JIHAD REVISTED
by Hakim Bey

June 5, 2004

In the mid-'90s I was invited to a big philosophy conference in
Libya. I wrote a little paper on the influence of "Neo-Sufism" on
Col. Qaddafi and his Green Book. I wondered if the Libyans would
even allow me to read it. After all, Q came to power in 1969 by
overthrowing a king who was also a Sufi master. Perhaps he had
repudiated the influence of Sufism on his own life and thought?

Turned out the Libyans loved the paper and told me I was correct: in a
sense the Libyan Revolution had been directed against corrupt Sufism on
behalf of reformed Sufism. Unfortunately, Q himself never showed up at
the conference to confirm or deny this, but I'm sure they were right.

Neo-Sufism arose in the 19th century in response to the corrupt
authoritarian Sufism of colonial times and partly in response to
colonialism itself. Anti-French resistance in Algeria was spearheaded
by the great Emir Abdel Kader, guerilla chief and brilliant Sufi
shaykh in the school of Ibn Arabi.

Neo-Sufis broke with the medieval concept of the all-powerful
"master." Instead, they sought initiation in dreams and visions. In
North Africa, the Sanussi Order and the Tijani Order, amongst others,
were founded by seekers who'd been empowered in dreams by the Prophet
Mohammed himself.

The Neo-Sufi orders were also conceived and shaped to some extent
as reform movements within Islam, in competition with modernism &
secularism on one hand and Salafist/Wahhabi neo-puritan "Islamism" on
the other. Education & health and economic alternatives to colonialism
were stressed in the Sanussi Order in Libya. And when armed struggle
against Italian rule erupted, Sanussi fuqara (dervishes) led the
uprising.

After independence, the head of the Order became King Idris I. Young
Moammar Qaddafi, born in a Sanussi village to Sanussi parents,
attended a Sanussi elementary school and high school. In England for
military training in the '60s, the young officer read Colin Wilson's
The Outsider and absorbed some New Left ideas, including "council
communism" and the notion of the Spectacle. (See The Green Book,
esp. the section on sports.)

Libyan Islam is not "fundamentalist," as so many Americans seem
to believe. In fact it's anti-fundamentalist. The Islamists hate Q
as a heretic, innovator & crypto-sufi. The Libyan ulema (religious
authorities) declared the Ahadith (the Prophetic traditions) to be
non-canonical, an extremely "liberal" position. There is still a
Council of Sufi Orders in Libya, and the Sanussi Order still exists
("Just not the royal branch of it," as a Libyan delegate told me).

Elsewhere in the Islamic world, however, Neo-Sufism largely
failed to provide a paradigm for contemporary spirituality or
politics. "Westernization" and its reactionary double "Islamism"
have swept the field. The old Sufi ideals of tolerance, difference,
cultural depth, the arts of peace--as the Tunisian poet Abdelwahab
Meddeb asserts in The Malady of Islam (Basic Books, 2003)--are despised
by both secular modernists and rabid neo-puritans.

Mebbed also points out that the Islamists by no means adhere to
"anti-materialist values." They adore technology and Capital as
fervently as Westerners--provided it's "Islamic" tech and "Islamic"
money, of course.

The synthesis of mysticism and socialism, envisioned by
anti-Capitalist/anti-Soviet thinkers of the '60s and '70s like Ali
Shariati of Iran, or Col. Q himself, appears to be a lost cause--along
with "third world socialism" in general, and "third world neutralism"
as well. The very terms indicate their historical emptiness: how
can there be a third world when the "second world" has imploded
and vanished?

The conference in Tripoli turned out to be a curious circus of "lost
causes," including two anarchists from New York (we were cheered as
heroes for defying the "travel ban"), countless African liberation
fronts, the interesting French "New Right" philospher Alain de
Benoist and some Australian Red/Brown types, two charming Turkish
Greens, a Slovenian anarchist, a clique of Parisian Maoists, etc.,
and a phalanx of hospitable Libyans, all fuelled by excessive coffee
intake. A German doctor gave a paper on depleted uranium in Iraq,
the first time most of us had heard of such a thing. A New Zealand
delegate told horror stories about privatization of water; ditto.

