Dis/connecting Islam and terror: the ‘Open Letter to Al-Baghdadi’ and the pitfalls of condemning ISIS on Islamic grounds

Abstract

When Muslim individuals or groups perpetrate acts of violence, Muslim scholars are routinely required to condemn the ‘misuse’ of Quranic verses, and scholars of Islamic studies have to ‘explain’ the distant relation between classical jihad and modern terrorism. Most critics of an organization like the ‘Islamic State’ (ISIS) refute a direct link between its violence and Islam. However, they paradoxically take this link seriously enough to discuss it in detail or discard it entirely, by attributing it to an ‘Islamophobic’ perception of Islam. As misuse is still a kind of use and distance a kind of closeness, these experts risk reconstructing the connection that most of them wish to undermine because their criticism, by aiming at ISIS or ‘Islamophobia,’ still conjures up an Islamic imaginary. The article draws attention to the pitfalls in talking about so-called ‘Islamic terrorism’ and sheds a light on the under-researched politics of condemnation, in which Muslims are routinely called upon to engage. A case in point is the ‘Open Letter to al-Baghdadi,’ published by 126 religious scholars in 2014, which condemned ISIS on religious grounds. The author argues that such a condemnation contributes to an asymmetrical perception of Islam and an ideological understanding of terrorism. It reiterates truncated understandings about the root causes of political violence, while failing to address the thorny issue surrounding legitimate forms of violence. The main problem bedeviling the critics of Islamically justified terrorism is the ambiguous nature of a terror organization like ISIS, whose communication strategy forcefully targets Muslim as well as non-Muslim audiences and their attempts to vindicate or blame Islam.

Keywords:

• Terrorism
• Islamophobia
• religion
• violence
• Salafism

Notes

1. I use the English acronym ISIS (‘Islamic State in Iraq and Syria’ for al-Dawla al-Islamiyya fi l-ʿIraq wa-l-Sham) throughout the text although the organization has abbreviated its name to IS (‘Islamic State’) after the proclamation of the caliphate in 2014. It has developed out of al-Qaʿida in Iraq, an organization established by Abu Musʿab al-Zarqawi and several other jihadist organizations after the US-led intervention of Iraq in 2003.

2. Compare for example the low profile coverage on war crimes committed by state actors like the Assad regime, although Assad is not even a Western ally.

3. This ambivalence reveals that the critique of Islamphobia is inspired by Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978), see e.g. Kumar’s (2012: 20–60) positive references to Said.

4. This has changed after the burning to death of Sunni Muslim Jordanian pilot Mu’adh Kasasbeh in February 2015. The Grand Sheikh of al-Azhar, Ahmed Tayib, released a statement saying that ISIS extremists should be ‘killed, or crucified, or their hands and legs cut off,’ thus applying ‘the punishment of those who wage war against Allah and his messenger’ (Quran 5:33) to ISIS and renouncing the Azhar’s former reservation of declaring ISIS un-Islamic.

5. Prominent public figures are the Grand Mufti of Egypt Shawqi ʿAllam; his predecessor ʿAli Gumʿa; the Mufti of Jerusalem, Muhammad Ahmad Hussein; the Turkish theologian Mustafa Çağrıcı; the former Grand Mufti of Bosnia, Mustafa Ceric; and the Mauretanian scholar Abdallah Bin Bayyah. Prominent Sufi sheiks are the Syrian Muhammad al-Yaʿqoubi and the Saudi Abdullah Fadʿaq. American Muslims are represented, among others, by Jamal Badawi from the Fiqh Council of the USA and Caner Dagli, professor of Religious Studies.

6. Syrian signatory Muhammad al-Yaqoubi is well-known for his support of the uprising in Syria and had to leave the country. The Iraqi signatories are Ahmad Al-Kubaisi, spokesperson of the Sunni Ulema Council and TV preacher, and Bashshar Awwad Marouf, former Dean of the Islamic University in Baghdad and fellow at the Royal Al al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought. The Saudi signatory Abdullah Fadʿaq is a Sufi sheikh and Shafiʿi cleric.

7. The full quote is: ‘Once all relevant scriptural passages have been gathered, the ‘general’ has to be distinguished from the ‘specific’, and the ‘conditional’ from the ‘unconditional’. Also, the ‘unequivocal’ passages have to be distinguished from the allegorical ones. Moreover, the reasons and circumstances for revelation (asbab al-nuzul) for all the passages and verses, in addition to all the other hermeneutical conditions that the classical imams have specified, must be understood. Therefore, it is not permissible to quote a verse, or part of a verse, without thoroughly considering and comprehending everything that the Qur’an and Hadith relate about that point. The reason behind this is that everything in the Qur’an is the Truth, and everything in authentic Hadith is Divinely inspired, so it is not permissible to ignore any part of it. Indeed it is imperative to reconcile all texts, as much as possible, or that there be a clear reason why one text should outweigh another’ (Open Letter 2014: 3).

8. I use the term to designate a relationship that is weaker than causality, but stronger than mere coincidence, implying that the adversaries’ violence is factually there, and not only as a source of self-legitimatization.

9. Reference to the first mixed-gender campus in Saudi Arabia on the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), founded near Jeddah in 2009.