Islam and the Third Universal Theory

The Religious Thought of Mu'ammar al-Qadhdhafi

Mahmoud M. Ayoub

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781315312279
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This volume, first published in 1987, was the first to examine in depth the religious thought of Colonel Mu'ammar al-Qadhdhafi and its central place in his political, social and economic theories. The work is based on sources inaccessible except in the original Arabic. While drawn from Islamic concepts and sources, Qadhdhafi's religious views were original. His religious openness and universal view of Islam and other monotheistic religions in particular will be surprising to those familiar with only the image associated with him in the Western mind. This title is a useful source for students of both politics and Islamic studies.

1
Qadhdhafi's Dream

Qadhdhafi's Background and Youth

'The Bedouins have no walls and gates. Therefore, they provide their own defense and do not entrust it to or rely upon others for it. They watch carefully all sides of the road. . . . They go into the desert, guided by their fortitude, putting their trust in themselves. Fortitude has become a character quality of theirs, and courage their nature.'¹

The old civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia were born on the banks of the Nile and the two rivers. They were, however, close to the desert by which they were nurtured and refined. It was in the desert that God spoke to Moses, and the children of Israel were disciplined and purified. In the desert the ancient revolutionary prophet Elijah heard the 'still voice of God' ordering him to face the tyranny of an oppressive king.² In the desert, Christ prepared himself through fasting and prayers for a mission which was to shape Western history. In the solitude of the desert the prophet Muhammad contemplated the order of creation and the sad state of his own people.

In the desert heaven and earth meet. The vast expanse of sand mirrors the Absolute in its stillness and raging fury. The desert is the epitome of simplicity and calm, eternal sameness and precarious change, austerity and freedom.

The people of the desert live with and like the sandy expanse of their habitat. They are always on the move in search of water and herbage for themselves and their animals, and dream of 'gardens beneath which rivers flow'.³ Thus their character is formed by the desert - by the frugality that comes from the uncertainties of life, by the hospitality which is dictated by the will to share the basic amenities of life, and by the will to raid and plunder dictated by the ever-present spectres of hunger and thirst. The desert is the home both of oases and of an aridity, caused by long drought or the sudden downpour of torrential rain - rain 'with which God revives the earth after its death'.⁴

These are the qualities of the desert which become the qualities of the austere, free and uncompromising character of its men and women. In the desert Mu'ammar al-Qadhdhafi was born, lived, dreamed and reflected. From an early age he appeared to be different from other children. He was serious, even taciturn; yet his stern countenance was always tempered with an inquisitive smile. He was an only son to a family who lived in the desert, far from the city and its demands and benefits. Mu'ammar seldom played with his cousins; rather he was always lost in thought about one thing or another.⁵

Mu'ammar's father was a poor man living in a tent in the Sirte Desert. In the same tent, in which Mu'ammar's parents continued to live even after the revolution had secured homes for most city dwellers, he was born. To this day he returns often to his desert birthplace to resume his life in a tent among the members of his tribe and family. His father recalled these visits, saying, 'Yes, he often comes. He sleeps on his old mat. He takes up the old way of living, and you simply cannot imagine how he thrives here in the desert.'⁶

Although himself an illiterate man, Mu'ammar's father was anxious that his only son receive some education. He therefore brought a teacher of the Qur'an from the city to teach his seven-year-old son and his cousins to read the Qur'an. Mu'ammar never left his teacher and showed an extraordinary desire for learning. At the age of nine or ten, Mu'ammar was sent to the Sirte elementary school, about 30 kilometres away from his home. As his father could afford no lodging for his son, Mu'ammar slept in the mosque. Every Thursday the youth returned home on foot to spend Friday with his parents and walk back to school that evening. Mu'ammar took full advantage of the opportunity for formal education, completing six years of elementary schooling in four years.

Four years later, when Mu'ammar was fourteen years old, the Qadhdhafi family moved to Sabha, the main town of the Fezzan district. The purpose of this move was to give the young boy a chance to pursue his secondary education. While yet a child, Mu'ammar loved to listen to stories of the bitter struggle of his people against their colonizers. He would have his father tell him for the hundredth time the story of how Mu'ammar's grandfather fell in battle against the Italian colonialists, and how he himself was wounded in his left shoulder in the same struggle after the First World War. Every time he heard the story he would again ask his father, 'And who was your leader?'

