Salvation is just a family affair

David Myatt is certainly no stranger to ideologies, having been active in the neo-Nazi camp and also founding the hardline British National Socialist Movement (BNS). In 1998, all that changed when he walked into a British mosque and announced his conversion to Islam.

David Myatt's discovery of Islam is vividly portrayed in an Internet article he wrote for the Saved Sect website. His association with the Saved Sect speaks volumes on the stream of Islam he is partial to.

The Saved Sect, more formally known as the Savior Sect, receives its name from the famous hadith (tradition):

My nation will be divided into 73 sects, all of them will be in the Fire except for one (the saved sect)...

Like most other Salafist flavors that derive the idea of a saved sect (al-Firqat un-Naajiyah) from the hadith, the Saved Sect merely claims to represent the views of the saved sect without claiming that they themselves are saved.

Though it is disputed by some, the Saved Sect is widely alleged to be an offshoot of al-Muhajiroun, which was set up by Omar Bakri Muhammad as a front outfit for Hizb ut-Tahrir in Saudi Arabia. Al-Muhajiroun broke away from Hizb ut-Tahrir in 1996 and was officially disbanded in 2004.

Tariq Ramadan (Western Muslims and the Future of Islam) calls Hizb ut-Tahrir a Salafist-Reformist group, with clear political aims to re-establish an Islamic caliphate. The Saved Sect- along with its now defunct affiliate, al-Muhajiroun- do not detract much from this aim. Like most Salafist flavors, the Saved Sect shoulders the burden of establishing dawah (evangelism) to remind Muslims- most of whom they deem to be on the brink of apostasy- about their duties.

Their manifesto also includes:

1. Labeling popular scholars such as Sheikh Hamza Yusuf and Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi as apostates. Not even Saudi-Salafists like Sheikh ibn Baaz or Sheikh ibn Uthaymeen are spared.

2. Positively identifying the Saudi kingdom as the personification of the ancient cult of secessionists known as Khawaarij (seceders). [see khawaarij]

3. Condemning the practice of taqleed (adherence to a School of Thought) that is widespread amongst Muslims to be a "road to deviation, misguidance, superstition and all other forms of falsehood".  [see taqleed]

4. Labeling Sufism as a deviant sect. [see bid'ah]

Such lists are hardly novel, since ideologies don't ordinarily tolerate one another. The Saved Sect's criticism of popular Saudi sheikhs, for example, ensures hostility from a tireless and well-endowed quarter; that of Saudi Salafism. However, to extend the point about general ideological intolerance, Saudi Salafism does share a common enemy with the Saved Sect. Both groups detest Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi and many conservative Salafists label him as the Wicked Mufti. A Mufti, of course, is an Islamic scholar who is qualified to issue religious edicts called fatwas. Combined with the appellation, wicked, it denotes a person who perhaps issues heretical fatwas.

Sheikh al-Qaradawi's brand of deviation, at least according to this article, is called Qaradawism. It's rather unimaginative, but Olivier Roy (Globalised Islam) describes such exercises as entirely typical of ideological groups in Islam.

...[they] tend to have the same habit as did the Soviets, labeling a 'deviation' with the name of the thinker (Suroorism, Qaradawism, Qutbism).

Aside from having a whole movement named after him, Sheikh al-Qaradawi is also the target of any number of threats. They range from relatively harmless name-calling, like being dubbed a "barking dog" by no less a personage than Sheikh Muqbil ibn Haadee al-Waadi'ee, to out-and-out appeals for his execution. In this, Sheikh Abu Basser at-Tartousi, a man who explicitly styles himself a Wahhabi [1] and christens the Saudi regime as a kafir (Islam-rejecting) establishment, quotes a verdict by Saudi Sheikh ibn Uthaymeen [2],

...if he [al-Qaradawi] doesn't repent, he is to be killed as an apostate.

The Saved Sect, however, carefully maintains that it does not,

...advocate any type of violence towards any particular nation.

