Mirroring the Bedouins of Old: From Periphery to the Black Cube

By: Eco al Hollandi

This article was initially written for Sifr and will appear in the forthcoming first volume of Sifr Journal.

There has probably been no civilization in the world that has been decimated by modernity so deeply as the Islamic world. I realise that this statement might be contentious. What does it even mean to be “decimated” by modernity? Sure, the Islamic world has seen its fair share of wars over the past few decades, but so have other regions throughout modernity; the two world wars took place in the old continent, the atom bombs were dropped on Japan.

Also, besides violence, aren’t there other candidates more suitable for this moniker? If one means, for example, a decimation that came with prosperity but at the cost of rupturing traditional society then of course one might say this has happened in the Islamic world, but this is true of other parts of the world too, Europe not in the least; even if it stepped into that rupture willingly (though possibly unknowingly). If one means by decimation a form of distance in power (whether economical, militarily or otherwise), then again the argument can be made that this is true for other parts of the world (isn’t it the case that Africa is much more “subjugated” than a majority of the Islamic world)?

Before we can come to answer what we mean when we say that the Islamic world was “decimated” by modernity we first need to take a look at the term used here in conjunction with this decimation: the “Islamic world”. The use of this term has been widely contested, not in the least by Muslims themselves, and has been cause for numerous debates (often centred around nonsensical obsessions with inclusive language) within academia and among people paradoxically hailing from what would roughly be seen as the Islamic world.

Roughly is an important word here, as there is indeed some truth to the scrutiny given, although it is often for the wrong reasons. The boundaries of the Islamic world are not clearly defined in the sense commonly understood. They are not based upon a nation state, even if there exist proud countries within it and within those countries proud citizens and nationalists. Still, despite this, many Muslims and non-Muslims alike refer to a loosely bounded region as the Islamic world, generally denoting those areas in which Muslims have maintained a presence for centuries.

It is important to mention that this designation is not a modern Orientalist invention but has been used by Muslims themselves for more than a millennium. Islamic civilization is then somewhat particular, as it has not been primarily defined by nationality. Rather, it specifically defines itself as the entire collection of lands that Muslims inhabit. Of course, there have been many other civilizations who defined themselves as such, but this was always in conjunction with a particular national identity. Chinese “Tianxia” was unmistakingly bound to the Chinese people. Christian civilization itself was early on centred around Europe which quickly bound itself to the nation states. Even the recently coined term Judeo-Christean is inextricably tied to “the West”.

For reasons too complicated to fully develop here, Muslims have retained this traditional notion of the Islamic world even in the era of nation-states, having identified itself as such to such a degree that the vaguely bounded Islamic world (or Islamic civilization) has been taken on by others (funnily enough leading to criticism from those Muslims obsessed with pity politics, as mentioned above).

It is for this reason, among others, that Islam can be seen as the universal civilization par excellence, because it defines itself first and foremost by the existence of Islam, meaning that every corner of the Earth can become folded into “the Islamic world”. Furthermore, the Islamic world – contrary to popular belief – lacks a specific centre, though it has a periphery along its loosely defined boundaries. There have been seats of power throughout Islamic history but these have never remained fixed in a single place.

Does this not make our thesis more difficult? If the Islamic world has retained a traditional understanding of its own identity, is it then not the LEAST decimated by modernity? It is exactly within this descriptor of the Islamic world as a universal society that we find our answer to this question. Modernity is, in Guenonian terms, characterised by a profound departure from traditional structures; it is a process of utter deterritorialization and fragmentation to the point of unrecognisability. It is a society which has lost a central axis around which to orbit.

If Islam is universal then in modernity’s fragmented world, it should have been the most able to provide a solution to its problems, to move beyond it, to revitalise the world. And yet it hasn’t. What remains in the Muslim world is not any semblance of real tradition, but rather empty husks. The structures are merely a fata morgana; half of the population trying to hold on to an imagined, long gone past and the other half disillusioned and obsessed with the West. It is seen in the confusion, the extremism, the constant failed uprisings - the failure of the entire “Islamic world”. The veneer of strong religiosity that remains is, if anything, a sign of further emptiness, of blindness to the condition in which it finds itself.

Contrary to the image that is often given of a civilization that still holds on to its religion and traditions, it has become completely fragmented, it has become the most decimated part of the world because it has lost itself and is yet to reach the stage of even recognising this fact. It is still in fighting mode, unable to accept this reality. As opposed to the West, not only does it not-know where it is going, but it has yet to find out that it does not-know where it’s going.

Loss and Resistance

Let us analyse that phenomenon that brought the condition described in the introduction to this article and the events that followed it. The arrival of modernity and the rupture it brought throughout the world deserves an article in and of itself, but it is not far-fetched to say that the ensuing panic was greatest in the Islamic world. That world that had known such glorious days, that beacon of philosophy, theology, science and innovation, now having to tolerate harbis (disbelievers) in power over them.

With the onset of modernity, the gunpowder empires weakened and eventually fell one by one, unable to keep up with the times. What was left was an utterly confused population. As opposed to other parts of the world, the religiosity of the Muslims left them incredibly resistant to modernity, and disinclined to adapt. The Muslims, in their pride, despite having been reduced, at best, to helpers of the ruling powers, still believed that they were the ones who were to rule, as the truth was with them. They were the one who had carried the torch of civilization. By many, it was seen as impossible that they would be governed by outsiders.

It was in this environment that the existing class of scholars, new members of the intelligentsia (often educated in the West), activists and politicians would try to find ways to change this situation. Fundamentalists would quibble with Western-influenced “Islamic Modernists” over what direction the Islamic world should head in – existing institutions were attacked by progressivists and revivalists alike and in turn these institutions would devise answers to these new “innovators”. A thousand flowers bloomed, sects arose everywhere, but the result was little more than a deepening confusion among the population, as epistemic clarity was eroded and, funnily enough, those that could play “the modern game” the best would eventually come out on top.

