Chapter III: THE IDEOLOGY OF RADICAL ISLAM

The Main Enemy:  Islamism
Chapter III: The Ideology of Radical Islam

How did all the recent advances of Islamism, which we summarized in Chapter II, come to pass with little notice in the space of just a few decades?

It is, of course, true that dogmatic orthodoxy and extremism, including its most violent forms, is nothing new in Islam and that Moslem history is replete with movements and individuals who have tried to impose their version of Islamic orthodoxy on fellow Moslems.

It is also a fact that since the codification of sharia law in the second and third century of Islam (eighth/ninth century AD) and the "closing of the gates of ijtihad"[1] in the eleventh century, authoritative sharia interpretation and Koranic exegesis have been dominated by the most dogmatic, literalist reading possible, turning them into an exercise in medieval obscurantism.

Yet the actual practice of Islamic societies, as shall be shown in the next chapter, has been considerably different, in that sharia law, despite being paid lip service to on a regular basis, was seldom applied to governance except as family law.

Contemporary Radical Islam, on the other hand, though seeking religious legitimization in sharia and age-old Islamic dogma, is a modern phenomenon that has more in common with totalitarian revolutionary movements than with any kind of transitory "Islamic revival" as many have argued.

Understanding its Nazi/Communist totalitarian ideological nature and its modus operandi as a highly organized revolutionary movement is essential for comprehending the nature of the threat it poses and designing a strategy to defeat it.

Sharia Law and Radical Islam
[Note:  See the Appendix:  A Short Primer on Sharia Law at the end of this chapter for definitions and main tenets]

The nucleus of the totalitarian concept motivating today’s Radical Islam does have antecedents going back to the formative years of Islam as a religion and, more specifically, to sharia law as the quintessence of militant, expansionistic, and uncompromising Islam.[2]

Since in the Islamists’ worldview, as the purported "God’s sacred law" of the Moslems, sharia has become both the guiding doctrine and the panacea for all ills, real or imagined, afflicting the Moslem ummah or community, it is important to briefly examine some of its key concepts as they relate to Islamist ideology.

Moslem scholars traditionally divide sharia law in two major parts: ibadat and mua’malat.

Ibadat deals essentially with devotional and ritualistic matters and, for the most part, poses few problems to the non-Moslem world.[3] 

Mua’malat, on the other hand, deals with "transactions," which means that it provides instructions for Moslems to follow in a wide range of areas outside the devotional sphere.  

It is here in the areas of relations with non-Moslems as well as gender issues, legal status, etc., that sharia’s reactionary character is exhibited most clearly.

For the purpose of better illustrating some of these problems, it is worth examining a few specific sharia tenets on the subjects of jihad and religion, an area crucial to the Islamist ideology.

They are all taken from the authoritative sharia compendium of the Shafii school of jurisprudence (madhhab), entitled The Reliance of The Traveler: The Classic Manual of Sacred Law (known in Arabic as Umdat al-Salik), by Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Masri (hereafter cited as Umdat al-Salik).[4]

Sharia on jihad and religion:
*Offensive, military jihad against non-Moslems is a religious and communal obligation. ^[5]
*Establishing the Moslem Caliphate is a religious obligation.[6]
*Apostasy from Islam is punished by death without trial.[7]
*Non-Moslem subjects of a Moslem state (dhimmi) are subject to discriminatory laws.[8]
*It is permissible to bribe non-Moslems to convert them to Islam.[9]
*Lying to infidels in time of war or jihad is permissible.[10]

Starting out with the injunctions dealing with jihad and religion above, for people familiar with both the Koran and sharia, which, unfortunately, most Moslems are not, it becomes immediately clear to what extent these sharia mandates diverge, often Radically, from the Koran in a more militant direction.

While the Koran postulates in numerous suras (verses) that jihad could be both a peaceful striving and a military campaign, the sharia dispenses with all the talk about non­violent pursuits and mandates offensive, violent campaign against infidels as the only religiously mandated form of jihad.

