Resistance

Alastair Crooke

Description

This book traces the essence of the Islamist Revolution from its origins in Egypt, through Najaf, Lebanon, Iran and the Iranian Revolution to today. Alastair Crooke presents a compelling account of the ideas and energy which are mobilising the Islamic world.



Crooke argues that the West faces a mass mobilisation against the US-led Western project. The roots of this conflict are described in terms of religious themes that extend back over 500 years. They represent clashing systems of thinking and values. Islamists have a vision for the future of their own societies which would entail radical change from Western norms. Resistance is presented as the means to force Western behaviour to change and to expose the essential differences between the two modes of thinking.



This is a rigourous account that traces the threads of revolution of various movements, including the influence of 'political Shi'ism' and the Iranian Revolution and its impact on Hezbollah and Hamas.
Foreword

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part I - Existential Threats

1. In the Service of God and the Interests of the People

Part II - Ideology of Revolution

2. The Awakening of Resistance

3. Political Shi'ism

4. Social Revolution

5. God is a Liberal

Part III - Practising Resistance

6. A Culture of Willpower and Reason

7. Refusing Subservience

Part IV - Demonisation

8. Resistance and the normalisation of Injustice

9. The Nature of Power

Conclusion

10. The Limits to the Present

Epilogue

Notes

Index

Sujets

• Social History
• HISTORY
• Philosophie et théologie
• History of ideas
• Religion
• Islam

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 février 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781849644266
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Resistance The Essence of the Islamist Revolution

ALASTAIR CROOKE

PLUTO PRESS www.plutobooks.com

First published 2009 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010

www.plutobooks.com

Distributed in the United States of America exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010

Copyright © Alastair Crooke 2009

‘Waiting for the Barbarians’ from COLLECTED POEMS by C.P. Cavafy, translated by Edmund Keeley and Phillip Sherrard, published by Chatto & Windus. Reprinted by permission of the Random House Group Ltd; and the Estate of C.P. Cavafy, c/o Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd, 20 Powis Mews, London W11 1JN.

The right of Alastair Crooke to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN ISBN

978 0 7453 2886 7 978 0 7453 2885 0

Hardback Paperback

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin. The paper may contain up to 70 per cent post consumer waste.

10

9

8

7

6

5

4

3

2

1

Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Publishing Services Ltd, Sidmouth, England Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England Printed and bound in the European Union by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

CO

N

T

E

N

T

S

Acknowledgements Political Movements Prominent Figures

Introduction

PART I

 1 In the Service of God and the Interests of the People

PART II

 2  3  4  5

The Awakening of Resistance Political Shi’ism Social Revolution God is a Liberal

PART III

 6 A Culture of Willpower and Reason  7 Refusing Subservience

PART IV

 8 Resistance and the Normalisation of Injustice  9 The Nature of Power 10 The Limits to the Present

Epilogue

Notes Index

vi vii xii

1

3

9

65 86 110 138

165 192

219 239 266

283

285 297

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

To Usama from whom I have learned so much.

And with thanks also to Nawaf and Chafiq; and particularly to those particular people, Aisling and others, without whose contributions and practical support, tolerance and encouragement it would never have seen the light of day: they know who they are, and have been thanked more personally. I thank also Pluto for being sufficiently intrepid to have a go.

vi

POLITICAL MOVEMENTS

Deobandiis a conservative Sunni Wahhabisttype movement named after the town, Deoband, in India where a seminary Darul Uloom was founded in 1866. Its ideology was influenced by Wahhabism – as brought to India. It is now the second largest centre of learning in the Muslim world after alAzhar University in Cairo. In 1857, Muslims had joined Hindus in the Sepoy mutiny against Britain. The British responded by deposing the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar – ending 400 years of Muslim rule on the Indian subcontinent. In its place the British established direct rule of India. They also shut down Muslimschools. Deobandism arose as an anticolonialist movement opposed to the British colonial rule in India. It became politically active in opposing the abolition of the Caliphate in 1924, and in the era of President Zia ulHaq of Pakistan, became politically influential in Pakistan. It has been a longstanding ideological supporter of the Taliban, who follow a simplistic version of Deobandi thinking, tempered by tribal custom.

DFLPor the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine was formed in 1969 as a breakaway fraction of the PFLP led by Newef Hawatmeh, who has been described as leader of the Maoist faction of the PFLP. Its original programme was based on the view that Palestinian national goals could only be achieved through revolution by the masses. It is now a very small movement.

FATEH,literally ‘opening’, stands as a reverse acronym for ‘Palestinian National Liberation Movement’. Fateh was founded in 1954 by members of the Palestinian diaspora – principally refugees from Palestine who were professionals working in the Gulf states. Among its founders was Yasir Arafat. It is one of the two principal Palestinian movements. It is a broad tent nationalist

vii

viii POLITICAL MOVEMENTS

movement that has dominated the PLO with a policy, since the 1990s, of seeking to negotiate a settlement with Israel.

HAMAS: The letters that form the name are an acronym in Arabic that stands for Islamic Resistance Movement. It was formed in 1987 in Gaza, Palestine, by members of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood in response to the Israeli occupation of Gaza. In 2006 it won comfortably the Palestinian parliamentary elections; but was unable to govern effectively as Israel interned many of its parliamentarians; and the EU and US isolated and imposed sanctions on the movement. It has formed the vanguard of Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation since the second Palestinian Intifada, literally the ‘shakingoff’ or uprising that began in 2000, and stands as a respected symbol for Sunni Muslims everywhere.

