Global Intifada

My summer vacation thus far has been spent meeting up with old friends, taking care of my family, looking for a summer job, and reading. I’ve been working ardently on the papers that I promised myself I would finish. The paper on colonialism has completely consumed me. I’ve transformed the dining room into a study room: books are strewn all accross the table, my laptop and printer nestled, papers, pens, and post its scattered everywhere. What has been most taxing is explaining to my family the importance of this paper in lieu of the fact that I’m no longer in school, let alone taking a class that has anything to do with the many books I’ve been reading lately. My mother can’t understand why her cup of tea must wait a few minutes while I”m engrossed in a book.

Given the absence of literature on Portugal, which is where the story of the colonization of the Ummah begins, I’ve turned my attention to the rise of the Spanish empire and the control of the Mediterranean by the Turks. The latter forever etched into the European mind the necessity of a grand restructuring of their societies in what we now call modernization. One interesting book I’ve been reading is “Sea of Faith: Islam and Christianity in the Medieval Mediterranean World” by Stephen O’Shea. The book captures the history of seven decisive battles between Islam and Christendom that would forever change the face of the world as a whole: Yarmuk, Poiters, Manzikert, Hattin, Las Navas del Tolosa, Constantinople, and Malta.

Today, I read about the battle of Manzikert (1071) in Eastern Turkey that would mark the rise of the Seljuk Turks and the decline of the Byzantine Empire that would climax in what we now call “The Crusades.”

The following is a speech by Alp Arsalan to his troops before the battle took place:

“Either I shall be victorious and fulfill my goal or I shall be a martyr and enter Paradise. Those who desire to follow me, come with me; those who wish to go back may do so freely. There is here no Sultan commanding and no soldier being commanded. For I am today only one of you … When some of you who follow me and dedicate their lives to the most high God die, they will enter Paradise, and those who stay alive will acquire great riches. Eternal fire and infamy await those who desert us.”
(p 122)

What this quote aptly describes are several principles embodied in warfare, such as those that have been elaborated by theorists such as Von Clausewitz: a military commander must be first and foremost, a good soldier and warrior. If he is incapable on the battlefield, it will demoralize his troops. Yet, following the advice of Umar (radhi allahu anhu) he must also be well reasoned and calm and not rash. He must use his reasoned judgment to make complex calculations; when the time is appropriate, he must invoke rhetoric and inspire his troops to fight. Thus, Alp Arsalan is one of many models for Islamic Military Leadership. He was not only a general, but a capable soldier himself; willing to lay down his life for the cause and not just expend his soldiers as if they were cattle going to a slaughter. The Turkish people, among many other Muslim peoples, had such mastery of warfare that they assisted in the establishment of three of the great Empires around the same time that Europe was experimenting with colonization in the new world. These three empires were: the Ottomans, the Safavids, and the Mughals. InshaAllah, this is where my essay on colonialism of the Ummah will begin.

The story of the battle of Manzikert is one that would do well for Muslims today. In order to prosecute an effective campaign, the military force must have four “M’s”: (1) Manpower, (2) Morale, (3) Money, and (4) Management. Manpower is not a problem for Islamic revivalist/resistance groups that seek to conduct warfare according to the Shari’ah. It is moral, money, and management that are the key problems.

Among the problems with morale is that Muslims tend to be excessively emotional and this emotionalism often ends up being counterproductive. In addition to these negative personality traits, our communities are wracked by sectarianism and partisanship. By Sectarianism, I mean that they are obsessed with particular scriptural interpretations and place these interpretations by a certain group of people above the well being of the community as a whole. Although such people,whether Salafi or Deobandi or Sufi or whatever, may very well understand the Hukm, they lack the Hikmah behind the Hukm or the Hikmah in explaining and implementing the Hukm. The collective energy is wasted on theological disputes that lay people shouldn’t be debating about in the first place, let alone propagating since the agreed upon opinion is that their is no enforcement of issues where there is ikhtilaaf by the fuqaha. Such disputes are completely destructive and various Islamic organizations, especially Masajid and MSA’s which are the building grounds of the Islamic movement have been rendered useless at the maximum and inefficiently run at the minimum. Take, for example, this Masjid in NJ, where the Salafi/Non-Salafi beef has reached epic proportions. If we envision the Masjid is be a microcosm of the Ummah, then what do such divisions say about our Ummah?

By Partisanship, I mean that many of our Islamic organizations and communities are wracked by personal vendettas by bloated egoes, or by nationalistic tendencies that are cosmetically covered up by faint allegiances to Islam, or by group politics, which is the worst of all forms of partisanship. In particular, members of ideologically motivated groups such as Hizb e Tehrir, Ikhwan al Muslimeen, and others, while invoking the name of “unity” often engage in strong-arm tactics or useless rhetorical emotionalism that often ends up causing much disunity. The key element to an effective fighting force is its internal cohesion and that itself requires discipline from every single unit. Unfortunately, many members in our community lack such discipline. They are too busy buying into the image of “an army of one”; as if the whole of the Ummah can be saved by one bloated ego. The Ummah is a community and the only effective resistance will be by people with varied interests merging together in a solid formation. This can only happen by firm allegiance to one’s commander and cause. If one examines the colonization of the Ummah, it is apparent that from the beginning in places such as al-Andalus, the Muslism were not defeated by the Europeans before they had already decimated their resources and energies in fratricidal civil wars. The Cordoban Caliphate collapsed and was followed by many petty Emirates that couldn’t provide effective resistance against wave after wave of Europeans inspired by the Crusades. It was not the Spanish that defeated the Muslims, it was the Swiss, the British, the Germans, the Italians, the French, i.e. the whole of Europe that worked together to extinguish the light of Islam in al-Andalus. While the Europeans provided a unified front in that area, the Muslims had broken down into petty emirates vying for power like gangs defending their local turf. The “divide and conquer” strategy is a misnomer, since many Muslim states had already been divided and were ripe for conquest by Europeans by the time the era of colonialism came around. Unfortunately, we as Muslims have lost track of our history and because we aren’t aware of the shortcomings of our ancestors, we are bound to repeat them. One component of Morale is the concept of “Asabiyyah” or “Group Feeling” that has been highlighted by Ibn Khaldun in his Muqaddimah.

