Abstract

As an anarchist and a Muslim, I have witnessed troubled times as a result of extreme divisions that exist between these two identities and communities. To minimize these divisions, I argue for an anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian Islam, an ‘anarca-Islam’, that disrupts two commonly held beliefs: one, that Islam is necessarily authoritarian and capitalist; two, that anarchism is necessarily anti-religious. From this position I offer ‘anarca-Islam’ which I believe can help open-minded (non-essentialist/non-dogmatic) Muslims and anarchists to better understand each other, and therefore to more effectively collaborate in the context of what Richard JF Day has called the ’newest’ social movements.

Chapter 1. Panegyric Desert of the Present

On Islam, Anarchism and the Newest Social Movements

In Open Sky (1990), Paul Virilio argues that “the ban on representation in certain cultural practices and the refusal to see — women, for example, in the case of Islam — is being superseded at this very moment by the [Western] cultural obligation to see, with the overexposure of the visible image taking over from the underexposure of the age of the written word” (90). That is, Islam and Muslims are now not only facing the perils of invisibility, but also “the impossibility of not being seen” (1997: 90, emphasis added). This Western obligation to “gingerly sneak a sidelong look” (Virilio, 1990: 90) at Islam and Muslims, I contend, is generally based on two intents: First, an intent to unmask an inexhaustible supply of hidden terrorists. And, second, to set up Islam as an oppressive regime, as is the case with the clichéd view of veiled Muslim women undergoing the horrors of Non-Western patriarchy, or of Iraqis and Afghanis as feeble subjects of Islamic tyranny who must be freed. Muslims in the West face an intensified assault on representation; in other words, representations are abundant and often function through binary significations. As Jean Baudrillard argues there is a “reduction of Islam [and Muslims] to” the representations Fundamentalism and Orientalism, or terrorism and oppression, “not to destroy but to domesticate [them]...and the symbolic challenges” they represent “for the entire West” (Baudrillard, 1995: 28).

In the West, it has practically become a pathological obligation, born “of scorn”, to clear the semiotic space of any alternative representations, as if the Fundamentalist/Orientalist pairing were school uniforms (Foucault in Afray and Anderson, 2005: 210). The West’s symbolic challenge is forcing Muslims to submit to these representations, especially immigrant and citizen Muslims of the West who have slipped across that formation’s necessarily porous borders (Deleuze, 2000: 90). To the West, controlling Muslims by limiting fields of possibility for revolutionary representations of their subjectivities is now the only remaining feasible form of discipline, considering that the West cannot ex-communicate Muslims en masse to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, or the notorious Abu Ghraib that has been renamed Baghdad Central Prison . But then I rhetorically ask, what is the difference between being held between the four walls of a prison cell, and the manipulation of one’s identity to the point that one comes to resent oneself?.

Many scholars have contended that September 11th has resulted in the intensification of reductive imagery of Muslims. As Jean Baudillard argues, “September 11th ...is there first — only then does its possibility and its causes catch up with it, through all the [binary] discourses that will attempt to explain it” (2005: 135), like heroes/villains, victims/perpetrators, innocent/evil, “enemies/future allies” (Virilio & Der Dian, 1998: 89), with us/against us, terrorists/oppressed, Fundamentalist/Orientalist. “The United States’ ‘war on terror’” successfully bred “a particular geopolitical terrain in the post-9/11 period,” enabling the blatant racism now being exercised on the bodies of Western Muslims (Razack, 2008: 84). Now when Westerners “speak of the ‘martyrs’, it is their way of Islamicizing the Japanese suicide attack[s]” (Virilio, 2002: 178) on Pearl Harbor. But the satire behind 9/11 is not only that it created Muslims as racialized enemy targets, but that any ‘other’ remotely resembling, defending or supporting Muslims became a terrorist or a co-conspirator of terror as well. In the article 9/11 Violence ‘stalks UK Sikhs’ (2004), published on the British Broadcasting Corporation’s website, Jagdeesh Singh, a member of the Sikh Community Action Network in Britain, noted that “racial assaults on Britain’s Sikh community have become ‘fashionable’ since the 11th September attacks,” with “racist abusers...shout[ing] ‘Bin Laden’ at Sikh men because of their beards and turbans”. Singh, himself a victim, not just of a racial assault as a result of a case of mistaken identity, but also of the general climate of 9/11, is now seen as a co-conspirator of terror. In this sense, 9/11 has caused the confusion of others as Muslims, legitimizing violence not only on Muslims but ‘the generalized other’ as well.

Beyond generalities, and although these representations can be seen as abstractions, they can be brought closer home to demonstrate their existence on an everyday level through the specific example of racist, Islamaphobic incidents at Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada in 2008–2009. In late September 2008, as Jane Switzer reported in the article Muslim Student Targeted in Racist Incidents (2008) of the Queen’s Journal, the Queen’s Muslim Student Association’s (QUMSA) prayer space was barraged by multiple “anti-Islamic crimes”. Crimes that started with advertised slogans spanning a mass condemnation of Muslims to death (“all Queen’s Muslims should die,” the graffiti said) to the “breaking in, [and the] theft of charitable donations” (Switzer, 2008). These incidents were followed later by the “vandalizing of a poster” and the tearing to shreds of religious texts (Switzer, 2008). These incidents happened in two days, seven years after the attacks on 9/11.

Under such circumstances, it would seem that Western Muslims have one of two options: We must either use mainstream media and politics against those who represent us, or continue to silently accept our lot and truly live in hell. It seems to me that most Muslims in the West have in fact chosen one of these options. Some, however, are resisting this false choice, by recreating alternatives to it, by becoming Muslim anarchists. They are becoming revolutionary subjects in a Deleuzian and Guattarian sense (1984: 127). That is, they are “casting off their shame [of being identified as Muslim] and responding to what is intolerable”, i.e. the dichotomous representations themselves (Deleuze, 1990). These Muslims, many of whom identify as anarchists, are taking it upon themselves to pierce open desiring processes by reconstructing a new understanding of what it ‘is’ to identify and to be identified as a Muslim in the West. And it is because of anarchism’s anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist orientations that these Muslims are particularly drawn to it. Anarchism offers Muslims new avenues for their identity’s reformulation.

This embracing of anarchism by a minority of Muslims as a response to the “problem of Muslims and Islam” (Foucault in Afray and Anderson, 2005: 210), and this presentation of Muslims as a socio-political force, allows us to see Muslim anarchism as an example of what Richard JF Day has called the newest social movements (2005: 9). Because of the critical role it has to play, by acting as a safe space for Muslims’ (further) resistance, it is in the newest social movements that I see hope, not only for Muslim anarchists, but also for all Muslims. It is in this critical space where I can see a place for Muslims and Muslim anarchists to be able to begin again and again the radical recreation of their socio-political identities in a way that is conducive to Islam’s present confrontations with contemporary Western societies. It is there that there are infinite possibilities and opportunities for a Muslim’s resistance to the horrors and neuroses of a Muslim’s daily life. Muslims supported with time by a passage through anarchism’s vernaculars in the newest social movements can be bodies that are not frozen in their current socio-political state of coma and naiveté.

It is in the newest social movements too, that anarchism and anarchists stand to learn from interacting with Muslims. For instance, anarchists could benefit by learning how to disagree ethically as a community as opposed to tearing each other apart over ideological and personal differences. Islam developed this type of ethics early on, in what is referred to Usul Al-ikhtilaf, or the ethics of disagreements, as a compassionate and forgiving form of etiquette for Muslims to address disagreements amongst themselves. Anarchists in the newest social movements, as much as Muslims, indeed stand to gain, culturally, aesthetically, politically and ethically, should anarchists learn to accept that others who are not exactly like them ought to be able to join them in their anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist revolt. Despite the fact that the newest social movements can potentially act as a safe space, Muslims and Muslim anarchists still have a long way to go in terms of being made to feel welcome and comfortable by anarchists. This necessitates the opening up of a panegyric desert of the present, a metaphor that stands for a more hospitable space carved out for Muslims and Muslim anarchists in the newest social movements. That is, a space where they can interact with anarchists and anarchism, and similarly for anarchism and anarchists to interact with Islam and Muslims. This panegyric desert is especially pertinent given that vital and critical misconceptions exist between Muslims and anarchists, which hinder collaborations between the two. These misconceptions have an especially adverse effect on Muslim anarchists. They leave Muslim anarchists facing difficulties because of their ostracization by anarchists on top of what is already their ostracization by Muslim communities. Still there is no way to eradicate misconceptions completely. They will indefinitely persist, given that their cause, stereotypes, can never be entirely eliminated, but only identified, situated contextually, and minimized.

2. With an Alibi: Who is Speaking?

Throughout my thesis, I will showcase how the seemingly dichotomous identities Muslim and anarchist can co-exist. For now however, let me state that I self-identify as a Muslim anarchist. In fact, I am, in a Deleuzian and Guattarian sense destined to be becoming both Muslim and anarchist, considering there is no ideal state of either (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, 7–13). As a former immigrant and now citizen left feeling as a disrespected worthless foreigner, a second-rate citizen, studying, working and living in the West, I am a settler on indigenous land. I am also a racialized person of color. I am a socially constructed heterosexual male. I have class privilege. I am a human being who has experienced a cosmopolitan upbringing taking me on journeys across four continents. I have no home or community. I want one with anarchists and anyone willing to share similar anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian commitments to myself, and more importantly to anarchism. I would go anywhere for that community. I would do anything for it. I am a fascist with fascisms crystallized at the centre of my heart because of the privileges I possess (Guattari, 1995: 244–245). I am a fascist till I arrive at a position of grasping and comprehending my standings to privileges, but then undertaking journeys and stories of warding off those privileges. Finally, I believe that “those who enjoy structural privilege must strive to identify and work against this privilege if they hope to establish relations of solidarity with those who do not share it” (Day, 2005: 11).

In trying to convince anti-religious anarchists not to out rightly reject what I am saying because it is religious, I say to them here that: part of the reason that I feel the pain I feel is because though your anarchistic ethical-political actions are so honorable, “innocent and disarming” (Derrida 1987: 186), they are also ones based on wanting to take anarchism back from me on account of what to you is my ‘useless’ spirituality. As anti-religious anarchists, you shun me from our community when you have never met me. You shun me when the anarchism you and I believe in is a commitment to standing against the exercise of any form of oppression. You shun me out of your fear of Islam as an institutional and organized authoritarian mechanism of repression. But, who is to say that Islam has to be institutional, organized, authoritarian, and repressing? I prove in this thesis it does not have to be. As for your dogmatic view that ‘God is Dead’, I believe that view to be too easy to fathom because it simplifies what is, in fact, a complex reality. Furthermore, there is no proof of God’s life or death. Your view is nothing more than a Euro-centric view, rooted in the essentialist perception that “God [and God’s fettered religion solely possess]...promises...null and void...only...fulfilled by man’s subordination” (Goldman, 1969: 5–7). But Emma Goldman’s statement pertains to a particular interpretation of Christianity being practiced at a particular place and time as opposed to all types of religious interpretations. And so my belief in God is not an aesthetic thing or a ritual I do, but the strength from which I derive reason to drive myself to stand and share the same ethical and political commitments as you. It is God who graced me with the gift of encountering anarchism after 9/11. Now anarchism is what is compelling me to come back to Islam to unleash the Islamic and anarchic anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist concepts and practices that I believe exist in Islam in an attempt to bridge the proximity between the two, Islam and anarchism, me and you.

