- An Islamic revivalist movement, often characterized by moral conservatism, literalism, and the attempt to implement Islamic values in all spheres of life.
- The religious faith, principles, or cause of Islam.
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WordNet:
Islamism
Note: click on a word meaning below to see its connections and related words.
The noun has 2 meanings:
Meaning #1:
Muslims collectively and their civilization; based on a monotheistic religion believing that Mohammed was the last major prophet of God
Synonyms: Islam, Muslimism, Mohammedanism, Mohammadanism
Meaning #2:
the monotheistic religion of Muslims based on the Koran
Synonyms: Islam, Mohammedanism, Muhammadanism, Muslimism
Wikipedia:
Islamism
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It has been suggested that Political aspects of Islam be merged into this article or section. (Discuss) |
- This article is about political Islamism
For the religion of Islam, see Islam.
For scholarship of the subject of Islam, see Islamic studies.
Islamism (Arabic: al-'islāmiyya) is a term usually used to denote a set of political ideologies holding that Islam is not only a religion but also a political system and its teachings should be preeminent in all facets of society. It holds that Muslims must return to the original teachings and the early models of Islam, particularly by making Islamic law (sharia) the basis for all statutory law of society and by uniting politically, eventually in one state; and that western military, economic, political, social, or cultural influence in the Muslim world is un-Islamic and should be replaced by purely Islamic influences. A broader definition gives Islamism's role as "support for identity, authenticity, broader regionalism, revivalism, revitalization of the community;" [1] while a narrower definition defines it as "an Islamic militant, anti-democratic movement, bearing a holistic vision of Islam whose final aim is the restoration of the caliphate." [2] Attributes of sharia law supported by many, but not all, Islamists include "enforcement of Islamic punishments, including prohibitions on taking interest, playing music, showing television[3], ... and enforcing traditional dress and attendance at prayers."[4]
Muslims instrumental in developing and promoting tenets of Islamism include Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Abul Ala Maududi, Sayyid Qutb and Ayatollah Khomeini[5]. The term is applied to a wide variety of movements and groups spanning the gamut from reformists who seek change through participation in elections - like the successful and respected moderate Islamist Justice and Development Party of Turkey, the Egyptian Muslim Brothers and Tunisian leader Rashid Al-Ghannouchi who deny any plans to force the implementation of sharia law; to groups that participate in both elections and armed attacks such as Hezbollah in Lebanon; to the radical Islamist al-Qaeda and Egyptian Islamic Jihad who oppose democracy and support the use of attacks on civilians, and takfir of other Muslims. One of the major divisions in Islamism is between the fundamentalist "guardians of tradition" of the Salafism or Wahhabi movement, and the "vanguard of change" centered on the Muslim Brotherhood[6]
This usage is controversial. Those labeled Islamists often, if not always, oppose use of the term, maintaining they are simply Muslims, and that their beliefs are a straightforward expression of Islam as a way of life. Some people find it troublesome that a word derived from "Islam" is applied to organisations they consider radical and extreme.
Synonyms for Islamism include political Islam[7] and activist Islam.[8]
Relation between Islam and Islamism
One of the most central controversies in Islamism is whether Islam is inherently political. Scholars and observers who think not include Fred Halliday and John Esposito). Those who do think Islam is inherently political, and thus question the validity of the terms "Islamist" and "Islamism," include Robert Spencer, Bat Ye'or, and Bernard Lewis[citation needed]).
The question asked by Muslims who do not see a difference between Islamism and Islam is, "If Islam is a way of life, how can we say that those who want to live by its principles in legal, social, political, economic, and political spheres of life are not Muslims, but Islamists and believe in Islamism, not [just] Islam"?[9]
Nonetheless, the need to distinguish between groups actively seeking to implement Islamic law, such as Islamic Salvation Front in Algeria[10] or Jamaa Islamiya in Egypt,[11] from other Muslim groups, has led some of the Muslim-owned and -run media to use the terms "Islamist" and "Islamism," as distinguished from Muslim and Islam.
Another source distinguishes Islamist from Islamic "by the fact that the latter refers to a religion and culture in existence over a millennium, whereas the first is a political/religious phenomenon linked to the great events of the 20th century." Islamists have, at least at times, defined themselves as "`Islamiyyoun/Islamists`" to differentiate themselves from `Muslimun/Muslims." [12]
According to Bernard Lewis, Islamists, or as he terms them "activist Muslims", follow the role the Prophet Muhammad played as "rebel" during his time in Medina:[13]
"There are in particular two political traditions, one of which might be called quietist, the other activist. The arguments in favor of both are based, as are most early Islamic arguments, on the Holy Book and on the actions and sayings of the Prophet. The quietist tradition obviously rests on the Prophet as sovereign, as judge and statesman. But before the Prophet became a head of state, he was a rebel. Before he traveled from Mecca to Medina, where he became sovereign, he was an opponent of the existing order. He led an opposition against the pagan oligarchy of Mecca and at a certain point went into exile and formed what in modern language might be called a "government in exile," with which finally he was able to return in triumph to his birthplace and establish the Islamic state in Mecca...The Prophet as rebel has provided a sort of paradigm of revolution—opposition and rejection, withdrawal and departure, exile and return. Time and time again movements of opposition in Islamic history tried to repeat this pattern."
