HIST131 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Anders Behring Breivik, Muhammad, Al-Qaeda
31 Aug 2016
School
Department
Course
Professor
Islam – A Very Short Introduction 2/13/2016 8:03:00 PM
Chapter 1 – Islam, Muslims, and Islamism
• Muslims refer to Islam as a religion of peace – it means
“submission” (to God) and is related to salam which means peace
• 750 CE Islam born in Arab conquest, but spread peacefully
• “Religion of the book”: prestige of high culture associated with
Cairo, Baghdad, Delhi
• No formal papacy meant it could easily absorb local, older traditions
• Principal agents of spreading were via scholars and holy
men/women who doubled as merchants
• Much more fluid process than conversion; insinuates intentionality
and individual choice
• The notion that Islam is inherently violent is due to:
o Recent colonial history – Muslim resistance to Western-
influenced colonialism
o Exaggerating effects of the media – peace-loving majorities
are obscured by noisy minorities; exploited by extremists to
draw attention to minority political agendas
• Anders Behring Breivik was “closest thing to a Christian form of al-
Qaeda”
• Similarities between him and al-Qaeda:
o Resorted to catastrophic violence on behalf of their
community (umma vs. Europe)
o Frame their struggles as wars of survival, with emphasis on
religiously based culture
o Hate respective government for “collaborating” with outside
enemy
o Use language of martyrdom
o Lament erosion of patriarchy and emancipation of women
• The assassination of bin Laden may have lost their leader, but the
radicalism was still going strong; Infuriated radical groups
• Can be both a religious faith and political ideology as well as mark
of personal group or identity
Islam as Identity
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
• Means self-surrender to God through message of Prophet
Muhammed
• Muslim
o Means someone who surrenders him/herself
o Or born to Muslim father who takes on parent’s confessional
identity without necessarily subscribing to the faith
o Indicated ethnicity and group allegiance but not necessarily
religious beliefs
• “Christian” has been come to be known as strictly confessional
affiliation: Christian atheists
• Lines have been drawn between strictly practicing Muslims and
those that don’t, sometimes labeled infidels
• Islam and Muslim terms are constantly disputed
Islam as Political Ideology
• Fundamentalist – Muslims who seek by whatever means to restore
the Islamic state
o According to this view, it is the task of the Islamic state to
enforce Shari’a (law of Islam)
• Problems with fundamentalism: Christian origins: originally a
movement directed against liberal or modernist theology. Many
fundamentalists have adopted a modern interpretation of the
Quran, while all believing Muslims see Quran as eternal unmediated
Word of God
• Action rather than belief
o Islamic rectitude about practice rather than doctrine
o Muslims who dissented from majority were tolerated as long
as they conformed to social behavior and accepted standards
o Orthopraxy (behavioral conformity) over orthodoxy (doctrinal
conformity)
• Democracy in politics may be rejected: aim to replace people’s
sovereignty through legislation with “sovereignty of God” revealed
through Shari’a law
• Critics’ arguments:
o No Islamic society was governed exclusively by Islamic law
o Misinterpretation and mixing of ideologies
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
