المجددون في الإسلام

Tajdid means religious renewal — the idea, rooted in a hadith attributed to the Prophet, that God sends a reformer (mujaddid) to the Muslim community at the head of every century. Al-Khuli builds his study on two manuscripts he verified in the Egyptian National Library: Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti's compilation on this hadith, and a companion survey by al-Maraghi al-Jarjawi. He argues that this impulse toward renewal in belief, worship, and law is native to the Islamic tradition, not a modern import from the West.

The book profiles reformers traditionally identified with the tajdid hadith, including the Umayyad caliph Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz, the jurist al-Shafi'i, Ibn Surayj, Abu Sahl al-Sa'luki, the theologian Abu al-Hasan al-Ash'ari, and Abu Bakr al-Baqillani.