Rivals in the Gulf: Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Abdullah Bin Bayyah, and the Qatar-UAE Contest Over the Arab Spring and the Gulf Crisis 9780367280628, 9780429299490

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Rivals in the Gulf

Rivals in the Gulf: Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Abdullah Bin Bayyah, and the Qatar-UAE Contest Over the Arab Spring and the Gulf Crisis details the relationships between the Egyptian Shaykh Yusuf al-Qaradawi and the Al Thani royal family in Qatar, and between the Mauritanian Shaykh Abdullah Bin Bayyah and the Al Nahyans, the rulers of Abu Dhabi and senior royal family in the United Arab Emirates. These relationships stretch back decades, to the early 1960s and 1970s respectively. Using this history as a foundation, the book examines the connections between Qaradawi’s and Bin Bayyah’s rival projects and the development of Qatar’s and the UAE’s competing state-brands and foreign policies. It raises questions about how to theorize the relationships between the Muslim scholarly-elite (theʿulamāʾ) and the nation-state. Over the course of the Arab Spring and the Gulf Crisis, Qaradawi and Bin Bayyah shaped the Al Thani’s and Al Nahyan’s competing ideologies in important ways. Offering new ways for academics to think about Doha and Abu Dhabi as hegemonic centers of Islamic scholarly authority alongside historical centers of learning such as Cairo, Medina, or Qom, this book will appeal to those with an interest in modern Islamic authority, the ʿulamāʾ, Gulf politics, as well as the Arab Spring and its aftermath. David H. Warren is Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, USA.

Islam in the World Series Editors

Katherine Brown Birmingham University, UK Jorgen Nielsen Birmingham University, UK

Freedom of Speech in Universities Islam, Charities and Counter-terrorism Alison Scott-Baumann and Simon Perfect Rivals in the Gulf Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Abdullah Bin Bayyah, and the Qatar-UAE Contest Over the Arab Spring and the Gulf Crisis David H. Warren

For more information and a full list of titles in the series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Islam-in-the-World/book-series/ITWF

Rivals in the Gulf

Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Abdullah Bin Bayyah, and the Qatar-UAE Contest Over the Arab Spring and the Gulf Crisis David H. Warren

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 David H. Warren The right of David H. Warren to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-28062-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-29949-0 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

Acknowledgements

vi

Introduction: Rivals in the Gulf

1

PART 1

Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Al Thanis, and Qatari foreign policy

17

1

Wahhabism and wasaṭiyya in Qatar

19

2

Qaradawi, Qatar, and the Arab Spring

40

3

War in Syria, coup in Egypt, crisis in the Gulf

55

PART 2

Abdullah Bin Bayyah, the Al Nahyans, and Emirati foreign policy

71

4

Abdullah Bin Bayyah and the Al Nahyans

73

5

The Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies

94

Conclusion: the ʿulamāʾ in the Gulf states

115

Index

121

Acknowledgements

I would like to take the opportunity to acknowledge the support of key institutions and individuals who helped to bring this work to completion. The writing of this book was completed at Washington University in St. Louis, and I am grateful to Hillel Kieval, Nancy Reynolds, and all my colleagues at the Department of Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies for providing such a welcoming environment. I would also like to acknowledge the support of the Alwaleed Centre for the Study of Islam in the Contemporary World at the University of Edinburgh, especially Hugh Goddard and Tom Lea. Grants to support this project financially have been generously provided by the Gerda Henkel Foundation, the Spalding Trust, and the Gilchrist Trust. Many of the ideas and insights found in this book have emerged from innumerable conversations with peers and colleagues over the years. I am grateful to all of you. I would also like to thank the staff of the offices of Yusuf al-Qaradawi and Abdullah Bin Bayyah for their hospitality and generosity with their time. Many of them will remain nameless to preserve their privacy, but I wish to extend my thanks to Waleed Abu al-Naga and Zeshan Zafar in particular. Special acknowledgement is also due to Jasser Auda and Basma Abdelgafar, formerly of the Qatar Faculty of Islamic Studies, as well as Brad Bauer and the library staff at NYU Abu Dhabi. Lastly, special thanks go to my family. I am especially grateful to Simon F. Warren for his gentle cajoling, Sultana Y. Ali for her love, Leila A. Sadiq for providing a sense of what matters in life, and Tazeen M. Ali, whose myriad contributions are beyond encapsulation.

Introduction Rivals in the Gulf

This book details the relationships between the Egyptian Yusuf al-Qaradawi (b.1926) and the Qatari royal house of Al Thani (Āl Thānī), and between the Mauritanian Abdullah Bin Bayyah (b.1935) and the royal house of Al Nahyan (Āl Nahyān),1 which rules Abu Dhabi and is the senior royal house in the United Arab Emirates. These relationships stretch back decades, to the early 1960s and early 1970s respectively. Using these long histories as a foundation, I focus on the connections between Qaradawi’s and Bin Bayyah’s rival projects and the interventionist foreign policies of Qatar and the UAE as they developed during the 2011–2013 Arab Spring and its aftermath. These case studies contribute to two overlapping academic conversations. The first concerns the relationship between the Muslim scholarly-elite, the ʿulamāʾ (sg. ʿālim),2 and Arab regimes during the Arab Spring and its aftermath; the second concerns the development of Qatar’s and the UAE’s competing foreign policies during that same period. Qaradawi and Qatar were the most visible and vocal ʿālim and state to support the Arab Spring. In 2011, Qaradawi and his like-minded peers among the Qatar-based International Union of Muslim Scholars (al-Ittiḥād al-ʿĀlamī li-ʿUlamāʾ al-Muslimīn, IUMS) began to articulate a new branch of Islamic jurisprudence called the Jurisprudence of Revolution (fiqh althawra). As the Arab Spring began and the region’s dictatorial regimes sought to cut off Internet access and media not controlled by the state, the Qatari satellite channel al-Jazeera served as an important outlet for news of the spreading uprisings for Arab viewers. Qaradawi’s fatwas, interviews on his popular al-Jazeera show Sharia and Life (al-Sharīʿa wa-l-Ḥayāt), and his televised sermons from Doha’s Umar Ibn al-Khattab mosque each became news items in their own right. Qatar also provided enormous financial support to the Muslim Brotherhood (MB)-led government in Egypt, as well as matériel support to MB-affiliated militias in Libya and Syria. The fall of Husni Mubarak (d.2020) on 11 February 2011 had shocked the UAE into a new, interventionist foreign policy and led to an intense rivalry

2

Introduction

with Qatar. Though the UAE and Qatar were the only two Arab states to actively join the 2011 NATO-led military intervention in Libya, after the fall of Muammar Gaddafi (d.2011) the two states began supporting opposing groups in the country’s ongoing civil war. In Egypt too, while Qatar supported the government of Muhammad Mursi (d.2019), the UAE was the most active state providing strategic advice to the coupists behind the scenes and after the 3 July 2013 Coup replaced Qatar as Egypt’s most generous financial backer. Tensions between the two states continued to build until finally the UAE – alongside Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Bahrain – launched an ongoing economic and diplomatic blockade of Qatar on 5 June 2017. Bin Bayyah had been Qaradawi’s deputy at IUMS since the organization was founded with Qatari sponsorship in 2004. However, over the course of 2011–2013 Bin Bayyah became increasingly concerned at what he considered to be increasing chaos throughout the region. In September 2013, he resigned from his position at IUMS and in March 2014 formally announced a new ʿulamāʾ organization called the Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies (Muntadā Taʿzīz al-Silm fī l-Mujtamaʿāt al-Muslima, FPPMS). FPPMS was based in Abu Dhabi and personally sponsored by the UAE Minister of Foreign Affairs Abdullah b. Zayed Al Nahyan (b.1972). In his first speech at the opening of FPPMS, Bin Bayyah announced a new project to promulgate an alternate genre of jurisprudence called the Jurisprudence of Peace (fiqh al-silm). This book argues that Qaradawi and Bin Bayyah have actively shaped the Al Thani’s and Al Nahyan’s alternate visions for the region, rather than simply being scholars-for-hire or providers of ex post facto legitimizations of Qatari and Emirati policies. Though Qaradawi and Bin Bayyah have each formulated new and distinct brands of jurisprudence, the Jurisprudence of Revolution and the Jurisprudence of Peace, I show these projects are in fact rooted in the same foundational assumptions and share similar modes of production. The term branding is not meant to imply insincerity. Rather, I use the term to encapsulate how the ʿulamāʾ have crafted an image as an elite scholar-class, and then differentiated themselves from each other by laying claim to different labels such as wasaṭī, Salafi, or Sufi for example. On the world stage, small states also have to brand themselves in order to garner outside powers’ interest in ensuring the security and economic stability. This dynamic has particular features in the Gulf, and I argue that Qaradawi and Bin Bayyah have played crucial roles in how Qatar and the UAE have crafted alternate brands of Islamic reform, though each brand shares the key aim of cultivating the continued investment of the United States in maintaining its security. Though the Gulf sits at the very center of global capitalism, there is far more to the cities of Doha and Abu Dhabi than simply vast material wealth, important as that is. Instead, I argue that Doha

Introduction 3 and Abu Dhabi should be considered central nodes in the transnational Muslim moral geography alongside historical scholarly centers such as Cairo, Medina, or Qom.

The ʿulamāʾ and the fragmentation of authority Since the 19th century, a host of social transformations such as mass education, increased access to Islamic texts, and the rise of new media technologies have caused a fragmentation of the authority of the ʿulamāʾ. While the ʿulamāʾ had once enjoyed a veritable monopoly on speaking authoritatively in the name of Islam, since the 19th century they have competed with new actors including state-bureaucrats, popular preachers, and secularly trained intellectuals.3 In the common narrative, this fragmentation represents a “crisis” as lay Muslims are faced with an increasingly diverse array of authority options from which to pick and choose.4 Though this narrative has explanatory power, this crisis also presented the ʿulamāʾ with new opportunities. As a response to their new competitors, ʿulamāʾ rebranded themselves as the guardians of tradition in a secular age.5 Though they no longer enjoy a monopoly on the promulgation of Islamic norms, now the ʿulamāʾ intervene in national, transnational, and online conversations “qua ʿulamāʾ,” that is, in their new role as religious specialists. As Muhammad Qasim Zaman remarks, “It is precisely their [the ʿulamāʾ’s] claims to authoritatively represent an ‘authentic’ Islamic tradition in its richness, depth and continuity that may have become the most significant basis of their new prominence.”6 Modernity not only caused a fragmentation of authority, but also a fragmentation of knowledge. As knowledge fragmented into distinct realms – politics, economics, etc. – the category of religion acquired a new meaning as referring to a distinctly moral realm.7 As the emerging nation-state expanded its bureaucratic capacity, it appropriated more areas of administrative life, such as education and the judiciary, on behalf of these emerging non-religious, or secular, realms of knowledge. As a result of states’ bureaucratic expansion, areas of administrative life allotted to the ʿulamāʾ became smaller.8 In response, the ʿulamāʾ differentiated themselves from these non-religious sectors as “a specialist organization teaching a body of knowledge called religion” that “served as a moral watchdog over all areas.” As the public increasingly perceived the ʿulamāʾ as moral watchdogs, demand for their expertise increased. The public came to expect the ʿulamāʾ to comment upon all aspects of social life.9 Academics assumed that the proliferation of platforms, increased literacy, and access to texts would reduce demand for the ʿulamāʾ. However,

4

Introduction

higher literacy and access to texts have raised awareness of these texts’ complexity and resultantly increased demand for the expertise of the specialist.10 Moreover, the ʿulamāʾ have shown a marked ability to make use of new technological opportunities. Nowadays, key ʿulamāʾ have enormous Twitter accounts, popular YouTube channels, and prevalent social media profiles. They also head the Islamic educational institutions (both old and new) that either supply the ijāzas or, in another mark of adaptation, award contemporary credentials in the form of certificates of completion, diplomas, and degrees. Here too, many ʿulamāʾ have taken advantage of these new trends toward the formalization of education and credentialization of authority by acquiring both ijāzas and PhDs to present themselves as “alshaykh al-duktūr,” that is, “Dr. Shaykh.”11 Last, rather than compete headon with their new rivals, many ʿulamāʾ have formed alliances with secularly trained intellectuals, journalists, and military officers in order to augment their authority still further.

