Sahwa (Saudi Arabia)
The Sahwa ( Arabic الصحوة, DMG aṣ-ṣaḥwa 'the awakening'), actually as-Sahwa al-islāmīya (الصحوة الإسلامية / aṣ-ṣaḥwa al-islāmīya / 'Islamic Awakening') is an influential group of Islamic scholars in Saudi Arabia who challenged the Saudi regime during and after the Second Gulf War by protesting against the stationing of American troops on Saudi soil, but were later co-opted and today defend the regime against criticism from other groups. The most prominent members of the group include Safar al-Hawālī (born 1950), Salmān al-ʿAuda (born 1956), ʿĀ'id al-Qarnī (born 1959) and Nāsir al-ʿUmar (born 1952). They were arrested in 1994 and not released until 1999. Also Sa'ad Al-Faqih , the founder of the Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia (MIRA), originally belonged to the Sahwa. The religious-political orientation of the Sahwa, whose members are known as Sahwis ( ṣaḥwīyūn ), represents a mixture between traditional Wahhabiism and the attitude of the Muslim Brotherhood .
Emergence
The Sahwa goes back to a loose association of students that formed in Saudi schools and universities in the 1960s. Her mentors were traditional Wahhabi scholars and various religious scholars from Egypt and Syria who had come to the country during this period as the Saudi university system was expanded. The two most important of these scholars were the Egyptian Muhammad Qutb, brother of Sayyid Qutb , who taught at the King Abdulaziz University of Jeddah , founded in 1967 , and the Syrian Sheikh Muhammad Surūr (born 1938), who taught at various technical institutes in Buraida was active. Initially, the members of the group had no political ambitions of their own and avoided any interference in state affairs. From the 1970s onwards, the Sahwis strove to develop their own identity. The group gained greater prominence in the 1980s when the regime turned to its members in an effort to secure its Islamic legitimacy. By allowing the Sahwa ideologues to perform publicly and solicit supporters in the 1980s, the royal family hoped to retain this fringe group of radicals, mostly students. Due to the dogmatic orientation of the group, this calculation did not work out. Although the Sahwa scholars had no official positions of power in the state, they were very strongly represented in the religious education sector, which was being massively expanded by the state at the time. Around the mid-1980s, they distinguished themselves primarily through polemics against the modernist literary group al-Hadātha . Various Sahwi intellectuals called for the establishment of a "conservative Islamic democracy" as early as the late 1980s, while at the same time criticizing the Wahhabi discourse.
Confrontation with the government
The decision of King Fahd ibn Abd al-Aziz on August 7, 1990 to call American troops into the country to fend off possible aggression by Saddam Hussein sparked a political crisis in Saudi Arabia. Many Islamic scholars viewed the stationing of American troops in Saudi Arabia as a desecration of sacred ground. The crisis triggered a reform discourse in which members of the Sahwa played a major role. In October 1990, deliberations began in the house of the scholar ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Qāsim, which led to the drafting of a document in January 1991 containing a list of twelve political demands. This included the establishment of a consultative council , the regular review of the existing state regulations for their conformity with the Sharia , the examination of the moral integrity of the representatives of the state and the abandonment of foreign policy alliances that contradict the Sharia. This "letter of demands" ( ḫiṭāb al-maṭālib ) was signed by around 400 scholars in the following months, including the state mufti ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Bāz , and given to the king in May 1991. However, the "Council of the Committee of Great Scholars" ( maǧlis haiʾat kibār al-ʿulamāʾ ), the country's most important scholarly body, responded in June 1991 with a fatwa condemning the dissemination of the letter of demands and pointing out that advice was given to the Rulers are not to be issued in public form.
Despite this less than encouraging response from the state, the intellectuals of the Sahwa were convinced that the reform project had to be continued. When Hamdān al-Hamdān, chairman of the Department of Islamic Culture at King Saud University , was dismissed from his post at the end of 1991 because of his criticism of the Saudi participation in the Madrid conference , 15 Sahwis established the "University Committee for Reform" as an informal group and deliberation "( laǧnat al-ǧāmiʿa li-l-iṣlāḥ wa-l-munāṣaḥa ), also known by its Arabic acronym Lidschām ( liǧām ). This group subsequently worked out a commentary on the "Letter of Demands", which specified the individual demands and also added the demand that scholars should also be appointed to the "Council of the Committee of Great Scholars" by their ability to ijtihad were excellent. The document, known as the "Memorandum of Advice" ( muḏakkirat an-naṣīḥa ) was 120 pages long and was signed by a total of 110 scholars, 80 of whom belonged to the Sahwa, including Salmān al-ʿAuda, ʿĀ'id al-Qarnī and Safar al-Hawālī. The presentation of the memorandum to the king in mid-1992 and its simultaneous publication in the Arab newspaper al-Muharrir in Paris aroused great anger among the royal family.
