M – Hybrid Learning

Muhammad Iqbal Allama

Batoota — Mon, 10 Jul 2017 17:49:25 +0000

Sir Muhammad Iqbal (Urdu: محمد اقبال ‎) (November 9, 1877 – April 21, 1938), widely known as Allama Iqbal (علامہ اقبال), was a poet, philosopher, and politician, as well as an academic, barrister and scholar in British India who is widely regarded as having inspired the Pakistan Movement. He is called the “Spiritual father of Pakistan”. He is considered one of the most important figures in Urdu literature, with literary work in both the Urdu and Persian languages.

Iqbal is admired as a prominent poet by Pakistanis, Indians, Iranians, Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans and other international scholars of literature. Though Iqbal is best known as an eminent poet, he is also a highly acclaimed “Muslim philosophical thinker of modern times”. His first poetry book, Asrar-i-Khudi, appeared in the Persian language in 1915, and other books of poetry include Rumuz-i-Bekhudi, Payam-i-Mashriq and Zabur-i-Ajam. Amongst these, his best known Urdu works are Bang-i-Dara, Bal-i-Jibril, Zarb-i Kalim and a part of Armughan-i-Hijaz. Along with his Urdu and Persian poetry, his Urdu and English lectures and letters have been very influential in cultural, social, religious and political disputes.
In 1922, he was knighted by King George V, granting him the title “Sir”. While studying law and philosophy in England, Iqbal became a member of the London branch of the All-India Muslim League. Later, during the League’s December 1930 session, he delivered his most famous presidential speech known as the Allahabad Address in which he pushed for the creation of a Muslim state in Northwest India.
In much of South Asia and the Urdu speaking world, Iqbal is regarded as the Shair-e-Mashriq (Urdu: شاعر مشرق‎, “Poet of the East”).He is also called Mufakkir-e-Pakistan (Urdu: مفکر پاکستان‎, “The Thinker of Pakistan”), Musawar-e-Pakistan (Urdu: مصور پاکستان‎, “Artist of Pakistan”) and Hakeem-ul-Ummat (Urdu: حکیم الامت‎, “The Sage of the Ummah”). The Pakistan government officially named him a “national poet”. His birthday Yōm-e Welādat-e Muḥammad Iqbāl (Urdu: یوم ولادت محمد اقبال‎), or Iqbal Day, is a public holiday in Pakistan. In India he is also remembered as the author of the popular song Saare Jahaan Se Achcha.
Sir Muhammad Iqbal’s house is still located in sialkot and is recognized as Iqbal’s Manzil and is opened for visitors.
Wikipedia

MYANMAR

Batoota — Tue, 08 Nov 2016 17:27:57 +0000

MYANMAR. At the time of the most recent published census (1983), the Muslim population of Myanmar (formerly Burma) accounted for only 3.9 percent of the country’s 34 million people. This proportion has remained stable since records began last century. The overwhelming majority are followers of Sunni Islam, but they are divided into three distinct Muslim communities, each having a very different relationship with the majority Buddhist society and the government.
The longest-established Muslim community, with its roots in the Shwebo area in the central plains near the precolonial capitals of the Burmese kings, can trace its origins back to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries when their ancestors came to the country as court servants, mercenaries, and traders from the west. By the 1930s these well-assimilated Burmese Muslims accounted for less than a third of the Muslim community. Nearby, in the Shan State bordering China, there were also a small number of Muslims of Chinese descent.
The most recently established section of the Muslim community arrived following the colonization of Myanmar by the British in the nineteenth century. By making British Burma a province of India until 1937, the colonial government encouraged significant numbers of immigrants and casual laborers, as well as traders and civil servants, to settle mainly in and around Yangon, the colonial capital and entrepot. These Indian Muslims, who by the 1930s accounted for more than a third of those who followed Islam, maintained strong links with the religious and cultural practices of their homelands. This often brought them into conflict with the Buddhist majority and the Burmese Muslims over matters of marriage and property law as well as the role of Islam in Myanmar’s political life.
The third Muslim community is settled in the Myanmar state of Arakan or Rahkine, which borders Bangladesh. Prior to 1784, when it was finally destroyed by a Burmese army, Arakan had been an independent Buddhist monarchy, though the rulers used Islamic designations. Its position was weakened not only by the rise of Burmese power to the east, but also by Mughal power to the west. After its absorption into British Burma, Arakan received large numbers of Bengali immigrants. The largest proportion of Muslims in Burma are of Bengali descent, and the majority of these reside in Rahkine State.
Indian immigration and the rise of nationalism generated significant tensions among the three Muslim communities in Burma, as well as between them and the Buddhist majority. While many of the Indian Muslims became involved in organizations and societies with their origins in the Indian subcontinent, the longestablished Burmese Muslim population tended to identify with the Burmese Buddhist majority and supported the Burmese nationalist movement. The Rahkine Muslims remained detached from both and have continued to develop their own history separate from the other two communities.
Following the independence of Myanmar in 1948 the roles of the three communities continued to be divided. The Burmese Muslims found places in the government of the devout Buddhist Prime Minister U Nu, and many continued to serve in the military and socialist governments of General Ne Win after the coup of 1962. The more outward-looking and commercially oriented Indian Muslims found life more difficult after independence and sought political alliances with Burmese politicians or returned to India and Pakistan. Following the wholesale nationalization of the economy by Ne Win’s Revolutionary Council government in 1963, several hundred thousand South Asians, including many Muslims, returned to the countries of their ancestors. A significant Muslim community, however, remains in Yangon (Rangoon) and other cities in southern Myanmar.
The position of the Rahkine Muslims has been the most difficult. As the poorest and the least established of the three communities, they have been buffeted by war, dislocation, and civil strife. During World War II several thousand fled into Bengal when BurmeseBengali strife developed in the area. After the war, some Muslims in the area demanded that the northern part of the region be included in Pakistan. There ensued armed conflict between the so-called Mujahid and government troops until 1961. Since that time conflict over land and access to resources has remained a problem in the area. The Mujahids, arguing that they were Rohinga (the name of the mixed Bengali, Urdu, and Burmese language that was the language of their poetry and songs of Arabic and Persian origins) became especially active again in the 1970s and 1980s. Encouraged by the economic decline of Myanmar and the rise of Pan-Islamic movements elsewhere in the world, they championed the cause of the tens of thousands of Bengalis who had settled in Rahkine during and after Bangladesh’s war with Pakistan. In 1978 the Myanmar authorities forced many of these settlers back into Bangladesh. After negotiations and the assistance of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, many were resettled in Rahkine, but similar conflicts erupted in 1989-1990, with many thousands of persons seeking refuge in camps in Bangladesh.
[See also Islam, article on Islam in Southeast Asia and the Pacific.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Chakravarti, Nalini R. The Indian Minority in Burma: The Rise and Decline of an Immigrant Community. London, 1971.
Taylor, Robert H. The State in Burma. London and Honolulu, 1987. Yegar, Moshe. The Muslims of Burma: A Study of a Minority Group. Wiesbaden, 1972.
R.H. TAYLOR

Masjids in Myanmar

MUTAHHARI, MURTAZ A

Batoota — Tue, 08 Nov 2016 16:49:26 +0000

MUTAHHARI, MURTAZ A (January 31, 1919 – May 1, 1979), Iranian religious scholar and writer, one of the closest associates of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Born in a village in northeastern Iran to a scholar who was also his first teacher, Mutahhari began his formal schooling at the age of twelve in the great shrine city of Mashhad, where e discovered the great love for philosophy, mysticism, and theology that was to remain constant throughout his life. The core of the religious curriculum, however, consisted of fiqh (jurisprudence). To study this subject under the principal authorities of the day, Mutahhari moved to Qom in 1937. In Qom he made the acquaintance of Khomeini, renowned at the time mainly for his mystically tinged lectures on ethics. Significant, too, were the links Mutahhari developed with `Allamah Muhammad Husayn Tabataba’i (d. 1981), the wellknown exegete and philosopher. In 1952 Mutahhari left Qom for Tehran, where he began teaching at the Madrasah-yi Marvi and, two years later, at the Faculty of Theology at Tehran University. The scope of his activity expanded still further when he began collaborating with Islamic organizations founded by religiously inclined laymen, the most important of these being the Husayniyah-yi Irshad, founded in 1965. Many of the lectures he gave under the auspices of these organizations were later published in book form.
Mutahhari was imprisoned for forty-three days in the aftermath of the uprising led by Khomeini in June 1963. After his release, he participated actively in organizations that sought to maintain the momentum the uprising had created, most significantly the Jami`ah-yi Ruhaniyat-i Mubariz (Society of Militant Clergy). He remained in touch with Khomeini during the ayatollah’s fourteen-year exile, visiting him repeatedly in Najaf and, during the revolution of 1978-1979, at Neauphlele-Chateau near Paris. A sign of the trust in which Khomeini held Mutahhari was his appointment to the Shura-yi Ingilab-i Islam! (Council of the Islamic Revolution), which functioned as interim legislature after the victory of the revolution in February 1979. A few months later, on I May 1979, Mutahhari was assassinated in Tehran by adherents of Furgan, a group preaching a radically modernistic and anticlerical reinterpretation of Shi’i doctrine, which regarded Mutahhari as its most formidable intellectual opponent. Mutahhari was eulogized as “a part of my flesh” by an atypically weeping Khomeini and buried in Qom.
Although the Iranian Revolution gave Mutahhari visibility as a political figure, it is his writings, vigorously promoted by the revolutionary authorities, that constitute his chief legacy. The most substantial of his works is, perhaps, his philosophical critique of materialism, Usul-i falsafah va ravish-i rValism (The Principles of Philosophy and the Method of Realism, 4 vols., Qom, 1953-1971) based largely on discussions held in the circle of `Allamah Tabataba’i. A more polemical approach to the same subject, paying particular attention to the cultural disorientation of Iranian society, was `Ilal-i girayish ba mdddigari (Reasons for the Turn toward Materialism, Qom, 19’71). Other works were also conceived in a spirit of addressing urgent contemporary concerns, most notably Nizdm-1 huquq-i zan dar Islam (The System of Women’s Rights in Islam, Qom, 1966). Taken as a whole, the works of Mutahhari demonstrate how leading figures among the Iranian `ulama’ concerned themselves, against a background of traditional learning, with the problems of the modern age, and thereby contributed to creating the intellectual climate of the Iranian Revolution of 1979.
[See also Qom; Shi’i Islam, article on Modern Shl’! Thought; and the biographies of Khomeini and Tabdtabd’i.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hoda, M. In Memory of Martyr Mutahhari. Tehran, 1982.
Khurasani, Muhammad Va’izzadah. “Sayri dar zindagi-yi `ilmi va inqilabi-yi ustad-i Shahid Murtaza Mutahhari.” In Yddndmah yi ustad-i Shahid Murtazd Mutahhari, edited by `Abd al-Karim Surush, pp. 319-380. Tehran, 198z.
Mutahhari, Mujtaba. “Zindagi-yi pidaram.” Harakat (Tehran) i (n.d.): 5-16.
Mutahhari, Murtaza. Fundamentals of Islamic Thought: God, Man, and the Universe. Translated by R. Campbell. Berkeley, 1985.
HAMID ALGAR

