The Struggle for the Real Islam: Militancy and Failure of Reform and Development
The Struggle for the Real Islam: Islamic Militancy and Failure of
Modernization and Economic Transformation.
ByDr Michael Sakbani*
Monotheistic religions have been around for more than 3000 years. This time span is punctuated by a thousand years between Christianity and Judaism, another 650 between Christianity and Islam and a thousand four hundred between our era and Islam. Each of these three religions took its own road of reform and development into our era. The revelation of Judaism was gradually evolved by the rabbinical authorities in Mesopotamia and by the great Rabbis of the middle ages, in particular the great Arab-Jewish theologian, Ibin al Ma`moun (Mimonadis) of Cordoba. In the nineteenth century, Judaism underwent significant evolutions through the rise of the conservative and reform faiths. In effect, non-Orthodox Judaism reflects man’s effort to adapt his religion to his circumstances. For Christianity, the Church and its doctors had carried out important evolution of the revelation by the end of the fifth century. In particular, the third council of the Church redefined the basis of the faith, thereby splitting the Western Church from the eastern Ethiopian and Nestorian churches. Then, the Church split again between Orthodoxy and Catholicism redefining in the process the basic tenants. In the middle ages, nothing happened for some 600 years. However, since the renaissance, Christian dogma has undergone significant reorientation towards man and his world and absorbed in its theology so much of western thought. The Reformation, and in its wake, the cumulative changes in the Catholic doctrine starting with St. Thomas Aquinas, transformed modern Christianity to a faith that can be said to reflect as much the Western culture as any thing in the original revelation.
Five Centuries in the Formation of Islam
The road of Islam started out by the recording of the revelation of the Prophet at the time of the third Caliph, Osman, a process of tracing and checking oral sources which lasted for about 50 years. With the Koranic text on hand, it became the main source of religious, moral and temporal rules. The development of society, however, required an ever-expanding code of behavior. This was supplied in a juridical manner by the development of what came to be called the Fuqh (the science of religion). According to the Fuqh, the Koran is not the only source of this law; the sayings and practices of the Prophet, i.e., the Sunna, were added as another source of religious legislation to the body of the Sharià, the religious corpus. To develop further the Sharià so as to cope with the complexity of a society, the Fuqh developed a system of hierarchy for sources together with rules of derivation wherefrom. This system of rules of derivation starts with the Koran, the book of the revelation, and then the sayings and practices of the profit, i.e. the Sunna, and thereafter, the consensus of the community (Ijma`a), which became practically unattainable after the early period of limited geography. Hence, the Fuqh considered the consensus of the learned, the Ulama, to be its equivalence.
These three sources came to characterize the early Sunni version of Islam. But this proved rather inadequate as the Muslim society developed further. Hence, another avenue of sourcing developed. It involved comparing the case on hand with
· Former Director of Economic Cooperation, Poverty Alleviation and Special Programs, UNCTAD; Adjunct Professor of Finance and Economics at Thunderbird-Europe and Webster-Geneva; Senior Consultant to the UN System and the European Union.
similar precedents thereby opening the door to what came to be called Qiyas, i.e. patterning on the precedent, whether in fact or in reasoning, the legal disposition of the case on hand. The extent of acceptance and deployment of teach of these sources came to distinguish and demarcate the four Sunni schools of Fuqh. The Hanbali` school is on the extreme of emphasizing the Hadth and the Hanafi School on the flexible end emphasizing the Quran more than the other sources. The other two schools are in between. Several hundred years later, the great Sunni doctor of Islam, al Ghazali, added a fifth source, which he called the “Interests of the Prophecy (al Masalih al Mursala); it generates Sharià rules on the basis of what he considered the five general purposes of the religious prophecy.[1]
It is interesting to note in this respect the similarity between Judaism and Islam in placing the accent on developing a code of behavior for the faithful, the religious law.
In Shià Islam, some two centuries after the Prophet, his distant grandson, Jaafar al Sadique, the sixth Imam, fashioned the institution of the Imamate and endowed it with the capacity to interpret the doctrine so as to be compatible with changes in time and place. The authority of the Imam is said to emanate from his inspired perception of the inner meaning or intents of the religion and from his mission of safeguarding the true faith. He is accordingly infallible and obedience to him is an essential part of the faith. As Shià Islam developed subsequently, it created a cast of trained scholars and a hierarchy of authority in the matter of the Sharià. A decisive moment in the development of Shiism arrived when the scholar al Kulayni compiled in the first half of the Tenth Century, a collection of traditions in his book, Kitab al Kafi, which came to constitute the basic reference for Shià Islam[2]
This rather juridical character of al Sharià implied a code of varied strictures on individual behavior and the functioning of the society. Yet, outside Shià Islam, the Sunni mainstream did not create any institutions to evolve these rules or to revise them; there was never an institutionalized religious authority in Sunni Islam.
The effervescence of religious learning and creativity in the first four centuries of Islam resulted in a pluralistic culture of interpretation and a wide variety of schools, more than twenty of them. There were however two main approaches to religious jurisprudence: an interpretative tradition following strictly the Sharià`s rules of sourcing, and a philosophical approach emphasizing additionally, concepts inspired by Aristotelian and neo- Plutonian rationalism. This tradition started with al Farabi and al Kindi followed by a long line of Muslim philosophers, like Ibin Sina (Avicina), all the way to Ibin Rushd (Averroes). In time, these two approaches came to an inevitable collision. To the philosophers, epitomized by the great Ibin Rushd, Sharià, and religion in general, cannot be at tension with rational thinking, since thought, like religion, is bestowed upon man by his creator. Hence, the maxim: whatever is from the mind is from God. Therefore, to the philosophers, the theology of religion is a rationalist and by implication relativist.
The celebrated debate between al Ghazali and Ibin Rushd in the eleventh century marked a schism between these two traditions in interpreting and developing the Sharià[3]. At any rate, this intellectual dispute was immediately seized upon by the temporal authorities and by the Ulama (the religiously learned) who were appointed by them. As we will argue below, both had an obvious interest in shutting off free-thinking and non- authorized theorizing. Some Caliphs (kings) were alarmed by the proliferation of Islamic interpretations and the great multiplicity of schools, some of which were quite anti-authoritarian, like the Khawarej, the Karamitah and the early Ismailis. Moreover, such anti-authoritarian schools used violence in challenging the power of the state and in implementing their egalitarian programs, like land and wealth distribution. Thus, the state banned in the sixth century of Islam new religious invention, that is, the Ijtihad was officially banned, and felons doing it were pursued and persecuted by the full power of the state. Under the Seljuk rulers, at the time of the grand vizier Nizam al Mulk, the famous al Ghazali was invited to write the authoritative version of Islam according to the state, with the head of the state as the head of Islam[4]. After al Ghazali wrote the official canon, some five centuries of rich philosophic traditions in the Arab- Islamic culture receded rapidly from the intellectual scene. It is one of the ironies of Islamic culture that its philosophers, in particular, Ibin Rushed influenced more the development of Christian than Islamic theology. As Bertrand Russell remarked “he was a dead end in the latter (Islamic theology) but a beginning in the former (Christian theology)”[5]. Russell continues to note that Ibin Rushd influence in the West “was very great, not only on the scholastics, a body of unprofessional free thinkers … who were called “Averroists” …but…among professional philosophers…especially the Franciscans and at the University of Paris”
.
Closing the Door on Theological Innovation: the Petrifaction of Islam
This act of the Saljuk grand Wazir signaled the beginning of the era of an official homogeneous Islam. The rulers had an obvious interest in assuming the mantle of official Islam, so as to fuse temporal and spiritual power in their hands and force obedience to themselves as a matter of religious duty. On the other hand, the Ulama had a vital interest in securing their status and assuring the continuation of their economic earnings. This model ushered in at the time of the late Abbasid Empire prevailed and continued during the subsequent long reign of the Ottoman Sultans. It should be recalled that the Sultans were temporal kings and additionally after Sultan Selim the first, Islamic Caliphs. Consequently, this tradition of official religiousity gained the party and obedience to the rulers, the guardians of religion, became the hallmark of the writings of Muslim scholars. The effervescence of Islamic intellect, so striking in the first five centuries, sadly came to a murmuring halt enthusiastically enforced by the temporal rulers.
An exception to this was the development of Sufism in the middle period. The development of Sufism brought into Islam a spiritual dimension of utmost interest. It bore the influence of some aspects of Shià Islam, Christianity and Hinduism, and in some of its finest advocates, Mohieddin Ibin Arabi, it had a universal ecumenical spirit. However, despite its interest and universal leanings, Sufism great contribution was in the recasting of the relationship between man and God rather than in the theology of Islam.
