The phenomenon of radical Islam, or Islamism. Part II

2nd of 3 parts

The Failure of Pan-Arabism and the Rise of Islamism

Under the influence of the West, the modern concept of nationalism took root in the Arab world, assuming two different forms: local nationalism, defined by country, and pan-Arab nationalism, based on the unity of language and culture throughout the Arab world. Pan-Arab nationalism thus transcends the boundaries of specific Arab countries, holding Arab unity as its ultimate goal. Due to the close connection between Arab identity and Islam, pan-Arab nationalism had a much stronger appeal than the rival ideology of local (e.g., Egyptian) nationalism.

Secular Arab intellectuals seeking to modernize their societies were drawn toward a form of collective identity based on nationalism, rather than on religion. The conservative masses could equally well identify with pan-Arab nationalism, as it retained much of the Islamic legacy. The term umma, traditionally used in reference to the Islamic nation ( ummat al-Islam ), was adopted by Arab nationalists to refer to the Arab nation ( al-umma al-'arabiyya ). Their calls for jihadagainst the enemies of the Arab nation evoked the familiar calls for jihad against the infidels, as these enemies – whether Jewish, English, French, or American – were indeed infidels. Thus, pan-Arab nationalism was a suitable vehicle for both the modernizing intellectuals and for the still-religious masses.

However, for the Muslim clerics who supported the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Syria, pan-Arab nationalism was an adversary, and once Nasserism and the Ba'th Party had taken hold, it became an actual enemy.

The success and influence of pan-Arabism peaked in the 1950s and 1960s. In these years, Egyptian President Gamal 'Abd al-Nasser gave the Arabs the feeling that they had regained their rightful place in world history. Although Nasser in Egypt, as well as President Hafez al-Assad in Syria, repressed the Muslim Brotherhood, the two leaders took care to display respect for Islam in public. A well-known photograph showed Nasser in the pilgrim's white robe, performing the ritual of the hajj (the pilgrimage to Mecca), as befits a good Muslim.

The 1967 Six-Day War, bringing with it the collapse of the Nasserite vision, was a cataclysmic event for the Arabs: an utter defeat, which naturally had religious significance. As far as the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists were concerned, the collapse of the Arab armies, although distressing, was understandable and even justified. In their eyes, it was the Arabs' punishment for having abandoned Islam, and it offered an opportunity for repentance and rectification. For the Islamists, the 1967 military debacle has laid bare the worthlessness of secular Arab nationalism, Nasserist and Ba'athist alike. The maxim "Islam is the solution" was now being proclaimed with greater force. The ideas and writings of Sayyid Qutb, the Muslim Brotherhood leader, who was hanged at Nasser's order on August 29, 1966, were widely disseminated.

Sayyid Qutb, who had made some reputation for himself as a literary critic in Egypt in the 1940s, was an adherent of Egyptian, rather than pan-Arab, nationalism. His writings of that time showed no sign of predilection toward Islamic identity either. However, after two and a half years of study in the U.S. (from 1948 to 1950), Qutb radically changed his worldview and joined the Muslim Brotherhood. He spent nine years (1955-1964) in jail, on charges of subversive incitement, and after another imprisonment, he was tried for seditious conspiracy and executed.

Qutb wrote tirelessly from his prison cell; among his works was an extensive commentary on the Koran, entitled Fi Zilal al-Qur'an ("In the Shadow of the Koran"). He harbored an extreme hatred of Jews and missed no opportunity in his commentary to denounce their ubiquitous evil and corruption. He accused the Jews of plotting to take over the entire world, echoing the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Qutb did not only call for instituting Islamic law, but also championed jihad. According to Qutb, jihad should be waged not only against Islam's external enemies, but against its internal enemies – that is, the seemingly Muslim rulers who are in fact anti-Islamic. Like Rashid Ridha before him, he drew extensively on the works of the 14th-century scholar Ibn Taymiyya. According to Ibn Taymiyya, a Muslim ruler who commits grave sins or applies alien laws (i.e., non-Islamic laws) is no better than an apostate ( murtadd ) and should be put to death. Hence, waging jihadagainst such rulers is a religious duty.

Qutb explains that Muslims in modern times find themselves, like the Prophet Muhammad and his early companions some 1400 years ago, in a hostile pagan environment – even though they live in an ostensibly Muslim country. The malignant influence of Western culture, with all its negative manifestations – materialism, sexual permissiveness, and economic exploitation – has generated a cultural and moral situation that he defined as a new Jahiliyya (that is, pagan barbarism), no different than the state of Jahiliyya that prevailed before the advent of Islam.

The Wahhabis

To complete our understanding of the roots of present-day Islamism, we must go back in history to the mid-18th century and turn our gaze eastward, to the Arabian Peninsula, where an earlier current of Islamic reform emerged some 150 years before the Salafi movement in Egypt. At the oasis of al-'Uyayna, in the heart of Arabia, a young Muslim scholar, Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab (1703–1792), after studying in Iraq and Iran, reached the conclusion that Islam had become decayed and corrupt because of all kinds of forbidden innovations ( bida' ) and foreign accretions. Influenced by the works of his predecessor by four hundred years, Ibn Taymiyya, he believed that for Islam to regain its power, Muslims must adhere to its fundamental texts – Koran and Hadith – and follow the model of the "pious forefathers" ( al-Salaf al-Salih ). He formed an alliance with a minor local ruler, Muhammad ibn Saud, founder of the House of Saud; thus was born the union between the desert kingdom and the religious movement that sought to restore Islam to its original power.