Importance of Islamism
Few observers contest the influence of Islamism. While political movements based on the liberal ideology of free expression and democratic rule have led opposition in other parts of the world - Latin American, Eastern Europe and many parts of Asia - "the simple fact is that political Islam currently reigns as the most powerful ideological force across the Muslim world today." [14]
The strength of Islamism draws from the strength of religiousity in general in the Muslim world. Compared to Western, Latin or Asian cultures, "[w]hat is striking about the Islamic world is that ... it seems to have been the least penetrated by irreligion." Where other peoples may look to the physical or social sciences for answers in areas their ancestors regarded as best left to scripture, in the Muslim world, religion has become more encompassing not less, as "in the last few decades, it has been the fundamentalists who have increasingly represented the cutting edge of the culture." [15]
In Egypt and the rest of the Muslim world "the word secular, a label proudly worn 30 years ago, is shunned" and "used to besmirch" political foes. [16] The small secular opposition parties "cannot compare" with Islamists in terms of "doggedness, courage," "risk-taking" or "organizational skills". [17]
In the Middle East and Pakistan, religious discourse dominates societies, the airwaves, and thinking about the world. Radical mosques have proliferated throughout Egypt. Bookstores are dominated by works with religious themes ... The demand for sharia, the belief that their governments are unfaithful to Islam and that Islam is the answer to all problems, and the certainty that the West has declared war on Islam; these are the themes that dominate public discussion. Islamists may not control parliaments or government palaces, but they have occupied the popular imagination.[18]
Sources of its strength
Reasons for the strength of Islamism in the Muslim world include
Alienation from the West
Muslim alienation from Europe and its ways, including its political ways.
- The memory in Muslim society of the many centuries of "cultural and institutional success" of Islamic civilization that have created an "intense resistance to an alternative `civilizational order`", such as Western civilization,[19]
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Outside Islamdom, Christian missionaries from Europe usually succeeded in making converts. Whether for spiritual reasons or material ones, substantial numbers of American Indians, Africans, Hindus, Buddhists, and Confucians accepted the Gospels. But Muslims did not." [20]
- The proximity of the core of the Muslim world to Europe and Christendom where it first conquered and then was conquered. Iberia in the seventh century, the Crusades which began in the eleventh century, then for centuries the Ottoman Empire, were all fields of war between Europe and Islam. [21]
- The Islamic world was aware of European fear and hatred
-
For almost a thousand years, from the first Moorish landing in Spain to the second Turkish siege of Vienna, Europe was under constant threat from Islam. In the early centuries it was a double threat - not only of invasion of conquest, but also of conversion and assimilation. All but the easternmost provinces of the Islamic realm had been taken from Christian rulers, and the vast majority of the first Muslims west of Iran and Arabia were converts from Christianity ... Their loss was sorely felt and heightened the fear that a similar fate was in store for Europe.[22]
- and also felt its own anger and resentment at the much more recent technological superiority of westerners who
-
are the perpetual teachers; we, the perpetual students. Generation after generation, this asymmetry has generated an inferiority complex, forever exacerbated by the fact that their innovations progress at a faster pace than we can absorb. ... The best tool to reverse the inferiority complex to a superiority complex ... Islam would give the whole culture a sense of dignity.[23]
- "For Islamists, the primary threat of the West is cultural rather than political or economic. Cultural dependency robs one of faith and identity and thus destroys Islam and the Islamic community (ummah) far more effectively than political rule."[24]
- The end of Cold War has eliminated the common Communist enemy uniting religious Muslims and the capitalist west.
Resurgence of Islam
- The resurgence of Islamic devotion and attraction to things Islamic can be traced to several events. A tenet of the Quran is that Islam will deliver victory and success.[25][26][27] Yet
-
by the end of World War I, there was scarcely such a thing left as a Muslim state not dominated by the Christian West. How could this happen? Only two answers were possible. Either the claims of Islam were false and the Christian or post-Christian West had finally come up with another system that was superior, or Islam had failed through not being true to itself.
- Obviously, a redoubling of faith and devotion by Muslims was called for to reverse this tide.[28]
- The connection between lack of Islamic spirit and lack of victory was underscored by the disastrous defeat of Arab nationalist-led armies fighting under the slogan "Land, Sea and Air" in the 1967 Six Day War, compared to the almost-victory of the Ramadan War four years later. In that war the military's slogan was "God is Great".
- Along with the Ramadan war came the Arab oil embargo where the (Muslim) Gulf oil-producing states' dramatic decision to cut back on production and quadruple the price of oil, made oil, Arabs and Islam synonymous - and powerful - in the world, and in Muslim, public imagination. [29] Many Muslims believe as Saudi Prince Saud al Faisal did that the $100s of billion of wealth from the huge Persian Gulf oil deposits were nothing less than a gift from God to the Islamic faithful. [30]
- As the Islamic revival gained momentum, governments such as Egypt's, which had repressed (and continued to repress) Islamists, joined the bandwagon. They banned alcohol and flooded the airwaves with religious programming,[31] giving the movement even more exposure.
