The Mythic Foundations of Radical Islam
by John Calvert
Orbis, Winter 2004
John Calvert is assistant professor of history at Creighton University in
Omaha, Nebraska.
Mankind today is on the brink of a precipice, not because of the danger of
complete annihilation which is hanging over its head- this being just a
symptom and not the real disease- but because humanity is devoid of those
vital values for its healthy development and real progress. Even Western
scholars realize that their civilization is unable to present healthy values
for the guidance of mankind and does not possess anything to satisfy its own
conscience or justify its existence.1
These are the words of the Egyptian Islamist ideologue Sayyid Qutb
(1906-1966), taken from his 1964 treatise Maalim fi al-Tariq ("Milestones"),
which is to the Islamist movement what Lenin's "What is to be Done?" was to
Marxism. In this passage Qutb expresses one of the most enduring themes in
radical Islamist discourse: that the Western-dominated world order is in the
grip of spiritual decline and decadence. He goes on to explain why only
Islam, properly understood, is in a position to remedy this. According to
Qutb, the crass materialism and selfish individualism of the current age are
features not only of Western secular societies, but also of ostensibly
Muslim nations such as Egypt. True Muslims, he writes, have an obligation to
challenge this global decadence and restore the full sovereignty of God over
every area of life. Qutb argued for a vanguard of believers to spearhead a
revolt against the powers that be, thus releasing man from servitude so that
he could serve God alone.2
Beyond vague references to the imperative use of "power," Qutb was not
precise as to the form this jihad should take. His execution at the hands of
Egypt's Abd al-Nasir regime in 1966 precluded his elaborating on this point.
But there was no doubt in the minds of many who were inspired by his vision
of the "Islamic imperative"3 that it required immediate and violent
confrontation with the forces of state. Throughout the 1980s and '90s,
underground organizations such as Egypt's Jamaa Islamiyya and Islamic Jihad,
of which Al Qaeda lieutenant Ayman al-Zawahiri was a member, drew upon
Qutb's radical thought to justify attacks against leading members of the
Egyptian political establishment. Islamic Jihad assassinated Egyptian
president Anwar Sadat in 1981, and in 1995 militants made an attempt on the
life of President Hosni Mubarak. Over those same years, radical Islamist
groups with Qutbian-style maximal agendas emerged in other countries,
including Algeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia. These and other
manifestations of radical Islam were equally influenced by local conditions
and a variety of religious traditions (for instance, Saudi Arabian
Wahhabism), but all responded to Qutb's exhortation to challenge forcefully
the Western hegemonic order in the name of "true Islam." Qutb had provided
the ideological template of contemporary radical Islam, which would be taken
up by Al Qaeda's al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden, as well as Abdallah Azzam,
bin Laden's Palestinian mentor.
The core concepts of radical Islamist dissent constitute a political myth of
Islam's rebirth as a vital force in world affairs, to be attained by
confrontation with the West. Composed of simplistic images that speak to the
despair and alienation felt by many Muslims, as well as to their hope for
the future, the myth addresses the fundamental malaise of modern Islam, the
"sense that something has gone wrong with Islamic history."4 Not only does
this myth function to mobilize activists in support of Islamic resurgence,
it can also provide the necessary justification for acts of terror. As
British journalist Fergal Keane observes:
To be capable of sustaining a savage war against the enemy, to be able to
subject him and his loved ones to a relentless campaign of terror- a war in
which the normal rules, the concept of a 'warrior's honour' are abandoned-
it is necessary to narrow the mind, make it subject to a very limited range
of ideas and influences.5
At this mythic level, radical Islam shares points of similarity with
political opposition movements of other times and places, including most
notably the secular nationalist movements, which likewise call for
collective reassertion. Keane cites the IRA gunmen of the 1920s, whose
political consciousness and willingness to adopt political violence were
shaped by the vision of a reborn Ireland, but other examples could equally
be cited, including the Revisionist Zionist movement in British-mandate
Palestine and the various articulations of Arab nationalism, such as
Baathism. These movements differ on a multitude of points, including their
commitment to "direct action," but all share the underlying premise of
community regeneration through struggle.
