He was an engineer committed to politics and founded the Republic Brotherhood party, which opposed the approval of state laws based on shari’a, and with his school of thought gave life to an innovative idea of Islam through various publications, among them “The Second Message of Islam”, published first in Arabic and later translated into English by Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im. His theory is based on the idea that there were two messages of Islam, the first definitively consigned to history and the second instead still in fieri, in the sense that its complete fulfilment has not yet been achieved.

The first message was addressed at Mohamed’s followers in Medina, after the Hijra, or migration from Mecca, and the creation of a community free of links to the original tribes. The “first message” consisted of laws and a system, while the “second”, chronologically really revealed in Mecca before the Hijra, contains the universal foundations of the religion, its ethics, theology and redemption and is addressed at all future generations of Muslims.

The revelation of the Koran as a written text has therefore come to an end, but explanations have not. This thesis has explosive consequences, as the Italian historian of Islam Massimo Campanini emphasises, because the first message appears to be historically surpassed, contextualised within a certain historical period, while the second one acquires eternal validity. This is a full frontal challenge to the traditional version according to which “the real Muslim society” is the one in Medina, destined to be repeated and become the basis for Muslim jurisprudence.  

Taha adds to this religious vision his political ideas of democratic and socialist inspiration, critical of Marx’s socialism, and based on three forms of equality, economic – a sort of third way between Western capitalism and socialism – political equality through democracy and social equality.