Jihad in a postmodern era

Inventing a traditional way to get back to the real Islam

Main Points

Rereading Sayyid Qutb (d. 1966) on the current state of Islam

looking at Abd al-Salam Faraj (d. 1982) and Bin Ladens rationales for jihad an original Islam: considering Waldmans argument for tradition being a modality of change

Sayyid Qutb (d. 1966)

The historical context

Hasan al-Banna founded the brotherhood in 1928, assassinated in 1949; Qutb joins the Brotherhood in 1951, same year that Hasan al-Hudaybi is appointed to head the Brotherhood Free officers revolt in 1952, Nasser becomes president in 1956 and rules until 1970 1954, attempted assassination of Nasser; Brotherhood outlawed, Qutb jailed 1965, Qutb released, publishes Milestones; 2nd crackdown on Brotherhood after alleged plot of government, Qutb imprisoned and then hanged in 1966; 1969 Hudaybi publishes refutation of Qutbs ideas

Qutb on the absence of true Islam:

That Islamic society today is not Islamic in any sense of the word. We have already quoted a verse from the Quran that cannot in any way be honestly applied today: Whoever does not judge by what Allah has revealed is an unbeliever. (5:48) . . . So long as Muslim society adhered to Islam it manifested no weakness and no tendency to abdicate its control of life. It was when it fell away from Islam that these things took place. (262)

Reasons for the decline: isolating real Islam

those tribal Umayyads (except for Umar II)

the Abbasids and those foreign converts the awful Mongols; the disasters of the Crusades and the end of al-Andalus Worst of all: European colonialism; international Zionism

The future solution: Islam

both European materialism/capitalism and communism destined to fail Christianity a wholly ascetic inward-looking religion

Islam the only holistic way of life that is rooted in spirituality, not materialism True Islam must be put into practice in the Muslim world first, as an example for the rest of the world

Jihad in the 20th and 21st century

The Quran defines jihad as exerting oneself in the path of God (jihd f sabl Allh) . . . The last two decades of the twentieth century saw an increase in radical Muslim responses to oppression and aggression by Muslim and nonMuslim forces . . .these . . . have provided occasions when radical Muslim (or Islamist) groups have formed and called for jihad in tones, and often in terms, that have articulated rationales for greater violence against enemies than the language of the classical sources and modern juristic definitions would seem to sanction. (Martin, Discourses, 156)

The Absent Duty: jihad against

internal enemies

Abd al-Salam Faraj (d. 1982), one-time member of the Muslim Brotherhood argues for the central importance of jihad to Muslim identity: fard ayn, not fard kifaya
current leaders of the Muslim world apostates, similar to the Mongols of the 13th century: outwardly believers, inwardly not the necessary jihad is the one which involves fighting, not just calling to God

Reacting to Desert Storm and Bosnia

Battle of fatwas on whether attacking Muslims with non-Muslim support is licit; Tantawi vs Bin Laden Bin Laden: jihad an individual duty, all tactics permissible as long as the aggression of the nonMuslims continues Not just Palestine, but also Bosnia (think of Srebrenica) and Chechnya examples of the ethical failure of Western modernity

Situating the post-modern Jihad

Nonetheless, there is an aspect to the writings of Abd al-Salam Faraj, Osama bin Laden, and other more radical theorists of jihad that must not be lost sight of. The deeply classical manner of these fatwas and writings, despite their radical tone and departure from the quietism of traditional Sunni theories of jihad, reminds us that scholars must read and interpret these texts as part of a very traditional theological genre . . . What seems to be relentlessly modern or postmodern about this literature is that is has become globalized in print and on the internet, attracting attention and commentary by non-jurist Muslims and non-Muslims across the world. (Martin, Discourses, 168)

So what happened to traditional Islam?

questioning the tradition of tradition: if youre traditional would you know it?
Although the tradition of talking about tradition has grown, it has not yet adequately appreciated a dimension of tradition that it has implicitly recognized: tradition as processas a modality of change, as a way, but not the way, in which any society can cope with universal problems of human existence, such as legitimacy, authority, and change itself. (Waldman, Tradition, 326)

Sharia dress (Egypt)

Tradition as a Modality of Change

Marilyn R. Waldman, 1986

Balto (Sanaa, Yemen)

Tradition as a Modality of Change

Marilyn R. Waldman, 1986

Abayya (Saudi Arabia)

Tradition as a Modality of Change

Marilyn R. Waldman, 1986

Burqa (Sohar, Oman)

Tradition as a Modality of Change

Marilyn R. Waldman, 1986

Chador (Iran)

Tradition as a Modality of Change

Marilyn R. Waldman, 1986

Thinking about Shari dress, balto, abaa, burqa and chador . . .

Although it would be easy for an outsider to lump all of these phenomena together as examples of reversion or fundamentalism, none is truly fundamental and each differs in important ways from the others. The appearance of a new form of proper Islamic dress for women in Egypt, Shari dress, is implicitly a rejection of the traditional clothing Egyptian women used to wear earlier in this century (as well as before) to symbolize their piety and modesty. Its nontraditional and non-Western form expresses the Egyptian womans ability to be true to an important inherited religious value and also to the demands and opportunities of modernity. (Waldman, Tradition, 335).

Coming back to Jihad

through Waldman, we can see the Salafi (ancestral) movement as utterly modern again, a religious tradition cannot be reified, falls apart into a succession of practices which demand contextualization, which are contingent upon social and political events

what then are the relevant contexts with regard to Bin Laden, Abd al-Salam Faraj and other activist Muslims who stress the individual duty of jihad?