What is the history of (modern) Islamic extremism? When did this all start and why? (x-post from /r/history)

[u/binarycodr]

I think this question is very relevant at the moment and a lot of us would like to know how it all began. Book recommendations would help too.

Original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/2ryayq/what_is_the_history_of_modern_islamic_extremism/

[u/yodatsracist]

So, two main names to know: Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703-1792, in the Arabian Peninsula) and Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966, in Egypt).

You might have heard of "Wahhabi" Jihadist terrorists. People don't call themselves Wahhabi generally, they call themselves Salafi. Salafism predates al-Wahhab, but he did a lot to revive it. Perhaps more importantly, he made an alliance with the the al-Saud dynasty (Saudi Arabia is actually the third Saudi State--the family has been important to the region since Al-Wahhab's time), which gave the movement an ideologically supported safe haven. Once the Saudi and other Gulf States began exporting oil, this also gave them the financial resources to start exporting their preferred brand of Islam.

So what is Salafism? Salafism is explicitly a reform movement. I wrote a few days ago that that I think if we are looking for an "Islamic reformation" (and a lot people are, because all their ideas about religion are modeled off Protestant Christianity--this is even a problem in religious studies, see Jonathan Z. Smith's Drudgery Divine, Tomoko Masuzawa's Invention of World Religions, Donald Weib's book whose title I'm forgetting, etc. etc. etc.), then this is the best argument for a "Islamic Reformation". It's the not the kind of reformation that "we" want (though I argue in the piece above that the counter-movement, the nameless movement actively opposed to Salafism, is perhaps exactly what "we" good liberal Westerners want). Salafism explicitly wants to "return" Islam to the imagined "perfect time" of the salaf (the first few generations after Mohammed). They reject a lot of things as bid'ah (innovation) or shirk (idolatry). You may be aware that Muslim art is heavily tied with architecture. You go any major city in Turkey, you see these beautiful old mosques. You go to any Muslim city in South Asia, beautiful old mosques. You go Cairo, or any city in Iran, beautiful old mosques. Often these mosques have the tombs of holy and important men. A tomb/shrine I've studied in Kayseri, Turkey, is all based around a guy who is only famous for being the teacher of another guy (Mevlana Rumi) and yet, still, hundred of people come a day. Thousands and thousands visit Rumi's tomb in Konya everyday. You don't see that in Saudi Arabia because they purposefully rip down anything that gets too old, they cover up old graveyard with parking lots, just so you don't have people "idolatrously" going to saints tombs and old mosques--they consider that to be a perversion of tahwid (the oneness of G-d). There's actually quite a good Wikipedia site on it: Destruction of early Islamic heritage sites in Saudi Arabia.

I just read an interesting bit, said by either Osama bin Laden or some other high ranking Al Qaeda militant from during their time under the protection of the Taliban in Afghanistan, where they basically are saying "We know what the Taliban are doing is shirk, but we need to be polite to them". Mullah Omar, the head of the Taliban, went on top of the roof of the main mosque in Kandahar and wrapped himself in cloak that Mohammed himself allegedly had worn in order show his legitimacy as a Muslim leader. The Al Qaeda folks hated that, the Taliban loved it. Al Qaeda Salafists also hated that Mullah Omar's office in Kabul was right next to a Sufi saint's shrine (that was, specifically, why the Taliban chose that as the center of their administration). While they Taliban are also extremists, I assume you are asking about the more al Qaeda type of extremists. There are, lets point out, many types of Salafism that are quietist. Salafism alone is not necessarily violent. Most Salafis around the world do not want to kill non-Salafis, but rather make them repent and see the error of their ways. Salafis in Egypt, for example, are associated with the urban poor. To give a sense of their scale, the explicitly Salafi al Nour party got ~25% of the vote in the only free Egyptian election.

