Part 6: The Muslim Brotherhood (or Brethren) and its Splinter Groups, Fellow Travellers and Off-shoots

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Out of the perceived successes and failures of the men and movements discussed in the last few posts and others, both secular and religious, came the ideology of the Muslim Brethren. It also arose first in Egypt and out of Egypt’s history.

Egypt was a ferment of ideas in the 19^th and 20^th Centuries. It had emerged from direct Ottoman rule with the ascent to rule of the modernising Albanian, Muhammad ‘Ali, in 1804-5 only to be dominated by the colonising British and financing French. An anti-Western revolt in the late 1870s and early 1880s led by Colonel Ahmad Urabi had led to further British domination. Al Ahram newspaper had also begun and began to be influential in these decades with contributions from the likes of Muhammad ‘Abduh and Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani.

By 1922, the regime had achieved official independence albeit with the continuation of real reliance on the British. Nationalist ideology had been considered as it was being in Europe notably by the Fascist and Nazi party governments of Central and Southern Europe. The official removal of the style of caliph from the Turkish state system would soon provoke debate in Egypt concerning the return of the style in Egypt. The regime was formally liberal democratic but did not appear to be living up to what was implied by that descriptor and Egyptians were also attracted to the other European trends of socialism and Communism. There were also two trends, a secularising trend and a trend towards Western dress and pastimes, neither of which appealed to the many devout Muslims of the heartland of Egypt. The new secular Westernised example of Turkey appeared threatening to those who devoured the writings of Messrs ‘Abduh and Afghani. The Europeanisation of the giving of charity at lavish parties as adopted mainly by the urban and relatively elite upper classes was especially irksome to these devout people. There seemed to be an inherent contradiction in such an excessive event being devoted to alleviating poverty which warranted righting and thus a reform movement was born in an attempt to collect charity more properly and also promote the spread of the proper practices of Islam.

The idea for a Muslim charity organisation to compete with the hated Western model came first from the charismatic Hasan al-Banna (1906 – 1949). He had achieved the status of Effendi by a combination of religious and secular studies at the Dar al-‘Ulūm at the new University of Cairo. After thus achieving teaching registration and moving to Isma’iliyya to teach in the relatively secular state high school system there, he formed the Muslim Brotherhood (or Brethren) in 1928 in his new town. Upon later moving to Cairo, he also set up a branch there.

Each branch referred to itself as a family (usra) and al-Banna preferred the overall title of group (jama’a) rather than party (Hizb), which was used in its plural form in the Qur’an with negative connotations and so is unfortunately an offensive term to some Muslims.

Despite not being formally a party, it has had an ambiguous role in Egyptian politics since and has come to play a role in Arab and Muslim politics as well with branches in many countries. Part of its success has certainly been due to a unique access to a speaking platform (and ‘public space’ in terms of the theory of German social philosopher, Jürgen Habermas) not available to secular parties, the Mosque. As a result, secular politicians such as Yasser Arafat in Palestine in seeking to reach a religious audience have been influenced in turn by leaders of the Brethren (as well as Palestinian Christian leaders, incidentally). Arafat, though a secular politician, was first influenced by the Brotherhood much earlier, however, as a student in Cairo. Finally, however, the corruption of his Palestinian Authority government led to the election of the religious Hamas government. Secular military governments in Pakistan (of General Zia ul-Haq) and Sudan (of General Ja’far Numayri) have also found it convenient to work with Islamic figures and parties (for example with the widely educated Hassan al-Turabi and his National Islamic Front in Sudan) with this type of unique access. Numayri, in particular, was somewhat more sympathetic, personally, with Islamism than was ul-Haq. These co-operations were able to bear fruit because the parties did not seek theocracy and were limited to a concern to reform education, which the governments were confident they could control. Saudi Arabia provides a classic example (discussed a few posts ago) of a secular ruler’s (and in fact dynastic) co-operation with a national (also largely dynastic) religious elite beginning with the 18^th Century agreement between Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab and the first major Saudi dynast and continuing until today.

Al-Banna was eloquent, interesting and modern in his speaking style, although he was effectively preaching. Today, his published letters are the main source of our knowledge about his ideas. He appears to have been plainer spoken than most traditional preachers and this style has been subsequently copied by his successors at the helm and in positions of authority in the Brotherhood. His main interests were in the correct education of children in Islam and the building of their characters. He thought an ideal society required and would naturally follow from the kind of piety that he thought this education would bring about. His was a revivalist, activist and fundamentalist (but not violent) version of Islam that his Brotherhood first worked on promoting in Egyptian politics, society and culture.