As for you, immigrant and citizen Muslims, whoever and whatever interpretation of Islam you choose to follow, I can feel some of you are lost, trapped between the politics of a former corrupt native land and an adopted Western immigrant and citizen tongue. I feel you by virtue of my years of residency in the West and my prayers with and alongside you in Mosques. And my interest here rests on not bending “myself to your determination” (Derrida, 1987: 186) by believing in barriers when discussing anything ethical and political with anarchists. My intent is to politically and ethically reorient your Islam and mine because our Islam, as I will demonstrate, has given me the Koranic right to do so. Know that what I write here cannot be rejected on the grounds of heresy. I am merely writing here because I am deafened by the termination of dialogue between us as Muslims, as well as the ambivalence and complacency of some of us towards patriarchy, trans-queer-phobia, racism, ageism, capitalism and authority, unwarranted and existing in our communities. So after reading this come up with your own interpretations and I welcome all criticisms after study, as long as they are done respectfully.

Finally, what is left and what I expect from all Muslims and anarchists reading this thesis is that they listen before passing judgment on what I have come here to say.

3. Everything Divided — The Argument Condensed

There are five remaining chapters to this thesis:

In the second chapter, Who Says What With Respect to Islamic anarchism...Can Anyone Speak to What it Is?, I carry out a literature review of writings by Muslim anarchists. It includes Hakim Bey’s essays Millennium (1996), Islam and Eugenics (1997), Sacred Drift: Essays on the Margins of Islam (1993), and Michael Muhammad Knight’s fictional text Taqwacores (2004). I also discuss three articles on the topic ‘Islam and anarchism’, written by non-Muslim writers. The first is Harold B. Barclay’s “Islam, Muslim Societies, Anarchy” published in Anarchist Studies (2002). The second is Patricia Crone’s “Ninth-Century Muslim Anarchists” published in Past and Present Volume 10, no.2 (2000). The third is Anthony Fiscella’s “Imagining an Islamic Anarchism: A New Field of Study is Ploughed” in Religious Anarchisms: New Perspectives (2009, forthcoming). I also present contemporary and historical examples of Muslim anarchists and anarchist Muslims, including Yakub Islam, Gustave Henri Jossot, and Leda Rafenilli. The literature is a positive step in resisting the dichotomous representations of Muslims but there are three critical problems I address: First, the literature does not deal with the Koran, leading to the secularization of the texts. Second, the writers do not particularly identify who the intended audience is or the purpose of what is written. Three, the writers adopt and advocate for a Stirnerian individualistic approach to writing on Islam and anarchism (Kropotkin, 1910).

I will be arguing for three things in light of this literature’s problems. The first is the construction of an anarchic interpretation of Islam and an Islamic interpretation of anarchism. And for this construction to be done Koranically and anarchistically, by drawing conceptual and pragmatic anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist resonances between Islam and anarchism. Second, that this synergistic interpretation addresses a relevant audience and be with a particular purpose. The audience addressed will be Muslims and anarchists within the newest social movements, with the purpose of helping increase the possibility of solidarity between Muslims and anarchists. Three, that this interpretation adopt and advocate for a balanced approach between communal politics, “based on affinity-based ethico-political commitments”, and micro-politics (Day, 2005: 17, 143) as opposed to a strict adherence to an individualistic Stirnerian approach. Under these criteria, I offer the interpretation that I label Anarca-Islam.

This interpretation is of value for three reasons. First, it can allow Muslims, and Muslim anarchists, to resist the aforementioned dichotomous representations. Second, because it counters two misconceptions of Islam and Muslims amongst anarchists. The first misconception is the impossibility of the construction of either an anarchic interpretation of Islam or an Islamic interpretation of anarchism. The second misconception is the impossibility of the co-existence of Muslim and anarchist identities in a single subjectivity. Evidence of these misconceptions is to be demonstrated through anarchist articles, forums, and blogs. Third, this interpretation is of value because it carves a panegyric desert of the present where Muslims, anarchists, and Muslim anarchists can collaborate more effectively in the newest social movements. Examples of their current collaboration are groups like No One Is Illegal (NOII) and Solidarity Across Borders (SAB).

In the third chapter, Methodology and Theories, I introduce a method I call Anarchic-Ijtihad and outline the theoretical paradigms I use in my contribution, Anarca-Islam, to the existing discourse on Islam and anarchism. Throughout the thesis, I carry out a critical exegesis of the Koran, as well as other Islamic and anarchistic texts, using Anarchic-Ijtihad as a method of interpretation. Some orthodox Muslim scholars, known in Arabic as Muftis or Imams, will doubtless regard this method as heresy, and secular Muslims such as Michael Knight will regard it as unnecessary. The accusation of heresy will be levied under the guise of safeguarding Islam from an impure and tainted Westernized reading. When, truthfully, the issue is related to power, its concentration within institutions versus its dissemination amongst the Muslim populace at large. The perception of Anarchic-Ijtihad as unnecessary will be levied under the pretext that the Koran, as some scholars like Knight contend, is a “tiny little book for tiny little men” (2004: 105). In defense of the practice of Anarchic-Ijtihad, I argue that Islam grants me the right to conduct a critical exegesis of the Koran and to write on Anarca-Islam. This right, whose classical form is referred to as ijtihad, literally implies striving. Ijtihad denotes not only an Islamic right, but an obligatory duty, entrusted by God to Muslims involved in scholarly study, to interpret and re-interpret Islamic ethico-political principles and thereby engage in “independent reasoning” (Esposito, 2002: 159). Anarchic-Ijtihad is so-named to highlight that it is an anarchistic type of ijtihad. Anarchic-Ijtihad is the deconstructive logic and force I will use to reread conceptual and pragmatic practices in the Koran and the Prophetic Oral tradition(s) so that they resonate with anarchism.

Following my discussion on Anarchic-Ijtihad, I identify the theoretical paradigms used to create Anarca-Islam: post-anarchist, deconstructionist, post-colonial, and poststructuralist theories, along with sociological theories of social movements. I discuss how these theories will be individually and collectively used. Briefly, post-colonial theory offers a discursive resistance to Eurocentric biases (Gandhi, 1998: 4; 10; Minh-ha, 1991; Bhabha, 1994; Monod, 1970). As Jacques Monod has argued, Muslims in the West face a “survivalist necessity”(1970) to resist assimilationist and racist practices and policies directed against them. Poststructuralist and deconstructionist theories offer a resistance to structuralism, hierarchies and dominant relations established upon the construction of essentialist or reductionist qualities. Here I have in mind qualities along the lines of race, ethnicity, gender, ability, age, sexuality, religion and class. Post-anarchist theory offers a poststructuralist interpretation of anarchism, resonating with the interpretation of Islam I advocate for. Social movement theory is the space where these theories are manifesting and interacting (Deleuze, 1990).

In the fourth chapter, Anarca-Islam’s Space and Political Consciousness in Relation to anarchism, Islam and the capitalist-State, I define Anarca-Islam in relation to anarchism, Islam and the capitalist-State. First, I argue for the death of a singular puritanical Islam, and the death of a singular puritanical anarchism; both are in fact pluralistic traditions (Deleuze and Guattari, 1980: 26–39). Islam is only alive in so far as it manifests itself in the Holy Koran and the Prophetic Oral tradition. Anarchisms, Western and Non-Western, are also only alive in so far as they manifest themselves in their classical texts (Bakunin 1873; Kropotkin, 1890; Goldman, 1910; Adams; 2003). Anarca-Islam is then defined. Its relation to Islam and anarchism, specifically post-anarchism, is established. An immanent critique of Western classical anarchism’s Euro-centricity and perception of power operating strictly at the macro level — the state and institutionalized religion — is carried out. This involves a discussion of Nietzschean/Foucaultian and post-anarchistic views of micro and macro power (Day, 2005; May, 1994; Call, 2001; Rolando, 1990; Newman, 2001) and of the similarities and the differences between strategic and tactical political philosophy (May, 1994:10–11). This critique is done to distinguish between Western classical anarchism and post-anarchism.

Following this, I define, in line with Saul Newman (2001), a triadic relationship that consists of: Daddy (authoritarian practices of the type macro and micro), Mommy (capitalist practices) and Me (oedipal subject). The analogy, Mommy-Daddy-Me, is derived from Newman’s reading of Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1977), and which Newman discusses in his text From Bakunin to Lacan: Anti-authoritarianism and the Dislocation of Power (2001). Newman’s argument is that in a capitalist-State society, the “Holy State” acts as a symbolic Father and “capital” as the symbolic Mother as if the Oedipal duality were active as “religious signifiers to which individuals are subordinated to” (Newman, 2001: 99). In this light, I discuss the particular role each parent has with respect to me and discuss the effects their relationship has on me. Given, that is, that I am an Oedipalized subject seeking to become relatively de-Oedipalized (Day, 2005: 142–143) by creating and attending a clinic, Anarca-Islam. In other words, Anarca-Islam resembles a clinic that I, an Oedipalized subject, construct and attend in an act of resistance to Daddy, Mommy, and thus the capitalist-State.

In chapter five, The Birth of the Clinic — Seeing and Knowing the Clinic’s Commitments in Resistance to Daddy-Mommy-Me, I construct Anarca-Islam. I begin by establishing Anarca-Islam’s resistance to authoritarian practices at the micro level through micro-anti-authoritarian concepts and practices extracted from Islam, i.e. Shura, Ijma and Maslaha. I then show how it is possible to resist authoritarian practices at the macro level, such as institutionalized religion and the modern state. I offer an alternative rereading of the classical interpretation of the Islamic concept Khilafah, Islamic state. I thereafter address the ‘authority’ of Prophet Muhammad and God. In the end, I will have constructed an anti-authoritarian Islam through Anarca-Islam’s resistance to authoritarian practices.

I then construct for Anarca-Islam its resistance to capitalism, through concepts and practices extracted from Islam: Property, Communal and Individual Caretakers, Mudarabah/Musharakah, Riba, Zakat, Ramadan, Sadaqat Al-Fitr and Islamic banking. The rereading of these concepts and practices produces an anti-capitalist Islam. Finally, I announce myself as no longer merely Oedipalized but becoming relatively de-Oedipalized. Anarca-Islam’s, or the clinic’s, construction is the symbolic act of both delineating the misconceptions held by many anarchists in the newest social movements and the opening up of a panegyric desert of the present for Muslims, Muslim anarchists and anarchist Muslims in the newest social movements.

