Commenting on the lack of progress of the Islamist regimes since the Arab Spring began, former visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institute, Khalil al-Anani, says,

“…the most visible result of Islamists’ failure is the “desacralization” of their ideology,”

which means

“Islamism, as a religious and political ideology, is increasingly losing its credibility and symbolic power.”

Commenting on the Islamist experiment of governance, he says,

“After two years in power, such a state has proven to be nothing but a mere “mirage”

and

“…while Islamist parties are ascending, their ideology, ‘Islamism,’ is surprisingly descending.”

He concludes by saying,

“If the Arab Spring would tell us something after two years of torturous transition, it is that Islamism is yet another ‘illusive’ ideology that can’t preserve its credibility and salvation power without fulfilling peoples’ aspirations which may put Islamists’ future at stake.”[[8]]

Of the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions of the Arab Spring, Islam scholar Olivier Roy says the demonstrators,

“…are operating in a secular political space, and they do not see in Islam an ideology capable of creating a better world.”[[9]]

Marc Sageman, former CIA psychologist and terrorism scholar who conducted studies on terrorists, concluded,

“[T]errorists in Western Europe and North America were not intellectuals or ideologues, much less religious scholars. It is not about how they think, but how they feel.”[[10]]

As stated, the protestors are largely non-ideological as well. Author and expert Fawaz Gerges says,

“On the whole, the revolts are peaceful, non-ideological, post-Islamist, and led by the embattled middle class, including a coalition of men and women of all ages and political colors: liberal-leaning centrists, democrats, leftists, nationalists, and Islamists.”

In addition,

“Clerics and mullahs are not key drivers; there is no Ayatollah Khomeini waiting in the wings to hijack the revolution and to seize power.”[[11]]

He also says that

“the revolutions have reinforced what many of us have already known: al-Qaeda’s core ideology is incompatible with the universal aspirations of the Arabs.”[[12]]

Recently in May 2013, Emad Abdel Ghafour, a Salafi adviser to former Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, said he “had no problem” with Egypt’s peace with Israel.[[13]]

Even Salafis are being molded by the new social-political realities of the day.

Al-Qa’eda Beyond Ideology

Author and former FBI agent, Ali Soufan, who investigated the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in East Africa and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole, said,

“…al-Qaeda’s rhetoric is not an ideology; it’s anti-American narrative” (italics added).[[14]]

In other examples, ideology does not always appear to be the motivator of actions of certain well-known militants.

Fawaz Gerges who had interviewed some of Zawahiri’s former cohorts in Egypt, Yemen, and other places in the late 1990s, says,

“The consensus was that pressing financial and operational circumstances forced his” – Zawahiri’s – “hand and caused him to join bin Laden’s front, a tactical move to rescue his sinking ship.”[[15]]

Some cohorts said,

“Zawahiri had no genuine interest in transnational jihad” and used the World Islamic Front to fight the “near enemy.’”[[16]]

Moreover,

“at the end of the Afghan war in 1989, none of the leading figures – neither Azzam, Fadl, Zawahiri, nor bin Laden – called for targeting the United States,”

and,

“at this stage, none of the important voices advocated an armed confrontation with the West.”[[17]]

Gerges further notes,

“Although there is no single explanation for bin Laden’s antipathy to America, the Gulf War and its aftermath, particularly the stationing of troops in Saudi Arabia, were primary.”[[18]]

Had ideology been the primary cause of their animosity towards the United States and its allies, why did they not express their ideological opposition towards the “infidels” earlier?

Terrorism expert, Jessica Stern, says,

“Terrorist movements often arise in reaction to a perceived injustice, as a means to right some terrible wrong, real or imagined. Yet ideology is not the only, or even the most important, factor in an individual’s decision to join a terrorist group.”

Stern continues,

“In interviewing terrorists, I have found that operatives are often more interested in the expression of a collective identity than they are in the group’s stated goals.”

She concludes,

“This understanding – that ideology is not the only, or even the principal, reason that individuals are drawn to terrorist groups – needs to be incorporated into our counter-terrorism efforts, especially when we consider counter-radicalization” (italics added). [[19]]

The exaggeration of the role of ideology in Islamist movements has resulted in a myopic view of the terrorist threat by Islamophobes who appear to see most issues through a religion-ideology lens. This distorted view has caused them to create an unrealistic narrative that amalgamates everything “Islamic,” historically and contemporarily, as a single, fixed, and unchanging entity.

