New Religious

Movements in Islam &

The Birth of Saudi Arabia

L e c t u r e N o t e s b y n o t e s b y D e n i s B a š i c

Ibn Rushd, aka Averroes (1126-1198)

Three Explanations for the Decline of the Islamic World

Some Islamic scholars criticize the tendency of the Muslims to blindly follow the teachings of previous generations of religious scholars. The harshest among them condemn their predecessors for misinterpreting or falsifying the original precepts of Islam, including ijtihad (reasoning), which had to be harnessed again to revise Islam and make it applicable to the contemporary conditions. These are Islamic Modernists.

Others accused later Muslim societies themselves of corrupting the islamic precepts by mixing Islam with folk customs, such as saint worship, mysticism, and divination (prophesying the future by supernatural means.) These are the Salafis, also often called Islamists.

The third explanation for the Decline of the Islamic world comes from the so-called “Westernizers” who frequently blamed Islam for the “backwardness of the Middle East.”

SUFIS vs.

SALAFIS

Sufism = Islamic Mysticism Sufism, mystical Islamic belief and practice in which Muslims seek to find the truth of divine love and knowledge through direct personal experience of God. It consists of a variety of mystical paths that are designed to ascertain the nature of humanity and of God and to facilitate the experience of the presence of divine love and wisdom in the world.

Though the roots of Islamic mysticism formerly were believed to have stemmed from various non-Islamic sources in ancient Europe and even India, it now seems established that the movement grew out of early Islamic asceticism that developed as a counterweight to the increasing worldliness of the expanding Muslim community; only later were foreign elements that were compatible with mystical theology and practices adopted and made to conform to Islam.

Sufism = Islamic Mysticism 2By educating the masses and deepening the spiritual concerns of the Muslims, Sufism has played an important role in the formation of Muslim society. Opposed to the dry casuistry (the use of clever but unsound reasoning) of the lawyer-divines, the mystics nevertheless scrupulously observed the commands of the divine law.

The Sufis have been further responsible for a large-scale missionary activity all over the world, which still continues. Sufis have elaborated the image of the Prophet Muhammad —the founder of Islam—and have thus largely influenced Muslim piety by their Muhammad-mysticism.

Without the Sufi vocabulary, Persian and other literatures related to it, such as Arabic, Turkish, Urdu, Sindhi, Pashto, and Punjabi, would lack their special charms. Through the poetry of these literatures, mystical ideas spread widely among the Muslims.

In some countries Sufi leaders have also been politically active.

For more on Sufi teachings, check our website.

SALAFISThe Salafis are those critics of the previous generations who advocated using the first Islamic community called al-salaf al-salih (pious ancestors) established by Muhammad in Medina as a model for the political and moral regeneration.

Salafis disregarded all other sources, but the Qur’an and Hadith. Even the Qur’an and Hadith, they use them selectively, often applying the principle of Abrogation of more moderate by less moderate verses and hadithes.

They advocate for the تقليد /taqlid/ - unquestioned imitation of the first Islamic community surrounding Prophet Muhammad.

(Do not forget that all Islamic movements - Islamic modernists, Sufis, as well as Islamists - claim that they are true to the original message of Muhammad)

Therefore, in the Salafi world, there is no اجتهاد /ijtihad/ reasoning base on the consensus إجماع ijma/ of the community.

But, this is easier said than done!

WAHHABISM... is a reform movement in Islam, originating in Arabia; adherents of the movement usually refer to themselves as Muwahhidun [unitarians]. It was founded by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahab (c.1703-1791), who was influenced by another Islamic theologian, Ibn Taymiyya (1263-1328) and taught that all accretions to Islam after the 3d cent. of the Muslim era—i.e., after c. 950—were spurious and must be expunged. This view, involving essentially a purification of the Sunni sect, regarded the veneration of saints, celebration of Prophet Muhammad’s birthday, ostentation in worship, and luxurious living as the chief evils. Accordingly, Wahhabi mosques are simple and without minarets, and the adherents dress plainly and do not smoke tobacco or hashish. The male adherents wear long beards with no or very short mustache and often pants the length of about one foot from the ground. Their female adherents are usually completely veiled in public.

