Nikki Keddie On Islamism

Society for Comparative Studies in Society and History
The Revolt of Islam, 1700 to 1993: Comparative Considerations and Relations to Imperialism Author(s): Nikki R. Keddie Source: Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 36, No. 3 (Jul., 1994), pp. 463-487 Published by: Cambridge University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/179293 . Accessed: 02/09/2013 05:06
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The Revolt of Islam, 1700 to 1993: Comparative Considerations and Relations to Imperialism
NIKKI R. KEDDIE Universityof California, Los Angeles Withinthe Muslim world, revoltswith a religious aspect or ideology have had a long history. My currentcomparativeresearchon this topic indicates that these revolts, common in the early centuriesof Islam, became less frequent thereafter.These revolts may generally be characterized as either "left" sectarianor "orthodox" revivalist. The latterrevived aftercirca 1700. It is partof my thesis to see threephases to these modem revivalistrevoltsand to say that all three phases were, in different ways, tied to interactionwith the West, althoughthis was far from being theironly cause. These threephases were the pre-colonial phase, early resistance to colonialism, and the recent Islamic revival. The scope here covers the whole Muslim world, and the approachis comparative. Before discussing these movementsI will give some backgroundaboutthe relations between Islam and politics, which influenced the movements. It is widely believed that Islam and politics are unusuallyclosely intertwinedin all spheres and periods, with the partialexception of the past century.This view understatesthe close church-state relationsof the EasternOrthodoxchurches and of religion and politics in the pre-modernWest, with the difference between Islamic and Christianlands being partlywhen and how they reached modernity.In practice, despite the often-cited special role of Roman law and the existence of a clear relationshipbetween church and state in the West, Christianityand Islam had rathersimilar levels of relationsbetween religion and politics in pre-moderntimes. The supposednear-identity of religion and politics in Islam is more a pious myth thanrealityfor most of Islamic history.Afterthe first four pious caliphs, there arose essentially political caliphal dynastiesthat workedthroughpolitical appointees and broke religious rules when they wished. The body of 'ulama helped to create the schools of law partlyto create a sphere independent of such essentially temporalrulers,but the 'ulama'srulingsgenerallyhad less force than those of rulers. The independence of rulers from religious controlgrew as tribaland militaryconvertstook increasingpower. Authorsof
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advice to rulersoften stressedthe importance of backingreligion, but this was not advice to be pragmaticadvice, really good Muslims.' Views similar to mine on the essential separationof religion and politics have been voiced by Ira Lapidus, Sami Zubaida,Muhammad Arkoun, Nazih and Emmanuel but the older view remains dominant.2 It would Sivan; Ayubi, be useful to do a careful comparisonof the actual relations of religion and politics and of church and state in pre-moder Europeand the Middle East. The differencesare not all in the directionof greaterpolitical power for Islam thanfor the ChristianChurch.I suspectthatde facto the medievalrelationship between religion and state was a standoffbetween the Muslim Middle East and the ChristianWest, with Christianinstitutionsstrongerin some ways and more limited in others than Islamic ones. Whatdoes seem clearandmay makepeople mistakethe premodemsituation is thatin modem times religious institutions,movements,andbeliefs have had more political importancein the Muslim world than in the West. This is often attributed to special featuresof Islam, which areof some importance,but there appearto be othercauses, such as, first, the greatchangesin the Westfrom the late Middle Ages on, including those in trade, production,exploration, the Enlightenment,andrepresentative government,which occurredin the Muslim World only recently and in different ways. In this period there was less structural change in the Muslim Worldthanthe West;hence, Muslims entered modem times with structures,ideas, and religious beliefs quite similarto past ones, while the West did not. Second, the long history of conflict between Christiansand Muslimstendedto make Muslimsdefensive aboutIslam and to define (as did some Westerners) the situationin religious terms. I do not deny special featuresto Islamic thought. Before discussing these I note thatit has become fashionable,amongmembersof a groupdifferentfrom those who point to long-termties of religion andpolitics in the Muslim world, of significantunity or continuityto variousphenometo attackthe attribution na over time or place as essentialistand ipso facto benighted. In my field it is almost as bad to be an essentialistas to be an orientalist.In fact, no one calls herself or himself an essentialist. Much as it is called biological essentialism is used to say there are significant non-culturaldifferencesbetween women and men, so it is ideological essentialismto say that Islam has importanten' See, for example, Nizam al-Mulk, The Book of Governmentor Rulesfor Kings (London: Routledgeand KeganPaul, 2nd ed., 1978), 190-238, stressinghereticalmovementsand revolts. 2 Ira M. Lapidus, "The Separationof State and Religion in the Developmentof EarlyIslamic Journalof MiddleEasternStudies, 6:4 (1975), 364; Sami Zubaida,Islam, Society,"International the People and the State (London:Routledge, 1989), 41-42; Nazih N. Ayubi, Political Islam: Religion and Politics in the Arab World(London:Routledge, 1991); EmmanuelSivan, Radical Islam: Medieval Theologyand ModernPolitics (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1985), 175, with citations to two articles by M. Arkoun. I quote and discuss this point and its literatureat greater length in "Islam, Politics, and Revolt: Some UnorthodoxConsiderations,"in Nikki R. Keddie, Iran and the Muslim World:Resistance and Revolution(London:Macmillan, 1994).
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duringfeatures. AlthoughI sympathizewith much of this, if carriedto its logical end, anti-essentialismmeans that nothinghas any special featuresexcept those displayed at a particularmoment.3My view is that religions do have a adaptionsvary shape and influence coming from the past, althoughparticular with time and circumstance. Hence, it is importantto note that Muslims themselves have often considered Islam a total world view comprisingreligion and politics, however little this unity has been realized. This totalizingaspect of Islam appearsespecially in periods of Islamic revolts and revivals, ratherthan during stable empires. Although the often radicalIslamic revival of recent decades is in many ways novel, it has some importantresemblancesto religious revolts of the past. Among these resemblancesis a returnto the early combinationof religion and politics with enforcementof Quranicand legal provisions. Looking at several unconnectedIslamic militantmovementssuggests ideological similaritiesthat owe something to a widespreadbelief in what relationsbetween religion and politics in Islam should be. Not counting the very early civil wars in Islam, its earliest religious revolts were carriedout by the first sectarians,the Shi'is and the Kharijis,both of whom had a total alternate view of Islam. The Sevener branch of the Shi'is continued to be frequentlyrebellious throughthe age of the so-called Assassins. The variabilityof Islam and politics is suggested by the fact that the line of Assassin leaders ended with the Aga Khans, the wealthy pillars of order. An opposite evolution was traced by the Twelver Shi'is. Although many scholars say that Shi'is as such justified revolt, this is false. The Fifth and Sixth Twelverimams laid down lines dividingreligion andpolitics and enjoining obedience to rulers. The doctrinethat the Twelfthimam had disappeared was probably adopted to remove from the world an alternatesource of allegiance, which might encouragerevolution.4 For some centuriesboth Shi'is and Sunnis in the centralMuslim lands had a
3 as essentialAny kind of continuitynot caused by immediatefactorscould be characterized ist, even though few people carrytheir thoughtsto this logical extreme. The views that do carry anti-essentialismto its logical conclusion are primarilythose called "occasionalism"in the early modem West, which were put forth earlierby a school of conservativeAsh'arite theologians in Islam who said that there are no secondary causes and that God recreates the world every moment. The late Ash'arites said that apparentworldly causation and order were due only to God's mercy to humanityand that God could equally create a completely new world, or none at all, at each moment. This is a theorydesigned to combatall naturallaw and, some say, to mirror arbitraryrule; and it is in some ways ironic that the strongest anti-essentialistsof our day are mostly on the left, although they have either not thought of the implications of a totally antiessentialist position or would renounce such totality. 4 W. Montgomery Watt, The FormativePeriod of Islamic Thought (Edinburgh:Edinburgh University Press, 1973); Idem, "The Significance of the Early Stages of Imami Shi'ism," in Religion and Politics in Iran, Nikki R. Keddie, ed., 21-32; and Nikki R. Keddie and Juan R. to Shi'ism and Social Protest, Cole and Keddie, eds. (New Haven: Yale Cole, "Introduction" University Press, 1986).
