Not just one abomination, but two! (FB Ali)

The burning alive of a captured Jordanian pilot by the Islamic State (IS) was a horrific act, and deserves to be wholeheartedly condemned by everyone. It is, sadly, true that people are incinerated during war, both combatants and non-combatants. But the burning alive of Lt al-Kassasbeh was a brutal crime, since he was a prisoner of war and also because of the 'production' made of the whole miserable episode.

The IS compounded this vicious act by committing a second abomination: claiming that this punishment was administered according to the tenets of 'Islam'.

This 'Islam' that the IS adhere to is a simplistic, medieval code derived from the Wahhabi creed, which is the usual religion of Jihadis. But this creed is not the Islam that was first taught by the Prophet Muhammad in the 7th century CE. It is not even the Religion of Islam that began to be formulated some 200 years after the Prophet and, over the centuries, developed into a complex structure with many variations in different parts of the world (the usual trajectory of religions that start from a simple, fundamental ideology).

Unfortunately (for Islam and Muslims), the Wahhabi creed is spreading in the Muslim world and has become the face of Islam for many on the outside. It is important to understand how this has come about.

This creed arose in Arabia in the 18th century and advocates a return to the purity and simplicity of early Islam through a purging of all the 'dross' that the religion has subsequently acquired. The "early Islam" that it seeks is that of the first few generations of Muslims, but the sources it relies on are of much later provenance and of very mixed quality. Inevitably, the picture that emerges from them is of life in an early medieval time, requiring much interpretation and extrapolation to apply it to current conditions.

This creed gained some local standing by allying itself to the Ibn Saud family that went on to ultimately achieve power in that backward and poor desert country. It then became the state religion, and also spread among the Gulf Arabs. With the discovery of oil the Saudi kingdom and the Gulf emirates vaulted from a poor backwater to important players on the international stage. It was not until the 1980s, however, when the US began its campaign to push the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan, that the Wahhabi creed started to spread outside its home base.

The Saudis, urged by the US to assist the Afghan Mujahideen fighting the Soviets, poured in money, weapons, and a number of Arab volunteers, along with their creed. The latter appealed to the unsophisticated Pashtun tribesmen in both Afghanistan and Pakistan and, boosted by the accompanying financial incentives, soon spread widely among them. At the same time, Gen Zia-ul-Haq assumed power in Pakistan and eagerly embraced Saudi assistance to Islamicise the country, mainly through generously financed Wahhabi madrassahs (religious schools). In time this creed became the religious belief of the Jihadi movement, first in the form of al Qaeda and the Taliban, and later the Pakistani Taliban and other offshoots. And, of course, the IS.

The Saudis have consistently sought to increase their influence and standing in the Muslim world through a combination of their huge financial resources and the propagation of the Wahhabi creed. They have found a receptive audience among Muslims of many lands, either fed up with the misgovernance, corruption and lawlessness in their own countries or living alienated lives in other countries.

Muslims generally have also felt themselves to be under pressure or outright attack by the West, with the only obvious resistance coming from the Jihadis (with their Wahhabi creed). Its status is also much burnished when they see the leaders of the powerful West bow and scrape before the Saudi monarchs, its patron.

The fall of relatively secular Muslim regimes and their modernising agendas has also fueled its rise; Jihadis, often backed by Wahhabi money, exploit the chaos and resulting power vacuums. This has happened in Afghanistan (yes, the Soviet-backed regime was one such!), Iraq, Libya, and Syria (while Egypt and Tunisia have progressed only part way through this scenario). No doubt these regimes were authoritarian, often harsh, and corrupt, but no more so than most other Muslim countries, and indeed many others. That this fate has befallen all of them makes many wonder whether Ian Fleming's classic formulation applies here: Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time, Mr Bond, it's enemy action!

It seems odd that the West continues to support, and even show deference to, the Saudis and their Gulf satellites, given their support for anti-West Jihadis and their efforts to radicalise more and more Muslims around the world. It becomes understandable, however, when one realises how many constituencies in these countries and governments benefit from this situation. There is the boost this 'terror threat' provides to their militaries, security agencies and their supporting structures (corporations, think tanks, the media, etc). The former acquire more power and financing, while the latter stand to make lots of money. A frightened citizenry accepts the promise of increased security in lieu of many of their rights and freedoms, while marginalised groups can legitimately be denied resources.