To be sure, radical Islam differs from secular nationalism in its
affirmation of the metaphysical over the worldly, but it is nonetheless
expressive of a common, deep-seated drive to attain self-transcendence and a
sense of belonging by pursuing radical solutions to alleged ills. Viewed in
this way, radical Islam sheds some of its exoticism and acquires a degree of
historical normalcy.
The "Quickening Fire" of Myth
The term "myth" has several meanings. Here, it is used not in the common
meaning of an unfounded and false notion, but in the sense of a body of
beliefs that express the fundamental, largely unconscious or assumed
political values of a society- in short, as a dramatic expression of
ideology. The details narrated in a political myth may be true or false;
most often they meld truth and fiction in ways that are difficult to
distinguish. What is important, however, is that the myth's narrative
elements are perceived and embraced as true. To be effective, political myth
must engage not reason, but belief and faith.6 British philosopher Terry
Eagleton notes that "Men and women engaged in conflict and struggle do not
live by theory alone. . . . It is not in defense of the doctrine of base and
superstructure that men and women are prepared to embrace hardship and
persecution in the course of political struggle."7 Shared myths and symbols
define their social being. Radical Islamist activists and ideologues appear
to have intuited this requirement in drawing upon images from the Islamic
heritage that facilitate setting community boundaries and determining the
nature of the political and social struggles in which they are engaged.
A number of Western thinkers have examined the non-rational and
inspirational forces that underlay ideologies, including Vilfredo Pareto,
Carl Schmitt, and Georges Sorel, the father figure of political myth theory.
Sorel's observations about the nature of symbolic images and their
relationship to political action remain useful in understanding the mythic
dimensions of ideologies.8 Political myth may well denote the irrational
mainspring of all ideologies, "irrespective of their surface rationality or
apparent common sense."9 Yet its galvanizing potential has made it a
prominent feature of dissident movements that stand in opposition to a
dominant order, however that order may be defined. Given the distinctive
antiestablishment orientation of Islamist discourse, that too is enmeshed in
myth, authorizing opposition to the status quo with reference to emotionally
charged symbols that connect Muslims to paradigmatic moments of their
past.10 Construed as pointers of timeless truths, these symbols signal
fidelity to the cause of Islamic moral rearmament, which, following victory,
its adherents hope to articulate in forms of association that express
sentiments of value and dignity.
Yet it would be incorrect to label radical Islam a utopian ideology, in the
strict meaning of that term. Whereas utopias are models of the future based
upon speculative discussion and planning, radical Islam is the expression of
the collective conviction intuited in the moment. Much like fascism, radical
Islam makes the revolutionary process central to its concerns at the expense
of a fully thought-out "'orthodox stage when the dynamics of society settle
down to becoming 'steady-state,' namely when its internal and external
enemies have been eliminated and new institutions created."11 In other
words, the mythic horizons of radical Islam do not extend beyond the stage
of struggle to envision precisely what a "proper" Islamic state should look
like.
Perhaps uniquely among Islamists, Sayyid Qutb explicitly understood this
emotional aspect of the Islamist discourse. In his mature writings, composed
in prison between 1956 and 1964, Qutb wrote that the Islamic movement was
propelled by the catalytic power of the religious imagination, not by
logical arguments meant to convince Islamism's detractors. In Qutb's view,
Islam was not a truth to be analyzed, but an ensemble of images that stirred
souls and called Muslims to action. The source of this power, he explained,
resided in the Quran's aesthetic propensities, especially its unique
abilities of artistic description, which enabled readers and listeners to
experience the divine message palpably. Here Qutb took cues from the
classical Islamic doctrine of the ijaz, the Quran's "inimitability," which
prompted Muslim scholars to identify the stylistic and rhetorical
characteristics of the Quran that set it apart from human-produced
literature. In Qutb's view, just as the artist speaks through forms that,
gathered into a unity, possess the ability to affect emotionally the
individual consciousness, so too does God communicate to men by means of
images designed to render absolute value as intuitive.12
All of this is reminiscent of Sorel's understanding of political myth's
ability to create an "epic state of mind" in its adherents. But whereas in
Sorel's view the mythic élan lay within subjective consciousness, for Qutb
it was the expression of the individual's faith in God and of unquestioning
obedience to His will. In this sense, Qutb lived the purported truth of myth
rather than conceived it, as Sorel did, as an instrument of expediency whose
grounding in truth was unimportant. For Qutb, belief preceded understanding
and was the primary mode of self-alteration. He instructed his Muslim
readers that if they had forgotten the Quran's method of fusing theory and
practice, such a method was used by the first, exemplary generation of
Muslims in the time of the Prophet Muhammad and had been the secret of that
generation's worldly success. According to Qutb, specific deliberations for
the formulation of a new body of Islamic laws (sharia) relevant to the
modern era would take place only once God's sovereignty on earth had been
reestablished.13 In the meantime, Muslims had an obligation to struggle in
the name of the Islamic idea until victory was complete.