Salafism and Modernism

One such sect that succeeded in this game, well known in name by now, was Salafism. Salafism is one of those terms that everyone (including self declared Salafists) conceptualises differently, evidenced by the large number of terms associated with it, such as Wahhabism, Jihadism, La madhhabism, etc. In general, one might say that Salafism, in the eyes of most, has simply become a stand-in for “extremist”, whether this conjures up images of a Iraqi Jihadist raiding a Yezidi village or a Saudi scholar devising a fatwa on the impermissibility of rebelling against the rulers.

It should be noted that, in this entangled history of Modern Islam, Salafism in its origin has no necessary link to any form of extremism. In general, Salafism can be traced back to a number of thinkers who, to differentiate from our contemporary understanding of the term, might best be described as “proto-Salafists”. These proto-Salafists largely existed within their own national context, often reacting against local superstition and colonial overrule.

From the Egyptian movement led by Muhammad Abduh to the Indian Ahli-Hadith and the Yemeni followers of Al-Shawkani, indeed, almost all of these Proto-Salafists would adhere to some kind of literalism and were staunchly opposed to the existing institutions, but they weren’t always “extremist” in the way we understand this now. This is evidenced by the aforementioned Muhammad Abduh and his pupil Rashid Rida, who, in Western studies, are often described with the label of Islamic Modernists.

Simultaneously, the methodology of Abduh and Rida was close to the methodology of the contemporary Salafists. They championed ijtihad and opposed the “blind following of the opinions of earlier scholars” which these schools engaged in. Blaming them for the stagnation of the Muslim world they would instead call for a return to the Qur’an and the Sunnah. Anyone familiar with Salafism will recognize this call to return to the sources.

But as said, Abduh was a modernist. He wanted to return to the Qur’an and the Sunnah because he believed that these sources already contained much of what had become “Western Science” within it, and that it was the existing institutions – the madhhahib (schools of jurisprudence), the Sufi Tariqat, the Madaris – who had held back the Muslim world from realising its potential. It is in fact this idea which is most central to Salafism – this desire to raze all existing institutions to the ground, to create what Baudrillard calls the flatness of the desert, to reduce the world to the totalizing reality of the Book.

To understand why this idea, which on the surface might strike us as potentially progressive, would eventually lead to extremism, we have to look into that term closely related to Salafism: Wahhabism. Wahhabism, which can be seen as another Proto-Salafist movement, was, as opposed to most other Proto-Salafi movements, not born out of a panic vis-à-vis the colonial overrule of Europe and the decline of Islamic civilization. Muhammad ibn abd al-Wahhab’s movement was initially little more than a local faction led by him and some fellow bedouins (who had a history of extremism in their interpretation of the religion), after ibn abd al-Wahhab had become convinced of the widespread prevalence of shirk (idolatry) in Islamic lands, owing to his staunch interpretation of the Islamic sources.

When reading writings such as the collection of fatawa “ad darur as saniyyah”, one finds that ibn Abd al-Wahhab and his descendants would focus solely on matters of shirk and tawhid, defining the latter term (which roughly translates to “monotheism”) in a radical way, seeing traditional practices such as the veneration of the prophet or calling upon his intercession as idolatrous. Because of their lack of interest in matters of fiqh (jurisprudence), they largely retained an adherence to the existing Hanbali school that was prevalent in their region. As many know, Ibn abd al-Wahhab eventually formed an alliance with the house of Saud, and several successive victories and alliances would ensure the existence of Wahhabism in the newly formed Saudi state up till this date.

But while Wahhabism hyper-focused on matters of shirk, neglecting the battle against the institutions for the revival of Islamic civilization that other proto-Salafist strands were engaging in, it nonetheless shared much of its intellectual influence and methodology with these strands. While the Wahhabis did not leave the Hanbali madhhab, they would likewise continuously repeat the mantra that rulings had to derive from the Qur’an and the Sunnah.

A main driver in the increasingly close ties of the Wahhabis and the other Proto-Salafis would be Rashid Rida, the student of Muhammad Abduh. While Rida retained much of the Modernism that his teacher was inflicted with, after Abduh’s death he would become aware of several other movements similar to his, with Wahhabism catching much of his attention.

As the process of Globalisation began to accelerate, and the Wahhabi-Saudi alliance came to dominate both the Najd and the Hejaz, other proto-Salafist groups likewise became aware of the existence of this force, seemingly with a methodology close to their own. With technological innovation allowing for ever faster travel and ever faster communication, these groups would begin to converge, and by the mid 20th century we would come to see the first semblance of a united Salafi movement.

Coalescence

While the Proto-Salafist groups would steadily intertwine, it would still take a few decades (and the appearance of a few more thinkers) before Salafism really took on the shape we know today. Throughout the mid 20th century, there was still a relatively clear divide between those influenced by the ideas of Rashid Rida (and the similarly focused Ahl-i-hadith in India) on the one hand, and the Wahhabis on the other.

The Albanian-Syrian scholar Nasiruddin al-Albani would come under the influence of Rashid Rida’s works, written in his magazine al-manaar, and would become one of the leading scholars to take on his thought. Under Al-Albani, a form of Salafism would begin to appear which is often termed “la madhhabiyyah” or “anti-madhhabism”. As this term describes, Al-Albani would mainly focus on matters of taqlid (obedience toward religious authority), opposing the existing madhhahib and institutions, just as Rida had done.

That Saudi-Arabia’s Wahhabism was still in part a separate movement in this time is evidenced by the reaction to Al-Albani’s invitation to the country to teach there - initially opposed by then Mufti Muhammad ibn Ibrahim who was a staunch opponent of Al-Albani’s criticism of the madhhahib and his overfocus on issues of fiqh as opposed to issues of tawhid. Notwithstanding this, after Muhammad ibn Ibrahim’s death, Al-Albani would still make the trip towards Saudi-Arabia and be appointed as a university teacher, owing to Muhammad ibn Ibrahim’s successor as Mufti, Abdulaziz ibn Baaz, who would come under the influence of Al-Albani’s teachings (and La Madhhabi thought in general).

