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Politics and Islam

Political aspects of the religion of Islam are derived from its religious scripture, as well as elements of political movements and tendencies followed by Muslims or Islamic states throughout its history. Shortly after its founding, Islam's prophet Muhammad became a ruler of a state, and the intertwining of religion and state in Islam, is in contrast to the doctrine of rendering "unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God", of Christianity, its related and neighboring religion.

Pre-modern Islam
, believed to be descendants of Ishmael, that lived in the Roman-era provinces of Arabia Petraea (West) and Arabia Deserta (North). Origins of Islam (7th century CE) according to traditional accounts coins in circulation during Rashidun, (Pahlavi scripts, crescent-star, fire altar, depictions of Khosrow II, bismillāh in margin). Unlike known historical figures such as Ibn Zubayr and Mu'awiya I, there are no coins minted in the names of caliphs titled rashidun that could be evidence of official dominancy. with depictions of the Byzantine Emperor Constans II holding the cross-tipped staff and globus cruciger. There was no specific Islamic-religious identity and political stance with sharp boundaries in the early Islamic period. Early Islam arose within the historical, social, political, economic, and religious context of Late Antiquity in the Middle East, in the life and times of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and his successors. According to the traditional account, His family belonged to the Arab clan of Quraysh, which was the chief tribe of Mecca and a dominant force in western Arabia. To counter the effects of anarchy, they upheld the institution of "sacred months" when all violence was forbidden and travel was safe. The polytheistic Kaaba shrine in Mecca and the surrounding area was a popular pilgrimage destination, which had significant economic consequences for the city. While Muhammad's region had tribes, it did not have a state. Unlike its neighboring major religion, Christianity, (whose adherents were a minority in their region and subject "to suspicion and often to persecution" among Israelites and Romans until the conversion of Emperor Constantine), Islam formed a state very early. Daniel Pipes argues that it had little choice. The real intentions of Muhammad regarding the spread of Islam, its political undertone, and his missionary activity (da’wah) during his lifetime are a matter of debate extensively discussed among Muslim scholars and non-Muslim scholars within the academic field of Islamic studies. Authors, activists, and historians have proposed different understandings of Muhammad's intent and religio-political mission in pre-Islamic Arabian society. Larry Poston asks, Quran Legal rule and political themes The Qurʾān is conceived in Islam to be the word of God as spoken to Muḥammad and passed on his followers and the rest of humanity "in exactly the same form as it was received". Some commands did not extend past the life of Muhammad, such as ones to refer quarrels to Allah and Muhammad or not to shout at or raise your voice when talking to Muhammad. Out of the approximately 6000 verses of the Quran, 250–300 deal with legal aspects of "civil, criminal, moral, community, family and personal affairs", and of these verses only a relatively small number concern issues of a "political nature". Also limiting its political relevance is the fact that the Quran doesn't mention "any formal and continuing structure of authority", only orders to obey Muhammad, Historian Thomas W. Lippman finds only the verse enjoying men to "conduct their affairs by mutual consent" as a general advice in the Quran on leading a community. While the Quran doesn't dwell on politics, it does make mention of concepts such as "the oppressed" (''mustad'afeen), "emigration" (hijra), the "Muslim community" (Ummah), and "fighting" or "struggling" in the way of God (jihād), that can have political implications. A number of Quranic verses (such as ) talk about the mustad'afeen, which can be translated as "those deemed weak", "underdogs", or "the oppressed", how they are put upon by people such as the pharaoh, how God wishes them to be treated justly, and how they should emigrate from the land where they are oppressed (). Abraham was an "emigrant unto my Lord" (). War against "unbelievers" (kuffār) is commanded and divine aid promised, although some verses state this may be when unbelievers start the war and treaties may end the war. The Quran also devotes some verses to the proper division of spoils captured in war among the victors. War against internal enemies or "hypocrites" (munāfiḳūn'') is also commanded. When he was about 40 years old, he began receiving at mount Hira' what Muslims regard as divine revelations delivered through the angel Gabriel, which would later form the Quran. These inspirations urged him to proclaim a strict monotheistic faith, as the final expression of Biblical prophetism earlier codified in the sacred texts of Judaism and Christianity; to warn his compatriots of the impending Judgement Day; and to castigate social injustices of his city. Muhammad's message won over a handful of followers (the ṣaḥāba) and was met with increasing opposition from Meccan notables. In 622 CE, a few years after losing protection with the death of his influential uncle ʾAbū Ṭālib ibn ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, Muhammad migrated to the city of Yathrib (subsequently called Medina) where he was joined by his followers. Later generations would count this event, known as the hijra, as the start of the Islamic era. In Yathrib, where he was accepted as an arbitrator among the different communities of the city under the terms of the Constitution of Medina, Muhammad began to lay the foundations of the new Islamic society, with the help of new Quranic verses which provided guidance on matters of law and religious observance. After a series of military confrontations and political manoeuvres, Muhammad was able to secure control of Mecca and allegiance of the Quraysh in 629 CE. and Arab Pagans. and dealt with tribal affairs during Muhammad's time in Medina The document was drawn up with the explicit concern of bringing to an