Notions of Islamic Decline and Rebirth
Given the prevalence of the rebirth myth across cultures and eras, it is not
surprising that the impetus to renewal within Islam has a long pedigree
itself, predating by many centuries the emergence of radical Islam in the
middle and late decades of the twentieth century. For purposes of
comparison, it is useful to situate the radical Islamist discourse in this
broader Islamic context.
In the medieval and early modern periods, Muslims living in putatively
decadent times often resorted to a hadith (reported saying) of the Prophet
Muhammad that told of the mujaddid (the renewer of the faith), who would
appear at the outset of each century to combat creedal innovations (bidai)
and restore Islam to its original purity and vigor. Important mujaddidin
included the Umayyad caliph Umar II (early eighth century); the Baghdad
scholar Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (d. 1111); the influential Naqshbandi Sufi from
India, Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi (d. 1624); and Usman dan Fodio, who founded the
Fulani empire in what is now northern Nigeria in 1804-8. Sometimes rebels
appeared in various parts of the Islamic world claiming to be the millennial
figure of the Shiite or Sunni Mahdi or his precursor. Muhammad Ahmad (d.
1885), the charismatic Sufi leader who sought to rid the Sudan of the
disruptive features of Egyptian and British colonialism, is perhaps the
best-known Mahdist claimant within the Sunni tradition.14
The religious modernist reformers of the late-nineteenth and twentieth
centuries put a different spin on the mythic impulse to Islamic rebirth. In
contrast to the mostly indigenous concerns of earlier and traditional
revivalists, these men constructed understandings of Islam that implicitly
or explicitly addressed the political, economic, and cultural dominance of
the European nations, which by that time enjoyed unprecedented degrees of
influence and power in the swath of Muslim lands that stretched from Morocco
to the Malay archipelago. The decline of Islam as a worldly force was a
terrible blow to the reformers, who took seriously the Quran's pronouncement
that Muslims constituted "the best community raised for mankind" (Quran
3:110). To this extent they shared in the general sentiment of Muslims of
the age. Given the debilitating circumstances of colonialism, they sought
"to set their history going again in full vigor, so that Islamic society may
once again flourish as a divinely society should and must."15
The reformist trend was best represented in its formative stage by the
Turkish Namik Kemal (d. 1888), the Egyptian Muhammad Abduh (d. 1905), and
the Indian Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan (d. 1898), all of whom aimed to accommodate
Islam to the requirements of global modernity by fashioning historically
specific, metaphorical, or even purely apologetic understandings of the
Quran. This approach enabled them to justify in Islamic terms the adoption
of European political, economic, and civic institutions, which they regarded
as progressive and modern. Thus, for example, several reformers, including
Namik Kemal and Abduh, mobilized the old Islamic principle of shura
(consultation) to legitimize the writing up of political constitutions in
their countries.
