Zaid Nabulsi Blames Wahhabi Teachings and Reliance on Early Muslim Texts for Islamist Barbarity

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In its series "Reform in the Muslim World," Memri (Special Dispatch No. 5963, February 11, 2015) reports on a column by Zaid Nabulsi in the English-language Jordan Times, titled "We Have a Problem" (February 10, 2015), which blames Wahhabi teachings and reliance on early Muslim texts for current-day Islamist barbarity, and I excerpt from his column below:

Enough is enough. It is time to speak out. 'Islam is innocent' is an incomplete sentence. Introspection is needed . . . . [I]f we shy away from reality, the alternative will be more images like those we witnessed . . . when brave [Jordanian pilot] Lt. Muath Al-Kasasbeh was burnt to death . . . . Some Wahhabist teachings, which have permeated . . . the Muslim world, are simply irreconcilable with decent human values, especially the ones that declare that every non-Wahhabist is a disposable body whose blood may be shed . . . . It has become tiresome to keep hearing the unproductive cliché that Islam is innocent after each atrocity committed by devout fanatics who did nothing except execute the exact letter of their textbooks, which order them to slaughter the infidels . . . . [To say] that mainstream Islam has nothing to do with those atrocities does not hold water anymore because Wahhabism and Islam have become indistinguishable. To understand the crisis of Muslims today, one has to remember that Wahhabism exists in several textbooks containing the alleged sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, or books of 'Hadith,' revered by so many. What we . . . confront is the undeniable fact that . . . from many stories found in these books . . . [comes] the unprecedented cruelty of groups such as the . . . Islamic State . . . . The catastrophe today is . . . the visible manifestation of Islam in the modern world, as demonstrated by the prevalent beliefs and practices of . . . Muslims . . . . If we truly want to defend Islam, we need to perform . . . invasive surgery. Take the Muslim Brotherhood as an example of the prevalence of the Wahhabist teachings among Muslims today. The Brotherhood is the virtual womb that incubated all the current jihadist groups, including Al-Qaeda itself . . . . The . . . decapitations in Syria over the last four years . . . [were] promoted by very rich Sunni clerics . . . . aided by . . . countless satellite stations openly calling for the murder of Alawites and Shi'ites, and financed by billions from extremely wealthy but hateful Muslims . . . . [E]nough with the denials . . . . [T]ime to raise the alarm. We have a problem! . . . . There is . . . a propensity towards eliminating 'the other' . . . within Wahhabist ideology. It is not only foolish to deny this fact, it is also dangerous, for we would be covering the cancerous tumour with a bandage. What we cannot deny is that . . . Wahhabist textbooks are the . . . operating manuals that Islamist butchers use to justify their savagery. For example, very few people know that while [the Jordanian pilot] Muath was being set on fire in that macabre video, the voiceover was a recitation of an Ibn Taymiyah fatwa deeming the incineration of unbelievers a legitimate act of jihad. Ibn Taymiyah is not some obscure scholar on the fringe of Sunni Islam. In the Sunni world, he is universally venerated . . . [as] 'Sheikh of Islam,' elevating him to an almost infallible clerical status . . . . [W]e need to do more than just repeat this meaningless mantra about us having nothing to do with [ISIS]. We have to muster the courage to identify the specific texts that actually defame Islam, denounce them and permanently cleanse Islamic tradition of them.

This sounds much like Ibrahim Issa's criticism of the same problem, which I posted on yesterday. Perhaps Warren Larson is right "that many Muslims are going through some serious soul-searching at the moment."

Let us hope so . . .

Graphic Artist Ganzeer

Not Yours to Touch

June 2014
Ganzeer

I learned of this artist of the Egyptian Revolution through Barbara Pollack's article "Hieroglyphics That Won't Be Silenced" (NYT, July 10, 2014), so I Googled his pseudonym, "Ganzeer" (i.e., "bicycle chain") and found his website with this message above, "not yours to touch no matter how naked I am," a warning to the gropers among the men of Egypt, along with their supporters, concerning which, he says:

There's a sad misconception among many men (and even some women unfortunately) that if a girl dresses revealingly then she's fair game, and there for anyone to touch or worse. This here poster, featuring artist/model Maya Desnuda, is my attempt at tackling the subject matter.

