islamism and the wheel of history: celal nuri (ottoman...

York Norman

Islamism and the Wheel of History:

Celal Nuri (Ottoman Turkey, 1914), Sayyid Qutb (Egypt, 1964), and

Mohammad Khatami (Iran, 1998)

Abstract:

This article discusses the ideas of three critical Islamic thinkers, Celal Nuri (1882-1936), an

Ottoman Young Turk intellectual, Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966), an Egyptian Islamist militant and

Mohammad Khatami (b. 1943), former president of Iran, as they relate their ideas on state

formation. In particular, it examines Nuri's thoughts in 1914 about his country's entry into the

First World War, and his fear that his empire was about to break up despite its openness to

outside cultures. The defeat of the Ottomans by the British and its allies led to a series of

mandated states, whose subjects soured towards ideas of liberalism and nationalism that so

inspired Nuri. This led to the rise of radical Islamists like Qutb, who saw salvation in embracing

a totalitarian version of political Islam that viewed political and cultural pluralism as heresy. His

ideas undoubtedly spawned terrorist groups like Al Qaeda, but had much less of an effect on

Islamic regimes like Iran, which tapped into nationalist sentiments just as much as

fundamentalist Islam. New generations of Iranian leaders, like Khatami, would argue in favor of

reconciliation with the United States in an effort to overcome national grievances against

colonialism. Khatami's efforts, like Nuri's, were largely ignored by the West, frustrating possible

transitions from Islamist to secular states.

Introduction:

Celal Nuri (1882-1936), an Ottoman Young Turk intellectual and arguably the most

prolific Islamist writer of the empire, wrote a treatise in November 1914 reflecting at length on

the fate of his own country’s recent declaration of war against the Entente. He framed his

discussion by citing the renowned classical Arab historian Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406): “Ever since

...Khaldun, people have looked at nations as individuals who go through stages, like infancy,

youth, adulthood, old age and death.”1 Nuri applied this principle to all major parties in the

1 Celal Nuri, İttihad-i İslam ve Almanya: İttihad-i İslam’a Zeyl (The Unity of Islam and Germany: A supplement to

the Unity of Islam), (İstanbul: 1914), 12. For further work on Celal Nuri, see: Cemal Aydın, The Politics of Anti-

Westernism in Asia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 99-104; Recep Duymaz, “Celal Nuri İleri,”

İslam Ansiklopedisi, vol. 7 (İstanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 1993), 242-245, and Christoph Herzog, Geschichte und

Ideologie: Mehmed Murat und Celal Nuri über die historischen Ursachen des osmanischen Niedergangs (Berlin:

Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1996), 88-195.

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conflict, claiming that the English and French had all benefited from the fruits of the

Enlightenment by adopting its ideal of reason and applying it to their society through education

and the economy. But these two powers had made a critical mistake in colonizing and repressing

others, and refusing to pass on the benefits of their knowledge. This decision had prematurely

aged those powers, and the non-Western victims of their aggression were now themselves young

nations who stood to overturn the old order. He feared that Germany, his country’s primary ally,

after winning the present war, might make the same mistake.

Nuri also saw the First World War as a great opportunity for the Ottoman Empire to

realize its ambitions to form a federation of Islamic nations, including Turks, Arabs, Persians and

other African and Asian peoples. This federation, making up one-sixth of the world population,

would become a great power, and work with others, like Germany, Austria-Hungary and China,

to establish a peaceful, new order. The war had almost the opposite effect, as the British and

French would achieve victory, dismember the Ottoman Empire, and rule much of the Islamic

world through colonies, protectorates, and mandated states.

This defeat raises the question of how Nuri’s principle of the rise and fall of nations truly

applied to Muslim states and the Islamist ideals which sometimes undergirded it. Islamism, a

political movement whose ultimate aim was to unify all Muslims in one state, first arose in the

wake of the Russian-Ottoman War of 1877-1878, when the Ottomans lost much of the Balkans

and Caucasus. The war triggered a mass exodus of Muslim refugees from these areas into

Istanbul, who then pressured Sultan Abdulhamid II (1876-1909), the reigning monarch, to launch

a war of revenge to take back their homes. Abdulhamid II quickly sought to take advantage of

this moment by emphasizing the Ottomans as an empire run by Islamic principles and laws. To

the Sultan, the loss was the fault of secular-minded reformers who mistakenly gave equality to

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non-Muslim subjects. These subjects interpreted this as a sign of weakness and a reason to

revolt. Abdulhamid II claimed the title of caliph, or the political head of the Muslim community,

since the Ottomans were the greatest independent Muslim state, and the guardians of Mecca and

Medina, the two holy cities of Islam. Abdulhamid II used this post to threaten the British,

French, and Russians with holy war (jihad), a menace which helped cement the Entente and

attracted German Kaiser Wilhelm the Second to support his cause.

Nuri, a Young Turk, sought to transfigure Islamism from its more fundamentalist

beginnings to a more mature, liberal form. Admittedly Nuri, like the Islamists during

Abdulhamid’s reign, bitterly denounced the Entente as an alliance of colonialist powers intent on

enslaving their subject peoples. He, like many of the Young Turks, was profoundly shaken by

the loss of Libya, and their remaining Balkan territories in the five years after they took power in

1908. Still, he was also an enthusiastic supporter of the Young Turk military coup, which

transformed the Sultanate into a constitutional monarchy. That Nuri shied away from claiming

the Sultan as caliph is no surprise. But his departure from original Islamism was more profound,

for he did not full-heartedly embrace the Ottoman declaration of jihad in 1914, implying that he

disagreed with the fundamental division of the world between Muslim and non-Muslim states.

