Foreign Service officer Christopher Henzel, a recent graduate of the National War College, gives some valuable background on some of the Islāmic thinkers whose work influenced present-day jihadists in important ways:
The Origins of al Qaeda’s Ideology: Implications for US Strategy Parameters (US Army War College quarterly) Spring 2005.
Despite the title, the focus of the article is less on the strategy implications and more on understanding the figures and ideas he discusses. His main point for strategy is the much-needed observation that policymakers should not make simplistic and careless generalizations about Islām, and that they need to recognize that destabilizing existing Middle Eastern regimes may have negative consequences for American foreign policy. As Henzel puts it:
Western advocates of [Islāmic] "reformation" understandably want to see the existing secular, Westernized classes in Muslim countries gain the upper hand. But these politically weak classes are small elites viewed with suspicion by both the masses and the regimes. Any American effort to strengthen these elites must be a project for several decades, to be carried out quietly and with the greatest caution. The United States would gain little if more among the Muslim masses came to regard Muslim liberals as agents of the global hegemon, bent on depriving Islam of its capacity to resist a Western culture that most view as morally depraved.
Revolutionary SalafismOne of the most useful aspects of Henzel's article is that he defines the jihadist-type ideology as "revolutionary Salafism," an important distinction:
Sunni Islam is a very big tent, and there always have been insiders and outsiders within Sunnism playing out their rivalries with clashing philosophies. Throughout the past century, the most important of these clashes have occurred between Sunni reformers and the traditional Sunni clerical establishment. ...
For the most part this struggle has been waged in Egypt, Sunni Islam’s center of gravity. On one side of the debate, there is Cairo’s Al-Azhar, a seminary and university that has been the center of Sunni orthodoxy for a thousand years. On the other side, al Qaeda’s ideology has its origins in late-19th-century efforts in Egypt to reform and modernize faith and society. As the 20th century progressed, the Sunni establishment centered on Al-Azhar came to view the modernist reform movement as more and more heterodox. It became known as Salafism, for the supposedly uncorrupted early Muslim predecessors (salaf, plural aslaf) of today’s Islam. The more revolutionary tendencies in this Salafist reform movement constitute the core of today’s challenge to the Sunni establishment, and are the chief font of al Qaeda’s ideology.
Salafism looks to restore the purity of Islām as it supposedly existed in the religion's early days of the pious ancestors (salaf). Juan Cole, speaking in reference to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's group in Iraq, now linked to Al Qaeda, wrote (
Tawhid Joins al-Qaeda Informed Comment 10/18/04):
They are probably especially oriented toward the Salafi school of modern Islamic thought, which has a Protestant-like emphasis on going back to the original practice of the early companions of the Prophet Muhammad. (Most Salafis are not militant or violent, though they tend to be rather narrow-minded in my experience, on the order of Protestant Pietists). Monotheism and Holy War obviously does have a violent interpretation of Salafism, rather as the the [sic] leaders of the so-called German Peasant Rebellion among early Protestants did.
So Henzel's term "revolutionary Salafists" seems to be a good one for today's jihadists. Cole also links to
this definition of Salafism at WordIQ.com:
The Salafis view the first three generations of Muslims, who are the prophet Muhammad's companions, and the two generations after them (the Tabayeen and the next generation) as perfect examples of how Islam should be lived and practiced. These three generations are often referred to as the Pious generations. ...
Though often used interchangeably in common discourse and the media,
technically speaking the terms Salafi and Wahhabi are not the same.
In a post of 03/05/04, Cole also recommends this article on Salafism:
The Forgotten Swamp: Navigating Political Islam by Guilain Denoeux
Middle East Policy Council Journal June 2002. Denoeux defines Salafism as follows; note that he considers Wahhabism a variant of Salafism:
Within the Islamic context, the tradition that comes the closest to the western concept of "fundamentalism" is what is known as Salafism (al-Salafiyya in Arabic), a current of thought which emerged during the second half of the nineteenth century. The word comes from al-Salaf, which refers to the companions of the Prophet Muhammad, and is usually used as part of the expression al-salaf al-salih, i.e., the "virtuous forefathers." Salafism urged believers to return to the pristine, pure, unadulterated form of Islam practiced by Muhammad and his companions. It rejected any practice (such as Sufi rituals), belief (such as the belief in saints) or behavior (for example those anchored in customary law) not directly supported by the Quran or for which there was no precedent in Muhammad's acts and sayings. Salafi thinkers also refused the idea that Muslims should accept blindly the interpretations of religious texts developed by theologians over the centuries. Instead, they insisted on the individual believer's right to interpret those texts for himself or herself through the practice of ijtihad (independent reasoning).
