linkage between Wahabism and Terrorism

The form of Islam normatively understood and practised in Malaysia, i.e. Malaysian Islam, has undergone myriad changes since the 1970s as a result of gradual Salafization. Powered by Saudi Arabian largesse and buoyed by the advent of the Internet, this new wave of Salafization has eclipsed an earlier Salafi trend that spawned the Kaum Muda reformist movement. Recent surveys suggest that there has been a rise in the level of extremism among Muslims in Malaysia. While the majority is far from being enamoured by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the Wahhabi-Salafi doctrine that ISIS claims to represent in unadulterated form does appeal to many of them following the decades-long Salafization of Islam in the country. This tallies with media reports on increasing numbers of Malay-Muslim youth harbouring an attraction towards radical Islamist movements such as ISIS. Salafization, referring to a process of mindset and attitudinal transformation rather than the growth of Salafi nodes per se, is not restricted to individuals or groups identified as “Salafi”, but rather affects practically all levels of Malay-Muslim society, cutting across political parties, governmental institutions and non-state actors. It has resulted in Islamist, rather than Islamic, ideals increasingly defining the tenor of mainstream Islam in Malaysia, with worrying consequences for both intra-Muslim and inter-religious relations. Responses to the Wahhabi-Salafi onslaught from the Malay-Muslim ruling elite in Malaysia have been ambivalent, and have had weak counteracting effects on the Salafization process.

Since 2010, Malaysia one of the largest strongholds of Sunnism in the Islamic world, has been stigmatizing Shia followers tremendously. Historical accounts show that Shi’ism exists in Malaysia since ages. The discrimination and sectarian apartheid originated from a 1984, and 1996 fatwa by Malaysia’s top Islamic clerics that Shia Islam was banned, and declared as a deviant teaching. Lately the oppression is getting worse as Wahabi movement within are embolden. This paper looks into Malaysian Shi’ites lonely struggle to demand their rights and how the religious edict and policies contradict to Malaysia’s commitment at the international level.

Il Pakistan, paese marcato da una profonda eterogeneità sotto diversi aspetti (geografici, culturali, sociali e religiosi) ha visto aumentare negli ultimi decenni la sua importanza strategica, essendo al tempo stesso sia criticato in quanto Stato canaglia, che lodato per il suo ruolo di avanguardia nella guerra contro il terrorismo. Al tempo stesso, la sua marcata eterogeneità rende difficile la definizione di un’identità nazionale, inclusa la posizione riservata all’Islam nello Stato. A ciò si lega anche la penosa questione dei conflitti settari. I rapporti fra la maggioranza sunnita e le minoranze religiose sono progressivamente degenerati nella violenza, soprattutto a partire dagli anni 80, a seguito delle politiche di Zia-ul-Haq di islamizzazione del Paese volte a definire un Islam di stato, processo accompagnato anche dall’inizio della sponsorizzazione saudita di gruppi religiosi al fine di esportare una particolare variante di Islam, quello wahhabita. Questo studio si occupa di delineare le principali linee guida per una lettura dell’incidenza saudita in Pakistan su vari livelli, politico, sociale, educativo e religioso. Questo fenomeno, iniziato durante gli anni 70 del XX secolo è cresciuto nel corso dei decenni successivi, e col tempo le affinità del Pakistan con le questioni mediorientali si sono approfondite e i vincoli religiosi sono diventati più forti. La saudizzazione del Paese continua a rappresentare un pericoloso fattore di instabilità sia a livello interno che estero attraverso la radicalizzazione della società e alla divisione della stessa su linee settarie e la sponsorizzazione più o meno ufficiale di gruppi fondamentalisti sunniti a livello interno, e influenzando la politica interna del Pakistan, soprattuto le sue politiche regionali, in particolare quelle che coinvolgono l'Afghanistan.

