The following is part 1 of a 3 or 4 part Victory Institute Lecture on Jihad’s ethical root.
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Jihad Lecture 2
From the Victory Institute Lecture Series
Is Jihad a political or an ethical animal?
That is the question.
Hello.
And welcome back to the Victory Institute Lecture Series.
Again, my name is Gary H. Johnson, Jr. I am the Senior Advisor for International Security Affairs at the Victory Institute.
In the Victory Institute’s first Jihad Lecture, I defined Jihad as an ideological nexus of deceit comprised of Fatah, Dawa, Loyalty and Enmity, Jahaliya, and Abrogation.
In this Lecture, we will discuss the nature of ibn Taymiya’s unique contribution to the philosophy of modern Islamic Supremacy. Defining the nature of the tactical methodology of the enemy we face is the first stage of the war of ideas ahead. And now that we have defined Jihad, it is time to tilt at the Strategic underpinning and ideological trigger of indoctrination at the heart of the Muslim Ethos and Sharia Law – the Hisba.
Most Westerners see the history of the world through the prism of power and politics. Thus, when considering Islamic Supremacy, the experts of America focus on the political activism of the Islamists of the world and discuss the political goal of an Islamic State, the instatement of Shariah Law or the rise of a global Caliphate. However, in my estimation, this approach falls far short of explaining the reality of Islam’s martyrs and the advances of the supremacist faith.
Essentially, history is a study in ethics and ethical movements, not politics. Ethics is the philosophical branch which defines the nature of good and evil for a culture…determines right and wrong for a people. The nature of good and evil, when placed into a social setting, allows economics and politics to develop along a “moral” path which the society agrees to accept for one reason or another. From my vantage as a historian and philosopher, the ethical bases of a culture, whether NAZI Germany, Maoist China or Apartheid South Africa determines both the economics and politics of the power structure, whether that structure be dictatorship or democracy, whether that socio-economic model be mercantilism, socialism or capitalism.
With these admitted preconceptions and moral prejudices wrought from a lifetime of studies in history and philosophy hardwired into my psyche and self-esteem, my reasoned journey into the ethical depths of militant Islam and Islamic Supremacy has led me to continually stumble over the name Ibn Taymiya. Every time Wahhabism, the Muslim Brotherhood, or Sayyed Qutb is mentioned in a text exposing radicalism in Islam, the experts and authors continually tracked the root of the twisted rationales of these jihadists to the teachings and formulas of Ibn Taymiya; but, without fail, in every mention of Taymiya, the Western authors focused only on his treatise on political Islam. So, in late 2007 and early 2008, two years into my own emersion into Islamic thought, I predicted that I would find an ethics based socio-economic treatise by Taymiya that would clarify Jihad and Sharia.
By mid 2008, I had found the missing link – Public Duties in Islam. Subtitled The Institution of the Hisba, I can say without hesitation or equivocation that the Taymiya text is by far the most important book I have ever read as a counterterrorism researcher.
Indeed, for those who find the narrative refrain “Islam is a Religion of Peace” disturbing after reading the Koran, for those who are not yet satisfied in the pursuit of justice following the 9/11 atrocity, the Hisba, as taught by Taymiya, demands a full unpacking.
Ibn Taymiya is known as the Sheikh of Islam. Though a Hanbali scholar and Sufi Pir, virtually all branches and schools of Muslim thought consider his works to be treasures – his thought is revered in the Occident similarly to the manner in which Westerners view Aristotle and Plato. The power of his teachings cannot be underestimated in value. The values Taymiya espouses in The Institution of the Hisba are perhaps the most complete rendering of Islamic Ethics ever put to print.
Truly, a Western thinker cannot comprehend the “context” of the Koran, the triune nature of Capacity in Jihadi ideology, the avowed Truth and miraculous New Knowledge of Islamic epistemology, or the manifestations of Islamic mysticism and metaphysics without grappling with the Hisba as a cardinal institution of ethics.
Mapping contemporary Jihadism, unveiling Sharia Law, investigating Sharia Compliant Finance, and tracking the indoctrination manufacturing rings of political Islam are, all, incomplete endeavors without taking the time to philosophically tackle the Hisba as taught by Ibn Taymiya.