Nuri felt that the only way the Ottomans and the Islamic world could survive was to

accommodate the prevailing trends towards nationalism, and the secularization of education and

laws. Muslim states like his own could make a smooth transition, he contended, as they too

valued the inviolability of human life and happiness. Nuri’s vision would ultimately only be

accomplished in modern Turkey, where Atatürk (1882-1938) created an independent, secular

state with a guiding slogan of “peace at home, peace in the world.” It is no accident that Atatürk

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would entrust Nuri and others like him to help write the new republican constitution.2

The Entente ignored this potential, and effectively turned back the clock on much of the

Middle East when they dismembered the Ottoman state in favor of smaller successor states

which the British and French controlled. Rather than helping the states develop independently

along a liberal, nationalist path as Nuri had envisioned, the British and French compromised

native political elites in the face of their public by forcing them to submit to their ultimate

authority and agree to military, commercial, and social concessions. Much of the population

learned to associate liberal nationalism with colonial control, and turned instead to Islamism as a

solution. This tendency undermined governments in the region well after British influence in the

region had waned, such as in Nasser’s Egypt or Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s Iran.

In Egypt, Nasser was in a constant struggle with the Muslim Brotherhood, a group

dedicated to establishing an Islamist state since the group’s foundation in 1928. Hassan al-Banna

(1906-1949), the founder of the movement, was assassinated after the Muslim Brotherhood had

killed the prime minister of Egypt, and Nasser quickly banned the group once he took power in

1952. The group would find its intellectual successor in Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966), a figure seen

by most Islamists as important to their movement as Karl Marx was to Communism.3 In

Milestones (1964), Qutb’s most influential text, he reformulated Islamism as an underground

social struggle to overturn Nasser and other secular Middle Eastern governments in favor of a

fundamentalist Islamic state grounded in Islamic law (shariah). It was the duty of all true

Muslims to mercilessly persecute those who profaned Islam by accepting Western cultural

values. Such a social movement waged continual struggle (jihad) against liberal values until all

2 Duymaz, 244.

3 John Esposito, The Future of Islam (London: Oxford University Press), 67.

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submitted to God’s will. Ultimately, the movement would move from a single state―such as

Egypt―to a global struggle between those who accepted Islam (darulislam) and those who

resisted (jahiliyyah).

As such, Qutb’s version of Islamism was far more totalitarian in nature than that of even

Abdulhamid II. Although Abdulhamid II may have reestablished the caliphate, reaffirmed

Islamic law and threatened others with holy war, he never sought to provoke his adherents to

wage a continual social struggle against others, nor did he envision jihad as going beyond a

defensive war against impending European colonial expansion. Qutb would likely have

condemned Abdulhamid―and certainly Nuri―of jahiliyyah―as they did not take his struggle to

its logical conclusion. The main reason for this difference, I will argue, stems from Qutb and his

movement’s absolute alienation from the Egyptian state, a relationship that contrasts starkly with

Abdulhamid and Nuri, both of whom worked within the Ottoman governing tradition. The result

of this alienation would be a radicalization of Islamism that spawned the assassination of Anwar

Sadat in 1981 and inspired Osama Bin Laden to found Al Qaeda and wreak acts of terror against

the United States and anyone else that upheld a liberal value system abhorrent to their own

narrow, fundamentalist vision of the world.

The Islamic revolution that Qutb desperately hoped for in Egypt occurred in Iran in

1979. The Mohammad Reza Shah (1941-1979), unlike Nasser, was still seen as a compromised

leader, given his continual reliance on the United States. Mohammad Mossadegh (1882-1967), a

liberal Iranian reformer, nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1951 and hoped to form

an independent republic. The Shah had left Iran and was brought back only after an American-

sponsored coup two years later. Both liberal nationalists and the Shah fell into disgrace, and the

alienated populace looked to the Islamists and leftists as alternatives. Islamism in Iran was

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uniquely defined by its adherence to Twelver Shiism, a fact that limited its appeal to other

Twelver Shiite communities, such as southern Iraq, southern Lebanon, and minorities throughout

the Gulf region. Iran was the natural home for such a movement as seen in its sizable population

and the fact that common religion, not ethnicity, defined Iranian identity. This was a heritage

from its earlier Safavid dynasty, when the bulk of the population converted from Sunism to their

new faith. Thus, opposition to Khomeini’s Islamic Republic was much more out of secular

conviction than religious difference.

Khomenei and the Iranian revolutionaries consolidated their hold on power by appealing

to nationalist sentiments. Taking over the U.S. Embassy in November 1979 did not disturb many

Iranians given the Mossadegh affair, and Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran pitted a secular

Sunni against an upcoming Shiite power.

But other political tensions simmered within the new republic. Khomeini, who held one

of the highest religious posts in Twelver Shiism, that of ayatollah, was the most prominent

member of the traditionally powerful Iranian elite of religious judges (mullahs). His insistence

that the republic install him as the first supreme religious authority of the state, assured that he

and his fellow mullahs would maintain ultimate control of the new system.

Yet, one such mullah, Mohammad Khatami, President of Iran (1997-2005), played a

pivotal role in his openness towards political reform and religious change. This tendency dates

back to his appointment by the regime to the Islamic Institute in Hamburg, Germany where he

was exposed to a wide variety of scholars, intellectuals, and communities different from his own.

Khatami, part of a distinguished family of clerics with close personal ties to Khomenei and his

supporters also served for an extended period as cultural minister. His prominent role in 1978-

1979 in the Society of Combatant Clergy―a key organization in mobilizing popular support for

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the revolution in Iran and establishing the new regime―greatly enhanced his credibility among

conservatives. His appeal to multiple audiences in Iran―reformists and

conservatives―ultimately resulted in his election to the second highest office in the state.

Once president, Khatami would soon make a bold attempt to transform the regime. On

January 7, 1998, he had an extended televised interview with CNN chief international

correspondent Christiane Amanpour, in which he attempted to open the first major political

dialogue with the United States after nearly a generation of hostility.4 Although defensive of his

regime's legitimacy and its longtime conflicts with Washington, Khatami saw similarities

between America and Iran in terms of their commitment towards political and religious liberty.

He would openly cite Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (1831), a work

fundamental to American political identity, in support of his ideas, revealing that mature

Islamists worked within a multicultural framework. Such arguments were much like Nuri’s

wartime appeal in 1914, but they held even greater promise, given Khatami's political

prominence, and the fact that war between Iran and the United States seemed remote.

