The Myth of Monolithic Islamism

        For most of the 20th century Islam, and its myriad political manifestations, has been widely misunderstood (and misinterpreted) by most western governments and politicians.  Prior to two world wars and a slew of “lesser” regional ones, Islam’s existence in many Muslim societies was subjugated—or relegated to an afterthought—by colonial governments and the international community (i.e. the League of Nations and the United Nations).  With independence, however, a wide range of differing approaches to governance emerged, sparking an evolution in thought as to Islam’s value, stature and relevance in Muslim societies that continues today.  An analysis of this Islamic worldview may prove a useful tool for policymakers to better interact with and understand many Muslim states.  How have Islamists viewed the general Muslim condition in society over the last hundred years?  How have they diagnosed the associated problems of the conjoining of Islam and government?  What solutions have they offered and pursued?  I argue that the Islamist evaluation of the Muslim condition at large has been and remains a nuanced response to political environments.  The wide array of local conditions and grievances has elicited a wide-range of solutions, some more permanent but all influential to this day.  I begin by defining Islamism within the context of 20th century, as well as its roots.  Then I examine key shifts in Islamism throughout the time period through a discussion of central Islamic revivalist figures.  This examination ends with the rise of radical Islamism, as well as responses to it. Finally, I evaluate the efficacy of the different approaches and the different solutions offered and realized.  In particular, I focus on Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Mawdudi in Pakistan.

        The most facile definition of Islamism is the politicization of Islam. This superficial description, however, overlooks important foundations and incorrectly assumes Islamists to be a monolithic group.  It also falsely equates the intimate proximity of religion and politics to be a phenomenon unique to Islam.^[1]  Islamism is more completely defined as a religiously-based, locally-driven social movement that seeks the rebirth and rooting of Islamic ideals and law in Muslim societies.^[2]  It advocates a view of Islam as a comprehensive religion, one that provides guidance for all aspects of life—from the individual to the community and from a soul’s eternal destination to the temporal earthly governance of it.  

        As important as what Islamism embraces is what is rejects.  This rejection is grounded in its eschewal of the West—this means not only a rejection of the toxic westernization of society but also the accompanying secularization.  An important distinction is that it does not absolutely reject modernity.  Rather, it selectively embraces the intellectual progress and academic rigor of modernity, but rejects its often implicit and always illicit western lifestyle.  Finally, it declares that Islam is the only answer for the questions and problems of one’s life and nation.^[3]  This stems, of course, from the very meaning of the word Islam—to submit.  This constant daily submission to God is trumpeted as a liberating concept—if God is the sole entity to which one submits, then no one else can claim authority over you.  This submission is echoed in Islam’s entry point—the shahada—the confession of faith in which the believer affirms their belief in monotheism (tawhid) and in their five times daily genuflection towards Mecca.  Practically, Islamism requires the implementation of shariah as the legal system by which Muslim life is governed at the personal and community level.^[4]

        The start of the 20th century saw a marked shift in focus for Islam from internal to external.  Where late 19th century Islamic modernists sought to reconcile the inward traditions of their religion with reason, creating new opportunities for interpretation (ijtihad), the Islamic revivalists sought to refocus criticism toward the deleterious effects of westernization.  Specifically they fought to counter the notion that the liberal and secular ideas of the West could solve a perceived problem of Muslim underdevelopment and societal retardation.^[5]  Importantly, the revivalist shift in criticism would be shaped as much by regime action as by the ideologues themselves.^[6]  This new outward focus did not mean that Islam itself was exempt from criticism.  Two leading figures in the revivalist movement, Hasan al-Banna and Abul Ala Mawdudi, both lamented and denounced the feeble and decrepit state of the ulama, and their subservience to political authority.^[7] 