In the middle period of Islam, its mainstream, Sunni Islam, became rigid, final and homogenized with great suspicion of anything new- cast as budaa, i.e., doubtful invention. Uncertainty and doubt, which are a part and parcel of spiritual belief, gave ground to the certainty and immutability of the established faith. The belief was widespread that the Koran has everything and that the last word on anything can be found in the authorized body of the religion. It was forgotten that the great religious traditions are worlds of texts and deeds i.e. worlds of forms, that take us closer to God, but can in no way define and explain God or his will and pin down the spirituality of belief. Spirituality derives its power from a Source that is a reality within and outside religious forms, and this Source cannot be proven or explained strictly in the terms of religious forms[6]. This homogenization led to concrete forms and beliefs, with literal meaning and precise preordained rites. Consequently, the risk became great that individuals regardless of their learning can believe in communicating God’s will according to their own reading of it. This was to portend the great dangers of fundamentalist interpretations. It is not our contention that there were no great scholars in this period; rather, such scholars spent their energies purging the faith from inventions not based on what they considered the official corpus of the canon. A new tradition of scholarship came to the fore in which the ancestral scholars assumed superior authority and later ones spent their energy quoting and interpreting what their “righteous predecessors” opined. This tradition of more or less backward referring scholarship continued in traditional Islam to this day.
In Shià Islam, the conversion of Iran to Twelve Imam Shiism[7] after the coming to power of the Safavid dynasty in the sixteenth century, propelled the establishment of religious institutional hierarchy and an alliance with the temporal power of the Safavids. Shià theology in opposition to Sunni theology gave the sayings and deeds of the prophet a reference power only if transmitted by Shià scholars and/or decedents of the Prophet. The interesting twist in Shià jurisprudence is its use of the Mutazila rational doctrine in justifying the Imamate`s status and authority as rthe depository of authoratative i.e. rational choice eventhough on completely different grounds.The institution of the Imam, thereby conferring upon it the validity of reason in all its pronouncements[8]. However, in matters of theology, Shià Fuqh is more restrictive than its Sunni counterpart in as much as it does not accept Qias as a source. This is quite understandable in view of the Imamet`s authority in developing Sharià. Aside from this aspect, the Shià establishment did not evolve the doctrine; their main effort was to evolve the tenets of Shià Islam as opposed to Sunni Islam, especially with respect to the authority of the four deputies of the last Imam and their successors.
As far as other schools of Shià Islam went, the Ismaili Seven Imam sect, the second most numerous, developed in various localities, and evolved from a violent start to a peaceful cult of basically local importance. However, unlike the 12th imam shiisim, the Ismaili tradition brought to their faith a philiosophical traditions in which the text was interpruted as having an interior mening in tune with philosophical dictate rather than the external strict literal sense of the text. Ismaili shiism was later to split into numerous Islamic factions. Thus, Islam arrived into the modern era without major adaptation or radical changes in the last seven hundred years.
The fossilization of Islam would have been explained in historical terms as a phenomenon of historical rise and decline in a cyclical pattern of history. However, what distinguishes it from self- reversing phenomena is that it is coupled with cultural, economic and scientific declines. In other words, it was a new state of mind of a formerly great civilization. The state of backwardness of Islamic societies have in addition bred cultural habits and modes of thought often alien to Islam itself. An outstanding manifestation of that is the refusal to participate in Western progress in all aspects of education, culture and economics and the insistence on the indigenousness of any development. A case in point is the refusal of Arab parents in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to send their children to western schools on the basis of their missionary financial backing[9].
Revivalist Currents: the Birth of Political and Fundamentalist Islam
The stark decline of the Islamic world from its previous exalted heights called forth a mixture of revivalists. There were among them extremist schools that followed the teaching of some middle-age scholars, notably, Ibin al Kayyem and Ibin Taymyya, a Hanbali scholar, who sought salvation by returning to early Islamic purity, i.e. seeking the truth in the concrete simplicity and literal textual interpretation. Theology and Fuqh thus become methods of interpreting words, language phrases and ascertaining the authentic historicity of events collateral to their interpretation. A shoot of this return- to- the- roots thinking can be found in the Wahhabi sect of Islam which seeks to emulate the “righteous ancestors” and duplicate their ways[10], thus, the name the“ Salafiyya”. The idea is to re-establish the old practices to shake off the prevailing state.
Another shoot seeks the politicization of Islam and the reestablishment of a Muslim state of authentic and pure character, the Khilafah. This type of political Islam is present in the post- Khilafah thought; it having been abolished by Mustafa Kemal in 1923. A leading example is the thought of Hasan al Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brothers in the 1920`s in Egypt[11]. The Muslim Brothers started a trend in Islamic societies of seeking political power in the name of Islam by presenting the Sharià as a political program without advocating any reform in it. Implicit in this is the thought that the problems of Islamic societies lie in their abandonment of the true path of the Sharià and not in the genuine petrifaction of Islamic theology. It is therefore an advocacy of taking the historical example rather than offering a specific new program. In this view, the prevailing state is essentially the result of the disintegration of the political order. Thus, a proposition common to the political Islamists in this mold is the advocacy of re-establishing a Muslim state, i.e. al Khilafah, to defend Muslims and secure their rights. Political Islamists in the contemporary scene include the Islamic Front of Salvation of Algeria and the followers of Al Maududi in Pakistan. A different variety of political Islam is found in the thoughts and actions of Hasan al Turabi in Sudan.
Some extremists of al Banna followers combined politicization with the literal theology of Ibin Taymyya, resulting into a brew of incendiary thinking, such as found in the writings of Sayyed Qutb and his society of “Forgiveness and Disfranchising”. Sayyed Qutb elaborated, after Ibin Taymyya, the doctrine of disfranchising from Islam, i.e., Takfeer, any body who does not subscribe to his thought and act according to Islam as he sees it. In particular, he considered democracy as a major corroding Western influence, which impedes the Islamization of societies. He, therefore, opined killing its advocates and practitioners’. Bin Laden, and his principal associate, al Zwahiri along with the Talabans, are the latest link in Qutb`s chain of political Islamists.
Another offshoot of political Islamists is the Party of Islamic Liberation. This was founded in Lebanon in the early fifties by the Palestinian Takuyuddin al Nabahani. This party has a significant following in the Central Asian countries. This is altogether different from other Islamists in that it primes the political advocacy of establishing an Islamic state in which a new theological interpretation of Islam would modify the existing Fuqh. It remains still in the nature of a sect with a political agenda and a distant promise of a new future theology. It can be said that its views on contemporary Islamic societies are essentially transitional.
In Shià Islam, the equivalence is found in Imam al Khumeini` concept of the “reign of the religious authority”, Wilayat al Faquih, installed in the Islamic Republic of Iran through the Council of Guides. The Council is charged with the task of an overseer of all the laws and actions of the elected officials, which have to be consistent with precepts of Shià Fuqh, i.e. the teachings of the deputies of the disappeared Imam. With the exception of authenticating the Prophet’s sayings and actions by a Shià source and the Imamet institution, Shià Islam does not have a different theology than Sunni Islam.
Besides the political Islamists and the literalist militants, there were at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century other revivalists within the Islamic main traditions. These include modernizers such as Jamaluddin al Afghani, Abdurahman al Kawakiby, Muhammad Abdoh, Muhammad Iqbal, Taher al Jazairy and several others. These reformists, unlike the political Islamists and the literalist Salafiyyas, had thoughts that included both the Sharià itself and the state of their societies. They offered at the time a critique of what was wrong with the Ottoman State, the Islamic Khilafah, the intellectual state of Islam itself as well as the way it was practiced in their time. They all advocated reopening the door of Ijtihad, i.e. new thinking, in reinterpreting and renewing the Islamic Sharià. They were also sharply aware of the double value system of the West and the materialist nature of its secular culture and sought to develop a spiritual alternative[12]. Therefore, they tried to innovate within the context of Islam’s character and within the requirements of their time. However, the advent of Western colonialization at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century in the aftermath of the collapse of the Ottoman State, the Islamic Khilafah, turned the general public attention from Islamic reform to National awakening to fight colonialism. Indeed, at the beginning of the last century, nationalist movements spread all over the Islamic world. The nationalists' programs involved modernization, a bit of secularism and a western-style nationalist creed. The nationalists caught the imagination of the educated elite and soon became also mass movements with clear -cut political agendas. It was evident that the Nationalist appeal for joining the struggle against the yoke of the Imperialist West drowned the appeal of religious reformers. Thus, the Nationalists can be said to have pre-empted the main stream Islamic reformers[13].
