Islamism is a religio-political ideology. The advocates of Islamism, also known as "al-Islamiyyun", are dedicated to realizing their ideological interpretation of Islam within the context of the state or society. The majority of them are affiliated with Islamic institutions or social mobilization movements, often designated as "al-harakat al-Islamiyyah." Islamists emphasize the implementation of sharia, pan-Islamic political unity, the creation of Islamic states,, and rejection of non-Muslim influences—particularly Western or universal economic, military, political, social, or cultural.

Muhammad Rashid Rida was a prominent early Salafist Sunni Islamic scholar, reformer, theologian, and Islamic revivalist. As a Salafi scholar who called for the revival of hadith studies and a theoretician of an Islamic state, Riḍā condemned the rising currents of secularism and nationalism across the Islamic world following the abolition of the Ottoman sultanate and championed a global pan-Islamist program aimed at re-establishing an Islamic caliphate.