organizations – Hybrid Learning

JIHAD ORGANIZATIONS

Batoota — Sat, 12 Jul 2014 15:39:22 +0000

JIHAD ORGANIZATIONS. The number of jihad organizations has been increasing in the Arab world, and indeed in much of the Islamic world. This fact does not say as much about Islam, as is often assumed in the West, as it says about desperate attempts to exploit Islam politically. The word jihad is often translated in the Western press as “holy war,” although the original Islamic concept, on the basis of a well-known hadith, does not have an exclusive military connotation. Jihad is Arabic simply means “struggle,” and it came to denote in Islamic history and classical jurisprudence the struggle on behalf of the cause of Islam. In classical and modern times, Islamic governments, or more accurately governments that base their legitimacy on Islamic rationalization, have used the word to describe all combat efforts of their armies.
In the turbulent politics of the Arab world, the radical opposition groups are now fighting their own governments with the same weapons that have been used against them. Just as Arab governments have exploited Islam for purely political purposes, radical opposition groups that espouse Islam as an ideology now use the term to attribute their violent deeds to Islamic requirements. While many groups in the Middle East have used the phrase “Islamic Jihad” as the name for their organizations, it is important to note that those organizations are not necessarily in coordination with one another. There is very little, if any, coordination between those groups, and each should be analyzed within the context of the particular country in which it exists. There is no central jihad structure that conspiratorially creates and manipulates those groups in question.
Lebanon. The Lebanese-based Organization of the Islamic Jihad is probably the most notorious jihad group in the world, because it has claimed responsibility for the bombing of American interests in Lebanon (such as the embassy and the marines’ barracks). Islamic Jihad also claimed responsibility for kidnapping Western hostages in Lebanon. Nevertheless, there is no such organization in Lebanon. The name was used by Hizbullah (the Party of God) in Lebanon to maintain a degree of deniability for fear of retaliation by Western military forces. The Party of God also used other names, including the Organization of the Oppressed on Earth and the Revolutionary Justice Organization, in the course of their anti-Western and anti-Israel attacks. Some press reports linked Islamic Jihad to the security branch of the Party of God and to `Imad Mughniyah and `Abd alHadi Hammadi personally. But it is impossible to ascertain the truth of such reports in the absence of verifiable documentation, and party members and leaders have been consistently secretive about Islamic Jihad. [See Organization of the Islamic Jihad; Hizbullah, article on Hizbullah in Lebanon.]
Palestine. As in other Muslim nations, there is more than one organization using the word jihad in its name among Palestinians. The first Palestinian organization to use the word jihdd was the Usrat al-Jihad (Family of Jihad), which was founded in 1948 by `Abd Allah `Izz Darwish. The second organization is the Detachment of the Islamic Jihad, which claimed responsibility for the killing of Israeli soldiers in October 1986. This organization was believed to be tied to the faction within Fatah that was under the control of the late Palestine Liberation Organization leader Abu Jihad. The basis of support for this organization was in the West Bank.
The main jihad organization among the Palestinians is the Islamic Jihad Movement, the existence of which was revealed to the public in 1987. It emerged in Gaza and engaged in violent attacks in the course of the Palestinian uprising. Unlike jihad organizations in Egypt, the Islamic Jihad Movement seems to be less fixated on issues of theology and more insistent on the need for the eviction of Israeli occupation from Arab lands. It believes in the efficacy of armed struggle and has shown no reluctance to use violence against its enemies.
The Islamic Jihad Movement cannot be understood in a vacuum; it should be seen within the context of the contemporary transformation of the various cells of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1960s and especially following the humiliating Arab defeat in 1967. The writings of the Syrian Islamic fundamentalist thinker Said Hawwa served as the ideological inspiration of the movement. Leaders of the movement claim that it had emerged from the milieu of Palestinian Islamic fundamentalist activists of the 1970s. Most of the members who initiated contacts with one another regarding the need for a new Islamic Palestinian party were formerly active members of the establishment Muslim Brotherhood. The Islamic Jihad Movement represents an offshoot of the mainstream Islamic fundamentalist movement by dissatisfied members who resented the political and military passivity of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Islamic Jihad Movement refuses to consider its birth as an original act; rather, it is perceived as a continuation of a long line of Palestinian activists and martyrs who combined their anti-Zionist stances with a political ideology based on their interpretations of Islam. The name of `Izz al-Din al-Qassam (the Syrian Islamic activist who died fighting for the Palestinians in 1935) is frequently invoked in this regard. The spiritual leader of the movement, `Abd al-`Aziz `Awdah, often expresses his firm belief in the efficacy of military combat against Israel. For the movement, the struggle against Israel does not revolve around the question of the rightful ownership of the land, but over the religiopolitical duty of Muslims to fend off religious enemies. Like other Islamic fundamentalist groups, the movement underlines the religious significance of Palestine from the standpoint of Islamic history.
