IDEOLOGY, HISTORY, METHODS, FAILURES
Origins of the Islam and his Expansion.
The concept of the minor Yihad, blood effort in «Allah’s way» does not exist in the Noble Koran. Nevertheless, there exist in it near 50 aleyas that encourage the Muslims to the defense of the community, to the fight against the unfaithful people and to the armed spread of the Islam. Established the main lines, rapidly the political chiefs of the Umma, including the Prophet, threw hand of the instrument that so clearly was offering them and that they needed to life or death. At the beginning of the Islam, when was reigning the jahiliyya (the barbarism previous to it) in the Arabs, in the times of Mohammed, the Yihad was indispensable and inevitable for the defense of the new religion. That was arising in the middle of a stormy sea of tribes and pagan and idolatrous clans more o less nomads, that were populating Arabia. And the Muslims groups could easily be eliminated by his enemies.
But the March (the Hegira) of him with a handful of followers, from Mecca to Medina in the 622 A.D., inaugurated a new age of transformation in the world and of expansion of the Arabic Islamic theocracy. In that epoch, the power in the whole Middle East or, better, the Asia of the Southwest was distributing between the Persian Empire of the Sassanids and the Empire of Byzantium. A few years later, the Arabs had got hold of the Sassanids Empire (644). And they had restricted the lands of Byzantium in Asia, to the center and west of Minor Asia (the Anatolia). Parallelly, they were controlling the north of Africa: in 641 occupied Egypt and they were rapidly spreading up to Tripoli and the Atlantic coasts of the Maghrib and Ifrikia (in 697). Finally, in 711 they invade the visigoth kingdom of Roman Spain and in 732 penetrate in the kingdom of the Francs.
As in any religious primitive community, the Umma was the center of the mandates and Allah’s benedictions. There being collectivly and keenly lived the fulfillment of a monotheistic and simple doctrine. By the side of the mundane interests, the extension of the Arabic conquests, in his uncontrollable advance during more than one century, brought the control over the goods and wealths of the new and numerous subjects and the political and military power over them. The Moslem domain was established by the presence of a governor with his military garrison, in every city or conquered region. The relation of the new subjects with the Islamic regime was establishing and regulating by the payment to the governor of the periodic taxes for the imposed vassalage and the practising, for the moment, of a different religion. The third reason for this dizzy expansion of the Islam, was attainable to the nobles, chiefs and more out-standing Muslims. And it was the distribution of the power quotas that were generating by the domain, the defense and the governance of the new territories of al-Islam, the lands where the Islam was applying and governing.
The sunnism, which follow near of the 90% of the Muslims, also agrees as divine revelation the Tradition or Sunna of the Prophet. The facts and Mohammed’s comments form the tradition. The major or minor rigor in the selection for the purity of his origin and in the acceptance of this tradition, which was gathered and transmitted by his more immediate followers, characterize the four ideologic sunnis schools, founded astride between the VIIIth and IXth century. The most opened and flexible school, the Chafii founded by the Palestinian al-Chafii, died in Cairo on 820 at the age of 53 years, opened an encouraging door for the pacific evolution of the Islam. She also accepts the «sages of the community consensus» and the analogical reasoning or qiijas, as correct routes for the adjustment of the Islam to all the times and places. Departing from his «rural, illiterate, poor and medieval origin and surrounded of hostiles and barbarism».
