Modern Islamist Movements: History, Religion, and Politics (14 page)

Qutb buttresses his stance in favor of physical jihad against jahili society by quoting a variety of Quranic passages and several examples from the life of Muhammad.106 Qutb believes that the jahili societies of the polytheists (during Muhammad’s day and afterwards) and those of the Persians and Byzantines (during Muhammad’s time and afterwards) had to be opposed using physical means, because warfare was the only way that seventh- and eighth-century Muslims could resist the overwhelming power of those regimes which attempted to perpetuate falsehood and oppression. In the same way, during Qutb’s own time, Qutb believed that Muslims had to use physical force to destroy jahili political and social structures and replace them with the rightful religious, political, and social institutions dictated by Islam.

Qutb believed that anytime a true Islamic state or society was created, human freedom was absolutely guaranteed. That is, he believed that jahili governments, by virtue of the fact that they do not accord supreme authority to God and God’s law and, as such, give ultimate authority to human beings, are oppressive and unjust.107 It must be remembered that Qutb wrote Milestones while in prison and that incarceration placed a heavy burden upon him. Related to this, Qutb found Gamal Abd al-Nasser’s regime to be intensely oppressive to the Muslim Brotherhood and to any other form of dissent. Thus, Qutb longed for freedom – for the whole of Egyptian society, for his fellow Muslims worldwide, and for himself. He was convinced that when God’s laws were properly instituted, freedom for all people – both Muslim and non-Muslim – would be the natural outcome.108 In this vein, Qutb wrote:

Islam does not force people to accept its belief, but it wants to provide a free environment in which they will have the choice of beliefs. What it wants is to abolish those oppressive political systems under which people are prevented from expressing their freedom to choose whatever beliefs they want, and after that it gives them complete freedom to decide whether they will accept Islam or not.109

Qutb believed that Muslims should engage in a step-by-step process as they work to dismantle the jahili forces. The physical jihad against these forces must begin locally, then move to the national and international fronts, since much of the world is dominated by jahili cultures.110 In a limited way, Qutb’s hope that Islam’s influence would spread was manifested in the Muslim Brotherhood’s expansion to numerous countries in the Muslim world.111 Ayman al-Zawihiri and Usama bin Laden, who were heirs of aspects of Qutb’s thought, attempted – through the establishment of al-Qaida – to expand Islam’s confrontation with jahili cultures into the international realm.112

Qutb was in prison until 1964. He was released briefly during that year because of the intervention of Iraq’s President (Abd al-Salam (Arif and was

placed under police surveillance.113 Eight months after his release, Qutb was arrested again on charges of preparing armed revolt and terrorism.114 He was tried, convicted, sentenced to death, and hanged on those charges and sedition; his execution took place on August 29, 1966.115 Because of his execution at the hands of the government which he opposed and his willing- ness to die for his strongly held beliefs, Islamists and other Muslims have viewed Sayyid Qutb as a highly-esteemed martyr for the Muslim cause.116

The Muslim Brotherhood and Islamism in Egypt after Sayyid Qutb

One result of the imprisonment of large numbers of Muslim Brothers during the 1950s and 1960s under Gamal Abd al-Nasser and the distribution of Sayyid Qutb’s ideas was the formation of small Egyptian Islamist groups that could be considered offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood. Some of the members of some of these groups were former members of the Muslim Brotherhood and had endured torture in Egypt’s prisons. The best known of these small Egyptian Islamist groups are the Military Technical College Organization, the Society of the Muslims (not to be confused with the Muslim Brotherhood), the Jihad Organization, and al-Jama(a al-Islamiyya. These groups interpreted Sayyid Qutb’s ideas in a variety of ways and had differing strategies for either relating to or opposing what they considered jahili societies.117

