The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought

propaganda

Propaganda, defined as the systematic spreading of information, ideas, and rumors in the effort to help or harm a particular group or cause, plays an integral role in the activism of modern Muslim groups for social, religious, and political purposes. Their understanding and use of it is rooted in the classical concept of da‘wa, which means “call or invitation” in the Qur’an and hadith (prophetic tradition) as well as in everyday parlance. The term da‘wa is most commonly used to describe religious missionary activity, and a missionary or proselytizer is termed a dā‘ī, or “one who calls or invites.” In the modern period, state-sponsored da‘wa has allowed certain interpretations of Islam, such as the Saudi version of the Salafi trend within Sunni Islam, to gain a global following. Muslim political groups, both religious nationalist and transnational, have adopted classical principles of da‘wa and applied them to modern politics.

In the medieval period there are several examples of the use of da‘wa to further political goals. In the mid-eighth century, Abu Muslim (d. 755) was sent to the region of Khurasan to propagate and plan a revolt on behalf of the Abbasids, a family claiming descent from the Prophet Muhammad, against the ruling Umayyad dynasty. Another notable example is the movement of the early Shi‘i rebel Mukhtar (d. 687), who led a revolt against the Umayyads from 685 to 687 in the name of Muhammad b. al-Hanafiyya, though the latter did not support it. In the second half of the ninth century, the Fatimids, a family claiming descent from the Prophet’s family through his daughter Fatima, dispatched missionaries across the Muslim world to win converts for their cause—namely, the right to assume the roles of spiritual and temporal ruler, combining them into one position, that of “imam-caliph.” By 875, Fatimid missionaries had established footholds in North Africa, Syria, Yemen, Iran, Bahrain, and Central and South Asia. The dā‘ī Abu ‘Abd Allah al-Shi‘i converted the Kutama Berbers of North Africa to Fatimid Isma‘ili Shi‘ism, allowing the Fatimids to move from Salamiyya, Syria, where they were threatened by the Abbasid dynasty, to greater safety in Tunisia, where they built their empire.

Propaganda of many types allowed premodern rulers in Islamic societies to bolster legitimacy, mobilize the populace, and suppress dissent. Political propaganda often touted the outstanding qualities and accomplishments of the ruler, especially his generosity, charity, justice, clemency, piety, devotion, abstention from sinful behavior, dedication to the faith, bravery, and exertion in defending the Muslim community and in championing the believers. Authors often announced these qualities explicitly in panegyric poetry, court chronicles, campaign narratives, biographies, diplomatic correspondence, and the introductions and dedications of treatises on diverse topics. Rulers also implicitly propagated similar messages by the construction of mosques, colleges of Islamic law, Sufi centers, hospitals, and so on; lavish support of the annual pilgrimage caravan; and refurbishment of places of worship in the main cities of their realm and at prominent shrines such as in Mecca, Medina, Jerusalem, or Karbala. Public ceremonies on holy days or during the month of Ramadan, including donations or free banquets, served a similar role. Rulers also enhanced their images as pious by public acts of personal repentance, such as Shah Tahmasp’s Edict of Sincere Repentance in 1556, when he swore off drinking wine, listening to music, and so on, or visible acts of devotion, such as Shah ‘Abbas I’s barefoot pilgrimage from Isfahan to Mashhad in 1601 or the contemporary Moroccan king’s televised sacrifice of two sheep on ‘Id al-Adha (the festival of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca), one for himself and one symbolically for the Moroccan people. Rulers also boosted their images as defenders of the faith by sponsoring campaigns against public immorality and heretical views, closing down brothels and wine taverns, executing or punishing heretics, or burning the books of the Shi‘is and the Mu‘tazilis, as occurred upon Mahmud of Ghazna’s conquest of Rayy in 1029, and philosophy books, as occurred in the Andalus under the Almohads.

Propaganda denouncing enemies of the realm or the faith has often served for the establishment of political legitimacy, political mobilization, and social control. The Abbasids and the Seljuqs made use of propaganda in the form of sponsored polemics about their Isma‘ili rivals, both Fatimid and Nizari. In formally signed public documents, they proclaimed that the Fatimids’ genealogy was forged. They also propagated what are collectively known as the “black legends,” which accused the Isma‘ilis of involvement in black magic, sexual deviance, and heresy. Many Muslim rulers such as the Hamdanid Sayf al-Dawlah bolstered their legitimacy by touting their victories in warfare against the Christian Byzantines. When the Fatimids conquered Egypt and most of Syria in the mid-tenth century, they continually announced that the main purpose behind the occupation was their dedication to conducting jihad against the Byzantines, in contrast to the failure of the current rulers in the region to pursue it vigorously. Propaganda played an enormous role in mobilizing Muslim forces to combat the Crusades, and it resulted in the authorship of many works on the virtues of jihad and the merits of Jerusalem and other holy sites in the Levant. The Zengids, and particularly Nur al-Din, developed what has been termed the unified jihad, a vigorous propaganda campaign against not only the Crusaders but also the Shi‘is, on the logic that the latter weaken the Muslim community from within and are potential allies with the enemy from without. A particularly striking act of Nur al-Din was his commission of a lavish minbar, the pulpit from which the Friday sermons were read, intended to be installed at the mosque at the Dome of the Rock upon the eventual reconquest of Jerusalem from the Franks. In the 16th century, the Twelver Shi‘i Safavid dynasty, aided by religious scholars from Jabal ‘Amil in Syria, used da‘wa to convert much of Iran’s Sunni majority to Shi‘i Islam. They enhanced their legitimacy by denouncing their Sunni neighbors, the Ottomans and the Uzbeks, as heretical foes. The Ottomans and the Uzbeks reciprocated, having fatwas issued declaring the Safavid Shi‘is heretics and denouncing them in many polemical works.

