All hail the priesthood of illiterate believers!

What exactly is this “strict form of Islamic Law”; al- Shabab would like to impose on the semi-literate masses of Somalia?

The one which will allow them to randomly abduct and stone 13 year old girls whom they have “suspected” of committing “adultery” to death?

The one which will allow them to police the Salat?

The one which allow them to destroy all of the traditional Islamic architecture of Somalia and wage a total war against an assortment of practices which have historically been integral to traditional orthodox Sunni Islam?

Once again, I am afraid we are seeing the fruits of the "Islamic reformation" which the Friedman’s, Manji’s, and Rushdie’s of the world have so fervently campaigned for right before our very eyes! It is quite evident from their words and actions that Al-Shabab like their Islamic modernist counterparts Hamas,



In this paper I will briefly analyze the origins and evolution of early Islamic modernism and its political expression in the Arab world by using the religious studies methods we discussed in class.

The Origins of Islamic Modernism
Islamic modernism was born out of the Muslim world’s initial encounter with western modernity and colonialism during the early 19th to the early 20th centuries. It like its secular nationalist counterparts was but one of many responses to the changing social, political, and economic landscape of the Middle East during the time. However, what distinguished it from its innumerable secular oriented rivals was its distinctively religious character and global appeal.

While different variants of secular nationalism sought to appeal to and unite specific ethno-linguistic groups residing in the greater Muslim world, Islamic modernists sought to appeal to all Muslims regardless of their ethnic, racial, or linguistic make up. They also sought formulate a common Islamic political and cultural identity that would bring about pan-Islamic unity and serve as both an instrument for the modernization of the Muslim world and a rallying call against European Imperialism.

It was the proponents of Islamic modernism’s moderate and fairly nuanced approach regarding the modernization of the Muslim world which highlighted the voluminous difference between them and their secular oriented counterparts and ultimately guaranteed their ideologies wholesale incorporation into the social and cultural fabrics of numerous societies throughout the Muslim world.(Hamzawy p.6) While Islamic modernism’s ideological opponents called for the rash and immediate discarding of the judicial and political aspects of Islamic law in favor of a coercive overnight secularization process and the wholesale importation of western legal systems, Islamic modernists like Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani, Muhammad `Abduh, and Rashid Rida only called for the discarding of the traditional, nuanced, understanding of these aspects of the law in favor of the judicial process of Ijtihad (Housain p.108-109).

Like their reformist counterparts the Wahhabis of Arabia, Islamic modernists rejected the four traditional schools of Islamic Jurisprudence which have historically transmitted Islamic Law, because they held the staunch opinion that it was the Muslim world’s lack of innovation and stringent insistence on the imitation of their medieval forefathers which brought about their scientific and economic stagnation as well as their humiliating military downfall and wholesale degradation. As the Islamic modernist and future intellectual forefather of the Muslim Brotherhood Muhammad Abduh put it “The supposed superiority of the ancients was a mere pretext to keep intact the absurdities of the past.”(Engineer p.165)

In place of classical Islamic Law, Abduh and his fellow Islamic modernists advocated the development of a new hermeneutical technique which would interpret Islam’s sacred texts in a “rational and liberal manner in light of modern times”. This ‘new and enlightened” exegesis of the sacred texts according to Abduh and his cohorts would bring about “Islamic brotherhood, tolerance, and social justice” (Housain p.108). Time of course would ultimately show that the monstrously sophomoric and unsophisticated hermeneutical method of the Islamic modernists would not produce “brotherhood, tolerance, and social justice” but rather it would produce a trend in modern Islamic thought known as the ‘Islamisation of Knowledge” which would go on to bare poisonous fruits like Mummer al-Kaddafi’s murderously oppressive concept of ‘Islamic Socialism’, Ruhollah Khomeini’s menacingly fascistic “Islamic Constitutional Republic” and Abul Ala Maududi’s infamous brand of Leninism in religious garb. It is of course important to note that none of the above mentioned movements are a product of the explicit teachings of the founders of Islamic modernism, but rather a product of the reckless individualistic reformist ethos which they propagated.