Saudi Arabian funding
Starting in the mid-1970s the Islamic resurgence was funded by an abundance of money from Saudi Arabian oil exports.[32] The $10s of billions of dollars "petro-Islam" largess from the new higher price of oil funded an estimated "90% of the expenses of the entire faith,"[33] throughout the Muslim world, to young and old, from children's maddrassas to high level scholarship.[34] "Books, scholarships, fellowships, mosques" (for example, "more than 1500 mosques were built from Saudi public funds over the last 50 years") were paid for. [35] It rewarded journalists and academics who followed it; built satellite campuses around Egypt for Al Azhar, the oldest and very influential Islamic university.[36]
The interpretation of Islam promoted by this funding was the strict, conservative Saudi-based Wahhabism or Salafism that taught that Muslims should reject absolutely any non-Muslim ideas and practices, including political ones. In its harshest form it preached that Muslims should not only "always oppose" infidels "in every way," but "hate them for their religion ... for Allah's sake," that democracy "is responsible for all the horrible wars of the 20th century," that Shia and other non-Wahhabi Muslims were infidels, etc.[37] While this effort has by no means converted all, or even most, Muslims to the Wahhabist interpretation, it has done much to overwhelm more moderate local interpretations and set the Saudi-interpretation of Islam as the "gold standard" of religion in Muslims' minds. [38]
Dissatisfaction with the status quo
- The core of the Muslim world - the Arab world - has been afflicted with economic stagnation. For example it has been estimated that the exports of Finland, a European country of less than five million, exceeded those of the entire 260 million-strong Arab world, excluding oil revenue.[39]
- Strong population growth combined with economic stagnation has created urban conglomerations in Cairo, Istanbul, Tehran, Karachi, Dacca, and Jakarta each with well over 12 million citizens, millions of them young and unemployed or underemployed. [40] Such a demographic, alienated from the westernized ways of the urban elite, but uprooted from the comforts and more passive traditions of the villages they came from, is understandably favorably disposed to an Islamic system promising a better world - [41] an ideology providing an "emotionally familiar basis of group identity, solidarity, and exclusion; an acceptable basis of legitimacy and authority; an immediately intelligible formulation of principles for both a critique of the present and a program for the future." [42]
Shelter of the mosque
While dictatorial ruling regimes can preempt opposition nationalist or
Charitable work
Islamist movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood, "are well known for providing shelters, educational assistance, free or low cost medical clinics, housing assistance to students from out of town, student advisory groups, facilitation of inexpensive mass marriage ceremonies to avoid prohibitively costly dowry demands, legal assistance, sports facilities, and women's groups." All this compares very favorably against incompetent, inefficient, or neglectful governments whose commitment to social justice is limited to rhetoric. [45]
Power of identity politics
Islamism can also be described as part of the religiously-oriented nationalism that emerged as in the Third World in the 70s: resurgent Hinduism in India, ultra-Orthodox Judaism in Israel, militant Buddhism in Sri Lanka, resurgent Sikh nationalism in the Punjab, `Liberation Theology` of Catholicism in Latin America, and of course, Islamism in the Muslim world." [46] (This is distinguished from ethnic or linguistic-based nationalism which Islamism opposes.) These all challenged Westernized ruling elites on behalf of `authenticity` and tradition.
Grand Mosque Seizure
The strength of the Islamist movement was manifest in an event which might have seemed sure to turn Muslim public opinion against fundamentalism, but did just the opposite. In 1979 the Grand Mosque in Mecca Saudia Arabia was seized by an armed fundamentalist group and held for over a week. Scores were killed, including many pilgrim bystanders in a gross violation of one of the most holy sites in Islam (and one where arms and violence are strictly forbidden).
Instead of prompting a backlash against the movement from which the attackers originated, however, Saudi Arabia, already very conservative, responded by shoring up its fundamentalist creditials with even more Islamic restrictions. Crackdowns followed on everything from shopkeepers who did not close for salah and newspapers that showed photos of women, to the selling of dolls, teddy bears (images of animate objects being haraam), and dog food (dogs considered unclean).[47]
In other Muslim countries, blame for and wrath against the seizure was directed not against fundamentalists, but against Islamic fundamentialism's foremost geopolitical enemy - the U.S.. Ayatollah Khomeini sparked attacks on American embassies when he announced:
It is not beyond guessing that his is the work of criminal American imperialism and international Zionism,
despite the fact that the object of the fundamentalists revolt was the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, America's major ally in the region. Anti-American demonstrations followed in the Philippines, Turkey, Bangladesh, India, the UAE, Pakistan, and Kuwait. The U.S. Embassy was burned in Libya by protestors chanting pro-Khomeini slogans and burned to the ground in Islamabad Pakistan.[48]
Post 9/11 Issues
It is important to distinguish between Islamists and Islamist terrorists: "While ignoring the overwhelming majority of Islamists who have nothing to do with terror and making them virtually irrelevant and stigmatized in Western political discourse ... To ignore the complexity of political Islam and tar all Islamists with the same brush of terrorism guarantees Bin Laden's success."[49]
History of usage
The term "Islamism" first appeared in eighteenth-century France as a synonym for "Islam". At the turn of the twentieth century, it was being displaced by the latter, and by 1938, when Orientalist scholars completed the Encyclopaedia of Islam, had virtually disappeared from the English language.[50] According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, usage of the term "Islamism" dates to 1747.[citation needed]
It attained its modern connotation in late 1970s French academia, thence to be loaned into English again, where it has largely displaced "Islamic fundamentalism" as the preferred term.[51]
History
Earliest History and Classical Thinkers
Islamist is a modern term but similar movements are to be found throughout Islamic history, including that of Muhammad ibn Abd-al-Wahhab during the 18th century in Saudi Arabia, and Ibn Taimiya a Syrian law specialist during the 13th and 14th centuries.
