This panel explores how religious scholars, past and present, deploy characters and categories from early Islamic history as they advocate for particular forms of power, authority, and communal identity in the present. The papers explore how scholars seek to persuade other scholars and popular opinion as they comment on and contend for particular forms of religio-political authority and identity.
In times of political transition and upheaval, religious and political actors frequently deploy tropes and paradigmatic figures from early Islamic history to legitimize their own reading of a contemporary conflict. The Arab Spring and subsequent Winter is merely the most recent event which seventh century actors have been asked to speak to.
Two of the papers in this panel focus on how scholars at al-Azhar and rival claimants to religious authority use events, characters, and principles from early Islamic history to support their views and delegitimize their opponents. One paper focuses on the rhetorical use of terms like khawarij and Pharaoh in the months leading up to Morsi’s removal. The other paper focuses on how Azhar scholars frame their opinions on current events with reference to competing principles within medieval Islamic political theory. The former paper concludes that this historical referencing damages political debate by placing one’s opponent outside the Islamic community. The latter paper contends that the breadth of medieval political discourse facilitates debate by allowing scholars to put forward competing claims while remaining within the realm of religious and political orthodoxy.
The other two papers address a similar process of using past events to explain contemporary conflicts, but do so by focusing on Sunni-Shi’a rather than intra-Sunni ones. One paper analyses pamphlets on Shi’ism published in 2012 by al-Azhar in which actions by the Iranian and Syrian governments are explained by seventh century events. The final paper provides a helpful counter-point illustrating that the process of presenting contemporary or personal interpretation as established orthodoxy pre-dates the modern period. The paper analyzes the changes Ibn Kathir employs in his presentation of Ali from his (usually Alid-sympathizing) source material. Ibn Kathir’s portrayal of Ali was informed by and in turn aimed to inform others about the threat posed to Syria by the Shi’i Ilkhanids.
Together the papers on this panel explore how using established figures and ideals from the early Islamic period can open up or close down, moderate or radicalize, innovate or stagnate, debates about political authority and religious identity.
Egyptian religious scholars have disagreed on the way they reacted to the military coup that toppled Egypt’s first democratically elected president on the 3rd of July, 2013. Whereas some of them – such as Shaykh Ahmad al-Tayyib, the Grand Imam of al-Azhar Mosque, and Shaykh ʿAli Jumuʿa, Egypt’s former Mufti – openly supported the coup, others – such as the Egyptian, Qatar-based Shaykh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, and Shaykh Hasan al-Shafiʿi, who was advisor to al-Tayyib himself until the time of the coup – openly condemned it. The justification that these scholars put forward for their respective positions ranged from presenting the coup as “the lesser of two evils” – in the words of al-Tayyib – to lengthy rebuttals of the claims that President Muhammad Morsi had lost his legitimacy to rule, as al-Qaradawi and al-Shafiʿi did.
Depending on public statements that these religious scholars made during and in the immediate aftermath of the coup, this paper will examine their arguments in view of the circumstances in Egypt in the few weeks prior to the coup. Its main argument is that the differing positions of these scholars do not necessarily mean that we cannot speak of one Sunni understanding of political legitimacy. However, this understanding, which had to accommodate many contradictions in the past, is both broad and flexible enough to allow even contradictory positions – which could be politically motivated – to appeal to it. In this theory, therefore, scholars are always able to make their own judgment on the basis of what they regard as the “greater evil” in each case, which judgment obviously depends on their perception of the circumstances of each case.
The paper will thus discuss how the arguments that some Egyptian scholars made reflect their perception of what was happening on the ground at the time of the coup, which perception was crucial for the weighing the evil of deposing an elected president against the evil of his remaining in power. It also discusses how they sought to justify their positions on “religious” grounds, either by citing textual sources or employing, explicitly or implicitly, some Sunni doctrines on political legitimacy. For this last point, it will discuss how medieval Sunni scholars dealt with two incidents from early Islamic history: the murder of the caliph ʿUthman, and the (anti-)caliphate of ʿAbd Allah ibn al-Zubayr.
With two major political upheavals, Islamic authorities in Egypt have become strongly polarized. When justifying their positions they are placed within a classical context, evoking verses from the Qur’an and statements of the Prophet or citing scholars such as al-Mawardi and Ibn Taymiyya. Appearing most prominently in public discourse is the use of faith-based labels. For example, the state when acting violently is deemed Pharaonic and those against it likened to the Prophet Moses. Alternatively, those who dare to challenge the authority of the state are labeled as Khawarij and cast out of the Islamic fold.