Simultaneously, the success of Saudi-Arabia in matters of GDP, spurred on by the outpouring of oil from its soil caused many Islamic institutions, including those influenced by proto-Salafi strands, to turn to Wahhabism; as oil-stained petrodollars spread the Wahhabist view among these institutions. Cementing this unification; Ibn Baaz & Al-Albani would grow more and more fond of each other's positions and openly praise one another, largely leading to the existence of a seemingly unified Salafism, with other La madhhabis following swiftly.

Fragmentation

A truly unified Salafism would never actually materialise. While Wahhabism and the other Proto-Salafist movements had converged on topics of fiqh and tawhid, Salafists would start to grow apart over political issues. With the end of the Colonial era, the subsequent failure of the nation states in the region to grow back into power and the onset of American hegemony, a period of deep disillusion would set over the Muslim world.

The continued existence of the Israeli state would be a particular thorn in the eyes of the Muslims, an enduring symbol of submission and a reminder of their long-lost power. On top of this, a number of other wars broke out in the Islamic world with the Soviet-Afghan war, the Kuwait War and the Chechen war signalling to the Muslims that the era of occupation was not yet over.

Young Muslims would become increasingly militant and flocked to fight in these wars, driven by zealotry and dissatisfaction; modern technology had enabled them to join the cause of Jihad in droves. In the background of this, several thinkers would further come to influence Salafi thought; in particular, a man by the name of Sayyid Qutb.

Qutb, like so many other Muslims of his time, became disillusioned with the Islamic world, having watched it crumble and stagnate over the course of his life. Seeking an answer in several ideologies, ranging from Leninist vanguardism to the Muslim Brotherhood, he would eventually blend his former ideas and devise his theory of “Jahiliyyah”; stating that the rulers were disbelievers who had to be disposed and that a small vanguard should take over society.

Influencing the assassins of Anwar Sadat, Qutb’s reach would come to stretch far beyond Egypt. Among the Afghan mountains and the poppy fields, young Muslim Jihadis drawn to his ideas would mingle with the local Afghan mujahideen and the large population of Saudi-Arabian fighters. Along with their weapons they carried even greater aspirations - though they had no idea where they were headed, for a moment in time they dared to dream once more.

Inspired by the 1979 Iranian revolution, led by the illustrious Ruhollah Khomeini (himself in part influenced by the teachings of Qutb), they started to believe that things could be different. Methodologies in part were learned from the Islamic Republic allegiant Hezbollah, who had used suicide bombings in their fight against Israel. On the battlefield, Qutb’s ideas on the rulers would mix with Wahhabist views on tawhid, La Madhhabi views on fiqh and Hezbollah-esque methods of attack.

But this new ideology, synthesised amidst shrapnel shells, would only lead to further fragmentation. Salafist scholars would divide over the question of whether what these youths were doing was permissible. Ultimately this would rip up the Salafist community into several sects, largely differing from one another in terms of politics — a process which continues till this day.

What had started as an attempt at feverish revivalism had now further fragmented the Salafists who, through Saudi-Arabian financialization, had become the frontrunners of Islam in modernity. With Salafism having destroyed the credibility of existing institutions, it was now time to turn on its own. Nothing could be left standing. Any clarity would disappear. Scholarly credentials would lose their meaning. Islam had become a religion of team sports. The result of 200 years of shame had proved to be particularly dark.

This emptiness would obviously prove futile in creating fertile ground for a revival, only further radicalising young Muslims in the region, leading up to 9/11 and the subsequent Jihadist age. Now, the young desert warriors, filled with resentment, had no great ambitions; no building was necessary: destruction of everything, including the self, was enough.

The Sufi Jihadists

So, what exactly is that “razing” which we called central to Salafism, which makes it so unique? Is it that tendency to destroy your surroundings and even your own body in an attempt to leave behind nothing? That seems unlikely. As mentioned, suicide attacks were already a staple among shi’ite militants, but even before that Sufi anti-colonial fighters would offer up their body in this life for the next. The famous Aceh Killings were probably the first large-scale example of this. As Dutch colonialist Snouck-Hurgronje described it, they were willing to destroy themselves to destroy the enemy within. Their body was as much a sacrifice as their target.

This Sufi-insurgency was in fact a common occurrence, and it is in part for this reason that the West, up until the 20th century, was relatively open to the “progressivist” Proto-Salafists, who were seen as a counterforce against the Sufis. These Sufis, as opposed to the Salafists, clung tight to their tradition and opposed any modern innovations.

Fast forward and this image has completely turned on its head. The culmination of Wahhabism, Qutbism and La Madhabiyyah Salafism has now taken on its ultimate form in the archetypal Muslim extremist, with Sufists largely seen as a peaceful counterforce. Of course, this is quite funny if one understands that even in its most extreme forms, Salafism retains a progressive element, where Sufism, even in its most peaceful forms, retains a staunch traditionalism.

The core of Salafism then, is its progressiveness. Its tendency to raze is its willingness to let go of the past, to destroy the past. These destructive tendencies can be said to play a large part in the current crisis of the Islamic world, as they gave way to this destructive impulse in typical modern Muslim fashion: with no plan forward. Add Wahhabist extremism to this and the razing becomes all-encompassing, not merely aimed at the institutions, but at the entire world, including itself. Salafism’s panic response towards modernity only deepened the latter’s entrenchment, leaving most Muslims utterly confused about what Islam is, regardless of their intentions.

