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Title: Islamism from Hasan alBana to Bin Laden: An Overview.


1
Islamism from Hasan al-Bana to Bin Laden An
Overview.
  • Abdullahi A. Gallab

2
Who are the Islamist?
  • The term describes current groups and
    manifestations of political movements, sometimes
    described as fundamentalist, neo-fundamentalist
    s," militant, and/or political Islam.
  • It distinguishes between those who are depicted
    as Islamiyyun (Islamists) and their political
    ideology from the rest of the Muslimun
    (Muslims).
  • The term Islamist (Islamawi in Arabic)
    determines a choice of a political ideology
    rather than the simple fact of being born Muslim.

3
Who are the Islamists?
  • There is a relative agreement among Muslim and
    Western scholars that the term Islamist
    provides a reasonable association between the
    current movements and the social attitudes and
    political demeanor attached to them.
  • The Tunisian Islamist leader Rashid al-Ghannushi,
    describes Islamism as the "the action which began
    in the 70's and calls for a return to the sources
    of Islam, far from the inherited myths and a
    fixation on tradition"
  • Nikki Kedie argues that the term Islamist " is
    probably the most accurate, distinguishing belief
    ('Islamic') from 'movements to increase Islam's
    role in society and politics, usually with the
    goal of an Islamic state'

4
Who are the Islamists?
  • Some of the leaderships of the Islamists take
    pride in their knowledge of the West. One of
    them maintained, I listen to Mozart I read
    Shakespeare I watch the Comedy Channel and also
    I believe in the implementation of the Sharia,
  • It is important to stress that though Islamism
    broadly refers to those who are committed to
    applying an ideological vision of Islam in the
    socio-political sphere, its manifestations differ
    and not all Islamists engage in violence.
  • Islamism as a political current and in all its
    forms, is also recognized as problematic by
    Muslims in general.

5
What are the characteristics of the Islamists?
  • Main characteristics of the Islamists include
  • They have been advocating a political ideology
    based on Islam asserting the primacy of Islam and
    calling for an Islamic order.
  • They share a background of public and Western
    education, and they live with the values of the
    cityconsumerism and upward social mobility
    (Roy, 1992).
  • They resent, the traditional clerical scholars
    (the ulama, scholars of high Islam) and they
    ridicule Sufism and its saints and leaders.

6
What are the characteristics of the Islamists?
  • They have no state-legitimated and supported
    relationship to the broad and historical corpus
    of Islamic knowledge.
  • They lack the knowledge and popular support Sufis
    enjoy.
  • At the same time they have smatterings of Western
    education without, again, "having institutional
    connection to that body of knowledge."
  • They operate on the fringes of the three spheres.

7
The Founding FathersHasan al-Bana (1905-49)
The founder of (Jamaat al-Ikhwan al-Muslimoon)
in Egypt 1928. al-Banna was a man of modest
background from the Delta region in northern
Egypt. He was educated as a teacher from Cairo
Teachers College. His first employment as a
teacher was in 1927 in a primary school in the
city of Ismailiya in the Suez zone
8
Hasan al-Bana
  • Al-Bana was concerned to reform the way Islam was
    lived in light of his understanding of the
    primary Islamic texts.
  • He focused on moral education (tarbiya) as the
    key to achieving this, promoting the study of
    Quran, hadith, life of the prophet (sunnah),
    jurisprudence (figh), and training in preaching.
  • His message is encapsulated in his slogan God is
    our goal, the profit is our exemplar, the Quran
    is our constitution, jihad is our pathway,
    martyrdom is what we yearn for.