These reformers expressed the regenerative dimension of their thought in
terms of "progress," an Enlightenment concept that influenced the names they
used to describe their particular movements.16 This critical, modernist
trend continues in the present period, although in a much different,
contemporary form, and is exemplified by the figures Hasan Hanafi, Nasr
Hamid Abu Zayd of Egypt, the Iranian Abdul Karim Sorush, and the Syrian
Muhammad Shahrur, all of whom, in various ways, call for a reformed Islam
that is socially inclusive, open to change, yet authentic to basic Quranic
principles. As a mostly intellectual tendency, the trend exists on the
margins of Muslim society, making very little impact on the way people live
their lives or the way states conduct their business.
Like the reformers, radical Islamists also react to what they perceive to be
the ongoing reversal of Muslim fortunes, but in a way that breeds a sense of
distance from the West rather than accommodation with the foundations of its
civilization. In this view, far from a benevolent mentor to Muslim peoples,
the West is an adversary intent on the political and cultural conquest of
the Islamic world. As evidence of Western disregard for Muslim
sensibilities, radical Islamist ideologues point to the fates of beleaguered
Palestinian, Bosnian, Kashmiri, and Chechen Muslims, all of whom are seen to
suffer as a consequence of policies implemented by the Western states and
their regional allies. Special odium is reserved for the United States,
whose historical support for the State of Israel and long-term presence in
the Gulf (recently institutionalized in the occupation of Iraq) are viewed
as components of a seamless policy aimed at undermining Muslim aspirations.
As is well known, radicals like bin Laden and al-Zawahiri talk of a
"Zionist-Crusader alliance." At issue for the radicals also is the pervasive
influence in Muslim societies of secular Western values, which, in their
view, work to destroy the distinct features of Islamic culture. As a result
of these Western policies, al-Zawahiri writes, "The Muslims in general and
the Arabs in particular are left with nothing that is dear to them."17
Radical Islamists proclaim the resurrection of Islam as the necessary
panacea to these perceived indignities and injustices. Against the Western
hegemony of what constitutes the "good life," they represent Islam not in
terms of privatized religion but as a comprehensive ideological system
(nizam) covering all aspects of the state, economy and society. Once the
Quranic principles have been implemented in their entirety, Muslim societies
will find their God-given potential and slough off the defeatism that has
plagued them for the past two centuries. Strengthened thus, Muslims will be
in a position to defeat Islam's enemies and reestablish the universal
caliphate. Although, as we shall see, there is much that is novel in the
radical Islamist discourse, it also has some important resemblances to
religious revolts of the past. This is true of the totalizing aspect of
Islam, which was often featured in earlier jihadist and Mahdist efforts to
renew Islam against its enemies.18
Critical assessments of U.S. policy and Western values are common to Muslims
(and others) who chafe at the imbalance of power in the world. Many of these
will support their positions on world affairs with reasoned arguments, and
dismiss the rhetoric of the Islamists as reductionist and hyperbolic, even
while appreciating the kernels of "truth" lurking in the discourse. Other
Muslims might sympathize with the radical Islamists' grievances against the
West, yet shy away from outright activism on behalf of the cause. Indeed,
many who expressed genuine horror at the 9/11 attacks on America
nevertheless suggested gingerly, "America had it coming." Interviews of
Cairo metro passengers conducted by the Cairo Times in the weeks following
the 9/11 attacks are revealing in this regard. The interviewees consistently
focused on what they considered to be the provocations of American foreign
policy, especially regarding the Palestine issue.19 There is a small but
crucial number, however, for whom the one-dimensional imagery of the radical
Islamist ideology is especially compelling. The profiles of captured or
killed lower-level Al Qaeda operatives suggest an ideal type: young men of
conservative religious and middle- or lower-middle-class backgrounds, caught
between cultures and often living lives of alienation and anomie. The
radical Islamist myth created by the ideologues gives shape and direction to
these outsiders' anger, which is as likely to have a personal source as to
derive from political grievances.20 In gravitating to the mythic heart of
radical Islam, these young men are able to identify their activities with a
"sacred and transcendent cause," thus insulating the propositions and
preferences of the movement "against criticism by mere mortals."21
The Mythic Core of Radical Islam
The Islamist myth harnesses aesthetic power to present the cardinal features
of its worldview. The mythic substance of this ideology- the ensemble of
images and symbols that crystallize for Islamists the struggle against the
political and cultural power of the West and its allies in the Muslim world-
is the vision of Islam's renewal. In common with millenarians and
nationalists the world over, radical Islam addresses the past in an attempt
to address the decadent present, aiming to build a new society by claiming
kinship to the glorious and healthy eras of Islam's past.