The Failure of the Nationalist Regimes and the Rise of Global Militancy
The nationalist thinking in general and that in the Arab world in particular, followed closely the European Nationalist thought of the nineteenth century. It was secular, modernizing and totally disinterested in the concept of the Islamic state. It was to be expected that the particular country conditions of various Muslim societies dictated the contents of the modernization programs of the various national movements. Still, a common feature of the nationalist thinking was the abandonment of the Islamic state. Moreover, the reform of Islam and the building of modern, rationalist and equally spiritual new traditions, were not, and perhaps could not be, a part of the projects of modernization of the nationalist movements. On the other hand, a distinct Islamic theological revival did not seem to attract the attention or interest of the advocates of political Islam; they continued to believe that the full truth is implicit in the received traditions and that the problems of their societies are of political nature rather than, additionally, questions of doctrinal relevance and socio-political maladaptation.
In the Arab world, the two movements: the political Islamists and the Arab Nationalists, cohabited at some tension in the first six decades of the Twentieth Century, specifically, from 1908 when the Young Turks took over power in the Ottoman state, bringing with them to the Islamic State (Khilafah) a National Touranic creed, to 1967 and the decade of the seventies, when the Arab National Movement was defeated by Israel and its dysfunctional and failed national political regimes were exposed over the decade as mere dictatorships, often corrupt and always repressive. The lack of political and cultural content to Arab Nationalism exposed its vulnerability to political exploitation and cultural retrogradation. And the socialism content of its economic programs added to that economic failure. This largely explains its impoverished record.
The cohabitation however produced a dualistic culture in Arab societies: the culture of the ruled masses with no political power or political participation in which the Islamists laid low, and that of the ruling one-party National state. The culture of the masses was traditional, full of givens from the past, closed upon itself, politically neutered, economically poor and rather backward. The culture of the Nationalists was modern only in slogans, their states based on power relationship to the ruled, and in respect of the prevailing traditions, empty of any reformist contents. Almost all the Nationalists` leaders came through the army from rural backgrounds with little personal intellectual attainments and thus limited intellectual horizon: Nasser, Assad, Kadafi, Boumedienne and Saddam, all come to mind in this respect[14]. They put in place "etatic", Soviets- style, totalitarian regimes protected from the people by police and security apparatuses, all above and outside the law. The one party system puts its beneficiaries, mostly unqualified, in charge of the public sector, which managed and controlled the economy with no standards of performance or a bottom lime[15]. The nationalists` forays into social and cultural transformation were negligible and often politically skewed. For example, forming and educating a new generation capable of functioning in the modern universal civilization became exercises in political indoctrination, in dilution of academic standards and in neglect of teaching critical thinking and historical objectivity. The result was a failure on most fronts[16]. In addition, the dysfunctional nationalist regimes, all of which came by military coups, failed even in the military task of protecting their people against Israel. And this failure became obvious to the populace by the end of the 1960`s. This populace who supported the Nationalists and dreamt for decades of revival under their leadership received the cruelest of history’s shocks: the loss of self- esteem and the desperation of repeated failure on multiple fronts. This was to be reflected later on in the Jihadis finding in self-sacrifice a personal redemption from the collective failure. The result of the nationalist failure was the loss of followers in the popular scene, much to the delight of the West, and the move of the advocates of political Islam and the fundamental religious revivalists to occupy the resultant vacuum. They had a ready audience in the subculture of the masses among which they have lain low. These masses were politically neutered and intellectually desperate for something new. The Islamists laid a claim to authenticity in the prevailing dualist culture and connected readily to the grievances of this substratum among which they survived for several decades.
The Islamists of all hues came gradually to share with the Arab Nationalists most of the nationalistic goals, and more importantly, the same sense of grievance towards western colonialism. With the creation of Israel and the unlimited support of the West, especially the US, to its Zionist designs, the Islamists exploited the flagrant incapacity of the nationalist Arab rulers to put a limit to the humiliations and encroachment inflicted by Israel and fashioned an anti-Western attitude wrapped by a feeling of deep injustice. As economic and social underdevelopment along with political repression turned out to be the main legacy of the Arab Nationalist regimes, the 1970`s witnessed a turn among large segments of the disaffected Arab populations towards the Islamists who posed as the natural power inheritors. The Islamists claimed authenticity to their analysis of the problems and their solutions were premised on Islamic deliverance without ever specifying its details[17]. On this view, since the entire verity reposed in the dogma, the return to the sources was claimed to be the historically proven way out. In other words, the program was based on faith and historical example rather than specifics[18]. Absent any political organization and civil society institutions left in place between the Nationalists and the Islamists by the totalitarian regimes, there was no other choice to be made.
The political Islamists are of two streams: a stream that wants an Islamic revival, and as of late, accepts democracy and renounces violence as referred to above, and another who rejects democracy altogether on the theory that God is the only source of authority and the Sharià is the lone genuine program reference[19].
To be sure, the political Islamists of all shades were still a minority in the population, but this minority was the only force present in opposition to the nationalist dictatorships. The supporters of Arab Nationalism, took a kind of political sabbatical in the 1980`s to examine and try to understand their multiple failures. During the decade of the nationalists' sabbatical, their disappearance from the scene left the Islamists as the only advocates of change in the Arab street and the main victims of political repression of the rulers. It was not until the 1990`s that the Nationalist reappeared back on the scene. As an example, a nationalist conference was held in Cairo, under the auspices of the Centre for Studies of Arab Unity, to examine in a manner of self-critiques the gaps and errors of the nationalist program and its experience. This conference formulated a new platform of six goals for the nationalist project, among which democracy and Arab federalism, modernization and economic development had central places. Another conference was organized by the same sponsors in 1994, which included this time the leftists, Marxists and the non-violent Islamists, who for the first time endorsed, inter alias, democracy and the peaceful alternation of power by the ballot box as parts of a common program[20]. During the second half of the 1990`s, the Muslim Brothers in Egypt, in Syria, and in Iraq moved gradually from their old position of considering the Sharià as the sole valid reference for the society to accepting references of non-Islamic parties provided that all compete democratically. Thus, while the Muslim Brothers were the pioneers of militant political Islam, they have grown in effect from a political movement into an Islamic political party. In the last five years, the Egyptian, Syrian and Libyan Muslim Brothers have joined the opposition to their countries respective regimes with a claimed full acceptance of the democratic game and a forthright denunciation of violence for political purposes. In sum, the Muslim Brothers have separated themselves from the militant Islamists and accepted in theory to join others in the movement for political democracy, human rights and reform in the Arab World. However, this remains a promise to be tested under democratic conditions.
The Rise of the Global Jihadi Militants
The rise of political Islamists in the Arab and other countries in the 1970`s and 1980`s as a consequence of the failure of the Nationalists received an unexpected twist with the efforts of the US and Saudi Arabia to combat the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. For the first time in centuries, the Jihadis recruited for the Afghan war experienced Jihad against an aggressor and fought with brother Muslims against a common enemy. In Afghanistan, they were able to gather and indoctrinate volunteers, train and equip them with the direct aid of the US, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. That experience was a trial by fire for them, and among other things, it convinced them that armed violence is the only way to remove injustice even if perpetrated by a big, seemingly invincible power. The Afghan war also gave its fighters the sense of living a common experience with coreligionists who shared the same views on Western materialism whether capitalists or communist and in the process identified their common enemy. Finally, the experience of a community of believers drew on the universal spirit of Islam in globalizing the scope of the militants` agenda and establishing, almost for the first time, a global network, free of national boundaries, fit to fight in a globalized world for a universal Islamic state. However, experience is not sufficient to bind global militants; there had to be an ideology behind all that. This they found in the thought of Sayyed Qutb, who was hung in Egypt, and they weaved into it different strands from Wahhabi theology. Among the major tenets of this thought is the notion of Takfeer, i.e. disfranchising from Islam anybody who does not share their views. Thus, they become, like the born again, a community apart from the main Islamic one.
