Frequently Asked Questions

Young Turks, The

The Young Turks emerged prior to the 1908 Revolution as an opposition movement against the autocratic leadership of Sultan Abdulhamid II (d. 1918), and which subsequently governed the Ottoman Empire between 1908 and 1918. The moniker “Young Turks” was given by European onlookers, and elided the true diversity of opposition to Abdulhamid, which included Jews, Albanians, Arabs, and in its early period, ...

Read more about Young Turks, The

Youth Movements in Egypt

Contributed by Ben Marcus, Harvard Divinity School

Youth movements in Egypt played a key role in orchestrating the uprisings that overthrew Hosni Mubarak on February 11, 2011. It is crucial to note that a number of these youth movements—including Kefaya, the April 6 Movement, and others—began organizing long before 2011 and that some of these movements have attempted to use their popularity to impact the formation of the new government and its policies. The demography of these movements varies...

Read more about Youth Movements in Egypt

Yusuf al-Qaradawi

Yusuf al-Qaradawi (b. 1926) is a Sunni Muslim theologian and one of the most highly respected scholars in the Arabic-speaking world and the wider Muslim world. He is considered by his followers as a moderate thinker and part of the Muslim reformist tradition, continuing the work of early reformists such as Muhammad ‘Abduh and Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, though unlike them, he does not argue that Islam must update itself to meet modern needs. Rather, he argues that Islam already provides genuine answers to modern questions. His position is consistent with the wave of revivalism triggered by...

Read more about Yusuf al-Qaradawi

Pages