9
Hasan al-Bana
  • al-Bana believed that the rise and spread of
    Western secular ideas in the Muslim world posed
    the greatest threat to of the faith (usul) as
    the sole reference point for ordering the
    Islams survival and he urged a return to the
    fundamentals life of the Muslim family,
    individual, community, and state",
  • The Muslim Brothers were strongly involved in
    Egyptian politics. They often came into conflict
    with the Egyptian monarchy.
  • On December 28, 1948 Egypt's prime minister was
    assassinated by the Brotherhood member in what is
    thought to have been retaliation for the
    government crackdown.
  • The organization was disbanded in late 1948.
  • In what many believe to be government
    retaliation, Hasan al-Banna was assassinated in
    early 1949 at the height of his career

10
The Founding Fathers Abu al-Ala al-Mawdudi
(1903-1979)
  • Born into an upper class family in the city of
    Aurangabad in South India.
  • He received religious home education then was
    sent to public school to study modern sciences.
  • He worked as a journalist.
  • He adopted Indian nationalism to mobilize Muslim
    Indians to support India independence.

11
The Founding Fathers of Islamism
  • He founded the Jama'at al-Islami (the Islamic
    Party) in Lahore, Pakistan in 1941. 
  • Mawdudi believed that the two principals of
    Western ideologies, capitalism and socialism,
    were moral and social failures and could be
    successfully supplanted by Islam.
  • Seyyed Vali Resa Nasr argues that, "Mawdudi's
    formulation was by no means rooted in traditional
    Islam.
  • He adopted modern ideas and values, mechanisms,
    procedures, and idioms, weaving them into Islamic
    fabric"

12
Al-Mawdudi
  • Over his career, he published 120 books and
    pamphlets and gave over 1000 speeches and press
    statements.
  • He founded the Jamaat-e-Islami political party in
    Pakistan that promoted Islamic values and
    practices, and is currently the oldest political
    party in Pakistan.
  • al-Mawdudi was sentenced to death for a seditious
    pamphlet he wrote, although the sentence was
    later annulled.
  • One of his main ideas was that the purpose of
    jihad was to confront tyrannical and illegitimate
    rulers and their supporters who prevent the
    actualization of world unity and equality, i.e.
    the spread of Islam.

13
The Chief IdeologueSayyid Qutb (1906-1966)
  • Born into a family of moderate means living in
    the village of Musha in upper Egypt.
  • He was sent to Cairo for education. He became a
    teacher and later an inspector of schools.
  • He spent two years (1948-50) in United States.
  • If all the world were America, it would
    undoubtedly be the disaster of humanity.

14
Qutbs Ideology
  • His book Signposts (Maalim fi -l-Tariq) has been
    compared to Lenins What is to be Done? In terms
    of its influence on todays world of the
    Islamists. The Book was published in 1964.
  • He argued in that bookwhich was written during
    nine years of imprisonment by Nassers
    regimejihad should be waged not defensively, in
    the protection of Muslim land, but offensively
    against the enemies of Islam.
  • Describing Nassers regime as one of jahiliyya
    (age of ignorance), Qutb justified and advocated
    any form of resistance to such a regime.

15
Qutbs Ideology
  • Commenting on the Quranic story of Moses
    confrontation with the Pharaoh, Qutb made
    Pharaonic rule the template for tyranny and
    implied that courageous confrontation with
    tyrants (tawaghit)those who had usurped Gods
    powerwas needed today.
  • This being the case, Muslims were under an
    obligation to struggle against the forces of
    jahiliyya that now controlled their society.
  • Nassers regime arrested Qutb in 1965 to bring
    him to trail on charges of treason. He was
    executed in the summer of 1966.
  • Like Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Marxist whose
    prison writings secured his reputation, Qutb was
    a prolific writer.

16
Qutbism
  • Qutbs message inspired a generation of Islamists
    from Morocco to Indonesia.
  • His shadow has covered every other shadow in the
    Islamists movements to make the reality of the
    1960s and 70s submit to the proposed up and then
    down model (Burgat, 2003)
  • The discourse that emerged out of the Qutbist
    radicalism, departed radically from the old
    al-Ikhwan down to up model.
  • The major groups that represent this new
    development were
  • al-takfeer wa alhijra
  • al-jamaa al-Islamia
  • tanzeem al-jihad

17
Characteristics of new discourse and emergence of
internal jihad
  • The events that followed Qutbs execution
    produced a far-reaching changes in the entire
    climate of Islamists movements
  • Produced a growing tendency among the Islamists,
    particularly the young, to advocate all-out
    violence (internal jihad) as the means for
    socio-political change.
  • They reinvented some of Ibn Taymiyya (1236-1326)
    ideas to fit this new ideology of internal jihad.
  • These new jahadists were inclined to see the
    society in terms of a stark division between what
    they perceive as Islamic and what is un-Islamic.
  • The state was labeled as un-Islamic (kafira).
  • New sources of finance.