Hesballah, literally the ‘Party of God’, emerged in 1982 as a Shi’i resistance fighting the Israeli invasion of south Lebanon; but its roots go back to the Shi’i ‘awakening’ in Lebanon of the 1950s and 1960s. It was influenced by Hesb alDa’wa resistance movement formed in 1957 in Iraq, ‘Imam’ Musa Sadr, ‘Imam’ Khomeini and the Iranian Revolution. It is represented in the Lebanese Parliament; and it and its leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, are acknowledged to be among the most prominent influences in the contemporary Muslim world.

Hesb alDa’waor Islamic ‘call’ party was founded in 1957 at Najaf in Iraq. It represented the first Islamist resistance movement. Initially it comprised both Sunni and Shi’i and had members who were also affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood and Hesb al Tahrir. Saddam Hussein waged a relentless war of persecution against its members, including its leading ideologue, Mohammad Baqir Sadr, who was cruelly murdered together with his sister: Baqir Sadr’s writings on politics, sociology and economics had a profound influence on the Iranian Revolution.

Hesb alTahrir,literally the ‘party of liberation’, was established in Jerusalem in 1954 by Sheikh alNabahani. It is an international

POLITICAL MOVEMENTS ix

Sunni political party whose goal is to combine all Muslim countries in a unitary Islamic state or caliphate, ruled by Islamic law and with a Caliph head of state elected by Muslims.

Isma’ili sectof Shi’i Islam takes its name from a dispute over the succession in the Shi’i imamate. Isma’ilis accept with other Shi’i the initial Shi’i Imams, but believe that the Imamate ended with the occultation of Muhammad bin Ismail in the eighth century. From the eighth century CE , the teachings of Isma’ilism further transformed into the belief system as it is known today, with an explicit concentration on the deeper, esoteric meaning of Islam. Isma’ilism rose at one point to become the largest branch of Shi‘ism, and was at the height of political power during the Fatimid Empire in the tenth through twelfth centuries.

alManaris not a movement, but is the satellite television channel belonging to Hesballah. It has a wide audience throughout the Middle East and is influential. The European Union and the United States have tried to prevent its broadcasts into their territories. The US has designated the entire television enterprise as a ‘terrorist entity’.

Muslim Brotherhoodor ‘The society of the Muslim Brothers’, its full title, is a transnational Sunni movement and one of the world’s oldest and largest Islamist movements in the Arab world, founded by an Egyptian schoolteacher, Hassan Banna, in 1928.

Palestinian Islamic Jihadis a Palestinian resistance movement that was formed in Gaza by members of the Muslim Brotherhood during the 1970s initially as a branch of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Although a Sunni movement, its inspiration derived from the Iranian Revolution through the writings of one of its co founders, Fathi Shaqaqi (1951–95), who wrote key texts on the ideas of Imam Khomeini and the Iranian Revolution. It is a smaller movement than Hamas, and its focus lies principally in resistance to the Israeli occupation.

x POLITICAL MOVEMENTS

PFLPor Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine is a Marxist Leninist secular nationalist party founded in 1967. In the first Palestinian Intifada or uprising, the PFLP was one of the most militarily active resistance movements. It was initially opposed to the Oslo Accords but by 1999 had acquiesced to Fateh’s negotiations with Israel.

PLO or Palestinian Liberation Organisation is the political confederation of Palestinian movements which has, since 1974, been recognised by the Arab League as ‘sole Representative of the Palestinian People’. In effect it has been a fiefdom of the Fateh movement. Technically legal agreements between Israel and Fateh have been signed under the auspices of the PLO.

AlQae’da,literally ‘The Base’, is a global Sunni movement that was founded in 1988 in the wake of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and subsequent political implosion. Its aim has been to cause a similar wider western implosion – similar to that suffered by the USSR – by provoking the West to overreact, and to overextend itself both militarily and financially in the pattern of the Soviet Union, thereby exposing its internal contradictions. Its ideology has been influenced by Wahhabism and Egyptian Islamic Jihad, although its ideology cannot be neatly categorised in this way. Its significance has always been exaggerated in the West.

Salafism,literally ‘pious ancestors’, is a very early Sunni movement dating to the twelfth century CE . Salafis see the first three generations of Muslims, who are known as ‘The Prophet’s Companions’, and the two succeeding generations after them, as the Tabi‘in, as examples of how Islam should be practised.

Taliban,literally ‘students’, is a conservative Sunni movement associated with ethnic Pashtoons, which ruled Afghanistan from 1996 until the 2001 USled attack on Afghanistan in the wake of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center in New York. Centred around the conservative mullahs of Khandahar, and brought into existence by the Pakistani intelligence service, the Taliban are not

POLITICAL MOVEMENTS xi

so much a true Islamist movement as a tribal movement espousing Pakhtoonwali – the conservative tribal practice, law and customs of south Afghanistan and the neighbouring areas of Pakistan, which is far from synonymous with Islamism.

Wahhabismis a conservative and reformist orientation of Sunni Islam that was founded by Mohammad ibn abdal Wahhab (1703–92) in the eighteenth century in what is now Saudi Arabia. Abdal Wahhab, influenced by Ibn Taymiyya sought to purify Islam from its later accretions by a return to the practices of the first three generations of the companions of the Prophet. Wahhabism is the dominant form of Islam in Saudi Arabia and is popular in Kuwait and in Qatar. ‘Wahhabism’ is often used interchangeably with the term Salafism; but Wahhabism is more correctly viewed as a current within Salafism. Salafists reject the suggestion that abdal Wahhab established a new school of thought.

Young Turkswere a coalition formed in the 1880s of various Turkish political movements advocating westernstyle reform of the Ottoman Empire. Many were explicitly atheist and followed the positivist ideology of Auguste Comte. At the centre of the Young Turks’ revolution was the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) that came to office in 1908 and which espoused a form of secular and unitary nationalist thinking which was xenophobic and exclusive. The policies pursued by the CUP prepared the way for Mustafa Kemal known as ‘Ataturk’.