Salafism did not develop as a monolithic movement but rather as a broad philosophy, a frame of mind. To this day, there is no single Salafi ideology or organization. Instead, since the late nineteenth century, Salafism has expressed itself in a multiplicity of movements and currents of thought that have reflected specific historical circumstances and local conditions. Most have been primarily intellectual-cultural undertakings that generally have eschewed the political arena. In the past two decades, however, one particular brand of Salafi ideology - the Saudi variant known as Wahhabism - has known particular success...
Ibn TaymīyyaHenzel identifies several figures as important for today's jihadist ideology. The earliest of them is
Taqi ad-Din Ahmed ibn Taymīyya (1263-1328). He lived in a period of Mongol advances into the former Muslim caliphate. Ibn Taymīyya sought to encourage Muslims to rally around the rulers of Egypt to resist the Mongols. But some Muslims argued that one cannot wage jihad against other Muslims, and the Mongol king had just adopted Islām. Ibn Taymīyya argued that because the king had not fully implemented sharia (Islāmic law), the Mongols were apostates and therefore righteous Muslims could practice jihad against them. As Henzel writes, "Today’s revolutionary Salafists cite Ibn Taymiyya as an authority for their argument that contemporary Muslim rulers are apostates if they fail to impose sharia exclusively, and that jihad should be waged against them."
Hans Küng in
Der Islam (2004) writes of Ibn Taymīyya that, from his refuge in Damascus (the caliphal seat of Baghdad fell to the Mongols in 1258) "he becomes famous not only for his call for resistance [to the Mongols], but also for his campaign for the execution of a Christian who had insulted the Prophet Muhammand." He compares Ibn Taymīyya, who was a jurist rather than a theologian or philosopher, to the medieval authorities in the Catholic Church who relied so heavily on canon law.
Küng describes Ibn Taymīyya as a religious reactionary, though he doesn't use precisely that world. He believed that all innovation in matters of religion was bad. The Qur'ān and the traditions of the Prophet that had taken authoritative form in the sharia were the only valid religious standards in Islām. He took what we might call a "Puritanical" approach to Islām. "Ibn Taymīyya also spoke out strongly against worldly music and every kind of dancing." He recognized no right of internal resistance to the established authority in an Islāmic state.
What was new about Ibn Taymīyya's situationas a major Islāmic legal authority is that, for the first time in Muslim history, there was no centralized caliphate. Instead and thenceforward, Muslims would be governed by a variety of rulers in different lands. (Although in practice al-Andalus had been independent of the caliphate for centuries, as were parts of northern Africa for a shorter time.) In order to maintain proper religious rule, Ibn Taymīyya maintained, the various Muslim political leaders should rely heavily on the ulama (religious authorities) for direction in applying the sharia.
Ibn Taymīyya was part of the Hanbalite legal school, one of the four enduring trends in Islāmic legal thought. Ibn Taymīyya and the Hanbalite legal school were to become influential in the Wahhabi version of Islām. Küng writes that Ibn Taymīyya's book
Legal Policy (or
Treatise on Juridical Politics;
Gesetzpolitik is the German name Küng uses), which based Islāmic law specifically on religious and not rational grounds, became "a catechism of Islāmic fundamentalism, even though he himself was perhaps not really a fundamentalist." Küng seems to prefer the description "traditionalist" for Ibn Taymīyya. Küng places him in the fourth Islāmic paradigm, the "ulama-Sufi" paradigm, in his six-paradigm historical scheme of the religion.
Al-AfghānīĞamāl ad-dīn al-Afghānī (1839-1897), writes Henzel, launched a "modernizing reform movement in Islam, one strain of which developed later into the revolutionary Salafism the United States confronts today." Küng sees al-Afghānī as one of the Islāmic reformers of the 19th century who focused not only on the need for a response to European colonial encroachments into the Muslim world, but also looked at ways to address problems in "real existing Islam." (That's a reference, one that has become common in German writing, to the Communist regime in the former East Germany which described its system as "real existing socialism.") Though "al-Afghānī" means "the Afghan," he was an Iranian Shia, but he had a huge influence on Sunni Muslims, as well.