For many Muslims this onslaught of Saudi money and ideology is deeply disturbing. It is leading to the rise of fundamentalism, and pulling the religion of Islam more and more towards the Wahhabi model. (Since, at its core, the religion also presents a medieval ideal as its standard, this results in the shedding of more and more of the ameliorating beliefs and practices that it has acquired over the centuries). Such Muslims are faced with the difficult choice of either abandoning their aspirations for a progressive system of life or adopting the hypocrisy of a purely external belief.

This agonizing choice can be avoided if Muslims realise that the religion of Islam as they know it is not the Islam that the Prophet Muhammad received. That original was a profound and powerful set of beliefs relating to the existence of God, the relationship of humans to the deity, and our role in the world. This Islam was recorded in the Qur'ān, and is still available to us today to study and rediscover these fundamental, nurturing beliefs.

(Anyone interested in seeing how this can be done, and what these beliefs are, can refer to my paper Understanding the Qur'ān's Message. Interestingly, if they explore these issues in some depth and without preconceptions, non-Muslims, even atheists, can arrive at pretty much the same conclusions, as discussed here).

Comments

[Patrick Bahzad]

See you're conceding a point again when you were rejecting the whole idea in the first place. You wanted one example I gave you four. So if you saying now ISIS may have been to selective in choice of crucifixion that sounds on the border of interpreting the Quran in light of reason.
I also notice no reply with regard to other two points I made so I take it you agree there's is something there ...
As for your last statement, you only have centuries of Islamic jurisprudence against you

[Babak Makkinejad]

No I do not agree with your general point or specific points.

I selected the first and the last as examples and I believe I have rebutted them.

The only people who approached Quran, historically, in the light of Human Reason for any length of time have been a few Shia - despised by the other Shia as well as Sunnis; in my opinion.

You do not seem to understand how much people like "Not to Think".

Thinking is hard, that is why it took 2000 years to have an adequate theory of magnetism; for example.

[Patrick Bahzad]

I'm judging not based on what you say but how you chose to reply ... You state your disagreement but your avoidance at answering questions speaks volumes ! From someone who pretends to be well read and knowledgeable in the Quran, I'd say you can do better !

[Babak Makkinejad]

I am extremely well-rad, I am not deeply knowledgeable in the Quran.

[Charles I]

I am pretty ignorant of Muslim theology etc, but I am surprised no one has posted any thing like this here as we discuss authorities.

"Al-Azhar refuses to consider the Islamic State an apostate

Egypt’s Al-Azhar issued a statement Dec. 11, 2014, refusing to declare the Islamic State (IS) apostates. “No believer can be declared an apostate, regardless of his sins,” it read. Al-Azhar's statement came as a Nigerian mufti seemingly declared IS apostates at a Dec. 4, 2014, Al-Azhar conference. Al-Azhar stated that various media outlets had misrepresented the mufti's speech.

The sheikh of Al-Azhar, Ahmed al-Tayeb, repeated his rejection of declaring IS apostates on Jan. 1, during a meeting with editors-in-chief of Egyptian newspapers. This sparked criticism from a number of religious, political and media parties, especially since Al-Azhar could have renounced the Nigerian mufti’s statement on IS without addressing the issue of whether or not Al-Azhar considers the group apostates.

In press statements, Al-Azhar representative Abbas Shoman said that the institution had not declared any person or group an apostate throughout its history. Yet, this claim was refuted by the daughter of late Egyptian author Farag Foda, Samar Farag Foda, who called into an Egyptian satellite TV program, saying, “My father’s assassination came as a result of fatwas issued by the majority of Al-Azhar’s sheikhs declaring him an apostate, because he had called for the separation of religion from politics.”

Al-Azhar’s leaders — the grand mufti and the Council of Senior Scholars — have actually never declared any person or group an apostate throughout Al-Azhar’s history, yet they have not taken any measures against Al-Azhar figures who have issued fatwas to that effect."

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/02/azhar-egypt-radicals-islamic-state-apostates.html?utm_source=Al-Monitor+Newsletter+%5BEnglish%5D&utm_campaign=f991bff7cc-February_13_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_28264b27a0-f991bff7cc-93086137

[turcopolier]

Bandolero

IMO Iran has no interest in doing the job of suppressing IS/Nusra and the non-Iranian locals lack the strength absent Turkish participation. Sometimes you can't have what you want. This is one of those times. pl

[Patrick Bahzad]

I never doubted that.
but you won't find everything in books , and not everything you might know for a fact from a book will turn out that way in the real world.

