No. 44: 134-146, October-December 2005.

Islamic fundamentalism

 

Enrique López Oliva, Historian and journalist
History Studies Latin American Commission (CEHILA-CUBA)

 

The Qur’an also teaches that the most important
is not what man says about his faith, but what
that faith makes him do.   -- Ibn Arabi (1165-1241)


A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann.
ORIGINAL:
http://www.temas.cult.cu/revistas/44/11_lopez.pdf

By creating a distorted and reductionistic image of Islamic culture and religion, especially after the September 11, 2001 events, the main media, as well as outstanding political leaders from big powers with the United States at the top and distinguished western academicians and writers, they have stepped up a process of demonization and negation –actually started several centuries ago– to try to justify Europe’s colonial conquest of the Muslim world, which had its precedents in the Christian Crusades first mustered by Pope Urban II in 1091.

 

Taking into account that the said process of negation is largely based upon Westerners’ ignorance of Islam, I wrote this historic article as an attempt to outline key related developments that provide neophytes with a socio-historical and cultural-religious view of a reality which is now virtually faced with a political-ideological perspective barely equipped to understand it.

 

Four major fundamentalist currents exist today in the world, although many authors mention only three: Christian fundamentalism, with its Catholic elements Protestantism and evangelism [1]; Judaism, whose chief expressions are Zionism and the Jewish religious ultra-orthodoxy; Islam, with extreme religious and political positions spearheaded by groups who pursue their goals through violence; and a neo-atheist secularizing fundamentalism that is intertwined with neoliberalism and regards individualism and consumerism as sacred, idolizes the market and creates religious stopgaps to replace the traditional ways [2].

 

Some scholars speak too about fundamentalist Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and even Confucianism. There’s also a cultural-religious fundamentalism linked to the wide African spectrum and its descendants.

 

The term ‘fundamentalism’ comes from the adjective ‘fundamental’, that is, what serves as a foundation, or the noun ‘fundamentals’, or basic rules [3]. In the field of religious sociology, it’s a trend based on the literal interpretation of a text deemed sacred, be it the Bible, the Qur’an, or others. When seen as a specific, sacred expression of divinity, humans cannot alter its contents with new interpretations.

 

In his Diccionario básico de las religiones, Spanish professor Pedro R. Santidrian describes fundamentalism as a religious political movement also known as radicalism. It came into being in the second half of the nineteenth century and took roots in Protestant and Catholic countries in the course of the twentieth. Then it was introduced as well in some political and religious movements within Judaism and Islam [4].

 

A fundamentalist evangelic movement came up in the United States in the late 19th century whose followers objected to both evolutionism and modern-day biblical hermeneutics, arguing that they undermined the ‘fundamentals’ of biblical faith by using scientific methodologies to interpret the Bible, construe its texts from the historic context in which they were supposedly written, and study them on the basis of linguistic evolution from its original language to its subsequent translations –which they compared to other texts of that time– taking into account a number of various archaeological findings.

 

To U.S. scholar Jorge Pixley, a Baptist theologian who has worked for many years for theological institutions in Mexico and Central America, “it’s customary today to call ‘fundamentalist’ the most disparate groups from different parts of the world” [5], whereas Brazilian liberationist theologian Leonardo Boff remarks that “fundamentalism is not a doctrine, but an exclusive way of seeing the doctrine” [6]. Santidrian agrees with Boff as to the perception of a ‘pejorative’ connotation.

 

Between 1910 and 1915, in the United States were published twelve volumes of a work titled The Fundamentals, an anti-modernist manifesto against the threats that some Protestants saw hovering over their nation and churches. One of fundamentalism’s purposes was to restore an idealized past where authority was never questioned.

 

Pixley underscores that it is “essentially right-wing, since it opposes equality and supports authoritarian solutions to defend a truth they conceive as absolute and revealed by God” [7].

The term was equally applied to political philosophies strongly opposed to evolution and faced with revisionist tendencies which tried to adjust to political, economic and scientific change.

 

Some mistake fundamentalism for dogmatism, a set of proposals or principles deemed to be neither changeable nor questionable, so some scholars take them as synonyms even if each term has its own particular nuances. As it happens with other political currents, dogmatism has no sacred origins and is therefore appropriated by many religions.

 

Neoliberalism is interpreted as a form of dogmatism nowadays.

 

Pixley was one of the first scholars to see the fundamentalists as “right-wing anti-imperialists” opposed to the overall market’s goals, which is on a par with “our search for popular, left-wing solutions”.

 

These coincidences must be well used, says Pixley, not without warning of the danger that “fundamentalism’s authoritarianism” represents to us left-wingers “who are learning about the need for internal democracy” [8].

 

Some scholars believe fundamentalism to be a major obstacle to ecumenical understanding within Christianity, interreligious dialogue and the development of a pluralistic society where all cultural and religious expressions are respected. Religious fundamentalisms and fanaticisms jeopardize peaceful coexistence among all religious creeds and, if mixed with politics, they become a serious danger to peace and understanding between the peoples.

 

Almost 500 leaders of about ten religions who gathered in Aachen, Germany on September 9, 2003 labeled fundamentalism “the childhood disease of all religions and cultures”, and called for a dialogue against war and to eliminate the pessimistic view of all those who “believe a clash among civilizations is inevitable”. Andrea Ricardi, founder of the Comunidad Católica de San Egidio, warned that “there’s no holy war; only peace is sacred” [9].

 

Many scholars see common features in the fundamentalist currents –regardless of their different origins and specifics: they sprouted in response to profound challenges that, they say, threaten the existence of their culture and religion; express a real fear of changes imposed on them from abroad; see enemies bent on modifying sacred, deeply entrenched values and customs; cling on truths; and dogmatize standards and lifestyles.

 

Samuel P. Huntington, professor of Political Science at Harvard University and author of the controversial book The clash of civilizations and the remaking of world order, where he warns of the danger of a violent clash between the Judeo-Christian West and the East, states that the fundamentalist movements in particular are “a way to face chaos and the loss of identity, sense and safe social structures, a circumstance generated by the hastened introduction of modern social and political models, laicism, scientific culture and economic development” [10].