Henzel calls al-Afghānī an admirer of Western rationalism. This description by Küng seems to portray him as an appealing thinker from the viewpoint of present-day non-Islāmic Westerners, particularly for conservatives who like to talk about the need for an Islāmic Reformation:
He stands between the traditionalists who want to return to the Qur'ān and Medinan beginnings and the secularists who want to give up Islam for European learning. He represents, quasi Islamic Martin Luther, the necessity of an Islāmic Reformation. European progress, he said accurately, was only possible because the [Protestant] Reformation preceded it.
But glib historical analogies can be misleading. And if those who pass an easy judgment about the need for an Islāmic parallel to the European Reformation were to reflect on the close collaboration of the Lutheran establishment and the Prussian (German) state, the peasants' revolt that Luther was so eager to see bloodily crushed, early Protestant fanaticism in matters like witch-burning, and the Wars of Religion that followed the Church split, they might not be quite so quick to recommend an Islāmic equivalent today. And while al-Afghānī was an important Islāmic modernizer, his legacy is complicated.
As Henzel points out, al-Afghānī saw rationalism as a necessary part of a
theological response to what he viewed as a religious problem in Islām. He also looked to return to a supposedly lost original spirit of Islām. He believed, as Küng puts it, that the true Islām properly understood in its original sense presented no difficulties in tying itself to "Western reason, science and technology." But, Küng also notes, al-Afghānī always had "his sights on liberation from the colonial yoke as the final goal" of his reformist thinking. Even during his lifetime, one of his disciples assassinated the Shah of Iran. His ideas were to be very influential on both Muslim nationalism and the Pan-Arabist movement. Küng also credits his approach with opening the way to a more modern Qur'ānic exegesis that began to apply more scientific/scholarly methods and to take into account political and social developments.
Küng emphasizes that al-Afghānī and his followers did not perceive themselves as accommodating the West. Rather, they understood themselves as "religious reformers who acknowledged the Qur'ān and the Sunna [tradition] and promoted a return to the original Islām." This was similar, of course, to Martin Luther's attempt to return to what he saw as the original Christianity of St. Paul as interpreted by St. Augustine.
‛Abduh and RidhāTwo of al-Afghānī's followers were particularly important in developing his ideas:
Muhammad ‛Abduh (1849-1905) and
Rašīd Ridhā (1865-1935).
‛Abduh became the Mufti of Egypt in 1899, making him in Henzel's words "the only prominent Salafist to have made a career among the clerical elite." Küng's description of ‛Abduh and Ridhā gives a synopsis of the elements of their approach that made them made them influential. Küng writes that as Mufti, ‛Abduh sought to "authoritatively interpret the sharia in a modern way." (Note: Küng writes his historical narrative in present tense.)
He interprets it so that a reform of the justice system becomes possible and even European clothing and the payment of interest are allowed. At the same time, he presses for reform of Islāmic law, Islāmic theology and education. He made the differentiation that duties to God like prayer, fasting, pilgrimage,are clearly unchangeable; but in no way is that true of duties to other people. ‛Abduh showed himself to be especially critical of polygamy and its highly negative effects on family life. Besides his Qur'ān commentary and a treatise on mystical inspiration, he wrote The Theology of Unity (Risālat at-tawhid). His comrade-in-arms (Mitkämpfer) Qāsid Amīn (1862 to 1908), prosecutor and judge, writes a bold, controversial book on the emancipation of women: The Liberation of Women (1899), then The New Woman (1901). He would later be praised as the hero and founder of the [Islāmic] feminist awakening. After ‛Abduh's death, Rašīd Ridhā (1865-1935), a Belanese-descended journalist and religious teacher, became the intellectual leader of the reformist movement in Egypt. In the fight again nationalism and secularism he even advocated a renewal of the caliphate: "The caliphate or the largest imamate."
It's important to recognize that men like al-Afghānī, ‛Abduh and Ridhā cannot easily be pigeonholed into present-day Western democratic categories of progressive, conservative, reactionary, etc. This is especially important to keep in mind because of the simple-minded and often downright bigoted ideas about Islām commonly tossed out by Republicans and the Christian Right. These Islāmic thinkers were not mini-Osamas. And even though they influenced the development of present-day jihadist thinking, their influence evolved in various directions.
Their emphasis on rationalism and the need to adapt Islāmic theology and sharia to changing social-historical conditions represented a vital push to understand the modern world and modern science in Islāmic terms while preserving the core of the religion: "There is no God but God and Muhammad is his Prophet." The strong element of rationality, the increasing recognition of the rights of women and the strong desire for independence from colonial rule are all things that seem understandable and positive from a democratic point of view.