In the sixth Chapter, The End is the Beginning is the End, I summarize the argument and project the future trajectory of Anarca-Islam.

Chapter 2. Who Says What With Respect to Islamic anarchism...Can Anyone Speak to What it Is?

“The anarchist ‘movement’ today contains virtually no Blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, [Muslims], or children...even tho in theory such genuinely oppressed groups stand to gain the most from any anti-authoritarian revolt. Might it be that anarchisms offers no concrete program whereby the truly deprived might fulfill (or at least struggle realistically to fulfill) real needs and desires?” (Hakim Bey, 1991)

1. Chapter Introduction

In this chapter, I carry out a critical assessment of academic texts as well as non-academic anarchist movement works that are relevant to the field of Islam and anarchism as it currently exists. Here I am seeking to identify both academic and non-academic writers whose work could be used to support my contentions, as well as what I consider to be gaps in the existing literature.

In the first section of the literature review, I identify six tendencies I have observed in academic texts that I will use as resources to support my position for constructing Anarca-Islam. The first tendency I observe is in academic texts by Muslim anarchists or anarchist Muslims, such as Peter Lamborn Wilson (a.k.a Hakim Bey ) and Michael Muhammad Knight. Bey’s non-fictional texts Millennium (1996), Islam and Eugenics (1997) and Sacred Drift: Essays on the Margins of Islam (1993), as well as Knight’s fictional work Taqwacores (2002) dispel “the false image of Islam as monolithic, puritan, and two-dimensional” (Bey, 1993). In other words, Bey and Knight argue that Islam is neither homogenous nor monolithic, an issue I will return to in more detail in chapter four. The second tendency is in academic texts by non-Muslim writers, such as Harold B. Barclay, Patricia Crone and Anthony Fiscella . Barclay’s “Islam, Muslim Societies, Anarchy” published in Anarchist Studies (2002), Crone’s “Ninth-Century Muslim Anarchists” in Past and Present (2000) and Fiscella’s “Imagining an Islamic Anarchism: A New Field of Study is Ploughed” in Religious Anarchisms: New perspectives (2009, forthcoming) provide evidence against “the traditional view that Islam and anarchism are necessarily incompatible” (Fiscella, 2009). In other words, Barclay, Crone and Fiscella identify resonances between Islam and anarchism, in support of my argument for the possibility of constructing Anarca-Islam. The writers identify these resonances anthropologically and historically, and therefore adopt Bey’s approach. The third tendency is in Bey’s works Millennium and Jihad Revisited (2004). In these two works, Bey advocates for a “necessary revolution — the jihad” (1996), a method I develop in chapter three and use to “form the constellation of a new propaganda within Islam” (1996) for Anarca-Islam in chapter five. The fourth tendency is in Bey’s text Islam and Eugencics. In this work, Bey advocates for the rise of a politicized Islam with a new spirit, what he calls the “spirit of Sarajevo” (1997), in America and Europe. Bey hopes that when this politicized Islam rises that it is one based in “communities, not professions of faith,” and that it creates in “mutual tolerance & synergy a city-state of precious value, with an Islamic heritage”(1997). What Bey advocates and hopes for is descriptive of Anarca-Islam’s orientation to a panegyric space in the newest social movements. The fifth tendency is both in Bey’s text Sacred Drift: Essays on the Margins of Islam and Knight’s text Taqwacores. In these two works, Bey and Knight engage in a “scathing critique on ‘authority’” (1993) in Islam, resonating with Anarca-Islam’s anti-authoritarian position that I construct in chapter five. The sixth and final tendency is in Fiscella’s text Imagining an Islamic Anarchism: A New Field of Study is Ploughed. In the text, Fiscella classifies the studies of Islamic anarchism into three categories that are useful in defining the discourse of Islam and anarchism. The first category is concerned with “studies of Islamic anarchist theory” (Fiscella, 2009). The second category is concerned with “studies in the anarchic character of tribal Muslim societies” (Fiscella, 2009). The third category is “studies of the anarchical structure of Islam” (Fiscella, 2009).

In the next section, I move from reviewing the academic texts to reviewing non-academic works in the form of articles and blogs. The review includes the article and blog forum titled Islam and Anarchy Join Together (2003) by Chris R. on Info-shop. It also includes the articles, “The Trouble with Islam” in Red and Black Revolution: Issue 7 (2003) by Andrew Flood and Muslim Anarchism (2009) by Eric van Luxzenburg. The movement’s articles and blogs reaffirm my contentions that Islam is neither homogenous nor monolithic and that there exist resonances between Islam and anarchism. Nevertheless, the articles and blogs also paradoxically produce two misconceptions about Islam and Muslims. The first misconception is the impossibility of the construction of either an anarchic interpretation of Islam or an Islamic interpretation of anarchism. The second misconception is the impossibility of the co-existence of Muslim and anarchist identities in a single subjectivity. I argue that these misconceptions exist amongst anarchists for two reasons. The first reason is their exposure to Western corporate media representations. The second reason is that they do not speak nor read Arabic, practice the Islamic faith, nor have they struggled with the Koran to adequately understand interpretative traditions of Islam derived from it.

In the final section of this chapter, I argue that although the academic and non-academic literature are a positive move in resisting the dichotomous representations of Muslims there are three critical problems with them. First, both types of literatures do not deal with the Koran and the Prophetic Oral tradition(s), the Sunnah, leading to the secularization of the texts. Second, the academic and non-academic writers do not identify who the intended audience is or the purpose of what they are writing. Three, but particular to the literature of Bey and Knight, the writers adopt and advocate for a Stirnerian individualistic approach to writing on Islam and anarchism (Kroptkin, 1910). I argue for three things in light of the literature’s critical problems. The first is the construction of an anarchic interpretation of Islam and an Islamic interpretation of anarchism, Anarca-Islam. Moreover, I argue for the importance of this construction Koranically and anarchistically by drawing conceptual-pragmatic anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist resonances between Islam and anarchism. Second, that this synergistic interpretation addresses a relevant audience and be with a particular purpose. The audience addressed to be Muslims, Muslim anarchists and anarchists within the newest social movements. The purpose of this approach is to help increase the possibility of solidarity between Muslims and anarchists currently collaborating in groups like No One Is Illegal (NOII) and Solidarity Across Borders (SAB) — two groups that, in Day’s view, constitute part of the growing newest social movements (Day, 2005: 189–190). Three, for this interpretation to adopt and advocate a balanced approach between communal politics, “based on affinity-based ethico-political commitments”, and micro-politics (Day, 2005: 17, 143) as opposed to a strict adherence to an individualistic Stirnerian approach.

2. A Review of the Academic Literature

The first tendency Bey and Knight raise is supportive of my contentions. They concede that Islam is not monolithic, but rather is multiple. To them talking of Islam as a singularity is blasphemy. After all, it is problematic to speak of Islam as singular when, as Bey argues, it is born from the recognition that:

“The ‘hyper-orthodox’ & the ulemocracy can’t...reduce [Islam] to a hegemonistic/universalistic ideology...to rule out divergent forms of ‘sacred politics’ informed by Sufism [like the Naqshabandis], ‘radical’ Shia-ism, Ismaelism, Islamic Humanism and Sunni-ism, the ‘Green Path’ of Col. Qadafi (part neo-Sufism, part anarcho-syndicalism)...not to mention the ‘cosmopolitan Islam of Bosnia [Note: we mention these elements not to condone them necessarily, but to indicate that Islam is not a monolith of ‘fundamentalism’]” (Bey, 1996).

Following this premise, Bey’s work focuses on mapping and identifying, anthropologically and historically, “anarchisitic elements in Islam” (2009). In doing so, Bey demonstrates, as Fiscella notes, a plurality of anarchically oriented interpretative traditions of Islam as practiced through the:

“Qalandars, Ismailis (especially the Assassins), the socialist Ali Shariati, Khezr (or the Green Man whom Wilson associates with militant environmentalism, Khaldun’s Bedouins, Sufis (such as Ibn al-Arabi, al-Hallaj, and Rumi, Muammar Qaddafi’s Third Universal Theory, and his own Moorish Orthodox Church (originally a white beatnik outgrowth of Noble Drew Ali’s Moorish Science Temple)” (Fiscella, 2009).

In demonstrating a plurality of anarchically oriented traditions in Islam, Bey is identifying Islam as multiple as opposed to it being monolithic.

Next to Bey is Knight, who in his text Taqwacores also argues against the idea of a monolithic Islam. Knight’s text is a fictitious story of a straightedge Sunni, Umar, a drunken Mohawk-wearing Sufi who plays “rooftop calls-to-prayer on his electric guitar” (Knight, 2009), Jehangir, a dope smoking riot girl donning a burqa, Rabeya, and an Iranian Shi’ite skinhead, Ayyub. The central protagonist and narrator of this renegade anarchist pack of Muslim-punk-rockers out of Buffalo, New York, is Yusuf. Yusuf is an engineering student of Pakistani descent who is caught between the worlds of “Muslim piety, angry hardcore music, and....[a] mixed dose of both soft and hardcore sex” (Knight, 2009). The novel beautifully illustrates its characters’ “collective articulation of a heresy-friendly, pluralist Islam” (Knight, 2009). The novel sheds light on a few of the representations of Islam that are left out of mainstream representations of it by “looking into the twin identities of punk and Islam in their many varieties and degrees of orthodoxy” (Knight, 2009). A memorable passage in the novel is when Umar says to Yusuf,

“’Islam enjoins solidarity with our oppressed and persecuted bothers. But I’m not a nationalist; that’s why I got that one up — ‘ He gestured to the Islam Conference flag. “We’re one community, brother; that’s the umma, the only legitimate political entity on this earth.” (Knight, 2002: 53).