It is time to focus on other factors of extremist movements other than ideology to truly understand and win the war against extremists of all stripes.

(© Zubair Qamar 2013)

Sebastian Gorka of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies says,

“One of the greatest — self-induced — obstacles we have to understanding our enemy is mirror imaging, seeing Islam as just one more religion like the religions we are most familiar with — Christianity and Judaism. However, if one understands that Islam, not just in its extreme forms, but in its mainstream version, sees politics, economics, law and faith as integral to each other and as part of “shari’a” — the way of life, then one understands that even the phrase ‘political Islam’ is a case of the West using its terminology for something that does not reflect Western concepts and categories. It is pointless therefore to use the phrase ‘political Islam’; Islam is political” (p.188 – Fighting the Ideological War).

Gorka oddly describes mainstream Islam as political Islam and understands Islam as a political ideology. Gorka’s lack of understanding of the history of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism will be discussed in a separate post.

However, while Gorka sees mainstream Sunni Islam as a political ideology, his view is more similar to the minority of Islamists than to the majority of Muslims who do not share this view.

Religion and terrorism expert, Mark Juergensmyer, says,

“The assumption of those who hold this ‘Islam is the problem’ position is that the Muslim relationship to politics is peculiar. But this is not true. Most traditional societies have had a close tie between political leadership and religious authority, and religion often plays a role in undergirding the moral authority of public life.”[[1]]

Furthermore, there is no equivalent word for “ideology” in classical Arabic, Persian, or other languages, which proves that classical Muslims never saw their religion as an ideology. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, scholar and professor at George Washington University, says,

“The case of ‘ideology’ is very telling as far as the adaptation of modern notions in the name of religion is concerned. Nearly every Muslim language now uses this term, and many Muslims in fact insist that Islam is an ideology. If this is so, then why was there no word to express it in classical Arabic, Persian, and other languages of the Islamic peoples?”[[2]]

“Traditional Islam,”Nasr says, “refuses ever to accept Islam as an ideology, and it is only when the traditional order succumbs to the modern world that the understanding of religion as ideology comes to the fore […].”[[3]]

Describing Islam as an ideology, whether by Gorka or by Islamists, is a modern notion – not a classical one. While Islam has a political dimension, Hamza Yusuf, author and Sunni scholar at Zaytuna College, says,

“…the focus of Islam has never been on rectifying the state, but rather on rectifying the state of the souls that make up the state.”

Yusuf then says,

“We need an Islamic state of mind more than an Islamic state.”[[4]]

Another author and Sunni scholar, Zaid Shakir, says, that

“…doctrine issuing from a particular ideology is marshaled based on its efficacy in advancing the cause, not on the basis of any preexisting moral or ethical standard. Such a formulation is at complete odds with Islam and, thus, largely alien to its classical tradition.”[[5]]

Islamic knowledge of creed and jurisprudence in almost all of Islamic history had not been the prerogative of politicians, but of religious scholars who taught the masses, and distanced themselves from rulers while largely retaining their independent roles as spiritual guides. When examining the Islamic sources, reference to political authority is scarce, while references to spirituality and belief are abundant. That is why Prophet Muhammad is known as a religious prophet, and not a politician, and Islam is understood to be a religion, and not a political movement by most people.

Moreover, political ideology is not one of the five pillars of Islam or the six Sunni articles of faith. The uncertainty of Muslims on the issue of leadership following Prophet Muhammad’s death illustrates that political leadership was not a high priority to Islam’s Prophet. Otherwise, Muhammad  would have made matters of political leadership clear to his followers as he did many matters before his demise.

While political leadership took on an important role in classical Sunni Islam, it was subservient to and confined within the limits of spirituality. Today, Islamist groups prioritize politics and make spirituality subservient to it.  People who conflate the two misrepresent both and confuse more than clarify.

It is for this reason why many caliphs throughout Islam’s history were not necessarily supported by the masses, but tolerated, even when certain caliphs displayed unIslamic qualities and used religion for political expediency and domination. But anarchy was believed to be worse than poor leadership as it brought more harm than good to society. Therefore, all actions of caliphs over 1,000-plus years should not be seen as representative of Islam’s teachings, and Muslims who lived under their rule should not be described as their wholesale supporters. To do so is to misunderstand and mischaracterize social-power dynamics in those times and to misrepresent Muslims and Islam today.

It is recommended that Gorka and others who hold similar views describe mainstream Islam as most Muslims describe Islam — as a religion and not a political movement or ideology.