The Muslim Brotherhood
While the Islamic modernist’s programs of Pan-Muslim unity and Islamic modernization were appealing to small sector within the larger secularized Muslim intelligentsia, their agenda for social, political, economic, and educational reform remained largely theoretical and unheard of by members of the general population in the Arab world until the formation of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1929. Following the founding of the brotherhood by the Islamic school teacher and Rashid Rida idolizer Hassan al-Banna; the Islamic modernists began implementing wide scale programs promoting social and economic change on a grass roots level. Initially the brotherhood concentrated its energies on creating a welfare society in Egypt, however it eventually gained its massive popularity in the Arab world through it militantly vocal opposition to the colonization of Muslim lands including British occupied Palestine by organizing mass protest rallies; a tactic which eventually garnered the organization a large amount of popular support both in Egypt as well as in neighboring nations in the Levant.(Abu Amar p.11) By the time the state of Israel was founded in 1948 the Muslim Brotherhood had grown from its initial seven members to a highly sophisticated socio-political organization with a membership base consisting of over two Million people, an additional three branches of its organization established in the Levant and a highly publicized military confrontation with the State of Israel.( Housain p.72) The Muslim Brotherhoods fortunes however were about to take a drastic turn for the worst.

In 1952 after a four year period of Arab unrest and discontent over Arab forces is defeat at the hands of the Israelis during the 1948 war of Israeli Independence, a group of secular Arab nationalist officers in the Egyptian Army with the moral support of the Brotherhood overthrew the Egyptian Monarchy and established a secular Arab Republic in its place, ushering in a new era in Middle Eastern History (Housain p.165). Initially the relationship between the Muslim Brotherhood and the new secular established were so good that the Brotherhood was popularly labeled the “party of the government” (Abu Amar p. 7) however this honeymoon was short lived. In 1954 after a fall out with Jamal abd al-Nasser the leader of the Free Officers movement which seized power, regarding the terms of an evacuation treaty between Britain and Egypt, an attempt was made on Nasser’s life and the Muslim Brotherhood ended up bearing the blunt of the blame for the would be assassination effort. (Abu Amar p. 8) Following the incident, Nasser ordered the immediate arrest of all key Muslim Brotherhood members and and high profile affiliates. The incidents of systematic and widespread oppression and brutality on the part of the Egyptian government against the Muslim Brotherhood which would take place in the following decade would eventually cause the wholesale political radicalization of what has otherwise been a historically non-violent socio-political organization.

The Mainstreamization of Islamic Modernism
While the Muslim Brotherhood temporarily found themselves in the lime light, it would be their organization in particular and ideological movement in general which would find itself having the last laugh and not their Arab nationalist rivalries. Following Nasser’s imprisonment of his adversaries, and massive decade long popularity surge after the 1956 Suez War, he and his entourage were faced with what humiliating anomy-esq defeat of the greater Arab world’s collective military forces at the hands of a nation state the size of Togo. Indeed it was this event which many Middle East historians have deemed to be a turning point in the regions history.

Following the Arab world’s humiliating defeat in 1967 a plethora of theodicean questions regarding the spiritual state of the Arab nation and their relationship with the God of Abraham began to be asked by Arab societies from the Atlantic to the Gulf. Many Arabs found it extremely difficult to grasp why God would grant the ‘evil prophet killers’ of Israel such a momentous victory against the Arab peoples?( Housain p.169) The answer according to the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist organizations in the Muslim world was quite simple: God was punishing the Arab masses for their violation of the dictates of the Shariah, wholesale embracement of secularism and socialism, support for Nasser’s vehemently anti-Muslim regime, and alignment with the Godless ‘Evil Empire’ known as the Soviet Union.( Housain p.169) According to the Brotherhood, God would naturally favor the State of Israel over the Muslims who turned their backs on their religion because it was a “religious state founded on Judaism”. (Housain p.169-170) The Arab world’s reflection on these questions as well as the arson attack on the al-Aqsa Mosque, and the founding of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, eventually gave way to the wholesale social embracement of Islamic Modernism.










To my knowledge not one of the four schools of Islamic Jurisprudence which have historically transmitted the Shariah sanction any of the activities I have mentioned above.




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While the feeble minded Islamists of Najdi persuasion may temporarily bring the failed state of Somalia out of a Hobbesian state of nature, in the end their fascistic Islamist tendencies will work to the determent of not only the impoverished and illiterate Somalia masses, but the Muslim Ummah as a whole.



The Way Forward
The Somali Militants should reject the deviant Wahhabi teachings of their Saudi funders and embrace traditional Sunni Islam. They should discard their doctrine of Sola Scriptura and fallacy ridden hermeneutics when it comes to the law and subscribe to one of the traditional schools of Islamic Jurisprudence. Their can be NO SHARIAH without FIQH.