Moreover, after abrogating the Meccan suras, sharia clearly approves of the use of force against non-Moslems not only in self-defense but in order to extend the sway of Islam.[11] Infidels are left with only three choices according to sharia: converting to Islam, accepting a subjugated status (dhimma) or being killed.

Thus, the argument of many sharia apologists that Islam does not practice compulsion in religion by referring to Sura 2-227 ("there is no compulsion in religion") is disingenuous since this verse has clearly been abrogated according to most recognized sharia authorities.

It is also a basic principle of sharia that Islam and unbelief cannot coexist in the long term- though temporary truces are permitted-and sooner or later the Moslems are required by all means available to incorporate the infidels’ "abode of war" (Dar ul-Harb) into the believers’ "abode of Islam" (Dar ul-Islam).

Sharia permits the use of force and violence also against Moslems "whose conduct is deemed to be subversive of the Moslem community or detrimental to the interests of Islam."[12]

The sharia mandate to establish the Caliphate (a worldwide Islamic state) as a religious obligation of the community is an even better example of its divergence from the Koran, for the simple reason that neither the Koran nor the Sunna mention the Caliphate or the concept of a Moslem state at all.

The concept of the Caliphate was introduced into the sharia by clerics serving the Umayyad regime (680-750 AD), which needed religious sanction for its imperialistic pursuits. 

In recent times, however, Radical Islamists have seized on the idea of a Caliphate as a mobilizing factor and have made it a key, if millenarian, objective of their extremist ideology.

Utopian though it may be, the idea of an Islamic state ruled by sharia in which a synthesis of state and religion (din wa dawla) would take place has become a powerful motivating symbol of the Radical Islamist movement and must be ranked as one of the principle pillars of Islamist ideology at present.

At least in theory, it also provides political justification for the forces behind the ongoing forceful Islamization of majority-Moslem states such as Pakistan, Sudan, and the northern states in Nigeria.[13]

A similar disconnect is true of the punishment for those leaving Islam. Sharia is unequivocal that the punishment for apostasy is death without trial, while the Koran merely prescribes a hundred lashes.

Even the few examples of actual sharia mandates listed above should be enough to illuminate the extent to which practicing sharia is not only incompatible with the norms of Western civilization, but also conflicts with basic Koranic injunctions.

Undoubtedly, its violent and uncompromising nature is the main reason why contemporary Islamist extremists have elevated it to a core doctrine of their ideology and made its wholesale implementation the number one objective of the Radical Islamic movement.[14]

Ostensible faithfulness to sharia doctrine also provides Radical Islam with religious legitimacy since sharia, though seldom practiced in the real world, retains its symbolism as God’s law for most believing Moslems even when they have only a vague idea as to its actual teachings.

Furthermore, sharia has been historically viewed and promoted by the Moslem clergy (ulema) as an immutable and indivisible doctrine that cannot be subject to any question or reform and must be followed in its entirety by the devout.

Thus, the unwillingness of the believer to challenge even the most intolerant and reactionary injunctions of sharia and the Islamists that promote them, lest they be accused of apostasy, furthers the cause of Islamic extremism.

This also explains why no efforts to reform sharia have ever succeeded and why a reactionary, medieval doctrine of little relevance to today’s realities continues to enjoy support even among moderate Moslems.

Just as sharia law has been historically used by various Moslem potentates to justify their policies, Radical Islam uses sharia today as a legitimization tool for its essentially political objectives.

In fervently subscribing to sharia, today’s Radical Islamists have also secured for their ideology the wholehearted support of the ulema (clerics), whose institutional and economic interests have always been vested in their claim to be the only legitimate interpreters and defenders of sharia, resulting in a de facto alliance between the Islamists and the orthodox ulema across the Moslem world.

This is a key factor in the recent growth and popularity of Islamism that has often been misunderstood or neglected by analysts seeking to explain the rise of Radical Islam. The main reason for this analytical failure is the uncritical acceptance of Moslem claims that, unlike Christianity and Judaism, Islam does not have an established "church" institution and therefore the views of its scholars and clerics do not and cannot represent the Moslem religion as such.