'A Turk,' his father would reply patiently, as he repeated the story many times over.⁷ This proud shepherd boy saw the only cause of his people's sufferings to be the foreigners. He often fell asleep as he dreamed of new adventures, of new struggles against new colonialists, of revolution and of a new kind of liberty. Mu'ammar's youth coincided with the successful Egyptian revolution of 1952, and the Algerian struggle against French colonialism. Thus it was in Sirte that his political ideas began to take shape.

Even as a youth, Mu'ammar al-Qadhdhafi was admired by his fellow students at the Sabha secondary school for his passionate interest in politics and his ability to stir students to action by his impassioned speeches. He used any political issue or significant event as a good occasion for a demonstration: the Algerian revolution, French testing of an atom bomb over the Sahara, the death of Patrice Lumumba and the dissolution of the Syrian-Egyptian union in 1961 were only a few examples. During his third year at Sabha, the school authorities expelled him because he was considered a dangerous political agitator. In Sabha, Mu'ammar formed a small circle of like-minded friends to whom he confided his political ideas. Among these were people like 'Abd al-Salam al-Jalloud and others who have remained close associates of Colonel Qadhdhafi throughout his political career.

In 1961 Qadhdhafi transferred to Misrata, a city near Tripoli, where two years later he completed his secondary education. It was in Misrata that he formed the first effective civilian political movement prior to the revolution. The movement included civil servants, teachers and other professionals from different parts of the country. This movement was to be free from any party identity or ideological preference. It was rather to be a purely Libyan movement in aim and character, but with Arab national unity as its ultimate goal. Arab unity has remained Qadhdhafi's lifelong dream and preoccupation. To it, and it alone, he has devoted all his energies, as will be amply demonstrated throughout this study. In Misrata, Qadhdhafi realized that the only way to liberate his country from external exploitation and internal corruption was through a revolution that would overthrow the regime of King Idris and reorganize society on the principles of justice, equality and a fair distribution of wealth. He thus urged a number of close student friends to join the military, so as to form the nucleus of a corps of Unionist Free Officers. As the name of this important group of officers indicates, they were to be committed to Arab unity and liberty of the Libyan and all the Arab peoples. Qadhdhafi himself joined the military academy in Benghazi in 1963. There he formed the movement of the Unionist Free Officers in the following year. The character and aims of this movement are described in Colonel Qadhdhafi's memoirs. The first revolutionary movement began in the fifties in Sabha among the students. In 1964 a Central Committee composed exclusively of military personnel was formed. Another civilian committee was also formed, which was to be independent from the movement of the Unionist Free Officers, who made up the Central Committee.⁸ An axiom of this movement was freedom from any party politics. It was to be characterized by flexibility and breadth. It was to avoid at all costs narrow cliquishness and sterile disputation. These characteristics helped protect the movement from being found out, and prevented the authorities from discovering its ultimate goals.⁹

It was observed at the start of this chapter that the desert forms and nurtures the character of its people. It may not be too presumptuous to add here that the desert is the right soil for single mindedness, clarity of vision, and even the faith in the one and omnipotent divine sovereign. 'The voice of the wilderness' was that of Zarathustra, the ancient prophets of Israel, John the Baptist, Jesus of Nazareth and Muhammad, all calling humankind to a faith commitment to the One God. Their message was one in its uncompromising moral strictness and the demand of a holy life before the holy God. It is in this sense, as we shall see later, that Qadhdhafi insisted that they all preached the message of total submission (islam) to the will of God. Qadhdhafi shares this moral strictness and leaning towards a holy life, as have all the desert people throughout the centuries of Jewish, Christian and Islamic history.