In this passage, Knight clearly demonstrates, through Umar, a view he believes exists amongst some Western Muslims. The view is that Islam is monolithic. Only then pages later, in contrast to Umar’s view, during a conversation between Jehingar and Yusuf, Knight writes of Jehingar’s response to Yusuf when Yusuf asks Jehingar about what taqwacore is. Jehingar reveals that it is about ugly Muslims, outcasts from their individual communities, who constitute a multi-faceted Islam as opposed to a monolithic Islam. Knight writes:

“‘So what do you think it is?’ I asked. ‘I think it’s just about being ugly...But yeah, man...I think that’s where it’s at...ugly...’ ‘What’s taqwacore then? Ugly Muslims?’ ‘Kind of.’ ‘I stayed plopped on the porch, Jehangir stayed stretched out on the sidewalk and we went a while without speaking. In silence I lost myself daydreaming of an Ugly Muslim Parade marching single-file down our street with every Ugly Muslim included: the women who traveled without their walis, the painters who painted people, beardless qazis, the dog owners in their angel-free houses, hashishiyyuns like Fasiq Abasa, liwats and sihaqs, Ahamdiyyas, believers who stopped reading in Arabic because they didn’t know what it said, the left-handers, the beer swillers, the Kuwaiti sentenced to death for singing Quran, the guys who snuck off with girls to make out and undo generations of cerebral clitorectomy, the girls who stopped blaming themselves every time a man had dirty thoughts, the mumins who stopped their clock-punching, the kids who had pepperoni on their pizza, on and on down the line” (Knight, 2002: 56).

Knight’s juxtaposition of Umar and Jehingers’ positions on a puritanical legitimate Muslim community versus an ugly impure Islam is commendable. It symbolizes the way some post-colonial Muslims perceive themselves and the relative ease with which the West appropriates these perceptions. Knights’ view, like Bey’s, is therefore in line with my contention that Islam is not monolithic.

The second tendency I observe, as taken from academic texts by non-Muslims, is the recognition that resonances exist between Islam and anarchism. To these writers, Islam and anarchism are not identical, but neither are they necessarily incompatible. For instance, Barclay in his text Islam, Muslim societies and anarchy begins by addressing a “possible relationship between the idea of anarchy and Muslim society” as it exists in “Kharijite and Sufi traditions” (Barclay, 2002). Barclay then proceeds to push his argument further by considering “various [anarchic] manifestations of tribal organization in North Africa and Southwest Asia” (Barclay, 2002). Barclay pays specific attention to the anti-statist approach of these tribes that was “documented by Ibn Khaldun” (Fiscella, 2009), a thirteenth century Muslim philosopher and sociologist. Barclay finally concludes his contribution with an “assessment of writings” (Barclay, 2002) by Colonel Mu’ammar Qaddafi, Libya’s present day dictator. In doing this, Barclay argues like Bey that Qaddafi’s writings “appear to have some anarchist content” (Barclay, 2002), especially in the context of “Qaddafi’s Third Universal Theory” (Fiscella, 2009). At the end of Barclay’s text, Barclay writes that “although there is no consistent rejection of the notion of domination, and no advocacy of a free society”, nevertheless “it is apparent anarchistic themes do pervade Muslim societies” (Barclay, 2002). Barclay therefore confirms my contention that there are anti-statist resonances between Islam and anarchism.

Crone, who adopts Bey’s anthropological and historical approach in her text Ninth-Century Muslim Anarchists, also recognizes resonances between Islam and anarchism. Crone identifies anti-statist Muslims such as Ja’far ibn Harb (d. 850), Al-asamm (d.816 or 817), Al-Nazzam (d. between 835 and 845), Hisham al Fuwati (d. 840) and his pupil Abbad ibn Slayman (d. 870). All these Muslims are Muslims who:

“lived or began their careers in Basra [, Iraq, and belong to the] so called Mu’tazilite ascetics (sufiyyat al-mu’tazila) [a Muslim sect], active in Baghdad...[and who along with a] sub-sect [of the Kharijites, another Muslim sect, called] the Najidiyya, or Najadat, [but] who had appeared [earlier] in the seventh century and who seem to have survived into the tenth, possibly in Basra and possibly somewhere else” held “that Muslim society could function without ...the state” (Crone, 2000: 3–4).

Crone, like Barclay, therefore reaffirms my contentions that anti-statist resonances exist between Islam and anarchism.

Fiscella’s text Imagining an Islamic Anarchism: A New Field is Ploughed also recognizes resonances between Islam and anarchism. Fiscella does this by pointing to contemporary examples of Muslim anarchists who find compatible the identities Muslim and anarchist, and the discourse of Islam and anarchism. Fiscella first points to a U.K. based Muslim, Yunus Yakoub Islam, born Julian Hoare. Yakoub had discovered anarchism in the 80’s through a punk band, Crass, only to convert to Islam in 1991 and then began writing a “Muslim Anarchist Charter” (Fiscella, 2009). Amongst the commitments of Yakoub’s Muslim Anarchist Charter is that the purpose of life as a Muslim anarchist necessitates a:

“Wholehearted commitment to learning, where such learning is carried out freely, consciously refusing to compromise with institutional power in any form, be it judicial, religious, social, corporate or political... the active pursuit of justice with the aim of establishing communities and societies where free spiritual development is uninhibited by tyranny, poverty and ignorance. Such a purpose requires an affinity with all peoples who define themselves as belonging to cultures of Judeo-Christian-Islamic origin in which both commonalities and differences are acknowledged and understood, and disagreement engenders debate rather than division and satire but never mockery...The Muslim Anarchist Charter rejects fascist forces which seek to enforce a single, absolute truth, including patriarchy, empire, and Wahhabism” .

Fiscella also points to the seductress Leda Rafenelli, whom I consider as Islam’s contemporary Emma Goldman (Fiscella, 2009). Born with an “early [anarchistic] poetic vein” (Fiscella, 2009) in 1880 in Pistoia, Italy, Rafenelli immigrated in 1903 to Alexandria, Egypt. Bewitched with her treatment by Arabs, Rafenelli learned Arabic, embraced Sufism, and became a mystic anarchist. Rafenelli then started writing of her experience in Egypt. In the early 1920s, Rafenelli went back to her native Italy and co-founded with Joseph Monanni their Publishing House Company. She started publishing the works of “Nietzsche, Malatesta, Kropotkin, Stirner” (Fiscella, 2009) only to then write 50 novels in Italian dedicated “to anti-colonialism...[opposing] European Imperialism...raging against clericalism, militarism and the oppression of women” (Fiscella, 2009). Near the end of her life, Rafenelli dedicated her writing to the issue of solidarity among anarchists, writing:

“I see comrades who, because of a word or two which offends them, forget the brother/sisterhood, the solidarity that bring us anarchists together... It is natural that there should be some disagreements among us...But when someone expresses his/her opinion on people or facts, those who oppose those judgments should do so without personal antagonism” (Fiscella, 2009).

Finally, Fiscella points to Gusatve Henri Jossot or Abdoul-Karim Jossot (Fiscella, 2009). Jossot was an early 19th century caricaturist and contributor to the anarchist publications Les Temps nouveaux and l’Assiette au Beurre (Moreel, 2003). Though Jossot never claimed to be a Muslim anarchist like Rafenelli and Yakoub, Jossot targeted his caricatures at authoritarian families, the army, the courts, the police and the church , all of which are anarchist concerns (Moreel, 2003). Converting to Islam in 1913, Jossot contributed a statement to La Dépêche Tunisienne . In his contribution, Jossot wrote: “no mysteries, no dogmas, no priests, almost no ceremonies, the most rational religion in the world...to start Islamic fatherlands [, states,] is betraying Islam” (La Dépêche Tunisienne, 10 February 1913). Fiscella, by pointing to the former contemporary examples of Muslim anarchists therefore, along with Crone and Barclay, reaffirms my contentions that there are anti-authoritarian, pro-solidarity and anti-capitalist resonances between Islam and anarchism, and the identities Muslim and anarchist.

The third tendency I observe is in Bey’s texts Millennium and Jihad Revisited (2004). In the texts, Bey emphasizes the revolutionary Islamic concept of jihad. Contrary to popular perception, the concept does not mean holy war. It means ‘to struggle’ in the sense that it is “derived from the Arabic root jhd, ‘to strive’” (Marranci, 2006: 17). Jhd also “serves as the root for other verbs emphasizing effort and struggle...in difficult tasks” (Marranci, 2006: 17). An example of such a verb is ijtihad, which means “‘to strive for understanding and interpreting the Qur’anic law’ [and with]...the same jhd root as jihad” (Marranci, 2006: 17). Jihad and ijtihad are not just Muslim practices that involve offering variant “meanings of individual words” (Al’awani, 1993: 83) in the Sunnah and the Koran. Rather they also involve dealing with the “linguistic difficulties...over questions of grammar” in the Sunnah and the Koran and deciding whether God is speaking in an active or a passive voice (Al’Awani, 1993: 82). Jihad is the reason why there exists a pluralistic, impure Islam. It is the concept I develop as a method in chapter three, through its form ijtihad, and which I then practice when constructing Anarca-Islam in chapter five. Bey argues in his text Jihad Revisited that it is jihad, which allowed the Neo-Sufis and others, like the Sanussi order in Libya, to break with:

“the medieval concept of the all-powerful ‘master’. Instead, they sought initiation in dreams and visions. In North Africa, the Sanussi Order and the Tijani Order, amongst others, were founded by seekers who’d been empowered in dreams by the Prophet Mohammed himself...[It is jihad that allowed] the Neo-Sufi orders...[to be] conceived and shaped to some extent as reform movements within Islam, in competition with modernism & secularism on one hand and Salafist/Wahhabi neo-puritan ‘Islamism’ on the other. [It is jihad] that allowed] education & health and economic alternatives to colonialism...[to be] stressed in the Sanussi Order in Libya. And when armed struggle against Italian rule erupted, Sanussi fuqara (dervishes) led the uprising” (Bey, 2004)

Bey also rightly points out in Jihad Revisted that jihad has unfortunately become a forsaken and an abandoned Islamic practice. This is particularly important considering that “perhaps the single most damaging blow to Islamic knowledge came in the tenth century under the Abbasids when the ‘Gate of Ijithad’...was declared closed” (Esposito, 1984: 19). In this light, Bey in Millennium advocates for jihad, because it is only with it that:

“Traditions of tolerance, voluntarism, egalitarianism, concern for social justice, critique of usury’, mystical utopianism — etc. — can form the constellations of a new propaganda within Islam, unshakably opposed to the cognitive colonialism of the numisphere, oriented to ‘empirical freedoms’ rather than ideology, critical of repression within Islam, but committed to its creativity, reticence, interiority, militance, & style. Islam’s concern with pollution of the imagination, which manifests in a literal veiling of the image, constitutes a powerful strategic realization for the jihad; — that which is veiled is not absent or invisible, since the veil is a sign of its presence, its imaginal reality, its power. That which is veiled is unseen” (Bey, 1996).

Bey’s emphasis on jihad as an Islamic practice, therefore, affirms my contention for the necessity of its development as a method for constructing Anarca-Islam.

