What is Mustafa al-Maraghi?
[[File:Mustafa al-Maraghi.jpg|right|thumb|Mustafa al-Maraghi]] '''Muhammad Mustafa al-Maraghi''' (1881–1945; {{lang-ar|محمد مصطفى المراغي}}) was an [[Egypt]]ian modernist reformer and rector of [[Al-Azhar University|al-Azhar]] in the 1930s. He was one of the students of [[Muhammad 'Abduh]]. He called for social, legal and educational changes and pursued a strong campaign - begun by Muhammad 'Abduh and finished by [[Mahmoud Shaltout]] - to include the modern sciences in al-Azhar's [[curriculum]].<ref>[http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100132775 The Oxford Dictionary of Islam (Oxford Reference)]</ref> To that end he organised committees to reform the university's regulations and curriculum and created a supervisory department for research whose responsibilities included publishing and translation. Mustafa al-Maraghi was the link between the reforms of his mentor Muhammad Abduh and such subsequent leaders of al-Azhar as [[Mustafa Abd al-Raziq]], [[Abdel-Halim Mahmoud]] and [[Mahmoud Shaltout]]. As a reformer, al-Maraghi believed in Islam's flexibility and ability to adapt to the needs of modernity. He called for the exercise of [[ijtihad]] (independent reasoning/interpretation), reinterpretation, and opposed [[taqlid]] (imitation or emulation), the blind following of tradition. And he attributed the religious, moral, intellectual, and political decline of Islamic peoples to the adherence to taqlid and the lack of ijtihad. He said that after the first three centuries, [[ijma']] ([[consensus]] of the Muslim community or scholars for resolving legal questions) was impossible, because scholars were so scattered in the [[East]] and [[West]] that usually it was not possible to collect their opinions.<ref>Islam and the Modern Age - Volume 27 - Page 166.</ref> == References == {{reflist}} {{DEFAULTSORT:Maraghi, Mustafa al-}} [[Category:1881 births]] [[Category:1945 deaths]] [[Category:Egyptian Muslims]] [[Category:Islamic religious leaders]]