While he thought that, as Islam was a whole-of-life religion, it was necessary in political life (he used the slogan din wa dawla), the Brotherhood was not active politically until near his death. He thought generally that a leader would be acceptable to Islam provided that s/he was responsible to God and to her/his people (though being a conservative man he would certainly have preferred a male leader) and could provide unity. He favoured a mechanism of popular supervision of government which might make use of a form of constitutional democracy. He certainly did not favour rule of the ulema although he does seem to have regarded one-party rule as less divisive and therefore better than fully pluralistic multi-party democracy.

He was rather vague and perhaps disingenuous in suggesting that God via Islam had dictated the ideal role of women in the world reflected in the tradition roles for women. Although he had no specific programme with respect to women he attracted female members who were later forced to form a breakaway Muslim Sisterhood which did formulate a programme. These women nevertheless generally favoured veiling as a valued symbol of piety and commitment to Islam.

He saw patriotism as compatible with and in fact a form of faith (he noted a Hadith that suggests this). He nevertheless thought of modern European civilisation and its forms of nationalism (which were producing Communism, Fascism and two World Wars in his lifetime) as atheistic and therefore wholly immoral. He had no real ideas on the state of American culture as the US had not been as active in Egypt in his lifetime as Europe had. He also had the idea that Islam could produce an ideal economic system on which he never elaborated much.

Among the Brotherhood’s first converts were naturally educators and education bureaucrats as al-Banna’s first interest was always in education. Several of the novels of Naguib Mahfouz depict the Brotherhood and Communism being the two major ‘grassroots’ players politically in schools in the early years of the mission of the Brotherhood.

The movement soon became more widely political, however, and conditions were not always conducive to non-violent reformism. The year of al-Banna’s assassination, 1949, saw members exchanging assassinations with a repressive Egyptian government. Many in the Brotherhood supported the coup of 1952 which led to Gamal 'Abd al-Nasser’s coming to power but by 1954 Nasser, too, had begun to suspect that the Brotherhood movement planned his assassination and suppressed it until his death, from natural causes, in 1970. These years of brutal suppression, arrest, imprisonment, torture and state sponsored murder of Brotherhood activists in fact radicalised the movement as nothing else could have. Nasser in the meantime had felt forced by Roosevelt’s attitude to seek support from the USSR in his conflicts with British, French and Israeli forces which led the people of Egypt including the newly radicalised Brotherhood to decide that the US did not support the aspirations of the Muslim nation. The Brotherhood now contained a widely disparate variety of thinkers from the modernising moderate law professor ‘Abd al-Qadir ‘Awda to the Sayyid Qutb (see below for more discussion of Qutb), initially a moderate member too, but radicalised by brutal torture in Egyptian gaols.

Anwar Sadat succeeded Nasser and continued the suppression but in his case of both leftists and the Brotherhood, which now saw him as supporting an imperialist US following his infitah (opening up of trade (especially to the West)). At the same time he sought Islamic legitimacy for his policies which was an incitement in itself to this now radical movement. In this context, his public assassination by members of his own security forces in 1981 now seems almost to have been an inevitable consequence of his policies of incitement.

Sayyid Qutb (1906 – 1966) was a contemporary of al-Banna at the University of Cairo’s Dar al-Ulūm and Brotherhood member who outlived him by about two decades to become radicalised by the probably unnecessarily brutal reaction to the Brotherhood of a succession of repressive and paranoid Egyptian governments. His political ideas are especially important today as inspiration for the political and terrorist movement which is now known as al-Qaeda. One of his early interests was actually literary review and he was actually quite moderate, then, in his views. He also became a teacher. He was also in government in his early career acting once as the Minister for Radio. There is evidence that he was once also considered for the position of Minister for Education but was assessed as being too radical, by that time. Several factors combined to radicalise his views in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Firstly, he visited the US to study teaching there and found both the mixing of sexes at dances and the discrimination he himself faced there as a non-white repulsive. He also suffered a total of around 11 years (in two blocks) in the brutal environment of Egyptian incarceration. He was tortured and witnessed the torture of others there.

