Two words,
Islam and fundamentalism, have become intimately linked in English usage.
The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English now defines fundamentalism
as the “strict maintenance of ancient or fundamental doctrines of any religion,
especially Islam.” However problematic this formula, it does acknowledge
that fundamentalism in Islam is today the most visible and influential
of all fundamentalisms.
The nature of fundamentalist Islam,
and even the use of the term, are hotly debated. But this debate is largely
a self-indulgent exercise of analysts. Within Islam, there are Muslims
who have created an “-ism” out of Islam — a coherent ideology, a broad
strategy, and a set of political preferences. They do not defy definition.
They defy the world.
What Is Fundamentalist Islam?
What is fundamentalist Islam? Its
contradictions seem to abound. On the one hand, it manifests itself as
a new religiosity, reaffirming faith in a transcendent God. On the other
hand, it appears as a militant ideology, demanding political action now.
Here it takes the form of a populist party, asking for ballots. There it
surges forth as an armed phalanx, spraying bullets. One day its spokesmen
call for a jihad (sacred war) against the West, evoking the deepest
historic resentments. Another day, its leaders appeal for reconciliation
with the West, emphasizing shared values. Its economic theorists reject
capitalist materialism in the name of social justice, yet they rise to
the defense private property. It moralists pour scorn on Western consumer
culture as debilitating to Islam, yet its strategists avidly seek to buy
the West’s latest technologies in order to strengthen Islam.
Faced with these apparent contradictions,
many analysts in the West have decided that fundamentalism defies all generalization.
Instead they have tried to center discussion on its supposed “diversity.”
For this purpose, they seek to establish systems of classification by which
to sort out fundamentalist movements and leaders. The basic classification
appears in many different terminological guises, in gradations of subtlety.
"We need to be careful of that emotive
label, `fundamentalism’, and distinguish, as Muslims do, between revivalists,
who choose to take the practice of their religion most devoutly, and fanatics
or extremists, who use this devotion for political ends."
So spoke the Prince of Wales in a 1993
address, summarizing the conventional wisdom in a conventional way. The
belief that these categories really exist, and that experts can sort fundamentalists
neatly into them, is the sand on which weighty policies are now being built.
Fundamentalist Islam remains an enigma
precisely because it has confounded all attempts to divide it into tidy
categories. “Revivalist” becomes “extremist” (and vice versa) with such
rapidity and frequency that the actual classification of any movement or
leader has little predictive power. They will not stay put. This is because
fundamentalist Muslims, for all their “diversity,” orbit around one dense
idea. From any outside vantage point, each orbit will have its apogee and
perigee. The West thus sees movements and individuals swing within reach,
only to swing out again and cycle right through every classification. Movements
and individuals arise in varied social and political circumstances, and
have their own distinctive orbits. But they will not defy the gravity of
their idea.
The idea is simple: Islam must have
power in this world. It is the true religion—the religion of God—and its
truth is manifest in its power. When Muslims believed, they were powerful.
Their power has been lost in modern times because Islam has been abandoned
by many Muslims, who have reverted to the condition that preceded God’s
revelation to the Prophet Muhammad. But if Muslims now return to the original
Islam, they can preserve and even restore their power.
That return, to be effective, must
be comprehensive; Islam provides the one and only solution to all questions
in this world, from public policy to private conduct. It is not merely
a religion, in the Western sense of a system of belief in God. It possesses
an immutable law, revealed by God, that deals with every aspect of life,
and it is an ideology, a complete system of belief about the organization
of the state and the world. This law and ideology can only be implemented
through the establishment of a truly Islamic state, under the sovereignty
of God. The empowerment of Islam, which is God’s plan for mankind, is a
sacred end. It may be pursued by any means that can be rationalized in
terms of Islam’s own code. At various times, these have included persuasion,
guile, and force.