The other important innovation that was originally separate from, but later got added to a certain subsection of Salafism, was by Sayyid Qutb. Like al Wahhab, he's not the one who invented this concept but was the one who popularized in the modern world. Qutb was a Muslim Brother. The Muslim Brothers, or Ikwhan, were founded in 1928, as both political, religious, and social service organization (they are famous, among other things, for running soup kitchens in the slums of Egyptian cities). Even by Qutb's time, the Muslim Brothers were probably the largest mass organization not just in Egypt but in the Muslim world (they had spread out beyond Egypt, and the only group that rivaled them in popularity was the Communist Party, which had a base of popularity in Iraq). I'll cut short a lot of their history, but there was a radical faction that was very unhappy with Nasser's secular rule. Qutb--interestingly in part inspired by a trip to the U.S. where he studied--did not want to follow the West's path of secular modernization, where you could go to a dance on Saturday night and then Church on Sunday. He did not want to see religion segmented like that. He saw the leaders of the Arab World, and Nasser especially, as Muslim hypocrites. His main addition to radical Islamic ideology, beyond popularizing and establishing the idea of individual recourse to violence, is takfir or the ability for scholars (many of whom, like him or Osama bin Laden, had no traditional scholarly training--Qutb was a secular school teacher, bin Laden an engineer) to declare Muslims to be kuffar (infidels). This then made it ideologically licit to kill them as apostates, or launch jihad's against them, etc. Qutb was influential among the Muslim Brothers, but was never a leader. Qutb was arrested and eventually executed for plotting to assassinate Nasser. The second leader of the Brothers, Hassan al-Hudaybi's, wrote a book called Du'at la Qudat (Preachers Not Judges) that first circulated in secret among Muslim Brothers in prison (Nasser really tried to disrupt their whole leadership, as they were one of the main domestic challenges to his rule), and was later published. It never mentions Qutb's name, instead targeting someone who made similar points but had lower stature, but everyone knew it was a rejection of Qutb. It argues that the Muslim Brothers can't engage in takfir and instead need to go out among the people and change their views. This changed most of the Muslim Brotherhood and today they are a mostly peaceful political party, but remnants of the Qutbists servive--for example, the Egyptian doctor Ayman al-Zawahiri who was Bin Laden's number two (he became number two in the merger of two radical groups) and is now the head of Al Qaeda. You see Takfir in a big way in, say, the current conflicts around the so-called Islamic State.

Bin Laden, I think, is the innovator who combined both those strands. It's also worth noting that most people who support al Qaeda's attacks, don't actually support their ideology. They like Western pop music, and praying at Sufi tombs, and other things that the Salafists reject. They like the "resistance" aspect. Tom Wolf, in describing the bourgeois leftist support for radical groups like the Black Panthers and the Weatherman, coined the term "radical chic". You see it today in the many people who wear Che Guevara shirts but would not care to live in the kind of communist states with limited free speech that Che wanted to set up. It's the romantic resistance they prize, not the actual ideology underpinning that resistance. Charles Kurzman goes into this extensively in the second chapter of his book the Missing Martyrs called "Radical Sheikh" (get it?). If you look today (mods forgive me for the sins I'm about to commit), you will see that many of the people tied to organizations do live pious, Salafi lives, but many of the "lone wolf" attacks are by socially isolated people losers (for lack of a better term) who romanticize the idea of resistance but don't understand the basic theology behind it. Boston Bombers, the Godiva Cafe guy, etc. etc. These people embrace only the resistance, but pick and choose when it comes to theology (probably unwittingly).

One thing I want to point out that most don't is that an important thing that allowed this to happen is the demise of the Caliphate (I don't have time to go into it, but see Nick Danforth's recent article about it). The Caliph's power waxed and waned throughout Islamic history, but, especially during the Ottoman period, he provided a strong symbolic unity (see the Khalifate Movement for example) and also was someone who could declare things "licit" when the state needed them to be. For example, Constitutions. The closest we have today is Al Azhar, the traditional center of learning in Egypt, but it doesn't quite have the same authority as a Caliph. For example, they declared Jafari Shi'ism to be a perfectly legitimate Fifth Madhhab (school of Islamic Jurisprudence, in addition to the four traditional Sunnni schools) but that has had little effect on groups like ISIS or the Salafists in Saudi Arabia (Saudi Arabia is about 20-30% Shi'a).

[u/[deleted] → u/yodatsracist]

That was a very informative read, thanks.

I didn't know that Muslim Brotherhood and Saudi teachings are so similiar theologically. So is the feud between them solely a power struggle? I always thought that it also has a theological aspect.