Thus, while Catholic priests, for instance, are seen as representing the views of the Catholic church, Moslem imams are traditionally characterized as little more than "prayer leaders" and the opinions of individual Islamic scholars as just their own. This is highly misleading, for in reality the role of Moslem clerics (ulema), scholars (mujtahids), and imams in promoting one interpretation of Islam or another is vastly more important that that of their Christian and Jewish colleagues.

This is so because despite the flimsiest of Koranic evidence,[15] sharia law, itself largely the product of the ulema, has elevated obeying the dicta and fatwas of Islamic scholars and clerics to the level of religious obligation for the ordinary believer.

The Shafii compendium of sharia law, for example, dedicates an entire chapter to "The Validity of Following Qualified Scholarship."[16]  It argues that for the average, uninformed Moslem it is just as mandatory to follow the opinions of the cleric as it is for the mujtahid to follow the revealed injunctions of the Koran; in other words, not doing so is tantamount to apostasy.[17]

The power over the Moslem believer that this sharia injunction gives the clerics cannot be overestimated.

Yet another historical aspect of Islam that has been put in the service of contemporary Islamism is the myth of the Islamic "golden age."

Unable to find much that is worth emulating in Islamic society in the past few centuries, Radical Islamists have constructed the fiction of an ostensibly perfect Moslem society said to have existed under Mohammed and his four immediate successors, known as the "rightly guided" (rashidun) caliphs (622-61). There is little historical justification for this claim. 

While it is a fact that the Moslem empire expanded dramatically under Mohammed’s successors, neither politically nor economically did this period resemble anything like a perfect society.

Indeed, much of it was marked by internecine violence, mass apostasy from Islam, nepotism, corruption, and violent power struggles that led to the murder of three of the four rashidun. In referring back to an imaginary golden age, the Islamists follow the well-trodden path of earlier extremists who invariably blamed demonstrated failures of Moslem societies on lack of piousness rather than looking critically at the underlying causes. 

Radical Islam’s public obeisance to sharia and the myth of the golden age of the salaf al-salih (pious predecessors) forms an important part of its ideology and serves to buttress its Islamic credentials with the most dogmatic part of Moslem society and especially the ulema as the guardians of sharia orthodoxy.

Much of the rest of its ideology, however, though carefully rooted in the Islamic idiom, borrows more from twentieth-century totalitarian constructs than purely Islamic concepts.

To that effect, Radical Islam resembles a violent revolutionary movement like Nazism and Communism with messianic Islamic overtones to a far greater extent than a religious revival movement.

Nonetheless, the intellectual fathers of Radical Islam have been successful in framing it as deriving from traditional Koranic and sharia tenets, thus securing for it more than a modicum of legitimacy among the Moslem masses. 

Key Doctrinal Concepts
The intellectual fathers of Radical Islam have achieved this legitimacy by focusing on two fundamental aspects of modern Islamist ideology with deep roots in Islamic theology and exegesis-the concepts of the external and internal enemy, and the more modern totalitarian concept of the Islamic Vanguard. 

The External Enemy
The stark juxtaposition of Believers Vs. Infidels is a fundamental precept of the Moslem faith and something every Moslem intuitively understands. For the devout it is an article of faith.

This us-­versus-them concept is a metaphor for the good vs. evil and darkness vs. light construct of political Manichaeism that became the sine qua non of twentieth-century totalitarianism, as exemplified, for instance, in the Nazis’ "pure Aryan race" concept, juxtaposed to the supposedly "miscegenated Jews," "subhuman Slavs," and assorted other untermenschen, and the Communists’ mantra of the virtuous proletariat versus the bourgeois class enemy. 

Like their erstwhile totalitarian confrères, modern-day Islamists use this dichotomy to paint an elaborate image of an implacably hostile external enemy that is both the cause of Moslem backwardness and an existential threat to the very survival of Islam. That enemy is the West and its allies, especially Israel after 1948, who jointly are the imagined cause of Moslem backwardness through imperialist and colonialist policies.