end the bitter intertribal fighting between the clans of the Aws (Aus and Khazraj) within Medina. To this effect it instituted a number of rights and responsibilities for the Muslim, Jewish, Christian, and Pagan communities of Medina, bringing them within the fold of one community: the Ummah. It formed the basis of the First Islamic State, a multi-religious polity under his leadership. Many tribal groups are mentioned, including the Banu Najjar and Quraysh, as well as many tribal institutions, like vengeance, blood money, ransom, alliance, and clientage. The laws Muhammad established during his rule, based on the Quran and his own doing, are considered by Muslims to be sharīʿa or Islamic law, which Islamic movements seek to re-establish in the present day. Muhammad gained a widespread following and an army, and his rule expanded first to the city of Mecca and then spread across the Arabian peninsula through a combination of diplomacy and military conquests. and the Islamic empires the caliph ruled as "caliphates". The first series of caliphs—Abū Bakr (632–634), ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb (Umar І, 634–644), ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān (644–656), and ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib (656–661)—are known as the rāshidūn ("rightly-guided") caliphs in Sunnī Islam. Sunnīs believed the caliph was elective and any Muslim from the Arab clan of Quraysh, the tribe of Muhammad, might serve as one. Shīʿītes, on the other hand, believed the proper leadership of the Muslim community (known as Imams) should be hereditary in the bloodline of Muhammad, and thus all the caliphs (from the Shīʿa perspective), with the exceptions of Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib and his firstborn son Ḥasan, were actually illegitimate usurpers. The early Islamic empire stretched from al-Andalus (in modern day Spain) to the Punjab region (in modern day Pakistan) under the reign of the Umayyad dynasty. Expansion of the Caliphate The era of Muhammad's rule from Medina and the rule of his companions (the Rashidun Caliphate) was the era that Sunni Muslims look to as a model for Muslims to follow, but was also an era when Islam began its rapid expansion over a vast geographical area—conquered the collapsing Sasanian Persian Empire and most of the Byzantine Empire. argues that the standard Arabian practice during the early caliphates was for the prominent men of a kinship group, or tribe, to gather after a leader's death and elect a political leader from amongst themselves, although there was no specified procedure for this consultation or consultative assembly (shūrā). In Sunnī Islam, the ideal selection process for the caliphs — who were successors of Muhammad in political authority and heads of the caliphate—was to follow the "doctrine of elective succession", whereby the political representatives of the people, engaging in consultation (shūrā), choose the new caliph. The model for this was the rāshidūn ("rightly-guided") caliphs — Abū Bakr (632–634), ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān (644–656), and ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib (656–661) — who were elected, (at least in the parlance of Sunni jurists). According to Bernard Lewis, the case for consultation as opposed to "arbitrary personal rule", is supported "by a considerable body of material" in Muslim literature - "by traditionist ... by commentators ... and by numerous later writers in Arabic, Persian and Turkish". But despite all this recommendation, the doctrine of consultation only reaches the level of recommended (Mustahabb) not commanded (farḍ/wājib) in Islamic fiqh, and arbitrary rule is only condemned (Makruh), not forbidden (ḥarām/maḥzūr). Other requirements for the Caliph differ according to scholars and schools. According to one source, Majlis ash-Shura Traditional Sunnī Muslim jurists agree that the shura, loosely translated as "consultation", is a function of the Islamic caliphate. The phrase used to denote those qualified to appoint or depose a caliph or another ruler on behalf of the Ummah, was Ahl al-Ḥall wa’l-‘Aḳd ( or sometimes 'the people of the solution and the contract'). Deliberations in the politics of the early caliphates, most notably the Rāshidūn Caliphate, were not "democratic" in the modern sense of the term; rather, decision-making power laid with a council (Majlis ash-Shura) of notable and trusted companions of Muhammad (ṣaḥāba) and representatives of different Arab tribes (most of them selected or elected within their tribes). The Majlis-ash-Shura advises the caliph. Al-Mawardi wrote that members of the majlis should satisfy three conditions: they must be just, they must have enough knowledge to distinguish a good caliph from a bad one, and must have sufficient wisdom and judgment to select the best caliph. Al-Mawardi also stated that in case of emergencies when there is no caliphate and no majlis, the people themselves should institute a council of majlis, select a list of candidates for the role of caliph, then the majlis should select from the list of candidates. As the caliphate moved away from its ideal, caliphs were often times not only not elected but not in charge, becoming figureheads, Feldman believes a symbol of the success of this system is the current popularity of the Islamist movement which seeks to restore the Islamist state. According to Feldman, the legislative power of the caliph (or later, the sultan) was always restricted by the scholarly class, the ulama, a group regarded as the guardians of Islamic law. Since the sharia law was established and regulated by the schools of Islamic jurisprudence, this prevented the caliph from dictating legal results. Sharia-compliant rulings were established as authoritative based on the ijma (consensus) of legal Muslim scholars, who theoretically acted as representatives of the entire Ummah (Muslim community). After law colleges (madrasa) became widespread beginning with the 11th and 12th century CE, students of Islamic jurisprudence often had to obtain an ijaza-t al-tadris wa-l-ifta ("license to teach and issue legal opinions") in order to issue valid legal rulings. In many ways, classical Islamic law functioned like a constitutional law. According to Noah Feldman, the Muslim