Driven from Medina for his preaching, the founder of the Wahhabi sect, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahab, went into the NE Nejd and converted the Saud tribe. The Saudi sheik, Muhammad ibn Saud, convinced that it was his religious mission to struggle (jihad) against all other forms of Islam and began the conquest of his neighbors in c.1763. By 1811 the Wahhabis ruled all Arabia, except Yemen, from their capital at Riyadh. The Ottoman sultan, nominally suzerain over Arabia, had vainly sent out expeditions to crush them. Only when the sultan called on Muhammad Ali of Egypt for aid did he meet success; by 1818 the Wahhabis were driven into the desert.

WAHHABISM 2

In the Nejd, the Wahhabis collected their power again and from 1821 to 1833 gained control over the Persian Gulf coast of Arabia. Their domain thereafter steadily weakened; Riyadh was lost in 1884, and in 1889 the Saud family fled for refuge into the neighboring state of Kuwait. The Wahhabi movement was to enjoy its third triumph when Abd al-Aziz Ibn Saud advanced from his capture of Riyadh in 1902 to the reconstitution in 1932 of nearly all his ancestral domain under the name Saudi Arabia, where it remains dominant. Wahhabism served as an inspiration to other Islamic reform movements from India and Sumatra to North Africa and the Sudan, and during the 20th century has influenced the Taliban of Afghanistan and Islamist movements elsewhere.

WAHHABISM 3

The Salafi movement is often described as synonymous with Wahhabism. At other times, Salafism has been described as a hybrid of Wahhabism and other post-1960s movements, i.e. as a larger term than Wahhabism. And indeed, for instance, the Salafis of Pakistan are pro-democracy, while the Wahabbis of Saudi Arabia are not. The Wahhabis consider the term "Wahhabi" derogatory, for it implies that they follow and venerate Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahab (c.1703-1791) as Christians follow and venerate Jesus (as a Son of God or God Himself), which is a blasphemy in their opinion. They prefer being called “Muwahhidun” (Unitarians) or “Salafis.”Following the same rationale, Muslims do not like being called “Muhammadans.”

Listed to this excellent documentary program by Tarek Osman of the BBC entitled Sands of Time : A History of Saudi Arabia

NOMENCLATURE

Salafis vs. Sufis

For more on the conflict between these two islamic sects, check these links:

Salafis and Sufis in Egypt (click on “Full Text”)

Sufis vs. Salafi - A Believer is His Brother's Mirror

Islamic Modernists

vs. Middle eastern

Secularists

ISLAMIC MODERNISTS vs. Middle Eastern Secularists

Islamic modernists argued that the true Islam that had preserved the Greek philosophy during Europe’s Dark Ages was not incompatible with science and reason, modern ideas and progress. Unlike the pure Westernizers, who frequently blamed Islam for the “backwardness of the Middle East” and promoted the adoption of such Western ideas as secularism, Islamic modernists were more selective in what they chose to borrow.Secularists wanted a drastic change, however, realizing that the majority of the population does not share their view, sometimes they sought to manipulate people using a conservative, even religious rhetoric.

Young Ottomanswere a group of Ottoman nationalist intellectuals formed in 1865, influenced by such Western thinkers as Montesquieu and Rousseau and the French Revolution. They developed the concept of Ottomanism, aligned with these thinkers. They advocated a constitutional, parliamentary government.The Young Ottomans were bureaucrats resulting from the Tanzimat reforms who were unsatisfied with its bureaucratic absolutism and sought a more democratic solution.Their ideology was based on the indigenous Islamic principles, namely of the principle of shura (council). In the early Islamic civilization this council’s task was to elect Muhammad’s successor. The Young Ottomans used the same idea to call for the Ottoman parliament and constitution. Besides influencing the establishment of the Ottoman constitution and parliament, they influenced the ‘Urabi rebellion in Egypt, as well as the Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1905.