The starting point of Qutb and the ideologically related activists of Al
Qaeda is the concept of the umma (global community of Muslims) as a superior
historical and spiritual reality. Governed by Quranic principles, it
reflects the divine law of the universe (namus). To live in accordance with
this law, manifestly expressed in the sharia, is to exist in harmony with
the natural order of the cosmos, a condition "entirely beneficial for
mankind, as the only guarantee against any discord in life."22 In the
activists' view, the community represented by the Prophet Muhammad and his
companions (al-salaf al-salih) at Medina reflected this harmony to its
fullest extent. Theirs was a unique generation whose example in matters of
belief and practice was worthy of emulation, who comprised a golden age
similar in the nature of its ennobling imagery to the glorious pasts
represented in other communalistic-type ideologies. The tracts of Abdullah
Azzam, Osama bin Laden, and other Salafi-oriented activists are replete with
quotations from and references to the pious ancestors of the faith, for
clues of how best to live the life of the Quran.
Sayyid Qutb articulated the importance of deference to the divine Will in
his avowal of God's sovereignty (hakimiyya) over the universe.23 The term is
not found in the Quran, nor can it be traced in the normative statements of
classical Islamic political theory. This is because the concept of hakimiyya
is a uniquely modern one, plausible only within the context of modern state
formation. As Cambridge sociologist Anthony Giddens observes, modern state
authorities exercise sovereignty because they are able, unlike their
medieval counterparts, "to make laws and effectively sanction their upkeep;
exert a monopoly over the disposal of the means to violence; control basic
policies relating to the internal political or administrative form of
government; and dispose of a national economy that is the basis of its
revenue."24 Recognized in international law, state sovereignty became the
legitimizing principle of the discrete political units that emerged in the
early modern period.
Qutb posits hakimiyya as the exclusive prerogative of God, who alone is
qualified to fashion principles appropriate to the proper functioning of a
social, political, and economic order. To submit to the supervision of
secular authorities and humanly devised institutions is to surrender to the
whims and selfish interests of imperfect worldly forces.25 The rule of man
over man, according to Qutb, can lead only to oppression and the stifling of
man's God-given nature. "The earth belongs to Allah and should be purified
for Allah, and it cannot be purified for Him unless the banner 'No god
except Allah' is unfurled across the earth. Man is a slave to Allah
alone."26 According to Qutb, the divine origin of Islam's basic principles
means that they do not change or evolve. Rather, they are constant (thabit),
immutable to historically engendered transformation and environmental
variation. They are also comprehensive (shamil), making no distinction
between religion proper and worldly affairs.27 Indeed, Qutb upbraids those
who would distinguish between the ibadat (devotional duties owed to God) and
the muamalat (aspects of the sharia relating to interpersonal relations):
"No one who ably understands religion could conceive of a divine religion
which limits its influence to people's emotions (wijdan) and exercises no
influence over their daily activities, [for] it is not natural for religion
to be separated from the affairs of the world." And yet, according to the
radical activists, the natural order of Islam has in the modern era been
contaminated by the mentality encouraged by liberal individualism and by
other forces unleashed by Western secular society.
Qutb took the lead in equating this condition with the jahiliyya (Time of
Ignorance).28 Unlike hakimiyya, jahiliiya is a Quranic term well placed
within the body of classical Islamic discourse.29 Traditionally, most Muslim
commentators took the word to denote the condition of disbelief current
among the Arabs of the Peninsula prior to the advent of Islam's civilizing
mission. Qutb, however, provided the term with a wider application relevant
to the political thrust of his Islamist discourse. He applied it to those
forces that, in his view, worked against the implementation of the divine
directive throughout history and were especially prominent in his own time.
