This volume is based on papers which members of the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) presented in April 2008 at this organization’s inaugural conference. Their purpose, as Professor Emeritus, Bernard Lewis of Princeton, stated in the volume’s Foreword,[1] was to challenge “[t]he deadly hand of political correctness… [that] has asphyxiated the rational discussion of Islam”. It was thus fitting that the Association’s first fruit would focus on the academically controversial problem of political Islam.
It is never claimed, however, that this volume alone tackles this sensitive issue in a professional manner devoid of political correctness. Indeed, Joseph Morrison Skelly names in his introductory article “Political Islam from Muhammad to Ahmadinejad” some of the leading studies in this field. But the present volume is not another scholarly work intended to be added to this accumulating literature. As Skelly puts it, “This collection not only presents a sophisticated dissertation of political Islam, but also illuminates a viable path to progress and renewal in the Muslim world.” In other words, it may also have practical use.
The book contains fourteen articles, each discussing a single aspect of the “fusion of Islam and politics” phenomenon, in addition to Skelly’s introductory essay which knits together all the others into a solid, yet multifaceted discussion. This is the book’s strongest point, as it enables one to appreciate the subject from different angles, and thus gain additional insight.
Philip Carl Salzman, anthropology professor at McGill, whose field of specialization is nomadic societies, sheds light, in his article, “Balanced Opposition: The Tribal Foundations of Arab Middle Eastern Islamic Culture,” on the traditional Arabian patterns of social order where the individual depends on kinship ties on various levels for his security and well-being. With the emergence of Islam in the seventh century, these patterns evolved into a formidable sense of hostility to non-believers, which fueled the ensuing conquests. Thus, Islam since its very inception has acquired a strong political character. To prove his point, Salzman shows that, contrary to what is generally assumed, the conquering Muslims committed atrocities and treated their subjects as inferiors. However, atrocities in war, as well as discrimination against occupied populations, have been commonplace among most nations throughout history, not just among nomadic peoples, which makes his point hardly convincing. He might have developed, instead, his interesting thesis further from an anthropological point of view, comparing the Arab case to similar ones in history – perhaps the Mongols.
In his article “Why did Muhammad Attack the Byzantines? A Re-examination of Quran Sura 30:1-2″ David Cook, professor of religious studies at Rice University, argues that Muhammad’s expeditions against the Byzantines were a political act based on religious motives – in contrast to his former sense of affinity to his Christian neighbors – due to a specific event interpreted by Muhammad as pagan behavior on their part. This is a well-reasoned hypothesis which, unfortunately, cannot be sustained by solid evidence due to the lack of adequate contemporary sources.
Unlike Cook, Sherko Kirmanj, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of South Australia, does rely on primary and secondary sources to prove his argument. In his article “Challenging the Islamist Politicization of Islam: The Non-Islamic Origins of Muslim Political Concepts” he questions the validity of modern Islamists’ teachings that Muslim political concepts such as shura, dhimmi, and even jihad and the notion of the inseparability of state and religion are a unique creation of Islam. Though seemingly far-fetched on one or two occasions, with some minor historical inaccuracies (Nizam al-Mulk – not Mulik – was not a Seljuk sultan but rather a powerful vizier), his thesis is generally convincing.
The next two articles deal with theoretical issues. The first one, entitled “War and Peace: Negotiating Meaning in Islam” by Robert P. Barnidge, Jr., lecturer at the University of Reading’s Law School, suggests a new framework for the interpretation of Islam’s attitude to the issues of war and peace. His suggested framework “prioritizes diversity and a decentralized ethic for understanding over homogenization and hegemonization and avoids post-colonial constructions of inevitable inferiority and weakness.” In other words: democratization of the debate away from experts’ domination, political correctness and politically motivated approaches. What is missing here is a further elaborated example by the author as to how exactly this suggested framework of interpretation should be employed in a given specific case.