The End of the 19th century
The end of the 19th century was the time of the slow disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, a time of religious and cultural decline. The empire was financially and militarily dependent on European powers, including Britain, France, and Germany. In this context, the publications of Jamal ad-din al-Afghani (1837-97), Muhammad Abduh (1849-1905) and Rashid Rida (1865-1935) became popular among small groups of followers who considered their messages important in thinking about indigenous alternatives to the political, economic, and cultural decline of the empire.
Their ideas included the rejection of any change to Islam after 855, among them the Islamic schools of law (madhhabs) since they were considered deviations from the true Islam. Society should return to the true messages of Islam, remove the wrong interpretations and additions of the past centuries, and create a truly Islamic society under sharia law.
The Deobandi Movement
The Deobandi movement in India was a Sunni Islamic revival movement that developed as a reaction to British colonialism and the influence of Muslim modernist Sayed Ahmad Khan, who advocated the Westernization of Islam. Named after the town of Deoband, where its Dar al-Ulum seminary was founded in 1867, the movement expanded to become the foremost movement of traditional Islamic thought in the subcontinent and lead to the establishment of thousands of madrasahs throughout modern-day India, Pakistan, Bangladesh. Deobandi adher to the Hanafi school of thought and have also been Sufi guides.[52]
In Pakistan, Deobandiism is represented by the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam organization/political party and its splinter groups. The thousands of madrasahs these groups established for impoverished Afghan refugees helped spawn the Taliban, a Deobandi-based movement that held power in most of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001.[53] The Taliban were renowned particularly for the many restrictions they placed on women[54] and their hosting of Osama bin Laden, despite the attacks he organized against the United States, and the eventual American-organized attack and overthrow of the Taliban in retaliation.[55]
Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi
Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi was a "Deobandi alumni"[56] and an important early twentieth-century figure in the Islamic revival in India, and then after independence from Britain, in Pakistan. Trained as a lawyer he chose the profession of journalism, and wrote about contemporary issues. Most of his writings addressed topics of Islamic law,[57] governance, and human rights.[58] He was instrumental in turning Indian Muslims away from a united India and toward a separate Muslim state of Pakistan,[59] and an inspirational figure for modern Islamist groups in South Asia and elsewhere.
Maududi advocated the creation of an Islamic state governed by sharia, Islamic law, as interpreted by Shura councils. Maududi founded the Jamaat-e-Islami party in 1941 and remained at its head until 1972. Although Maududi had had education at Deobandi institution(s)[60] his party is a long time rival of the Deobandi Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam party/group.
Maududi was much more influential in his writing than in his political organizing. His extremely influential book, Towards Understanding Islam (Risalat Diniyat in Arabic), placed Islam in modern context and enabled not only conservative ulema but liberal modernizers such as al-Faruqi, whose "Islamization of Knowledge" carried forward some of Maududi's key principles. Chief among these was an integration of Islam with an ethical scientific view. Quoting from Maududi's own work:
Everything in the universe is 'Muslim' for it obeys God by submission to His laws... For his entire life, from the embryonic stage to the body's dissolution into dust after death, every tissue of his muscles and every limb of his body follows the course prescribed by God's law. His very tongue which, on account of his ignorance advocates the denial of God or professes multiple deities, is in its very nature 'Muslim'... The man who denies God is called Kafir (concealer) because he conceals by his disbelief what is inherent in his nature and embalmed in his own soul. His whole body functions in obedience to that instinct… Reality becomes estranged from him and he gropes in the dark.