legal scholars and jurists eventually lost their control over Islamic law due to the codification of sharia by the Ottoman Empire in the early 19th century: Literature Classical Islamic thought (according to Olivier Roy) is "overflowing with treatises on governing, advice to sovereigns, and didactic tales", but has little or nothing to say that reflects "on the nature of politics" in general. Bernard Lewis also writes about an "immense " literature from the classical Islamic age produced by government bureaucrats concerning the "art of government", practical issues in politics and governance, known as adab, and distinct from Islamic jurisprudence, known as fiqh, which also concerns governing. Lewis finds three major themes in the political literature of jurists and bureaucrats. • The choice, appointment and accession of the ruler, who must possess "certain necessary qualifications" specified by Islamic law, must take office by means of "certain procedures", and whose position must be validated by means of some kind of contract. The literature disagreeing to some extent over what the qualifications and procedures are. • the obligation owed by the ruler to the subject (to rule justly according to sharia, enjoining good and forbidding evil) and the subject to the ruler (to obey the ruler); • the extent and limits of authority and obedience (when obedience to sharia and to the ruler come into conflict, obedience to religion must prevail). Obedience and opposition , battling the fourth caliph Ali According to scholar Moojan Momen, the verse • "O believers! Obey God and obey the Apostle and those who have been given authority [uulaa al-amr] among you" (), is "one of the key statements in the Qur'an around which much of the exegesis" on the issue of what Islamic doctrine has to say about who should be in charge is based. Bernard Lewis calls the verse (along with related hadith and tafsir) "the starting point" of most Islamic "teaching about politics". The importance of obedience to rulers has also been emphasized by • hadith quoting the Prophet saying: • "Whoever obeys me has obeyed Allah, and whoever disobeys me has disobeyed Allah; and whoever obeys the leader has obeyed me, and whoever disobeys the leader has disobeyed me"; • "... He who swears allegiance to a Caliph should give him the pledge of his hand and ... obey him to the best of his capacity. If another man comes forward (as a claimant to Caliphate), disputing his authority, they (the Muslims) should behead the latter. ... ". • By scholars such as • Ibn Taymiyya (1263–1328): "Better a century of tyranny than one day of chaos." For Sunnīs, the expression "those who have been given authority" (uulaa al-amr) refers to the rulers (caliphs, sultans, kings); for Shīʿa these are usurpers not rulers, and the true authorities are the Imams. The importance of obedience to political rulers, and the belief that it is duty of the Muslim population to practice piety, prayer, religious rituals, and personal virtue, rather than questioning their authority is known as Quietism. However, there are also Quranic injunctions to "enjoin good and forbid evil" (al-amr bi-l-maʿrūf wa-n-nahy ʿani-l-munkar, found in , , and other verses). Bernard Lewis writes that the Quranic obedience verse (Q.4:59) was elaborated in a number of sayings attributed to Muhammad. But there are also sayings that put strict limits on the duty of obedience. Two dicta attributed to the Prophet and universally accepted as authentic are indicative. One says, "there is no obedience in sin"; in other words, if the ruler orders something contrary to the divine law, not only is there no duty of obedience, but there is a duty of disobedience. This is more than the right of revolution that appears in Western political thought. It is a duty of revolution, or at least of disobedience and opposition to authority. The other pronouncement, "do not obey a creature against his creator," again clearly limits the authority of the ruler, whatever form of ruler that may be. Ibn Taymiyya also interprets "there is no obedience in sin" to mean that Muslims should ignore the order of the ruler if it would disobey the divine law. However, they should not use this as excuse for revolution because violence would mean the spilling of Muslim blood. Ibn Ḥazm (994–1064) also agreed with total obedience unless the Quran or Sunnī population are violated, but asserts that an authority who does violate them should be prevented, punished and if that cannot be done, removed. Sharia and governance (siyasa) Starting from the late medieval period, Sunni fiqh elaborated the doctrine of ''siyasa shar'iyya, which literally means governance according to sharia, and is sometimes called the political dimension of Islamic law. Its goal was to harmonize Islamic law with the practical demands of statecraft, on the grounds that non-formalist application of Islamic law was sometimes required by expedience and utilitarian considerations (Islamic law rejected circumstantial evidence, for example). The doctrine created exceptions to the use of qadi courts and their strict sharia enforcement, including mazalim'' courts administered by the ruler's council that applied "corrective" discretionary punishments for petty offenses; their jurisdiction was expanded under the Mamluk sultanate, to commercial and family law; broader use of Maslaha (public interest) as a basis of Islamic law—the Ottoman rulers promulgating a body of administrative, criminal, and economic laws known as qanun. Shīʿa tradition Shīʿa Muslims, who believe that ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib and his descendants (Imams) should have been the leaders of the Muslim community, evolved from a political party to a religious sect after the massacre of Ali's son Husayn and his followers by an Umayyad force at Karbala in 680 CE. The tragedy of the event — with its themes of "martyrdom and persecution ... sacrifice, guilt and expiation" around the suffering of those killed, wickedness of those who did the killing, the penitence of those who failed save the victims — are commemorated annually by Shia. Along with their status through the centuries as religious minorities under rulers they regard as usurpers, this created a difference not only in outlook but in "political attitudes and behavior" from