Ultimately, establishing a case of Reasoned Resentment against Sharia Law is not possible without exposing the values instilled in the Institution of the Hisba.
You may have heard of Hizb-ut-Tahrir, Hizb-i-Islami, and Hezbollah – these jihadist organizations push forward Jihad at the tactical level and Sharia at the strategic level to establish the Justice of the Hisba. The tactical level of Jihadism is based on operational proficiency. The strategic level of Supremacy is a matter of positioning influence to protect operational activities.
The multiple Taliban elements, who seek to impose a “literalist perspective,” a “rigid interpretation” or a “harsh application” of Sharia do so in order to advance the wholesale institutionalization of the Hisba in their societies.
You may have heard of the Mutawwa of Saudi Arabia, the Secret Police of Egypt, or the Virtue and Vice squads of Iran – these legitimate branches of OIC governments are literally implementing the ethical principles of the Hisba at the tactical and strategic levels.
Many experts, looking at the phenomenon of Sharia enforcement from a political angle simply cannot see this ethical reality. For instance, in his recent book The Grand Jihad when Andrew McCarthy exposed the Mutawwa on page seven, he exposed the department of Saudi Arabia which promotes virtue and prevents vice and its institution of harsh measures in Sharia, claiming the root cause of the morality police as the derivations of a radical cleric’s Fatwa in the 1960s. McCarthy’s view, while valid, is a result of believing modern political Islam is rooted in modern political activism. McCarthy’s account falls far short of the larger picture, however…as this lecture and the ethical history it imparts will discuss.
This Lecture will focus on the nature of the Hisba as an ethical imperative of Islam. There will be many concepts discussed that will be foreign to you. Don’t worry about it. If I have learned anything in my four years of in depth research into the nuances of Islamic Supremacy, what I know to be true is that Western education has left Americans blind to the realities of ancient and modern Islamic society – its murderous genocides, its slave markets, its mercantile economics, its imperialist conquests, its pirate barbarism, its elitist totalitarianism, its dynastic warlordism, its exploited dhimmis, its subjugated women – purposely leaving the X-rated history out of its textbooks out of a twisted sense of multicultural censorship. This sanitization effort has led to a Western world that is completely disarmed and gelded in the effort to come to grips with the terrorist exploits and legal coups occurring on a daily basis around the world in the name of Islamic Supremacy.
So, when you come to an idea that you do not understand… When you come to a word that you have never read or a concept that is foreign in this discussion, take a moment and write it down with your own hand, on your own tablet. This is the first step in leading a counterinfluence campaign. You can numbly read all day long and agree or disagree; however, in order to actively defeat Islamic Supremacy, you must take the small step of writing while you read. If it is a foreign concept then place a question mark beside it. If you partially or completely disagree with ant sections, stop and take the time to write your initial reactions and opinions down. I do not expect you to take my word for gospel; I do, however, expect that you will actively work to find your own answers to the question marks that you write with your own hand. In this process of personal development, date your work and keep track of the number of hours you spend on the effort. By logging your effort, you will learn your own potential as a researcher and a thinker on the road ahead.
We all have different capacities and talents; but, what is certain is that solid effort, if it is to amount to anything, must become concrete through your own volition, through your own pen…since there may not necessarily be a degree that you will be able to earn in your chosen specialty. But realize this truth – you will not be the same person after investing a thousand hours of logged purpose in yourself, after investing five thousand hours of logged intent in your own merit. Developing self-confidence and self-esteem, developing heroism, in the war of ideas is a matter of weighing ideas of others from across a spectrum of disciplines. Personally, I am rounding the 8,000 hour mark. I spend 30 to 50 hours per week on the craft on average…which translates to around 2,000 hours per year…it is a job…it is hard work. On any given day, my mind races from what happened in Afghanistan and Pakistan, over to Iran and Syria over to Lebanon and Israel, down to Hamas and Egypt, over to Saudi Arabia and Yemen, around the GCC to the horn of North Africa, then on to the complexities of geopolitics, diplomacy, narco-terrorism, underground criminal syndicates, and then on to the nuances of Islam, Jihad, and Shariah Compliant Finance…all of this through the lenses of the UN, NATO, the G20, international monetary mechanisms and the DC bureaucratic system of intelligence and homeland security…with a cursory eye on the advances of jihadists into America by stealth and by the natural weaknesses of a multicultural insanity inherent in our current open society in the face of Islamic Dawa methodology. It is a full time gig for me as a concerned American with only his country and his liberty left to lose. Whether you take on the mantle I have chosen is a matter for your conscience. But I, for one, cannot sit idly in these consequential times.