18
Sadat and the promotion of Islamism
  • Following the Arab armies defeat in the 1867
    Arab- Israeli War, many blamed the semi-secular
    Arab governments for this defeat.
  • Sadat, who succeeded Nasser in 1970, promoted the
    Islamists as an alternative to the communists.

19
Sadat and the Islamists
  • Throughout the 1970s, Egypt's President Anwar
    Sadat enjoyed and endured a contrary relationship
    with various Muslim organizations existing within
    his country.
  • His predecessor, Gamal Abdel Nasser, had
    generally suppressed such groups, in order to
    pursue a secular brand of pan-Arabism but
    following his death in 1970, and facing the
    competing demands of pan-Arabism and radical
    socialism, Sadat had sought to widen his basis of
    support and legitimacy by embracing the
    previously suppressed Muslim Brotherhood.
  • In 1971, thousands of Brotherhood members and
    other Islamists were released from prison, and in
    subsequent years restrictions on meeting,
    publications, and other rights of association
    were lessened.

20
Khumayni
  • In Iran, the Ayatullah Ruhullah Khumayni
    overthrew the Western-backed Shah in 1978,
    implementing a harsh brand of fundamentalist
    Islam.
  • Khamayni was not an Islamist but his victory gave
    a big boost to the Islamists cause.
  • While in power, Khumaynis definition of jihad
    became similar to that of Sunni schools, where
    martyrdom and battle for the sake of Islam were
    common rhetoric.
  • In Lebanon, a civil war was waged between 1975
    and 1990. In 1982, the Israelis invaded southern
    Lebanon, causing a number of the minority Shiite
    to form groups to fight the Israelis.
  • One of the main groups to form, which is still
    active today, was Hizbullah (the party of God).

21
Emergence of Militant groups
  • Militant Islamist groups were developing in Egypt
    beginning to take military action against the
    'apostate' government.
  • After Anwar al-Sadat negotiated peace with
    Israel, he was assassinated by a radical group
    al-Jihad.
  • Sadat's assassination, in front of his entire
    Army, took less that 35 seconds. Egyptian
    forensic experts have timed the bullets that
    killed Sadat at 735 meters per second at a
    distance of less than 15 meters.

22
The Neglected Duty
  • Following Sadats assassination, a document by
    Abd al-Salam Farag was discovered which helps
    trace the development of radical thought from the
    execution of Sayyid Qutb to this period titled
    The Neglected Duty.
  • Farag presents the jihad as a global imperative
    designed to ensure Islams conversion of the
    world, in order to restore the glory of the
    Muslim community and to combat infidelity
    directly. He supported the militancy of jihad,
    while ignoring many other parts of Muslim
    tradition
  • Mohammed Adel Salam Faraj. Faraj was found guilty
    of leading an insurrection and being part of the
    assassination plot. The assassination planning
    took place at Faraj's home, and it was Faraj who
    told Abu Jebel and Abdul-Latif (Abood) Al-Zummur
    that military and security personnel were to be
    recruited before civilians.
  • Islamic militant cells, directed by Faraj and
    Al-Zummur, did not exceed seven persons per cell.
    A cell leader would be in contact with a central
    planner. Assassination and overthrow cells were
    developed in the Cairo districts of Shubra,
    Abdeen, Quba Bridge, and Alexandria.