At one point I overheard one of the Parisian Maoists say that the real
objectively-existsing enemy of humanity was not neo-liberal/Global
Capital, but the USA. At the time I considered this view misguided,
in part because of my enthusiasm for Zapatismo, in part because the
Maoist line sounded so old-fashioned. At that time neo-liberalism was
on the ascendent and a nuanced global response seemed more vital than
any Vietnam-era anti-Americanism.

In a collection of essays, Millennium (Autonomedia, 1996), I
speculated on the need for new ways to express anti-Capitalist
strategies in a post-Spectacular situation. If Zapatismo could
draw on Mayan spirituality as well as anarchist influences, perhaps
something similar could happen with Sufism. Islam contains a potential
for socialism in its strictures against usury and its communitarian
idealism (according to Ali Shariati, for example). "Lawless" (bishahr)
Sufism and some types of Islamic heresy have anarchistic aspects. At
the time, I thought Islamism was on the wane.

Sufism itself is sometimes defined as the "greater jihad," while holy
war is called the "lesser jihad." The struggle to "become who you are"
takes precedence over even the most righteous cause. But esotericism
is not always quietistic in Islam. Sufis have launched revolutions,
including 19th and early 20th century anti-colonialist/imperialist
struggles. Perhaps, I fantasized, it's now time for a kind of Islamic
Zapatismo to emerge. I actually proposed this in a preface for the
recent Turkish translation of my now-quite-elderly book, TAZ: The
Temporary Autonomous Zone (Autonomedia, 1985).

Since 1996, two changes seem to have occured within the so-called
End of History. First appeared neo-conservative neo-liberalism,
a.k.a. the USA as sole superpower and hegemon of Global Capital's
final triumph--a.k.a. the Empire.

Second, it turned out that puritanical Islamism was given new
life during the Soviet gotterdamerung in Afghanistan. American
Intelligence discovered a magic lamp and rubbed it--once, twice,
thrice--and then the genie escaped and became the Old Man of the
Mountains. The US then invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, and committed
itself to the Israeli Right. Islamism somehow became the new Evil
Empire of Pure Terror. It also became anti-Americanism.

A few people have misguidedly complimented me on "predicting" this New
Jihad. Anyone who ever wrote a word on Islamism before 9/11/01 is now
burdened with this dreary mantle. In fact the jihad I "predicted" (or
rather imagined) has not come to pass. By now it's probably too late.

>>From the US Empire's p.o.v., Islamism makes the perfect enemy
because it's not really anti-Capitalist or anti-technocratic. It can
be subsumed into the one great image of Capital as Law of Nature,
and also simultaneously used as a bogeyman to discipline the masses
at home with fear-of-terror, and to explain away the miseries of
neo-liberal readjustment. In this sense Islamism is a false ideology or
"Simulation" as Baudrillard put it.

America makes a perfect enemy for the Islamists because Americanism
isn't a real ideology either. Brute force, McDisney-kultur, an
Orwellian "Free Market" and a frothy "post-industrial" economy
based on out-sourcing the entire misery of production to the former
third world--all of this fails to achieve even the tarnished and
untrustworthy status of "ideology''--it's all simulation. "Money
talks," as the popular wisdom has it. Money is the only master of
speech here and money speaks only to itself. "Democracy" is now
a codeword for coca-colonization by cluster-bomb--"Islam" for the
emotional plague. It's the wrong jihad.

At present (May '04), the Empire seems to be choking on an overdose
of its own image addiction, stupid lies, suffocating mass media,
politics as snuff porn. Staying in Iraq or "pulling out" of Iraq:
both seem equally impossible to imagine--the Vietnam Syndrome,
complete with atrocity photos.

If the current US regime is changed, presumably the best we can expect
is a return to the neo-liberal Globalism of the '90s. But this may
prove impossible and it's not clear that the Democrats intend any
such retreat. How do you step down gracefully from imperialism?