MUT AH

Batoota — Tue, 02 Dec 2014 06:00:15 +0000

A pre-Islamic tradition, mut `ah (“temporary marriage”) still has legal sanction among the Twelver Shicis, residing predominantly in Iran. It is often a private and verbal contract between a man and an unmarried woman (virgin, divorced, or widowed). The length of the marriage contract (ajal) and the amount of consideration (ajr) given to the temporary wife must be specified; temporary marriage may be contracted for one hour or ninety-nine years. The objective of mut`ah is sexual enjoyment (istimta’), that of permanent marriage (nikdh) is procreation (tawlid-i nasl) us!, 1964, pp. 497-502; Hilli, 1968, pp. 515-528; Khomeini, 1985, p. 116; Mutahhari, 1974, p. 38).
Presently, mut`ah is a marginal urban phenomenon, popular primarily around pilgrimage centers in Iran. This pattern, however, is changing owing to the Islamic regime’s support of and advocacy for the institution. A temporary marriage need not be registered or witnessed, although taking witnesses is recommended us!, 1964, p. 498). In addition to the four wives legally allowed all Muslim men, a Shi’i Muslim man is permitted to contract simultaneously as many temporary marriages as he desires, a practice disputed by Ayatollahs Ruhollah Khomeini (1982, P. 39) and Murtaza Mutahhari (1974, p. So). A ShN Muslim woman is permitted only one temporary marriage at a time. No divorce procedure exists in a temporary marriage, for the lapse of time specified in the contract automatically dissolves the temporary union. After the dissolution of each temporary union, no matter how short, the wife must undergo a period of sexual abstinence (`iddah); in case of pregnancy, `iddah serves to identify a child’s legitimate father. Herein lies the legal uniqueness of temporary marriage, distinguishing it, in Shi`i law, from prostitution, despite their striking resemblance.
The reciprocal obligations of temporary spouses are minimal. The man is not obliged to provide the daily maintenance (nafdqih) for his temporary wife, as he must in a permanent marriage. Correspondingly, the wife is under minimal legal obligation to obey her husband, except in sexual matters (Haeri, 1989, p. 60).
Mut`ah of women was banned in the seventh century by the second caliph, `Umar, who equated it with fornication (zind). For the Sunni Muslims, therefore, temporary marriage is legally forbidden, although in practice some have resorted to it occasionally (Benson, 1992, pp. 5-8).
The Shi’is have maintained all along the legitimacy of temporary marriage based on the Qur’an (4.24) and on the absence of specific prohibition by the Prophet Muhammad, not withstanding some Sunni hadiths to the contrary. The legitimacy of temporary marriage has continued to be a point of chronic disagreement, passionate dispute, and, at times, animosity between Sunnis and Shi’is (for a contemporary exposition of this ongoing dispute, see Kashif al-Ghita`, 1964; Shafa’i, 1973: Murata, trans., 1987, pp. 51-73).
During the Pahlavi regime (1925-1979) the custom of temporary marriage, though not illegal, was perceived negatively. The Islamic regime (since 1979), on the contrary, has made a concerted effort to resuscitate the custom publicly. Following the ideological legacy of Ayatollah Mutahhari (d. 1979), many of the Islamic regime’s thinkers and theologian/bureaucrats, most notably President Hashemi Rafsanjani (Hashimi Rafsanjani), have lauded the institution of temporary marriage as a desirable approach to relationships between men and women in a modern Islamic society (Tabataba’i, 1977, 1985; Bahunar, 1981). They specifically see temporary marriage as an ethically and morally superior alternative to the “free” relations between the sexes prevalant in the West.
Despite the religious and legal rehabilitation of mut’ah, most urban, educated middle-class Iranians view it with some moral and emotional ambivalence. Mut`ah marriage has never won the unequivocal approval of permanent marriage among the Iranians (Haeri, Law of Desire, 1989).
[See also Inheritance; Iran; Marriage and Divorce, article on Modern Practice; Women and Social Reform, article on Social Reform in the Middle East.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bahunar, Muhammad Ja’far, et al. Ta’limat-i dini (Religious Education). Tehran, 198i. A high school textbook, published after the revolution, in which the benefits of temporary marriage for youth was first discussed.
Benson, Linda. “Islamic Marriage and Divorce in Xinjiang: The Case of Kashgar and Khotan.” Association for the Advancement of Central Asian Research 5.2 (Fall 1992): 5-8. On the legitimacy of temporary marriage among Chinese Sunnis.
Gourji, Abu’l-Qasim. Temporary Marriage (Mut a) in Islamic Law. Translated by Sachiko Murata, N.p., 1987. Very competent summary of the major Shl’i sources of jurisprudence on mut`ah.
Haeri, Shahla. Law of Desire: Temporary Marriage in Shi’i Iran. Syracuse, N.Y., 1989. First major ethnography on the institution of temporary marriage.
Hilli, Najm al-Din Abu al-Qasim Jafar. Sahray` al-isldm (Islamic Law), vol. z. Translated from Arabic to Persian by A. Ahmad Yazdi and M. T. Danishpazhuh. Tehran, 1968. Excellent compendium on Shi’i marriage and divorce by the thirteenth-century Shi’i scholar.
Kashif al-Ghip`, Muhammad Husayn. A’in-i and (Our Custom). Translated by Nasir Makarim Shirazi. Qom, 1968. Contains a major chapter on temporary marriage, refuting some of the Sunni allegations.
Khomeini, Ruhollah. “Non-Permanent Marriage.” Mahiuba 2.5 (1982): 38-40. English translation of his position on temporary marriage.
Khomeini, Ruhollah. The Practical Laws of Islam. 2d ed. N.p., 1985. Abridged version of his Tawzih al-masd’il (Clarification of Questions).
Mutahhari. Murtaza. Nizdm-i huquq-i zan dar Islam (Legal Rights of Women in Islam). 8th ed. Qom, 1974. One of the more comprehensive writings on the rights of women in (Shi’i) Islam.
Shafa’i, Muhsin. Mutah va asar-i huquqi va ijtima’i-i an (Mutah and its Legal and Social Effects). 6th ed. Tehran, 1973. Extensive, if apologetic, treatment of mutah.
Tabataba’i, Muhammad Husayn. Shiite Islam. Translated by Seyyed Hossein Nast. Albany, N.Y., 1977. Major contribution to understanding Shi’i theology and philosophy.
Tabataba’i, Muhammad Husayn, et al. Izdivdj-i muvaqqat dar islam (Temporary Marriage in Islam). Qom, 1985. Edited volume on temporary marriage; includes an article by Rafsanjani.
Tillsi, Abu Jafar Muhammad. Al-nihayah. Translated from Arabic to Persian by M. T. Danishpazhuh. Tehran, 1964. One of the four major sources of Shl’i jurisprudence, compiled in the tenth century.
SHAHLA HAERI

MUSLIM-JEWISH DIALOGUE

Batoota — Wed, 01 Oct 2014 05:30:42 +0000

MUSLIM-JEWISH DIALOGUE. Relations between Jews and Muslims have been extensive and often cooperative throughout history, whereas Jewish-Muslim dialogue has not yet achieved a respected status. The creation of the state of Israel and the displacement of millions of Palestinians since 1948 have precluded the launching of a successful Jewish-Muslim dialogue.
Although the parameters of dialogue from an Islamic perspective as stipulated by the Qur’an may seem ambiguous, they are the product of the context of revelation when the Muslim community was establishing itself. The pronouncements regarding Jews are framed in the Qur’an in the context of the establishment of the Muslim community in Medina, where several Jewish tribes resided, and they furnish a sufficient basis of theological dialogue between Muslims and Jews. One can deduce theological commonalities between Jews and Muslims (and, of course, Christians) on the basis of the following key Qur’anic terms: ahl al-kitab (people of the book); umm al-kitab (the mother of all books, al-lawh al-mahfuz (the preserved tablet). From this perspective, the Qur’an is just one link in a long chain of revelations given to earlier people, including but not confined to Jews and Christians. In certain surahs, the Qur’an speaks of the Jews as a community of faith. Politically speaking, however, the Qur’an documents an increasingly negative relationship between Jews and Muslims in Medina. Fazlur Rahman argues:
Jews, like Christians, had been recognized as a community, possessing a revealed document and called “People of the Book”. They were asked to live by the Torah. As such, they had religious and cultural autonomy. Yet, the Qur’an continued to invite them to Islam. . . . Thus, at the religious level, the relationship is somewhat ambiguous, although there is no doubt that Jewish religious and cultural autonomy was respected. (“Islam’s Attitude Toward Judaism,” The Muslim World 72.1 [January 1982]: 5.)
The relationship between Jews and Muslims has evolved over time and taken different shapes. There is an almost unanimous Arab and Muslim opinion that Jews fared better under Islam than they did under Christian Europe. Jewish scholarly opinion is divided on the matter, but, on the whole, it indicates that MuslimJewish coexistence was possible in most instances. Bernard Lewis, for example, concludes in a recent article, “There is in medieval and even modern Christianity a vast literature of polemics, written by Christian theologians, to persuade Jews of the truth of the Christian dispensation. The theologians of Islam felt no such need. There are few Muslim polemics against Judaism, and most of them are efforts at self-justification by recent converts from that religion” (“Muslims, Christians, and Jews: The Dream of Coexistence,” The New York Review of Books 39.6 [26 March 1992]: 48). A different view stipulates that Jewish-Muslim dialogue was impossible because of the “darker side of Jewish life under Islam, which redefined the erstwhile conception of Islamic `toleration’ as having been more problematic than could before have been imagined.” (Ronald L. Nettler, Past Trials and Present Tribulations: A Muslim Fundamentalist’s View of the jews, New York, 1987, p. ix). According to this view, Muslims have developed a sophisticated and rich doctrine of hatred toward Jews since the foundation of the Islamic state during the Prophet’s time in Medina in 622, and this “emotional hatred” is best represented by the ideology and activities of Islamic revivalists.
In the few Jewish-Muslim dialogue meetings taking place in Europe and the United States, one is struck by the similarities in themes often raised by Jewish and Muslim scholars and thinkers. These include the emergence of the modern West as a world power with the spread of colonialism and westernization; the emergence of Zionism as a national movement for the liberation of Jews in Europe; the Holocaust and its aftermath; the creation of the state of Israel; and the displacement of the Palestinian people.
Jewish scholars usually focus on the Holocaust as one of the major events still affecting Jewish relations, with other groups: “For contemporary Jews, the overwhelming experience of suffering is the Jewish Holocaust, the death of six million Jews and the attempted annihilation of our entire people. Interpretation of the event is omnipresent, though insights are diverse and often controversial” (Marc H. Ellis, Toward a jewish Theology of Liberation, Maryknoll, 1988, p. 11).
Muslims and Jews maintain fundamental, and perhaps unbridgeable, differences over the meaning of Israel. To most Jewish theologians and thinkers, especially those affected by the Holocaust, the creation of Israel has been a divine sign that God is on the side of a victimized people. To the majority of Arab and Muslim thinkers, those same Jewish theologians are not sensitive to the plight of the displaced Palestinians, who are usually treated as the nonexistent other. The 1967 Israeli victory and the annexation of Jerusalem were seen by some Jewish theologians as a symbol of “the presence of God and the continuation of the [Jewish] people” (Marc H. Ellis, Beyond Innocence and Redemption: Confronting the Holocaust and Israeli Power, New York, 1990, p. 16), whereas it was seen by Arabs and Muslims as a great tragedy, and by some as God’s testing of Muslim faith or punishment for veering away from the true faith.
Perhaps Isma’il R. al-Faruqi’s ideas, as expounded in his Islam and the Problem of Israel, best summarize the modern Islamist position toward dialogue with Jews and Judaism. Al-Faruqi contends that Islam and Judaism are theologically compatible in that they both affirm the divine principle of din al fitrah or religio naturalis and are united by the principle of revelation and the same religious tradition of Noah, Abraham, Jacob, and Isaac. Islam, in the opinion of al-Faruqi, not only recognized Judaism as a religion de jure-which no other religion or political system did before the Enlightenment-but it further demanded the observance of the Torah and gave rabbinic courts in Muslim lands the executive power to manage the internal religious and cultural affairs of the Jewish community there. Al-Faruqi presents the following theses in summarizing of the positions of modernday Islamists. First, the Jewish question, as it was termed in Europe before the Holocaust, is an exclusively European, Christian problem, and as such, it must be understood against the religious, social, and historical background of Medieval and modern Europe. Second, in the same vein, Zionism was created in Europe as the result of the unique circumstances the Jewish people there faced in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Third, Israel is a unique and aggressive form of Western colonialism in Muslim lands. Finally, the danger posed by the existence of a settler-colonial state like Israel is enormous: far from endangering Palestinian society alone, Israel poses a real threat to the security and safety of Arabs and Muslims at large. AlFaruqi writes: “The problem of Israel confronting the Muslim world today has neither precedent nor parallel in Islamic history. The Muslim world has tended to regard it as another instance of modern colonialism, or at best, as a repetition of the Crusades. The difference is not that Israel is neither one of these; but that it is both and more, much more” (Islam and the Problem of Israel, London, 1990, p. I).
Jewish-Muslim dialogue, as an academic discourse, has been confined in the main to a handful of scholars and thinkers from both sides. The stumbling block continues to be the clashing interpretations given to the meaning of the state of Israel and the Palestinian question. Another difficulty associated with Jewish-Muslim dialogue lies in the different nature of the two communities. Applied to the American scene, what that means is that for Jewish-Muslim dialogue to succeed, Muslim and Jewish institutions, and not merely a handful of individuals, should assume a leading role. Although “American Islam” is in the process of growth and expansion, it is doubtful that American Muslims, who are such a diverse and dynamic group, have caught up with the high level of economic progress and political organization American Jews have achieved over the past several decades. Therefore, at least theoretically speaking, there are many issues that need to be discussed by both sides in a spirit of critical dialogue.
[See also Judaism and Islam; Muslim-Christian Dialogue.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abu Amr, Ziyad. Islamic Fundamentalism in the West Bank and Gaza: Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic jihad. Bloomington, 1994 Abu-Rabi`, Ibrahim M. “Israel and the Palestinians: Muslim and Jewish Perspectives.” Islamic Studies 31.2 (Summer 1992): 235-245. Arkoun, Mohammed. “New Perspectives for a Jewish-ChristianMuslim Dialogue.” In Muslims in Dialogue: The Evolution of a Dialogue, edited by Leonard J. Swidler, pp. 345-352. Lewiston, N.Y., 1992.
Bretton-Granatoor, G. M., and A. L. Weiss. Shalom/Salaam: A Resource of jewish-Muslim Dialogue. New York, 1993
Ellis, Marc H. Ending Auschwitz: The Future of jewish and Christian Life. Louisville, Ky., 1994.
Gordon, H. “The Lack of Jewish-Arab Dialogue in Israel and the Spirit of Judaism: A Testimony.” In Muslims in Dialogue: The Evolution of a Dialogue, edited by Leonard J. Swidler, pp. 389-401. Lewiston, N.Y., 1992.
Haddad, Yvonne Yazbeck. “Islamists and the `Problem of Israel’: The 1967 Awakening.” Middle East journal 46.2 (Spring 1992): 266285.
Haddad, Yvonne Yazbeck, and Adair T. Lummis. Islamic Values in North America. New York and Oxford, 1987.
Hertzberg, Arthur. jewish Polemics. New York, 1992.
Kattani, Idris al-. Banu Isrd’il ft `ahd al-inhitat al-`Arabi. Rabat, 1992.
Rahman, Fazlur. Major Themes of the Qur’an. Minneapolis, I 98o.
IBRAHIM M. ABU-RABI`

Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan

Batoota — Tue, 30 Sep 2014 16:06:01 +0000

Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan
An enduring feature of Jordanian political life for more than fifty years, the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan was created as part of an effort by the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Hasan al-Banna’ (1906-1949) to form additional bases of support for his movement. In the early 1940s, members of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood were sent to both Palestine and Jordan to establish new branches.
In 1946, the first Jordanian branch was founded in the town of Salt; further centers were then established in the capital, Amman, and the towns of Irbid and Kayak. The leaders of the new movement registered the organization under the Jordanian Charity Societies and Clubs Law. The leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood was indigenous, and the first head of the organization was a prominent cleric, Hajj `Abd al-Latif al-Qurah (d. 1953) Hajj al-Qurah led an eight-member majlis (ruling council), which directed organizational aspects of the new movement. This leadership structure mirrored that of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
In addition to legal registration, Hajj al-Qurah sought official approval from the Jordanian monarch for his fledgling organization. King Abdullah (r. 1946-1951) extended tacit approval to the organization but warned that benefaction would be rescinded if the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood strayed from the spiritual and became identifiable with Jordanian political affairs. At this point, the Muslim Brotherhood was essentially a religious organization. The steady politicization of Islamic clerics, which began in Egypt in the nineteenth century, was barely discernible in Jordan in the 1940s. Nevertheless, the very founding of the Muslim Brotherhood at this time indicated that a new generation of politically active Muslim clergy was ascendant.
The Islamic Message. The functional religious role of the Muslim Brotherhood permitted the movement to promote its ideology to all sectors of Jordanian society. Through its charitable activities, including the provision of health and welfare facilities in the kingdom, the new movement was able to disseminate its Islamic message. The Muslim Brotherhood’s message was a direct reflection of the prevailing philosophy it had embraced. Members should strive to educate society and encourage a return to Islamic values.
From 1946 until the outbreak of the war between the Arabs and Israel in 1948, the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan remained essentially unchanged. Following the war and the Jordanian annexation of the West Bank area of Palestine in 1950, the number of branches of the Muslim Brotherhood increased, as existing Islamic organizations active in the West Bank, including Ansar alFadil and al-I’tisam, were absorbed. As a result of this new, expanded base of support in the West Bank, the leadership and cadres of the Muslim Brotherhood became increasingly politicized.
Political Consolidation. Following the death of Hajj al-Qurah in 1953, a new leader was appointed for the movement. On assuming his new post, `Abd al-Rahman al-Khalifah (an attorney) approached the Jordanian prime minister, Tawfiq Pasha Abu al-Huda, with an application for an expansion of the mandate regarding the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood to facilitate the political and cultural propagation of the movement’s Islamic message. The license permitting the Muslim Brotherhood to be a general and comprehensive Islamic grouping was subsequently granted by the authorities.
What was most striking about the development of the Muslim Brotherhood under al-Khalifah was its relatively close relations with the ruling regime and the monarchy. During the period when the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt was being repressed by the state, the conservative Jordanian regime found in its own branch of the Muslim Brotherhood a useful ally against the leftist movements sweeping through the region. However, the relationship between monarch and movement has been characterized by peaks and troughs and is for the most part motivated by political pragmatism rather than Islamic idealism.
The attitude of the regime toward the Muslim Brotherhood was further emphasized in 1957 when King Hussein issued a decree proscribing all political parties. The Muslim Brotherhood was exempted because the organization was officially registered as a charity, although in practice its activities were indistinguishable from those of any political party. Thus, the Muslim Brotherhood was free to continue with its own political agenda. Throughout this period it fielded individual candidates in elections to the bicameral legislative assembly. In 1962, the Muslim Brotherhood was the only organization to defy a West Bank boycott of the general election.
By 1964 the Muslim Brotherhood had also formed an umbrella organization called the Islamic Charitable Society, described by al-Khalifah as a charity rather than a political party. Nonetheless, the activities of the charity included the dissemination of Muslim Brotherhood ideology. By this time, the program of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan was almost identical to that of the organization in Egypt.
Pawns and Politics. Following the Arab-Israeli War of 1967, in which Jordan lost the West Bank and the Palestine Liberation Organization established strongholds among the refugee community of the East Bank, the relationship between the Muslim Brotherhood and the monarchy was strengthened. A relationship of de- of eighty seats in the parliament and that its Islamist counterparts had won an additional twelve; this total of thirty-four seats comprised the largest parliamentary bloc. The king’s policy of political cooptation had thus resulted in an Islamic majority in the country’s legislative assembly. The future stability of the regime was called into question, yet many failed to take into account the fact that the king still possessed the ultimate authority over the legislature (and therefore the Muslim Brotherhood): he could dissolve parliament at any time.
The Muslim Brothers greeted their election success with characteristic zeal. They set about forcing their political agenda through the legislature and into the statute books. Large amounts of parliamentary time were devoted to specifically Islamic issues, such as the banning of the production of alcohol. In essence it appeared that the Muslim Brotherhood’s response to the opportunities presented by its new political power was to concentrate on the areas of policy making that it knew best; thus, the Muslim Brotherhood lobbied for cabinet posts covering social, educational, and religious affairs. There did not appear to be any concerted attempt to tackle such issues as the economy, defense, or foreign affairs.
The outbreak of the Gulf War in 1990 signaled historic changes and challenges for the Muslim Brotherhood. The conflict presented the organization with the most difficult political dilemma in its history centering around the conflicting pressures from local constituents and financial backers in the conservative Gulf regimes. The Muslim Brotherhood initially condemned Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, but popular Islamic sentiment expressed in the streets of Amman soon persuaded the movement to alter its policy and support the Iraqi leader. This policy jeopardized the Muslim Brotherhood’s relationship with Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, which had provided the bulk of its funding.
The fact that the king and the “loyal opposition” in the Muslim Brotherhood were on the losing side in the war has altered only regional rather than domestic political arrangements. The Muslim Brotherhood preserved and further legitimated its popular support. The Islamic message remains a broadly popular one and ensures an enduring future for the organization. However, in the final analysis, such endurance will always be dependent on King Hussein, and this factor makes the Jordanian movement unique with respect to any other branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.
[See also Jordan.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abidi, Aqil H. H. Jordan: A Political Study, 1948-1957. London, 1965. Dated but worthwhile account of Jordan in the 1950s. Aruri, Nasser Hasan. Jordan: A Study in Political Development, 19211957. The Hague, 1972. Introduction to the Jordanian political system.
Bailey, Clinton. Jordan’s Palestinian Challenge, 1948-1983. Boulder, 1984. Perceptive book addressing the issue of Jordanian Palestinians, who account for 50 percent of the kingdom’s population. Gubser, Peter. Jordan: Crossroads of Middle Eastern Events. Boulder, 1984. Interesting account of Jordan’s regional role.
Kilani, Musa Zayd al-. Al-Harakat al-Islamiyah fi al-Urdun (The Islamic Movements in Jordan). Amman, 1990.
Milton-Edwards, Beverley. “A Temporary Alliance with the Crown: The Islamic Response in Jordan.” In Islamic Fundamentalism and the Gulf Crisis, edited by J. P. Piscatori, pp. 88-108. Chicago, 1991. Insight on Jordan during the Gulf crisis.
Wilson, Rodney, ed. Politics and the Economy in Jordan. London, 1991. Collection of essays on the inextricable relation between political and economic development in the Hashemite kingdom.
BEVERLEY MILTON-EDWARDS
next: Muslim Brotherhood in Sudan