The Afghan experience of militant global Islamists would not have been sufficient to explain the spread of militant political Islam except as regarding those who participated in it. To recruit future Jihadis, explicit Koranic references together with concrete factual applications had to be found. Like any other text, even if holy, the Koran has both general and relative addresses. Relative address concerns the particular situations that faced the Islamic community at the time of the prophet; they do not seek to establish general principles of eternal validity. The global Islamists simply selected the verses ordaining Jihad when Muslims are aggressed, as they were during the time of the Prophet, and did not fail to find concrete examples in which Muslims were under attack in our time. From Afghanistan to Kashmir, to Palestine, to Chechnya, to Bosnia and lastly Iraq, they conjured a spectre of Islam under attack.
This selectivity in referencing their actions and political agenda has not been convincingly challenged by the main line Islamic establishment. How could it have escaped attention that a religion that equates taking one life to killing all humanity, renounced aggressive wars against others and elevated the preservation of human life to one of the five cardinal purposes of its prophecy, has come to be associated with violence and terror. There has been reluctance by religious authorities and Muslim public opinion-makers to face up to such a distortion of Islam, in part, because of the common and shared sense of grievance, and in another, because these acts were initially targeted against outside aggressors. The religious authorities did not see their holy duty in the pursuit of the tolerant and peaceful message of Islam clear of partial interpretations. They seem to have silently condoned what seemed to them a justified struggle against aggressors like Israel. This is a major error of principle; in a matter of distortion of the faith, only a wide and unqualified condemnation of all terrorist acts and rejection of their perpetrators is appropriate. In addition, it convinces no one to hold that because these terrorists are subject to pursuit by the illegitimate Arab governments, one should not take a stand against the opposers of the regimes. Like at the time of al Khawarej, the distortion of religion should be condemned as such and dealt with inside the Muslim community as an internal aberration. It took quite a while for this realization to sink- in and it is unfortunate that the Muslim community has not fully grasped the damage that the extremists have inflicted on the good name of Islam. Fortunately, there are some positive changes of late[21].
Part of the blame should also be apportioned to the rulers who expelled the extremists to the outside world. By exporting those who took aim at their failure to protect their people and improve and modernize their conditions, they sought to neutralize a significant activist part of their domestic opposition. The political illegitimacy of the rulers played into the hands of both the extremists and their tolerant foreign hosts. The immigration of a large swath of political Islamists to the West has resulted in implanting among the majority of peaceful Muslim immigrant communities a minute band of activists busy trying to influence and charge with militant fervor the disaffected youths of such communities, often victims of discrimination and poverty. It is only recently that this state of affairs has become of public concern in both the West and among the rulers of the Arab world who have finally joined the international struggle against the resultant violence.
It would be a violation of reality to leave the impression that the political Islamist trend is well and thriving. As a matter of fact, since the early 1990`s, political Islam has failed in all countries to become dominant among the masses. Indeed, al Zwahiri, Bin Laden`s principal ideologue, admits in his book (Knights Under the Banner of the Prophet) that the Islamists have failed to turn the Muslim masses into armed militants i.e., tajyeesh[22]. Its record in places where it took power (Afghanistan, Iran and Sudan) has been far from satisfactory. No less bleak has been its record in countries where it attempted to take power (Algeria, Egypt, Syria and Yemen). Its methods drenched in violence and festooned in terror have aroused popular dismay, vocal objections, disapproval and, in cases, down right resistance.
A fundamental problem of political Islamists is their refusal to dispute or look critically at the Islamic heritage and their insistence on according their advocacies the character of divine reference. When programs were formulated, a rare thing, they have appeared rather simplistic to wide segments of the public opinion, and where implemented, has had very poor results. Neither in questions of doctrine nor in those of political, social and economic matters have its advocates produced a coherent and empirically valid answer to the problems of the society and the economy[23]. There has been, as discussed above, some transformations of position among some political Islamists regarding democracy and the necessity of adapting their programs to the exigencies of modern societies. This was accompanied by a forthright admittance of the errors of their past ways[24].
It is beyond the scope of this paper to document and explore the failure of political Islam and its future. Nonetheless, one can clearly glean from a great number of recent works that it is now on a descending trend[25]. Nonetheless, history synthesizes the messages of movements and ideas that erupt throughout its course. Without being a strict Hegelian, one can assert that the thesis which the political Islamists, as well as the traditional reformers, tried jointly to preach, namely, the sense of seeking a communal revival endowed with Islam’s spiritual values met its antithesis in Western secular and modern materialism and that the synthesis of the political Islamists of the future will be in grafting to the Western individualist and humanist traditions a spiritualist dimension in the life of man absent from rigid secularism. This is an outcome that fascinated Michael Foucault when he observed first hand the Iranian revolution at its inception and thought that it would usher an alternative to the bureaucratic and materialist civilization of the West[26]. In a recent book along somewhat different lines, Reza Aslan holds that the future of democracy and political Islam in the Islamic societies will reflect the egalitarian and communal dimension of Islam and will infuse them with its particular spirituality[27]. In other words, Islamic societies will establish their own pattern of democracy and modernization, which is different than the Western model. It is hazardous at best to predict the course of history, but the marks that economic and technological transformations leave have historically had more similarities than differences across various societies unless there are different dynamic forces at play.
The question arises, whether it is fair to link Islam with the terrorist acts of the extremists in view of their selective Islam. It is said, why is terror by non- Muslims not religiously linked? ; Why is Islam paired routinely with terrorism in the Western Press? Without dwelling upon the condemnations of the likes of Senior Berlusconi, who deal with stereotypes, or upon the hysterical and ignorant journalism of Oriana Falaci, the average individual in the US and Europe sees that the perpetrators of terror claim religious justification for their acts, which goes on without repudiation by the Muslim religious authorities. Furthermore, the perpetrators have not suffered effective ostracism by their co-religionists. As long as there are some Muslims who insist on explaining, even if they do not justify, such acts in political terms, the outside world and its prejudiced and castigating media cannot be blamed for calling this terror in the terms chosen by its perpetrators.
The Islamic and Arab worlds are poised at a historical juncture: they have to start thinking about modernization not just in economic and technological terms, but, as well, in cultural and political terms. And all the efforts expended on this course will come to serious obstacles if Islam is not reformed and looked at with modern eyes as a religion relevant to the universal civilization of our times.
Conclusions
This essay leads to short and long-run conclusions. In the former, the Muslim community and the Islamic establishment have both to repudiate without qualifications the violent acts of the Jihadis as an aberration to Islam. There has also to be an internal mobilization of public opinion, especially among the youth, against this distorted selective Islam. In the long run, the root causes of the feelings of collective failure, political oppression, and injustice-to- Muslims and slight to dignity must be dealt with. This implies wide-scale political reform, the democratisation of governance and the establishment of the rule of law in the affected countries. There has to be a new project of modernization and economic development in the Arab countries backed fully by the West, financially, technologically and culturally. A revision of scholastic curricula to introduce critical thinking and humanist cultural values together with modernization of the learning technology is an essential requisite[28]. Finally, the policies of the West towards festering problems like Palestine, Kashmir, Chechnya, etc.., must be revised and purged of cultural arrogance, imperial thinking and double standard. Similarly, the European domestic policies towards Muslim minorities, especially the disaffected youth, must move towards empowerment, furthering economic and employment opportunities and acceptance of the other.
Geneva, 28/10/2005.
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[1] According to al Ghazali the purposes of the prophecy are: the preservation of faith, of life, of nature, of moral ethics and of peace among peoples.[2] For the development of Shià Islam seethe discussion in J. Berky, The Formation of Islam, Cambridge university press, 2003, Ch.14, 18& 19, p. 179 and after.[3] This debate started after al Ghazali publisher his treaty entitled, The Collapse of Philosophy, attacking in it the philosophical interpretation of Islam. Ibin Rushd, one of the greatest late philosophers, answered by writing his book, The Collapse of the Collapse, in which he attacked the traditionalist interpretation and penned a classic exposé of the philosophic foundations of theology.[4] Al Ghazali wrote his famous book, The Revival of Religion `s Learning, as an annotated guide to Islam. Despite its theological brilliance, it has stood as a prime exposé of orthodoxy. On the development of Sunni Islam in this period see, J. Berkey, Op. Cit., especially, Ch.12 &13, pp.113-129.
