The testimony given by the Egyptian preacher, Sheikh Muhammad Hussein Yaqoub, before an Egyptian court in the case known in the media as the "Imbaba cell", renewed the controversy over the crisis experienced by the Salafist movement in Egypt since the January 2011 revolution, regarding the boundaries separating the societal and political And the nature of the relationship with the ruling regimes. After long decades during which the main Salafist current chose to voluntarily refrain from engaging in politics, this current quickly rushed to the heart of the raging political conflict after the revolution without prior revisions, whether at the level of thought or at the level of plans and practice, a rush that the Salafi movement seems to be paying the price for today. Not only by effectively exiting the arena of politics, but also isolation, and relegation to the margins of society.
Since the birth of the modern Salafist version at the beginning of the twentieth century, and in the context that followed the fall of the Ottoman Caliphate and the emergence of a number of different Islamic revival movements;
The Salafi trend in general has become primarily preoccupied with advocacy and religious educational work, and politics has not had a prominent place in its priorities, neither in thought nor in action.
In general, this can be attributed to the nature of the influence and influence of the Wahhabi call and its extensions in the Arab world within the Saudi expansionist project through competition for the authority of Sunni Islam.
This though not the only reason;
It has a great relative weight and is effective in the equation of the formation of the Salafi intellectual imagination throughout the Arab and Islamic countries.
Given the location of Egypt and its geopolitical and historical importance;
Talking about any intellectual transformations or stations in them is like talking about one of the central regions in the Arab world whose influence extends to distant countries. History always tells us about the impact of reform and modernization movements in Egypt and the limits of their impact on the Arab and Islamic world, especially in the last three centuries.
With the events of the January 25, 2011 revolution and its aftermath;
The Salafis found themselves in front of an opportunity to fill part of the political and social vacuum that was left after Mubarak’s resignation. For various reasons, they rushed to exploit this void to serve their reform vision, especially since the space for political competition at that time was inflamed and many Islamic and secular trends entered it.
Sections of the Salafist currents in general, and in Egypt in particular, dealt with the model of modern political practice (elections - parliaments - the constitution - political parties) according to the famous saying of the Salafi Sheikh Muhammad Nasir al-Din al-Albani, “It is politics to leave politics.” General deals with politics on two levels:
The first
establishes a special Islamic conceptual framework for the term;
It is everything related to managing people’s political, social, economic and religious affairs, and Salafi literature often issues the goals of politics in Islam with the function of “Islamic Sharia arbitration” and the preservation of “Islamic identity” being major goals sought by Islamic movements in general, in light of man-made laws, according to what he sees A large sector of Islamic trends.
The second
is the modern level of politics, a level that is dealt with as a Western importer and alien to the Islamic environment and an outsider to it, and thus becomes among the ideas and practices that are dealt with with apprehension and anxiety from a religious standpoint as it is the “other Western.”
The Salafists, then, proceed from an "Islamic identity" with a special conceptual framework, which places a special meaning on politics in its religious lexicon, and deals with a logic of separation to a large extent with the incoming Western concepts.
Salafi theories inform us of the content of their view of the idea and practice of politics in its modern Western model, as most of them agreed before the January revolution that it was not permissible to participate in elections in all its forms, due to their lack of feasibility, in their view, in achieving political and social change towards the Islamic Salafist model, and the necessity of making “legitimate” concessions On the constants of Islamic Sharia, in addition to their historical interest in their preaching and educational function as a basic function to achieve the political and social conception of the Muslim state.
Despite the above, it is necessary to look in more depth at the motives that prevent the Salafists from participating at some stage; Salafi thought in general pays great attention to what he calls the "method", which means the optimal way they see to practice and manage the affairs of life and society, which must be according to the vision they see that the "methodology of the Prophet and his companions" developed through their interaction with the Qur'anic and prophetic text, and it is the approach that It requires, according to the Salafi vision, to avoid any action or idea outside the permissible conceptual framework, especially with regard to modern Western concepts and practices.
This “methodology” was formed on the basis of an interpretive model that deals with the interpretation of religious texts as it requires defining the special method and the necessary distinction between them and others who did not adhere to this interpretation (1). With the development of this explanatory context historically, a state of increasing discrimination arose based on this "method" with the Wahhabi revival of the literature of "Ibn Al-Qayyim" and "Ibn Taymiyyah", and the adoption of Saudi policy until a decade ago, an expansionist pattern through the regional spread of Salafi thought.