 

But religious fundamentalism has not necessarily to agree directly with the political one, nor conservatism with right-wing positions. Some religious conservatives might have progressive political affiliations, which makes it all the more difficult to study a topic where various factors play a role, including the generational one, so different from one historical moment and location to another, that in general combines ideological, religious, psychological and cultural elements with the social, political and economic praxis.

 

Another important element in the analysis of fundamentalism is that neither it nor its expression is always negative or unhealthy. At times, committing to certain traditional principles and standards proves fruitful inasmuch as it provides a balance between culture and religion that allows them to put themselves across to the future. In a way, there is a complex relationship among the various fundamentalist currents: they feed from each other and justify one another in order to strengthen their, in their opinion, imperiled identities.

 

However, British expert on religious affairs Karen Armstrong remarked that western media usually seem to convey the idea that the stubborn and at times violent form of religiosity referred to as fundamentalism is an Islamic phenomenon. Not quite so. Fundamentalism is a universal fact that has risen in each and every major religion as a response to problems posed by our modernity [11].

 

We must bear in mind that in Islamic countries this religion is practiced in a different way as in the West, where according to estimates there are more than three million Muslims, many of whom are linked to academia and business. Likewise, there are distinctions between Islamism in Arab countries and sub-Saharan Africa, for instance, Sudan, as a result of clashes with ethnic beliefs. It is important to distinguish between classical and popular Islam.

 

Islam is currently undergoing widespread renovation [12]. Heated discussions are taking place at the Iranian University of Qom, home to the largest library of Islam’s sacred texts, about its role in the world, history and the future of mankind. By fostering both interchange among various Islamic groups and a more unrestrained, flexible and democratic Islam –without loosing sight of its essence– the Internet itself is giving rise to appreciable modifications of the Islamic world. Some experts think that Islamism, usually withdrawn in the past, is beginning to open up to the outside world through websites and satellite dishes broadcasting in English and French, which allows for a broader diffusion. Yet, today’s technology facilitates not only a positive, renewed trend within Islam. Islamic fundamentalists used the Internet to devise, plan and coordinate the terrorist attacks in Madrid on March 11, 2004.

 

Islamic women are playing a central role in the process to renovate Islam. Some have been able to study in universities and are not afraid of expressing themselves freely and even employing Qur’anic studies and the very history of Islam to question in public the obscure place assigned to them in many Muslim countries. Their significance to Islam is so increasing that many believe their ability to be central to this religion and culture will decisively account for Islam’s true renovation. A second, feminine reading of Islam is in keeping with the worldwide problems of reinterpretation and readjustment of gender roles. In fact, much of the fictional work on women in Islam widely circulating in the West today is said to have been written by Islamic women, often in complicity with male relatives, and published under pen names.

 

The introduction to a special issue of the Revista Académica para el Estudio de las Religiones dedicated to “Islam and the new jihad”, published in Mexico City, remarks:

“Now more than ever, it’s essential that those of us born and raised in western countries have an outlook on the Islamic world. Trying to analyze the 9/11 attacks against the Pentagon and the World Trade Center with no context upon which to draw and without making a proper distinction between key concepts can throw us into confusion. This would unavoidably lead to mistaken conclusions”. [13]

 

It also says:

 

“For decades, some international mass media have reinforced stereotypes made popular by Hollywood and many TV programs: Islamic men and women are fanatics, which extends to all Arab peoples and therefore complicates communication, since it all swings from lack of information to misinformation: the assimilation of false data about a given phenomenon. And this is a classic educational challenge: filling the information void is not the same as correcting deep-rooted wrong notions that are further strengthened on a daily basis [14].

 

The Spanish Juan Pedro Yaniz Ruiz, who wrote the prologue to the Spanish edition of The Holy Sword: the story of Islam from Muhammad to the Present, first published in 1959 by U.S. journalist Robert Payne, believes that in the present circumstances the West seems to be free from the religious atavisms from days of yore, even if it still shows signs of a remarkable lack of understanding concerning the opponent’s position, which is not the case of religious fundamentalist sectors, whether Islamic or Judaic [15].

 

He underlines that profound reflections are needed in the near future in order to break the vicious circle of civilizations blindly clashing between each other, seemingly extolled by schematic propaganda campaigns we are bound to undergo in the next few years –in fact it has been happening for months now. Taking positions is always very complicated and arbitrary [...]. And the conflict posed by the “control of and access to oil”, described by this author as “essentially important”, constantly shows up throughout this story, albeit some try to conceal its meaning behind ideological rhetoric, as Huntington himself acknowledges [16].

 

Within Islamic reformism, in addition to diverse fundamentalist trends, are modern, moderate fundamentalist currents sprung from democratic and social values and institutions and propelled by economic and intellectual sectors as well as by political leaders mostly qualified in the West or by professors who studied in European and American universities.

 

But Washington’s identification with the Israeli government and its wars in Afghanistan and Irak, not to mention its repeated threats to Muslim countries like Iran, Syria and Sudan, have led several members of those currents –initially moderate and pro-West– to either assume anti-West positions and even join radical groups in some cases or reach an agreement with the West.
 

 

The Turkish example: secularism vs. Islamism


Among those movements we could mention the ones developed in Turkey, which led its founding fathers –kemalists, after Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1880-1938), first president of the Turkish Republic from 1923 to 1938)– to increasingly secularize their society after 1923 through measures that included abolishing the sultan and caliph figures, declaring a state monopoly over education, eliminating the Ministry of Religion, adopting a Swiss civil code, and closing down Shari’a courts of law. Women were allowed to vote, the alphabet was Latinized, and they deleted from the Constitution a paragraph decreeing Islam as the Turkish’s religion.
 

Further, all Sufi religious orders, which had rebelled, were terminated and outlawed, and members of the Armed Forces or Public Administration were banned from professing Islam in the open. Because of these measures, all Islamic religious activity was forced into private practice, and modern Turkey became the less “Islamic” of all great Muslim nations as a result.
 

