Download Lecture 2 Islamic Reformation File

Political Islam in International
Relations
PSIR 432
Islamic Reformation, Afghani to Qutb
and Modern Implications
Islamic Civilizational Decline
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Colonization
Loss of influence on the world stage
Scientific and technological stagnation
Stagnation of independent inquiry
Modernism vs Universalism
Al-Afghani
• How could Islam, which had so long reigned as
a dominant civilisation, producing a wealth of
literary, scientific, medical and cultural
achievements, guided by God, have fallen so
far behind the West after extensive periods of
such exceptional dominance?
• Islam as a complete social, political and
economic system provided all the tools
necessary for society to function.
Three lines of Political Islam
• Traditional: the ulem (al Azhar)
• Liberal Reformists (al Wasat)
• Conservative Reformists
– Jihadism (al Qaeda)
– Neo-traditionalists (Muslim Brotherhood)
– The New Conservative Branch? (ISIS)
Jamal al din al Afghani
Conservative Reform
Rashid Rida
Liberal Reform
Muhammed Abduh
Reformation Schism
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Al banna
Sayid Qutb
Al Zawahiri
M. Morsey
Legacy of Abduh
• Wasatiya, The Middle Path
• Abu al Al-Madi founder of al Wasat,
legalised in 1996 in Egypt
• Liberal democracy within an Islamic
Framework
• Flexible sharia
• Relaxation of Dar al Harb\ Dar al
Islam
• Dar al Ahd
Ijtihad
• “the total expenditure of effort in the search
for an opinion as to any legal rule in such a
manner that the individual senses an inability
to expend further effort” al Ghazali
• maximum effort by the jurist to master and
apply principles and rules of legal theory for
the purpose of discovering God’s law” Wael
Hallaq
• Personal Reasoning, but for what purpose and
for whom?
Closing the Gates 10th C
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Natural decrease of the practice
All questions on positive law have been answered
Interpretation at an end
Ijma (Consensus) Fiqh (Juris-prudence)
Concerns over abuse by ruling powers
Undermining the legitimacy of the ulema
Created the conditions for reformation
Limited the ability to bring and Islamist voice to
contemporary questions.
• Taqlid, Unquestioning imitation replaces ijtihad
Scope of Ijtihad
• Is it only a practice that
related to matters of
religious law, or does it
extend to the very nature of
society itself and into
science, rationalism and
philosophy
• Quran and Sunnah are more
than simply a textbook for
the development of Sharia,
but rather, a guide for
human civilization in totality
• Preisthood of the individual
• “an individualist revolution
that no amount of clerical
effort can contain”
Muslim Brotherhood
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Marginalization, subjugation or radicalisation
Founded 1922
The crisis of the Caliphate
“God is our objective; the Qur’an is our
constitution; the Prophet is our leader;
Struggle is our way; and death for the sake of
Allah is the highest of our aspirations.”
New Jahiliya
• Revival of Ibn Taymiyya’s concept
• Jahiliya: Ignorance of God’s will
• Maududi, “Muslims have overthrown God’s
sovereignty.”
• Islam “is a revolutionary ideology that seeks to
alter the social order of the entire world and
rebuild it in conformity with its own tenets
and ideals.”
Sayid Qutb
• Using Maududi’s method transforms al Banna’s
approach of escaping society into a revolutionary
idea
• “Everything around us is jahiliya, people’s
perceptions and beliefs, habits and customs, the
sources of their culture, arts, literature and their
laws and legislations. Much of what we think of
as Islamic culture, Islamic sources or Islamic
philosophy is in fact jahiliya.”
• “The American girl is well acquainted with her
body’s seductive capacity, she knows
seductiveness lies in the round breasts, the full
buttocks, and in the shapely thighs, sleek legs and
she shows all this and does not hide it.”
• Qutb lays the foundation for the al Qaeda
Salafi Jihadist ideology
• Blends the Salafist method with Jihadist action
• Increasing tension between Islamist
movements
• Assassination of al Sadat, Egyptian Islamic
Jihad
• The origins of the hijra
• Mubarak, Crackdown on Islamist organizations
Al Wasat (Middle Path)
• “We distinguish between missionary and political
activities, because mixing of the two is extremely
dangerous, threatening both the nation and
religious groups themselves.”
• “We are glad to see that a party established by
the Muslim Brotherhood It confirms that the new
Center Party has no connection.”
• “Any Person who talks about the abrogation or
review of the Camp David Accords is not aware of
the reality of the situation
Al Azhar 2011
• 1961 al-Nasser nationalizes al-Azhar, takes
control of budgetary allocation
• Increased co-option of the ulema to legitimise
regime rule.
• Post Mubarak al Azhar independence
• 2012 Egyptian Constitution
• The Azhar Document for the Independence of
Egypt (al-Azhar Sheikhdom 2011a), In Support for
the Arab Spring Revolutions (al-Azhar Sheikhdom
2011b) and The Document for Religious
Freedoms (al-Azhar Sheikhdom 2012).
Ulema as Reformers?
• “Al-Azhar views education and scientific
research as the main way of culture in Egypt,
and so there is need to dedicate all efforts to
compensate what we missed in such fields.”
• “Serious scientific research in humanities,
physics, mathematics, etc., is the driver of
human progress and the means to discovering
the laws of the universe so as to use them for
the goodness of humankind”
Free Thinking
• “If thinking in general is an Islamic duty in all
branches of knowledge and arts, as held by the
scholars of ijtihad, theoretical and experimental
scientific research is the instrument for the
discharge of this duty”
• The commitment to freedom of thoughts and
opinion with a full respect of humans”
• The scholars of ijtihad and legislation have
attached great significance to the mind in Islam
and left us a golden rule that says: If the mind
and the text are apparently conflicting, the mind
should be given precedence and the text
reinterpreted