He was eventually considered too radical by the leadership of the Brethren and was executed by Nasser’s regime. The Brethren continued under Sadat to criticise the posthumous spread of Qutb's writings, which were in fact being misinterpreted for their own reasons by even more radical Brethren splinter groups. He wrote most of his radical and most influential works in his periods of imprisonment, most notably Ma’alim fi-l-Tariq (Signposts along the Way). He also wrote much of his influential commentary on the Qur’an, In the Shade of the Qur’an (Fi Zilal al-Qur’an), in prison, which shows an aesthetic appreciation of the Qur’an reminiscent of Qutb’s early moderate works. His attention to the Qur’an is generally considered fairly scholarly concerning spiritual aspects of the Qur’an but to fall down in its discussion of political aspects.

His works emphasised the concept of jahiliyya (best translated as arrogant, corrupt ignorance) among Muslims which he regards as especially inexcusable given that Muslims are raised to be good Muslims whereas he expects less of truly ignorant non-Muslims who may be somewhat excused for being arrogant about being ignorant of Islam. This idea appears to have fed into the ideologies of violent Islam concerning the validity of the harming of ‘nominal’ Muslims in suicide bombings apparently designed to shake Muslims out of their ignorance. He also took on Maududi’s incorrect reading of God’s hākimiyyah (I will discuss Maududi in a later post). The immorality which he saw all around him appeared to completely disgust him. Nevertheless, he may well have not been a revolutionary, as his preferred method of bringing about his desired changes (as with al-Banna) remained education. Nevertheless, the killers of Sadat and subsequent terrorist organisations were probably inspired by his writings. The groups arising from his writings discussed the necessity for a hijra (emigration) from the corrupt 'Muslim' society and its takfir (sinning or apostasy) into secretive small groups of ‘true’ Muslims. The withdrawal was for the purpose of the spiritual rearmament and renewal necessary before returning to bring about change in the corrupt society. They may also be seen as responding in one sense to the writings of historian, Arnold Toynbee, who was himself an admirer of the work of Ibn Khaldoun.

Both the Brethren and these splinter groups (including ultimately al-Qaeda) remain important in the Islamic world today. The Brotherhood has branches in Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Yemen, Palestine and other Arab countries. The splinter groups have been created by the suppression of the Brethren and there are other radical groups in non-Arab countries that also have an international reach. The FIS (Front Islamique du Salut) in Algeria, the Renaissance Party in Tunisia (where parties cannot legally use words like Islamic in their titles) and at least one Islamic party in Sudan are similar in their aims to the Brotherhood. Thus these parties (as opposed to the splinter groups created by government suppression of the moderate parties) tend to be fairly peaceful and moderate in their intent and aims. Maududi’s Jama’at al-Islamiyya is another moderate example. It is a nasty fact that suppression of moderate parties tends to create two party wings, an accommodationist wing that renounces what the government requires it to and a radical wing which won’t, that ultimately can’t coexist in the same party. The execution of Qutb seems to have been pivotal in producing splinters in Brethren groups.

The Syrian Brotherhood began in the 1940s and was politically active from the 1950s. They produced several MPs in places like Damascus, Aleppo and Hama. In the brief period of Nasser’s control of Syria in the late 1950s and early 1960s, they were suppressed as Nasser, out of an apparently unfounded fear of assassination, was suppressing them in Egypt. The minority ‘Alawite "Shi’a" Ba’ath Party-rule from 1970 by Hafez al-Assad and possibly to a lesser extent later by his son, Bashshar, continued the suppression as they sought to prove their Islamic credentials to the country’s majority Sunnis and at the same time gain and maintain the support of Iran and Iranian pilgrims. Sunnism generally (the majority sect) was somewhat suppressed (ironically as Shi’ism was in Ba’athist Iraq) and ‘Alawites were favoured. As a result, the Sunni Brethren revolted in the period 1979 to 1982 which led to further suppression.

In Jordan as in Syria, the Brethren started in the 1940s. Unlike in any other country in which it has been active, it has always been formally legal in Jordan (if occasionally mistreated by authorities). Before coming close to having a multi-party democratic system from 1989 following peaceful protests as it also had before 1957, Jordan in the meantime eventually prohibited all parties. The Brotherhood, however, escaped the definition of party at that time being viewed instead by both itself and Jordan’s government as a movement. Since the restoration of parties, the Brethren have fielded candidates under the party name, “the Islamic Action Front”. In parliament its members (along with Ba’ath Party and socialist and Communist party MPs) opposed the peace deal negotiated by the government with Israel.

