Islamic extremism
Islamic extremism is characterised by extremist beliefs, behaviors and ideologies adhered to by some Muslims within Islam. The term 'Islamic extremism' is contentious, encompassing a spectrum of definitions, ranging from academic interpretations of Islamic supremacy to the notion that all ideologies other than Islam have failed and are inferior.
Islamic extremism is different from Islamic fundamentalism or Islamism. Islamic fundamentalism refers to a movement among Muslims advocating a return to the fundamental principles of an Islamic state in Muslim-majority countries. Meanwhile, Islamism constitutes a form of political Islam. However, both Islamic fundamentalism and Islamism have also been classified as subsets of Islamic extremism by some. Acts of violence committed by Islamic terrorists and jihadists are associated with these extremist beliefs, while many Muslims see extremists as not following Islam. The term "Islamism" has been criticized as having been given connotations of violence, extremism, and violations of human rights, by the Western mass media, leading to Islamophobia and stereotyping.
During the Cold War following World War II, some NATO governments, particularly those of the United States and the United Kingdom, launched covert and overt campaigns to encourage and strengthen fundamentalist groups in the Middle East and southern Asia. These groups were seen as a hedge against potential expansion by the Soviet Union, and as a counterweight against nationalist and socialist movements that were seen as a threat to the interests of the Western nations.
In a 2018 interview with The Washington Post, Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, said that investments in mosques and madrassas overseas were rooted in the Cold War, when allies asked Saudi Arabia to use its resources to prevent inroads in Muslim countries by the Soviet Union. According to some estimates, since the 1960s, the Saudis have funnelled over USD 100 billion into funding schools and mosques all over the world with the mission of spreading puritanical Wahhabi Islam. According to political scientist Alex Alexiev, the impetus for the international propagation of Salafism and Wahhabism was "the largest worldwide propaganda campaign ever mounted", David A. Kaplan described it as "dwarfing the Soviets' propaganda efforts at the height of the Cold War". In 2013, the European Parliament identified Wahhabism as the main source of global terrorism.
Definitions
Academic definition
The academic definition of radical Islam consists of two parts:- The first being: Islamic thought that states that all ideologies other than Islam, whether associated with the West or the East have failed and have demonstrated their bankruptcy.
- The second being: Islamic thought that states that secular regimes are wrong because of their negligence of Islam.
United Kingdom High Courts' definition
Aside from those, two major definitions have been offered for Islamic extremism, sometimes using overlapping but also distinct aspects of extreme interpretations and pursuits of Islamic ideology:
- The use of violent tactics such as bombing and assassinations for achieving perceived Islamic goals
- An extremely conservative view of Islam, which does not necessarily entail violence.
Key influences of radical Islam
Early Islam
According to the academic definition of radical Islam, the second condition for something to be called radical Islam, is that it is antigovernmental. Consequently, a government is a condition for radical Islam. However, even though the peace of Westphalia was established in 1648 and thus introduced the nation state, the writings of the formative centuries of Islamic history are influential to the contemporary writings that were coined radical after the concept of the nation state was established in the Muslim world as well. Key influences of radical Islam that stem from early Islam include:Kharijites
Islamic extremism dates back to the early history of Islam with the emergence of the Kharijites in the 7th century CE. The original schism between Kharijites, Sunnīs, and Shīʿas among Muslims was disputed over the political and religious succession to the guidance of the Muslim community after the death of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. From their essentially political position, the Kharijites developed extreme doctrines that set them apart from both mainstream Sunnī and Shīʿa Muslims. Shīʿas believe ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib is the true successor to Muhammad, while Sunnīs consider Abu Bakr to hold that position. The Kharijites broke away from both the Shīʿas and the Sunnīs during the First Fitna ; they were particularly noted for adopting a radical approach to takfīr, whereby they declared both Sunnī and Shīʿa Muslims to be either infidels or false Muslims, and therefore deemed them worthy of death for their perceived apostasy.The Islamic tradition traces the origin of the Kharijities to the battle between ʿAlī and Mu'awiya at Siffin in 657 CE. When ʿAlī was faced with a military stalemate and agreed to submit the dispute to arbitration, some of his party withdrew their support from him. "Judgement belongs to God alone" became the slogan of these secessionists. They also called themselves al-Shurat, to reflect their willingness to sell their lives in martyrdom.
These original Kharijites opposed both ʿAlī and Mu'awiya, and appointed their own leaders. They were decisively defeated by ʿAlī, who was in turn assassinated by a Kharijite. Kharijites engaged in guerilla warfare against the Umayyads, but only became a movement to be reckoned with during the Second Fitna when they at one point controlled more territory than any of their rivals. The Kharijites were, in fact, one of the major threats to Ibn al-Zubayr's bid for the caliphate; during this time they controlled Yamama and most of southern Arabia, and captured the oasis town of al-Ta'if.
The Azariqa, considered to be the extreme faction of the Kharijites, controlled parts of western Iran under the Umayyads until they were finally put down in 699 CE. The more moderate Ibadi Kharijites were longer-lived, continuing to wield political power in North and East Africa and in eastern Arabia during the 'Abbasid period. Because of their readiness to declare any opponent as apostate, the extreme Kharijites tended to fragment into small groups. One of the few points that the various Kharijite splinter groups held in common was their view of the caliphate, which differed from other Muslim theories on two points.