.[5] Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy, Simon and Schuster, N.Y. 1972.PP.425-428.[6] See for a discussion of religious forms Paul Laude, “An Eternal Perfume”, Parabola, Winter 2005, pp.6-9.[7]Twelve Imam Shià is so called because after the death of the eleventh Imam, Hasan al Askari, at the age of 29 in 873, a raging debate took place among Shià scholars about his succession. The opinion that triumphed was that he had a son called Mohammed al Muntazar who disappeared and will come back at the end of time to fulfil god’s plans for the faithful. See Said Amir Arjumand, ed. Authority and Political Culture, SUNY Press, Albany, 1988, pp. 25-53.[8] See J. Berkey, Op, Cit., Ch.13.[9] In the Sunna, the prophet says that a Muslem should seek knowledge even if it were as far as China.[10] It is customary to see Wahhabi clerics and similar literalist wearing the same attires as those of the righteous predecessors some 1400 years ago.[11] There has been in recent year’s significant changes in the stances of the M.B. on democracy and violence. The Muslim. Brothers. are now on record adopting democracy and renouncing violence. But that remains a promise.
[12] Muhammad Abdoh who was the grand Mufti of Egypt, wrote at the end of the Nineteenth Century addressing the English public, “We Egyptians believed once in English liberalism and sympathy; but we believe no longer, for facts are stronger than words. Your liberalism and enlightenment is only for your self”.[13] In recent years, some traditionalist reformers such as Yousuf al Qardawi, have been trying to revive the Ijtihad and add to the body of traditional Islamic Jurisprudence. The challenges faced by Muslims living in the West, i.e., outside Islamic societies, have created needs for revisiting many of the old agreed precepts. Consequently a Council of Islamic Fatwa, whose membership include some prominent scholars, has been found to legislate new rules when needed. One cannot however, group this work with the renovations wanted by the revivalists early in the twentieth century, because this reformist movement strictly adheres to the rules of the existing Jurisprudence and is again backward- referencing to the four Sunni Islamic schools plus some of the Shià Jurisprudence in their sourcing.[14] Although the Baath party, one of the main elements in the Nationalist movement, had a fair number of intellectuals, it got bogged down and mixed up with the military elements, officers with sectarian and tribal backgrounds who soon took over the party and turned its apparatus into a cast of acquiescent beneficiaries or, as did Saddam Hussain, expelled or liquidated the old cadres.[15] In the surprising position of a supporter of the unqualified, the urbane and cultured journalist M. H. Haykal, chief editor of the al Ahram, wrote in 1960 a series of articles in the paper entitled “ People of trust versus people of expertise” in which he defended this recourse to the trusted and unqualified as necessary but temporary. History, Haykal`s favourite subject, proved him wrong; states cannot secure legitimacy without performance and cannot cast off easily the beneficiaries entrenched inside the regime.[16] The nationalists achieved significant gains for the rural population, especially in education and employment. But these gains occurred in the context of the re-distributional efforts of the state under stagnant economic developments and non modernized structural forms. There were under Nasser and later on under Saddam, attempts at industrialization. However, political failures and wars aborted the potential of these efforts as attested by the statistical development data.[17]One of the outstanding examples of lack of specifics and objective imprecision’s of the Islamists is their claim that there is in the Sharià an economic system. To be sure, there are some general statements about fair exchange and commerce and interdiction of usury. However, such generalities are far from being elements of a valid economic system. In Islamic banking, a going concern, there is a mix up between interest rate and usury and a complete lack of understanding of the market interest rate and its function in time and in capital theory. There is also a mix up between banking intermediation where the depositor bears only the residual default risk of the bank and the commercial deployment of capital via venture capital or merchant banking where the depositor bears the commerce and business risks.
[19] This view echoes some Wahhabi opinions that God through his Sharià and not the populace is the source of authority. The Saudi Royal Family, at least as can be ascertained from some of its spokesmen, supports this view. For example, prince Turki Ibin Faisal, the former head of intelligence, former Ambassador in London and current Ambassador in Washington, has repeatedly stated this position in public. In a televised world forum anchored by Christian Amanpour on CNN in May 2004, he repeated this position. Recently, Mr. Adel Jabbar, a spokesman for King Abdullah, said on CNN that the Saudi government is interested in political reform and not in the label of democracy.[20] See the Centre for Studies of Arab Unity for the papers of these two conferences.[21] The Grand Sheikh of al Azhar University, and such Islamic scholars like Yousuf al Kardhawi and several others have opined against violence and terrorist acts in the last three years.[22] Ayman al Zwahiri, Knights under the Banner of the Prophet, Document: FBIS-NES-“002-0108 of 2/12/2001 Number: 20020108000197.[23] After his release from jail, Dr. Hasan al Turabi admitted in his one- hour TV interview with al Jazeera on 18/10/2005 that the Islamists, himself included, have major gaps in their thinking in matters of economic, political governance and social modernization. He also admitted errors of judgment in their political struggle for governing. The Muslim brothers in Syria, Egypt and Yemen admitted publicly the errors of their past practices and approach.[24] After the terrorist attacks on civilian targets in Saudi Arabia in 2003, 2004 and similar such attacks in Morocco in 2003 and Egypt in 2005, all Arab governments seem to have joined in the struggle against Islamist extremists.[25] See Olivier Roy, L`Echec de L`Islam Politique, Seuli, Paris, 1992 for an early socio-cultural study of the elements making for success or failure. More recently, two more sources can be recommended: Gilles Kepel, Jihad, Expansion ET Déclin de L`Islamism, Galimard, Paris, 2000. Also, Antoine Basbous, L`Islamism : Une Révolution Avortée ? , Hachette, Paris, 2000.[26] Janet Afary & Kevin Anderson, Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the Seductions of Isalmism, University of Chicago press, 2005.[27] Reza Aslan, No God but God: the Origins Evolution and Future of Islam, Random House, 2005.[28] Among the necessary scholastic aims is the introduction of empiricism and logical objectivity in thinking and in the study of history. In the same vein, the learned Islamic institutions, such as al Azhar, would benefit of modernizing their curricula to assure in addition to the mastery of the Fuqh, the knowledge of philosophy, comparative religion, theology, jurisprudence, critical thinking, and the methodology of science and modern methods of research. The study of Islam should become a true university -level endeavor with requisite standards.
The fossilization of Islam would have been explained in historical terms as a phenomenon of historical rise and decline in a cyclical pattern of history. However, what distinguishes it from self- reversing phenomena is that it is coupled with cultural, economic and scientific declines. In other words, it was a new state of mind of a formerly great civilization. The state of backwardness of Islamic societies have in addition bred cultural habits and modes of thought often alien to Islam itself. An outstanding manifestation of that is the refusal to participate in Western progress in all aspects of education, culture and economics and the insistence on the indigenousness of any development. A case in point is the refusal of Arab parents in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to send their children to western schools on the basis of their missionary financial backing[9].
Revivalist Currents: the Birth of Political and Fundamentalist Islam
The stark decline of the Islamic world from its previous exalted heights called forth a mixture of revivalists. There were among them extremist schools that followed the teaching of some middle-age scholars, notably, Ibin al Kayyem and Ibin Taymyya, a Hanbali scholar, who sought salvation by returning to early Islamic purity, i.e. seeking the truth in the concrete simplicity and literal textual interpretation. Theology and Fuqh thus become methods of interpreting words, language phrases and ascertaining the authentic historicity of events collateral to their interpretation. A shoot of this return- to- the- roots thinking can be found in the Wahhabi sect of Islam which seeks to emulate the “righteous ancestors” and duplicate their ways[10], thus, the name the“ Salafiyya”. The idea is to re-establish the old practices to shake off the prevailing state.
Another shoot seeks the politicization of Islam and the reestablishment of a Muslim state of authentic and pure character, the Khilafah. This type of political Islam is present in the post- Khilafah thought; it having been abolished by Mustafa Kemal in 1923. A leading example is the thought of Hasan al Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brothers in the 1920`s in Egypt[11]. The Muslim Brothers started a trend in Islamic societies of seeking political power in the name of Islam by presenting the Sharià as a political program without advocating any reform in it. Implicit in this is the thought that the problems of Islamic societies lie in their abandonment of the true path of the Sharià and not in the genuine petrifaction of Islamic theology. It is therefore an advocacy of taking the historical example rather than offering a specific new program. In this view, the prevailing state is essentially the result of the disintegration of the political order. Thus, a proposition common to the political Islamists in this mold is the advocacy of re-establishing a Muslim state, i.e. al Khilafah, to defend Muslims and secure their rights. Political Islamists in the contemporary scene include the Islamic Front of Salvation of Algeria and the followers of Al Maududi in Pakistan. A different variety of political Islam is found in the thoughts and actions of Hasan al Turabi in Sudan.
