Posted on 01/12/2003 6:35:55 AM PST by SJackson
Basheer M Nafi* finds interesting similarities between Russia's accusations against Sufism in the 19th century and those the West is currently levelling against Wahhabi Islam
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One has only to skim a daily digest of the Russian print media to realise that the Russian press is united in its understanding of the Chechen problem. Accordingly, the war in Chechnya is the work of a foreign group of radical Muslim activists and an alien culture, namely Wahhabism. More than 10 per cent of the Chechen people have been killed and twice that number are now living in refugee camps in other areas of the Caucasus. Those remaining in Chechnya are daily subject to horrendous forms of oppression at the hands of Russian security forces, including rape, torture and detention in the absence of any kind of legal process. While Russian troops pillage the supposedly autonomous republic, Grozny, its capital, has become a ghost town, deprived of all necessary means of living. Meanwhile, the Russian media puts all of this down to the actions of a group of foreigners and few a Chechen dissidents, motivated by evil Wahhabi influences.
The attribution of an imperialist conspiracy to a particular school of Islam is neither new nor uniquely Russian. During the 19th-century Dagestani resistance (1830-59), Tsarist Russia found in the Naqshbandi Sufi order a convenient scapegoat. The reason behind the vilification of Sufism was the involvement of a number of Naqshbandi followers, most prominent among them Imam Shamil, in the resistance movement. Like her British and French counterparts, 19th-century Russia saw her work in the northern Caucasus as a civilising mission. Any resistance to it was by definition an expression of fanaticism, backwardness and decadence. From the Russian perspective, the project of Russification in the northern Caucasus was driven by the values of progress; consequently, the values embraced by Dagestani fighters were portrayed as nothing more than anti-historical and anti-progressive cultural sentiments. In other words, the problem in mid-19th-century Daghestan (and then in Chechnya) was not the Russian imperialist expansion but the culture of backwardness and fanaticism precipitated by the "alien" Naqshbandi.
In the latest issue of the German academic journal, Die Welt des Islams, Alexander Knysh, professor of Islamic studies at the University of Michigan, published a rigorous challenge to the Russian reading of the 19th-century Islamic resistance in the northern Caucasus, and to all those who adopted this reading. Knysh, who is of Russian origin and highly-regarded as an expert of Sufism, considers the Russian reading an intrinsic part of the Western view of Islamic resistance to imperialism in the 19th century. The Russians, however, did not have a monopoly on the vilification of Sufism: the theme also marks Anglo-French interpretations of Islamic jihadi movements in Sudan, Somalia, Algeria and West Africa, and was used for the same objective by the Dutch in Indonesia and the Italians in Libya. In Sudan, the British faced popular resistance embodied in the Mahdi movement, while the Somali opposition to the British occupation originated in branches of Qadiri and Idrissi orders. Abdel-Qadir Al-Jaza'ri, who led the anti-French resistance in mid-19th-century Algeria, was also an adherent of Naqshbandi Sufism, while the Sanussi order would play, a half a century later, a major role in organising Islamic resistance to European invasions of Chad, Libya and other parts of West Africa. As all these resistance movements had Sufi affiliations, it was expedient for imperialist administrators, commanding officers and their advisers to depict Islamic jihadi forces in the 19th century as desperate cries from an inward-looking and declining Sufi culture that was being pushed to the margins of history by the forces of progress and civilisation.
Basing his argument on a thorough understanding of Sufism and the resistance in the northern Caucasus in the 19th century, Knysh demolishes the theory of militant Sufism from its foundations, describing it as a police-reports historiography. Imam Shamil, for example, was not a main Sufi sheikh but merely a follower of one of the Naqshbandi sheikhs in Dagestan; nor were all sheikhs of the Naqshbandi order associated with the anti-Russian jihad. While a few influential sheikhs declared their support for the jihad, others openly disapproved of the use of armed struggle, emphasising the spiritual and educational mission of Sufism. More important is the utter lack of evidence to link the teachings of Naqshbandi and 19th-century Sufism in general, with jihadi orientations. This is equally true of the case of the Sanussi, which was born as a reformist movement within Islam -- not as a framework for Islamic resistance to foreign domination. The only exception, which can by no means be considered a rule, was the Mahdi in Sudan that carried from its moment of inception strong sentiments against the Egyptian administration, many of whose officials at the time were Europeans. There is no doubt that if Naqshbandi, Sanussi or Mahdi brotherhoods did not exist, Muslim peoples would still have risen against the colonial forces.