Winning the War of Ideas requires a willingness to compete in the realm of ideas and to present better ideas than the enmity (the hatreds) of our offenders. Competition in the realm of ideas requires an unflinching assessment of the enemy ideology. Only upon completion of this task can one compare and contrast society, ethics, politics, diplomacy, and thought itself. We will have to earn our victory if we expect to vanquish the supremacy of Islam.
So, strap in and grab a pen. We are about to explode the Philosophy of Jihad.
Let’s Roll.
Why is Ibn Taymiya important?
Experts on Radical Islam will tell you that in order to understand Jihad, you must first read the Koran, the Hadith traditions of the Prophet, the Biography of Muhammad known as the Sira, and reckon with the consensus of Islamic Scholars known as the Ijma to appreciate the intricacies of Islamic jurisprudence (Figh) and Sharia Law – collectively referred to as the Sunna. Without a doubt, this is a helpful starting point for those with a few years to invest in the in depth and serious study of the supremacy inherent in Islam. However, from my perspective, the lesson on contemporary Jihadism actually begins with Ibn Taymiya.
The Ijma consensus, the accepted traditional teachings of Islam were locked in stone and made into a dogmatic formula by the 9th century. In fact, the utilization of individual reasoning and rationale to determine the importance of the Koran and the Hadith, a process known as ijtihad, was formally forbidden in the 9th century. This alone is a testament to the controlling and totalitarian nature of Islam’s formal teachings.
But, by the 14th century, Ibn Taymiya broke with the tradition and practiced ijtihad.
At the time, Islam was in a period of decline, the caliphate was under assault in both the East and West and ibn Taymiya broke with the tradition that forbade ijtihad, to instill in his Muslim community a revival of Islamic values.
Widely read and a traveling Pir, Taymiya’s thought was so radical and controversial at the time that he was often thrown in prison. But before being executed as an apostate in each case, he would say, simply, “Allah Knows the Truth.” This simple refrain would be met as an indisputable sign of his Muslim belief and would serve as his exit visa from imprisonment. A modern example of the power of this phrase can be found in Mark A. Gabriel’s book Muhammad and Jesus in which the Egyptian scholars of Al-Azhar urged Gabriel to utter a similar phrase to keep from being lynched by the Egyptian Secret Police for his apostate leanings.
In all probability, as a universal scholar, Taymiya was likely familiar with the works of Hellenistic Greece. His lean toward Platonic thought is striking. Even more striking is his natural geometric reasoning. Indeed, it would not surprise me, after reading Public Duties in Islam, in fact I would predict after reading the text, that ibn Taymiya has produced a treatise on mathematics, geometry or statistics that may or may not yet be translated into English.
The Hisba, as presented by Taymiya, is a geometric proof of Allah’s Rights and the affirming power of Prayer. Interestingly, in the conditional reasoning of Taymiya, since the word of Allah is taken as an absolute, Euclidean geometric proofs would assign the ayat (signs) of the Koran as axiomatic propositions. In turn, each Hadith tradition would serve as a corollary statement to affirm his position. In Public Duties of Islam, Taymiya consistently issues an axiom followed by two corollaries to justify his proof of The Institution of the Hisba.
The modern student should realize that when Taymiya pushed forward his revivalist treatises, the Muslim Empire was in full sail internal and fringe meltdown. Hellenistic thought had developed throughout the civilized world, and Aristotelian Reason was shaping the secular worldview of many learned elites in Islam, while Platonic Rationale was developing along the mercantile trade routes and challenging the logicians and philosophers of the Islamic Empire. The same battle traveled down through the ages and the influence can be seen displayed powerfully in the comparison and contrast of Aristotelian philosophers like Descartes and Locke and in Platonic thinkers like Kant and Hume. Just as in the age of enlightenment, which witnessed an explosion of secular science away from the dogmatic traditions of the Catholic Church, in the age of Taymiya, the advances in Aristotelian thought were increasingly defeating the imposition of dhimmitude and Sharia Law on the conquering outskirts of the Islamic Empire. To counter this advance of objectivism and empiricism, Taymiya’s efforts drew heavily from Neoplatonism.
