Al-dawla al-fātimiyya Politics, history and the re-interpretation of Islam

Abstract

This study focuses on the ways and forms through which Mu'ammar al-Ḳadhdhāfī reproposes the opportunity of a proclamation (i'lān) of the second dawla fātimiyya in North Africa, in the framework of history, politics and re-interpretation of Islam. This topic has been scarcely studied by Western scholars and analysts interested in the thinking and political action of the leader of Tripoli. My intention, here, is to highlight, though briefly, the peculiar modalities and forms through which al-Ḳadhdhāfī re-reads history in general, and the history of the dawla fātimiyya in particular, by taking into account the political and ideological choices of the Libyan leadership. In conducting this re-reading with relation to the role of the dawla fātimiyya in North Africa, two are the interconnected aspects which I think are worth mentioning:

1) the meaning of history and historiography, as in the case of the affirmation of the dawla fātimiyya in North Africa at the beginning of the 10^th Century, with a special attention to the debate on the caliph-imam and the role of the elites;

2) Islam as an unifying system and the discourse on the ‘supposed’ differences between sunna and shī'a. For the first, as well as for the second aspect, what seems fundamental is the vision of al-Ḳadhdhāfī with regard to the necessary unitarian recompositions in Arabic and Islamic context, and more precisely in connection with Europe, together with the relationship among Arab nationalism, Arabism and Islam.

Keywords:

• Fatimids
• politics
• history

Notes

ḳaḍiyyat al-dīn fī'l-‘alam al-mu‘āṣir, min aḳwāl al-akh al-‘aqīd, Speeches Collection delivered during the years 1974–1975, Idārat al-a'lām wa'l-shu’ūn al-thaḳafiyya, Tripoli, 1975, p. 92.

Ibid.

Al-qur'ān wa'l-ḳawmiyya al-'arabiyya, Tripoli, Wizārat al-A'lam wa'l-thaḳafa 1972, pp. 9–13.

‘Al-Da‘wa al-islāmiyya ‘alā abwāb al-qarn al-djadīd’, in Risālat al-Djihād n. 81, Tripoli, October 1989, pp. 6–28.

This speech is published in Risālat al-Djihād, Tripoli n. 81 – October 1989, pp. 26–27.

Al-Sidjill al-ḳawmī. Bayānāt wa khuṭab wa aḥādīth al-'aqīd Mu'ammar al-ëadhdhāfī, al-madjallad al-sanawī al-tāsi' 1397–98 H. / 1977–1979, Tripoli, Amānat al-I‘lām wa'l-thaḳāfa al-Idāra al-‘āmma li'l-thaḳāfa wa'l-irshād al-qawmī, p. 212.

Meeting with the students of the Faculty of the Humanities at the University of Benghazi on 7 May 1973.

ḳaḍiyyat al-dīn op. cit.

al-Naẓariyya al-thālitha li'l-‘aqīd Mu'ammar al-ëadhdhafī, Tripoli Manshurāt al-Ittihād al-ishtirākī al-‘arabī 15, 1972; see also Muḥammad Bn ‘Abd al-Karīm al-Gazā’irī, al-ëadhdhafī wa'l-mutaqawwilūna ‘alayhi, Beirut Dār ‘Uqba Bn Nāfi‘, 1982.

Ḥadīth fī kulliyyat al-Adāb, 1973.

Published by Dār Al al-Bayt, the fourth of al-Maktaba al-fāṭimiyya, 1st edition 2007.

Address on 18 February 1992 at a ceremony held in Tripoli for the participants to the meeting of the Madjlis muḥāfiẓī of the Islamic Bank for Development.

Speech held in Marsa Matruh, Egypt, on 24 May 1996.

On this occasion, the title used by al-Qadhdhāfī was that of ḳā’id salaṭīn al-tawāriḳ, Chief of the Tuareg Sultans.

Address at a meeting with the chiefs of the tribes of the Great Sahara, in Aghadis on 31 March 2007.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Khiṭāb to the youths on 28 min shahr Rabī‘ al-Awwal – 15 min shahr al-Ṭayr 1375/15 April 2007: demonstration against the 1986 American attack.

‘Ma'nat al-sunna’, in al-Sidjill al-ḳawmī, cit., pp. 486–489.

‘Madhāhib wa firaḳ’ in al-Sidjill al-ḳawmī, cit., p. 1016.

Ibid.