Islamic Unity Research Articles

Islamist Perspectives on International Relations: The Discourse of Sayyid Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah (1935–2010)

The academic literature on political Islam has paid scant attention to how contemporary Islamists conceptualize international relations. By examining the writings on international relations of one leading Islamist thinker - the recently deceased Sayyid Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah - this article attempts to deepen our understanding of this key aspect of contemporary Islamist thought. The article highlights Fadlallah's views on a range of theoretical and substantive issues which are at the core of international relations in the post-Cold War era. These issues revolve around: the underlying principles of international relations; the nature of the current (post-Cold War) international order and the role of the United States therein; the relationship between the United States (and the West, in general) and the Arab and Islamic worlds; Israel and the Palestinian question; and the prospects for Islamic unity and the form that it can take in the modern era. It also relates Fadlallah's discourse on international relations to that of other Islamists, secular Arab nationalists, and other critics of the prevailing international order, as well as to the writings of Christian realists and in particular Reinhold Niebuhr.

Ibâḍî Reformism in Twentieth-Century Algeria : The Tafsîr of Shaykh Ibrâhîm Bayyûḍ

Shaykh Ibrâhîm b. ‘Umar Bayyûḍ of Wâdî Mzâb (1899-1981), leader of Ibâḍî reformism in Algeria after the death of Muḥammad b. Yûsuf Aṭfiyyash (1820-1914), delivered a public commentary on the Qur’an from 1935-1980, which was recorded beginning with Sûra 17:70. Shaykh Bayyûḍ claimed to follow the goals and methodology of Muḥammad ‘Abduh and Rashîd Riḍâ’s Tafsîr al-Manâr. This article analyzes Shaykh Bayyûḍ’s commentary in comparison to, on the one hand, Aṭfiyyash’s two Qur’an commentaries (Hamayân al-zâd ilâ dâr al-ma‘âd and Taysîr al-tafsîr), in order to determine its relationship to earlier modern Ibâḍî reformism, and, on the other hand, to Tafsîr al-Manâr, in order to determine its relationship to that strand of Sunni reformism. It finds that Bayyûḍ’s commentary, like Tafsîr al-Manâr, promotes Islamic unity and eschews theological dogmatism, while attacking customs deemed antithetical to Islamic teaching and making sometimes lengthy digressions on topics of contemporary social and political importance. Nonetheless, Bayyûḍ remains faithful to Ibâḍî doctrine on topics on which Ibâḍîs and Sunnis differ, and there is little evidence that he argued for Islam’s compatibility with liberal values ; on the contrary, at several points in his commentary he states that modern ideas and customs constitute a real threat to Islam.

The Role of Islam in the Abolition of Slavery and in the Development of British Capitalism

West Indian scholars have overlooked the role played by the Muslim leadership in West Africa in bringing an end to the transatlantic trade in Africans. The jihād movements in West Africa in the late eighteenth century gave political unity to West Africa challenging the collaboration of European trade in Africans with the pagan slave traders. West Indian historiography, while emphasizing European abolitionist movements, ignores the Islamic unity (tawhīd) of humankind, which brought together many ethnically heterogeneous enslaved African Muslims to successfully challenge the West Indian plantation system. The exploitation of the human resources and the immense wealth of the then Moghul India and Imperial China by British colonialism helped develop the British industrial capitalism, which controlled most of the world until the end of World War II. The security of the British industrial capitalist complex could no longer depend on the small-scale West Indian plantation economies but on the large-scale economies of Asia protected by the British imperial forces under the British imperial flag.

The Role of Islam in the Abolition of Slavery and in the Development of British Capitalism

West Indian scholars have overlooked the role played by the Muslim leadership in West Africa in bringing an end to the transatlantic trade in Africans. The jihād movements in West Africa in the late eighteenth century gave political unity to West Africa challenging the collaboration of European trade in Africans with the pagan slave traders. West Indian historiography, while emphasizing European abolitionist movements, ignores the Islamic unity (tawhīd) of humankind, which brought together many ethnically heterogeneous enslaved African Muslims to successfully challenge the West Indian plantation system. The exploitation of the human resources and the immense wealth of the then Moghul India and Imperial China by British colonialism helped develop the British industrial capitalism, which controlled most of the world until the end of World War II. The security of the British industrial capitalist complex could no longer depend on the small-scale West Indian plantation economies but on the large-scale economies of Asia protected by the British imperial forces under the British imperial flag.