Some extremists of al Banna followers combined politicization with the literal theology of Ibin Taymyya, resulting into a brew of incendiary thinking, such as found in the writings of Sayyed Qutb and his society of “Forgiveness and Disfranchising”. Sayyed Qutb elaborated, after Ibin Taymyya, the doctrine of disfranchising from Islam, i.e., Takfeer, any body who does not subscribe to his thought and act according to Islam as he sees it. In particular, he considered democracy as a major corroding Western influence, which impedes the Islamization of societies. He, therefore, opined killing its advocates and practitioners’. Bin Laden, and his principal associate, al Zwahiri along with the Talabans, are the latest link in Qutb`s chain of political Islamists.
Another offshoot of political Islamists is the Party of Islamic Liberation. This was founded in Lebanon in the early fifties by the Palestinian Takuyuddin al Nabahani. This party has a significant following in the Central Asian countries. This is altogether different from other Islamists in that it primes the political advocacy of establishing an Islamic state in which a new theological interpretation of Islam would modify the existing Fuqh. It remains still in the nature of a sect with a political agenda and a distant promise of a new future theology. It can be said that its views on contemporary Islamic societies are essentially transitional.
In Shià Islam, the equivalence is found in Imam al Khumeini` concept of the “reign of the religious authority”, Wilayat al Faquih, installed in the Islamic Republic of Iran through the Council of Guides. The Council is charged with the task of an overseer of all the laws and actions of the elected officials, which have to be consistent with precepts of Shià Fuqh, i.e. the teachings of the deputies of the disappeared Imam. With the exception of authenticating the Prophet’s sayings and actions by a Shià source and the Imamet institution, Shià Islam does not have a different theology than Sunni Islam.
Besides the political Islamists and the literalist militants, there were at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century other revivalists within the Islamic main traditions. These include modernizers such as Jamaluddin al Afghani, Abdurahman al Kawakiby, Muhammad Abdoh, Muhammad Iqbal, Taher al Jazairy and several others. These reformists, unlike the political Islamists and the literalist Salafiyyas, had thoughts that included both the Sharià itself and the state of their societies. They offered at the time a critique of what was wrong with the Ottoman State, the Islamic Khilafah, the intellectual state of Islam itself as well as the way it was practiced in their time. They all advocated reopening the door of Ijtihad, i.e. new thinking, in reinterpreting and renewing the Islamic Sharià. They were also sharply aware of the double value system of the West and the materialist nature of its secular culture and sought to develop a spiritual alternative[12]. Therefore, they tried to innovate within the context of Islam’s character and within the requirements of their time. However, the advent of Western colonialization at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century in the aftermath of the collapse of the Ottoman State, the Islamic Khilafah, turned the general public attention from Islamic reform to National awakening to fight colonialism. Indeed, at the beginning of the last century, nationalist movements spread all over the Islamic world. The nationalists' programs involved modernization, a bit of secularism and a western-style nationalist creed. The nationalists caught the imagination of the educated elite and soon became also mass movements with clear -cut political agendas. It was evident that the Nationalist appeal for joining the struggle against the yoke of the Imperialist West drowned the appeal of religious reformers. Thus, the Nationalists can be said to have pre-empted the main stream Islamic reformers[13].
The Failure of the Nationalist Regimes and the Rise of Global Militancy
The nationalist thinking in general and that in the Arab world in particular, followed closely the European Nationalist thought of the nineteenth century. It was secular, modernizing and totally disinterested in the concept of the Islamic state. It was to be expected that the particular country conditions of various Muslim societies dictated the contents of the modernization programs of the various national movements. Still, a common feature of the nationalist thinking was the abandonment of the Islamic state. Moreover, the reform of Islam and the building of modern, rationalist and equally spiritual new traditions, were not, and perhaps could not be, a part of the projects of modernization of the nationalist movements. On the other hand, a distinct Islamic theological revival did not seem to attract the attention or interest of the advocates of political Islam; they continued to believe that the full truth is implicit in the received traditions and that the problems of their societies are of political nature rather than, additionally, questions of doctrinal relevance and socio-political maladaptation.
In the Arab world, the two movements: the political Islamists and the Arab Nationalists, cohabited at some tension in the first six decades of the Twentieth Century, specifically, from 1908 when the Young Turks took over power in the Ottoman state, bringing with them to the Islamic State (Khilafah) a National Touranic creed, to 1967 and the decade of the seventies, when the Arab National Movement was defeated by Israel and its dysfunctional and failed national political regimes were exposed over the decade as mere dictatorships, often corrupt and always repressive. The lack of political and cultural content to Arab Nationalism exposed its vulnerability to political exploitation and cultural retrogradation. And the socialism content of its economic programs added to that economic failure. This largely explains its impoverished record.
The cohabitation however produced a dualistic culture in Arab societies: the culture of the ruled masses with no political power or political participation in which the Islamists laid low, and that of the ruling one-party National state. The culture of the masses was traditional, full of givens from the past, closed upon itself, politically neutered, economically poor and rather backward. The culture of the Nationalists was modern only in slogans, their states based on power relationship to the ruled, and in respect of the prevailing traditions, empty of any reformist contents. Almost all the Nationalists` leaders came through the army from rural backgrounds with little personal intellectual attainments and thus limited intellectual horizon: Nasser, Assad, Kadafi, Boumedienne and Saddam, all come to mind in this respect[14]. They put in place "etatic", Soviets- style, totalitarian regimes protected from the people by police and security apparatuses, all above and outside the law. The one party system puts its beneficiaries, mostly unqualified, in charge of the public sector, which managed and controlled the economy with no standards of performance or a bottom lime[15]. The nationalists` forays into social and cultural transformation were negligible and often politically skewed. For example, forming and educating a new generation capable of functioning in the modern universal civilization became exercises in political indoctrination, in dilution of academic standards and in neglect of teaching critical thinking and historical objectivity. The result was a failure on most fronts[16]. In addition, the dysfunctional nationalist regimes, all of which came by military coups, failed even in the military task of protecting their people against Israel. And this failure became obvious to the populace by the end of the 1960`s. This populace who supported the Nationalists and dreamt for decades of revival under their leadership received the cruelest of history’s shocks: the loss of self- esteem and the desperation of repeated failure on multiple fronts. This was to be reflected later on in the Jihadis finding in self-sacrifice a personal redemption from the collective failure. The result of the nationalist failure was the loss of followers in the popular scene, much to the delight of the West, and the move of the advocates of political Islam and the fundamental religious revivalists to occupy the resultant vacuum. They had a ready audience in the subculture of the masses among which they have lain low. These masses were politically neutered and intellectually desperate for something new. The Islamists laid a claim to authenticity in the prevailing dualist culture and connected readily to the grievances of this substratum among which they survived for several decades.
The Islamists of all hues came gradually to share with the Arab Nationalists most of the nationalistic goals, and more importantly, the same sense of grievance towards western colonialism. With the creation of Israel and the unlimited support of the West, especially the US, to its Zionist designs, the Islamists exploited the flagrant incapacity of the nationalist Arab rulers to put a limit to the humiliations and encroachment inflicted by Israel and fashioned an anti-Western attitude wrapped by a feeling of deep injustice. As economic and social underdevelopment along with political repression turned out to be the main legacy of the Arab Nationalist regimes, the 1970`s witnessed a turn among large segments of the disaffected Arab populations towards the Islamists who posed as the natural power inheritors. The Islamists claimed authenticity to their analysis of the problems and their solutions were premised on Islamic deliverance without ever specifying its details[17]. On this view, since the entire verity reposed in the dogma, the return to the sources was claimed to be the historically proven way out. In other words, the program was based on faith and historical example rather than specifics[18]. Absent any political organization and civil society institutions left in place between the Nationalists and the Islamists by the totalitarian regimes, there was no other choice to be made.
The political Islamists are of two streams: a stream that wants an Islamic revival, and as of late, accepts democracy and renounces violence as referred to above, and another who rejects democracy altogether on the theory that God is the only source of authority and the Sharià is the lone genuine program reference[19].