Because Islam is all-encompassing, Maududi believed the Islamic state should not be limited to just the "homeland of Islam". It is for all the world:
Islam wishes to destroy all States and Governments anywhere on the face of the earth which are opposed to the ideology and programme of Islam regardless of the country or the Nation which rules it. The purpose of Islam is to set up a State on the basis of its own ideology and programme, regardless of which Nation assumes the role of the standard bearer of Islam or the rule of which nation is undermined in the process of the establishment of an ideological Islamic State. It must be evident to you from this discussion that the objective of Islamic 'Jihad' is to eliminate the rule of an un-Islamic system and establish in its stead an Islamic system of State rule. Islam does not intend to confine this revolution to a single State or a few countries; the aim of Islam is to bring about a universal revolution.[61]
Although Maududi talked about Islamic revolution,[62] he was both less revolutionary and less politically/economically populist than later Islamists like Qutb.[63]
The Muslim Brotherhood
Roughly contemporaneous with Maududi was the founding of the Muslim Brotherhood in Ismailiyah, Egypt in 1928 by Hassan al Banna. His was arguably the first, largest and most influential modern Islamic political/religious organization. Under the motto "the Qur'an is our constitution,"[64] it sought Islamic revival through preaching and also by providing basic community services including schools, mosques, and workshops. Like Maududi, Al Banna believed in the necessity of government rule based on Shariah law implemented gradually and by persuasion, and of eliminating all non-Muslim imperialist influence in the Muslim world. Jihad was declared against European colonial powers.
Some elements of the Brotherhood, though perhaps against orders, did engage in violence against the government, and its founder Al-Banna was assassinated in 1949 in retaliation for the assassination of Egypt's premier Mahmud Fami Naqrashi three months earlier.[65] The Brotherhood has undergone periodic repression in Egypt and has been banned several times, in 1948 and several years later following confrontations with Egyptian president Gamal Abdul Nasser, who jailed thousands of members for several years. In Egypt its status is currently usually described as a "semi-legal."[66] Despite periodic repression, the Brotherhood has become one of the most influential movements in the Islamic world,[67] particularly in the Arab world. Along with being the most powerful opposition group in Egypt, it has fostered several offshoot organizations in many other countries.[68]
Sayyid Qutb
Maududi's political ideas influenced Sayyid Qutb, one of the key philosophers of Islamism, and a leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood movement. Qutb believed things had reached such a state that the Muslim community had literally ceased to exist. It "has been extinct for a few centuries,"[69] having reverted to Godless ignorance (Jahiliyya).
- See also: Qutbism
To eliminate jahiliyya, Qutb argued Sharia, or Islamic law, must be established. Sharia law was not only accessible to humans and essential to the existence of Islam, but also all-encompassing, precluding "evil and corrupt" non-Islamic ideologies like socialism, nationalism, or liberal democracy. Qutb preached that Muslims must engage in a two-pronged attack of converting individuals while also waging jihad to forcibly eliminate the "structures" of Jahiliyya -- not only from the Islamic homeland but from the face of the earth.
- See also: Ma'alim fi-l-Tariq
Qutb was both the most famous member of the brotherhood and enormously influential in the Muslim world at large. Qutb is considered by some to be "the founding father and leading theoretician" of modern jihadis, such as Osama bin Laden.[70][71] Ironically, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and in Europe has not embraced his vision of armed jihad, something for which they have been denounced by more radical Islamists.[72]
The Six Day War of 1967: Reawakening of Islamic Resurgence
The quick and decisive defeat of the Arab troops during the Six-Day War by Israeli troops constituted a pivotal event in the Arab Muslim world. The defeat along with economic stagnation in the defeated countries, was credited to the Arab nationalism of the ruling regimes. A steep and steady decline in the popularity and credibility of both secular and nationalist politics ensued. Ba'athism, Arab Socialism, and Arab Nationalism suffered, and Islamist movements inspired by Mawlana Maududi, and Sayyid Qutb gained ground.[73]
Lebanon
The Lebanese Civil War gave radical Shia movements in that country a new power and prominence after 1975. Expatriate Iranian cleric Musa al-Sadr founded the Amal movement well before his native country's own revolution (see below), heading a combination of political party and militia. After his disappearance in 1978 his organization survived, but the opportunity arose for other factions to mobilize potential support from the same social base. The most successful such movement is Hezbollah. Founded in 1985 by Lebanese Shia aided by Iranian Shia Islamists, the movement is dedicated to the expulsion of Western "colonialist entities" from Lebanon and the destruction of Israel, which it sees as an illegal and state usurping Islamic territory. Hezbollah was instrumental in driving the Israeli military from Lebanon in 2000, which heightened its popularity in Lebanon even among non-Shia.[74] In 2006, an Israeli attack on Hezbollah strongholds in south Lebanon attempting to crush the movement sustained serious casualties and was considered by many observers a failure for Israel.[75]
Foundation of the first Islamic Republic in Iran
- See also: Islamic republic
- See also: Guardianship of the Islamic Jurists
The first Modern Islamic state (with the possible exception of Zia's Pakistan) was established among the Shia of Iran. In a major shock to the rest of the world, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini led the Iranian Revolution of 1979 to overthrow the oil-rich, well-armed, Westernized and pro-American secular monarchy ruled by Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi.
