Do Excellent Surgeons Make Miserable Exegetes? Negotiating the Sunni Tradition in the Ǧihādī Camps, Welt des Islams, Vol. 53, no. 02 (2013) (original) (raw)
2013, Die Welt des Islams
This article is an attempt to explore how ǧihādī authors make use of the Sunni tradition to bolster their case. Islamicists have rarely embarked on such a discussion, given the tendency to a priori chastise extremist authors for their untenable misrepresentation of Islam. Similarly, ǧihādī arguments are frequently tossed aside as an already familiar rehashing of an insignificant, isolated stream of thought that stretches directly from Ibn Taimīya via Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb to Sayyid Quṭb. In revisiting this claim, I employ a close reading of the crucial ǧihādī manual al-ʿUmda fī iʿdād al-ʿudda li-l-ǧihād fī sabīl Allāh (The Essential Guide of Preparation for ǧihād on the Path of God), written in the mid 1980ies in the context of the Afghan ǧihād by an influential ideologue who is widely known as Dr. Faḍl. After presenting and evaluating a selection of the religious sources and authorities on which the author draws, the article enters into a discussion of his political thought. I argue that Dr. Faḍl makes a convincing case for a political project in the camps that is deeply embedded within the Sunni tradition while reading Ibn Taimīya faithfully. Dr. Faḍl does not turn him into a proponent of violence but rather sticks to the profound quietism the Damascene scholar is known for, thereby questioning supposedly established, clear-cut paths of reception.
Related papers
‘The kafir’s blood is halal for you’: The Doctrine of Jihād in Dabiq and Rumiyah
Journal for the Academic Study of Religion 33/3 (2020) 311–36, 2020
The Islamic State movement (IS, formerly ISIS) is widely denounced by both Muslims and non-Muslims as ‘un-Islamic’, for, among other deeds, attacking fellow Muslims, inciting international terrorism, and taking female captives as sex slaves – all in the name of jihād. IS’s propaganda magazines Dabiq (15 issues) and Rumiyah (13 issues), published between July 2014 and September 2017, sought to justify and explain the movement’s ideology and actions, presenting its credentials as an almost uniquely authentic expression of current Sunnī Islam. Drawing on these magazines, this article constructs a systematic overview of IS’s jihād doctrine, showing its indebtedness to both traditional sources, the Qurʾān, sunna, and fiqh, and to more recent Salafī-Jihādī thought. IS aims to revive the genuine Islam of the Prophet and the first generations of Muslims, rejecting the modernist view of military jihād as purely defensive. While clearly Islamic and heavily indebted to traditional sources, IS’s jihād doctrine is anachronistic, apocalyptic, selective, and sectarian.
Loading Preview
Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.