The political thought of the movement also carries some nationalistic elements. It is hard for any Palestinian movement to go very far in political mobilization without reflecting the nationalistic sentiments of the Palestinian people. Thus, for `Awdah, it is not the Palestinian cause that is in the service of Islam, but Islam is to be used in the service of the Palestinian cause. In other words, the Palestinian movement is understood and analyzed from both secular and religious points of view. On the question of the two-state solution, the movement rejects any compromise of the goal of liberating all of Palestinian lands.
It is a mistake to treat the Jihad movement as an organization with an original ideology. In fact, its political thought and practice is indistinguishable from other militant Islamic fundamentalist groups in the Middle East. Moreover, the Palestinian Jihad organization comprises within its ranks some former members from the Fatah movement. And it reflects the mood of disillusionment that prevailed among the Palestinians in the late 1970s. The Islamic fundamentalist groups among the Palestinians promote themselves as the credible alternatives to the secularist and nationalist agendas that are considered bankrupt by most Palestinians.
In recent times, the Islamic Jihad Movement failed to become the major political force that the Hamas organization has became. It also suffers from a reputation of blind allegiance to the Iranian regime. Information about the nature of financial, military, and political ties between the Palestinian Jihad movement and the Iranian regime are not easily verifiable.
Egypt. Much confusion surrounds the study of Jihad organizations in Egypt because there have been several groups using the name in their activities. Islamic fundamentalists from the ranks of the Muslim Brotherhood have been using the label of Jihad since 1958. Originally, the notion of Jihad simply referred to the attempt by some groups to use Islam to rationalize their violent activities. The organizational development of Jihad groups is the product of more recent times. The Jihad organization in Egypt can be traced back to 1979 when the engineer Muhammad `Abd al-Salim Faraj founded the Islamic Jihad Community. There were groups at the time that characterized their activities as Jihad activities but they did not choose the name Jihad for their organizations. Faraj’s organization came about as a result of the merger of three militant Islamic fundamentalist groups: Faraj’s group; Karam Zuhdi’s group; and the Jordanian Salim al-Rahhal’s group. The unity of the three groups was firmly established in 1981 when the leadership was centralized in a joint shura (council) headed by the prince (amir) of the organization, Faraj himself.
The council was divided into three committees: one dealt with propaganda and jurisprudent inculcation, the second dealt with economic and fund-raising issues, and the third dealt with preparation and military affairs. The political platform of the organization was presented in the booklet Al -faridah al-gha’ibah (The Missing Obligation), which was written by Faraj and which inspired, according to court records, the assassins of Sadat in 1981. The religiopolitical thought of Faraj was not original; he merely repeated the claims by Sayyid Qutb and others that certain Muslims (including rulers who use Islam for political legitimacy) could be declared kafirun (infidel). The practice of takfir (declaring the unbelief of other Muslims) is, of course, not new. It was practiced by the Khawarij in the first century of Islam. What is distinctive about Faraj is his ability to produce an accessible pamphlet that could articulate the opposition of Islamic fundamentalists to the rule of Sadat on religious grounds. The inspiration for Faraj, and for other contemporary fundamentalists, was found in the writings of Ibn Taymiyah, who in the fourteenth century urged and led the Muslim resistance to the Mongol invasion of Damascus despite the Islamic faith of the invaders. The ability of a Muslim to question the authenticity of the Islamic profession of another Muslim is the strongest political weapon in the hands of contemporary fundamentalists, because it belittles the Islamic claims of modern Islamic governments.