The timing seemed perfect. Both Iran and the United States were emerging out of the

Cold War era, one as an emerging Middle Eastern power, and the other as the dominant actor

and global events. Bill Clinton, President of the United States (1993-2001), seemed eager to

cement his political legacy by acting as a global peacemaker, successfully convening the Oslo

peace accord between the Israelis and Palestinians, intervening in Bosnia on behalf of the

Bosnian Muslims and Croats, and even ending the violence in Northern Ireland.

Nevertheless, the American response to this opening was muted. Clinton, previously

4 “Transcript of Interview with Mohammad Khatami” http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9801/07/iran/interview.html

(accessed March 20, 2012). This source is hereafter noted as “Khatami CNN interview.”

http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9801/07/iran/interview.html

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committed to a policy of containing Iran's political influence in neighboring Iraq and its alleged

ambitions―even then―of pursuing nuclear weapons. US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright

would take two years before she would respond, and then only with the simple acknowledgment

that Iranian resentment towards the United States for supporting a coup against Mossadegh was

“understandable.” Later, when Al Qaeda launched the 9/11 attacks against the United States,

Khatami and even Ayatollah Seyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei, the current Supreme Leader of Iran,

expressed their sympathies to the victims, the George W. Bush administration looked askance.

By January 2002 Bush named Iran as part of the “axis of evil,” and after invading neighboring

Iraq some two months later, Iranian hardliners had regained the upper hand.

The continuing tensions we see today between Iran and the United States are indicative of

the impending military confrontation much in the same way the Ottoman Empire and England

was nearly a century ago. Thus, it would seem that the United States, like England before it,

would be set on a pattern of military confrontation, invasion, and ensuing occupation, which

would potentially degenerate Islamism to Qutb's stateless movement of social terror, a phantasm,

which continues to haunt us today.

Celal Nuri and the fate of Ottoman Turkey:

Nevertheless, Nuri, like any Islamist writer defending his state against impending foreign

control, was quick to denounce colonialism. To Nuri, “the Empire where the sun never sets”

encapsulated what went wrong with the world. The British were most responsible for European

expansion overseas, establishing colonies from Ireland, North America, and the Caribbean to

Australia, Hong Kong, India, Afghanistan, Kenya and South Africa. These developments would

not have been possible without the sheer power of the British fleets, which transformed their

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country into the dominant power of the age through a series of armed conflicts, from the defeat

of the Spanish Armada to the Seven Years and Napoleonic wars.

In Nuri’s eyes, the British followed the unfortunate path of claiming “command for him

who conquers,” meaning that the British should use their power to sell all and use all for their

own profit:

England …[is] the greatest colonial [power], and any of [its] accomplishments have come

at the cost of the materials and spiritual well-being of humanity. It is possible to meet

eminently knowledgeable Englishmen in the schools and chemistry laboratories of

…London. The English are the most free to speak their minds and their literature and arts

[are also great]. Shakespeare, Milton, Carlyle and Stevens are English… [But] England

has 375 million prisoners of war. How much injustice has been wreaked on these peoples,

suppressing their humanity, extinguishing their talents and breaking down their self-

respect in power. All of these victims have had brilliant pasts, noble goals and laws. Is it

possible that a few works of art can erase the sin of this terrible crime? We should not be

defeated by appearances… [This state is] in decline…. England is preoccupied with

holding on to its property. Consequently, if the earth remains in their hands, civilization

will decay and mankind will diminish.5

Nuri feared the Germans―the Ottomans’ erstwhile allies―would also ruin themselves with their

imperialist ambitions. After winning great victories against the French at Paris and Sedan, and

developing the factories and railroads, the Germans used their might to seize colonies in China

and East Africa. He warned that the Germans should not continue such actions after the war with

the Muslims:

Germany should not be eager to pursue colonization after victory, for if they do, they will

become like England. Their modern weaponry and economic development are not

sufficient for this task... In the future, Germany and the Islamic world can agree to

respect each other equally... Germany can find customers for its industries and does not

need old-fashioned imperialism.6

5 Nuri, Almanya, 57-58.

6 Nuri, Almanya, 31.

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Although the Germans had recently given two modern cruisers in order to secure Ottoman entry

into the war, Nuri complained that Von Biberstein, the German ambassador to the Porte, openly

refused Ottoman further requests for military and economic aid, and insisted that Germany retain

its capitulary privileges in hopes of securing the empire under its influence.7

Nuri begged the Germans to look to the Chinese to learn how to interact with other states.

“The Chinese nation is not aggressive,” Nuri claimed, “and their philosophers pity those

Europeans who fight each other.” He further argued that they had “reached a stage of civilization

that no European has achieved,” since “they spurned the law that command is for him who

conquers.”8 They too knew nations that oppress would artificially age. This was a truism that

seemed Taoistic. Wars of exploitation and colonial domination were bound to provoke an equal

and opposite reaction―rebellion and a new non-Western world order based on mutual respect.

This lesson of yin and yang was universal, as Muslims, Jews and Christians alike were taught to

live by the principle “that you reap what you sow.”

Nuri saw Western secular progressives as following the same philosophy. He would cite

Charles Darwin’s findings that humans were the greatest of creatures because they had

developed an acute sense of right and wrong, and the need to sacrifice individual and national

self-interest for the communal good of the species.9 Nuri also saw socialists, as fellow travelers



9 Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, second edition (New York: D. Appleton &

Co., 1896), 124-125.

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on the road towards global social harmony since they too decried exploitation and wished to

overturn the imperialist order.10

Muslims too were a positive force in the history of the world:

European nations can be powerful colonizers, but Muslims have been the most successful

in spreading civilization, and therefore are the most civilized state. For it is the Muslims

that have been able to spread religious institutions, the arts, and other important cultural

principles to different races.11

Nuri repeatedly compared the Islamic world to the Romans, whose multi-ethnic empire

lasted centuries beyond the lifespan of most nation states. They both were extremely effective,

because they “reached out to those who have not prospered materially.” The core Muslim belief

systems, the Koran, and their charitable institutions “are very simple and suitable to the needs of

primitive nations.” Wherever Muslims have passed, they have left their foundations and beliefs.

