[30][31][29] As a young hadith student who studied al-Ghazali and Ibn Taymiyya, Rida believed reform was necessary to save the Muslim communities, eliminate Sufist practices he considered heretical, and initiate an Islamic renewal.

[61] Abduh's disciples eventually divided into two camps: one, which included Saad Zaghloul and Ali Abdel Raziq, was founded in modernism and Westernized secularism, and the other, the al-Manar Reform Party, was based in the revival of Islam.

[64][65] In 1898, Rida began publishing articles encouraging Ottoman authorities to adopt a new religious strategy within the existing caliphal and pan-Islamic policy under Sultan Abd al-Hamid II.

He believed that the dynastic nature of the Ottoman state was reconciled with the classical legal approach that allowed caliphs to rule through force rather than with shura, consent, and adherence to Islamic law.

[84] During World War I, Rida's activities primarily involved negotiating with the British and Sharif Hussein of Mecca, attempting to persuade them on the issue of establishing a united pan-Islamic state with autonomy for different regions to prepare for the eventual collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

In his 1922–23 work al-Khilafa aw al-Imama al-'Uzma (The Caliphate or the Supreme Imamate), he proposed comprehensive pan-Islamism and called upon Muslims to come together under their shared Islamic faith to shun emerging nationalist movements.

He saw ibn Sa'ud of the Sultanate of Najd as the most suitable candidate for this task, not only because he favoured the Wahhabis as the best hope for Arab and Islamic renaissance, but also because of their promising military-political capabilities to bring stability and security to the Hejaz, and to defend it from any European imperial aggressions.

[94] The Allied Powers' post-World War Order and the betrayal of Sharif Hussein led to a radical phase in Rida's pan-Islamist enterprise and he became a key figure in injecting militant anti-Westernism into Syrian and Egyptian Islamic politics.

Al Sa'ud encouraged Saudi Muslims to tone down their dogmatic views and in the 1920s facilitated the movement of several of Rida's disciples to Hejaz, where, through education, their beliefs were shifted from exclusivist, narrow-minded Classical Wahhabism prone to takfirism to a more tolerant and accepting people.

He became a prominent delegate and organizer of the Congress, whose objectives were international Islamic recognition of the Saudi rule of Hejaz, consultations on hajj services, and erasure of past reputation of sectarianism associated with the Wahhabis.

He published an article in al-Manar called Speculative Theology is a bid'ah according to the Pious Predecessors, as well as a discussion of the importance of following the Salaf in the promotion of hadith sciences, the spread of which he identified with the Islamic revival.

As a Salafi, Riḍā pushed back against the Ash'ari and Maturidite schools and advocated the traditionalist doctrine of Qur'anic letters, recitation, and voice being uncreated (ghayr Makhluq) word of God, a belief based on the works of ibn Taymiyyah.

[145] He thought the Muslim world faced crises in spiritual, educational, and legislative affairs, and identified Islamic religious reform as a "triple unification of doctrine, law, and ethics."

While the madhab partisans are influenced by administrative positions of power and promote governmental interests, the Mutafarijun divided the Muslim community based on differences in language, nationality, and geography, and conceived new identities within the nation-states, which Riḍā considered significantly more harmful.

In one of his final texts, published in 1935, Riḍā told Muslims to unite and "take the path traced by our ancestors, who defeated the Jewish in the first epoch [of Islam] and expelled them from the Arabian Peninsula.

[172] Riḍā alleged that the Jewish people had undermined the power of the Roman Catholic Church in Europe and introduced freemasonry, through which they manipulated the Bolsheviks and the Young Turks against the Russian and Ottoman empires, respectively, and that they orchestrated the French Revolution.

In November 1910, he publicly asserted that the Young Turk Revolution was a Jewish response to the Hamidian regime's rejection of Zionist plans to reclaim of their Third Temple in Jerusalem and its surrounding territories, through which they sought to reestablish their kingdom.

[190] Rida condemned the Shia for "supporting the Tatar and Crusader invasions" and alleged that Raafidi doctrines were formulated by a Jewish-Zoroastrian conspiracy aimed at "perverting Islam and weakening the Arabs.

"[89] Rida called upon "moderate Shi'is" to dissociate themselves from the stagnant Shia clergy and condemn intercessory practices such as beseeching their religious figures from the Ahl al-Bayt and Awliyaa in their graves, which he equated with polytheism.

He believed these gender roles represented the proper solution to these social problems, and that, while men are heads of the household, Muslim women were allowed to choose a spouse and were clearly given stipulated rights and responsibilities in a marriage.

[195] Riḍā was also a firm defender of traditional Islamic views on polygamy, presenting it as a solution to the emerging social ills afflicting societies, such as free mixing of men and women in workplaces and consequent sexual freedoms.

In one of his last treatises, A Call to the Fair Sex (1932), he argued that polygamy not only solved the problems associated with promiscuity and its resultant evils, but also addressed the difficulties produced by the loss of men in war.

[213] Medieval jurists such as al-Qarafi and ibn Taymiyya considered istislah as a logical extension of Qiyas, whereby a consideration of utility neither explicitly enjoined nor excluded by the revealed texts would be assumed as a valid basis for judgment.

[70] He also blamed the weakness and corruption of Muslim societies on Sufist pacifism and excess,[45] the blind imitation of the past (taqlid), the stagnation of the scholars, and the resulting failure to achieve progress in science and technology.

Instead of criticising Sufism based on its perceived role in the Islamic historical scheme, Riḍā opposed Sufis because he considered their activities to be innovations without textual precedents or any sanction in the practices of the earliest generations.

[119][241] Riḍā published Majmuʿat al-rasaʾil wa al-masaʾil al-najdiyya (Collection of Treatises and Questions from Najd) in 1928; this was one of the earliest occurrences wherein the doctrine of loyalty and disavowal was emphasised alongside tawhid in the Salafi context.

[248] The Egyptian Salafi hadith scholar Ahmad Shakir conferred the title of Hujjat al-Islam to Riḍā and extolled his Qur'anic commentary Tafsir al-Manar as a "real defense of religion" in the contemporary era, encouraging everyone to read it and spread its message.

These fatwas were regarded by the indigenous reform-oriented scholars as their main source of inspiration and became influential in shaping the intellectual thought of religious circles in 20th century Indonesia, introducing them to Salafi reformist ideals.

The official publication of the organisation was a magazine titled al-Manar al-Jadid ("the New Lighthouse") in honour of his legacy; they stated that the Muslim community continued to face "the same tribulations" as during Riḍā's era.

[252] Riḍā was an important source for many 20th century Salafi scholars, including al-Hilali, al-Khatib, al-Qasimi, ibn Uthaymin, Abdur Razzaq Malihabadi, Vakkam Abdul Qadir Moulavi, and, most notably, al-Albani.