The fourth tendency I observe is in Bey’s text Islam and Eugenics. In this text, Bey advocates and foretells the rise of an anarchic interpretation of Islam and Islamic interpretation of anarchism in the West. The interpretation Bey hopes will be endowed with a ‘spirit of Sarajevo’ and in possession of its own Islamic heritage as it introduces itself into ‘a precious city-state’, a metaphor I perceive Bey uses in reference to social movements. Moreover, this interpretation’s task, as Bey sees it, ought to create a panegyric desert for Muslims and Muslim anarchists amongst anarchists in social movements. Bey describes the interpretation’s spirit in Islam and Eugenics, writing:

“Inshallah, some day Sarajevo will rise again as a unique particularity in which European Moslems and European Christians (I’m speaking loosely here of communities, not professions of faith) will create in mutual tolerance & synergy a city-state of precious value, with an Islamic heritage. That would constitute an imaginal infusion, a flow of energy from the past, which would now be ‘our’ past. This would mean far more than an empty apology for the old Ottomans, Caliphs of Islam and inventors of the fez” (Bey, 1997).

Bey then goes on in Islam and Eugenics to describe his vision of this anarchic interpretation of Islam and an Islamic interpretation of anarchism, writing:

“‘Islam’ in Europe & America? Why not? Why not enjoy it? Autonomous enclaves in Berlin, Paris, London — linked by anarcho-federalism with other autonomous zones, squats, social centers, eco-farms & free rural municipalities, & other anti-Capital entities & non-hegemonic particularities. Revolutionary difference against the idols of Moloch & Mammon, & the culture of global sameness. Why not introduce into ‘western culture’ the virus of a critique of the tyranny of the image — an iconoclastic breath from the desert? Reactionary fundamentalism has long since betrayed itself as a revolutionary force. Why not something else, the ‘spirit of Sarajevo’ perhaps — or the castles of the Assassins” (Bey, 1997).

Bey’s hopes and visions in the passages above therefore affirm my contention that it is indeed possible and favorable to construct an anarchic interpretation of Islam and an Islamic interpretation of anarchism.

The fifth tendency I observe is Bey and Knight’s anti-authoritarian stance. In advocating for this stance, by “drawing inspiration from his interpretation of the abrogation of the Law (Qiyamat) during the Assassin reign at Alamut” (Fiscella, 2009), Bey writes:

“In a sense anyone can be the Imam; in a sense, everyone already is the Imam...the idea of the Iman-of-one’s-own-being implies the idea of self-rule, autarky: each human being a potential king, and human relations carried out as a mutuality of ‘free lords’... To liberate everyday life...beings with the individual and spirals outward in love to embrace others...’radical’ (post-Qiyamat) Ismailism restores ‘sovereignty’ to the individual, who thus becomes his/her own ‘authority’. Spirituality is not a master/slave relation — it is not an ‘Oriental despotism’. Not anymore. Not now. Maybe it never was. Who cares? Here and now: — we need something different” (Bey, 1993: 58).

Similarly, Yusuf in Taqwacores expresses Knight’s anti-authoritarian stance. Knight writes:

“Fuck the local imam, fuck the PhDs at al-Madina al-Munawwara ... give me the Islam of starry-night cornfields with wind rustling through my shirt and reckless fisabilillah make-out sprees that won’t lead to anything but hurt. Knee-deep in a creek is where I’ll find my kitab. If Allah wants to say anything to me He’ll do so on the faces of my brothers and sisters. If there’s any Law that I need to follow, I’ll find it out there in the world” (Knight, 2004: 252).

Bey and Knights’ arguments for an anti-authoritarian Islam therefore affirm my contention that it is possible to construct an anti-authoritarian commitment as a foundation for Anarca-Islam.

The sixth and final tendency I observe in the academic texts is Fiscella’s categorization of the anthropological and historical studies of Islamic anarchism to date in Imagining an Islamic Anarchism: A New Field of Study is Ploughed. Fiscella applies three classifications that could be useful in defining the Islamic-anarchism discourse. Fiscella does this but also humbly acknowledges that:

“Alternative models are required. It is not possible right now to do justice to the richness and complexity of the material but a crude tool might be crafted in order to at least begin digging” (Fiscella, 2009) the discourse on Islam and anarchism.

The classifications Fiscella uses include the following:

“[Type One , inclusive of works of Crone, Bey and Knight, are] studies of anarchist theory [and with the subtypes Organic Islamic anarchism and Post-modern Islamic anarchism]... [Type Two , inclusive of the work of Barclay, are] studies in the anarchic traits of tribal Muslim societies [and with the subtypes Pre-modern Muslim anarchy and Post-modern Muslim anarchy]...and finally, [Type Three are] studies of the anarchical structure of Islam [with the subtypes Anarchical Islam (Caliphate period) and Hyper-anarchical Islam (Post-Caliphate period)]...Within each category further distinctions can be made based on qualitative developments” (Fiscella, 2009).

Fiscella’s identification of the preliminary parameters of Islamic anarchism as a discourse, affirms my contention that Anarca-Islam does have a theoretical and pragmatic role to play in terms of its contribution to anarchism and Islamic-anarchism as discourses as well as the newest social movements.

3. Review of the Movement Literature

Non-academic, movement articles and blogs reaffirm that there is no monolithic Islam and that there have been historical, anti-authoritarian movements within Islam resonating with anarchism. Nevertheless, the same articles and blogs also paradoxically reproduce the two misconceptions of Islam and Muslims that I discussed earlier. In Muslim Anarchism, Luxzenburg writes of anti-authoritarian resonances between Islam and anarchism and acknowledges the existence of multiple strands of Islam as well. Luxzenburg writes:

“The first recorded strand of anti-authoritarian Islam dates all the way back to the death of the third [Caliph] Uthmān ibn ‘Affān. They had a disagreement about who should succeed him as the leader of Muslims, resulting in the [Shia] — [Sunni] split. There was a third group, however, the [Kharijites], who opposed both the Sunni and Shia sects, and claimed that any qualified Muslim could be an Imam. They held that all people were individually responsible for the good or evil of their acts. They challenged all authority and encouraged all, especially the poor and dispossessed, to see the struggle against injustice as being divinely sanctioned. However, although Kharijites saw all believers completely equal regardless of any social differences, they believed that non-believers had no rights, and could be killed. At least one sect of Kharajites, the Najdiyya, believed that if no suitable [imam] was present in the community, then the position could be dispensed with. A strand of Mutazalite thought paralleled that of the Najdiyya: if rulers inevitably became tyrants, then the only acceptable course of action was to stop installing rulers” (Luxzenburg, 2009).

In addition to Luxzenburg’s article, but hardly as historically and anthropologically informative and interrogative as his, there is also Chris R.’s article Islam and Anarchy Join Together. In the article, Chris R. also acknowledges resonances between Islam and anarchism. He writes:

“ISLAM and the LIBERTARIAN SOCIAL struggle are, in no way, opposed, but rather have an ample nexus that joins them together. To that end, brothers and sisters, know that we are not different, we are like you and have the same objectives, bringing awareness to social struggles...in reality ISLAM is pureness, love, peace, social awareness and more” (Chris R., 2009)

Nevertheless, and in spite of the article’s positive viewpoint(s) on Islam and anarchism, anarchist bloggers like ‘Brain-Fear’ and ‘PJP’ responded negatively to the article through its blog forum. In their comments, the anarchist bloggers dismissed the possibility of Muslim anarchists and the possibility of an anarchic interpretation of Islam and Islamic interpretation of anarchism, basing their views on their homogenization of Islam and Muslims. Brain-Fear and PJP write:

“Any form of religion is thought control — Islam is sexist and homophobic... If they [Muslims] are serious about anarchism, they would have dropped the sexist and homophobic aspects of the religion and accentuated more libertarian aspects of the religion” (Chris R., 2009)

A third anarchist blogger, ‘Burning-man’, also expresses a similar yet more direct critique towards what is described as ‘Anarcho-Islam’; a neither Koranic nor anarchically proven fusion of Islam and anarchism. Burning-man’s comments demonstrate the two misconceptions of the impossibility of an anarchic interpretation of Islam and an Islamic interpretation of anarchism as well as the impossibility of the co-existence of Islam and anarchism in a single subjectivity. Burning-man wrote:

“Anarcho-Islam is about the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of. Islam is about submission. Slave to Allah and all that crap. It has an extremely rigid set of rules and conduct and, while more enlightened than other monotheistic religions in a number of important ways, it never quite went through anything like the Reformation. It is reactionary, pro-capitalist, pro-slavery, imperialist and misogynist to the core. Just read the fucking Koran” (Chris R., 2009).

Treading in line with Brain-fear, PJP, and Burning-man, in regurgitating these misconceptions are also anarchists associated with the Anarchist Federation in London, England. The anarchists in question produced an article in the “December 2001 issue” (Adam K., 2007) that levels all differences between Islam and Muslims and portrays Islam as monolithic, fundamentalist, reactionary, homo-trans-queerphobic, and oppressive towards women. The article reductively and Islamophobically claims Islam “the enemy of all Freedom loving people” (Adam K., 2007).

Similarly, in Flood’s article The Trouble with Islam the two misconceptions reappear. Flood’s argument revolves around this introductory statement:

“The left in general ...[but in particular] groups like the British SWP [Socialist Party of Britain] have gone so far as to describe left criticism of the Islamic religion as ‘Islamophobia’ echoing the official line of their government which insists ‘The real Islam is a religion of peace, tolerance and understanding’. While there is a real need for the left to defend people who are Muslims from state and non-state victimisation in the aftermath of 9–11 this should not at any time imply a defence of the Islamic religion. Freedom of religion must also allow freedom from religion!” (Flood, 2003).

While I concur with Flood’s views that ‘freedom of religion must allow freedom from religion’ and that the ‘left ought possess the right to critique Islam without fear of the accusatory charge of Islamophobia’, Flood’s argument is problematic because Flood writes of Islam and Muslims as if both were monolithic. Flood dismisses the possibility of constructing an anarchic interpretation of Islam. Causally, and by failing to acknowledge Islam’s multiplicity, Flood also denies the possibility of the existence of Muslim anarchists in social movements. However, I find that the most unfortunate part of Flood’s article is his concluding statement. In it, he praises anarchists and anarchisms’ historical commitments to anti-oppression, yet expresses his yearning for an anarchic vigilance in opposition to Islam. Flood supports this conclusion through his view of Islam as puritanical and running counter to anarchism’s commitment to freedom from oppression(s). Flood writes:

“Anarchists have a long and proud tradition of fighting the power of organised religion, including in countries like Spain fighting fascist gangs formed on a religious basis. While we recognise the freedom of people to hold a religion we also recognise that there has to be a freedom from religion — an idea that runs against the basis of Islam. Anarchists in the Middle East and beyond will need to determine for themselves the most effective ways of counteracting the influence of the fundamentalists there. In the west we can at least make sure their attempts to impose themselves on the immigrant communities are opposed” (Flood, 2003).

