While both men are well-known for their religious authority, what is less well-known is Bin Bayyah’s long political career. After Mauritanian independence from France [in 1960], Bin Bayyah took part in the then-ruling Mauritanian People’s Party, for which he was a Permanent Trustee of the Party and a member of its Cabinet and Permanent Committee from 1970 to 1978. He afterwards held the following positions: Judge at the High Court of the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, Head of Shariah Affairs at the Ministry of Justice, Deputy President of the Court of Appeal, Main Negotiator on Religious Affairs in the Republic, First Minister for Islamic Affairs and Education, Minister of Justice and Official Holder of the Seals, Minister Of State for Human Resources – with the position of Deputy Prime Minister, and Minister of State for Directing State Affairs, Organizations and Parties (which included overseeing the Ministry of Information and Culture, the Ministry of Youth & Sport, the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, and the Ministry of Postal Services and Communication). This is important to mention because it is precisely his symbolic authority as a Sufi untouched by modernity that causes many who would not accept Shaykh Bin Bayyah’s current political stances and reasoning in other contexts to turn a blind eye to these positions. These voices also reference the shaykh’s long experience in politics, suggesting that he is well aware of the consequences of his thought.
[...] To put the above quote in context, it is crucial to note exactly who it is Shaykh Hamza thinks wants to tear everything down: Islamists. Specifically, in the genealogy he builds, Islamists are violent because they have been influenced by Marxism to seek a utopia in the dunyā. “They want the ideal world; they want to eliminate evil…This is their goal to create paradise on earth. To create the Marxist dream to create paradise on earth … once we establish equality on earth.” [...] However, a careful analysis of Shaykh Hamza’s thought would demonstrate a certain blurring of the lines between the categories of the ‘ideological,’ the ‘Marxist,’ and the ‘neo-Marxist,’ enabling a fluidity to the scope of analysis – if not accuracy itself – which allows him to construct meaningful links and designations to an incredibly wide spectrum. Nonetheless, a great deal of the shaykh’s discourse rests on this Islamist=Marxist=Utopian narrative and we will return to this equation in the following sections.
[...] Lastly, the fear mongering against Islamism in the West cannot be separated from structural Islamophobia in the West. After the war on terror in general, but particularly after Donald Trump came to power, there have been attempts to criminalize Muslim institutions by branding them as Islamist. In early 2017, Senator Ted Cruz introduced the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Act which aimed to criminalize such mainstream organizations like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). In fact, the UAE itself made that link prior in a bid to criminalize these organizations. Similarly, Al Arabiya English – a Saudi owned news organization – ran a piece accusing not only the newly-elected Muslim congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, but also the Palestinian activist Linda Sarsour, of belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood. The implications of this global war against whatever the UAE and Saudi Arabia define as being Islamism could have an incredibly harmful impact on the lives of ordinary Muslims in the West. In fact, the UAE foreign minister, Abdullah Bin Zayed, under whose auspices the Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies is held, warned of the potential terror risk posed by Muslims living in the West, calling them an ‘ulcer’ that needs to be cured from the stomach of the West.
[...] This also demonstrates the artificiality of how we define “Islamism.” If we still term Ghannouchi (called by some the intellectual godfather of the Arab Spring) an Islamist when he argues for Islamic citizenship in the contemporary world, then does that also make Shaykh Bin Bayyah and Hamza Yusuf Islamists? If Ghannouchi and our shuyūkh are arguing for the same thing, then is Ghannouchi still a utopian Marxist? If neither Ghannouchi nor our shuyūkh are Islamists, then are the Arab Spring protestors still seeking “heaven” on earth? What this entire shaky edifice does suggest though is that while their thought, such as the general metaphysical framework, has remained constant, their discourse has not. Rather than being based solely in the realm of ideas, their discourse is seemingly very much based on political contingencies.
[...] Not only has the “political” changed, power too has changed. Specifically, to what degree can the modern state be compared to the ḥākim or ruler? What analogy can be made between a ruler who would have to wait months to put down a rebellion, would have to wait days or even weeks to receive news from his province and a modern state which can throw you in jail for conversations over Whatsapp? What analogy can be made between a ruler that had very little power over both of what is now the legislative and judiciary and the modern state which not only takes your children away for hours every day to teach its curriculum, but also decides what they will eat for lunch?
The modern nation-state has the power to penetrate all layers of society in a way simply incomparable with anything in the pre-modern period. In any other field of fiqh, if this much change had been witnessed, the scholar would take great care before simply transferring the ruling across centuries. All of this is to say, we tend to project the vertical relationship between the modern state and citizens (often composed solely of nuclear families) back into the past. However, societies were in fact much stronger than they are now, with Muslims often having multiple relations, whether that be to the extended family, a guild or a Sufi tariqa. As such, power was far more horizontal than it is now and much of what we now consider “political” would in the pre-modern era in fact be located in the “social.” This can be seen in how the Arabic word “siyāsa,” which originally meant something closer to statecraft, that is limited to the executive, now means politics in the general sense. Therefore, when we consider that the ʿulamāʾ held both the legislative and judiciary in their hands, often made interventions for the community when taxes were too high, and were effective social actors, the ʿulamāʾ were not just political, but political par excellence.
See the full article at https://themaydan.com/2019/01/theology-obedience-analysis-shaykh-bin-bayyah-shaykh-hamza-yusufs-political-thought/
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