The hadith build on this framework, coupling the proper practice of Islam with the generation of Islamic conquests. In a well-known hadith from Sahih al-Bukhari, Muhammad says:
The best of you are my generation, and the second best will be those who will follow them, and then those who will follow the second generation … Then will come some people who will make vows but will not fulfill them; and they will be dishonest and will not be trustworthy, and they will give their witness without being asked to give their witness, and fatness will appear among them. (Sahih al-Bukhari 8.78.686)
The premise of this hadith undergirds the common Muslim conception of the Islamic Golden Age: after Muhammad will come the best era of Islamic history, and gradually through selfishness and lack of integrity, Muslims will fall away from the proper practice of Islam. Classically, Muslims and scholars have considered the Golden Age to span 500 years starting at about the middle of the eighth century, but radical Muslims today are given to envisioning the era of the Golden Age as far back as the first generations of Muslims.
Those earliest generations are referred to as the salaf, the ancestors, and some fundamentalist Muslims make it their stated purpose to follow the ancestors’ example. They refer to themselves as Salafi Muslims, and their hope is that, through obedience and integrity, Muslims can return the world to the Golden Age they have heard of and yearned for. Among their ranks is a strong propensity for radicalization.
Conclusion
It is easy to see why people would think Islam was spread by the sword. Muhammad said, “I have been ordered to fight against the people until they testify that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah…. [O]nly then will they save their lives and property from me” (Sahih Bukhari 1.2.25). Though this may sound like Muhammad wanted to convert non-Muslims at sword-point, early Muslims did not interpret it that way. Rather, it was understood that Islamic territory was to expand, but the fighting would desist if the vanquished converted to Islam.
This distinction between conquering for conversion or conquering them for their territory unless they convert is a subtle one, and in the long run the outcome was the same. With few exceptions, Islam is the majority religion only in those lands that were captured through jihad.
Muslims believe that because of the obedience of early Muslims, the Islamic empire expanded beyond all estimation. The obedience of the earliest Muslims laid the foundation for the Golden Era of Islam, and it is remembered with yearning in the Muslim heart as a time when people obeyed Allah and Allah blessed the land. Mankind was at its pinnacle. Political, intellectual, scientific, and moral progress has never been sustained in such purity since that time. Muslims can thank the earliest Muslims, the salaf, for their devotion, and if they model their example in obeying Allah and following Muhammad with integrity, Allah will bless mankind again.
With these final pieces of the puzzle, the expectation of Islamic dominance and the nostalgic notion of an Islamic Golden Age, the foundations of radical Islam were laid.
Part 2
Part 2, Jihad Today
Question 7
Question 6, What is Radical Islam?
IN 1950 AN EGYPTIAN literary critic with refined sensibilities and a toothbrush moustache moved into a sleepy town in northern Colorado. The America he encountered, seen through the lens of post-colonial tumult and his devout Islamic upbringing, ultimately transformed Sayyid Qutb into the father of radical Islam.
The Birth of Radical Islam
As I have shown in my answers to Questions 4 and 6, the first Muslims were launched into a trajectory of global warfare with no clearly delineated endpoint. There was an expectation of Muslim domination that would be the result of faithful practice of Islam, including endeavors of jihad, which the Quran enjoins upon all good Muslims. The salaf generation exemplified obedience with their devotion and their conquests. In return, Allah blessed them with the Golden Age of Islam. At the risk of overgeneralizing, this common understanding of Islam boils down to this: True obedience to Allah will result in Muslim dominance.
The first cracks in Muslim dominance appeared in the mid-1700s, when Muslims like Ibn Abd al-Wahhab and Shah Waliullah noticed that Christian lands were progressing into what would become the Industrial Revolution. They began to ask themselves how it could be that Muslims might lose dominance, given the promises of the Quran. Hundreds of years later, these questions would drive the development of radical Islam. For the time being, though, the Muslims remained dominant over the vast territories that they had colonized.
