Roots of Political Islam: Exploring Religious Extremism

Islam morphed into Islamism in six phases. This transformation resulted from recourse to a weaponized exegesis and jurisprudence, necessitated by the political exigencies. Militant rulers craved a rendition of Islam that would enable them to wage unlawful wars of territorial expansion under the banner of Islam. This required a re-alignment of the relationships between revelation, reason and tradition. The process reflected a drift from tradition to revelation. The revelation-centric paradigm gave way to a tradition-centric paradigm. This was an anomaly in the epistemology of Islam and explains a slew of problems confronting the umma today. At the prodding of militant rulers and their accomplices among clerics the umma turned from revelation to tradition. This was exemplified in the requests by rulers to record the traditions ascribed to the prophet in defiance of his prohibition of the recording of his traditions. The traditions were recorded reluctantly by the persons tasked with the recordings. For a few of them remembered that the prophet prohibited the recording of his traditions. To assuage the fears of defying the prophet, Umar II publicly declared that the prophet "abrogated" his prohibition of recording his traditions. The first and sixth phases were political. The second stage witnessed the repression of reasoning by tradition. In the third stage, tradition would become a "part of" revelation. In the fourth stage, tradition would "judge" revelation. In the fifth stage, the verses of reconciliation in the Book of Allah would be abrogated and replaced by the verse of the sword and hawkish traditions. The transformation of Islam to Islamism was expedited by the repression of reason. This was achieved by treating the use of reason in religion as kufr. In the third phase, tradition was treated as revelation. It was at this juncture that Islam became "traditional." The treatment of tradition as revelation was "justified" by recourse to a tradition in which the prophet said that his traditions were "similar" to the Book of Allah. In so far as tradition was treated as an "equal" of revelation, the designation of tradition as revelation amounted to scriptural shirk. Thus, the transformation of Islam into Islamism was enabled by a gradual encroachment upon tauhid. In the fourth phase, tradition transcended revelation and was treated as a "judge" of revelation. Treating tradition as a "judge" of revelation required the subordination of revelation to tradition. In so far as the subordination of revelation to tradition amounts to the subordination of the word of God to the words of persons, the treatment of tradition as a judge of revelation also amounted to shirk. The fifth stage witnessed the abrogation of revelation by revelation, tradition, and the rulings of the ulama. When the peace verses were "abrogated" by the verses of the sword, Islam became "political." In so far as the abrogation of revelation by tradition and the rulings of the ulama required treating the words of persons as greater authorities than Allah, the alleged "abrogation" of revelation by tradition and the rulings of the ulama were expression of juristic shirk. The sixth and last stage witnessed the embedding of the teaching of the clash of the realm of peace (dar al-Islam) with the realm of unbelief (dar al-kufr). Islam became political and began to serve as a justification for unlawful wars of territorial enlargement waged under the pretext of propagating Islam by the sword, a practice referred to as jihad al-talab, or the sixth pillar of Islam. The aggressiveness of militant Islam brought defeats, as in the destruction of the Abbasids by the Mongols, the defeats of the Turks at the gates of Vienna, as well as the wars in Afghanistan and the fall of Bagdad in 2003.

Author: Leslie Terebessy

Publisher: Independently Published

Publication Date: Apr 07, 2022

Number of Pages: 156 pages

Binding: Paperback or Softback

ISBN-10: NA

ISBN-13: 9798448450846