A population as afraid of remaining stagnant as it is of moving forward; all it can do in this lethargic state is dream, as it gets devoured by contemporary reality, surrounded by violence, war and foiled ambitions. In turn, the existing Sufi and non-Salafist scholars have moved little beyond their former anti-colonial position, their reactionary attitudes making them slow to catch up with new trends and communications.

While the Saudi-Wahhabi alliance led to the destruction of Islamic heritage on the one hand, it integrated itself within the Western economical world on the other, replacing old Islamicate structures with meaningless new mega-projects. Thus, the ruins left behind by those destructive tendencies are quickly buried under hyperreal signs; any form of resistance being merely a feeble lashing out at the current state of affairs: it contains nothing of substance. Make no mistake, the Islamic world IS as hypermodern as the rest; everything else is mere veneer.

The Hypermodern Void

A somewhat controversial claim I make based on the above is that Salafism is the hypermodern religion par excellence. Funded by oil money, obsessed with images and reproductions of images, it has become self-referential. It thrives on information and — as madrassahs, qadis and other traditional Islamic institutions became obsolete — it took over cyberspace, such that any Muslim in search of an answer for the perils of modernity would find themselves confronted with it. Salafiyyah is algorithmic dominance, a destruction of what came before it, with no vision of what follows after.

In an Islamic environment dominated by Salafism, the Muslim is nominally left with two choices: re-enact these Salafist gestures and feign puritanism, or freely give up your identity and willingly go along with Westernisation. It might be said that there is a third choice. Those remaining Traditionalists; the Sufis and the Madhhabists, who, from time to time, endeavour to give counterweight to the dominance of Salafism.

You hear them screech about the necessity to return to the past; fighting a battle that was lost a century ago, unable to accept that history has moved on. Wherever they seem to succeed they do so temporarily, and virtually always by playing the Salafist’s game, giving themselves up to the information society as they see no other way out, always remaining one step behind. Thus, in his own right, the traditionalist becomes lost in the forest he vowed to cut down.

The problem that the blindness of both these forces leads to is that they cannot bring themselves to embrace that void which they have unwittingly led themselves and their followers into. Whether it is through the destruction of the existing institutions or their defence, they cannot recognise that whatever they do takes places within a large game of play and pretend.

Their discourse screams extremism, progression, tradition, revivalism or any other fancy term, but it never recognizes itself for what it is: that is, the embodiment of hypermodernity, which is nothing more than modernity revealing itself for what it is as it descends deeper into itself; emanating from Liberalism’s planetarisation turning on itself, revealing the emptiness at its core, the lack of a human future, increasing societal speed combined with increasing human stagnation. This leads to a perpetual neurosis about things spinning out of control – thus, the implementation of control systems and, paradoxically, to the loss of control for the human subject.

While a majority of the world subconsciously feels a deep sense of uncanniness and a loss of agency, it has been in the Muslim world – only as of late aided by a minority in the West, beyond barely read philosophers – where the largest cohort of people have felt the problem, as in their fall from grace they sensed the horrific emptiness; frantically and violently seeking an escape but always only descending yet further.

Information rules, money rules, even outward piety rules, but there is no true civilizational ethos anymore and there is no future. A society of the ever-inert fighter, emptying magazines without being able to see a path beyond vague talks of 1000 year old relicts – a situation epitomised by the Arab spring. The entire Muslim world extravagantly celebrates the coming change. What change? No idea, but things would finally change, they said.

In the end it only laid bare the nonpareil of the lands surrounding the near-orient. A population reacting without knowing why, or what for; all it can do is lash out violently. Violence might not seem inert on the surface, but it is exactly that. Of course, individuals themselves are not inert, as they desire change – which already marks a real difference from the rest of the world. But it is society, the “Islamic world” made up of those individuals, which is inert, because it is unable to even imagine a change in the face of the same overwhelming outside forces it has been trying to escape from for 200 years.

Missing the insight that the uncanny they stumbled upon exists as an all-encompassing structure (that it is to say: it is contemporary society par-excellence), their incredibly early recognition of the problem has consistently been paired with a naïve belief in their ability to fight it, each step through the maze drawing them further and further from the exit.

The problem this article has, up until now, tried to describe is that, while the Islamic world has recognized that problem, it has failed to provide a response and, in the end, only worsened the conditions that came with the arrival of modernity. But here something interesting happens: if hypermodernity is the destruction of the real and the subsequent disappearance of any sort of future, then the Islamic early recognition of the problem – of the destruction that came along with modernity, the uncanniness it felt – is in itself a sign that they are further progressed than any other civilization, having skipped over the step of bliss that was experienced in the West, and immediately falling into societal stagnation.

But because of this early arrival, this societal stagnation, unlike in other parts of the world where hypermodernity arrived, did not carry with it the stagnation of human will, despite the decimation of its society. Where the rest of the world witnessed an advancement of society in which increasing flows of information led to increasing societal progress which, in turn, led to increasing human inertia; in the Islamic world, the same flows of information did not bring about any such progress (outside of a poor imitation of western luxury), but neither did it lead to this inert state of being.

Instead, it led to greater human resistance, action in the physical world and attempts at reviving what was lost. Of course, all of this was shown to be futile, and we have emphasised that the revivalists have only worsened the problem, but nonetheless the question remains why this instinct of resistance remains in the face of a disillusioned population which has for more than a century now been incapable of formulating a coherent vision for its future.

