Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2017 Soldiers of God: S#fism, Islamist Activism, and the Tradition of Comanding Right and Forbidding Wrong John Samuel Houston Follow this and additional works at the DigiNole: FSU's Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected] FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES “SOLDIERS OF GOD”: ṢŪFISM, ISLAMIST ACTIVISM, AND THE TRADITION OF “COMANDING RIGHT AND FORBIDDING WRONG” By SAM HOUSTON A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Religion in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2017 Copyright © 2017 Sam Houston All Rights Reserved Sam Houston defended this dissertation on March 20, 2017. The members of the supervisory committee were: John Kelsay Professor Directing Dissertation Jeffrey Ayala Milligan University Representative Helen Boyle Committee Member Sumner B. Twiss Committee Member Adam Gaiser Committee Member The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the dissertation has been approved in accordance with university requirements. ii To Shannon, who from the very beginning of this journey has been my steadfast companion iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I firmly believe that a life well lived is determined largely by those whose company you keep. As such, I have been extremely fortunate over these last six years to surround myself with a truly capable and caring contingent of mentors, colleagues, friends, and family. The Department of Religion at Florida State University has been a warm, stimulating, and supportive environment, and it has taught me that despite the challenges one may find working in academia today, intellectual community and friendship are indeed possible. I am grateful to have had such accomplished mentors along the way such as Sumner B. Twiss, one of the voices most responsible for shaping recent comparative religious ethics. My ustadh Adam Gaiser not only guided me along the path of the academic study of Islam and imparted to me the importance of the material and particular in Islamic history (a needed counter-balance to my penchant for theological and philosophical abstractions), but he also generously bought me staggering amounts of Mexican food which we shared while conversing about such topics as Ummayad era numismatics, military history, and fantasy literature. I came to Florida State primarily to work with John Kelsay, for more than any other he provided a scholarly model which I hoped to emulate. With my background in Reformed theology and pragmatist thought and my aspirations to study Muslim ethics in comparative perspective, I could think of no one better with whom to study. During my time under his guidance, he has been an exemplar for me not only as a scholar of religious ethics, but as a gentleman as well. A formative part of my education at Florida State also included my stint as editorial assistant with the Journal of Religious Ethics under the tutelage of Aline Kalbian and Martin Kavka. They taught me much about the publishing world, the landscape of the academic study of religious ethics, and the work place health benefits of laughter. Just as vital as my mentors were my fellow graduate student colleagues who provided not only intellectual friendship but comradery of all kinds. They include Kirk Essary, Tommy Carrico, Jeffrey Gottlieb, Josh Lupo, Lauren Cosgrove, Ross Moret, Syeda Beena Butool, Thomas Greene, Charlie McCrary, and Aaron Ellis. I have also benefited from the examples and guidance of those who completed their doctoral programs ahead of me and took faculty positions throughout the academy. Betsy Barre, Shannon Dunn, James Broucek, Rosemary Kellison, and Nahed Artoul Zehr all considerately shared their advice and encouragement with me along the way. And I am grateful for the financial support I received in the form of various internal fellowships, grants, and awards including the 2011–2013 Lucius Moody Bristol Graduate Fellowship, the 2015–2016 Florida State University Dissertation Grant, and the 2016–2017 Florida State University Graduate Student Research and Creativity Award. Beyond Florida State University, I want to thank those who facilitated my research and writing and exemplified for me what it means to be a part of a scholarly community. In many ways, my project’s genesis may be traced to the summer of 2013 when I studied Arabic in Rabat, Morocco on the US State Department sponsored Critical Language Scholarship. It was there that I came upon the life and work of ʿAbd al-Salām Yassine (d. 2012), a man who, in his Islamist opposition to the monarchy and embrace of Ṣūfism and non-violence, fascinated me in his nonconformity with standard accounts of Islamism. As I pursued my research further, I presented my findings in a number of conference venues such as the American Academy of Religion and iv the Society for the Study of Muslim Ethics. In these settings, I received vocal support and helpful feedback from Marcia Hermansen, Kecia Ali, Sohail Hashmi, Jamie Schillinger, Bob Tappan, and Martin Nguyen. Finally, I express my sincere and utmost gratitude to my friends and family whose support throughout this project has meant everything to me. I am especially grateful to the community of friends I made at Faith Presbyterian Church, for they grounded me and provided thoughtful and refreshing perspectives on the world beyond those of academia. My mother, Jean Huddleston, siblings, Shelby Soleimani, Ann Pogue, and J.J. Houston, and their families have all been sources of immense love and joy, and my father who recently passed away, James Houston, indelibly shaped me in ways for which I will always be in his debt. And as my dedication indicates, my wife Shannon Houston has been my constant companion and best friend for the entirety of this journey. Through it all, she expressed unwavering support, displayed bountiful patience, and proffered wise counsel. It is with her that I share all of my success and achievement. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Notes on Transliteration and Translation ...................................................................................... vii Abstract ........................................................................................................................................ viii Introduction ......................................................................................................................................1 1. Al-Ghazālī, Ethical Formation, and “Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong” in Classical Islam ...........................................................................................................................................20 2. “Monks by Night and Knights by Day”: Ḥasan al-Bannāʾ, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Rise of the Virtuous Vanguard .................................................................................................72 3. “Salafī Ṣūfism” and the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood; or Tarbīya, Virtue, and Activism in the Thought of Saʿīd Ḥawwa ........................................................................................................122 4. Ṣūfism and Islamist Activism in Morocco: ʿAbd al-Salām Yassine, Iḥsān, and the Socio- Political Dimensions of the Spiritual Journey .........................................................................151 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................181 References ....................................................................................................................................189 Biographical Sketch .....................................................................................................................201 vi NOTES ON TRANSLITERATION AND TRANSLATION In my transliteration of Arabic names and terminology, I have followed the system utilized by the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. For the sake of clarity, my transliterations do not reflect the assimilation of the definite article by sun letters. I have included the definite article only in those instances where a transliteration includes a name, phrase/sentence, or an iḍāfa structure (as in uṣūl al-dīn). In terms of the premodern dates used herein, I have written according to the Islamic (hijrī) calendar, followed by the Gregorian date (Common Era). For example, 505/1111 refers to the five hundred and fifth lunar year after the Hijra (the early Muslim community’s emigration to the city now known as Medina) and 1111 CE. Qurʾānic passages are cited numerically such that Q. 3:110 refers to chapter (or sura) 3, verse (or āya) 110. My translation of the Qurʾān typically follows that of the Sahih International version. Unless otherwise noted, all translations of Arabic are my own. vii ABSTRACT In this project, I contribute to ongoing debates regarding proper conceptions of “political Islam” or “Islamism” by bringing greater attention to the roles that Islamic mysticism, or Ṣūfism (taṣawwuf), has played in shaping theories and practices of virtue and character formation in Islamist movements. I do so by undertaking a genealogical study of the discourse concerning the practice of “commanding right and forbidding wrong” in classical Islamic thought as well as in that of modern Sunnī Islamism. Figures such as medieval scholarly giant al-Ghazālī (d. 505/111), Ḥasan al-Bannāʾ (d. 1949), founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Saʿīd Ḥawwa (d.