        In 1928, Hasan al-Banna created the Society of Muslim Brothers—the Muslim Brotherhood (MB)—intending a populist response to the British-dominated Egyptian parliament and monarchy through the promotion of genuine Islam.   Al-Banna began his efforts, not as a religious cleric, but as a public educator of children, gradually beginning to speak and preach at coffee houses in the evenings after his graduation from Dar al-Ulum.  As the movement grew, its structure was greatly influenced by al-Banna’s Sufi roots; it embraced a defined hierarchy (characterized by a leader-follower relationship) and held periodic ritualized meetings.^[8]  He eventually created an armed branch that would become increasingly active and violent in concert with his continued demands to the king for reform and for a cessation of corruption.  This would come to a head in December 1948 when an MB member assassinated the Prime Minister—al-Banna would be killed in retribution a few months later.^[9]  While the Muslim Brotherhood did contain definite elements of violence, it is important that al-Banna himself advocated evolution—not revolution—of political change. He stressed that a country’s ruler is responsible to God and the people (not notions of nationalism) and that it is the nation’s responsibility to unify in enforcing Islamic accountability in its ruler.^[10]   

        Abul Ala Mawdudi faced a different challenge in India (and later Pakistan) where he had to contend with Islam’s role within a religiously and ethnically plural society.^[11] Mawdudi was also not a religious cleric but was instead a journalist, beginning his career in Delhi in 1918.  While his early writings embraced Indian nationalism, he soon became disillusioned with it and he turned toward an Islamic political outlook as a better method by which to fight British colonial rule.  The next decade of his life was characterized by an increasing dedication to Islam and a declaration that the only way to protect Muslim rights was by sanctifying Islam and necessarily separating its political struggle from that of the Hindus.  This divergence was marked by his creation of the Jammat-i-Islami (JI) Party in 1941.^[12]  When Pakistan was created in 1947, he would move the party headquarters there with a shift in focus to “no longer to save Islam in India but to have it conquer Pakistan.”^[13]  Whereas al-Banna concentrated his efforts on the grass-roots mobilization of the mass populace, Mawdudi focused on a top-down approach, immersing himself in elite-driven politics.  This was due partly to his criticism of nationalism and stalwart stance that Islam is inextricably tied to the political state and that the populace must be influenced to strive for the Islamic ideal in order to create an Islamic state.  To preserve Islam and oversee its national implementation required the wisdom and guidance of a vanguard elite.^[14] 

        Like al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb also began his career as a public educator in Egypt and was a major ideological influence within the MB during the 1950s and 1960s.  His beliefs, however, marked a major departure from revivalist thought, as he strove for a radicalization of Islamism.  This divergence was no doubt influenced by the repressive and totalitarian Nasser regime.  Prominent among his beliefs was his espousal of jihad as an offensive strategy and his assertion that jahiliyyah (traditionally the time of spiritual ignorance prior to God’s revelation to Muhammed) is not confined to a period in history but rather is a spiritual condition that must be sanctified through takfir (excommunication of Muslims, thereby making them eligible for jihad).  This doctrine stemmed from his absolutist belief that a true Muslim only submits to the authority of God—any submission to a human authority is, in effect, revering that authority as a god—which is the basest crime of shirk (polytheism).^[15]  Qutb expounded upon his beliefs in his authoritative and still ubiquitous exposition of the Quran in Shades of the Quran and then in his pathway to Islamic purity, Milestones.  His fiery rhetoric brought about his arrest in 1954 and his execution (and martyrdom) eleven years later in 1966.  This martyrdom and uncompromising ethos continues to inspire violent radicals to this day as they co-opt and use his ideas of jahiliyya and jihad.^[16]

        Unlike the previous leaders discussed, Ruhollah Khomeini was a religious cleric (and a Shia one at that) in every sense of the word.  In 1917, at the age of fifteen, he began his serious pursuit of religious studies.  He embraced and inculcated himself within the ulama, rapidly ascending through its ranks.  His religious focus did not become overtly political though until after the anti-clerical reign of Reza Shah. This was the beginning of his break with the quietist Iranian clerical community—indeed those he saw as colluding with Reza Shah were among his chief targets. ^[17]   He did remain guarded in his opposition to Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s autocratic Persian regime; however, this was due more to severe repression (through the SAVAK) than his own conviction.   His activism did not truly begin until the death of his mentor Ayatollah Borujerdi and the Shah’s subsequent distancing of the government from the clergy.^[18]  After this, Khomeini quickly became more outspoken, earning him an exile in 1965.  While his initial and primary focus was the overthrow of the un-Islamic, western-aligned regime, during his exile he expanded his efforts to the spreading his unique doctrine.  His did this through building a horizontally (through students) and vertically (through clergy and activist leaders) broad coalition to mobilize the populace against the Shah.^[19]  During exile was Khomeini’s first vocalization of his central concept of vilayat-i-faqih—the idea that politics and Islam were inseparable and that Islamic government needed to be led by a single supreme cleric and politically and morally supported by the Shia ulama.^[20]  This idea was an innovative departure from traditional Shia doctrine that considered all rule both temporary and illegitimate until the return of the twelfth Mahdi.  Khomeini was advocating a closing of the gap between the ulama and rulers that traditionally maintained a theological and moral sanctity for the clerics.^[21]