Shadowing the famous “stages of Capitalism”, the last stage of hypermodernity (which is itself the final and seemingly ever-lasting stage of modernity); with all its information circuits, emptiness and dehumanisation, can be said to be cybernetics, or systems thinking. As the theory collective Tiqqun mentions “the cybernetic gesture asserts itself by a negation of everything that escapes regulation, of all the lines of escape that save existence in the interstices of the norm and its apparatuses…the cybernetic hypothesis is now the most substantial anti-humanism, one that is determined to maintain the general order of things while priding itself on having gone beyond the human…it has become a set of apparatuses whose ambition is to take charge of the totality of existence and the existent”

So, if Islam was the first to reach hypermodernity, as we (perhaps somewhat controversially) posture here, why is it that the Islamic world has retained such a human spirit? The sudden onset of modernity from outside paradoxically prevented the completion of the turn on itself; as the reins were forcefully removed from its hands, there was no need for those anxious attempts to keep the direction of history under mankind’s control which we saw across the West during the early and mid-20th century, spurred on by modern man’s (and subsequently modern society’s) self-questioning – ultimately leading to what we have called the “last stage of hypermodernity” through the cyberneticisation of society in the aftermath of WW2. Though on a societal level it was forced to become part of the system, its hostility towards this force prevented many of its people from individually stepping into the machine.

But of course, there are many regions outside of the West where people oppose Western domination. It should then be noted that the Islamic world’s continuing rebellion does and did not necessitate a single group to take authoritarian leadership (without which any sort of “resistance” fervour would quickly disappear) nor does the resistance seem to be a mere lashing out by the poor for a ‘bigger slice of the pie’, as is so often echoed in the grievances of the footsoldiers of decolonization, who are often quite open about their greatest wish being to stand at the top themselves (notwithstanding their posturing about the fall of the system itself). Rather, the Muslim rebel shouts “we want nothing to do with you or your system”, and, while not being able to provide another path, it is this attitude prevailing among some of its members which prevents it from fully becoming yet another node in the (now global) cybernetic system - which is exactly why equilibrium is so difficult to achieve in much of the Muslim world.

Even though this rebellion has utterly failed and has become a destructive lashing out against the self and the world, there is an underlying sign of lasting anthropic vitality. Where the process of modernity in the West started out with the slow destruction of the old structures, institutions and traditions and ultimately ended with the destruction of man, the Islamic world never reached that stage. Though having taken a most horrifyingly self-denying form, there seems to be hidden a spirit within that Islamic world that retains a distinct humanness, in contrast to the anti-humanism of the world order and of the other, incomplete forms of “rebellion”.

Muhammadan Reality

Within Sufi doctrine there is a belief which states that the Prophet Muhammad was not merely the last Prophet, but also the first creation – not in a corporeal form, but rather as light (or perhaps better: as a reflection of the light of God). The famous mufassir ibn Jarir at-Tabari, commenting on the famous verse in Surah al-Nur states that: “By Light He means Muhammad (Allah bless him and give him peace), through whom Allah has illuminated the truth, manifested Islam, and obliterated polytheism; since he is a light for whoever seeks illumination from him, which makes plain the truth".

On another occasion The Prophet Muhammad stated that he was the first of the Prophets to be created and the last of them to be sent. In light of this, the Sufis see the Prophet Muhammad as the inspiration for all the other Prophets and all of humanity. His being sent as the final Prophet is a fulfilment of the messages of the earlier Prophets, which are sublated in the final Islamic message and the law that he brought.

The Haqiqatul Muhammadiyyah states that Muhammad is the primordial prototype who served as the inspiration for all of humanity. His light shines upon all the previous Prophets who were sent to a particular people with a message and a law that reflected the customs and ways of being of those people. The final religion, which came down in the form of Islam, brought by the prophet Muhammad, is then only seen as the fulfilment of these prior messages.

As the prophet Muhammad is both the perfect human and the perfect creation, he is also the perfect incarnate reflection of the covenant that was formed between humanity and God. By reaching the loftiest status among creation and being the prototypical inspiration for the entirety of human history, he is the insan al-kamil, the highest qualitative form, the perfect man who stands in between the rest of creation and the heavens, standing symbol for the privileged position humanity holds in the eye of God and the relation between the two, a diadem set on the head of the world.

Helical History

Where we described hypermodernity as the cyberneticisation of society up to the point of becoming anti-human, it should again be noted that cybernetics is nothing but the uncovering and instantiation of self-referential flows of information – these flows either being self-sustaining (negative feedback) or spinning out of control (positive feedback). In the most abstract self-referential sense this becomes pure binary number, without notion of quality.

This was already noted by the French Sufi thinker Rene Guenon, who noted that the modern condition, with all its industrialization, its scientism, its empiricism, its governmental totalization, resulted in a world which moved away from vertical knowledge emanating from the transcendent, towards horizontal knowledge in the aftermath of the breakdown of structure; pure quantity, everything reduced to mere instantiation of number.

To reiterate, if we take this in its most abstract form this quantity is mere information-as-number, continuously self-referencing without any connection to quality, qualia. But Guenon maintained that such a modernity was not eternal, that we weren’t only going down. Rather, in his view of time, history was cyclical. Furthermore, he maintained that at the end of every cycle there would be a small group of people who would retain a link with the primordial tradition and thus maintain qualitative knowledge and a link with the transcendental throughout the catastrophic end of a cycle and ultimately prepare society for the revival with the onset of a new age.

This Guenonian idea is echoed in a particular hadith about the end times. While a number of hadiths speak about the degeneration of man towards the end of history, this hadith mentions that a small group of people of the Muhammadan ummah would remain upon the truth: “A group of people from my Ummah will continue to fight in defence of truth and remain triumphant until the Day of judgement”. When we use the framework of the Haqiqatul Muhamadiyyah the important role of humanity in this process of revival becomes even clearer. The Prophet, being the perfection and ultimate creation, is ultimately of flesh. Thus, he is not only human but he is the inspiration for all humanity.

Furthermore, as all the previous Prophets and their laws were inspired by him and the final religion, from an Islamic point of view he is also the inspiration for human civilization and human flourishing in general. Prophets would be sent to particular people in a time where these people had become far removed from God. From an Islamic point of view then, all previous religions were in part inspired by a Prophet sent by God (and thus in turn by the Muhammadan reality) but would ultimately degenerate as mankind would deviate from their message. It is only with the Prophet’s bringing of Islam that this process was fulfilled and the whole and complete universal law was revealed.

