by Ed Husain
‘Saudi’ Arabia emerged in 1932, as did much of the modern Middle East, out of the corpse of the Ottoman Empire. With Wahhabism as its social glue, together with support and advice from Great Britain, it was the realpolitik of Abdul Aziz ibn Saud, a direct descendant of the Mohamed ibn Saud who allied himself with the Wahhabis, that brought the tribes together, ensured financial success, created alliances with the West, and slowly urbanised a mostly Bedouin population. As early as 1902, Ibn Saud marshalled the power of the Ikhwan, the volunteer force of puritans from Najd, in central Arabia, who busied themselves with ensuring that Wahhabi standards of ritual observation and creed were upheld, and all else was wiped out.
This group from Najd formed the spine of the Ikhwan fighters who swore allegiance to Ibn Saud and under his leadership did battle with the powerful Al Rashid tribe and the millennium-old custodians of Mecca and Medina, the Sharifs (now known as the Jordanian royal family after their expulsion from the holy cities of Islam).
Back in the 1790s, the chief qadi of Mecca had been convinced that the Wahhabis, or Salafis, were not even Muslims. He penned a fatwa ruling them firmly outside the fold of Islam. That view was shared by the majority of the Muslims in Mecca and Medina, and for two years they were kept away from the holy cities and the Hajj on the grounds that kuffar (non-believers) could not enter the city. The holy cities of Islam were then occupied in revenge by Salafi–Wahhabi fighters under the political leadership of Abdul Aziz.
The occupation persists to this day. And with it, the message of the Muwahhid movement is exported stridently across the Muslim world. When I visit Mecca or Medina, I am exposed to what 2 million Muslims from every part of the globe witness as the high point of our pilgrimage. In restaurants, universities and other public spaces, gender apartheid thrives, where men are superior and separate from women. The imposition of black garments, head and face covers on women comes from the same trend of Salafi–Wahhabi-dominated discourse from the headquarters of Islam.
This has now become the global Muslim zeitgeist. We see its impact on the streets of Paris, London, Vienna, Brooklyn and Berlin – men in long beards, no moustaches and trousers cut short at the ankles, wearing red-and-white chequered headscarves to mark themselves out as different. Yes, the Prophet taught that male robes should be shortened, but that was because wearing long, flowing silk robes was a sign of arrogance among the Meccan pagans. Yes, the Prophet most likely said: ‘Let your beards grow, and trim your moustaches,’ but he was trying to teach humility. Literalists lose sight of the spirit of the teaching, and focus on the externalities – like the English Puritans who dressed for their station in life, specifying the correct apparel for the scholar, the farmer and the merchant, rejecting fashion and avoiding sexually provocative clothing. The Salafis of the Gulf and their adherents globally have adopted the dress of the Bedouins, who were mostly goatherds and wore a rope ‘igal on their heads to hold down the kuffiyyah, the chequered headscarf. Yet when I visit a mosque in Turkey, which is refreshingly free of Salafi puritanism, I see women walking in and out freely, and men who are imams in Western or everyday modern dress, focusing on the state of the heart rather than the outline of the torso.
Are Salafis the only real and true Muslims? Were protestant Puritans real Christians? To say ‘yes’ is to worship the letter and scorn the spirit. It was in England that Puritanism began, and in England its theocracy ended. Likewise, it was in Saudi Arabia that Salafism began, and it is in Saudi Arabia that it needs to be uprooted. The 1749 alliance between the Saudi royal family and Wahhabi clerics must be nullified. Without Saudi Arabia as a financial, educational and preaching base, the Salafi–Wahhabis could not survive on the fringes of the Muslim world. Before it takes hold of other capitals, Salafi–Wahhabism must be brought to an end. Its backwardness is not limited to creed, conduct and hard-line conservatism. Its violence did not end in 1932 with the creation of Saudi Arabia, but erupts today with international jihadism.
10
Who is a Jihadi?