That Parisian Maoist: was he correct after all? The USA seems to
have positioned itself quite deliberately by alienating Europe and
horrifying the Islamic world. It has rushed to embrace the role of
enemy-of-humanity and thrown away the last of its diminished popularity
as defender of freedom.

But Islamism will never provide the dialectic negation of this Empire
because Islamism itself is nothing but an empire of negation, of
resentment and reaction. Islamism has nothing to offer the struggle
against Globalism except dessicated theofascist spasms of violence.

Americanism & Islamism: a plague on both their houses. As for true
jihad, there's more going on in South America and Mexico now than
anywhere else. Maybe while President Tweedledee and the Imam ibn
Tweedledum bite each other's throats out on CNN, something interesting
might have a chance to emerge from the barrios of Argentina or
Venezuela, or the jungles of Chiapas.

-------------

Hakim Bey is an anarcho-Sufi mystic and political theorist. His writings are on-line at:

http://www.hermetic.com/bey/

Other links:

Emir Abdel Kader: http://www.fact-index.com/a/ab/abdel_kadir.html

Ibn Arabi: http://www.ibnarabisociety.org/IbnArabi.html

Sanussi Order: http://www.4dw.net/royalark/Libya/libya.htm

Tijani Order: http://www.nuradeen.com/Reflections/ElementsOfSufism3.htm

Salafist/Wahhabi movement: http://www.thewahhabimyth.com/

Sanussi armed struggle against Italian rule: http://reference.allrefer.com/country-guide-study/libya/libya26.html

Muammar Qaddafi: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moammar_Al_Qadhafi

Colin Wilson: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jbmorgan/cwintro.html

The Outsider: http://users.lycaeum.org/~maverick/cwil-int.htm

Council commuism: http://www.informationgenius.com/encyclopedia/c/co/council_communism.html

The Spectacle: http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/debord/

The Green Book: http://www.qadhafi.org/the_green_book.html

Ahadith: http://www.islamia.com/ahadith.htm

Abdelwahab Meddeb: http://www.limag.refer.org/Volumes/Meddeb.htm

The Malady of Islam: http://www.semcoop.com/detail/0465044352

Ali Shariati: http://www.shariati.com/index2.html

Alain de Benoist: http://www.alphalink.com.au/~radnat/debenoist/

Zapatismo: http://www.ezln.org/

Greater jihad: http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/features/jihad/jihad2.shtml

Lesser jihad: http://www.islam.org.au/articles/26/jihad.htm

Millennium: http://www.hermetic.com/bey/millennium/index.html

TAZ: The Temporary Autonomous Zone: http://www.hermetic.com/bey/taz_cont.html

The Old Man of the Mountains: http://www.phinnweb.com/neuro/assassins.html

Simulation: http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Baudrillard/Baudrillard_Simulacra.html

Baudrillard: http://www.uta.edu/english/hawk/semiotics/baud.htm

The emotional plague: http://www.goodvibes.com/cgi-bin/sgdynamo.exe?HTNAME=magazine/features/sex_and_c ulture/2001072.html

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Shaykh Ahmad Zarruq’s grave has been desecrated In Libya

On Sunday 26th August 2012  The Salafis came at night 3 AM while people were sleeping and dug out the blessed resting place of Hazrat Shaykh Ahmad Zaruq Alayhi Rahma.

IMPORTANT UPDATE:

We Have Just Been Informed By Brothers In Libya that The Salafis Have Taken The Blessed Body of Shaykh Ahmad Zarruq Alayhi Rahma and They Have Dumped It At An Unknown Location and the Salafis are on their way to destroy the tomb of the Sahabi, Ruwayfi’ b. Thabit al-Ansari in Libya.