Muslim Brotherhood in Syria

Batoota — Tue, 30 Sep 2014 15:57:15 +0000

Muslim Brotherhood in Syria
Throughout its fifty years of activity in Syria, the Muslim Brotherhood has been principally an opposition movement that has never held political power. The brotherhood traces its origins to the 1930s, when the Syrian people were engaged in their struggle to achieve national independence from French rule. The structural changes that Syria experienced during the interwar years were especially disruptive in the town quarters. Small merchants and artisans suffered under the weight of expanding European trade. The laboring classes found it increasingly difficult to feed their families because of the high inflation rates of the period. Uprooted rural dwellers in growing numbers entered the peripheral quarters of the towns, having been pushed off the land by drought or, more commonly, by indebtedness to absentee landowners and moneylenders. All sought the support of local leaders who could help them articulate their grievances and meet their needs. By this time, the leaders of the national independence movement had become increasingly distant from their urban constituencies, owing to their preoccupation with negotiations with the French Mandate authorities. This distance enabled newer, more radicalized groups to begin to challenge the leadership of the veteran nationalists.
To address the pressing social and psychological needs of the urban masses, the vast majority of whom belonged to the Sunni Muslim rite, there arose in the towns a variety of socially and politically active organizations, some of which were religious beneficent societies (jam’iyat) headed by men who had received formal religious training in Islamic law. The House of alArqam in Aleppo was one of these societies. On the eve of Syria’s independence, the House of al-Arqam moved its headquarters to Damascus, the Syrian capital, where it became known in 1944 as the Muslim Brotherhood (al-Ihkwan al-Muslimun). It is generally thought that the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which had been established in 1928, influenced the emergence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria. Some Syrian students who had studied in Cairo became familiar with the ideas of Hasan al-Banna’, the Egyptian organization’s founder. One was Mustafa al-Siba’i, the Syrian brotherhood’s first general supervisor (al-muraqib al-`amm), who became acquainted with al-Banna’ in Cairo. Others were inspired by a tour of Syria made by members of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in the mid-1930s.
The earliest goals of the Muslim Brotherhood were to spread Muslim education and ethics and to inculcate anti-imperialist feelings among the urban populace. It was through schools and magazines associated with the brotherhood that such ideas were disseminated. Its first published program in 1954 failed to offer a detailed strategic plan, dwelling instead on the goals of combating ignorance and deprivation and establishing a political regime based on Islamic law. For a period after Syria gained independence, the brotherhood put forward a vague notion of Islamic socialism but eventually abandoned it. Unlike the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Syrian organization has never produced a systematically articulated set of principles and program of action. The closest it came to this achievement was the 1980 proclamation of the Syrian Islamic Front to which the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood belonged.
The Arab military defeat in Palestine in 1948 enabled the brotherhood to expand its following in the Syrian towns, especially in Damascus where its members controlled roughly a fifth of the parliamentary seats allotted to the capital and its environs in the 1950s. In this period, the brotherhood competed with Communists, Ba’thists, Nasserists, and other opponents of the veteran nationalists who had governed Syria since independence in 1946. The challenge posed by the Nasserist movement to the brotherhood was particularly effective because the two movements shared the same political constituency, the Sunni Muslim urban trading classes. Not surprisingly, the brotherhood supported Syria’s secession in 1961 from the Egyptian-dominated United Arab Republic, established in 1958. [See also Nasserism. ]
The Bath Party’s seizure of power in 1963 focused the Muslim Brotherhood’s opposition squarely on the radical, secular, nationalist regime’s socialist policies and its introduction of large numbers of rural peoples into the state bureaucracy. These measures not only upset the interests of urban absentee landowners, merchants and industrialists, middle-level bureaucrats, and the liberal professions, but also threatened the positions of the urban artisan and small trading classes that formed the main constituency of the Muslim Brotherhood. Religious leaders associated with the brotherhood promoted civil disobedience against the Ba’thist regime’s secular policies. But in the aftermath of Syria’s military defeat in the 1967 war with Israel and the establishment of Hafez al-Assad’s Ba’thist government in 1970, a schism developed within the brotherhood. Militants in Aleppo and Hama pressed for a policy of armed struggle against the Assad regime but they were countered by the Damascus followers of `Isam al-`Attar, a religious shaykh in the Syrian capital who had replaced Mustafa al-Siba`i in 1961 as general supervisor of the brotherhood. The `Attar wing of the organization had identified a certain convergence of interests between the urban artisan and trading classes that supported the brotherhood in Damascus and the Assad regime’s gradual adoption of economic liberalization and its willingness to attract to Syria investments from the Arab oilproducing states of the Persian Gulf.
The Syrian regime’s honeymoon with the Damascus branch of the Muslim Brotherhood did not last long. President Assad’s secular constitution of 1973 provoked widespread protests in the Syrian towns led by the brotherhood and forced him to amend the constitution to require that the president had to be Muslim. By the mid-1970s, the northern militants in the brotherhood had gained the upper hand over the Damascus branch; during the next seven years they escalated the level of violence against the Assad regime. This phase in the Muslim Brotherhood’s struggle against the Syrian government was closely identified with the leadership of `Adnan Sa’d al-Din, a teacher and writer from the central Syrian town of Hama, who had become the brotherhood’s newest general supervisor. Several factors prompted the brotherhood to adopt a strategy of armed struggle (jihdd): the Syrian government’s intervention in 1976 in the Lebanese civil war against the Palestinians and their Lebanese Muslim allies; growing corruption stemming from the government’s economic liberalization policies; and, above all, the increased power that the president’s own rural-based community of `Alawis, a religious minority who constituted only io percent of the Syrian population, had achieved at the expense of the country’s Sunni majority, and especially the Sunnis of the towns. From this time onward, the brotherhood’s opposition was defined as one of Sunni majority against `Alawi minority and of town against countryside.
The Muslim Brotherhood’s tactics at first focused on assassinating `Alawi officials but soon expanded into armed attacks on prominent institutional symbols of the Assad regime including Bath Party offices, police stations, and army units. Most notable were the June 1979 killing of eighty-three `Alawi artillery cadets in Aleppo, large-scale demonstrations and boycotts in Aleppo, Hama, and Homs in March 1980 and an attempt to assassinate Assad himself later that year. Those who carried out the violence against the regime and its supporters tended to be university students, school teachers, and members of the liberal professions. Their leaders were also engineers, dentists, and teachers who came from small trading families and the middle levels of the Muslim religious establishment.
To counter this violent opposition, the Syrian government decreed in July 198o that any association with the Muslim Brotherhood was punishable by death. It began to crack down on the brotherhood with its formidable military resources, in particular its dreaded security forces composed almost exclusively of `Alawis. Under this pressure, the Muslim Brotherhood regrouped under the banner of the Syrian Islamic Front (al-Jabhah alIslamiyah fi Suriyah), a broad-based alliance of Islamic opposition groups established in October 198o and headed by the brotherhood. Shaykh Muhammad alBayanuni, a member of the religious establishment in Aleppo, became the Islamic Front’s secretary-general, but its strongman was `Adnan Sa`d al-Din, the brotherhood’s general supervisor. The front’s chief ideologue was Said Hawwa, a religious figure from Hama who, with Sa’d al-Din, had been a leader of the northern militant faction that had taken control of the brotherhood in the mid-1970s.
The culmination of five years of terror and counterterror was a showdown between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Syrian regime in February 1982 in the socially conservative Sunni stronghold of Hama. There the brotherhood sparked an armed uprising and seized control of the town in its strongest bid ever to challenge the Assad regime’s legitimacy. Within two weeks, the regime had restored its authority over Hama, but not before its military forces killed between five thousand and twenty thousand inhabitants of Hama and razed large sections of this ancient town. Assad’s regime had dealt a devastating blow to the brotherhood and in so doing put all its political opponents on notice that it would not countenance any challenges to its rule. The lesson of Hama appears to have been taken to heart for little has since been heard from the Muslim Brotherhood.
Unlike the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt that struck roots in both town and countryside, in Syria the brotherhood was exclusively urban based. This can be explained in part by the fact that the Syrian countryside was to a large extent populated by heterodox sects such as the `Alawis, Druze, and Isma’ilis. The Syrian brotherhood specifically appealed to townsmen from the class of small tradesmen and artisans. This class has long been closely intertwined with the Sunni religious shaykhs attached to the neighborhood mosques that are located in the heart of the local suqs or bazaars where small tradesmen and artisans work and live. The religious shaykhs provided the brotherhood with many of its leaders over the years and with the strong religious values to which its membership subscribed. Because many shaykhs from the middle rungs of the religious establishment also earned their livings as traders, they, like their followers, supported free enterprise and thus stood in opposition to the socialist and quasi-socialist reformism of the Ba’thist governments that have ruled Syria since 1963.
In the 1970s, when the Muslim Brotherhood became the most visible and powerful opponent of the Assad regime, it attracted to its ranks large numbers of students, school teachers, engineers, and other members of the liberal professions, many of whom came from small urban trading families. These elements contributed to the organization’s increased militancy in this period and to a noticeable generation gap between its younger, better educated militant youth and their elders. Only rough estimates exist for the size of the Muslim Brotherhood. Although its numbers have fluctuated widely over the decades, it probably reached its maximum size of around ten thousand during the late 1970s. The Syrian government’s efforts to destroy the organization by military and legal means reduced its ranks to fewer than five thousand on the eve of the Hama uprising in 1982 and to far fewer afterward. Since then the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood has been in exile and its rank and file underground in Syria.
The ideological orientation of the Muslim Brotherhood is best summed up in the Islamic Front’s proclamation of November 198o. Although it was designed to appeal to all political opponents of the Assad regime, the proclamation nonetheless pointed to several specific positions that the brotherhood had adopted over the years. It raised the prospects of civil war along Sunni`Alawi lines unless the leaders of the `Alawi community rejected Hafez al-Assad’s political leadership. It emphasized the Syrian people’s right to regain their basic political and civil liberties, which were described as being as important as the people’s right to basic economic security, of which they had also been stripped. It called for an independent judiciary and for a government based on the rule of law and on the Islamic principle of mutual consultation (shura). And it emphasized the importance of jihad (struggle in the name of Islam) as a means for ending sectarianism and establishing an Islamic state in Syria. Many of the values and directions highlighted in the proclamation were not exclusively Islamic in character, particularly those that emphasized natural rights and liberties. In this sense, the brotherhood was in step with a wide variety of opposition groups throughout the Middle East that had already made individual freedoms their highest political priority as they struggled against the authoritarian governments that dominated the region.
Economic policies were also stressed in the proclamation. It insisted on the reintroduction of the ownership of private land and on giving workers ownership rights of public industries. The emphasis was clearly on buttressing private enterprise and reducing state controls over the movement of capital and the running of industry. The Islamic Front’s economic orientation closely corresponded to the defined interests of the Sunni trading and manufacturing classes in the Syrian towns, major contributors to the membership and coffers of the Muslim Brotherhood. They strongly opposed the government’s economic favoritism toward the military, workers in modern industries, and rural minorities, especially the `Alawis.
Since the Muslim Brotherhood’s crushing defeat in Hama in 1982, its political prospects have not been promising. The strategy of armed struggle proved to be a major blunder from which the organization has yet to recover. Divisions within its leadership over whether to continue or abandon its militant tactics and over the Islamic Front’s relations with neighboring states also contributed to its fragility. Outside support has not been forthcoming. Soon after coming to power in Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini disappointed the brotherhood when he made it clear that his government supported the Syrian regime because it was the only major Arab state to side with Iran in its war with Iraq that began in 198o. Iraq’s victory over Iran in 1988 briefly freed the rival Ba’thist regime of Saddam Hussein to resume its efforts to destabilize the Assad regime, but Iraq’s defeat in the Persian Gulf war in early 1991 has, for the time being, drastically reduced its threat to Syria. The best prospects for external support have come in recent years from Jordan where Islamic movements have expanded their political influence.
Ultimately, the Muslim Brotherhood’s ability to resume its leadership of the Syrian opposition will depend on how successfully President Assad and his `Alawi supporters continue to wield the carrot and the stick. In the new post-cold war era, the Syrian regime no longer enjoys the patronage and protection of the former Soviet Union. American pressures on Syria to negotiate a less than advantageous settlement with Israel, especially in the aftermath of the Palestinian-Israeli peace initiative of 1993, and the continued fragility of the Syrian economy may well reduce the Assad regime’s already narrow base of support, encouraging its opponents to resume their struggle. The visible but limited political successes registered by Islamic movements in other Arab countries offer Assad’s opponents some hope. These are the kinds of conditions that may enable the Muslim Brotherhood to reemerge in Syria.
[See also Syria and the biography of Siba`i.]
Carre, Olivier. Les freres musulmans: Egypte et Syrie, 1928-1982. Paris, 1983. Comparative study of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Syria over a fifty-year span.
Commins, David D. Islamic Reform: Politics and Social Change in Late Ottoman Syria. New York, 1990. Informative study of the Islamic societies and movements that were precursors of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Dam, Nikolaos van. The Struggle for Power in Syria: Sectarianism, Regionalism, and Tribalism in Politics, 1961-1978. London, 1979. Dekmejian, R. Hrair. “Syria: Sunni Fundamentalism against Baathi Rule.” In Islam in Revolution: Fundamentalism in the Arab World, pp. 109-125. Syracuse, N.Y., 1985. Insightful analysis of the Muslim Brotherhood’s struggle for power and the nature of its leadership.
Hinnebusch, Raymond A. “The Islamic Movement in Syria: Sectarian Conflict and Urban Rebellion in an Authoritarian-Populist Regime.” In Islamic Resurgence in the Arab World, edited by Ali E. Hillal Dessouki, pp. 138-169. New York, 1982. Excellent overview of the place of Islamic movements during the past three decades. Kelidar, Abbas. “Religion and State in Syria.” Asian Affairs 61 (February 1974): 16-22. Useful account of the conflict of religion and state at the time of the Syrian constitutional crisis in 1973. Khoury, Philip S. Syria and the French Mandate: The Politics of Arab Nationalism, 1920-1945. Princeton, 1987. Comprehensive study of interwar politics and society in the period when the Muslim Brotherhood first emerged.
Mayer, Thomas. “The Islamic Opposition in Syria, 1961-1982.” Orient 24 (December 1983): 589-609. Useful examination of the conflict between the Ba’thist regime and the Muslim Brotherhood over a twenty-year span.
Mitchell, Richard P. The Society of the Muslim Brothers London, 1969. Remains the best study of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Perera, Judith. “The Shifting Fortunes of Syria’s Muslim Brothers.” Middle East (London) (May 1985): 25-28.
Reissner, Johannes. Ideologie and Politik der Muslimbriider Syriens. Freiburg, 198o. Unique study of the intellectual origins and ideological development of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria in the 1940s and 1950s.
Seale, Patrick. Asad: The Struggle for the Middle East. Berkeley, 1988. Fascinating biography of Syrian president Hafez al-Assad based on a wide variety of sources, including extensive interviews with the subject.
Seale, Patrick. The Struggle for Syria: A Study of Post-War Arab Politics, 1945-1958. London and New York, 1965. Remains the most perceptive account of Syrian politics in the postindependence period.
PHILIP S. KHouRY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abd-Allah, Umar F. The Islamic Struggle in Syria. Berkeley, 1983. The most comprehensive study of modern Syrian Islamic movements available in the English language.
Batatu, Hanna. “Syria’s Muslim Brethren.” MERIP Reports 12.9 (November-December 1982): 12-20, 34, 36. Penetrating social analysis of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria.
Next:
Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan

MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD

Batoota — Tue, 30 Sep 2014 15:43:31 +0000

[This entry comprises five articles:
An Overview
Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt
Muslim Brotherhood in Syria
Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan
Muslim Brotherhood in the Sudan
The introductory article provides an overview of the origin, ideological development, and geographical spread of the movement; the companion articles focus on four countries where the Muslim Brotherhood has played an active role in religious, social, and political life.]
An Overview
Founded in Isma’iliyah, Egypt, in 1928 by Hasan alBanna’ (1906-1949), the Muslim Brotherhood (alIkhwan al-Muslimun) is the parent body and the main source of inspriation for many Islamist organizations in Egypt and several other Arab countries, including Syria, Sudan, Jordan, Kuwait, Yemen, and some North African states. The movement was initially announced as a purely religious and philanthropic society that aimed to spread Islamic morals and good works. Its emergence, however, was part of a widespread reaction to various alarming developments that were sweeping through the Muslim world. The Arabs had been divided into spheres of influence by the European powers, and the attempted restoration of the caliphate, abolished in Turkey in 1924, failed in 1926. Western influence also appeared to be making serious inroads into the Islamic culture of the region. Not only did writers such as Salamah Musa and Taha Husayn propagate openly secularist ideas, but even some al-Azhar scholars adopted apparently Western approaches in analyzing “Islamic” issues, a trend that reached its most disconcerting point with the publication in 1925 of `All `Abd al-Raziq’s book on Islam and government in which he denied that Islam was in any way concerned with politics. [See the biographies of Husayn and `Abd al-Rdziq.]
As a teacher and gifted orator, al-Banna’ was able to attract to his movement various members of the local intelligentsia, as well as some artisans and a few workers. The Ikhwan became increasingly interested in public affairs, developing a distinctive conception of the comprehensiveness of Islam, which contrasted with that of both the established clergy and the existing conventional philanthropic charities. Al-Banna’ called for a total and activist Islam. He perceived the Islamic state as a significant ingredient of the desired Islamic order, but the Ikhwan leaders probably did not consider the assumption of political power an imminent possibility at the time. At such an early stage in the group’s formation and development, the tasks of moral reform (isldh alnufus) and of agreeing on an Islamic approach and “methodology” (minhdj Islami) must have appeared more appropriate for the requirements of that phase. Too much emphasis on government might also have subjected the society to even more official suspicion.
The Ikhwan did not identify itself as a political party, although it acted very much as if it were. Its activities began to acquire a distinct political character around 1938. The weekly Al-nadhir (The Warning) was started, and occasionally threatened to “fight any politician or organization that did not work for the support of Islam and the restoration of its glory.” Its concept of absolute obedience (al-ta’ah) to the leader and its tight organizational pattern, which linked the highest level of the Guidance Council to the most basic level of the usrah (“family” or cell) and included all the technical sections and committees as well as the consultative council, have been likened by some observers to those of fascist organizations.
By now the Ikhwan had more than three hundred branches advocating its ideas, although it had been careful so far not to antagonize the Palace, and to avoid confrontation with the British at any price, while building up its own organizational and paramilitary capacity. A special “secret apparatus” was established within the movement (its membership is believed to have reached 75,000 by 1947), and special “phalanges” were formed, sometimes under the guise of ranger scouts (jawwdlah). The Ikhwan also built its own companies, factories, schools, and hospitals, and infiltrated various organizations, including the trade unions and the armed forces, to such a degree that by the end of the 1940s it almost represented “a state within the State.” By this time it also had escalated terrorist attacks on British and Jewish interests in Egypt, in which many Egyptians were inevitably killed or injured. The government was forced to respond by dissolving the brotherhood; the confrontation between the two reached its peak late in 1948 and early in 1949 with the Ikhwan’s assassination of Prime Minister Mahmud Fahmi al-Nuqrashi and the government’s assassination of the leader of the Ikhwan, alBanna’ himself. Membership of the brotherhood had by now reached its peak, including nearly a half million active members (`udw `amil) and another half million sympathizers, spread among some 200,000 branches throughout Egypt.
New Political Emphasis. The disappearance of the charismatic leadership of al-Banna’ in 1949 and, more specifically, the confrontation between the Ikhwan and the new revolutionary regime in Egypt in the 1950s caused it to raise the “political” to a much higher rank within its order of concerns. It should be noted that the Muslim Brothers were no strangers to the Free Officers who launched the 1952 revolution. Their various contacts with the officers enabled them to escape the fate of dissolution after the coup, since they were classified as a “movement” or a “society,” not as a political party. Many brothers, including the new “general guide” (almurshid al-`amm) Hasan al-Hudaybi, seem to have hoped that given the affinity between the two movements, the Free Officers would be prepared to allow the Ikhwan direct participation in government after the revolution. When this hope was frustrated, relations between them deteriorated, resulting in two bloody confrontations (in 1954 and 1965), repeated imprisonment, and severe torture. It was this confrontational atmosphere that eventually effected a shift in the thinking of the Ikhwan associate Sayyid Qutb, a shift that subsequently colored the ideas of most of the regiments of radical political Islam in Egypt and the Arab world.
On a general ideological level, the detention of Qutb and his colleagues led to an overall revision of the movement’s thought, the major part of which now was affected by a hatred for the state and the regime. The Qutbian ideas that have come to influence most of the contemporary movements of political Islam are mainly the ones to be found in the writings he produced between his two periods of imprisonment. The key concept in this later Qutbian discourse is undoubtedly jahiliyah (total pagan ignorance). Inspired partly by Ibn Taymiyah but most specifically by Sayyid Abu al-A’la Mawdudi, and influenced by the fascist ideas of Alexis Carrel, Sayyid Qutb extracted this concept from any historical or geographical context, giving it a universal validity that covers all contemporary societies, Muslim ones included. The way out of such jahiliyah, as prescribed by Qutb, is also simple: a declaration of the total sovereignty and rulership of God (al-hakimiyah). Strongly affected by such ideas, the imprisoned brothers in their anguish and isolation and with the ever-present memory of their martyrs, were to create an alternative to Nasserism, a “counterproject” that reflected the maturation of the contradictions between the brotherhood and the Nasserist state (and, indeed, between Islamists and all similar “modernizing” projects such as Ba’thism and Bourguibism). This contradiction in fact has become, since the late 1970s, the main ideological confrontation in the Arab world. [See Nasserism and the biography of Qutb.]
From its inception, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt attracted a membership drawn principally from among the urban and recently urbanized afendiyah strata of lower- and middle-level officials, clerks and school teachers and from among the “traditional” artisans and merchants; from its beginning, too, it has had a fringe of professionals (lawyers, accountants, and doctors). In the 1940s, it managed to make serious inroads into the industrial proletariat. The splinter groups that have broken away from the brotherhood since the 1960s are characterized by their radicalism, their generally younger age, and a more scientific and technical slant in their educational backgrounds. A similar membership profile seems to characterize the brotherhood in other countries, although the relative importance of various social groups differs from one country to another, with, for example, the intelligentsia more heavily represented in a country like Jordan, the merchants and artisans in a country like Syria, and the students and professionals in a country like Sudan. However, the exact relationships, in terms of personnel, organization, and strategy, among the older Muslim Brotherhoods and the newer militant groups (often functioning under such names as Tanzim al-Jihad (The Jihad Organization) or Al-Jama’at al-Islamiyah (The Islamic Group) are far from entirely clear. [See Jama’at al-Islamiyah, al-.]
Pan-Arab Activities. Soon after its founding, the Muslim Brotherhood movement spread into the countries adjacent to Egypt; today it remains the main PanArab Islamic movement. Its basic charter stipulates that it is a “universal Islamic assembly” (hay’ah islamiyah jami`ah) rather than an Egyptian or even an Arab organization. It actively established branches from the mid1930S onward, following a number of working visits to Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, Iraq, Yemen and elsewhere, and set up special tents in Mecca during the pilgrimage seasons in the 1940s and 1950s to greet, entertain, and convert pilgrim delegates from all over the Muslim world. Several Sudanese and other Arab students, attracted to the movement while studying in Egypt, carried their ideas back to their countries. A number of fellow associations were also established, initially not always under the same title of the Muslim Brothers. The Pan-Arab activities of the Ikhwan were stepped up during the Palestine War of 1948, to which it contributed with voluntary personnel. From that time onward, the Ikhwan did its best to give support to its fellow movements from other Arab countries when they came under persecution, an activity that was soon caught up in the dynamics of inter-Arab politics. For example, the Syrian brothers gave support to their Egyptian colleagues (and perhaps even acted as the main regional headquarters, under the leadership of Mustafa al-Siba`i) following the ordeal of the Egyptian Ikhwan in 1954. The Syrian brothers in turn received support from their Jordanian colleagues (and some say from the regime as well) after their ordeal at the hands of the Syrian government in 1981. The movement also had some appeal in North Africa, especially in Morocco (where it had close relations with the Istiqlal Party and with Muhammad `Allal al-Fasi), and was not completely unknown in Tunisia, Algeria (where it maintained cordial relations with the `ulama’) and in some regions of Sudan, Jordan, Kuwait, Yemen, and some North African states. The movement was initially announced as a purely religious and philanthropic society that aimed to spread Islamic morals and good works. Its emergence, however, was part of a widespread reaction to various alarming developments that were sweeping through the Muslim world. The Arabs had been divided into spheres of influence by the European powers, and the attempted restoration of the caliphate, abolished in Turkey in 1924, failed in 1926. Western influence also appeared to be making serious inroads into the Islamic culture of the region. Not only did writers such as Salamah Musa and Taha Husayn propagate openly secularist ideas, but even some al-Azhar scholars adopted apparently Western approaches in analyzing “Islamic” issues, a trend that reached its most disconcerting point with the publication in 1925, Of ‘Ali `Abd al-Raziq’s book on Islam and government in which he denied that Islam was in any way concerned with politics. [See the biographies of Husayn and `Abd al-Rdziq]
As a teacher and gifted orator, al-Banna’ was able to attract to his movement various members of the local intelligentsia, as well as some artisans and a few workers. The Ikhwan became increasingly interested in public affairs, developing a distinctive conception of the comprehensiveness of Islam, which contrasted with that of both the established clergy and the existing conventional philanthropic charities. Al-Banna’ called for a total and activist Islam. He perceived the Islamic state as a significant ingredient of the desired Islamic order, but the Ikhwan leaders probably did not consider the assumption of political power an imminent possibility at the time. At such an early stage in the group’s formation and development, the tasks of moral reform (isldh alnufus) and of agreeing on an Islamic approach and “methodology” (minhdj Islami) must have appeared more appropriate for the requirements of that phase. Too much emphasis on government might also have subjected the society to even more official suspicion.
The Ikhwan did not identify itself as a political party, although it acted very much as if it were. Its activities began to acquire a distinct political character around 1938. The weekly Al-nadhir (The Warning) was started, and occasionally threatened to “fight any politician or organization that did not work for the support of Islam and the restoration of its glory.” Its concept of absolute obedience (al-ta’ah) to the leader and its tight organizational pattern, which linked the highest level of the Guidance Council to the most basic level of the usrah (“family” or cell) and included all the technical sections and committees as well as the consultative council, have been likened by some observers to those of fascist organizations.
