Jihad: Political Islam from the Muslim Brotherhood to IS
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Summary Lectures Jihad: Political Islam from Muslim Brotherhood to IS
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Jihad: Political Islam from the Muslim Brotherhood to IS
Institution
Universiteit Van Amsterdam (UvA)
This document provides you with a complete summary of the lectures by Robbert Woltering on Jihad: Political Islam at the UvA. The lecture notes are extensive as the topics discussed are difficult to grasp.
Jihad: Political Islam from the Muslim Brotherhood to IS
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Lectures Jihad
Introductory lecture
A tendency to speak in a manner that is fully understandable only to the in-crowd is normal for a
movement/organisation which has radicalised. If you are part of a movement that is seeking a
rupture with the existing norms/society, then it is very normal that you have certain
references/vocabulary that marks you as being a part of the movement, such as brother (IS)
/comrade (Communism) etc. The enemy forces are given specific names to give a mark, such as the
unbelievers or the bourgeois or leftist church.
Different ways to define Political Islam:
1. Political Islam is the manifestation of Islam beyond the religious domain into the realm of
politics. However, Hirschkind would argue that it is the other way around in modern times.
The modern notion of the (nation)state interferes with so many more things in comparison
with pre-modern states; it interferes in the personal sphere of someone, the language,
education. All these are extremely invasive, and this is what Political Islam is reacting
towards, the fact that modernity brings a state authority into the realm where there used
to be religious authorities in charge.
Hirschkind warns against overstating political economy at the cost of looking into the rationale of the
actors in question. Hirschkind argues that there is not given enough attention to how people who are
a member of a Islamist organisation or the Political Islam movement rationalise and experience their
own part of that movement because it is not just merely about people being poor (bad socio-
economic circumstances).
2. Islamism is not an ideology but a religious cultural political framework for engagement on
issues that most concern politically engaged Muslims (Graham Fuller). It is interesting that
the definition begins by stating what it is not, but it is logical because many people believe it
is an ideology. It is not an ideology because Islamism/Political Islam does not have enough
internal consistency; it does not have a programme (you can support any economic
direction/agenda), diversity found in the positions taken by movements in Islam is extremely
broad so it should not be referred to as an ideology. It is thus a framework (weaker and
less coherent than an ideology: framework of references).
3. An interpretive framework reacting to and expressive of modernity, claiming authority
over Islam and offering its interpretation as a cure to what is perceived as a (Muslim) world
in crisis (article). A framework by means people look at the world in a certain way:
interpretation of the world.
Introduction to the edited volume Rethinking Political Islam
- Rethinking is necessary because of the situation that emerged after 2011/2013 with the
eruption of the Arab Spring which went of its course in what occurred in Egypt in 2013 with
the coup d’état and the political system dominated by the Muslim brotherhood (shock) AND
the emergence of Islamic State around the same time these two shocks necessitate a
rethinking
- The authors only define ‘’mainstream Islamists’’ (and not Islamism itself!) by which they
mean essentially Muslim brothers and such organisations that are inspired by the Egyptian
Muslim Brotherhood. No definition because, according to Schwedler, we might do well to
abandon all together the idea that Political Islam represents a tangible object of study
Key aspects of Political Islam
, 1. Political Islam is a modern phenomenon like other fundamentalist movements/trends as
they react to the expanded state, scientific progress, the way in which rationalism imposes
itself in the minds of peoples
2. Rejecting orthodoxy as they reject the religious status quo and movements of Political Islam
operate in the way modern society allows them to operate and not to operate in the manner
they are brought up to operate. Political Islam wants to change things because it feels like
things have been lost and the guardians of religion have failed but they are still occupying
seats of power whereas they are very corrupted
3. Political Islam claims authenticity and is a movement that engages with identity politics and
does so by stating such a thing as an authentic way of being Muslim which has been lost and
needs to be re-established
4. Seeking social change; ranges from mere improvement to utopia
Islam is actually not so unique in being a religion that functions as a political vehicle and an excuse for
political exclusion and violence in the modern age: the Jewish state (and law) of Israel, Hindu
nationalism in power in India, Budist violence against Muslims in Myanmar, Christianity as state
religion with many perks and Christian fundamentalism engaging in terrorism such as in the United
States and on the rise in the Netherlands. Muslim religion is next to Christianity the only globally
present religion (geography of Islam not limited to a certain number of countries and its violence is
thus a global phenomenon). To conclude: BUT Islam is unique in being the only globally present
religion in a world dominated by powers other than itself.
The thematic approach of the course revolves around the idea that both Islam as a religious
tradition and large parts of the Muslim world’s politics are in a crisis and this crisis revolves to a
large extent around the question of authority and the quest for authenticity: who speaks for Islam?
