Islamic World League

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The Islamic World League ( Arabic رابطة العالم الإسلامي, DMG Rābiṭat al-ʿālam al-islāmī ; English World Muslim League (WML) is an international Islamic non-governmental organization founded in 1962 and financed by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia . It sees itself as the cultural and religious representative of the Islamic peoples.

The Islamic World League includes the International Islamic Relief Organization , the “Islamic Legal Council” and the World Mosque Council . The general secretary must be Saudi Arabian, currently it is Muhammad bin Abdul Karim Issa. That is why it is also referred to as a government- controlled non-governmental organization (GONGO, Government-operated Non-governmental organization). According to one estimate, Saudi Arabia has supported the Islamic World League with approximately $ 90 billion since the mid-1970s.

Islamic World League logo

history

It was founded on May 18, 1962 at a conference in Mecca by Islamic scholars from 22 countries. The second world conference, attended by 266 delegates, was also held in Mecca in 1965. The ambitions of the Saudi regime to use the organization as an instrument of its foreign policy were opposed by the Secretary General of the League, Muhammad Surūr as-Sabbān, who declared in 1967 that his organization would never maintain missionary institutions that are directly subordinate to the Saudi Foreign Ministry. The League initially recruited its missionaries from the graduates of the Islamic University of Medina . However, the league did not develop real missionary activities until 1973/74.

The league was founded during the Cold War (East-West conflict); When a pro-Soviet bloc formed in the Arab world, it was on the side of the West.

In the 1970s and 1980s, the Islamic World League repeatedly sought the role of guardian over right-wing belief. In April 1974, for example, she published a fatwa according to which the Ahmadiyya were to be excluded from the Islamic community . In March 1975, in a fatwa, she declared the Sudanese scholar Mahmūd Muhammad Tāhā to be an apostate, with reference to the fact that he claimed a divine message for himself, and called on the Sudanese government to confiscate his books and forbid their printing. From 1979 to 1982, and finally in 1983, the world league condemned Muammar al-Gaddafi's image of Islam as unbelief . However, the organization in 1985 agreed in principle to al-Azhar of the gate to -Auffassung of the partial reopening of ijtihad to.

From the 1970s, various sub-organizations were founded, the League established in September 1975 to the "Conference to revive the message of the mosque" ( mu'tamar Ihya 'al-Risalat masǧid ) in Mecca to Weltmoscheenrat . In 1979 the Constitutional Council of the League decided to create a new structure that would combine Daʿwa and humanitarian aid for refugees, war victims and those in need. The result was the International Islamic Aid Organization in Mecca. In March 1988 the League together with the Azhar University in Cairo convened a Daʿwa congress at which the "International Islamic Council for Daʿwa and Aid" ( al-maǧlis al-islāmī al-ʿālamī li-d-daʿwa wa-l -iġāṯa ) was created.

According to Grundmann, 48 billion dollars flowed into international activities from 1975 to 1987 and 70 billion dollars between 1988 and 2002.

In April 2018 the Secretary General of the League and the Roman Catholic Curia Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran signed a cooperation agreement to promote dialogue between Christians and Muslims.

Activities in Sub-Saharan Africa

Already at the founding meeting of the Islamic World League two important personalities attended the West African Islam, Ahmadu Bello , leader of the "Company of the victory of Islam" ( ǧamā'at Nasr al-Islām ) in northern Nigeria, and the Tijaniyyah -Scheich Ibrahim Niass . In an interview in 1964, Ahmadu Bello complained that African Islam was underrepresented in the organization and expressed concern that the league might turn into a purely Arab organization. At the second conference in Mecca in 1965, 78 delegates from sub-Saharan Africa took part. In addition to Ahmadu Bello and Ibrahim Niass, sub-Saharan Islam was represented in the organization by three people until 1975: Abdelwahhab Doukouré, Mali's ambassador to Riyadh (1965), Oumar Ahmad Galo from Niger (1970) and Ahmad Khalifa Koutouku from Cameroon (1974). A first highlight of the League's missionary activities in sub-Saharan Africa was the conversion of Bernard-Albert Bongo to Islam in 1973 . Omar Bongo, as he was called from then on, also supported the project to open an office for the league in Libreville in 1974 . In 1975 and 1977 further offices were opened in Brazzaville and Dakar respectively.