Even some of the elements that directly influenced today's revolutionary Salafists are complex and often contradictory. Admirers of the American Revolution can certainly understand the impulse to revolt against colonialism. But in the minds of al-Afghānī and those he inspired, the revolt against colonialism was also understood as a revolt against Western corruption that threat the core religious values of Islām. As much as they desired to assimilate Western rationality, they were still engaged in an intellectual, political and
religious opposition to the West; they were not trying to become like the West. And they didn't hate the West because of its democratic freedoms. They opposed the Western powers because they were seen as, above all, a threat to Islām.
The idea of the umma (Muslim community) promoted by these reformers could be used, as in the Ridhā quote above, to promote the goal of re-establishing the caliphate of old. While it may have been useful in promoting Muslim solidarity across national, class, ethnic and other barriers, it was also a utopian fantasy. The notion that a unified, theocratic superstate like the caliphate of the Rightly Guided Caliphs, the Umayyads and the 'Abassids could be recreated in the world of the 19th century or today so defies practical reality that it almost inevitably leads to desperate ideas and actions. And this idea of recreating a utopian caliphate is a major element of today's jihadist ideology.
Perhaps the most contradictory notion bequeathed by these reformers is that of the need for "itjihad." (I'm using "contradictory" here in the sense of "internal contradictions"; I have a soft spot for Hegel, okay?) This concept relates to the interpretation of Islām, and of sharia in particular, in the light of individual reason and judgment. Since the 1300s, the general consensus in Sunni Islām was that "the gates of itjihad are closed," and that new interpretations must be drawn from previous Islāmic scholarship and tradition.
The new reliance on itjihad is certainly an important one for those who want to challenge ossified ideas of religious authorities. But, as anyone familiar with the fractious history of American Protestantism is aware, the "priesthood of the believer" (Luther's version of itjihad, to use a loose analogy) can lead to arbitrary and eccentric interpretations if it is not also firmly anchored in the theology and traditions of the faith. Itjihad is used by today's revolutionary Salafists as a way to justify their extremist, ahistorical and homicidal interpretations of the religion of the Prophet.
The Muslim Brotherhood and Sayyid QutbHenzel briefly mentions
Hasan al-Bannā as the founder of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, which is rightly regarded as the organizational godfather of today's Islamism - a broader concept than the revolutionary Salafism of the jihadists. Al-Bannā had been a student of Rashid Ridhā. Küng describes al-Bannā's vision of the Brotherhood as follows:
Its goal: an Islāmic order based on the Qur'ān and the Sunna, a "social Islām" with its own factories, stores, schools, groups and newspapers. So a Muslim ethic should be developed for the modern world which proves itself in charitable and social institutions.
One of the Egyptian Muslim Brothers,
Sayyid Qutb, was especially important as an influence on today's jihadists. I've discussed Qutb at some length in
an earlier post. A decisive idea of Qutb's was that an entire Muslim society and state can be declared "jahiliyya", outsiders to true Islām,against whom a religious jihad can be justified in Islāmic terms.
Mawdūdī and the Jamaat-i-Islami groupAnother important figure, who was a key influence on Qutb and on Islāmic fundamentalism generally, was the Pakistani
Mawlānā Abu'l-A‛la Mawdūdī. Mumtaz Ahmad in his essay on "Islamic Fundamentalism in South Asia" in
Fundamentalisms Observed (1991), Martin Marty and Scottt Appleby, eds., makes some important observations in relation to the Pakistani Jamaat-i-Islami fundamentalist group, which Mawdūdī founded. He describes some of the ways in which Islāmic fundamentalism differs from both conservative Islām and modernizers like al-Afgānī. For one thing, their version of itjihad is limited in practice:
[U]nlike the conservative ulama, who, for all practical purposes, maintain that the gates of ijtihad (independent legal judgment) have long been closed, the Jamaat-i-Islami upholds the right to ijtihad and fresh thinking on matters not directly covered in the teachings of the Qur'an and the Sunna. But, unlike Islamic modernists, who would like to institutionalize the exercise of ijtihad in the popularly elected assemblies, the Jamaat restricts this right only to those who are well versed in both the classical sciences of Islam and in modern disciplines. Again, in actual practice the extent to which the fundamentalists of the Jamaat do exercise the right to ijtihad has been rather limited. In many cases, especially those involving a consensus among the orthodox imams of legal schools, they have tended to be one with the conservative ulama. The only areas in which the Jamaat leaders have shown readiness to accept fresh thinking are in the implementation of the socioeconomic and political teachings of traditional Islam: political parties, parliaments, elections, etc. (my emphasis)
He also makes this distinction between Islāmist fundamentalists and other reformers:
This brings us to one of the most important defining characteristics of the Jamaat-i-Islami and other Islamic fundamentalist movements: unlike the conservative ulama and the modernists, the fundamentalist movements are primarily political rather than religio-intellectual movements. While both the ulama and the modernists seek influence policy-making structures, the fundamentalists aspire to capture political power and establish an Islamic state on the prophetic model. They are not content to act as pressure groups, as are the ulama and the modernists.They want political power because they believe that Islam cannot be implemented without the power of the state.