Just as Islamism is not Islam, so too jihadism is not jihad. To think that jihad and jihadism are the same thing would be to allow the jihadis to win their propaganda war and corrupt the teachings of Islam for their own purposes. The jihadis’ tactics and branding confuse us into thinking that ISIS is different from al-Qaeda, that Boko Haram is different from the Taliban. But they all swim in the same waters; they all grow out of the same soil; and that territory is firmly Salafi–Wahhabi. That said, not every Salafi is a jihadi, but every jihadi today is a Salafi, and it is on the highway of Salafism that the intersection to jihadism lies. The more candid among the Salafi clerics accept the overlap between Salafism and jihadism. In August 2014, for example, a former imam at the Grand Mosque in Mecca with 2 million followers on Twitter, senior Salafi Sheikh Adel al-Kalbani, tweeted: ‘ISIS is a true product of Salafism and we must deal with it with full transparency.’
The Quran calls Muslims to jihad – best translated as ‘struggle’ – but this is clearly different from qital (killing) or harb (war). The Prophet Mohamed persevered in the face of Meccan pagan hostilities for more than a decade, as God in the Quran repeatedly called for patience, kindness and gentleness in inviting the polytheist Meccans to believe in Allah. Only after thirteen long years of pagans killing Muslims, torturing, expelling, shunning and humiliating them, was the Prophet’s community commanded to fight back. Muslims are not pacifists and, like the Japanese samurai or the ancient warrior cultures of Greece and Rome, Muslims believe in taking up the sword to disarm barbarians and madmen. But there are agreed rules for undertaking jihad that distinguish it from ordinary warfare or fighting.
The sharia and the vast majority of the world’s Muslim scholars have for centuries agreed that jihad has preconditions: that jihad must be declared by a Muslim head of state, not individuals or unauthorised bands of angry men; that when heading for jihad fighters must seek the permission of their parents; that only enemy combatants can be killed, not innocents; that women, children and the defenceless must not be assaulted; that wells cannot be poisoned; and that nature, cattle and livestock must not be attacked.
For over a millennium, Muslims followed the teachings of the Quran and the Prophet when engaging in warfare, and Muslim armies fought by the rules of Islam. They had with them scholars and Sufis to remind them constantly of higher ideals. In the twelfth century, the Crusader king Richard the Lionheart spoke respectfully of his Muslim enemy Saladin’s chivalry and kindness in sending medical help when Richard was ill.
The violation of the rules, however, is jihadism, not jihad.
Today’s jihadism, violating all the ethics of Islam, is nothing more than a continuation of the puritanism of the Salafi–Wahhabis from the deserts of Najd. They seek physically to impose their rigid Muwahhid worldview. The Ottomans were the focus of their grievances in the nineteenth century; now it is the Muslim rulers of our times and their Western allies.
They are connected globally today, no longer confined to the deserts of Arabia. And they will continue to spread, because they are riding a wave of Salafi–Wahhabi puritanism. Jihadism is the logical conclusion to Salafism.
As Salafi–Wahhabis, these groups believe in five key principles that give them the conviction to pursue their violent actions.
The first principle on which the worldview of jihadis rests is that of being ‘Ghuraba’, a minority of ‘strangers’ or outsiders in modern society, different from the mainstream and seeing themselves as right and truthful in a world of wrongdoers. They wear their ‘strangeness’ as a badge of honour. Osama bin Laden, his successor Ayman al-Zawahiri, and countless radical Islamist organisations have cherished and advocated being Ghuraba. Indeed, the terrorists behind the 7 July 2005 attacks in London identified themselves as Ghuraba in the immediate aftermath of the bombings. The theme music of many jihadis, their global anthem from Chechnya to Yemen to Berlin, has repeatedly featured a nasheed, or song, called ‘Ghuraba, Ghuraba’. The words, translated from Arabic, are
:
Ghuraba do not bow the foreheads to anyone except Allah.
Ghuraba have chosen this to be the slogan of life!
If you ask about us, then we do not care about the tyrants.
We are the regular soldiers of Allah, our path is a reserved path.
We never care about the chains of prison, rather we will continue for ever!
So let us make jihad, and battle, and fight from the start.
Ghuraba, this is how they live free in the enslaved world.
So let us make jihad, and battle, and fight anew.
Ghuraba, this is how they are free in the enslaved world.
A major component of extremism is the sense that being marginal, different and heterodox is a religiously blessed condition. The Salafi-jihadis base this not only on their cultish, rebellious ways but also on Harfiyya, literalism. The Prophet Mohamed is reported to have said: ‘Islam began as a stranger, and it will once again become something strange. Blessed are the strangers.’ They cling to this as a prediction of their own arrival as the true, blessed believers the Prophet spoke about. In their mental paralysis they overlook other sayings of the Prophet, including this: ‘Be aware of extremism in religion, for it was extremism that destroyed those who went before you.’
