Islamophobia (noun): irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against Islam or people who practice Islam.[footnoteRef:1] After the September 11 attacks on the United States by al-Qaeda, many people, especially Americans, associate Islam and Muslims with violence and extremism. Despite the overrepresentation of radical terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS in popular media, Islam at its core is a peaceful religion that shares roots with Christianity and Judaism. Many of the beliefs of Islamic terrorists can be traced back to Ibn Taymiyya, a thirteenth century Muslim. Ibn Taymiyya’s fundamentalist ideas in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries served as a justification for contemporary radicals such as Sayyid Qutb, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Osama bin Laden to use violence as a means of expressing distorted beliefs of Islam. [1: “Definition of ISLAMOPHOBIA,” accessed April 11, 2019, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Islamophobia.]
In order to understand Ibn Taymiyya’s views and their effects on modern radicals, it is important to first understand where those views came from. Ibn Taymiyya was born in Harran in 1263. After the Mongols invaded in 1269, his family relocated to Damascus, which was under the rule of the Mamluks of Egypt, and where they remained a part of the minority Hanbali community.[footnoteRef:2] The Hanbali School of Law is generally thought of as the more traditional and strict of the four schools in Sunni Islam. While Sharia is still derived from the Quran and the Hadith, members of the Hanbali School believe that laws cannot be decided upon based on judicial or communal consensus when there is no clear answer in the sacred texts. These beliefs, along with Ibn Taymiyya’s exceptional reading and writing abilities, are what made his ideas so influential in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. [2: Yossef Rapoport and Shahab Ahmed, Ibn Taymiyya and His Times / Editors, Yossef Rapoport, Shahab Ahmed., Studies in Islamic Philosophy ; v. 4 (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2010).]
Ibn Taymiyya’s ideas were reignited again in the early twentieth century when Sayyid Qutb, an educator from Egypt, used his writings as a foundation for his beliefs about western culture and secular government. In 1948, Qutb traveled to the United States and obtained a Master’s Degree in Education. While in Colorado, he was shocked by what he perceived as sexual promiscuity and materialism. This led him to become a more deeply devoted Muslim, and he began to write about questions pertaining to Islam and politics. After he returned to Egypt in 1951, he joined the Muslim Brotherhood and wrote for a Muslim Brethren weekly, which was banned in 1954. Many of the Brethren, including Qutb, were imprisoned for their ideas. During his twenty-five year prison sentence, Qutb wrote his most influential and substantial works.[footnoteRef:3] These ideas were drawn from Ibn Taymiyya’s beliefs, and were passed down by Qutb to his followers. [3: Albert J. Bergesen, ed., The Sayyid Qutb Reader: Selected Writings (New York, NY: Routledge, 2008).]
Sayyid Qutb’s core beliefs about Islam can be broken up into several categories: the goal, the obstacle, and the solution. According to Qutb, the goal is to realize “the Islamic concept”. The Islamic concept centers around a radical Oneness of God, making other religions, including Christianity and Judaism, open to errors. One of these errors is limiting the Oneness of God to a specific human group, rather, Qutb believed that God is for all of humanity.[footnoteRef:4] Limiting the Oneness of God to certain individuals subdivides the global umma, and therefore God (with a capital G) into smaller gods (lowercase g). This closely reflects Ibn Taymiyya’s ideas that denied Sufism as a philosophy that requires a personal relationship with God and therefore holds individualistic standards. [4: Sayyid Qutb, “The Islamic Concept and Its Characteristics,” in The Sayyid Qutb Reader (Plainfield, IN: American Trust Publications, 1991) 187.]
Next, Qutb claimed that the obstacle to realizing the Islamic concept are jahili societies. In other words, human made social and political systems that center around human submission to other humans. To submit to anyone other than God is to violate the Oneness of God and creates what Qutb calls a “servitude of servants.”[footnoteRef:5] Similar to Ibn Taymiyya, Qutb believed that secular government perpetuated disunity among the umma, and could only be resolved by following Sharia Law as found in the Quran or the Hadith. [5: Qutb, 1.]
Lastly, Qutb wrote that the best way to enforce Sharia law on political structures was through jihad. While many interpret jihad to mean a struggle within oneself to overcome the temptation of sins, Qutb used the term to describe the struggle for the initiation and establishment of a system “for the benefit of all people, both Muslim and non-Muslim.”[footnoteRef:6] This political system would abide by Sharia law according to the Quran and the Hadith, and be enforced by an Islamic state. [6: Qutb, 12.]
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Before his execution in 1966, Sayyid Qutb had many followers and students to whom he preached his beliefs. Among those was Ayman Muhammad Rabi’ Al-Zawahiri. Born in 1951, Zawahiri belonged to an Egyptian family of distinguished Islamic scholars. As a result, he grew up an intellectual, and like Ibn Taymiyya, was especially interested in literature and politics.[footnoteRef:7] Zawahiri joined the Muslim Brotherhood when he was only fourteen, and promised to carry out Qutb’s visions after his execution. [7: Aboul-Enein, Youssef H., “Ayman Al-Zawahiri: The Ideologue of Modern Islamic Militancy,” The Counterproliferation Papers, Furture Warfare Series, no. 21 (2004): 2.]