Hamas was one splinter group from the Brothers born during the so-called ‘first intifada’ in Palestine. Hamas means zeal in Arabic but it is also an acronym of HArakat al Muqawama al-ASlami (Movement of Islamic Resistance). Its usual name in Arabic is thus Harakat Hamas (Zeal Movement or Movement of Islamic Resistance Movement). The Israeli government (especially conservative and religious Likud party coalition government) was the suppressor that brought Hamas about and appears to have always wanted to suppress Yasser Arafat’s relatively secular and peaceful Fatah faction of the PLO, finding Hamas useful as a radical enemy to blame for lack of progress in the peace process. The Likud Party may be seen as a virtual mirror of Hamas in Israel which explains why Ariel Sharon formed a new party in order to be able to introduce a policy of disengagement from the West Bank and Gaza that Likud would generally no more countenance than Hamas would face modifying their own claim on Israel.

Al-Qaeda came about when a group inspired by the splinter groups went to war in Afghanistan against the USSR. Its initial leadership group of three had both Brotherhood and non-Brotherhood origins. Usama Bin Laden was brought up in Wahhabi Saudi Arabia as the engineer son of the major construction family in the kingdom. He was not a Brotherhood member but was influenced by two events that both occurred in the 1970s: the Soviet invasion and the Shi’a Iranian revolution (though as a Wahhabi he was a committed anti-Shi’a). The USA was interested in recruiting and supporting and did support fighters like Bin Laden in the war against the USSR in Afghanistan.

Ayman al-Zawahiri was a Muslim Brother. Like Qutb, Zawahiri was jailed, tortured and thus radicalised in Egypt. His views were initially more radical than those of the other two leaders. He first met Bin Laden in Afghanistan as a fellow mujahid and encouraged him to consider using more violence in more situations than the then-current war against invading infidel troops.

‘Abdullah ‘Azzam was probably the least radical of the three. He was a Palestinian teacher of Law at the University of Jordan before travelling to Afghanistan in the mid 1980s to fight. He was the most theoretically disposed of the three leaders and was certainly opposed to the use of violence against civilian targets. It is believed that he was assassinated on al-Zawahiri’s orders essentially for his moderate views.

The war was won and the Taliban, a local group of narrowly focused Islamic ex-students, eventually took control. The three leaders had been successful fighters against invaders and along with many other Arab fighters were now without a cause. As with any large group of veterans, assimilation back into peaceful society is an often painful process and many wanted to find a fight. The name al-Qaeda in fact means "the Base" and refers to a database of men willing to fight for Islam in various parts of the world that was in fact kept by the leaders. Both propaganda and training for the organisation were begun using the internet. Training and development, of course, also needed to be arranged at training camps and these were soon initiated where they could be. Members were soon fighting in Chechnya and Bosnia and 9/11 and the Bali, Madrid and London bombings were a new fight that the group found. Iraq was not a focus of al-Qaeda until the US invasion in 2003 after which time it of course became a major focus as a coalition of 'infidel' countries had invaded an at least nominal Muslim one that was thus potentially ripe for radicalisation. The US had of course supported many of these fighters now fighting against them in Iraq when in Afghanistan. There is also evidence that the radical group Fatah al-Islam that committed acts of violence in the north of Lebanon in 2007 possessed US army field manuals supplied to members by the CIA in Afghanistan. Thus it is fair to say that radicalised ideas of the now quite moderate but still persecuted Muslim Brothers are now being adopted in many corners of the world inspired by persecutions and invasions by the US and US-supported governments in the Middle East.

Part 5: the Turkish Ultra Secularist Experiment - Kemalism - (and its recent relaxation?)

Turkey was of course the central land of the Ottoman Empire as discussed in earlier posts. The Empire participated to an extent in the European state system and European secularist, modernist and nationalist ideas also had a significant impact in the Turkish centre of the Empire (as they did in its Arab territories). The revered father of modern Turkey was, of course, the extreme secularist, Ataturk (Father of the Turks). I want now to outline how the state of Turkey developed from its Ottoman roots under his political model and the latest moves to relax the extreme secularism insisted upon under its aegis until quite recently.