Secondly, the West threatens Islamic norms because democracy and popular sovereignty leave no room for the sovereignty of God and therefore push Islam out of its rightful place at the center of man’s universe.[18]

What was new in the Islamists’ articulation of the enemy image was the vehement and total denial of any legitimacy to the West and its civilization, plus the framing of Islam’s inevitable conflict with it in apocalyptic, Manichean terms.[19]

The result was a strident demonization of the West as essentially a subhuman civilization that must be destroyed if Islam is to survive and triumph as ordained by sharia.

The concept used to dehumanize the Western enemy in Islamic terms was "new jahiliyya."

Jahiliyya, according to the Koran, is the period of pre-Islamic ignorance and paganism said to have characterized the desert Arabs before Mohammed.

It had occasionally been used in later periods by exponents of Islamic orthodoxy, such as the thirteenth-century scholar Ibn Taymiyya, to defame assorted enemies, but in general, jahiliyya was considered an unfortunate period in Arab history that had long been overcome by the advent of Islam.

It was first given a radically different meaning by Abul Ala Mawdudi in 1939, who introduced the concept of "modern jahiliyya" as a state of affairs, rather than a historical period, and as a "sweeping condemnation of modernity and its incompatibility with Islam."[20]

To Mawdudi, new jahiliyya was nothing less than a new barbarism that had taken over the West and presented a mortal danger to Islam. The concept was further explored by Mawdudi’s disciple and prominent Islamist author in his own right, Abu-l-Hasan Ali Nadvi, who in turn influenced Sayyid Qutb and other Moslem Brotherhood thinkers.[21]

It was the ideologue of the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood, Sayyid Qutb, who fully developed the concept of the West and modernity as the modern epitome of jahiliyya and made it a fundamental precept of Islamist ideology.[22]

For him, as for Mawdudi, modernity, as the key motivating force behind Western jahiliyya, was the sworn enemy of Islam because it did not allow any place for God’s haqimiyya (sovereignty) in a man-centered modern society and thus condemned Islam to oblivion if embraced by the Moslems.

The choice for the believers was stark: either jahiliyya or Islam. This led Qutb to posit that the very survival of Islam depended on fighting the West and modernity by all means available, including violent jihad, because:  "Those who have usurped the authority of God and are oppressing God’s creatures are not going to give up their power merely through preaching."[23]

Not only did Qutb urge a total confrontation with the West as a way to re-energize Islam and reassert its supremacy, but he was also the first major Islamic thinker to argue confidently that the West could be defeated, a belief that remains an article of faith for today’s Islamists.

In Qutb’s view, this was possible because Western civilization had lost its élan vital and found itself in a state of accelerating moral depravity and social decline. The ultimate victory of what some have called Qutb’s "Islamic liberation theology" was also preordained, in his view, because unlike "jahili societies" which, "in all their various forms, are backward societies," Islamic society is, "by its very nature, the only civilized society."[24]

The Islamic order and sharia law, furthermore, are not valid just for Moslems, but are part of "that universal law which governs the entire universe, including the physical and biological aspects of man."[25]

However exotic and improbable such beliefs may appear to a Western reader, there is little doubt that they continue to dominate Islamist ideology more than half a century after they were first articulated.

The Internal Enemy
Another closely related doctrinal innovation of the ideologues of Radical Islam in the twentieth century was the idea that the West’s pernicious cultural influence had already subverted Moslem society to the point of transforming it also into a state of jahiliyya..

This internal jahiliyya, argued Sayyid Qutb, was "the most dangerous jahiliyya which has ever menaced our faith" in that it attacked Islam from within the ummah. And it followed logically that the supporters and promoters of jahiliyya in majority Moslem societies, including all Moslem governments not ruling according to sharia, had become apostates and deserved to be treated accordingly.