Such a succession of Prophethood, ever inspired by Muhammad and ending with his incarnation and the coming of Islam, might – as opposed to Guenon’s cyclical description – better be described as helical. After every new law there would eventually come a decline, after which another Prophet would be sent; ultimately leading up to Muhammad. We can thus see that Islamic history both has a cyclical and a progressive element.

Within Islamic history, the Prophets that came before Muhammad brought their message to a particular people within a specific civilization and/or locality. It is often said that Islam abrogated these previous messages but if we understand Islamic history as a progressive revelation of the primordial religion – each new instantiation bringing a piece of that religion inspired by the Muhammadan reality, with its ultimate fulfilment brought by the Prophet himself - then it might be better to speak of sublation, instead of abrogation.

In this sense, Islam is the only truly universal religion. It does not negate the previous religions but rather comes as their ultimate fulfilment in a universal sense; thus instead of a religion for a particular people it manages to incorporate within it all the differing previous laws based on particular cultures, and thus the totality of human cultural flourishing.

We see this lasting legacy in the historically different expressions of Islam in lands varying from south-East asia to China to Andalusia, places where Islam would take on a vastly different form while remaining united with the rest of the Muslim world through the shared belief in tawhid, each of them simultaneously believing themselves to follow the fulfilled religion that had already existed in an incomplete form within their culture.

Every prophet sent to a particular people would integrate the customs of those people and bring them a law that could integrate local customs with the message, inspired by the message of Muhammad. Thus, it stands to reason that Muhammad’s final message, which was not only sent to the Arabs but to all of mankind, would be able to incorporate all these differing customs within a singular religion.

There is evidence of this in Islam’s relationship to Muhammad and prophet Ibrahim who in Islamic historiography was responsible for building the Ka’aba. While Muhammad cleansed the structure of shirk (idolatry), he did not abandon the structure; rather he maintained it and furthermore incorporated existing local rituals, as Islam in its later forms would do in various parts of the world. With this in mind, the oft levelled charge against the ‘cube’ in Mecca is in actuality a proof for the ability of the Muhammadan message to incorporate the local as opposed to the equally common accusation of it being a destructive force towards everything outside itself.

From the above we can conclude that Islam, through the person of Muhammad – that inspiration for all prophets and religions – bestows a special position upon humanity and human society, with all Muslims commanded to follow his example. Islam aims precisely at the preservation of humanity, and the flourishing of human cultures and traditions, with its universal form not being a cause for the destruction of this diversity but rather a unifying element between all peoples who are free to express this religion in their particular local forms.

Returning to Guenon’s notion of a small group of people preparing the way for a revival and the hadith regarding this; when analysed from the framework of the haqiqatul muhamadiyyah, the unique position of mankind and the helical history of Islam, we might begin to understand that what we see as an end is equally a new beginning, this new beginning allowing for a further progression, while also being an expression of the primordial.

A Desolate Embrace

Up till this point we might have come across as wanting to level an accusation against Salafism in favour of more traditional understandings of Islam, as we have mentioned that it was these traditional institutions, such as those of the Sufis, that were replaced by Salafism’s monocultural tendency for the destruction of tradition and diversity. For a large part, this is certainly true. Salafism, by denying the doctrine of the Muhammadan reality and of the Perfect Man, denies the exceptionalism of mankind and of its cultures.

While the ummah is protected and guided by that spirit of Muhammad we described – and thus retains their human will to rebel – Salafism, through its negation of the Muhammadan reality, has nowhere to aim that rebellion except inwards. However, we have likewise mentioned the failure of those who kept clinging on to their tradition, stupidly hoping that somehow they would survive without having to give new forms to their religion in an undeniably changed world. It is in this sense that Salafism, in its proto-expressions (though it is incomplete on their own), has something to offer to the Muslim.

The destructive tendencies of the proto-Salafists – removed from any Wahhabist violence and extremities – are in fact a necessary component that the Sufis and other traditionalists have neglected. If we understand Islamic history as helical, then a further progression into the dark and an outward break with the past in form is a necessary step towards a revival of its inner content.

Instead of anxiously clinging onto long-extinct forms, Muslims should accept the reality of modernity’s nothingness. If hypermodernity is “nothing human”, then from the view of the Muhammadan reality, it is at once the end and a new beginning, as its inherently human exceptionalist view necessitates that humanity’s qualitative relationship will be maintained through the influence of the Prophet.

To fulfill those dreams which have been weighing on Islamic youths since the 80s: those dreams of a world of non-submission, they should become willing to embrace the desert and to wander, to return to the days of early Islam once more. Only in this sense should they become like the Bedouin, those desert dwelling nomads who lay at the foundation of the contemporary Salafist-Wahhabi fusion, coming from the geographical heartland and wandering all across the Muslim world.

But in spirit, they should be the opposite of the Wahhabists. They should revive Proto-Salafism and be Sufis at the same time; they should destroy, not out of hatred, but out of that deepest of love that exists among the Sufis – love for God, love for the Prophet, love for his religion and love for humanity, recognizing that the “structures” in the Islamic world have, as we mentioned, become mere fata morgana. They should raze these empty husks while submitting to the Muhammadan reality, believing not in mere Wahhabist destruction, but rather in a new beginning – razing while remaining traditional; giving a new form to that primordial religion so as to move beyond hypermodernity towards a true post-modernity.

A Peripheral Attitude

Driving the point of Islamic universality further; the history of Islam is, in fact, a history of peripheral rebellion against the seat of the caliphate (wherever it was located). We see, furthermore, that the epicentres of human culture and flourishing existed on the border of the Islamic empire. These were also the places where new forms of Islam would appear which would ultimately come to be influential in the further evolution of Islam.

