Islam and the Arab Revolutions

The Ulama Between Democracy and Autocracy

Usaama al-Azami

• Publisher: Hurst Publishers
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781787386389
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Théologie islamique

The Arab revolutions of 2011 were a transformative moment in the modern history of the Middle East, as people rose up against long-standing autocrats throughout the region to call for 'bread, freedom and dignity'. With the passage of time, results have been decidedly mixed, with tentative success stories like Tunisia contrasting with the emergence of even more repressive dictatorships in places like Egypt, with the backing of several Gulf states.

Focusing primarily on Egypt, this book considers a relatively understudied dimension of these revolutions: the role of prominent religious scholars. While pro-revolutionary ulama have justified activism against authoritarian regimes, counter-revolutionary scholars have provided religious backing for repression, and in some cases the mass murder of unarmed protestors.

Usaama al-Azami traces the public engagements and religious pronouncements of several prominent ulama in the region, including Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Ali Gomaa and Abdallah bin Bayyah, to explore their role in either championing the Arab revolutions or supporting their repression. He concludes that while a minority of noted scholars have enthusiastically endorsed the counter-revolutions, their approach is attributable less to premodern theology and more to their distinctly modern commitment to the authoritarian state.

1

YUSUF AL-QARADAWI

EARLY SUPPORTER OF THE ARAB REVOLUTIONS
(JANUARY 2011)

In the early days of the Arab revolutions, Yusuf al-Qaradawi was probably the most prominent global religious voice advocating for the youth-led protests throughout the Arab world. Throughout his career, Qaradawi had expressed his opposition to despotic rulers, from a play he composed from his first stint in prison with the MB in his early twenties in which he celebrated an early Islamic scholar confronting a tyrant, to his excoriation of dictatorship in his encyclopedic Fiqh al-Jihād, published shortly before the Arab revolutions.¹ Speaking out against oppressive autocrats had been a consistent theme in his writings throughout his unusually long career and his response to the Arab revolutions was thus true to form.

The present chapter considers what were likely Qaradawi’s first public statements in support of the spark that initiated the uprisings of that spring, namely Tunisia’s successful revolution in January 2011. These statements were made on his then weekly Al Jazeera show, al-Sharīʿa wa-l-Ḥayāh, which became one of his main platforms for promoting the revolutions in this early period. In what follows, certain important features of Qaradawi’s discourse will be highlighted including his insistence on the need for political freedom. He also addressed the delicate issue of the self-immolation by a Tunisian man that eventually gave rise to these uprisings. However, most of the show was dedicated to the question of tyranny (ẓulm) and how to confront it. At the heart of Qaradawi’s message was the important Islamic principle of commanding right and forbidding wrong (al-amr bi-l-maʿrūf wa-l-nahy ʿan al-munkar), an important Islamic norm grounded in both the Qur’an and Prophetic hadiths that will come up repeatedly in the chapters that follow as providing the Islamic basis for confronting tyranny. I also briefly consider the implications of Qatar’s support for democracy in the region through Al Jazeera. The chapter concludes with a brief consideration of the form that Qaradawi’s arguments in favor of the revolutions take at this early stage. It will be seen that they are grounded explicitly in Islamic scriptural texts that pertain to confronting tyranny while also showing a concern for social stability. This is a theme that continues into the next chapter, which addresses Qaradawi’s continued engagements with the Arab revolutions as they reached Egypt later that month.