The history of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood after Sayyid Qutb’s execution is complex. Yet, the Brotherhood’s prevailing worldview in the years after his death is one that is at times marked by the Brotherhood’s attempts at involvement in the mainstream of Egypt’s political process. While the Muslim Brotherhood had remained formally illegal (or at best extralegal) during periods since Qutb’s death, members of the Muslim Brotherhood have run for office in Egypt’s parliament under the banner of other parties and they have attempted to spread their Islamist worldview and expand their religious and political influence through numerous professional and student organizations.118

The Muslim Brotherhood has also spread its ideas and exerted its position in Egyptian society by providing a wide range of social services such as food, jobs, health care, schools, and banking services.119 The Muslim Brotherhood has a reputation for providing services in areas where the state has either failed or has shown considerable weakness. One widespread saying in Egypt about the Muslim Brotherhood summarizes some people’s attitudes toward its services, “When the Muslim Brothers are asked, they open the drawer and give you something. When you ask government officials, they open the drawer and they ask you to give [them] something.”120 During the late

twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist organizations in Egypt have been able to encourage the implementation of some laws consistent with Islamist priorities in such areas as marriage, family, and education.121

Yet, there have been offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood that have emphasized violence and militancy as Islamically justifiable and necessary methods for beginning the transformation of societies toward what these Muslim militants believe to be “truly Islamic” societies. One of the most militant interpretations and implementations of some of the Muslim Brotherhood’s and Sayyid Qutb’s ideas was constructed by Ayman al-Zawahiri, a significant intellectual force behind the establishment of al-Qaida. As a Muslim intellectual and activist, Zawahiri is one of the most influential figures responsible for the internationalizing of physical jihad. Zawahiri emphasizes the aspects of Qutb’s thought which emphasize the notion that all non-Islamic cultures are jahili and have been contributing to the degradation of Islam. Zawahiri also strongly gravitates toward Qutb’s ideas that Muslims have an obligation to engage in physical jihad against jahili states outside of the majority-Muslim world, especially when such states threaten Muslims.

Zawahiri was born into an aristocratic and observant Muslim family in 1951 in an affluent suburb of Cairo.122 He was an excellent student and when he became tired of studying, he did not spend time with other children or watch television; rather, he read the Quran and books about Islam.123 Like others in his family, Zawahiri said his prayers regularly and attended several courses in Quranic interpretation, Quranic recitation, and Islamic law at the mosque he and his family attended.124 Zawahiri completed elementary and secondary school in the Cairo area. He earned a degree in medicine from the Faculty of Medicine at Cairo University in 1974, a Master’s degree in surgery from Cairo University in 1978, and a doctorate in surgery from a University in Pakistan, while he lived in Peshawar.125 In 1979, Zawahiri married (Azza Ahmed Nuwair (who earned a degree in philosophy from the Faculty of Arts at Cairo University) in a conservative Muslim wedding in a large Cairo hotel.126 Zawahiri led an Islamist cell in Egypt from his mid-teen years and continued to do so until 1981 when, at the age of 30, he was arrested for conspiring to assassinate the Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.127 As Zawahiri quietly participated in the Islamist cause, he secretly provided members of his cell with an education about various aspects of Islam, about the reasons he believed most of the world’s governments were infidel, and about modes of Islamist resistance.128

The assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat on October 6, 1981 was a life-changing event for Zawahiri.129 Sadat’s assassin, Khalid Islambuli, was a member of Egypt’s Islamic Jihad organization which formed in 1979 under the leadership of Muhammad Abd al-Salam Faraj,

an engineer in the administration of the University of Cairo; Zawahiri was empathetic to that group’s worldview and goals.130 Faraj’s interpretation of the Quran and Hadith, which was influenced by the ideas of Sayyid Qutb, stated that when a majority-Muslim country is under the rule of a government whose laws and political ideologies are atheistic (as Faraj believed was the case with Egypt), Muslims have the obligation to kill the political leader or leaders so that “true Muslims” may assume leadership, creating a “purely Islamic state.”131 As a believer in this Islamic worldview, Islambuli assassinated Sadat with the hope that, after he died, Egyptians would immediately engage in a massive revolt, toppling the members of the existing secular regime, and establish an Islamic state.132 No such revolution occurred at that time and Sadat’s Vice-President, Hosni Mubarak, became Egypt’s President directly after Sadat’s death.133