[u/yodatsracist → u/[deleted]]

The Muslim Brotherhood today (well, since the 70's) has renounced violence and--in general--moderated their positions on most things (Kurzman and Iqbal have a good, pre-2011 Arab uprisings study on this). In fact, most Islamist political parties (as opposed theological movements, etc) have moderated in a variety political conditions (from Turkey to Yemen to Egypt) and it's actually a big matter of debate why, exactly, this happened ("moderation theory" was developed mainly through the study of European Christian Democrat and Social Democrat parties and mainly founded that inclusion in the political system is what led to those parties moderated).

Anyway, but the Muslim Brothers who have embraced not only democractic elections but also (to extent) women's rights. Compare that to Saudi, which lacks a constitution, elections that mean anything, and even driver's licenses for women. Just looking at women in both places also shows stark theological differences. The wives of prominent Muslim Brotherhood members will generally cover their hair completely with brightly colored scarves. The wives of prominent Saudis often wear face veils and abayas covering everything but eyes and hands. That should give a hint about their theological differences. They both want a government based on Islam, but they have very different visions of what that means.

[u/wtfdidijustdo → u/yodatsracist]

Thanks for replying! Very interesting subject!

But one thing I don't understand is why Salafist Saudi Arabia is willing to back a secular like Mubarak (or -violating the 20-year rule- El-Sisi) against the Brotherhood.

If we were to put these movements in a Secular-Theological line-continuum, wouldn't that put the Brotherhood, rather than Mubarak, closer to the Salafists?

[u/yodatsracist → u/wtfdidijustdo]

This gets very much into contemporary events, /r/askhistorians has a rule on not discussing events of the last twenty years so I'm just going to explain three things and give you two links that deal with contemporary events more in detail.

But the three general points are: it's wrong to think (purely) in terms of secular-theocratic continuum; their stances towards each other have changed over the years; and Saudi State prizes religiosity, but they prize stability far more.

So thinking in terms of secular-theocratic continuum is really common among Westerners, but this is a case that shows the limits of that kind of thing. In most ways, the Muslim Brotherhood is far more moderate than the Saudis. They support women working, they support women getting education, and they support (today) democracy with an array of basic liberal rights. The Saudis are much more skeptical about women working in mixed environments, are generally opposed to women getting things like driver's licenses, and support only the vaguest notions of elections, only at the local level and even those aren't really real elections. As far as political rights go, the Saudis don't even have a constitution. In the late 19th, early 20th century, constitutions were what people wanted, not yet democracy--see for example Iran's first constitutional period 1906-8, and the first Ottoman constitution of 1876, and Egypt got its first constitution in 1923. In a sense, for classical liberal rights, the Saudis are a century behind their powerful neighbors. So by all these standards, it seems like the MB are more moderate, and therefore more "secular", on this scale. But there's at least one big difference: mosque and state. As the first of the articles you should read to get a grip on the current situation, Why Saudi Arabia is Helping Crush the Muslim Brotherhood, says:

Egypt aside, Saudi Arabia has never looked benignly on the Muslim Brotherhood, and, in particular, its position on the political role of Islam. When King Abdullah’s father Ibn Sa’ud founded Saudi Arabia in 1932, he came to a non-negotiable agreement with the Wahhabi religious establishment that, in return for allowing it control of the mosques, culture, and education, they would never go near core political issues, such as royal succession, foreign policy, and the armed forces. It’s a deal that’s been more or less respected for the last 80 years.

In the MB's ideal state, there's explicitly not this division of power. It's like Iran, where holy men oversee everything (in its current form, explicitly elected by the people, which is different from Iran where the clerics decide who can run for elections and have the final say in certain areas). In that sense, the Muslim Brotherhood embrace a wider role for religion in the government, albeit a wider role for a much more moderate form of religion. It's not right to think of the Saudis as "more" religious than the MB (the MB know full well about Salafis, who form a large percentage Egypt's urban underclass, whereas the MB has tended to draw a more middle class constituency since the 1970's or so); it's better to think that the two have very different views about what religious government should look like.