Faraj and other members of militant Islamic fundamentalist groups in Egypt believed that Muslims should not live under any laws except those that are derived from the Qur’an. The divine source of rulership constitutes a major element in the thought of modern Islamic fundamentalist groups. But the groups refuse any application of Islamic laws if it does not conform to their specific interpretations of shari’ah (the divine law). The goal of the establishment of an Islamic republic founded on the principles of shad `ah, and only on the principles of shari’ah, becomes a religious obligation that all Muslims are required to work for. No means are to be excluded in the struggle for the new Islamic order and for “restoration of the caliphate,” and violence occupies a central part of the strategy of the Jihad organization, as is illustrated in the booklet by Faraj. The rulers of Egypt cannot be removed without the employment of violent means (jihad in the lexicon of Faraj), because they are supported by the enemies of Islam. The Islamic credentials of the government in Egypt and of the establishment religious institutions (like al-Azhar) are totally discredited, because their interpretations are seen in the thinking of the Jihad group as tantamount to unbelief.
The Jihad group never enjoyed an ideological or organizational coherence; it always served as a vehicle for a loose association of individuals and factions. Shaykh Omar Abdel Rahman (`Umar `Abd al-Rahman), for example, who now serves as the leader of the Islamic Community (al-Jama’ah al-`Islamiyah), was identified with one of the factions of the group. He is also responsible for the promotion of the notion of “restoration of the caliphate” in the literature of the group, especially in the mouthpiece of the group Kalimat Hagg, which was circulated on college campuses.
The confusion over the exact role of the Jihad group in Egypt arose from the splits that afflicted the group in the mid-1980s. There are still reports in the Arabic and Western press that claim that Abdel Rahman, for example, is the leader of the Jihad organization. In reality, the brief unity between the various factions that formed the Jihad organization did not last very long. The various leaders and members of the group engaged in lively and arduous debates and deliberations in jail after their arrest in the wake of the assassination of President Anwar el-Sadat in 1981. In the course of the debates, it became clear the Abdel Rahman saw himself as the overall leader of the Jihad group, and he was attracting followers from among the political prisoners. Others, headed by `Abbud al-Zumar, strongly disagreed with Abdel Rahman and objected to the imamate (leadership of the Islamic community here) of the blind man. Zumar and his followers argued that Abdel Rahman could play a leading role in the group but could not assume the ultimate leadership position. Sometime in 1984 (in jail) the two groups parted ways, and each developed an independent organizational existence. Zumar became the overall head of the Jihad organization, which now was different from the old one because of the defection of other factions, while Abdel Rahman became the head of what is known as al-Jama`ah al-`Islamiyah (The Islamic Community). [See Jama`at al-Islamiyah, al-; and the biography of Abdel Rahman.]
Much of the violent activities in Egypt in the past several years are often mistakenly attributed to the Jihad organization, while in reality the Islamic Community is responsible for most of the acts. The Islamic Community continues to have a number of leaders and followers active m the countryside, while the leadership the membership of the Jihad remains in jail serving long sentences. Zumar, who is serving a forty-year sentence for his involvement in the assassination of Sadat, continues to exercise leadership responsibilities from behind bars, and he sometimes succeeds in smuggling interviews and speeches to the outside world. He strictly rejects the principle of party politics and is very suspicious of coordination with other parties and groups.
In 1993, it was revealed that the organization TaldT al-Fath (Vanguards of Conquest) was now part of the Jihad organization; at that time efforts were underway to rejuvenate the Jihad organization by inviting a variety of small militant Islamic fundamentalist groups to join the Zumar-led Jihad group. It appeared that Ayman alZawahiri, who resides in Pakistan and is the deputy commander of the Jihad organization, was concentrating on the need for expanding the power base of his organization.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ahmad, Rifat Sayyid. Al-harakat al-Islamiyah ft Misr wa-Iran (The Islamic Movements in Egypt and Iran). Cairo, 1989.
Ahmad, Rifat Sayyid. Tanzimat al-ghadab al-Isldmi (Organizations of Islamic Anger). Cairo, 1989.
Esposito, John L. Islam and Politics. Rev. ed., Syracuse, 1991.
Mustafa, Halah. “Al-jihad al-Islami fi al-ard al-muhtallah” (The Islamic Jihad in the Occupied Territories). Qadaya Fikriyah (April 1988).