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doctrineof obedience to existing rulers. It was only afterIranbecame Shi'i in 1501 that a more centralized,independentclergy arose and was given doctrinal power that Shi'i clerical resistancebegan. Another widely held myth is that the denial of legitimate resistance and revolt by normative Islam left people without any but sectarian means to justify revolt. Here again, comparison with pre-modem Europe would be useful. Did main-lineEuropean Christianity provideany morejustificationfor revolt than did Islam? Although leading Muslim thinkers spoke and wrote againstrevolt, consideringit worse thanan evil ruler,therewere ways around this in the Islamic tradition. It was almost unknownto speak of one's own movement as a revolt, and the words we translateas "revolt"were pejorative (again as in Europe?). But there were other importantways to conceive a A rebel could claim to be the renewerof Islam or revolt. One was millenarian: the precursorof the messianic Shi'i or Sunni mahdi or the mahdi himself. Another was to declare one's ruler an unbelieverand the war against him a holy war. The possibility of declaring Islamic rulers unbelieversis found in the great theologians, Ibn Taimiyyaand the NorthAfrican al-Maghili, whose ideas were cited by West African rebels. Both jihad and mahdismwere frequently used, often both at once. Before going into the eighteenth-and nineteenth-century revolts, I note that the idea that Muslims were so hostile to revolt is partlybased on a simplistic of ideas of revoltfromthe modem West. The words in fact used for translation revolt do not translateas revolt and have a positive meaning. It should again be stressed that Sunnis used these ideas as much as Shi'is. The notion that Shi'ism as such is especially prone to revolt comes not only from the early centuriesbut also from a false belief that Shi'is generallyjustified revolts by appealing to the model of Imam Husain's martyrdomin battle. A recent investigationindicatesthis paradigmwas not used for revoltuntil very recently and that earlier Shi'i revolts usually had a Mahdist paradigm, much like many Sunni revolts.5 shouldbe aboutanti-essentialism My remarkscontainingsome reservations noted here. From one end of the Muslim world to the other-Senegal to Sumatrain my travels-Muslim revoltsused manyof the same themes:mahdism, jihad, and a returnto stricterQuranicand Islamic laws and practices, including those affecting gender. Hence, there is almost surely something in Islamic content that helps determinethe form and ideology of movements in differentparts of the Muslim world, even lacking direct contact.
MILITANT NINETEENTH ISLAMIC REVIVALISM IN THE EIGHTEENTH AND CENTURIES
The rise of militantpoliticized Islamic movementsin the 1970s and 1980s in Iranand elsewhere has increasedinterestin the past of militantIslam. There
5 Interview with Mansour Ehsan, based on his University of Oregon Ph.D dissertation.
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has, however, been little new seriousmonographic study and also little serious are exceptions.6I will of militant there movements, though comparativestudy here attempta comparativestudy of some militantMuslim movements that, like most recentones, claimed to be revivingpureIslam and its holy law. The movementsstudiedcomparativelyhere are relatedto differentphases of interaction with the West, althoughthey have indigenous roots. The past movements are sometimes called puritanicalmovements or reform movements. The latter phrase, reform movements, seems unsatisfactory,since the term Islamic reform is equally used for a liberal modem school with tenets and practices very differentfrom those of the revivalists. Anything that changes ideas and practicesin a way thatits proponents considera majorimprovement be called but the term be reform, may may confusing if othersuse it to referto different movements. very Similarly,the word puritanmay be objected to as to a Western referring particular group; and so both will be used sparingly here. Anothername for these movementsis jihad movements, meaningthatthey called for holy war against external non-Muslimenemies or that they practiced jihad against local rulers and enemies whom they considered not truly Muslim. These movements wished to replace these rulersand practices with truly Islamic ones. Among such movements were those of the Wahhabisof Saudi Arabia, movements in West Africa in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, and a majorjihad in Sumatrain the early nineteenthcentury. These occurredwithout Westernconquest, while in the period of early Western conquest there were similarmovementsdirectedwholly or in partagainst the Westerners.These included the Wahhabisand Fara'izis of South Asia, Shamyl in the Caucasus, Abdel Qadir in Algeria, and the Senussis in Libya; while the Mahdistsin the Sudanshow similarities.The causationof the latter movements include Western, infidel conquest; while the causes of the preconquest movements are more complex and less obvious. There are some features and causes found in both groups. Most of these movements have only recently become the topic of serious study, and this-plus the fact that they occurred in such widely dispersed places and cultures-has meant that there has been very little comparative study of them. Yet it remains a dramaticand puzzling fact that, after many centuriesin which such large-scalerevolutionary jihad movementswere quite there was a sudden of concentration them in a period of about a infrequent,
6 Some of these movementsare discussed comparativelyin the following works, which I have used with profit:John ObertVoll, Islam: Continuityand Change in the Modern World(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1982); Nehemia Levtzion and JohnVoll, EighteenthCenturyRenewal and Reform in Islam (Syracuse:Syracuse University Press, 1987), especially relevantarticles in the book by Levtizan Voll and Louis Brenner. See also William Roff's argumentsin the book he edited, The Political Economy of Meaning (Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress, 1987). I have also benefitedfrom travelto, anddiscussions in, Senegal, Nigeria, NorthAfrica, the Middle East, Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia, England, and France.
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century.It seems unlikely that this is a coincidence, and it should be instructive to ask what common factors may have operatedin some or all of these diverse regions to produce similar results. In the past, one common factor adduced regardingsome of these movements was the purported influence of the ArabianWahhabi movement, which stood for a puritanicalIslam and for holy war againstthose not consideredto be true Muslims. Recent researchers have generallyconcludedthat the influence of the Wahhabis has been overstated.This influenceis no longer considered key in the main West African movement, the Nigerianjihad of Usman dan Fodio; and it could not have entered into the Senegambianeighteenthcentury movements, which came too early. South Asia's jihad movements also seem to have been less Wahhabi-influenced than was once thought. In Sumatrathe fact that three movement leaders made the hajj at the time the Wahhabiscontrolledthe Hijaz is of some importance,but it was probablyonly a minor factor in a movement that can be shown to have had strong local roots. Wahhabism retainsa place among the causes of the simultaneousjihad movements in the Muslim world, but it no longer appearsto be the major explanatorycause. One reason why there have been few comparativestudies of Islamic revivalist movements is that scholars of Islam tend to be divided by geographic specialty,with MiddleEast specialistsconfidentthatthey representthe central Muslim world and are happy to ignore the great majority of the world's Muslims who live outside the Middle East. There has begun to be a recognition of the role of SouthAsia in eighteenth-century religiousreformand in the of neo-Sufism, but this has not yet led origins and spread eighteenth-century to a comprehensive interest in what was happening in the Muslim world outside the Middle East. If one is studying militantrevivalist movements of the eighteenth and nineteenthcenturies, however, one finds the first major examples in what may be called the peripheryand the semi-periphery,and even laterexamplesare concentrated in tribalareasnot nearimperialor power are used purely geocenters. (Here the words peripheryand semi-periphery or far from urban world of Muslim for near the areas the edges graphically nineteenth and in later the centuries, early eighteenth imperialcenters.) Thus, the largestmilitantpuritanical movementsoccurredin present-daySaudi Arabia; in West Africa; and in Sumatra,Indonesia. Latermovements, largely in response to Westernconquests, occurred in South Asia, North Africa and adjacentAfrican lands, and the Caucasus. Therewere a numberof conditionsthathelp explainthe rise and location of these movements, although available sources and scholarshipdo not allow convincing comparisonon all points. I would suggest the following factors as probablyimportantin most of the movements. First, in West Africa and Sumatra, the impact of the significant rise of others, and helped creEuropeantradeweakenedsome classes, strengthened
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ate preconditionsfor a united state with a united law and ideology and were importantto internalsocioeconomic change. A similarchange in class structures and demands may also be found in the areas of some of the Muslim revivalistmovementsoccurringafterEuropean conquest, and it is conceivable the growing Westerntrade in Persian Gulf ports had an influence in inland Najd. Second, European-induced changes interactedwith internalsocioeconomic a growth of population, which some scholars These include changes. may have seen as characterizingthe eighteenthcentury world-wide.7Along with apparentpopulationgrowth, there was more clearly new tradeand urbanism, as well as new social tensions, problems, and possibilities. It is significant were all areaseitherwithouta state, thatNajd, WestAfrica, and WestSumatra as was the case in Najd and Sumatra,or with weak states, as in West Africa, so that a rise of trade,population,and economic quarrelsprovidedan impetus for strongerstates, in which original Islam could provide effective law and ideology. Third, in religion and ideology, the eighteenthand nineteenthcenturiessaw a spread of Islamic learning and the rise of so-called neo-Sufism, including strong Sufi orderswith types of scholarshipand practicescloser to normative Islam and classical scholarshipthan were most of the earlier Sufi orders. In the peripheryand semi-periphery of the Muslim world, neo-Sufi orderswere especially important,often providingthe main force for spreadingIslam and is associits teachings.8Notably, althoughthe Islam of the ArabianWahhabis ated with hostility to Sufism, most of the non-Arabian puristleadersbegan as, and often continued to be, leaders of the Sufi orders. This includes such charismaticgiants as Usman Dan Fodio in Nigeria, Abdel Qadir in Algeria, and Shamyl in the Caucasus. Sometimes, as with Shamyl, stress on the strict shari'a was combined with the Sufi idea that the Sufi path was only for the select few, while the literal shari'a was for the majority.In additionto neoSufism, there was a general spreadof Islamic learningand an increase in the number of Islamic scholars that was especially importantin lightly Islamicized areas. Fourth,in the political sphere, the eighteenthcenturysaw the decline of the great Islamic empires-Ottoman, Safavid, and Moghul-and their breakup into smaller states or regions. This providedthe Wahhabisthe opportunityto thathad been loyal to the Ottomans,until the Ottomans expandinto territories were able to enlist MuhammadAli of Egypt to send troops against the Wah7 See Jack Goldstone, "East and West on the Seventeenth Century:Political Crises in Stuart England, OttomanTurkeyand Ming China"(unpublishedpaper);Joseph Fletcher, "Integrative History: Parallels and Interconnectionsin the Early Moder Period, 1500-1800," Journal of Turkish Studies, 9 (1985), 37-57. 8 There is some controversyamong scholarsaboutneo-Sufism. See R. S. O'Fahey,Enigmatic Saint:AhmadIbn Idris and the Idrisi Tradition(Evanston:Northwestern UniversityPress, 1990), ch. 1.