Trade and Geography in the Economic Origins of Islam: Theory and Evidence

This research examines the economic origins of Islam and uncovers two empirical regularities. First, Muslim countries, virtual countries and ethnic groups, exhibit highly unequal regional agricultural endowments. Second, Muslim adherence is systematically larger along the pre-Islamic trade routes in the Old World. The theory argues that this particular type of geography (i) determined the economic aspects of the religious doctrine upon which Islam was formed, and (ii) shaped its subsequent economic performance. It suggests that the unequal distribution of land endowments conferred differential gains from trade across regions, fostering predatory behavior from the poorly endowed ones. In such an environment it was mutually beneficial to institute a system of income redistribution. However, a higher propensity to save by the rich would exacerbate wealth inequality rendering redistribution unsustainable, leading to the demise of the Islamic unity. Consequently, income inequality had to remain within limits for Islam to persist. This was instituted via restrictions on physical capital accumulation. Such rules rendered the investments on public goods, through religious endowments, increasingly attractive. As a result, capital accumulation remained low and wealth inequality bounded. Geography and trade shaped the set of economically relevant religious principles of Islam affecting its economic trajectory in the preindustrial world.

Trade and Geography in the Economic Origins of Islam: Theory and Evidence

This research examines the economic origins of Islam and uncovers two empirical regularities. First, Muslim countries, virtual countries and ethnic groups, exhibit highly unequal regional agricultural endowments. Second, Muslim adherence is systematically larger along the pre-Islamic trade routes in the Old World. The theory argues that this particular type of geography (i) determined the economic aspects of the religious doctrine upon which Islam was formed, and (ii) shaped its subsequent economic performance. It suggests that the unequal distribution of land endowments conferred differential gains from trade across regions, fostering predatory behavior from the poorly endowed ones. In such an environment it was mutually beneficial to institute a system of income redistribution. However, a higher propensity to save by the rich would exacerbate wealth inequality rendering redistribution unsustainable, leading to the demise of the Islamic unity. Consequently, income inequality had to remain within limits for Islam to persist. This was instituted via restrictions on physical capital accumulation. Such rules rendered the investments on public goods, through religious endowments, increasingly attractive. As a result, capital accumulation remained low and wealth inequality bounded. Geography and trade shaped the set of economically relevant religious principles of Islam affecting its economic trajectory in the preindustrial world.

Public Interactions between Orthodox Christian and Muslim Organisations at the Federal Level in Russia Today

When we discuss Orthodox–Muslim relations in Russia we need to be clear which particular partners we are talking about. My article is about relationships among the religious leaderships at the federal level. These relationships are essentially asymmetrical, and this is the result not only of differences in the number of believers, but also of differences in political weight and ideological loyalty to the regime. One important factor is that Orthodoxy is part of the basis of Russian ethnic self-identification, whereas Islam has not become a unifying factor for many varied ethnic groups in the country. Orthodox and Muslims have asymmetrical relations as far as tolerance is concerned. At all levels – ordinary citizens, the mass media, the actions of leaders – this is heavily dependent on the dominant political mythology. The Russian Orthodox Church has privileged relations with the federal power, and Muslim leaders simply have to accept this as a fact. Some of the latter are preoccupied with their own ethnic issues; some follow the ideological lead of the Orthodox Church; others invoke Islamic unity; yet others see themselves as defending minority rights. Relations between Orthodox and Muslim leaderships are intimately involved with discourse about identity, and in the context of the ever-increasing significance of this discourse in Russia their relations are becoming ever more strained. Meanwhile the federal authorities do not seem to be paying serious attention to this phenomenon.