This paper analyzes the use of the Pharaoh and Khawarij labels, particularly during the events leading up to and following the removal of Muhammad Morsi from power, as well as examining its implications in the wider Egyptian political context. It engages with the important questions of: How does the use of labels correspond to or differ from the traditional religious accounts? How are these labels reflected in protestor action or government policy?
Sources will include relevant television broadcasts, Friday sermons, radio programs and newspaper articles. An effort will also be made to confirm these opinions through interviews with representatives from both state authorities such as Al Azhar and non-state figures including the Egyptian Salafi movement.
Ultimately the paper concludes that Muslim preachers in Egypt consistently define political conflicts through a faith-based lens where polices are secondary and the primary criteria for measurement of legitimacy is faith. This is done to allow preachers navigation around the tricky waters of classical texts that call for quietism and only sanction political opposition when an adversary has left the religion. This results in further polarization of the society and encourages outward religious expressions and leads to a game between the government and the opposition, the prize of which is the label of “true believer.”
The Al-Azhar monthly magazine is distributed with an accompanying thematic booklet; in 2012 three of these booklets were dedicated to drawing linkages between “crimes” committed by Shi’a in the past and in the present. This paper analyzes the use of early Islamic history in this portrayal and the apparent intended impact in light of current events.
Each booklet is a reproduction of an earlier work, edited and introduced by Dr. Muhammad ‘Amara. The booklet for August 2012 presents a 1983 work “Two Contradictory Pictures from the Sunni and the Shi’i” by Abu al-Hasan al-Nadawi, a scholar from India who died in 1999. The author considers, in relation to human improvement and global transformation, four characteristics heavenly religions and then assesses the record of the Sunni and the Shi’i on these four points. The November 2012 booklet presents a treatise on the “Shi’i Religion” by Muhibb al-Din al-Khatib who was born in Ottoman Syria and served as an Ottoman qadi in Yemen and then for Faisal in Syria before settling in Cairo where he died in 1969. Dr. ‘Amara notes in his introduction that readers may be surprised that Muhibb al-Din al-Khatib uses the term Shi’i “religion” rather than “madhhab” or “sect,” but that readers will come to understand that Shi’ism is in fact a different religion. Dr. ‘Amara concludes his introductory remarks by linking together how the Shi’i allied with the Crusaders against Saladin and with Hulegu against the Abbasids and finally with the American imperialists, Christian and Jewish Zionists in the destruction of Iraq in 2003. In the December 2012 booklet Dr. ‘Amara presents a history of al-Azhar’s relations with the Shi’a from the age of the Fatimids to the present followed by an anthology of statements by seven Azhar scholars on the Shi’a.
This paper analyzes the content and tone of these booklets in the light of the intensifying civil war in Syria throughout 2012. Special attention is given to the presentation of early Islamic history and Shi’i beliefs and practices. What characters, events, and views are highlighted and which ignored? How one-eyed is the portrayal? Is the division between Sunni and Shi’a presented as primarily doctrinal, historical, cultural, or political? Based on the above, what response do the booklets seem designed to illicit in their readers.
The act of (re)writing Islamic history to justify political action did not begin (nor shall it end) with the Arab Spring of 2011-14. The paradigmatic events of early Islamic history have long functioned as an intellectual battleground, as the early Islamic narrative is creatively framed, re-ordered, elaborated, and elided, all in the service of political ideology. This process is overt in Ibn Kathīr’s (ca. 1300-1373) annalistic history Kitāb al-Bidāya wa-l-Nihāya. Ibn Kathīr’s fervent Sunnism and local Syrian pride (not to mention his Syrian patronage) led him not only to “innovate” the early Islamic narrative in a manner that was more sympathetic to his Sunni worldview and to place the Syrian contribution to Islamic history (especially the Umayyad dynasty) in a rehabilitated light, but also to confront some of the proverbial “sacred cows” of Shīʿism—in particular the character of ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib. The iniquitous usurpation of ʿAlī’s right to succeed the Prophet Muḥammad as the leader of the umma being the central complaint of Shīʿite claimants, Ibn Kathīr finds in his presentation of ʿAlī a useful weapon for the intellectual battle of the early Islamic narrative, and a counterpoint to the pro-Shīʿite or ʿAlid-sympathizing representations of ʿAlī’s life and character. By exploring the changes (both in terms of content and in terms of literary style) Ibn Kathīr employs in his presentation of ʿAlī from his (usually ʿAlid-sympathizing) source material, this paper will highlight how the reframing of the paradigmatic early Islamic narrative reflected the evolving notions of political and religious legitimacy of Ibn Kathīr’s time.