Seeing themselves as ‘blessed strangers’, a ‘saved sect’ within Islam, they begin to form a psychological alienation from mainstream society. Normal Muslims are labelled ‘deviants’ because they do not share the supposedly faithful puritanical beliefs of those who see themselves as Ghuraba. Even parents and family members become deviants or disbelievers to the Ghuraba. The normal becomes abnormal. All are at fault.
Yet the Prophet repeatedly taught Muslims to be part of society, not to abandon it. Those who see themselves as the only true possessors of Islam, and therefore ‘strangers’ on a collision path with their fellow Muslims, are fundamentally wrong by the criteria of the Quran and the Prophet. The Quran warns repeatedly against going to extremes in religious observation, and against sowing fitna (dissension) in society. The Prophet taught that his followers would never agree, or achieve consensus (Ijma), on anything that is false. And yet those who claim to be Ghuraba break every consensus built by Muslims over a millennium in matters political and social, and now seek to divide and cause fitna among Muslims. According to the Quran and the Prophet, they are demonstrably wrong.
Second, not only are the Salafi-jihadis literalists and self-avowed outsiders, but they also believe and actively proclaim something that – despite their literalism – does not appear anywhere in the Quran or the sayings of the Prophet, something known in Arabic as al-wala wa al-bara. This can be roughly translated as ‘loyalty (to Muslims) and disavowal (of, and enmity toward, non-Muslims, or infidels)’.
If a first-century Muslim, or a disciple of the Prophet, were asked what they understood by al-wala wa al-bara, loyalty and disavowal, they would look utterly perplexed. Although the radicals claim to be true to the text, their form of Islam would be unrecognisable to the Prophet and his disciples. Despite my being born and raised in a mainstream Sunni Muslim family, I only came across the concept of al-wala wa al-bara for the first time when attending Friday prayers at university. Similarly, most Muslims who come across this toxic belief do so on student campuses or in Saudi religious textbooks.
Essentially, scriptural literalists argue that Muslims should be loyal and committed in honesty and truth to one another. Disbelievers are sworn enemies of Islam and Muslims, and they should not be trusted, befriended or emulated. Believers in the al-wala wa al-bara principle try to enforce the prohibition of social and friendly ties between Muslims and non-Muslims. Celebrating birthdays and national holidays like Labour Day comes under the heading of ‘emulating disbelievers’, and it is for this reason that Saudi clerics forbid Muslims to mark Valentine’s Day or celebrate birthdays. Even the birthday of the Prophet Mohamed, commemorated by most Muslims across the globe, is still officially banned by clerics in Saudi Arabia because they see birthdays as a form of ‘emulating disbelievers’, and thus violating the tenets of al-wala wa al-bara.
However odd all this may sound, Salafis justify it by citing religious scholarship from a bygone era and claiming to be trying to save Muslims’ souls from hell by keeping them clear of the ways of disbelievers. Orthodox Jews have similar compunctions when interacting with the goyim, an often derogatory term for the non-Jewish population. More serious problems arise when this form of religious and social separatism, underpinned by theology, becomes conflated with politics.
To the most radical of anti-American militants, al-wala wa al-bara is not only about creed and social separatism, but also about political confrontation. Ayman al-Zawahiri wrote explicitly in December 2002 that al-wala wa al-bara was one of the most important pillars of his form of Islam. After explaining al-wala wa al-bara, and citing opinions of past Muslim scholars (while omitting to clarify that theirs was a different world), al-Zawahiri applied this notion to his reading of politics as well:
•It is Muslim governments, with their treaties and alliances with Jews and Christians, that have befriended the disbelievers and violated al-wala wa al-bara;
•The enemies of Islam, ‘especially the Americans, Jews, French and English’, have, ‘through a chain of conspiracies, secret relationships, direct support, bribes, salaries, secret accounts, corruption and recruitment’, put in place these governments that must be removed through jihad;
•The United Nations is ‘a hegemonic organisation of universal infidelity’;
•Acceptance of Israel is a rejection of jihad and shows disloyalty to the Muslims of Palestine; and
•To condemn al-Qaeda and the mujahideen is to be disloyal to Muslims and to side with disbelievers.