The regime subsequently withdrew its favor from the Sahwa sheikhs and began to take measures against them. ʿĀ'id al-Qarnī was banned from preaching as early as the summer of 1992, and similar measures were taken against all other prominent members of the circle by early 1993. In mid-1993, fundraising outside of the official channels was banned to prevent such funds from going to the Sahwa. The state measures against the Sahwa meant that by 1993 they lost much of their social influence to other scholarly networks , in particular to the circle around the Salafi Sheikh Muhammad Amān al-Jāmī (born 1930) and his student Rabīʿ al-Madchalī , who had previously been in a rivalry with the Sahwa.
In September 1994, after a series of rallies in Buraida and Riyadh known as the "Buraida Intifada " for which the Sahwa was held responsible, the authorities arrested all of the circle's leaders and top activists, 110 people in total. including Salmān al-ʿAuda and Safar al-Hawālī. The wave of arrests continued until the summer of 1995. In March 1995, Nāsir al-ʿUmar and other Sahwis were arrested for criticizing Ibn Bāz's 1993 fatwa, which allowed for a peace agreement with Israel, to be arrested. In June 1996, another 50 university professors with ties to the Sahwa were dismissed from their posts, including Muhammad Qutb, who was deported to Qatar . Their positions were mainly re-filled with supporters of Sheikh al-Jami.
Some Sahwis, such as Saʿd al-Faqīh and Muhammad al-Masʿarī, who were released, went outside the country and set up opposition organizations in exile, from where they campaigned for the detainees. The most important opposition organization of the Sahwa abroad became MIRA ( Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia ) in London, which made the plight of the prisoners public. In Saudi Arabia itself, however, the Sahwa uprising ended with the wave of imprisonment in 1995. Although the years of imprisonment were a time of suffering for the Sahwis, on the other hand, the self-sacrifice demonstrated in this way also enabled them to accumulate symbolic capital that became popular and celebrity struck down.
The "new Sahwa"
From 1997 the Sahwis were released in small groups, on June 25, 1999 the leading members Salmān al-ʿAuda, Safar al-Hawālī and Nāsir al-ʿUmar were also released. Because of the reputation they have gained for their criticism of the regime, the Sahwa scholars were able to easily overshadow the state religious establishment, which consisted mainly of the pale Abd al-Aziz bin Abdullah Al-Sheikh . After the Internet was introduced in Saudi Arabia in 1998 , the Sahwis made extensive use of this medium and built virtual communities of like-minded people. The Sahwa camp now fell into three different groups, which Lacroix called "new Sahwa", "Islamo-liberals" and "neo-jihadis". While the Islamo-liberals continued to demand a radical form of the political system and the neo-jihadis saw all-out war against the United States and support for al-Qaeda as the highest priority, the representatives of the "new Sahwa", including the earlier ones, proposed The main actors of the Sahwa belonged to a more moderate tone towards the state and presented themselves as representatives of a middle way ( wasatīya ). One of the most famous internet forums of the Sahwa became the "Club of the Middle Way" ( muntadā al-wasatīya ) founded by Muhsin al-ʿAwādschī in 2000 . The support of the regime by the sheikhs of the new Sahwa resulted in the regime becoming more tolerant of them.
With reference to the ideal of the middle ground and the principle of the "common good" (al-maṣlaḥa al-ʿāmma) , the sheikhs of the new Sahwa also condemned the use of force, such as the terrorist attacks of September 11th . When 34 people died in a series of suicide attacks by al-Qaeda in Riyadh on May 12, 2003 , al-ʿAudah, al-Hawālī and several other important members of the Sahwa group signed a declaration condemning the attacks. When the government published wanted lists, the Zahwi sheikhs called on the jihadis to surrender themselves and prevent further bloodshed. At times they even started negotiations with the jihadists.