What is remarkable about fundamentalist
Islam is not its diversity. It is the fact that this idea of power for
Islam appeals so effectively across such a wide range of humanity, creating
a world of thought that crosses all frontiers. Fundamentalists everywhere
must act in narrow circumstances of time and place. But they are who they
are precisely because their idea exists above all circumstances. Over nearly
a century, this idea has evolved into a coherent ideology, which demonstrates
a striking consistency in content and form across a wide expanse of the
Muslim world.[2]
Fundamentalist Forerunners
Afghani
The pursuit of power for Islam first gained some intellectual coherence
in the mind and career of Sayyid Jamal al-Din “al-Afghani” (1838-97), a
thinker and activist who worked to transform Islam into a lever against
Western imperialism. His was an age of European expansion into the heartlands
of Islam, and of a frenzied search by Muslims for ways to ward off foreign
conquest.
In many respects, Afghani was the prototype of the modern fundamentalist.
He had been deeply influenced by Western rationalism and the ideological
mode of Western thought. Afghani welded a traditional religious hostility
toward unbelievers to a modern critique of Western imperialism and an appeal
for the unity of Islam, and while he inveighed against the West, he urged
the adoption of those Western sciences and institutions that might strengthen
Islam. Afghani spread his unsettling message in constant travels that took
him to Cairo, Istanbul, Tehran, and Kabul. He visited Paris, London, and
St. Petersburg as well, where he published and lobbied on behalf of revolutionary
change.
A contemporary English admirer described Afghani as the leader of Islam’s
“Liberal religious reform movement.”[3]
But Afghani—not an Afghan at all, but a Persian who concealed his true
identity even from English admirers—was never what he appeared to be. While
he called for the removal of some authoritarian Muslim rulers, he ingratiated
himself with others. While he had great persuasive power, he did not shrink
from conspiracy and violence. A disciple once found him pacing back and
forth, shouting: “There is no deliverance except in killing, there is no
safety except in killing.”[4] These were not idle
words. On one occasion, Afghani proposed to a follower that the ruler of
Egypt be assassinated, and he did inspire a supple disciple to assassinate
a ruling shah of Iran in 1896. Afghani was tempted by power, and believed
that “power is never manifested and concrete unless it weakens and subjugates
others.” Quoting this and other evidence, one Arab critic has argued that
there is a striking correspondence between Afghani’s thought and European
fascism.[5]
Was Afghani a liberal or a proto-fascist?
A reformist or a revolutionary? Was he the forerunner of those fundamentalists
who plead their case in political ways? Or those who open fire on the motorcades
of government ministers? Afghani was athese things, and one can only wonder
how today’s taxonomists (and with them, the Prince of Wales) would have
classified him. Some fundamentalists still pose this same intractable dilemma
of classification, although most of them have far weaker “liberal” and
“reformist” credentials than had Afghani.
Banna
Between Afghani and the emergence
of full-blown fundamentalism, liberal and secular nationalism would enjoy
a long run in the lands of Islam. Europe had irradiated these lands with
the idea that language, not religion, defined nations. In the generation
that followed Afghani, Muslims with an eye toward Europe preferred to be
called Arabs, Turks, and Persians. “If you looked in the right places,”
wrote the British historian Arnold Toynbee in 1929, “you could doubtless
find some old fashioned Islamic Fundamentalists still lingering on. You
would also find that their influence was negligible.”[6]
Yet that same year, an Egyptian schoolteacher named Hasan al-Banna (1906-49)
founded a movement he called the Society of the Muslim Brethren. It would
grow into the first modern fundamentalist movement in Islam.
The Muslim Brethren emerged against
the background of growing resentment against foreign domination. The Brethren
had a double identity. On one level, they operated openly, as a membership
organization of social and political awakening. Banna preached moral revival,
and the Muslim Brethren engaged in good works. On another level, however,
the Muslim Brethren created a “secret apparatus” that acquired weapons
and trained adepts in their use. Some of its guns were deployed against
the Zionists in Palestine in 1948, but the Muslim Brethren also resorted
to violence in Egypt. They began to enforce their own moral teachings by
intimidation, and they initiated attacks against Egypt’s Jews. They assassinated
judges and struck down a prime minister in 1949. Banna himself was assassinated
two months later, probably in revenge. The Muslim Brethren then hovered
on the fringes of legality, until Gamal Abdel Nasser, who had survived
one of their assassination attempts in 1954, put them down ruthlessly.
Yet the Muslim Brethren continued to plan underground and in prison, and
they flourished in other Arab countries to which they were dispersed.
Source: http://www.geocities.com/martinkramerorg/FundamentalistPower.htm
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