Research Paper on:
18th Century Muslim Reform Movements

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of militant Islam has increased (Keddie, 1994). The following examination of these "reform" movements will examine why Muslims revolted against the status quo, looking at why they wished to reform  Islam and how they went about expressing this desire. The movements that have characterized the history of Islam have been referred to as "puritanical or reform movements," but  Keddie (1994) rejects these terms as fundamentally inaccurate. Puritanical generally denotes a particular Western religious group, so, therefore, does no seem appropriate. Keddie rejects the term "reform" because it is  equally used for a liberal modern school whose tenets and practices are very different from those of eighteenth century revivalists (1994). Another name for these movement is "jihad movements,"  which is a term used to refer to a holy war against forces external to the Muslim faith. In each instance, the express motivation was to remove current rulers and  practices and replace them with ones that were deemed to be "truly Islamic" (Keddie, 1994). In the eighteenth century, such movements occurred in Saudi Arabia with the Wahhabis;  in West Africa, and a major jihad occurred in Sumatra in the early nineteenth century (Keddie, 1994). These movements occurred without Western conquest. However, in the period of early  Western conquest, similar movements were directed wholly or in part against Westerners. These include the Wahhabis and Faraizis of South Asia, Shamyl in Caucasus, Abdel Qadir in Algeria, and the  Senussis in Libray (Keddie, 1994). The causation of the latter movement include the territorial conquests of the West, the infidel; however, the causes of the pre-conquest movements are more complex  (Keddie, 1994). There has been little comparative study of these movements because they occurred in such a widely dispersed area and among different cultures (Keddie, 1994). Several of the