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.