Salafis

The Salafi designation is contested in the scholarly literature as well as among some Muslims, and because of this there is considerable confusion about to whom it applies and the nature of its doctrines. A historically grounded definition maintains that Salafis adhere to a literalist theology that rejects allegorical interpretation and reason- based arguments and claim to be faithful to the teachings of the theological Hanbalis or the ahl al-יּadűth. Salafis insist that their beliefs are identical to those of the first three generations of Muslims, al-salaf al-ጃăliיּ (pious ancestors), from whom they take their name. Their attention is directed at convincing other Muslims of the superiority of Salai teachings and of the need to abandon reprehensible innovations (bida’) allegedly not rooted in Islam, such as superstitious beliefs and the intercessionary practices associated with the cult of dead saints. Sufis and Shi’is in particular are the target of Salafi polemical attacks for partaking in forms of unbelief (kufr) by not being faithful to a strict conception of God’s oneness (tawיּűd). Salaflsm’s most prominent premodern authorities are Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328), his student Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (d. 1350), and a number of reformist scholars who followed in their footsteps, such as Muhammad b. ’Abd al-Wahhab (d. 1792) and Muhammad al-Shawkani (d. 1834), among others. Because Salafis are concerned with theological purity, they engage in exclusionary practices that can attain the level of excommunication (takfűr) of fellow Muslims, and embedded in this is the potential for direct action against individuals or institutions.

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Revolutions

Revolution is a transformation of the social, political, economic, or religious structures in a society, carried out, most frequently, by re-volts of the less powerful or disenfranchised against ruling authorities. This transformation can occur in a single locale over a period of days or extend across a wide geographical region over a period of de-cades. Revolutions signal or embody a crisis of the status quo. Revolutions may involve a political crisis for existing regimes of power and authority that cannot respond effectively to challenges from ex-ternal or internal actors or coalitions of actors. Sometimes revolutions are led by intellectuals, elites, military cadres, or members of the middle class, but quite often, revolutions begin at the grassroots level through the discontent of the masses or dispossessed. Revolutions and revolutionary thinking have had a place within Islamic thought since the Prophet Muhammad first overturned the prevailing cultural, political, and religious status quo of the Arabian Peninsula by establishing new institutions of governance, law, and society in Medina in 622. The boundaries of revolution in Islam are defined, first and foremost, by Qur’anic injunctions, regardless of the ideological commitments of the various Muslim revolutionary thinkers. There is a revolutionary quality to the Qur÷an itself: beyond being the direct word of God, the Qur’an offers itself as a witness to itself, as revelation and instruction unlike any other, and as reliable guidance for the purpose of establishing a righteous social and political order under the specific theological, ethical, and human framework of belief in the one God. Muslim revolutionaries throughout history have cited various verses of Islam’s sacred text in order to justify and validate revolution as authentically Islamic and have rejected the admonitions attributed to the Prophet Muhammad regarding the fitna (trial) of rebellion against unjust rulers. According to many of these thinkers, the mission of Qur’anic revelation is to provide a revolutionary ideology, sufficient unto itself, that can transform people and free them from the shackles of unjust cultural and social practices.

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Muslim Brotherhood

The Society of the Muslim Brothers (al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun) is a political movement whose ideology is based in Islamic principles. It was one of the most significant political opposition movements in the second part of the 20th century. Founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hasan al-Banna (1906— 49), it produced offshoots elsewhere in the Middle East, such as in Palestine, Syria, Jordan, and Sudan, and influenced the ideologies of Islamist movements in Northern Africa.
In the 1940s, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood became the first mass grassroots political organization in the modern Middle East. Under the leadership of Banna, it sought recruits from the educated middle class and from the lower classes “who thereby gained a nonelitist access to politics“ in contrast to the recruitment of politicians from higher socioeconomic backgrounds through patronage and clientele networks. This style of recruitment partially explains the extraordinary growth of the movement, in combination with Banna’s focus on moral and religious education as well as on a practical vision of Islam reflected in active preaching and in the construction of schools and mosques. This vision brought to life many of the principles underlying reformist intellectual trends such as those inspired by Muhammad ’Abduh (1849— 1905) and Rashid Rida (1865— 1935). The Muslim Brotherhood has authoritarian forms of internal governance as well as administrative structures that resemble those of a political party. Banna was not in favor of parliamentary partisan life as it played out in Egypt between the two World Wars, however, and it was not until the end of the 20th century that the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and some of its offshoots located elsewhere attempted to become legal political parties.