Islamic institutions and the nation-state Islamic educational institutions, like the ʿulamāʾ they produce, have also proved adept at navigating the recent transformations that were previously thought to have sounded the death knell for their authoritative place in Muslim societies. Ancient centers of learning were able to take advantage of the encroachment of a nation-state’s administrative apparatus upon their autonomy; they utilized the state-funding that followed to markedly expand their bureaucracies and facilitate their increasingly wide-ranging interventions in the public sphere.12 Similarly, just as the ʿulamāʾ rebranded themselves as guardians of tradition, Islamic universities mobilized their positions at locations historically associated with confluences of scholarship to garner state funding, international students, and prestige.13 As international students came to study in increasing numbers from the geographical peripheries, they then returned to home countries such as Malaysia or Senegal and either took up teaching positions or established sub-centers of learning using the same curricula, further cementing the authority of the core institutions.14 However, as state-funding for Islamic institutions has increased, so too has public suspicion, as dissatisfaction with the postcolonial state extends to the institutions and ʿulamāʾ they sponsor.15 However, prominent ʿulamāʾ invariably rely on some form of state-sponsorship, and consequently branding oneself as independent from state control can be an important element of an ʿālim’s authoritative claim-making, as it has been for Qaradawi. For Bin Bayyah, by contrast, addressing the crisis of authority requires the support and sponsorship of a strong state.

Introduction 5

Modern revivalism: from Wahhabism to Neo-traditionalism Qaradawi’s and Bin Bayyah’s projects are influenced by the Islamic currents that together make up the plateau of modern revivalism: Wahhabism, Salafism, Islamism, and Neo-traditionalism. An overview of these categories, which are not mutually exclusive and the subject of substantial debate, is helpful for contextualizing the current that Qaradawi and Bin Bayyah associate themselves with: wasaṭiyya (centrism, moderation). Modern revivalism originates in the 17th century, when on the Arabian Peninsula an intellectual movement emerged that was interested in circumventing the legal schools’ vast bodies of jurisprudential literature in favor of a return to a direct interpretation of the source texts. Based on its reading of the Hanbali authorities Ibn Taymiyya (d.1328) and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (d.1350), this movement prioritized the Qurʾan, the Prophetic Sunna, and the consensus of the first generations of Muslims (the salaf) as the three sources of Islamic law. Muhammad b. ʿAbd al-Wahhab (d.1792) was a student of this movement and became its eponym. While Wahhab personally rejected the practice of adhering (taqlīd) to a particular legal school, the Wahhabi ʿulamāʾ who follow his thought do, in effect, practice a taqlīd of the Hanbali school and follow a Neo-Hanbali theology.16 Salafism emerged in the early 20th century and was influenced by the Wahhabi movement that by 1925 dominated the Arabian Peninsula. Salafis first used the Arabic term salafiyya to describe their approach in the 1920s. Salafism’s hallmarks include a Neo-Hanbali theology derived from Wahhabism, a thoroughgoing criticism of the legal schools (madhāhib sg. madhhab), and a critique of Sufism’s emphasis on the personalized relationships between shaykhs and their murīds.17 Samuli Schielke’s term de-traditionalization encapsulates the Salafi hermeneutic. De-traditionalization captures the manner in which ʿulamāʾ, in the urban centers of late Ottoman Damascus and Cairo for example, abandoned pre-existing Sufi traditions of critique and reform in favor of the genealogically Wahhabi approach of direct engagement with the source texts of the Qurʾan and Sunna unimpeded by the authorities of the legal schools. Salafism’s claim to direct access to texts and circumventing ʿulamāʾ-elites did not, however, translate into tolerance for interpretative pluralism.18 Moreover, despite Salafis’ critiques of Sufism, they frequently draw on genealogically Sufi concepts and curricula,19 while the personal relationship between Salafi teachers and students remains highly important.20 What was new about this emerging Salafi hermeneutic was that, influenced by European positivism, it envisioned Islam as a set of clear commandments and objective facts arising out of the plain-meaning of texts in a manner that was easily comprehensible to the

6

Introduction

everyday believer. As a result, Salafi publications often take the form of short instruction manuals.21 Consequently, Salafism is a form of religiosity that built upon the new common sense that emerged in the 20th century, which was deeply informed by modern ideologies of positivism, progress, and nationalism alongside aspirations to capitalist consumption.22 Though prominent Salafis dreamed of establishing an Islamic state upon Salafi foundations, many of them were pragmatists who cautioned against political activism or violent confrontation with local regimes.23 The Salafi goal of establishing an Islamic state was (usually) a distant one that could only be achieved after individual purification and communal education.24 Though things have changed since 2011 in countries like Egypt, where the Salafi al-Nur Party has emerged as a key powerbroker, for decades Salafi movements such as Ansar al-Sunna al-Muhammadiyya (founded in 1926) avoided political activism. Consequently, they were permitted to operate in Egypt unimpeded, and they flourished as a result.25 Rashid Rida (d.1935) was an important influence on the development of Salafism,26 and his personal project resembles the Salafi de-traditionalization of Islam in important ways. Rida took two technical terms of Islamic jurisprudence, taqlīd (adherence to a legal school) and ijtihād (independent reasoning),27 and changed them into broader watchwords of backwardness and progress.28 An important feature of his project, which Qaradawi and Bin Bayyah both adopt, was bringing previously marginal classical concepts to the center of modern Islamic jurisprudence. In addition to Salafism, Rida was also an important influence on Hasan al-Banna (d.1949) and the Muslim Brotherhood (founded in 1928).29 Banna began to use the term Islamism to describe his project in the 1940s,30 and consequently I reserve this term to refer to the MB and its offshoots. The distinctions between Islamism and Salafism are easily blurred, either intentionally or by accident.31 This blurring is epitomized by the figure of Sayyid Qutb, a member of the MB32 who was influenced by Wahhabi theology and then in turn became influential for violent Salafi groups.33 However, an important difference between Islamism and Salafism is the concept of the citizen. Banna envisaged individual Muslims as “believing activists” (al-ʿāmilūn al-muʾminūn),34 and as the MB abandoned violence35 and embraced democracy,36 later Islamist intellectuals like the Tunisian Rashid al-Ghannushi (b.1941) articulated their own conceptions of popular sovereignty.37 By contrast, Salafis’ approach to citizenship within the bounds of the nation-state remained ambiguous and quietist, at least until 2011.38 One thing that does unite Wahhabism, Salafism, and Islamism is that they imagine themselves to be critiquing an ossified tradition that needs

Introduction 7 reforming in order to bring about progress. In response to these critiques, or at least reinvigorated by them, another increasingly important current emerged: Neo-traditionalism.39 In contrast to their critics, Neo-traditionalists advocate an adherence to one of the four Sunni legal schools. They also hold a highly positive view of Sufism to the extent that the personal,40 uninterrupted (muttaṣil) transmission of knowledge from Sufi shaykhs to murīds is a central part of their claim to represent an orthodox (ḥanīf), or traditional (taqlīdī), Islam.41 Neo-traditionalists claim to be maintaining or reviving a tradition that they consider threatened by the negative consequences of modernity, represented in no small part by the emergence of Wahhabism, Salafism, and Islamism. However, as a prominent current of modern Islamic thought and practice, Neo-traditionalism has also been shaped by modern processes.42 Modernity, from the perspective of the Neo-traditionalists, is not defined in a programmatic fashion but instead emerges as a general anxiety over “civilizational decay,” moral decline, and fading religiosity in wider society.43 Neo-traditionalist ʿulamāʾ are skeptical of lay Muslims’ capacity for self-governance. Consequently, Neo-traditionalists exhibit a particularly deep concern about the fragmentation of authority. They express this concern via a trope known as the chaos of religious discourse (fawḍā al-khiṭāb al-dīnī) or, more specifically, as “the chaos of the fatwa” (fawḍā al-fatwā, fawḍā fī l-fatwā). This trope views lay Muslims as being easily led astray by unqualified muftis,44 “merchants of religion” (tujjār al-dīn), and other charlatans. As a result, Neo-traditionalists generally consider a powerful state, overseen by a strong leader and an empowered ʿulamāʾ-elite working in concert, as necessary to maintain the social stability required for Muslim piety to flourish. Consequently, Neo-traditionalist ʿulamāʾ such as Muhammad al-Buti (d.2013) or Hamza Yusuf (b.1958) are also considered quietist.45 While many regimes in the Arab World and beyond have generally allowed quietist Salafi movements to operate so long as they did not challenge the established order, states such as Morocco, Russia, and the United Kingdom have actively promoted Neo-traditionalist forms of Islam, particularly Sufism.46 As Mark Sedgewick puts it, Neo-traditionalists “define themselves by what they oppose as much as by what they promote, and what they oppose is non-traditional, ‘modern’ Islam.”47 Neo-traditionalists define modern Islam very broadly, to the extent that contemporary forms of Wahhabism, Salafism, and Islamism can all be included.48 As Part 2 will discuss, Neotraditionalists have an interest in dissolving the boundaries between these different currents. These four currents have all influenced Qaradawi and Bin Bayyah’s thought to varying extents. As an affiliate of the MB who has been

8

Introduction

offered the position of General Guide twice, Qaradawi’s thought clearly influences, and has been influenced by, Islamism. Qaradawi also identifies himself as a student of Rida.49 By contrast, Bin Bayyah’s general adherence to the Maliki school and Sufism put him closer to Neo-traditionalism, though he has long had a relationship with more clearly Islamist-leaning ʿulamāʾ, namely Qaradawi. Alongside the Azhar, they are both advocates of wasaṭiyya,50 a term they define in terms of flexibility and openness:51 be it an openness to all the legal schools, mobilizing the pre-existing distinction between unalterable acts of worship and interpersonal transactions that are changeable, considering Sufism an important dimension of Islamic life (without necessarily identifying as Sufi),52 following an Ashari theology while being receptive to Maturidi or Neo-Hanbali theologies, and emphasizing the need to take into account the contemporary social reality (al-wāqiʿ) when issuing fatwas.53 Moreover, many of Qaradawi and Bin Bayyah’s proposed reforms are built on the modern tension that pre-supposes the lay believer as rational and capable of self-governance while maintaining a continued need for the personal authority of a scholar.

Islam and state-branding in the Gulf Small states face particular challenges on the global stage. Militarily weaker in comparison to more powerful neighbors, and economically more vulnerable to sudden shifts in the global distribution of capital, small states are dependent on cultivating the interest of larger powers in ensuring the security and maintaining their stability. The most successful small states are those that can exploit or create a particular niche, thereby demonstrating their value to others as independent and secure entities.54 The tiny Sunni Gulf monarchies surrounded by the much larger, near neighbors of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Iran exemplify the small-state conundrum. Since independence, Qatar, Kuwait, and the UAE have all had territory claimed or occupied by these three larger states.55 Following the 1979 Iranian Revolution, President Jimmy Carter implemented the Carter Doctrine. As a result, the United States became the outside power whose interest the Gulf monarchies needed to cultivate to preserve their security, both from expansionist outside powers and internal demands for democracy.56 However, given that the Gulf monarchies are similar to each other in a number of ways, cultivating a unique niche has particular challenges that have necessitated incorporating an additional element to their strategies for survival: branding.57 As John E. Petersen puts it, “Branding has emerged as a state asset to rival geopolitics and traditional considerations of power. Assertive branding is necessary for

Introduction 9 states as well as companies to stand out in the crowd, since they often offer similar products: territory, infrastructure, educated people, and for example in the Gulf, almost identical systems of governance.”58 In facing this challenge, Gulf monarchies such as Qatar and the UAE have used their wealth to build brands and differentiate themselves from each other. For example, Qatar has marketed itself as an important American military ally, hosting the US military’s Central Command (CENTCOM) before and during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The country has also developed a state-brand rooted in philanthropy and world culture through the Qatar Foundation’s high-profile sponsorship deals and hosting the 2022 FIFA World Cup. For the UAE’s part, Dubai has become a center of global tourism and air transportation, and Dubai Ports World operates over 10% of global container traffic in over 40 countries.59 Moreover, the UAE was the only Arab country to station military forces in Afghanistan after the 2001 US invasion.60 The growth of US military bases in Qatar and the UAE is testament to the success of these efforts. US forces not only shield the Gulf monarchies from external invasion, but they protect the royal families from internal challenges and local calls for democracy.61 This book shows how Islam and the ʿulamāʾ play an important in Qatari and Emirati foreign policy and state-branding efforts. For much of the Arab Spring, Qaradawi was an important asset to Qatar, and his close relations with President Erdogan of Turkey have proven useful since the start of the Gulf Crisis. Since 9/11 in particular, the US State Department has invested heavily in “programmatic efforts to reshape and transform ‘Islam from within’” as part of its post-9/11 security and foreign policy.62 This effort was facilitated by the passing of the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act that gave the US unprecedented power to regulate religious life internationally in the name of promoting religious freedom.63 Since 2014 the UAE has made a concerted effort to brand itself a willing partner in this US policy, an effort in which Bin Bayyah has played an important role.

