K – Hybrid Learning

KYRGYZSTAN

Batoota — Mon, 28 Jul 2014 06:18:16 +0000

KYRGYZSTAN. The Central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan, formerly known as Kirghizia, stretches from the Pamirs to the Tian Shan. Its geographical features include the Pobeda Peak, Issyk Kul, the Naryn, Chu, and Talas Rivers, and the Ferghana Valley. Historically, the Kyrgyz, an ancient Turkic people, were a major power along the Yenisei River, where they had developed a “runic” script and established an elaborate civilization. After the Mongol onslaught, they moved west and became mountain-dwelling pastoral nomads in the grasslands of the Tian Shan. During the eighteenth century, influenced by Muslim traders and Sunni Uzbeks, they accepted Islam. Their past is celebrated in the great Kyrgyz epic, the Manas.
Kyrgyzstan was incorporated into the Russian Empire in 1876. Thereafter, Russian peasants routinely displaced the Kyrgyz and confiscated their grazing lands. In 1916, pressured by shortages at the front, Tsar Nicholas II drafted Kyrgyz youth into the army. The decision set off revolts throughout Muslim Central Asia, resulting in the death of many Kyrgyz; many more fled to eastern Turkistan.
In the 1920S the Basmachi movement, which advocated national independence and the return of the waqf (religious endowment) lands was crushed, and the Kyrgyz were forced to abandon their nomadic lifestyle. In the 1930s the Jadidist movement, which sought Turkish unity and modernization of Islam, met with a similar end. In both cases, the Muslim intellectuals who had advocated the reforms were liquidated. After 1937 all the manifestations of the Kyrgyz past celebrated in the Manas were dissolved in efforts toward collectivization and industrialization. Mosques and madrasahs masqueraded as museums and opera houses, while programs of sovietization and russification dominated Kyrgyz education. The Arabic script gave way to Latin and then to Cyrillic. Eventually Russian became the state language. The shari `ah and the `adat legal codes were replaced by the Soviet civil code, and prayers, death rituals, pilgrimages, and circumcisions were outlawed. Even Islamic marriages, including the traditional practice of kalym (bride price) and ichkari (confinement of women to their quarters), were forbidden.

Today Kyrgyzstan has a population of 4,590,000 (55 percent Muslim), made up of Kyrgyz, Russians, Uzbeks, Ukrainians, and Germans; the highest birthrate occurs among the Kyrgyz. The republic has established a democratic government and is instituting a market economy. Through privatization, the state-held enterprises are being divided among small concerns in the public sector. Agriculture, livestock raising, mining, and manufacturing are also being privatized. While this process might inspire unrest elsewhere, the political stability stemming from the curtailment of communist power in Kyrgystan may help it succeed. The recent referendum, empowering President Asghar Akayev to implement extensive reforms, is proof that the Kyrgyz are determined to effect change in their republic. This, of course, is not a new phenomenon; intellectuals like Chingiz Aitmatov have advocated political, cultural, and economic reforms since the late 1960s.
Islam in Central Asia must be understood within a north-south geographic orientation. In Kazakhstan the influence of Islam is slight; Alma-Ata, the republic’s capital, has only one mosque located in the bazaar district, and the population is virtually unaware of its existence. Conversely, in Tajikistan, a southern republic, Muslim groups actively rehabilitate mosques, open madrasahs, and teach the Qur’an. However, since the November 1992 civil war and the introduction of antiWahhabi measures resulting in a factional bloodbath, the general goodwill for Islam has noticeably diminished. Furthermore, Tajikistan’s gradual domination by Russia-Tajikistan is now in the ruble zone; is heavily in debt to Russian; lacks skilled cadres, raw material, and parts for its factories; and the 201st Russian division defends its southern border-has led to the sociopolitical and economic unification of three of Tajikistan’s Turkic neighbors: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. While all those states pay lip service to Islam, on their way to Pan-Turkism, they control their Muslim groups very firmly. This is particularly true of Uzbekistan.
Islam in Kyrgyzstan is influenced both by the Kazakh conservativism reflected in the speeches of Imam Ratbek Nisanbayev, and by Tajik extremism. In the capital Bishkek, in the north, Islam is taking its first steps, while in Osh, on the edge of the Ferghana, many young people are finding their salvation in Islam. They perform the rituals and attend the mosque. The urban faithful, however, are only a fraction of the main body of Kyrgyz devotees of the rural south, where Imam Abdulmajid Qari and the chief Islamic judge of the republic, Abdulrahman Kimsenbayev, expend most of their energies. As a result of their efforts, today Kyrgyzstan has more than two hundred mosques whereas in 1985 it had only forty. By the end of 1992, Bishkek alone was scheduled to add six more mosques to its existing four. Kyrgyzstan also has two madrasahs, the Bishkek Islamic Seminary and the Qara Qul Seminary.
The Islamic Republic of Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia provide funds for many Islamic activities in Kyrgyzstan, including the organization of pilgrimages to Mecca, the acquisition of books for instruction in Islam, and the building of mosques and madrasahs.
[See also Basmachis; Islam, article on Islam in Central Asia and the Caucasus; Jadidism.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Allworth, Edward, ed. Soviet Nationality Problems. New York and Boston, 1971.
Allworth, Edward, ed. Central Asia: One Hundred and Twenty Years of Russian Rule. Durham, N.C., and London, 1989. Gives an overall view of the social, cultural, and economic dynamics of the republics.
Bennigsen, Alexandre, and Marie Broxup. The Islamic Threat to the Soviet State. New York, 1983. History of Russian and Soviet interactions with the Muslims of Central Asia from the Mongol invasion to the present.
Bennigsen, Alexandre, and S. Enders Wimbush. Muslims of the Soviet Empire: A Guide. Bloomington, 1986. Provides vital information for all the republics, especially about their Muslim peoples.
Fierman, William, ed. Soviet Central Asia: The Failed Transformation. Boulder, 1991.
Hatto, A. T., ed. The Memorial Feast for Kokotoy Khan: A Kirgiz Epic Poem. London, 1977. The best portrayal of Kyrgyz nomadic lifestyle before sovietization.
Massell, Gregory. The Surrogate Proletariat: Moslem Women and Revolutionary Strategies in Soviet Central Asia, 1919-1929. Excellent study of the role of women in the integration of Muslim Central Asia into the Soviet system.
Olcott, Martha. “Central Asia: The Reformers Challenge a Traditional Society.” In The Nationalities Factor: Soviet Politics and Society, edited by Lubomyr Hajda and Mark Beissinger, pp. 253-280. Boulder, 1990. Comprehensive overview of social, political, and cultural issues in Central Asian republics in recent years.
Rywkin, Michael. Moscow’s Muslim Challenge: Soviet Central Asia. New York, 1982. Examines the effectiveness of Moscow’s policies for the Central Asian republics.
Shahrani, M. Nazif. The Kirghiz and Wakhi of Afghanistan: Adaptation to Closed Frontiers. Seattle and London, 1979. Good study of the struggle of the displaced Kyrgyz and the odds of their survival in a changing world.
IRAI BASHIRI