The idea of conducting violent jihad against self-professed Moslems, of course, ran afoul of key Koranic injunctions and had been practiced on any scale in the past only by radical sectarians such as the late seventh-century Kharijites, and the followers of Mohammed bin Abd al-Wahhab (d. 1792), the founder of the violent Wahhabi creed, in the eighteenth century.[26]

Indeed, this novel interpretation stood on their head long-established Islamic norms that urged the believers to accept and obey their rulers even if they were unjust, because even unjust rule was preferable to internecine violence and anarchy (fitna) in the ummah.

This principle was particularly entrenched in Sunni political practice, which denied Moslems the right to revolt against a Moslem ruler and urged them to "obey the Caliph even if he is a black slave."[27]

It is this doctrine established through the centuries that Sayyid Qutb sought to overturn by seeking to "legitimize revolt in terms of mainstream Sunni thought."[28]

This he did by advancing the theory that the real proof of the Moslem state and whether or not a ruler is a Moslem is the imposition of sharia law in the state. If sharia is not the law of the land, than neither the state nor its rulers could be considered real Moslems, and it was therefore the duty of the believers to fight them. [29]

This "powerful argument for revolution in Sunni terms," may be Qutb’s major and lasting contribution to Islamist doctrine, in the words of the scholar Emmanuel Sivan.[30]

Qutb’s radical doctrinal innovations to traditional Islamic teaching had far-reaching impact on the emerging Islamic movement and continue to provide legitimacy to the use of violence against Moslem regimes by extremist groups.

Qutb’s thought could be said to have ushered in a radicalization that ultimately spawned openly terrorist organizations in Egypt and outside it and resulted in a number of celebrated terrorist incidents and assassinations, such as that of President Anwar Sadat in 1981, and set the stage for the Islamic terrorism phenomenon of the past two decades.[31]

The Islamic Vanguard
The concept of an Islamic vanguard, though almost certainly borrowed from the identical Leninist construct of the Communist Party as the vanguard of the revolution, is not only another key doctrinal contribution to Islamist ideology credited to Sayyid Qutb, but also one that proves beyond doubt the modern totalitarian roots of Islamism.

Lenin, as a Communist ideologue, believed that the proletariat could not be trusted to carry out the revolution by itself because it was possessed by a "false consciousness."  So Qutb, the Moslem Brotherhood ideologue, despite paying homage to the potential of the ummah to restore Islam to its rightful place, was not confident that the Moslems would rise on their own.

Both ideologues thus argued that the enemy could be defeated only if the revolution was headed by a vanguard, a small dedicated group of ideologically committed, trained and organized revolutionaries.

This vanguard was to act as the cutting edge of the Islamic revolutionary movement and lead the Moslems in the struggle against jahiliyya and toward the ultimate goal of reviving Islam. And in order to do that, argued Qutb, "it is necessary that this vanguard should know the landmarks and the milestones of the road toward this goal…"

Qutb added rather prophetically that he had written his main oeuvre, Milestones, "for this vanguard which I consider to be a waiting reality about to be materialized."[32]

The vanguard concept, though seldom elaborated at great length by the Islamists themselves, has since then become a guiding force of the Islamist movement. It would be a mistake, however, to confuse it with terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda.

While it does not at all reject violence as one of the instruments at its disposal, it is primarily involved in spreading the ideology of Radical Islam, carrying out proselytism, forming Moslem public opinion and organizing Islamist networks in both Moslem countries and the West.[33]

The leading Islamist activist and scholar Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi defines the Islamic vanguard as the first and most important task for the "revival of the Islamic movement":

"Firstly, [what is needed is] the formulation of an Islamic vanguard which is capable of leading the contemporary society of Islam without isolation or leniency, and curing the diseases of the Moslems with medicines that have been prescribed by Islam alone.[34]

Al-Qaradawi then proceeds to list seven fields of work for the Islamist cause in which this vanguard must be active, most of which deal with indoctrination, proselytism, propaganda work, and introducing Islamic standards in economics, education, and politics. Jihad is only one of these fields of pursuit.[35]

Not openly stated in the various Islamist treatises on the vanguard subject, but always implicit, is the understanding that this leading group of Islamic revolutionaries is expected to operate in a more or less conspiratorial, clandestine manner in building the networks necessary to prepare the ground for the eventual Islamist takeover.