Arguments of the book We are now better placed to consider this book’s arguments. If, as academics have argued, the ʿulamāʾ have responded to the crisis of authority and the fragmentation of knowledge by rebranding themselves as a scholar-class of religious specialists, then it is important to recognize how this dynamic of brand-building also occurs at the level of the individual ʿālim. Rival ʿulamāʾ, with the aid of their supportive networks and sponsoring states, differentiate themselves from each other even as their projects may be structurally

10

Introduction

very similar and built upon the same foundational concepts. Qaradawi and Bin Bayyah are both advocates of wasaṭiyya, yet since 2014 Bin Bayyah has developed a distinct brand. This is because Qaradawi and Bin Bayyah developed very different views of events as the Arab Spring unfolded, and they promulgated rival projects in response. These two projects – the Jurisprudence of Revolution and the Jurisprudence of Peace – were built on the same foundations and use similar means of argumentation. Small states brand themselves and cultivate niches in order to garner larger powers’ interest in ensuring their security. For Qatar and the UAE, there are particular dynamics to this process of brand-building and differentiation, as these smaller Gulf monarchies are very similar to each other in terms of their economies, populations, and cultures. Consequently, cultivating distinct Islamic state-brands has been particularly important for Qatar and the UAE’s respective foreign policies. The relationship between the ʿulamāʾ and their rulers has a long and varied history. The rulers of Muslim empires, administrators working for colonial powers, dictators at the head of postcolonial regimes, and more recently, democratically elected politicians have all seen fit at times to support or suppress those ʿulamāʾ whose projects they have viewed quiescent or recalcitrant. In turn, across different regions and time periods various ʿulamāʾ have engaged their rulers and governments in all kinds of ways, serving as regime mouthpieces, mobilizers of resistance, or careful negotiators seeking to carve out spaces of (relatively) autonomous action for their projects. The relationships between Qaradawi, Bin Bayyah, and the royal houses of Al Thani and Al Nahyan stretch back decades: to the 1960s and 1970s respectively. Since Qaradawi arrived in Qatar from Egypt in 1961, and Bin Bayyah more recently, these two ʿulamāʾ have shaped the Al Thani’s and Al Nahyan’s competing understandings of Islamic normativity and the Qatari and Emirati Islamic state-brands. Neither of them simply produce Islamic rationales for their sponsors’ foreign policies ex post facto. Qaradawi arrived in Qatar in 1961 as part of the Azhar Mission to Doha. Over the coming decades he supplanted the country’s Wahhabi ʿulamāʾ establishment and facilitated its decline. Though Qaradawi is a prominent affiliate of the MB, his impact on the Al Thanis and Qatari elites was not through exporting the MB’s political ideology. Rather, through a history of Islamic education in Qatar during the 20th century, it is clear (I argue) that Qaradawi’s impact in shaping this education and the views of Qatari elites represents a startling success the Azhar’s mission of exporting its version of wasaṭiyya Islam, which he then systematized and made his own. With Qatari support, Qaradawi then built a unique brand as the quintessential outsider, while simultaneously drawing on the prestige of his Azhar training

Introduction 11 and his MB-affiliation. This image was a key asset for Qatari foreign policy and state-branding. By the 1990s, Qaradawi had become a prominent advocate of democracy in the Arab World, yet his vision of democracy included foundational tensions that burst into the open as the Arab Spring unfolded. Bin Bayyah’s relationship with the UAE’s founding president, Zayed b. Sultan Al Nahyan (often known simply as “Shaykh Zayed”), dates back to the 1970s, when Bin Bayyah was a high-ranking member of the Mauritanian government. Though Bin Bayyah and Shaykh Zayed remained close, his impact on the Al Nahyan’s normative Islamic vision and the UAE statebrand is more recent. In particular, Bin Bayyah’s influence is evidenced most clearly through the Al Nahyan’s repetition of the chaos of the fatwa trope. Bin Bayyah had longstanding skepticism toward democracy, which has its roots in his understanding of the 1991–2002 Algerian Civil War and the occupation of Iraq. As far as he was concerned, the course of the Arab Spring only served to confirm his skepticism. Bin Bayyah’s junior colleague in FPPMS, Hamza Yusuf, is also an important influence in the UAE. However, Yusuf’s contribution to the Jurisprudence of Peace project and UAE foreign policy is through leveraging of his interfaith networks in the US, rather than through his political thought. The Islamic element of the UAE state-branding project rests upon branding itself an American ally in promoting international religious freedom in the region. Qatar and the UAE sit at the very center of global capitalism. Consequently, while academics draw attention to Muslim moral geographies that foreground historical centers of scholarship such as Cairo, Medina, Qom, and Damascus, we should also start thinking about how Doha and Abu Dhabi fit alongside those cities and serve key nodes in these networks of Islamic scholarly authority.

Structure of the book This book comprises two parts. Part 1 is divided into three chapters. Chapter 1 details the Wahhabi milieu in Qatar prior to Qaradawi’s arrival. It then explicates Qaradawi’s role in supplanting Qatar’s Wahhabi ʿulamāʾ establishment before detailing his close relationship with the Al Thanis as he built his global brand. Chapter 2 details Qaradawi’s interventions and Qatari foreign policy during the Arab Spring and the Al Thani’s support for the Jurisprudence of Revolution project. Chapter 3 examines the tensions that emerged between Qaradawi and the Al Thanis as his interventions became the source of greater controversy and the Arab Spring revealed deep divisions in Arab societies. Despite those tensions, Qaradawi once again became an asset as Qatar pursued closer relations with Turkey since the start of the Gulf Crisis.

12

Introduction

Part 2 is divided into two chapters. Chapter 4 charts Bin Bayyah’s relationship with the Al Nahyans from its beginning in the 1970s to the Arab Spring. The chapter details Bin Bayyah’s skepticism toward democracy prior to 2011 and examines how his views changed over the course of 2011– 2012 before his final divergence from Qaradawi. Chapter 5 then examines the development of Bin Bayyah’s alternate projects with the Al Nahyan’s support and assesses their importance for UAE state-branding efforts. Bin Bayyah’s project, the Jurisprudence of Peace, intersects with the UAE’s foreign policy objective of creating a state-brand of Islamic reform that satisfies US expectations for promoting international religious freedom.

Notes 1 This book follows the International Journal of Middle East Studies transliteration style with minor exceptions. I generally avoid honorifics such as Shaykh or Amir. In cases where individuals’ names have well-known anglicizations (e.g. Bin Bayyah), I use those. 2 I use ʿulamāʾ to refer to those trained at institutions such as the Azhar, and intellectuals to refer to those trained at state-founded institutions such as the Dar al-ʿUlum. 3 Dale F. Eickelman and James Piscatori, Muslim Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). 4 Zareena Grewal, Islam Is a Foreign Country: American Muslims and the Global Crisis of Authority (New York: New York University Press, 2013), 33–42. 5 Abdulkader Tayob, “Religion in Modern Islamic Thought and Practice,” in Religion and the Secular: Historical and Colonial Formations, ed. Timothy Fitzgerald (London: Equinox, 2007), 177–192 (11). 6 Muhammad Qasim Zaman, The Ulama in Contemporary Islam: Custodians of Change (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 180. 7 For reflections on the relationship between dīn and dunyā see Rushain Abbasi, “Did Premodern Muslims Distinguish the Religious and Secular? The Dīn – Dunyā Binary in Medieval Islamic Thought,” Journal of Islamic Studies 31, no. 2 (2020): 185–225. 8 Chris A. Eccel, Egypt, Islam and Social Change: al-Azhar in Conflict and Accommodation (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz, 1984). 9 Tayob, “Religion,” 11–12. 10 Masooda Bano, “Introduction,” in Modern Islamic Authority and Social Change: Evolving Debates in Muslim Majority Countries, ed. Masooda Bano, vol. 1, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018), 1–51 (10). 11 Alex Thurston, “Polyvalent, Transnational Religious Authority: The Tijaniyya Sufi Order and Al-Azhar University,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 86, no. 3 (2018): 789–820 (6). 12 Malika Zeghal, “Religion and Politics in Egypt: The Ulema of al-Azhar, Radical Islam and the State (1952–1994),” International Journal of Middle East Studies 31, no. 3 (1999): 371–399. 13 Masooda Bano and Keiko Sakurai, “Introduction,” in Shaping Global Islamic Discourses: The Role of al-Azhar, al-Medina and al-Mustafa, ed. Masooda Bano and Keiko Sakurai (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015), 1–20 (10–11).

Introduction 13 14 Hiroko Kushimoto, “‘Azharisation’ of ʿUlama Training in Malaysia,” in Shaping Global Islamic Discourses, 190–218; Cheikh Anta Babou, “The al-Azhar School Network: A Murid Experiment in Islamic Modernism,” in Islamic Education in Africa: Writing Boards and Blackboards, ed. Robert Launay (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2016), 173–194. 15 Bano and Sakurai, “Introduction,” 8. 16 Ron Shaham, Rethinking Islamic Legal Modernism: The Teaching of Yusuf alQaradawi (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 17–18. 17 For a conceptual history of salafiyya see Henri Lauzière, The Making of Salafism: Islamic Reform in the Twentieth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016). 18 Samuli Schielke, Egypt in the Future Tense: Hope, Frustration, and Ambivalence before and after 2011 (Bloomington, IN: University of Indiana Press, 2015), 68–72. 19 See further Richard Gauvain, Salafi Ritual Purity: In the Presence of God (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012), 79–82, 88, 92, 112, 229, 305. 20 Jonathan A.C. Brown, “Is Islam Easy to Understand or Not?: Salafis, the Democratization of Interpretation and the Need for the Ulema,” Journal of Islamic Studies 26, no. 2 (2015): 117–144. 21 Schielke, Egypt, 68–72. 22 Schielke, Egypt, 72. 23 See further Joas Wagemakers, Salafism in Jordan: Political Islam in a Quietist Community (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). 24 Jacob Olidort, “The Politics of ‘Quietist’ Salafism,” Brookings Institution, no. 18 (February 2015): 1–25 (16). 25 Jacob Høigilt and Frida Nome, “Egyptian Salafism in Revolution,” Journal of Islamic Studies 25, no. 1 (2014): 33–54. 26 See Lauzière, Making, esp., 60–96. 27 See further Aria Nakissa, The Anthropology of Islamic Law: Education, Ethics, and Legal Interpretation at Egypt’s Al-Azhar (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 209–223. 28 Dyala Hamzeh, “From ’Ilm to Ṣiḥāfa or the Poetics of the Public Interest (Maṣlaḥa): Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā and His Journal al-Manār (1898–1935),” in The Making of the Arab Intellectual: Empire, Public Sphere and the Colonial Coordinates of Selfhood, ed. Dyala Hamzeh (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013), 90–123 (11–20); Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen, “Portrait of the Intellectual as a Young Man: Rashid Rida’s Muhawarat al-Muslih wa’l-Muqallid (1906),” Islam and Muslim-Christian Relations 12, no. 1 (2001): 93–104. 29 Gudrun Krämer, Hasan al-Banna (Oxford: Oneworld, 2010), 5, 16, 29–30, 36–38, 99. 30 Lauzière, Making, 17. 31 Husam Tammam also referred to the “Salafization” of the MB. Husam Tammam, Tasalluf al-Ikhwān: Taʾākul al-Uṭrūḥa al-Ikhwāniyya wa-Ṣuʿūd al-Salafiyya fī Jamāʿat al-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn (Alexandria: Maktabat alIskandariyya, 2010). 32 The most thoroughgoing critiques of Qutb’s thought came from ʿulamāʾ affiliated with the MB. Qaradawi is thought to be one of the authors of the famous critique of Qutb, Preachers Not Judges (Duʿāt lā Quḍāt). Barbara Zollner, The Muslim Brotherhood: Hasan al-Hudaybi and Ideology (Abingdon: Routledge, 2008), 69.