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habis in the early nineteenth century. Eighteenth-century political fluidity, along with economic changes, made it a propitiousperiodto build new states. Nineteenth-centurymovements in Algeria, Libya, and Sudan were clearly influenced by Ottomandecline. And South Asian state-buildingpuritanical movements were reacting, among other things, to the decline of the Moguls and the Muslim power vacuum it left. Fifth, also importantin the sphere of religious intellectualswas the development of learning, of travel over large distances to learning, and of the pilgrimage to Mecca-factors importantin the personal history of several leaders of revivalist movements. John Voll has tracedthe eighteenth-century spreadof learningnetworkswhich tied many 'ulama to the same scholars in the Hejaz or Yemen, and Juhanyhas noted the growth of learned 'ulama in eighteenth-century Najd, some with ties to the network discussed by Voll.9 Severalleadersof revivalistmovements, such as those in Sumatraand some in West Africa, had histories of pilgrimages to, or education in, Mecca and of early Islamic tenets arising Medina. There was a growing understanding from greatereducationin Hejaz, Egypt, and Syria. Cumulativeimprovements in transportand communication,which mostly originatedin the West, were importantto the rise in pilgrimageto and education in Arab territories.The sixth and final point is that, unsurprisingly, nearly all these movements had charismaticreligio-politicalleaders. Several of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century jihad movements echo 1 Like of Islamic the early Islam, these movements original experience. parts arose in a period of the decline of empires, often near the borders or just beyond those empires. Islam in most of these regions was especially the religion of traders,and in all the so-called Fulanijihads of West Africa, the jihadists were composed, like the early Muslims, of traders, scholars, and fighting nomads. Similar alliances were found in Arabia and South Asia, although the tradeelement may have been less importantthere. Tradersand scholars were very importantin the Sumatranmovement, where the tropical terrainprecludedpastoralnomadism. I have not consideredhere deliberateimitationsof Muhammad,notablythe by Usmandan Fodio and otherWest hijra emigrationsof believers undertaken Africanjihad leadersbefore they launchedtheirjihads;the list above includes only structural similarities that presumably were not deliberate but,
9 JohnObertVoll, "LinkingGroupsin the Networksof Eighteenth-Century Revivalist Scholars," in Levtzion and Voll, eds., Eighteenth Century Renewal; and Uwaidah Metaireek AlA Study of Social, Political and Religious Juhany,"The History of Najd Priorto the Wahhabis; Conditionsin Najd duringThree CenturiesPrecedingthe WahhabiReform Movement"(Seattle: Ph.D dissertation,History Department,University of Washington, 1983). 10 W. Montgomery Watt, Muhammad at Mecca (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953), and Muhammadat Medina (Oxford: ClarendonPress, 1956); and Maxime Rodinson, Mohammed, has been opposed by Anne Carter,trans. (New York:Vanguard Books, 1974). This interpretation various recent scholars, including PatriciaCrone and Michael Cook.
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rather,may express a similarityof movements occurringin partiallysimilar socioeconomic and intellectualenvironments. The revivalist movementsof the eighteenthand nineteenthcenturies, all of which engaged in jihad (holy war) either against local rulersor against westerners, were in partrespondingto a combinationof economic, political, and culturalchanges which had some similaritiesto the changes felt at the time of the rise of Islam. Naturally, therewere also differences;these, in particular the of role of and Western trade and made the growing capitalism conquest, and movements into new Modem eighteenthnineteenth-century phenomena. Westerntrade, even before colonial conquest, had a more dramaticstructural effect on societies than did the more restrictedtradeof ancient times.
THE ARABIAN WAHHABIS
of SaudiArabiahave Despite theirrecognizedimportance,the early Wahhabis been the subject of very little scholarlypublication, althoughthere are some dissertations about them.1 The most important discussion of the socioof the eighteenth-century economic and culturalbackground movementof Ibn 'Abd al-Wahhaband his followers in Najd is found in the recent dissertation by UwaidahAl-Juhany.By means of painstakingwork in the sources, Juhany tries to demonstrate the growthof populationand of settlementsin eighteenthcentury Najd.12 Others have spoken of a world-wide trend in population growth in the eighteenthcentury,possibly the resultof favorableclimatic and agriculturalconditions. Juhany's work also suggests a rise in trade and a growing need for economic rules and laws in an increasinglystratifiedsociety with a growing number of tribal conflicts between nomadic and settled people. Also, the rise in Najd of Islamic scholarshipand the growth of its 'ulama createda group competentto carryout Islamic legal rules in the face of dominant tribal customary law. There was no state structurein Najd, and there were increasing problems and divisions that could best be met by a unified state and legal system. The decline of Ottomanpower in Arabiaopened the way for the rise of an independent and powerful state, at least until
" In addition to the Juhanydissertationin note 3, above, see especially George W. Rentz, "MuhammadIbn 'Abd al-Wahhab(1703/4-1792) and the Beginning of UnitarianEmpire in Arabia" (Berkeley, Ph.D dissertation, History Department, University of California, 1948); MuhammadS. M. El-Shaafy, "The First Saudi State in Arabia"(Leeds, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Leeds, 1967). A vivid and instructive contemporaryaccount is in John Lewis Notes on the Bedouins and Wahabys,2 vols. (London:Henry Colburnand Richard Burckhardt, Bentley, 1831). On Wahhabidoctrine, see Henri Laoust, Essai sur les doctrines sociales et politiques de Taki-d-DinAhmad b. Taimiya(Cairo: Institut Francaisd'archaeologie orientale, Notes on the 1939), Book III, ch. 2. For contemporary information,see John Lewis Burkhardt, Bedouins and Wahabys(London:Colburnand Bentley, 1831), and M. Niebuhr,Travelsthrough Arabia and Other Countries of the East, Robert Heron, trans. (Edinburgh,1792). 12 Juhany, "Historyof Najd, " first chapters. Goldstone, "East and West";Joseph Fletcher, "IntegrativeHistory."
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the Ottomanscould suppress it via MuhammadAli in the early nineteenth century. Michael Cook, while recognizingthe importanceof Juhany'swork, thinks he has overstrainedlimited evidence of indigenous socioeconomic change. Cook says that Juhanytakes immigrationas a sign of populationgrowth and emigrationas a sign of overcrowding, so that both are seen as evidence of population growth. While some evidence points to internal socioeconomic change or exogenous influences from foreign trade, Cook believes that this evidence is not strong enough to make it certain that either indigenous or exogenous socioeconomic changes were great enough to be major factors in the Wahhabimovement.13Although Cook's argumentis effective, it appears to me that it does not destroyall of Juhany'scase. As majornew sources may not be found, the non-specialistshouldkeep in mindCook's points and realize that the economic evidence concerningNajd is weaker than it is for Sumatra and West Africa. Sumatraand West Africa in the eighteenth and nineteenth centurieswere heavily involved in foreign trade, which left records;but Najd was not. It seems fair to say that the case for importantsocioeconomic influences on the early Wahhabisis weaker than it is for most other militant revival movements, but such a case may still have some validity based on the evidence. Alternatively,one may accept that not all major revivalist movements have socioeconomic causes. Since the original Wahhabimovement seems barely relatedto the West or its trade, I will omit discussion of it here.