Call it Bengalee Islam, Sufi Islam, Ma’arefoti Islam or whatever, the overarching truth behind the phenomenon’s finds roots in several coordinates that endeared them to the genetically secular Bengalees. For one, the idea of peace, brotherhood and respect for fellow human beings has always been integral in the belief systems of all major religions of the world with Bengal and Bengalee Islam being no exception. Secondly the lofty ideals of cohesion and assimilation that the Vaishnavite expounded where in no way dissimilar to what the Sufi Muslims where preaching and coalesced very well when they were making their initial inroads into India. And thirdly and most importantly, the Bengalee respect for food, agriculture and the natural cycles and its rejection of crass capitalism meant that these so-called ‘subordinate cultures of the riff raffs’ had many a common element to resist the aggression and oppression of the British rulers who had looted and pillaged India, leaving it to a state of pauperization. This is quite opposed to the wealth and prosperity witnessed before the British entered India. Therefore when it came to resistance, Bengalees had more reasons to challenge the imperial status quo, and all of it to consolidate itself with penchant for music and prayers.

Malaysia is one of the largest strongholds of Sunnism in the Islamic world, and, frequently, the existence of Shi‘a in the Malay archipelago in the pre-modern era or the existence of any sizable number of indigenous Malay Shi‘a is denied; this is done explicitly in the context of legislation outlawing Shi‘ism. Nevertheless, Malay cultural practices show evidence of the influence of Shi‘ism; this suggests a stronger historical presence of Shi‘ism than is commonly acknowledged. Applying the oral historiography framework of Jan Vansina, this study unearths evidence of Shi‘ism in Malaysia going back centuries through anonymous interviews. It also highlights the contemporary lack of religious freedom that the Shi‘a minority in Malaysia faces, particularly after the 2010 raid on the Hauzah Ar Ridha Alaihissalam community centre near Kuala Lumpur. Ultimately, this study hopes to put the situation of the Shi‘a in Malaysia today into a larger historical context and refute the argument that Shi‘ism is a recent arrival to the Malay archipelago.

Hamadi Redissi, professor of political sciences at the university of Tunis describes in this concise work (Une histoire du wahhabisme, Seuil 2016) how the dogmatistic  ideology of a "pure islam" is combined from the beginnings of Abd al-Wahab  (18th century) with political power claims. Anticolonial resistance and conservative reforms have led to the idea of an islamic state against all who refuse the same level of belief and are open for different interpretations of the Qur'an. Therefore Arabia today does not present only a fundamentalistic and hereretic islam, but has become a box of Pandora which is a danger for a peaceful living together worldwide and an alarming challenge to all other ways of thinking and religious faiths.

The conflict in the break away republic of Chechnya is incredibly multifaceted. Its Muslim fighters consider themselves Mujaheddin and are rapidly embracing Wahhabite Islam yet the people of Chechnya are not typically religious. It is an independence struggle that has twice captured independence and yet lost it to two failed states. It is an anti-colonial conflict that has cost more lives and more suffering then any in the history of the former Soviet Union after World War 2; yet it has not made Moscow more stable or Groznyy more free. The people of Chechnya have rallied around their Islamic identity through uprisings, deportations, and war in an effort both throw off the yoke of a foreign power. In a war torn society where cruelty and death are the only certainty the Chechen resistance has become the Chechen Jihad.

Malaysia is one of the largest strongholds of Sunnism in the Islamic world, and, frequently, the existence of Shi‘a in the Malay archipelago in the pre-modern era or the existence of any sizable number of indigenous Malay Shi‘a is denied; this is done explicitly in the context of legislation outlawing Shi‘ism. Nevertheless, Malay cultural practices show evidence of the influence of Shi‘ism; this suggests a stronger historical presence of Shi‘ism than is commonly acknowledged. Applying the oral historiography framework of Jan Vansina, this study unearths evidence of Shi‘ism in Malaysia going back centuries through anonymous interviews. It also highlights the contemporary lack of religious freedom that the Shi‘a minority in Malaysia faces, particularly after the 2010 raid on the Hauzah Ar Ridha Alaihissalam community centre near Kuala Lumpur. Ultimately, this study hopes to put the situation of the Shi‘a in Malaysia today into a larger historical context and refute the argument that S...

In his study of the Bangladesh branch of the trans-national Hizb al-Tahrir (HTB) and the Bangladeshi public sphere, Ahmed Abidur Razzaque Khan argues that government authoritarianism, and its sponsorship of state-oriented Islamist parties with little public support, has favoured the HTB and its programme for a global caliphate. Within Bangladesh’s illiberal public sphere, and through global new media, HTB has successfully carved out its own ‘pseudo-public sphere’ where it communicates its messages without having to confront critics. A genuinely liberal public sphere would thus make it harder for HTB to sell their programme to the Bangladeshi people.