14

Introduction

33 Olidort, “Politics,” 18. 34 Roel Meijer, “The Political, Politics, and Political Citizenship in Modern Islam,” in The Middle East in Transition: The Centrality of Citizenship, ed. Nils Butenschøn and Roel Meijer (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2018), 179–202 (10). 35 See further Uriya Shavit, “The Muslim Brothers’ Conception of Armed Insurrection against an Unjust Regime,” Middle Eastern Studies 51, no. 4 (2015): 600–617. 36 Carrie Rosefsky Wickham, The Muslim Brotherhood: Evolution of an Islamist Movement (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), 46–75. 37 Andrew F. March, The Caliphate of Man: Popular Sovereignty in Modern Islamic Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019), 150–200. 38 Emin Poljarevic, “The Ambiguity of Citizenship in Contemporary Salafism,” in The Middle East in Transition: The Centrality of Citizenship, ed. Nils Butenschøn and Roel Meijer (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2018), 338–374; Zoltan Pall, “Can the Umma Replace the Nation? Salafism and Deterritorialized Citizenship in Lebanon and Kuwait,” in The Middle East in Transition: The Centrality of Citizenship, ed. Nils Butenschøn and Roel Meijer (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2018), 203–222. 39 For a view on the distinction between the terms Neo-traditionalism and Traditionalism see Abdullah Ali, “‘Neo-Traditionalism’ vs ‘Traditionalism,’” Lamppost, n.d., https://lamppostedu.org/neo-traditionalism-vs-traditionalism-shaykh-abdullahbin-hamid-ali. 40 For a critique of the reification of Sufism and its usage as an explanatory category see Alexander Knysh, “Sufism as an Explanatory Paradigm: The Issue of the Motivations of Sufi Resistance Movements in Western and Russian Scholarship,” Die Welt des Islams 42, no. 2 (2002): 139–173. 41 See further Mark Sedgwick, “The Modernity of Neo-Traditionalist Islam,” in Muslim Subjectivities in Global Modernity: Islamic Traditions and the Construction of Modern Muslim Identities, ed. Dietrich Jung and Kirstine Sinclair (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 121–146. 42 See further Ali, “Neo-Traditionalism.” 43 Sedgwick, “Modernity,” 13–19. 44 See further Mohammad Fadel, “Islamic Law and Constitution-Making: The Authoritarian Temptation and the Arab Spring,” Osgoode Hall Law Journal 53, no. 2 (2016): 472–507 (29–31). 45 See further Walaa Quisay, “The Neo-Traditionalist Critique of Modernity and the Production of Political Quietism,” in Political Quietism in Islam: Sunni and Shiʿi Practice and Thought, ed. Saud al-Sarhan (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2019), 241–258; Farah El-Sharif, “The Problem of ‘Political Sufism,’” The Maydan, 15 December 2018, https://themaydan.com/2018/12/problem-political-sufism/. 46 Fiat Muedini, Sponsoring Sufism: How Governments Promote “Mystical Islam” in Their Domestic and Foreign Policies (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 67–96, 125–174. 47 Sedgwick, “Modernity,” 13. 48 Thomas Pierret refers to Neo-traditionalism as the “anti-Salafi international.” Thomas Pierret, Religion and State in Syria: The Sunni Ulama from Coup to Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 126–127. See further Farah El-Sharif, “The Rhetoric of Twentieth-Century Damascene AntiSalafism,” Contemporary Levant 5, no. 2 (2020): 1–13. 49 Shaham, Rethinking, 1.

Introduction 15 50 See for example, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Fiqh al-Wasaṭiyya wa-l-Tajdīd fi l-Islām (Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 2010); Abdullah Bin Bayyah, “Miʿāyīr al-Wasaṭiyya fī l-Fatwā,” Binbayyah.net, 14 February 2009, http://binbayyah.net/arabic/ archives/164. 51 Flexibility and openness are, of course, subjective terms, and there are very clear limits to what advocates of wasaṭiyya consider (un)acceptable debate. See further Gudrun Krämer, “Drawing Boundaries: Yūsuf al-Qaraḍāwī on Apostasy,” in Speaking for Islam: Religious Authorities in Muslim Societies, ed. Gudrun Krämer and Sabine Schmidtke (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 181–218. 52 For further discussion of Qaradawi and Bin Bayyah’s relationship to Sufism and Sufi Orders see Sohaib Saeed, “Reforming Sufism in the Writings of Two Senior Azharites,” Insights 3, no. 2–3 (2014): 1–14 (3); Ahmadou Bamba, “Kharīṭat al-Ṭuruq al-Ṣūfiyya fī Gharb Ifrīqiyā,” IslamOnline.net, 8 February 2010, https://web.archive.org/web/20100706195342/http://islamyoon.islamonline. net/servlet/Satellite?c=ArticleA_C&cid=1264250008567&pagename=Islamy oun/IYALayout; Usaama al-Azami, “Neo-Traditionalist Sufis and Arab Politics: A Preliminary Mapping of the Transnational Networks of Counter-Revolutionary Scholars after the Arab Revolutions,” in Global Sufism: Boundaries, Structures, and Politics, ed. Mark Sedgwick and Francesco Piraino (London: Hurst, 2019), 225–236. 53 Masooda Bano, “Protector of the “al-Wasatiyya” Islam: Cairo’s al-Azhar University,” in Shaping Global Islamic Discourses, 73–92 (7–12); Christopher Pooya Razavian, “al-Azhar, Wasaṭiyyah, and the Wāqi‘,” in Modern Islamic Authority, 102–123 (3); Nakissa, Anthropology, 75, 267–274. 54 John Petersen, “Qatar and the World: Branding for a Micro State,” Middle East Journal 60, no. 4 (2006): 732–748 (2–6, 9–10). 55 Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, Qatar and the Gulf Crisis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 23–26; Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, The United Arab Emirates Power, Politics and Policy-Making (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), 52, 138; Allen J. Fromherz, Qatar: A Modern History (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2012), 38. 56 Laleh Khalili, Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula (New York: Verso, 2020), 258. 57 See further, Ulrichsen, United, 160–163; David Roberts, Qatar: Securing the Global Ambitions of a City-State (London: Hurst, 2017), 113–122; Ulrichsen, Gulf Crisis, 181–182; Mehran Kamrava, Qatar: Small State, Big Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015), 90–96. 58 Petersen, “Qatar,” 14. 59 Khalili, Sinews, 94–96. 60 Ulrichsen, United, 148. 61 Khalili, Sinews, 260. 62 Saba Mahmood, “Secularism, Hermeneutics, and Empire: The Politics of Islamic Reformation,” Public Culture 18, no. 2 (2006): 323–347 (1). 63 Mahmood, “Secularism,” 5.

Part 1

Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Al Thanis, and Qatari foreign policy

1

Wahhabism and wasaṭiyya in Qatar

Qatari support for the MB is at the heart of the ongoing Gulf Crisis, and it was the clearest difference between Qatari and Emirati foreign policy during the Arab Spring and its aftermath. This support for the MB is not realpolitik, that is, simply part of the muscular power politics typical of the Gulf region. Instead, it results from an influx of primarily Egyptian ʿulamāʾ and intellectuals in the late 1950s and early 1960s. This was a period when Qatar, like many of its near neighbors such as the UAE and Kuwait, was building a state-education system, and these émigrés came to Qatar to address a shortage of skilled laborers, particularly teachers. Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who arrived in 1961, would become the most influential figure to come to Qatar during this period. Upon his arrival, Qaradawi was tasked with heading the new state-run Religious Institute (maʿhad dīnī) that trained Qatari imams and other Islamic functionaries, and he played the central role in building Qatar’s Islamic education system as a whole. This role brought him to the attention of the Qatari Amir Ahmad b. ʿAli Al Thani (r.1960–1972, d.1977), with whom he formed a close relationship. In the beginning of the 20th century, education on the Qatari peninsula was limited to village kuttāb schools (known locally as mulās) that focused primarily on Qurʾanic memorization.1 In 1916, the then Amir ʿAbd Allah b. Qasim Al Thani (r.1913–1949, d.1957) invited Muhammad b. Maniʿ (d.1965) to establish a madrasa for Qataris seeking a more advanced Islamic education.2 Coincidentally, 1916 was the year the British took control of the Qatari Peninsula, supplanting the Ottomans who had arrived in 1871 and establishing Qatar’s first formal bureaucratic structures.3 Ibn Maniʿ was a Hanbali ʿālim from ʿUnayza in the Wahhabi heartlands of Najd. By the 1950s, his Qatari students had come to represent a local ʿulamāʾ establishment made up of scholarly families such as the Al Mahmuds, the Ansaris, and the Subayʿis. This ʿulamāʾ establishment adhered to the Hanbali school and the Salafi creed (ʿaqīdat al-salaf).4

20

Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Al Thanis, etc.

Ibn Maniʿ was part of the Wahhabi ʿulamāʾ elite on the Arabian Peninsula. Though Wahhabism has commonly been stereotyped as parochial and backward, like many Wahhabi ʿulamāʾ of the early 20th century Ibn Maniʿ read and studied widely in Damascus, Baghdad, as well as at the Azhar in Cairo. Ibn Maniʿ’s student, ʿAbd Allah b. Turki al-Subayʿi (d.1968) was appointed Head of Islamic Sciences (shuʾūn dīniyya) in the new Ministry of Education (wizārat al-maʿārif). In 1957, he traveled to Cairo and the Azhar in search of qualified ʿulamāʾ to staff Qatar’s developing state-Islamic education system. It was in Cairo where Subayʿi first met Qaradawi, whom he eventually persuaded to move to Qatar. Subayʿi’s decision had profound ramifications both for Qaradawi and for Qatar. The history of Islamic education in Qatar both before and after Qaradawi’s arrival helps us appreciate his impact. This book is not the first to note the importance of Qaradawi’s move. Academics who study Qatari foreign policy have considered Qaradawi’s significance in terms of Qatar’s later support for the MB internationally.5 At the same time, academics attribute the failure of Qaradawi and his peers to recruit local Qataris to join the MB to the “strictures” of local Wahhabism.6 However, while Qaradawi and his peers played a key role in introducing the MB to the Gulf region, when he traveled to Qatar he was not traveling there in his capacity as an affiliate of the MB. Rather, Qaradawi went to Qatar to join the Azhar Mission (al-baʿtha al-azhariyya) that had recently opened in Doha. It was not difficult for Qaradawi and his Azhari-educated peers to join, and eventually eclispe, the local Wahhabi scholarly establishment. The Azhar Missions were exporting the Azhar curriculum and outlook well before the official opening of the University of Medina in 1961, the institution usually credited with pioneering the notion of exporting a particular Islamic outlook worldwide through its Wahhabi mission. Consequently, credit for transforming Qatar’s Islamic-scholarly milieu from one indebted to the Wahhabism of Ibn Maniʿ to Qaradawi’s wasaṭiyya goes not to the MB, but the Azhar.