Yet, ironically enough, in an article entitled "How Islam will dominate the world", the group recommends several ways in which a state or country can become Daar ul-Islam (the domain of Islam). One of them states that Muslims should,

...rise, overthrow the government and implement the Sharee'ah by force...

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[1] The original declaration is found in a now-defunct website (www.tibyan.com) whose cached page I have screen-captured for posterity.

[2] His teacher was Sheikh ibn Baaz, Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia and one of those who had been educated by a teacher from the family of Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab.

When blindness kills

The latest bombings in Egypt effectively nail the coffin shut on the lie that terrorism is the West's problem. In fact, because of the increased security in the United States and Europe, major terrorist strikes have unsurprisingly moved into predominantly Muslim capitals. From the bombings of the Hazrat Shahjalal shrine in Bangladesh, to the demolition of the golden dome in Samarra, Iraq. From the triple suicide bombings in Jordan to the slaughter of Muslim ulema (scholars) who had arrived at Karachi, Pakistan to commemorate Mawlid (Prophet Muhammad's birthday); the attacks increasingly point to an ideological divide between Muslims. In fact, the targets themselves offer the first clues to the shape of the ideology that perpetrated the attacks

Unfortunately, unless Muslim governments are willing to take the all-important first step in identifying the ideology, their cities remain vulnerable to terrorists who recognize no other rules except their own.

When the blinkers will be removed is anybody's guess.

Jerusalem: Where armies and souls contend

Steven Erlanger (The New York Times) ruminates on the troubled city of Jerusalem.

The struggles over the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif...are fundamental, with fanatics of both faiths wanting to expunge the other.

Yet this is one of my favorite places in Jerusalem - grassy, shaded by trees and deceptively calm.

While I sit on a stone wall and look at the intricate tiles of the Dome of the Rock, some Jews are plotting to destroy it and Al Aksa mosque and build a third temple. Some evangelical Christians hope they'll do it, thinking that only then will Jesus return. Some Muslims are convinced that the Jews are burrowing underground to create a new synagogue. Jews are upset that the Muslims dug into the hill at the site of Solomon's Stables in 1996 to create a new underground mosque, the Marwani. It's here, on the ground revered by both Judaism and Islam, where Jerusalem is most divided - and most volatile.

And it's here that Sharon made a controversial visit in September 2000, which many Muslims say set off the second intifada...

Continue reading...

Can interfaith relations stop extremism?

A CBS poll claims to prove, within a reasonable margin of error, that people's perception of Islam is going down the drain. Margin or no margin, one does not need a poll to know that.

In almost all interfaith gatherings, the agenda inevitably coalesces on the question of Islam's image. I think it saps the agenda somewhat. More can be done instead of simply waxing and waning that Muslims are hated as never before. God forbid that such gatherings should go the way of most OIC (Organization of Islamic Countries) meetings.

Nonetheless, it is a fact that most people believe that one of the means to reduce the potential for future terrorism is to build bridges between faiths. While this is a commendable attitude, I have never believed in its realism, not while the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, for example, is couched in the absolutist terms of religion. To put it bluntly, peace has little chance of succeeding if terms like Jerusalem, third holiest city of Islam, and Jerusalem, eternal capital of Israel are consistently placed on the negotiating table.

The Israeli position, especially, makes little sense in the tumultuous context of the Tanakh (the Hebrew scriptures). They, of all people, should know the falsity of such claims.

For better or for worse, however, Israel has influential friends in the United States. No group has been more vociferous in supporting America's myopic stance on the Middle East than the Christian premillennialist camp. Malise Ruthven (Fundamentalism, the Search for Meaning) calls them,

theological refugees in a world they no longer control. They have a baleful influence on American foreign policy, by tilting it towards the Jewish state which they aim eventually to obliterate, by converting 'righteous' Jews to Christ. They have damaged the education of American children in some places by adding 'scientific creationism' to the curriculum...On a planetary level, they are selfish, greedy, and stupid, damaging the environment by the excessive use of energy and lobbying against environmental controls. What is the point of saving the planet, they argue, if Jesus is arriving tomorrow?