KUWAIT

Batoota — Sat, 26 Jul 2014 19:30:30 +0000

Kuwait , officially the State of Kuwait, is an Arab country in Western Asia. Situated in the northern edge of Eastern Arabia at the tip of the Persian Gulf, it shares borders with Iraq and Saudi Arabia. As of 2013, Kuwait has a population of 4 million.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Kuwait was a prosperous center of trade and commerce. In the early 20th century, Kuwait declined in regional economic importance and by 1934, Kuwait had lost its prominence in long-distance trade. Kuwait’s economy was devastated by several trade blockades; before the blockades Kuwait was prosperous. During World War I, the British Empire imposed a trade blockade against Kuwait because Kuwait’s ruler supported the Ottoman Empire.Following the Kuwait–Najd War of 1919–1920, Saudi Arabia imposed a trade blockade against Kuwait for 14 years from 1923 until 1937.
In 1990, Kuwait was annexed by Iraq. The Iraqi occupation came to an end after direct military intervention by United States-led forces.Kuwait is a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system of government. Kuwait City is the country’s capital. Kuwait is classified as a high income economy by the World Bank.
History
Kuwait was historically the site of settlements from the Ubaid period (ca. 6500 to 3800 BC). The earliest evidence of sailing has been found in Kuwait, the world’s oldest reed boat was found in Subiya in northern Kuwait. The Kuwaiti island of Failaka was first inhabited by Sumerians in 2000 BC. In 224 AD, Kuwait fell under the control of the Sassanid Empire. In 636 AD, the Battle of Chains between the Sassanid Empire and Rashidun Caliphate was fought in Kuwait near the town of Kazma. As a result of the Rashidun victory in the seventh century, an early Islamic settlement known as Kazima was founded in Kuwait.
Economic prosperity
In 1613, the town of Kuwait was founded in modern-day Kuwait City. In 1716, the Bani Utubs settled in Kuwait. At the time of the arrival of the Utubs, Kuwait was inhabited by a few fishermen and primarily functioned as a fishing village.
In the eighteenth century, Kuwait prospered and rapidly became the principal commercial center for the transit of goods between India, Muscat, Baghdad and Arabia. By the mid 1700s, Kuwait had already established itself as the major trading route from the Persian Gulf to Aleppo.[28] During the Persian siege of Basra in 1775—1779, Iraqi merchants took refuge in Kuwait and were partly instrumental in the expansion of Kuwait’s boat-building and trading activities. As a result, Kuwait’s maritime commerce boomed.
Between the years 1775 and 1779, the Indian trade routes with Baghdad, Aleppo, Smyrna and Constantinople were diverted to Kuwait.The East India Company was diverted to Kuwait in 1792. The East India Company secured the sea routes between Kuwait, India and the east coasts of Africa.After the Persians withdrew from Basra in 1779, Kuwait continued to attract trade away from Basra.
Regional geopolitical turbulence helped foster economic prosperity in Kuwait in the second half of the 18th century. Kuwait became prosperous due to Basra’s instability in the late 18th century. In the late 18th century, Kuwait partly functioned as a haven for Basra’s merchants fleeing Ottoman government persecution.By 1800, it was estimated that Kuwait’s sea trade reached 16 million Bombay rupees.Kuwait’s pre-oil population was ethnically diverse. The population consisted of Arabs, Persians, Africans, Jews and Armenians.
Kuwait was the center of boat building in the Gulf region. Ship vessels made in Kuwait carried the bulk of international trade between the trade ports of India, East Africa, and Red Sea. Boats made in Kuwait were capable of sailing up to China. Kuwaiti ship vessels were renowned throughout the Indian Ocean for quality and design. Kuwaitis also developed a reputation as the best sailors in the Persian Gulf.
In the 19th century, Kuwait became significant in the horse trade, horses were regularly shipped by the way of sailing boats from Kuwait.By the mid 19th century, it was estimated that Kuwait was exporting an average of 800 horses to India annually. Pre-oil Kuwait was divided into three areas: Sharq, Jibla and Mirqab. Sharq and Jibla were the most populated areas. Jibla was inhabited by immigrants from Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Bahrain. Sharq was mostly inhabited by Persians.
During the reign of Mubarak Al-Sabah, Kuwait was dubbed the “Marseilles of the Gulf” because its economic vitality attracted a large variety of people. In a good year, Kuwait’s annual revenue actually came up to 100,000 riyals, the governor of Basra considered Kuwait’s annual revenue an astounding figure.A Western author’s account of Kuwait in 1905:
“ Kuwait was the Marseilles of the Persian Gulf. Its population was good natured, mixed, and vicious. As it was the outlet from the north to the Gulf and hence to the Indies, merchants from Bombay and Tehran, Indians, Persians, Syrians from Aleppo and Damascus, Armenians, Turks and Jews, traders from all the East, and some Europeans came to Kuwait. From Kuwait, the caravans set out for Central Arabia and for Syria.
H. C. Armstrong, Lord of Arabia”
In the first decades of the twentieth century, Kuwait had a well-established elite: wealthy trading families who were linked by marriage and shared economic interests.The elite were long-settled, urban, Sunni families, the majority of which claim descent from the original 30 Bani Utubi families. The wealthiest families were trade merchants who acquired their wealth from long-distance commerce, shipbuilding and pearling.They were a cosmopolitan elite, they traveled extensively to India, Africa and Europe.The elite educated their sons abroad more than other Gulf Arab elite. Western visitors noted that the Kuwaiti elite used European office systems, typewriters and followed European culture with curiosity.The richest families were involved in general trade. The merchant families of Al-Ghanim and Al-Hamad were estimated to be worth millions before the 1940s.
Downfall of economy
In the early 20th century, Kuwait immensely declined in regional economic importance, mainly due to many trade blockades and the world economic depression. Before Mary Bruins Allison visited Kuwait in 1934, Kuwait lost its prominence in long distance trade.During World War I, the British Empire imposed a trade blockade against Kuwait because Kuwait’s ruler supported the Ottoman Empire.The British economic blockade heavily damaged Kuwait’s economy.
The Great Depression negatively impacted Kuwait’s economy starting in the late 1920s. International trading was one of Kuwait’s main sources of income before oil. Kuwaiti merchants were mostly intermediary merchants. As a result of European decline of demand for goods from India and Africa, the economy of Kuwait suffered. The decline in international trade resulted in an increase in gold smuggling by Kuwaiti ships to India. Some Kuwaiti merchant families became rich due to gold smuggling to India.
Kuwait’s pearling industry also collapsed as a result of the worldwide economic depression. At its height, Kuwait’s pearling industry led the world’s luxury market, regularly sending out between 750 and 800 ship vessels to meet the European elite’s need for pearls. During the economic depression, luxuries like pearls were in little demand.The Japanese invention of cultured pearls also contributed to the collapse of Kuwait’s pearling industry.
Following the Kuwait–Najd War of 1919-1920, Ibn Saud imposed a trade blockade against Kuwait from the years 1923 until 1937. The goal of the Saudi economic and military attacks on Kuwait was to annex as much of Kuwait’s territory as possible. At the Uqair conference in 1922, the boundaries of Kuwait and Najd were set. Kuwait had no representative at the Uqair conference. Ibn Saud persuaded Sir Percy Cox to give him two-thirds of Kuwait’s territory.More than half of Kuwait was lost due to Uqair. After the Uqair conference, Kuwait was still subjected to a Saudi economic blockade and intermittent Saudi raiding.
In 1937, Freya Stark wrote about the extent of poverty in Kuwait at the time
“ Poverty has settled in Kuwait more heavily since my last visit five years ago, both by sea, where the pearl trade continues to decline, and by land, where the blockade established by Saudi Arabia now harms the merchants. ”
Some prominent merchant families left Kuwait in the early 1930s due to the prevalence of economic hardship. At the time of the discovery of oil in 1937, most of Kuwait’s inhabitants were impoverished.
Discovery of oil
In 1937, the 15 year trade blockades against Kuwait were lifted and Kuwait’s large oil reserves were discovered by the US-British Kuwait Oil Company. Exploration was delayed until after World War II, the use of oil only began in 1951. Between World War II and 1948, Kuwait’s inhabitants were still largely impoverished. A few years following World War II, oil exploration finally began. In 1951, a major public-work programme began to enable Kuwaitis to enjoy a better standard of living. By 1952, the country became the largest exporter of oil in the Persian Gulf region. This massive growth attracted many foreign workers, especially from India.
Independence and beyond
On 19 June 1961, Kuwait became independent with the end of the British protectorate; the sheikh Abdullah Al-Salim Al-Sabah, became an Emir, and the country joined the Arab League. Iraq laid claim that Kuwait was part of its territory, but formally recognized Kuwait’s independence and its borders in October 1963. Under the terms of a newly drafted constitution, Kuwait held its first parliamentary elections in 1963. The exploitation of large oil fields improved Kuwait’s economy. During the 1970s, the Kuwaiti government nationalized the Kuwait Oil Company, ending its partnership with British Petroleum.
In the early 1980s, Kuwait experienced a major economic crisis after the Souk Al-Manakh stock market crash and decrease in oil price. However, the crisis was short-lived as Kuwait’s oil production increased steadily to fill the gap caused by decrease in Iraq’s and Iran’s oil production due to the Iran–Iraq War.
During the Iran-Iraq war, Kuwait supported Iraq. In the 1980s, there were many terror attacks in Kuwait, including the 1983 Kuwait bombings, hijacking of several Kuwait Airways planes and attempted assassination of Emir Jaber in 1985. After the war ended, Kuwait declined an Iraqi request to forgive its US$65 billion debt.An economic rivalry between the two countries ensued after Kuwait increased its oil production by 40 percent. Tensions between the two countries increased further in July 1990, after Iraq complained to OPEC that Kuwait was stealing its oil from a field near the border by slant drilling of the Rumaila field.
On 2 August 1990, Iraqi forces invaded and annexed Kuwait. After a series of failed diplomatic negotiations, the United States led a coalition to remove the Iraqi forces from Kuwait, in what became known as the Gulf War. On 26 February 1991, the coalition succeeded in driving out the Iraqi forces. As they retreated, Iraqi forces carried out a scorched earth policy by setting oil wells on fire. During the Iraqi occupation, more than 1,000 Kuwaiti civilians were killed. In addition, more than 600 Kuwaitis went missing during Iraq’s occupation,approximately 375 remains were found in mass graves in Iraq.
In March 2003, Kuwait became the springboard for the US-led invasion of Iraq. Upon the death of the Emir Jaber, in January 2006, Saad Al-Sabah succeeded him but was removed nine days later by the Kuwaiti parliament due to his ailing health. Sabah Al-Sabah was sworn in as Emir. In 2011–2012, there were protests inspired by the Arab Spring. The parliament was dissolved in December 2011 due to protests against the parliament. The prime minister stepped down following protests and allegations of high-level corruption.
Religion
The majority of Kuwait’s citizen population is Muslim; there are no official figures, but it is estimated that 60%–70% are Sunni and 30%–40% are Shias.
In 2001, there were 525,000 Sunni Kuwaiti citizens, 300,000 Shia Kuwaiti citizens and 820,000 Kuwaiti citizens in total thus Sunnis formed 64% and Shias formed 36.5% of the Kuwaiti citizen population. In 2002, the US Department of State reported that Shia Kuwaitis formed 30%-40% of Kuwait’s citizen population, noting there were 525,000 Sunni Kuwaiti citizens and 855,000 Kuwaiti citizens in total (61% Sunnis, 39% Shias). In 2004, there were 600,000 Sunni Kuwaitis citizens, 300,000-350,000 Shia Kuwaiti citizens and 913,000 Kuwaiti citizens in total.
Kuwait has a native Christian community, in 1999 there were 400 Christian Kuwaiti citizens. There were 256 Christian Kuwaiti citizens living in Kuwait in June 2013. There is also a small number of Bahá’í Kuwaiti citizens, it is likely that 18 Kuwaiti citizens follow the Bahá’í religion.There are 400 Bahá’ís in total in Kuwait.
Kuwait also has a large community of expatriate Christians (est. 450,000), Hindus (est. 600,000), Buddhists (est. 100,000), and Sikhs (est. 10,000).