Собирание расколотой уммы: фундаментализм как реинтерпретация исламской истории

SUMMARY: In this article Igor Alekseev addresses fundamentalism as a way of reinterpreting Islamic history. Alekseev begins by questioning the terms of the discussion, such as “fundamentalism,” “extremism,” and “radicalism,” and notes that these terms have become loaded with meanings that have little to do with Islam. Drawing on M. Kemper’s work, Alekseev introduces the concept of “Islamic discourse,” which includes a discussion of the relevance of Islamic terms and concepts to the situation of a given Muslim author, as well as the degree to which contemporary conditions correspond to some ideal vision of Islam. For Alekseev, Islamic fundamentalism is the most extreme case of such a discourse. Noting that return to the source of tradition has been prominent in the dynamics of Islamic cultures as a means to overcome crises, Alekseev discusses concepts of return to the source of tradition in Sunni Islam ( salafiyya ) and in the Shi’ia tradition ( usuli ). Alekseev argues that these concepts have innovative and reformist rather than retrograde connotations for Islamic scholars. Thus, one of the basic ideas of Islamic fundamentalism, as opposed to a Western construct of it, is the notion of “correcting” the social and political ways of Islamic societies through innovation. The latter is achieved by extracting guiding principles from the sources of tradition. Alekseev maintains that this general conception of innovation undergoes minor yet crucial changes in the hands of today’s fundamentalists, who demand restoration of early Islamic social institutions according to a selective vision of the shari‘a . This selectivity demands a return to “pure faith” and attempts to monopolize the truth. Alekseev explores historical precedents of radical innovation in Islam, focusing on Wahhabism and its reception and impact on Islamic movements in the twentieth century. For Alekseev, the Wahhabi logic of intolerance represents an extreme case of a universal Islamic discourse of “gathering the broken ummah. ” Alekseev then explores the role of Jemal ad-Din al-Afghani in the modernization of Islamic discourse and the articulation of a concept of Islamic unity cast in distinctly nationalist rhetoric. According to the author, terms used to describe “nation” ( millet in Turkic languages and ummah arabiyya in Arabic) did not allow for the separation of ethnic and confessional unity. The same line of development merging nationalism and Islam was visible in the doctrine of the “Muslim Brotherhood,” whose organization emerged in Egypt in the 1920s. Despite the emergence of “progressive” and “socialist” Islam in the 1970s, radical Islamic movements gained prominence and often were seen as a counterweight to Soviet/Communist influence. Alekseev concludes that the relative success of various Islamic radical movements can be explained in terms of their manipulation and use of the Islamic discourse of innovation. At the same time, the inability to write Western notions of progress and modernization into Islamic discourses intensifies the appeal of fundamentalism in the face of failed attempts to consolidate “the broken ummah .”

WILFRIED BUCHTA, Die iranische Schia und die islamische Einheit 1979–1996 (Hamburg: Deutsches Orient-Institut, 1997). Pp. 427. No price available.

From its inception in 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been characterized by a paradox. Some of its most frequently employed slogans: wahdat-i isl―am (Islamic unity) and sud―ur-i inqil―ab (export of the revolution) reflect the apparent eagerness of its leadership to reach out beyond Iran and to make the rest of the Islamic community share in the fruits of the country's revolutionary experience. Yet the minority status of Shi⊂ism within the umma, coupled with the close and growing identification of the revolution with (Twelver) Shi⊂ism, has largely restricted the outside appeal of Iran's new order to the Shi⊂i world.

Namik Kemal's constitutional Ottomanism and non‐Muslims

The nineteenth century was a turning point in Muslim conceptualization of non‐Muslims in Islamic societies. This paper analyzes Namik Kemal's (1840–88) conceptualization of the role of non‐Muslims in Ottoman society. I argue that it stemmed from his reformist discourse, in particular, from his criticism of the ideology of absolutist Ottomanism, and gave rise to a variety of discursive tensions. Specifically, tension emerged in his attempt to reconcile the issue of egalitarianism with that of Islamic political and cultural unity. I link Kemal's ideas on the means and objectives of reforms, in particular, his thoughts on constitutional Ottomanism, to his views on the political role of non‐Muslims in the Ottoman state. The results should hopefully elucidate our understanding of the organizing principles of inclusion and exclusion of non‐Muslims in the Ottoman Empire.

21st Century and the Birth of the United Nations of Islam

This book studies the posibilities, objectives, characteristics, and advantagesof the unity of Muslim nation in the foreseeable future. The author, Jawed UIHaq Siddiqui, deals with the various dimensions and functions of this aspiredunity and offers an ambitious institutional scenario for its attainment. Its dominantfeature is the establishment of the Organization of Islamic Unity (OIU),which will replace or reconstruct the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC).The OIU will work to establish various institutions and processes of unificationby the year 2000, ullimately to establish the United States of Islam (USI) by theyear 2010.The birth of the USI will result by accumulating different processes of unificationundertaken by Muslim nations from now until the year 2010. USI's confederationwill be open for membership to all Muslim states. ln order to join, Muslim states must sign on to at least one of the basic points of confederation.The basic points are the following: ...

Islamic Unity and Political Change. Interview with Shaykh Muhammad Hussayn Fadlallah

Islamic Unity and Political Change. Interview with Shaykh Muhammad Hussayn Fadlallah

Islamic Unity and Political Change. Interview with Shaykh Muhammad Hussayn Fadlallah

Islamic Unity and Political Change. Interview with Shaykh Muhammad Hussayn Fadlallah

The Politics of Pan-Islam: Ideology and Organization

The unity of all Muslim believers is in one sense a given: Islam forms a complete moral, cultural, legal, social, and political system. Yet Islamic unity is also a political goal, one that has had influential and controversial expression in the ideal known as Pan-Islam. Jacob Landau's renowned study is the authoritative treatment of the Pan-Islamic movement over the last 120 years. Covering a broad area of the Islamic world including Morocco, South Asia, and the Arabian Peninsula, this timely work has now been expanded to treat recent developments in the ex-Soviet Republics of the Caucases and Central Asia.