THE PADRI MOVEMENT IN SUMATRA
For the Islamic Revival movementin West and CentralSumatra,we have the convincing and documented study by Christine Dobbin, which takes into account socioeconomic and ideological factors.14 Dobbin's book and articles provide a uniquetotal study of a jihad movement, for which there are, unfortunately, no equivalents for the other movements under consideration. Her works deserve considerationby all studentsof similarmovements. Her stress on the socioeconomic impact of early modern Westerntrade is especially important.There are no otherworks on the subjectthatmake extensive use of primarysources in several languages. West Sumatra, usually called Minangkabau,comprises an ethnically related, matrilineally organizedsociety speakinga dialect of Malay.The society
13 Michael Cook, "The Expansion of the First Saudi State: The Case of Washm," C. E. Bosworth et al., eds., The Islamic World from Classical to Modern Times:Essays in Honor of Bernard Lewis (Princeton:Darwin Press, 1989), 661-700. 14 ChristineDobbin, Islamic Revivalismin a ChangingPeasant Economy:Central Sumatra, 1784-1847 (London, 1983). Dobbin has also published related articles. The padris are also discussed in a numberof Dutch sources and writings, as well as in a smallernumberof English works that have been largely supersededby Dobbin's book. O'Fahey,Enigmatic Saint, 188, n. 48, says: "ProfessorAnthony Johns of the AustralianNational University points out (personal communication)that no study of the religious writingsgeneratedby the movementhas yet been made; this he hopes to undertake."
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is based on agriculture,particularlywet-rice cultivation. Its basic organizational unit was long the negari, or cluster of villages. We know little about change within Minangkabausociety before Hindu rulers came from Java to create a state in the fourteenthcentury,but it seems probablethat the population grew and that most of the good inland territorywas occupied in this period. Also, gold was mined and tradedbefore the fourteenthcentury.Dobbin cites convincing evidence that the Hindu rulerswho came from Javaand set up the first Minangkabau kingdomwere seeking gold and remaineddependent on the gold trade, which at first flourishedbut laterdeclined. They never controlledenough wealth to have effective armedforces, and the local negari remainedvirtuallyautonomous.Underthese kings Muslim tradersapparently entered Minangkabauand made many conversions, and by the seventeenth of rulersin the originallyHinduroyal family, all centurywe find a triumvirate with titles whose second words were Arabic and Islamic in origin. At the top was the Raja Alam (King of the World),and below him were the Raja Adat (custom) and the Raja Ibadat (Islamic worship). It is significantthat we find no mentionof the non-ibadat partof Islam-mu'amalat (this-worldlytransactions), which cover the great majorityof this-worldlyquestions dealt with in Islamic law. From the first, MinangkabauIslam centered on worship and ritual, primarilythe so-called Five Pillarsof Islam, while this-worldlymatters came mostly underadat, or customarylaw, as they still do in most Minangkabau villages.15 Islam was apparently broughtto Minangkabau by tradersand spreadlargely Sufi orders. All three were among throughteachers from three international the more orthodox orders, but they still stressed the individual'srelations to God, ratherthan Islamic law or the this-worldly side of Islam. Once, howsocioeconomic conditionsdeveloped sufficientlyto make ever, Minangkabau the this-worldly side of Islam relevantto Minangkabau society, a movement of Islamic Revival grew up in the late eighteenthand early nineteenthcenturies that addressedmany new needs. With the decline in the monarchyafter the depletion of known sources of gold, which formedthe monarchy'smain support,there were increasingwars between negaris. At the same time, new forms of trade developed from
and in the Middle East:Compara's See Nikki R. Keddie, "Islamand Society in Minangkabau tive Reflections,"Sojourn(Singapore),2:1 (1987); TaufikAbdullah,"Adatand Islam:An Examination of Conflict in Minangkabau," Indonesia, II (October)(CornellUniversity, 1966); Harsja W. Bachtiar, "Negari Taram:A MinangkabauVillage Community,"in Koentjariningrat, ed., Villages in Indonesia (Ithaca: Corell University Press, 1967); Elizabeth Graves, The MinangkabauResponse to Dutch Colonial Rule in the NineteenthCentury(Ithaca:Cornell Moder IndonesiaProject, 1981); F. Benda-Beckman,Propertyand Social Continuityand Change in the Maintenanceof PropertyRelationsthroughTime in Minangkabau(The Hague:MartinusNijhoff, 1979); FrederickK. Errington,Manners and Meaning in WestSumatra:The Social Context of Consciousness (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984); Joel S. Kahn, MinangkabauSocial Formations: Indonesian Peasant and the WorldEconomy (Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity Press, 1980).
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India, Indonesia, China, Malaysia; increasingtradecontacts within Sumatra; such Westernstates as Portugal,Holland, GreatBritain, and and, importantly, the newly independentUnited States. These foreigners, in addition to their interest in what gold remained, developed an even greater interest in what became very lucrative Sumatranexport crops-chiefly pepper, gambir, cassia, and especially coffee after Arabicacoffee was introducedfrom Yemen. These crops were mainly grown in hillside areas not suitable to Sumatra's of the new export crops attracted older staples, and the growth and transport crops that persons in search of new means of making profits. Transporting were much bulkierthan gold was difficult and costly, given the area's mountainous terrainand lack of roads; and traderswere subjectto robberyand to tradegrew rapidly,so that by the late village tolls. Nonetheless, international eighteenthcenturythere was a socioeconomic situationwith significantparallels to the Hijaz in Muhammad'stime. The old local adat did not cover the needs of traders,who requireda supra-villagelaw, morality,and enforcement mechanism, and indeed a new state that could enforce law and order better than the old monarchyever had. The applicationof Islamic law, including its this-worldly protectionof trade and traders,could provide an ideal, already available, solution to many of the problems of a society with a growing trading interest but without centralizedlaw or government. In this situation Islamic reformer,who had many iman outstandinglate-eighteenth-century the more thorough application of Islam to advocate portant pupils, began and its laws. His stress on trade was such that he was called the "patronof traders." new wealth and increasedinterestin Islam led to a rise in Minangkabau's the numberof its pilgrims to Mecca. In 1803, three importantsuch pilgrims witnessed the rule of the militantpuritanicalWahhabisapplied in Mecca and determinedto apply uniformIslamic laws, forcibly returnedto Minangkabau who had been their teacherat of Traders" if necessary.The reformist"Patron first backed them, but later opposed their use of force. These militant Muslims became known as Padris, apparentlyafter the name of the port from which they went to Mecca (althoughsome derive it from the Portugueseword for priest). For almost three decades, they spreadtheir influence throughout by both peaceful and violent means. They were only defeatedin Minangkabau the 1830s by the Dutch, who had received appeals from that section of adat leaders who opposed the Padris. The last Padri leader to resist the Dutch, a man called ImamJombol, after the town on the equatorfrom which he came and Indonesiannationalhero. and in which he fought, has become a Sumatran He representstoday not so much puritanicalIslam as one of the first to offer sustained resistance to Dutch conquest and rule.'6 The Dutch were glad to
16 In ImamJombol'shome town of Jombol, on the equatorin Sumatra,I saw a fighting statue of him, in which he was characterizedin a typical Malay lingua-francamixtureof words from NationalHero." Arabic, Persian, and Dutch, as the "Martyred
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have a pretext to conquer Minangkabau.The adat leaders who appealed to them had no more legitimacy thanthe adatand Islamic leaderswho sided with the Padris who were probablygreaterin numberand certainly in power. The doctrinesof the Padrishad the same puritanical and strictIslamic flavor as those of the Wahhabis,althoughthey were not carriedas far. Also, the Padris became milder and more compromisingover time, as they had to win over people tied to a matrilineal,village-centeredcustomarylaw radicallydifferent from strict Islamic law. Originally, in addition to protecting traders from robberyand extortion,the Padriscalled for the abolitionof opium and alcohol, along with the cockfighting and the gambling that accompaniedit. The latter was a more importantchange than it might seem, as villages featuredpublic space devoted largely to this highly popularpractice. The Padriscalled upon men to wear beards and on women to use the veil, which they had not done before (and have done rarely since) and made other demandsconsonantwith Islam. Overtime, as noted, theycompromisedwith adat, which was puritanical widely practiced and had powerful representativeswho could not be totally converted. Had the Dutch not conqueredMinangkabau, the Padrismight have set up a statein which Islamic law played a greaterrole thanit did eitherbefore or since but in which adatand its officials also continuedto have some power. Internaldivisions in the movementsmeantthatthis was only a possibility and not a certain outcome, however. The Sumatrancase is one in which the spread of Orthodox Sufi orders, often together with Muslim tradersand scholars, and especially the need for state formation felt with the growth of internationaltrade, helped create a situation in which a handful of Wahhabi-influenced leaders could rapidly influence a society for which large partsof their message were then appropriate. Like othercontemporary jihad movements, the Padrimovementevinces a socioeconomic change and dislocationbroughton partlyby a growthin Western trade, a felt need for state formationand unified law in a developing but decentralizedsociety, charismaticleadership,and an influence of the spread of Islamic learning. In both Sumatraand West Africa the process of Islamizationhad for centuries before the jihad movements been a peaceful one carried out not by conquering states and rulers but largely by traders who either came from abroad or were influenced by travel in Muslim lands. In Sumatra, these traderswere often at first identicalwith the membersof tarigas, usually called Sufi orders in English. This form of peaceful Islamization,largely by means of traders,contributed to special featuresin Indonesianand most WestAfrican Islam. Lacking coercive powers, the convinced Muslims were in no position to make either rulers or believers follow Muslim law; and even relatively orthodox Sufis were generally more concerned with making converts than with assuringpracticeof the shari'a. Rulers and village heads in Sumatraand most of Islamized West Africa, even when they were nominally Muslim,
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generally enforced little Islamic law and practice. They found it more convenient both for popularityand to justify theirown rule on traditional groundsto mix older local religious practiceswith Islamic ones, often giving the lattera secondaryplace. This situation,both in Sumatraand West Africa, provideda fertile ground, given other preconditions,for supportersof jihad to say that existing authoritieswere unbelieversagainstwhom holy war was incumbent. In West Africa the spreadsince the eighteenthcenturyespecially of first the Qadiriand then the nineteenth-century Tijaniordersmay have been important in generalizing a devotion to Islam that providedfertile ground for the jihad movements. A similarhypothesismay be made aboutthe spreadof tariqasin Sumatra,althoughthis phenomenonhas been less studied.
