Fiqh al-Daʿwa: The Emerging Standardization of Islamic Proselytism
In: Die Welt des IslamsGlobalization has been made responsible for a variety of (re)invented traditions with a trend toward a new religious foundation in and of societies. With Islamic proselytism having gone global, it may resemble religious resistance to the status quo, when pious Muslims instigate homogenizing daʿwa activities and attempt to endow them with moral obligations and normative superstructure. The proliferation of standards and fledgling processes of ideological framing are traceable in what is called fiqh al-daʿwa, which includes general theorizing and ostensibly legal reasoning on daʿwa. In reality, it is more of a missionary ideology given weight by being clothed in Islamic legal terminology. This paper investigates the fiqh of daʿwa in its global setting, with an emphasis on its radical Islamist articulations. It does so by examining fiqh al-daʿwa’s legally, or rather ideologically and morally, charged treatises. In this way, the article reconstructs the genealogy of this rather new genre, as well as its social composition, its ideational grounding, and its normative potential. The condensed forms and derivatives of fiqh of daʿwa will be documented by means of certain rules, methods, and strategies of Islamist ideologues and organizations, particularly the post-Huḍaybī Muslim Brotherhood.
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2
See Peter L. Berger, The Heretical Imperative: Contemporary Possibilities of Religious Affirmation (New York: Doubleday, 1979), 44.
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4
Compare Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000).
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6
John Urry, Sociology Beyond Societies: Mobilities for the Twenty-First Century (London: Routledge, 2000), 158.
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7
Jörn Rüsen, “Some Theoretical Approaches to Intercultural Comparative Historiography,” in History and Theory, 35,4 (1996), 5-22, 8.
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13
Patrick D. Gaffney, The Prophet’s Pulpit (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 33.
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14
Franz König, Religionswissenschaftliches Wörterbuch (Freiburg: Herder, 1956), 544f.; also Reinhard Schulze, “Islam und Judentum im Angesicht der Protestantisierung der Religionen im 19. Jahrhundert,” in Lothar Gall and Dietmar Willoweit (eds.), Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in the Course of History: Exchange and Conflicts (Munich: Beck, 2011), 139-65. For the reciprocities of Christian and subsequent Muslim missionary activities in British India, see Avril A. Powell, Muslims and Missionaries in Pre-Mutiny India (London: Psychology Press, 1993). Early Muslim actors in the field were, for example, Raḥmat Allāh Kairānawī (1818-1891) and the group around the journal Tahdhīb al-Akhlāq established by Sayyid Aḥmad Khān (1817-1898); for Kairānawī see Christine Schirrmacher, Mit den Waffen des Gegners (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz, 1992); for Khān see Christian W. Troll, Sayyid Ahmad Khan: A Reinterpretation of Muslim Theology (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1979).
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17
See Muhammad Khalid Masud (ed.), Travellers in Faith (Leiden: Brill, 2000); Yoginder Sikand, The Origins and Development of the Tablighi Jamaʻat, (1920-2000): A Cross-Country Comparative Study (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2002).
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21
See for example Reinhard Schulze, Islamischer Internationalismus (Leiden: Brill, 1990), 279ff; Commins, The Wahhabi Mission and Saudi Arabia; Jamal Malik, “Islamic Mission And Call: The Case Of The International Islamic University, Islamabad,” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 9,1 (1998), 31-45; Carrie R. Wickham, Mobilizing Islam: Religion, Activism, and Political Change in Egypt (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002); Larry Poston, Islamic Da‘wah in the West:Muslim Missionary Activity and the Dynamics of Conversion to Islam (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); Nina Wiedl, Da‘wa: Der Ruf zum Islam in Europa (Berlin: Schiller, 2008); Thomas K. Gugler, Mission Medina: Da‘wat-e Islami und Tabligi Gama‘at (Würzburg: Ergon, 2011); Hans Peter Mattes, Die Innere und Äussere Islamische Mission Libyens (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag, 1986).
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29
Gordon Silverstein, Law’s Allure: How Law Shapes, Constrains, Saves, and Kills Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
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30
Gunther Teuber (ed.), Juridification of Social Spheres: A Comparative Analysis in the Areas of Labor, Corporate, Antitrust and Social Welfare Law (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1987).