Islamic education in Qatar before Qaradawi: Ibn Maniʿ and his students In 1916, Amir ʿAbd Allah Al Thani invited Ibn Maniʿ to establish a madrasa in Qatar to provide an Islamic education more advanced than the local kuttābs. In the early 20th century, Amirs inviting prominent Arabian ʿulamāʾ to found madrasas in their locales was typical, and it was also occurring in the Shaykhdoms that would later make up the UAE.7 Ibn Maniʿ traveled to Qatar from Bahrain, and he would spend much of the remainder of his life there. After living in Qatar for a period of 24 years, Ibn Maniʿ returned to his native Saudi Arabia in 1939 to serve as an advisor to King ʿAbd al-ʿAziz

Wahhabism and wasaṭiyya in Qatar

21

b. ʿAbd al-Rahman Al Saʿud (d.1953), the founder of modern Saudi Arabia, before going on to take over the Directorate of Education in Mecca.8 During these years in Saudi Arabia, Ibn Maniʿ played a major role in the establishment of Islamic education and Saudi Arabian state-building in the recently occupied Hijaz.9 He then returned to Qatar in 1957, again at the request of the Amir, where he remained until his passing in 1965.10 Ibn Maniʿ was among the most prominent Wahhabi ʿulamāʾ on the Arabian Peninsula in the first half of the 20th century, and his Qatari madrasa drew students from as far afield as Kuwait and Iran.11 It is little surprise that the Amir ʿAbd Allah Al Thani had invited a prominent Wahhabi ʿālim to establish this madrasa, since modern Qatar’s founding Amir, Jassim b. Muhammad Al Thani (d.1913), had allied himself with the Saudi Wahhabi tribes after they had re-emerged as major forces on the Arabian Peninsula in 1902. With that alliance, Jassim Al Thani embraced Wahhabism “by conviction,” a conviction that Qatar officially holds to this day.12 During the early 20th century there were no clear boundaries between the categories of Wahhabism and Salafism. In the 1920s the term Salafism (salafiyya) referred to a developing hermeneutic rooted in an adherence to the Hanbali legal school and a Neo-Hanbali (Wahhabi) theology.13 Yet, ʿulamāʾ who were part of this milieu refrained from referring to their theology as either Hanbali or Wahhabi.14 Hence, Ibn Maniʿ defined himself as “Hanbali in law and Salafi in creed” (al-ḥanbalī madhhaban wa-l-salafī iʿtiqādan).15 That being said, Ibn Maniʿ’s peers in Saudi Arabia certainly claimed him as Wahhabi.16 However, establishing categorical distinctions between Hanbali, Wahhabi, and Salafi ʿulamāʾ can be somewhat arbitrary at this time, given that Ibn Maniʿ traveled and studied widely with a range of ʿulamāʾ in Baghdad, Damascus, and at the Azhar, which was not unusual.17 Ibn Maniʿ claimed to be the Arabian Peninsula’s first Azhar-educated ʿālim, something he took great pride in.18 His students formed the nucleus of a local Qatari ʿulamāʾ establishment that was predominantly Hanbali in terms of its legal school and Neo-Hanbali (Wahhabi) in its theology. Given Ibn Maniʿ’s pedigree and the founding Amir Jassim Al Thani’s Wahhabi conviction, this ʿulamāʾ establishment can therefore be termed Wahhabi. By the 1950s, oil revenue was contributing to the Qatari treasury in increasing amounts, and the new Amir ʿAli b. ʿAbd Allah Al Thani (r.1949– 1960, d.1974) used this revenue to expand the infrastructure of the state. In 1952, ʿAli Al Thani formed a committee to establish a state education system.19 Due to the poor quality of Qatar’s kuttāb-educated Islamic functionaries at the time, developing Islamic education was a priority. In Hamed A. Hamed’s dire portrayal, “Preachers in Qatar were not qualified to perform the duties expected of them. . . . The majority were only able to read and write and therefore lacked the ability to address topics pertaining to

22

Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Al Thanis, etc.

problems of Qatari society. . . . [For their Friday sermons], they depended solely on an old book of fifty-two sermons, equal to the number of weeks in the year.”20 Based on this situation, developing Islamic education was a priority for the committee, which was led by Ibn Maniʿ’s students. One of them, Jassim al-Darwish, was appointed Director of Education while Subayʿi, as Head of Islamic Sciences, was charged with developing Islamic education.21 However, the committee to establish a Qatari state-education system was not solely populated by Ibn Maniʿ’s students. Working alongside them were prominent intellectuals from the MB who had emigrated from Egypt such as ʿAbd al-Badiʿ Saqr (d.1986). Saqr had left Egypt for Doha in 1954 after his release from Egypt’s Tur prison, where Qaradawi had also been jailed at the same time.22 Given the presence of émigrés from Egypt on the education committee, and Ibn Maniʿ’s pride at being an Azhar graduate, it is not surprising that Subayʿi chose to travel to Cairo and the Azhar in search of qualified staff for Qatar’s new Islamic education system. Subayʿi’s most significant recruit was a young Qaradawi, whom he met one Friday in Cairo’s well-to-do district of Zamalek.

Yusuf al-Qaradawi Qaradawi was born in 1926 and grew up in the village of Saft al-Turab in Egypt’s Nile Delta. Raised by his uncle after his father passed away while he was still very young, Qaradawi’s scholarly aptitude and bookishness were apparently recognized even at that time. His community endearingly called him “Shaykh Yusuf,”23 a term of affection used by his colleagues and students to this day.24 Having memorized the Qurʾan by heart studying at his village kuttāb by age 9, training with the ʿulamāʾ of the Azhar was a natural aspiration. As Qaradawi recalled, “I used to attend the lectures of the ʿulamāʾ and shaykhs in our village. I loved them and realized that everyone loves them and admires them.”25 While pursuing his dream at one of the Azhar’s new regional institutes in Tanta, Qaradawi first heard Banna preach. He was immediately impressed, and he joined the MB as soon as the opportunity arose.26 Qaradawi joined the Azhar education system when he enrolled at the Azhar’s satellite institute in Tanta in 1940 at the age of 14. He studied there for 9 years before graduating to study at the Azhar University in Cairo. Qaradawi was a popular student who excelled at his studies. He was also highly critical of the curriculum: there was little to no teaching of foreign languages, theology was often impenetrable, jurisprudence was abstract and irrelevant to daily life, and there was too much emphasis on subjects such as grammar at the expense of literature. In Tanta and later in Cairo, Qaradawi became a student

Wahhabism and wasaṭiyya in Qatar

23

leader who was active in demanding educational reforms. These reforms included modernizing the curriculum to include English, opening up other professions such as the police academy and officer corps to Azhar graduates, expanding the number of Azhar institutes across Egypt, and opening those institutes to women and girls. Qaradawi graduated from the Azhar University in 1954, first in his class.27 Though Qaradawi’s status as an Azhar graduate is an important part of his identity to this day, and he retains an investment in the institution’s future,28 it was his activities with the MB that brought him to the attention of the Nasser regime. MB members were routinely imprisoned during the 1940s and 1950s. Qaradawi himself was imprisoned multiple times, and his prison writings such as his poem My Cell (Zinzānatī) and play A Scholar and A Tyrant (ʿĀlim wa-Ṭāghiya) have become part of the MB canon.29 The aforementioned Saqr was also imprisoned in Tur at the same time, and he left Egypt for Doha in 1954. Another of Qaradawi’s fellow inmates who later left for Qatar was ʿAbd al-Muʿazz ʿAbd al-Sattar (d.2011). Sattar was an Azhar-educated ʿālim affiliated with the MB who had been in prison with Qaradawi in 1948–1949 and then joined the Azhar Mission in Doha.30 The Azhar Missions project was developed during the rectorships of Muhammad al-Zawahiri (d.1944) and Mustafa al-Maraghi (d.1945). The Azhar Missions were not established to proselytize among non-Muslims. Rather, they were established to educate Muslims according to an Azhari curriculum and also to dispatch ʿulamāʾ abroad to study, primarily in Europe. The Azhar teaching missions focused on sending qualified ʿulamāʾ to fill the growing number of vacant teaching posts in the growing staterun Islamic education systems in countries ranging from India, to Tanzania, to Qatar.31 The Azhar Missions were the official channels sending, or rather exporting, Azhari ʿulamāʾ worldwide decades before the University of Medina launched its own Wahhabi Mission.

Meeting Subayʿi and leaving Egypt Between 1954 and 1956, Qaradawi was arrested twice for his activities with the MB.32 Upon his release in 1956, the MB had been banned permanently and he was likewise forbidden from teaching or preaching. The then Minister of Endowments Ahmad Hasan al-Baquri (a former member of the MB, d.1985) offered him a position working part time at the Ministry of Endowments.33 In 1957, the Egyptian government permitted Qaradawi to give Friday sermons again, which he did at the Zamalek mosque. That same year, Subayʿi traveled to Cairo to recruit qualified ʿulamāʾ for Qatar. One Friday he visited the mosque in Zamalek, where Qaradawi was delivering the sermon for the congregational jumʿa prayer. After the prayer, Subayʿi approached Qaradawi

24

Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Al Thanis, etc.

to compliment his sermon and invite him to his hotel to speak further. The Wahhabi ʿālim was interested in Qaradawi as a recruit. During their conversation at Cairo’s Grand Hotel, Qaradawi and Subayʿi bonded over a discussion of texts and figures that they both considered authoritative. As Qaradawi recalled, their discussion of “the hadith sciences, the two Imams Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, and similar subjects made me very appealing to the Shaykh [Subayʿi]. His trust in me grew, and his mind was put at ease.”34 After his return to Qatar, Subayʿi wrote to Baquri asking that Qaradawi be loaned to Qatar as part of the Azhar Mission in the country.35 The move was delayed as Qaradawi was yet not suitably qualified. In the summer of 1957, he enrolled at the Azhar to undertake further studies.36 Over the next three years, Qaradawi authored and published his most famous and popular book, The Lawful and the Prohibited in Islam (al-Ḥalāl wa-l-Ḥarām fī l-Islām). Written at the request of Hasan al-Hudaybi that Qaradawi author a book of moral instruction for a lay readership,37 the book’s style and arrangement anticipated many of the structural changes occurring in Arab society that would shape the Islamic Awakening from the 1970s onward.38 It also exemplified the shifting patterns of authority resulting from the de-traditionalization of Islam. Cheaper printing costs, coupled with higher literacy rates among the emerging middle classes eager and able to consume Islamic material gave rise to “a brisk consumption and production of religious media and literature.”39 Importantly, these changes necessitated a shift in Islamic writing practices away from a specialized to a mass readership and a new textual genre called the “Islamic book” (kitāb islāmī).40 In contrast to earlier waves of printing that (re)discovered for a wide readership Islamic classics by authors such as Ibn Khaldun,41 the new Islamic book was accessible, short, and (relatively) cheap. Qaradawi’s reflections on these changing trends in reading and writing mirror Salafi ambivalences and tensions at the de-traditionalization of Islam. Recognizing the reality of a mass, educated readership, Qaradawi considers the lay Muslim capable of gaining an understanding of Islamic knowledge through reading alone. However, he acknowledges that reading alone has its risks, as not all Islamic books are suitable, and the personal companionship of a teacher is recommended wherever possible. Spoilt for choice in the Islamic marketplace, Qaradawi says, the Muslim reader cum consumer may not know which books are appropriate. Consequently, he argues that suitable specialists need to deconstruct the work of the classical authorities and produce accessible and authoritative Islamic books for the public to read.42 Qaradawi’s classic work The Lawful and the Prohibited exemplifies his understanding of what an accessible and authoritative Islamic book should look like. As Amir Hamid notes, Qaradawi’s style of argumentation and arrangement of the book departed from premodern works of