In Arabic:

نبش ضريح سيدي احمد زروق بمدينة مصراتة

تمت عملية نبش قبر سيدي أحمد زروق تحت جنح الليل والناس نيام بتاريخ 26/08/2012 حيث قامت مجموعة من الخوارج الوهابية والمسلحين بالهجوم على الضريح عند منتصف الليل وعندما اعترضهم بعض الأشخاص اخرجوا ورقة وقا…

لوا أنه أمر من اللجنة الأمنية العليا بإزالة القبر دخلوا الضريح ومعهم معدات الحفر واقفلوا الباب عليهم وتم العمل بكل هدوء وتم نبش القبر ووجدوا رفات وعظام في القبر حسب شهود عيان انها رفات لشخص واحد مع العلم بأن ضريح سيدي أحمد زروق مدفون معه شخصين احدهما خادمه. طبعا فوجئ الناس واهالي مدينة مصراتة بهذه الجريمة النكراء التي ترفضها كل الأديان والشرائع وقاموا بالاحتجاج والاستنكار والاعتصام في المسجد وامام محكمة مصراتة وبعد صلاة العشاء تم اجتماع بين أهالي مصراتة ورئيس المجلس المحلي وقام رئيس المجلس المحلي الدكتور سليم باستنكار واستهجان هذا الفعل إلا انه قدم اعذار واهية لعدم مقدرة الاجهزة الأمنية في مصراتة من بسط السيطرة والأمن في المدينة ورد عليه اهالي مدينة مصراتة الصمود وشبابها أنه إذا لم تكن الأجهزة الأمنية على قدر المسئولية لحماية المدينة والقبض على الخارجين عن القانون واسمائهم معروفة فإن شباب الثورة الوطنيين والغيورين على الدين والوطن قادرون على حماية المدينة وكما وفقنا الله للدفاع عنها وتحريرها والمساهمة في تحرير باقي تراب ليبيا الحبيبة فإنه لن يعجزنا بإذن الله القضاء على هذه الشرذمة المارقة والخارجة عن القانون واعطيت فترة 48 ساعة للمجلس المحلي والأجهزة الامنية للقبض على الجناة الخوارج واعادة الرفاة إلى مكانه وصيانة الضريح واعادته في أبهى حلة وإلا فإن أبناء مدينة الصمود قادرون وجاهزون لحماية المدينة واحقاق الحق والضرب بيد من حديد على هؤلاء الخوارج الوهابية والله ولي التوفيق

Shah Abdul Aziz Dehlwi (radi Allahu anhu), in his book, “Bustaanul Muhaditheen”, praises Hazrat Sayyidi Ahmed Zarooq (radi Allahu anhu), by describing him as follows:

Photos from the desecration of the grave of Shaykh Ahmad Zarruq Alayhi Rahma:

Libyan graves

Last week, millions of Muslims worldwide celebrated one of Islam’s two annual celebrations, Eid al-Fitr, which follows their completion of fasting the month of Ramadan. For Muslims, Eid is a time for visiting family and friends, and a time for feeling joy and solidarity. During these celebrations, Muslims often feel a heightened sense of belonging to a historically-rooted community and an increased affinity for their heritage.

The attacks were not limited to road construction equipment demolishing the structures built immediately around graves (as well as exhuming some of the bodies), but included burning books contained in the sites’ libraries – all of this under the Salafi banner of ‘removing sources of religious innovation.’

The Arab revolutions that began towards the end of 2010 have included a wide range of participants. For most participants, the goal has been political reform and democratic transformation. There are other actors, however, whose goal is to transform Muslim society to the way they perceive it to have been during the first three centuries of Islamic history; their goal is to reform society according to their puritanical vision of the past. These actors consider Muslims to have lived the past millennium astray — both the laity and the scholars — which leads many to conclude that this reform does not constitute a return to the past, but rather a revision of past history.

Many of those radical Salafi actors were not even engaged in the revolutions, deeming them to be forbidden on account of ‘going against the ruler’ — but their religious doctrine were revised, yet again. Now, the revolution is a method through which they can achieve their own goal — revising religion according to their dogmas, and imposing changes they know they could never achieve through popular referendum. This is part of what we see playing out in this week’s destruction of religious sites in Libya.

To the hardline Salafi religious revisionist, these sites and the tombs they house are either loci for or precursors to heresy. Their worry is that ordinary Muslims who visit the sites supplicate to the dead and ask them to intercede on their behalf. It does not matter whether anyone actually goes there with this intention, since the mere presence of these shrines leaves an ongoing risk to the masses.

