Study and Critique of Sayyid Jamal al-Din Asadabadi and Muhammad Abduh Views in the Ascending Development of the Islamic Awakening

Sayyid Jamal al-Din Asadabadi and Muhammad Abduh are among the pioneers and thinkers of the Islamic Awakening in the Sunni world. Looking at the circumstances of the Islamic nations and retardation of their countries, and feeling a "common suffering", both of them searched for a solution and found "Islam" as the final solution; and, in accord to their finding, they provided some way out.
Although, Sayyid Jamal had in his mind great ideals such as "unity" and tried hard to realize his ideals, he did not pay so attention to appropriateness of his way and did not go to find some public support. The reason behind this was that he was mostly concerned with theoretical reflections upon consequences of his own ideas.
In spite of his sincerity and the attention paid by him to cultural attempts, Abduh believed that as long as Egyptians are unaware, they are not able to push the English out of their country and for the same reason reform in Egyptians' religious thought should precede political struggle against colonialism. He did not heed to the fact that for colonized nations, it is impossible to get free from retardation without getting free from colonialism. And, in most cases, colonialism and Muslims' decline intensify each other.
Now, in the third decade of the Islamic Revolution, the role played by Sayyid Jamal and Abduh has lost its importance, since with its ascending development, the Islamic Awakening has entered the stage of system-making and civilization-building. In spite of being of some influence in the Sunni world at the beginning, thoughts and functions of these two reformers lack the necessary properties such as deep knowledge of colonialism and belief in the role which may be played by people to go along with this ascending development. Thus, under the present circumstances, the important question to which attention should be paid is as follows: "which thought and function are efficient to establish and continue such a process?"
The present study seeks to study and criticize the thoughts and functions of Sayyid Jamal and Abduh in a fair way, and find the extent of efficiency of these two thoughts in the ascending development of the Islamic Awakening.