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Islamic jurisprudence in important ways. In The Lawful and the Prohibited, Qaradawi uses succinct definitions (taʿrīfāt) and clear principles (mabādiʾ) to appeal to his readership’s critical faculties. The book’s core chapters also divide up Muslim social life in accordance with the realms established by the modern nation-state: public life, private life, and marital/family life. Qaradawi also writes that he left out unnecessary disputation (ikhtilāf) so as not to confuse the reader or waste their time. By contrast, premodern legal texts were divided into two parts. Explications of the laws of acts of worship (iʿbādāt) were always followed by explications of the laws of interpersonal interactions (muʿāmalāt). This sequencing was crucial for the functioning of premodern Islamic law. The readers’ embodied practice of worship in turn cultivated their desire to willingly obey the laws of interpersonal interactions. Premodern authors considered embodied practice the means to cultivate readers’ piety, while modern authors like Qaradawi appealed to readers’ critical faculties.43 The Lawful and the Prohibited was published to wide acclaim in 1960. The book was also subjected to rigorous critique by Wahhabi ʿulamāʾ in Saudi Arabia for its perceived permissiveness on a number of issues such as listening to music and playing chess.44 Finally, the opportunity for Qaradawi to join an Azhar Mission arrived. While Kuwait was the destination of choice for many of his peers because of the high salaries, Qaradawi opted for Qatar at Subayʿi’s urging. He departed Egypt in September 1961.45

Qaradawi’s educational project in Qatar In his memoirs, Qaradawi describes his arrival in the Gulf in terms that will be familiar to many new travelers to the region: by remarking upon the extraordinary heat and humidity that greets passengers as they step out of an airplane.46 On his arrival in Doha he knew only two Qataris but was acquainted with members of the growing community of Azhari émigrés, many of whom were fellow members of the MB and had been imprisoned back in Egypt. The first Qatari he knew was Subayʿi, the “father of the Azharis” (abū al-azhariyyīn), and the second was a cousin of the Amir, Suhaim b. Hamad Al Thani (d.1985).47 Suhaim Al Thani had been a diplomat in Egypt, and in 1972 he would become Qatar’s foreign minister. Subayʿi’s favorable opinion and the early success of The Lawful and the Prohibited meant Qaradawi’s growing reputation preceded his arrival. The local ʿulamāʾ establishment took an interest, and he was soon receiving visitors from members of Qatar’s scholarly families such as ʿAbd Allah al-Ansari (d.1989) and ʿAbd Allah Al Mahmud (d.1997). The most prominent visitor was Ibn Maniʿ, who had by now returned to Qatar from Saudi Arabia.48 While Ansari and Mahmud had been, like Subayʿi, Ibn Maniʿ’s

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Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Al Thanis, etc.

students, their families’ scholarly lineage also extended back to the nearby Wahhabi heartlands of Najd and al-Ahsa in Saudi Arabia.49 Given that Wahhabi is often used as a pejorative term, in his memoirs Qaradawi described his new acquaintances in terms of their legal school (Hanbali) and as followers of the Salafi creed (ʿaqīdat al-salaf).50 He described Ibn Maniʿ by remarking, “He was a Hanbali ʿālim who took great pride in that, and clung fast to the Hanbali school. . . . In spite of that he was not fanatical, but was a kind and magnanimous man.”51 These interactions suggest that the scholarly milieu in Qatar at the time was thoroughly Wahhabi, but with a growing community of Azhari educated ʿulamāʾ. However, despite the fact that today the relationship between Wahhabi and the Azhar is generally an antagonistic one,52 Qaradawi and his fellow Egyptians moved easily in this milieu. Indeed, Qaradawi was soon invited to join the new Islamic University of Medina’s Advisory Council.53 However, and due in no small part to Qaradawi’s influence, the Azharis would eventually eclipse their Wahhabi hosts, with important ramifications for Qatari society and policy. Qaradawi and his fellow Egyptians formed a group for Qatar-based MB members. Qaradawi represented this group at meetings of the MB’s international organization (al-tanẓīm al-dawlī), which he also helped to found.54 Though this affiliation is significant, Qaradawi had traveled to Qatar with the express purpose of joining the Azhar Mission and developing a staterun Islamic education system. At Subayʿi’s request, after Qaradawi’s arrival he took over the Religious Institute, which had opened one year before. Qaradawi notes that, since the Institute had been established by another Azhari, its curriculum was based upon “the system we studied under in our day” back at the Azhar, with an added emphasis on Hanbali jurisprudence at the expense of the other legal schools.55 In this new post, Qaradawi now had the opportunity to implement the kind of educational reforms he had been advocating for while a student at the Azhar. Coincidentally, many of those changes were implemented as part of the 1961 Azhar reforms, the year Qaradawi left Egypt.56 At the Religious Institute, he introduced new subjects such as mathematics, the social and natural sciences, and foreign languages. After some initial protest from the students at these changes, Qaradawi recalls, he eventually got his way.57 Qaradawi also organized field trips for his new students to Saudi Arabia and Egypt. In an incident he describes at length in his memoirs, Qaradawi took his students to visit Riyadh in 1963. While in Riyadh, Qaradawi recounts a conversation he had with the then Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, Muhammad Ibrahim Al al-Shaykh (d.1969). Qaradawi’s recounting of the conversation demonstrates his view of his relationship with the Wahhabi ʿulamāʾ elites on the Arabian Peninsula and showcases the points of similarity and difference

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he chooses to foreground. Here, Qaradawi recounts Shaykh questioning him about his introduction of new subjects such as mathematics and English into his curriculum: HE [SHAYKH] SAID TO ME,

“Do you not think that it is detrimental for a student of the Islamic sciences and the Arabic language to study these modern subjects?” I SAID, “Not at all, we are obliged to do this. How can a student live so isolated from their own time? Even if he had the ability to work as a missionary or give fatwas he would be still be an ʿālim engaging a particular social reality. . . . As Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya said, ‘the true jurist is he who marries the obligatory with the reality.’ . . . The Azhar has developed its institutes by incorporating the study of foreign languages, and widening the study of the modern sciences. This development is nothing more than bringing us in line with the times.”58 Here, Qaradawi foregrounds the need for an attentiveness to the social reality (wāqiʿ) derived from the Hanbali authority Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya. He also emphasizes that in making his changes to the curriculum he is following the example of the 1961 Azhar reforms. During the 1960s, Qaradawi would take his Qatari students on fieldtrips to the Azhar, and his graduates would go there for further study.59 Writing his memoirs in the early 2000s, Qaradawi depicts 1960s Doha in quaint terms. Doha “resembled a large village . . . uncorrupted by modern life.”60 In addition to working as educators, the other main task for Qaradawi and his fellow members of the Azhar Mission was traveling to different mosques around Qatar. During these visits, the Mission’s members would give lectures, religious instruction, and lead the supererogatory tarāwiḥ prayers during Ramadan.61 During this time, Qaradawi’s fellow former prisoner Saqr introduced him to the new Amir, Ahmad b. Ali Al Thani (r.1960–1972, d.1977). After impressing the Amir at his first meeting, Qaradawi’s meetings with Ahmad b. Ali became regular, occurring once every two to three months.62 Qaradawi soon became close with the wider Al Thani family. The deputy Amir and Minister of Education at the time was Khalifa b. Hamad Al Thani, (r.1972–1995, d.2016). Khalifa Al Thani was Amir Ahmad Al Thani’s cousin, who he would usurp in a bloodless coup in 1972. Over time, Qaradawi and Khalifa Al Thani developed a close relationship. Khalifa Al Thani would attend Qaradawi’s sermons,63 and Qaradawi became his personal religious instructor during the month of Ramadan.64 Despite

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Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Al Thanis, etc.

that close relationship, Qaradawi’s first meeting with Khalifa Al Thani was a tense one. In 1961, shortly after Qaradawi took over the Religious Institute, Khalifa Al Thani withdrew the stipends for his non-Qatari students. Qaradawi and Subayʿi visited Khalifa Al Thani at the Ministry of Education to urge him to reconsider. Though a satisfactory solution was found, Qaradawi describes the under-funding of the Religious Institute as a long-running issue.65 In 1968, when the Egyptian government refused to extend his position at the Azhar Mission, Amir Ahmad Al Thani offered him Qatari citizenship and a permanent post at the Religious Institute, which he accepted.66 In 1977, Qaradawi founded the College of Sharia at Qatar University, where he became the Dean. He continued building links between Qatar and the Azhar, sending graduates from the College of Sharia there for further study as well. The number of female students traveling to the Azhar from Qatar grew so great that a house in Cairo was rented specifically for their residence while studying abroad.67

The decline of Qatar’s Wahhabi ʿulamāʾ Academics interested in Qatari foreign policy have noted the apparent tension in Qatar’s support for the MB while remaining nominally a Wahhabi state. In particular, David Roberts and Courtney Freer have noted the influx of MB-affiliated ʿulamāʾ and intellectuals in the 1950s and 1960s to fill shortages in skilled labor.68 Though a branch of the MB was eventually formed in 1975, it never gained much traction among local Qataris and dissolved itself in 1999.69 Birol Baskan and Stephen Wright have remarked upon the existence of Wahhabi scholarly families in Qatar such as the Mahmuds and the Ansaris at the time, but they noted that these families did not have a comparable influence on Qatari policy as has been the case in Saudi Arabia.70 There are several reasons for the decline of the nascent Wahhabi ʿulamāʾ establishment that was present in Qatar when Qaradawi arrived in 1961. In Saudi Arabia, the production of an ʿulamāʾ elite educated in a thoroughly Wahhabi curriculum was a central element of Saudi Arabian state-building. That project was led by the new Islamic University of Medina founded in 1961 in the recently occupied Hijaz. The Saudi Arabian government invested heavily in that institution and offered generous stipends to persuade prominent Hijazi scholarly families to send their offspring to study a Wahhabi curriculum that was still associated with backwardness.71 In Qatar, a tiny and relatively homogenous society by contrast, there was little need for such a thorough state-building effort. There was a long-running concern in Qaradawi’s

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memoirs regarding the falling student stipends at the Religious Institute and the subsequent declines in the number of Qatari students in particular.72 Qaradawi’s educational reforms at the Religious Institute also had an impact. Back in Egypt, he had argued that Azhar graduates should be more than a professional class of ʿulamāʾ and should be trained to enter a wide range of professions. In Qatar, this appears to have happened, but this apparent success contributed to the decline of the local ʿulamāʾ establishment. In his memoirs, Qaradawi lists with pride the professions his (male) Qatari students entered after graduating from the Religious Institute and College of Sharia. While he mentions his Qatari graduates becoming ambassadors or the heads of various ministries, he does not mention any of them joining the ranks of the ʿulamāʾ.73 By contrast, Qaradawi’s female graduates generally appear to have gone to the Azhar for further study and then returned to Qatar to take up teaching positions.74 One of these female graduates became particularly influential. Maryam al-Hajari had been a student of Qaradawi’s at the College of Sharia. In 1997, she founded the enormously popular fatwa website IslamOnline with Qaradawi’s support. At the height of its popularity, IslamOnline was the most frequently searched-for Arabic language website.75 In an interview, Hajari described the impact of studying the higher intentions and purposes of the Sharia (maqāṣid) with Qaradawi and learning to relate subjects such as almsgiving (zakāt) to the social reality. “How you suppose to dispose of your knowledge, that was a new concept to me,” Hajari says. “Before, I thought zakāt was only for money. So, I thought, I have got a lot of knowledge, I was a top student, so, what am I going to do with [my knowledge]? . . . I thought about it a long time.”76 Qaradawi’s students, educated in a curriculum modeled after the Azhar, were clearly having an impact as diplomats, in government ministries, as teachers of Islamic studies and, in the case of Hajari, founding an Islamic website that was receiving up to 120,000 visitors a day.77 Qaradawi’s influence percolated beyond his students to Qatari society. As Michael Stephens put it, “Lots of Qataris agree with what Qaradawi is saying but they see this as being religious, not as being Muslim Brotherhood.”78 However, rather than understanding Qatari affinity for Qaradawi in terms of “being religious,” instead we can see through the example of students like Hajari that it was his effort to make Islamic jurisprudence relevant and responsive to realities of everyday life that was appealing. That outlook was rooted in wasaṭiyya and indebted to his Azhari background as much as it was to an MB ideology. Qatar’s scholarly families did not disappear entirely, however.79 Nevertheless, over the coming decades, Qaradawi’s influence grew and would extend far beyond Qatari society, and his global stature would increase enormously.

