Islamist vs. Islamist: The Theologico- Political Questions Samuel Tadros December 2014 Research Report Islamist vs. Islamist: The Theologico-Political Questions By Samuel Tadros © 2014 Hudson Institute, Inc. All rights reserved. For more information about obtaining additional copies of this or other Hudson Institute publications, please visit Hudson’s website, www.hudson.org ABOUT HUDSON INSTITUTE Hudson Institute is an independent research organization promoting new ideas for the advancement of global security, prosperity and freedom. Founded in 1961 by strategist Herman Kahn, Hudson Institute challenges conventional thinking and helps manage strategic transitions to the future through interdisciplinary studies in defense, international relations, economics, health care, technology, culture, and law. Hudson seeks to guide public policy makers and global leaders in government and business through a vigorous program of publications, conferences, policy briefings and recommendations. Visit www.hudson.org for more information. Hudson Institute 1015 15th Street, N.W. Sixth Floor Washington, D.C. 20005 P: 202.974.2400 [email protected] Acknowledgments This project was funded by a grant from the Smith Richardson Foundation. I would like to express my gratitude to Nadia Schadlow for her continuous support for this project since it was first proposed and throughout the last two years. I could not have wished for a better place to conduct this research than the Hudson Institute. The Hudson Institute’s dedication to innovative research that challenges conventional wisdom has provided me with the working environment and intellectual freedom necessary to complete this study. This research would not have been completed without the support of the Hudson Institute’s management team: Kenneth Weinstein, John Walters, Lewis Libby, David Tell, Daniel McKivergan, Thereza Austria, Kevin Searcy, Kim Bowling, Carolyn Stewart, Rebecca Baker, and Rob Cole. I would like to thank my colleagues at the Center for Religious Freedom, Paul Marshall and Lela Gilbert, for their support and Nina Shea for her wisdom and guidance. Working at Hudson, I am fortunate to benefit from the scholarship and professional support of several scholars with deep knowledge of Islamism and national security. In countless conversations, I have learned from the thoughts and opinions of Hillel Fradkin, Eric Brown, Abram Shulsky, Lewis Libby and Hussein Haqqani. At Hudson, I have had the pleasure of working with three excellent interns: Shiyun Lu, Dominique Canape, and Danielle Thompson. They conducted research for this project in its final phase. I would like to thank Joseph Braude for introducing me to Al Mesbar Studies and Research Center and its important scholarly work in analyzing Islamism. The Center’s Executive Director Mansour Alnogaidan allowed me to take many of the center’s valuable books home, greatly aiding my research. I am grateful for his flexibility and generosity. Amr Bargisi’s deep knowledge of Egyptian Islamism has been a source of inspiration and a valuable asset in researching this project. Throughout the past two years, I have enjoyed numerous conversations with Amr that have helped me develop my arguments. During those two years, I was also fortunate to know Mokhtar Awad, who generously shared his wisdom in hundreds of conversations. I profited greatly from his insights. Both of them read the chapters as I wrote them, and provided me with valuable comments. Finally, I would like to thank Stan Crock and Peter Rough for their superb editing of the manuscript. Introduction This monograph is the second part of a two-year study on Egyptian Islamism funded by the Smith Richardson Foundation. The study is divided into two parts. The first maps the various currents, groups, and individuals that form the complex Egyptian Islamist scene. The second examines the internal dynamics of Islamism in terms of the interrelationship between its various constituent currents and their disagreements on key theological political questions. The study aims to fill two significant gaps in our knowledge of the Egyptian Islamist scene. While the study of Islamism goes back for at least several decades, it was only after the 9/11 attacks that the world’s attention fixated on the threat and challenge that Islamism posed to international security and world order. Ever since, hundreds of scholars have devoted their time and energy to analyzing the phenomenon, advancing our knowledge of its complexity. It is no surprise that Egyptian Islamism would be at the center of this scholarly pursuit, consideringthe role Egyptians play in shaping the very meaning of Islamism and leading some of its most important organizations. The focus of the attention has been, rather understandably, on two components of Islamism: Jihadis of various stripes and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and its offspring in the Muslim world. As a result, a blind spot emerged between those waging Jihad and the mass organizations contesting elections, one that remarkably involves the largest pool of Islamists: Salafis. That is not to say that Salafism is a completely unstudied phenomenon. On the contrary, a number of scholars have done serious work on historical figures such as Al Shawkani,* contemporary developments such as the Awakening in Saudi Arabia,† and works that approached Salafism in a global framework.