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Political Islam and Revolutionary Violence

Political Islam and Revolutionary Violence. Religion and Nation. Supernatural, Transcendent Role of doctrine and ethics Self and Other Apply nationalism theory to religion What is the relationship between nationalism and Islamism? Between ethnicity and Islam?

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Political Islam and Revolutionary Violence

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  1. Political Islam and Revolutionary Violence

  2. Religion and Nation • Supernatural, Transcendent • Role of doctrine and ethics • Self and Other • Apply nationalism theory to religion • What is the relationship between nationalism and Islamism? Between ethnicity and Islam? • A challenge to the nation? Or a prop of it?

  3. Holy Texts: An Instrumentalist View • '[As a Jew] if you are in favour of peace with the Palestinians, you can cite the case of King David, who gave away land to the King of Sidon. Equally, if you are against making peace...you can find material in Deuteronomy 25, which enjoins war to the end • No connection between religiosity and support for violence in Muslim world

  4. Holy Texts: A Perennialist View • Islam: "Whoever changes his religion, kill him"- hadith • Not unique to Islam: "ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves" – Exodus 34: 13-17 • **Commentary pertaining to jihad and martyrdom • 'Anyone who can read passages like those quoted above and still not see a link between Muslim faith and Muslim violence should probably consult a neurologist'- Sam Harris, TheEnd of Faith, p. 23 • Connection between support for religion in politics and support for violence

  5. Holy Texts: An Ethnosymbolist View • Interpretive theologies can acquire rootedness over time • Political interpretation of jihad persisted due to anti-colonialism • Political interpretation of crusade fell into abeyance after Wars of Religion (Toft 2007) • But crusade and jihad are resources that can be unearthed in the future • Holy texts are symbolic resources

  6. Premodern Fundamentalism? • Corruption of clergy • State as usurping functions reserved for religion • Foreign domination (Mongol, Crusader, Persian?, Ottoman?) • Idolatry: state and its religious officials, schools and structures • Empire vs umma of true believers • Masses should rise up and eject the foreign infidels and their idolatrous traitor governments

  7. Premodern Defenders of Orthodoxy • Kharijites – (from 650s) - small sect that believed that rule should be by the book and not the law. Should be no imamate • Ibn Hanbal (780-856) – Traditionalist. Literalist. Rejects dominant (Persian) Abbasid syncretism of Hellenistic traditions and mysticism of Sufi cults • Ibn Taimiya (d. 1328) – A Hanbali cleric. Treatises like 'statecraft according to shari'a'. Parents fled the Mongols to Syria. Defended Sunnism from heterodoxy, sufism and foreign influence. Declared a fatwa on Mongols and insisted that religious figures and the shari'a play a political role – His work has influenced many schools including contemporary political Islam

  8. Secular Nationalism • "For five hundred years these rules and theories of an Arab sheik, and the interpretations of generations of lazy, good-for-nothing priests have decided the civil and the criminal law of Turkey... Islam, this theology of an immoral Arab, is a dead thing." • Lands seized, clerical power attenuated • Dress Laws: riot in Qom, 1963, hundreds killed

  9. Shiite Revolution • Iran. 1979.

  10. Hizbollah, 1983. • Shia of Bahrain, Iraq (??)

  11. Instrumentalist • Coalition of leftist and religious forces at first ('Quranic Marxism') • Shah's corruption • Bazaari merchants and ulama bypassed, had their interests threatened • Ulama had their own economic and power centre in the mosques and source of income

  12. Ethnosymbolist • Could not have happened without history of Shi'ism in Iran • Safavid Order – Safavid empire, 16th c • Shows that quietist faiths can become active • Islamic resources: texts, hadith – point to moral righteousness of overthrowing secular oppressor

  13. Cultural, but Modernist • Shariati reinterprets traditional Shi'ism in a revolutionary, activist way • Khomeini influenced by his ideas • Fundamentalism involves a stripped-down, reformed Islam • Islamism as modern

  14. Sunni Islamist Revolution: Act I • Soviet-Afghan War, 1979-87 • Jihad and martyrdom • Saudi and Pakistani connection • US-Saudi funding • 100,000 volunteers from 43 countries

  15. 'Blowback' • Jihadism could not be controlled • Pakistani and Saudi contradictions: Islamist, yet nation-states • Idea to vent Salafi-jihadi energies abroad • Came back to haunt Saudis, Pakistanis, Americans • Azzam, bin Laden – create Al-Qaeda • Peshawar madrassas create Taliban

  16. 'Blowback' & Failed Sunni Revolution: Algeria • FIS, 1989 • Wins, 1990 with 54% of vote in municipal elections • 1992 – govt cancels poll, arrests 40,000 FIS • 1992-7 Civil War

  17. Role of 'Arab-Afghans' • Groupe Islamique Armee (GIA) • Kabul Mosque, Algiers • Target secular intellectuals, those connected to regime • Kill conscripts, monks, civilian takfiris • 100,000 killed in Civil War • 1994-5 hijacking and summer bombing campaign in France

  18. Sunni Islamist Coup: Sudan • Al-Turabi's influence. National Islamic Front • Nimieri and creeping Islamisation, 1980s. Shari'a 1983 • War with South, reconciliation attempt • Islamist Coup, 1989. Omar Hassan al-Bashir

  19. Sunni Islamist Coup:Taliban, Afghanistan • 1996-2001

  20. Failed Sunni Islamist Coup: Egypt • Muslim Brotherhood repressed in Egypt, 1960s. Qutb executed. • Al-Jihad • Sadat assassinated, 1981 • Many attempts on Mubarak's life • Gamaat Islamiya, Luxor Massacre, 1997

  21. Other Theatres • Intifadas in Palestine (1987-93; 2000-6) • Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb • Al-Qaeda in Iraq (Zarqawi) • Al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula (QAP) • Taliban/Al-Qaeda in Af-Pak region • Movements also in Malaysia, Indonesia (esp. Aceh), Bosnia, Chechnya, Kashmir..

  22. Impact of Jihadism on Patterns of Global Violence • Since 1940: • 90 percent of the ten civil wars fought within a religion involve Islam • 73 percent of the 32 conflicts in which the parties differ by religion involve Islam • 58 percent of states gripped by religious civil wars had a Muslim majority (Toft 2007) • 2 of 64 terrorist movements were religious in the 1980s, this jumped to 46 percent by 1995. (Philpott 2007)

  23. Key Social Strata • Western-educated elite – affected by modern Islamism, failures of Marxism and Arab nationalism • 'pious middle classes' – traditional strict Islamists in towns and cities • Rural masses – Sufi or heterodox Islam, but population not receptive to secular nationalism. • Radicalised by population explosion and rural-urban dislocation

  24. Other Issues • Islam as nationalism or apocalyptic-chiliastic faith? • Just the gunmen (ie Arab-Afghans) or popular support? • Religion more violent than socialism, nationalism?

  25. Has Jihadism Failed? • Sunni Arab Regimes crush Islamists • Islamist vote stuck at 15 pc in Arab-Muslim core • Only successful Islamist parties are moderate • Violence leads to lower support for jihad at home: Algeria, Egypt… • Or just an ebb – and the possibility of renewed violence again

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