Interfaith gatherings, while great for fostering relations between the intellectuals and elites of religions, have limited impact on the ground. Sometimes, I suspect that these talks are promoted for their sheer futility, because let's face it, the initiatives and positions adopted by interfaith councils seldom, if ever, trickle down to the sermons delivered from either Christian pulpits or Muslim minbars. No boats are rocked. It's a useful distraction from real problems.

Of greater importance is the dialogue between different Muslim groups. Take this recently-concluded interview with Saudi Sheikh Ayedh al Garni, in which he supports calls for,

...an open dialogue between Sunni, Shiaa and Sufi Muslims.

He further adds,

"We should meet and refer our differences to the Quran and the Sunna."

Now, I am not going to comment on Sheikh Ayedh's inference that Sunni Muslims and Sufi Muslims are two different things. It's obvious he means Salafist Muslims when he mentions Sunni Muslims, even though the Sunni'ism of the majority of Muslims is based on taqlid (adherence) to the four Madhhabs (Schools of Thought) and a qualified acceptance of the science of Tassawwuf (Sufism). This majority is in fact established by the Jordan Initiative, which places the Madhhabs at the apex of a list it calls "true Islam". Why is this an issue? Salafists typically despise taqlid and condemn it every opportunity they get.

Nor am I going to say that any dialogue that transpires should rightly lie between this Sunni majority and the Salafist minority, a conversation that has, in reality, taken place away from the masses.

I merely mentioned Sheikh Ayedh's interview because I wanted to bring up the brilliant response of one blogger, Mr Ahmed Al-Omran of the prolific Saudi Jeans.

I'm all for dialogue, but I don't really see the point of this one. Instead of looking for our differences- as if these differences are some kind of a problem, how about respecting each other and support freedom for everybody to practice their beliefs?

How to Lose Your Job at a Saudi Newspaper

Fawaz Turki- erstwhile columnist of the Saudi-based Arab News- on the finer points of how to blow your career in the Middle East.

What mattered was that I had committed one of the three cardinal sins an Arab journalist must avoid when working for the Arab press: I criticized the government.

The other two? Bringing up Islam as an issue and criticizing, by name, political leaders in the Arab or Islamic world for their brazen excesses, dismal failures and blatant abuses.

Continue reading...

Terrorism nearly killed Saladin

Malaysia plans to break into the lucrative animation industry in a big way, by tackling no less a personage than the great Saladin al-Ayubbi himself.

Saladin's chilvary, courage and military brilliance are well-known both inside and outside the Muslim world. Little wonder then that Moustapha Akkad (The Message: The Story of Islam) had chosen the Kurdish commander as the theme of his latest film, with the ageless Sean Connery playing what might have been a leading role. Akkad explained,

"In the light of unjustified accusations of terrorism directed towards the Arab world, Saladin is- in my perspective- the most suitable character to present to the West as our mouthpiece. Is there a more barbaric example of religious terrorism than the medieval Crusades that Saladin confronted? However, nobody accuses Christianity of breeding terrorism."

This was all before the hotel bombings in Jordan, of course. Along with sixty other civilians, Moustapha Akkad and his daughter were killed by bombs strapped onto a troupe of suicide bombers. An al-Qaeda website later clarified that those hotels were valid targets because they had become the favorite haunts of, amongst other things,

"American and Israeli intelligence and other Western European governments."

I suspect that the newfound interest in Saladin was sparked by two relatively recent developments. The first was Steven Spielberg's splendid Prince of Egypt, which showed how good animation could be used to tell even the most careworn stories. The second was the positive potrayal of Saladin in Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven.

Nonetheless, Malaysia wades into the Saladin franchise with what seems to be a unique narrative.

According to the feature's official homepage,

...the series proposes a fictional period in his life as a young adventurer, the experience of which shaped the great leader he would become. 18 years old and ready to take on the world, Saladin leaves his home city of Damascus with his lifelong friend Tarik...

Dare I say it? There seems to be a healthy dash of Ibn Battuta thrown into the series.

No matter how historically inaccurate the animated feature turns out to be, it's a monumental step for a country many Muslims once considered to be an outpost of the ummah. The trailer doesn't look half bad, either.