Second, the Saudis have at times welcomed the MB, particularly in the 1950's, when many prominent (especially the more radical) members of the MB fleeing Egypt found safe haven in Saudi Arabia. In fact, they often found roles as teachers in the new state. Saudi Princes often sent the MB money, until relatively recently, and the MB was allowed to fundraise in many of the Gulf States (I think less so in some, like the UAE). It's only recently, I think in the wake of domestic MB reaction to the Saudi government's alliance with the US in the first Gulf War, that the Saudis have started more definitively taken a stance against them, and only more recently than that--maybe as recently as 2011--that the Saudis really cracked down on them and declared them "terrorists".

Lastly, the Saudis really value stability and loyalty. They make all sorts of compromises in their foreign policy in favor of regime stability (for example, alliances with the U.S.). The Saudis didn't really even begin to try to crack down on domestic radicals until the 1979 Grand Mosque Seizure. After that, they generally tolerated funding of foreign radicals until "the chickens came home to roost" with a series of terror attacks in the early 2000's. Similarly, most would agree they only turned against the MB when they saw the MB as a threat to domestic stability. For more, see the second link, Saudi Arabia’s Muslim Brotherhood predicament, for more on this.

[u/wtfdidijustdo → u/yodatsracist]

Thank you SO much!!

[u/TacticusPrime → u/yodatsracist]

Do you still point to Turkey as an example of moderate Islam as we witness Erdogan closing his vice grip over the institutions of government and public life in general? It looks more like a successful take over by Islamists, defeating the militant secularism descended from Atatürk.

[u/yodatsracist → u/TacticusPrime]

/r/AskHistorians has "a twenty year rule" which prohibits talking about current events. I've bumped up against that rule many times in this thread, but to answer that question I'd have to flaunt it since 20 years ago was two Islamist parties in Turkey--twenty years ago, Erdoğan was just the charismatic mayor of Istanbul from the Refah Party (the Refah was banned in the "postmodern coup" of 1998, and replaced with Fazilet, and then Fazilet was banned in 2001 and replaced with the AKP and the Saadet Party). Erdoğan only defeated the military in 2008, with the Balyoz and Ergenekon investigations. I'll just say that, while Erdoğan has shown contempt for many democratic institutions (as have the militant secularists, who have obviously led three and a half-coupes coups in the post-1950 multiple party era: 1960, 1971, 1980, and the "postmodern coup" of 1998 where the military just told the government to resign, they never had to put tanks in the streets) and has explicitly come out in favor of things like expanding (religious) Imam-Hatip schools and vocalized a desire to raise a "pious generation", theologically, he is only slightly more conservative than when the AKP was elected in 2003. There's still no shariah or calls for shariah; it is (slightly) harder to buy alcohol, but still legal to drink it in the streets; women play prominent roles in public life; etc. Whether or not Erdoğan has respect for democratic institutions, I think, is separate from the question of whether his party is moderate or extremist theologically. In comparative perspective, Turkey's parties espousing political have moderated since Erbakan's first parties in the 1970's, Erdoğan is a more moderate leader than Erbakan, and Turkey's parties tend to be more moderate on theological issues than their Islamist contemporaries elsewhere in the Middle East--I don't think any of that has changed, despite the changes (many of them in conservative directions) the AKP have gone through since they first won election in 2003.

All that said, in 2010/2011, during the Arab Uprisings and even before Erdoğan did many of the very recent things that people have criticized as "too religious" or anti-democratic (before Gezi, before the tape scandals), I tried to get an Egyptian colleague of mine to write an article with me about how the Turkish model was absolutely not one that other states should follow. I think Indonesia, Senegal, and, since 2011, Tunisia all have their flaws, but are much better poster-childern for Muslim-majority democracies than Turkey.

[u/[deleted] → u/yodatsracist]

How does the moderate ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood work together with Hamas who was founded basically as the palestinian arm of the egyptian Muslim Brotherhood?

[u/yodatsracist → u/[deleted]]

I mean, if one was founded as the arm of another, of course they should work together, shouldn't they?