Apparently, he has encountered displeasure among Egypt's new military leaders, who have accused him of being in league with the recently deposed Muslim Brotherhood, whereas he's actually a liberal secularist, so far as I can tell.

See what you think.

Muslim Brotherhood's Plans for the West?

Investigative Project on Terrorism

I've long been aware of the investigative journalist Steven Emerson, who has looked into radical Islamism in the West since the early 1990s, especially in the United States. He founded an archive in 1995 on Islamist groups, the Investigative Project on Terrorism, which has among its files a widely known Islamist memo by the Muslim radical Mohamed Akram on pdf file, "An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Brotherhood in North America" (May 19, 1991). This is a fifteen-page Arabic document followed by an eighteen-page English translation in which Akram sets forth his detailed plan for Islam in America. One section is labeled Understanding the Role of the Muslim Brother in America, by which he means the role of the "Muslim Brotherhood," -- though Akram seems not to distinguish clearly between Muslim Brother and ordinary Muslim -- and in which he states the following:

The process of settlement [in America] is a "Civilization-Jihadist Process" with all the word means. The Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and "sabotaging" its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions. Without this level of understanding, we are not up to this challenge and have not prepared ourselves for Jihad yet. It is a Muslim's destiny to perform Jihad and work wherever he is and wherever he lands until the final hour comes, and there is no escape from that destiny except for those who chose to slack. But, would the slackers and the Mujahedeen be equal.

This is written for a broadly conceived jihad -- "with all the word means," Akram tells us, and since the word means "struggle," then he intends to see it applied to all of its traditional uses, from inner spiritual struggle to active proselytizing to outright battle. This is to be the American front in the Islamist attack on Western Civilization, and that memo was written nearly twenty-one years ago as an explanation of a long-term plan dating from 1987, so this Islamist goal is at least twenty-five years old. Read the entire memo to see just how ambitious this "Brotherhood" is.

The Ikhwan, or Muslim Brotherhood, will be familiar to those who have been keeping up with the Arab Spring as the weather has changed with the seasons to an Islamist Winter. The Brotherhood's members were the winners in the recent Egyptian election, and the group has a very professional website that shows their pleasant face under the name of the Freedom and Justice Party, but the terms "freedom" and "justice" have Islamic meanings delimited by sharia, Islamic law, which the FJP fully intends to implement, a legal system in which Muslim women have fewer rights than Muslim men, Christians and Jews have fewer rights than Muslims, and infidels have no rights as all, not even to mention the hudud laws stipulating beheading, stoning, amputation, and flogging for crimes against Allah.

That's what Islamist individuals like Mohamed Akram want for the US as well as for the broader West . . .

Muslim Brotherhood Rising in Egypt

Prime Minister Essam Sharaf (Center)

Muslim Brotherhood Member Mohamed el-Beltagi (Left)

Tahrir Square

Photo by Mohamed Omar

European Pressphoto Agency

(Image from New York Times)

I thought that Egypt's well-organized Islamists might try to take over the January 25 Revolution, though I expected them to do so more violently if Egypt's government fell and chaos ensued:

If the protests bring down the Egyptian government, the Islamists will almost certainly take control.

The government didn't entirely fall since the military took control and promised democracy, but I then noted that Charles Kupchan was warning Westerners not to expect Western democracy to result from the Arab revolutions sweeping North Africa and the Middle East. Now, Michael Slackman reports from Cairo for the New York Times that an "Islamist Group Is [the] Rising Force in a New Egypt" (March 24, 2011). He means the Muslim Brotherhood, of course:

In post-revolutionary Egypt, where hope and confusion collide in the daily struggle to build a new nation, religion has emerged as a powerful political force, following an uprising that was based on secular ideals. The Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group once banned by the state, is at the forefront, transformed into a tacit partner with the military government that many fear will thwart fundamental changes.