Khomeini's beliefs were similar to Sunni Islamic thinkers like Mawdudi and Qutb: He believed imitation of early Muslims and restoration of Sharia law was essential to Islam, that secular, Westernizing Muslims were actually agents of the West serving Western interests, and that "plundering" of Muslim lands was part of a long-term conspiracy against Islam by the Christian West.[76]
But they also differed:
- As a Shia, the early Muslims Khomeini looked to were Ali ibn Abī Tālib and Husayn ibn Ali, not Caliphs Abu Bakr, Omar or Uthman.
- Khomeini talked not about restoring the Caliphate, but about an Islamic state were the leading role was taken by Islamic jurists (ulama) as the successors of Shia Imams until the Mahdi returned from occultation. His concept of velayat-e-faqih ("guardianship of the [Islamic] jurist"), held that the leading Shia Muslim cleric in society -- which Khomeini and his followers believed to be himself -- should serve as head of state to protect or "guard" Islam and Sharia law from “innovation" and "anti-Islamic laws" passed "by sham parliaments.”[77]
- The revolution was influenced Marxism through Islamist thought and writing that sought either to counter Marxism (Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr's work) or to integrate socialism and Islamism (Ali Shariati's work). A strong wing of the revolutionary leadership was made up leftists or "radical populists", such as Ali Akbar Mohtashami-Pur.[78]
While initial enthusiasm for the revolution in the Muslim world was intense, it has waned as "purges, executions, and atrocities tarnished its image". [79]
As a model for potential Islamic states, the Islamic Republic has not been notably successful in achieving many of its goals: [80]raising standards of living; ridding Iran of corruption, poverty, political oppression and Westernization,[81] or even protecting Sharia from innovation.[82] Internally, it has been modestly successful in increasing rate of literacy[83][84] and health care.[85]
It has also maintained its hold on power in Iran in spite of the U.S. economic sanctions, and created or assisted like-minded Shia Islamist groups in Iraq (SCIRI)[86][87] and Lebanon (Hezbollah)[88], (two Muslim countries that also have large Shiite populations). During the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict, the Iranian government enjoyed something of a resurgence in popularity amongst the predominantly Sunni "Arab street,"[89] due to its support for Hezbollah and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's vehement opposition to the United States and call for the annihilation of Israel. [90]
Pakistan and general Zia-ul-Haq's Islamization campaign
In July 1977 General Zia ul-Haq overthrew Prime Minister Ali Bhutto's regime in Pakistan. Ali Bhutto, a leftist in political competition with Islamists, had banned alcohol, horse-racing, and nightclubs, and announed that the "sharia would be fully applied" within six months, shortly before his overthrow.[91] Ul-Haq was much more committed to Islamism. Implemention of the Islamic law, (aka sharia) became a cornerstone of his eleven-year military dictatorship, and Islamism his "official state ideology." An admirer of Mawdudi, Mawdudi's party Jamaat-e-Islami became the "regime's ideological arm," its members propering under ul-Haq[92]
Islamization was a dramatic reversal of the traditional secularism of Pakistan's founding Muslim League and its leader Mohammad Ali Jinnah, but unlike neighboring Iran, ul-Haq's policies were intended to "avoid revolutionary excess", and not strain relations with his American and Gulf state allies. [93]
Afghanistan: Civil War and Jihad Against the Soviets
In 1979 the Soviet Union deployed its 40th Army into Afghanistan, attempting to suppress an Islamic rebellion against an allied Marxist regime in the Afghan Civil War. The conflict, pitting indigenous impoverished Muslims (mujahideen) against an atheist superpower, galvanized thousands of Muslims around the world to send aid and sometimes to go themselves to fight jihad. Leading this pan-Islamic effort was Palestinian sheikh Abdullah Yusuf Azzam. While the military effectiveness of these "Afghan Arabs" was marginal, Azzam's group is said to have organizing paramilitary training for more than 20,000 Muslim recruits, from about 20 countries around the world.
When the Soviet Union abandoned the Marxist Najibullah regime and withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989 (the regime finally fell in 1992), the victory was seen by many Muslims as the triumph of Islamic faith over superior military power and technology that could be duplicated elsewhere.
The jihadists gained legitimacy and prestige from their triumph both within the militant community and among ordinary Muslims, as well as the confidence to carry their jihad to other countries where they believed Muslims required assistance.[94]
Image:Osama bin Laden.jpg
The "veterans of the guerrilla campaign" returning home to Algeria, Egypt and other countries "with their experience, ideology, and weapons," were often eager to continue armed jihad.
The collapse of the Soviet Union itself in 1992, was seen by many Islamists, including Bin Laden, as a defeat of a superpower at the hands of Islam, the $6 billion in aid given by the U.S. to the mujahideen having nothing to do with the victory. As bin Laden opined[95] : "[T]he US has no mentionable role" in "the collapse of the Soviet Union ... rather the credit goes to God and the mujahidin" of Afghanistan.[96]
Persian Gulf War
Another factor in the early 1990s that worked to radicalize the Islamist movement was the Persian Gulf War, which brought several hundred thousand U.S. and allied non-Muslim military to Saudi Arabian soil to end Saddam Hussein's occupation of Kuwait. Prior to 1990 Saudi Arabia played an important restraining role on the many Islamist groups that recieved its aid. But Saddam's embrace of Islamic rhetoric and complaint that his enemy the Saudi kingdom was proving itself to be a puppet of the west by violating Islamic unity and its role as custodian of the two holy cities by allowing non-Muslims on its soil (traditional Muslim belief holding that non-Muslims must not be allowed on the Arabian penisula), resonated with conservative Muslims.