Between Arabism and Islam

It is the consensus among Middle Eastern and Western students of the Middle East that Arab nationalism as an ideological premise of politics and policy in the Arab countries was devalued after 1967. Its supreme goal of Arab unity has been abandoned. 1 In any event, its radical heyday was associated with one particular leader in the 1950s and early 1960s, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt. Its other exponent and standard-bearer, the Baath party, suffered a relentless process of militarization and fragmentation in the Fertile Crescent and the Levant. The very core of its programme, Arab unity, is not for the moment a credible objective or a popular ideology. The defeat of both centres and leaders of the Arab nationalist and Arab unity cause, Egypt and Syria, at the hands of Israel in 1967 put paid to their claims and aspirations. The convergence, at the same time, of the growing financial power of the more traditional and conservative Arab states, some of which, like Saudi Arabia, claim an Islamic basis and identity for their political order, further eroded the political vitality of secular Arabism. It also encouraged movements to promote the primacy of Islam in the affairs of Arab states and in their relations with the outside world. So-called fundamentalist movements arose in many of these countries to challenge the authority of their respective rulers and states, and to combat external, non-Islamic influences and power. These movements, too, theoretically seek Islamic unity,the unification of the umma, the community of believers. They wish to reassert Islamic identity, implement the sacred law, and reject everything non-Islamic, that is, of infidel provenance. Such an Islamic movement succeeded in coming to power in Iran under the leadership of the Shia divines for reasons peculiar to both the Shiite creed and the status and organization of its religious teachers. The fact remains that the Khomeini regime in Iran justifies its power and control of the state on its rejection of a modernity that was being imposed through Western, or Westernized, means. In Lebanon, religion, as the basis of political identity and ideology, culminated in a ten-year destructive civil war, leading to the disintegration of the State of Lebanon and the armed confrontation between the various religious communities, with no political resolution of their differences in sight. Although a recurrent enough phenomenon, militant Islamic fundamentalism has had a sustained growth in the last 20 years. Its virulence and apparent strength reiterates the peculiar role of religion in politics. It also exposes the weakness and transience really failure of its secular counterpart, Arab nationalism or Arabism. Its proponents reject nationalism as an alien ideology that is ill-suited to Muslim societies, and claim authenticity for their call for a return to Islam which is the native cultural and political idiom. They put it forward as the only alternative order for Muslims, and the only efficacious shield against the hostile non-Islamic world. Yet only in Iran, so far, has such a movement acceded to state power. Elsewhere, it remains a

Pakistan and West Asia

State to state relations between Pakistan and Southwest Asian states dateback to the birth of Pakistan in 1947, but the ideological bonds are much older.In 1946, it was late king (then prince) Faisal who chaperoned the PakistanMovement delegation headed by Mr. Isphahani that visited the United Nationsand got sympathetic ears to its pleas? Again, the Saudi king was thefirst head of state to felicitate Mohammad Ali Jinnah after learning of theViceroy’s decision to grant independence to Pakistan and India. Equally warmand sincere support came from Iran.Pakistan and West Asia: Evolution of RelationsImmediately on achieving independence, Pakistan displayed notable enthusiasmin advocating the cause of Islam and Islamic states but soon learntto be more patient. Pakistan’s call for Islamic unity was seen by the Arabsas a move to stifle nascent Arab nationalism at the instigation of the West.These developments corresponded to the early 50s when Pakistan, under intensethreat from India, signed the Mutual Defense Aid pact with the UnitedStates and became a suspect in the eyes of the Arabs who thought of Pakistanas an instrument of the West. Pakistan's joining of the Baghdad Pact in 1954along with Iraq was also interpreted by the Arab nationalist leaders as a neocolonialmove to divide the Arab world. Saudis even called it a stab in theheart of the Arab and Muslim states. In 1956, Indian Prime Minister JawaharLal Nehru’s warm welcome in Saudi Arabia followed by the Suez Crisis putPakistan’s relations with those important Islamic states at their lowest level.During that period the Arabs viewed the region mostly in the Arab and non-Arab context ...