Religious tradition open to unrest when authority is questioned and open. Questions of
nationality. What is the real Islam? Who belongs in it? These questions are not easily resolved. You
need an authority to establish and protect the boundaries of Islam but without agreement about
what Islam means it is impossible for any authority to establish itself without any credibility.
Authenticity and authority
- Identity and alterity
- Purity of the Self, of religious conviction, of the absence of doubt, and society
- Salafi imitation of ‘’pristine’’ Muslim times: belief that the first three generations of Muslims
were true Muslims
- Reformist revival of ‘’original’’ Islam: inspiration of early day Islam and NOT imitation
- The struggle against tradition and orthodoxy in the name of authenticity that tradition and
orthodoxy are rejected
- Estrangement in an age of globalisation: Political Islam as a struggle against cultural changes
and fears of globalisation
The Law of Asynchronicity, by Thomas Bauer, argues that it is difficult to understand whether
something should be labelled authentic. This concept is easily manipulated as people have the
tendency to unconsciously mislabel and misunderstand authenticity.
Orientalism, by Edward Said, is not just mere critique of stereotyping but it also involves the context
of power relations which are inequal: orientalism being a discourse regarding the Orient and
implacable in the ways in which people in other countries speak of people in their neighbourhood
countries. Orientalist thinking is a manner of thinking that creates an Other for the purpose of an
idealised self-image.
, The problem with Political Islam is that the topic is politicized and therefore many people are
positioned at the ends of a polarised discussion. The second problem is that the course is abnormal
and it risks misrepresenting the great whole: Political Islam a modern phenomenon and does
something new away from the Islamic tradition AND it is not normal in the sense that it is only a part
of the Muslim world and not normality. Muslim world is likely not the world you live in.
The origins of Classical Islam
John Voll’s introduction in Islam. Continuity and Change in the Muslim World, written in 1982, is
important to get a basic understanding in Islamic classical history and it is of an analytical nature. Voll
argues four basic styles of the Islamic experience: (1) pragmatic adapters, (2) conservatives, (3)
fundamentalists (Salafism), and (4) personal and individual emphasis on faith (charismatic
experience, Sufism and Shiism in particular). These styles are present in various combinations in a
certain time and place. All four are not mutually exclusive and sometimes certain voices/styles are on
the rise and more dominant than others. Islamic practises can be at times more diverse, adopting
things from surrounding religious cultures, and there are times when things are stricter and more
separated wherein people return to their textual basis.
For many centuries (1000-1800), there was a Muslim world comparable to the modern Western
world by which is meant the way in which the Muslim world was a global phenomenon reaching
beyond its geography: Muslim civilisations all over the world in which practises of trade and justice or
educational systems and literature were practised. Some have argued it was an Islamicate
civilisation which meant it comprised various religious traditions. Several religious groups, from
Muslims to Jews, used the same scientific knowledge and framework in the world, just as creating
arts, poetry along the same lines with every religion. Similar coins were used in Europe with universal
value, coins that had Arabic writing and origins to it, which shows the reach of the Abbasid (family
ruling the Islamic kingdom from 750 to the 13 th century) monetary influence far beyond its borders.
The establishment of a Muslim polity:
In the 7th century on the Arabian Peninsula, there were apart from Yemen no states and people lived
in tribal societies. There was an increasingly prosperous trading town in the Peninsula, Mecca, and in
that town Mohammed (Ca. 570-632) emerged as a prophet offering a monotheism in the Abrahamic
tradition which meant it refers to Judaism and Christianity (and other religious traditions) as
preceding religious traditions that originate in the same God. With the Quran as the word of God
with the most important message that there is only one God, an afterlife, solidarity, and reckoning.
This is possibility a reaction to strains in the tribal solidarity precisely due to the growing prosperity in
the town of Mecca. Mohammed then offers a new basis for solidarity, one that eventually
supersedes tribal allegiance.
In 622, Mohammed and his followers are casted out of Mecca and migrate to Medina where
Mohammed gradually becomes the leader of Medina more broadly. Different groups of people
emerged. People who migrated because of religious reasons (Mohammed and his followers) were
called ‘’migrants’’. The people who received and helped Mohammed and his followers, already living
in Medina, were called ‘’helpers’’ in assisting Mohammed in spreading his message. The Islamic term
for ‘’helper’’ now refers to Islamic organisations. The people in Medina claiming they are supporters
of Mohammed but are in fact working against him are ‘’hypocrites’’ and this term was applied to
people who were considered enemies of the proper faith by Islamic terms. Lastly is the Prophet’s
Family, especially the group around Ali (nephew of Mohammed). Thus, all these old terms are later
still used by Islamic State and others with heavy meaning.
In 632 Mohammed dies. An ad hoc group agrees on Abu Bakr, close to Mohammed and originally
from Mecca, and is declared khalif and not a prophet so in being Mohammed’s successor in terms of
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