Nevertheless, secularization failed to take roots in rural Turkey and came into a structural conflict with Islamic life –yet to be over– that was worsened by the resurgence of Islam owing to domestic factors and international developments. This gave rise to strong Islamic political groups and parties, such as the Welfare Party that assigned women to political proselytism tasks and attained Ankara’s mayor office in 1994 and Parliament control later on, despite opposition by the military and other secular political groups like the right-wing Motherland Party, strongly linked to the European Union governments.

 

The abovesaid secularization process notwithstanding, Islam in Turkey has achieved new ideological and political dimensions that go beyond its national frontier and serves as a referential to other Muslim countries, thus allowing Turkey to take on the difficult role of bridging the gap between Islam and the West and increasing its chances to become NATO’s first Muslim country despite certain reservations about its entry, due precisely to that condition.

 

As Islamic Studies professor Serif Mardin remarks, “we are once again facing totally unforeseen consequences of fundamentalist behavior and signs that new bases for discussion are in the making within Islam” [17]. Additional examples could be mentioned in the case of Muslim countries such as Indonesia, Egypt, and even Irak.


The origins of Islam and Islamic fundamentalism  

 

Islamic religion shares a common trunk with Judaism and Christianity, the world’s three great monotheistic religions whose beliefs are based on Abraham’s God (Al-illa, the God, for Islamists), although each has its own views in this regard. This has paved the way for a rather complex interreligious theological dialogue that, despite all efforts, has failed to overcome certain obstacles which respond mostly to political interests.

 

Robert Payne, who as a foreign correspondent traveled all over Muslim countries for several years, holds that since the gap between East and West is on a widening trend we’re inclined to think that Muhammadans belong in the opposite team, when in fact they are part of the West. Whether we like it or not, they are indissolubly connected to our own culture; they are part of ourselves. We have almost the same roots and share a single divine energy [18].

 

To Payne, “Islam’s history is a long dialogue with Christianity” [19]. A frequent promoter of talks with Islam, Supreme Pontiff John Paul II himself firmly opposed war in Irak and tried to mediate between Jews and Palestinians for the sake of peace in the Middle East, said in 1985: “A dialogue between Christians and Muslims is now more necessary than ever before” [20].
 

Still, we must keep in mind that following the crusades, as British scholar Karen Armstrong says, people in the Western Christendoms created a stereotyped, distorted image of Islam, which they deemed an enemy of virtuous civilization. Said prejudice intertwined with Europe’s fantasies about the Jews, the other Crusaders’ victims [...] It was precisely the Christians who fueled a number of brutal holy wars against the Muslim world after the European monks pictured Islam as an intrinsically violent and intolerant religion that could only assert itself by the sword. The myth of Islam’s alleged fanatic intolerance has become a standard idea in the West [21].

 

French thinker and former French Communist Party Political Bureau member Roger Garaudy, who now calls himself an Islamist, thinks that “there won’t be a new world economic order without a new world cultural order”, and goes on to add: “The dialogue among civilizations has become an urgent, inconstestable necessity, a matter of survival” [22].

 

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, in turn, said in a conference at the German University of Tuebingen that it was a mistake to behave “as if Islamic and Western values were incompatible”, and recognized that after September 11 “many Muslims [in the West] are the object of suspicion, harassment and discrimination, whereas in part of the Islamic world anyone related to the West is exposed to hostility and even violence” [23].

 

Islam stems from the religious experience of Muhammad ibn Abdallah, better known in the West as Muhammad (570-632), and is based upon a process of 114 revelations-messages he says to have received from Allah through the Archangel Gabriel (Jibril) who appeared to him in his dreams during a spiritual retreat in the Mountain of Light, near Mecca, and ordered him: “Recite in the name of your Lord...”.

 

It is said that since that moment the Prophet –who was 40 years old then– began to recite Allah’s words in these verses, collected after his death by his secretary Zayd under a committee’s supervision, but thirty years passed before a final canonic version went through a process similar to that of the Christian Gospels and was put together as The Qur’an. It contains 114 surahs, each of which includes a revelation.

 

The new religion has been described by some scholars as a Christian sect in the beginning. The Qur’an abounds in references to the Jewish Pentateuch and Jesus himself, and the Prophet is held to have said: “There’s no other Mahdi [the Messiah, the Chosen One] than Iesa (Jesus), son of Maryam (Mary)”. However, it was called Islam (surrender) in the end. A Muslim was the man or woman who had fully submitted to Allah (God) and his demand that “human beings behave toward each other with justice, equity and compassion” [24].

 

Yet, expert Toufic Fahd underscores that the great religious reformer, called by his followers ‘Seal of the Prophets’ –that is, the one who puts an end to their era– has been judged by the West on the basis of an ethic which was neither his own nor that of his time or his milieu. It was through a decadent Byzantium, an African continent deleted from the Christian map, an occupied Spain and a number of bloody and eventually useless Crusades that Europe forged an image of Muhammad and of the doctrine of this ‘heathen’, this ‘Antichrist’ cursed by all Christians in the Middle Age [25]. Many of these epithets are still in use, mostly in reference to Islamic religious and political leaders.

 

Although Islamic fundamentalism and other movements find common cause, Muslims object to the use of that term. The reason, as professor Armstrong explains, is that “it was coined by U.S. Protestants as a proud motto, and it can’t even be properly translated into Arabic” [26]. She specifies that the Arabic term usul is used to design the key principles of Islamic jurisprudence and, since all Muslims agree with them, they suscribe to usuliya (fundamentalism), which by no means imply they fit into the West’s perception of a fundamentalist, and those extremists classifiable as violent fundamentalists are a minority in a population of around 1,200 million, many of whom live in Europe.

 

Islam has become the third-largest religion in France and the United States, preceded only by Protestantism and Judaism. For the most part, those Islamists are a peaceful and hardworking people who, like any other, long for better living conditions and, if need be, are capable of fighting to defend their interests.

 

Regardless, due to frequent campaigns in the mainstream mass media many westerners believe all Muslims are either ‘fundamentalists’, however far they are from being it, or ‘terrorists’, a vague term with various connotations that entail indiscriminate use of violence.
 

