Campusalam

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Contemporary political trends and their evolution are best understood against the backdrop of the ideas that emerged in the Islamic world under colonisation in the late nineteenth century. Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani (d. 1897) and Muhammad ‘Abduh (d. 1905) were among the first to resist colonial domination with reference to Islamic sources. They called the Muslim leaders and population to resist being politically and culturally colonised by coming back to the ‘true Islamic teachings’, their cultures and languages. Later, Muhammad Iqbal, in Pakistan, followed in the footsteps of these two Muslims scholars and called upon the Muslims to come back to ‘ijtihad’ to be able to face the contemporary scientific, social and political challenges as well as to refuse to be divided into ‘nations’ which were imposed on them by the colonisers. Many other Muslim scholars produced similar ideas which were to become the religious and intellectual resources as well as the theoretical framework for the activists of the next generation.

Non-violent Resistance

Very soon Islamic political movements were created in different countries (Egypt, Algeria, India-Pakistan, Turkey, etc.) whose leaders were trying to embody the teachings and claims of these Muslim scholars. Organisations or Movements like the Muslim Brotherhood (1928) founded by Hassan al-Banna (d. 1949 ) in Egypt or the Jamaat-e-Islami founded by Abu al-A’la al-Mawdudi (d. 1979) in Pakistan, while focusing on Islamic education and social projects within their respective countries, also sought to resist British colonisation. Jam’iyat al-ulama, founded by Ben Badis (1889-1940) in Algeria had the same agenda and objectives while facing French colonisation. In Turkey, Sa’id an-Nursi (d. 1960), with the movement Nurju, argued that the only way to avoid the decline of the Ottoman Empire was to come back to the true teachings of Islam and to promote both an Islamic political resistance and an Islamic alternative: his influence extended directly or indirectly to the contemporary Islamic movement from Erbakan to the current ruling party of Erdogan. This first wave of Islamic political movements promoted a determined resistance to colonialism and a clear Islamic political agenda, while avoiding violence as a way of reform. This was also the case of other groups such as Hizb ut-Tahrir calling for an ‘Islamic State’ through radical non-violent resistance.

Violent Resistance : from local to global

Many of these Islamic organisations had to face repression. Egypt was the first country to experience a political situation which became a kind of laboratory for the majority of the other Muslim majority countries. When Jamal ‘Abd an-Nasser took over in 1953 (after a military coup), he very soon started to arrest the Muslim Brothers to whom he belonged for years and on whom he had relied to achieve his revolution. The repression was massive and many leaders from the Muslim Brotherhood were imprisoned or executed: among them was Sayed Qutb who was jailed for years and executed in 1966. Qutb wrote most of his Qur‘anic commentaries and booklets in jail and he argued that it was legitimate to act against a Muslim leader (like Nasser) who betrayed the revolution and all the Muslims. In jail, the youngest generation of Muslim activists thought that the peaceful resistance based on ‘education’ (tarbiyya) promoted by the Muslim Brotherhood had failed, and a more radical resistance was needed. Organisations and groups like At-Takfir wal-Hijra, al-Gama’at Islamiyya al-Jihad al-Islamy were created, maintaining that it was legitimate to use violence against both the oppressors and their supporters, whether Muslims or not. A clear split happened in Egypt between these two tendencies: it started in jail amongst the followers and spread all around the Islamic world.

Organisations like at-Takfir, al-Gama’at or al-Jihad in Egypt were active on a national level; at first against Nasser and then culminating with the assassination of Anwar al-Sadat in 1981. Other organisations were following in their footsteps in Pakistan, Afghanistan and even in Algeria after the elections’ cancellation (1988) that the Salvation Islamic Front (FIS) was to win. These violent trends were present in different countries and directed their violent activities against their respective governments.

In 2001 a new strategy seems to have been constructed, as Ayman al-Zawahri put it. He was previously from the Gama’at Islamiyya in Egypt and then left the country so as not to be arrested after Sadat’s assassination. After much travel he ended up in Afghanistan where he become Usama bin Laden’s lieutenant. In various speeches he explained that the strategy is now ‘global’: it is no longer a question of attacking the oppressors in the Islamic majority countries but attacking their supporters from the West directly. Violent actions were lawful (halal), for the West was dominating and oppressing the Muslims everywhere through their ‘puppet governments’.

These organisations are very marginal in the Islamic countries but they have gained international attention because of their spectacular terrorists attacks (New York, Bali, Madrid, London, Amman, etc.), killing thousands of people. The classical Islamic institutions (such as al-Azhar), the Muslim scholars around the world as well as the leaders of the other Islamic political organisations have unanimously condemned these actions.