KOMITEH

Batoota — Sat, 26 Jul 2014 19:01:58 +0000

KOMITEH. Revolutionary committees active in the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the Komitehs arose in the fall of 1978 when students and young people formed neighborhood defense units against government-backed clubwielders who attacked protesters and set fire to shops, stores, and schools. Initially, the Komitehs were comprised of individuals with differing political ideologies and were not directed by any central authority. Two processes brought them under the control of the fundamentalist clergy, who employed them as a coercive organ. First, many members who had supported a democratic revolutionary outcome voluntarily left these organizations in the face of increasing authoritarianism. Second, in the summer of 1979, the clergy initiated an ideological purge of the Komitehs, dismissing forty thousand who did not meet with their ideological approval. The purified Komiteh members were largely drawn from the lower middle class, urban poor, and recent rural migrants.
With the collapse of the monarchy in February 1979, the Komitehs mobilized offensively to arrest and punish officials of the shah’s regime. Many Komiteh members had armed themselves with weapons confiscated during attacks on army barracks in the last two days of the revolutionary conflicts in February. During the first six months of the Islamic Republic, the Komitehs arrested a large number of officials and executed more than 220 police and army officers, SAVAK (secret police officials), and politicians linked to the monarchy. Over the next five years, they imprisoned numerous nonpolitical Baha’is, executing more than 200.
Liberal and nationalist political leaders who remained in the government, such as Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan and President Abol-Hasan Bani Sadr, repeatedly complained about the arbitrary nature of Komiteh activities. There were even some large-scale demonstrations in Tehran against the repressive measures taken by the Komitehs. In response to growing criticism, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini stated in late February 1979 that as soon as the government was in complete control of the cities, the Komitehs should relinquish their power and avoid involvement in government affairs. In mid-April, however, Khomeini, recognizing the threat posed by mounting social and ideological cleavages, modified his stand, declaring that the Komitehs needed purging, not dissolution. He stated that as long as corrupt individuals existed, there was a need for the Komitehs.
As the revolutionary coalition broke down and new conflicts emerged within the Islamic Republic, the Komitehs directed their attention against those who opposed fundamentalist rule. The Komitehs were significant in the dissolution of Workers’ Councils that sprang up in factories, the closure of colleges and universities throughout the country beginning in 198o, the repression of liberals aligned with President Bani Sadr in 1981, and the armed struggle against the socialist Islamic group, the Mujahidin-i Khalq, during the early 1980s. In addition, the Komitehs were instrumental in the arrest and execution of more than seven thousand leftist, Kurdish, and Tiirkmen opponents of the regime between 1981 and 1984.
By 1984, with the repression of the opposition virtually complete, the Komitehs moved out of the local mosques, where most of them had been headquartered. Their tasks were redefined and directed toward controlling smuggling and drug trafficking, and enforcing the use of the veil by women. In 1991, they were incorporated into the regular police force and ceased to exist as an independent entity.
[See also Iranian Revolution of 1979.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abrahamian, Ervand. Iran between Two Revolutions. Princeton, 1982. Excellent history and analysis of the rise and demise of the Pahlavi dynasty and the creation of the Islamic Republic.
Amnesty International. Law and Human Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran. London, 198o. Discusses the formation and functions of revolutionary organizations and issues of human rights in the early months of the Islamic Republic.
Bakhash, Shaul. The Reign of the Ayatollahs: Iran and the Islamic Revolution, New York, 1984. Insightful narrative of the post-1979 conflict and the establishment of the theocratic state.
Parsa, Misagh. Social Origins of the Iranian Revolution. New Brunswick, N.J., and London, 1989. Analyzes the nature of the state, economy, social conflicts, and collective action by various social groups between 1951 and 1981, with special emphasis on the 19771979 conflicts.
MISAGH PARSA

KISHK, ABD AL-HAMID

Batoota — Sat, 26 Jul 2014 18:53:31 +0000

KISHK, ABD AL-HAMID (March 10, 1933 – December 6, 1996) more fully, Shaykh `Abd al-Hamid `Abd al-`Aziz Muhammad Kishk, immensely popular Egyptian preacher, known to many of his followers as Shaykh `Abd al-Hamid. Born in 1933 in Shubrakhit, a village not far from Damanhur, Kishk went to school in Alexandria and became blind at the age of twelve. Graduating from the us il al-din (dogmatics) faculty of al-Azhar, he worked for some time in the service of the Egyptian awqaf (religious endowment) ministry as a mosque preacher and imam. From 5 May 1964 until 28 August 1981, he was an independent preacher in the `Ayn al-Hayah Mosque in Misr wa-‘1-Sudan Street in the Cairene quarter known as Hada’iq al-Qubbah. This mosque is also known as the Masjid al-Malik. It was from here that his fame and popularity spread.

KISHK, ABD AL-HAMID

Under the regime of President Gamal Abdel Nasser (1952-1970), Kishk came into conflict with the authorities over several questions. For instance, he refused to give a fatwa that approved of the death sentence imposed by the regime on Sayyid Qutb in 1966; and he avoided answering the question of Arab socialism’s compatibility with Islam. By such attitudes he identified himself as a dissident, and he consequently spent time in prison.
Under the regime of Anwar el-Sadat (1970-1981), Kishk’s sermons became immensely popular. In these, he continued to criticize sharply any behavior that he regarded as a deviation from the norms of Islam. However, the regime was a little more tolerant of such criticisms, since it needed the support of the Islamic movement in the struggle against “communism and atheism.” Nevertheless, Shaykh Kishk, unlike Islamists such as Shaykh al-Sha’rawi, did not appear on state-run television or publish in the official printed media.
In spite of the official media boycott, Kishk’s sermons were widely distributed on cassette tapes, as were, in the same period, those by the Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini, who came to power in 1979. Hence, the Western media have sometimes called Kishk an Egyptian Khomeini. It is now more obvious than it was in the 1980s that the resemblance between the two men is superficial at best. Whereas Khomeini founded a revolutionary movement that came to power in Iran and survived the death of its founder by years, Kishk’s political views (as far as they can be found in his books) resemble a form of anarchism. He writes, for instance, with great nostalgia about the days when there were no policemen to stop people and ask for their driver’s licenses, or frontier guards to ask for passports and entry or exit visas: those were the days when the Muslims conquered the world, so Kishk wants his audience to remember.
Anarchism, obviously, is too strong and too Western a word to describe the traditional dislike for rulers and government officials in the Middle East and elsewhere. This common attitude is perhaps best put into words by Sa’d Zaghlul (1857-1927; prime minister of Egypt from January to November 1924), who once remarked that Egypt’s citizens tend to look at their rulers in the same way a bird looks at the hunter.
The emphasis in Kishk’s preaching falls on personal and private piety, not on something as transitory as worldly power. The shaykh is occupied with the end of the world, the miracles of the Sufi saints, the metaphysics of the soul, eschatology, and death. Nevertheless, in a politically tense atmosphere the statements he makes about this world may easily be understood as veiled demands for the introduction of a theocracy, especially by those who are in favor, or in fear, of an Islamic theocracy. There can, however, be little doubt that many in the shaykh’s audiences, in the traditions of the Islamic quietist Sufi movements, are only superficially, or not at all, interested in political (Islamic) utopias.
“The believer’s creed must be compressed into: loving God,” Kishk once wrote (Kishk, 1978-, vol. 13, p. 159). It is not plausible, although admittedly possible, that such an emphasis on love, also known from Islamic mysticism, accompanies political ambitions, revolutionary schemes, and participation in the struggle for worldly power. Yet Kishk’s social criticisms may be thought to imply political consequences. In a sermon on 12 December 1980, he attacked not only Jews, Christians, lax Muslims, and a former rector of al-Azhar University, but also a soccer captain and a businessman who was reported to have presented his wife with an expensive coat. Since the shaykh was intermittently sent to jail, one has to assume that those in power were concerned about the force of such sweeping criticisms.
In the first days of September 1981, on the eve of the assassination of Sadat, which took place on 6 October, Kishk was again thrown into prison. He shared this fate with 1,526 others of all political persuasions who were put under “precautionary arrest.” In anticipation of the publication of a complete official list of detainees, the first page of Al-ahrdm on September 4 noted the imprisonment of Kishk along with a small number of prominent Egyptians. In spite of controls on the media, the shaykh’s fame had clearly spread.
On 24-25 January 1982, Kishk was released from detention. In February, the Egyptian semiofficial weekly devoted to religious affairs, Al-liwa’ al-Islami, contained minor contributions by Kishk-an indication that a compromise with the regime of Hosni Mubarak had been reached. His books and cassette tapes were to be freely available (they still were in 1993), but his life as a public preacher was over-for the time being at least. His mosque in Cairo has since been transformed into a public health center.
Kishk’s uniqueness is closely connected to the way in which he chants his sermons. His voice expresses nostalgia for the Kingdom of Heaven in a way that moves many members of his audiences.
[See also Egypt.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Jansen, Johannes J. G. “The Voice of Sheikh Kishk.” In The Challenge of the Middle East, edited by Ibrahim A. El-Sheikh et al., pp. 57-67. Amsterdam, 1982. Discusses the teachings of Shaykh Kishk.
Jansen, Johannes J. G. The Neglected Duty: The Creed of Sadat’s Assassins and Islamic Resurgence in the Middle East. New York and London, 1986. Discusses the teachings of Shaykh Kishk and his reaction to the assassination of Sadat. Contains quotations from his sermons and his booklets (pp. 91-120).
Kepel, Gilles. The Prophet and Pharaoh. London, 1985. Contains translated excerpts of Shaykh Kishk’s sermon for 1o April 1981 (pp 172-190).
Kishk, `Abd al-Hamid. Maktabat al-Shaykh Kishk. Cairo, [1978-]. More than thirty-two small volumes, most of them reprinted several times. The first volume, Tariq al-naja, was written, or rather dictated, before 1973.
Kishk, `Abd al-Hamid Qissat ayyami: Mudhakkirat al-Shaykh Kishk. Cairo, n.d. [1986]. Autobiography.
Kishk, `Abd al-Hamid. Al-khutab al-minbarryah. Cairo, 1987- Literal texts of the shaykh’s sermons. Thirteen volumes had appeared by 1992. Date of delivery is given for some sermons; not arranged chronologically.
Kishk, `Abd al-Hamid. Fatawd al-Shaykh Kishk: Humun al-Muslim al-mu’asir. Cairo, n.d. [1988?]. Ten volumes had appeared by 1992. Contains answers (fatawd) to questions by concerned Muslims.
JOHANNES J. G. JANSEN