German religion historian Markus Hattstein wrote:

 

“A boost of modernity took place in Islamic countries in the early 19th century as a result of new contacts with the West, mainly with Europe, where they were manipulated into long-standing political and economic dependence” [27].

 

To this historian, the Islamic modernist movements appeared in earnest halfway into the 19th century with many elements now ascribed to ‘fundamentalism’: an eagerness to have a real Islam that is true to its origins; a yearning for the proto-Islam and Islamic unity instead of the myriad existing systems; a definition of Islamic culture against outside oppressive influences; an emphasis in that all believers are equal to God; and the demand for a social and charitable commitment from the individual [28].

 

Hichem Djaït, from Tunisia, affirms: “It’s true that Islam is above all else a diversely interpreted religion that nevertheless lit up man’s life in both his inner world and highest expressions” [29].

Islam’s major schools of thought are Sunni, Shi’a and Sufism. Most Muslims call themselves Sunnis (followers of the harmonious path), after Sunna (path), a collection of six 'authentic' (Sabih) books of hadith (Arabic for report) with narrations of Muhammad’s lessons and works not mentioned in the Qur’an and others ascribed to his foremost followers, called Sahaba Muhammad (the Prophet’s companions). Present estimates indicated that approximately 80% of the world’s Muslims are Sunni, who are in turn divided into four classic schools of Islamic jurisprudence: Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’i and Hanbali.  

 

Founded by Abu Hanifa (699-767), Hanafi is the most widespread and liberal of the four schools, and the most open to reasoning and personal views. It’s especially fond of legal subtleties, to the point of having introduced procedural and doctrinal criteria which still hold sway nowadays. It’s predominant in Central Asian countries, India, Pakistan, Turkey, Afghanistan, Tunisia, and part of Egypt.

 

The Maliki, named after Malik ibn Anas (715-795), is a conservative and very strict school that refers to customs practiced in Medina in the Prophet’s time. It’s common in the Maghreb, Sudan and Kuwait.

 

The Shafi’i denomination, placed in between Hanafi and Maliki, was founded by Imam ash-Shafi’i (767-820) and has helped differentiate legal principles. It’s very common in Indonesia, Malaysia, Jordan, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon and part of Egypt.

 

Named after Ahmed ibn Hanbal (780-855), the Hanbali adopt a strict, radical and fully devoted traditionalism, becoming increasingly important after the early 19th century reform of the Wahhabi. It predominates in Saudi Arabia, with followers in Syria, Irak and Algeria.

 

All four legal schools recognize the four roots (usul) of Islamic law: the Qur’an and the hadith, as well as the judicial methods of analogical reasoning (qiyas) and consensus (Ijma). Any agreement among Islamic experts on a given topic stems from the Prophet’s opinion that an individual may be wrong, but Allah’s accurate guidance manifests itself in the overall community of believers, who can never be wrong.

 

Even if no distinct trend to subdivision exists within the Sunni, there are separate groups gathered around a given political leader or expert in Islamic issues. According to Sunni theology, the Mahdi (‘Guided One’) will be a political leader guided by divinity, sent by Allah to the Earth in order to bring all Muslims together under a single political State before the day of judgement. In the course of centuries, over a dozen Mahdi sects grouped around different masters, holy men and tribal or village chieftains have come along, but many disappeared soon after the Mahdi passed away.

 

Some believe today that Libyan president Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi is an al-Mahdi, albeit a Saudi-ruled Sunni theological commission from Mecca has accused him of a traitor to Islam for his own version of Sunni law and theology, which they see as anti-Islamic.

 

A Mahdi sect in Pakistan, founded in Eastern Punjab in the 1880s by Mirza Ghulam Ahmed, who died in 1908, claims to have more than one million followers today. Ahmed assured he was not only the Muslim Mahdi but also Jesus reincarnate and an avatar of the Hindu deity Krishna, and proclaimed himself to be in charge of unifying Islam and incorporating Christianity and Hinduism into it. His group split into two branches and eventually assumed an anti-Semitic stance, accusing the Jews of murderers of Jesus Christ and persecuters of the Prophet.

 

His followers, the Ahmadiyya, fulfilled relatively successful missions in West Africa, the West Indies and every big city of the United States and established small communities in black ghettos from which independent entities such as the Black Muslims of America and The Nation of Islam eventually sprouted. Subsequently, both Malcolm X (1925-1965) –who founded the Muslim Mission of America, leaned toward Sunni orthodoxy– and the present African American radical leader Louis Farrakhan, separated from the latter.

 

Next in the list of Islam’s branches are the Shi’ites (or ‘God’s guerrilla’), supporters of Ali ibn Abi Talib, Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law and the closest relative to survive him. In the year 656 he became the fourth caliph [30], before he was murdered by the Umayyad.

 

The Shi’ítes were tenaciously persecuted by the Umayyad, who seized power under the leadership of Damascus’s governor Muawiya. Ali’s followers came out a minority, separated from most of the Muslims.

 

Shi’ite Islam is much older than the Sunni and claims to be more faithful to the political practice implemented by the Prophet and the first four caliphs. It’s mostly a creed with a strong leaning to martyrdom and violence for the purpose of defending Qur’anic postulates.

 

Present-day Shi’ites are divided into various groups or sects. They represent 20% of the world’s population and over 40% of people in the Middle East, especially in Iran, where most of them live. They’re also a majority in Yemen and Azerbaijan and account for more than half the Iraki population, in addition to being significant minorities throughout Arabia.

 

Most Shi’ites are Twelvers (Izna-.shariyah), followed in number by the Seveners (isma.iliya or Ismaili), quite scattered all over the Muslim world. Today’s Ismaili abide by the Qur’anic message concerning equality among all races, practice internationalism and charity, and established important foundations to that end. One of its groups were the ‘Assassins’ (Isma’iliya Taiyabi and Nizariyya) [31], a monastic-like institution of armed groups who tried to overthrow the Sunni rulers, whom they deemed usurpers. Famous for their use of disguise, they would take hashish before missions in order to boost their strength and courage and stood out because of their heroism when they fought the Christian Crusaders.