A peripheral re-appropriation of the core of Salafism and a subsequent fusion with traditional Sufism necessitates an opening up of Islamic discourse and a move away from the centralization of Islam within the Gulf heartland (its geographically central location shadowing the fact that it has taken the place of the caliphate as a perceived centre of power within the Islamic world), towards the peripheral regions of the Muslim-inhabited world where experiments in new forms of Islam that blend the old and the new can take place without the centralising power encroaching on these spaces.

A semblance of this can already be seen in peripheral regions throughout modern Islamic history, where such projects have taken on notions of Salafism and Sufism in very differing ways (although most often not consciously so). Indonesia is perhaps one of the best examples here. Its Islamic landscape is dominated by two groups, the Nadwatul Ulama, described as conservative and the Muhamadiyyah, described as progressive.

These groups have, since their founding in the early 20th century, often been opposed to one another. The anomaly is that the Muhamadiyyah (or: the progressives) were in fact directly influenced by Muhammad Abduh’s and Rashid Rida’s proto-Salafism. Where in other regions the various variants of proto-Salafism were inevitably hijacked by Wahhabism, in Indonesia the Muhammadiyyah retained the former progressive attitude of many of the differing proto-Salafist groups.

Their progressivism notwithstanding, in their opposition to established institutions and authentic traditional Indonesian Islam, they share the destructive element with Salafism, showcasing once more that this desire to escape from the old is not merely a Wahhabist phenomenon, but that it is only with Wahhabism that this line of flight becomes suicidal. But as we have noted time and time again, even if we remove this suicidal aspect of contemporary Salafism, its ability to raze the old institutions is insufficient.

This becomes evident when analysing the other side of the Indonesian Islamic landscape: the Nadwatul Ulama (or: the conservatives), who strongly oppose the Muhammadiyyah and instead advocate for a more traditional understanding of Indonesian Islam, which organically developed over centuries and syncretized various pre-islamic Indonesian practices into their form of Islam.

While the Muhamadiyyah are thus interesting for their non-suicidal non-Wahhabist form of Salafism, their feud with the traditionalist Nadwatul Ulama showcases that there remains a problem with their complete aversion to traditional structures and Sufism; and as we have seen before the narrow emphasis on deterritorialization is exactly what lead to that inability to form a compelling vision of the future.

In this case, the Muhamadiyyah are perhaps merely one such experiment which we deemed necessary to move away from the Wahhabist dominated centralising heartland. But if we want to deem Islam the saving grace of humanity, then such a move should not only be accompanied by a decentralisation and a willingness to cut ties with institutions that constrain society to the past, but also by an emphasis on local forms of Islam which, paradoxically, necessitate such ties.

Here we propose what might be called an Anarchist attitude; with its distrust of power and its emphasis both on local communities and simultaneous desire to not be limited by historical boundaries. While anarchism might be, at least in the form it has taken on now, seen as the polar-opposite to Islam, it implicitly lends itself to decentralised experiments and the creation of new networks.

Its effectiveness might be seen at the other end of the Islamic periphery, where, around the same time that the Indonesian landscaped became influenced by Salafism, a group of Europeans in search of mystical truth and often engaged in occultist and/or Orientalist studies, would take up a deep interest in Islam, and in Sufism in particular.

Most of these individuals were strongly influenced by Anarchist values, which enabled them to actively rebel against existing European norms, traditions and constraints; which all of them found to be oppressive. Despite the contemporary connotations of such language, none of this indicated the hideous anti-religious form anarchism would later take on. Rather, their anarchism was often combined with a yearning for the traditional, for the spiritual and for a re-establishment of a relation with God (those familiar with the development of the counterculture of the 60s would be familiar with the conservative spirituality of many of its thinkers).

In their “anarchism” we see the exact image of the wandering nomad that we used to describe the Wahhabist Bedouin – wandering individuals, unafraid to set themselves against the past. But instead of ending in the suicidal tendencies of Wahhabism, we likewise see the image of the Sufi in them, with their appreciation for tradition leading them to a profound admiration for the Islamic world and for Sufism, which provided them exactly that which the Western world had lacked: a renewed link to God, to unity, to the primordial; as has been described so well by Rene Guenon.

If we return to the Muhammadiyyah, we might propose that they too adhered to that rebellious anarchist mindset, but instead of rebelling against European traditions, they rebelled against their local forms of Islam, and instead opened themselves up to what was their other - here meaning the modern and the European. We might then say that a comprehensive Anarchist attitude would enable Muslims to do both, to retain that love for humanity and for tradition through its embrace of the Muhammadan reality, while being unafraid to step out of the boundaries that have, up until now, restrained Muslims from navigating a clear path through Modernity.

In this way, they should turn the Wahhabist-Salafist journey, whose Bedouins spread from geographical centre to periphery, on its head, embarking on that Islamic tradition of rebellious wandering, from the periphery to the caliphal seat of power with the intention of reviving Islamic civilization, it’s ultimate destination being beyond even that, not a geographical location but a spiritual centre, the only place on earth which shall never be an empty husk: the black cube.

The Black Cube

The black cube’s location in Mecca should not be tied to whatever nation rules it, or even to the people who have been dwelling in those lands for millennia. Rather, it is encircled by people coming from all over the world, a unified orbit arout that spiritual centre. This is especially significant because the black stone within the kaaba is itself a symbol for the relation between God and humanity.

As mentioned by Abdal Hakim Murad: “Ali ibn Abi Talib narrated that when God took the Covenant, He recorded it in writing and fed it to the Black Stone, and this is the meaning of the saying of those who touch the Black Stone during the circumambulation of the Ancient House: ‘O God! This is believing in You, fulfilling our pledge to You, and declaring the truth of Your record’. The Ka’ba therefore, while it is nothing of itself - a cube of stones and mortar - represents and reminds its pilgrims of the primordial moment of our kind.”