KISAKUREK, NECIP FAZIL

Batoota — Sat, 26 Jul 2014 18:30:02 +0000

KISAKUREK, NECIP FAZIL (May 26, 1904 – May 25, 1983), Turkish poet, playwright, and essayist. One of the most striking figures of modern Turkish literature, Necip Fazil combined in his life concerns for literary style and political ideology. Today he is remembered primarily for the second, but in fact his poetry, prose, journalism, and theater bring together experimentation with form and concerns about the cultural identity of the modern Turk.

Necip Fazıl Kısakürek

Necip Fazil was born in Istanbul in 1905 of a family with ancient roots in the town of Maras in southeastern Turkey. The early death of his father and the somewhat retiring role of his mother in the family strengthened the influence on him of his grandparents, who had strong, idiosyncratic personalities. From his grandfather he acquired a knowledge of Ottoman culture and history; from his grandmother he absorbed her attempts to join the stream of Western culture and to imitate Western manners, shaped by her immersion in French novels. These sources instilled in the boy a curiosity about the West that eventually led to his reasonably wide knowledge of European culture. It also generated a suspicion of the suitability of western European values and of westernization in general as a model for Turkish modernization. This concern increased as he aged and grew into the primary focus of his later years.
He irregularly attended a number of the schools that during the nineteenth century had replaced the traditional madrasah (seminary) with programs copied from western European schools. After a five-year stint he dropped out of the Naval Cadet School in Istanbul. While registered at the Faculty of Philosophy of Istanbul University, he won a government scholarship for study abroad in 1921. As a student in Paris he refined his knowledge of French literature and culture but never received a university degree. He pursued a bohemian lifestyle, some traces of which remained for the rest of his life.
Upon his return he worked in various banks and taught at the Conservatory of Arts in Ankara, at the Academy of Fine Arts in Istanbul, and at Robert College, an American missionary school with strict academic standards. His poetic pieces and short stories appeared in such Istanbul literary magazines as Yeni Mecmua, Milli Mecmua, Anadolu, Hayat, and Varlik in the 1920s. His earliest pieces show a pervasive pessimism and often highlight motifs of boredom, despair, or death combined with a search for identity.
His versification was in the modern Turkish “syllabic” style, in which he showed an originality that brought him to the attention of the literary establishment. His poems show the influence of French symbolism promoted by his predecessor Ahmet Hasim but also have aspects reminiscent of the worldview of Ottoman Sufism. Orhan Okay has described such cultural mixture and use of themes from Western sources as characteristic of Turkish writers who lived through the transformation of the Ottoman Empire. With the establishment of the Turkish Republic (1923) the change of values from Islamic to secular, at work since the nineteenth century, was greatly accelerated. For Necip Fazil the transformation brought up the problem of achieving a degree of authenticity amid the clash of two cultures, a dilemma prominent in his plays of the 1930s, such as Tohum (The Seed) and especially Bir adam yaratmak (To Create a Man).
To resolve these matters Necip Fazil adopted a philosophy that placed the East and Islam at the foundation of his outlook on life. In his autobiography Ove ben (He and Myself) he ascribed this change to the influence of a shaykh of the Naqshbandi order, Abdulhakim Arvasi, whose path he followed thereafter. Although ideologically committed to Islam, Necip Fazil never abandoned a frankly Western way of life, nor did he succeed in erasing the bohemianism of his early days, which brought him repeatedly to the gambling table.
His adoption by the younger generation of Turkish conservatives at a time when Turkish nationalism was giving way to the stronger influence of Islam may be attributed to the theme of a revival of the East first broached in his periodical The Great East (1943-1978) where he presented a critique of the emptiness of the basic social and humanistic philosophy of republican Turkey. Although frequently interrupted for long periods, the journal and the themes found in its columns, which reappeared in a number of collected essays, make up a compendium that younger conservative Turks use for ideological guidance.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Kisakurek, Necip Fazil. O ve Ben. 3d ed. Istanbul, 1978.
Mavera (Ankara) Special number on Kisakurek (July-August 1983). Okay, M. Orhan. Necip Fazil Kisakurek. Ankara, 1987.
SERIF MARDIN

KING FAISAL FOUNDATION

Batoota — Sat, 26 Jul 2014 18:20:55 +0000

KING FAISAL FOUNDATION. A philanthropic organization established in 1976 by the eight sons of King Faysal ibn `Abd al-`Aziz Al Sa’ud (1906-1975), who play a major role in the civic and cultural life of Saudi Arabia, the King Faisal Foundation is intended to promote within Saudi Arabia and abroad all charitable endeavors that the late king strove to accomplish, namely, helping fellow Muslims, expanding Islamic da,wah (missionary activity), and fostering solidarity among Muslim states. The foundation is comprised of three distinct entities: The King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies, the King Faisal International Prize, and the King Faisal Foundation General Secretariat. The director general of the foundation is Prince Khalid al-Faysal, emir of ‘Asir Province, and most of the high-ranking posts of the foundation, particularly in the finance and investment section, are held by Saudis. In I99I, the research center’s library held some 63,000 books and 2,000 periodicals in sixteen languages as well as 10,300 manuscripts. The children’s library attached to the center provides a reading space for eighty children, and it holds 15,000 children’s books and serials in Arabic, English, and French. The computer search services of the center provide college students and researchers, free of charge, with full bibliographies on any topic related to the Arab world and Islam.

The King Faisal International Prize, valued at 350,000 Saudi riyals (approximately US$93,000), is awarded annually to outstanding international figures whose contributions are universally recognized in five major fields: service to Islam, Islamic studies, Arabic literature, medicine, and science. Since the inception of the prize in 1979, an average of six scholars per year, from twenty-six countries, have won this award.
In financing philanthropic projects in Islamic states, the foundation oversees a multitude of programs directed to nongovernmental institutions, particularly schools, orphanages, and hospitals. This aid is independent of any assistance programs provided to these countries by the Saudi Government. The only requirement is that such bodies must conform to the sunnah (authentic teachings) of the Prophet and be run on sound business principles.
The foundation also encourages young students and scholars from the Muslim world to pursue medical and engineering studies in advanced industrial countries. Open to both men and women, most scholarships have gone to Muslim students from countries other than Saudi Arabia. In I99I, forty students received full scholarships; another twenty-two had already graduated and returned to their home countries.
Structurally, the foundation’s secretariat is divided into two main divisions: the investment section and the programs and research section. A steering committee coordinates the work of the two divisions. The foundation’s assets amounted to $332 million in 1991. Its holdings include a large shopping mall in Riyadh, one residential building, two high-rise office buildings, a fivestar international hotel, a supermarket, and a modern boarding school. The foundation is also developing two more shopping centers in the southern Saudi cities of Abha and Khamis Mushayt. In addition, the investment section actively deals in shares, stocks, and bonds, and it holds partnerships in some business and touristic ventures in eastern Saudi Arabia. Earnings from these investments in the past fourteen years were directed toward financing some ninety-nine projects in twentyseven countries. In 1991, total earnings amounted to $18 million, half of which was spent on programs and projects and one-fourth on administration; the remaining quarter was kept as a reserve and for the upkeep and maintenance of existing facilities.
[See also Da`wah, article on Institutionalization; Saudi Arabia.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The foundation publishes a multitude of pamphlets, a newsletter, and an annual report, mostly in Arabic. It also publishes a monthly Arabic cultural journal, Al -faysal, with a circulation of twenty-two thousand. The foundation commemorated its tenth anniversary by the publication of two books in Arabic reviewing its accomplishments. Few articles about the foundation’s work are available in English.
SALEH ABDUL-REHMAN AL-MANI`