To be sure, the political Islamists of all shades were still a minority in the population, but this minority was the only force present in opposition to the nationalist dictatorships. The supporters of Arab Nationalism, took a kind of political sabbatical in the 1980`s to examine and try to understand their multiple failures. During the decade of the nationalists' sabbatical, their disappearance from the scene left the Islamists as the only advocates of change in the Arab street and the main victims of political repression of the rulers. It was not until the 1990`s that the Nationalist reappeared back on the scene. As an example, a nationalist conference was held in Cairo, under the auspices of the Centre for Studies of Arab Unity, to examine in a manner of self-critiques the gaps and errors of the nationalist program and its experience. This conference formulated a new platform of six goals for the nationalist project, among which democracy and Arab federalism, modernization and economic development had central places. Another conference was organized by the same sponsors in 1994, which included this time the leftists, Marxists and the non-violent Islamists, who for the first time endorsed, inter alias, democracy and the peaceful alternation of power by the ballot box as parts of a common program[20]. During the second half of the 1990`s, the Muslim Brothers in Egypt, in Syria, and in Iraq moved gradually from their old position of considering the Sharià as the sole valid reference for the society to accepting references of non-Islamic parties provided that all compete democratically. Thus, while the Muslim Brothers were the pioneers of militant political Islam, they have grown in effect from a political movement into an Islamic political party. In the last five years, the Egyptian, Syrian and Libyan Muslim Brothers have joined the opposition to their countries respective regimes with a claimed full acceptance of the democratic game and a forthright denunciation of violence for political purposes. In sum, the Muslim Brothers have separated themselves from the militant Islamists and accepted in theory to join others in the movement for political democracy, human rights and reform in the Arab World. However, this remains a promise to be tested under democratic conditions.
The Rise of the Global Jihadi Militants
The rise of political Islamists in the Arab and other countries in the 1970`s and 1980`s as a consequence of the failure of the Nationalists received an unexpected twist with the efforts of the US and Saudi Arabia to combat the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. For the first time in centuries, the Jihadis recruited for the Afghan war experienced Jihad against an aggressor and fought with brother Muslims against a common enemy. In Afghanistan, they were able to gather and indoctrinate volunteers, train and equip them with the direct aid of the US, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. That experience was a trial by fire for them, and among other things, it convinced them that armed violence is the only way to remove injustice even if perpetrated by a big, seemingly invincible power. The Afghan war also gave its fighters the sense of living a common experience with coreligionists who shared the same views on Western materialism whether capitalists or communist and in the process identified their common enemy. Finally, the experience of a community of believers drew on the universal spirit of Islam in globalizing the scope of the militants` agenda and establishing, almost for the first time, a global network, free of national boundaries, fit to fight in a globalized world for a universal Islamic state. However, experience is not sufficient to bind global militants; there had to be an ideology behind all that. This they found in the thought of Sayyed Qutb, who was hung in Egypt, and they weaved into it different strands from Wahhabi theology. Among the major tenets of this thought is the notion of Takfeer, i.e. disfranchising from Islam anybody who does not share their views. Thus, they become, like the born again, a community apart from the main Islamic one.
The Afghan experience of militant global Islamists would not have been sufficient to explain the spread of militant political Islam except as regarding those who participated in it. To recruit future Jihadis, explicit Koranic references together with concrete factual applications had to be found. Like any other text, even if holy, the Koran has both general and relative addresses. Relative address concerns the particular situations that faced the Islamic community at the time of the prophet; they do not seek to establish general principles of eternal validity. The global Islamists simply selected the verses ordaining Jihad when Muslims are aggressed, as they were during the time of the Prophet, and did not fail to find concrete examples in which Muslims were under attack in our time. From Afghanistan to Kashmir, to Palestine, to Chechnya, to Bosnia and lastly Iraq, they conjured a spectre of Islam under attack.
This selectivity in referencing their actions and political agenda has not been convincingly challenged by the main line Islamic establishment. How could it have escaped attention that a religion that equates taking one life to killing all humanity, renounced aggressive wars against others and elevated the preservation of human life to one of the five cardinal purposes of its prophecy, has come to be associated with violence and terror. There has been reluctance by religious authorities and Muslim public opinion-makers to face up to such a distortion of Islam, in part, because of the common and shared sense of grievance, and in another, because these acts were initially targeted against outside aggressors. The religious authorities did not see their holy duty in the pursuit of the tolerant and peaceful message of Islam clear of partial interpretations. They seem to have silently condoned what seemed to them a justified struggle against aggressors like Israel. This is a major error of principle; in a matter of distortion of the faith, only a wide and unqualified condemnation of all terrorist acts and rejection of their perpetrators is appropriate. In addition, it convinces no one to hold that because these terrorists are subject to pursuit by the illegitimate Arab governments, one should not take a stand against the opposers of the regimes. Like at the time of al Khawarej, the distortion of religion should be condemned as such and dealt with inside the Muslim community as an internal aberration. It took quite a while for this realization to sink- in and it is unfortunate that the Muslim community has not fully grasped the damage that the extremists have inflicted on the good name of Islam. Fortunately, there are some positive changes of late[21].
Part of the blame should also be apportioned to the rulers who expelled the extremists to the outside world. By exporting those who took aim at their failure to protect their people and improve and modernize their conditions, they sought to neutralize a significant activist part of their domestic opposition. The political illegitimacy of the rulers played into the hands of both the extremists and their tolerant foreign hosts. The immigration of a large swath of political Islamists to the West has resulted in implanting among the majority of peaceful Muslim immigrant communities a minute band of activists busy trying to influence and charge with militant fervor the disaffected youths of such communities, often victims of discrimination and poverty. It is only recently that this state of affairs has become of public concern in both the West and among the rulers of the Arab world who have finally joined the international struggle against the resultant violence.
It would be a violation of reality to leave the impression that the political Islamist trend is well and thriving. As a matter of fact, since the early 1990`s, political Islam has failed in all countries to become dominant among the masses. Indeed, al Zwahiri, Bin Laden`s principal ideologue, admits in his book (Knights Under the Banner of the Prophet) that the Islamists have failed to turn the Muslim masses into armed militants i.e., tajyeesh[22]. Its record in places where it took power (Afghanistan, Iran and Sudan) has been far from satisfactory. No less bleak has been its record in countries where it attempted to take power (Algeria, Egypt, Syria and Yemen). Its methods drenched in violence and festooned in terror have aroused popular dismay, vocal objections, disapproval and, in cases, down right resistance.
A fundamental problem of political Islamists is their refusal to dispute or look critically at the Islamic heritage and their insistence on according their advocacies the character of divine reference. When programs were formulated, a rare thing, they have appeared rather simplistic to wide segments of the public opinion, and where implemented, has had very poor results. Neither in questions of doctrine nor in those of political, social and economic matters have its advocates produced a coherent and empirically valid answer to the problems of the society and the economy[23]. There has been, as discussed above, some transformations of position among some political Islamists regarding democracy and the necessity of adapting their programs to the exigencies of modern societies. This was accompanied by a forthright admittance of the errors of their past ways[24].
It is beyond the scope of this paper to document and explore the failure of political Islam and its future. Nonetheless, one can clearly glean from a great number of recent works that it is now on a descending trend[25]. Nonetheless, history synthesizes the messages of movements and ideas that erupt throughout its course. Without being a strict Hegelian, one can assert that the thesis which the political Islamists, as well as the traditional reformers, tried jointly to preach, namely, the sense of seeking a communal revival endowed with Islam’s spiritual values met its antithesis in Western secular and modern materialism and that the synthesis of the political Islamists of the future will be in grafting to the Western individualist and humanist traditions a spiritualist dimension in the life of man absent from rigid secularism. This is an outcome that fascinated Michael Foucault when he observed first hand the Iranian revolution at its inception and thought that it would usher an alternative to the bureaucratic and materialist civilization of the West[26]. In a recent book along somewhat different lines, Reza Aslan holds that the future of democracy and political Islam in the Islamic societies will reflect the egalitarian and communal dimension of Islam and will infuse them with its particular spirituality[27]. In other words, Islamic societies will establish their own pattern of democracy and modernization, which is different than the Western model. It is hazardous at best to predict the course of history, but the marks that economic and technological transformations leave have historically had more similarities than differences across various societies unless there are different dynamic forces at play.
The question arises, whether it is fair to link Islam with the terrorist acts of the extremists in view of their selective Islam. It is said, why is terror by non- Muslims not religiously linked? ; Why is Islam paired routinely with terrorism in the Western Press? Without dwelling upon the condemnations of the likes of Senior Berlusconi, who deal with stereotypes, or upon the hysterical and ignorant journalism of Oriana Falaci, the average individual in the US and Europe sees that the perpetrators of terror claim religious justification for their acts, which goes on without repudiation by the Muslim religious authorities. Furthermore, the perpetrators have not suffered effective ostracism by their co-religionists. As long as there are some Muslims who insist on explaining, even if they do not justify, such acts in political terms, the outside world and its prejudiced and castigating media cannot be blamed for calling this terror in the terms chosen by its perpetrators.
