{"id":4734,"date":"2020-02-04T07:46:27","date_gmt":"2020-02-04T07:46:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.cardiff.ac.uk\/islamukcentre\/?p=4734"},"modified":"2026-04-13T09:35:46","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T09:35:46","slug":"usaama-al-azami-how-have-the-arab-revolutions-affected-western-muslims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/islamukcentre\/usaama-al-azami-how-have-the-arab-revolutions-affected-western-muslims\/","title":{"rendered":"Usaama al-Azami: How have the Arab Revolutions affected Western Muslims?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In a forthcoming book, Islam and the Arab Revolutions<\/em>,\nI explore the engagements of the ulama (Islamic scholars) both in favour of and\nopposed to the popular uprisings that began nearly a decade ago against\nautocracy in the Middle East. An understudied facet of these revolutions has\nbeen their impact on Western Muslims, a question that preoccupies the final\nchapter of my work. This Wednesday, I look forward to addressing some of my\nconclusions in a lecture<\/a>\nat Cardiff University\u2019s Centre for the Study of Islam in the UK.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The key challenge that Western Muslims have faced in dealing\nwith the fallout of the Arab revolutions has been the perceived or real complicity\nof certain respected ulama with counter-revolutionary forces in the Middle\nEast. In my book, as in my lecture, I hope to focus primarily on how the ulama\nengaged with the 2013 Rabaa massacre in Egypt in which Egyptian forces likely\nkilled well over a thousand unarmed protestors against the military coup of\nJuly that year. According to Human Rights Watch, the security forces appeared\nto deliberately target unarmed protestors with kill shots directed at the head,\nneck, and upper torso. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The coup that lead to the subsequent massacre had been\nfacilitated by Shaykh al-Azhar Ahmad\nal-Tayyib, the Egyptian\nstate\u2019s highest ranking religious official. Subsequently, it would emerge that\nthe massacres perpetrated by the security forces had been actively encouraged\nand subsequently celebrated by Ali Gomaa, one of Egypt\u2019s most senior Islamic\nlegal authorities. Gomaa had long been viewed as an influential religious\nauthority beyond Egypt, many Western ulama having studied in his classes or\nhaving maintained cordial relations with him. However, not many of these\nWestern ulama spoke out publicly against Gomaa\u2019s complicity in the post-coup\nmassacres, even after recordings emerged that included his enthusiastic\nendorsement of the armies behaviour and his exhortation that they \u201cshoot to\nkill\u201d protestors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was doubtless in part because certain Arab ulama who\nwere popular in the West had actively defended Gomaa\u2019s actions, claiming,\ncontrary to the evidence, that he never endorsed killing unarmed protestors,\nand that the protestors were in fact, themselves, firing on security forces.\nThis was, for example, claimed by a popular Yemeni scholar and student of\nGomaa, Ali al-Jifri.\nAl-Jifri had been frequenting Western capitals for many years prior the Arab\nrevolutions, sharing platforms with prominent Western ulama such as the notable\nAmerican scholar Hamza Yusuf. The former had promoted this narrative about\nGomaa in retreats he had participated in in the UK in the years after the\nmassacre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps it should not then surprise us that Hamza Yusuf\nappeared to defend Gomaa\u2019s scholarly bona fides in the face of the criticism directed\nat the latter after the Rabaa massacre. Yusuf, despite being one of the West\u2019s\nmost influential Islamic scholars has never publicly commented on the Rabaa\nmassacre to my knowledge. His own teacher, one of the most influential scholars\nin the Middle East, Abdullah bin Bayyah, has similarly held his tongue on the\nmassacre. In his political activities however, Bin Bayyah joined forces with\nthe financial and political backers of the coup by establishing a\ncounter-revolutionary organisation, the Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim\nSocieties (FPPMS), under the patronage of the UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin\nZayed nine months after the Rabaa massacre. Bin Bayyah may not have been aware,\nat the time, that Bin Zayed had personally encouraged the Egyptian military to\ncrush the anti-coup protestors in Egypt in 2013 while promising them that the\nUAE would mitigate the negative fallout of any massacre. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because he is Hamza Yusuf\u2019s most noted teacher, Bin Bayyah\u2019s\nactivities also had implications for Western Muslims. Particularly noteworthy\nwas his drawing Hamza Yusuf into Middle Eastern politics more directly. Yusuf\nwould be appointed the vice president of the FPPMS which Bin Bayyah presided\nover. From this platform, Yusuf and Bin Bayyah would broadcast the UAE\u2019s\ncounter-revolutionary message of obedience to one\u2019s rulers even if they are\noppressive while remaining studiously silent over any repression perpetrated by\nMiddle Eastern states that were allied to the UAE.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of the scholars are part of the same Sunni denomination\nwhich is sometimes called Traditional Islam, and which I refer to as\nNeo-traditionalism. They have a large following in the West. They often portray\nthemselves as representative of a tolerant and inclusive Islamic orthodoxy that\nepitomises the mainstream of Islamic thought. Through their willingness to work\nwith repressive regimes, however, they have also shown themselves as willing to\nuse intra-Sunni denominational disagreements as a sectarian weapon that\nlegitimates either actively encouraging, papering over, or wilfully ignoring\ncrimes committed in the name of Islam including mass murder. As a consequence,\ntheir religious and moral authority has been, I argue, severely compromised in\nthe past decade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There have, however, been other ulama, including from the same\nNeo-traditionalist denomination, who have spoken out against the crimes of the regnant\nregimes of the Middle East and the scholars who serve their interests. These\nscholars, I conclude, have helped preserve the integrity of the Islamic\nscholarly tradition into the post-Arab revolutionary context. It remains to be\nseen, however, how effective they are in confronting the activities of\nstate-sponsored counter-revolutionary ulama in the long run.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a forthcoming book, Islam and the Arab Revolutions, I explore the engagements of the ulama (Islamic scholars) both in favour of and opposed to the popular uprisings that began […]","protected":false},"author":1844,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-news"],"meta_box":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/islamukcentre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/islamukcentre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/islamukcentre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/islamukcentre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1844"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/islamukcentre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4734"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/islamukcentre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4734\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5032,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/islamukcentre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4734\/revisions\/5032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/islamukcentre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/islamukcentre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/islamukcentre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}