Qutb regarded jahiliyya as unrelenting and pervasive, especially in the
modern period, and included the societies of the Muslim world in this
category.
Like the Egyptian jihadists who followed Qutb, bin Laden appropriated this
concept of rebuke, melding it with the Wahhabi-oriented traditions of
intolerance towards difference, which he gained from his upbringing in Saudi
Arabia. Against the tendency of religious tolerance and accommodation
fostered by the classical Islamic juristic discourse, the Wahhabis drew a
sharp distinction between those who upheld what they considered to be the
true and authentic understanding of Islam and "iniquitous others," including
Shiites, Sufis, and "infidel" Jews and Christians. Yet there always existed
the possibility that circumstances might turn the Wahhabi discourse against
its original benefactors in the House of Saud. In an interview conducted
with Al Jazeera TV in October 2001, bin Laden was quick to pronounce
anathema on those whom he considered as "traitors within." Isolating from
its interpretive context the Quranic verse, "O you who believe! Take not the
Jews and Christians as friends" (5:51), he equated the scholars and princes
of the Saudi regime, and indeed all "so-called" Muslim governments in league
with the West, with the "hypocrites" (al-munafiqin) who connived with the
Jews against the Prophet at Medina. Bin Laden comments, "So the ones who
take the disbelievers as leaders, friends, and protectors, then they have
disbelieved in Allah and His Prophet."30
Because Islam demands concrete implementation in society, it follows for the
radial activists that it is incumbent upon Muslims to confront the jahili
forces. In their opinion, this can only be accomplished by reactivating the
Islamic principle of jihad (striving), a particularly urgent need given the
current levels of disbelief and injustice in the world. As Azzam writes,
"Anybody who looks into the state of Muslims today will find that their
greatest misfortune is their abandonment of Jihad (due to love of this world
and abhorrence of death). Because of that, the tyrants have gained dominance
over the Muslims in every aspect and in every land."31 Despite the single
meaning that the activists give the term, jihad is, in fact, a complex
concept "with multiple interpretive possibilities."32 In the premodern
period, jihad variously referred to efforts to reaffirm, defend, or
otherwise support the propagation of the faith. The classical doctrine of
the jurists tended to emphasize proactive interpretations of the term, which
privileged the "sword verses" of the Quran.33 These particular
interpretations were used to justify the rapid conquests by Muslim armies in
the early medieval period. In Sufi discourse, the term denoted the highly
personal struggle to tame one's base desires and debilitating habits.34 The
activists' understanding of jihad is obviously closer to the classical
jurists' than to the Sufis', but even so they apply meanings to the concept
that go beyond anything envisioned by medieval Quran exegetes, such as
al-Qurtubi and Ibn Taymiyya, who addressed the issue.
Azzam and bin Laden make much of the classical juridical stipulation,
related, for instance, by al-Qurtubi, which made jihad a "compulsory duty on
every single Muslim" (fard ayn) in cases where Muslim land is occupied by
non-Muslims, as in Palestine, Afghanistan, Kashmir, and Saudi Arabia. Jihad,
in this understanding, stands with belief, fasting, and prayer as an
obligation of the faith. This stipulation contrasted, according to these
activists, with the "collective obligation to jihad" (fard kifaya), which
made it the responsibility of an official, delimited force such as an army,
only.35 It is precisely this understanding of jihad as an individual
obligation that forms the basis for bin Laden's infamous 1998 self-styled
"fatwa" against Jews and Crusaders, in which he makes it obligatory for
Muslims to kill Americans and their allies "in any country in which it is
possible, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa mosque and holy mosque [Mecca]
from their grip."36 Again, bin Laden refers to a single verse of scripture
bereft of wider context to justify his willingness to kill innocents: "And
if you punish (your enemy, O you believers in the Oneness of Allah), then
punish them with the like of that with which you were afflicted" (16:126).
As bin Laden states explicitly, "they kill our innocent civilians, so why
not kill theirs."