23
Ayman al-Zawahiri
  • Over subsequent months and years, they set about
    imprisoning, torturing, and executing al-Jihad
    members.
  • Faraj was executed for his part in the
    assassination in April 1982. Under this pressure,
    the group split into two factions, one led by
    Ayman al-Zawahiri, retaining the name al-Jihad,
    and the other by Abdel Omar Rahman, called
    al-Gama'a al-Islamiyah.
  • Al-Zawahiri, a doctor from a prominent Cairo
    family, had been one of the principle architects
    of Sadat's killing, even allegedly meeting the
    assassins the night before the murder.
    Nevertheless, the judicial authorities could not
    find him guilty of anything more than illegal
    possession of a gun, and after three years in
    jail, he was released and left Egypt, initially
    for Saudi Arabia.

24
Abdullah Azzam
  • Born in Palestine in 1941, Azzam became a
    teacher, and subsequently earned a BA in Sharia
    at the University of Damascus in 1966.
  • After the Six-Day War in 1967, Azzam left his
    home in the West Bank and followed other
    Palestinians to Jordan. In Jordan, he joined the
    Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood. He participated
    in paramilitary operations with the PLO against
    Israeli targets.
  • Azzam continued his studies at al-Azhar
    University in Cairo, earning a Masters in Sharia
    and a Ph.D. in the Principles of Islamic
    Jurisprudence. He continued to teach at
    universities in Jordan and Saudi Arabia until the
    Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
  • He moved to Peshawar, near the Afghani border,
    and supported the mujahideen. Azzam was
    ultimately assassinated there in 1989.
  • Azzam has been a very influential scholar and
    theologian within the radical Islamist movement.

25
After Azzam
  • the global jihad has undergone profound changes
    in its ideology and modes of operation.
  • From its inception in 1989 to present day, the
    movement received three major setbacks.
  • The first one was due the assassination of Dr.
    Abdullah Azzam the ideologue, "travelling
    salesman", and founder and builder of the
    infrastructure of global jihad, in Peshawar in
    1989.

26
Hassan al-Turabi and the First Islamist Republic
  • Educated in England and France.
  • Dr. Hassan al-Turabi has engineered and nurtured
    the Islamist movement in the Sudan since 1964.
  • He was the ideological power behind the Islamist
    regime in the Sudan from its inception in 1989
    till 1999.
  • During that period his title has changed from Dr.
    Hassan to Sheikh Hassan describing his role as
    the grand jurist and the supreme religious and
    political reference to the regime.
  • He was arrested by the regime February 2001but
    never brought to trialthough charged with
    offences related to crimes against the State.
  • He was released from prison last Oct 2002.

27
Turabi Revolution and Global Jihad
  • Turabi described himself as a typical
    fundamentalist (1994).
  • He defined fundamentalism as a movement of
    historical change aiming to mobilize and
    organize not only the Muslim community at large,
    but also human life in its entirety.
  • He claimed that a vacuum had developed for
    fundamentalism and Islam to fill because of the
    inefficiency and corruption of post-independence
    nationalist, socialist, and liberal governments
    of the Arab and Muslim countries.
  • For Turabi, the demise of that brand of communism
    coincides with what he believed to be the promise
    of an emerging Islamist order that would liberate
    the entire human race from the clutches of all
    kinds of material, political, occult, or
    psychological control (Hamdi 1998).

28
Al-Qaida 1
  • In their new state, the Islamists transformed
    Khartoum into a hub and base of operations
    receiving, training, and providing a sanctuary
    for a network of radical individuals and groups
    from different parts of the Muslim world.
  • Destabilizing the Muslim and Arab regimes, which
    were considered anti-Islamic, in an attempt of
    replacing them with Islamists state through
    force. Either by following the Sudanese model of
    military coup--Islamization form above--or
    through a manipulation of a grand plan that
    includes the military experience of the Arab
    Afghan who were hardened in Afghanistan during
    the war against the Soviets and mobilizing the
    masses in these countries--Islamization from
    below.

29
The Federated Qaida
  • By early 1990s the pan-Islamic brigades who came
    to Afghanistan from different parts of the Muslim
    world were back to their countries after the
    defeat of the Soviets and their allies in
    Afghanistan.
  • These Afghan Arabs who received training in
    warfare techniques in Afghanistan and forged
    through their experience an Islamists ideology
    based on armed struggle, found in the Sudan a
    base which I call the federated Qaidafor
    spreading this ideology.