Mustafa, Halah. “Al-tayyar al-Islami fi al-ard al-muhtallah” (The Islamic Current in the Occupied Territories). AI-mustaqbal al-`Arabi 11.113 (July 1988).
Sarah, Fayiz. “Al-harakah al-Islamiyah fi Filastin: Wahdat alidiyulujiyah wa-inqisamat al-siyasah” (The Islamic Movement in Palestine: The Unity of Ideology and the Divisions of Politics). Almustaqbal al-`Arabi 12.124 (June 1989).
Sivan, Emanuel. Radical Islam. New Haven, 1990.
Wardani, Salah al-. Al-harakah al-Islamiyah ft Misr. Waqi` alThamaninat (The Islamic Movement in Egypt: The Reality of the 1980s). Cairo, 1990.
Wright, Robin. Sacred Rage: The Wrath of Militant Islam. New York, 1985.
AS`AD ABUKHALIL

INTERNATIONAL ISLAMIC FEDERATION OF STUDENT ORGANIZATIONS

Batoota — Mon, 12 May 2014 10:23:22 +0000

INTERNATIONAL ISLAMIC FEDERATION OF STUDENT ORGANIZATIONS. A worldwide organization of Muslim student associations, the International Islamic Federation of Student Organizations (IIFSO) received its initial impetus from the experience of Muslim students in North America. In 1963, the Muslim Students Association of the United States and Canada (MSA) was established on the campus of the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. This was a new experiment in the history of Islamic student organizations, in the sense that the student constituency in the United States came from all parts of the Muslim and non-Muslim worlds. The Association provided a sense of identity to the foreign Muslim students and also gave them an opportunity to learn about Islam in a modern context. The free access to Islamic literature and to books and journalistic misrepresentations of Islam helped them to discover for themselves what the Islamic revival meant to Muslims and to those who insisted on misrepresenting it.

The American Islamic experience also created a greater global consciousness in these foreign Muslim students and provided the MSA with global links through its members and alumni. This experience was enriched further when the MSA began to attract Americans who embraced Islam. Representatives of the MSA participated in the conferences and conventions of other Muslim student organizations in different countries. In the course of these meetings, Muslim students who were becoming increasingly aware of the need to restructure Islamic thought and identity moved toward a common goal: the creation of an umbrella organization that could help in the organized promotion of concepts such as the unity of Islamic thought, the universality of the Islamic movement, and the consolidation of a mature Muslim leadership.
The plan to establish a world federation of Muslim student organizations, finally realized with the establishment of the IIFSO, was adopted at a convention held at Ibadan University, Nigeria, in July 1966; it was an allAfrican affair with representatives from Sudan, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Gambia, Ghana, and Guinea. A preparatory committee was formed to mobilize ideas and resources for an international conference to be held in Sudan in December 1968.
Participation in the Sudan conference was more international; delegates of Muslim student organizations from Europe, North America, and Africa attended. The conference concluded with the adoption of an interim constitution. Three months later, in February 1969, a larger meeting was held in Mecca, during the hajj, at which delegates resolved to: reconsider the IIFSO constitution and make any appropriate amendments; make arrangements for convening the IIFSO General Constituent Assembly; and establish widespread contacts in order to introduce the IIFSO, its mission, and purpose, secure affiliation from a maximum number of student organizations, and ensure material support for the Constituent Assembly. The draft constitution was circulated among eminent Muslim thinkers who endorsed the idea and offered both support and useful suggestions.
The first inaugural conference of the IIFSO was held on 13-14 June 1969, at the Bilal Mosque in Aachen, Germany. Since then, the organization has held international conferences in several countries. Each conference has had a profound effect on the local Islamic community. A second conference was held in Aachen in 1971; the third and fourth took place in Istanbul; the fifth in Kuala Lumpur; the sixth in Khartoum; and the seventh again in Malaysia in 1988. Regional conferences have been held in South and Southeast Asia, the Caribbean region and the Pacific region, North and South America, Europe, and Africa.
The roots of the IIFSO run deep in the experience of those members who were students in the West. Most of the secretaries general have been either past presidents or active members of the MSA. Their vision of an Islamic movement that integrates the best of the Muslim world and the West has helped impart a definite character to the IIFSO.