This is a strategy that is almost never discussed in publications on the war on terror since it is not considered directly related to it. Yet, should such tactics succeed in establishing a fifth-column extremist presence in Western societies, its subversive potential is likely to be vastly greater than individual terrorist incidents.

Next week in Chapter IV, to highlight how Islamism is a modern invention, we’ll delve into history to discuss The Limited Scope of Sharia in Past Moselm Empires.

Appendix:  A Short Primer on Sharia Law

Sharia
Arabic word generally used to denote "Islamic law," but originally meaning path to water or to the source. It is mentioned only once in the Koran in its original meaning: "And now we have set you on the ‘right path,’" Sura 45:18.

Islamist Definition
Sharia is sacred Islamic law as revealed by God, the essence of the Moslem faith, and its imposition is the solution to all problems of the Moslem community (ummah). Sharia is the constitution of the Islamic state that guarantees the unity of religion and state (din wa dawla). Belief in the sacrosanct nature of sharia and the imperative to impose it in all Moslem communities is the sine qua non of the Radical Islamist ideology.

Attitudes toward sharia are seen by Islamic extremists as nothing short of a litmus test of whether one is a Moslem or not. Moslems who oppose sharia and argue for the separation of religion and state are apostates (murtad) and should be killed. A fatwa to that effect issued by the well-known fundamentalist Mohammed al-Gazali (Al-Hayat, London, June 23, 1993), for instance, reads, "There is no punishment in Islam for those Moslems who kill these apostates."

In the American context, expressions of loyalty to sharia as its guiding norm on the part of an organization is a strong indication of Islamist views, apart from representing a de facto rejection of the Constitution of the United States as the law of the land.

Reformist Definition
Sharia is a man-made, post-Koranic invention designed to serve the political purposes of Islamic rulers after Mohammed. It is neither a defined body of law nor a constitution for an Islamic state and derives mostly not from the Koran but from secondary sources such as the hadith. Indeed, it often contradicts the Koran.

For instance, while sharia mandates that Moslemswho become apostates should be killed, there is no similar injunction in the Koran.

In the words of the prominent Moslem scholar Bassam Tibi:

"There exists no homogeneous, defined and delimited legal body that we can call shari’a," and "In short, the notion of Islam as din wa dawla (unity of religion and state) and the contention that shari’a is the constitution of an Islamic state are invented traditions with little content and no real background in classical Islamic history or the authoritative sources of scripture."  (The Challenge of Fundamentalism: Political Islam and the New World Disorder, University of California Press, 2002, pp. 168-69. )

Sharia further contradicts most of fundamental tenets of Western human rights consensus, as well as the United Nations’ "Universal Declaration of Human Rights."

Major Tenets of Sharia

*A Moslem cannot be condemned to death for the murder of an infidel.

*A Moslem man can have four wives, a woman only one husband.

*A Moslem man can marry non-Moslems, Moslem women may not.

*A woman needs four male witnesses to prove rape and could be stoned to death for adultery if she fails to find them.

*A Moslem virgin cannot marry without permission of a male guardian.

*Moslems who leave Islam automatically get the death penalty. If they are not available for killing, their marriages are annulled, and they are denied inheritance

*Women inherit half of what a man does, and their testimony is worth half of that of a man in business transactions.

*Judges in an Islamic state must be Moslems. A non-Moslem judge can adjudicate only for infidels.

*Adoption is prohibited by sharia.

*A man can divorce his wife instantaneously; women must pay the husband to have the marriage dissolved, provided he agrees.

*A Moslem man is allowed to beat his wife.