“People have come across tribes today that accepted Islam in the remotest parts of Africa, where

no European ever came.”12

Despite the Muslims’ peaceful, positive role in promoting the “gradual evolution of

peoples,” Nuri posited that no empire could achieve its mission without conquest:

World peace and brotherhood can unfortunately only be attained by the sword. This can

be seen previously in history when Rome established the Pax Romana only after

annexing the known world. The Prophet Muhammad united the Islamic world in similar

conditions. Peace only follows after one power defeats another, and thus, the building of

a new unity of states depends on defeating Europe.13

In practical terms the Ottoman Turks’ primary war aim was to liberate their Muslim brethren and

10

Celal Nuri, İttihad-i İslam: İslamın Mazisi, Hali, İstikbali (The Unity of Islam: Islam’s Past, Present and Future),

(İstanbul, 1912), 291.

11 Nuri, İttihad-i İslam, 197.

12 Nuri, İttihad-i İslam, 207-208.


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form a greater federation. They should send their army to the Suez Canal to rescue the Egyptians,

and come to the aid of the Persians and Afghans from their entrapment by the British and

Russians. They would thereby “fulfill the logic of history” since their victory over the Entente

would herald “the dawn of a new age in geography, law, commerce, administration, art and

reform [in the Islamic lands]. Perhaps 1914 will become a more important year than 1789, or

even an entire century of the renaissance.”14

Yet the Ottomans and their German allies could only launch this golden age if they took

to heart the Islamic principle that governed international relations. He cited the beginning line of

the Koran’s injunction on conquest: “We granted you a clear victory. May God forgive you for

your past and future sins.”15

This statement warned that victorious nations should have mercy on

the defeated or those who now fell under their rule. The true struggle was not a holy war against

the infidel, but instead one of restraining passions in favor of human liberty and mutual respect.

All along these lines, Nuri conceived the present war as limited in nature, since the Ottomans

simply sought to restore Muslim dignity. Once this goal was attained, peace would ensue, an

argument not all that different from the familiar refrain that this would be “a war to end all

wars.”

Nuri was mindful, though, that his Muslim federation should respect nationalism as a

motivating force within the Islamic order. In the past Nuri made surprising claims about non-

Muslim nationalist movements:

The Armenian nation has continued to live in misery among the decadent Oriental

people. There was no difference between Turks and Armenians in the past but during the

14

Nuri, Almanya, 15.


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last hundred years, Armenian national consciousness has awoken.... The Armenian nation

imitated the Europeans and Americans, and civilized themselves. The Armenians learned

their work ethic, and today they contribute much to eastern intellectual and economic life.

Similarly, the Greeks were in a very poor state before the Morean rebellion. The people

were unaware of themselves. The Etniki Eterya committee revived the Greeks and they

became civilized with the national spirit. They became engaged in commerce, and

independence followed.16

Here he implied that the Turks too should revitalize themselves. The fruits of this effort were

apparent to many Young Turks, Nuri included:

Turkish unity is an obligation, and in fact a sacred duty. The Turks should know that they

are part of an enormous nation of 75 million no matter which state they are subject to.

Turks have mutual moral qualities, virtues, customs, ethics, religion, language and

aspirations. Their goals are one. Those who improve their national sentiments progress in

our day and age...[This progress leads] to economic, social, scientific and educational

advances.17

Enver Pasha (1885-1920), who led the Young Turks into the First World War, cherished this

goal so much that he would make several vain attempts to establish greater Turkestan. He was

personally responsible for such actions as the disastrous loss of 50,000 troops in the failed

Caucasian campaign of 1915, the short-lived occupation of Azerbaijan in the wake of the

Russian Revolution, and his last suicidal invasion of Lenin’s Russia in 1920.

Nuri was aware, however, that the Turks would have to learn to respect other nations if

they were to work to achieve a greater Muslim empire. This was quite apparent when he talked

about the Arabs, who he argued, should be given autonomy in much the same way the Austrians

granted rights to the Hungarians:

The Arab provinces and people are impossible to separate from the Ottoman sultanate

and the Islamic caliphate... They like us have rights within the state... It is necessary to

give the Arabs their own administration, at least in terms of local government...

16

Nuri, İttihad-i İslam, 169-170.


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especially in regard to the Arabic language, the judiciary and primary school education.18

If the Turks did not do this, he warned that Mecca and Medina would be lost, and the Sultan

would lose his role as the leader of the Islamic world.

Nuri similarly saw the secular principle that sustained nationalism as also key to

modernizing his state. Nuri would go so far as to argue in favor of removing religion from the

public sphere:

They [the French] overthrew the monks in 1789, leading to the separation of church and

state, and spiritual and material progress came about as a result. The idea of freedom has

not flourished on Islamic lands, and consequently the power and dignity of the individual

has been diminished.19

The centrality of Islamism’s gradual secularization to Nuri’s argument is also evident in his

model of Ibn Khaldun. Ibn Khaldun was not only the first true historian of Islamic civilization,

but he also was unalterably suspicious of those who held holy writ above rational criticism. Nuri

quite likely styled himself as a witness to the ultimate evolution of that civilization to a point

where faith and reason could coexist, and “spiritual and material progress would come about as a

result.” His belief in the Ottoman just war would betray this mission, and the chance for

Islamism’s transformation to mature statehood beyond the borders of the future Republic of

Turkey would be lost for generations.

Sayyid Qutb and stateless Islamism:

Sayyid Qutb, writing fifty years after Nuri, would lead Islamism in an entirely different

direction. Qutb―deeply affected by the fundamental disconnect between Egypt’s Muslim

masses and those who held the levers of power―sought to establish a political Islamic

18

Nuri, İttihad-i İslam, 120.