The Tunisian revolution

What was likely his first extensive public expression of support for the revolutions came on the heels of the success of the Tunisian revolution in which popular protests forced the resignation of the long-time Tunisian dictator, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali (d. 1441/2019), on 14 January 2011. Two days later, Qaradawi appeared on his then weekly primetime Al Jazeera Arabic show with that week’s episode entitled ‘Jihād al-Ẓulm wa-Wasāʾiluh’ (‘Jihad against Tyranny and Its Means’). The entire episode was dedicated to celebrating and religiously legitimating the Tunisian revolution, as well as encouraging peaceful protests of this kind in general.²

Qaradawi’s weekly show on Al Jazeera, which ran for about fifteen years on the channel until late 2013, would open with a brief introduction by a presenter citing verses from the Qur’an and hadiths that were pertinent to the topic of that week before launching into an interview of Qaradawi, who was the main guest of the show over the years of its airing. The lion’s share of the airtime would typically involve Qaradawi responding to a set of prepared questions in light of Islamic teachings. Most shows also allowed for audience participation via phone calls or other internet-based communication.³ As noted by Marc Lynch in 2009, Qaradawi was an excellent barometer of Arab public opinion, and the weekly show reflected the concerns of the so-called Arab street.⁴ Most significantly for our purposes, however, Qaradawi seems to have expressed enthusiasm remarkably early for the Arab revolutions.

In his episode on the triumph of the Tunisian revolution in January 2011, Qaradawi was clearly moved by the success of the protestors at ousting a dictator who had ruled since 1987. He opened the episode by expressing his support for the Tunisian people who had ‘shown an example to the Arab and Islamic peoples, and oppressed people in general, that they should not despair nor fear tyrants (ṭawāghīt).’⁵ The Arabic word he used, namely the plural form of ṭāghiya, is not the typical Arabic word for tyrant, but rather a more emphatic form of the word with Qur’anic resonances that is more commonly used to refer to idols and false gods.⁶ Qaradawi went on to describe the Tunisians as engaged in jihad, a Qur’anic term denoting a righteous struggle against oppression.⁷ In invoking this concept, Qaradawi was implying both that the cause of the revolutionaries was just and that God was on their side. He also invoked Tunisia’s Islamic heritage, citing the Companion of the Prophet Muhammad, ʿUqba b. Nāfiʿ (d. 63/683) who led the conquest of North Africa in the seventh century, establishing the city of culture and scholarship, Kairouan, which, as Qaradawi highlighted, hosts the mosque-university complex of Zaytuna.

Qaradawi then shifted to giving more practical advice and making certain demands of a political nature. He warned the revolutionaries to be wary of those who would undermine their efforts at reform after the success of the revolutions, and he called on Tunisia’s interim administration to immediately release all prisoners of conscience who, he asserted, had been incarcerated without trial or any evidence against them. ‘There are things that should not be delayed: granting […] freedom to all.’ On the theme of freedom, he forcefully asserted:

I have frequently said on this programme, and elsewhere, that in my view freedom is to be given preference over the implementation of the Sharia. We must give [people] freedoms! How can the tyrant fall and freedoms remain [restricted] after them. I am astounded at this. Tyrants fall, but their followers continue to rule! I call for freedom for all, and for the right for political participation for all. There is no isolation or exception [to who can participate]—leftists, rightists, secularists, Islamists, communists, all must unite. Except those whose hands have been stained with the blood of innocents. These people must receive punishment. Tribunals must be opened as soon as possible—civilian tribunals, not military ones. These should be regular courts with judges recognized as upstanding and just who will judge all of those for whom there is evidence that they tyrannized this people, and perpetrated crimes against this people.⁸

These remarks nicely illustrate the Islamist conception of political freedom that dominated their discourse at this historical moment. Qaradawi’s apparent prioritizing of ‘freedom’ over the traditional Islamist concern for ‘implementing the Sharia’ arguably reflects the gradualism that has characterized Islamists of the MB variety for much of their recent history. According to such a view, without freedom the implementation of the Sharia through coercion against an unwilling public would be a meaningless exercise in religious terms. Such organizations and the Islamist denomination they represent are concerned with creating long-term Islamic social change. By willingly adopting an Islamic world view, they argue, a society would not need to be coerced into adopting the Sharia as its legal framework, but rather it would choose to do so voluntarily. Indeed, Qaradawi had as early as the 1980s argued that the ḥudūd, which are often associated with the notion of implementing the Sharia, were a relatively minor part of the Islamist project, and that the Sharia itself, while recognizing their validity, strongly discouraged their implementation.⁹