Morale, is one of the most important aspects of any Islamic resistance organization. It is the most important capital in the engine of warfare. In the absence of moral, weapons and tactics and money become useless. A good commander is ever on the alert for dips in moral. He will push his units far, but not so far as to break their spirit. He knows when they cannot be moved so far and will not press them so that they will mutiny against him. He is also aware of the importance of breaking the morale of the opponent. High tech weapons and control of global resources are meaningless in warfare if the people who control these things lack the will to fight. In warfare, willpower is the primary focus. If one can break the opponent’s willpower without unsheathing one’s sword or letting loose a drop of blood, one has attained victory.

Money is the second greatest obstacle for an effective Islamic resistance movement. As it stands today, no country in the Ummah today, except for Turkey, possesses the necessary weaponry, economy, or army to act within the interests of the self-defense of the Ummah. The only effective way of resisting occupation, then, is through a process of attack and retreat on a global scale: guerilla warfare. However, guerilla warfare is by no means an easy task and a dangerous card to play as it has the tendency to spiral out of control quicker than it will have to evict the invaders. The occupiers are well aware that the lack of centralized control and economic constraints upon guerilla units can create heightened tensions that can easily result in the creation of factions that can then be played against one another. The greatest obstacle in effectively stimulating any guerilla campaign is economic in nature. It is the acquisition of funds for the purchase of weapons, supplies, and necessities for units. According to individuals such as Che Guevara and Mao Zedong, the most effective way of sustaining funds for a guerilla campaign is by melding in with the local population. This has the effect of making the resistance to occupation a people’s resistance while also developing self-sufficiency in dangerous conditions. Another strategy, such as the one utilized by the Prophet (sallahu alayhi wa sallam) was to engage in a series of raids against wealthy individuals or businesses that are not heavily guarded. Of course, the most effective way of generating funds for warfare is by using the state itself through a system of taxation. However, this option isn’t available for those who are engaging in guerilla warfare. In general, this isn’t a major problem for most resistance movements. However, access to high-tech weapons is and the generation of funds will inevitably effect the procurement of such weapons when the guerilla campaigns advance from wars of independence within countries into wars of unification between countries. Of course, in order to be truly successful and relevant to the Ummah today, any guerilla force must be revolutionary and evolutionary. It must be revolutionary in the sense that the very purpose for its existence is to bring about a wider transformation of society into one that is in the era of Jahiliyyah to one that is in the era of Khalifah, Mashwarah, and Shari’ah. It is evolutionary in the sense that its very tactics must evolve in light of these underlying goals. In other words, as the guerilla movement gains success in one region and ascends to power, it must change its tactics from that of militancy towards acclimization towards the political and international order. It must not become another isolated despot among a sea of tyranny. As its strategies change from warfare to political maneuvring with full accountability to the people and world governments, it must learn to evolve from an irregular low-tech fighting force into a professionalized standardized army. This is one of the greatest transformations a paramilitary unit can make and it is by no means an easy task. In order to assist this transformation, obviously, there must be funding. While the key to a successful guerilla insurgency is its ability to meld into the local populace and utilize scant resources to conduct asymmetrical warfare, a professionalized army is quite the opposite as it must possess both offensive and defensive capabilities. It must be able to acquire land, sea, and air targets that a guerilla force is usually incapable of taking let alone maintaining control. Money is the true mark of a standing, professional army. Without money, professional armies, no matter how disciplined or trained will melt a part. History is replete of examples of loyal soldiers mutinying when the state coffers ran dry. For example, the Devishirme (Janiessaries) and the Timariot (heavy cavalry) frequently revolted in the Ottoman state whenever their autonomy was challenged or the state lacked the funds to provide them welfare. One of the driving engines of the Ottoman expansionist state was warfare, but warfare itself is an expensive venture and it can never alone be the source of income; only economic and political sources should be used for the generation of income, especially in the modern era where warfare has been reduce to the application of state policy and not for the expansion of a state. Any revolutionary movement will have to face such problems, in addition to the others discussed in this post.

Lastly, management. This is the most important of all factors in the failure of an effective Islamic resistance movements among Ahl us Sunnah. Muslims. Do. Not. Know. How. To. Fight. Wars. The Ottomans faced the problem of management and the results were devastating, although they did manage to outlast many of their opponents. As was stated above, management requires certain personality traits, many of which are completely lacking in Muslims today, let alone our leadership. We have many people who are brave, but braveness without discipline becomes rashness. We have many people who can recite beautiful rhetoric, but rhetoric is only useful to move people to action; without action rhetoric is just that: angry men yelling at other angry men. What we need, what we really need, are strategists. People who can make and execute plans effectively. This requires a calmness of mind and a disposition of careful study but daring bravery. In addition to that, one must note economic conditions, the subtelties of international law, etc. Management has two separate wings: internal management and external management. Internal management is the management over one’s own forces in order to maintain a disciplined fighting unit with clearly ascertainable goals and methods to achieve them. External management is the management between one’s force and other forces, such as other groups, parties, states, or powers. The latter requires expert diplomacy. When one engages in warfare, one must be a paternal figure whereas diplomacy requires maternal instincts.

In addition to these problems, there is also the problem of the absence of the fog of war.

InshaAllah, many of these issues and more will be discussed in the upcoming essay.

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