the Sunni. Kharijite tradition Islamic extremism dates back to the early history of Islam with the emergence of the Kharijites in the 7th century CE. The Islamic tradition traces the origin of the Kharijites to the battle between ʿAlī and Muʿāwiya at Siffin in 657 CE. When ʿAlī was faced with a military stalemate and agreed to submit the dispute to arbitration, some of his party withdrew their support from him. "Judgement belongs to God alone" (لاَ حُكْكْ إلَا لِلّهِ) became the slogan of these secessionists. The original Kharijites opposed both ʿAlī and Muʿāwiya, and appointed their own leaders. They were decisively defeated by ʿAlī, who was in turn assassinated by a Kharijite. They engaged in guerrilla warfare against the Umayyads, but only became a movement to be reckoned with during the Second Fitna (the second Islamic Civil War) when they at one point controlled more territory than any of their rivals. The Kharijites were, in fact, one of the major threats to ʿAbd Allāh bin al-Zubayr's bid for the caliphate; during this time they controlled the central region of Yamama and most of Southern Arabia, and captured the oasis town of al-Ṭāʾif. According to al-Ashʿarī, their leader Nāfiʿ bin al-Azraḳ was the first to cause disputes among the Kharijites by supporting the thesis according to which all adversaries should be put to death together with their women and children (istiʿrāḍ). Because of their readiness to declare any opponent as apostate, the Kharijite movement was divided and started to fragment into smaller groups, from which the Ibāḍites derived. The more moderate Ibāḍi Kharijites were longer-lived, continuing to wield political power in North and East Africa, and in Eastern Arabia during the Abbasid period, and are the only Kharijite group to survive into modern times. By the time that Ibn al-Muqaffa' wrote his political treatise early in the Abbasid period, the Kharijites were no longer a significant political threat, at least in the Islamic heartlands. The memory of the menace they had posed to Muslim unity and of the moral challenge generated by their pious idealism still weighed heavily on Muslim political and religious thought, however. Even if the Kharijites could no longer threaten, their ghosts still had to be answered. ==Modern era==
Modern era
From the 16th to the 20th centuries the Muslim world felt the external impact of European colonialism that brought a new era. Unlike the 7th century Byzantine Greeks and Sasanian Persians, the 18th and 19th century British, French, Russian, etc. were conquerors, and unlike the medieval Turks and Mongols that had also conquered large areas of Muslim land, the Europeans had little interest in conversion to Islam or adopting Muslim ways. Early modern empires (15th–16th centuries) In the early modern period between 1453 and 1526, three major states were founded by Muslim dynastic monarchies—in the Mediterranean (Ottoman), Iran (Safavid), and South Asia (Mughal). They were known as the Gunpowder empires for their use and development of the newly invented firearms, especially cannon and small arms, which allow them to expand and centralize their empires. By the early 17th century, the descendants of their founders controlled much of the Muslim world, stretching from the Balkans and North Africa to the Bay of Bengal, with a combined population estimated at between 130 and 160 million. The empires all benefited from alliances between rulers and religious officials. The Muslim Mughal dynasty ruled a majority-Hindu population along with smaller religious minorities, and were necessarily tolerant of other faiths. Much of the territory it gained (the Balkans, North Africa, and the Levant) came from the land of an older, related Abrahamic religion to the north, i.e. Christianity. Christendom was poorer and less sophisticated; its attempts to gain back lost territory from the Muslim world mostly unsuccessful for many centuries. The Ottoman Empire began its expansion into Europe by invading the European portions of the Byzantine Empire in the 14th and 15th centuries up until the capture of Constantinople in 1453, establishing Islam as the state religion of the newly-founded empire. The Ottoman Turks further expanded into Southeastern Europe and consolidated their political power by invading and conquering huge portions of the Serbian Empire, Bulgarian Empire, and the remaining territories of the Byzantine Empire in the 14th and 15th centuries. The empire reached its xenith of territorial expansion in Europe in the 16th century. They were useful in preventing both the slave rebellions and the breakup of the Empire itself, especially due to the rising tide of nationalism among European peoples in its Balkan provinces from the 17th century onwards. European kingdoms began establishing embassies and diplomatic missions to the Ottoman Empire between the 15th and 16th centuries in order to create closer, and more friendly, relationships with the Ottoman Turks (see also: Franco-Ottoman alliance). Ottoman and Muslim decline The fear of Ottoman expansion and its implications on religion in Europe finally dissipated by the 17th century. Starting in the second half of the 17th century, with the end of the Battle of Vienna and the Treaty of Karlowitz (1699), this changed; Ottoman expansionism ended with their defeat in the Great Turkish War (1683–1699). The Ottoman Empire, for centuries the mightiest Muslim state and referred to as the "cruel Turk" among Europeans, now was looked down upon by the other European countries as the "Sick man of Europe", During the last hundred years of the Ottoman Empire it gradually lost almost all of its European territories, until it was defeated and eventually collapsed in 1922. This included the French conquest of Algeria (1830). as well. The First World War brought the defeat and dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire, (see also: Abolition of the Caliphate, Abolition of the Ottoman sultanate, Kemalism, and Secularism in Turkey). understanding of Ottoman history. However, by 1978, historians had begun to reexamine the fundamental assumptions of the Ottoman decline thesis. In addition to military advances, the economic development and worldwide colonization and exploration of Europeans and westerners meant their merchants had a vast