The irony is that colonizing imperatives of Islam were put to an end by European colonialism. By 1920, every region of the Muslim world that Europeans desired was either directly or indirectly under European control. The foundational doctrines of Islam predicated upon Muslim superiority were now moot, and it became necessary to redefine jihad in the umbra of anti-colonial angst.
Abu al-Ala al-Maududi, a highly acclaimed Muslim scholar from the Indian subcontinent, attempted to redefine jihad in his 1930 work Jihad in Islam. As he was eager to denounce European colonialists for their rule over his homeland, he was obligated to explain how jihad was not a colonialist endeavor. Against the consensus of early Muslim jurists, he argued that jihad was not an effort to conquer lands, but rather a sincere desire of Muslims to spread the religion that they loved. It was through jihad that non-Muslims were able to encounter Islam. In other words, mujahideen were not colonialists but liberators and freedom fighters. His reasoning and apologetics were highly influential during his lifetime and remain so today.
One of the men Maududi influenced was Sayyid Qutb. Unlike Maududi, Qutb was not an apologist, and his writings are devoid of guile. Having spent a few years as a student in the United States, Qutb was repelled by Western society. Even though he had lived in a sleepy town in northern Colorado that was prudish by most American standards, he was horrified by American culture. He saw Americans as ill-bred, brutish, and savage. Their music was little short of screaming, their art was unsophisticated, and they were altogether numb to spiritual values.
By contrast, he viewed the Arab world as brimming with Old World refinement and grace, especially when it came to higher matters of morality and spirituality. This enlightened condition he attributed to the blessings of Islam. America, by contrast, existed in a state of jahiliyya.
As the tendrils of the West were beginning to influence Arab politics, especially after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of Israel, the expansive resources of America and its influence in world politics concerned Qutb tremendously. He saw Egypt falling to the barbarous power of the West.
Upon returning to Egypt Qutb joined the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization that had recently been developed with the intent of starting an Islamic revival and returning to the study of the Quran and hadith. He quickly became the brotherhood’s most dominant intellectual figure, infusing it with his thoughts and perspectives, until Gamal Abd al-Nasir’s regime arrested him along with most of the brotherhood’s leadership. Qutb was humiliated, tortured, and ultimately executed under false charges by a government that was, indeed, increasingly coming under the influence of the West. Because of the way the government treated him, many Muslims hailed him as a hero and a martyr for his message.
What was that message? Qutb believed Islam was the answer the world needed, but nowhere was it being practiced according to the principles of the Quran and Muhammad’s life. The world was in disarray because democracy reigned in the West and communism in the East. Muslim rulers were courting these foreign governments and modern principles, abandoning sharia and making themselves apostates.
This is important to grasp: Qutb saw the leaders of Muslim countries as hypocrites and apostates, no longer following Islam. They were a large part of the problem. If Muslims would but follow the original, pure Islam, Allah would bless all the Muslims, the ummah, and return them to dominance. Muslims must thus raze centuries of accreted Islamic tradition and return to the teachings of Muham
mad and the Quran. If they did, there would be a glorious revival of Islam for the betterment of the world, just as there was in Muhammad’s time and during the Golden Age of the Islamic empire.
Qutb maintained a consistent approach to jihad, returning to the foundations of Islam for guidance. Jihad ought to progress in stages, just as it did in Muhammad’s life. One should start by peacefully proclaiming Islam, then engaging in limited warfare, then exacting retribution for injustices against the Islamic community, and finally launching in warfare without end against the non-Muslim world. However, under the influence of Maududi, Qutb envisioned jihad as a liberation of the non-Muslim’s mind, ensuring that the non-Muslim is able to hear and consider the message of Islam, something that may not happen unless jihad is waged.
Qutb’s martyrdom fanned his popularity among Egyptians, even though many Arabs also maintained hopes that modernization would benefit their nations as it had the Soviet Union and the West. When Israel decimated the Arab coalition of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria during the Six Days War of 1967, these hopes were dashed, and many more Arabs began to sympathize with Qutb’s views. President Anwar al-Sadat’s negotiations with Israel a decade later added fuel to this fire, confirming in the minds of many Arabs that their leaders had betrayed Muslims and become apostates.
