07/03/18 - Spring 2018 semester
Session 2: Socio-anthropological approach to Salafism religious doctrine and (anti) social practices Course taken in UNIL
- Professor: Salima Amari
Religious fundamentalism is the return to the original (fundamental)
Olivier Roy (a French political scientist): Fundamentalism is a disconnection between religion and culture.
Michel Younès (a theology professor): Fundamentalism has 3 characteristics:
- Immediacy (divine text (non-historical) without mediation)
- Absolute truth (binary logic = mine is true faith/yours is wrong)
- Imitation
Islamic fundamentalism introduces literal reading of the Quran and the prophetic tradition (Sunnah)
Islamic fundamentalism has ideological affiliations in multiforms, one of them is Hanbalism.
Ahmad Ibn Hanbal (traditionist) (750-855)
- He participated in the constitution of the prophetic tradition (collected 30 000 hadiths)
- He is the founder (initiator) of a madhab - judicial school.
The main Sunni judicial schools that are historically imposed are:
- Hanafite school
- Malekite school
- Shafi'ite school
- Hanbalite school
Debate between Hanbalite and Mu'tazilite over the question: "Is the Quran the word of God, sacred and uncreated, or is it expression of an originally divine and created speech?
Note:
Mu'tazilite - by Hasan al-Basri who was isolated in a mosque in Baghdad with his disciples hence the name Mu'tazilite: Mu'tazila: isolated.
For the Mu'tazilite: There is a difference in nature between God and his speech (his words).
Archtypical God is uncreated
Prophetic reading written by human / the Quran is created by the transmission phenomenon: written by human.
For the Hanbalite: God and his words are of the same nature: they are uncreated. The transmission of the words to the Prophet are of absolute fidelity (divine form and content).
Archtypical book = Prophetic reading
Proof: Alphabetism of Muhammad: no human intervention.
Consequences of this debate:
- to say that the Quran is created means that understanding it and giving it a meaning depends on the reader
- Difficulties in understanding means that there will be intervention of reason by the reader (reading is not literal). - to say that the Quran is uncreated
- gives primacy of the sacred.
- the reading is literal
- in case of difficulties to understand, judgement is suspended until finding explanation in the hadiths.
Fundamentalism does not accept the silence of texts as a richness, but as a complication that it is imperative to overcome with authorized explanation (Jean-Luc Rolland).
Saudi Fundamentalism: Wahhabism
- reforming tradition through religion
- superiority of the Ancients over the Moderns
- As mentioned previously: Pact in 1745 between the preacher Ibn Abd al-Wahab and Muhammad Ibn Saoud (Emir of al-Dir'iyya - Arabian Peninsula).
- This alliance was never questioned again during the successive kingdoms (1745-1818); (1824-1890) then the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was created in 1932.
- Ibn Abd al-Wahab denounced the veneration (respect/worship) of the graves of holy figures.
- The Cult of the Saints first developed in Islam around the figure of the Prophet Muhammad, who always presented himself as a simple messenger of God.
- In the 9th century, people started to give him supra-human qualities by making him a being who is halfway between the human and the divine.
- It is at this moment that his tomb is sacredized, then that of his family and his companions.
- Little by little a whole group of people recognized as "saints" developed. The cult is expressed through pilgrimages (tombs, other places where the main character - the prophet - left his mark) = Sufism.
- The Cult of the Saints is widely spread through Sufism - Wahab islamizes them.
- In the 13th century, Ibn Taymiyyah (Hanbalite) proposes a solution to avoid defiances of the Cult of Saints to erase the tombs, so as to make them invisible.
- The Wahhabis advocate erasing the memory of the saints from the memories of the believers; during the conquest of Hedjaz by the Saud in 1925, they destroyed a number of tombs, including those pf the Prophet's companions who were in the cemeteries of Medina and Mecca.
- The Wahhabi ideas influence contemporary Salafism (a very strong condemnation of the Cult of Saints
- Bid'ah (innovation) becomes an obsession - any innovation - anything that is added to pure Islamic tradition is heresy.
- For example: the mausoleums of Muslim saints (date back to 14th century) in Timbuktu ( nickname: city of 333 saints) were destroyedd in 2012 by Ansar al-Din.
- These mausoleums of Muslim saints in Timbuktu were perceived by the population as protectors against dangers (saints were solicited for weddings, or to send rain against drought).
The Case of Egypt: Islamism & Neo-Salafism
Links exist between Wahhabism and Islamism of the Muslim Brotherhood (founded in 1929) by Hasan al-Banna, whose ideal was: "God is our goal, the Prophet is our Model, the Quran is our Law, the jihad is our path, martyrdom is our desire".
Egypt is historically the motherland of the Muslim Brothers (Islamism)
Islamism: the term can refer to diverse forms of social and political activism advocating that public and political life should be guided by the Islamic principles.
Neo-Fundamentalism, Neo-Salafism
The term "Salafism" dates from the late 19th century with Jamaluddin al-Afghani (1838-1897).
He was a Muslim reformer (return to the original text and models of society from the time of the Prophet).