The two misconceptions exist amongst these anarchists for two reasons. The first is that these anarchists are influenced by Orientalist and Fundementalist Western representations of Islam and Muslims. The second is the fact that these anarchists, for the most part, do not read Arabic, practice Islam, and have never read the Sunnah or the Koran. Moreover, these anarchists have never practiced jihad and ijtihad and therefore have not understood interpretative traditions of Islam derived from either the Sunnah or the Koran. The majority of anarchists are not aware that within Islam, “everything that is said under the explicit form of the law usually also refers to another meaning” (Foucault, 1978: 753–4). For instance, they are not aware that the Arabic word ayn in the Koran may change from meaning “an organ of sight” to “running water”, from “pure gold” to a “spy” (Al’Awani, 1993: 82). Anarchists for the most part do not realize that it is possible through jihad and ijtihad that the Koranic “word qar’ (plural: quroo’) can either mean menstruation” (Al’Awani, 1993: 82) or the exact opposite, “purity following menstruation” (Al’Awani, 1993: 82). As a result of not being aware of any of this, the majority of anarchists remain blind to the fact that there are non-dogmatic possibilities in literal and figurative connotations that Muslim scholars, Muj’tah’eideen, encounter when they engage in jihad and ijtihad, especially when Muj’tah’eideen are orienting Islam ethically and politically to a specific hermeneutic such as anarchism.

What the majority of anarchists need to recognize then is that they cannot take for granted the difficulty Muj’tah’eideen face at deriving different connotations and alternative readings based on the subtleties of the Sunnah and the Koran. In not recognizing this, these anarchists undermine the power and burden of a Muj’tah’eid (singular for Muh’tah’eideen). Anarchists, for the most part, dismiss the sacred responsibility a Muj’tah’eid is entrusted with and for which he and/or she is accountable before God. All anarchists must understand that “the East and Islam don’t necessarily have the same regimes of truth as the West” (Foucault, 1978, 753–4). These regimes of truth are knowable truths, but which a majority of anarchists know little of. Anarchists cannot afford to be ignorant or ambivalent of Islam out of fear.

4. Conclusions Drawn from Reviewing both Literatures

In drawing my conclusions from reviewing the literatures, let me say that the literature is undoubtedly a vital symbolic step that can help Western Muslims in confronting Western representations ascribed to Islam. However, the literature shows weaknesses on three interrelated fronts. First, there is the weakness of the secularization of the texts, and this applies to both the academic and non-academic literature. The secularization occurs because the texts use neither the Koran nor the Sunnah. The writers abstain from offering conceptual and pragmatic Koranic and anarchic justifications of how it is (im)possible to construct an anarchic interpretation of Islam and an Islamic interpretation of anarchism. The literature defers instead to identifying useful but still just anthropological and historical resonances between anarchism and Islam. The consequence is the literature’s weakened effectivity due to the overarching dismissal of what I see as a critical aspect with respect to the discourse of Islam and anarchism. As Fiscella argues, it is not “merely about the imagination of the potential options for how things can be” (Fiscella, 2009) between the two, Islam and anarchism. Rather, it is about proving the Islamic and anarchic concepts and practices necessary for this idea’s presentation to a socio-political arena comprised predominantly of non-secular Western Muslims. That said, I have little doubt and can almost guarantee that post-colonial immigrant and citizen Muslims, regardless of how liberal, can tolerate but will never seriously accept a word in any of these literatures unless the Koran and the Sunnah are used.

Second, there is the weakness that the academic and non-academic writers do not identify clearly who the intended audience or the exact purpose of their writing. The literature lacks clarity when in fact the writers could direct the literature and its intended message(s) far more adequately to a particular audience. For instance, Bey and Knight parley between representing Islam and Muslims either through fictional insights that call the Koran a “tiny little book for tiny little men” (Knight, 2004: 105) or through insights using what Bey calls “poetic terrorism” (Bey, 1993: 58) in his quest for “poetic facts” (Bey, 1993: 58). As Fiscella writes, Bey’s “work is easy to read but difficult to follow...seamlessly blend[ing] scholarly research with manifesto in a quest for ‘poetic facts’” (Fiscella, 2009). The consequence of the inadequate addressing of the religious literature, as well as the lack of clarity, is the persistence of the former misconceptions in the hearts and minds of anarchists.

A third weakness found generally in literature on anarchism and Islam, but one that is particular to the literature by Bey and Knight, is that they adopt and advocate for a Stirnerian individualistic approach to writing on Islam and anarchism (Kroptkin, 1910). I am vehemently against this approach. Bey and Knight encourage Muslims to:

“not only [be Muslims in] a complete revolt against the state and against servitude...but also [after] the full liberation of...[themselves] from all social and moral bonds [and responsibilities to even themselves as community] — the rehabilitation of the ‘I’, the supremacy of the individual, complete ‘amoralism’, and the association of egoists’”(Kroptkin, 1910).

For Bey and Knight, when it comes to representing Islam and Muslims “heresy and the margins of legitimacy are perfectly respectable options” (Fiscella, 2009). This means, according to Bey and Knight, that any Muslim reserves the right to do as they please without being bound by or accountable for the ethico-political rights of the community over that individual. On the one hand, Bey “speaks of a need for the individual to be bound by an ethical and spiritual stance...[yet] on the other hand, he argues that the individual alone has the right to determine the validity of those ethics” (Fiscella, 2009). Whereas in Knight’s case, “Knight’s vision is one of multiple heresies and quasi-orthodoxies [of Islam and Muslims] living under the same roof and together manifesting an Islam where individualists are bound together in a radically intentional pluralism” (Fiscella, 2009). I however believe in the need for a more balanced approach between the rights of the community and the rights of the individual, and beyond Knight’s ‘radical intentional pluralism’ and which is not rooted in shared ethico-political commitments. In this sense, the literature inadequately addresses Muslims and anarchists in the newest social movements, and remains lacking in Koranic substance, encouragement, and call for communitarian action amongst Muslims and anarchists.

It seems to me then, that Bey and Knight fail to construct what I think is necessary. That is, an anarchic interpretation of Islam that is simultaneously an Islamic interpretation of anarchism. I accept and respect Bey’s anthropological and historical approach as well as Knight’s fictional approach. However, the construction of an interpretation or a multiplicity of interpretations is necessary, if only to effectively mobilize Muslims, Muslim anarchists and anarchists towards understanding each other better within the newest social movements. Without this type of interpretation, Muslim anarchists are fetishized revolutionary subjects and representatives of a dreary fusion of Islam and anarchism. In fact, without this kind of interpretation, Muslim anarchists exist only in name, since they are without the adequate theological foundations for the fusion of their two identities. Leaving Muslim anarchists susceptible to mockery by anarchists like Brain-fear regarding something called Anarcho-Islam, and which no one, not even Muslim anarchists, have defined. The consequence is more of the same thing for Muslim anarchists. That is, their further separation and ostracization from anarchists and Muslims. An interpretation is not a guarantee of the end of misconceptions between Muslims, Muslim anarchists and anarchists but it is a start in proving Koranically and anarchistically the concepts and practices behind a Muslim anarchist’s right to exist.

I argue for three things in light of this literature’s critical problems. The first, as I have already mentioned, is the construction of an anarchic interpretation of Islam and an Islamic interpretation of anarchism. This interpretation needs to be achieved Koranically and anarchistically by drawing conceptual, pragmatic, anti-authoritarian, and anti-capitalist resonances between Islam and anarchism. Second, that this synergistic interpretation addresses a relevant audience and have a particular purpose. The audience addressed needs to be defined to include Muslims and anarchists in the West, but more particularly Muslims and anarchists within the newest social movements; this literature should have the purpose of increasing the possibility of solidarity between Muslims and anarchists currently collaborating in groups like No One Is Illegal (NOII) and Solidarity Across Borders (SAB). Three, I am also arguing that this interpretation adopt and advocate for a balanced approach between communal politics, which would be based on shared ethico-political commitments, and micro-politics as opposed to a strict adherence to an individualistic Stirnerian approach. This way the interpretation is advocating for an ‘escape’ from what Day refers to as “the hegemony of hegemony, but [not] at the cost of an excessive [heretical] reliance upon a ‘nomadic’ conception of subjectivity” (2005: 17) and which “rejects not only coercive morality, but affinity based ethico-political commitments as well” (2005: 17). My hope is that this interpretation assists Muslims and anarchists in forming a community where they can organize themselves in a way

“so as to minimize domination and exploitation [amongst each other and in their own communities], particularly in a world increasingly colonized by neoliberal globalization and the societies of control” (Day, 2005: 143).

In organizing in this communitarian way, as opposed to an individualistic way, this interpretation is calling on Muslims, Muslim anarchists and anarchists to avoid the legacy of what the Koran calls an individualistic ‘narrow and constricted existence’ . After all, there has to be balanced approach between the rights of an individual and the rights of a community. As God says in the Koran:

“And do not dispute with one another [by delighting in what each of you thinks] lest you fail and your strength desert you” (The Holy Koran, Chapter 8: Chapter of ‘The Accession’: Verse 46; Al-awani, 1993: 3).

In line with the three criteria, I advocate for this interpretation, what I call Anarca-Islam, as this thesis’ contribution to emergent views on the discourse of Islam and anarchism. I believe it to be an important contribution, considering as Fiscella argues:

“None of these [aforementioned literatures] can tells us what Islamic anarchism is but all of them tell us how an Islamic anarchism might be imagined — even if the imagining borders on the realm of wishful thinking and fantasy” (2009).

In response to Fiscella, I offer Anara-Islam as a reinvention of Islamic forms of anarchist thought and anarchist forms of Islamic thought. For now, however and before constructing Anarca-Islam the following chapter will address the methodology and theories necessary to construct it.

Chapter 3. Methodology and Theories

“I will say only this: if I ask to look closer, concerning this concept of position...it is that it bears at least the same name as an absolutely essential, vital mechanism...The position-of-the-other...to pose — oneself by oneself as the other of the Idea, as other-than-oneself in one’s finite determination, with the aim of repatriating and re-appropriating oneself, of returning close to oneself in the infinite richness of one’s determination...overturning...displacement...scenes, acts, figures of dissemination.” (Jacques Derrida, 1971)

1. Chapter Introduction

In this chapter, I identify the methodological and theoretical positioning(s) necessary in constructing Anarca-Islam. In the first section of this chapter, I introduce a method I call Anarchic-Ijtihad. Anarchic-Ijtihad is the method I use to construct Anarca-Islam in chapter five. After introducing Anarchic-Ijtihad, I defend its use against possible objections against this method of inquiry, such as the critique offered by some orthodox Muslim scholars and secular Muslims such as Michael Muhammad Knight. In the second and final section of this chapter, I introduce the theoretical paradigms I use, alongside Anarchic-Ijtihad, to construct Anarca-Islam, including post-anarchist, deconstructionist, post-colonial and poststructuralist theories along with sociological theories of social movements. Following the identification of these paradigms, I explore the individual role of each paradigm in constructing Anarca-Islam. I conclude this section and chapter by clarifying a critical point to my argument for constructing Anarca-Islam. That is, I distinguish between Islamic principles and Muslim cultural practices. The two are not to be conflated, albeit that they do intersect.