The Kaaba being built by the first Prophet Adam and eventually being made the central spiritual axis of the final religion further deepens its relation with humanity - through its importance in the Prophetic spirals and the establishment of the final religion, becoming exactly that symbol of a united humanity encircling it, who get closest to the covenant between humanity and the divine when touching the black stone contained within it.

The Kaaba’s continued existence throughout the prophetic cycles and its primordial significance make it the absolute structure. Shaped as a perfect angular void, it functions both as the end point of decoding, as its continued existence necessitates a link with the primordial tradition, while its relation to the prophetic cycle also makes it a recoding device, the ultimate representation of the Muhammadan reality.

We mentioned already that Islam has no centre in the geographical sense. Thus, despite being geographically located close to the heartland of Wahhabism, the Kaaba is in no way tied to that strand of Islam. Rather, its relationship with humanity in a geographical sense is dialectical, attracting people from all over, after which they subsequently return to their abodes. Thus, if we speak of those nomads with a Sufi-Salafi spirit embarking on a journey from the periphery to the centre, we are speaking, first and foremost of a journey towards that spiritual centre, any geographical point merely being the pathway in between.

The Final Spiral

Up till now it might have been unclear how – if Islamic helical history ends with the ultimate fulfilment of that covenant between humanity and God in the form of Islam being brought by the prophet Muhammad – decline is still taking place and, perhaps more importantly: if Islamic history is completed with Muhammad, how could any sort of revival take place?

The Sunni-Guenonian scholar Charles-Andre Gilis informs us that, while the prophetic cycle has finished (and fulfilled in its utmost sense) with Muhammad bringing the final law, one should take note not to confuse this spiritual fulfilment of the message with the material dominion and upholding of that spirit. Indeed, God has left both saints and scholars to periodically remind us of its spiritual content and caliphs to uphold its exoteric jurisprudential sense and spread it across the earth.

In the prophetic ahadith, Gilis mentions that it is the figure of the Mahdi that will ultimately function as the perfect consummation of these two roles; being both the qutb (or: the highest ranking saint) as well as the perfect caliph who will bring universal peace to earth, through the spread of Islam, reaching all across the 4 cardinal directions that the corners of the kaaba correspond to. It is this moment that Gilis identifies with the revival and the onset of the last cycle (or in our case: spiral) before Allah rolls up the heavens and the earths in His Right Hand.

It is at this point that the traditional idea of the Islamic world and the consummation of the Muhammadan law, will be completely fulfilled. Here, for the first time, the peripheral impulse to revive within Islam will be eradicated, as the entire earth will eventually come to fall under its domain. The Mahdi will become the leader of those who resisted, as is mentioned in a longer version of the hadith regarding a select group of the ummah that will continue to resist until the day of judgement.

The coming of the Mahdi informs us of the certainty of the world reaching beyond post-modernity. But like Guenon mentioned, the ahadith on the Mahdi’s coming should also remind us that we should not take this to mean that we can sit and wait for the revival to begin. Rather we should attempt to create the perfect landscape for revival in our planetarized world, meaning that we create forms of Islam that can overcome modernity, that can fuse the universal and the particular, that can once more bring peace to all parts of the earth, that can fulfil humanity’s sacred role – if only in preparation of the coming of the Mahdi.

For this preparation to materialise the ancient institutions (which insist upon an eternal stasis instead of a continuation of the spiral) must be destroyed so that they can be rebuilt in ways that fit into their particular regions. Hence our pilgrims come from the periphery, there where the population is most seeking, most ruptured and most nomadic, and they return to the periphery, understanding that – as the role of the Mahdi teaches us – revival requires a balance between spiritual utopianism and caliphal pragmatism.

From their peripheral localities they will engage in a destructive journey, leaving behind nothing but flatness through their proto-Salafistic impulse until they reach that primordial structure, that black cube which embodies the covenant between humanity and God, fulfilled by the Prophetic spirals; that building that will stay forever raised among the flatness as a symbol of humanity’s lofty position.

In this way, they embody the Sufist idea of fana’ and baqa’: annihilation of the self to subsequently return to a more advanced state of being, a return of the self with a higher awareness of its connection to God. Similarly, the journey they will embark on consists of an annihilation not for annihilation’s sake – that suicidal tendency we described in contemporary Salafism – but rather for that ultimate return to the primordial; preparing the world for a revival of Muhammad’s law, for the covenant between humanity and God, for the re-appearance of human excellence.

Taifa City States

Returning from their journey I dream of neo-Taifas, city states that embody both the local and the future. I imagine vast wastelands that utilise the cubical relation between humanity and God, embodied by the Prophet, to build up from flatness once more. The pilgrims who had left from the farthest corners of the earth will return, now to a home that seemed, until that point, not to exist.

By bringing the new in the form of a Salafist impulse and the old in the form of a Sufi impulse they will create forms of Islam that will rejuvenate their localities instead of being a burden, creating local negentropic zones that provide the world a glimpse into the future by establishing a new human-centred order on the far edges of chaos.

From this peripheral revival we hope to see the message of Islam spread once more; their influence re-enacting their journey by going from the periphery to the current heartland. In similar fashion the Mahdi will come from a faraway Island and will reach the Kaaba to subsequently usher in a universal caliphate.

With such a revival seemingly far-away; the Salafi impulse having been hijacked, the Sufi impulse in complete stasis, and an Islamic population which, for all its ambitions, has no power or influence at all, this might seem wishful thinking and the reader might be disappointed by the lack of practical instructions on how to bring forth such a revival.

To those, I say that there is no reason to be dismayed. Very soon, SAIF (which comes from complete non-space) will begin to distribute practical guides as the first step in establishing a sympoietic machine that will function as a growing network of inter-related nodes in preparation of the journey toward the heartland. This machine will function as its trojan horse, carrying within it hidden human elements, smuggling them through enemy territory.