The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought

rebellion

Rebellion is action undertaken by a group aiming to replace the government in a state or to secede from the state to form a new one. Direct references to rebellion are not found in the Qur’an, but there are numerous references to hypocrites (munāfiqūn) in Medina who publicly accepted Islam while continuing to oppose Muhammad, more through subversion than in open revolt. The Qur’an (9:107) alludes to a “mosque of dissension” (masjid al-ḍirār) erected on the outskirts of Medina “by way of mischief and infidelity—to disunite the believers.” This building was demolished on Muhammad’s orders before the plotters’ schemes could materialize. Rebellions marked the caliphates of Abu Bakr, ‘Uthman b. ‘Affan, and ‘Ali b. Abi Talib. The Umayyad dynasty lasted barely 90 years before it was overthrown by an Abbasid revolt, and the Abbasids themselves had faced numerous rebellions already by the late ninth century.

Rebellion was, therefore, a timely and troubling issue for classical political and legal theorists. With the goal of preventing civil strife (fitna) and disorder or corruption (fasād), the theorists banned nearly all challenges to the established ruler. Qur’an 4:59, which reads, “Obey God and obey the Messenger and those in authority among you,” along with numerous hadith reports, was marshaled by scholars to prohibit revolt against the caliph or the sultan, regardless of how he had come to power. Disobedience to a ruler’s commands was permitted only when the ruler contravened Islamic law in accordance with the hadith that states, “No obedience to the created in opposition to the Creator.” An errant ruler should be admonished, counseled, and suffered patiently by his subjects rather than challenged by force. Only in extreme circumstances, such as when a ruler abandoned Islamic law altogether or committed apostasy, should the Muslim subjects overthrow him. Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328), for example, declared jihad obligatory against the Mongol conquerors of the Abbasid Empire, who, despite their conversion to Islam, ruled by the Yasa, the Mongol tribal law, rather than the shari‘a. He castigated rebellion, however, against Muslim rulers over mainly political grievances.

Classical sources generally treat rebellion (baghy) as a type of criminal activity along with apostasy (ridda) and brigandage (ḥirāba), yet they devote considerable attention to differentiating the way rebels are to be treated compared to apostates, highway robbers, or pirates. People were deemed rebels if they formally withdrew from the Muslim community (khurūj) by disavowing allegiance to the ruler, provided a reasonable religious pretext for their disobedience (ta’wīl), and constituted a group with demonstrated power to challenge the state (shawka). If they met these criteria, they were subject to treatment under the laws governing the suppression of rebels (aḥkām al-bughāh). Because these laws were based largely on precedents set by ‘Ali in dealing with his enemies, especially the Kharijis, there was general agreement between Sunni and Shi‘i legal schools on these matters. As Mawardi writes in al-Ahkam al-Sultaniyya (The ordinances of government), fighting rebels differs from fighting infidels, apostates, and brigands in eight ways: the intent is to deter rather than kill rebels; they should not be pursued when they are retreating; their injured may not be killed; captured rebels may not be killed; their property may not be seized and their women and children may not be enslaved; the aid of dhimmīs (protected communities) cannot be sought in fighting rebels; the Muslim commander may not give them assurances of an indefinite truce or conclude a peace treaty in return for monetary payment; and their homes and farms may not be despoiled. Clearly, the goal of these strictures was to rehabilitate rebels back into the body politic as quickly and completely as possible.

The political quietism proposed in the classical theory was always in tension with more popular themes of renewal (tajdīd) and reform (iṣlāḥ), which led periodically to violent movements aimed not only at overthrowing corrupt rulers but also at purifying society. One such insurrection was the Wahhabi revolt in 19th-century Arabia that in many ways laid the intellectual basis for the Muslim revivalist movements of the 20th century. To the Wahhabi creed of purging Islam of internal, heretical innovations (bid‘a), 20th-century activists added the goal of thwarting Western political and cultural domination of Muslim countries. Thus modern writers espouse not so much rebellion but revolution, in the sense of a thoroughgoing sociopolitical change in norms and institutions.

Sayyid Qutb, in his influential essay Ma‘alim fi al-Tariq (Milestones), never openly declares jihad against the Egyptian or any other Muslim government, but his argument that Muslim societies are in a state of jāhiliyya (ignorance) akin to that against which the Prophet fought has obvious revolutionary implications. ‘Abd al-Salam Faraj, the author of al-Farida al-Gha’iba (The absent duty), the manifesto of Anwar Sadat’s assassins, took Qutb’s views to their logical conclusion. Citing Ibn Taymiyya, Faraj declared the Egyptian government to be an apostate regime; thus rebellion against it was a religious obligation. In responding to this document, the ‘ulama’ (religious scholars) of Azhar University denounced Faraj’s justification of tyrannicide by resorting to classical arguments that so long as a ruler was a Muslim and did not interfere with the performance of Islamic obligations in the country, rising up against him was prohibited.

A number of Shi‘i theorists also figure prominently in contemporary debates on the legitimacy of rebellion. For centuries, Shi‘i ‘ulama’ generally espoused dissimulation (taqiyya) and compliance with political authorities, tracing this policy back to the views of the sixth imam, Ja‘far al-Sadiq. The views of Ayatollah Khomeini fundamentally challenged this legacy. Beginning in the 1940s with criticism of the two Pahlavi shahs, Khomeini moved to open defiance and by the late 1960s called for the regime to be overthrown. In Hukumat-i Islami (Islamic government), published in 1970, Khomeini outlines his theory of wilāyat al-faqīh (guardianship of the jurist). At the end of the treatise, he calls for tyrannical rulers (ṭāghūt) to be overthrown through civil disobedience and for the creation of parallel Islamic institutions. Similarly, the most prominent lay intellectual of the revolution, ‘Ali Shari‘ati, focused on mobilizing a grassroots movement led by the youths. Shari‘ati criticized what he labeled “Safavi Shi‘ism,” after the Safavid dynasty, characterizing it as an ideology of quietism and political repression. True Shi‘ism, Shari‘ati argued, was “‘Alavi Shi‘ism,” after ‘Ali b. Abi Talib: a dynamic, politically active faith that required action to implement a just Islamic order.