Apocalyptic Jihad

As many of you know, many assertions have been made about the year 2012 in the Gregorian calendar. One of the most well-known beliefs  is that today, December 21, 2012, is supposed to be the end of the world. This idea was originally popularized by New Age devotees in the 1960s who re-imagined what they thought was ancient Mayan spirituality. Of course this is not what the ancient Mayan actually believed. This apocalyptic furor draws more from American concepts of dispensational postmillennialism and their fantasies about ancient Greek mystery cults than it does authentic Mayan prophecy and religion. But, there is a long tradition in most of the world’s religions in having a belief in an imminent end to the world. Islam is no exception, and many modern terrorist organizations and Arab insurgent groups use these tropes of Muslim religiousity to further their own ends.

The Muslim tradition of apocalypticism comes out of an age spanning from the seventh century through the ninth century where a strong belief among the Muslims of that era in an imminent end of the world helped fuel their military conquests and empire expansion. The appearance of comets in the sky during this time followed by plagues and war fueled their speculations. Much of the Qur’an is written in an apocalyptic tenor where celestial phenomena (such as comets) and war are given as possible signs for the world’s end (Qur’an 30:1-6; 53:1, 54:1). Other verses speak to the nearness of the last hour (Qur’an 42:17; 54:1).

Hadith literature is also full of apocalyptic predictions where Muslims fighting “holy war” is understood as having an especially strong connection to the imminent end of the world (Riyadh, 2002).

The scholar Patricia Crone has stated that Hadith literature has portrayed the Prophet Muhammad as a doomsday prophet sent just before the end of the world to warn those who would listen and to punish those who would not. In doing so, Crone says that Muhammad performs the first recorded jihad, a process that is supposed to dilute the hold that materialism has over converted believers. 

Such jihad-centric Hadiths taught that a soldier’s life was impermanent, and the real world implications of those teachings were that many Muslim soldiers during those centuries broke with and dissolved their family ties and renounced their worldly possessions. The power that came from setting the early teachings on jihad within an apocalyptic atmosphere makes clear why a connection to the end of the world was maintained in later jihadi literature: without an imminent end to the world, it would have been much more of a problematic burden for Muslim soldiers to summon the necessary stamina to achieve their conquests up through the ninth century.

Jihad has continued to play a major role in Islamic apocalyptic literature.

Apocaylptic traditions in Islam focus on Muslim wars with the Byzantines who were the only serious opponents to the early Muslim community. The early Muslims dreamed of conquering the Byzantine capital of Constantinople; thereby, completing their conquest of the entire Mediterranean basin, the territory once controlled by the Roman Empire. When these early Muslims failed to achieve their goal, conquering the basin would became another sign for the world ending in future Islamic apocalyptic writings.

The Islamic messianic figure, known as the Mahdi, is understood to complete the conquests left undone by the early Muslims. He will conquer Constantinople, Europe, India, Asia, and the rest of the undiscovered world. It is understood that the Mahdi will not forcibly convert the populations of these regions, but he will expand the Muslim empire and will rule these populations according to just (sharia) law. Muslims will be required to dedicate their lives to fighting jihad with the Mahdi, recreating the warrior caste from early Islam.

The Mahdi is prophesied to rule for either seven, nine, or nineteen years. Sunnis Muslims view the Mahdi as the successor to Muhammad; however, belief in the Mahdi is more prevalent in Shi’a Islam where he is understood to appear at the end of time.

Tales of Muslim conquests, set in both the past and the future, have created a whole additional genre of Islamic literature available in Hadith collections, and much of it is devoted to jihad and the end of the world. These writings are intended to flesh out material from the Qur’an, but they are used today along with newer interpretations of jihad to inspire (and in some cases indoctrinate) individuals to the causes of militant groups and terrorist organizations.

The Role of Religion in Security Studies

Why is religion an important component of international security analysis?