Aristotle believed that “A is A”. A table is a table. A horse is a horse.
Plato believed that A is a reflection of the Universal A in the heavens. That is A table is a reflection of the universal table in heaven. In the heavens, in the ether, according to Plato, a perfect representation of Human ideas and thoughts and secular things existed as Universals.
Truth, then, to Aristotle, was based in the objects themselves. Hence truth was a matter of objective fact or empirical data.
Truth, to Plato, was based on the earthbound object’s subjective relation to the Universal concept it drew its reflection from to attain earthly manifestation.
Now, while this is perhaps an oversimplification, it is an instructive philosophical rendering of the two primary modes of Hellenistic thought – objective versus subjective thought. The two schools have been at odds for over two thousand years. Ibn Taymiya, perhaps recognizing the inherent rejection of the Divine in Aristotelian thought, took up the Platonic subjectivism in many of his teachings. He often spoke in “anthropomorphic” terms as Neoplatonists did in his time, speaking of Allah as having human attributes, such as a hand or a shin or a thrown. It is actually easy to see how he would make the leap – the Koran often mentions Allah’s “right hand” in terms of the Islamic Community (the Umma) or in terms of His possessions. However, to depict Allah as anything resembling human was troubling to the scholars and theologians of his age, who were working overtime to prove that Christ could not possibly have been Man and God and Holy Spirit –all – in one.
So, when we look at the influence of Taymiya, today, and in the past, it must be reckoned with that his thought was powerful and lasting primarily because it assumed a complete subjectivity similar to Platonic thought. Moreover, in this frame, it should not be a mystery when we find that Islamic intellectuals (and American liberal/progressive thinkers) find the works of Immanuel Kant and David Hume to be the most gripping and influential Western philosophical works in modernity. In this alignment, Reason, itself, is under attack in the philosophical branch known as epistemology, which is the study of human understanding. At the same time, the branch of philosophy known as metaphysics, which is the study of the nature of reality and being, is the battlefield…and a monopoly on the nature of Truth is the prize. Islamic Theology is subjective, since it derives its Truth from Allah (a Universal). Objectivism, then, is the philosophical adversary of Islam. In this, Taymiya’s works take their place in a long line of attack against the value of human Reason in the attainment of Truth. Moreover, in our fight to check the advances of Sharia, today, the philosophical battlefield for the hearts and minds of mankind remains, remarkably, unchanged from the age of Taymiya.
In Taymiya’s day, Islam, after over 600 years of unchecked advances in its conquering imperialism, was expected to subjugate the world. To overcome a crumbling and weakening society, Taymiya proposed to return to first principles of Islam by expounding on the glory of Islam’s Golden Age – the time of Muhammad, his original followers and companions, particularly the first four Caliphs, known collectively as the Rightly Guided Caliphs, or…the Salaf.
Modern Salafi fundamentalists of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Saudi Arabian mold owe their “Salafist” title to Taymiya’s revivalist thought.
In fact, nearly half a century after Taymiya’s death, before Saudi Arabia was a nation-state, while it was still a mass of warring tribes, a holy man from the Nejd, known as Muhammad abd al Wahhab, found the works of ibn Taymiya to be so powerful that he transcribed them each by hand and set about mounting a revivalist movement in the Arabian Peninsula, which would eventually link up with political and military might found in the patriarch Saud. The Sauds and Wahhabs would arise as a powerful family, whose princes and extended royalty number, today, in the tens of thousands.
Under the shadow of a Turkish seat of power Islamic Empire, whose caliphate was waning as evidenced by the turning back of Muslim forces from Westphalia, the teachings of Wahhab, in the Arabian seat of the two holy cities (Mecca and Madina), over the course of the next century found adherents worldwide as the result of the Hajj pilgrims who learned and promoted the Taymiya line via Wahhab.