View the trailer

Blogging for Islam- best practices

Inundated by questions from aspiring bloggers, I have decided to reveal some of the things I do in the course of blogging. Best practices, of course, is a misleading word, since what works for me might not necessarily work for you, just as one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

Through this post, though, I hope to address some of the questions that have come my way. Read and enjoy SheilaX's 12-point program to successful blogging, the kosher/halaal way!

Point 1. Feeding frenzy
Most blogs have a secret side to them. We don't see them very often because they are plain and ugly. They're called feeds. A feed is a complete mirror of your blog's contents, written out in near-indecipherable language. Actually, the language has a name; XML. It's not for human digestion. XML is really the staple snack of hardworking, underappreciated little applications called aggregators.

If you haven't already activated your blog's feed, activate it now. Mine, for example is found here.

Point 2. Feed munchers
There is writer's block, and there is blogger's block. Unlike writer's block, the blogger's block can be a crippling condition. You'll go days on end without food, drink or sleep; and it's not Ramadan.

But it needn't be so bad. Remember aggregators? Well, these suave applications either exist as online services like Bloglines or Google Reader (my own), or as software you install into your personal computers. Unless you lug your PCs wherever you go, I recommend online services for their sheer portability.

What you do is visit your favorite blogs or news portals, and dig out their feed pages. Usually, they can be found by clicking on suspicious-looking icons that have the words RSS or XML on them. The hipper, more understated icon that cool people use is this:

Copy the URLs of these feeds and paste them into your aggregators. Now, you don't have to visit ten different websites to receive your daily diet of news and gossips. The aggregator literally pulls the contents from the registered feeds and throws them on the screen. All the news in the world at a single place. How cool can that be?

Do you see the potential of feeds and feed munchers now? With them, you will have a never-ending source of inspiration and writing angst.

One tip. If you don't want to be bogged down by news that you care little for, narrow down what you want to read by zeroing in on sectional feeds. BBC, for example, offers different feeds for different categories of news. For my line of blogging, I usually go for all things Middle Eastern. That's where all the action is!

Point 3. Your blog needs TLC
What's green and loves blogs? Technorati, of course. Technorati is the mother of all blog search engines. So go on over to Technorati and claim (fancy word for register) your blog. Once registered, your blog begins to show up in their search results. If you use tags- a topic I'll come to later- Technorati's affection for you becomes even more amorous.

Another critical service all blogs should have is Feedburner. Feedburner basically takes your blog's feed and does magic tricks with it. You won't believe the multitude of features they offer. One of my favorite is this little graphic that you can embed as a signature in your emails and forum profiles.



Point 4. Spread wisdom
Dirty little secret here. There's no better way to advertise your blog than leaving comments in other, more popular blogs. Most commenting forms require that you fill up a URL to your own blog, so that people who are too curious for their own good can click on your profile and be teleported straightaway into your domain.

So spread whatever wisdom you have across the blogosphere. But make sure you keep track of them with this nifty little service called cocomment.

Point 5. The Umm Zaid syndrome
Be regular in your postings. Aim to post as frequently as Umm Zaid of the thoroughly-enjoyable and always-intelligent Sunni Sisters blog.

Point 6. Link to your source
In the Internet age, everybody is a skeptic. Always ensure that the main themes in your blog entries have links that lead to online material. This may range from snippets on popular news portals (BBC, CNN, Time, etc.) to more exotic sources like the history of Nation of Islam. Quote liberally but don't go into extremes.

Depending on what you blog about, always ensure that your sources are reputable. Most Muslims, for example, shut down their browsers before even the banner of danielpipes.org appears.

Know your audience, and your audience knows you.

Point 7. Dead links
Avoid linking to rarely-visited materials. If you do, then screen-capture (the often misunderstood Print-Screen) the webpage and save it as an image because there is a high chance that the material won't be around in a year's time. Also, if you frequently link to online news portals, check that these portals keep obsolete materials online permanently. BBC is your safest bet.