The impact of exporting the Saudi religiosity pattern on the structure of the Salafi perception towards the state and political action is shown by marketing the idea of the Saudi model in governance, as it combines a faction that manages the political matter without democracy, and a faction that manages religious affairs with great powers that include the social life of the people, as this helped in the standardization of a concept He is a politician in the Salafi imagination, and he made the traditional approach to politics in the Salafi concept limited to the Saudi experience without other, more modern models at the level of the governance model.
Regarding Salafism in Egypt;
Before January 2011, the Salafist currents agreed to adopt a blocking or conservative stance towards democracy. The “Salafist Call” in Alexandria expressed a position prohibiting participation, while not denying the participants, because participation requires concessions on religious principles that they cannot give up.
Yasser Burhami, one of the most important theorists of Salafism in Egypt, mentions two clear statements of the Salafi stance towards democracy, where he says: “In truth, words like political action, democracy, and pluralism are bright words that have no truth, and they have no share of application, even among those who claim to embrace them. and defending it” (2), and Burhami adds that they “see that politics should be practiced with a kind of what he called “reservation” or “resistance”, in order to expose and expose corruption instead of embellishing it and legitimizing it (3).
Yasser Burhami
The “Salafist Call” was not unique in this position on political action. Rather, most of the positions of other Salafi currents towards political action converge, and most of them are unanimously agreed that the concept of democracy, for example, means: rule by the people or sovereignty for the people, and these reports are frequently mentioned in the lessons and articles of symbols. Egyptian Salafism. And because the formation of Salafist attitudes towards political action requires the presence of the character of ideological legitimacy; Looking at democracy results in describing it as inviolable, because it places the sovereignty of the people above the rule of Sharia, and that expanding the powers of parliaments to enact legislation that may contradict Islamic Sharia, which is not acceptable from an Islamic ideological perspective. Noting that some Salafi currents decide that there is a significant difference in the position of democratic practice, but they restrict it to certain restrictions and not on its launch, and they rely on fatwas of two major Salafi figures, Sheikh “Abdul Aziz bin Baz” and “Muhammad Salih al-Uthaymeen.”Which indicates the extent to which the symbolism of the Saudi Salafist references affected Egyptian Salafism.
There is a position taken by the activist Salafists in Egypt regarding the state in general, and the regime in Egypt in particular; It is that the system of government depends on man-made laws, and that arbitration for a person other than Islamic Sharia is considered blasphemy in general, and some of them separate with special conditions the extent to which a person can be infidels or to pronounce judgment on the act of “ruling by other than what God has revealed” in general without specifying. This issue in particular is the center on which these people base their position on tyranny, as it is a secondary characteristic of what is described to them as “the tyrant,” a religious term that refers to the tyrant who rules without Sharia, and not in the political sense usual in social sciences, and therefore the position of the most prominent symbols of Salafism in Egypt towards “Despotism” is based on their legitimate meaning of the concept of “tagout” (4).
The new situation produced by the January revolution in Egypt resulted in a “temporary” political openness, during which hundreds of currents, parties, coalitions and groupings moved, each of which sought to reserve a political space in the new situation in Egypt after the revolution.
The Salafist movement was one of the most prominent emerging currents at the time, and according to the relative weights in the first electoral test;
The Nour Party was followed by the Brotherhood in the number of seats in the first parliament after the revolution.
Here an important and central question arises;
What is the reason for the migration of Salafis to politics after the revolution?
To answer this question, it is necessary to dig into the roots of Salafi political awareness, how it works, and its reading of the reality with which it interacts. The level of attention to political issues has varied, theoretically, in contemporary Salafi literature, but it also remains derived from the reference and intellectual structures of the Sunni heritage and the major Sunni references such as Imam Ahmed bin Hanbal. Ibn Taymiyyah and Ibn Kathir, in addition to a number of contemporary references such as Ibn Baz, Al-Albani and Ibn Uthaymeen.
