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“Everyone Who Disagrees with Us is Un-Islamic”

IN ISLAMIC extremism, the United States, as the greatest power, becomes the biggest enemy, the Great Satan. Anyone who supports the United States, including any Muslim who supports the United States, becomes an infidel. Since Satan is in constant battle with Islam, this attitude has already been responsible for enormous damage against the Ummah. This supernatural pretext essentially labels every violent act against non Muslims as an act of self-defense, an answer for some previous offense against the faithful Ummah, and is used as an excuse to murder any non Muslim or Muslim alike.

Any Muslim can be executed as a kafr, if he disagrees with Islamist interpretations of Islam, a theory that was promulgated by the outlawed Muslim Brotherhoods in Egypt but is traceable from the early heretical dissenters to ’Ali, the Khawarij (the “outsiders”). The outstanding founder of modern extremist thought is probably Hasan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim brotherhood. He taught that those who oppose his interpretation of Islam were apostates and unbelievers. He emphasized jihad and preached seeking after martyrdom (talab al-shahada), like the early kharijites. In the end, he himself was assassinated in 1949.62 His disciple Sayyid Qutb was hanged in Egypt on August 29, 1966.63 But other disciples and students like Mawlana Mawdudi (1903-79) of Pakistan and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (1902-89) of Iran, carried on his teaching.

This dangerous ideology is still vibrant in Islamism; it arguably became Iranian government policy after its Islamic revolution because the United States supported the outwardly moderate and secular regime of the Shah without too much attention to its sins of internal repression. Destructive dualism is characteristic of every fundamentalism, but it has been obvious since the revolutionary regime took power in Iran. The Iranian revolution of 1979, its very ease in defeating the Shah, seemed to many on the “Arab Street” to be the confirmation of the truth of Islamism. But, as is now evident to Iranian Muslims, even the overthrow of the Shah did not bring about a free or just society in Iran. It has not even brought about a just Islamic state. So far it has not brought significant actual reform; it merely substituted a more repressive religious elite for a repressive secular one. It is the very simplicity of Islamism’s answer, with its underpinning of religious self-righteousness, which is so appealing at first. But, as more and more Iranians now see, the appealing answer was simply a wrongly guided, seductive dream.

Fundamentalism and millenarianism may be quite different. For one thing, fundamentalism is a broad intellectual movement that favors the limitation of knowledge to that part of modern science which serves religion. Fundamentalist extremism, however, is a violent form of fundamentalist sectarianism, usually promoted by a small political extremist cadre. Fundamentalist extremism and millenarianism are deeply intertwined; indeed, one could make the case that it is a modern variety of politically motivated millenarianism. At the same time, there are significant differences in how power is mediated in millenarianism and fundamentalism. In millenarian cults, normally, a charismatic leader is important, so the decrees of the leader can serve as absolute law. In a fundamentalist-extremist movement, the organization of the movement is usually more sophisticated. Besides the charismatic leader, other leadership roles are filled and supported by a class of people whose job it is to make absolute claims based on a scriptural tradition.64 Usually this class of people claims clerical status, as in Iran and in American fundamentalism. But, they may not necessarily be trained as clergy in the standard, normative fashion. The effect in either case is that absolute and uncompromising claims are used to garner support for the political program of the “clergy.” Simple truths are