 

Among other groups –around seventy distinct Shi’ite groups exist today, some with only a hundred followers– we can mention:

 

- The 13th century Alawis (Isma’iliya Alwiyin), who defend Allah and elements of Christian theology, especially the resurrection of Christ –which they match with their faith in ‘the second advent of the twelve occult Imam’– and also celebrate Easter;

 

- the Druze, established in Cairo in 1021 by a group of Ismaili. Their first leader was the Turkish ad-Darazi (‘the shoemaker’), and they accept the doctrine of the reincarnation of Christ, defining themselves as ‘self-Unitarian’;

 

- the Zaidis (Shi’i Zaidiyya), one of the most conservative Shi’ite sects and the closest to the Sunni, and

 

- the Bahá’í, originally Shi’ites but now unacknowledged and persecuted by other Shi’ites. They came into being as an anticlerical movement opposed to Twelver jurists, and emphasize one of the Prophet’s hadith: “There is no priesthood in Islam”.

 

Many experts assert Christianity’s impact on modern Islam has been stronger than whatever influence Islamism ever had on contemporary Christians, and therefore new schisms have appeared in Islamic sects that adopted Christian beliefs, such as Turkey’s Baktashi, who have assimilated the Trinity as Allah (the Father), the Prophet (the Son) and the lineage of mystic Imams (the Holy Spirit). Elements of paganism (pre-Islamic religious forms of different ethnic groups) and shamanism have been adopted by a number of Islamic sects, and dozens of Shi’ite sub-sects have gathered around the shrines of various Islamic martyrs.

 

Furthermore, there is a rich and complex Islamic mystical faith called Sufism, which has always been at odds with official Islam and developed fraternities around a master –revered as a saint– who claimed to have insightful knowledge of God, a heresy to some Islamists.

 

The term Sufi derives suf (Arabic for wool), a coarse garment worn by these preachers who practiced –and still advocate– a severe asceticism and many of whom were taken to court and executed by Islamic authorities on charges of theological and political subversion.

 

The Wahabi rebellion and the first fundamentalist Muslim State
 

According to British Islamists Chris Horrie and Peter Chipindale, Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab (1703-1792) “was the first modern fundamentalist”. A Sunni who attempted a radical reform of the foundations of Islam, he maintained that the Ottoman and their local collaborators had misappropriated the role of keepers of Ka’bah and thus turned pagan.

 

Wahhab claimed his role was similar to Muhammad’s and supported the purification of Islam as well as a return to the legal conventions of the Sunni Hanbali school of thought, oriented toward Arab traditions. He tried to organize an Arab tribal Confederation and joined forces with Muhammad ibn Sa’ud, who took over the direction of the movement when Wahhab died and on his name declared war on both the Ottoman and rival tribes. In 1934, after years of war, his clan managed to assume control of the Arabian Peninsula. They had previously seized holy places like Mecca, Medina and Karbala, and in 1932 had proclaimed the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

 

The Saudi State imposed a tight version of Islamic law (al Sharia) and became the first modern Wahhabi-based fundamentalist Muslim State [33]. The Saudis proclaimed themselves heirs of the pristine Islamic religion of the Arabian Peninsula and succeeded in getting many ulema (Muslim scholars trained in Islamic legal and religious tradition) to sanction the said State, in return for which the Saudi kings, in charge of interpreting Islam, decreed conservative religious values.

 

Women had to wear facial and head veil and be confined to their home, gambling and alcohol were banned, and the legal system had resource to traditional ways of punishment that included the mutilation of thieves. Many Muslims from other States and Islamic organizations voiced their opposition to the assumption that the Qur’an demanded such penal procedures.

 

Another movement of fundamentalist persuasion established in Egypt in 1929, the Muslim Brotherhood (al-Ijwan al-Muslimun) condemned this Saudi practice from the outset, calling it archaic and unseemly, especially when the ostentatious, elitist Saudi rulers (the State is administered as a family business) and the uneven distribution of wealth infringed values of equality laid down in the Qur’an [34]. Founded by the Sufi Hasan al-Banna (murdered by Egypt’s secular government in 1949), they aimed to replace the laic Constitution Britain imposed on Egypt in 1923 with an Islamic one and merge their proselytism in favor of a fundamentalist Islam with political activities that included military training in the desert to fight British-backed king Faruk. Following Israel’s victory over Egypt and other Arab nations, they organized a revolt in 1948 and were pivotal to the nationalistic revolution of 1952 that finally toppled king Faruk and put Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918-1970) in the presidential chair.

 

Yet, the Wahhabi insurrection inspired Muslims worldwide to call into question a number of practices, different expressions of mysticism and worshipping cults that had sprouted in the name of Islam.
 

 

The real founder of Islamic fundamentalism

 

Various authors agree to pinpoint Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966) [35] as ‘the real founder of Islamic fundamentalism’ among the Sunni. Maududi [35] had a great impact on him. He received a traditional Muslim education –at the age of 10 he could recite the Qur’an by heart– and went to college in Cairo, graduating as a teacher. Qutb was an avid reader of literary and socialist texts, and took an interest in Western culture, secular politics, individualism and existentialism. He wrote novels, poems and a book on methodology – Literary criticism: principles and methodology [36]– in addition to an essay called ‘Social justice and Islam’, in which some have perceived a trend toward Islamic fundamentalism.

 

In the 1940s, Qutb traveled around the United States. Various biographers have indicated that living in that country affected him deeply, since he found racism and sexual permissiveness appalling. As a result, he gave up his initial enthusiasm for Western culture and secular politics and adopted a radical mindset “with relentless hatred for the West and its entire work” [37]. On his return to Egypt he joined the Muslim Brotherhood, by then an Islamist mass movement with around half a million militant members.

 

Qutb urged Muslims to emulate the Prophet and stay away from the ruling society just as Muhammad had done during his journey from Mecca to Medina, insisting that unleashing a violent jihad was a sacred duty. As he underscored, only after a political victory and the creation of a true Islamic State could the Qur’anic mandate of tolerance be implemented.