The Deobandi Wahhab of Central Asia, for instance, scattered from Afghanistan through Pakistan and into India, arose as a force in the 1700s to break British Imperial control of the spice and opium trade and now provide safe haven for the rise of radical groups of regional terrorists like the Taliban and global terrorists such as al Qaeda. Combined with the tribal cultures of the region, Salafism, Wahhabism, that is, Taymiyan thought, has found a home in the caverns of the ISI in Pakistan and the Taliban elements that are at present wreaking havoc on Western and Muslim forces in the AfPak. But most importantly, with the sudden explosion of oil profits in the 1970s, the export of Salafist Literature, Wahhab teaching and other varieties of Taymiyan thought by Saudi Arabia and the Muslim Brotherhood has achieved a global stage in multiple ways over the course of the last four decades.
Since the fall of the Ottoman Caliph in the early 1920s, Ibn Taymiya has served as a central lodestone for the political movements at the heart of modern Fundamentalism. From the 14th century pen of this powerful thinker to our modern confrontation with contemporary jihadism and Sharia Law, the values espoused by Taymiya generate, literally, a perpetual motion machine of war.
What is the Hisba?
I first came upon the cardinal institution of the Hisba quite by accident. Looking for the ethical nature of good and evil in Islam, I came to Sura 3 Ayat 104:
“And from among you there should be a party who invite to good and enjoin the right and forbid the wrong. And these are they who are successful.”
Sura 3 Ayat 110 continues the thread:
“You are the best nation raised up for men: you enjoin good and forbid evil and you believe in Allah…”
At first blush, these verses of the Koran seem to be common ground with the Christian teaching: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. To verify this reading, though, I looked up the word “enjoin” and reeled.
The word “enjoin” does not mean “to join together” as I thought and assumed. Rather, “enjoin” is defined as “to command or demand from a position of authority.” I immediately researched the phrase “enjoin good and forbid evil” and fell upon the Hisba as an institution of Islamic thought. Without skipping a beat, I searched for links between the Hisba and ibn Taymiya. The book Public Duties in Islam: The Institution of the Hisba then came into view, and with a mouse click or five the book was on its way to my mailbox.
With the book in hand less than ten days later, I read the translation cover to cover three times, making sure to write “Allah” over the word “God” every time it appeared in order to gather an accurate perspective. In my studies, I have found that this simple, yet active, rejection of the automatic translation of “Allah” to “God” allows Westerners who do not speak Arabic to gain a level of objective intimacy with the Islamic texts they read.
In full, what I found in studying the Taymiya text was the nature of Islamic Ethics, the nature of an Islamic Economy, and the nature of Prayer in Islam.
According to the Editor’s preface, an Islamic Economy has four primary characteristics: 1) An Islamic Economy does not exist in a vacuum and can only be studied in terms of a socio-economic totalitarian system; 2) morality plays a pivotal role in the exercise of material exchange; 3) private ownership and private enterprise are matters of trusteeship that subject individual liberty to social regulation and control; and 4) the true objective of Islamic Economics is to establish a just social order.
The purpose of the Hisba’s establishment by the Prophet Muhammad, moreover, “was to regulate public life in such a way that a high degree of public morality is attained and the society is protected from bad workmanship, fraud, extortion, exploitation and charlatanism.”
In this function, the hisba developed into a hierarchy of leadership in which the Muhtasib “was responsible for the maintenance of public morality and economic ethics.” Wielding enormous powers, the Muhtasib exercises “moral as well as legal authority” in the Islamic Umma.
In this frame, the “ethical” nature of Islamic economics and finance is assured by the Koranic injunction al-Amr bi’l Ma`ruf wa-n-nahi `an al-Munkar (enjoin good and forbid evil), which translates into a command by Allah to establish the institution of the Hisba with the Muhtasib as an insurance against the Tyranny of those who would operate outside of Allah’s will.
In fact, the word hisba is from the Arabic root h.s.b. which can mean “arithmetical problem”; “sum”; or “reward”. As a noun, hisba refers to the state institution which was arranged by Allah to insure that the Umma would keep its covenant to enjoin good and forbid evil. Muhammad, moreover, is considered the first Muhtasib, since upon establishing the Islamic faith by rising as Madina’s leader he went about laying down norms of behavior in religion, in society, and in the market. Upon the creation of the office in the generations succeeding the Salaf, the aim of the Muhtasib was to maintain proper prayer, implement `adl (Justice) in society, to minimize exploitation in the market, and to ensure that sanitation and public health were administered.