Mine Bianco has with great discernment recognized these qualities in Mu'ammar al-Qadhdhafi's character. She says: 'It is in the desert that one may seek out the very essence of Qadhdhafi's nature, of the spirituality, of the mysticism which have greater weight than any of his aspirations, and which influence even his political action.' Still more concisely, Mme Bianco continues: 'It is precisely this concept of liberty, the intangible freedom of desert people - a freedom entirely one's own, and yet a submission to God, and God alone - which underlies all the choices, decisions and actions taken by Qadhdhafi; even, and perhaps essentially, those of a political nature.'¹⁰

Mme Bianco wrote these reflections after lengthy meetings with Mu'ammar's family, acquaintances and colleagues. In fact, her view of Qadhdhafi has been coloured by the words of his father and some of his closest associates. Since the aim of this discussion is not to present a biography of Qadhdhafi but, rather, a character sketch, I will present at some length the impressions of his father and of his close friends of his character. Mu'ammar was so serious and taciturn, his father observed, that one had to ask direct questions to make him speak. When asked about his son's basic characteristics, the old man answered, 'Courage and intelligence. His love of his family. His piety.'¹¹ This view is corroborated by many of those who were interviewed by Mme Bianco. Mu'ammar's old schoolteacher described him as a man of great intelligence, of sobriety bordering on asceticism, and a deep piety.¹² Qadhdhafi was a true son of the desert who feared no one but God. He was kind and helpful to friends, but severe when made angry. Muhammad Khalil, an old member of the civilian movement and friend of Qadhdhafi, describes the special qualities of his friend: 'They are his intelligence, his moral rectitude, his unswerving integrity. His religious fervor, too, which is a real source of his strength.¹³

Even though Colonel Qadhdhafi has become a public figure, exposed to all sorts of systems of government and ideologies, he remains constant in his religious devotion and strict observance. His early Qur'anic education has remained the main framework of his thought and actions throughout the stages of his ideological and political career. The discipline which he imposed on the Central Committee of the Unionist Free Officers is indicative of his religious and moral orientation. They were to observe prayers, in congregation whenever possible, under all circumstances. They were to abstain strictly from drinking, gambling and all other frivolous activities. He especially singled out card-playing because it could lead to actual gambling, and because it is an addictive activity. In short, strict adherence to Islam with all its moral demands constituted his code.

The group had to maintain a high degree of esprit de corps socially, politically and financially. There were no membership dues; rather, the pay of each member, as well as his car if he had one, were at the disposal of the group. Matters had always to be decided only when complete consensus could be achieved. Thus the absence of any member of the group invalidated the meeting. This naturally created many hardships, as the meetings of the group were held in strict secrecy. For this reason the absence of any member without a legitimate cause was severely reprimanded.

In the eyes of his colleagues, and, indeed, of the young men and women of his people, Mu'ammar embodies the spirit of their revolution, their dreams and vitality; but above all, he is 'the trustee of their liberty'.¹⁴ The example on which Qadhdhafi modelled his political thinking, and which he instilled into the group of young officers, was that of Gamel Abdul Nasser. Nasser embodied the aspirations of all Arabs, whom he fired with his call to unity and national dignity. At first Captain Sulayman Mahmud, one of Qadhdhafi's colleagues, observed that the Unionist Free Officers thought themselves and their country, with its small and largely illiterate population, incapable of a revolution like that of Egypt. 'In fact', Sulayman reflected 'Qadhdhafi at that time tried to do no more than make us think about current affairs in the Arab World, to make us remember our origin and descent, and our subsequent history.' At that initial stage, Qadhdhafi did not speak of any direct action. It was, rather, a necessary stage of preparation, of creating in his colleagues the political awareness, discipline and dedication requisite for the success of any revolutionary movement. Sulayman continued: 'He guided our minds and led us quite naturally to the next phase, when he would enlist our services for the revolution itself.'¹⁵

Colonel Qadhdhafi regards Islam as a complete civilization the soul of which is its faith in the One God. If Nasser, therefore, served as an immediate model for his revolutionary dreams, he considered the glorious past of Muslim history his goal and trust. He would say, Sulayman recalled, 'Remember the greatness of our past, the grandeur of our Islamic civilization, which once extended from China to France, with, as its single impetus, our faith in God, our faith in justice, in equality and the brotherhood of mankind. If we have lost all this, it is simply because our leaders deserted the true path, because they became divided: here is the true cause of our mortification and of our humiliation. Instead of looking upon Islam as the leaven of our minds and souls we have, in our contacts with other countries, allowed it to become the means of our submission, the cause of our backwardness.' Sulayman c...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Qadhdhafi's Dream
• 2 Qadhdhafi's Vision, The Green Book
• 3 Qadhdhafi's Faith
• 4 Qadhdhafi's Ideology
• 5 Qadhdhafi's Image
• Bibliography
• Index