Rashīd Riḍā, Jews, and Zionism

Muhammad Rashīd Riḍā was one of the most prominent religious scholars of Sunni Islam in the first third of the twentieth century, a reformer who sought to rehabilitate the Muslim world by means of a return to its origins, a strategy later followed by the Muslim Brotherhood and other fundamentalist movements. This article deals with a lesser-known aspect of Riḍā’s thought–his evolving attitude toward the Jewish settlement in Palestine and the Zionist movement. It began with appreciation if not admiration, continued in attempts at cooperation (in the face of common enemies and in general), and ended with anti-Semitic remarks and unequivocal religious rulings (fatwās) against the Zionist enterprise. All the same, even when Riḍā came to believe that the Zionist movement was an enemy that had to be fought, he still appreciated its abilities and continued to hold that Arabs and Muslims should take it as a role model both in fighting it and in general.