- First, they were principled egalitarians, holding that any pious Muslim can become Caliph and that family or tribal affiliation is inconsequential. The only requirements for leadership are piety and acceptance by the community.
- Second, they agreed that it is the duty of the believers to depose any leader who falls into error. This second principle had profound implications for Kharijite theology. Applying these ideas to the early history of the caliphate, Kharijites only accept Abu Bakr and 'Umar as legitimate caliphs. Of 'Uthman's caliphate they recognize only the first six years as legitimate, and they reject 'Ali altogether.
Ibn Taymiyyah
Ottoman Empire
Kadızadelis was a seventeenth-century puritanical reformist religious movement in the Ottoman Empire that followed Kadızade Mehmed, a revivalist Islamic preacher. Kadızade and his followers were determined rivals of Sufism and popular religion. They condemned many of the Ottoman practices that Kadızade felt were bidʻah "non-Islamic innovations", and passionately supported "reviving the beliefs and practices of the first Muslim generation in the first/seventh century".Driven by zealous and fiery rhetoric, Kadızade Mehmed was able to inspire many followers to join in his cause and rid themselves of any and all corruption found inside the Ottoman Empire. Leaders of the movement held official positions as preachers in the major mosques of Baghdad, and "combined popular followings with support from within the Ottoman state apparatus". Between 1630 and 1680 there were many violent quarrels that occurred between the Kadızadelis and those that they disapproved of. As the movement progressed, activists became "increasingly violent" and Kadızadelis were known to enter "mosques, tekkes and Ottoman coffeehouses in order to mete out punishments to those contravening their version of orthodoxy."
Modern Islam
Salafism and Wahhabism
The Salafiyya movement is a conservative, Islahi movement within Sunnī Islam that emerged in the second half of the 19th century and advocate a return to the traditions of the "devout ancestors". It has been described as the "fastest-growing Islamic movement"; with each scholar expressing diverse views across social, theological, and political spectrum. Salafis follow a doctrine that can be summed up as taking "a fundamentalist approach to Islam, emulating the Prophet Muhammad and his earliest followers—al-salaf al-salih, the 'pious forefathers'....They reject religious innovation, or bidʻah, and support the implementation of Sharia." The Salafi movement is often divided into three categories: the largest group are the purists, who avoid politics; the second largest group are the militant activists, who get involved in politics; the third and last group are the jihadists, who constitute a minority. Most of the violent Islamist groups come from the Salafi-Jihadist movement and their subgroups. In recent years, Jihadi-Salafist doctrines have often been associated with the armed insurgencies of Islamic extremist movements and terrorist organizations targeting innocent civilians, both Muslims and Non-Muslims, such as al-Qaeda, ISIL/ISIS/IS/Daesh, Boko Haram, etc. The second largest group are the Salafi activists who have a long tradition of political activism, such as those that operate in organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood, the Arab world's major Islamist movement. In the aftermath of widescale repressions after the Arab Spring, accompanied by their political failures, the activist-Salafi movements have undergone a decline. The most numerous are the quietists, who believe in disengagement from politics and accept allegiance to Muslim governments, no matter how tyrannical, to avoid fitna.The Wahhabi movement was founded and spearheaded by the Ḥanbalī scholar and theologian Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab, a religious preacher from the Najd region in central Arabia, and was instrumental in the rise of the House of Saud to power in the Arabian peninsula. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab sought to revive and purify Islam from what he perceived as non-Islamic popular religious beliefs and practices by returning to what, he believed, were the fundamental principles of the Islamic religion. His works were generally short, full of quotations from the Quran and Hadith literature, such as his main and foremost theological treatise, Kitāb at-Tawḥīd. He taught that the primary doctrine of Islam was the uniqueness and oneness of God, and denounced what he held to be popular religious beliefs and practices among Muslims that he considered to be akin to heretical innovation and polytheism.
Wahhabism has been described as a conservative, strict, and fundamentalist branch of Sunnī Islam, with puritan views, believing in a literal interpretation of the Quran. The terms "Wahhabism" and "Salafism" are sometimes evoked interchangeably, although the designation "Wahhabi" is specifically applied to the followers of Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab and his reformist doctrines. The label "Wahhabi" was not claimed by his followers, who usually refer themselves as al-Muwaḥḥidūn, but is rather employed by Western scholars as well as his critics. Starting in the mid-1970s and 1980s, the international propagation of Salafism and Wahhabism within Sunnī Islam favored by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and other Arab states of the Persian Gulf has achieved what the French political scientist Gilles Kepel defined as a "preeminent position of strength in the global expression of Islam."
22 months after the September 11 attacks, when the FBI considered al-Qaeda as "the number one terrorist threat to the United States", journalist Stephen Schwartz and U.S. Senator Jon Kyl have explicitly stated during a hearing that occurred in June 2003 before the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology, and Homeland Security of the U.S. Senate that "Wahhabism is the source of the overwhelming majority of terrorist atrocities in today's world". As part of the global "War on terror", Wahhabism has been accused by the European Parliament, various Western security analysts, and think tanks like the RAND Corporation, as being "a source of global terrorism". Furthermore, Wahhabism has been accused of causing disunity in the Muslim community and criticized for its followers' destruction of many Islamic, cultural, and historical sites associated with the early history of Islam and the first generation of Muslims in Saudi Arabia.