If these buildings pose such a risk to the masses, why did the previous generations of Muslims allow these shrines to remain in Libya and elsewhere? The grave of the prophet Ismail is located within the Sacred Mosque in Mecca and the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina grew to envelop the grave of the Prophet Muhammad. Why is it that both of these graves and the mosques around them were left unmolested? The answer is simple: the sages, muftis, judges, and rulers of previous generations did not consider them as loci for heresy; they did not consider their forcible removal to be the proper legal response. In short, the earliest generations — the Salaf from which the contemporary Salafi derive their name — did not understand the Quran and Sunnah to require forcible exhuming the bodies of Muslims or destroying tombs and other structures built adjacent to their graves.

The general rule in Islamic law concerning the use of force is that it is unlawful. The basis for this goes back to the often quoted verse in the Qur’an that states, “No compulsion is there in religion” (Quran, 2:256). When the Quran and hadith describe force as being legally warranted, they usually warn that God considers pardon and clemency to be the superior course of action.

The Sunni creed that Muslim theologians have taught for the past fourteen centuries to the general masses and at its primary scholarly institutions like the University of al-Qarawiyyin (founded in Fes in 859), and Azhar University (founded in Cairo in 970) — holds that all things in the world are created by God and God alone, in accordance to the Quranic verse “and when thou threwest, it was not thyself that threw, but God threw”(Quran, 8:17). The sound Sunni creed inoculated the majority of the lay community from becoming grave worshipers while visiting graves.

What is important here is that the religious and political authorities responsible for safeguarding religion and society were aware of the situation and left these sites alone. That is, until the 19th century when more militant forms of what became today’s Salafi movements began razing tombs in the Arabian Peninsula on the grounds that they lead to polytheism and declaring anyone in their vicinity a polytheist. Needless to say, the fatwa that were propagated to defend such destruction, as well as those that provide ‘legitimacy’ behind such crimes in today’s Libya, are spurious.

Yesterday, Egypt’s House of Edicts (Dar al-Ifta al-Misriyyah) issued an official statement condemning the attacks against the mosques and tombs of Sheikhs Ahmed al-Zarrouq and Abdel Salam al-Asmar, and which was reaffirmed on the Grand Mufti’s personal web site. Whereas the Egypt’s House of Edicts usually uses sedated language in its fatwas, the text of this fatwa used rare and uncharacteristically strong language, describing the perpetrators of these actions as “criminals,” “renegades,” and “hellhounds.”

These attacks have repercussions that go beyond desecration of physical property: they extend to desecration of Libya’s religious and historical identity and heritage, of Islam’s historical and legal norms, and the sovereignty of the Libyan state. For all people that are concerned about the future of a post-Gaddafi Libya, it is vitally important to promote transparency and firm positions towards the prevention of such violence. There is no religious, nor civil, justification for such wanton use of violence — this needs to be made clear by all authorities. The perpetrators are not only guilty of religious sin, but of crimes, and they need to be held accountable for.

As the Libyan revolution and others continue, religion is going to remain a topic that draws a great deal of attention, particularly concerning its role in public life and policies. Religion can be used for good, or it can be used for evil — and it will be down to the people of these countries to decide what they want in that regard. It can hardly be argued, however, that the revolutionaries of the Arab world deserve more bloodshed and destruction – surely, they fought for something better than this.

(Sheikh Musa Furber a writer for Egypt Independent where this article was published on August 29, 2012)

Libya Officials Seem Helpless as Sufi Shrines Are Vandalized

CAIRO — Libya’s interior minister retracted his two-day-old resignation announcement on Tuesday amid a growing uproar over the destruction of Sufi shrines and sacred sites, punctuated by a United Nations plea for an end to such “brutal attacks.”

A wave of such desecration since the overthrow of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi has exposed raw schisms among Libyan Muslims. The vast majority of Libyans follow a mainstream form of Sunni Islam, and the country also contains significant numbers of adherents to the more mystical Sufi traditions, which include prayer and worship around shrines and graves. The former King Idris, overthrown by Colonel Qaddafi, came from a Muslim religious order, the Senussi, often considered a form of Sufism. But many other Libyan Muslims roll their eyes at the Sufis or even consider them heretics.