After the death of the Prophet in 632 arised times in which the authority of a new chief and the rivalries between Mecca and Medina were threatening the unity and the development of the Islam. The first caliph or successor Abu Baker al-Siddique (632-634) affirmed his authority in the community or Umma and consolidated the caliphate as the «religious politician successors of the Prophet». And for it used the Yihad, in the war of the riddas, establishing a regular army, without wages. Omar, called the Lord of the Believers, was the second caliph (634-644). He organizes the administration and the theocratic system, where the military chief of the conquered land is the delegate of the caliph for the civil matters, the head of the Islam and the secular judge. Otman, the third caliph (644-656), of the family of the Omeyas, continued the armed expansion, but was murdered for leaving out the military caste. Ali was the fourth caliph (656-661), cousin, son-in-law and distinguished companion of the Prophet. But, Muhawiya revolted to avenge his cousin Otman and Ali turned out to be murdered. Muhawiya (661-680) was then proclaimed Caliph, initiated the Omeya dynasty and moved the capital of the caliphate to Damascus. His son Yazid (680-683) conquered the supporters of Hussein (son of Ali) in Kerbala’s combat (72 falls), on October 10 of 680. The first 4 caliphs are called by the sunnis the Rashidun, the «rightly guided (by God)». In this historical original stage, the Muslims realized their first conquests, departing from his initial core The Meca-Medina, towards the north, east and west of it.
HUSSEIN, SON OF FATIMA AND ALI AND GRAND SON OF THE PROPHET.
And then arose the political religious schism in the Islam. The transmission of the caliphate would enter soon in irreconcilable conflict with the shiies. The shiism, in demographic minority always, assumes historically a fatalistic, passive attitude, even of physical suffering for it. They wait for the return of the XIIth Iman (caliph) missing in 874, that will come as al-Mahdi (guided by Allah) at any time of the History, to make triumph the orthodox Umma (the Shiites). And it will have a time of peace in the earth, dominating the shiies in it, as prize to their efforts, before happens the Reappearance or final Resurrection and the Judgment of the men by Allah.
The Salafi Ideology.
Salafismo of «salaf», predecessor or ancestor. As salaf, the Muslims call Mohammed and his disciples: the first four caliphs and the next two generations. The expansion of the Islam in the 7th century assumes to the purity of his faith. Since then, whenever the Moslem societies are sufering an economic, political or social crisis, prominent figures will arise that will praise a return to the Islam of the Salaf. Ibn Hanbal, in the 9th century, gives a literal interpretation of the Islam, based in recovering the ancestors and in the condemnation to the theological innovations. Ibn Taymiyya resorted equally to her in the 14th century, when the Middle East was suffering the Mongolians invasions.
IBN HANBAL
TAYMIYYA
The modern salafists begin with the preaching of the Arabic ulema Mohamed Ibn Abdul Wahhab (1703-1792) who thought that the decline of the Moslem countries opposite to the West, ensues from the oblivion of the original message of the Islam. Ibn Abdul Wahhab preaches the literal and puritanical reading of the Islam, registering in the Hanbalist and in Ibn Taymiyya traditions. Searching «the correct way of acting in the educations of pious predecessors». His sermons were not well received and was expelled from his natal locality, in the Nejd region. He changed to Diriyah’s city and there formed an alliance with the sheikh Mohamed ibn Saud, initiator of Saud’s House. Ibn Saud promulgated the idea of the Islam «wahhabí» as the way of practising the Islam in official form in the country. For his part, al-Wahhab gave the religious legitimacy to Ibn Saud in his conquest of Arabia.
Mohamed Ibn Abdul Wahhab
Finally, in 1902, the emir Abdul Aziz ibn Saud reconquered Riyadh, in 1924 occupied Mecca and Medina and in 1932, all the Saudi Arabia. This was giving them the control on the Hajj, the annual peregrinaje to the sacred places and the opportunity to preach the wahhabism between the pilgrims. But, the wahhabism was a minor current of the Islam until 1938, when the oil reserves were discovered in the zone. The immense incomes from this new wealth gave a great impetus to his ideological expansion.
The salafi currents are renaissance movements of the Islam, through the return to the original faith, that of the «pious predecessors». They reject everything that identify as «human interpretations after the revelation of the Prophet». They are reformists movements which condemn the practices of the popular Islam (accused of being superstitions) and great part of the ideological Moslem thought, considered as carrier of «innovations». That is to say, «creations of the human reason», that move away from the divine message. The salafists reject in turn the influence of the western civilization, particularly the democracy, the relativism and the laity, that «corrupt the Moslem faith». The salafists become emancipated of the tradition founded by the 4 sunnis schools and they invent another Islam, which they affirm is founded on the Coran and the Sunna. Also they seek to imitate Mohammed in all the acts of the daily life, included the way of eating or dressing.