Toward the Realization of Ummah

IThe domain of Islam embraces some one billion people, 20 percent ofthe world’s population, distributed across the globe in virtually everypolitical unit and geographical context. Ideologically, the Muslim worldsenses a profound communion in the deeply embedded Islamic concept ofa territorially dispersed but spiritually unified global Islamiccommonwealth - ummah. Oswald Spengler, in his monumental Declineofthe West, reminds us that the Islamic community “embraces the wholeof the world-cavern, here and beyond, the orthodox and the good angelsand spirits, and within the community the State only formed a smallerunit of the visible side, a unit, therefore, of which the operations weregoverned by the major whole." This relationship between the modernnation-state and the ummah, now suppressed by the force of modernnationalism, continues to exist as a powerful primordial sentiment oftranscendent importance. That its dimensions, contours, and strengthcannot be assessed by empirical social science analysis does not make itless real as a critical component of the Muslim psyche. This impulsetowards Islamic unity, charged with emotion, religious fervor, andideology, canonically sustained by the concept of ummah, is alsonurtured by a vivid memory of Islamic imperial grandeur and by avibrant dynamic of missionary zeal. The latter, carrying out the Qur’anicproclamation of the universality of Islam and the command for globaldispensation of the Qur’anic message, has lost little of its originalimpetus. The force of ummah is the tacit dimension, the psychicindwelling nature of Islam. Nor can this compelling centrifugal thrustbe lightly dismissed as the transitory phase of a historical process.No other religion has quite so powerful an impetus for globalexpansion - neither Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism nor Christianity ...

The Ottoman Empire and its Aftermath

ly all other states in the classical Islamic world. It provided the principle of authority, of identity, and of political and social cohesion and loyalty. The polity was conceived as the Community of Muslims, its head as the successor of the Sultans and Caliphs of the glorious past and as the holder of an Islamic sovereignty dedicated to the maintenance of Islam and the extension of its domain. Characteristically, when Ottoman Muslims observed the role of Prussia and Savoy in the unification of the German and Italian peoples in the nineteenth century and considered a possible parallel role for themselves, they saw it in terms not of Turks but of Islam of a greater Islamic unity, embracing all Muslims, with Ottoman Turkey as its leader. In this sense the Empire was conceived not as a domination of Turks over non-Turks, since all Muslims were theoretically equal irrespective of language or origin, but as a domination of Muslims over non-Muslims. The task of the Muslim

中世イスラム世界におけるウラマーの移動性

One of the characteristic features of the medieval ‘ulama’ was their high geographical mobility. Pilgrimage, travelling for academic purposes and commercial activities, sometimes a combination of some or all of these, were its important factors while many ‘ulama’ were attracted for better job opportunities in other places.A need for Sunni ‘ulama’ in Egypt was first created by Saladin when he destroyed the Fatimids and began to rebuild Sunnism in Egypt. During the Ayyubid and early Mamluk period more ‘ulama’ flowed into Egypt from different parts of the Islamic world. Among them were many from the Islamic West. Even during the Fatimid period there was a connection between Western and Egyptian ulama i n the fields of hadith and Maliki law studies.Those Western ‘ulama’ can be classified into two types; one was the transit type and the other the settler type. Those belonging to the first contributed to the exchange of scholarship, bringing to Egypt some of Western achievements and back home more knowledges and skills from the East. But more important was their contribution to the promotion of the general feeling of Islamic unity and solidarity by teaching the population both of Egypt and the West through their contacts with local ‘ulama’ and their other travelling experiences in other lands.The contributions of the second type was more concrete; many Maliki fuqaha' who came to Egypt and lived there permanently played a significant role in establishing the Maliki law school there by working as teachers and sometimes as qadis. In other fields of scholarship, many individual scholars from the West made great contributions; to name a few, al-Shatibi in the qira'a, al-Qurtubi in the tafsir and Abu Hayyan in the philology. Another point we cannot neglect is that the western ‘ulama’ in Egypt were mostly Sufi is or zahids and helped the diffusion of sufism in Egypt.All in all, they were the beneficiaries of the general feeling of Islamic unity and they themselves in turn strived to promote and materialize this feeling.

Contemporary Islam and its World Mission

Like Christianity, Islam has a world mission. That mission includes evangelistic activity, but is by no means limited to it. In fact, the unity of Islam (religious, cultural, political, economic) is a much more dominant theme today. After two centuries of humiliating subservience to non-Muslims, the Islamic world experienced political emancipation after World War II and has made gradual but accelerating progress the past three decades toward recapturing its sense of unity — aided (and sometimes hindered) by the Palestine conflict, and by oil. In this paper, Professor Sicard traces the current Islamic Renaissance and underscores the new opportunities it affords Christians for vital communication with Muslims today.