The Political Theology of ISIS: Beyond the Binary of Politics and Religion
RoundTable 096, 2016 Annual Meeting
On Friday, November 18 at 5:45 pm
RoundTable Description
The analysis of ISIS in Western media and academia has adopted a dichotomous approach. It looks at ISIS as either about geopolitics or about Islam; it considers ISIS as either the epitome of Islam or as not a representative of 'true' Islam. This polarization has not allowed for a more nuanced and in-depth analysis of ISIS and has ignored two realities. One is that the ISIS project is a mesh of both politics and religion; this acknowledgment is a prerequisite for any critical evaluation of this subject matter. The other is that the definition of what Islam is or is not remains illusive and cannot be adopted as a starting point, let alone a criterion for critical analysis.
This roundtable session goes beyond these problematic binaries and looks at ISIS as a project embodying both politics and religion simultaneously, a project built on a 'political theology'. In so doing, it seeks to anchor ISIS' ideology into a wider historical context that provides ISIS with an intellectual genealogy within Islamic history and religious thought, in which politics and religion come intertwined, in both theory and practice. It is true that ISIS emerged out of a political vacuum in Iraq and Syria, but not out of an intellectual one. ISIS' religious ideology belongs to a strain of thought that has been thought and rethought, disappearing or resurfacing under specific circumstances. It is an ideology with certain continuity and consistency.
The discussants will analyze these two elements in ISIS ideology. Reading the material published by ISIS, they will assess and analyze it in relationship to previous literature with similar content, arguments and goals. Similarly, they will analyze the process through which ISIS resorts to historical precedents and religious heritage to build its project, justify its acts and appeal to a broader public.
This presentation will offer some analysis of the political theology of ISIS, their political and religious project. ISIS constructs narratives that provide a systematic theological account of their political experience. And their political theology is not a mere assemblage of ideas and deliberations, but these ideas inform and structure actual interventions in the real world. The presentation will try to understand the arguments made by ISIS as they relate to the traditions they invoke, from within the tradition, and also assess the way ISIS positions itself within the Islamic tradition in relation to other external factors that it may or may not explicitly recognize.
Prof. Suleiman A. Mourad
My contribution will focus on how the ideology of ISIS represents a continuity with particular religious trends that started in the medieval Islamic world, and how the organization uses a selective reading of the past (religious thought, history and personalities) in order to appeal to its members, broader network of support, and potential recruits. In this way, ISIS is in a war with other Muslims over the definition/nature of Islam. I will focus particularly on ISIS’s journal Dabiq, especially the feature-stories that display the religious/historical foundations of ISIS (e.g., peculiar glorification of the early caliphate, exploitation of the legacy of the Crusades and of the Sunni-Shiʿi schism, specific reading of the Qurʾan and Hadith, and selective employment of medieval and modern religious thinkers and personalities).
Dr. Amal Ghazal
My presentation will focus on the topic of slavery and its re-institution by ISIS as a legitimate practice sanctioned by the Quran and the Sunna. I will compare the arguments put forward by ISIS to those of the anti-abolitionist movement in the Arabic-speaking world in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Both groups, I argue, believe that the abolition of slavery contravenes divine commandments and Prophetic practices. They understand it as part of a broader theology that defines divine-human and human-human relationships, and establishes religiously-sanctioned responsibilities and duties without which, according to the opponents of abolition, many elements of Islamic law cannot be upheld. They also understand slavery as part of a socio-political order that gives Muslims advantages over their enemies. Thus, re-instating slavery, in the eyes of ISIS, is a religious duty but also a weapon in the ongoing fight against Western domination.
Sohaira Siddiqui
My presentation will provide a brief overview of the legal theory of ISIS as constructed through a close reading of their publications and recently obtained fatwas from their Shari'a courts. It will also delve deeper into the characterization of ISIS's legal theory as literal, which usually carries with it a pejorative connotation. The problem being that classical legal thinkers also constructed a legal theory which privileged the literal interpretation of a text over and above any metaphorical interpretation. Thus, this presentation will also aim to answer whether literalism is a useful lens through which to view ISIS's legal theory, and how does ISIS's legal theory both converge and diverge with that of classical jurists.