2. Thus Spoke God: The Method of Anarchic-Ijtihad

Anarchic-Ijtihad is the method I use to construct Anarca-Islam. This method is derived from its classical form ijtihad. Ijtihad is the Islamic practice of using independent and rigorous reasoning while interpreting and re-interpreting Islamic principles in the Sunnah and the Koran. The act of re-interpreting the Sunnah and the Koran in Islam is referred to as “tafsir” (Al’Awani, 1995: 25).

The principles on which tafsir is based are not connected to matters of belief. Ijtihad is a particularly acceptable act for a Muj’tah’id, or a scholar, to engage in when there are “matters on which there is no clear guidance in the Qur’an and the Sunnah” (Al’Awani, 1993: 25). Ijtihad, when there is no clear guidance in the Koran, therefore becomes a critical deconstructive force for a Muj’tah’id to re-interpret principles in Islam. A force that involves not only a Muj’tah’id’s critical exegesis of the Koran, but rather:

“the act of making a judgement, whether through considering the explicit meaning of a text or analyzing it with respect to the pertinent principles and proofs...[and in this sense is] one of the most important types of juristic reasoning... one which the early Muslims followed” (Al’Awani, 1993: 25–26).

This act of making judgement requires knowledge of pertinent linguistic and variant grammatical implications when analyzing and understanding the Koran. This judgement allows the Muj’tah’id to exceed the parameters of critically explaining, expanding, and interpreting the text and therefore endows him and/or her with the ability to go beyond critical analysis. The Muj’tah’id is authorized to make ethico-political judgments with respect to the re-interpretation of Islamic principles, provided the Muj’tah’id supports the re-interpreted principles by the necessary textual evidence and Koranic justifications for the Muj’tah’id’s ethical-political re-orientation of the Islamic principles in a particular direction. The Muj’tah’id is able re-interpret the principles, if the principles are not already oriented in the particular ethico-political direction a Muj’tah’id believes they should be oriented towards. In this thesis, I will show the textual evidence for my argument regarding the existence of anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian principles, concepts and practices in Islam. As well, I will provide the Koranic justifications for my re-orientation of these principles in order to demonstrate the interpretative tradition of Islam that resonates with anarchism.

One might ask: What does a Muj’tah’id do then with principles that pertain to matters of belief and which a Muj’tah’id, as noted earlier, is forbidden from practicing ijtihad with respect to? The Muj’tah’id is to “adopt the manifest meanings and what is properly and strictly sanctioned by the purport of the text” (Al’Awani, 1993: 25). The reason for the forbiddance of ijtihad in such cases is that these types of Koranic verses address matters the details and the knowledge of which is reserved for God alone. One example of such a verse is in the second chapter of the Koran. The chapter is titled ‘The Cow’. It begins with the verse “Alif Lam Mim” . The verse is comprised of three Arabic letters ‘Alif’, ‘Lam’ and ‘Mim’, and which do not form an Arabic word. The details of this verse, of which there exist ample similar Koranic examples, are “beyond the reach of human perception included in the term al ghayb” (Al’Awani, 1993: 27). Al-Ghayb means that the true meaning of the verse belongs to God. In this light, no Muj’tah’id possesses the ability to delve into interpreting such verses as ‘Alif Lam Mim’. While a Muj’tah’id is permitted to comment on these types of verses, the Muj’tah’id’s comments are bound to and cannot contradict what has been generally stated in other verses in the Sunnah and the Koran in regards to the interpretation of this verse. That is, ‘Alif Lam Mim’ cannot contradict enshrined principles of the faith such as the oneness of God. God says in the Koran of these types of ambiguous verses:

“But no one knows its interpretation except God. And those who are firmly rooted in knowledge say: ‘We believe in it’” (The Holy Koran, Chapter 3: Chapter of ‘The Family of Imran’: Verse 7).

God therefore strictly demands in the verse above from a Muj’tah’id that when an ambiguous verse as ‘Alif Lam Mim’ appears that the Muj’tah’id simply accepts its ambiguousness. In a sense, a Muj’tah’id’s task here is therefore one that exceeds that of conducting a discursive analysis of the text. That is, a Muj’tah’id’s duty exceeds studying, analyzing, and comprehending the circumstances behind the revelation of a verse as ‘Alif Lam Mim’ or the linguistic boundaries of the very verse itself. The Muj’tah’id accepts the verse as God’s verse or as ‘is’. That is, the verse is not to be analyzed, understood or misunderstood, but appreciated as it is beyond a Muj’tah’id‘s grasp and comprehension. In light of this and in the case of my thesis, there however are no such types of verses upon which I will draw to construct Anarca-Islam.

In light of the mentioned verse above, it is clear that the Koran that it is a complicated text. This makes it more necessary for the reader to comprehend the Koran’s complexity as a text. To quote Seyyid Hossein Nasr on this matter:

“Many people, especially non-Muslims, who read the Quran for the first time are struck by what appears as a kind of incoherence from the human point of view. It is neither like a highly mystical text nor a manual of Aristotelian logic, though it contains both mysticism and logic. It is not just poetry although it contains the most powerful poetry. The text of the Quran reveals human language crushed by the power of the Divine word. It is as if human language were scattered into a thousand fragments like a wave scattered into drops against the rocks at sea” (Nasr in Brown, 1992: 90).

Language in the Koran is therefore language that is not fixed in meaning. Rather, the Koran’s language is endlessly reinventing itself anew. God’s words remake the rules and limits of Arabic as a language. In fact, as Nasr notes, God replaces human Arabic with a Divine form of Arabic that is seemingly incoherent, poetic, and mystical. The Koran offers a descriptive account of tales of past prophets and callings upon the reader to contemplate the very truth of the Divinity of the words and the language used.

The degree of detail in the Koran transforms the Koran into a text whose principles can never be fully analyzed and understood by a Muj’tah’id. It becomes a text that requires a Muj’tah’id‘s endless struggle. Ijtihad in a sense is God’s perpetual challenge to a Muj’tah’id. In this challenge, during a Muj’tah’id‘s interaction with the Koran, a Muj’tah’id encounters and reads a variety of different meanings for the same Koranic words. The different meanings offer varying principles and consequently result in different interpretations of Islam. Examples of such words are ‘ayn’ or ‘qar’, which were discussed in chapter two, and upon which Koranic principles are laid and based. The Muj’tah’id’s task consists of offering varying insights, reasoning(s), and advancing proofs regarding Koranic principles. In doing so, the Muj’tah’id is continually engaging in an act of destabilizing dogmatic principles interpreted by other Muj’tah’ideen.

This analysis leads to this question: Who is entitled to conduct ijtihad and who is permitted to become a Muj’tah’id? Ijtihad is considered to be a divinely decreed right and gift from God to Muslims en masse. As Taha Jabir Al’Awani argues in the Ethics of Disagreements in Islam (1993): The Koranic “legal intellectual effort is required by the divine injunction: ‘Learn a lesson, then, O you who are endowed with insight’” (26; The Holy Koran, Chapter 59: Chapter of ‘Banishment’: Verse 2). Ijtihad is then a necessary right ordained and tantamount to duty for Muslims through the Koranic verse Al’Awani indicates above. This right exists for all Muslims according to their individual abilities and upon scholarly study. God intends ijtihad as a merciful mechanism to accommodate Muslims. In this regard, God states in the Koran:

“Shouldst thou not bring them a sign, they say, ‘Hast thou not yet made choice of one?’ Say, ‘I only follow what is inspired to me by my Lord [i.e. in the Koran]. These are perceptions from my Lord, and a guidance and a mercy to a people who believe’. And when the Koran is read, then listen thereto and keep silence; haply ye may obtain mercy” (The Holy Koran, Chapter 7: Chapter of ‘The Elevated Places’: Verse 201).

In the verse, God acknowledges the Koran as a merciful text, a gift to Muslims. Moreover, God advises Muslims to partake in ijthad with the Koran, not necessarily by literally re-interpreting it, but by actively listening to it as highlighted in the verse above. That is, God ordains that Muslims understand the Koran as opposed to blindly ascribe to its message. Furthermore, God advocates that Muslims neither dogmatically accept nor rely upon a Muj’tah’id‘s interpretation of the Koran. Muslims are not to take ijtihad for granted. God even vows to guide Muslims in explaining the Koran. That is, God vows to support and enlighten any Muslim who engages and struggles with the Koran and not only Muj’tah’ideen. As God says in the Koran: “We explain the signs in detail for those who reflect” (Chapter 10: Chapter of ‘Yunus’: Verse 24). God’s insistence that capable Muslims use ijtihad as a mechanism to re-interpret Islamic principles in accordance with their spatial, temporal, political, and social conditions and circumstances highlights the relative ease which ijtihad offers and brings for Islamic practice. In fact, God expects differences in Islamic principles due to the practice of ijtihad in different spatial, temporal, political, and social circumstances. Below are two Koranic verses that address this matter:

“Not all of them are alike” (The Holy Koran, Chapter 4, Chapter of ‘The Women’: Verse 113)

and

“unto every one of you We [God] have appointed a different law and way of life and if God had pleased, God would have made you a single Ummah [community], but that God might try You in what God gave you. So vie with one another in virtuous deeds. To God you will all return, so that God will inform you of that wherein you differed” (The Holy Koran, Chapter 5, Chapter of ‘The Dinner Table’: Verse 48).

In the above verses, God acknowledges that Muslims are created equal but not alike. God did not intend for Muslims to be organized into a single community, but rather that each Muslim individual and community vie with the other in virtuous deeds while also appreciating the differences that set them apart. The difference in laws as a consequence of ijtihad, and which the second verse refers to, does not imply that Muslims ought not appreciate Islamic interpretations of past Muslims or laws of other communities. Rather it encourages Muslims to do right by themselves for their own conditions, while drawing upon lessons from the past in order to appreciate and contextualize past achievements and interpretations of Islam (Esposito, 2002: 159). God confirms that the Koran is an adaptable text through ijtihad and for all time:

“Will they not ponder on the Koran? If it had not come from God [i.e. adaptable for all time ], they could surely find in it many contradictions” (The Holy Koran, Chapter 4, Chapter of ‘The Women’: Verse 82).