By now the Ikhwan had more than three hundred branches advocating its ideas, although it had been careful so far not to antagonize the Palace, and to avoid confrontation with the British at any price, while building up its own organizational and paramilitary capacity. A special “secret apparatus” was established within the movement (its membership is believed to have reached 75,000 by 1947), and special “phalanges” were formed, sometimes under the guise of ranger scouts (jawwalah). The Ikhwan also built its own companies, factories, schools, and hospitals, and infiltrated various organizations, including the trade unions and the armed forces, to such a degree that by the end of the 1940s it almost represented “a state within the State.” By this time it also had escalated terrorist attacks on British and Jewish interests in Egypt, in which many Egyptians were inevitably killed or injured. The government was forced to respond by dissolving the brotherhood; the confrontation between the two reached its peak late in 1948 and early in 1949 with the Ikhwan’s assassination of Prime Minister Mahmud Fahmi al-Nuqrashi and the government’s assassination of the leader of the Ikhwan, alBanna’ himself. Membership of the brotherhood had by now reached its peak, including nearly a half million active members (`udw `amil) and another half million sympathizers, spread among some 200,000 branches throughout Egypt.
New Political Emphasis. The disappearance of the charismatic leadership of al-Banna’ in 1949 and, more specifically, the confrontation between the Ikhwan and the new revolutionary regime in Egypt in the 1950s caused it to raise the “political” to a much higher rank within its order of concerns. It should be noted that the Muslim Brothers were no strangers to the Free Officers who launched the 1952 revolution. Their various contacts with the officers enabled them to escape the fate of dissolution after the coup, since they were classified as a “movement” or a “society,” not as a political party. Many brothers, including the new “general guide” (almurshid al-`amm) Hasan al-Hudaybi, seem to have hoped that given the affinity between the two movements, the Free Officers would be prepared to allow the Ikhwan direct participation in government after the revolution. When this hope was frustrated, relations between them deteriorated, resulting in two bloody confrontations (in 1954 and 1965), repeated imprisonment, and severe torture. It was this confrontational atmosphere that eventually effected a shift in the thinking of the Ikhwan associate Sayyid Qutb, a shift that subsequently colored the ideas of most of the regiments of radical political Islam in Egypt and the Arab world.
On a general ideological level, the detention of Qutb and his colleagues led to an overall revision of the movement’s thought, the major part of which now was affected by a hatred for the state and the regime. The Qutbian ideas that have come to influence most of the contemporary movements of political Islam are mainly the ones to be found in the writings he produced between his two periods of imprisonment. The key concept in this later Qutbian discourse is undoubtedly jdhihyah (total pagan ignorance). Inspired partly by Ibn Taymiyah but most specifically by Sayyid Abu al-A’la Mawdudi, and influenced by the fascist ideas of Alexis Carrel, Sayyid Qutb extracted this concept from any historical or geographical context, giving it a universal validity that covers all contemporary societies, Muslim ones included. The way out of such jahiliyah, as prescribed by Qutb, is also simple: a declaration of the total sovereignty and rulership of God (al-hakimiyah). Strongly affected by such ideas, the imprisoned brothers in their anguish and isolation and with the ever-present memory of their martyrs, were to create an alternative to Nasserism, a “counterproject” that reflected the maturation of the contradictions between the brotherhood and the Nasserist state (and, indeed, between Islamists and all similar “modernizing” projects such as Ba’thism and Bourguibism). This contradiction in fact has become, since the late 1970s, the main ideological confrontation in the Arab world. [See Nasserism and the biography of Qutb.]
From its inception, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt attracted a membership drawn principally from among the urban and recently urbanized afendiyah strata of lower- and middle-level officials, clerks and school teachers and from among the “traditional” artisans and merchants; from its beginning, too, it has had a fringe of professionals (lawyers, accountants, and doctors). In the 1940s, it managed to make serious inroads into the industrial proletariat. The splinter groups that have broken away from the brotherhood since the 1960s are characterized by their radicalism, their generally younger age, and a more scientific and technical slant in their educational backgrounds. A similar membership profile seems to characterize the brotherhood in other countries, although the relative importance of various social groups differs from one country to another, with, for example, the intelligentsia more heavily represented in a country like Jordan, the merchants and artisans in a country like Syria, and the students and professionals in a country like Sudan. However, the exact relationships, in terms of personnel, organization, and strategy, among the older Muslim Brotherhoods and the newer militant groups (often functioning under such names as Tanzim al-Jihad (The Jihad Organization) or Al-Jama’at al-Islamiyah (The Islamic Group) are far from entirely clear. [See Jama’at al-Islamiyah, al-.]
Pan-Arab Activities. Soon after its founding, the Muslim Brotherhood movement spread into the countries adjacent to Egypt; today it remains the main PanArab Islamic movement. Its basic charter stipulates that it is a “universal Islamic assembly” (hay’ah islamiyah jami’ah) rather than an Egyptian or even an Arab organization. It actively established branches from the mid1930s onward, following a number of working visits to Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, Iraq, Yemen and elsewhere, and set up special tents in Mecca during the pilgrimage seasons in the 1940s and 1950s to greet, entertain, and convert pilgrim delegates from all over the Muslim world. Several Sudanese and other Arab students, attracted to the movement while studying in Egypt, carried their ideas back to their countries. A number of fellow associations were also established, initially not always under the same title of the Muslim Brothers. The Pan-Arab activities of the Ikhwan were stepped up during the Palestine War of 1948, to which it contributed with voluntary personnel. From that time onward, the Ikhwan did its best to give support to its fellow movements from other Arab countries when they came under persecution, an activity that was soon caught up in the dynamics of inter-Arab politics. For example, the Syrian brothers gave support to their Egyptian colleagues (and perhaps even acted as the main regional headquarters, under the leadership of Mustafa al-Siba’i) following the ordeal of the Egyptian Ikhwan in 1954 The Syrian brothers in turn received support from their Jordanian colleagues (and some say from the regime as well) after their ordeal at the hands of the Syrian government in 1981. The movement also had some appeal in North Africa, especially in Morocco (where it had close relations with the Istiqlal Party and with Muhammad `Allal al-Fasi), and was not completely unknown in Tunisia, Algeria (where it maintained cordial relations with the `ulama’) and in some regions of the Horn of Africa, such as Eritrea and Somalia. Sympathetic groups, with somewhat similar orientations, have also existed in places as far away as India, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and of course Pakistan where the Jama’at-i Islami shares the Ikhwan ideology. In cooperation with such organizations the Muslim Brothers are believed to exercise a certain degree of influence over the Islamic World Congress (Mu’tamar al`Alam al-Islami). [See Istiqlal; Jama’at-i Islami; and the biographies of Siba’i and Fasi.]
Government circles in several Arab countries believe that there exists at present a “Muslim Brotherhood International” that coordinates activities and finances among the various countries’ branches. According to unconfirmed reports, this organization’s structure includes, in addition to the highly authoritative position of the General Guide, a General Guidance Bureau (GGB, Maktab al-Irshad al-`Amm) and a General Consultative Council (GCC, Majlis al-Shura al-`Amm), both of which provide a distinct advantage to the Egyptian brothers. The members of the GGB are the Egyptian General Guide, eight more Egyptians, and one representative each from Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Algeria, and Kuwait, guaranteeing the Egyptian brothers an automatic majority. A similar pattern obtains in the GCC, the legislative branch of the organization, which has a minimum required membership of thirty: thirteen members from the personnel of the GGB, the guide himself and three persons appointed by him; three members from Syria, and two each from Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen; and one each from Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Iraq, Lebanon, Somalia, Tunisia, Algeria, Europe, and the United States. In 1989 the GCC had thirty-eight members including twelve Egyptians and nine from the Gulf region; the Egyptians and the Gulf members (representing numerical weight and financial means) had an automatic majority within the Council.
Although meetings and exchanges among Ikhwan leaders from various countries certainly occur, and some transfer of funds likely takes place, the coordination of activities and finances is probably not as well planned and tightly executed as the authorities sometimes imply. For one thing, some of these movements (for example, in Sudan, Tunisia, and the Gaza Strip) have acquired a certain degree of autonomy in their intellectual and political outlook that noticeably distinguishes them from the conventional Muslim brothers’ position. Most of them (with the partial exception of Sudan) are underground or opposition movements that have sufficient problems of their own in their own territory. And though the possibility of some Saudi Arabian financing is sometimes mentioned, many of the brothers have acquired part of their financial resources through working personally in the Arabian oil-exporting countries. Furthermore, the Gulf crisis of 1990-1991 reportedly has led to further divisions, not only among the brotherhoods from various countries but sometimes within the Muslim Brotherhood movement of one country.
A relatively recent development has been the electoral success and the participation in government by Muslim Brother elements in a number of Arab countries (notably Egypt, Sudan, Jordan, and Kuwait). The main question that follows from this is: will such a measure of success turn the Muslim Brothers into a milder, “legal” political force that accepts the rules of the game within their specific countries, or will it prompt them into a more radical, Pan-Islamist line in the belief that the universal triumph of political Islam lies virtually at hand? [See also Pan-Islam and the biography of Banna’.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
`Abd al-Halim, Mahmud. Al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun. 3 vols. Alexandria, 1979-1985. Very detailed account (including testimony) of the history of the brotherhood from 1928 to 1971, by a member of its Constitutive Body.
Ayubi, Nazih N. Political Islam: Religion and Politics in the Arab World. London and New York, 1991. Includes reviews of the political thought of al-Banna’, Qutb, and the Jihadists, and studies on the role of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Syria, the Sudan, Jordan, and other Arab countries.
Bayyumli, Zakanya S. Al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun wa al -Jama’at alIsldmiyah (The Muslim Brothers and the Islamic Groupings). Cairo, 1974. Good study, especially on the shades and multiplicity within the Brotherhood and its relations with other Islamic groups. Carre, Olivier, and Gerard Michaud. Les Freres Musulmans, 19281982. Paris, 1983. Good account of the brotherhood in Egypt and Syria.
Centre for Political and Strategic Studies. Al-Taqrir al-Istratiji al’Arabi (The Arab Strategic Report). Cairo, 1991. Part 2, section i.ii, includes a detailed account of the “Muslim Brotherhood International.”
Harris, Christina. Nationalism and Revolution in Egypt: The Role of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Hague, 1964. Useful study of the interplay between religious and secular influences in the development of Egyptian nationalism.
Husayni, Ishaq Musa al-. The Moslem Brethren. Translated by John F. Brown et al. Beirut, 1956. Useful, detailed study, although now somewhat dated.
Mitchell, Richard P. The Society of the Muslim Brothers. London,1969. Still the best account of the brotherhood in Egypt to the mid-1950S.
Naftsi, `Abd Allah F. al-. Al-harakah al-Islamiyah (The Islamic Movement). Cairo, 1989. Analysis and self-critique by a Kuwaiti Islamist of the aspects of unity and division within the Islamic movement in the Arab world.
Zahmul, Ibrahim. Al-Ikhwdn al-Muslimun: Awraq tarikhiyah (The Muslim Brotherhood: Historical Papers). N.p., 1985. Sympathetic account with useful material and some information on the brotherhood outside Egypt.
NAZIH N. AYUBI
next:Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt

Mujahidin-i Khalq

Batoota — Tue, 09 Sep 2014 11:13:11 +0000

Mujahidin-i Khalq
The Saziman-i Mujahidin-i Khalq-i lran (Holy Warrior Organization of the Iranian People) is better known simply as the Iranian Mujahidin. It is a religious, but anticlerical, organization and constitutes the main opposition to the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The Mujahidin’s ideology combines Shiism with Marxism. It interprets Islam, especially the Qur’an, the hadiths (sayings of the Prophet and imams), and Shi `i teachings, to be a divine message for social, economic, and political revolution. It also finds much of Marxism, but not dialectical materialism, to be an indispensible tool for analyzing politics, society, and history. As one of its handbooks declares: “We say `no’ to Marxist philosophy, especially atheism. But we say `yes’ to Marxist social thought, particularly to its analysis of feudalism, capitalism, and imperialism” (Mujahidin Organization, Tarikhchah, jiryan-i kudita, va khatt-i kununi -yi Sdzimdni Mujahidin-i Khalq-i Iran [Short History, the Coup Incident, and the Present Policy of the People’s Mujahidin Organization of Iran], Tehran, 1978). Mujahidin ideas are so similar to those of ‘Ali Shari`ati, the famous contemporary thinker, that many commentators have jumped to the erroneous conclusion that Shari’ati inspired the organization. Actually, the two developed their ideas independently of each other. [See the biography of Shad `ad. ]
The Mujahidin organization was created in the mid1960s by a group of recent graduates from Tehran University, most from the Colleges of Engineering and Agriculture, who had also studied the Qur’an and Imam `All’s Nahj al-baldghah (Way of Eloquence) with Ayatollah Mahmud Taleqani [see the biography of Taleqani]. The founding leaders had been members of Mehdi Bazargan’s Nahzat-i Azadi-yi Iran (Liberation Movement of Iran), but after the bloody demonstrations of June 1963, they found their parent party too moderate and too wedded to conventional politics. Even more important, they were all deeply impressed by contemporary guerrilla movements, especially those in Cuba, Vietnam, and Algeria. They concluded that the only way to challenge the Pahlavi regime was through armed struggle and heroic deeds of martyrdom. In their own words: “After June 1963, militants-irrespective of ideology-realized one cannot fight tanks with bare hands. We had to ask the question `what is to be done?’ Our answer was straightforward: `armed struggle.’ ” (Mujdhid 4 [November 1974]). In their early discussion groups, they studied Che Guevara’s Guerrilla Warfare, Lenin’s What Is to Be Done?, Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth, Regis Debray’s Revolution within the Revolution, and most important of all, Amar Ouzegan’s Le meilleur combat. Ouzegan, a former communist who had become the leading theoretician of the Algerian FLN, argued that Islam was a revolutionary socialist creed and that the only way to fight imperialism and its local lackeys was to resort to the armed struggle and appeal to the religious sentiments of the masses. The early Mujahidin adopted Le meilleur combat as their main handbook.
In the late 1960s the Mujahidin collectively wrote a path-breaking book of their own entitled Nahzat-i Husayni (The Husaynite Movement). In this book they argued that Imam Husayn had taken up arms because the Ummayyad Caliphate was exploiting the masses and betraying the Prophet’s true cause-the establishment of a classless society, which they termed nizam-1 tawhidi (unitary order). This became their battle cry first against the shah and later against the regime of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The eternal message of the holy month of Muharram, when Husayn was martyred, Nahzat-i Husayni stressed, was that human beings, unlike animals, had the sacred duty to fight political oppression and class exploitation. The ShN martyrs, the book concluded, were like Che Guevara: they accepted martyrdom as a revolutionary duty and considered the armed struggle against class oppression as their sacred obligation. In short, both the martyrs and Guevara had died for the cause of social equality. The Mujahidin developed similar ideas in pamphlets entitled Takdmul (Evolution toward Perfection), Shindkht (Knowledge), and Iqtisdd bih zaban-i sadah (Economics in a Simple Language).
The Mujahidin also developed their own tafsir (explanatory method) for understanding scriptural texts, especially the Qur’dn and the Nahj al-baldghah. These texts, they argued, should be treated not as dead parchments, but as “guides” and “living inspirations for revolutionary action.” They should be placed in their proper “historical context” and read for their “real radical essence.” They further argued that the clergy had done to these texts what the reformist Social Democrats of Europe had tried to do to Marx and Engels-paid lip service to them, turned their teachings into harmless banalities, and emasculated their revolutionary essence.
These early works gave new meanings to old Islamic and Shi`i terms. For example, the meaning of mustaz`afan changed from “the meek” to “the exploited masses” (as in Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth); ummah, from “a religious community” to “a dynamic society in constant motion toward a classless society”; jihad, from “crusade” to “liberation struggle”; mu’min, from “the pious believer” to “the true fighter for social justice”; shahid, from “religious martyr” to “revolutionary hero”; mujahid, from “holy warrior” to “freedom fighter”; and most ironic of all, imdm, from “religious leader” to “charismatic revolutionary leader.” Some of these new meanings eventually found their way into Khomeini’s own pronouncements.
The Mujahidin launched their guerrilla struggle in 1971 with a series of bombings and armed attacks. In the course of the next eight years, the organization gained a nationwide reputation for courage, determination, and efficiency. At the same time, however, it lost many of its leaders and cadres through arrests, executions, and street shootouts. Of the eighty-three Mujdhids who lost their lives from 1971 to 1979, almost all came from the ranks of the young intelligentsia in Tehran and the central Persian-speaking’ provinces. They were engineers, teachers, accountants, and most often, university students. By the mid-1970s, the Mujahidin, as well as the Marxist Fida’iyan, were considered to constitute the main opposition to the shah.
Despite this success, the Mujahidin suffered a major schism in 1975. Some members declared themselves Marxist-Leninists and denounced Islam as a “conservative petit bourgeois ideology.” Their religious disillusionment was caused by the discovery that Khomeini and the clergy, with the notable exception of Tdleqdni, refused to support their armed struggles. These Marxists later renamed themselves the Saziman-i Paykdr dar Rdh-i Azadi-yi Tabaqah-yi Kdrgdr (The Combat Organization for the Emancipation of the Working Class Paykdr, in short. Ibrahim Yazdi, a Nahzat-i Azadi leader, argued that this schism so weakened the Mujahidin that it paved the way for the clergy to come to power. The split, he claimed, changed the whole course of Iranian history (Akharin Taldsh-hd dar dkharin ruz-ha [Last Struggles in the Last Days], Tehran, 1984).
By late 1978 and early 1979 little remained of the Mujahidin-and those who were left were incarcerated in prison and led by Mas’ud Rajavi, one of the few early members to have survived the executions and the armed confrontations. A graduate of Tehran University’s law school, Rajavi had been arrested in 1972 and condemned to death. An international effort made on his behalf by his brother, a student in Switzerland, had persuaded the shah to commute Rajavi’s death sentence to life imprisonment. Rajavi did not leave prison until late 1978, but when released, he promptly regrouped his followers, who then helped deliver the old regime its coup de grace in the final street battles of February 1979.
In the two years after the Iranian Revolution, the Mujahidin grew rapidly into a major force. It established branches throughout the country. It rebuilt an underground armed network-much to the consternation of the new authorities. Its organ, Mujahid, became one of the country’s largest-circulation newspapers. Its parliamentary candidates drew substantial votes, in some constituencies posing serious challenges to the clerical favorites. Its electoral supporters included not only numerous trade unions, leftist organizations, professional associations, and regional parties-notably, the Kurdish Democratic party-but also an impressive array of prominent writers, lawyers, politicians, antishah politicians, and even some maverick clergymen. Its rallies drew tens of thousands-sometimes hundreds of thousands-of enthusiatic supporters. Gradually the Mujahidin became allied with Abol-Hasan Bani Sadr, the popularly elected president, who, after taking office, accused the clergy of monopolizing power and plotting to establish the “dictatorship of the mullatariat.”
The Mujahidin grew for a number of reasons. It had a well-earned mystique of revolutionary martyrdom. It adhered to Shiism, but opposed Khomeini’s brand of Islam. It denounced his concept of vildyat-i fagih (wilayat al fagih, jurist’s trusteeship) and his claim that the clergy had the divine right to rule. It dismissed as “medieval” his attitudes toward women and his interpretation of shari’ah-especially on the questions of corporal punishment and laws of vengeance. The Mujahidin often cited Taleqani’s famous warning that “the most dangerous form of tyranny is that of the clergy.” It called for political pluralism, freedom of the press, elected councils in towns, villages, and workplaces, and complete equality for all citizens (men and women, clerics and nonclerics, Muslims and non-Muslims, Shi’is and Sunnis alike). Moreover, the Mujahidin advocated farreaching social changes, including land reform, literacy campaigns, medical services, low-income housing, work projects, income redistribution, nationalization of large companies, and worker’s control of industrial factories. In short, the Mujahidin presented a radical but modernist intepretation of Islam.