What happened to the secular youth with their laptops, Facebook pages, and Twitter accounts who were pushing for freedom and democracy?

It is also clear that the young, educated secular activists who initially propelled the nonideological revolution are no longer the driving political force -- at least not at the moment.

As one might have expected, those secular leaders were a minority:

"We are all worried," said Amr Koura, 55, a television producer, reflecting the opinions of the secular minority. "The young people have no control of the revolution anymore. It was evident in the last few weeks when you saw a lot of bearded people taking charge. The youth are gone."

The International Crisis Group thinks that the military struck a deal with the Muslim Brotherhood to control the direction of the revolutionary movement because the Brotherhood is so well-organized and can easily order 100,000 people off the streets. Be that as it may, the Brotherhood is certainly aiming for power:

The question at the time [of the January 25 Revolution] was whether the Brotherhood would move to take charge with its superior organizational structure. It now appears that it has . . . . When the new prime minister, Essam Sharaf, addressed the crowd in Tahrir Square this month, Mohamed el-Beltagi, a prominent Brotherhood member, stood by his side. A Brotherhood member was also appointed to the committee that drafted amendments to the Constitution.

The Christian minority is naturally worried, especially over the recent referendum, which called for speeding up the election process:

"Freedom is nice; so is democracy," said Rifaat Abdul Massih, 39, a construction worker. "But I'm a Christian, and we are a bit worried about the future. I voted 'no' to give more time to the secular parties. I don't want to have the Muslim Brotherhood here right away."

And the Christians -- whether Coptic or other denominations -- probably don't want the Brotherhood there after a while, either.

Whither Egypt? -- Yusuf al-Qaradawi

Yusuf al-Qaradawi

(Image from Wikipedia)

The recent Arab uprisings began while I was vacationing in regions with slow internet access, so I missed out on those beginnings and have been playing catch-up ball ever since. I did express a passing opinion last January 30th when I managed to access the Marmot's Hole:

If the protests bring down the Egyptian government, the Islamists will almost certainly take control.

The government hasn't quite fallen because the military retains control, but the Islamists in Egypt are positioning themselves to take advantage even though the January 25th Revolution was largely led by secular youth. One needs to recall the events of Iran's 1979 Revolution, in which the secular revolutionaries were edged out by Islamists guided by the Ayatollah Khomeini. Do we see anything similar happening in Egypt? According to Dan Murphy, "Egypt revolution unfinished, Qaradawi tells Tahrir masses" (Christian Science Monitor, February 18, 2011):

Leading Islamic theologian Yusuf al-Qaradawi returned from Qatar to rally hundreds of thousands at Tahrir Square today in his first public speech since 1981 . . . .

The devout crowd . . . was also a reminder that huge sections of Egypt take their Islamic faith seriously -- and that real and open democratic reform will almost certainly lead to a stronger role for the faith in the nation's political life.

"Qaradawi is very much in the mainstream of Egyptian society, he's in the religious mainstream, he's not offering something that's particularly distinctive or radical in the context of Egypt," says Mr. [Shadi] Hamid[, research director at the Brookings Institute’s Doha Center in Qatar]. "He's an Islamist and he's part of the Brotherhood school of thought, but his appeal goes beyond the Islamist spectrum, and in that sense he's not just an Islamist figure, he's an Egyptian figure with a national profile."

