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John O. Voll has compellingly demonstrated that the eighteenth century was a time of reorientation of the Islamic tradition as Muslims from various walks of life sought to purify and revitalize their understanding of their faith through a return to the fundamentals of scripture at the same time that they sought the sociomoral reconstruction of society (Voll 1994, 22, 25). 1 This quest for a more “authentic” identity rooted in Islam resulted in an emphasis on education and greater personal agency with respect to religious belief and practice as Muslim individuals sought more intentionally to engage their faith through direct encounters with scripture and a stronger connection to their faith communities. The hallmarks of these movements—attention to the content (matn) of hadith rather than to the form through chain of transmission (isnad); reduced dependence on medieval scholars (taqlid) in favor of direct study of the Qur’an and hadith; use of independent reasoning (ijtihad); and revival and reform of the faith tradition as a

An earlier version of this chapter was presented at John O. Voll’s retirement gathering at Georgetown University, April 9, 2014. 1. Voll argues that the term fundamentalist is appropriately applied to those movements that place the scriptures of religions as the permanent standard by which existing conditions are to be judged.