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Preface
Hard
cover, 392 pages, including Glossary,
Biblio and Index, plus 16 pages of
historic photographs. This book is about
Penang-based Syed Shaykh al-Hady,
militant reformer of Islām and Muslims
in the early 1920s.
He was one of the founder of al-Imām
(The Leader) in 1906, a Jawi-Malay
journal published in Singapore and
dedicated to islah, reform and renewal.
In 1926-8, now based in Penang, he
created al-Ikhwān (Brethren), as well as
the Jelutong Press. In these, Syed
Shaykh courageously attacked abuses
wrongly sanctified by a
misinterpretation of what was the
intrinsic direction and nature of Islām,
which he contended was at all times
progressive and life-giving. He also
adamantly stood against taqlid, the
blind following of tradition which
Prophet Muhammad had warned would lead
us ‘to crawl into the lizard’s hole’ if
our forefathers had done so.
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