The Challenge of Abu Sayyaf and Islamic Fundamentalism

The Challenge of Abu Sayyaf and Islamic Fundamentalism

The Abu Sayyaf Groups or ASG like any Islamic Extremist Groups are NOT accepted by mainstream Muslims. This fact alone and the many varying differences in the Islamic Movements preclude a single or monolithic fundamentalist belief.

Is there any possibility of understanding the militant and often violent Islamic Extremist groups when the leaders of these groups in the name of Islam are preaching fire and damnation against the government, Christianity, and the West? The names of Janjalani, Qaddafi, Angeles, Robot, Abu Sabaya, Marwan, Bassit, etc. are synonymous to violence, kidnappings and terrorism.

Since the early 1990s until their deaths, both Janjalani and Angeles and their successors in the Abu Sayyaf had been promoting the use of violence and acts of lawlessness, particularly kidnapping. People ask what kind of relationship these groups can foresee with Islam and other Islamic fronts in light of the lawlessness and criminality that the Abu Sayyaf is a prime example. The apprehension of extremist Islamic groups is widespread among Christians living in Southern Philippines and in other Muslim-dominated societies in the Middle East and in other parts of Asia and Africa.

This small publication is a sort of giving assistance to people to be able to wrestle with the many questions people entertain as they search for a comprehension of the terrible phenomenon as the Abu Sayyaf Groups. In this regard the cautionary advice may help orientate our perspective: "Contemporary people stereotype of Islamization reflect three tendencies which militate against understanding: sensationalism particularly in the mass media which oversimplifies complex realities; essentialism which tends to cast Islam as a monolithic religion and view all Muslims as the same; and extremism which regards all Muslims as fundamentalist with the implication that they are dogmatic, reactionary, and anti-modernist."

An early example of prediction that Islamic fundamentalists are poised to take over the Muslim world is found in Militant Islam by the Indian-born British journalist Godfrey Jansen. Writing in the shadow of the Iranian revolution, he portrayed fundamentalism as the most potent force within the contemporary Muslim world, rooted in its Islamic past, successful in Iran, Sudan and Afghanistan and Pakistan, and "well placed to come to power in Algeria, Egypt and the Sudan in the near future, and in Indonesia in the not too distant future."

Fundamentalism is often expressed as Islam's ‘Wrath against the West’. Anger against the West - its imperial history, its monopoly of resources, its political manipulations ensuring that Muslims' "half-made societies are doomed to remain half-made"--is Fundamentalism's recurrent theme.

Fundamentalism is also often associated or identified with terrorism. Beginning with Khomeini’s revolution, Islamic Fundamentalism has become a sort of a sacred rage yes a sort of the Wrath of Militant Islam. The focus is on terrorism as a particular manifestation of anger. This portrayal of fundamentalism that is almost entirely in militant terms falls back on the cliché of fanaticism.

The reductionist interpretations of Islamic fundamentalism are misleading in that they adhere to a single account of fundamentalism that, upon closer analysis, is shown to be untenable as a total explanation. They address symptoms more than causes. Does this suggest that fundamentalism is more deeply rooted in the very nature of Islam as a historic religious experience?

With greater discrimination, however, we need caution to assess Islam as fundamentalist by nature. This is to disregard the wide variety of religious, social, and political manifestation of Islamic identity throughout history. It is, in fact, to play to the fundamentalists' own methodology and rhetoric, which seek to impose a particular view of Islam upon Muslims as a whole. Muslim and non-Muslim alike need to rectify this violent image by honoring the rich diversity of Islam's historic and contemporary experience.

The concept of fundamentals certainly exists in Islamic thought, and centrally so in the importance of the ‘usul ("roots," or "foundations") of religion. The roots of Islam lie in the Qur'an, the Hadith, and the Shari'a. The Qur'an is held to be the very Word of God (kalam Allah). The Hadith, embodying the sunna, or inspired example of the Prophet Muhammad, serves to interpret and amplify the meaning of God's Word. Together, the Qur'an and Hadith constitute the sources of shari's, which, by a process of juristic discernment (figh), provides ethical instruction and guidance for Muslim communities and individuals. Traditional Islamic theology gives first place to these three fundamentals of religion, distinguishing them from everything else, which is derivative and therefore classified as "branches" (furu').

Of the several Arabic terms that designate renewal, one that has enjoyed wide currency through the past century is islah--a word that has no precise English equivalent but that conveys the idea of making righteous. It was used particularly by Muslims from the second half of the nineteenth century who wanted to restore the identity of Islamic society (at the time largely controlled by European empires) by returning to the precedent of the Prophet Muhammad and his companions (salaf). Known as the Salafiya movement, (17) it eschewed anachronistic historicism by advocating a renewed use of reason 'aql) as the means of interpreting the fundamentals of religion over against centuries of imitative tradition (taqlid).

Generally considered to be the first "fundamentalist" movement in the Muslim world, the Muslim Brotherhood enables us to identify the phenomenon (1) as the social application of Islamic principles, (2) as a counter-ideology to the ruling elite, (3) with leaders emerging form outside the rank of religious professionals ('ulama), and (4) as attractive to people who feel themselves alienated from both traditional Islamic authority and secular rulers.

Central to Social Transformation is the concept of jihad, the Arabic word for "striving," in which it is the duty of all Muslims to engage. The Prophet Muhammad taught that jihad is engaged at four levels: in the heart, as the place of spiritual striving; by the tongue, as the means of preaching and teaching the message of Islam; by the hand, as the means of its social application; and finally by the sword, as the implement of its defense and confrontation against ungodly forces. This last meaning of militant struggle was exemplified in the Prophet Muhammad's strategy against pagan forces of Mecca from his home base in Medina. Sayyid Qutb drew an analogy between this and the situation in Egypt under the cold war pressures of Soviet and American influences. He declared Egypt to be in a state of pagan ignorance; thus he justified the use of force to bring about change.

Analysts of the Iranian revolution question the degree to which it was purely Islamic in the sense of being motivated solely by religious factors. A potent variety of political and economic elements were involved. As the only major institution during the Pahlavi monarchy that successfully resisted state control, it was the clergy, under Khomeini's uncompromising leadership, who were able to articulate popular grievances against the Westernizing trends of the shah's Iranian nationalism, eventually to the point of directing and "Islamizing" the forces of opposition.

Now into its second decade, and deprived of Ayatollah Khomeini's leadership, the Islamic Republic is moving into a new phase colored by ideological compromise, internal power sharing, and reconciliation with the United States. In terms of a descriptive definition of fundamentalism, this current status underlines two features: the strength of the fundamentalists lies in their defining, through religious symbols, the opposition to a ruling regime; the problem facing the fundamentalists is the difficulty of translating their religious generalizations into sustainable governmental programs.

The debates on the Abu Sayyaf and Fundamentalism will help us develop a descriptive profile of the phenomenon of Islamic fundamentalism in the Philippines. It becomes clear that no simple definitions, as have been offered in much of the literature of the 1980s, are sufficient. The phenomenon is not monolithic. There are striking differences between and among Fundamentalist groups where the phenomenon has a longer history than anywhere else in the Muslim World, we find a broad spectrum of theory and praxis.

This is why many scholars refuse to use the term "fundamentalism," deeming it too imprecise to identify the complexity of trends that are actually involved. If we choose to retain the term, we need to think of fundamentalisms in the plural and to avoid generalization from the perspective of any one of them. (Prof. Eliseo ‘Jun’ Mercado, OMI – Notre Dame University, Graduate School)

(Note: This is an updated article originally published in ASG Primer. NDU 1998)