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movement that was bent on seizing power. As the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood,

Egypt’s most powerful Islamist party, Qutb naturally grew up resenting British colonial rule, and

acknowledged that intellectual heritage: “the British Empire...is based on national greed... and

exploits those colonies [they] annexed.”20

Qutb would be far more militant towards the British

prior to the Free Officer’s coup of 1952 when Nasser came to power. Yet, Nasser’s failure to

include him or the Muslim Brotherhood within the new government led him to criticize those

who would seek to secularize Egypt, and use Islamic principles to justify such actions. He would

therefore spend much effort in decrying reformers like Nasser, Atatürk and Nuri to separate

church from state:

Sometimes …[the problem] appears in the form of a society in which the existence of

Allah is not denied, but His domain is restricted to the heavens and His rule on earth is

suspended. Neither the Shari`ah nor the values prescribed by Allah and ordained by Him

as eternal and invariable find any place in its scheme of life. In such a society, people are

permitted to attend mosques, churches and synagogues; yet it does not tolerate any

demand by them that the Shari`ah of Allah be applied in their daily affairs. In such a

society Allah’s sovereignty on earth, is openly denied or suspended, while the Qur’an

says: It is He Who is Sovereign in the heavens and Sovereign in the earth. Because of this

behavior, such a society cannot be considered as following the religion of Allah as

defined by Him: The (authority to) command belongs to God alone. He commands you

not to worship anyone except Him. This is the right way of life.”21

People who made such efforts were in a “state of ignorance from the guidance of God”

(jahiliyyah), since they were in fact trying to compromise their faith in Islam with other beliefs.

He condemned this as “polytheism” (shirk):

It is futile to try to construct a system of life, which is half-Islam and half-jahiliyyah.

Allah does not forgive any association with His person, and likewise He does not accept

20

Sayyid Qutb, Milestones, translated from the Arabic by Ahmad Zaki Hammad (Indianapolis: American Trust

Publications, 1990), 41.

21 Qutb, 79-80.

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any association with His revealed way of life. Both are equally shirk in the sight of Allah,

because both are the product of the same mentality.22

Those that tried to justify openness to other cultures and traditions as a way of

modernizing Islam were ignoramuses (jahili) that deserved special condemnation:

We ought not to be defeated to such an extent that we start looking for similarities with

Islam in the current systems or in current religions or current ideas. We reject these

systems in the East as well as in the West. We reject them all, as indeed they are

retrogressive and in opposition to the direction toward which Islam is leading mankind.23

Particularly dangerous in Qutb’s view were the secular interpretations of history, philosophy,

ethics, theology, comparative religion and sociology, since “all these disciplines…come into

conflict, explicitly or implicitly, with the fundamentals of … Islam.”24

Such vitriol seems to be

aimed at the likes of Nuri, as his work sought to use these disciplines to justify Islam’s open

relationship to the modern world.

Qutb was just as critical of nationalism―the dominant motivating force in Middle

Eastern political life since the end of the Second World War. Nasser, the military dictator of

Egypt, had endeared himself to the Egyptian public by nationalizing the Suez Canal and defying

the subsequent British, French, and Israeli invasion. Qutb, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood,

was particularly disturbed that Nasser’s brand of pan Arab socialism would undercut the viability

of his own movement. He condemned loyalty to homeland as yet another form of polytheism and

called his followers to free themselves “from the bondage of flesh and blood and the pride of soil

and country.” For the Muslim, Qutb maintained, his “country has not been a piece of land, but

22

Qutb, 114.

23 Qutb, 117-118.

24 Qutb, 94.

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the homeland of Islam―the homeland, where faith rules and the Shari’ah of Allah holds

sway.”25

To Qutb, the only state a Muslim could be loyal to would be one firmly rooted in Islamic

law and the preservation of the Islamic community, which was only a future hypothetical, since

he saw no such state as existing at the time he wrote. A Muslim would have to pledge himself to

the Islamic community its beliefs, ideas, observances of worship and legal regulations “to Allah

alone.”26

This leads to the question of how one becomes a truly observant Muslim. In his eyes, the

key to successful conversion was the sincere acceptance of the Muslim Witness to Faith “that

there is no god but Allah and that Muhammed is the Messenger of Allah.”27

This acceptance

entailed submitting oneself entirely to God’s will, cutting oneself off from jahiliyyah in all of its

forms, and joining the Islamic community in complete obedience to its laws and leadership.

Here he would be following the example of Muhammad himself, as he soon found

fellowship among his converted companions after receiving his divine revelation, and left with

them to reform the Islamic community in exile in Medina. While in exile, the Muslim―like

25

Qutb, 107. One should also note that Qutb expounded at length on communism, a rival movement to his own.

Qutb remarks at length that Muhammad could have easily started a “war against the class of nobles and the wealthy

taking away their wealth, and distributing it among the poor.” If he had, Qutb asserted, “Arab society would have

been divided into two classes, the great majority supporting the new movement because they were sick of the

tyranny of wealth, nobility and power and a small minorities possessing these things.” Communism, Qutb admitted,

was like Islam in that it demolished “the walls of race, color, nation and geographical region” but it was materialistic

rather than spiritual. “The Communist ideology and Communist system reduce man to the level of an animal or a

machine” since the history of the world from their perspective was a struggle over basic physical necessities. Qutb,

22, 41, 66.

26 Qutb, 64-65.

27 Qutb, 65.

Page | 18

Muhammad―would learn to be entirely dependent on his fellow believers, and be prepared to

sacrifice all to maintain the group’s collective welfare.

But these were merely the first steps in this struggle for the faith (jihad). Qutb highlighted

that Muhammad might have migrated from persecution at the hands of the polytheists, but he

eventually was “commanded to fight the polytheists until Allah’s religion (din) was fully

established.”28

This fight was all-encompassing in nature, as it was not to stop until every human

being was freed from the influence of jahiliyyah:

Since the objective of Islam is a decisive declaration of man’s freedom, not merely on the

philosophical plane but also in the actual life, it must employ jihad. It is immaterial

whether the homeland of Islam… is in a condition of peace or whether it is threatened by

its neighbors. When Islam calls for peace, its objective is not a superficial peace requiring

only that the part of the earth where the followers of Islam are residing remain secure.

The peace of Islam desires means that the…law of society be purified for Allah, that all

people should obey Allah alone, and every system that permits some people to rule over

others be abolished.29

The endpoint of this struggle would of course be the destruction of jahiliyyah society in

all its forms and the establishment of the entire world as the “abode of Islam.” Conversion to

Islam would not be forced on non-Muslim subjects, but they would be inside a system based on

Islamic law that would encourage them to do so. Non-Muslims would retain the right to worship

their own faith as long as it did not contradict the fundamentals of Islam, although they would

never hold the right to fully govern themselves. In time, Qutb believed that the remaining non-

Muslims would accept the call to convert, and the world would be united by faith. Qutb

envisioned this universal Islamic civilization as a virtual tree of life:

Indeed, it is the nature of this eternal and universal Islamic religion which requires this

particular method, as this [religion] stands entirely on belief in the Oneness of Allah, and

28

Qutb, 43.