Contemporary propaganda, in the form of multimedia and written releases, is an integral political tool for Muslim political (“Islamist”) groups. Religious-nationalist groups such as the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun) and the Lebanese Shi‘i party Hizbullah have long used propaganda to build support for their social, religious, and political platforms. Transnational Islamist militants, popularly and self-referentially called jihādīs, have adopted media and propaganda tactics started by religious-nationalist groups and greatly expanded them to fit their own needs. From its founding in 1928, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood has published newsletters, newspapers, and magazines to propagate the movement’s views. The movement continues to publish such materials but has since also wholeheartedly adopted the use of new technologies such as the Internet, running Arabic- and English-language websites. As part of its Internet strategy, the Ikhwan employs a team of its younger members as bloggers.

Hizbullah, which began as a national resistance movement against Israel’s occupation of a large swath of southern Lebanon in the 1980s and 1990s, has evolved into a sophisticated political movement with national and regional influence. The party’s growth has been aided significantly by its media outlets, key among them its satellite television station Al-Manar (The beacon), which began broadcasting in 1991. Hizbullah also publishes the newspaper Al-Intiqad (Criticism) and runs a radio station, Al-Nur, as well as several websites in Arabic, Hebrew, English, Persian, Spanish, and French.

The earliest transnational jihādī literature was published in the 1980s by various groups participating in the war against the Soviet Union’s occupation of Afghanistan (1979–89). Thousands of foreigners, many of them Arab Muslims, traveled to Afghanistan in order to aid the various factions of Afghan mujahidin, or warriors of the faith. One of the most influential of these was ‘Abd Allah ‘Azzam, a Palestinian Sunni religious scholar who had completed a doctorate in Islamic law at Egypt’s famed Azhar University, who was a key fundraiser for the anti-Soviet cause. He founded the Markaz al-Khidmah li-l-Mujahidin al-‘Arab (Service Bureau for Arab Mujahidin) in Peshawar, Pakistan, which aided Arab fighters going to Afghanistan, many of whom entered via Pakistan. ‘Azzam and his supporters also published propaganda materials, including the magazine Al-Jihad (The struggle), in which the exploits of the mujahidin were recounted.

Al-Qaeda and many other transnational jihad groups have their own media outlets through which they produce and distribute propaganda materials. Since 2003–4, the majority of this material is distributed online through a handful of web forums and affiliated websites, including the Ansar al-Mujahidin (Partisans of the warriors of faith) forum. Releases are made available for download via file-sharing websites, where copies are uploaded dozens of times and the URLs published in the forums. Major releases are advertised with animated banners, and forum users then upload the files to non-jihad websites such as Internet Archive and YouTube.

Al-Qaeda Central’s (AQC) al-Sahab (The clouds) Foundation for Media Production is the premier jihad media outlet and regularly produces sophisticated videos through which its leaders broadcast their ideology and address their supporters, potential supporters, and enemies. Among its most sophisticated productions is the video series Rih al-Jannah (Wind of paradise), which highlights the group’s martyrs in Afghanistan and Pakistan. As of this writing, it consists of five installments. Jihad videos mesh image and spoken word, including martial music in the form of anāshīd (religious and political anthems).

Despite al-Sahab’s preeminence, other major jihad media outlets connected to other groups, many of them al-Qaeda allies and affiliates, exist, including al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb’s (AQIM) al-Andalus Media, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s (AQAP) Al-Malahim Media, and the Islamic State of Iraq’s al-Furqan Media. Many of these groups publish monthly or bimonthly Internet magazines, including al-Samud (Afghan Taliban) and Sada al-Malahim (AQAP). Several major “independent” jihad media outlets and distribution networks also exist, chief among them the Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF) and the al-Fajr Media Center, which distributes releases from AQC, AQAP, and AQIM. The GIMF produces translations of Arabic and Urdu-language releases from various transnational jihad groups, including AQC, and publishes essays and monographs from a host of jihad scholars and ideologues. Jihad propaganda is regularly produced in Urdu, Pashtu, Uzbek, Turkish, Dari, German, Uighur, Russian, Chechen, and French, in addition to Arabic and English, by various groups, each of which favors the native language(s) of its key support bases.