 

Despite the fact that in the beginning the Muslim Brotherhood gave its support both to the revolution against Faruk and to General Nasser’s rise to power, they soon detached from the latter because of his secularistic policies. 1954. Nasser in turn persecuted the Brotherhood, hanging six of its main leaders, jailing dozens of its members, and exiling several thousands, most of whom took refuge in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

 

Among the incarcerated intellectuals was Qutb, who made the best of his time in prison to take his ideas to greater depths. Starting in 1954 and prior to his execution in 1966, he wrote Milestones, a.k.a. Under the shadow of the Qur’an (or Ma’alim fi-l-Tariq), a kind of program to overturn Nasser’s government and any other anti-Islamic regime.

 

Qutb’s death turned him into a martyr, and his writings became required reading for radical Islamists. They were published in several countries including the United States, though his work enjoyed great popularity in Pakistan. Saudi dissident Saad al-Fagih refers to Qutb’s texts as “the most important to militant Islamism” [38].
 

 

Osama Bin Laden and Islamic Jihad

 

Multiple biographies have been written about Osama Bin Laden, and most agree that from an early age he showed signs of a religiosity that marked him for life. At 17 he married a Syrian relative, the first of four wives, his last being a Yemenite he wedded in Qandahar in 2000 [39].

He studied in the famed King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah –where he got involved with the Muslim Brotherhood– and earned a degree in Economics and Public Administration in 1981. Among his professors of Islamic Studies were Abdullah Azzam and Muhammad Qutb, who had a significant impact on his formation.

 

Years later Azzam founded what is considered to be the First International Jihhadi Network of the modern world [40]. When the renowned Islamic scholcar Muhammad Qutb’s brother Sayyid was assassinated in 1966, he became the main interpreter of his thoughts.

 

Four events shook the Muslim world: the Ayatollah Khomeini-led Iranian Revolution that toppled the Sha’s pro-American regime in January, 1979; the peace treaty signed in March of that same year between Egypt and Israel; a bloody battle fought in Mecca by radical Islamists in November; and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. All these developments seem to have had a significant influence on, and defined the future life of, the young Osama.

 

Jorge Erdely and Lourdes Argüelles assert that the most serious studies on Osama coincide with the fact that during his days with the Afghan guerrilla who fought the Soviet invaders the then Saudi millionaire went through a religious conversion from Islam to what Ruthven [41] would call Islamism, a particularly politicized and expansionist branch of that faith [42].

 

The inhospitable mountains of Hindu Kush in Afghanistan used to be a province of the Arab Islamic empire in the 1st century after the Prophet, and Islam’s fortress in Asia. Characterized by their traditionalism, the so-called warlords –still active in Afghanistan– kept for years an age-old, conservative form of Islamism [43].

 

Unlike Central Asia in the north and India’s Muslim territories in the southeast, Afghanistan was never under Russian domination, but it was for some time a British protectorate in the first half of the 20th century. Afghan Islam merged with a militant nationalism and fervently took on jihad (a holy war against infidels). Time passed, and Afghanistan became a symbol of how Islamic fundamentalism could survive Europe’s attempts at domination. For centuries, a variety of dynasties of native Turkish, Iranian and Mongolian rulers tried in vain to restrain the power of the local Afghan chieftains and imposed on them a centralized government.

 

In the early 1960s, radical students started a campaign in favor of an agrarian reform and other modernizing objectives. Their movement culminated in the overthrowing of the Afghan king, who was in power thanks to his manipulation of a fragile alliance with various chieftains and warlords, as the government imposed by the NATO-supported coalition headed by the United States is doing today.

 

Directed by the Muslim Brotherhood, groups of traditionalist Islamists opposed the laic republic established in 1973, the pro-Soviet government installed in 1978 and the large-scale Soviet invasion in late December, 1979. The chieftains rose up against the measures to modernize their country –collectivization of agriculture, education of women, and so on– and joined others who adopted the name of mujahideen (combatants engaged in a jihad).

 

Islamic governments were gradually established in different Afghan regions. The Muslim Brotherhood split into two rival groups: Hizb al-Tahrir al-Islami (Islamic Liberation Party) and Jama’at al-Muslimin (The Society of Muslims), whose social basis was the Pashto ethnic group. Others, like Yahha’ye Neyat-e Milli-ye Afgani (National Afghan Liberation Front) and Mahaze-e Mille-ye Islami-ye Afgani (National Islamic Front for the Liberation of Afghanistan) also divided up on the basis of tribal criteria. Millions of Afghan refugees settled down in the neighboring Pakistan, where the government –with economic support from the United States and Saudi Arabia– harbored the mujahideen’s camps in its territory.

 

Few weeks after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Osama, who was 22 at the time, traveled to Pakistan to offer his personal and economic support to the Afghan leaders of the resistance movement [44].

 

He is said to have met there with Burhanuddin Rabbani and Abdul Rasuul Sayyaf, whom he had known when they went on a pilgrimage to Mecca. Back in Saudi Arabia, he pressured family and friends for their economic support to the anti-Soviet Afghan guerrilla, and traveled to Pakistan several times to bring supplies.

 

Already a demolition expert as a result of his work at his family’s construction company, in the early 1980s, bin Laden allegedly went to Afghanistan a number of times with minefield clean-up technology and construction equipment such as excavators, loaders, dump trucks and tools to dig trenches, build highways and make tunnels in the mountains (for the guerrilla to use as shelter and to set up field hospitals).

 

In 1984 he opened a hostel in Peshawar for Muslims who felt the call of jihad. He named it Beit al-Ansar, or House of the Followers, an allusion to those who adhered to the Prophet and helped him get to Medina from Mecca. Once in Pakistan, he renewed ties with his former university professor of Islamism Abdullah Azzam, and together established who had established a Services Office (Maktab al-Khadamat) in Peshawar to spread information about and funnel money into the Afghan war.