The problem did not go any with Saddam's defeat either as the American troops remained stationed in the kingdom and a defacto cooperation with Palestinian-Israel peace process developed. While Saudi Arabia attempted to compensate for its lose of prestige among these groups by repressing those domestic Islamists that attacked it (bin Laden being a prime example), and increasing aid to Islamic groups (Islamist madrassas around the world and even aiding some violent Islamist groups) that did not, its old moderating influence was greatly reduced.[97] A result was the campaigns of attacks on government officials and tourists in Egypt, a bloody civil war in Algeria and Osama bin Laden's terror attacks climaxing in 9/11 attack. [98]
Afghanistan Taliban
Sadly, the mujahideen's victory did not lead to justice and prosperity in Afghanistan but to a vicious and destructive civil war between warlords, making Afghanistan's becoming one of the poorest countries on earth. In 1996, a new movement known as the Taliban, based on Deobandiism and supported by governmental and nongovernmental groups in neighboring Pakistan, rose to defeat many of the warlords and take over roughly 80% of the country.
The Taliban differed somewhat from other Islamist movements to the point where they might be more properly described as Islamic fundamentalist or neofundamentalist. Their ideology was also described as influenced by Pashtunwali tribal law, Wahhabiism, and the jihadist pan-Islamism of their guest Osama bin Laden. Unlike most Islamists, the Taliban enforced very strict prohibitions on women -- employment, schooling, etc. -- and seemed indifferent to social, economic, technological development -- at one time explaining that "We Muslims believe God the Almighty will feed everybody one way or another."[99]
The Taliban considered "politics" as against Sharia and did not hold elections. They were led by Mullah Muhammad Omar who was given the title "Amir al-Mu'minin" or Commander of the Faithful, and a pledge of loyalty by several hundred Taliban-selected Pashtun clergy in April 1996. The Taliban were also famous for the wide variety of activities they banned -- music, TV, videos, photographs, pigeons, kite-flying, beard-trimming, etc. -- and for the energy and resources they used to enforce the bans, including hundreds or thousands of religious police armed with "whips, long sticks and Kalashnikovs."[100]
The Taliban opposed Shi'ism and have been accused by human rights groups of indiscriminate killing of thousands of Shia.[101] They were also overwhelmingly Pashtun and accused of not sharing power with the approximately 60% of Afghans who were from other ethnic groups. (see: Taliban#Ideology)
Although driven from power in 2001 following the 9/11 attacks, the Taliban have launched a vigorous insurgency from their exile in the frontier regions of Pakistan with suicide bombings on NATO and Afghan government targets.
Islamic Jihad movements of Egypt
While Qutb's ideas became increasingly radical during his imprisonment prior to his execution in 1966, the leadership of the Brotherhood, led by Hasan al-Hudaybi, remained moderate and interested in political negotiation and activism. Fringe or splinter movements inspired by final writings of Qutb in the mid-1960s (particularly the manifesto "Milestones," aka Ma'alim fi-l-Tariq) did, however, develop and pursued a more radical direction.[102] By the 1970s, the Brotherhood renounced violence as a means to their goals.
The path of violence and military struggle was however taken up by the Egyptian Islamic Jihad organization responsible for the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981. Unlike earlier anti-colonial movements, Egyptian Islamic Jihad focused its efforts on "apostate" leaders of Muslim states, or those leaders who held secular leanings or introduced or promoted Western/foreign ideas and practices into Islamic societies. Their views were outlined in a pamphlet written by Muhammad Abd al-Salaam Farag, in which he states:
…there is no doubt that the first battlefield for jihad is the extermination of these infidel leaders and to replace them by a complete Islamic Order…
Islamists in Egypt, especially al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya (Islamic Group), sometimes employed violence in their struggle for Islamic order. Victims of campaign against the Egyptian state in the 1990s included the head of the counter-terrorism police (Major General Raouf Khayrat), a parliamentary speaker (Rifaat al-Mahgoub), dozens of European tourists and Egyptian bystanders, and over 100 Egyptian police.[103] Ultimately the campaign to overthrow the government was unsuccessful, and the major jihadi group, Jamaa Islamiya (or al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya), renounced violence in 2003.[104]
Sudan
For many years Sudan had an Islamist regime under the leadership of Hassan al-Turabi. His National Islamic Front first gained influence when strongman General Gaafar al-Nimeiry invited members to serve in his government in 1979. Turabi built a powerful economic base with money from foreign Islamist banking systems, especially those linked with Saudi Arabia. He also recruited and built a cadre of influential loyalists by placing sympathetic students in the university and military academy while serving as minister of education.[105]
After al-Nimeiry was overthrown in 1985 the party did poorly in national elections but in 1989 was able to overthrow the elected post-al-Nimeiry government with the help of the military. Turabi was noted for verbal commitment to democratic process and liberal government while out of power, but strict application of sharia law, intensification of the long-running war in southern Sudan,[106] human rights abuses, after the coup. The NIF regime harbored Osama bin Laden for a time (before 9/11), and working to unify anti-American Islamist opposition to the American attack on Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War.