array of products and commodities from across the world to sell to Muslims—including products (sugar, coffee, paper) that had originally been Muslim export products but that Westerners could now grow more cheaply in their colonies. Furthermore, the middlemen handling and profiting from the new western imports were usually not Muslims but foreigners or religious minorities (usually Christians), “seen and treated” as marginal. After World War II, colonies in Africa and Asia were freed but the new decolonized states were fragmented, no longer empires, and Western economic influence remained, and went well beyond commodities. Reaction to European colonialism The fight for Islamic resurgence against Western encroachment might be divided into two contrasting approaches: meeting the enemy on its own terms and fighting "him with his own weapons", on the battlefield, in politics and in general by "modernizing". Or alternately with religious revival, since Islam is by definition superior to all faiths, failures and defeats in the temporal world must mean that those defeated Muslims are practicing authentic Islam and their states are not authentic Islamic states. Muslims must then return to the pure authentic Islam of the Prophet Muhammad and his Companions, discarding innovations and accretions to achieve victory over disbelievers. The first Muslim reaction to European colonization was of "peasant and religious", not urban origin. "Charismatic leaders", generally members of the ulama or leaders of religious orders, launched the call for jihad and formed tribal coalitions. Islamic law (sharīʿa), in defiance of local common law, was imposed to unify tribes. Examples include Abd al-Qadir in Algeria, Muhammad Ahmad in Sudan, Shamil in the Caucasus, the Senussi in Libya and Chad, Mullah-i Lang in Afghanistan, the Akhund of Swat in India, and later, Abd al-Karim in Morocco. Despite "spectacular victories" such as the annihilation of the British army in Afghanistan in 1842 and the taking of Kharoum in 1885, all these movements eventually failed The second Muslim reaction to European encroachment later in the century and early 20th century was not violent resistance but the adoption of some Western political, social, cultural and technological ways. Members of the urban elite, particularly in Egypt, Iran, and Turkey, advocated and practiced "Westernization". The "paradigm of the executive as a force unchecked by either the sharia of the scholars or the popular authority of an elected legislature became the dominant paradigm in most of the Sunni Muslim world in the 20th century." Pan-Islamism Pan-Islamism (in the sense of "Islamic unity or at least cooperation") was promoted in the Ottoman Empire during the last quarter of the 19th century by the Ottoman sultan Abdul Hamid II for the purpose of preventing secession movements of the Muslim peoples within the empire's territories and mobilizing Muslim opinion in support of "the faltering Ottoman state". The claim that the head of the last Muslim state of any size and power independent of Europe was "the head of all Islam", served as a rallying point for Sunni Muslims until the 1924 abolition of the Ottoman caliphate. Early movement leaders The major leaders of the Pan-Islamist movement were the triad of Jamal al-Din Afghani (1839–1897), Muhammad Abduh (1849–1905), and Sayyid Rashid Rida (1865–1935). All were active in anti-colonial efforts to confront European penetration of Muslim lands, believed Islamic unity to be the strongest force to mobilize Muslims against imperial domination. Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (who was actually from Iran, not Afghanistan, and brought up Shīʿa, not Sunnī) was an Islamic political activist who travelled throughout the Muslim world during the late 19th century urging pan-Islamic unity in colonial India against the British Empire. Al-Afghani's ideology has been described as a welding of "traditional" religious antipathy toward non-Muslims "to a modern critique of Western imperialism and an appeal for the unity of Islam", urging the adoption of Western sciences and institutions that might strengthen Islam. He was thought to not have any deep faith in Islam, nor in a constitutional government—which he doubted was a viable political alternative in the Islamic world—but was very interested in the overthrow of any Muslim rulers he saw as lax and/or subservient and their replacement with ones who were strong and patriotic. Muhammad Abduh, an Egyptian Islamic scholar, judge, was a central figure of the Arab Nahḍa (awakening), and Islamic Modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. he helped publish a newspaper in Paris with him calling for a return to the original principles and ideals of Islam, and greater unity among Islamic peoples. As a qāḍī in Egypt, he was involved in many decisions, some of which were considered quite liberal, such as calling for Muslims to accept interest on loans and meat butchered by non-Muslims. He promoted both religious and scientific education. Islamic jurist Muhammad Rashid Rida—a student of Abduh and Afghani—positioned himself as the successor to those two pan-Islamists and anti colonialists. He called for a unified Islam based on revival of the Islamic caliphate led by Arabs and the reformation of Muslims. Inspired by stories of the purity of the early eras of Muhammad and the Rashidun, he was more interested in Wahhabism than modernism, and preached for a puritanical Islam where Islamic law (sharīʿa) was implemented. According to Rida, the state-sponsored scholars neglected the revival of early Islamic traditions in the Muslim community (Ummah). His influential Islamic journal Al-Manār promoted anti-British revolt, as well as Islamic revivalism based on the tenets of Salafism (Salafiyya). Caliph claimants The era between World War I and World War II was perhaps the nadir of Islamic power. The Ottoman caliphate had been abolished by the Grand National Assembly of Turkey in 1924 (see Atatürk's reforms), and only two Muslim-majority countries were "genuinely independent"—Iran and Turkey. But rather than providing a model of Islamic independence, both of these country's rulers—Reza Shah and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, respectively—were secular, nationalist, modernizing, Westernizing. Into