The Islamic and Arab worlds are poised at a historical juncture: they have to start thinking about modernization not just in economic and technological terms, but, as well, in cultural and political terms. And all the efforts expended on this course will come to serious obstacles if Islam is not reformed and looked at with modern eyes as a religion relevant to the universal civilization of our times.
Conclusions
This essay leads to short and long-run conclusions. In the former, the Muslim community and the Islamic establishment have both to repudiate without qualifications the violent acts of the Jihadis as an aberration to Islam. There has also to be an internal mobilization of public opinion, especially among the youth, against this distorted selective Islam. In the long run, the root causes of the feelings of collective failure, political oppression, and injustice-to- Muslims and slight to dignity must be dealt with. This implies wide-scale political reform, the democratisation of governance and the establishment of the rule of law in the affected countries. There has to be a new project of modernization and economic development in the Arab countries backed fully by the West, financially, technologically and culturally. A revision of scholastic curricula to introduce critical thinking and humanist cultural values together with modernization of the learning technology is an essential requisite[28]. Finally, the policies of the West towards festering problems like Palestine, Kashmir, Chechnya, etc.., must be revised and purged of cultural arrogance, imperial thinking and double standard. Similarly, the European domestic policies towards Muslim minorities, especially the disaffected youth, must move towards empowerment, furthering economic and employment opportunities and acceptance of the other.
Geneva, 28/10/2005.
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[1] According to al Ghazali the purposes of the prophecy are: the preservation of faith, of life, of nature, of moral ethics and of peace among peoples.[2] For the development of Shià Islam seethe discussion in J. Berky, The Formation of Islam, Cambridge university press, 2003, Ch.14, 18& 19, p. 179 and after.[3] This debate started after al Ghazali publisher his treaty entitled, The Collapse of Philosophy, attacking in it the philosophical interpretation of Islam. Ibin Rushd, one of the greatest late philosophers, answered by writing his book, The Collapse of the Collapse, in which he attacked the traditionalist interpretation and penned a classic exposé of the philosophic foundations of theology.[4] Al Ghazali wrote his famous book, The Revival of Religion `s Learning, as an annotated guide to Islam. Despite its theological brilliance, it has stood as a prime exposé of orthodoxy. On the development of Sunni Islam in this period see, J. Berkey, Op. Cit., especially, Ch.12 &13, pp.113-129.
.[5] Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy, Simon and Schuster, N.Y. 1972.PP.425-428.[6] See for a discussion of religious forms Paul Laude, “An Eternal Perfume”, Parabola, Winter 2005, pp.6-9.[7]Twelve Imam Shià is so called because after the death of the eleventh Imam, Hasan al Askari, at the age of 29 in 873, a raging debate took place among Shià scholars about his succession. The opinion that triumphed was that he had a son called Mohammed al Muntazar who disappeared and will come back at the end of time to fulfil god’s plans for the faithful. See Said Amir Arjumand, ed. Authority and Political Culture, SUNY Press, Albany, 1988, pp. 25-53.[8] See J. Berkey, Op, Cit., Ch.13.[9] In the Sunna, the prophet says that a Muslem should seek knowledge even if it were as far as China.[10] It is customary to see Wahhabi clerics and similar literalist wearing the same attires as those of the righteous predecessors some 1400 years ago.[11] There has been in recent year’s significant changes in the stances of the M.B. on democracy and violence. The Muslim. Brothers. are now on record adopting democracy and renouncing violence. But that remains a promise.
[12] Muhammad Abdoh who was the grand Mufti of Egypt, wrote at the end of the Nineteenth Century addressing the English public, “We Egyptians believed once in English liberalism and sympathy; but we believe no longer, for facts are stronger than words. Your liberalism and enlightenment is only for your self”.[13] In recent years, some traditionalist reformers such as Yousuf al Qardawi, have been trying to revive the Ijtihad and add to the body of traditional Islamic Jurisprudence. The challenges faced by Muslims living in the West, i.e., outside Islamic societies, have created needs for revisiting many of the old agreed precepts. Consequently a Council of Islamic Fatwa, whose membership include some prominent scholars, has been found to legislate new rules when needed. One cannot however, group this work with the renovations wanted by the revivalists early in the twentieth century, because this reformist movement strictly adheres to the rules of the existing Jurisprudence and is again backward- referencing to the four Sunni Islamic schools plus some of the Shià Jurisprudence in their sourcing.[14] Although the Baath party, one of the main elements in the Nationalist movement, had a fair number of intellectuals, it got bogged down and mixed up with the military elements, officers with sectarian and tribal backgrounds who soon took over the party and turned its apparatus into a cast of acquiescent beneficiaries or, as did Saddam Hussain, expelled or liquidated the old cadres.[15] In the surprising position of a supporter of the unqualified, the urbane and cultured journalist M. H. Haykal, chief editor of the al Ahram, wrote in 1960 a series of articles in the paper entitled “ People of trust versus people of expertise” in which he defended this recourse to the trusted and unqualified as necessary but temporary. History, Haykal`s favourite subject, proved him wrong; states cannot secure legitimacy without performance and cannot cast off easily the beneficiaries entrenched inside the regime.[16] The nationalists achieved significant gains for the rural population, especially in education and employment. But these gains occurred in the context of the re-distributional efforts of the state under stagnant economic developments and non modernized structural forms. There were under Nasser and later on under Saddam, attempts at industrialization. However, political failures and wars aborted the potential of these efforts as attested by the statistical development data.[17]One of the outstanding examples of lack of specifics and objective imprecision’s of the Islamists is their claim that there is in the Sharià an economic system. To be sure, there are some general statements about fair exchange and commerce and interdiction of usury. However, such generalities are far from being elements of a valid economic system. In Islamic banking, a going concern, there is a mix up between interest rate and usury and a complete lack of understanding of the market interest rate and its function in time and in capital theory. There is also a mix up between banking intermediation where the depositor bears only the residual default risk of the bank and the commercial deployment of capital via venture capital or merchant banking where the depositor bears the commerce and business risks.
[19] This view echoes some Wahhabi opinions that God through his Sharià and not the populace is the source of authority. The Saudi Royal Family, at least as can be ascertained from some of its spokesmen, supports this view. For example, prince Turki Ibin Faisal, the former head of intelligence, former Ambassador in London and current Ambassador in Washington, has repeatedly stated this position in public. In a televised world forum anchored by Christian Amanpour on CNN in May 2004, he repeated this position. Recently, Mr. Adel Jabbar, a spokesman for King Abdullah, said on CNN that the Saudi government is interested in political reform and not in the label of democracy.[20] See the Centre for Studies of Arab Unity for the papers of these two conferences.[21] The Grand Sheikh of al Azhar University, and such Islamic scholars like Yousuf al Kardhawi and several others have opined against violence and terrorist acts in the last three years.[22] Ayman al Zwahiri, Knights under the Banner of the Prophet, Document: FBIS-NES-“002-0108 of 2/12/2001 Number: 20020108000197.[23] After his release from jail, Dr. Hasan al Turabi admitted in his one- hour TV interview with al Jazeera on 18/10/2005 that the Islamists, himself included, have major gaps in their thinking in matters of economic, political governance and social modernization. He also admitted errors of judgment in their political struggle for governing. The Muslim brothers in Syria, Egypt and Yemen admitted publicly the errors of their past practices and approach.[24] After the terrorist attacks on civilian targets in Saudi Arabia in 2003, 2004 and similar such attacks in Morocco in 2003 and Egypt in 2005, all Arab governments seem to have joined in the struggle against Islamist extremists.[25] See Olivier Roy, L`Echec de L`Islam Politique, Seuli, Paris, 1992 for an early socio-cultural study of the elements making for success or failure. More recently, two more sources can be recommended: Gilles Kepel, Jihad, Expansion ET Déclin de L`Islamism, Galimard, Paris, 2000. Also, Antoine Basbous, L`Islamism : Une Révolution Avortée ? , Hachette, Paris, 2000.[26] Janet Afary & Kevin Anderson, Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the Seductions of Isalmism, University of Chicago press, 2005.[27] Reza Aslan, No God but God: the Origins Evolution and Future of Islam, Random House, 2005.[28] Among the necessary scholastic aims is the introduction of empiricism and logical objectivity in thinking and in the study of history. In the same vein, the learned Islamic institutions, such as al Azhar, would benefit of modernizing their curricula to assure in addition to the mastery of the Fuqh, the knowledge of philosophy, comparative religion, theology, jurisprudence, critical thinking, and the methodology of science and modern methods of research. The study of Islam should become a true university -level endeavor with requisite standards.
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