29 Qutb, 51.

Page | 19

all its institutions and laws are derived from [this] great principle… A simile for this

[religion] is a strong, tall tree whose shade spreads far and wide and whose branches

reach toward the sky. Such a tree would naturally put its roots deep down into the earth

and spread them over a wide area, in proportion to its size. The case of this [religion] is

similar. Its system extends into all aspects of life; it treats all minor or major affairs of

mankind; it orders man’s life—not only in this world but also in the world to come; it

gives information about the Unseen as well as about the visible world; it not only deals

with material things but also purifies intentions and ideas. It is thus like a tall, strong,

wide-spreading tree; clearly its roots must go down deep and be in proportion to its size.30

The organic nature of Islam as a continual social movement that subsumes the individual

raises the issue of whether Qutb’s Islamism entailed totalitarianism. Qutb was rebelling against

liberal and cosmopolitan respect for other cultures and religions, according to Paul Berman.31

This view is indicated by Qutb himself when he claimed:

They knew very well that the proclamation, “there is no god except Allah,” was a

challenge to that worldly authority which had usurped the great attribute of Allah,

namely, sovereignty. This call to Islam was a rebellion against all modes of behavior

which have been devised under this usurpation and was a declaration of war against that

authority which legislates laws not permitted by God.32

Certainly Berman is also right in asserting Qutb’s apocalyptic view of the world as a struggle

between Islamic and non-Islamic states and cultures, and that the end of the history of the world

would lead to the total victory of Islam.33

A sense of terror also permeated Qutb’s work. Qutb’s assertion that the struggle with

jahiliyyah was an eternal one often waged by Muslim organizations, and not necessarily

governments, would justify Islamic puritan militants from carrying out acts to further the abode

of Islam. No limits outside of respecting non-Muslims who submit to Muslim rule are given, and

30

Qutb, 26-27.

31 Paul Berman, Terror and Liberalism (New York; London: W.W. Norton & Co., 2003), 99.

32 Qutb, 20-21.

33 Berman, 98.

Page | 20

Qutb seems even more permissive of acts against the “polytheist” rulers who dominated much of

the Islamic world at the time he wrote. Although Qutb was purposely vague about who the

“polytheists” might be, Nasser seemed to be well aware of the threat, and cited the publication of

Milestones and its message of Islamic revolution as a reason for his execution in 1966. Others,

including many within the Muslim Brotherhood, and militant Islamic groups would find both his

work and his “martyrdom” inspirational. It is not far-fetched to conceive that Khalid Islambouli

(1955-1982), the assassin of Anwar Sadat, was inspired by Qutb’s message when he proudly

exclaimed “I have killed the Pharaoh and do not fear death!” Ayman Zawahiri, a defender of

Islambouli and leader of Egypt’s Islamic Jihad, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, would

go on to help cofound Al-Qaeda with Osama bin Laden, to wage the fight against jahiliyyah in

all its forms.

Yet, Qutb’s intellectual alienation from the Egyptian political scene cannot be over

emphasized. Qutb would never have authored this extremist ideology if the government had

incorporated him or the Muslim Brotherhood earlier in some meaningful way. The fact remains

that Egypt under both the British and Nasser systematically excluded the Muslim Brotherhood

from participating, leading figures like Al-Banna and Qutb to denounce the regime from the

position of a total outsider. Corrupt or compromised governments―such as those led by secular

liberals under British rule―were particularly vulnerable to this oppositional movement. Nasser’s

popularity as a national savior certainly alleviated this threat, but his persecution of the Islamists

would only delay the threat. After Egypt’s defeat in the Six-Day War, the Muslim Brotherhood,

and other alienated Islamist parties like it, would promise that only they could deliver the

independence and Islamic identity many people of the region still craved.

Page | 21

Mohammad Khatami and the future of Iranian Islamism:

Khatami’s 1998 speech, delivered as head of state of an independent Islamic republic

seeking accommodation with the West, is much more reminiscent of Nuri than Qutb. Like Nuri,

he framed his message by comparing aspects of non-Muslim culture with his own:

The American civilization is worthy of respect. When we appreciate the roots of this

civilization, its significance becomes even more apparent. As you know, in Plymouth,

Massachusetts, there is a rock, which is respected and revered by all Americans. The

secret of American civilization lies in this rock. In early seventeenth century, those 125

men, women and children left England in search of a virgin land to establish a superior

civilization finally landed on this rock... The Puritans constituted a religious sect, whose

vision and characteristics, in addition to worshiping God, was in harmony with

republicanism, democracy, and freedom. They found the European climate too restrictive

for the implementation of their ideas and thoughts.34

Khatami cleverly articulated this vision of the United States in ways both Iranian and Americans

could understand. Iranians, for instance, would immediately identify Plymouth Rock as a

Christian version of the Kabaa, the most sacred shrine of Islam that sits in the heart of Mecca.

Social conservatives in both countries could find comfort in the idea that America was originally

a Christian nation, which escaped European oppression to found a new state based on religious

and political freedom. Faith and reason, Khatami intimated, could work together seamlessly to

build a new civilization and avoid the secularism and ethnic homogenization of the nationstate.35

He then described Iran in similar terms:

You are cognizant of the great heritage of the Iranian nation with its glorious civilization

and culture. Iran's glorious civilization was concurrent with the Greek city states and the

Roman Empire. After the advent of Islam, the Iranians ardently embraced it. The blend of

Iranian talents, and the sublime Islamic teachings was a miracle. Without intending to

deny the share of other nations and the formation of the Islamic civilization, I believe the

34

Khatami CNN interview.