Joseph C. Myers, for his part, focuses in his article “The Quranic Concept of War” on a treatise carrying the same name whose author is a former Pakistani Army Brigadier. Myers, a US army officer and analyst, stresses the strategic and philosophical dimensions of jihad featured in the treatise, which he offers as a guide to Western strategists who face radical Islamist activity. He finds terror to be a fundamental issue within this work, but on the psychological level, as a goal, rather than on the operational level as a means: “The battleground of Quranic war is the human soul” and the motto is: “strike terror; never feel terror.” This is a revealing message.
The next two sections of this volume contain six articles dealing, each, with a specific local manifestation of political Islam. “Mad Mullahs and Pax Britannica: Islam as a Factor in Somali Resistance to British Colonial Rule”, by George L. Simpson, Jr., a Middle Eastern and African History Professor at High Point University in North Carolina, carefully analyzes the failed attempt to surpass local tradition and clan divisions in that country and create a unified Muslim front against British expansion in the early twentieth century. In a way, this article is an antithesis of Salzman’s contribution as it presents a different course of development than the one that took place in seventh-century Arabia.
“Jihadists and Jurisprudents: The ‘Revisions’ Literature of Sayyid Imam and Al-Gama’a Al-Islamiyya”, by Daniel L. Lav, head of Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor division at MEMRI, is a thorough and insightful analysis of the ideological change that has taken place among Egyptian Islamists regarding their attitude to the government under the pressure of prevailing circumstances. This seminal work clearly shows that even extremist organizations are susceptible to trends of moderation over time and it is hoped that similar works tracing the ideological development within various Islamist movements elsewhere will follow this one.
In his article “Takfir as a Tool for Instigating Jihad among Muslims: The Ghanaian Example” Mohammed Hafiz, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Melbourne, demonstrates how implicit(!) charges of unbelief (takfir) made by Saudi-educated scholars against the Tijaniyya Sufi order in Ghana ignited the 1990s clashes between followers of these two groups there. He also presents the means (mostly economic) that contributed to the end of hostilities, with possible wider implications on similar cases among other Muslim societies.
Ofira Seliktar, professor of political science at Gratz College and at Temple University, sheds light on the complex political system in the Islamic Republic of Iran which during the last two decades has undergone significant changes. “Reading Tehran in Washington: The Problems of Defining the Fundamentalist Regime in Iran and Assessing the Prospects for Political Change” is an illuminating realistic analysis of one of the most phenomenal manifestations of political Islam in our time. It seriously questions the ability of policy makers in the U.S., and the West in general, to grasp fully the characteristics of such a regime, which limits their ability to successfully grapple with it. This article thus puts a challenge to Western analysts and policy makers. It is regrettable, however, that some of the names appearing in the article have been misspelled: Abdolhasan Banisadr’s real name is Abolhasan and Sadegh Ghotbzadeh appears as Gobzadeh.
Islamic Mahdism is discussed in its current Iraqi context by Timothy R. Furnish under the title “The Modern Impact of Mahdism and the Case of Iraq”. Furnish has been studying this field for some time and he wonders whether the existing three Mahdist organizations in Iraq are, in fact, harbingers of a wider movement, far more violent, that might encompass both Sunni and Shiite worlds under the banner of offensive jihad against Western world hegemony. Though perhaps lacking in adequate primary source material, this article draws attention to this significant, yet relatively neglected, threat.
Suicide bombing is the topic of the next article – “Palestinian Precedents: The Origins of Al-Qaeda’s Use of Suicide Terrorism and Istishhad“, by Benjamin T. Acosta, Ph.D. candidate at Claremont Graduate University. The author shows how suicide terrorism, initially employed by Shiite groups in Iran and Lebanon in the 1980s, became a legitimized religious-political tool in the Sunni world after Palestinian terrorist organizations had adopted it in the 1990s. The extensive support for the Palestinian cause in the (mostly Sunni) Arab and Muslim world made it possible for Sunni Muslim clerics to transform suicide-homicide attacks into “deliberate martyrdom” (Istishhad) and, as such, an integral part of jihad. But this transformation did not stop here. When extremist organizations like Al-Qaeda started using this tool in their own cause, the religious justification of suicide bombings against civilians reached Baghdad and as well as other Muslim and non-Muslim places. In this particular sense, Acosta’s detailed and analytical article is most informative.