It is no coincidence that both movements calling for Islamic revival – the 18th-century Wahhabis and the 20th-century Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood – are ultimately based on Ibn Taymiyya's al-Salaf al-Salih doctrine. It is also no coincidence that we find the progeny of both movements in the leadership of al-Qa'ida: the Saudi Osama bin Laden, a product of Wahhabi education, and his Egyptian deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri, who had absorbed the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood before joining the Egyptian Islamic Jihad movement.

Extremist Islam Today

The takeover of the U.S. embassy and the taking of U.S. hostages by Iranian students on November 4th, 1979 was an event greeted throughout the Muslim world as a victory of Islam over the infidels. Iranian students managed to humiliate the great American superpower – a confirmation of the Islamist belief that by acting fearlessly in the name of Islam Muslims could defeat the infidels. The fact that this was a victory by Shiites, a minority group in the Islamic world, did not detract from the sense of achievement among Muslims in general. In the grand division of the world into two camps – believers and infidels – there was a near-universal Muslim solidarity with Khomeini's Iran.

For the Saudi regime, however, the prestige earned by the Islamic Revolution in Iran posed a problem. After all, it was the House of Saud, the Defender of the Two Holy Places (i.e., Mecca and Medina), that should rightfully be the guardian of the true Islam – that is, Sunni Islam in accordance with the Wahhabi doctrine. In their view, it was they who deserved to lead the Islamic awakening – not the heretical Shiite Ayatollah Khomeini, whom they considered not much better than an infidel. The religious aura of the House of Saud was a political asset in the pan-Arab and international arena, and even more so within its own kingdom. In order to preserve their religious status, they had to win the struggle for primacy as the champions of Islam throughout the world. This was a struggle for the heart and soul of all Muslims.

Therefore, in response to the challenge posed by the Iranian Revolution, the Saudis took a dual course of action: they embarked upon jihad against the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and they launched a far-reaching operation for the propagation of Islam. To this end, they invested billions of dollars through Islamic charities in order to build mosques and religious seminaries ( madrasa s)throughout the world. Obviously, these madrasa s and mosques were venues for Wahhabism, disseminating the doctrine of Ibn Taymiyya. The propagation of Wahhabi Islam worldwide served an internal purpose as well, countering charges of moral laxity directed against the Saudi regime.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that the past 25 years have witnessed a process of "Wahhabization" throughout the world. Although this process cannot be quantified, its effects are evident in far-flung Muslim communities, ranging from Manchester to San Diego, from Shanghai to Oslo.

The 1989 Soviet debacle in Afghanistan was a great victory for Islamism. A decade after Khomeini's Islamic revolution in Iran, Sunni Islam triumphed over the infidel Communist power. The U.S. believed at the time that they had effectively manipulated Islam to deal a blow to the Soviets, but for the Islamists this was only a single battle in the global drama that would unfold until the ultimate victory of Islam, which would include the trouncing of the U.S.

A series of terrorist operations, which took place in the course of the 1990s, pointed to the direction of Islamist activity. These attacks included:

• February 26, 1993: The World Trade Center bombing, New York – six killed;
• March 1993: The murder of U.S. diplomats in Pakistan;
• November 1995: The attack on the Saudi army base in Riyadh – dozens killed;
• · June 1996: The attack on Khobar Towers, a residential building for U.S. military personnel, in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia – dozens killed and hundreds wounded;
• August 1998: The double attack on the U.S. embassy in Nairobi – 12 Americans and 280 Kenyans killed – and the U.S. embassy in Dar es- Salaam – one American and 10 Tanzanians killed;
• October 2000: The attack on the USS Cole near Aden – 17 sailors killed and dozens wounded.

On February 23, 1998, Osama bin Laden and four of his aides, including Ayman al-Zawahiri, issued their "Declaration of Jihad against the Crusaders and the Jews," which was a declaration of all-out holy war against the U.S. and its allies. "Killing the Americans and their allies – both civilians and military personnel – is a religious duty for every individual Muslim who can do this, in any country in which he can do this." [7] The unique significance of this declaration lay in the fact that bin Laden and his associates had pronounced this jihad to be the personal obligation of each and every Muslim throughout the world. They based their decision on the teachings of medieval Muslim authorities, primarily Ibn Taymiyya, maintaining that the circumstances in which Muslims found themselves today warranted this unusual decision.

Islamist jihad has two goals, both global. One of these is the toppling of the evil regimes in the Muslim countries, because their leaders are only outwardly Muslim. It is thus a religious obligation to fight them, depose them, and establish a truly Islamic regime in their place. The other goal is to wage war against the main infidel power, the U.S., and all of its allies.

Israel and the Jews are singled out in bin Laden's jihaddeclaration. It presents the 1991 Gulf War as an operation by "the Crusader-Zionist alliance." It further states that one of the goals of the U.S. in its campaigns in the Middle East is "to help the tiny Jewish state and to distract attention from the fact that it is occupying Jerusalem and murdering Muslims."

Osama bin Laden's declaration of jihad is not an isolated document. Similar calls – and even stronger ones – are disseminated regularly through Friday sermons that are broadcast live on Arab television across the Arab and Muslim world, and even in the West. These sermons include exhortations to slaughter Jews and Americans, because "Allah has commanded the killing of the infidels." [8]

In sum, from the Islamist perspective, Muslims are in a no-holds-barred war ofjihad. We have seen how Islam's traumatic encounter with Western culture in the 19th and early 20th centuries led to the emergence of Salafism and, subsequently, to the formation of the Muslim Brotherhood movement and other similar groups. We have also seen how two Islamic movements which emerged two centuries apart – the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots, on the one hand, and Wahhabism, on the other – share a spiritual father in Ibn Taymiyya and have united in a common holy war, intended to change the face of the world.

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