35 Khatami CNN interview.

Page | 22

great Iranian civilization had a major role in developing and promoting the Islamic

system...The Iranian nation has driven to establish liberty, independence, and a noble way

of life. [This ultimately culminated in the Iranian revolution] which... couples religiosity

with liberty.36

Thus, Khatami argued that Iran and the United States were founded on similar cultural principles

that cried out for mutual understanding. He went on to illustrate that the strive for independence

formed yet another common link that could explain the unique relationship between the

American and Iranian Revolutions:

The American nation was the harbinger of independence struggles, the initiator of efforts

to establish independence, for whose cause it has offered many sacrifices, leading

ultimately to the Declaration of Independence, which is an important document on human

dignity and rights....[But I should also] refer to the struggles of Iranian people over the

last two centuries, which culminated in the quest for independence during the Islamic

Revolution launched by Imam Khomeini... Iran was in a terrible condition [at that time]:

the ...nation had been humiliated and its fate was decided by others.37

The irony is bittersweet. Just as the Americans had broken from English rule in 1776, so

Khatami argued that the Iranians sought independence from the Americans roughly 200 years

later. This had much to say about how their countries lived up to their own value systems. The

Iranians simply wanted to pursue their own liberties in a way that the Americans achieved

before.38

America unfortunately entered a period of crisis in recent times, according to Khatami:

“Unfortunately policies pursued by American politicians... over the past half-century since

World War II are incompatible with the American civilization, which is founded on democracy,

freedom and human dignity.”39

Those politicians were not the real representatives of their

36





Page | 23

civilization, but instead were “adventurers” who pursued “a flawed policy of domination.” This

policy “deprived and oppressed nations, including our own.” Specifically, he blamed the United

States for toppling Iranian Prime Minister Mossadegh, continuing to support the Shah’s “foreign

installed government,” and, most ominously, the imposition of “capitulations”―a status of

forces agreement, which gave the US jurisdiction over American military personnel based in

Iran. This was followed after the revolution, by official threats “to root out the Iranian nation,”

the U.S. downing of an Iranian aircraft carrier in 1988, allocations by U.S. Congress to topple the

Iranian government, and the passage of the D'Amato Act (1996) which sanctioned investors in

the Iranian energy industry, especially those involved in nuclear research.40

Such actions, in

Khatami’s opinion, led to a loss of trust, and a betrayal of America’s liberal ideals. Iran instead

carried out its “own activities and...[has] no need for political ties with the United States.”41

Khatami focused in particular on the issue of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

(NPT), and the concern of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that Iran had not

lived up to its commitments to that agreement:

It is ironic that those who are so concerned about saving humanity from nuclear weapons,

fully support Israel, which is a nuclear power and is unwilling to join the NPT or accept

IAEA safeguards, while leveling allegations against Iran, which has not even been able to

complete its first nuclear power plant, which began before the revolution. These are all

pretext for imposing certain policies on Iran and the region to create panic and mistrust.

We are not a nuclear power, nor intend to become one.42

40




Page | 24

This led to further complaints by Khatami about continual American support for Israel,

and the perception that Tel Aviv had an inordinate influence over US foreign policy was also

destabilizing. He went so far as to claim that:

Anti-Semitism …is a Western phenomenon [that]…has no precedence in Islam or in the

East... what concerns me is that… this Western anti-Semitism has turned into a tool for

the imposition of a whole range of improper policies and practices on the people of the

Middle East and Muslims in general.43

He concluded that Zionist persecution of the Palestinians amounted to acts of “state terrorism”

that deserved international condemnation. He believed that the majority of Jews did not support

the existence of Israel, and indeed regretted what the Zionists had done.

In his eyes, the United States, unlike Israel, still had a chance to enter a dialogue Iran.

The critical step would be for the Americans to “apologize to their own people for the approach

they have adopted.” This would spell an end to the “Cold War” of American imperialism.

America had overcome such problems before, Khatami maintained, when it had defeated another

set of colonialist “adventurers,” namely those fortune seekers who had come to America and

enslaved Africans in the American South: “There were numerous martyrs who gave their lives...

[to abolish slavery], the most famous of which was Abraham Lincoln, the strong and fair-minded

American president.” Khatami went on to note that Tocqueville―an author “most Americans

have read”―predicted that the Americans would abolish slavery as early as 1831, and his words

were inspirational to American idealists ever since.44

Freely using Western thinkers to bolster the argument for rapprochement between the

Islamic and Western worlds was nothing new. Nuri had launched into a similar discourse in 1914

43



Page | 25

when he had lauded the Renaissance and the French Revolution as something the Ottomans

could emulate.45

Khatami built on this trope himself when he posited that the taking of hostages

and the burning of American flags when Khomeini took power were the excesses of 1789

revisited. The goal, that of leading Islamic civilization on the path of progress and independence,

was the same as that of the French. The end goal of this movement was the establishment of a

republican regime firmly grounded in constitutional law. It is telling that both Khatami and Nuri

played a role in fostering the new system; Khatami, as president, presided over constitutional

developments in his country; Nuri supported the Young Turks putting the sultan under the rule of

law, and participated in establishing the legal basis of the new Republic of Turkey in 1923.

Khatami did differ from Nuri in two critical aspects. First, Nuri―unlike Khatami―had

gone as far as to endorse the French revolutionaries separation of church and state. Khatami, the

acting president of an Islamic republic, could not follow suit even if he had wanted to, since

Iran's powerful religious conservatives would have quickly disposed of him as a traitor. Yet,

Khatami’s clever use of Tocqueville is telling. Tocqueville may have praised America for its

political and religious liberties, but he saw the separation as the cornerstone for the “the peaceful

dominion of religion in” America.46

Could it be that Khatami was hinting that Iran one day

would be ready for the transition Nuri had once proposed?

Second, Khatami did not share Nuri's expansionist aspirations for his government.

Whereas Nuri saw the First World War as the last chance the Muslim world had to free itself of

the colonialist West, Khatami did not see violence as an option. Iran had never started a war

45

Nuri, Almanya, 15.

46 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. 1, revised edition, translated by Henry Reeve (New York:

Colonial Press, 1900), 313.

Page | 26

since the time of Napoleon, and the Iranian revolutionaries had only gone into conflict with Iraq

after Saddam Hussein invaded with an eye on seizing Iran's oil-rich southwest provinces. Iran,

unlike the Ottoman Empire, had relatively stable borders, and did not have the problem of

separatist nationalism to deal with.