Finally, as lay scholars of Islam, leaders of the fundamentalist movements are not
theologians but social thinkers and political activists. They are less interested in doctrinal, philosophical, and theological controversies associated with classical and medieval Islamic thinkers. The main thrust of their intellectual efforts is the articulation of the socioeconomic and political aspects of Islam.
But this does not mean, as some American polemicists who wish to minimize the religious elements of the jihadists' ideology carelessly assert, that the jihadists are not religious but purely political. While there are surely individual variations among individuals, the revolutionary Salafist ideology - and fundamentalist Islām more generally - has
political goals but those goals are understood in
religious terms and in the context of the Muslim faith.
The South Asian Islāmic opposition movements of which Mawdūdī was a part sought, as Henzel writes, "to exclude non-Muslim influences from their lives, build purely Muslim institutions, and strive to live a wholly Islamic life..." Ahmad observes:
The task of a Muslim, according to Maududi, is "to try to make the whole of Islam supreme over the whole of life." It is not enough to give "an Islamic color to one or a few aspects of life. . . . The all-encompassing supremacy of Islam alone can give us in opportunity to fully enjoy the spiritual, moral, and material benefits that are the natural and inevitable results of working according to the guidance of the Lord."
The idea that Islam encompasses the whole spectrum of life and that there is no separation of religion and state in Islam is of course not original with Maududi. His real contribution was "to offer a set of clear and well-argued definitions of key Islamic concepts within a coherently conceived framework" and thenbuilda systematic theory of Islamic society and the Islamic state on the basis of these concepts. Through a systematic treatment of such key Islamic terms as Allah, rab (lord), malik (master), 'ibada (worship), deen (way of life), and shahdah (to bear witness), Maududi demonstrated a rational and logical interdependence of Islamic morality, law, and political theory. The key Qur'anic concept that Maududi has used to advance his idea of Islam as a complete system and a way of life is deen. Throughout his commentary on the Qur'an, Maududi keeps coming back to this holistic and primarily political meaning of the word deen. At one point, translating the word deen as "law," Maududi writes: "This use of the word categorically refutes the view of those who believe that a prophet's message is principally aimed at ensuring worship of the one God, adherence to a set of beliefs, and observance of a few rituals. This also refutes the views of those who think that deen has nothing to do with cultural, political, economic, legal, judicial, and other matters pertaining to this world."
However, here again it is important to not jump to easy conclusion about the implications of Mawdūdī's teachings. Ahmad points out that, especially later in life, Mawdūdī described his desired political order in terms that sounded much like European parliamentary democracy: "universal adult franchise, periodic elections, guaranteed human rights and civil liberties, an independent judiciary and the rule of law, and multiple political parties." He also says that Mawdūdī's experiences in jail led him to a greater concern for issues of procedural justice.
___________________
Anthony Shadid, one of the Western reporters in Iraq who actually speaks Arabic, provides some anecdotal confirmation of Henzel's article in his report on a Baghdad bookseller who he's interviewed at a number of different times since the beginning of the Iraq War:
Two Years of War: Taking Stock Washington Post 03/20/05.
He approved of attacks on U.S. soldiers - like most Sunnis, he considered that part of the insurgency legitimate resistance. But he recoiled at the car bombs and suicide attacks against Iraqi police and civilians, whose deaths are far more numerous.
"A car bomb in front of a school, in front of children?" he asked. "Can you call this an act of resistance?" ...
In his bookstore, once-banned titles were selling well. Most were Iranian imports by Shiite clerics. Also popular were titles by radical Sunnis: Mohammed ibn Abd Wahhab, the 18th-century godfather of Saudi Arabia's strict brand of Islam; the austere medieval thinker Ibn Taimiya; and Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian author of the seminal militant tract "Signposts on the Road," who was executed in 1966. (my emphasis)
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