But, when looking at the Taymiya treatise on the Hisba, what needs to be understood is that no such thing as “economics” existed in Islamic theory or scholastic teaching. This singular fact reveals Public Duties in Islam by Taymiya to be one of the most remarkable treatises ever put to print. Indeed, this fact reveals that the hisba as an institution, then, represents the calculus of a socially conscious Mercantilism.
As Muhammad Akram Khan notes in an excellent appendix essay, “The economic history of the Muslim people has not yet been chronicled in detail.” Khan continues that while historians have made passing references to different economic conditions down through the ages, “the modes of production, distribution, and exchange and credit system have received little attention.” Documentation on these is scanty and records allow only a glimpse of the operations of Muslim economies; however, hisba literature does allow a view into the morality of the economic system of Islam.
In this, while Khan goes on to note the particulars of an Islamic Economy, what must be reckoned with in the West is why these records would not be well maintained?
Is it possible that the modes of production included conquest, slavery and forced dhimmitude?
Is it possible that distribution has always been hampered by piracy, since the dawn of Islam’s initial raids on Meccan supply lines?
Is it possible that records of exchange and credit were poorly kept and have been kept hidden from Western eyes due to the fact that a slave trading system of barter developed from Morocco to New Delhi, and that Western writers and historians have, in the name of multiculturalism and peace, whitewashed and sanitized the damnable truth of the Islamic Economic history?
Is it possible that the slave trade which brought thousands upon thousands of African slaves to the new world actually held Arabian and Islamic dimensions and underpinnings?
The answer to these questions is an obvious and emphatic “Yes.”
The truth is Mercantilism is a form of commerce, but it is based on combativeness, not competitiveness.
Only from this vantage can Westerners understand the historic reality and reason for the expansion of Islam. Mercantilism, as an economic theory, holds that the amount of wealth in the world is static. In this, the application of power by a group or a Nation and the strength of that group or Nation will exist in direct proportion to the amount of territory and resources it can hold. Mercantilism holds a fixed view of wealth, so whoever holds the most controlling interest in a region’s resources holds the keys to raising the biggest army, equipping that army with the best weaponry and thereby dominating on the battlefield.
Mercantilism is the economic model of Islam. In fact, every biography of the Prophet Muhammad refers to the birth of Islam in a “Mercantile Age.” The result of a mercantile philosophy of wealth is twofold – piracy and dynasty.
When one looks over the history of Islam, both are in full form in its conquering expansion from the caravan raid to the establishment of caliphates, sultanates, khanates, imamates and emirates. Due to scarce resources, the will to power in the mercantile frame, then, drives society to utilize force to acquire wealth and expand its frontiers. This methodology developed, over time, into an “empire” or “imperial” understanding of power through the dark ages, ending in a feudal system of fiefdoms and warlordism by the age of Islamic decline.
Colonialism, socialism, fascism, and communism are all vestiges of this Mercantile theory of static wealth.
In the history of human thought, the radical deviation from this theory of wealth as static was born in 1776 with the birth and publication of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith.
Capitalism dramatically altered the picture of economics by establishing the idea of property rights based on competitive means rather than combative ends. In capitalism, wealth is not static, it is dynamic, it can be created and built, rather than stolen and hoarded.
To this day, Western thinkers confuse these notions based on their own prejudices for one reason or another; however, what is certain is that the free market requires individual liberty and laws which guarantee rights from the trespasses of men and governments. On the other hand, Mercantilism requires only that trade and commerce exist that it might be plundered and dominated; but, in a system in which wealth is static, a zero-sum game exists in which the will to steal is not checked by reasoned property rights.
It is not a mystery that slavery was abolished after the rise of America and its capitalist system. What is a mystery is whether America’s constitution is strong enough to defeat the rise of the neo-mercantilists agitating at the gates of Liberty.
So, what is the Hisba?
The Hisba is Allah’s dispensation of Truth through the Affirmation of human Thought and Deed on the Scales of Justice.
In full, the Hisba, as an institution, is the establishment of Allah’s Rights to dominion as the wielder of the Pen of Judgment.