KHOQAND KHANATE

Batoota — Sat, 26 Jul 2014 10:58:52 +0000

KHOQAND KHANATE. This Central Asian state of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries took its name from its capital, the city of Khoqand (locally pronounced Kukon or Kokan, and in Russian and Western literature rendered Kokand) in the central part of the Ferghana valley. During the post-Mongol period, before the eighteenth century, Ferghana had been only a province of the khanates, whose centers were elsewhere, mostly in Transoxania. With the political and economic decline of the Khanate of Bukhara by the end of the seventeenth century and its disintegration into a number of independent Uzbek tribal chiefdoms, several such chiefdoms emerged in Ferghana, but most of the region was dominated first by Nagshband-1 shaykhs (khojas) from the village of Chadak in the northern part of the valley. The leaders (biys) of the Uzbek Ming tribe, which had its yurt (tribal territory) in the central part of Ferghana, gradually gained strength. One such leader, Shahrukh Biy, eliminated the Chadak khojas in 1709171o; his son `Abd al-Karim Biy founded the city of Khoqand in 1740. During most of the eighteenth century the Ming chiefdom was only one of four competing principalities in Ferghana. During the rule of Narbuta Biy (c.1770-1798) most of Ferghana was united under the Mings, and his son `Alim (1798-1810) was proclaimed khan, thus founding a new reigning dynasty in Central Asia that had a status equal to those of Bukhara and Khiva. A genealogical legend was created according to which the Ming dynasty traced its origin back to the Timurids and the Chingisids.

In the first half of the nineteenth century the Ming khans embarked on a policy of vigorous expansion beyond the Ferghana valley. `Alim Khan conquered Khojand (1805) and Tashkent (1809); his son and successor `Umar Khan captured the city of Turkestan (1816) and expanded the possessions of Khoqand in the southern parts of the Kazakh steppes. Muhammad `Ali (“Madali”) Khan (1823-1842) annexed vast areas in the Zheti Su (Semirech’e) and central Tian Shan and subdued Kirghiz tribes in this region; his troops invaded Kashgar twice (1826 and 1830), but without lasting result. During the first decades of the nineteenth century the khanate also experienced fast economic growth owing to the influx of population from Transoxania, the expansion of irrigation systems undertaken by the government, and especially the rapidly growing trade with Russia via Tashkent. In cultural life this period was marked by intensive building activity in the cities of the Ferghana valley and by the flourishing of literature and poetry, in both Persian and Turkic, especially under `Umar Khan, who was a poet himself.
In the early 1840s, however, the khanate entered a period of almost uninterrupted political turmoil-civil wars and rebellions, caused by sharp conflicts between the major ethnic groups of its heterogeneous population (sedentary Uzbeks, Sarts, and Tajiks, and nomadic Kipchaks, Kirghiz, and Kazakhs), coupled with frequent wars with the neighboring Khanate of Bukhara. The authority of the central government weakened considerably, and the khanate was unable to offer effective resistance to Russia, which began its military advance into the territory of the khanate in 1853. In 1865 the Russians captured Tashkent and in 1866 Khojand. By 1868 the territory of the khanate was reduced to the Ferghana valley, and it had to sign a commercial convention with Russia that established a de facto Russian protectorate. In 1875 a popular uprising began against the oppressive rule of Khudayar Khan and had to be put down by Russian troops. The khanate was abolished in 1876, and its territory was annexed to the Russian Governorate-General of Turkestan.
[See also Bukhara Khanate; Khiva Khanate.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barthold, Wilhelm. “Khokand.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. 2, pp. 963-965. Leiden, 1913-.
Bregel, Yuri. Bibliography of Islamic Central Asia. Vol. 1. Bloomington, 1994. Works cited are almost all Russian; see pages 85-91 for pertinent citations.
Nalivkin, Vladimir Petrovich. Histoire du khanat de Khokand. Paris, 1889. Originally published in Russian as Kratkaia istoriia Kokandskogo khanstva. Kazan, 1886. The only existing general history of the khanate, but inadequate (no references to the sources) and outdated.
Nettleton, Susanna. “Ruler, Patron, Poet: Umar Khan and the Blossoming of the Khanate of Qoqan, 1800-1820.” International Journal of Turkish Studies 2.2 (1981-1982): 127-140.
Saguchi, Toro. “The Eastern Trade of the Khoqand Khanate.” Memoirs of the Research Department of the Toyo Bunko (Tokyo) 24 (1965): 47-114.
YURI BREGEL

KHOMEINI, RUHOLLAH AL-MUSAVI

Batoota — Sat, 26 Jul 2014 10:38:47 +0000

KHOMEINI, RUHOLLAH AL-MUSAVI (24 September 1902 – 3 June 1989), Iranian Shi’i leader of the Islamic Revolution. Born into a longstanding clerical family on 24 September 1902 in Khomein, a small village in central Iran, Ruhollah al-Musavi Khomeini was the youngest of six children. His father, Mustafa, who had studied theology in Isfahan and Najaf, was murdered seven months after Khomeini’s birth.