Approaches. The IIFSO’s method is intellectual as well as practical. Combining scholarship with pragmatism, it has provided direction to various student movements and steered them toward constructive work aimed at rejuvenating Muslim thought. An important aspect of the IIFSO’s work is the provision of continuing education to its membership; thus, it sponsors and supports training camps throughout the world. In order to provide a clear direction to this activity, Dr. Hisham Altalib, a former secretary general, has published a comprehensive Training Guide for Islamic Workers. The IIFSO has also played a major role in encouraging women to take an active role in the Islamic movement. It sent women delegates to the International Women’s Conference at Nairobi, Kenya, in 1985, and its delegates played an active role in the founding of Muslim women’s organizations in Pakistan.
In the Caribbean region, the IIFSO is a significant factor in the development of private enterprise through its program of providing loans and expertise to small businessmen. It has also organized Islamic work among Spanish-speaking people in North and South America. The details of such work were refined in two international conferences held by the IIFSO in Mexico (1987) and Columbia (1988). Finally, the IIFSO has been active in providing relief and reconstruction help in places struck by natural calamities.
The IIFSO’s desire to create an independent financial base for itself has led to a new direction in Islamic publishing. Heretofore, most Islamic literature has been available only in its original language or in translation into the major traditional Muslim languages (Arabic, Farsi, Urdu). The IIFSO has made Islamic literature available in more than eighty languages. To date, it has published more than five hundred titles with ten million copies. The sale of these books has become a vital source of financing for the IIFSO’s various activities. This experience has been duplicated by several other Islamic organizations within their own jurisdictions. Several Islamic organizations, including the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), have relied heavily on IIFSO publications in building the libraries of Muslim youth organizations in different linguistic communities around the world.
This publishing venture has helped the IIFSO stay clear of fundraising activities and, at the same time, has given native speakers of many languages access to the works of several important Islamic thinkers. It is noteworthy that the IIFSO was among the pioneers that undertook translation of Islamic books, many written in English in the United States, into languages of the former Soviet Union and into Cyrillic script.
Relations with International Islamic Organizations. The IIFSO maintains close ties with other international Islamic umbrella organizations. Its secretary general is an ex-officio member of the board of trustees of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, a connection that provides a basis for mutual involvement and cooperation. Similarly, the IIFSO has close relations with the Muslim World League.
It was out of the IIFSO’s experience of success that the WAMY was born. The WAMY was founded in 1972 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, at an international meeting of Islamic workers involved in youth activities and representatives of youth organizations. It was established to help youth organizations around the world implement their planned projects. It has been holding its international meetings about every three years and publishes a newsletter in Arabic and English, Al-mustagbill The Future. The headquarters of the WAMY is located in Riyadh and its regional offices are located in Jeddah (Saudi Arabia), Malaysia, Spain, Nigeria, and Kenya.
In keeping with its international outlook, the IIFSO has sought to maintain active communication not only with its various components and other Islamic organizations but also with international organizations. It has nongovernmental operation status with the United Nations. It participated in the World Youth Conference in Spain in 1985, in the Conference on Muslims for World Peace in 1987 in Baku, Azerbaijan, and in the International Conference on Youth Services in Chicago, sponsored by the United Nations in 1985. It took part in the U.N.’s Fifth Session of the High Level Committee on the Review of Technical Cooperation Among Developing Countries held in New York in May 1987, and an IIFSO representative attended the International Conference Against Drug Abuse in Vienna in 1987.
The IIFSO has participated in various national and international book fairs held in Cairo, Khartoum, Brussels, Washington, D.C., and several other American cities, Singapore, New Delhi, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Qatar, and Germany.
The IIFSO is active in promoting human rights throughout the world. It has lent its active support to human rights organizations focusing on problems in South Asia, North Africa, Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union. It took an early lead in the Peoples’ Republic of China as soon as an opening for religious work seemed to appear. For several years, the IIFSO published Al-akhbdr (The News) in Arabic and sometimes in English. A direct source of news about the Muslim world, it was an important source of information about the violation of the human rights of Muslim minorities.
[See also Youth Movements.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Altalib, Hisham. Training Guide for Islamic Workers. Herndon, Va., 1991.
The First 20 Years of IIFSO. Salumyah, Kuwait, 1989. Toward a Global Islamic Brotherhood. Herndon, Va., 1987.
SAYYID MUHAMMAD SYEED