Fallacy of Militant Ideology

Competing Ideologies and Conflict among Militants, the Muslim World and the West

Munir Masood Marath

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000431537
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Ideologies
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book highlights the conflict between jihadist militants and the West as essentially ideological in character. It has serious implications internalized by Muslim societies, with the boundaries of faith changed by the interplay of socio-political variables. Violence emerged in Muslim societies as a means of emancipation or identity when the state could not resolve the conflict situation. Although the militants were influenced by socio-political factors, they have always looked to religion to justify their acts of violence. This book, exposing the fallacy of the narrative evolved by the militants, offers a counter narrative. It reinterprets the primary sources, unravels the historical and socio-political constructs, unmasks the heroes and enemies, challenges the dichotomies between theory and practice, re-establishes the boundaries between heresy and faith, and attempts to transform the current ideological discourse. ~This book will be of interest to students and scholars of the discourse between religion and security, political Islam, Islamic history, jihad, Middle Eastern studies, and South Asian studies.

1 Nature of conflict

DOI: 10.4324/9781003164883-1

The conflict between the West and the militants can be analysed by considering three parties within Muslim society: the militants, the apologists and the rulers in the Muslim world whom the militants accuse of following the agenda of the West against the fellow believers. Their ideas and respective positions with regard to socio-economic and political orders define their ideological vision in context of the Muslim world in general and Middle East and South Asia in particular. The narratives evolved by three actors makes the conflict among them as essentially ideological. As ideology is made up of religion, politics, economics and the social landscape, these areas are further investigated to develop a clear insight into their respective worldview.

Ideology

Definitions of ideology have always been controversial, but it refers to the set of ideas that orientate the thought process. It eventually leads to a normative vision essentially related to three spheres – religion, economics and sociology. The plurality of religious beliefs, social norms, cultural traits, and political and economic approaches are commonplace in societies. Given the diversity of intellectual undercurrents present in a society, this normative vision represents a worldview of the society as a whole regarding the collective spheres of human life. Instead of representing each intellectual stream, ideology as a thought process is a conglomeration of diverse intellectual streams which converge to form a worldview of the society as a whole. Nevertheless, this thought process that leads to form the ideological basis of a society is by all means a dynamic phenomenon. Intellectual courses in society keep on changing in terms of the degree of their influence vis-à-vis each other. With the advent of Islam, the Arabian Peninsula witnessed a radical shift in the social and cultural structure of society. The nature of societal faultlines changed – from tribal to ideological. History offers evidence of the transformation of political systems – from monarchies to democracies to military dictatorships. In the economic sphere, the evidence is not uncommon which shows the change in the economic systems. Eastern Europe joined the Communist block after World War II. However, the Eastern bloc reverted to economic liberalism after the fall of the Soviet Union. However, despite being dynamic and diverse, the normative vision of society always relies upon the state order for its protection, promotion and projection. Where a supportive state order is the culmination stage of the ideological process, it is at the same time, an essential condition for the perpetuation of the ideological discourse as well.

Religion

Religion has plural spiritual manifestations, which include ritual-performance by the adherents and acknowledgement of faith to be the source of ultimate knowledge, which is channelled to human beings. The approach of religion towards metaphysical phenomena determines its character in terms of either ‘divinity-based’ or ‘rationality-based’. Divinity-based religion presents practices and beliefs, which are informed through some sort of divine communication with human beings. This communication may be revealed or inspired to disseminate the divine providence to address the questions that fall in the domain of metaphysics. All Abrahamic religions believe that ultimate knowledge is divinely channelled to the prophets. Separate from theistic religions, which recognize the existence of God, man-made systems have emerged and eventually claimed many followers. Secularization of knowledge paved the way for renunciation of the link between metaphysics and knowledge. From these grounds, secular systems like communism, nationalism and democratic liberalism emerged almost as rationality-based religions. These systems do not affirm the sources of knowledge beyond the grasp of human reason and dismiss the realm of metaphysics in their quest of ultimate knowledge.

This taxonomy of ‘divinity-based’ and ‘rationality-based’ belief systems highlights the bifurcation between ideology and religion despite several similarities between the two. They both claim to order human conduct but there is a gap between the two in terms of scope. The scope of the ideology is usually limited to the temporal sphere, and the spiritual sphere is considered the exclusive domain of religion. However, the argument of mutual exclusivity between the two is not supported by historical evidence. The medieval history of Europe as well as Muslim historical discourse suggests that religion has played a part in statehood, especially in terms of defining its ideological character. Europe could not codify secularism until the period of Reformation. On the other hand, the Muslim societies have been classic examples of a mutually inclusive relationship between religion and ideology. Although secularism as an external factor could create ripples within Muslim society through generating debate on the inter-relationship of the two phenomena, in broader perspective, it could not overwhelm Islam as an ‘ideology-producing force’.