As a child, Khomeini studied Arabic, Persian poetry, and calligraphy at a government school and a maktab (elementary religious school). When he was sixteen, his mother and aunt, both of whom had been strong influences on him, died. At seventeen, he left Khomem to study in a madrasah (Islamic school) in Arak under Shaykh `Abd al-Karim Ha’iri Yazdi (1859-1936) and later followed him to Qom. There, he completed the three steps of religious education, and by the early 1930s he had become a mujtahid. At twenty-seven, he married Batul Saqafi. [See Qom and the biography of Ha’iri Yazdi. ]
In the 1930s, Khomeini, as a very confident teacher, with a growing circle of students, began to expound on ethics in response to Reza Shah Pahlavi’s modernization and secularization of Iran. Khomeini gave public lectures which brought him to the attention of the authorities for the first time. And when Reza Shah was forced to abdicate in 1941, Khomeini saw it as the thin end of the wedge of a Western ideological and cultural offensive. To counteract this influence, Khomeini advocated a united clerical establishment. [See the biography of Pahlavi.]
His first political statement appeared in a visitors’ book in a mosque at Yazd in 1944. It began with the Qur’anic verse, “Say, I do admonish you on one point: that you do not stand up for God, in pairs or singly.” The significant point in the lines which followed was his emphasis on rising up in the name of God.
By the end of the 1940s Khomeini’s interest in the political field, which he considered just as much part of Islam as philosophy and theology, increased. In the early 1950s, he was to witness the rise of the nationalist Mohammad Mossadegh and his rapid fall brought about by the United States and Britain. In 1962, when the chief Iranian theologian, Ayatollah Mohammad Hosayn Borujerdi, died, the burden of fusing religion and politics fell to Khomeini, whose aim was more to islamize politics rather than to politicize Islam. [See the biography of Borujerdi.]
The shah’s secularization policies of the early 1960s gave Khomeini his first excuse to oppose the ruler. He accused the government of aping the West and eroding Islam, and he showed great ability in mobilizing his network of opposition. Bazaris were one group which increasingly turned to Khomeini, as they felt their livelihood was threatened by the shah’s attempt to shift power to the burgeoning commercial and industrial bourgeoisie. Khomeini helped the merchants to establish an alliance of Islamic missions. Some of Khomeini’s trusted students, such as Murtaza Mutahhari and Muhammad Husayn Bihishti, acted as this alliance’s supervisory body, whose core members were later to create the Islamic Republican Party (IRP) after the Iranian Revolution of 1979. [See Islamic Republican Party and the biography of Mutahhari.]
During the mourning ceremonies in the month of Muharram in 1963, Khomeini took the opportunity to utilize the ShN zeal for tragedy and martyrdom by comparing the shah’s regime with that of the hated Caliph Yazid, who had killed Imam `All’s son, Husayn. On the day of `Ashura’, Khomeini delivered a forceful sermon railing against the shah, Israel, and the United States, ending with a warning to the shah to heed his actions. The result was a wave of antishah marches in Tehran that day and the next, which prompted the shah to have Khomeini arrested and removed to Tehran.
Such was Khomeini’s stature in the country after his imprisonment and house arrest in Tehran that the government seemed anxious to appease him, for it understood only too well that he was now the undisputed leader of disparate factions within Iranian society. In a series of statements, he turned his attention away from Islamic rituals to the social, political, and cultural aspect of Islam. His speech on the issue of granting extraterritorial rights to the United States led to his arrest again in October 1964. Thereupon, Khomeini was sent into exile in Turkey from where he went to Najaf In Najaf, Khomeini set about emphasizing to the clergy that they had a responsibility to introduce Islamic laws, rules, and codes to the educated youth, and indeed it was with leftwing, anti-shah Iranian student organizations abroad that Khomeini now started to develop a strong relationship. His written statements and audiotapes were widely distributed and proved to be a most effective weapon in the buildup to the revolution. Likewise, the preachings of `All Sharl’at-1, Murtaza Mutahhari, and Mahmud Taleqani brought intellectuals into the Khomeini camp [See Najaf and the biographies of Shari`ati and Tdleqdni.]
Khomeini returned to Tehran in February 1979 as the imam-a title used in the Arab Shi’i world for a religious leader. He had come to serve the clergy and Iranian society, which had been transformed by revolution. Khomeini’s main objectives for the future were twofold: to control those forces unleashed by the revolution and to consolidate his regime. Mehdi Bazargan, who had successfully attracted many young people to religion in the 1960s and 1970s, was appointed prime minister of an interim government, with the task of preparing Iran for the transition from a monarchy to an Islamic republic, which was approved by referendum in March 1979. The IRP was set up by a group of Khomeini’s disciples, which included `Ali Akbar Hashimi Rafsanjani, Muhammad Javad Bahunar, `Abd al-Karim Ardabili, `Ali Khamene’i and Bihishti. Khomeini, then aged seventy-seven, withdrew to Qom.
Bazargan felt his wings clipped by Khomeini supporters within government departments, the revolutionary committees, radio, and television. Together with some leading clergy, such as Ayatollahs Muhammad Kazim Shari’atmadari and Hasan Qummi, liberals, lawyers, and minority leaders, he was critical of the IRP and the revolutionary courts. Two days after the seizure of the U.S. embassy by a group of students, Bazargan resigned. Affairs were left in the hands of the Revolutionary Council, under Bihishti. Khomeini, however, always had the last word. [See the biography of Bazargdn.]
Shortly after the hostage taking, a newly formed rival party called the MPIRP, which had the support of Shari atmadari, tried to seize power in Tabriz. It failed but demonstrated that even among the `ulama’ there was a diversity of ideas on government. However, Khomeini was not prepared to compromise with anyone over his vision of the Islamic Republic. In November 1979 the Assembly of Experts drafted the Islamic constitution, which mandated three branches of government (executive, legislative, and judicial), presided over by a jurisprudent).
The following month the constitution was ratified in a national referendum, followed by the election of AbolHasan Bani Sadr as president in January 198o. The son of an ayatollah, Bani Sadr, a self-styled Islamic economics expert, political writer, and long-winded speaker, was an admirer of Mossadeq and not a believer in clerical supremacy. Also, he was no match for the leader of the IRP, Bihishti. The former student of Khomeini, Bihisht! was instrumental in the political transition of power from the shah to Khomeini, highly instrumental in controlling the machinery of revolutionary terror, and the formulator of the constitution.
The eight-year war with Iraq was a great testing time for Khomeini and one which he withstood. Coming as it did soon after the revolution, it led to food rationing, shortages, and other economic troubles. To extreme dissatisfaction, Khomeini told the nation that revolution was not about material well being and went on to pursue the war regardless of the burden it imposed on the country. In fact, he used the war to undermine various institutions to sustain the regime.
As with Bazargan’s prime ministry, Bani Sadr’s presidency was neither smooth nor long. He immediately set about resolving the hostage issue, seeing the students in the U.S. embassy as potential rivals. But in the long run he succeeded in antagonizing Iran’s radical and antiWestern forces and Khomeini himself. He filled the presidential office and other organizations with Western-trained technocrats who had little sympathy for “reactionary” or “incompetent” religious leaders. Even his supporters in the Majlis (parliament) ultimately went to the IRP side, as they found Bani Sadr’s tactics abrasive, ill timed, and provocative. Further confrontation took place when Muhammad `Ali Raja’! was appointed prime minister by the Majlis on Khomeini’s recommendation. In the conduct of the war, too, Bani Sadr clashed with Khomeini.
Events in summer 1981 were potentially perilous for Khomeini. Amid all the differences between the religious establishment and Bani Sadr, who had recently gained the support of the Mujahidin-i Khalq, Khomeini dismissed Bani Sadr and replaced him with Raja’!. The Mujahidin took the streets and Bani Sadr called for a mass uprising. On 28 June a bomb in the IRP headquarters killed Bihishti. and more than seventy others, followed by another bomb on 3o August, killing the president of five weeks, Raja% and his prime minister, Bahunar. Khomeini appealed to the nation in a broadcast to spy on the neighbors and hunt out the opposition, the counterrevolutionaries, which the nation obligingly did, heralding a period of indiscriminate imprisonment, torture, and killing.
Khomeini, victorious again, this time decided to ex-clude all who did not agree with political Islam and vilayat-i faqih [see Wilayat al-Faqih]. Thus the upper religious class came to take over the government of the country, more serving Islam through Iran than serving Iran through Islam. In October 1981 Hujjat al-Islam ‘Ali Khamenei became the third president of Iran, with Mir Husayn Musavi, a member of the central council of the IRP, as prime minister. Rafsanjani took over the Majlis and Ardabili the judiciary. So Khomeini could now relax with the knowledge that his former disciples were in charge of the country. “We [i.e., the clergy] are here to stay”, he told his critics.
In a speech in summer 1982, Khomeini said “our aim is to rid Iraq of its tyrannical rulers and move to liberate Jerusalem.” But internal shortages and external pressure in response to Iran’s intransigent policies put Khomeini on the defensive. He defied all those who continually pleaded with him to agree to end the war. Opposition to continuation of the war after the liberation of Khurramshahr, which had fallen to the enemy early on, grew inside the country.
Khomeini pursued the war regardless of the burden it imposed on the country. He was growing bolder in focusing on Islamic internationalism. His 1987 message entitled “The Charter of the Islamic Revolution,” which he sent to Iranian officials in Saudi Arabia, began with the Qur’anic verse: “And he who goes forth from his house, a migrant to God and his Apostle, should he die his reward becomes due and sure with God” (Surah 4.100).
By early 1988, Khomeini’s promise that the final offensive would bring military victory had become palpably unattainable. In April 1988, Iran lost the dearly won Faw peninsula. Meanwhile the “War of the Cities” reached its peak with Iraq firing long-range missiles at Iranian cities. After each Iraqi missile, a new wave of resentment came to the surface over the inability of the regime to protect its citizens. Donations for the war were drying up. Volunteers were scarce. Soldiers were deserting from the war front. Diplomatic pressures were mounting, and Iranians increasingly felt the effects of the tightening of the international black market loophole.
Khomeini’s defensive tone was evident in his opening speech to the Majlis read out by his son Ahmad on 28 May 1988. The faqih was feeling adversity both internally and internationally. The last straw for him came on 3 July 1988 when an American warship shot down an Iran Air Airbus, killing 290 on board, the ship’s crew claiming that it had mistaken the plane for an attacking
jet fighter. He finally realized that his revolution was in serious trouble. Faced with the choice between the continuation of the revolutionary struggle or the survival of the republic, he chose the latter. In the biannual meeting of the Assembly of Experts on 16 July the frail ayatollah’s willingness to seek a diplomatic solution to the war was first discussed, and on 18 July Iran unconditionally accepted United Nations Security Council resolution 598. Two days later Khomeini issued a statement declaring that he had accepted the truce in the interest of the revolution and the Islamic system. It was, said the old man, more bitter for him than a poisoned chalice.
Having suppressed or driven underground all organized opposition, Khomeini had had time to look at the question of succession. He firmly told the Assembly of Experts to choose the next leader. It took the assembly more than two years to reach a decision. In November 1985 it was announced that the assembly had appointed Ayatollah Husayn `All Muntaziri to succeed Khomeini.
Muntaziri acted as a loyal opposition leader, often protesting against human rights abuses, corruption, and red tape. But on foreign policy he was more in tune with the radicals, especially in their anti-Americanism. When the radicals tried to turn Muntaziri’s office into a power center from which to seize control of the leadership after Khomeini’s death, Rafsanjani, Ayatollah `All Mishkini, and Ahmad Khomeini responded with alarm and caused a souring of relations between Khomeini and Muntaziri.
Muntaziri was blunt: “Unfortunately,” he said, “. . . I agree with the new generation of the revolution that there is a great distance between what we promised and what we have achieved . . . if government means to compromise our values and principles, we had better not have government.” For Khomeini, who valued ideology only if it could be translated into power and for whom the road to holiness was only through action, abjuring governmental control could only be a worst-case scenario. Muntaziri’s stand highlighted Khomeini’s increasingly defensive posture since he had accepted the ceasefire.
What tipped the balance was Khomeini’s fatwa (edict) in February 1989 against Salman Rushdie following the publication of that author’s The Satanic Verses, sentencing him to death for what many Muslims saw as an attack against the integrity of the prophet Muhammad. He called on all intrepid Muslims to execute both Rushdie and his publishers. He said “whoever is killed on this path would be regarded as a martyr.” By issuing this fatwa Khomeini was putting himself forward as leader of entire Islamic world and became the putative spokesman for Muslims everywhere. [See also Fatwa, article on Modern Usage; and Rushdie Affair.] In March 1989 Khomeini removed Muntaziri from office and set up a body to review the constitution.
Khomeini died on 3 June 1989. His funeral was again the occasion of tumultuous scenes as everyone wished to say a last farewell to “the most divine personality in the history of Islam after the Prophet and the Imams,” in the words of the joint statement issued by Rafsanjani, Khamene’i, Ardabili, and Musavi. Khomeini did not bring about the just and virtuous society he had promised but stated in his will that “he was proud to be trying to implement the rules of the holy Qur’an and the traditions of the Prophet.” Khamene’i was then selected as the next leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran-a smooth transition of power to conclude the long life of Khomeini, who had engineered one of the most significant revolutions of the twentieth century.
[See also Ayatollah; Iran; and Iranian Revolution of 1979
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Akhavi, Shahrough. Religion and Politics in Contemporary Iran. Albany, N.Y. 198o. Excellent guide to clerical politics in recent decades.
Algar, Hamid. Religion and State in Iran, 1785-1906: The Role of the Ulama in the Qajar Period. Berkeley, 1969.
Bakhash, Shaul. The Reign of the Ayatollahs: Iran and the Islamic Revolution. London, 1985.
Bazargan, Mehdi. Inqilab-i Iran dar du harakat (Iranian Revolution in Two Acts). Tehran, 1363/1984.
Khomeini, Ruhollah. Kashf al-asrar. Amman, 1987. Arabic translation of Khomeini’s first political work, originally published in Persian in 1941; a useful source on his early worldview.
Khomeini, Ruhollah. Islam and Revolution: Writings and Declarations. Translated by Hamid Algar. Berkeley, 1981. A most useful collection of Khomeini’s theoretical work on Islamic government. Khomeini, Ruhollah. Tahrir al-wasilah. Beirut, 1987. Khomeini’s major work on Shi’i law, written in exile in Turkey, which reflects some of his views on government.
Moin, Baqer. Khomeini: Sign of God. London, 1994. A major biography of Khomeini.
Rajaee, Farhang. Islamic Values and World View. Washington, 1983. Excellent book on the thought of Ayatollah Khomeini.
Ruhani, Hamid. Bar rasi va tahlili az nahzat-i Imam Khumayni (Analytical Study of Imam Khomeini’s Movement). 3 vols. Tehran, 1981-1993. Very useful source book on Khomeini written by one of his students.
BAQER MOIN