‡ Unfortunately, while foundational in the global phenomenon, Egyptian Salafism has received little if any attention. Egyptian Salafis continued to be an enigma well after the Egyptian revolution, until the Nour Party’s performance in the parliamentary elections forced Egypt watchers to scramble to understand the unknown and now awakened giant. The surge of interest has not, however, resulted in an advancement of our knowledge of the Egyptian Islamist scenes. But the weakness of scholarship on Egyptian Salafism is not the only deficiency we encounter. More problematic is the very way in which Islamism has been approached and studied. When approaching Islamism and its leaders, especially Brotherhood leaders, researchers and journalists too often focus on a set of questions relating to their views on democracy, terrorist attacks, peace with Israel, women’s rights, and the status of religious minorities. All of these are important questions, and Islamists certainly need to be scrutinized over these issues, but these questions hardly scratch the surface of Islamism. For such litmus tests, Brotherhood-like parties over time have mastered the art of providing meaningless answers in English to satisfy Western interlocutors. To * Bernard Haykal, Revival and Reform in Islam: The Legacy of Mohamed Al Shawkani. † Stephanse Lacroix, Awakening Islam: The Politics of Religious Dissent in Contemporary Saudi Arabia. ‡ Roel Meijer, Global Salafism: Islam’s New Religious Movement. 1 understand the Islamist phenomenon better, however, we must ask questions that probe those internal issues that matter to—and divide—Islamists most. To draw a map of the Egyptian Islamist scene, we must start like any good cartographer by setting the boundaries of Islamism itself and the divisions within it. It is thus natural to begin the first part of this study by defining what Islamism is and what it is not, tracing its history in Egypt and its interrelationship with other Islamist currents outside of Egypt. A much harder challenge is to draw the borders between various Islamist currents, especially if we are seeking to go beyond the conventional division of Brotherhood, Jihadis, and Salafis and map the various sub-currents, groups, and individuals who form Egyptian Islamism, including Madkhalis, Scholarly Salafis, the three Activist Salafi currents, Revolutionary Salafis, Jihadi Salafis, the Brotherhood, Brotherhood breakaway parties, independent Islamist thinkers, and new preachers. On what basis are we to define each of these entities and draw the borders between them? A story from the first century of Islam may provide us with the clue. As narrators inform us, a question was posed to Hassan Al Basri as he sat teaching and surrounded by his students and disciples: Is the person who commits a grave sin a believer or an unbeliever? Al Basri answered that such a person was still a believer. His answer did not satisfy one of his students, Wasil Ibn ‘Ataa. Wasil’s argument was that such a man was neither a believer nor an unbeliever but instead was in a state between the two conditions. As the story goes, Wasil stood up, withdrew from the study circle, and sat at another corner of the mosque. Others followed him and formed a new circle around him. Al Basri is said to have remarked, “Wasil has separated himself from us.” Thus were born the Mu’tazila, their name coming from the Arabic word for “to separate oneself.” Nearly 1,300 years have passed since Wasil stood up and separated himself as a result of his disagreement with his teacher on a key theological-political question. The Mu’tazila have long disappeared from history, their beliefs until recently traceable only through the works of their adversaries from Ahl Al Hadith and Ash’aris. But the basic formula for the emergence of a new current or sect within Islam has remained the same and has been transferred to Islamism. Simply put, a division within an existing current of Islamism and the emergence of a new one takes place only once a theological-political question is answered differently. Without a theological-political question, there are no borders in our map. Thus, if we seek to understand Egyptian Islamism, or for that matter Islamism in general, we must begin by setting aside the usual set of questions and instead approach Islamism on its own turf, the theological-political questions on which its followers fight. But before discussing the questions chosen and why they were chosen, we must discuss why, despite sharing a commitment to the Islamist project, no convergence of views has taken place between them and why these theological-political questions have resulted in fierce disagreements and divisions among Islamists. Islamism was born out of and as a response to the crisis of modernity in the world of Islam in its twin manifestations.