The role of the 'ulema class in Ottoman Turkey (and in the rest of the Empire) was typically to give legitimacy to the basically secular Ottoman rulers. They were a class of state officials as has frequently been the case in the greatest Islamic empires (and also clergy have historically played a similar role in many Christian polities). The state also controlled religious endowments and built great Mosques and in return rulers were permitted occasionally to claim the legitimacy afforded by the title, Caliph. This relationship with a secular power permitted a secular power interested in modernisation of law to manipulate the law determined by the religious officials that were thus ‘in their pockets’ and importantly also alienated from their flocks. I mentioned in recent posts that various muftis had no problem with modernisation. The major modernised ‘Code of Legal Rules (Majallat-i Akham-i Adliyyah)’ conceived largely by Midhat Pasha (1822 – 1883) was already more secularist in nature than had been usual in Muslim lands.

Ataturk’s military coup led to the end of the sultanate (and then the alleged caliphate in 1924). Turkey was specifically declared a 'laic' jumhurriya (secular republic). No other system in the world is as specifically secular as this one is. Sufi orders were abolished, the Turkish script was Latinised, many Arabic loan-words were removed from the Turkish language (although many remained) and ‘Islamic’ dress (such as the fez although it actually has a European origin) in public was officially discouraged. Veiling in various public places was (and remains, I believe) actually banned and the Islamic 'call-to-prayer' was required for some time to be called in Turkish (although it returned to Arabic after a few decades). The modernised Islamic laws were essentially replaced by a completely new code based on Swiss law and the French Code Napoleon.

This total secularisation came to be called Kemalism (after Ataturk whose less honorary name was Mustapha Kemal) and successfully isolated religion from Turkish politics. MPs were nevertheless still practicing Muslims who despite the repression involved were prepared to go along with Kemalism as a nationalist movement (much as many German Christians were simultaneously going along with Hitlerism). Ataturk formally allowed multi-party democracy but secularisation was non-negotiable and supported by a Kemalist military which saw itself as the protector of secularisation. Its commitment was evident in the mid 1950s when it instituted a coup to protect early moves to remove some restrictions upon religion.

The political class has long been attached to the West. Turkey was a signatory to the ill-fated Baghdad Pact, has joined NATO and continues to seek to join the EU. Coups also occurred in 1979 and 1981 against anti-Western religiously inspired governments. From the early 90s, however, the support for religious parties continued to grow and the Refah (Welfare) Party, another Islamist party, was elected in 1995 (but was forced by the military to resign in 1997). By this time, however, the main issue was the anti-Western (the party was critical of Israel, Europe and, importantly, NATO) rather than the pro-religion flavour. The party was banned and its members soon joined the Virtue Party (the FP) which was, in turn, forced to close in 2001.

Today the AK Party (also religiously based) has now been in government led by Recip Erdogan since 2002. Having learned the lessons of earlier incarnations of Turkish political Islam, it is no longer formally anti-Western and continues the liberalising political reforms required for entry to the EU. It has been a reasonably secularist party and a good economic manager. In the long term it hopes, however, to somewhat reverse what it sees as the excesses of Kemalism. How far this will be allowed to go remains uncertain.

Part 4: the Reformist Activists

The three outstanding and influential 19th and early 20th Century examples of this type of thinker are Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani (1838 – 1897), Muhammad ‘Abduh (1844 – 1905) and Rashid Rida (1865 – 1935).

Afghani was a charismatic thinker and polymath who influenced both contemporary and later activists and thinkers. He lived, wrote and published with ‘Abduh in Paris and London. He was a political activist and intellectual rather than a religious thinker. He was also eccentric and a rabble-rouser who also engaged in writing for the educated classes. He urged resistance against the British and others in Egypt and elsewhere and finally met his death in mysterious circumstances. He was unpopular with both the religious and political powers-that-be of his time.

‘Abduh had a degree of Islamic training and an interest in blending Islamic with Western ideas as a disciple of the slightly older Afghani. As with Afghani he spread his practical ideas for reform widely via the then-vibrant Arab/Ottoman presses. Among his ideas was that ultimately representative government in the Arab and Islamic world should follow a period of learning self-government under benevolent despotism. As a disciple of Afghani, he was also an Arab nationalist. He personally attempted (unsuccessfully) to reform al-Azhar. He also attempted the reform of the Arabic language itself and proposed unpopularly that judges and rulers should be areligious (or at least not religious scholars). He also had no interest in the re-establishment of any kind of Grand Caliphate.