KHOJAS

Batoota — Sat, 26 Jul 2014 10:24:33 +0000

KHOJAS. The Indian term khoja is derived from the Persian khvdjah (“master, teacher, respected, well-todo-person”), which was the title given by the Persian Isma’ili missionary Pir Sadruddin to his Hindu Indian converts to Islam in the fourteenth century. The definitive history of the Khoja community remains to be written: the community experienced factionalism in its early period, so much written in subsequent decades suffered from subjective (at times, hostile and prejudicial) analysis of its genesis and the later conflicts over questions of both leadership and doctrine. Some Khoja histories reveal the sentiments and emotions that led to dissension and ultimate division on the matter of how Shiism and the leadership of the Persian Isma’ili missionaries was to be construed by the Khojas.
The Hindu converts to Islam in the fourteenth century belonged to the Kshatriya caste (which provided the soldiers assigned to protect boundaries) and at the time of their conversion followed the Shakti Marg path of Hinduism. Some, however, believe that the Khojas came from the Vaishya caste of traders. On the basis of the professions followed by its members, Hindu society was further divided into different communities. The Khojas, according to their historians, formed the Lohana community, having descended from the mythic Indian king Rama’s son, Lav. As such, they were known as thakkar, from an Indian title, thakor (“lord, master”); this word is close in meaning to the Persian word khvdjah applied by Pir Sadruddin to these newly converted Hindus.
Between Hinduism and Sunni Islam. The Khoja community retained the caste system inherited from their Hindu ancestors for a long time because they had to continue to live openly as Hindus, but this caste identity has no relationship to Islam. There is nothing in the basic characteristic of being a Khoja that competes for loyalty with that of a Shi i Muslim in this community. A Khoja is a Khoja only by birth; even if a Khoja changes his religious affiliation from Shiism to Sunnism, he still remains a Khoja. This caste identity explains much about the early conversion of the Lohana Hindus to Isma’ili Islam and about why certain religious practices resembling those of Hindus were retained among them for more than four centuries.
From the beginning of their conversion to Shiism the Khojas were persecuted by the Sunni Muslim rulers of Gujarat. Consequently, many Khojas were advised to live a taqiyah-oriented life; in order to deflect the hostile attitude of the Sunni majority, they pretended to be Sunnis or members of some other tolerated minority, such as the Twelver ShN community. In the course of time, there appeared three varieties of Khojas organized under three different jama’ats: the Sunni Khojas, who are very few; the Twelver Khojas; and the majority who are the Nizari Isma’ili Khojas, followers of the Aga Khan.
The Nizari and Twelver Split. The major split into Nizari and Twelver Khojas occurred in the first half of the nineteenth century. This period has been described as the beginning of “Khoja awakening” which bore fruits in the second half of this century. By that time Bombay had become the point of convergence for many Khojas who had migrated from Kutch and Kathiavar to take advantage of its commercial growth. In 1829, the rich merchant Habib Ibrahim, also known as “Barbhaya” because of his twelve brothers, refused to pay the religious dues known as dassondh (“tithe, a tenth”) to the administrators of the jama’atkhanah (prayer-hall and meetingplace for the Nizari Khojas). The dassondh was imposed by the Nizari Imam and accordingly was regarded by Habib Ibrahim and some fifty families who followed his lead as lacking proper Islamic justification. Moreover, the dissenting group, because of its long contact with Sunni mullahs, was inclined toward the Sunni school of thought in its religious practices. In 183o all these families were expelled from the jama’atkhanah although the representative of the Isma’ili Imam, Hasan ‘Ali Shah Mahallati (the first Persian Nizari leader to have been granted the title Aga Khan by the Qajar monarch), who was in Iran at this time, contemplated filing a civil case against the group, the timing was felt to be improper.
The period between 1845 and 1861 was marked by socioreligious turmoil in the Khoja community. In 1850 four members of Habib Ibrahim’s group were killed by the followers of the Aga Khan in the Mahim jamd`atkhanah, and nineteen followers of the Aga Khan were subsequently arrested. Four of these persons were sentenced to death by the Bombay High Court. Following these events, and with a view toward establishing his religious authority in India, on 20 October 1861 the Aga Khan circulated a general announcement declaring the Khojas to be Shl’is; hence, their marriage and funeral rites were to be performed in accordance with Shi`i practice. Moreover, he required his followers to put their signatures under this announcement, declaring their Shi i affiliation and unquestioning loyalty to him. The document was kept in Bhindi Bazaar in the house of Aga Khan’s son, where some seventeen hundred Khojas (the majority) signed it. However, Habib Ibrahim and his group refused to do so. Copies of the document were sent to Gujarat and Kathiavar and also to Zanzibar and East Africa to collect signatures of supporters of the Aga Khan.
After this incident the Habib Ibrahim group attempted through court procedures to have all the Khoja property held by the Aga Khan placed under an independent trust that would ensure its proper use for the religious benefit of all Sunni Khojas, excluding the Nizari Khojas. There were also other demands meant to reform community conventions that were deemed unjust and disposed toward the protection of the Aga Khan’s ultimate rights over everything owned by the Khoja community. Of greater alarm to the Aga Khan and his followers was a plan to sever the Khoja community’s relationship to the Aga Khan through a suit filed in Bombay High Court.
The end result of this conflict was the permanent excommunication of the Habib Ibrahim group in September 1862. By 1864 the Aga Khan had ordered the Sunni mullahs to stop conducting religious services for his followers and had installed Shi`i mullahs to lead the regular prayers in accordance with the Twelver Shl’i rite. The court case against the Aga Khan was lost, and the supporters of Habib Ibrahim separated from the main group of the Khojas, establishing a separate Sunni mosque and graveyard. When the Twelver Khoja jama’at was formed following further friction in the Khoja community on issues related to Islamic authenticity, many Sunni Khojas joined this group and began to intermarry with them.
Religious Awakening and Affiliation. From the time of their conversion to Islam until the 1860s, the influence of Sunni mullahs led the Khojas to favor the Sunni school. The beginning of the “Khoja awakening” in the first half of the nineteenth century ushered in the revival of the community’s religious identity as a consequence of increased religious knowledge. With the exception of the Habib Ibrahim group, the Khoja community, following the public announcement circulated by the Aga Khan in 1861, had asserted their Shi’i identity.
However, religious practices among the Khojas until that time were not fully islamized or formalized. Pir Dadu, in the mid-sixteenth century, had traveled to Iran and had obtained from Isma’ili religious leaders prayer manuals that were used by the Khojas. Following this period knowledge about Shiism based on Persian works began to take roots among the Khojas. Religious books were written in the Sindhi language, based on the Persian jangnamah, describing the martyrdom of Imam Husayn in Karbala. These jangndmah were recited at the commemorative gatherings to mourn the tragedy of Karbala in every jama’atkhanah, following the festival of `Id al-Adha, through the month of Muharram until the fortieth (chihlum) of the martyrs of Karbala. These gatherings primarily functioned as religious schools for the Khojas, and Shiism became firmly established among them.
Nonetheless, an 1847 court case established the fact that prior to this period the Khojas had little knowledge about their Shi`i affiliation, not understanding the differences between the Shi`i and Sunni schools. Thus, when Aga Khan in 1861 required the Khojas to declare their Shiism, the community had no hesitation in doing so. The Shi i mullahs had prepared the community for this declaration of allegiance; more importantly, the Aga Khan and his son ‘Ali Shah regularly led the community in prayers and commemorative gatherings. These and other Iranian religious practices were based on Twelver Shiism, which consequently formed the basis of the Islamic religious practices that gradually took root among the Khojas under Aga Khans.
In 1862 a Twelver mullah, Qadir Husayn, opened a madrasah in the Khoja quarter of Bombay. In this religious school, not only did the Khoja children learn to recite the Qur’an, their parents also joined them to receive instruction about Twelver Shi`i religious practices. After a few years Qadir Husayn returned to Karbala; in response to a request by a leading Twelver Khoja, Hajji Devji Jamal, to the Shi’i mujtahid in Iraq, the mullah was sent again to Bombay in 1872 to teach Shiism.
The presence of Mullah Qadir Husayn in Bombay and his ceaseless efforts in educating the Khojas made community members aware of the syncretic Nizari Khoja religious rituals, which had continued to employ the Sindhi Hindu vernacular without requiring strict adherence to the shari`ah. Ironically, the Persian Isma’ili leadership of the Aga Khans was an important factor in this awareness of Twelver Shiism among the Khojas. The Nizari leaders had introduced Twelver religious practices in the jama’atkhanahs to combat Sunni influences and to assert their absolute authority among their Khoja followers. In addition, the presence of other Sli`is from the Northern Province of India and their continuous moral support of the Khojas resulted in the spread of the Twelver Shiism.
Nevertheless, the Twelver Khojas were still part of the larger Khoja community under the leadership of the Aga Khan. On realizing this influence of Twelver Shiism among their followers, the Nizari leaders started to impose restrictions on Twelver ShN practices. Under the Aga Khan III the Nizari Khoja community asserted its separate identity, dissociating itself from Twelver religious practices, including their basic ceremonial laws connected with fundamental teachings of Islam and the practice of commemorative gatherings to mourn Imam Husayn. The dissenting Khojas, although afraid of being ostracized from the jama’atkhanah, still dared to meet with Mullah Qddir Husayn and swore that if any one of their group was outcast, every other member would join that person. The news of this resolution reached the Isma’ili leaders. However, the number of Mullah Qadir Husayn’s followers was small, and they thought that the group could be talked into abandoning its move toward Twelver Shiism. Two prominent persons who provided moral as well as financial support for the new group were Hdjji Devji Jamal and Hdjji Khalfan Ratansi.
When Hajji Ratansi’s daughter died, the Nizari Khoja community required that he abandon the Twelver faith as a precondition for attending his daughter’s funeral. Hdjji Ratansi refused, and his daughter had to be buried in the Iranian cemetery. What helped the “smaller jama`at” of the Khoja (as it came to be known) was the support of many non-Khoja Twelver Shi’is in Bombay. The success of the Twelver Khojas in Bombay in forming their own group spread throughout the Khoja world; everywhere new jama`ats were formed, and the movement of spreading Twelver teachings was symbolized by the construction of proper Islamic mosques instead of the jama’atkhanah, as well as the performance of the regular salat practiced by all other Muslims regardless of their sectarian affiliation.
In this movement the disciples of Mullah Qadir Husayn played a major role. Mullah `Abdullah Sdlih Sachedina went to Zanzibar, where his lectures had enormous influence in the Twelver Khoja community. Another prominent student of Mullah Qadir Husayn, Hdjji Naji, began to preach the Twelver faith and launched a monthly journal, Rdhi najdt, during these critical days.
Nizari and Twelver Khojas Today. The Nizari Khojas, under the long and progressive leadership of the Aga Khan III (d. 1957), consolidated their Nizari identity and became thoroughly modernized through education and socioeconomic reforms that made the community self-sufficient. The unquestioning devotion of the Nizari Khojas to the Aga Khan, in addition to the restructured hierarchical communal organization with the Aga Khan as the supreme authority, facilitated the implementation of religious, social, and economic reforms. The policy of sociocultural assimilation of the Nizari
Khojas-who live as minorities in many parts of the world-through an elaborate administrative system of councils has continued under the Aga Khan IV.
The Twelver Khojas in many ways share the administrative and organizational structures of their Nizari brothers. In religious matters they accept the authority of the mujtahids in Iran and Iraq, to whom they are bound doctrinally in the absence of the Twelfth Hidden Imam. However, a conservative spirit dominates their outlook on questions of sociocultural integration. Calls for reforms within the community are regarded as a threat to long-established traditions of Indo-Muslim origin. Since the religious leadership in Iran and Iraq has little understanding of Khoja culture, it has not been able to provide the necessary directives to move the Twelver Khoja community toward Islamic solutions to the problems of sociocultural assimilation in a rapidly changing social and political climate, nor has the community recognized a single leadership within itself to provide such solutions.
Today the Khoja followers of the Aga Khan have formally abandoned their “khojaism” with its elements of Hinduism in favor of a more universal Shi’i Isma’ili tariqah (a remnant of the Persian Sufi connections of the Persian Isma’ili missionaries). Similar efforts toward shedding the Hindu past can be observed among the Twelver Khojas-who, ironically, in their worldwide organizations adhere to their “khojaism.” The inconsistency of clinging to a title that implies privilege claimed on the basis of birth while maintaining commitment to universal Islamic brotherhood has been the main reason for its abandonment in the recent decades of globalization of the Khoja community.
[See also Aga Khan; Isma’iliyah.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Three basic histories on which I have depended to draw the material are: Sachedina Nanjiani, Khoja Vratant (Ahmedabad, 1892); Adalji Dhanji Kaba, Khoja Qawm ni tavarikh: The History of the Khojas (Amreli, 1330/1912); and Jaffer Rahimtoola, History of Khojas (1905). Most of these works were compiled during the second part of the nineteenth century, the period of “Khoja awakening.” Accordingly, we have remarkably objective reports on the events that led to the division in the Khoja community at this time. In fact, A. D. Kaba reports episodes in which he himself was an eye witness. In addition, see the following works:
Daftary, Farhad. The Isma’ilis: Their History and Doctrines. Cambridge, 1990.
Ivanow, Wladimir. “Khodja.” In The Shorter Encyclopaedia of Islam, p. 256. Leiden, 1953.
Madelung, Wilferd. “Isma’iliyya.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam, new ed., vol. 4, p. 201. Leiden, 1960.
ABDULAZIZ SACHEDINA