Third, based on this sense of exclusivity and separatist Muslim identity, the Salafi-jihadis invoke the concept of Takfir, which in practice becomes a licence to kill. Takfir in Arabic means literally to declare that someone is a kafir (pl. kuffar) or non-believer. The Salafis use this principle to excommunicate Muslims who disagree with their imposition of al-wala wa al-bara. For a Muslim to declare Takfir against another Muslim is already a serious undertaking and grave sin, but, when combined with the Salafis’ literalist worldview, it also legitimises killing the person against whom Takfir has been declared.
Across the world, Salafi extremists use Takfir to denounce Muslims as non-Muslims and thus justify killing them on religious grounds. In their worldview, they cannot kill Muslims because it violates al-wala wa al-bara and is therefore a sin. They are called to be loyal to Muslims, not to kill them. But by declaring them infidels, they can justify killing them to cleanse the earth of the enemies of Islam. Modern Takfir of governments and then taking up arms by vigilante groups started with Wahhabi declaration of the Ottoman caliphate as deserving of jihad. That desert movement of rebellion against mainstream Islam is now known as global jihadism.
Without Takfir, al-Qaeda could not have declared war on the House of Saud in Saudi Arabia, or on the Muslims they killed in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq. Takfir was used to justify the 1981 assassination of Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat. In Syria, the Muslim Brotherhood used Takfir in 1981 to assassinate government ministers. The Algerian Islamists and Salafis used Takfir from 1991 onwards to murder over 100,000 of their opponents and military personnel. Today, ISIS and other terrorist organisations continue to use Takfir to justify their violence.
Once belief in and use of Takfir ceases, the killing of other Muslims no longer has any basis in religion for Salafis. Politically, recognising the United Nations, holding senior government posts or even working for police forces in countries that are not part of a caliphate becomes acceptable. At best, Muslims who do these things are mainstream believers who simply follow a different interpretation of the faith. At worst, they are sinners – but not apostates deserving to be killed.
The fourth key Salafi principle is the belief in a religious obligation to create what they call Hakimiyyah, or God’s g
overnment on earth, also known as a caliphate. In Arabia, the original Wahhabis of 1749 agreed that the House of Saud would serve Hakimiyyah. The idea that unless this obligation is fulfilled Muslims are sinful, and liable to punishment in hell, underlies not just al-Qaeda’s ideology but also that of every other Salafi-jihadi group. Hence, the war against Muslim governments launched by al-Qaeda, ISIS and other violent Salafis is based not only on Takfir but also on the belief that these governments are apostates and must be replaced by a caliphate.
This vision of creating ‘God’s government’ led Imam Ali, the fourth caliph of Islam, to do battle with people who claimed he was not implementing God’s laws. Even the caliphate of Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet, was not adequately Islamic for these people, a group who came to be known as the Kharijites, meaning those who went out, or made an exit, from mainstream Islam by virtue of their extremism. Muslim scholars have argued that al-Qaeda are today’s Kharijites.
From the Egyptian scholar Ali Abd al-Raziq, writing in 1925 (a year after the fall of the Ottomans), to the Sudanese scholar Abdullah Naimi in our time, others have argued that ‘God’s government’, or an Islamic state, is not a necessity today. The sharia is not a code of law that requires literal application – and it never has been. Even as early as the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Muslim scholarly giants such as Imam al-Juwayni and Imam al-Shatibi were already talking about the ‘Maqasid al-Sharia’, or five Higher Aims of the sharia. For them, and for their many students through the centuries, the purpose of the sharia was essentially to preserve life, religion, property, family and human intellect. Any form of government that ensured these five key facets of human life was, by definition, Islamic government, rendering demands for Hakimiyyah, a literalist interpretation of God’s law, null and void.
Fifth, and finally, Salafi-jihadis believe that until this caliphate is created, all Muslims are living in sin. It is therefore a collective duty on Muslims to ‘lift the sin off our necks’ (as they put it) by establishing God’s government on earth. For as long as this government is not established, Muslims are living in what they call ‘dar al-harb’, ‘the abode of war’. Not only is the West part of this ‘abode of war’, because it is not part of a caliphate, but even most Muslim-majority countries are classified in this Harfiyya-driven worldview as being in dar al-harb. It follows that in the abode of war the rules of war are to be followed, and from such cramped and literal-minded readings of theology they derive their politics.