the void left by came a succession of claimants to the caliphate—Hussein bin Ali, King of Hejaz in 1924, King Abdulaziz bin Abdul Rahman Ibn Saud in 1926 (both in Arabia), King Fuad in 1926, and King Faruq "at various times" (both in Egypt). Hussein bin Ali Hussein bin Ali, the Sharif and Emir of Mecca from 1908-1924, enthroned himself as King of the Hejaz after proclaiming the Great Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire, Political Islam movement leaders Following World War I, the defeat and dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, and the subsequent abolition of the Caliphate by the Turkish nationalist and revolutionary Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder of the modern Republic of Turkey, Following Jamal al-Din Afghani, Muhammad Abduh, and Sayyid Rashid Rida were Sunni Islamist thinkers/leaders Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leader Hasan al-Banna, Brotherhood editor author Sayyid Qutb and Indian journalist and politician Abul A'la Maududi who sought Muslim strength and unity under sharia law. Al-Banna emphasised that "Islam considers the government one of its pillars and relies on enforcement as much as on persuasion. ... The Prophet made 'government' one of the essential bonds of Islam and it is viewed in our books of jurisprudence as a part of the doctrine osul (fundamental) and not as a subsidiary foru. Islam consists of rule and execution, as well as of legislation and preaching. Neither part can be separated from the other." Qutb and Maududi followed the rejectionist Islamic view of Muhammad Rashid Rida, condemning imitation of foreign ideas, including Western democracy, which they distinguished from the Islamic doctrine of shura (consultation between ruler and ruled). This perspective, which stresses comprehensive implementation of sharia, was widespread in the 1970s and 1980s among various movements seeking to establish an Islamic state, but its popularity has diminished in recent years. Nostalgia for the days of successful Islamic empires simmering under later Western colonialism The Islamist political program generally begins by re-shaping the governments of existing Muslim nation-states; but the means of doing this varies greatly across movements and circumstances. Many political Islamist movements, such as the Jamaat-e-Islami and Muslim Brotherhood, focus on vote-getting and coalition-building with other political parties. and Ayman al-Zawahiri of al-Qaeda have promoted the overthrow of secular governments. Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian Islamist ideologue and prominent figurehead of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, was influential in promoting the pan-Islamist ideology in the 1960s. When he was executed by the Egyptian government under the regime of Gamal Abdel Nasser, Ayman al-Zawahiri formed the organization Egyptian Islamic Jihad to replace the government with an Islamic state that would reflect Qutb's ideas for the Islamic revival that he yearned for. The Qutbist ideology has been influential on jihadist movements and Islamic terrorists that seek to overthrow secular governments, most notably Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri of al-Qaeda, as well as the Salafi-jihadi terrorist group ISIL/ISIS/IS/Daesh. They also took part in the bombings in Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005. The recruits often came from the ranks of jihadists, from Egypt, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, and Morocco. The term "jihadist globalism" is also often used in relation to Islamic terrorism as a globalist ideology, and more broadly to the war on terror. The Austrian-American academic Manfred B. Steger, Professor of Sociology at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, proposed an extension of the term "jihadist globalism" to apply to all extremely violent strains of religiously influenced ideologies that articulate the global imaginary into concrete political agendas and terrorist strategies; these include al-Qaeda, Jemaah Islamiyah, Hamas, and Hezbollah, which he finds "today's most spectacular manifestation of religious globalism". Ibn Saud and Wahhabism Following Ibn Saud's conquest of the Arabian Peninsula, pan-Islamism would be bolstered across the Islamic world. During the second half of the 20th century, pan-Islamists competed against left-wing nationalist ideologies in the Arab world such as Nasserism and Ba'athism. At the height of the Cold War in the 1960s and 1970s, Saudi Arabia and allied countries in the Muslim world led the Pan-Islamist struggle to fight the spread of communist ideology and curtail the rising Soviet influence in the world. As Saudi Arabia became an enormously wealthy petroleum exporter, it used its funds to propagate the Wahhabi school of Islam through the Muslim world, spending over $75 billion from 1982 to 2005 via international organizations such as Muslim World League, the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, the International Islamic Relief Organization, etc.{{efn|various royal charities) Led by Prince Salman bin Abdul-Aziz, Minister of Defense at the time, who became king in January 2015. and religious attaches at dozens of Saudi embassies, Mosque funding was combined with persuasion to propagate the dawah Salafiyya; Ideologies coming from Europe that had for a time influence in the Muslim world included patriotism and liberalism in the 19th century. In the 1920, when Kemal Atatürk won the first major Muslim victory against a Christian power for centuries, defeating the Greeks and "facing down the mighty British Empire", he went on to secularize his country, converting what was left of the Ottoman Empire into the Turkish Republic, abolishing the caliphate, replacing sharia law, with a modified version of the Swiss Civil Code, the Arabic script with the Latin script, and adopting a range of European practices, Westernizing his country. At first Atatürk's victory resounded throughout the Muslim world, though he was later reviled as a "traitor" by Islamists. Arabism as a "common nationality" was first launched in the "late 19th and early 20th centuries". In the 1920s and 30s "nationalist leaders still dominated the political scene" in Muslim countries, and nationalist discourse