KHO’I, ABOL-QASEM

Batoota — Sat, 26 Jul 2014 09:47:57 +0000

KHO’I, ABOL-QASEM (1899-1992), widely followed Shi i mujtahid (interpreter of Islamic law). AbolQasem Kho’i (or Abu al-Qasim Khu’i was born in the city of Kho’i, province of Azerbaijan, Iran. At the age of thirteen, he entered religious training in Najaf, Iraq, studying with Shaykh Fath Allah al-Asfahani (alSharl’ah) and Shaykh Muhammad Husayn Na’ini, among others. Kho’i remained in Najaf’s hawza (theological center), rising to become a teacher of jurisprudence and theology, writer, and spiritual leader of millions of Shi’i Muslims in Iraq, Pakistan, India, and elsewhere.
With the death of Ayatollah Muhsin al-Hakim in 1970, Kho’i became the most widely followed Shi’i mujtahid. He maintained contact with his followers worldwide through a well-organized network of representatives, using the religious tithes conveyed to him to provide stipends to seminary students and to establish Islamic schools in Iraq, Iran (Qom), Thailand, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Lebanon. He founded a publishing house in Karachi and mosques with cultural centers in Bombay, London, New York City, and elsewhere.
Among KhoTs many well-known books are Al-bayan fi tafsir al-Qur’an (Exegesis in Qur’dnic Commentary); Al-masd’il al-muntakhabah (Selected [Religious] Questions); and Minhaj al-salihin (The Path of the Righteous), a two-volume work on religious practices and law. In his theology, Kho’i was traditional and scholarly; in his personal life, austere. He opposed all political activity by high-ranking religionaries and advanced two doctrinal objections to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s advocacy of wilayat al -faqih (guardianship of the jurist): (I) the authority of Shi’i jurists cannot be extended by humans to the political sphere; and (2) the authority of ShN jurists during the absence of the Twelfth Imam cannot be restricted to one jurist or a few. For this he was subjected to severe criticism from Khomeini’s followers.
In the area of women’s rights, Ayatollah Kho’i funded religious schools for girls but took the position that women could not be religious guides for others. He issued fatwas (religious decrees) allowing unrelated men and women to attend religious and social functions together.
Kho’i was the only ayatollah in Iraq after the Iraqi government expelled Ayatollah Khomeini in 1978 and executed Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr in 1980. He applied for an exit visa but was refused. His funds were confiscated; his students were arrested and tortured; and he himself was placed under a virtual house arrest that continued until his death twelve years later. Despite pressure from the Iraqi government to endorse its war effort against Iran, he held to his refusal to take any political positions. After Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in I 99o, he issued a fatwd forbidding ShNs to purchase goods brought from Kuwait, on the grounds that the goods were stolen. In March 1991, after the failed Shl’! uprising against Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, Kho’i was detained in police custody and the hawza was closed by the government.
Ayatollah KhoTs students number in the thousands and include the previously mentioned Ayatollah al-Sadr (Iraq); Sayyid Mahdi Shams al-Din, acting chairman of the Supreme Assembly of Lebanese Shi’i Muslims; Imam Musa al-Sadr (Lebanon); Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah (Lebanon), and Ayatollah Ardabili, former chief justice of Iran.
[See also Al-Khoei Benevolent Foundation and the biographies of Fadlalldh, Hakim, Nd’ini, and Sadr.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Al-Khoei Benevolent Foundation. “Concepts and Projects.” Fourteen-page historical account of the Al-Khoei Benevolent Foundation.
Momen, Moojan. An Introduction to Shi`i Islam. New Haven and London, 1985. Excellent depiction of Shiism and its prominent leaders. Muslim Group of the U.S. and Canada, Washington D.C. Chapter. “Al-Khu’i.” Washington, D.C., 1992. Five-page obituary addressing Ayatollah KhoTs contributions and his trials under Iraq’s Ba’thist regime.
JOYCE N. WILEY