In spite of the fact that Muslims are afforded this Divine gift of interpretation most Muslims today have become complacent in their right to ijtihad. This complacency can be traced historically, as I note in chapter two, to when the “Gate of Ijtihad” was closed during the reign of the Abbasids in the tenth century (Esposito, 1984: 19, emphasis added). The consensus of the ulama at the time of Abbasids was that an Islamic way of life had already been established and thus there was no need for further ijtihad or investigation. That is, that “there could be no justification for independent judgment or rational inquiry” in Islam (Mehmet, 1990: 60). The consequence of this closing off of ijtihad’s gates was that future generations of Muslims were bound to dysfunctional taqlid. That is, the “unquestioned acceptance and memorization of precedents and interpretations of past” Muh’tah’eideen (Mehmet, 1990: 60). Furthermore, with the closing of the gates of ijtihad:

“...the ulama assumed a monopoly control of public education, morality and opinion, and, in the process, advanced the cause of jahiliyya (mass ignorance), fatalism and underdevelopment as effectively as imperialism and colonialism” (Mehmet, 1990: 61).

As a result of this monopolistic control over ijtihad most Muslims nowadays are caught in a state of intellectual paralysis that has “afflicted both their resolve and their decisive intellectual endeavor” (Al’awani, 1993: 8). This nearly total absence of ijtihad amongst Muslims nowadays is all the more troubling considering that the gate of ijtihad was reopened in the nineteenth century.

At its opening, “Islamic modernists, notably Afghani, Abduh and Iqbal, clamoured for freeing Islamic knowledge from its ‘dogmatic slumber’ as a precondition for adapting it to the requirements of life in a modern world” (Mehmet, 1990: 61). Islamic modernists understood the dire consequences Muslims and the Islamic world faced due to the closure of the gate of ijtihad. Muslim modernists fought for the gate’s reopening, realizing the dire consequences should the new generation of Muslims continue to be forbidden from partaking in ijtihad. Yet despite this call by Islamic modernists, save for a “few notable Islamic scholars...[as] Ibn Timiya (1262–1328)... Jalal ad-Din as-Suyuti (1445–1505)...[and] Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406)” (Mehmet, 1990: 61), few others have dared to conduct ijithad or claimed their authority as Muh’tah’eideen. The result is the continued state of intellectual paralysis that nowadays exists amongst a predominant majority of Muslims. It seems, as opposed to the acceptance of this divine gift, Muslims have predominantly opted for a strict dogmatic adherence to past interpretations by past Muh’tah’eideen. Muslims opted to dismissing the divine gift of interpretation when the fact is that it is with ijtihad that Muslims:

“will undoubtedly release an abundance of energies [, hima,] in the Ummah [Muslim Community] — energies which are now dissipated and wasted in the theaters of futile internal [, as external] conflicts” (Al’awani, 1992: 9).

As a Muslim, I see a necessity for ijtihad. The method I choose is its anarchic form or Anarchic-Ijtihad. It is the method I develop for myself in my attempt at reaching:

“out of the intellectual paralysis which afflicts the Muslim mind...by tackling the roots of this intellectual crisis and rectifying the methodology of [Muslim] thought ...[arming Muslims through] a renewed stress on intellectual formation and the recovery of a sense of [ethical-political] priorities” (Al’Awani, 1993: 9).

Anarchic-Ijtihad is committed to identifying and re-interpreting, if necessary, anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian principles in the Sunnah and the Koran. I use Anarchic-Ijtihad to identify these anarchic commitments in Islam, so that the interpretation I am advocating for, Anarca-Islam, resonates with anarchism. Similarly, I use Anarchic-Ijtihad to reread Islamic anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian commitments in anarchism so that they resonate with Anarca-Islam. Because Anarchic-Ijtihad is an anarchically oriented ijtihad it is not only a form of critical or discursive form of analysis. Anarchic-Ijtihad, by virtue of the very definition of ijtihad, is a method I use to make judgements in favour of Anarca-Islam. It also affords me the ability to critique interpretations of Islam that do not uphold Anarca-Islam’s anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist commitments. I regard these commitments as Islamic commitments, just as I regard them as anarchist commitments. Anarca-Islam too is the method I use to coalesce the individual anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist concepts and practices from Islam.

The perception of this method of inquiry as unnecessary will be under the pretext that in the mind of seculars as Knight the Koran is innate, benign or useless. To Knight, as I discussed in chapter two, the Koran is a ‘tiny little book for tiny little men’ (Knight, 2004: 15, emphasis added). In Taqwacores, Knight has the female character Rabeya cross “out a verse from the Koran” (Fiscella, 2009) that Knight believes allows a man to beat his wife. Knight highlights in the passage below through Rabeya his point of view of the Koran:

“Finally I said, fuck it. If I believe it’s wrong for a man to beat his wife, and the Quran disagrees with me, then fuck that verse. I don’t need to stretch and squeeze it for a weak alternative reading, I don’t need to excuse it with historical context, and I sure as hell don’t need to just accept it and go sign up for a good ol’ fashioned bitch-slapping. So I crossed it out. Now I feel a whole lot better about that Quran” (Knight, 2004: 105)

As a Muj’tah’id, and using Knight’s words, I prefer to stretch, squeeze and work through the historical contexts of the verse and if necessary to re-interpret and provide the Islamic justification(s) for the verse’s re-interpretation using Anarchic-Ijtihad. I do this not to provide weak alternatives for the verse as Knight claims, but rather to construct a powerful position from it in Anarca-Islam. In sum, what I find beautiful about the way the Koran uses language is that it does so using Arabic words and sentences that are at times:

a) Extremely precise (whether in the scope of describing things and events or giving guidelines, clear lessons, or ‘rules’ to Muslims)

Or

b) Filled with metaphors that could be ‘deciphered’ using ijtihad, or any of its types like Anarchic-Ijtihad

Or

c) Contaminated by the use of Divine phrases that are ‘secret’ and to which Al’ Ghayb is applied.

As an Arabic reader, I find the Koran a difficult text to challenge that way. That is, in its ability to resist ‘the judgments’ of human beings on its divine integrity as a text, especially without critics understanding the different grammatical context to which rules of syntax are also applied. Unlike Knight, I therefore believe that it is in the spaces of these judgments that are leveled by critics as critiques on the Koran that there is an advantage for Muslims in using this space to their advantage while reinterpreting the Koran. After all there can be little doubt that the Koran speaks a thousand lies and truths that to this modern day creates uncertainty because of the language the Koran uses. The Koran creates this uncertainty while also disabling the degree to which heresy could be committed against it. This is because the Koran prides itself on being a text of moderation and that is lucid yet considerate to the understanding and comprehension of an Arabic reader. As a text, it is the Koran that haunts and holds Islam, and which means ‘the middle path’, and without which Islam does not exist.

3. Thus Speaks Academia: The Theoretical Framework

Throughout this thesis, the principal theories I use and which I intend to fuse are: post-anarchist, deconstructionist, post-colonial, and poststructuralist theories, along with sociological theories of social movements. This fusion denotes a common ethical and political project to dismantle the belief amongst Muslims and anarchists that it is impossible to identify as a Muslim anarchist, as well as the belief that it is impossible to construct an anarchic interpretation of Islam and an anarchic interpretation of anarchism. My destination, Anarca-Islam, is dependent upon the cohesive joining together of these ethical-political theories and philosophies to establish what, I argue, ought to be a designated space, a panegyric desert, for Muslims and Muslims anarchists through Anarca-Islam. It is the above stated theories that will individually and collectively allow me to contest the validity of that which is politically and ethically assumed of Islam and anarchism.

In this thesis, I argue that post-colonial theory allows Muslims to challenge and resist assimilationist and racist practices and policies directed against them by the West. As Jacques Monod argues, post-colonial theory is premised upon fate (1972). That is, post-colonial theory is a dividing line differentiating between necessity and chance, or an ordered and erratic disordered set of historical circumstances in light of colonial and imperial interventions upon the Muslim other (Monod, 1970). It allows for the relocation of post-colonial Muslims in light of “their definitive abandonment of an ‘old covenant’ [for] the [survivalist] necessity of forging a new one” that can resist the representations ascribed to it by the West (Monod, 1970). Post-colonial theory is a theoretical form of power that functions for Muslims, as a singular step towards a “theoretical resistance to the mystifying amnesia of...colonial [and imperial] aftermath(s)” (Gandhi, 1998: 4). That is, it offers Muslims a discursive, if not also a pragmatic, form of resistance to Eurocentric biases (Gandhi, 1998: 4; 10; Minh-ha, 1991; Bhabha, 1994). In particular, it offers resistance to Fundamentalist and Orientalist readings of Islam and Muslims by the West.

Poststructuralist and deconstructionist political philosophies, in this thesis, offer a resistance to structuralism, hierarchies and dominant relations that are established upon the construction of logo-centric and essentialist or reductionist qualities. Here I have in mind issues like race, ethnicity, gender, ability, age, sexuality, religion, and class. Poststructuralist and deconstructionist political philosophies as discourses and practices therefore serve to challenge “andro-, phallo-hetero, Euro-, and ethno-centrisms” (Hutcheon, 1989: 31). Poststructuralist and deconstructionist political philosophies also signify the means necessary through which Anarca-Islam will reabsorb and then counter attack the essentialisms of modernist Western paradigms . A critical point that I ought note is with respect to what Jacques Derrida calls deconstruction. As Derrida argues deconstruction is not a method. Richard Beardsworth explains deconstruction in this way:

“Derrida is careful to avoid this term [method] because it carries connotations of a procedural form of judgement. A thinker with a method has already decided how to proceed, is unable to give him or herself up to the matter of thought in hand, is a functionary of the criteria which structure his or her conceptual gestures. For Derrida [...] this is irresponsibility itself. Thus, to talk of a method in relation to deconstruction, especially regarding its ethico-political implications, would appear to go directly against the current of Derrida’s philosophical adventure” (1996: 4)

In other words, deconstruction is already always at work in a text. A theorist does not ‘do’ deconstruction. Rather the theorist tries to bring to the surface fragments of what the text is willing to offer and reveal of itself from its depth and that is inscribed in it as a text. Deconstruction is therefore not “the dismantling of the structure of the text but a demonstration that it has already dismantled itself, its apparently-solid ground is no rock, but thin-air” (Miller, 1976: 34).

In this thesis, post-anarchist theory offers a poststructuralist interpretation of anarchism that resonates with Anarca-Islam. This is particularly important considering that classical anarchism “retains the marks of its birth out of the womb of the European Enlightenment” (Day, 2005: 16; May, 1994; Newman, 2001; Call, 2002). Western classical anarchism emerges out of a Western modernist paradigm and which poststructuralists and deconstructionists critique. Anarca-Islam is therefore opposed to Western classical anarchism on this ground and especially with regards to its dogmatic and essentialist perspective on religion. Post-anarchism does not share Western classical anarchism’s essentialist and dogmatic perspective with respect to religion. That is, post-anarchism is more open to religion than Western classical anarchism. Furthermore, post-anarchist theory sets itself apart from other interpretative traditions in anarchism, especially Western classical anarchism, by recognizing a Foucau