 

Around that time he told a Pakistani journalist: “My father had the fervent hope that one of his children would fight the enemies of Islam. So I’m the son who’s acting according to his father’s wishes” [45].

 

As it is known, the United States and Saudi Arabia, one of its major partners in the region, gave the Afghans more than six billion dollars to help them deal with the Soviets. Milt Bearden, the then director of the CIA’s operations in Afghanistan, told a U.S. journalist that since the summer of 1986 Saudi sources had been contributing to the Afghan jihad with around 20 million dollars a month [46]. In those days Osama bin Laden is said to have been working closely with Prince Turki al-Faisal, “in fact, as an arm of Saudi intelligence” [47].

 

U.S. journalist Peter L. Bergen affirms the CIA took care of arming the Afghans, a very successful operation from a strategic viewpoint. The last Soviet soldiers left Afghan soil on February 15, 1989, an event duly celebrated at CIA headquarters in Langley (Virginia) [48].
 

“Some commentators have said that bin Laden himself received money from the CIA,” Bergen says, albeit not without reservations. Regardless of the intervention in the Middle East by the United States and two of its prime allies, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, many agree with the words of Gilles Kepel, a French expert in Islamism who sustains that “the Afghan jihad plays a key role in the worldwide evolution of Islam. It replaces the Palestinian cause in the minds of the Arabs and stands as a symbol of the transition from (Arab) nationalism to Islamism”. [49]
 

Having renounced to the typical life of Saudi multimillionaires –palaces in Jeddah and hotel suites in London and Montecarlo– to participate in the Afghan war, bin Laden became a celebrity in that country (where he founded al-Qaeda in 1988). His attitude was unlike thousands of the ruling al-Saud family members, none of whom seemed to have seen combat in Afghanistan and nonetheless claimed legitimacy on their role as ‘guardians’ of Muslim sacred places [50].

 

When interviewed by CNN, bin Laden himself said: “[the Afghan war] has given me so much that it would have been impossible to obtain the same from another experience [...] The main benefit was that in the mind of all Muslims and in my own, the myth of the superpower was smashed to pieces” [51].

 

An piece written for the Spanish journal Geo points out that nowadays many youths in Riyadh “revere Osama as a hero” [52]. It’s one of countless interviews, reports and articles that, together with his frequent TV messages following 9/11, contribute to solidify his Islamic combatant image.

 

Back from Afghanistan, bin Laden started to preach around the mosques. Thousands of his speeches, more and more critical of the U.S. policies for the Middle East with each passing day, were recorded and circulated within Saudi Arabia itself. He was believed to have masterminded and financed a number of terrorist acts against U.S. interests and representations in the region, and accused –no evidence was ever submitted– of being the organizer of the suicide attacks of September 11, thus joining the list of the most wanted by both the media and the secret services of Washington and its allies. Perhaps one day we will know the real facts about Osama’s participation in the above events, repeatedly used by the present U.S. Republican administration to justify, among other things, a policy of “preemptive war” supposedly aimed at international terrorism.

 

The September 11 tragedy and the Muslim world

 

Mahmood Monshipouri, an Iranian professor of Political Sciences, said in a sharp essay that “the 9/11 attacks in the United States brought old fears back to life, created new myths, and helped harden images and memories” [53].

 

Many wonder about what is left of al-Qaeda, and why bin Laden has not been captured yet. Shortly after the Taliban [54] were defeated by a U.S.-led coalition, Time magazine published an article by Romesh Ratnesar where he states: “Two months after the United States and its Afghan allies crushed the Taliban regime, the military campaign is yet to annihilate bin Laden’s followers”. And added, “it would seem that many terrorists of that organization have disappeared off the face of the earth. Only an insignificant number of its members have been arrested so far” [55].

 

In late 2003, almost a year later, David Rhode, a U.S. journalist at The New York Times, wondered: “Why can’t they capture Osama?”, and quoted Peter Bergen: “My impression is that they are not allocating enough resources to do it”, and “all efforts to infiltrate the group have failed”.

 

Referring to attempts to find both bin Laden and Mullah Omar –the leader of the Taliban who allegedly escaped by motorcycle when he was surrounded by U.S. troops– an American embassy spokesman told Rhode: “the search continues” [56].

 

Professor Monshipouri has underlined that “there is no way to eradicate the culture of violence other than by mitigating hunger and poverty” [57], and warned of the danger that U.S. campaigns against terror become “a war against Islam”, remarking that the current U.S. policy “has contributed to religious extremism” [58].

 

Finally, let’s return to Islam’s sacred text, the Qur’an, to read a message the West should think about too. Surah 2, No. 39, says: “And cover not Truth with falsehood, nor conceal the Truth when ye know (it)”. [59].

 

Notes

1. Enrique López Oliva, La derecha religiosa y el fundamentalismo cristiano, Temas, Havana, No. 35, October-December 2003, pp. 44-9; see Rod L. Evans and Irwin M. Berent, Fundamentalism: Hazards and Heartbreaks, Open Court, La Salle, Ilinois, 1988.

2. See Lluis Oviedo Torro, La fe cristiana ante los nuevos desafíos sociales: tensiones y respuestas, Ediciones Cristiandad, Madrid, 2002.

3. Diccionario Enciclopédico Océano Uno Color, Océano, Barcelona, 1997, p. 720.

4. Pedro H. Santidrian, Diccionario básico de las religiones, Verbo Divino, Navarra, 1996, pp. 180-1.

5. Jorge Pixley, ¿Qué es el fundamentalismo?, Signos de Vida, No. 33, Quito, September 2004, pp. 6-9.

6. Ibídem, p. 6.

7. Ibídem, pp. 8-9; see also Rod L. Evans and Irwin M. Berent, cited reference; Enrique López Oliva, cited reference, pp. 44-9.

8. Jorge Pixley. cited reference, p. 9.

9. “La paz es un nombre de Dios, señalan líderes religiosos del mundo”, Nuevo Siglo, a. 3, No. 10, Quito, October 2003, p. 12.

