Adonis Diaries

How current “modern” Islam radicalized into negative and oppressive precepts?

I’ll discuss three radical trends: The Moslem Brotherhood of Egypt, the Wahhabi Islam brand in the Arabic Peninsula, and the Ben Laden (Al Qaeda) for international jihadists.

1. In 1929, Egypt was relatively the most modern State in the Arab World. The Al Azhar religious university was guided by an enlightened sheikh Abdel Razeq.  Author Taha Hussein had published a very controversial book on poetry during Jahiliya period (before Islam in the Arabic Peninsula), and the Egyptian court refused to ban it.

During that period, the monarchs Fouad and Farouk and their entourage went overboard emulating the western life-style and flaunting blatantly their unacceptable behaviors to the little people.

Hassan al Banna (founder of the Brotherhood in 1929) jumped at the occasion of life-styles that obfuscated the common people and blamed the modern interpretation of Islamic teachings as a cover to the to the ill-behavior of the ruling classes.

Consequently, a return to Chariaa and fundamental “bedouin” Islam: tribal ancient customs and rules were prescribed in order to overcome the current degenerate conditions that will weaken the Moslem spirit for Jihad against the infidels…

The presence of colonial Britain in Egypt was mainly opportunistic catalysts for every time the British governor harshly confronted street demonstrations and uprisings…

Colonial western life-style was added as a practical dimension to the reactions of the Brotherhood members. The Brotherhood was implicitly regarded anti-colonial and, as a logical result, a de facto national movement…

2. The Wahhabi brand of Islam.  This sect was initiated by Abd el Wahhab in the Najd region in the Arabic peninsula in the early 19th century, during the Ottoman Empire. This Hanafi sect was quickly supported by the emirs in Najd, particularly the Saud tribe, and is currently classified as the fourth admitted sect in Sunni Islam.

Mainly, the Wahhabi movement was opposed to the Ottoman Empire, which didn’t really administered directly the Arabic Peninsula, and was funded and supported with arms by the British Empire, which had plans to occupy strategic ports in Aden (Yemen) and the Arabic/Persian Gulf.

Mind you that Islam of the Ottoman Empire was pretty loose and accommodating since the foundation of the Empire, and the Chariaa was observed with wide latitude  All that the Sultan wanted was the title of Calif of all the Moslems.

It happened that in the early 19th century, the Ottoman Empire was wide open to western culture and life-style and some Constitutional reforms were underway, called “Tanzimat” (Regulations)

The British got wary of reforms starting in the Ottoman Empire, and worked on minorities to destabilize the already shaky and declining Ottoman Empire. And how best to rally the tribes around in the peninsula if not by adopting opposite theological and radical religious positions against the Calif?

And quick to a drastic shift to the “fundamentals” of Islam, as the Protestants acted against the Catholic Church in the 15th century. What are these fundamentals? Abolishing and destroying all icons, pictures of Imams and Holy men, prohibiting pilgrimage to Imam sites wide dispersed in all Islamic world, as substitute to the expensive pilgrimage to Mecca…And back to Bedouin customs, traditions, setting more constraints on women…: The modus operandi to rooting the movement within the dominant tribes.

The Ottoman Sultan kept harassing his Viceroy in Egypt, Muhammad Ali, to send an expeditionary military force to wipe out the spreading of the Wahhabi uprising.  Finally, Ali dispatched his young 19-year old second son who entered Mecca and liberated it from the Wahhabis after many difficulties. The elder son Ibrahim Pasha carried out an extensive campaign for years and managed to enter and destroy the main City-State of the Wahhabi inside the deep desert.

And for two decades, the Wahhabi movement subsided, until the Egyptian forces had to return home. The British resumed their funding and support for the Wahhabi movement and eventually conquered all of the Peninsula in 1923.

Since Sadat of Egypt acceded to power in 1970, the Saudi Arabia absolute monarchy had been building mosques all over Egypt and hiring clerics of Wahhabi  inclination, re-publishing their own Coran and distributing it for free…

3. The Ben Laden phenomena of international jihadist movement. Ben laden kept swinging between the Moslem Brotherhood and the Wahhabi sect, driven by the political opportunities opened to him and which captured his attention. Ben laden had no fundamental theological doctrine or dogma and with no definite long-term purpose for his movement.

In the early 1980, he was a CIA agent and was dispatched by Saudi Arabia to usurp the nascent movement of Arab Jihadist flocking to the city of Peshawar (Pakistan) to be trained and sent to fight the Soviet communists in Afghanistan. The CIA wanted to be in control of the “resistance movement” against the Soviet…

After the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, no Arabic State wanted these fighters to return home. These jihadists were relocated to created Hot Spots around the world. The CIA took charge of that bounty of cheap recruits who are zealot and already trained and dispatched them to “containment regions” under the Soviet dominion…It was still the Cold War era.

To make a long story short, (extensively developed in a previous article) the US became an ideal target for the Al Qaeda movement which resulted in the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers and the reactions in conducting frequent drone attacks killing potential Al Qaeda “leaders”…

Note 1: The US has got to understand that the Arab peoples feel that an entire century was wasted, for nothing, and worse than going back to point one in 1918, where the Arab people hoped and demanded independence, and the colonial mandated powers replaced the Ottoman and created the Zionist state of Israel. More on that in a follow-up article.

Note 2: How to win war on terrorism https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2010/01/25/how-can-i-win-the-war-on-%E2%80%9Cterrorism%E2%80%9D-part-two/