Rida, in turn, was a disciple of ‘Abduh. He had more Salafiyya ideas than either of his predecessors. He established the al-Manār journal in which he discussed the Qur’an and expressed his desire for the return of a Caliphate (unlike Afghani and ‘Abduh, he lived to see the end of the Ottoman Empire and alleged Caliphate). In order to achieve this return, he encouraged Islamic rulers of different modern countries of the early 20th Century to discuss uniting politically. He also opposed European interference in the Islamic region as imperialism and domination. He saw both tradition and modernity as challenges (but not problems) for the Islamic world and therefore cautiously approved of both.

Part 3: the Modernising Wazirs

Wazir (or vizeer) is, of course, an Arabic term for a government minister. In Islamic countries Wazirs may also be, of course, muftis. Three government functionaries stand out from the late Ottoman era: Muhammad 'Ali, Rifa'a at-Tahtawi and Khayr ad-Din at-Tunisi.

The Albanian Ottoman ruler of Egypt, Muhammad ‘Ali, was interested in at least technological modernisation and one of his advisors was an Imam named Rifa’a at-Tahtawi (1801 – 1873) whom he sent to Paris as a young man to minister to the Egyptian students (sent there in order to inform the Ottoman regime of Western improvements in technology). Tahtawi began a translation project so that Western ideas could be understood in Arabic. He believed Western ideas could be assimilated into Islamic cultures. Tahtawi also interested himself in the reform of education while Muhammad ‘Ali interested himself mainly in modernisation of his armed forces and government. With mainly French ideas in mind but couched in Islamic terms, Tahtawi advised the Egyptian government on education.

Another government reformer of note was Khayr ad-Din at-Tunisi (1822 – 1889). His interest was the institution of constitutional rules of government which he brought about first in Tunisia and then in the centre of Ottoman power, Istanbul. His ideas came from the West. Like Tahtawi he attempted to assimilate Western ideas into Islam. His language was slightly more secular than Tahtawi’s, probably reflecting a different level of Islamic training and interest. He appears to have been influenced by the classical historian, Ibn Khaldoun, whose ideas he cast in modern secular terms. He did use one Islamic term, maslaha (welfare), which formed the basis of his arguments for constitutionality. Thus he introduced the Western idea of the accountability of government to its people into Islamic governmental practice as a modern Islamic update.

Part 2: the Modernising Muftis in Ottoman Turkey and its Empire (and Successor States)

Just a reminder: Mufti is the name given to a person considered legally qualified within Islamic legal traditions to issue legal opinions (note: a fatwa (legal opinion) is simply the Arabic name given to a legal opinion so not all fatwas (the plural is actually fatawa in Arabic) are death warrants). This and the next few posts as well as the last two describe a variety of current and recent Islamic legal and political models used by Muslims in some sort of position to have political influence. My use of different categories is somewhat arbitrary; it just helps shorten the posts somewhat. So there will be some overlap. Later I will also discuss the recent and current ideas of secular and non-Muslim Arabs, Iranians, Turks and others and then how both of these types of ideas (Muslim and other) have played out in more recent Middle Eastern history.

For now though, I'll return to the modernising Islamic thinkers. Periodically, thinkers in the Arab and Islamic world have considered that the law required reform, contrary to an often expressed view in the West that 'true' Muslims are all atavistic legal traditionists seeking a return to some immutable Sharia. Naturally, when the basis of the law is an understanding of religion, the law is expected to be morally sound and as mentioned in earlier posts circumstances may change the way laws affect people. Hence logically laws must occasionally be revised. Also, the law that Islamic societies and scholars created from the start weren’t necessarily good Islamic law. Fatima Mernissi, the Moroccan scholar, has forcefully argued that, from the start, there was legal backsliding by the patriarchal tribal society.

The Islamic State has usually codified very little, as a tradition. It has rather published collections of fatawa. Some Islamic scholars as a result do question the right of the State to make revisions to the law in Islamic majority countries (at least without the approval of Islamic scholars). But they would say that, wouldn’t they, as the writers of the fatawa? Suleiman the Magnificent (or Qanuni – the law giver – in Arabic) compiled collections of the fatawa of some muftis and this was seen as legislating legitimately within the Islamic tradition in which genuine scholarship had apparently declined. The Turkish legal reforms have subsequently been adopted by successor states such as Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. Religious courts were basically relegated to resolving questions of family law with the advent of secular courts dealing with all other matters from the 19^th Century. The law thus made is now largely codified in Arab and Muslim countries as a result of the modernising fatawa of muftis. The call for Sharia Law from those Muslims who call for it may be seen as a reaction to this modern style of codified law-making and the limitation of the power of religious courts (all approved by the modernising Muftis). Under the influence of the West, many scholars at Islamic universities such as al-Azhar also graduate in law from Western-based universities these days.