alone was heard in public debate". However, with patriotism's fragmentation and liberalism's failure, others replaced them—fascism in the 1930s, communism from the 1950s to the 1980. Between the 1950s and the 1960s, the predominant ideology within the Arab world was pan-Arabism, which de-emphasized religion and encouraged the creation of socialist, secular states based on Arab nationalist ideologies such as Nasserism and Baathism rather than Islam, By the 1990s, the secular ideologies of "liberalism, nationalism, capitalism, socialism, communism" had "failed utterly" to resolve the problems of the Muslim world (according to Bernard Lewis); and in the realm of political dissent in Muslim society, "from Cairo to Tehran, the crowds that in the 1950s demonstrated" against colonialism, and imperialism, were now simply anti-Westernism, and marched beneath the green banner of Islam, no longer "the red or national flag" (according to Olivier Roy). Atatürk's secularism was in retreat in Turkey. Opposition to political Islam Dissenting from the orthodoxy that the Quran, Muhammad or the Rashidun had much to say about governance (or that Shura is a "pillar of Islam"), are some Islamic Modernists. Taha Hussein (1889-1973) writes: Jebran Chamieh also argues that while it is true Muhammad exercised the executive power, commanded armies, controlled the finances and revenues, made legal judgements, he created no organized system for these functions. Chamieh also points out that this practice (or lack thereof) was followed by the Rashidun caliphate, who never established a "police force to keep law and order". When "the rebels attacked Caliph Othman in his house and assassinated him, no security measures were available to protect him. The caliphs did not establish an administration, a fiscal system, or a budget ... In the conquered lands, they retained the previous Byzantine and Persian administrative systems and kept the local employees to administer the country." Jebran Chemiah also notes that the two general comments on shura in the Quran say nothing further than that it is a good practice. The modality of the process, when, where and how shura should be used, whether the advise given must be followed, is not explained. Hadith, where obscure Quranic references are often explained when a theme from the Quran is thought worthy of explaining, say little or nothing. There is no evidence Muhammad held regular shura meetings with companions or ever felt their advice was binding on him when they gave it. Islamic political theories Muslih and Browers identify three major Islamic theories on socio-political organization by prominent Islamic thinkers that conform to Islamic values and law. One Islamist view rejects democracy, but at least one other accommodates it: • The moderate Islamist view stresses the concepts of maslaha (public interest), ʿadl (justice), and shura. Islamic leaders are considered to uphold justice if they promote public interest, as defined through shura. In this view, shura provides the basis for representative government institutions that are similar to Western democracy, but reflect Islamic rather than Western liberal values. Hasan al-Turabi, Rashid al-Ghannushi, and Yusuf al-Qaradawi have advocated different forms of this view. • The liberal Islamic view is influenced by Muhammad Abduh's emphasis on the role of reason in understanding religion. It stresses democratic principles based on pluralism and freedom of thought. Authors like Fahmi Huwaidi and Tariq al-Bishri have constructed Islamic justifications for full citizenship of non-Muslims in an Islamic state by drawing on early Islamic texts. Others, like Mohammed Arkoun and Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, have justified pluralism and freedom through non-literalist approaches to textual interpretation. Abdolkarim Soroush has argued for a "religious democracy" based on religious thought that is democratic, tolerant, and just. Islamic liberals argue for the necessity of constant reexamination of religious understanding, which can only be done in a democratic context. Muslim political opinion and theories As of the late 20th century (1988) scholar Bernard Lewis testifies to the popular power of Islam, which Opinion polls (2012, 2018) Polls conducted by Gallup and Pew Research Center in Muslim-majority countries indicate that most Muslims see no contradiction between democratic values and religious principles, desiring neither a theocracy, nor a secular democracy, but rather a political model where democratic institutions and values can coexist with the values and principles of sharia. Opinions in the polls varied by country. • 2007 poll by Gallup found strong majorities in Egypt, Jordan, and Pakistan agreeing with the statement the Shari'a must be the only source of legislation, while majorities in Indonesia and Iran agreed that it should be "a source but not the only source", and a majority in Turkey thought it should not be a source. Islamic political attitudes Based on the Pew and Gallup opinion polls, Western scholars John Esposito and Natana J. DeLong-Bas distinguish four attitudes toward sharia and democracy prominent among Muslims, as of 2018: • Advocacy of democratic ideas, often accompanied by a claim that they are compatible with Islam, which can play a public role within a democratic system, as exemplified by many protestors who took part in the Arab Spring uprisings; should administer "some" of the "religious and social affairs" of the Shi'i community. In its "absolute" form—the form advanced by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and the basis of government in Islamic Republic of Iran—the state and society are ruled by an Islamic jurist (Ali Khamenei as of 2022). The theory was a variant of Islamism, holding that since sharia law has everything needed to rule a state (whether ancient or modern), and any other basis of governance will lead to injustice and sin, a state must be ruled according to sharia and the person who should rule is an expert in sharia. The theory of sovereignty of the Guardianship of the Jurist (in fact of all Islam) explained by at least one conservative Shi'i scholar (Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi), is contrasted with the theory of sovereignty in "most of the schools of political