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Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Al Thanis, etc.

Qaradawi and Qatari foreign policy during the Cold War Building on the success of The Lawful and the Prohibited, Qaradawi continued to author Islamic books for a growing international readership that emerged during the Islamic Awakening. From the 1960s to the 1990s, Qaradawi’s publications reflected his self-image as an authoritative guide to the Awakening. He published critiques of both Salafism and secularism. He characterized the former as unreflective literalism coupled with unacceptable accusations of apostasy (takfīr) and the latter as a Western, Christian phenomenon that had no authentic place in the Arab World.80 In recognition of his growing stature, in 1976 the MB offered him the position of General Guide. Qaradawi declined, saying he was better suited to be a scholar.81 He also began to make use of the new opportunity presented by visual media. Beginning in the 1970s, Hamad b. Khalifa, now the Amir, gave Qaradawi a position on Qatari national television with a weekly fatwa program called Islamic Guidance (Hady al-Islām).82 A Qatari passport and royal sponsorship permitted Qaradawi to travel widely. At the invitation of grassroots MB-affiliated organizations, Qaradawi developed his concern for global Islamic issues as a frequent visitor to countries such as Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Europe, North America, and even as far afield as Japan and South Korea.83 Qaradawi was also a frequent visitor to neighboring Gulf states, and he played a significant role in establishing the MB in the UAE before local Emirati branches emerged in the mid-1970s. Qaradawi and his MB peers in Qatar and the UAE confined their activities to lectures and pietistic social activities, and Qaradawi was often invited to lecture at the public library in Dubai.84 In these increasingly wealthy rentier states, there was no demand for the kind of social services that were the source of much of the MB’s popularity in the wider Arab World.85 Moreover, as vulnerable émigrés they had little inclination to challenge the royal families of the Gulf for power. In any case, if they had done so, they would have received little local support. During this period, international politics was dominated by the Cold War contest between the United States and the Soviet Union. Qatar formally became independent from Britain in 1971, and in 1972 the new Amir Khalifa b. Hamad (the former Minister of Education responsible for overseeing the Religious Institute) reached an agreement with Saudi Arabia for protection in exchange for accepting some limits on Qatari autonomy. During the 1970s, the US had delegated the maintaining of regional stability to its two close allies Saudi Arabia and Iran, an arrangement upended by the 1979 Iranian Revolution. The Iranian Revolution and the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan prompted the issuance of the Carter Doctrine that signaled direct US militarization of the Gulf region.86

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The building of Qatar’s and Qaradawi’s global brands While the US military presence in the Gulf steadily increased throughout the 1980–1988 Gulf War, it was the 1991 invasion of Kuwait that unequivocally demonstrated to smaller Gulf monarchies such as Qatar that Saudi Arabia was unable to ensure their security. As a result, Amir Khalifa b. Hamad Al Thani pursued closer ties with the US by hosting military bases. The Cold War had provided little opportunity for a small state like Qatar to develop a presence on the world stage, and the state’s foreign policy had mirrored that of its neighbors such as Kuwait and the UAE, namely using high-profile, unilateral aid projects as the primary means of developing soft power.87 The collapse of the Soviet Union heralded the end of the bipolar domination of global politics. It also prompted the emergence of dozens of smaller conflicts, often within the boundaries of nation-states. This change in the form and scale of global conflicts offered an opportunity for a small state such as Qatar to distinguish itself from its near neighbors and develop a niche as a regional mediator. This opportunity was taken up by Khalifa b. Hamad’s son, Hamad b. Khalifa (r.1995–2013, b.1952), who overthrew his father in a bloodless coup in 1995. Qatar began this new policy of state branding as a regional mediator with credibility among all parties by breaking regional taboos by developing ties with both Iran and Israel, and simultaneously maintaining relationships with the US as well as groups such as Hamas, al-Qaeda, and the Taliban.88 It was with the founding of al-Jazeera that this policy of state-branding truly broke new ground. Hamad b. Khalifa reportedly first had the idea for a new Qatar-based satellite channel in 1994, which he envisioned as part of his new policy of asserting Qatari independence from Saudi Arabian regional hegemony and domestic influence. Al-Jazeera first aired on 1 November 1996.89 The channel was revolutionary in comparison to the preexisting state-media channels of the Arab World. With significantly looser editorial restrictions, al-Jazeera massively augmented Qatar’s status as an independent player in the region with its inclusion of voices ranging from Israeli officials to Saudi Arabian dissidents and, on occasion, criticisms of Qatari policy.90 It was al-Jazeera’s programming that distinguished it from the heavily censored and stale output of its competitors. Fiery debates and uncensored, controversial views became the hallmark of shows such as The Opposite Direction (al-Ittijāh al-Muʿākis), which academics hailed for their “democratizing effects.”91 Al-Jazeera’s first cohort of BBC-trained Arab journalists lent the channel an air of journalistic integrity.92 Additionally, Arab leaders’ frequent complaints to the Amir about negative coverage on al-Jazeera only served to augment the channel’s, and Qatar’s, claim to be a host of free speech.93

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Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Al Thanis, etc.

While its news programming was popular for its characteristic fiery debates, al-Jazeera was significant because it framed the Arab World in a new way.94 While other state-run media outlets such as Saudi Arabia’s alArabiyya framed the region in terms of nation-states dominated by regional hegemons, al-Jazeera dissolved state boundaries in favor of a supranational framing that envisioned the Arab World as an umma undergirded by a Muslim ethos.95 Al-Jazeera constructed a binary between the state-run national media on the one hand and al-Jazeera’s supranational brand on the other. This binary, coupled with the Arab public’s general suspicion of state institutions,96 meant al-Jazeera was able to portray itself as the “counternarrative to the dominant hegemonic discourse of nation-states and their communication apparatuses.”97 Al-Jazeera’s Islamic TV show Sharia and Life, hosted by Qaradawi, was its most popular program. At its height, the show garnered approximately 60 million viewers.98 Qaradawi’s vision was perfectly in sync with al-Jazeera’s supranational framing of the Arab World. Since the 1960s, through his written oeuvre Qaradawi had increasingly imagined his audience in pan-Islamic terms, which diffused among his readership and developed into a transnational Islamic counterpublic.99 In the 1990s, Qaradawi systematized the common motifs and concepts of his oeuvre, such as fiqh al-wāqiʿ (jurisprudence of reality), fiqh al-awlawiyyāt (jurisprudence of priorities), and fiqh al-muwāzanāt (jurisprudence of balancing), under the broad heading of wasaṭiyya.100 In so doing, Qaradawi elaborated the Qurʾanic reference to “a community of the middle way” (ummatan wasaṭan) found in verse 2:143 into a conceptual universe for this Islamic counterpublic. Consequently, though wasaṭiyya had been used by Azhari ʿulamāʾ in general since the 1960s,101 Qaradawi popularized the term and it became part of his personal brand.

Yusuf al-Qaradawi and democracy Democracy figured prominently among the concepts Qaradawi was articulating in the 1990s.102 In his 1997 book, On the Jurisprudence of the State in Islam (Min Fiqh al-Dawla fī l-Islām) Qaradawi writes approvingly, “The essence of democracy . . . is that people choose who rules over them and manages their affairs.” In fact, “Whoever contemplates the essence of democracy finds that it accords with the essence of Islam.”103 For him, democracy has an inherent moral value insofar as every element of modern democracy, Qaradawi says, has an Islamic precursor. For example, voting is the equivalent of a witness giving testimony in a courtroom, and a plurality of political parties is just like Islam’s plurality of legal schools. In responding to critics who might consider democracy a rejection of the

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sovereignty of God, Qaradawi responds saying this is not case. Rejecting God’s sovereignty “does not even occur to most people calling for democracy. What they do seek [in calling for democracy] is rather the rejection of dictatorship, a refusal to accept oppressive and tyrannical rulers.”104 In sum, “[What] all [people] mean by democracy is that the people elect their rulers as they please, that they hold them accountable for their actions, that they refuse their orders when these violate the nation’s constitution – that is, in Islamic terms, when the rulers command that which is sinful – and that people have the right to remove their rulers when they deviate and act unjustly.”105 In seeing clear equivalences between Islamic and democratic principles, Qaradawi in no uncertain terms embraces democracy as compatible with Islam. Yet, as the Arab Spring unfolds and reveals deep divisions in Arab societies, it becomes increasingly clear that his understanding of democracy is ill-suited to the complicated realities of democratic politics. Here, Khaled Abou El Fadl’s characterization of Qaradawi’s embrace of democracy as superficial and imprecise is useful. He criticizes Qaradawi for failing to appreciate the thoroughgoing challenge that democracy poses to his worldview: [W]hile Qaradawi has mastered the Islamic tradition, he only has the most superficial and casual knowledge of the institutions and theories of democracy. As a result, in his writings, Qaradawi treats democracy basically as an institution that gives effect to the will of the majority. Since Qaradawi assumes that the majority of the citizenry of an Islamic state will be Muslim, he does not foresee any problems with applying Sharia in a democratic state.106 For Abou El Fadl, the fact that Qaradawi sees such an easy equivalence between Islam and democracy means he appreciates the latter “only in the most vague and general sense.” Moreover, to Qaradawi, the Qurʾanic emphasis on consultation (shūra) means that, in effect, “Islam invented democracy before anyone else.”107 For him, though the people may choose their rulers, they may not choose to forbid that which Islam has permitted or permit that which Islam has forbidden.108 Consequently, they remain in need of the ʿulamāʾ to maintain those boundaries. These views further demonstrate to Abou El Fadl the limitations of Qaradawi’s understanding of democracy. The key issue in the relation to the Arab Spring is that Qaradawi understands democracy in majoritarian terms and does not pay due attention to the rights of the individual in the face of the coercive power of the state.109 As a result, to Qaradawi implementing democracy means empowering “the people” (al-shaʿb). Qaradawi imagines the people to share his normative vision

34

Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Al Thanis, etc.

and desire an Islamic state or, to use his most recent parlance, a civil state with an Islamic reference (al-dawla al-madaniyya bi-marjiʿiyya islāmiyya). Qaradawi’s imagining of who the people are and what they want is important for his understanding of his own role. As he put it in his 2009 book The Jurisprudence of Jihād (Fiqh al-Jihād), “Who is to judge [the rulers’] apostasy [ridda] when the judges and official mechanisms for issuing fatwas are in their hands? There is only Muslim public opinion (al-raʾī al-ʿāmm) and the public’s Islamic conscience (al-ḍamīr al-islāmī), which binds those among the ʿulamāʾ who are free (al-aḥrār).”110 For Qaradawi, there are the ʿulamāʾ who are bound to the state and there are the ʿulamāʾ who are bound to the people. To him, his voice and the true voice of the people are effectively the same, an assumption that would later become extremely divisive as the Arab Spring unfolded. Qaradawi’s binary distinction between state-ʿulamāʾ and free-ʿulamāʾ (i.e. himself) accorded perfectly with al-Jazeera’s binary distinction between state-media and free-media (i.e. al-Jazeera). The concepts that Qaradawi had systematized under the banner of wasaṭiyya were absorbed into al-Jazeera’s wider programming and used even on programs not specifically concerned with Islam. Wasaṭiyya concepts shaped the channel’s underlying Muslim ethos while amplifying Qaradawi’s stature.111 Sharia and Life was also distinctive from al-Jazeera’s other programming in important ways. While programs such as The Opposite Direction were famous for their angry debates and airing of taboo perspectives, Sharia and Life presented Qaradawi and his chosen guests as a singular voice of Islam. Though Sharia and Life featured wide diversities of opinion, this was always within clearly defined boundaries of (un)acceptability.112 Qaradawi’s personal brand of wasaṭiyya diffused throughout al-Jazeera and lent the channel an air of Islamic authenticity. In turn, al-Jazeera’s image of a channel known for its independent streak and journalistic integrity buttressed Qaradawi’s image as a voice of Islamic scholarly authority and authenticity among a viewership suspicious of state-run institutions. Like al-Jazeera, then, Qaradawi too was the outsider. Qaradawi was not beholden to regional hegemons like Egypt or Saudi Arabia, and he was outside state-institutions like the Azhar. Yet, he was still able to draw on the Azhar’s prestige as a famous graduate. Similarly, he had the prestige that came with being offered the post of General Guide of the MB twice (he was offered it a second time in 2002)113 but could claim independence from the movement, given that he had rejected the offer both times. Finally, he was an outspoken democrat, yet in a region of absolute monarchies and military dictatorships his understanding of that term had never been put to the test by the realities of democratic politics. As an independent, yet also omnipresent