Economics

An ideology also defines the socio-economic features of a society through evolving broader principles that determine the structure of economies. After World War II, two major economic ideologies, Marxian Communism and capitalism, emerged to define the international conflict scenario through projecting their ideological webs on their respective spheres of influence. The Communist ideology provided for the common ownership of the means of production, aiming at realization of a classless society, whereas capitalism sanctioned the private ownership of the means of production, and emerged as a global economic order through its projection by the transnational processes like globalization and imperialism.

Though both of these economic ideologies had their appeal across the Muslim world, they could not dislodge the ideological exclusivity of Islam even in the economic sphere. Islamic ideology that aims to construct a welfare state discredits the visions of welfare state systems of both the Communists and the capitalists. Communism developed on the basis of Marxian dialectical materialism which only recognized the material aspect of life. The exclusive focus on the material aspect earned the Communist ideology outright condemnation from Muslim ideologues because it could not achieve the sublime balance between the spirit and matter, which had always been a hallmark of Islamic ideology. Through their categorical condemnation of usury (ribā), which is a cardinal theme of the capitalist economies, the Islamists discredited capitalism as well. Their condemnation of capitalism and Communism further originates from the argument that, by going against the Islamic vision of creating a balance, Communism underestimates individualism and overestimates collectivism, and the reverse is the case with capitalism.

Sociology

Religious and sociological contexts are defined in terms of an approach to the supernatural.¹ The sociologists have been chiefly interested in examining the unifying effects of what they term ‘civil religion’.² In this purview, functionalist theorists like Emile Durkheim identify religion as a tool of human socialization instead of human–God relations.³ In the same stream, others like August Comte believed that religion in terms of an evolutionary stage became redundant with the advancement of historical process. They believe that if in the advancement of history religion survived, it survived only as a religion of humanity, entirely secular in nature.⁴ As terminologies like ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’ occupy a central place in the sociological explanations of religion, the sociologists focus on defining these terms to find the universal values of all religions. They define the ‘sacred’ as something relating to supernatural phenomena, which can be achieved through some rituals whereas ‘profane’ is part of ordinary life.⁵

Notwithstanding the academic value of these sociological studies, Islam as a religion does not bifurcate life into spiritual and temporal spheres. Even ‘civil religion’ fell short of achieving its essence when tested in the Muslim lands. For instance, dīn-e-elāhī of Akbar, the Mughal emperor, which aimed at unifying heterogeneous Indian society, faced stiff resistance from ulema as well as the Muslim masses. Sheikh Ahmed of Sirhind, the revivalist of Islam in the 2nd millennium, publicly condemned this royal edict as heretical in character and did not let it secure public legitimacy. This encounter is taken to have marked the dawn of Islamism in the sub-continent.⁶

Orders and the state formation

The ideological spheres of religion, economics and sociology produce orders within which the state and ideology develop and define their dynamics.

Political orders

Political orders emerge from the respective ideological spheres. Ideologies define the principles of the political orders, which in their turn, determine the nature of political orders and keep their operation within the ideological framework. These principles include sovereign authority, the framework of conflict amongst the political orders and the role of the actors involved. It is on these trajectories that the following discussion will examine the dynamics of conflict in democratic and Islamic political orders.

Democracy as a political order has been selected for comparative analysis vis-à-vis Islamism. When put against each other, both political orders offer a dynamic framework for the conflict. Against democracy, Islamism is presented from the perspectives of the puritans and the apologists. The puritans draw inspiration from the orthodox period of Islam whereas the apologists seek to reconcile Islam with western democratic ideals. Three leading Muslim theorists, namely Ibn Taimmiyah, Sayyed Maududi and Sayyed Qutb, have been selected to unravel the puritanical narrative. The ideas of Muhammad Abduhu and Rashid Rida have been examined to explore the domain of the apologists. The selection of these theorists from the array of Muslim scholarship has been made because of the degree of their influence on Muslim intellectual discourse.

Sovereign authority

The nature of sovereign authority reflects the character of a political order. It determines the relationship between the rulers and the ruled and also state and society. The following discussion examines the nature of sovereign authority in western democracy vis-à-vis the Islamic political order chiefly in theoretical context and highlights the implications emerging from the nature of sovereign authority in both orders.

Western democracy

Democracy as a socio-political ideal denotes that the will of people shall govern the state institutions. As governance depends upon coercion to a certain degree, the theory of democratic governance itself is caught up in paradoxes. These paradoxes need to be resolved to explain the genesis of democ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Nature of conflict
• 2 Heresy of ideas
• 3 Polemics revisited
• 4 Codification of violence
• 5 Codes of war
• 6 Killing fields
• 7 Fuel of faith: Pakistan – a case study
• 8 Counter narrative
• Conclusion
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index