After Sudanese intelligence services were implicated in an assassination attempt on the President of Egypt, U.N. economic sanctions were imposed on Sudan, a very poor country, and Turabi fell from favor.[107] He was imprisoned for a time in 2004-5. Some of the NIF policies, such as the war with the non-Muslim south, have been reversed, though the National Islamic Front (now named National Congress Party) still holds considerable power in the Sudanese government.
Salafism/Wahhabism
An influential and conservative strain of Muslim thought among both Islamists and other Muslims is that started by Muhammad ibn Abd-al-Wahhab in Saudi Arabia. Often dubbed Wahhabis - a derogatory term rarely used by the people it refers to[108] - also believed that it was necessary to live according to the strict dictates of Islam, which they interpreted to mean practicing religion in the manner that Muhammad and his followers had during the seventh century in Medina. Consequently they were opposed to many religious innovations such as veneration of saints. They were also opposed to the many superstitions that were beginning to spread in Arabia such as the wearing of talismans. When King Abdul Aziz al-Saud founded Saudi Arabia, he brought ibn Abd-al-Wahhab into power with him. With Saud's rise to prominence, the movement spread, especially following the 1973 oil embargo and the glut of oil wealth that resulted for Saudi Arabia. Some Salafis, the term most often used by followers of this movement, are against modern political Islamism, and many have sharply criticized Islamist figures such as Sayed Qutb [109] [110], Abu A`la Maududi [111] [112] and Osama bin Laden [113]. They have also been critical of Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood [114], and the methods they use, such as the political party system [115] and acts of terrorism. [116] [117]
Algeria
An Islamist movement influenced by Salafism and the jihad in Afghanistan, as well as the Muslim Brotherhood, was the FIS or Front Islamique de Salut (the Islamic Salvation Front) in Algeria. Founded as a broad Islamist coalition in 1989 it was led by Abbassi Madani, and a charismatic radical young preacher, Ali Belhadj. Taking advantage of liberalization by the unpopular ruling leftist/nationalist FLN regime, it preached legal system following Sharia law, education in Arabic rather than French, and gender segregation, with women staying home to alleviate the high rate of unemployment among young Algerian men. The FIS swept local elections and was favored to win national elections in 1991 when voting was canceled by a military coup d'etat.
As Islamists took to arms to overthrow the regime, the FIS's leaders were arrested and it became overshadowed by guerilla Islamists groups particularly the Islamic Salvation Army, MIA and Armed Islamic Group (or GIA). A bloody and devastating civil war ensued with between 150,000 and 200,000 killed over the next decade. Civilians -- including foreigners, University academics, intellectual, writers, journalists, and medical doctors -- were targeted by Islamist extremists[118][119] although government forces were also accused of killing civilians and of manipulating the brutal takfiri GIA.
The civil war was not a victory for Islamism. By 2002 the main guerrilla groups had either been destroyed or surrendered. The popularity of Islamist parties has declined to the point where "the Islamist candidate, Abdallah Jaballah, came a distant third with 5% of the vote"[120] in the 2004 presidential election.
Hizb ut-Tahrir
An influential international Islamist movement is the 'party' Hizb ut-Tahrir, founded in 1953 by a Sufi and Islamic Qadi (judge) Taqiuddin al-Nabhani. HT is unique from most other Islamist movements in that the party concentrates not on local issues or providing social services, but on the unification of the Muslim world under its vision of a new Islamic caliphate spanning from North Africa and the Middle East to much of central and South Asia. To this end it has drawn up and published a constitution for its proposed caliphate state. The constitution's 187 articles specify such policies as sharia law, a "unitary ruling system" headed by a caliph elected by Muslims, an economy based on the gold standard, and Arabic as the "sole language of the State."[121] In its focus on the Caliphate, HT takes a different view of Muslim history than some other Islamists such as Muhammad Qutb. HT see Islam's pivotal turning point occurring not with the death of Ali, Omar or one of the other four rightly guided Caliphs in the 7th century, but with the 1918 or 1922 abolition of the Ottoman caliphate. This is believed to have ended the true Islamic system, something for which they blame "the disbelieving (Kafir) colonial powers" working through Turkish modernist Mustafa Kamal. [122]
HuT does not engage in armed jihad or vote-getting, but works to take power through "ideological struggle" to change Muslim public opinion, and in particular elites who will "facilitate" a "change of the government," i.e. launch a bloodless coup. It allegedly attempted and failed such coups in 1968 and 1969 in Jordan, and in 1974 in Egypt, and is now banned in both countries.[123]
The party is sometimes described as "Leninist" and "rigidly controlled by its central leadership," [124] with its estimated one million members required to spend "at least two years studying party literature under