Point 8. But I want that dead link!
Because Islam is such a broad subject, there are literally tens of thousands of viewpoints on the religion to be found on the Internet. Google keeps an impressive index of most of these viewpoints, and you will find it an indispensable tool in your blogging.

However, Google is not perfect. Sometimes, your queries throw up links that look tantalizing on the Google results page, but actually lead nowhere. Enter the curse of the "defunct" link. Never fear! Go back to the results page and look for the seldom-used feature called CACHE. Google kindly throws up an old saved copy of the website.

The cached page won't last forever, though. Again, depress the by-now ubiquitous Print-Screen and save the page as an image.

Point 9. Give credit where credit is due
Most bloggers are flattered no end if you reprint their posts on your own blog. I know you would feel flattered too. After all, being quoted makes you feel all intellectual and such. It also goes to show that your hitherto secret plans for planetary domination are coming along just fine.

Just a quick note though, blogger tolerance rapidly deteriorates if the "lifted" post isn't credited to them. Always do the kind thing. Link back to their posts, 'kay?

Point 10. What a lovely picture
Nothing is worse than "hotlinking". Hotlinking is a term referring to when a web page of one website owner is direct linking to the images or other multimedia files on the web host of another website owner. As far as the World Wide Web is concerned, hotlinking is a worse sin than plagarization.

Host your own images, including images you screen-captured from the web. There are dozens of free image hosting services online. I personally use imageshack.

Remember, good Muslims don't steal another's bandwidth.

Point 11. Online bookmarks
If you are like me, your bookmarks (or Favorites, if you're a fundamentalist) folder would probably be tearing at the seams by now. Nevermind the carefully-organized, superbly-named folders into which your bookmarks are parked; you're a full-time blogger and you need your bookmarks on the move. This is when services like del.icio.us come in handy. Registering with del.icio.us means 3 things:

a. You bookmark a webpage by simply right clicking it
b. You get to access your bookmarks wherever you are in the world
c. You organize your bookmarks by an ingenious system called "tags", which- by the by- only has the knock-on effect of saving the very soul of Islam.

Point 12. Tag! You're it!
If you haven't heard of tagging, you have probably spent the better part of the Internet revolution on Pluto. Okay, just kidding. It's a relatively new phenomenon. Basically, you can also use the del.icio.us bookmarking service to tag your posts. Once tagged, the theme and nature of your post is instantly recognized by venerable blog-search engines such as Technorati.

Now, if enough moderate (for lack of a better word) Muslims blog and then tag their posts with keywords like Islam, Muslim or my favorite Martian, Salafism; there is a virtual monopoly over them. Search results will therefore throw up the "orthodox" definitions of those keywords.

It's not fool-proof, but it's definitely a start.

Islam, Fundamentalism, and the Betrayal of Tradition (Joseph E Lumbard)

Hailed by Hamzah Yusuf (Zaytuna Institute) as an important "step in the right direction", the book is a collection of essays penned by contemporary Islam's brightest scholars. The range of topics covered is broad, but all address a common theme: that the rise of extremist interpretations of Islam is directly attributable to the dismantling of the traditional framework of religion.

We often hear the term traditional without properly understanding what it entails. Traditional Islam, at its most superficial, is taken to be the complete opposite of Salafi Islam- that means, Sufi-loving, "grave-worshipper" and itinerant fan of a fossilized style of Islam. Of course, that is how some Salafi Muslims like to think their counterparts are.

By and large, though, it's not easy to properly pin down the definition of traditional Islam since it is the normative religion of the majority and allows for quite varied expressions of faith. Any definition must necessarily take into account Islam's multifaceted reality and attempt to be as broadly inclusive as possible. The latter proviso, as Sir Hamilton Gibb (Mohammedanism- An Historical Survey) acknowledges, has always been a hallmark of Sunni Islam.

It would not be to go too far beyond the bounds of strict truth to say...that no body of religious sectarians has ever been excluded from the orthodox community but those who desired such an exclusion and as it were excluded themselves.