[Jim Buck]

The British documentary maker Adam Curtis has a new film which addresses the influence of Wahhabism:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXcpDO8_3qU

[mbrenner]

As FB Ali correctly stresses, fundamentalism in today’s world is largely a socio-cultural phenomenon. The revival of religious righteousness in a self-conscious dedication to restoration of a faith’s purest expressions is religious in content and aspiration. But its causes normally have little or anything to do with an individual’s or a small community‘s thirst for the meaning of life and/or for salvation.

Two forms of genuine religious passion are notably absent from cotemporary movements: piety and ecstasy. The pious spend their time in devotion and prayer – not attending rallies, fighting wars or engaging in manipulative politics. False piety, of course, is another matter (whether we think of Houston/Los Angeles evangelical preachers of mega-churches, the ultra-Orthodox Jewish settlers in the West Bank, Bakr al- Baghdadi, or phony Hindu swamis on the make). Ecstasy is trickier since the experience of transcendent states of mind and emotion do occur in group settings of various kinds. The ecstasy of Sufis or yogis or holy-rollers, however, is meant to be revelatory and to lead to a higher state of consciousness marked by spiritual awareness. The endorphins of battle maintained through a constant stoking of rage and passion for exalted sacrifice is quite a different matter.

The worshipful path that typifies Islamic fundamentalists is highly ritualistic – in both the performance of devotional actions and in the observance of minutely specified strict rules. Discipline and obedieince are its hallmarks.

So Islamic fundamentalism nowadays seems to have a double appeal. It provides an extraordinary high for persons desperately seeking to experience something more consuming than their unsatisfying lives. It also casts a mantle of sacredness over their search. That sacred quality, moreover, endows them with a lost collective identity as members of a culture and a people that have suffered from both feeling themselves losers by modern criteria and humiliated in multiple ways by others who have proven superior by those measures. Fundamentalism offers an alternative measure while explaining that they fared so poorly in the great civilizational competition because they have been led astray from the true by the impure and those seduced by the deceptive material world. Finally, the answer provided requires little in the way of individual initiative other than the initial decision to efface oneself for the sake of the cause, i.e. the True Believer.

Christian fundamentalists in the Bible Belt exhibit many of these same traits and experiences.

[FB Ali]

Michael,

Well put. I fully agree.

The unfortunate implication is that the only way to deal with a fundamentalist on the warpath is to either capture him or kill him. Or, prevent him from becoming one.

The Saudi government's push to spread their Wahhabi creed in the Muslim world is mainly to increase their influence. That it also leads to the spread of fundamentalism is, for them, incidental.

However, the similar push by the Wahhabi religious establishment, backed by lots of private and some official Saudi/Gulf money, is directly aimed at creating fundamentalists and helping Jihadi organizations, including the IS.

Since the two moves have the same immediate goal, they work in tandem and both tend to produce the same ultimate result. That is why it so foolish for the West to keep backing the Saudis and the Gulfies. (However, it does suit Israel - for the time being).

[confusedponderer]

"IMO Iran has no interest in doing the job of suppressing IS/Nusra and the non-Iranian locals lack the strength absent Turkish participation"

I think the 'absent Turkish participation' is key.

Unless the Iranians had least one major Sunni ally in this quest, any Iranian attempt at the pacification of Iraq/ defeating IS would quickly turn into an open proxy war, with Iran doing the fighting and dying and paying while the Turks and the Gulfies fund and sustain their enemies and have the Iraqis and international volunteers do the fighting and dying.

Iran could as well put an arm in a meatgrinder.

I think the Iranians are acutely aware of that.

[Babak Makkinejad]

Will Germany supply Iran - at no cost - 1500 Leopard tanks to Iran?

Will Russia supply 600 helicopter gunships - again at no cost - to Iran for fighting ISIS?

I think not.

Because that is what it takes.

[Babak Makkinejad]

I think the fundamentalist Christians are all Protestants that broke with the Catholic Church.

The Catholic Church has the intellectual and emotional and religious wherewithal to debunk, dismiss, and discredit all attempts at respectability by the fundie Christians.

It is the "Mother Church" and even fundies know it.

And it also is the most popular Christian denomination in the world.

The analogues of the Catholic Church in the Muslim world in terms of intellectuality and emotive orientation are the Usuli Shia Doctors of Religion; a minority among the despised minority of Muslims.

There is therefore no way that the Wahabai fundies could be battled in the plane of ideas.

[Lord Curzon]

Literalists tend to have a rather terminal effect upon forward progress.