In order to better organize cooperation with local organizations in West Africa, the World League convened an Islamic-African conference in Nouakchott in June 1976 , at which the 20-member African Council of Islamic Coordination was created. In 1984 six other African personalities were elected to the organization. In 1978 the scholar Abu Bakar Gumi founded his "Society for the Elimination of Heresy and Establishment of the Sunnah" ( Ǧamāʿat Izālat al-bidʿa wa-iqāmat as-sunna , Hausa: Yan Izala ) in northern Nigeria with the support of the World League . Between 1973 and 1985, the number of World League missionaries working in West Africa increased from 49 to 473.

Activities in Switzerland

Saïda Keller-Messahli , President of the Swiss Forum for a Progressive Islam , announced on the occasion of the arrest of a mosque preacher in Winterthur at the beginning of November 2016 about the World League:

“There is a whole network of radically oriented mosques in Switzerland. Behind this is the Islamic World League, which trains young imams according to their needs and then sends them out into the world. These are real traveling preachers who are up to mischief not only in Switzerland, but also in Austria, Germany, Norway and Denmark. This network is a hub for Salafists . The Swiss authorities make the big mistake of not looking into the mosques. The image of the pitiful backyard mosques is no longer correct. New mosques are currently being built for several million francs each, most recently in Volketswil , Netstal and Wil SG . That these amounts should come from members is simply a lie. They come from the Islamic World League and its organizations in Geneva, for example, with the clear intention of spreading Salafist ideas in this country. "

- That's just the tip of the iceberg , NZZ , November 2, 2016, interview with Marcel Gyr

See also

literature

  • Johannes Grundmann: Islamic Internationalists. Structures and activities of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamic World League . Reichert, Wiesbaden 2005, ISBN 3-89500-447-2 Review by I. Küpeli
  • Reinhard Schulze : Islamic internationalism. Research on the history of the Islamic World League. Brill, Leiden 1990.
  • Reinhard Schulze: La da'wa saoudienne en Afrique de l'Ouest, in René Otayek: Le radicalisme islamique au sud du Sahara. "Da'wa", arabization et critique de l'Occident . Karthala, Paris 1993, pp. 21-35.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dr. Al-Issa is Secretary General of the Muslim World League
  2. ↑ What Is a Gongo? ( Memento of September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) By Moisés Naím, Foreign Policy May / June 2007
  3. ↑ Saudi Arabia's Dubious Denials of Involvement in International Terrorism ( Memento of September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Dore Gold, Research Institute for European and American Studies (RIEAS), October 4, 2003
  4. ^ Saudi Government Propaganda in the United States: Avowed Ally or Secret Enemy? CIA Director R. James Woolsey at the American Enterprise Institute, February 16, 2005 according to "The World Muslim League: Agent of Wahhabi Propagation in Europe?" ( September 27, 2007 memento on the Internet Archive ) By Evgenii Novikov, Jamestown Terrorism Monitor Foundation Volume 3, Issue 9 (May 6, 2005)
  5. ↑ See Schulze 1993, 28.
  6. ↑ See Schulze 1993, 29.
  7. ↑ Christian Röther: The Islamic World League and its goals: Does Europe have to become Muslim? In: www.deutschlandfunk.de. March 27, 2019, accessed March 27, 2019 .
  8. ↑ Fatwas and Statements of Islamic Scholars about Ahmadiyya ( Memento of October 20, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
  9. ↑ Cf. Annette Oevermann: The Republican Brothers in Sudan. An Islamic Reform Movement in the Twentieth Century. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main a. a., 1993. pp. 68f.
  10. ↑ Günter Kettermann: Atlas zur Geschichte des Islam , Darmstadt 2001, p. 167
  11. ↑ Schulze 1993, p. 34
  12. ↑ Globally networked political Islam: Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic World League ( Memento from October 13, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) B. Schmalenberger, Sicherheit-heute, June 22, 2006
  13. ↑ Vatican and Islamic World League decide to cooperate. In: kathisch.de . April 23, 2018, accessed March 27, 2019 .
  14. ↑ See Schulze 1993, 26.
  15. ↑ See Schulze 1993, 27f.
  16. ↑ See Schulze 1993 32.
  17. ↑ See Schulze 1993, 31f.
  18. ↑ See Schulze 1993, 28.
  19. ↑ Cf. Roman Loimeier: Islamic Reform and Political Change in Northern Nigeria . Evanston 1997. p. 148.
  20. ↑ See Schulze 1993, 31.