In addition, they defended the regime against the supporters of the reform movement of Saʿd al-Faqīh , who spread his criticism of the Saudi royal family via internet forums and satellite radio in Saudi Arabia. The group enjoyed even greater freedom in 2005 than it did before it faced the government in the early 1990s.
The Sahwa group continues to criticize the regime's close relationship with the United States and what it sees as an attack on Islamic beliefs and rituals. With regard to terrorism, the position of the Sahwa, in particular its two leaders al-Hawālī and al-ʿAuda, is ambivalent: While they condemn it in their own country, they advocate it abroad, in order to gain approval from the Saudi state and the Saudi Keep company. On November 5, 2004, on the eve of the Fallujah siege , 26 Saudi scholars, most of them Sahwis, signed an "open letter to the Iraqi people" calling on Iraqis to enter into a defensive jihad against the American military occupation. It is the difference in attitudes towards the strategic partnership with the US that divides the Sahwa and the government camp in Saudi Arabia the most.
Differences within the group
With regard to foreign policy issues and the rejection of militant Islamists in their own country, the Sahwa scholars form a common front, but there is less consensus among the Sahwa on other issues, especially those relating to religious and political pluralism in the country. Salmān al- ʿAuda, for example, met with Sufis and the Shiite scholar Hasan as-Saffār at a "Conference for National Dialogue" organized by Crown Prince Abdullah ibn Abd al-Aziz in June 2003 and is also said to have created the reform petition a constitutional monarchy of December 2003, which was signed by several other Sahwa members. ʿĀ'id al-Qarnī demonstratively visited Shiite communities and personalities in the province of al-Sharqiyya in 2004 . Safar al-Hawālī and Nāsir al-ʿUmar, on the other hand, reject any dialogue with the Saudi Shiites and also reject political reforms.
literature
- Madawi Al-Rasheed: Contesting the Saudi State: Islamic voices from a new generation. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2007. pp. 59-101.
- Mamoun Fandy: Saudi Arabia and the Politics of Dissent . New York: Palgrave 1999.
- Thomas Hegghammer: Jihad in Saudi Arabia. Violence and Pan-Islamism since 1979. Cambridge [u. a.]: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2010.
- Toby Craig Jones: "The Clerics, the Sahwa and the Saudi State" in Strategic Insights IV / 3 (March 2005), (online)
- Gilles Kepel: The War for Muslim Minds: Islam and the West . Translated by P. Ghazaleh. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2004. pp. 177-193.
- Stéphane Lacroix: Awakening Islam. The politics of religious dissent in contemporary Saudi Arabia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press 2011.
Individual evidence
- ↑ See Al-Rasheed 77.
- ↑ See Jones 9.
- ↑ Cf. Kepel 177, Al-Rasheed 66.
- ↑ See Al-Rasheed 66.
- ↑ Cf. Kepel 182.
- ↑ See Hegghammer 4.
- ↑ See Lacroix 245.
- ↑ See the translated text of the document in Lacroix 179f.
- ↑ See Lacroix 184.
- ↑ See Lacroix 174.
- ↑ See Lacroix 185-7.
- ↑ See Lacroix 203.
- ↑ See Lacroix 210.
- ↑ See Lacroix 212-229.
- ↑ See Hegghammer 70 and Lacroix 205.
- ↑ See Al-Rasheed 83 and Lacroix 205.
- ↑ See Lacroix 204.
- ↑ See Lacroix 214.
- ↑ See Al-Rasheed 77.
- ↑ See Al-Rasheed 86.
- ↑ See Lacroix 238.
- ↑ See Al-Rasheed 72.
- ↑ See Lacroix 238.
- ↑ See Lacroix 240.
- ↑ See Al-Rasheed 70.
- ↑ See Lacroix 241.
- ↑ See Lacroix 246.
- ↑ See Lacroix 243.
- ↑ See Al-Rasheed 83.
- ↑ Cf. Al-Rasheed 85f.
- ↑ See Jones 4.
- ↑ See Al-Rasheed 96.
- ↑ See Al-Rasheed 92.
- ↑ See Jones 5 and Al-Rasheed 94.
- ↑ See Jones 6.
- ↑ See Lacroix 244.
- ↑ See Lacroix 248.
- ↑ See Jones 7 and Lacroix 183.