The Islamic Republic’s restrictions on the Mujahidin intensified as the latter’s popularity increased-especially after Taleqani who had tried to mediate between the two, suffered a fatal heart-attack. The regime labeled the Mujahidin iltiqati (“eclectic”) and gharbzadah (contaminated with the disease of Westernism). It barred Mujahidin spokesmen from the radio-television network; disqualified Rajavi from the presidential race; periodically closed down Mujahid and its provincial offices; and stopped the ballot-count in constituencies where Mujahidin candidates were doing well. The Khomeini regime also refused to grant demonstration permits, and it used club-wielders, known as Hizbullahis (those of the Party of God), to break up Mujahidin rallies. More than seventy Mujahids lost their lives in such incidents in 198o and 1981-almost as many as had been killed in nine years of guerrilla warfare against the shah. Most of the victims were college and high school students. Finally, in June 1981, Khomeini pronounced the Mujahidin to be mundfiqin (“hypocrites”), and cited the Qur’an to argue that the “mundfiqin were more dangerous than the kdfir [infidels].” The regime promptly declared the Mujahidin to be the “enemies of God” and ordered the revolutionary guards to execute summarily Mujahidin demonstrators, irrespective of age.
The Mujahidin countered state terror with its own brand of “revolutionary terror”-ambushes, suicide attacks, bombings, and assassinations. The regime, in turn, retaliated with a reign of terror unprecedented in Iranian history: mass arrests, torture, executions, and even public hangings. During the height of this terrorwhich lasted from June 1981 until September 1985-the
Mujahidin suffered more than nine thousand dead. Most of them came from the young generation of the intelligentsia: they were teachers, civil servants, doctors, veterinarians, technicians, accountants, and most important, college and high school students. The dead also included some factory workers, especially ones with high school diplomas. In terms of geography, most came from Tehran, the Caspian region, and the Shi`i and Persian-speaking regions of central Iran and northern Khurasan.
The reign of terror forced the leadership, especially Rajavi, to move into exile, first to Paris, then, after June 1986, to Iraq. In Paris, the Mujahidin created a broad coalition named the Shura-yi Milli-yi Muqavamat (National Council of Resistance). Its avowed goal was to replace the Islamic Republic with a Democratic Islamic Republic. Initially the council included Ban! Sadr, the Kurdish Democratic party, and a number of leftist and liberal organizations as well as prominent national figures. In Iraq, the Mujahidin set up training camps, a radio station named Sada -yi Mujahid (Mujahid Voice), and most important, the National Liberation Army-a well-equipped force of some seven thousand men and women. Moreover, the Mujahidin, using the National Council name, established public-relations offices in the United Nations and in many capitals-in India, Pakistan, Indonesia, as well as in the West. These offices hold press conferences, fax news bulletins, publish pamphlets, and circulate videos to convince their host publics both that the present Iranian regime is highly unstable and that the National Council is the only viable alternative to the Islamic Republic. In early 1986, for example, these offices collected signatures from more than five thousand public figures-including thirty-five hundred legislators in Western countries-denouncing mass executions and violations of human rights in Iran.
Although it remains a significant force in exile, the Mujahidin has lost much of its social basis within Iran. The open alliance with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein-especially during the Iran-Iraqi War-has alienated the general public. Important allies, notably Ban! Sadr and the Kurdish Democratic party, have gone their separate ways. In fact, the National Council has been reduced to a mere front organization. The Mujahidin has lost some of its own cadres; some have dropped out of politics, others have created rival offshoots, yet others have made their peace with Tehran. The organization’s denunciation of former allies as “traitors”, “leeches,” “garbage,” and “parasites” has led many to wonder whether its version of Islam would be any more tolerant than that of Khomeini.
The Mujahidin has increasingly become an inwardlooking religio-political sect. It has surrounded its leader with an intense personality cult, proclaiming that “Rajavi is Iran, and Iran is Rajavi.” It has purged the halfhearted and denounced them as the enemies of Iran. It has ceased publishing intellectual works, serious analyses, and even regular newspapers. For some secular observers, it has become another sect-albeit an armed one-eagerly awaiting the New Revolution, much in the same way as the early Shi`is expected the Return of the Mahdi.
[See also Iranian Revolution of 1979.1
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abrahamian, Ervand. The Iranian Mojahedin. New Haven, 1989. Association of Committed Professors of Iranian Universities. Facts and Myths on the People’s Mojahedin of Iran: Examples of the Lies, Distortions, and Fabrications in Ervand Abrahamian’s The Iranian Mojahedin. N.p., 1990.
Irafani, Suroosh. Revolutionary Islam in Iran. London. 1983. Mujahidin critique of the Islamic Republic.
Mujahidin Organization. The History of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, 1965-1971. Long Beach, Calif., 1981. Contains short hagiographies of the founding members.
Mujahidin Organization. How to Study the Qoran? Long Beach, Calif., 1981. Summary of the organization’s method of exegesis. Mujahidin Organization. Massoud Rajavi. N.p., 1981. Short biography of the organization’s leader, together with its program in 1980-198i.
Mujahidin Organization. List of Names and Particulars of 14,028 Victims of the Khomeini Regime’s Executions. N.p., 1987. The organization’s book of martyrs since 1981.
Radjavi, Kazem. La revolution iranienne et les Moudjahedines. Paris, 1983. Authored by the brother of the organization’s leader, it describes the Iranian Revolution from the Mujahidin perspective. Shoaee, Rokhsareh. “The Mujahid Women of Iran: Reconciling ‘Culture’ and `Gender.’ ” Middle East Journal 41 (Autumn 1987): 519-537

MUHTASIB

Batoota — Sat, 30 Aug 2014 13:03:38 +0000

MUHTASIB. A holder of the office of al-hisbah, an executive function falling roughly between the offices of qadi (judge) and wdli al-mazdlim (mazdlim court magistrate), the muhtasib was charged with enforcing public morality, overseeing the public welfare, and supervising the markets, fulfilling thereby the community’s collective obligation to command the good and forbid evil (“al-amr bi-al-ma’ruf wa-al-nahy `an al-munkar”). The muhtasib had no jurisdiction to hear legal cases per se but only to settle common disputes and well-known breaches of the law in which the facts were obvious or where there was an admission of guilt. He was also vested with certain discretionary powers through which he could intervene in such matters as commercial fraud and public nuisances. In addition, he could levy discretionary punishments (ta`zir) up to but not equaling the prescribed shari `ah penalties (hudud) for such indiscretions as private intermingling of the sexes or abuse of pack animals.
Early manuals on al-hi sbah lay out precise (and extremely broad) jurisdictional boundaries. According to Ibn Taymiyah (d. 1328), however, the muhtasib’s actual function was determined in large part by the time and place in which he operated as well as local custom and the political agenda of the particular ruler under whom he served. What belonged to the police (shurtah) or to the courts in one place could fall under the jurisdiction of the muhtasib in another. Prominent scholars and jurists are known to have held the office, but it was also known to have been occupied by merchants and other persons of surprisingly little legal training.
Later sources reflect a gradual evolution in the muhtasib’s function from matters connected with public morality to a more restricted emphasis on policing the markets and overseeing the activities of merchants and artisans. In this capacity, in addition to his traditional duties of standardizing and inspecting weights and measures, the muhtasib was often called on to collect certain taxes, for example, import and export duties, or to impose penalties on artisans and other guild-members found in violation.
By the nineteenth century, the office of the muhtasib had all but disappeared in most parts of the Muslim world, its many functions being redistributed among various modern, secular jurisdictions. The Ottomans formally abolished the office in Istanbul in AH 1271/1854 CE, and it appears also to have disappeared in Persia around the same time. In the Indian subcontinent, the office had been in steady decline since the sixteenth century and enjoyed only a brief but futile revival under the Mughal ruler, Awrangzib. Little is known about the impact of colonial rule on the office of the muhtasib.
There remains today a few possible vestiges of the medieval office of the muhtasib in certain parts of the Islamic world. In Morocco, for example, the ra’is al-masalih al-iqtisadiyah (chief of economic welfare), appears to be a possible descendent of the nineteenthcentury muhtasib, who, because of his intrusive tendencies, had acquired the nickname, al -fuduli (busybody). The nizdm al-tilbah (system of appropriations) or halaqat al-`azabiyah (discipline corps) found among certain Ibadi communities in Algeria might also be considered a modern descendant of al-hisbah.
[See also Hisbah.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cahen, Claude, et al. “Hisba.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam, new ed., vol. 3, pp. 485-493. Leiden, 196o-.
Ibn Said, Ahmad. Kitab al-taysir ft ahkam al-tas’ir. Edited by Musa Laqbal. Algiers, n.d.
Ibn Taymiyah, Ahmad. Al-hisbah ft al-Islam. Beirut, 1387/1967.
Laqbal. Musa. Al-hisbah al-madhhabiyah ft bilad al-Maghrib al-`Arabi. Algiers, 1971.
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SHERMAN A. JACKSON