To sum up, the radical Islamists see their advocacy of jihad as part of a
continuing and unchanging tradition of Islamic revivalism. The heroes of
Islamic reassertion were the Mamluks in medieval times, who, under the
spiritual guidance of Damascene scholar Ibn Taymiyya, successfully
confronted the ravages and iniquities of their Tartar kinsmen; Nur al-Din
Zangi and Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi, who unified Greater Syria in the twelfth
century; and in more recent times, the Mahdi of the Sudan, Umar al-Mukhtar
of Libya, and Abd al-Hamid Ibn Badis of Algeria. Each of these holy warriors
struggled against the usurping authority of tyrants and colonialist
overlords. According to the essentialist vision of the radical Islamists,
the Crusades and the imperialist onslaughts of the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries were cut from the same cloth. All battles, including those
currently in progress in Afghanistan and Iraq, are effectively identical in
terms of their primary objective: the implementation of God's rule over the
earth.
The Revolutionary Vanguard
Radical Islamists see a vanguard of true believers (talia) as the agents of
revolution.37 According to the radicals, the Islamic revolution cannot be
left to the people because their minds have been contaminated by the alien
ideas of decadent forces. Moreover, the creation of a small vanguard unit
satisfies strategic needs and the requirements of security. In fact, "Al
Qaeda" (literally, "the base") was initially founded in Afghanistan as a
center of training and indoctrination for a vanguard of holy warriors in the
anti-Soviet war of the 1980s.
The situation of Islamist vanguardism is analogous to, and may well be a
derivation of, the Bolshevik experience, where Lenin created a vanguard of
dedicated political agents in order to diffuse socialism to the masses. Yet,
in keeping with their penchant for cultural authenticity, the radicals have
been quick to look to sources of inspiration within their own tradition in
order legitimize an organization of this kind. In their view, such a
strategy meshed with the example of the nascent Muslim community at Mecca,
which, under the leadership of the Prophet, separated itself from the
surrounding pagan society as a prelude to its eventual victory. In keeping
with the moral resolve of this first community of Muslims, the radicals
insist that the beliefs and conceptual grounding of the vanguard be pure and
its members devoted to serving God alone. Qutb writes how, as part of his
own preparation, he purified himself of forty years' worth of jahili
knowledge and culture gleaned during his years as a journalist and literary
critic.38
Radical Islamism is a fundamental, though disturbing, aspect of the modern
experience of Muslims, anchored in the historical record of suppression by
imperialist outsiders. Through recourse to the power of images drawn from
the cultural memory of Muslims, radical Islamists have been able to craft a
novel and uncompromising understanding of Islam, one whose core myth aims to
inspire a movement of purifying, cathartic community rebirth. By demonizing
the political and cultural moorings of the Western "other" and envisioning
principles for an as-yet-unrealized "community of virtue," they narrowly
circumscribe the range of legitimate political discourse. As Sayyid Qutb
well understood, Quranic images possess sufficient power to transform theory
into practice.
[1] Sayyid Qutb, Milestones, revised and trans. Ahmad Zaki Hammad
(Indianapolis: American Trust Publications, 1990), p. 5.
[2] Ibid, p. 47 and passim.
[3] The expression is Yvonne Haddad's, "Sayyid Qutb: Ideologue of Islamic
Revival," in Voices of Resurgent Islam, ed. John L. Esposito (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1983), p. 77 ff.
[4] Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Islam in Modern History (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1957), p. 41.
[5] Fergal Keane, "The Mind of the Terrorist,: The BBC Reports on America,
its Allies and Enemies, and the Counter Attack on Terrorism, eds. J. Baxter
and M. Downing (Woodstock and New York: Overlook Press, 2001), p. 56.
[6] George W. Egerton, "Collective Security as Political Myth: Liberal
Internationalism and the League of Nations in Politics and History," The
International History Review, Nov. 1983, p. 498.
[7] Terry Eagleton, Ideology: An Introduction (London and New York: Verso,
1991), p. 190.
