The root causes of what we are witnessing today trace back to the extraordinary political event that Salafists regard as the ultimate betrayal: the acceptance by Arab statesmen of Israel as a political power on Muslim soil, in the ancient territory of the Caliphate.
Founded with similar motivations across the Arab world in the early 1990s by veterans of the anti-Soviet jihad organizations such as the Groupe Islamique Armé (GIA) in Algeria and the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army in Yemen, al Tawhid, the group of which Musab at Zarqawi was first a member, is a radical Salafist organization nearly identical to the others. All of these armed groups share the same objective: to ignite a revolutionary jihad throughout the Muslim world and oust pro-Western governments. This civil war, or fitna, would evict the existing Arab regimes, which Salafists regard as taghut (idolatrous).100 After joining the group in prison, al Zarqawi went on to become its emir. Thus, when he formed his armed organization in Iraq he chose the name al Tawhid al Jihad. That both al Zarqawi and al Baghdadi share the Salafist creed—al Baghdadi hailing from a religious Salafist family—was key to the compatibility of their visions of jihad.101
At its outset, however, during the second half of the nineteenth century, Salafism was not an anti-Western ideology. On the contrary, it was Arab admiration for the modernized West that gave birth to the movement. Fascinated by European development, Arab countries began to compare their socioeconomic and political conditions with those of Europe. This evaluation triggered a deep reflection on the crisis of the Ottoman Empire, the political power that controlled the Arab world at the time, and stimulated great interest in Western civilization. In the Arab world this process is known as al Nahda, literally, the “awakening” or “renaissance.” Produced by the interaction of Arab thinkers with Western revolutionary ideals, al Nahda marked the beginning of Arab modernization or, rather, of the will to modernize. In essence, the Arab world acknowledged the socioeconomic and political superiority of the parliamentary European states. Looking to the achievements of the old Continent, Arabs wanted to create a Muslim modernity in the new Arab states emerging from the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire emulating Western political culture.102 This was a time in which the construction of the nation state greatly appealed to progressive Muslims.
Salafism, therefore, has always sought to modernize the Arab world, and it has identified the Ottoman Empire as the primary cause of the Arab failure to develop as Europe did. To overcome this obstacle, the Salafist doctrine called for all Muslims to go back to the purity of religion, to the origins of Islam and the teachings of the Prophet. In short, Salafism stressed the need to reconnect with one’s roots as a means of creating Arab identity, which would in turn provide the necessary strength to gain independence from the Ottoman Empire. This was essentially a process of spiritual purification, of cleansing, after centuries of political and economic domination.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century, however, betrayal by European powers, whose contribution to the modernization of the Arab world came in the form of brutal colonization, catalyzed Salafism’s transformation into a xenophobic and puritanical revivalist movement. The central goal of modern Salafism is still the purification of Islam, now from the contamination of corruption and stagnation produced by Western colonization. Foreign European powers, not the Ottoman Empire, are blamed for the decline of the Arab world; hence, the rejection of the nation state and of European modernity.
Against this religious and philosophical background, in the 1950s, Sayyed Qutb reformulated the concept of Tawhid,103 the divine and absolute unity of God, to give it a distinct political identity. “God is the source of power,” wrote Qutb from the Egyptian jail where Nasser had imprisoned him, “not the people, not the party, neither any human being.”104 This notion, known as al hakimiyya lil-llah (the principle of the government of God), projects a political Islam and its sole successful expression (the Caliphate) into the core of the political arena, the boundaries of which are strictly defined by the interpretation of the Prophet’s teachings, not by modern forms of government such as democracy or socialism.
As such, Qutb’s message is one of total severance from the Western-style politics embraced by Nasser and, at the same time, an exhortation to cleanse Islam of any external influence, sacred or profane. Any departure from the principle of the government of God, Qutb affirms, is an act of apostasy (riddah).
Although the accusation of apostasy (takfir) is originally a religious concept, it has, over Islam’s history, been molded into a powerful political weapon. It allowed Qutb, an Arab, to challenge the political legitimacy of Nasser, another Arab, painting him as an infidel on par with the Western colonizers. In power struggles within Islam, the accusation of apostasy is common. The first instigated by a takfir was fought soon after the death of the Prophet, during the reign of Caliph Abu Bakr (632–34), and is the genesis of the schism between Sunnis and Shias.105
Through the centuries, both Sunnis and Shias have used the concept of takfir to exclude each other from power. As we shall see in the following chapter, in recent times both al Zarqawi and al Baghdadi have used takfir to legitimize their genocidal wars against the Shias, whom they regard as the close and constant allies of foreign powers.
100 “Under the Microscope,” Al Jazeera Arabic Satellite TV broadcast, July 1, 2004, broadcast (in Arabic).
101 Various, “The Biography of Sheikh Abu al-Baghdadi,” https://archive.org/stream/TheBiographyOfSheikhAbuBakrAlBaghdadi/The%20biography%20of%20Sheikh%20Abu%20Bakr%20Al-Baghdadi_djvu.txt.
102 Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003).
104 Ibid.
105 “The Future of Sharia: Negotiating Islam in the Context of the Secular State,” http://sharia.law.emory.edu/index.html%3Fq=en%252Fwars_apostasy.html.