Regarding the Salafi situation in Egypt; The Salafist currents maintained a state of political regression until 2011, according to literature that treats politics, theoretically and practically, as forbidden or religiously hated, and relies in it on the principle of considering legitimate interests and corruptions and preserving the constants of the Islamic faith, which saw in the foundations of modern politics a lot of Ideas and practices that contradict Islamic Sharia, even if by necessity. Therefore, the position on the legitimacy of the modern state is one that largely rejects the structure of the modern state, and desires to restore the historical model of the “caliphate” and its procedural values such as shura and the people of solution and contract (5). However, an exception can be made to the so-called "Salafist entrance"Because it deals with the current political reality with a different logic, as the birth of this intellectual current was in Saudi Arabia, and its origin was based on theories accumulated since the emergence of the third Saudi state, pairing the rule of the House of Saud and the legitimacy of the family of Sheikh Muhammad Abdul Wahhab, which established the religious legitimacy of the form of this system, and moved Later on, the Saudi Salafi export to the rest of the Salafis in the Arab region.
A group of activist and revolutionary Salafis interacted quickly with the revolution, such as the Cairo Salafism (6) and the seeds of the Hazem Abu Ismail al-Thawri and Qutbian movement. Inside Tahrir Square and participants in the revolution.
This divergence in attitudes towards the “revolution” expresses two important things regarding the framework of Salafi political thought and interaction towards political modernity:
The first
is the qualified nature of the radical difference between Salafi currents in general, as there is a subjective feature within the Salafi practice of religious interpretation that makes Salafism as a contemporary application of an old perception and reality always subject to internal disagreement and conflict, and it is frequent with everything related to the concepts and manifestations of political, social, economic and intellectual modernity (7).
The second:
the knowledge gap that characterizes Salafi political thought, which stems from the long reliance on the codes of jurisprudence and heritage legitimate politics, and the lack of interaction with modern theoretical literature related to politics and sociology, which made the question of public policy an “unthinkable” for them, and then Making the Salafis themselves and in the eyes of society "sheikhs and preachers", and self-based on a "symbolic capital" formed based on this presbyterian phenomenon.
These two things gave birth to Salafism with this self characteristic of Salafi-Salafist relations, but it remains within a convergent political intellectual framework in terms of the source of ideas and texts, and the style and philosophy of treatment of political issues.
on a theoretical level;
Salafi discussions about the revolution remained confined to the debate about the “legitimacy of revolting against the ruler.” This heritage dimension in the discussion reflects the problematic nature with which all Salafis encountered the idea and event of the revolution, which is in fact an event and a practice of modernity in the first place.
After the January 2011 revolution in Egypt, a section of the Salafis hesitated to enter politics despite their previous position, and every part of the movement and scientific Salafist movement dealt with this hesitant behavior, while other activists participated in the revolution from its beginnings far from any horizon for political action.
However, this hesitation and lack of political imagination did not last long, as the Salafis found the opportunity to achieve greater expansion in the new Egyptian reality. There are two main concepts that explain this Salafist move towards modern political practice:
The first: the
concept of “Movement - Countermovement”(8), which explains the motives behind the movement of kinetic Salafism specifically towards the establishment of the many parties and coalitions that were born after the January revolution, and from a rational desire that makes the importance of the Salafist presence in the empty political spaces that exist at the time A necessity to compete with the Brotherhood's rise to some degree, and fears of secular and Christian ascent.
The second: the
concept of "religion-state conflict", a concept that reflects a belief present in the Salafi conscience that the modern state, and in Egypt in particular, always seeks to nationalize religion in general in society, and believes that the state succeeded in nationalizing the Al-Azhar institution and endowments, and it was seeking through Years to define the expansionist Salafist project as a pure and purposeful project that calls for the return of Muslim societies to pure Islam, and it will threaten the secular state as seen by the Salafis.
Egyptian Salafism, then, moved from the time of the “sheikhs” to the time of the “political sheikhs” under the compulsions of the revolution in Egypt, and most of the Salafist currents, and the rest of the Salafists, by extension, lost a great deal of their symbolic capital of the Presbyterian in the eyes of the new society after the revolution, as they were preoccupied with the political space.
Islamic movements always emphasize the principle of the unity of the Islamic nation as a final and historical goal, and despite the fact that this principle was firmly rooted in Islamic thinking in every year, and in Salafism, of course(9), Salafism was more in conflict with it in reality.