The imans next the Saudi regime, reject the jihadist way, that tries to impose a Moslem regime by means of the violent and revolutionary action, on having considered it to be condemned to the failure. One of his great figures, from the 60s up to his death in 1999, the sheikh Mohamed Nasiruddin al-Alabani, was declaring that «it forms nowadays part of the good politic, to leave the politic». For al-Albani it was necessary to follow a purification of the education strategy: on one hand, to regenerate the faith, purifying it of ideological «innovations» that remove it from his origins; and to educate the Muslims in this regenerated faith, in order that they leave his religious «corrupt» practices.
The «Jihadist Salafi» or Qutbism.
This current does the Jihad a center of his activity. The jihadism seek to accelerate the liberation of the Moslem countries of any foreign occupation. It is based on SayYid Qutb’s ideas, a theoretic and revolutionary born in the Moslem Brothers. He was sure that the Western Society was sick with individualism and ungodliness. And the Moslem countries would suffer the same thing, if they were influenced by West. And was affirming that the Moslem general regimes were apostates, on having applied lay laws, instead of the Sharia. Qutb’s thought was one of the principal influences in the sects Muslims’ Society or Excommunnication (takfir) and Hegira (migration), arisen in 1969 in the bosom of the Moslem Brothers in Egypt, and al-Qaeda, and his leaders, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama Ben Laden. The leader of the Moslem Brothers, Sayid Qutb, was detained, judged and executed at August 29, 1966, for planning the murder of the president Nasser. After his death, the Brothers evolved towards forms of organization and fight inside the existing political system. The actual salafi jihadism is born in the 80s, during the war of Afghanistan against the Soviet occupation. The salafists came from Saudi Arabia met the Moslem Brothers. It drove them to adopt the political speech of the Moslem Brothers and to restoring in him the salafi preaching of SayYib Qutb.
SAYYID QUTB IN PRISION…
The Moslem Brothers:
The organization of the Moslem Brothers, one of the sources of the modern islamist, has suffered throughout the 85 years lived from his foundation by Hasan al-Banna, all kinds of vicissitudes, displeasures and pursuit. He and his followers tried to create an Islamic network, which was using as counterweight nothing less than to the Egyptian state. In 1948, counting the Brothers with near 3 million members and active sympathizers, began a State pursuit against them. Al-Banna died in a street attempt at the beginning of 1949, transforming he in the «Martyr Iman». The path of the confraternity has hidden itself of the alien sights during long and intermittent periods. One of the politicians tics or mantras of the Brothers says: «Nasser killed us, Sadat pardoned us, Mubarak silenced us». And now they can add «Abdul Fatah al-Sisi disillusioned us».
HASAN AL-BANNA AND THE MOSLEM BROTHER’S COAT OF ARMS
The ideology, the organization and his action cohesionan the sunni community in a «unit of general action» motivated, effective and resistant. That is of very difficult repetition or reply for the laymen, the not communist atheists, the democrats and other potential enemies.
The islamist not recognize neither the states, nor the nations. Nor, certainly, they do not even accept the liberal western democracy. Only Allah is Legislator of the men. The phrase used by the western chanceries «Democratic legitimization of the elect president Mursi» is a blasphemy for them. Theocracy and democracy are essentially excluded and are actively rejected in the fundamentalist Islamic ideas. The Islam does not admit a political modernity, far from it a religious one. Everything is already legislated and given to the men, through Mohammed, for his personal and in the Believers Community «submissive fulfillment». The Egyptian party Liberty and Justice is a political «appearance», as food for the international gallery, created by the Moslem Brothers.
(TO BE CONTINUED)