        Each of the ideologues viewed this environment—the contemporary Muslim condition—in a different way that critically shaped their diagnosis and solution.  

Al-Banna had the advantage of a religiously homogenous quasi-nation-state (still much under Britain’s control) that he could operate within and whose population he could mobilize.  He was motivated to action by the overwhelming western influence and decay that he saw in his fellow countrymen.^[22]  Mawdudi faced a pluralist nation that would become a state but that had not wholeheartedly embraced Islam, having been corrupted by western and non-Islamic (Hindu) influence.  Qutb’s ideology emerged amongst and against Nasser’s competing nationalist and secular ideology—one that placed a pan-Arab identity as its ultimate goal.  Thus while Qutb deplored westernization, his initial motivation sprung from a reaction to ideologies that relegated Islam to a second tier.^[23]  An important moderating counter-response to the radical ideology of Qutb that would emerge during the late 1960s came from Hasan Isma’il al-Hudaybi’s seminal Du’at la Qudat (Preachers Not Judges).^[24]  This is important because his ideas emerged from within the tumult of the  1967 Six Day War that saw a rising dissonance within the MB.  Instead of an exclusionary takfir mentality, Hudaybi urged a more minimalist baseline to be considered a Muslim—the shahada.  He believed that this profession of faith was one which should only be evaluated by God, not fellow Muslims.^[25]  Similar to Qutb, Khomeini was faced with a state that marginalized the role and power of Islam, especially the ulama.  Thus his response emerged from a desire to restore Islam, specifically its jurists to their position of primacy in guiding and guarding society.^[26]

        Each Islamist ideologue’s solution to the problems cited above made an impact that directly affected its efficacy.  Al-Banna created an extensive network (the MB) that unified and provided for the Egyptian community in a network separate and parallel to the existing government.^[27]  Qutb would later leverage the hierarchical nature of this network to disseminate his anti-secular, cry for radical submission to God.  He was able to transform a grass-roots unifying organization (for a time at least) into a vanguard driven fundamentalist movement that elevated its elite to that of jurists through takfir and the ensuing jihad.  While lesser known, Hudaybi’s influence has been long-lasting as it countered the reductionist view that sharia existed in a timeless vacuum apart from human reasoning and political authority.^[28]  His ideology can then be viewed as a descendent of the unifying aspect of al-Banna that stands apart from the radical detour taken by Qutb.  Mawdudi was perhaps most pragmatic as he sought to broker change from within the system—not hesitating to work with governments to attempt to Islamize society, although his primary approach was always to first Islamize the society at

large.^[29]  Khomeini combined Mawdudi’s political calculation and pragmatism with a revolutionary fervor.  He was able to capitalize on a broadly dissatisfied populace and cooperate with a well-mobilized Marxist leftist movement to overthrow a secular regime.^[30]  Most importantly, he was able to harness this revolutionary fervor and effectively hijack it, creating a true Islamic state during the late stage drafts of the post-revolution constitution.^[31] 

        An evaluation of the iterations and variances within Islamism that did not address the local environment to which the specific social movement responded offers limited merit.  This essay has addressed the wide range of Islamist evaluations and diagnoses of the Muslim condition.  It has shown that the path of Islamism has not been guided solely by the doctrine of key ideologues.  Rather Islamism’s trajectory has been a dynamic one—highly responsive to the local environment—but also highly resilient.  An understanding of the flexibility and durability of Islamism over the last hundred years should be a signal to policymakers that there can be no uniform approach to it.   Islamism instead requires a nuanced, multi-faceted tact.  Ignorance and indiscriminate repression will only inflame the more radical elements and may well radicalize the moderate ones.

Bibliography

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