10. Samuel P. Huntington, The clash of civilizations and the remaking of world order, Paidos, Barcelona-Buenos Aires-México, DF, 1997, p. 116; see also: Rosemary Radford Ruther, A World on Fire with Faith, New York Times Book Review, New York, January 26, 1992, p. 10; William H. McNeill, Fundamentalism and the World of the 1990, at Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby, comps., Fundamentalism and Society, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1993, p. 561.

11. Karen Armstrong, Islam, Mondadori, Barcelona, 2001, p. 233.

12. Islam must not be mistaken by Islamism. The latter is usually understood as an extremist branch of Islam often seen as religiously and politically fundamentalist.

13. Introduction to the Revista Académica para el Estudio de las Religiones, Islam y la Nueva Jihad, t. IV, México, DF, p. 1.

14. Ibídem, p. 2.

15. Robert Payne, The sword of Islam, Luis de Caralt Editor, Barcelona, 2002, pp. 10-11.

16. Samuel P. Huntington, cited reference, p. 377.

17. Serefi Mardin, Notes on normative conflicts in Turkey, at Peter L. Bergen, ed., The limits of social cohesion. Conflict and mediation in pluralistic societies, Galaxia Gutemberg, Barcelona, 1999, p. 341.

18. Robert Payne, cited reference, p. III.

19. Ibídem, p. VI.

20. John Paul II, Speech to young Muslims in Casablanca, Morocco, on August 19, 1985, at Eloy García Díaz, ed., Diccionario de Juan Pablo II, Espasa Calpe, Madrid, 1997, p. 634.

21. Karen Armstrong, cited reference, p. 252.

22. Roger Garaudy, Promises of Islam, Planeta, Barcelona, 1982, p. 18.

23. Koffi Annan, Annan warns of tensions between the West and Islam, Tuebingen, Germany, December 12, 2003, Reuters; taken from Yahoo! News.

24. Karen Armstrong, cited reference, p. 46.

25. Toufic Fahd, Birth of Islam, at Henri-Charles Puech, dir., Historia de las religiones, Siglo XXI, Mexico, DF, 1979, v. 6; Las religiones en el mundo mediterráneo y en el Oriente Medio, v. 2, p. 392.

26. Karen Armstrong, cited reference, p. 237.

27. Markus Hattstein, Islam, World Religions, Koneman Verlagsgesellschaft, Cologne, Germany, 1997, p. 114.

28. Ibídem, p. 115.

29. Hicheim Djait, Europa y el Islam, Libertarias, Madrid, 1990. p. 77.

30. Caliph or guide, from Arabic Khalifah (‘representative’ or ‘successor’ of Muhammad). After the death of the Prophet, the caliphs assumed religious leadership and state control over increasingly larger territories, and their subordinate chieftains were appointed Imams.

31. Its current followers have renounced the name ‘Assassins’.

32. Chris Horrie and Peter Chippindale, ¿Qué es el Islam?, Alianza Editorial, Madrid, 1995, p. 131.

33. Ibídem, p. 226; Karen Armstrong, cited reference, p. 229.

34. Chris Horrie and Peter Chippindale, cited reference, p. 135.

35. Abul Ala Maududi (1903-1979) was an important Pakistani thinker whose ideas had a great influence on Sunni Islamists. He founded the group Jamaat-e-Islami, and thought the West was gathering forces to quash Islam. “Muslims,” he said, “must unite to fight this invading secularism if they want their religion and culture to survive”. See Karen Armstrong, cited reference, p. 237.

36. Paul Berman, The Philosopher of Islamic Terror, The New York Times Magazine, March 23, 2003, pp. 24-61; Karen Armstrong, cited reference, p. 238; Peter L. Bergen, Guerra Santa, S.A., Osama Bin Laden’s terror network, Random House Mondadori, Barcelona, 2002, p. 285.

37. Peter L. Bergen, cited reference, p. 285.

38. Ibídem, p. 286. Interview with Saad al-Fagih in London, October 2000.

39. Ibídem, p. 81. A source close to bin Laden’s family is cited.

40. Ibídem, p. 81.

41. M. Ruthven is the author of Islam: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford Univesity Press, Oxford, 2000; and Islam in the World, Penguin, London, 2000.

42. Jorge Erdely and Lourdes Argüelles, La nueva Jihad. Mitos y realidades sobre el pan-islamismo, Publicaciones para el Estudio Científico de las Religiones, Mexico, DF, 2003, p. 29.

43. Chris Horrie and Peter Chippindale, cited reference, p. 276.

44. Peter L. Bergen, cited reference, p. 85

45. Ibídem, p. 87.

46. Ibídem, p. 91. The author says to have interviewed him in Washington, DC, in April 2000.

47. Ídem.

48. Ibídem, p. 102.

49. Gilles Kepel, Jihad: Expansion et declin de l’Islamisme, Gallimard, Paris, 2000, p. 14.

50. Judith Miller, God has Ninety Names: Reporting from a Militant Middle East, Simon & Schuster, New York,1996; quoted by Peter L. Bergen, cited reference, p. 94.

51. Peter L. Bergen, cited reference, p. 95. Osama was interviewed in May 1997.

52. Christoph Reuter, Saudi Arabia: the realm of paradox, Geo, Madrid, No. 193, February 2003, p. 54. © , 2005.

53. Mahmood Monshipouri, The September 11 Tragedy and the Muslim World: Living with Memory and Mytth, Journal of Church and State, Waco, Texas., v. 45, No. 1, winter of 2003, p. 15.

54. The word talib means ‘student’ and is used to describe groups of students qualified in Islamic schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan who ruled most of the latter from 1996 until 2001.

55. Ratnesar Romesh, ¿Qué ha quedado de al-Qaeda?, Time Magazine, January 16, 2002. Taken from www.cnnenespanol.com.

56. David Rhode, ¿Por qué no capturan a Osama bin Laden?, La Jornada, Mexico, DF, December 18, 2003, p. 33A, taken from The New York Times.

57. Mahmood Monshipouri, cited reference, p. 29.

58. Ibídem, p. 37.

59. El Sagrado Corán, Edicomunicación, Barcelona, 1998, p. 8.

 

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