Zawahiri took Qutb’s beliefs about jihad another step forward, viewing it as an ideological struggle for survival. In his writings, Zawahiri claims that the September 11 attack on the United States was simply a gateway for war on Christian and Jewish “infidels”.[footnoteRef:8] Furthermore, like Sayyid Qutb and Ibn Taymiyya before him, Zawahiri believed that people governed by secular states (and not Sharia law) were apostates and therefore the killing of these individuals was an obligation and a duty until they chose to accept Islamic law.[footnoteRef:9] As a result, extremists such as Zawahiri used Ibn Taymiyya’s and Sayyid Qutb’s writings as a political tool justify the violence used against non-Muslims, and even Muslims whose beliefs may differ from their own. [8: Ayman Muhammad Rabi Al-Zawahiri, “Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner,” in His Own Words: Translation and Analysis of the Writings of Dr. Ayman Al Zawahiri (USA: TLG Publications, 2006), 19.] [9: Aboul-Enein, Youssef H., “Ayman Al-Zawahiri: The Ideologue of Modern Islamic Militancy.” 3.]
In 1988, Zawahiri assisted Osama bin Laden in the creation of an extreme militant Islamic group, al-Qaeda. Born in 1957 in Saudi Arabia, Osama bin Laden studied business and economics at King Abdulaziz University, though some scholars argue that he was more interested in politics and religion.[footnoteRef:10] After founding al-Qaeda, he served as both the leader and figure head of the organization until his death in 2011, when Zawahiri took over in his place. [10: Bruce Lawrence, ed., Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama Bin Laden (New York: Verso, 2005) 119.]
Osama bin Laden believed, like Ibn Taymiyya and Sayyid Qutb, that the best way to govern a country was based in Sharia law. Condemning other types of “secular” government, including communism, socialism, and democracy, bin Laden claimed in a 2001 interview that Afghanistan was the only true “Islamic” country.[footnoteRef:11] Afghanistan at the time was subject to the rule of the Taliban, yet another extremist organization that claimed to be an Islamic fundamentalist group. [11: Lawrence, 143.]
Osama bin Laden was also quite critical of the United States for several reasons that reflect his beliefs about Islam and politics. After claiming responsibility for the September 11 attacks on the United States, he explained that civilians from “enemy” countries, including children, were considered targets for his jihadist movement.[footnoteRef:12] He argued that violent jihad was necessary in order to correct the injustices committed by the United States and other non-Islamic states against Muslims in the Middle East. [12: Lawrence, 70.]
Ibn Taymiyya supported a more strict view of Islam, and sought to enforce a more fundamental understanding of the Quran, but he was not violent nor did he advocate for violence against others. Sayyid Qutb was the first to take Ibn Taymiyya’s writings and use them as a tool to justify violence on those who would not conform to his radical beliefs about sharia law. Furthermore, Qutb’s teaching impacted more recent extremists like Zawahiri and bin Laden to continue to carry out his visions of a global Islamic state that enforced his distorted version of Sharia Laws.
Islam is a peaceful religion, and the Sharia law the Quran teaches is similar to that of canonical law in the Christian church. It includes laws about marriage, divorce, inheritance, and business, as well as more religious matters like how and when to pray. The misuse of these laws in conjunction with the radical interpretation of Ibn Taymiyya’s works can be credited to the distorted view of Islam and Muslims in popular media. It is important to remember that it is not the religion people should fear, but rather the individuals that use it as a justification for terrorism.
Bibliography
- Aboul-Enein, Youssef H. “Ayman Al-Zawahiri: The Ideologue of Modern Islamic Militancy.” The Counterproliferation Papers, Furture Warfare Series, no. 21 (2004): 1–19.
- Al-Zawahiri, Ayman Muhammad Rabi. “Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner.” In His Own Words: Translation and Analysis of the Writings of Dr. Ayman Al Zawahiri, 19. USA: TLG Publications, 2006.
- Bergesen, Albert J., ed. The Sayyid Qutb Reader: Selected Writings. New York, NY: Routledge, 2008.
- “Definition of ISLAMOPHOBIA.” Accessed April 11, 2019. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Islamophobia.
- Lawrence, Bruce, ed. Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama Bin Laden. New York: Verso, 2005.
- Qutb, Sayyid. “The Islamic Concept and Its Characteristics.” In The Sayyid Qutb Reader. Plainfield, IN: American Trust Publications, 1991.
- Rapoport, Yossef, and Shahab Ahmed. Ibn Taymiyya and His Times / Editors, Yossef Rapoport, Shahab Ahmed. Studies in Islamic Philosophy ; v. 4. Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2010.
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