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Human Rights

As a contemporary political issue related to Islam, human rights is often invoked as an international legal yardstick to which some states with Muslim majorities, particularly in the Middle East, are seen, particularly by Westerners, to fall short. Related to this, some Muslims and their governments argue that aspects of contemporary human rights law reflect a Western neoimperialist political slant. Tensions along these lines usually center on political liberties, religious freedom, and women’s rights. Looking mostly at real or alleged shortfalls in Middle Eastern governments’ enforcement of contemporary rights law, however, obscures both the fact that perceived violations may have little to do with Islam per se and the historical importance of Islam’s role in bringing varied issues of equality and justice to the fore of many premodern societies. Given Islam’s strong foundational and doctrinal strains of social and economic justice, religion has been and can be linked with providing greater equality or addressing severe poverty in Muslim-majority societies.
Early Muslim texts and legal scholars did not use the modern Western political term ”human rights‘ (יּuq╖q al- insăn), nor did they envision current core concepts of human rights, which generally are specific privileges that individuals enjoy in relation to nation- states in which they are citizens or residents. In classical Islam, individual rights came about as the duty of a divinely sanctioned ruler of a transnational community of Muslims, and of protected non-Muslims, to realize God’s will through justice, fairness, and enhanced economic equality.

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Economic Theory

Throughout its history, Islam has sought to regulate all aspects of life, including economics. Its holy book contains verses concerning such matters as credit, trade, resource allocation, taxation, redistribution, and inheritance. The Qur’an prohibits ribă, a pre- Islamic credit practice, which commonly led borrowers into enslavement (2:274— 80, 3:130, 4:160— 61). It prescribes an annual tax called zakat on certain forms of wealth and income in order to finance eight categories of public expenditure, including defense, the propagation of Islam, and poor relief (2:177, 2:215, 4:8, 9:60, 24:22). It entitles all surviving children of a deceased person to a share of his or her estate (4:11— 12, 176). It requires individuals to be honest and fair in commercial transactions (55:7— 9).

Intellectual Heritage

Over the ages, a wide variety of economic policies have been justified through these prescriptions and prohibitions, including ones that are mutually incompatible. Often the justifications in question have rested also on the sunna, the normative practice of the Prophet Muhammad. From the dawn of Islam to the present, the use of interest on loans has been treated as illegitimate through an expansive interpretation of the ban on ribā, understood as usury. The preindustrial guilds that regulated the activities of craftsmen were given monopolistic and monopolistic privileges out of a sense of fairness defined in Islamic terms. In certain times and places, agricultural taxes were collected according to rules prescribed by the Qur’an.

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Ba‘th Party

Hizb al- Ba’th al- ’Arabi al- Ishtiraki (Party of Arab Socialist Resurrection) is a Pan- Arab nationalist party founded in the 1940s that exerted far- reaching political and cultural in‡uence on the Arab world, particularly in Syria and Iraq. Though conceived as a secular nationalist movement, its ideology considered Islam a vital part of Arab heritage but not the basis for politics. In practice, Ba’thists have been antagonistic to members of the traditional Muslim elite as well as violent opponents of Salafism and Shi’i religious movements.

Party Origins

Upon their return to Damascus, Syria, from university studies in Europe, Michel ’Aflaq and Salah al- Din al- Bitar (1912— 80) began a discussion circle among the city’s educated young men that would form the nucleus of the Ba’th Party (1942). Both ’Aflaq, a Greek Orthodox Christian, and Bitar, a Sunni Muslim, were of solid middle- class origins and brought to the party their distrust of the elite and bourgeois nationalists of a previous generation who had failed to rid Syria of colonial rule. The party’s ranks were swelled by the addition of the followers of an embittered ’Alawi refugee intellectual from the Sanjak of Alexandretta, Zaki al-Arsuzi (1901— 68), who also brought to the party an emphasis on social justice, the cult of personality, and Arab chauvinism. The party’s social-ism and secularism held little appeal for Syria’s Sunni elite or its middle class. Nevertheless, the party proved particularly attractive to non- Sunni landowners and rural smallholders, Arab Christians, and junior officers.

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