[8] On Pareto, see ibid, p. 186; on Schmitt, see Heinrich Meier, The Lesson
of Carl Schmitt, trans. M. Brainard (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1998). Sorel's ideas are most fully expressed in his Reflexions sur la
violence (1906), trans T. E. Hulm and J. Roth as Reflections on Violence
(London: Collier Books, 1950). See also David Gross, "Myth and Symbol in
Georges Sorel," in Seymour Drescher, David Sabean and Allan Sharlin, eds.,
Political Symbolism in Modern Europe: Essays in Honor of George L. Mosse
(New Brunswick and London: Transaction Books, 1982), p. 109; and J. L.
Talmon, "The Legacy of Georges Sorel," Encounter, Feb. 1970, pp. 47-60.
[9] Roger Griffin, The Nature of Fascism (London and New York: Routledge,
1993), p. 27.
[10] See, e.g., the comments of Malise Ruthven, A Fury for God: The Islamist
Attack on America (London and New York: Granata Books, 2001), pp. 207-8.
[11] Roger Griffen, The Nature of Fascism, p. 39.
[12] Issa J. Boullata, "Sayyid Qutb's Literary Appreciation of the Qur'an,"
in Issa J. Boullata, ed., Literary Structures of Religious Meaning in the
Qur'an (London: Curzon Press, 2000), pp. 354-71.
[13] Milestones, pp. 13, 39.
[14] A good summary of the Islamic revivalist tradition, especially its
manifestations in the 18th and 19th centuries, is Nikkie R. Keddie, "The
Revolt of Islam, 1700 to 1993: Comparative Considerations and Relations to
Imperialism, Comparative Studies in Society and History, July 1994, pp.
463-87.
[15] Smith, Islam in Modern History, p. 41.
[16] See Charles Kurzman, "Recovering the History of Modernist Islam," ISIM
Newsletter, 12, June 2003, p. 32; and Kurzman, ed., Modernist Islam,
1840-1940: A Sourcebook (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).
[17] Ayman al-Zawahiri, Knights under the Prophet's Banner, published in
al-Sharq al-Awsat
[18] Keddie, "The Revolt of Islam," p. 465.
[19] Cairo Times, Sept. 27-Oct. 3, 2001.
[20] See the revealing Seattle Times reportage on Ahmed Ressam, "The
Terrorist Within," June 23-July 7, 2002.
[21] Bruce Lincoln, Holy Terrors: Thinking about Religion after September 11
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003) p. 55. Lincoln's discussion of
the "metadiscursive" nature of religion is suggestive in this regard. See
esp. pp. 1-18, 51-76.
[22] Milestones, p. 75.
[23] See Calvert, "The Islamist Syndrome of Cultural Confrontation," Orbis,
Spring 2002.
[24] Anthony Giddens, The Nation-State and Violence (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1987), p. 282.
[25] Qutb, Mustaqbal, pp. 9-11; Milestones, pp. 6-7 and passim.
[26] Milestones, p. 22.
[27Qutb, Khasa'is al-Tasawwur al-Islami wa Muqawwimatuhu, 2nd printing
(Beirut: Dar al-Shuruq, n.d.), 107ff.
[28] See Calvert, "The Islamist Syndrome."
[29] The term is found four times in the Quran: 3:154, 5:50, 33:33, 48:26.
[30] At http://www.robert-fisk.com/usama_interview_21oct2001.htm; Lincoln,
Holy Terrors, p. 35.
[31] Abdullah 'Azzam Join the Caravan,
http://www.soa.uc.edu/org/mssn/joinaa.html
[32] Roxanne L. Euben, "Jihad and Political Violence," Current History, Nov.
2002, p. 368.
[33] Quran 9:5, 9:29, 22:39, 3:157-8. See Rudolf Peters, Jihad in Classical
and Modern Islam (Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 1996), 2-3 and
passim.
[34] Annemarie Schimel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1975), p. 112.
[35] Azzam, Join the Caravan.
[36] See the full text in Barry Rubin and Judith Colp Rubin (eds.),
Anti-American Terrorism in the Middle East: A Documentary Reader (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 149-57.
[37] Milestones, p. 9 and passim.
[38] Ibid, pp. 14-15, 96, and 112.
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