THE NATURE OF TYRANNY AND THE DEVASTATING RESULTS OF OPPRESSION

Publisher: London: Hurst, 2021, xxxii+145pp. ISBN: 9781787385481.

Considered as one of the architects of Arab political philosophy in the 19th century, the Syrian educationalist [Abd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi (born in mid- 19th century and died in 1902) was in uenced by the reformist ideas of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1838/9–1897) and Muhammad [Abduh (1849–1905), and advocated a return to the original purity of Islam, claiming that alien concepts and distortions such as mysticism, fatalism, sectarian divisions, and scholarly, blind imitation had led to ignorance and submission to stagnant theologians and despotic rulers who suppressed freedoms, promoted a false religion, and corrupted the moral, social, educational, and nancial systems of the Muslim nation. According to him, the best, or in this case the worst, example was the Ottoman Empire, at the same time he advocated Arab independence and an elected Arab caliph with limited powers as the basis for the revival of Islam.