This doesn't bode particularly well, in my opinion. The Islamists, especially the Muslim Brotherhood, want Shariah (Islamic law) for Egypt, and that is what is ultimately meant by "a stronger role for the faith in the nation's political life." Hamid insists that Qaradawi is more mainstream, more moderate that other Islamists. Perhaps he is comparatively less extreme, but that doesn't make him a moderate. Magdi Abdelhadi, reporting for the BBC News, "Controversial preacher with 'star status'" (7 July, 2004), relates Qaradawi's views on suicide bombing against Israelis:

Defending suicide bombings that target Israeli civilians Sheikh A-Qaradawi told the BBC programme Newsnight that "an Israeli woman is not like women in our societies, because she is a soldier.

"I consider this type of martyrdom operation as an evidence of God's justice . . . . Allah Almighty is just; through his infinite wisdom he has given the weak a weapon the strong do not have and and that is their ability to turn their bodies into bombs as Palestinians do".

Is this really so different in principle from Al-Qaeda's view that suicide bombings against the West are legitimate because Westerners are not innocent victims? Qaradawi distances himself from Al-Qaeda, but he seems to me to be of the same cloth.

And worrisome if true is this Agence France-Presse report in the Hindustan Times: "Egypt protest hero Wael Ghonim barred from stage" (February 18, 2011):

Google executive Wael Ghonim, who emerged as a leading voice in Egypt's uprising, was barred from the stage in Tahrir Square on Friday by security guards, an AFP photographer said. Ghonim tried to take the stage in Tahrir, the epicentre of anti-regime protests that toppled President Hosni Mubarak, but men who appeared to be guarding influential Muslim cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi barred him from doing so.

I've not been able to confirm this through any independent reports on other news sites, but if this should be an authentic report, it also does not bode well for the secular leaders of the January 25th Revolution.

Whatever the case on that report, let's hope that the youthful secular leaders of Egypt's January 25th Revolution prove tougher, cannier, and better organized than Iran's were back in 1979.

Islam hasn't always been puritanical . . .

Old Map of Mecca

1787 Turkish Map

(Image from Wikipedia)

In addition to learning of Sayyid Qutb's position as a bridge between the Muslim Brotherhood and Wahhabi Islam, I learned something else intriguing from reading Samuel Helfont's monograph, this time concerning the Wahhabist assualt on Ottoman Mecca, a place that hardly differed from any secular 'sin-city' at the turn of the 19th century:

Even more revealing of Wahhabism were conflicts in the first decade of the 19th century with the Ottomans in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.[20] The Wahhabists made drastic changes, many of which were intended to expose the faults of Ottoman Islam. Wahhabists criticized orthodox Ottoman theology and Sufi practices and faulted the Ottomans for failing to implement even the more lenient interpretations of Islamic law. As one historian explains, "The status of the holy city [Mecca] made its inhabitants feel superior to all other Muslims and led them to excuse a certain lewdness of behavior. Whole blocks of Mecca had belonged to prostitutes, who even paid a tax on their occupation. Homosexuality was widespread. Alcohol was sold almost at the gate of the Kaaba and drunkenness was not uncommon."[21] (Samuel Helfont, The Sunni Divide: Understanding Politics and Terrorism in the Arab Middle East, page 6)

[20] Esther Peskes and W. Ende, s.v. "Wahhabiyya," in Encyclopedia of Islam, eds. P. Bearman, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, W. P. Heinrichs, and Th. Bianquis (Leiden: Brill Online, 2006), Volume XI.
[21] James Wynbrandt, A Brief History of Saudi Arabia (New York: Checkmark Books, 2004), p. 136.

This account of Mecca is hard to imagine today, but I see where the Wahhabi Muslims' puritanical impulse originates, for they criticized the Ottomans for being so little Muslim that "even the more lenient interpretations of Islamic law" were neglected in favor of purely 'infidel' practices -- such as trafficking in alcohol and sex -- and Wahhabists have thus had to maintain purity ever since or lose their legitimacy entirely.

The Wahhabists in power have therefore had far less interest in implementing "even the more lenient interpretations of Islamic law" than did the Ottomans, albeit with an opposite result -- rigor over neglect.