Islam, Fundamentalism, and the Betrayal of Tradition ably delineates this spirit by establishing that traditional Islam is nothing less than,

Divine revelation and the unfolding and development of its sacred content, in time and space, such that the forms of society and civilization maintain a "vertical" connection to the meta-historical, transcendental substance from which revelation itself derives.

The writers, all of whom manage to combine the best of a Western outlook and classical Islamic knowledge, succeed in drawing a compelling distinction between the radicalism of modern Muslim groups and the normative Islam that was and continues to be practiced by the majority of Muslims.

It is a sad but inevitable fact that one of the devices used by modern-day extremists involves reducing Islam to its supposed "essentialities", thereby severing the religion from its place and role in history. What remains is a conceptualization that Islam was only at its purest at a specific time period, notably, the first three generations of al-salaf al-salihin (the Pious Predecessors). The statement is hardly dogmatic in itself, but the belief that only a small number of groups today mold themselves after the template of the salaf certainly is.

That period of al-salaf al-salihin is distant and blurred enough a canvas for self-proclaimed "reformists" to paint a persuasive utopian model. The lifespan of that model is taken as the cutting-off point for any branch of knowledge- even those arising to meet the challenge of providing depth to the Koranic revelation- to be deemed legitimate. Thus, religious sciences like kalaam (philosophical theology) and tassawwuf (spirituality) are dismissed as heresies simply because they did not exist within the utopian time-frame.

Joseph Lumbard argues, in the chapter entitled "The Decline of Knowledge and the Rise of Ideology in the Modern Islamic World", that there are notable exceptions, but for most of the liberal and doctrinal reform movements in the Islamic world,

Sufism became the scapegoat through which Islam "backwardness" could be explained. In this view Sufism is the religion of the common people and embodies superstition and un-Islamic elements adopted from local cultures; in order for Islam to retain its birthright, which includes modern science and technology, Sufism must be eradicated."

Tim Winter points out in the last chapter of the book that,

It is vital to understand that mainstream Sufism is not, and never has been, a doctrinal system, or a school of thought - a madhhab. It is, instead, a set of insights and practices which operate within the various Islamic madhhabs; in other words, it is not a madhhab, it is an ilm. And like most of the other Islamic ulum, it was not known by name, or in its later developed form, in the age of the Prophet (upon him be blessings and peace) or his Companions. This does not make it less legitimate. There are many Islamic sciences which only took shape many years after the Prophetic age: usul al-fiqh, for instance, or the innumerable technical disciplines of hadith.

A cursory study of history will reveal that there is also an undeniably political dimension to the reformists' rejection of Sufism. Most reformists arose at a time when Sufi tariqas (way) were actively engaged in a life-or-death struggle against European colonialists, from French-controlled Algeria to British-administered India to the Russian-infested Caucasus. The piety, tenacity and numbers that Sufi leaders were able to muster remains unparalleled till this day, and is testimony to the extraordinary nature of these awliya (Friends of God) and on how ordinary Muslims had regarded them. The tariqas were potent challengers to the reformists' ideology for the hearts and minds of the Muslim community.

But the encroachment of the West was a fact that many Muslim societies had to face from the seventeenth century onward. This triggered several responses in the Muslim community. One of the most influential being the rise of elites who insisted that there was no contradiction between scientific and Koranic pronouncements. These modernists sought to reconcile western scientific theories with verses from the Koran, making the fundamental mistake of thinking that science, like divine revelation, was a systemized body of law that changed little with time.

This trend gained a unique momentum in the Indian Subcontinent and was best served by the popular writings of the intellectual, Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan:

"the work of God", that is, God's work as visible in nature, cannot contradict the "Word of God", as revealed in the Koran.

In the essay "A Traditional Islamic Response to the Rise of Modernism", Fuad Naeem deftly summarizes the responses of one man, Maulana (lit. our master) Ashraf Ali Thanvi, to the core premises of modernism. In his treatise, Intibahat, the Deobandi scholar intelligently refutes,

the prevalent errors of modernism in the wake of Western domination of India, and thereby removes the barriers for the Muslim, especially those with a Western education, that prevent him or her from penetrating into the truth of his or her own tradition.