In light of this background, it becomes more understandable why Sadat was murdered in 1981. After his assassination, investigators recovered a document authored by Abd al-Salam Faraj. Faraj built on the foundation laid by Qutb by saying that Muslim leaders had become apostates and Muslims needed to return to a pure form of Islam, but he dispensed with Maududi’s notion of liberation. Instead he espoused a more historically accurate notion of jihad: When Muslims fight non-Muslims, Allah will bless them and give them territory where they will be able to establish an Islamic state and reintroduce the caliphate. There, Islam could be practiced in the pure form that apostate Muslim governments were neglecting.
Faraj went so far in denouncing Muslim governments as apostate that he equated them with Israel. Their proclaimed allegiance to Islam was just a veneer, in his view, designed to gain the support of Muslims and actualize their un-Islamic aims. According to Faraj, Muslim leaders were actually rebels against sharia.
Takfir and Muslim-On-Muslim Violence
Faraj treaded a dangerous road, one that alienated him from many would-be sympathizers. Historically, Muslims had maintained a generous approach to takfir, the practice of proclaiming someone an infidel. According to tradition, Muhammad declared that reciting the shahada was enough to consider someone Muslim; whether they were lying or not would be decided by God on judgment day. Qutb’s declaration of leaders’ apostasy, amplified significantly by Faraj, swung the door open wide for internecine hostilities among Muslims. But where was the line to be drawn? At what point could someone be declared non-Muslim?
This was new ground, and Faraj and his ilk ultimately settled on three nebulous criteria: an open manifestation of unbelief, ignoring the implementation of sharia, and a refusal to engage in jihad for the defense of the ummah. When all three of these criteria were fulfilled, a leader or a regime could be considered non-Muslim. Fighting against them for the sake of Islam would then be a legitimate jihad, and the aid of Allah could be expected.
I have frequently encountered the misconception that if Muslims are fighting other Muslims, their grievances must not be religious. After all, they are fighting others “on the same side.” Understanding Faraj’s and others’ radical approach to takfir should clarify this misconception; Muslim-on-Muslim violence can have everything to do with religion.
Surprisingly, the archetype of takfir is found in the Quran, and I have already touched on it. The Quran regularly accuses Muslims of being hypocrites if they are less than zealous in their obedience. Although the Quran usually suggests that Allah will be the one to punish hypocrites on the day of judgment, one verse is frankly contrary, correlating hypocrites to non-Muslims: “O Prophet, strive against the disbelievers and hypocrites, and be harsh with them. Their abode is hell” (9:73). The word for strive is jihad, and here we find a potential Quranic basis for Muslim-on-Muslim violence.
Conclusion
If we consider the words of the founders of the movement, radical Islam was born out of a frustration with the political inferiority of modern Muslim nations to Western and Eastern superpowers, especially in light of the Quranic promise that Allah will grant victory to those who strive for him. Radical Muslims believe another Golden Age awaits Muslims who are devoted to following the true teachings of Islam, and they are zealous to bring this about and see the glory of Islam restored.
Radical Islam, then, grows out of an understanding that the average expression of Islam today is too far removed from the teachings of Muhammad and the Quran. Adherents often consider moderate Muslims to be apostates because of their lack of zeal for the original teachings of Islam, and the Quran lays the foundation for undertaking jihad against these hypocritical Muslims.
But to fully grasp what radical Islam is, we need to answer another common question: Does Islam need a reformation?
Question 8
Question 2, Does Islam Need a Reformation?
I HAVE HEARD MANY PEOPLE, frustrated by the increasing frequency and scale of Islamist terrorism, suggest that Islam needs a reformation. What they may not realize is that radical Islam is the Islamic reformation.