In order to answer this question, we need to inspect  what exactly we mean by “security analysis.” The topic of security has been one of the primary interests in the study of international relations for the past 60 years. The political connotations for security were colossal during this time as is evidenced by how the Cold War was shaped by the subject of security: Two superpowers and their allies contested spaces, communities, and ideologies, and these contested issues had ramifications for war and peace, a balance of power, an arms race, and arms control.

As the Cold War evolved, security on an international level became a dominant focus. The most accepted concept of international security during this time was called realist hegemony where security experts thought that the international level would be the most stable when a single nation, or hegemon, was in power. However, once the Cold War ended and the United States was left as the solitary superpower, it became evident that our concepts of international security were inadequate.

Events like September 11th showcased that a broader approach to security analysis was needed, because the traditional concepts ignored non-state actors and the issues that were important to them.  Understanding security no longer means understanding a state’s military strength against the military power of other states. While the state remains important in the contemporary world, a state is ultimately limited by its boundaries or the boundaries of its allies. Non-state actors, on the other hand, have no such limitations. The nature of the “enemy” has changed; consequently, the nature of international conflict is understood differently.

International security is now understood as a complex arrangement of political, economic, and social factors under which military power can accomplish only limited security objectives.

Religion is an important component of the social factors that affect international security. Religion can both prevent and provoke various forms of conflict, and religious factors are related to ethnic group identity, territory, politics, language, and economics. Religious factors are therefore an essential element for effective conflict management as well as an important component in security analysis.

The Muslim Brotherhood: An Introduction

Since my recent post about Egypt’s internal turmoil, I’ve had some readers email me asking that I expound on who and what the Muslim Brotherhood are.

The Muslim Brotherhood is a socio-religio-political movement that was founded in Egypt in 1936, and, to me, the Brotherhood’s philosophical framework is best understood through the writings of one of their most prolific members, Sayyid Qutb.

Sayyid Qutb’s interpretation of Islam grew out of the many confrontations that occurred between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Egyptian state in the 1950s and 1960s. Increasingly radicalized by Egypt’s suppression of the movement, Qutb espoused a rejectionist ideology that was meant to be a kind of call to arms for the Egyptian people.

Qutb in an Egyptian jail

Qutb, who had a modern education, saw the Western world as morally decadent, racist, and devoid of familial responsibility. Worse, the West’s influence was growing in Egypt and the rest of the Arab world. Throughout the writings of his forty published books, Qutb divided the world into two antipodal camps, the Muslim world (dar al-Islam) and the world of evil epitomized by the West (dar al-Harb).

Mass Demonstrations Continue in Egypt

Thousands of Egyptians gathered in Cairo today for a mass demonstration to protest a draft constitution that has been adopted by the allies of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi. The demonstration culminated in a mass march on the presidential palace.

As you may be aware, Egypt’s fragile democracy was threatened last month when Morsi, a member of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, moved to dramatically expand his power by nullifying Egypt’s separation of powers and granting himself absolute authority.

Separation of powers is a model for state governance. It was first used by the Roman Republic around 509 BCE. Under this model, the state is divided into branches, each with separate and independent powers as well as areas of responsibility. This ensures that no branch has more power than the other branches. The most common branch division is an executive, a legislature, and a judiciary.

Under Morsi, Egypt’s executive branch now has immunity from the other branches, thus giving the president dictator-like powers.

Is the U.N. Palestine Vote a Game Changer?

The Palestinians have won their bid for stronger recognition at the United Nations. To be candid, this could be a game changer… but it probably isn’t. Most likely this move is yet another hollow gesture that ends up being meaningless.

The U.N. General Assembly voted last week to recognize Palestine as a non-member state. One hundred and thirty-eight countries voted in favor of changing the status of the Palestinian territories from a non-member “observer entity” to a non-member “observer state”.

While this does not make Palestine a voting member of the U.N., this vote does give Palestine the rights to join some of the specialized agencies of the U.N. which can only create complications for Israel. Symbolically, what this vote means is that Israel has lost leverage with countries that used to back it unquestioningly, but that doesn’t necessarily change the reality of the political landscape.