Samuel Helfont: "Politics, Terrorism, and the Sunni Divide"

'Qibla' Quibble?

What Direction Sunni Islam?

(Image from Wikipedia)

Samuel Helfont, doctoral student in Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, has written an article for the Foreign Policy Research Institute's E-Notes, "Politics, Terrorism, and the Sunni Divide," that is required reading for anyone interested in contemporary Islamism. Helfont opens the article with perfect clarity:

Wahhabism and the Muslim Brotherhood are two distinct forms of Sunni Islamism. They have separate histories and separate worldviews. In reality they are not even the same type of movement. Their origins were largely unrelated. Their historic missions have been completely different, as are their current goals and means of achieving those goals. Unfortunately, these differences too often are overshadowed by a false Sunni-Shia dichotomy that tends to lump all Sunni Islamists together. But learning the differences between Sunni Islamists is critical to understanding politics and terrorism in the Arab Middle East. One could even argue that the most important division shaping Arab politics is not between Sunnis and Shias but between the Wahhabis and the Brotherhood. Before delving into current issues, however, it is first necessary to define differences between Wahhabism and the Muslim Brotherhood.

One might suspect that Helfont is somewhat exaggerating the significance of the internal Sunni divide over the more traditional Sunni-Shia divide, but he manages to clarify for me a distinction internal to Sunnism that I had sensed but lacked the expertise to articulate. As "an Iraq war veteran and . . . intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve," Helfont perhaps had a practical bent along with the experience that led him to notice the difference and investigate it.

Basically, he argues that Wahhabism is a reactionary, puritanical Islamist movement that seeks to reform Islam in light of strictly defined Islamic categories and thus rejects any ideas contaminated by non-Islamic sources of inspiration, whereas the Muslim Brotherhood is a radical, politicized Islamist movement that seeks to reconceptualize Islam in light of contemporary ideologies, both Islamic and non-Islamic. This does not mean that the Muslim Brotherhood is liberal by Western standards -- the Brotherhood accepts suicide bombing, for example -- but it does mean that it is more willing to compromise with democratic processes than is Wahhabism. This does not make the Muslim Brotherhood friendly to the West, of course, as we see in Helfont's analysis of the difference between the Brotherhood and Wahhabism:

Because of this friction between pre-modern and modern norms, the Muslim Brotherhood has reinterpreted the meaning of jihad, infusing it with modern concepts. It generally understands jihad as resistance to expansionist warfare and imperialism. It does not consider domestic political violence to be jihad and it condemns attacks on other Muslims. The only time the Brotherhood considers jihad to be legitimate is when it takes place on Muslim land that it deems occupied by a non-Muslim force. Today, this would include Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Kashmir and other similar locales. Once jihad is declared, however, the Brotherhood uses whatever means it has at its disposal. This includes suicide bombings, targeting civilians, and the use of women and children . . . . Wahhabists generally see the Brotherhood's reinterpretation of jihad as an abomination. Muhammad ibn abd al-Wahhab's interpretation of jihad makes no apology for aggression. In fact offensive jihad was essential for the spread of Wahhabism in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. The famous union between abd al-Wahhab and Muhammad ibn Saud was based on the idea that Saud would have much to gain from religiously-sanctioned expansive warfare.

Neither the Muslim Brotherhood nor Wahhabism are compatible with Western Civilization's basic values, but their hostility will be differently expressed and acted upon and will therefore need to be differently responded to, and Helfont offers some policy recommendations. To deal with the Wahhabists, Westerners would need to gain expertise in Islamic laws and values, especially in the Wahhabist tradition. To deal with the Muslim Brotherhood, one could take advantage of contradictions in its unstable mix of modern and premodern ideas.

All this is quite interesting to consider.

One problem with Helfont's analysis, however, is that it does not very well account for the rise of Al Qaeda, which combines aspects of both types of Islamism -- as Helfont notes -- for given the stark distinction drawn between the two, one wouldn't expect to find such a combination.