Members of the Egyptian government suspected Zawahiri of being a conspirator in Sadat’s assassination and, much like Qutb, Zawahiri was imprisoned, interrogated, and tortured.134 Montasser al-Zayyat, who was imprisoned at the same time as Zawahiri, stated that when the Egyptian security forces brought suspects to the Citadel prison where Zawahiri was held, “they took off their clothes, handcuffed them, blindfolded them, then started beating them with sticks and slapping them on the face … . Ayman was beaten all the time – every day. [The officials] sensed that he had a lot of information.”135 Indeed, the torture which Zawahiri endured during his three years in prison strengthened his already profound opposi- tion to the secular Egyptian government, the Western governments that supported it, and virtually everything associated with what Zawahiri considered jahili cultures.136

One incident during Zawahiri’s imprisonment manifests some of the hardships which Zawahiri and other prisoners who were implicated in the assassination attempt experienced; this event also provided a forum for Zawahiri to express his own religious and political viewpoints. The defendants in Sadat’s assassination, some of whom were adolescents, were temporarily imprisoned in a large zoo-like cage which occupied the greater portion of an enormous makeshift courtroom in the exhibition grounds in Cairo, where fairs and conventions are often held.137 The other defendants chose Zawahiri as their spokesperson and international news organizations covered these events and the trial.138

The video footage, which was shot on December 4, 1982, the opening day of the trial, shows the roughly 300 defendants chanting, praying, and attempting to convey messages to family members.139 As the prisoners fell silent, Zawahiri began addressing the cameras:

Now we want to speak to the whole world. Who are we? Why did they bring us here and what do we want to say? About the first question, we are Muslims.

We are Muslims who believe in their religion. We are Muslims who believe in their religion [sic], both in ideology and practice, and hence we tried our best to establish an Islamic state and an Islamic society.

In response, the other imprisoned defendants stated the Muslim declaration, “There is no God, but God.” Zawahiri continued in a sermonic chant-like cadence:

We are here – the real Islamic front and the real Islamic opposition against Zionism, Communism, and imperialism … . Now, as an answer to the second question,“Why did they bring us here?” They brought us here for two reasons. First, they are trying to abolish the outstanding Islamic movement … and, secondly, to complete the conspiracy of evacuating the area in preparation for the Zionist infiltration.

The other prisoners responded by saying, “We will not sacrifice the blood of the Muslims for the Americans and the Jews.”140 Then, the prisoners raised their robes to show their scars and scabs from torture. Zawahiri explained the torture that took place in the

dirty Egyptian jails … where we suffered the severest inhuman treatment. There they kicked us, they beat us, they whipped us with electric cables, they shocked us with electricity and they used wild dogs. And they hung us over the edges of the doors with our hands tied behind our backs. They arrested the wives, the mothers, the fathers, the sisters, and the sons.

The defendants responded by declaring, “The army of Muhammad will return, and we will defeat the Jews.” Zawahiri then stated the names of prisoners who he believed died as a result of torture, and continued, “So where is democracy? Where is freedom? Where is human rights? Where is justice? We will never forget.”141

The extended and dramatic video footage dramatically portrays Zawahiri articulating some of the main principles of his Islamist ideals at the time and, for many Islamists, the event is emblematic of his courage. While in the zoo-like prison, Zawahiri was willing to publicly state his message and his criticisms of the current state of affairs, knowing that his torture could be intensified and his prison term lengthened as a result. This event also constituted what may have been the first time Zawahiri received extended television coverage and one of the initial occasions he appeared on television as an Islamist leader and spokesperson. In the years to come, he would continue to play a role as an articulate and outspoken leader for this Islamist cause.

Another circumstance related to Zawahiri’s imprisonment was his relationship with fellow-Islamist leader Sheikh Umar Abd al-Rahman, who