This fragmented nature was reflected in the reality of the Salafists after the revolution, and several entities and parties were born during this period. Societally and politically as well, amid the liquidity in the entities, institutions and associations that became popular in Egypt after the revolution.
Four things emerged that were the main concern of the Salafi currents after the revolution:
First:
Preserving the Islamic identity of Egypt, as it is a central determinant of political decision-making.
Second:
Preserving the wording of Article Two of the Constitution, as it is a major objective of accepting the Constitution, as well as rejecting any supra-constitutional clauses or documents that threaten the effectiveness of this Article later.
Third:
Standing in front of secular and Coptic ambitions and limiting their role in the new phase that Egypt is going through after the revolution.
Fourth:
Standing in the face of the Brotherhood’s political and social expansion, considering the Brotherhood an existential threat to the Salafis’ advocacy and political gains.
The Salafi position on democracy after the Arab Spring started from a legal determinant, which is the “estimation of the interests and the evils,” a criterion based on the sheikhs’ assessments of these interests and corruptions and the possibility of pushing back the conflict between them, or giving preference to the predominance of one over the other (10).
On the conceptual level, however, Salafism did not make much cognitive progress, and the goal of progressivism that Salafism brought about is accepting the mechanisms of the democratic process, not its philosophy, and adding the identity dimension to their practice so that they are not accused of compromising the constant “the sovereignty of Islamic Sharia.”
This became clear during their participation in the founding committee for drafting the constitution in 2012, where the Salafis insisted on adding an explanatory article to the second article, which provides for the reference of Islamic Sharia, and states: “The principles of Islamic Sharia include its total evidence, its fundamental and jurisprudential rules, and its reliable sources, in the doctrines of the people The Sunnah and the Community” (11). There was also a shift in the Salafi position on Al-Azhar, and the Salafis participating in the drafting of the constitution recognized the necessity of making Al-Azhar a major Islamic reference for Muslims in Egypt. Despite the conservative ideological stance towards Al-Azhar, the Salafis considered their battle with the secularists in the new Egyptian political space more dangerous than their ideological differences with Al-Azhar. And an article was added that states: “The opinion of the Council of Senior Scholars in Al-Azhar is taken in matters related to Islamic law” (12).
With the first sessions of the new People’s Assembly after the revolution, and the Salafis obtaining approximately 25% of the total seats, members affiliated with the various Salafist currents, most of whom are members of the Nour Party, added during their swearing in the oath the phrase “in a manner that does not violate the Sharia of God” as a new tradition they established to avoid The doctrinal embarrassment they may fall into if laws are passed that they see as violating Islamic law.
Because Egypt was on the cusp of transition to the stage of democratic transition at that time, the political practice in general was characterized by randomness and non-political competition, and the various Salafists were involved in this randomness, and to a greater extent the apparent lack of knowledge in social sciences, and the complete lack of political experience in exchange for a group The Brotherhood, which exercised a long political struggle before the revolution.
Given the unorganized nature of Salafi movements; The Salafis took a long time to absorb the changes and transformations that they took or were forced to do after the revolution, and because the forces of the counter-revolution did not give anyone more time to catch a breath, the Salafis found themselves in a moral and political dilemma with the removal of President Morsi, then the suspension of work on the constitution, and the appointment of the head of the court. The Supreme Constitutional Court became interim president in June 2013, and the Salafis are now facing a test of their ideological concepts, as their concept of “tagout” did not help them to confront the new situation, as it is the concept they have opposite to tyranny, and they were forced to find a new treatment for this scene, they are given the choice between the necessity of finding a legitimate justification A religious regime that bases its existence on a non-democratic path according to established democratic rules, and between standing with another Islamic faction between which there are differences and tensions.
Since the events of July 2013, Salafist attitudes began to differ sharply and to deal with the concept of the nation state more in line with modernity. Salafism was divided into three camps:
The first: He
took a tactical position regarding the escalation of the Brotherhood and the army during and after the events of Rabaa al-Adawiya and the removal of President Mohamed Morsi, the Salafist Call movement and its political arm, the Nour Party.
This current looked at its political gains, albeit in a small way, within the new political equation in Egypt, and chose not to be drawn into the Brotherhood’s battle with the military, and lined up carefully with the secular and liberal forces that opposed the Brotherhood’s rule, and dealt with the logic of the state as an entity whose stability and sovereignty should be preserved.