WEST AFRICAN MOVEMENTS
Among the many difficulties in comparing West African eighteenth- and jihads with Sumatra's,is thatthe natureof documentation, nineteenth-century and scholarly orientationof research, is quite different.For Sumatrathere is good documentationfor internationaltrade and its impact on Islamic reformers, and little known documentationand, to now, little study of what these reformersactually said and wrote. For West Africa, although certain kinds of trade are documented, the whole question of trade, particularlythe size and impact of the slave trade, is highly controversialand difficult for a non-Africanistto assess. On the otherhand, in recentyears a mass of original tracts written by jihad leaders has become available, especially in Nigeria. These tractsprovide an invaluablesource for the study of these movements, but some scholars have been inclined to limit themselves to analyzing these documents and to taking the motives and forces behind the jihad to be those expressed in the ideology of its leaders without looking for others, including socioeconomic causation.To some degree there is a division between Africanists who study social or economic history and those who study jihads, and of jihads that have been put forth, for the socio-economic interpretations B. the Senegalese Barry,have been controversial.What is said example, by below is thus provisional. The influence of trade in West Africa, primarilybut far from exclusively the slave trade,on WestAfricanjihad movementsis suggestedby the fact, not noted in any work I have read, that these jihads followed the chronological path of this trade. They began in Senegambia, which was involved early in trade with the West, and came only in the nineteenthcenturyto Nigeria and Mali, where Westerntrade, centeredon the slave trade, also came later. (A 1985 paperby HumphreyFisherdemonstrates considerablymore presenceof the slave trade in Nigeria before its early nineteenth-century jihad than most previous writershad granted, and this supportsthe hypothesis that this trade influencedthe rise of the jihad movements.) Fromthe early nineteenthcentury, the end of the slave trade and the rise of what was sometimes called "legitimate"trade with the West broughtfurthertransformations.
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The ways in which Europeantrade appearsto have influenced the rise of jihad movements were not identical in Sumatraand West Africa, but there were some similarities; and each situation may suggest importantresearch questions for the others. The size and effects on Africa of the African slave trade has been a subjectof intense controversyamong Africanistsfor several years. Although I am not competent to enter into this controversy,it seems likely that the slave trade had a very importantdisruptiveeffect in Africa. Devastationalone, which is stressedby some historians,would not, however, give rise to militant jihad movements. It is not the most devastated and depopulated areas that have revolutions, but usually those where socioeconomic and ideological changes have been rapid, bringingaboutthe rise of new classes and the weakeningof the old rulingclasses. The French,Russian, Chinese, and Iranianrevolutionsare all examples of this. The majorAfrican and one might expect the jihad movements may be consideredrevolutionary, socioeconomic changes that preceded them not to be limited to devastation and depopulation,whateverweight these factorsmay have, but also to include a rise of new groups and classes and a weakening of old ruling classes. The available evidence indicates that this is indeed the case. Althoughmany,perhapsmost, Africansremainingin Africa may have been hurtby the slave trade,therewere also groupsand classes who profitedfrom it and enterednew lines of economic activity. Many Africans and part-Africans engaged in the slave tradein variouscapacities, and the presenceof European trade gave rise also to increasedtrade, both in Africa and overseas, in other products, including kola, gold, ivory, gum Arabic (importantto European textile industries),and others. There was a rapid developmentof groups and classes involved in this growing trade, including wealthy long-distancetraders, local traders who dealt with them, and various kinds of middlemen, despite the prevalenceof elite and statecontrolof trade.The growthof trading classes increased after the end of the slave trade. In addition, the eighteenth and nineteenthcenturiessaw a developmentof large-scale village and plantationslavery in West Africa itself, where slavery had formerly been predominantlysmall-scale and family-centered.(Slaves, who sometimes carried out independentrevolts, do not seem to have been importantparticipantsin the jihad movement.) African slaveholders were often tradersor men involved in tradein slaves or in the commodities grown on plantations,so that the growthof large-scaleslaverysuggests anothersign of the importance of the growth of trade and trading classes. Although wealthy Africans might be involved in slave trade, it was often not in their interest to permit this trade to be unregulatedor to catch and enslave local persons who might be engaged in production.This was perhapsone reason why jihad movements were generally strict in enforcing Islamic law against the enslavement of Muslims, who were often taken from among the local population. Jihad leaders themselves accumulatednon-Muslimor "heretical" slaves, mainly by warfaredesigned to expand their states, and to take power
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from those who were, or were consideredto be, non-Muslims. The acquisition of firearmsand horses from the West helped make strongerstates possible.17
The few scholarswho have looked into the socioeconomic basis of African jihad movements note the dislocations formed in the coastal societies of and of SenegambianFutaJalonbeginningin the sixteenthcentury. Mauritania In FutaJalonthe IslamicizedFulbe (Fulani)became the richest and strongest social groupand the bearersof militantIslam. The MuslimFulbe spearheaded a revivalist revolt that set up a more Islamicized state than had previously existed. The slave tradecontributedto social conflict and reorganization.As in many previouscases, nomadicwarriorsunitedby a militantIslamic ideology won out. A combinationof traders,religious leaders, and nomadic warriors proved potent, as they did in later West Africanjihads. jihad of Nasir alSimilarly,Peter Clarketies the Mauritanian-Senegalese Din in the late seventeenthcenturyto tensionsarisingfromthe slave trade, the importof firearms,and the competitionfrom Europeanpowers for control of trade. He says Europeantradecontributed significantlyto socioeconomic and political change. The growth in firearmsallowed fighting over wider territories and encouragedgreaterwarriorpower. People began to look to the Muslim Fulbe for political leadershipand ideology.18 The jihad movementsin Senegambiain the eighteenthand nineteenthcenturies, even thoughthey did not set up strongand long-lived states, increased the influence of Muslim scholars and orthodoxyand the identity of Muslim in a situationin which "society was communities.Such identitywas important
17 Among those who most convincingly tie jihad movementsto socioeconomic conditions and trade, includingslave trade, is Peter B. Clarke, WestAfrica and Islam (London:EdwardArnold, 1982). Also suggestive of such ties is the dissertation(unfinishedwhen I saw it in 1985) of B. Barryof Senegal, which was, however, when I saw it, in partproblematic.Otheruseful works include Allen Christelow,"Religious Protestand Dissent in NorthernNigeria: from Mahdismto QuranicIntegralism,"Journal of the Instituteof MuslimMinorityAffairs, 6:2 (1985), 375-93; Philip C. Curtin, Economic Change in Precolonial Africa: Senegambiain the Era of the Slave Trade(Madison:Universityof WisconsinPress, 1975);Idem, "Jihadin WestAfrica:EarlyPhases and Senegal, Journal of AfricanHistory, XII: 1 (1971), 11-24; in Mauritania and Interrelations MichaelCrowder,West AfricaunderColonial Rule (London:Hutchinson,1968); M. Hiskett, The Sword of Truth:The Life and Timesof Shehu Usumandan Fodio (New York, 1973); D. M. Last, The Sokoto Caliphate(London, 1967); N. Levtzion, Muslimsand Chiefs in WestAfrica (Oxford, in Slavery:A History of Slavery in Africa (Cambridge: 1968); Paul E. Lovejoy, Transformations CambridgeUniversity Press, 1983); David Robinson, The Holy Warof Umar Tal: The Western Sudan in the Mid-NineteenthCentury (Oxford: ClarendonPress, 1985); J. S. Trimingham,A AfricanIslamic Africa (London, 1962); J. R. Willis, ed., Studiesin West History of Islam in West History (London, 1979); and a significant body of jihad literaturein translation,such as 'Abdullah ibn Muhammad,Tazyinal-Waraqat,M. Hiskett, trans. and ed. (IbadanUniversity Press, avail1963). There are numeroustranslationsand scholarlydissertationsthat are, unfortunately, able only in the universitiesof northernNigeria. There is also a considerablelocal and Western article literature,of which the articles by MarilynWaldmanmay be singled out. 18 Clarke, WestAfrica, 80. Some similarthemes are voiced in Barry'sthesis and in P. Curtin, in Mauritaniaand Senegal," Journal of "Jihadin West Africa: Early Phases and Interrelations African History, XII (1971), 11-24.