Still, the American public would have difficulty accepting some of Khatami's

contentions. The taking of US hostages in 1979, and the frequent burning of American flags and

chants of “death to America” could not easily be dismissed, since chants “death to America” had

become an innate part of Iranian political identity. Any future Iranian reconciliation with the

United States would mean renouncing such aspects of their revolutionary heritage, since they

remained deeply offensive to Americans.

Khatami's assertion that there was no such thing as anti-Semitism in the Islamic world

was also highly problematic. Khatami―like many of his Middle Eastern Muslim

contemporaries―was unwilling to deal with the dark side of their anti-colonial past. Figures like

Mufti Amin Al-Husayni (1895/1897-1974), the most prominent Palestinian Arab political leader

during the 1930s and 40s, had allied himself with Hitler and openly supported his mass murder

of the Jewish people and the Holocaust. Those Iranians who dismissed Zionism as simply

another “Western occupation” were blind to the fact that anti-Semitism spread far beyond the

borders of the Reich. To admit the global dimension anti-Semitism would lend credence to the

establishment of Israel, since a separate homeland would be the most practical way to escape this

persecution. Yet, Khatami would not make even this first step towards acknowledging Israel’s

legitimacy as a state.

Finally, Khatami’s claim that Iran was not interested in attaining nuclear weapons was

very debatable. American and Israeli concerns would only grow in the coming years, as Iran had

Page | 27

built multiple power plants and related facilities, upgraded their capability to produce fissionable

materials, and systematically avoided IAEA inspections. Other more hard-line Iranian

politicians, such as Ahmadinejad and Khamenei would simply repeat the line Khatami had taken.

Pursuing nuclear research in defiance of “foreigners” appealed to many Iranian nationalists who

viewed this as yet another attempt to infringe upon their sovereignty. Continued deadlock on this

issue today is a likely cause for a major conflict between Iran, Israel and the United States, if not

others in the Middle East and beyond.

Nevertheless, Khatami’s overture presented a unique opportunity for both Iranians and

Americans to resolve their differences. The failure of the Clinton administration to answer

Khatami in a timely and meaningful manner played into the hands of Khatami’s opponents.

George W. Bush’s denunciation of Iran as an evil regime led to the election of the hard-line

right-wing populist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and it renewed the game of diplomatic

brinksmanship between the two countries. A new “Cold War” had begun.

Conclusion:

That Khatami’s arguments would so closely parallel Nuri’s reminds us once again of Ibn

Khaldun’s views on national development. Khatami's Iran, once an Islamic revolutionary state

that had virtually cut itself off from other countries and cultures that did not closely identify with

Islam, and more specifically its Shiite varieties, emerged from isolation. Khatami tried to take

advantage of this “window of opportunity” by seeking reconciliation with Washington.

This process would certainly have been difficult for both sides, even in the best of

circumstances. The United States, on the one hand, would have had to acknowledge not only its

inability to dominate independent-minded non-Western states like Iran, but also admit its own

Page | 28

moral error in ever trying to do so. Thus the Americans would have to ask forgiveness for their

role in toppling Mossadegh in 1953, and their active hostility towards the Iranian Islamic

Republic from its inception onwards. Iran, on the other hand, would have had to end its hostility

to the United States and Israel in order to normalize relations. This act would be particularly

difficult, since anti-colonialism was absolutely key to explaining away the political,

socioeconomic, and cultural failures of the Islamic regime.

Nuri talked even more despairingly of the prospects of peace with the British Empire in

1914. To Nuri, the British occupation of Egypt and the Suez Canal and their sponsorship of a

separate Arab caliphate were impossible obstacles to overcome unless London admitted its errors

and left the Islamic world in peace. Nuri―despite his affinity for liberalism and his fears that the

Kaiser was at heart just as much of a colonialist as the British were―spoke out too late: the

Young Turks had entered the war two weeks before he published his pamphlet.

Despite these grave diplomatic problems, both Khatami's Iran and Nuri’s Ottoman

Turkey seemed ripe to make the transition from Islamist to secular state. Both would have

required outside support from the superpowers of their day to accomplish that task. Military

action by foreign powers hostile to those states, such as the Entente's destruction of the Ottoman

Empire in 1918, would lead to foreign-dominated successor states. The people of these states

would see no hope of attaining “self-determination” and often turned instead to the stateless

Islamic radicalism we saw with Qutb. By spurning Khatami, America seemed to have made the

same mistake at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Perhaps one should remember Nuri's metaphor of China, and how it became a model of

national and international social harmony. Nuri might not have been so shocked to see that China

by the late 1990s was rapidly developing into an industrial powerhouse, whose trade with the

Page | 29

United States was rapidly becoming the core of the global economy. In 1949, when the Marxist

radical Mao Zedung (1893-1976) took over the state, the situation was much more grim.

America had just entered the Cold War, and considered military confrontation with Red China to

be almost inevitable. Certainly, the devastation of the Great Leap Forward and cultural

revolution demonstrated the totalitarian nature of this rogue state. Yet by 1972, the United States

under President Nixon was willing to engage Mao and overcome their differences. George H.W.

Bush, who presided over the American government in 1989 when the pro-democracy

demonstrations broke out in Tiananmen Square, recognized this progress, and refused to openly

back the protesters.

Khomenei's Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979, and the violence overthrow of the Shah

disappointed us just as badly as Mao's victory over Chang Kai-shek. Nonetheless, the early days

of the regime ended, and the threat of another hostage crisis did not loom large, at least in

October 2001, when Ayatollah Khamenei declared his country's sympathy for the American

victims of 9/11. The George W. Bush reacted within a year by declaring Iran subject to regime

change. He, unlike his father, had not learned the lesson that the longest lasting nations use their

power with restraint. As Thomas Jefferson (and Barrack Obama) once said: “I hope that our

wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us that the less we use our power the greater it will

be.”47

47

“Text: Obama’s Speech in Cairo,” The New York Times, June 4, 2009.

islamism and the wheel of history: celal nuri (ottoman...

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