Muhammad Abd al-Salam Faraj

Muhammad Abd as-Salam Faraj (also Abd al-Salam Farag or Abdessalam Faraj , Arabic ﻣﺤﻤﺪ عبد السلام ﻓﺮﺝ, DMG Muḥammad ʿAbd as-Salām Faraǧ ; * 1952 or 1954 in ad-Dilnijat, al-Buhaira governorate in Lower Egypt; † April 15, 1982 in Cairo ), was an Egyptian revolutionary and radical Islamic theorist. He headed the Cairo cell of the Egyptian terrorist organization al-Jihad and made a significant contribution to the formulation and spread of a militant jihadist ideology with his work The Neglected Duty ( al-Farīḍa al-ghāʾiba , 1981) . He was executed in 1982 for his involvement in the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar as-Sadat .

Abd al-Salam Faraj

Life

Muhammad Abd al-Salam Faraj was born in the village of ad-Dilnijat in the northern Egyptian governorate of al-Buhaira . Faradsch studied electrical engineering and initially worked in the administration of Cairo University . Faraj began to form the Sunni terror group, later known as al-Jihad , in 1979. As a speaker, Faraj gathered numerous supporters in mosques. With the support of his closest followers, within two years he developed into the leader of a loose association of around fifty revolutionary cells in Egypt. These terrorist cells, of which Aiman ​​az-Zawahiri was one of the leaders , developed a joint strategy, but maintained a high degree of operational independence.

In September 1981, Farajh held a meeting with other al-Jihad leaders to plan the assassination of President Anwar al-Sadat. Faraj saw Sadat as an illegitimate ruler because he did not rule solely on the basis of Sharia law . Faraj's followers saw Sadat's assassination as a necessary and appropriate means of establishing the form of an Islamic state they sought . The proposal to assassinate the president came from Khalid Islambuli , a lieutenant in the Egyptian army , whom Faraj had campaigned for al-Jihad when he was stationed in Cairo six months earlier. Islambuli was invited to a celebratory military parade , in which the president should also take part, and saw in it an opportunity to assassinate the secular leader. On October 6, 1981, Sadat was assassinated in an attack by four members of the Cairo al-Jihad cell. Faraj was arrested shortly afterwards and executed on April 15, 1982, along with Islambuli and three other jihadists.

Positions and Effect

The Salafist current of Islam takes the view that it is the duty of Muslims to imitate the actions of the Prophet and his followers and that a lack of zeal in this area is the cause of the grievances in the Islamic world. Faraj exaggerated this position, arguing that Muslims in particular had neglected the religious obligation to engage in jihad as a military struggle against the enemies of Islam. Faraj considered jihad ( Arabic جهاد 'Effort, struggle, effort') immediately after the five pillars as the most important teaching of Islam. According to the English religious scholar Karen Armstrong , the jihadist narrowing of Islam that Faraj was propagating was, however, a "break with centuries-old Islamic tradition."

Faraj advocated an individualistic and military interpretation of jihad. Like the influential fundamentalist theorist Sayyid Qutb , he argued that jihad is an "individual obligation" ( fard al-ayn ) incumbent on every Muslim. He attacked non-military interpretations of jihad, which indicated an internal spiritual endeavor as “greater jihad” , as a falsification of Islamic tradition. Faraj declared local governments to be the primary target of the jihad. In doing so, he took up Qutb’s position that modern Islamic societies were permeated by “ Jāhilīya ” and had fallen back into a state of ignorance like in pre-Islamic times. With recourse to the Hanbali scholar Ibn Taimiya , Faraj made modern Islamic rulers who have fallen from the faith responsible for the Jāhilīya.

Faraj’s work The Neglected Duty ( al-Farida al-gha'iba , 1981), which was originally circulated among Faraj’s followers, gained great influence . The jihadist ideas developed in it shaped the program of the Islamic extremist groups in Egypt in the 1980s and 1990s. The later leader of the al-Qaeda terror network , Aiman ​​az-Zawahiri, was a friend of Faraj's and for years followed Faraj's slogan of fighting the “nearby enemy”. Faradsch's theses were sharply criticized. Gad el-Hak of Azhar University rejected Faraj's labeling of Sadat as an apostate - “no Muslim may call another practicing Muslim an apostate” - and held against Faraj's misinterpretations of the Koran , especially the verse of the sword . Other authors questioned Faradsch's religious expertise because he was a qualified electrical engineer and not an Islamic legal expert .

literature

• Mohammed Arkoun : Islam. Approaching a religion . Palmyra, Heidelberg 1999, ISBN 3-930378-22-1
• Karen Armstrong : In the fight for God. Fundamentalism in Christianity, Judaism and Islam . Siedler, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-88680-769-X
• Mark Juergensmeyer : The globalization of religious violence. From Christian militias to al-Qaeda . Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-86854-209-7
• Roxanne L. Euben, Muhammad Qasim Zaman Eds .: Princeton Readings in Islamist Thought: Texts and Contexts from Al-Banna to Bin Laden. Princeton University Press , 2009, ISBN 0691135886 ; Chapter The Neglected Duty , p. 327ff., Readable online; in English
• Johannes Jansen: "The neglected duty." The creed of Sadat's assassins and islamic resurgence in the middle east. MacMillan, New York 1986, pp. 159-234; again Verlag Theoklesia, 2013 ISBN 1618613316 (The original text, here in English)

Web links

• Excerpts from "Neglected duty" , p. 62 ff. (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Gilles Kepel : The Black Book of Jihad. The rise and fall of Islamism. Piper Verlag, Munich / Zurich 2002, p. 109.
2. ↑ Karen Armstrong: In the Fight for God. Fundamentalism in Christianity, Judaism and Islam . Siedler, Berlin 2004, p. 467.
3. ↑ Karen Armstrong: In the Fight for God. Fundamentalism in Christianity, Judaism and Islam . Siedler, Berlin 2004, p. 470.