Qaradawi’s remarks regarding the Tunisian revolution highlighted that the main menace, in his view, was authoritarianism. His appeals were deliberately broad-based: ‘leftists, rightists, secularists, Islamists, communists’ had to all unite against a common enemy that was more pernicious than any of these normally mutually hostile groups were to each other, namely tyranny. Indeed, his fear of tyranny seemed alive to the fact that there is often a temptation in despotic contexts to respond to the overthrowing of a tyrant with military rather than civilian tribunals which do not observe recognized rules of judicial procedure. These tools of coercion also had to be opposed, in his view. After the above statement, Qaradawi circled back to the earlier praise he directed at the Tunisian people who should be thanked, he stated, by the entire Arab and Islamic world because ‘they have awakened those who were asleep, brought the heedless to their senses, and become a role model for oppressed free peoples everywhere.’¹⁰

On Bouazizi’s self-immolation

It was not long before Qaradawi was asked about the spark that ignited the Arab revolutions, namely the self-immolation of the Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi, which resulted in his death. Citing a viewer’s question, the presenter asked whether the manner in which Bouazizi confronted the state was to be viewed as an exceptional means of jihad or as religiously condemned suicide. Qaradawi’s answer considered the ‘bigger picture’ rather than a strictly legalistic reading of the situation. He argued that anyone who considered the matter holistically would find that Bouazizi had an Islamic legal excuse (ʿudhr). Qaradawi’s interpretation of the situation is worth citing in full:

These [tyrants] have caused this young man and his likes to live in a state of psychological crisis. I consider him to not have been free when he took this decision [to self-immolate]. He was boiling inside! Because he had earned a degree, but he could not find work. He found that he was in need of sustenance, but he could not find sustenance. As our master (sayyidunā) Abū Dharr (d. 32/653) said: ‘I am amazed at one who does not find sustenance in his house, that he does not emerge against the people wielding a sword!’ I consider him to have been in a state in which he was absolutely not in control of his will. And I said in a statement yesterday, we ask God for his sake, we humbly beseech God that He shows him clemency and forgiveness. He is Worthy of pardoning [him], Worthy of forgiving [him]. I call on the Tunisian people and I call on Muslims in general that they intercede with God to pardon this young man because he was the cause of this goodness, in awakening this umma, in kindling this revolution. So we ask God, the Exalted, to excuse him.¹¹

Qaradawi’s argument here is an interesting one.¹² He was clearly at pains to highlight that under normal conditions, self-immolation would constitute suicide, but he did not necessarily consider that to apply to the case of Bouazizi due to extenuating circumstances. Yet, he clearly considered the act a sin, asking God to forgive its perpetrator, and this plea with God was accompanied by his request that others also beseech God to forgive Bouazizi. In Qaradawi’s view, Bouazizi’s ostensibly sinful act had resulted in an opening that, at the time that he made the statement, was desperately needed in Tunisia and the wider region. Additionally, he asked others not to copy such an approach to protest since, he argued, there were so many other ways to achieve one’s goal of protesting oppression. He stressed that ‘Muslims should adhere to the teachings of their religion’ by not committing suicidal acts, but again, he noted that these sinful responses were all a consequence of tyranny. Ultimately, he averred, it was the egregiously tyrannical regimes that were responsible for driving people to such extremes.¹³ In Chapter 4, we will see that Hamza Yusuf also considered this issue at the time, but used it to criticize what he perceived as the hypocrisy of some Muslims who advocated ‘suicide bombing’ while condemning Bouazizi taking his own life.