The power of the Maulana's words is in the combination of lucidity and deep spirituality that informs his insights. Fuad Naeem concludes that Maulana Thanvi,

follows the way of his great forbearers like al-Ghazali...and Shah Wali Allah of Delhi, who demonstrated synthetically that the ways of the intellect and the ways of revelation are harmonious and not contradictory. One of the Names of God in Islam is al-Haqq, the Truth. In light of this, the Islamic intellectual and spiritual tradition has always emphaisized the primacy of truth, wherever it may be found, for all divergent truths are unified in and testify ultimately to the One Truth, God. This is why Islam does not need to be reformed...; it already contains within itself the principles necessary for renewal from within.

Herein lies the true definition of mujaddid, which neither takes on the rather disingenuous rendition of "reformer" nor "innovator". Rather, it means renewer. The renewer fans a flame that has merely dimmed. Fuad Naeem asserts that it is presumptious to think that Islam needs to be re-formed when the religion already contains within itself the principles necessary for renewal. Renewal conforms with the Koranic invitation to reflect, so that it emerges from within, rather than needing any special institution to enforce it. Truth is clear from error, the Koran reveals. It must be said that Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab, a man many consider to be a reformer par excellence, had been an ardent advocate of the enforcement-by-the-sword rule.

The last chapter of the book is also my favorite for being the most daring. In "The Poverty of Fanaticism", Tim Winter directly identifies the ideology that is the backbone of most radical groups of our time. He eloquently relates his own experience with one manifestation of the Salafi movement.

I used to know, quite well, a leader of the radical 'Islamic' group, the Jama'at Islamiya, at the Egyptian university of Assiut. His name was Hamdi. He grew a luxuriant beard, was constantly scrubbing his teeth with his miswak, and spent his time preaching hatred of the Coptic Christians, a number of whom were actually attacked and beaten up as a result of his khutbas. He had hundreds of followers; in fact, Assiut today remains a citadel of hardline, Wahhabi-style activism.

The moral of the story is that some five years after this acquaintance, providence again brought me face to face with Shaikh Hamdi. This time, chancing to see him on a Cairo street, I almost failed to recognise him. The beard was gone. He was in trousers and a sweater. More astonishing still was that he was walking with a young Western girl who turned out to be an Australian, whom, as he sheepishly explained to me, he was intending to marry. I talked to him, and it became clear that he was no longer even a minimally observant Muslim, no longer prayed, and that his ambition in life was to leave Egypt, live in Australia, and make money. What was extraordinary was that his experiences in Islamic activism had made no impression on him - he was once again the same distracted, ordinary Egyptian youth he had been before his conversion to 'radical Islam'.

This phenomenon, which we might label 'salafi burnout', is a recognised feature of many modern Muslim cultures. An initial enthusiasm, gained usually in one's early twenties, loses steam some seven to ten years later.

The term "salafi burnout" seems especially apt when almost a century before, Maulana Muhammad Husayn Batalwi, a leader of those who rejected following one of the four Maddhabs (School of Thought), had conceded in his book Isha'at al-Sunna that,

After twenty-five years of experience, we have become aware of the fact that those who, out of ignorance, totally relinquish following a school altogether (taqlid) eventually relinquish Islam altogether [1].

The notion is hardly earth-shattering when one considers that almost all modern-day extremists reject both taqlid and the traditional framework of Madhhabs in favor for the alleged path "upon what the Messenger and his Companions were upon". The superficiality of the credo is evident from the many variations of Salafi thought spread across the global arena; each one claiming to be the only correct constituency.

Joseph Lumbard, whose name is also behind the seminal Jordan Initiative taken in 2005, assembled an impressive list of thinkers from all over the world for this project. The eight essays represent an exciting development in the Islamic world, the first inklings of a revolt against religious extremism that has so characterized the Islamic facade in recent decades.

It is not without justification that John L Esposito (Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam) calls these scholars "provocative Muslim voices".

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References:
[1] The Differences of the Imams, Shaykh al-Hadith, Muhammad Zakariyya Kandhlawi.