The second: He
chose to continue the battle with the Brotherhood, as they represent the sovereignty of the new state under Morsi’s rule, and they consciously merged in the case of “the state, its sovereignty and legitimacy” in the Brotherhood case, and mobilized their bases and symbols in the Rabaa al-Adawiya and al-Nahda sit-ins, as they were later forced to leave Egypt for Turkish exile. And complete the efforts of the opposition to the Egyptian regime from there.
This current represents Cairo Salafism, Revolutionary Salafism, and some Qutbists.
The third:
He returned to the advocacy barracks that was allowed to him, or chose to withdraw completely from those who were not allowed to do so with the new regime, the most prominent of whom are the symbols of Jami and scholarly advocacy Salafism.
The real paradox here lies in the transformation of the Salafis from permitting or coming to revolution and the modern state with the logic of interest and corruption and the need to preserve identity and Sharia, to the logic of sharp conflict over the state, the constitution and revolution in its Brotherhood status, or in its new status after June 30, 2013, and the Salafi lexicon entered a lot Among the modernist vocabulary that has crowded out the traditional legal lexicon, such as preserving the state and its stability, preserving Egypt’s sovereignty, or legitimacy in its modern political sense in the context of talking about Morsi’s legitimacy, or the military coup, and other original vocabulary and concepts in the modernist lexicon.
We are here, then, in a new debate about the perception of the “state” in the Salafi imagination, and how the Salafists can create justifications for its legitimacy or illegitimacy in light of this conflict between its most prominent currents, and how some can consider that what happened on June 30, 2013 was a revolution against the rule of law. The Brotherhood, or at least a popular movement against it (Alexandria Salafism), while others considered it to be arrangements of the counter-revolutionary forces of the military coup later (Cairo Salafism and others).
Following the Egyptian presidential elections in June 2012; Controversy arose about the movements of Yasser Burhami and his companions prior to the announcement of the election results, especially since the tension and polarization had reached an end between the Brotherhood, the military and their allies in the deep state, and the Salafis of the Nour Party at the time felt that the battle and its results might not be in their favor in both cases, if Mohamed Morsi wins Or Ahmed Shafiq. Given the size of the Alexandrian Salafist movement, the largest among the Salafis at that time; Burhami moved to secure the Salafist call in the event of Shafik’s victory, a preemptive tactical move, and the man secured his position and the position of his movement, albeit relatively, from the Shafiq camp, and for motives related to the Alexandrian Salafi position suspicious of the Brotherhood. , and explained their position on aligning with the Brotherhood.Burhami’s meeting with Shafiq preceded Burhami and his companions’ meeting with representatives from the Military Council to discuss what Burhami mentioned in one of his lessons that he had received information about the Brotherhood’s intention to take to the street by force if Shafiq was declared the winner of the elections (15).
These few signs tell us about the nature of the Salafist movement’s tension between proximity and distance with the Military Council until 2013, but with the advent of the events of June 2013 and the dismissal of Dr. Muhammad Morsi - may God have mercy on him -, then the events of the dispersal of the Rabaa al-Adawiya and al-Nahda sit-ins; The Egyptian Salafism was more severely divided in view of the position on the events, and then the position on the new July state that was formed after that under the leadership of Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi. The Salafis of Alexandria found themselves facing a difficult moral and political test, given the nature of the determinants through which they move politically. They chose to stand in a safer area for their call and movement, and they took sides, sometimes choosing and at other times, in order to calm down with the army and the forces loyal to it, while they withdrew early from the camp of the Brotherhood and their allies and tried to spare themselves the damages of the bloody battle they foresaw, regardless of the evaluation of this position.
On the other side;
Part of the kinetic and traditional Salafism took a position hostile to varying degrees of the army and the military council, and some of them, such as Muhammad Abdel-Maqsoud, Omar Abdel-Aziz and others, lined up with the Brotherhood in their verbal and media battles, and after the severe security pressure after the 2013 coup, they were forced to travel to Turkey and actively participate in the Brotherhood’s media work from there, while A sector of traditional and dynamic Salafis remained in a neutral area in the hope of maintaining a minimum of their advocacy and educational work, such as Mustafa Al-Adawi, Ahmed Al-Naqib and Muhammad Hassan. However, the policies of the new June state had proceeded according to the strategies of a comprehensive nationalization of the religious space, regardless of the type of his discourse.