This might sound shocking, but consider: Just as the Protestant Reformation was an attempt to raze centuries of Catholic tradition and return to the canonical texts, so radical Islam is an attempt to raze centuries of traditions of various schools of Islamic thought and return to the canonical texts of the Quran and Muhammad’s life.
This desire to return to the original form of Islam can be seen not only in the words of Sayyid Qutb, but also in his method. He focused almost entirely on references to the Quran. It is true also of the Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS today, whose publications and proclamations are punctuated by references to the Quran and hadith literature. Radical Muslim organizations are explicit in their aim to reform Islam.
Moderate Muslim Scholars Versus Isis
This reality became stark to me when I read an open letter written by 120 Muslim scholars rebuking ISIS for their version of Islam (see www.lettertobaghdadi.com). The letter starts with twenty-four points of “Executive Summary,” the very first point of which emphasizes that “fatwas must follow Islamic legal theory as defined in the Classical texts.” But ISIS does not grant authority to the legal theory of classical texts, the thoughts of the great Islamic jurists. They are returning to the foundational texts, the Quran and the hadith. The same is true for virtually all radical Muslim groups. This letter was therefore impotent in bringing about any change within ISIS, as I am inclined to think its writers must have known before issuing it.
Yet one of the points of the letter shot so wide of the mark that I am surprised it was included. In the writers’ condemnation of sex slavery, unable to provide a single reference that Islam forbade the practice, they instead appealed to a modern consensus: “After a century of Muslim consensus on the prohibition of slavery, you have violated this; you have taken women as concubines and thus revived strife and sedition (fitnah), and corruption and lewdness on the earth. You have resuscitated something that the Shari’ah has worked tirelessly to undo and has been considered forbidden by consensus for over a century.” I can imagine ISIS leaders laughing as they read this. Their whole purpose is to work against any consensus of modern Muslim scholars, especially if it contravenes the Quran and the example of Muhammad.
Truth be told, the Quran and hadith contain many references to sex slavery. The Quran explicitly allows Muslim men to use their captive women for sex (23:6; 33:50; 70.30). The canonical hadith collections corroborate the practice, going so far as allowing it even if captive women are already married and their husbands remain alive, or if the women are about to be sold and could be impregnated (Sahih Bukhari 4138; Sahih Muslim 3371 and 3
384; Sunan Abu Daud 2150). The Quran also explicitly confirms the former practice, teaching that captive women can be used as sex slaves even if they are married (4:24). The “century of Muslim consensus on the prohibition of slavery” is a departure from the foundations of Islam, and radical Islam is against such bidah, innovations in Islam.
To be clear, I am not arguing here against the legitimacy of an Islam that departs from its roots, but as long as Muslims try to return to the foundations of Islam, such modern consensuses will hold little authority over the teachings of the Quran and the example of Muhammad’s life. It is clear why ISIS does what it is doing; they are a part of the Islamic reformation.
Progressive Islam
The notion that reformation should lead to peaceful expressions of a religion is predicated on the assumption that the origins of that religion are peaceful. As I have demonstrated, that is not the case with Islam. Since violence is built into the very origins of Islam, the religion would need to be re-envisioned in order to produce a peaceful religion that is internally consistent. Emphasis would have to be drawn away from the Quran and Muhammad’s life, or the records of their contexts would need to be disavowed. This would not be a reformation but a progression of Islam.
Some Muslim thinkers have aimed to do just this. Fazlur Rahman, a Pakistani theologian of the mid-twentieth century, tried to impose humanist thought upon an Islamic framework, focusing on ethics and freedom. His method was to reconsider the historical authenticity of hadith, an essential component of the traditional foundations of Islam. He argued that hadith were formalized in the context of a living oral tradition; therefore, behavioral norms of Muslims of the time were formulated into the words and teachings of Muhammad. In other words, according to Rahman what we know as hadith are often simply the practices of ninth-century Muslims that have been petrified into an unchanging set of rules for all Muslims. Dispensing with the traditional foundations of Islam, Rahman offers novel understandings of the Quranic text, attempting to revolutionize the application of Islam.
Answering Jihad Page 6