30
  • The Sudanese regime gave shelter to Osama Bin
    Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Sabri al-Banna abu
    Nidal, and more than 5000 radicals from the
    entire world who used the Sudanese territory as
    their base of operations.

31
Global Jihad on the MarchThe Islamist Comintern
  • The Islamists established al-My'tamar as-sha'bi
    al-Arabi al-Islami the Popular Arab-Islamic
    Conference (PAIC), an "Islamist Comintern" that
    claimed the leadership of the world Islamic
    movement.
  • Since April 1991, Turabi organized an
    Arab-Islamic popular conference in Khartoum
    attended by about 500 delegates annually.
  • Through such acts, Islamists planned toward what
    some perceived as instigation of a global
    Intifada, global jihad, or open hostility toward
    what the Islamists describe as al-istikbar
    al-alami (the international arrogance) in a
    direct reference to the West and the United
    States in particular.

32
Osma Bin laden
Born into a wealthy Saudi Arabian family in 1957,
and attended elite schools, and studied economics
and business administration at the university
level. He became very involved in fighting the
Soviets in Afghanistan, using his share of his
familys fortune. He first went to Peshawar,
where he joined with Abdallah Azzam. Bin Ladin
and Azzam helped to form al-Qaida (the base),
which was originally intended to assist Arab
veterans of the Afghani wars. Since the Afghani
wars, bin Ladin has led al-Qaida in a number of
attacks against Western targets, the largest
being the September 11th, 2001 attacks against
the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
33
Which Way Islamists?
  • Five types of change need to be evaluated
  • The first change is that the state model the
    Islamists established in the Sudan after the
    military coup of 1989 is undergoing a major shift
    now from a totalitarian regime hostile to its
    neighbors, toward an authoritarian state striving
    to join the club of Arab, African, and Islamic
    regimes.
  • The second set back fell when the Sudanese
    Islamists expelled bin Laden from the country,
    closed his training camps and forced the young
    jihadists to leave the country.
  • The third came as a consequence of the horrific
    September 11th attacks against the twin towers of
    the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the
    different actions and reactions that followed to
    that have changed the order of things.

34
Which Way Islamists?
  • the authoritarian state has been an enduring
    power holding entity in the Arab and Muslim
    worlds.
  • The power holders of Arab, Islamic, and African
    sates "whether royal or republican, have all
    succeededexcept for Soharto and Saddamin
    putting their power well beyond the reach of
    their fellow citizen's electoral whim by the
    means of timely constitutional reforms (which had
    to be approved by purportedly popular
    referendums, of course)" (Burgat, 2003).
  • Not only that but, those throne holders proved to
    be successful in having their children succeeding
    them or to become the potential successors after
    they were gone.

35
Which Way Islamists?
  • The attempt of the state to wear a veil is not
    more than a window dressing. Olivier Carre
    asserted that "the modern secular state is in the
    process of becoming a naturalized "Islamic
    state"(Carre, 1995).
  • It seems that the modern secular state that
    Turabi describes as irreligious and should atone
    to religion, has its own way of absorbing and
    adapting some of the Islamists program without
    changing much of its authoritative constitution.
  • In an attempt to preempt the Islamists' program,
    the state in Egypt, Baathist Iraq, and Yemen, has
    developed its own way of repackaging itself along
    overtly Islamic conduct.

36
Which Way Islamists?
  • In another turn of events, it seems this same
    state is able to contain some of the violent
    Islamists groups and bring them kicking and
    screaming to biet al-taaa.
  • The long history of violence between al-Gama'a
    al-Islamiyya and the Egyptian regime is finally
    over.
  • A complicated process of negotiation between the
    two parties followed the statement issued by the
    historic leadership of al-Gamaa from Turah prison
    in 1997.
  • Later the state permitted the distribution of
    four books written by the leadership of the Gamaa
    explaining in great detail their new position
    from the state and violence.
  • similar concessions are underway in Egypt,
    Algeria and Yemen.
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