This, of course, should raise a number of questions about the ongoing attempt to turn Wahhabism (and sometimes the whole of Salafi Islam) into the source of all evils that have befallen our world. A century and a half after the defeat of Imam Shamil, Sufism is no longer a problem for Russia. In fact, Sufism is now presented in Russian writings as the peaceful, authentic culture of the peoples of the northern Caucasus. The problem is the alien teachings of Wahhabism, the Wahhabi of the foreign Arab mujahidin and scores of their Chechen dissident allies. And exactly like the 19th century, blaming Wahhabism is not restricted to Russian discourse. From writers at the respectable broadsheets of the British media, French specialists in modern Islam, leading American congressmen and women, to those Western Islamicists well-known for their humanist outlooks, there seems to emerge a kind of consensus that it was Wahhabism/ Salafism that provided the eco-cultural system from which Al-Qa'eda and all other currents of armed, radical Islam were born. And just like the international situation in the 19th-century, the distance between Western discourse and Western polices has narrowed to a great extent.
If Wahhabism/Salafism is the problem, then American armed forces should be unhesitatingly deployed to uproot centres of violence, backwardness and anachronism wherever they are -- even if that requires invading the entire eastern part of the Arab world. It apparently did not cross the minds of the makers of the Russian expansionist policy in the 19th century, or their counterparts in London, Paris and Amsterdam, that invading and oppressing other peoples was in itself an act of evil. What dominated the world outlook of the European metropoles was an unquestionable sense of self- righteousness to do whatever they had to do as long as they were fighting the battle of civilisation against backwardness, of freedom against fanaticism, and of the values of human progress and advancement against values of decline and attachment to the past. One perhaps has only to read a recent speech by George W Bush or Tony Blair to discover that almost nothing has changed in the Western discourse on Islam and Muslims. The discourse underpinning Western policies at the beginning of the 21st century is almost a literal reproduction of the Russian, British and French imperialist readings of Islamic resistance in the 19th century.
The Wahhabi movement, which is identified with sheikh Mohamed Ibn Abdel-Wahhab, was born in the Najdi region of the Arabian Peninsula in the second half of the 18th century. In terms of its intellectual antecedents, Wahhabism belonged to the wider pool of the Salafi school of thought and its deep roots in Islamic culture. Modern Salafism encompasses multiple currents, the common denominator of which is their affirmation of the position of the founding Islamic texts (the Qur'an and Hadith) and their opposition to various manifestations of popular religion.
Like the Sanussi, Wahhabism was a within-Islam reformist movement that for more than two centuries after its appearance showed no specific anti-imperialist tendencies. A considerable degree of violence was associated with the rise of the Wahhabi movement, but that violence was largely engendered by the Saudi political expansion and inherent tribal rivalries in the Arabian Peninsula. Today, even if we accept that Al- Qa'eda subscribes to Wahhabi doctrines, there exist manifestations of Wahhabism that reject recourse to violence despite their opposition to foreign influence and the state. Other Wahhabi manifestations are closely linked with the Saudi regime and denounce all forms of dissent that threaten the prevailing political order.
Within the broader context of Salafi Islam, Salafis of the 20th century evidence a wide range of intellectual and political concerns, from Mohamed Abdouh and Rashid Rida to Youssef Al-Qaradawi and independent Islamic intellectuals such as Mohamed Salim El-'Awa, Tariq El-Bishri and Fahmy Howeidy. Some of the 20th-century Salafis, like Haj Amin Al-Husseini, Izzeddin Al-Qassam and Abdel-Karim Al- Khattabi, were national liberation leaders; others, like Mustafa Al-Maraghi and Tahir Al-Jaza'iri, were advocates of reform in its civic sense. There is nothing inherent to the Salafi world-view that calls for recourse to violence or leads to it.
In the mid-20th century, as the nationalist trend moved to the forefront of the anti-imperialist movement in the Arab world, Arab nationalism became an object of relentless Western animosity. Preparing British public opinion for war on Egypt in 1956, Prime Minister Anthony Eden equated Nasser with Hitler. And for several decades afterward, Western powers saw in Islam (including Wahhabi/Salafi Islam) a dependable partner in the global war against the Soviet empire with which Arab nationalist leaders like Nasser and Boumedienne seemed to ally themselves.