The last section of this volume deals with the larger environment of political Islam. The first article in this section is titled “Economic Justice in the Middle East: A Bad Idea, Badly Done”, by Patrick Clawson, deputy director for research at the Washington Institute. This article articulately summarizes the inherent problem of relative economic backwardness in most Middle Eastern countries due to “priority of political ideology over prosperity, suspicions about the outside world and resistance to change” interconnected with lack of freedom and democracy, complex bureaucracy and bad governance which hinders economic growth. The “Islamic solution” experience in Iran throughout the last three decades has not fared better. According to the author, openness to the world is the real solution, and that leads to the other two articles which discuss ways to openness within Islamic intellectual environment.
In his article “‘For Truth Does Not Oppose Truth’: The Agreement of Divine Law and Philosophy in Averroës’ The Book of the Decisive Treatise (Kitab Fasl al-Maqal)”, Terence J. Kleven, religion and philosophy professor at Central College, Pella, Iowa, presents his own reading of this great Muslim thinker of the Middle Ages. Unlike today’s Islamists and secularists who follow Ernst Renan in his evaluation of Ibn Rushd (Averroës) as a non-religious (if not anti-religious) philosopher, Kleven suggests that Ibn Rushd strove to reconcile human reason with “revealed truth” as expressed in Islamic religious law. In his newly-acquired capacity, Ibn Rushd will now be able to serve as a model for modern Muslim intellectuals. The question, however, is whether these Muslim intellectuals will adopt Kleven’s interpretation of Ibn Rushd.
The last article by Edward Barrett, ethics professor at the U.S. Naval Academy and a U.S. Air Force veteran, is entitled “Hermeneutics and Human Rights: Liberal Democracy, Catholicism and Islam”. Barrett analyzes the process by which the Catholic Church during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries underwent an ideological transformation with regard to its attitude to human (and social) rights and, consequently, to liberal democracy, with special emphasis on Pope John Paul II’s thought in this respect. He then reviews and criticizes the ideas of three modern Muslim intellectuals (and a Christian-Arab one) as possible indicators of similar changes in Islam in the future. This is an intriguing attempt to draw an analogy between one religion and another, the validity of which still remains questionable.
On the whole, this volume is rewarding in three ways. Firstly, it provides the reader with glimpses into diverse aspects of political Islam from various perspectives. History and politics naturally constitute the main fields of expertise here, but religion, philosophy, anthropology and economics are represented too. In short, this volume presents a rich selection of examples, with a number of refreshing insights that could hardly be found in a monograph. Secondly, some of the articles offer new approaches to the understanding of political Islam and visualizing its possible future development. One need not agree with the authors’ respective suggestions in order to accept their useful role as thought stimulators. Thirdly, the subjects are discussed in a free atmosphere, without resort to politically correct formulations. As such, this fascinating book represents a new contribution to the study of the important (and still unclearly defined) phenomenon of political Islam and therefore deserves thorough study by anyone who is interested in the subject.
Arnon Groiss has followed Middle Eastern politics during his four-decade career at Israel‘s Arabic Radio and has specialized since 2000 inMiddle East schoolbook research. Initially a graduate of the HebrewUniversity, he earned his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from PrincetonUniversity‘s Department of Near Eastern Studies and holds an MPA degree from Harvard’s KennedySchool of Government.
[1] It would be appropriate to mention here that Prof. Lewis was my mentor, together with the late Professor Charles Issawi, during my Ph.D. studies in Princeton in the 1980s.