THE
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OF ISLAM,
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being turned upside down by the slave trade, the importationof arms and ammunition, the pillaging and devastations wrought by the tyeddo, and people were crying for protection,stabilityand law andorder."'9But the jihad leaders in Senegambia, as was the case later in Nigeria, tended to abandon theirearly egalitariantendenciesto favora few powerfulfamilies and discourin politics. Nearly all the challengersof the old age popular-class participation and authorities came from Muslim scholars who had repolitical religious ceived trainingin mysticism and were membersof a Sufi tariqa. Some scholars also give a partly socioeconomic interpretation of the famous early-nineteenth-century of Usman dan Fodio. When Nigerian jihad rulersfought each other, tradersprofitedfrom the growing trade;but the poor taxes. experiencedterribleeffects from famine, slave raiding,andextortionate There was also tension between pastoralists (mainly Fulani) and peasants (mainly Hausa). Nineteenth-century jihadists referredto the fifteenth-century Maghrebiwriter,al-Maghili, who spenttime in WestAfrica. He wrote strongly against the still-prevalentpractice of rulers of mixing local un-Islamic customs, often glorifying rulers, with Islam. He also said that a ruler who imposed unjust and illegal taxes was an unbelieverand reiterateda prevalent Islamic belief thatevery centurywould see a renewer(mujaddid) of Islam. He added that "there is no doubt that Holy War against [the above-mentioned "unbelieving"rulers] is better and more meritoriousthan Holy War against unbelievers."20 Usman dan Fodio of Nigeria, probably the most scholarly of the jihad leaders, learnednot only from al-Maghilibut also from QadiriSufis, although the importanceof his ties to the Qadiriyya is in dispute. In his dream or vision, the founderof the Qadiriyyaordergave him the "Swordof Truth"to Usman built up his orthofight God's enemies. In the late-eighteenth-century, dox community within the state of Gobir. Usman's jihad began when his community was attackedfrom Gobir in 1804, which led some to see it as a defensive war. Many rebellious holy wars and revolts begin defensively, fails to conhowever, when the religious leader or reformer,unsurprisingly, vert the powers that be to his reforms. It means little to say that if only the ruling elite had agreed to these changes, there would have been no war. The same can be said for Muhammadand the Meccans and possibly even for the Estates General and their monarch, not to mention numerousothers. In his key manifesto of 1804, the Wathiqat ahl al-Sudan, Usman says that all that is incumbent qualified jurists agree jihad against non-Muslims and againstrulerswho abandonIslam or combine un-Islamicobservanceswith it, which Usman said was common in Hausaland.He says it is illegal to enslave free Muslims or attacknon-Muslimswho accept Muslimpeace terms. Jihadis a duty against oppressors. He says the currentrulers imposed a non-Islamic
20
19 Clarke, West Africa, 87. Hiskett, Sword, 66.
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cattle tax (particularly dislikedby Fulanipastorlists,who along with primarily Fulani scholars played leading roles in the jihad), took bribes, and did not observe Islamic laws of inheritanceand succession. Although Usman and the brotherand son who succeeded him were militarily successful and createdin the Sokoto caliphatea long-lived state unparalleled by any other West Africanjihad movement, it is unclear how much lasting reformthey introducedbeyond a greaterenforcementof certainIslamic rules. Most scholars feel that the strong state structurethat followed owes much to pre-existingstates in the areaandthatold pre-jihadgovernmentaland economic elites were often left in place. Abdullahi Mahadi, in his brilliant dissertationon Kano, notes thatUsman and his followers did not have a really state model in mind, involvingreferenceto the era of the Prophrevolutionary et and first four elected caliphs. Instead,theirwritingsreferredto late Abbasid models of the caliphate, which includedthe kind of dynastic and hierarchical structuresthat Usman and his followers soon reinstalled in the areas they conquered, with some change in personnelto benefit the largely Fulani conquering class.21 The introductionof a stronger and more centralized state structurethan before, along with the spreadof a more orthodox Islam, were importantchanges, but they were not egalitarianand primarilybenefitted the tradingand ruling classes. In West African jihads we find the common features of importantand disruptiveeconomic change influencedby the West, a spreadof learning and neo-Sufism, a key role of tribes, and a need for strongerstates. Westernrule, Islamic ideology, and continuing socioeconomic disruptionsand discontents militantrevivalist moveform a line tying eighteenth-and nineteenth-century ments to those of recent years. On the other hand, there are today a host of new factors. This is suggested by the fact that Islamismhas now moved from the tribalperipheryto the urbancenters, requiringdetailedindependentanalysis of these recent movements. It is not at all suggested here that the same socioeconomic and cultural causes lead to militant puritanicalrevival in all cases. Sumatra and West Africa seem to show similarsituations.In each, Europeanand othertradehad a disruptiveimpact;and a small but growing orthodoxeducatedcadrerejected the rulers, people, and policies that they consideredonly nominally Islamic. Najd appearsto have had the latterfeature, but the socioeconomic causation was different and perhapsunprovable.Europeanconquest created a clearer cause for holy war than in the above cases. Othercausative factors and their differentoperationin differentareas have been discussed above.
21 Abdullahi Mahadi, "The State and the Economy: The SaarautaSystem and its Role in Shaping the Economy of Kano with ParticularReference to the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries"(Ph.D. dissertation,Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria, 1983). I read this in Zaria and do not know if it is available in the West, though a shortenedpublishedversion may appear.
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What seems clear is thatIslamic belief and doctrinesprovidethe idioms for two major types of revolt, namely, the messianic and Wahhabitype. The messianic revolt usually centeredon the Mahdi figure and rangeddoctrinally from occasional mainstreamconservatism to various kinds of heterodoxy. (These movementshave been especially prevalentamongthe Shi'a but are not exclusive to them.) The other, Wahhabitype, is puritanicaland literalistand predominatesin the movements discussed above. These two categories are permeable.Militantmessianistscan be puritanical,and militantpuristscan be messianic. The Sudanese Mahdi seems an example of the former, and the Khomeini movement of the latter. The militance and relative clarity in basic legal provisions that characterizedearly Islam have provided a continuing model for internal and external militance. It is striking how much unconnected militant movements used some of the same early Islamic modelsleaders' hijras, deputies called khalifas, the institutionof Islamic taxes, the veiling of women, and so forth. When a charismaticleader has been able to use these traditionsin favorablesocioeconomic and political circumstances, major and significant militantrevival movements have occurred.