The role of scholars qualified to pronounce fatawa (muftis) continued into the modern reforming world, however, and, as we know, in Iran, the grand Muftis, often called Ayatollahs, now reign supreme. At the other end of a long spectrum, the Turkish government of the 20^th Century has typically been positively anti-Islamic-rule. Muftis have typically been government agents in the Islamic world subordinate to the local ruler. ‘Abd al-Razzaq al-Sanhuri (1895 – 1971) from Egypt and Mustafa al-Zarqa (1904 – 1999) from Syria are two notable reformist muftis from the recent modern period who made reform on behalf of their governments.

Other More 'Modernised' Islamic Political Models Part 1: Resistance Movements (generally led by a 'Mystic')

After a delay caused by a wrist injury, I'm tentatively returning to my topic (though I'm not yet fully recovered). I've briefly discussed the most conservative political theory that survived in Islam into the modern period mainly in what became Saudi Arabia (and which has been recently spreading) and I'll now consider a few of the other models that were attempted (and are still being attempted) partly in response to the ideas brought by Western colonists. These models generally contain elements of either religious or ethnic 'nationalism'.

Resistance Movements (generally led by a 'Mystic')

There were separate movements led by Sufi mystics in at least Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Turkey, Iran and Chechnya to revive Islam and oppose occupations by the Ottomans, Egypt or European Powers. The Egyptian group especially was also focussed on nationalism and modernising while the Tunisian and Turkish groups were also modernising forces.

The Libyan group was led by Muhammad Ibn ‘Ali al-Sanusi (1787 – 1859) and opposed the Italian presence in Libya. The group therefore came to be called the Sanusiyya as its leader was called the Great Sanusi. It was also a religious, political and social movement which also had a partly pan-Islamic agenda. It had legal and political clashes with the more conservative religious establishments in both Mecca and al-Azhar over the right of ijtihad (legal reform). It provided for education and social welfare among its supporters and integration of tribes into the community order. It aimed to reform local religious practices by missionary activity and participated in nationalist resistance as jihad against the expansionary and invading 'infidel' Italians. Material luxury was shunned in the puritan and Sufi tradition.

‘Abd al-Qadir (1808 – 1883) opposed the French in Algeria. He controlled an independent state in the Algerian interior from 1832 to 1847 before his exile by the French and opinion is divided as to whether the brief state most resembled a modern nation-state or an Islamic state.

Al-Rifi (‘Abd al-Karim al-Khattabi) (1882 – 1963) in Morocco also opposed the French as well as Spanish occupation with an armed resistance in the early part of the 1920s. He combined nationalist with Salafiyya inclinations.

Al-Mahdi also known as Shaykh Muhammad Ahmad (1848 – 1885) in Sudan opposed the ineffective, economically disastrous and arbitrary joint rule of the Ottomans, the Egyptians and the English with his followers, the Mahdiyya, eventually killing the English general, Gordon, at Khartoum. His declaration of himself as the Mahdi was meant in the Sunni sense of renovator, saviour and bringer of justice rather than the more apocalyptic Shi’a sense. He was a charismatic leader and claimed religious and political authority for himself as a direct descendent from Muhammad with a definite mission inspired by God. He was able with his Ansar to form a revolutionary state from 1881 in which he sought to reform the distinctly Sufi form of Sudanese Islam to bring about a more orthodox and less complex form of Islam. Aside from requiring new religious practices he also required seclusion of women and bans on tobacco, alcohol, music and the visiting of tombs. His group understood itself to be performing jihad against infidels (understood to be all non-Sudanese). Nevertheless the movement had pan-Islamic appeal as it sought to conform to a ‘true’ Islam and oppose non-Muslim and Western colonial expansion and rule.

Muhammad Shamil (1797 – 1871), who was a Sufi master politically active from 1834 to 1859 in Chechnya, opposed Russian occupation and rule of the Caucasus. His resistance was nationalist and supported especially by the local free peasant landowners who opposed foreign control.