1. The state has become a Christian state.

2. The rule of Islam has come to an end.

3. A Damascene ‘alim commenting on the Western-inspired reforms undertaken by the Egyptian authorities during their occupation of Syria (1831–41)

During the twentieth century, as in other regions of the Muslim world, Syria witnessed the development of new forms of religious activism among the ulama. These were responses to Westernisation (which was felt in Syria well before the French invasion of 1920, as this chapter’s epigraph shows) and the abolition of the Caliphate in 1924. In such a context, the challenges faced by those who claimed to be the guardians of Islam gave rise to a new conception of the social role of men of religion. Mere ‘pastoral care’, which Max Weber defines as the religious cultivation of the individual, was now combined with ‘preaching’ – that is, a form of collective religious instruction that is reminiscent of the prophetic stage. The latter development underlies the modern success of the concept of da‘wa (‘call’, ‘invitation’). In the face of a threat which the Muslim clergy perceived as existential, da‘wa was no longer defined as an individual effort but transformed into a collective and organised endeavour of social reconquest.

Despite the political upheavals that occurred in Syria in the years shortly before and after 1920 (the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the short-lived rule of King Faysal, French occupation), the ulama’s activities focused primarily on the educational realm – partly because access to the political scene remained difficult until the 1950s due to the hegemony of the great notables, but more importantly because of the intrinsically educational nature of the religious function, which led the clerics to see teaching as the foremost weapon in a Kulturkampf between the Islamic and secularist trends.