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
The second group of Islamic movements occurredchiefly in the nineteenth centuryand were, as a whole or in part, directresponsesto Europeanimperial conquests. In these movements, the desire to keep out the conquerorand to form a united state were often strongerthan the goal of Islamic orthodoxy, althoughmost of the movementsalso had strongrevivalistfeatures. Clearly,a unified Islamic ideology was an effective one for a war against infidels and also for state building. The similarities of ideas and practices among these movements and between them and earlier ones suggests some "essential" featurescoming down throughthe Islamic political traditionin very different, distantand unconnectedlands. At the same time, their appearance only under certaindefined kinds of conditionssuggests thatthese essential featurescould be dormantor unimportantfor long periods before they burst forth, owing largely to new social circumstances. Like the earliergroup of movements, the nineteenth-century jihads against infidel conquests occurred in ratherperipheralareas and have seldom been compared to one another. They do, however, show a number of similar featuresto one anotherand to earliermovements. Theirleadershipstill tended to come from powerful figures in majorSufi orders(Shamyl in the Caucasus, 'Abd al-Qadir and others in Algeria) or from disciples of leaders of new Islamic movements (Sayyid Ahmad Brelwi of the South Asian jihad movement). These movements again stressed orthodoxy and state building; the Indianmovementswere called Wahhabi,especially by outsiders,because they resembled and presumablywere inspiredby, the ArabianWahhabis. Some movements moved from the pre-colonial to the colonial situation
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without real changes in ideology: The Padris ended up fighting the Dutch; some West African leaders ended up fighting the French;the South Asian jihadists based in the NorthwestFrontierstartedout fighting the Sikhs, then only later clashed with the British. These similarities to early movements and to one anothershould guard us against seeing these movements simply as a supposedly naturalMuslim resistance to imperialism. In most Muslim areas there was little or no initial armedresistance, so althoughthese movements clearly had a strong aspect of "Muslimresistanceto the infidel," this is not enough to explain them. In general, settled peoples underurbanleaders and accustomed to strong imperial rule on the whole did not support Islamically based resistance to Western imperialist conquest. The 'Urabi movement in Egypt in the early 1880s is a partialexception to this but was a somewhat different kind of resistance from the Islamic revolts named above.22 As was the case in pre-imperialrevolts, the immediately postimperial armed struggles against conquest were mostly based on tribal positions in a preexistingreligious order. fighters and leaders with important The leaders tended to have an overall vision of a new, united and militant Islamic society; they tended to come from, or (in the case of the South Asian Wahhabis)settle in, peripheralareas not closely tied to an existing or recent empire. Although they were not quite as peripheralgeographically as the jihad leaders, they were not near the center of major Iseighteenth-century lamic states. of the SouthAsian movements, despite the To some degree, the appearance above-noted similar features, was based on where Europeanpowers made their first modernconquests. Hence, South Asia, an areaof some of the first Western conquests of Muslims, saw two important and long-lasting nineteenth-centurymovements, the Wahhabisand the Fara'izis. The first Frenchconquestof Algeria led to the firstjihad movementin the Middle East. Similarly, Russia's conquest efforts in the Caucasus, beginning in the early nineteenthcentury,led to the first and most important jihad movementagainst 'Abd and of Wahhabis Indian of the that them. Like al-Qadir, Shamyl's resistance was very longlasting. Some of these movements' peripherallocation was thus due to the fact that the first Europeanconquests in Muslim territoriesavoided major Ottomanand Iraniancenters. Even when Ottoman urbancenters were taken, however, this rarely gave rise to major revivalist features, such as the predominance resistance, which indicatesthatperipheral of nomadic tribes and of non-urbanreligious forms, were also importantin resistanceto Westernconquest. The Indianmoveencouragingjihad-oriented had an explicit socioments that took place in a context of settled agriculture
22 For a work natureof the 'Urabimovement, see JuanR. I. Cole, stressingthe revolutionary Colonialism and Revolutionin the Middle East: Social and Cultural Origins of Egypt's 'Urabi Movement(Princeton:PrincetonUniversity Press, 1992).
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economic dimension, the Bengali movementbeing especially a partisanof the

poor.23
Two latermovementsalso belong in this generalcontext. First, the Mahdist movement in Sudanemployed the messianic more thanthe jihad argumentfor revolt but had importantelements of fundamentalismand jihadism. P. Holt sees the Mahdiststruggle as largely a result of the forced ending of the slave and R. Petersties this movementto trade, which caused economic disruption; various disruptive features of Egyptian and British colonialism.24 Second, therewas the revolt againstItalianrule in Libya led by the Senussi orderin the early twentieth century, later than the other movements because the Italians took over Libya later. This movement has many similarfeaturesto the other jihads, however, including the importance of a Sufi order. Mahdism and revivalist jihad are two alternativeways of justifying revolt in Islamic contexts, with mahdism more frequentlybeing unorthodox,sometimes "heretical" (notably,the IranianBabis), while jihad movementstend toward"fundamentalism"or a returnto literal observanceof the scriptures.The Sudanese mahdistmovement and some others among the movements discussed in this essay had some combinationof mahdist and jihadist elements, but the latter usually predominated.There were also a number of other significant antiimperialistrevivalist revolts in Africa and SoutheastAsia. Although it is often said that religion and politics in Islam are always intertwined,Islamic principlesare often only loosely enforcedduringperiods of normal government. These principles are, however, far more enforced in Islamic militant movements, such as those discussed above, which wish to remake society in an Islamic image. The militanceand injunctionsregarding morality and gender relations that are believed to characterizeearly Islam
23 revival movements respondingto Western Among the useful works on nineteenth-century conquest are (1) on Shamyl: John F. Baddeley, The Russian Conquestof the Caucasus (London:Longmans, Green and Co., 1908); Baron August von Haxthausen, The Tribes of the Caucasus (London: Chapmanand Hall, 1855); Louis Moser, The Caucasus and Its People: Witha Brief History of Their Wars;and Moshe Gammer,Muslim Resistance to the Tsar: Shamil and the Conquest of Chechnia and Daghestan (London:Cass, 1994). (2) South Asia: QeyamuddinAhmad, The WahabiMovementin India (Calcutta, 1966); K. K. Datta, History of the FreedomMovementin Bihar, I (Patna:Governmentof Bihar, 1957); Peter Hardy,TheMuslimsof BritishIndia (London:CambridgeUniversityPress, 1972); W. W. Hunter, The Indian Musalmans:Are They Bound in Conscience to Rebel against the Queen? (London: Trubner and Co., 1871); Hafeez Malik, MoslemNationalismin India and Pakistan(Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1963); 3. Abd al-Qadir:Col. Paul Azan, L'EmirAbd el Kader 1808-1883 (Paris: LibrairieHachette, 1925); RaphaelDanziger,Abd al-Qadir and the Algerians (New York:Holmes and Meier, 1977). There is a need of further study of these movements and the Senussis by historians with a knowledge of the requisite languages and of Islamist movements elsewhere. 24 Peter Holt, The Mahdist State in the Sudan, 1881-1898: A Study of its Origins, Developmentand Overthrow (New York:OxfordUniversityPress, 2nd ed., 1977); RudolphPeters, Islam and Colonialism: The Doctrine of Jihad in Modern History (The Hague: Mouton, 1979).
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provide a model for these movements. It is strikinghow much movements in disparategeographicalregions and without obvious ties to one anotherused the same early Islamic models; most of them, for example, insist on women's veiling and segregation. Such gender separationwas not only the result of copying early Islambut also arose fromthe desire of these movementsto form states. This was generally accompanied by a stratificationof classes and gendersand by an ideology thatincludedthe observationof normsconsidered Islamic. Often, from the eighteenthcenturydown throughthe Iranianrevolution, Islamic movementsbecame more lax and more centeredon the leader's desires after they took power.
ISLAMIC REFORMISM
Fromthe late nineteenthcenturyuntil afterWorldWarII, the main intellectual trendin the Muslim world was Islamic reformism,not militancy.Reformism centered in differentareas and classes, especially the urbanintellectuals and new middleclass. Althoughthis is an essay chiefly aboutmilitancy,it shouldbe noted that most people whose works have been studiedin modem times have taken a reformist ratherthan militant approach, especially as the militants armsor were otherwiseunsuceverywherewere defeatedmilitarilyby Western cessful until very recenttimes. The reformistsbelieved thatthey could achieve Westernthought. only by imitatingandnaturalizing strengthandindependence Fromsuch YoungOttomansas NamikKemalonward,earlyIslamicinjunctions to make them more in accord with Westernliberalism on were reinterpreted matters ranging from parliamentsto women's rights. Periodic backlashes againstwesternizedmodernismtendedto come in responseto Westernaggresbetween 1878 and 1882 of the Ottoman siveness, as in the dismemberment of and the occupation Egypt and Tunisiaby Britain and France.25 Empire The recent large-scale repudiationof modernism came in part because Muslims were more inclinedthanothersto rejectthe Westand its ways, due to the centuries-oldhostility between Christiansand Muslims, to the new obreformersor those stacle of Israel, and to the failures of rule by Westernized who called themselves reformers. One person tied to reformism who has, nonetheless, remained popular, militancy,is Sayyid Jamalal-Din "Allargely because of his anti-imperialist Afghani." He grew up in an Iranian Shi'i tradition that simultaneously stressed rationalistphilosophy and Islamic theorizing. He had knowledge of Shi'i strugglesand of the militanthereticalBabi movementin mid-nineteenth century Iran and sensed the potential of militant Islamic identificationas a wellspring of political action in the moder world. Afghani responded to shifting moods. Until the early 1880s his writingswere nearly all in a liberal and local nationalistvein, with a strong dose of Islamic modernismand of
25 See Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798-1939 (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), 103.