Interestingly, the statement Qaradawi attributed to the Companion Abū Dharr gave rise to some criticism within days on the online Arabic discussion forum of hadith researchers, Multaqā Ahl al-Ḥadīth. On it, Qaradawi was criticized by one researcher for using a statement attributed to Abū Dharr that, in fact, had no historical basis. The discussion on the forum concluded, however, that the wider point made by Qaradawi in invoking the likely apocryphal statement was sound. One participant pointed out that the Andalusian polymath, Ibn Ḥazm (d. 456/1064), argues in a similar fashion to the apocryphal statement when he states that a person at risk of death from hunger, thirst, or exposure may fight (yuqātil) people who have a surplus (faḍl) of resources in order to save his own life. If he is killed by someone who refuses to assist them when they are in a position to, then the killer is liable for the blood money (diya), whereas if the one withholding the surplus resources is killed, they are deserving of God’s wrath.¹⁴

On tyranny and acquiescing to it

After addressing these questions pertaining to Tunisia, Qaradawi turned to the question of tyranny. The presenter guided the discussion by alluding to the Prophetic statement: ‘The best jihad is speaking the truth (kalimat ḥaqq) in the presence of a tyrannical ruler (sulṭān jāʾir),’ a hadith considered authentic (şaḥīḥ) or sound (ḥasan) by Sunni hadith experts.¹⁵ Qaradawi responded by arguing that Islam aims at establishing justice on earth, with the Qur’an considering spreading justice to be the aim of all divinely revealed traditions. He quoted the Qur’an (Q. 57:25): ‘We sent Our messengers with clear signs, the Scripture and the Balance, so that people could uphold justice (qisṭ).’ By contrast, he argued, tyranny is diametrically opposed to all revealed traditions. To justify his stance, he cited a ḥadīth qudsī, which is narrated by Muslim (i.e. a hadith in which the Prophet quotes God) in which God says: ‘O my servants, I have prohibited myself from oppression (ẓulm), and I have rendered it prohibited among you, so do not oppress one another.’¹⁶ As a consequence, Qaradawi added, God dislikes perpetrators of oppression. He additionally cited a few other partial verses to make this point and made reference to the common conclusion of ten verses in the Qur’an that ‘God does not guide oppressive people (al-qawm al-ẓālimīn).’¹⁷ He further declared the oppressors to be people of the Hellfire, citing several verses in quick succession (Q. 19:72; 27:52; 18:59; 11:102; 6:45) in a display of rhetorical skill, a powerful memory, and the ability to recall pertinent verses despite his advanced age—Qaradawi was eighty-four years old in this interview.¹⁸ An informed viewer would likely have been impressed by what was clearly his deep and deliberative familiarity with the Qur’an.

The entire Qur’an, he asserted, was full of verses that prohibit oppression or supporting oppressors. Citing the Qur’an (Q. 11:113): ‘And do not incline toward those who oppress (alladhīna ẓalamū), lest you be touched by the Fire,’ Qaradawi noted that even inclining ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Note on the Text
• Introduction
• 1. Yusuf al-Qaradawi: Early Supporter of the Arab Revolutions (January 2011)
• 2. Qaradawi and the Egyptian Revolution (January–February 2011)
• 3. Ali Gomaa, Aḥmad al-Ṭayyib, and Ali al-Jifri: The Early Opposition to the Egyptian Revolution (January–February 2011)
• 4. Hamza Yusuf and Abdallah bin Bayyah: From Support to Opposition (January 2011–February 2013)
• 5. Ali Gomaa and the Counter-Revolutionary Massacres (June 2012–August 2013)
• 6. Azharīs Opposed to the Coup and Counter Revolutions (June–July 2013)
• 7. Ali Gomaa: Celebrating the Rabaa Massacre (August 2013–January 2017)
• 8. The Reactions of Anti-Coup Ulama to the Rabaa Massacre (August–October 2013)
• 9. Understanding Counter-Revolutionary Fatwas and Their Ramifications beyond Egypt
• Conclusion
• Epilogue
• Appendix 1. Yusuf al-Qaradawi: One of the Imams of the Muslims by Abdallah bin Bayyah
• Appendix 2. Translation of Ali Gomaa’s Pre-Rabaa Lecture to the Egyptian Security Forces
• Appendix 3. Translation of Ali Gomaa’s Post-Rabaa Lecture to the Egyptian Security Forces
• Abbreviations
• Timeline
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Back Cover