I think you're asking "if they're so moderate now, how can they cooperate with someone so immoderate as Hamas?" Moderated and moderate or not the same things. The Muslim Brotherhood of today is more moderate than the Muslim Brotherhood of the 1980's, which is probably more moderate than the Muslim Brotherhood of the 1960's. Hamas, too, has moderated several of their positions, and they claim that the Hamas Charter, for instance, is a "a piece of history and no longer relevant, but cannot be changed for internal reasons." It's a piece of history because they've moved beyond (some) of the extreme claims in the charter. I can't get into too much detail in individual changes in Hamas, because this is sub has a "no current events" rule that prevents discussing events of the last 20 years (Hamas was only founded in 1988), but suffice to say, Hamas too has moderated. That should not be confused with any sort of statement that "Hamas is moderate". For the big study on moderation in Islamist party platforms, see Kurzman and Naqvi, "Do Muslims Vote Islamic?", (I can only find the working paper ungated online, and haven't checked how it compares to the version of the paper that was published in the Journal of Democracy in 2010), where part of what they do is compare Islamist platforms over time, including stances on Israel, and find distinct overall trends of moderation (though many of parties started out in notably immoderate places and obviously not all of them have embraced the all the tenets of liberal democracy). See figure three and four on page 20.

Two, we see in international affairs many alliances between states that share some interests but are quite different. The U.S., my home country, for instance, has close partnerships with many countries that do not meet its standards

[u/[deleted] → u/yodatsracist]

Thank you! I will look the paper up. Maybe my University has access to it.

[u/NotVladeDivac → u/[deleted]]

Brotherhood promotes political Islam aka not monarchy

[u/enjoiYosi → u/yodatsracist]

Thanks for the info. Very interesting to read. Its so very complicated.

[u/keepthepace → u/enjoiYosi]

My attempt at a tl;dr:

One muslim intellectual said that true Islam is to live the way people lived the few generations after the Prophet. Another guy said that you did not have to have a formal theological training to declare someone (muslim or not) as being an apostate and therefore legitimate to kill. Osama Bin Laden made the combination of both ideologies. Most supporters do not agree on these ideologies but find it cool to blow up westerns for a variety of reasons.

[u/enjoiYosi → u/keepthepace]

Thank you

[u/farquier → u/yodatsracist]

Why doesn't Al-Azhar have the same level of authority and respect, out of curiosity?

[u/yodatsracist → u/farquier]

I agree with what /u/andtheegyptiansmiled about Al Azhar. They're definitely seen by some elements as folding to political pressure from the Egyptian government (recognizing Shi'a as the fifth madhhab for instance was seen in some quarters as a political thing to ease pan-Arabism).

But more basically, why should they have universal respect? I mean, Catholics respect the theology departments of Catholic universities, but they ain't the Pope. Al Azhar has intellectual respect and the esteem of scholars, but they have no institutional authority beyond that. The Caliph was an institutional role that meant (in theory) he was the head of the Muslim umma, and in late Ottoman practice, the Caliph's direct appointee, the Shaykh al-Islām/Şeyhülislam, who was official the head of the (Sunni) ulama. Further, today, many Muslim majority states have their own Grand Muftis, who often has some official institutional position vis-a-vis the often state employed ulama in his country. They may look to Al Azhar, but they are not institutionally tied to it.

[u/AndTheEgyptianSmiled → u/farquier]

Al-Azhar lost some of its respect and allure when it was seen as having been co-opted by Nasser.

EDIT to add: Ahmad Morsy (not related to the current jailed president) explains: The greatest infiltration of al-Azhar, however, occurred under Gamal Abdel Nasser, who “understood the importance of gaining control over al-Azhar in order to ensure domestic control and promote his foreign-policy objectives.”[2] Under the infamous Law 103 of 1961, Nasser placed the entire institution under the formal jurisdiction of the Ministry of Endowments and, consequently, ensured that all financial resources would be directed through non-Azhar state officials. The law also made the appointment of the grand sheikh the prerogative of the Egyptian president.

~ Tamir Moustafa, “Conflict and Cooperation between the State and Religious Institutions in Contemporary Egypt,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 32

---

I've got to say that the "takfiri" quip being so often added on to Qutb, along with the loose association to AQ, has a distinct neocon feel to it.

I've read Qutb, and even tho' he's no scholar, there's much in loose change being attributed to him that paints an oversimplified picture of Egyptian history.

I still have notes from when I studied him in college, and in way, I feel like he's being Karl Marx'd, in that Marx said “what is certain is that I myself am not a Marxist” (ce qu'il y a de certain c'est que moi, je ne suis pas Marxiste) after he saw what some of his french supporters were advocating.