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hostility to British colonialism. The latterfeaturestayed with him throughout his career. After the major losses of 1878 to 1882 of Muslim lands to the West, Afghani joined those who promotedpan-Islamicunity against Western imperial conquerors. Afghani, whose words were diffused in Arabic by his disciples, was a particularlyinfluentialpan-Islamistbecause he tied pan-Islamismto a strong stand against British encroachments in Muslim lands. Indeed, his antiimperialist,proto-third-worldist approachmay be the most influentialelement in Afghani's thought. This approach had increasing importance after his death. It is significant that Afghani is the only major writer and speaker popular with liberal and nationalistthinkerswho retains his popularitywith today's Islamists.26
CONTEMPORARY ISLAMISM
Above we have discussed threephases of Muslim thoughtand action since the eighteenth century, all of which had a relationshipto Westernimperialism. The early internaljihad movements of Sumatraand West Africa were in part reactionsto a growthof tradewith a strongerWest, includingthe very unequal slave trade. This trade helped change the internalclass structureof the affected countries, makingcertainareasripe for state buildingalong the lines of the original state building of early Islam, while the end of the tradeproduced furthersocioeconomic needs. NormativeIslam providedan appropriate ideology for state formation.The next stage of jihad movementswas a more direct response to French, British, Russian and Italiancolonial conquest, which in severalperipheralareaswas respondedto by militantjihads. In the thirdphase discussed, partly an outgrowth of Islamic modernism, such modernists as Namik Kemal and Jamalal-Din ("Al-Afghani")respondedto a new wave of Westernimperialistconquest by appealingto Muslim unity and revival as a shield against furtherWesternconquest. Muslim unity was in large part a means to regainterritory. Thoughthe appealof this line of thoughtnever died completely among intellectualsand many rulers, it lost out in the first decades of the twentieth century to various forms of secular nationalism, liberalism, socialism, and communism. Before WorldWarII, there began a new sort of Islamic political revival and organizationaimed once again at affirming a vision of original Islam and lessening or getting rid of the political and ideological influence of Westerncolonialists and neocolonialists in the Muslim world. Contraryto the views of those who tie the contemporaryIslamic revival mostly to IranianShi'ism, the first importantmoder revivalists were nonIranian Sunnis: Maududi and his followers in Muslim India, and later
26 See especially introduction,"FromAfghani to Khomeini,"to the 1983 edition of Nikki R. Keddie, An Islamic Responseto Imperialism:Political and Religious Writings of SayyidJamal alDin "al-Afghani"(Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress,-1983).
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Pakistan, and Hassan al-Bannaand the original Muslim Brethrenin interwar Egypt. The real expansionof these movementsis generallydated to the Arab defeat in the 1967 Arab-Israeliwar, which discreditedthe hitherto popular secular nationalistgovernmentof Gamal Abdel Nasser and also made many Muslims think that the "Jewish"ideology of Israel helped their victory, so a "Muslim"ideology would be similarlyhelpful. The increaseddiscreditingof Western-typegovernmentsand the search for an untriedalternativeencouraged many to turn to the promise of Islamic rule. Significantly, Islamist movements are strongest not in traditionalIslamic states like those of the Arabianpeninsulabut in countriesthat have had and been disillusioned with westernized governments:Iran, Algeria, Tunisia, and Egypt, in the Middle East, for example. Islamism is in part a reactionagainst the failures of such governments. and anti-neocolonialist. Much of Islamismis also militantlyanti-imperialist Often this is presented simply as a question of Muslim "fanaticism"and feeling in the "xenophobia."It is true that there is more vocal anti-Western Muslim world than in most other areas, partly because Islam brooks nonMuslim rule less than other traditions accept outsiders but also because conflict and the Israeli and Palestine questions have a long Muslim-Western history. On the other hand, we must accept the probabilitythat many young educated Muslims do not so much reject the West because they are Muslims but, rather, become Islamists largely because they are hostile to Western dominance. Islamists often come from the same groups and families and are sometimes the same individuals,who once were nationalistsor even socialists or communists.Disillusionmentwith secularsolutionshas as much to do with practicalpolitical experienceas it does with religiosity.Resistanceto Western culturaldomination, for example, is seen in the ex-communistIranianintelbecame a central lectual, Al-e Ahmad, whose famous treatise, Westoxication, text and led him to seek in Islam the solution to Iran's problems.27Similar things happened elsewhere. So we can speak of radical anti-imperialism, including culturalanti-imperialism,leading to Islamism as much as or more than the other way around. was one reason for the initial popularityof Such radical anti-imperialism Khomeiniamong non-Shi'i and even non-Muslimgroupsin the thirdworld. It also helps account for his initial Iranianfollowing among anti-shahand antiimperialistsecularists,even of the left. Here I may reaffirmsomethingI noted in one of the first articles I wrote over thirty years ago. It is difficult to and anti-Western maintainintellectually a totally anti-imperialist position at the same time as one puts forth a Western-based ideology, such as secular
27 Nikki R. Keddie, "WesternRule versus WesternValues: Suggestions for a Comparative Study of Asian IntellectualHistory,"Diogenes, 26 (1959), 71-96.
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To many people it seems nationalism,liberalism, socialism, or communism.28 a contradictionto reject Westernways, especially as they are felt abroad,and to adopt Westernviews. This has led to periodic revivals of neotraditionalist movements, once it was a question of getting an anti-imperialistfollowing among the more traditionalmasses and not just the educated. In India the movementsof Tilak, Gandhi,and recentHindunationalismreflect this; and in the Muslim world the variouspan-Islamicand Islamic revival movements do the same. The phases of modem Islamic militance have some common features but are also diverse, changing from the peripheryto the center, from traditionalism to a kind of modernity,from indirect Westerninfluence to central antiimperialismand from appeal to tribal groups to appeal to the young, urban, and educated. Islamic forms cover a great variety of contents. We have cerand combinationsto meet the tainly not seen the last of Islamic permutations conditions of an ever-changingworld.
28 The literatureon what those in the field generally call Islamism is extensive and growing. Among the most useful works are Nazih N. Ayubii, Political Islam (London:Routledge, 1991); Said Amir Arjomand,ed., FromNationalismto Revolutionary Islam (Albany:State Universityof New YorkPress, 1984); HamidDabashi, Theologyof Discontent: TheIdeological Foundationsof the Islamic Revolutionin Iran (New York:New YorkUniversity Press, 1993); JohnL. Esposito, ed., Voices of Resurgent Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983); Michael M. J. Fischer, Iran: From Religious Dispute to Revolution (Cambridge:HarvardUniversity Press, 1983); FredHalliday and HamzaAlavi, eds., State and Ideology in the MiddleEast and Pakistan (London:Macmillan, 1988); the entire issue on "Islamand Politics," ThirdWorldQuarterly,10:2 (April 1988), 473-1103; Gilles Kepel, Le propheteet pharaon: Les mouvementsislamistes dans I'Egypte contemporain (Paris: Seuil, 1990), Imam Khomeini, Islam and Revolution, Hamid Algar, trans. (Berkeley: Mizan Press, 1981); MartinMarty and R. Scott Appleby, eds., Fundamentalisms Observed, 4 vols. to date (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1991-93); Edward Mortimer,Faith and Power: The Politics of Islam (New York:RandomHouse, 1982); Maxime Rodinson, L'Islampolitique et croyance (Paris:Fayard, 1993); EmmanuelSivan, Radical Islam: Medieval Theology and Modern Politics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985); Sami Zubaida, Islam, the People, and the State (London: Routledge, 1989).

Nikki Keddie On Islamism

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THE REVOLT OF ISLAM,

THE REVOLT OF ISLAM,

THE REVOLT OF ISLAM,

THE REVOLT OF ISLAM,

THE REVOLT OF ISLAM,

THE REVOLT OF ISLAM,

19 Clarke, West Africa, 87. Hiskett, Sword, 66.

THE REVOLT OF ISLAM,

THE REVOLT OF ISLAM,

economic dimension, the Bengali movementbeing especially a partisanof the

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