---

[1]   Traditionally believed to mean the banning of human reason in the interpretation of sharia tenets.  [See Opening The Doors of Islam, TTP, December 2006.]

[2]   The history of sharia in early Islam is discussed in depth in Chapter IV.

[3]   One exception is the set of sharia injunctions governing the distribution of the Moslem charitable tithe, or zakat, which provide for its use to promote the spread of Islam (fi sabil allah) by all means, including jihad.

[4]   Amana Publications, Beltsville, Maryland, 1991. The Reliance of the Traveler is one of the few sharia compilations that is both authoritative (and certified as such by the prestigious Al-Azhar Islamic Research Academy in Cairo) and available in an excellent English translation. It should be noted that the Shafii school of sharia jurisprudence, apart from its celebrated founder Imam Shafii, has produced probably the most distinguished group of sharia jurists and hadith experts in Moslem history, including Buhari, Moslem, Ibn Kathir, Abu Dawud, Nawawi, Tirmidhi, etc. It is further worth noting that all four Sunni schools of jurisprudence are basically in agreement on most key sharia postulates and differ for the most part on relatively minor aspects that often have to do with norms established in the different geographic areas from which they originated. 

[5]   Umdat al-Salik, o9.0, pp. 59 -63.

[6]   Ibid., o25.1, pp. 638-639.

[7]   Ibid., o8.0, pp. 595-98.

[8]   Ibid., o11.0, pp. 607-609.

[9]   Ibid., h8.14, p. 270.

[10]  Ibid., r8.2, pp. 744-45.

[11]  The principle of abrogation is central for an understanding of sharia’s intolerant teachings and indeed the ideology of Islamism. A later Koranic verse abrogates (invalidates) an earlier verse or verses on the same subject. In practical terms, this means that a single verse could render invalid large passages of the Koran, despite the well-established sharia admonition against tinkering with a single word of the scripture as an act of apostasy. The best and most portentous example of this is the so called "Verse of the Sword" (Sura 9:5) which reads, "When the holy months are over, kill polytheists wherever you find them; capture them, besiege them, ambush them." The widely respected sharia exegete, Ibn Kathir (author of the authoritative multi-volume Tafsir Ibn Kathir), has noted the stark implications of this abrogation as follows: "This verse annuls any treaty between the Prophet-blessing and salvation be upon him-and any infidel, along with any contract or any accord." In practice, this means the annulment of 114 Koranic verses, spread among 54 suras, which advocate tolerance and peaceful relations with "people of the book." For a good discussion of this point see Mohammed Arkoun, Rethinking Islam, Westview Press, 1994, especially Chapter 21.

[12]  For a insightful discussion see Abdullahi Ahmed An-Naim, Toward an Islamic Reformation: Civil Liberties, Human Rights and International Law, Syracuse University Press, 1996, pp. 150-51.
 
[13]  The din wa dawla concept is analyzed in Bassam Tibi, "The Idea of an Islamic State," Chapter 8 in The Challenge of Fundamentalism, University of California Press, 2002, pp. 158-77.
 
[14]  For the disastrous practical effects of sharia imposition on human rights and political freedoms today, see Paul Marshall, Radical Islam’s Rules: The Worldwide Spread of Extreme Sharia Law.

[15]  The Koranic verse usually cited as bestowing unquestionable authority on Islamic scholars is Sura 16:43, which reads in one translation "Ask those who recall if you know not." This interpretation of the verse is highly controversial, and several other translations imply that "those who recall" does not refer to Moslem mujtahids at all, but to scholars knowledgeable in the scriptures of Jews and Christians. Here is how this verse is translated in the Saudi-published and Wahhabi-promoted Noble Koran by Muhammad Taqi-ud-Din al-Hilali and Muhammad Muhsin Khan: "And We sent not (as our Messengers) before you (O Muhammad) any but men, whom we sent Revelation, (to preach and invite mankind to believe in the oneness of Allah). So ask (you, O pagans of Makkah) of those who know the Scripture (learned men of the Taurat (Torah) and the Injeel (Gospel)), if you know not."
 
