Politics of the Middle East Islamic International Relations

Politics of the Middle East Islamic International Relations

An Islamic Theory? • Proctor: Islam and International Relations (1965) the notion that Islam could be influential upon international affairs and should therefore be an independent subject of study was clearly invalid • Buzan: Why is there no non-Western IR theory? • Fawcett: Religion must be taken into account in International Relations theorising without rejecting previous theories or disregarding research methods developed in the 20 th Century

• al siyasi al Islami (Islamic political order) • Extra-rational agency, Umma, Assabiya, • laws governing society are primarily normative as opposed to prescriptive • Abdul Hamid Abu Sulayman opened the door for an exclusively Islamic concept of the international in, Towards an Islamic Theory of International Relations

Functions of Theory • Theories disagree on what constitutes the state and its sovereignty • Non-Westphalian Approach: Diminished value of the Nation-State, • Two Concepts of The State and Sovereignty – 1) Umma, One indivisible community bound through a Assabiya, – 2) Inside/ Outside • Dar al Harb (Realm of War, The Other) • Dar al Islam (Realm of Islam)

Ontology • (What you know) • All theories accept Tawhid (oneness of God) • Theories differ on methodology – Quran (Word of God dictated to Muhammad) – Sunna (Sayings and deeds of the Prophet) – Fiqh ( Islamic Juris-prudence 5 Sunni, 3 Shi’ite) Ijtihad (personal judgment)

Islamic IR Schools • Classical ___ Realism • Reformist ___ Liberalism • Revolutionary ___ Critical

Classical Approach and the 1 st Debate • Islam’s formative period, Origins 7 th C to Conquest • Related to Classical Hobbesian Realism • Persistent existential struggle • Literalist interpretation: Divine sources require no human intervention • Defensive and Offensive Jihad (the lesser) • Perpetual Dar al Harb/ Dar al Islam conflict

Reformists and the 2 nd Debate • 19 th C Salafism (learning from the rightly guided caliphs) • Jamal al Din al Afghani • Emerged as a result of Islamic decline • Return to the Salafs. Mediation between the rejectionists and the modernists • Related to the Lockean tradition of cautious cooperation • Islam support both universalism and transnationalism?

Reformists Revisions • Revised Dar al Harb/ Dar al Islam: alternate intersubjective worlds coexisting without one asserting its hegemony upon the other through a superior assabiya • Dar al Ahd (realm of treaties) • The Umma is a meta-physical concept, Boundaries less constraining • Revival of Ijtihad – Traditionalist: judgment on matters without the consent of the ulema is heretical – Reformist: It is necessary to contend with the modern world

Salafi Jihadism, 3 rd Debate • Theoretical paradigms affected by world events, WW 1, end of the Caliphate • Encourages ijtihad (personal reasoning) not to engage with modernity but to replace it with the ancient model • SJ use ijtihad as a tool to bypass the ulema • Important theorists, Sayid Qutb, Hassan al-Banna , Maulana Maududi • Qutb asserted that Muslims have lost their way and Islam has been altered to the point of only existing in the minds of the revolutionaries

• Jihad, then, is not just a matter of survival but the only tool for achieving peace, as there can be no peace without a global Islamic political order • Early Muslim Brotherhood • Egyptian Islamic Jihad

Assassination of Sadat, 4 th Debate Crackdown on Islamist groups and Islamic institutions marginalization, subjugation, radicalization Muslim Brotherhood disavow violent action More concentration on traditional politics and social services • Exodus to Afghanistan, the Afghan Arabs • Ayman al Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden, Abdullah Azzam • •