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41
See, for example, Moshe Sharon, Revolt: The Social and Military Aspects of the ‘Abbasid Revolution (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University, 1990), passim.
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42
Compare Heinz Halm, The Fatimids and their Traditions of Learning (London and New York: I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd., 1997), 60ff.
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43
Michael Cook, Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 17-31.
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48
Compare Peter Mandaville, Global Political Islam (London: Routledge, 2007), 99.
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49
Compare Zollner, The Muslim Brotherhood, 71. On the doctrinal debate over irjāʾ, which accepts as Muslim whoever professes the faith, without regard to his deeds, see Daniel Lav, Radical Islam and the Revival of Medieval Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Josef van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft Im 2. und 3. Jahrhundert Hidschra, Vol. 2 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1992), 534-44; W. Montgomery Watt and M. Marmura, Der Islam II. Politische Entwicklungen und theologische Konzepte (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1985), 116-44.
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57
Compare Jocelyne Cesari, When Islam and Democracy Meet: Muslims in Europe and in the United States (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 160ff.
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59
See Tariq Ramadan, To be a European Muslim: A Study of Islamic Sources in the European Context (Leicester: Islamic Foundation, 1999), passim. See the interesting piece by Nicholas Tampio, “Constructing the Space of Testimony: Tariq Ramadan’s Copernican Revolution,” Political Theory 39/5 (2011), 600-29.
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63
See for example S.V.R. Nasr, “The Rise of Sunni Militancy in Pakistan: The Changing Role of Islamism and the Ulama in Society and Politics,” Modern Asian Studies 34,1 (2000), 139-180; Asef Bayat, “Islamism and Social Movement Theory,” Third World Quarterly 26,6 (2005), 891-908; Peter Mandaville, Global Political Islam (London: Routledge, 2010).
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121
See Jamal Malik, Islam in South Asia: A Short History (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 395ff.
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125
As has been argued by Schulze, “Islam und Judentum im Angesicht der Protestantisierung.” See also Roman Loimeier, “Is there something like Protestant Islam,” WI 45, 2 (2005), 216-54.
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127
Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Religiöse Gemeinschaften (Tübingen: Siebeck, 2005), Vol. 2, 100ff et passim.
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129
Max Weber, The Sociology of Religion (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993), 110.
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150
Quoted in Mitchell, The Society of the Muslim Brothers, 165.
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154
Mirza Masroor Ahmad, Die Bedingungen des Bai’at. Die Pflichten eines Ahmadis (Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Der Islam, 2007), 234. He quotes from a ḥadīth, transmitted by Abū Muslim, Saḥīḥ Muslim (Riyadh: Dār Ṭayyiba li-l-Nashr wa-l-Tawzī‘, 1426 h.), Vol. 14, Kitāb al-Imāra, hadith # 1849, p. 898.
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Fiqh al-Daʿwa: The Emerging Standardization of Islamic Proselytism
In: Die Welt des IslamsGlobalization has been made responsible for a variety of (re)invented traditions with a trend toward a new religious foundation in and of societies. With Islamic proselytism having gone global, it may resemble religious resistance to the status quo, when pious Muslims instigate homogenizing daʿwa activities and attempt to endow them with moral obligations and normative superstructure. The proliferation of standards and fledgling processes of ideological framing are traceable in what is called fiqh al-daʿwa, which includes general theorizing and ostensibly legal reasoning on daʿwa. In reality, it is more of a missionary ideology given weight by being clothed in Islamic legal terminology. This paper investigates the fiqh of daʿwa in its global setting, with an emphasis on its radical Islamist articulations. It does so by examining fiqh al-daʿwa’s legally, or rather ideologically and morally, charged treatises. In this way, the article reconstructs the genealogy of this rather new genre, as well as its social composition, its ideational grounding, and its normative potential. The condensed forms and derivatives of fiqh of daʿwa will be documented by means of certain rules, methods, and strategies of Islamist ideologues and organizations, particularly the post-Huḍaybī Muslim Brotherhood.
| All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 932 | 231 | 5 |
| Full Text Views | 117 | 21 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 170 | 56 | 0 |