—————————————————————————————–
margin
The Salafis rely on two prophetic hadiths in the context of crystallizing the concept of “methodology.” The first is called the hadith of “the saved group,” the second is called the hadith of “followers.”
“The Salafist Call’s Position on the Egyptian Revolution between Method and Application,” first edition, (Alexandria, Asus Academy for Research and Science, 2914), p. 38.
For more, see: Moataz Zaher, “From the Mosque to Parliament: A Study on the Salafist Call and the Nour Party”, first edition, (London, Takween Center for Studies and Research, 2015).
Previous, p.
See, for example, the theories of Yasser Burhami regarding the issue of “ruling by other than what has been revealed” in his reference book of his current “Al-Minnah Sharh Iqd Al-Sunnah”, and the recordings of “Muhammad Abdel-Maqsoud” and “Fawzi Al-Saeed” on the concept of “governance”, and they are generally based on In large numbers on the fatwas of the Permanent Committee for Research and Ifta in Saudi Arabia, and separate fatwas of Sheikh Ibn Baz and Ibn Uthaymeen, as major Salafi references they have.
For more details on the level of internal Salafi texts and differences, see: Muhammad Tawfiq, “The Salafists in Egypt: The Pragmatism of Religion, Politics, and Power,” in: Mustafa Abdel-Zahir (Editor), “What is Politics in Islam: Islamic Movements and the Noise of Politics”, first edition, (Cairo Al-Maraya House for Cultural Production, 2018).
See: “The Balancing of Interests and Corruptions and Their Impact on General Egyptian Affairs after the Revolution” Muhammad Abdul Wahed Kamel, first edition, (Cairo, Dar Al-Yusr, 2011).
Mamdouh Jaber, “The January Twenty-Fifth Revolution: A Legitimacy Vision”, first edition, (Cairo, Dar Al-Watan Liberation, 2011).
This can be clearly seen in passing through the various Salafi literature related to modern political and social ideas and practices, as the different positions of Salafism do not come outside the framework of rejection, apprehension, or questioning the legitimacy or feasibility of these ideas and practices, which it considers alien to the Islamic lexicon, and conflict in some way or form. In another with the constants of the Islamic faith, but it remains interesting to consider the persistence of differences between the different currents towards these concepts and practices, to the extent that it is suitable to limit the innovation or defamation of the Salafi opponents of each other. Among the examples of that crushing struggle that Salafism experienced in the Arab world as a whole over the permissibility of some Salafist currents of the Muslim Brotherhood access to political competition through elections and parliaments (the movement Salafism), which confronted the Salafist Madkhali violently in writings and religious lessons.See, for example, the book “Perceptions of Looking at Politics between Legitimate Applications and Enthusiastic Emotions,” by Abdul Malik Al-Ramadani.
David S. Meyer and Suzanne Staggenborg, “Movements, Countermovements, and the Structure of Political Opportunity”, American Journal of Sociology, Vol.
101, No.
6 (May, 1996), p.
1628-1660
The Salafis go into their literature in a more specific way with regard to the concept of the Islamic nation, and pay more attention to the concept of “Ahl al-Sunnah wal-Jama’ah” as a comprehensive concept of an ideological framework that includes specific ideological statements, and those who do not adhere to them are excluded from the surviving sect, as in the Prophet’s hadith.
For more on this, see: Ahmed Salem and Amr Bassiouni, “Post-Salafism: A Critical Reading in Contemporary Salafi Discourse”, first edition, (Beirut, Nama Center for Research and Studies, 2015).
See: Muhammad Abdel Wahed Kamal, “The Balancing of Interests and Corruptions and Their Impact on the Egyptian Public Affairs after the Revolution”, first edition, (Cairo, Dar Al-Yusr, 2011).
The book contains the most disciplined Salafi theories within the Salafi framework of the issue of interests and evils and their relationship to political action.
Article (219) of the Egyptian Constitution approved in 2012.
Article (4) of the Egyptian constitution, which was approved in 2012.
Mohamed Abdel Maqsoud's statements on the fourth channel on the link.
Sisi statement link
Link to Yasser Burhami's statement with details of his meeting with Lieutenant-General Ahmed Shafiq.