philosophy and other cultures". Non-Muslim cultures hold that "every man is free", and in democratic cultures in particular, "sovereignty ... belongs to the people". A ruler and government must have the consent of the governed to have political legitimacy. Whereas in fact, sovereignty is God's. The "entire universe and whatever in it belongs to God ... the Exalted, and all their movements and acts must have to be in accordance with the command or prohibition of the Real Owner". Consequently, human beings "have no right to rule over others or to choose someone to rule", i.e. choose someone to rule themselves. In an Islamic state, rule must be according to God's law and the ruler must be best person to enforce God's law. The people's "consent and approval" are valuable for developing and strengthening the Islamic government but irrelevant for its legitimacy. Contemporary movements Some common political currents in Islam include: Sunni Traditionalism, Fundamentalist reformism, Salafi jihadism, Islamism, Liberalism and progressivism within Islam. Of these, only Liberal/progressivism and Islamism embrace political action. • Sunni Traditionalism, which accepts traditional commentaries on the Quran, hadith literature, and sunnah, and "takes as its basic principle imitation (taqlid), that is, refusal to innovate", follows one of the four legal schools or ''Madh'hab'' (Shafiʽi, Maliki, Hanafi, Hanbali), and may include Sufism. An example of Sufi traditionalism is the Barelvi school in Pakistan. • Fundamentalist reformism or revivalism, which criticizes the Islamic scholastic tradition, the commentaries, popular religious practices such as visitation to and veneration of the shrines and tombs of Muslim saints, perceived deviations and superstitions; it aims to return to the founding scriptures of Islam. This fundamentalist reformism generally developed in response to a perceived external threat (for example, the influence of Hinduism on Islam). 18th-century examples of fundamentalist Muslim reformers are Shah Waliullah Dehlawi in British India and Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab in the Arabian peninsula, founder of the Islamic doctrine and movement known as Wahhabism. Salafism and Wahhabism worldwide, the Deobandi school in South Asia (mainly Pakistan and Afghanistan), Ahl-i Hadith and Tablighi Jamaat in India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Pakistan are modern examples of fundamentalist reformism and revivalism. Scholar Olivier Roy argues that unlike Islamists, "Neofundamentalism" (which includes Wahhabi and Salafi Islam) have no political element as they reject political action (such as founding or joining a political party even if the party is an Islamic one) as unislamic. Politic action like economy, constitution, political party, revolution, social justice, etc., are Western conceptual categories Muslims should have nothing to do with, even if they are given "an Islamic slant." "Indulging in politics, even for a good cause, will by definition lead to bid'a and shirk by "giving of priority to worldly considerations over religious values." • Salafi jihadism, (such as Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, ISIS), Sunni Salafism of those who seek to establish a global caliphate through armed struggle. Salafi jihadism is often described as "religiopolitical"Islamist and an "ideology". Notwithstanding this they have not engaged in any traditional political (as opposed to murderous or religious) activities. Al Qaeda, for example, has had "no political branch, union, women's organization, student branch or press, and there are no fellow-travelers. The `masses` are left on the pavement ... In this sense Al Qaeda is more a mafia or a sect than a professional underground organisation." • Islamism or political Islam, embracing a return to the sharia or Islamic law but adopting Western terminology such as revolution, ideology, politics, and democracy, and taking a more liberal attitude towards issues like jihad and women's rights. Contemporary examples include the Jamaat-e-Islami, Muslim Brotherhood, Iranian Islamic Revolution, Masyumi party, United Malays National Organisation, Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party and Justice and Development Party (Turkey). • Liberal and progressive movements within Islam generally define themselves in opposition to Islamist and Islamic fundamentalist political movements, but often embrace many of their anti-imperialist and Islam-inspired liberal reformist elements. Liberal Muslims affirm the promotion of progressive values such as democracy, gender equality, human rights, LGBT rights, women's rights, religious pluralism, interfaith marriage, freedom of expression, freedom of thought, and freedom of religion; Also contributing to the weakening of the juristic scholarly class and their moderating influence in Islam has been the international propagation of Wahhabism and allied conservative schools of Islam by Saudi Arabian petroleum exporting funds. It has led to the growth of expressions of puritanical intolerance (Abou El Fadl argues), including Salafi Jihadism with its terror attacks on civilians. Feldman believes it is no coincidence that the collapse of the influence of independent scholars of Islamic law has coincided with the rise of Islamist movements calling for enforcement of Islamic (sharia) law. In an analysis of the shura chapter of the Quran, Qutb argued that Islam requires only that the ruler consult with at least some of the ruled (usually the elite), within the general context of divine laws that the ruler must execute. Al-Nabhani argued that the shura is important and part of "the ruling structure" of the Islamic caliphate, "but not one of its pillars", and may be neglected without the caliphate's rule becoming un-Islamic. However, these interpretations formulated by Qutb and al-Nabhani are not universally accepted in the Islamic political thought, and Islamic democrats consider the shura to be an integral part and important pillar of the Islamic political system. Both of the following terms, Islamic democracy and Islamic fundamentalism, lump together a large variety of political groups with varying aims, histories, ideologies, and backgrounds. ==See also==
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