Islamic Modernism in Persia

In the mid-19th-century Persia a new class of intellectuals arose from the Daru-l-Funun in Tehran.

Some other Persian intellectuals were educated in Europe, especially later during the reign of Shah Reza.

These Persian, as well as Ottoman, intellectuals were under the influence of European thinkers, such as Auguste Comte (1798-1857) and Henri Comte de Saint-Simon (1760-1825). However, they always looked for guidance in the Qur’an, Hadith, and Islamic scholars of the past.

‘Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406) & His Muqqadimah

the greatest Arab historian, who d e v e l o p e d o n e o f t h e e a r l i e s t nonreligious philosophies of history, contained in his masterpiece, the Muqaddimah (“Introduction”). The Muqaddimah, or the Prolegomena in Latin, was written in 1377. It records an early Muslim view of universal history. Many modern thinkers view it as the first work dealing with the philosophy of history and the social sciences of sociology, demography, historiography, and cultural history, and a forerunner of modern economics. The work also deals with Islamic theology and the natural sciences of biology and chemistry.

Ibn Khaldun - Critical historiography

1. ...Partisanship towards a creed or opinion... 2. ...Over-confidence in one's sources... 3. ...The failure to understand what is intended... 4. ...A mistaken belief in the truth... 5. ...The inability to place an event in its real context 6. ...The common desire to gain favor of those of high ranks, by praising them, by spreading their fame... 7. ...The most important is the ignorance of the laws governing the transformation of human society."

“All records, by their very nature, are liable to error...

Ibn Khaldun starts the Muqaddimah with a thorough criticism of the mistakes regularly committed by his fellow historians and the difficulties which await the historian in his work. He notes seven critical issues:

ijtihad - reasoningIjtihad (Arabic اجتهاد) is a technical term of Islamic law that describes the process of making a legal decision by independent interpretation of the legal sources, the Qur'an and the Sunnah. The opposite of ijtihad is taqlid (تقليد), Arabic for "imitation." A person who applies ijtihad is called a mujtahid, and traditionally had to be a scholar of Islamic law, an Islamic lawyer or ‘alim.

The word ijtihad is derived from the root ج-ه-د (jahada, “to struggle"), the same root from which the term jihad is derived.In early Islam ijtihad was a commonly used legal practice, and was well integrated with philosophy. It slowly fell out of practice for several reasons, most notably the efforts of Asharite theologians from the 12th century, who saw it as leading to errors of over-confidence in judgement. Muhammad al-Ghazali (1058-1111) was the most notable of the Asharites and his work, The Incoherence of the Philosophers, was the most celebrated statement of this view. In his work, “The Incoherence of the Incoherence,” Ibn Rushd, aka Averroes, (1126-1198) refuted al-Ghazali’s view and defended the use of ijtihad in Islam.

ijtihad - reasoning 2Long after the 10th century the principles of ijtihad continued to be discussed in the Islamic legal literature, and Asharites continued to argue with their Mutazilite rivals about its applicability to sciences.In Islamic political theory, ijtihad is often counted as one of the essential qualifications of the caliph, e.g. by Al-Baghdadi (1037) or Al-Mawardi (1058). Al-Ghazali dispenses with this qualification in his legal theory and delegates the exercise of ijtihad to the ulema.Ironically, the loss of ijtihad’s application in law seems to have also led to its loss in philosophy and the sciences, which most historians think caused Muslim societies to stagnate before the 1492 fall of al-Andalus, after which Muslim works were translated into Latin and led in part to the Renaissance revival of classical works, using improved methods, although the Muslims themselves were no longer using these methods in their daily life at all until the reappearance of the modernist Islamic thought in the 19th century.