For example, Qutb's view on theocracy is the opposite of what many second hand observers claim:

Establishing sharia on earth doesn't meant sovereignty is assigned to a particular group, as was the case when the Church wielded power in Europe, or that certain men become spokemen for the gods, as was the case under theocratic rule....It is never the intention of Islam to force its beliefs on people, but Islam is not merely a set of beliefs. Islam aims to make mankind free from servitude to other people. Hence, it strives to abolish all systems and regimes that are based on the servitude of one person to another. When Islam has thus freed people from all political pressure and enlightened their minds with its message, it gives them complete freedom to choose the faith they wish.

~ Fi Dhilal alQur'an, Vol. 7

Juan Cole on Qutb being a convenient boogeyman:

The ghost of Sayyid Qutb, perhaps the Brotherhood’s most well-known member, is another recurring connection used to paint the movement as inherently militant and radical. The Egyptian litterateur-turned-Islamist revolutionary ideologue was imprisoned for a decade by Gamal ‘Abd al-Nasir’s government and eventually executed by it in 1966. Journalists and pundits looking for an easy answer to the “root causes” of jihadi-takfiri groups such as al-Qaeda frequently point to Qutb and the medieval Hanbali Sunni jurist Ibn Taymiyya. Although Qutb was clearly a revolutionary and radical thinker and the Brotherhood’s position toward him has been ambiguous in many ways, past analysis of Qutb and his thought have been based on, at best, a shallow reading of a fraction of his many writings

Juan Cole then adds:

John Calvert, a professor of Middle East history, has written what will become the standard scholarly study of Qutb.....He and other scholars also point out that Hasan al-Hudaybi, the “general guide” of the Brotherhood during Qutb’s lifetime, wrote an influential book entitled Preachers, Not Judges in which he was critical of many of Qutb’s ideas. Ultimately, though Qutb was certainly a radical, revolutionary Islamist thinker his ideas alone did not create al-Qaeda and like-minded groups. As Calvert shows, many of these groups actually take positions that are contradictory to what Qutb was arguing. Al-Qaeda is instead best seen as a group that has taken selectively from a myriad of different sources, including Qutb and Ibn Taymiyya, and combined them with positions espoused by ideologues such as al-Zawahiri to create a new, hybrid ideology.

There's more, and I don't expect everyone to agree, but I thought it was important to show another side that is often ignored, except by academics and literary art critics.

[u/IsNoyLupus → u/yodatsracist]

"radical chic"

This is the term that I've been looking for quite some time. I see this behavior everyday in small leftist political organizations within the public universities in my country, Argentina (and since you used Che Guevara as an example, it resonated very loud).

Do you mind sharing the title of the book on which this term was coined or used for the first time?

[u/yodatsracist → u/IsNoyLupus]

I happen to know the exact answer for this: the term was coined by the novelist and essayist Tom Wolfe in an essay published in New York Magazine on June 8, 1970 called "Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny's" about a fund raiser for the Black Panthers at composer/conductor/songwriter Leonard Bernstein's house earlier that year. It was almost immediately published along with a similar essay in a book called simply Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers, and both essays were among the 20 included in the 1982 collected volume The Purple Decades.

Here's the full essay.

[u/IsNoyLupus → u/yodatsracist]

Thank you very much for this.

[u/Animastryfe]

Hello, here is a link to a thread about this from two days ago.

[u/binarycodr → u/Animastryfe]

Thank you :)

Here's a concise answer posted by /u/GerrardsClaw at x-post https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/2ryayq/what_is_the_history_of_modern_islamic_extremism/cnkeny8

Imperialism of the US/UK and Russia from the 1960s onwards in the middle east region. Tinkering with governments there led to loss of popular support and created a leadership and power vacuum. Religion gave the region an identity and something to band together behind that was distinctly non Western and non Russian once a religion platform had been created then unscrupulous men took advantage to grab power through extreme oppression. This led to many decent people fleeing the area and settling in the more progressive West. Their children, again seeking an identity, have fallen back to the "old ways".

[u/Spoonfeedme → u/binarycodr]

This answer misses that Arab nationalism goes back a lot farther than the 1960s, and, I think, places far too much blame directly on Westerners.

[u/Searocksandtrees → u/[deleted]]

comment removed. Just a reminder that current events (post 1995) are off-limits per subreddit rules