[16]  Umdat al-Salik, Book B, pp. 15-26.

[17]  Adhering to a "formal legal opinion (fatwa) from a mujtahid (scholar) is in relation to the ordinary person just as proof from the Koran and sunna is in relation to the mujtahid." Ibid., b5.1, p. 20.
 
[18]  According to Qutb’s formulation, only a society where "sovereignty belongs to God alone, expressed in its obedience to the Divine Law," qualifies as "human civilization." Sayyid Qutb, Milestones, Dar al-Ilm, Damascus, p. 94.

[19]  Earlier Islamist thinkers, such as Jamaluddin Afghani, Rashid Rida, and Mohammed Abduh had also broadly rejected the West, but they never denied its achievements and were, in fact, willing to borrow from it in order to combat Moslem backwardness.
 
[20]  Abul Ala Mawdudi, Islamic Law and Constitution, rev. ed., translated by Kurshid Ahmad, Taj Company, Delhi, 1986. For an analysis see Emmanuel Sivan, Radical Islam: Medieval Theology and Modern Politics, Yale University Press, 1985, p. 22.
 
[21]  Nadvi elaborated on modern jahiliyya in a book in Arabic entitled What Did the World Lose Due to the Decline of Islam? published in 1950. He travelled to Egypt in 1951 and met Qutb, who acknowledged his debt to Mawdudi and Nadvi in his writings. For a discussion see Sivan, pp. 22-28.

[22]  For the ideological evolution of the Moslem Brotherhood, the key Islamist organization before Qutb and the modern period, see Richard P. Mitchell’s classic study, The Society of the Moslem Brothers, Oxford University Press, 1993.

[23]  Cited in Theodore Dalrymple, "The Persistence of Ideology," City Journal, Winter 2009, Vol. 19, no. 1. Dalrymple’s essay provides a compelling examination of the uncanny similarity between Qutb’s thought and Leninism, from which he borrowed freely. The American Islamic scholar Khaled Abou El Fadl and others also believe that Qutb was influenced by the Nazi philosopher Carl Schmidt. See El Fadl’s The Great Theft, Harper Collins, New York, 2007, p.83 and footnote 65.
 
[24]  Qutb, Milestones, p. 94.

[25]  Ibid., p. 88.

[26]  Abd al-Wahhab, who along with Ibn Taymiyya emerged as the patron saint of the Islamist movement in the second half of the twentieth century, was notorious for inciting murderous campaigns against Moslems whom he did not consider sufficiently pious, which usually meant that they did not believe in his extremist teachings. Such Moslems, in his view, were apostates worse than the infidels themselves and deserved to be killed, which he encouraged on a regular basis. For most of his long career he maintained that the main enemy of Islam was the Ottoman empire, a state he considered a nation of heretics (al-dawlah al-kufriyya), which corrupted Islam from within. For a discussion see El Fadl, The Great Theft, p. 51 and Chapter 3, "The Rise of the Early Puritans," pp. 45- 94.

  [27]  Cited in Sivan, Radical Islam, p. 91.

[28]  Ibid., p. 92.

[29]  That Qutb’s theories of Moslem apostates and jahiliyya were quite extreme even for some members of the Moslem Brotherhood is testified to by the fact that the organization’s head at the time, Hasan al-Hudaybi, wrote a book denouncing them. See El Fadl, pp. 84-85.

[30]  Ibid., p. 94.

[31]  These organizations included the Gamaa Islamiya, Al Jihad, and Takfir wal Hijra, along with individuals such as Abd al Salam Faraj, the "blind sheikh" Abdul Rahman, and al-Qaeda’s second in command Ayman al-Zawahiri.
 
[32]  Qutb, Milestones, p. 12.

[33]  Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, for instance, is a well-known supporter of suicide bombing.
 
[34]  Al-Qaradawi, Priorities of the Islamic Movement in the Coming Phase, Awakening Publications, Swansea, UK, 2000, p. 31

[35]  Ibid.