In addition, there are an unknown number of militant Islamists who took up arms against Colonel Qaddafi, some of whom had fought in Iraq or Afghanistan and may favor vigilante action against Sufi deviations from Muslim orthodoxy. There are also Salafis, who favor a strict and puritanical interpretation of Islam and scoff at Sufi practices. In Libya, the Salafis have generally shunned politics and even the revolt against Colonel Qaddafi — earning them some enmity from the militants as well.

It is unclear who is responsible for the destruction of graves and Sufi shrines since Colonel Qaddafi’s killing last October, but the interior minister, Fawzi Abdel Aal, sounded more or less powerless to stop the attacks as he announced his decision on Tuesday to rescind his resignation.

“If we deal with this using security we will be forced to use weapons, and these groups have huge amounts of weapons,” Mr. Abdel Aal said, apparently referring to the militants, according to news accounts of his announcement in Tripoli. “We can’t be blind to this. These groups are large in power and number in Libya. I can’t enter a losing battle, to kill people over a grave.”

“If all shrines in Libya are destroyed so we can avoid the death of one person, then that is a price we are ready to pay,” he added.

Mr. Abdel Aal made the announcement as Unesco, the cultural agency of the United Nations, issued a statement denouncing the escalating vandalism. The group specifically cited the destruction of the Islamic Center of Sheik Abdus Salam al-Asmar in Zlitan, the mosque of Sidi Sha’ab in Tripoli and the shrine of Sidi Ahmed Zaroug in Misurata. “I am deeply concerned about these brutal attacks on places of cultural and religious significance,” the Unesco director general, Irina Bokova, said in the statement. “Such acts must be halted, if Libyan society is to complete its transition to democracy.”

Reuters reported that in at least one episode, the police stood by and did nothing as militants bulldozed a shrine, and the failure of the interior minister to curb the attacks on the sites, along with other recent instances of violence, drew furious criticism from members of the recently elected National Assembly.

On Sunday, Mr. Abdel Aal had said he would resign because of the criticism, but on Tuesday he said his resignation would “further complicate security,” news accounts from Libya said.

Libyan Islamists Raze Sufi Sites in Bold Attacks

TRIPOLI, Libya (Reuters) — Attackers bulldozed a mosque containing Sufi Muslim graves in the center of Tripoli in broad daylight on Saturday, in what appeared to be the boldest sectarian attack in Libya since the overthrow of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi last year.

Government officials condemned the demolition of the large Sha’ab mosque and blamed an armed group who, they said, considered its graves and shrines to Sufi figures un-Islamic.

It was the second razing of a Sufi site in two days. Ultraconservative Islamists wrecked Sufi shrines with bombs and another bulldozer and set fire to a mosque library in the city of Zlitan early on Friday, an official said.

Libya’s rulers have struggled to control the many armed groups that are competing for power a year after Colonel Qaddafi’s fall.

The bulldozer leveled the Sha’ab mosque on Saturday as the police surrounded the site and prevented people from approaching.

“A large number of armed militias carrying medium and heavy weapons arrived at the Al Sha’ab mosque with the intention to destroy the mosque because of their belief graves are anti-Islamic,” said a government official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

He said the authorities tried to stop the militias but, after a small clash, decided to seal off the area while the demolition took place to prevent any violence from spreading.

Libya’s Supreme Security Council condemned the action, the council spokesman, Abdel Moneim al-Hurr, said.

A man who appeared to be overseeing the demolition said the Interior Ministry had authorized the operation after discovering people had been worshiping the graves and practicing “black magic.”

The ministry was not immediately available for comment.

One of Libya’s highest-profile cultural clashes since the toppling of Colonel Qaddafi has been between followers of the mystical Sufi tradition and ultraconservative Salafis, who have formed a number of armed brigades. They reject as idolatrous many Sufi religious rituals.