What Bin Laden is doing today is to invoke the cultural themes and motifs he is most intimate with in an attempt to legitimate the political strategy he is following -- exactly as Imam Shamil, Mohamed Ahmad Al-Mahdi and Al-Qassam had done before him. As a grand narrative, Islam has time and again been invoked, especially during the past two centuries, to provide the symbols that are the points of reference for a variety of political choices and programmes of action. For long, nonetheless, it was the political meaning and orientation -- rather than the ideological content -- which determined the nature of relations between the Western powers and the Arabs and Muslims. Wasn't Wahhabi/Salafi Islam the great, courageous instrument of the West against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan? How, then, did it become such an evil in Western eyes, only a decade after the Soviet defeat?
Perhaps, then, the vilification of Sufism and Salafism tells us more about the crisis of imperialism than about a crisis in Islam. With their absolute sense of self-righteousness, imperialists are never sure of what to make of the resistance they are faced with by the "lesser" peoples. The marathon- like conflict between Western imperialist powers and the world of Islam was caused neither by 20th-century Sufism nor by 20th-century Salafism. This conflict is rooted in a dominant set of international relations, known simply, in university textbooks, as the imperialist system. It is no doubt imperative for Islam to confront and deal with the forces of pathetic radicalism and nihilist violence that are trying to speak on its behalf -- a task that Islam has successfully engaged in on numerous occasions during its historical venture. Yet, this is will not put an end to the conflict. An end to the conflict and the development of normal relations between Western powers and the world of Islam are contingent upon an end to imperialist relations in our world.
* The writer teaches history and Islamic studies at Birkbeck College and the Muslim College, London.
Ahhh yes..the prevailing state sponsored religion/cult of our faithful allies, the Saudis.
Ah yes, the innocuous Bin Laden with his cultural themes and motifs!
As a grand narrative, Islam has time and again been invoked, especially during the past two centuries, to provide the symbols that are the points of reference for a variety of political choices and programmes of action.
I'll say it's been invoked! ALLAH AKBAR ! As the planes hit the buildings. But I guess that's a political choice and programme of action.
For long, nonetheless, it was the political meaning and orientation -- rather than the ideological content -- which determined the nature of relations between the Western powers and the Arabs and Muslims. Wasn't Wahhabi/Salafi Islam the great, courageous instrument of the West against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan?
And didn't you Wahhabis eat our food in your tent in Afghanistan ? So why the backstab ?
How, then, did it become such an evil in Western eyes, only a decade after the Soviet defeat?
See planes into buildings, above.
Perhaps, then, the vilification of Sufism and Salafism tells us more about the crisis of imperialism than about a crisis in Islam.
Crisis in imperialism ? We're the ones with the functioning societies, where the world streams to experience our educational systems, medicine, science, freedoms, and prosperity. I would say a religion now praising children for committing suicide and homicide is having a crisis.
With their absolute sense of self-righteousness, imperialists are never sure of what to make of the resistance they are faced with by the "lesser" peoples.
You'll find out soon what we make of it.
The marathon- like conflict between Western imperialist powers and the world of Islam was caused neither by 20th-century Sufism nor by 20th-century Salafism. This conflict is rooted in a dominant set of international relations, known simply, in university textbooks, as the imperialist system.
NO, once again, let me explain it to you: PLANES INTO BUILDINGS.
It is no doubt imperative for Islam to confront and deal with the forces of pathetic radicalism and nihilist violence that are trying to speak on its behalf -- a task that Islam has successfully engaged in on numerous occasions during its historical venture.Well get on with it then.
Yet, this is will not put an end to the conflict. An end to the conflict and the development of normal relations between Western powers and the world of Islam are contingent upon an end to imperialist relations in our world.
This is not about imperialism. This is about a set of religionists who will not get over their supposed HUMILIATION and take responsibility for building themselves a modern society. No one's holding you back but yourselves.
In his defense of the Chechins, he has weakened their PR construct.
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Hey, he's right. If we did he'd be screaming about imperialists, but I'd take his rhetoric over Wahhabi terror.
That seem's to be what the author's saying, though he reserves the right to call us colonialists in the aftermath.
If we're to believe the Wahabbi's are a small minority, well, the Islamic mainstream doesn't seem to be up to the job either, it all falls to the Imperialist West.
Apparently standing up for your beliefs is a Western Culture thing.
There's no connection, those Arabs in Chechnya lived in the next village over, not my kind of Arab.
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