Wahhabism and wasaṭiyya in Qatar

35

voice, Qaradawi had positioned himself at the head of al-Jazeera’s supranational Muslim counterpublic. In 2004, Hamad b. Khalifa sponsored the creation of a new Doha-based, transnational ʿulamāʾ organization, IUMS. Qaradawi was elected the organization’s head, and while IUMS’ membership was diverse, there were clearly defined boundaries demarcating (un)acceptable views.114 Like Qatar’s other projects instituted by Hamad b. Khalifa and now carried forward by his fourth son and successor Tamim b. Hamad (r.2013–present, b.1980), IUMS represents the Islamic element of Qatar’s soft power policies. The creation of IUMS and other institutions such as the Qaradawi Center for Research in Moderate Thought at the Qatar Faculty of Islamic Studies in Education City also represents an Islamic element of Qatar’s massive investment in developing a global profile in the lucrative MICE sector (meeting, incentives, conferences, and exhibitions).115 On the eve of the Arab Spring, Qaradawi was at the height of his prestige. With the aid of Sharia and Life, al-Jazeera, and the Al Thanis, he had branded himself as the quintessential ʿulamāʾ outsider in a region populated with ʿulamāʾ beholden to states. As the Arab Spring began and then unfolded with astonishing speed across the region, Qaradawi’s image as an independent and authentic voice of Islam would be put to the test.

Notes 1 Yusuf ʿAbd Allah, Taʾrīkh al-Taʿlīm fī l-Khalīj al-ʿArabī 1913–1971 (Doha: n.p., 2003), 307–308; Abdulla Juma Kobaisi, “The Development of Education in Qatar, 1950–1977 with an Analysis of Some Educational Problems” (Doctoral Dissertation, Durham University, 1979), 31–33. 2 ʿAbd al-Rahman b. ʿAbd al-Latif Al al-Shaykh, Mashāhīr ʿUlamāʾ Najd waGhayruhum, 2nd ed. (Riyadh: Dar al-Yamama li-l-Bahth wa-l-Tarjama wa-lNashr, 1974), 414. 3 Roberts, Qatar, 17. 4 For more on the term ʿaqīdat al-salaf see Lauzière, Making, 7, 39–41, 48–49, 122–129, 225–227. 5 Courtney Freer, Rentier Islamism: The Influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Gulf Monarchies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 56, 58; Kamrava, Qatar, 78–79; Roberts, Qatar, 34; Ulrichsen, Gulf Crisis, 28; Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, Qatar and the Arab Spring (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 101. 6 David Roberts, “Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood: Pragmatism or Preference?,” Middle East Policy 21, no. 3 (2014): 84–94 (5). 7 See Chapter 4. 8 Shaykh, Mashāhīr, 414–415. 9 Michael Farquhar, Circuits of Faith: Migration, Education, and the Wahhabi Mission (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016), 49–50. 10 Shaykh, Mashāhīr, 414–415.

36

Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Al Thanis, etc.

11 ʿAbd Allah, Taʾrīkh, 308. 12 Roberts, Qatar, 29. 13 It is possible to adhere to the Hanbali creed without adhering to the Hanbali school. Lauzière, Making, 7, fn 10. 14 Referring to a theology as Hanbali might have been taken to imply a blind adherence to Ahmad b. Hanbal (d.855). Lauzière, Making, 7. 15 Muhammad b. ʿAbd al-ʿAziz b. Maniʿ, al-Kawākib al-Durriya li-Sharḥ alDurra al-Muḍiyya fī ʿAqd Ahl al-Firqa al-Marḍiyya (Bombay: Matbaʿ al-Haydari, 1918), 120. Quoted in Lauzière, Making, 23. 16 Shaykh devotes a substantial entry to Ibn Maniʿ in Prominent Ulama of Najd. Shaykh, Mashāhīr, 411–417. 17 Shaykh, Mashāhīr, 411–417. 18 Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Ibn al-Qarya wa-l-Kuttāb: Sīra wa-Masīra, vol. 1, 4 vols. (Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 2002), 336. 19 Kobaisi, “Development,” 38. 20 Hamed A. Hamed, “Islamic Religion in Qatar during the Twentieth Century: Personnel and Institutions” (Doctoral Dissertation, University of Manchester, 1993), 120. 21 Roberts, “Pragmatism,” 3. 22 “Wafāt al-Dāʿiyya ʿAbd al-Badīʿ Saqr,” Qaradawi.net, 16 October 2018, www. al-qaradawi.net/content/158- ‫وفاة‬-‫الداعية‬-‫عبد‬-‫البديع‬-‫صقر‬. 23 Krämer, “Boundaries,” 5. 24 This is my observation. 25 Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Risālat al-Azhar bayn al-Ams wa-l-Yawm wa-l-Ghad (Cairo: Maktabat Wahba, 1984), 3. 26 Yusuf al-Qaradawi, al-Ikhwān al-Muslimūn: 70 ʿĀman fi l-Daʿwa wa-l-Tarbiyya wa-l-Jihād (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risala, 2007), 57. 27 Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen, “Yūsuf al-Qaraḍāwī and al-Azhar,” in Global Mufti: The Phenomenon of Yusuf al-Qaradawi, ed. Bettina Gräf and Jakob SkovgaardPetersen (London: Hurst, 2009), 27–54 (8–11). 28 Skovgaard-Petersen, “Qaraḍāwī and al-Azhar,” 4. 29 Husam Tammam, “Yūsuf al-Qaraḍāwī and the Muslim Brothers: The Nature of a Special Relationship,” in Global Mufti, 55–83 (10–11). 30 “D. Yūsuf al-Qaraḍāwī: ʿAraftu al-Shaykh ʿAbd al-Muʿazz ʿan Ṭarīq al-Mushahada wa-l-Samaʿ,” al-Sharq, 2 July 2015, https://al-sharq.com/article/02/07/2015/ ُ ‫د‬-‫القرضاوى‬-‫عرفت‬ -‫الشيخ‬-‫عبد‬-‫المعز‬- ‫عن‬- ‫طريق‬-‫المشاهدة‬-‫والسماع‬. 31 Francine Costet-Tardieu, Un réformiste à l’université al-Azhar: Oeuvres et pensée de mustafâ al-Marâghi (1881–1945) (Paris: Karthala, 2005), 116–118; Said Fares Hassan, Fiqh al-Aqalliyyāt: History, Development, and Progress (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 54; Babou, “Network,” 11–18. 32 Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Ibn al-Qarya wa-l-Kuttāb: Sīra wa-Masīra, vol. 2 (Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 2004), 107–203. 33 Sagi Polka, Shaykh Yūsuf al-Qaraḍāwī: Spiritual Mentor of Wasaṭī Salafism (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2019), 110. 34 “al-Qaraḍāwī: al-Subayʿī Rāʾid Nahḍat al-Taʿlīm al-Dīnī fī Qaṭar,” alSharq, 25 June 2015, https://al-sharq.com/article/25/06/2015/‫القرضاوي‬‫السبيعى‬- ‫رائد‬-‫نهضة‬-‫التعليم‬-‫الديني‬-‫في‬-‫قطر‬. 35 “Subayʿī.” 36 Qaradawi, Ibn, 2:220. 37 Tammam, “Qaraḍāwī and the Muslim Brothers,” 3–4.

Wahhabism and wasaṭiyya in Qatar

37

38 See Amir Hamid, “Mediating Desire: Yūsuf al-Qaraḍāwī and the Circulation of Norms on Gender Sexuality in the Transnational Muslim Public” (Doctoral Dissertation, University of Zurich, 2018), 69–70. 39 Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 3. 40 Yves Gonzalez-Quijano, Les Gens du livre: édition et champ intellectuel dans l’Egypte républicaine (Paris: CNRS Editions, 1998); Carrie Rosefsky Wickham, Mobilizing Islam: Religion, Activism and Political Change in Egypt (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 134–147; Ellen McLarney, Soft Force: Women in Egypt’s Islamic Awakening (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015), 15–16. 41 Ahmed El Shamsy, Rediscovering the Islamic Classics: How Editors and Print Culture Transformed an Intellectual Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020). 42 Yusuf al-Qaradawi, al-Fatwā bayn al-Inḍibāt wa-l-Tasayyub (Cairo: Maktabat Wahba, 1988). For further discussion of transformations in Muslim reading practices see Nakissa, Anthropology, 247–255. 43 Hamid, “Mediating,” 78–81. 44 See for example, Salih Fawzan, al-Iʿlām bi-Naqd Kitāb al-Ḥalāl wa-l-Ḥarām (Riyadh: al-Matabiʿ al-Ahliyya li-l-Uffsit, 1976); Muqbil al-Wadiʿi, Iskāt alKalb al-ʿĀwī Yūsuf bin ʿAbd Allāh al-Qaraḍāwī (Sanaʿa: Dar al-Athar, 2005). 45 Qaradawi, Ibn, 2:308–319. 46 Qaradawi, Ibn, 1:324. 47 Qaradawi, Ibn, 1:328. 48 Qaradawi, Ibn, 1:330–331, 336–338. 49 “Wafāt al-Shaykh ʿAbd Allāh Āl Maḥmūd,” Qaradawi.net, 4 August 2001, www.al-qaradawi.net/node/3576; “Wafāt al-Shaykh ʿAbd Allāh al-Anṣārī,” Qaradawi.net, 13 June 2019, www.al-qaradawi.net/content/172‫وفاة‬-‫الشيخ‬-‫عبد‬-‫هللا‬-‫األنصاري‬. 50 Qaradawi, Ibn, 1:337–338; “al-ʿĀlim al-Dāʿiyya ʿAbd Allāh bin Turkī al-Subayʿi,” IUMSonline, 18 May 2019, www.iumsonline.org/ar/ContentDetails.aspx?ID=9502. 51 Qaradawi, Ibn, 1:336. 52 See for example the furor after the 2016 Grozny Conference. Yaroslav Trofimov, “Excommunicating Saudis? A New Fracture Emerges in Islam,” The Wall Street Journal, 22 September 2016, www.wsj.com/articles/ excommunicating-saudis-a-new-fracture-emerges-in-islam-1474553071. 53 Farquhar, Circuits, 97. 54 Polka, Spiritual, 111. 55 Qaradawi, Ibn, 1:333. 56 Skovgaard-Petersen, “Qaraḍāwī and al-Azhar,” 31–34. 57 Qaradawi, Ibn, 1:333–335. 58 Qaradawi, Ibn, 1:440–441. 59 Kobaisi, “Development,” 72. 60 Qaradawi, Ibn, 2:351–353. 61 Qaradawi, Ibn, 2:348–349. 62 Qaradawi, Ibn, 2:348–349. 63 Sam Cherribi, Fridays of Rage: Al Jazeera, the Arab Spring, and Political Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 145. 64 Bettina Gräf, “Introduction,” in Global Mufti, 1–15 (3).

38

Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Al Thanis, etc.

65 Qaradawi, Ibn, 2:340–341. 66 Krämer, “Boundaries,” 9. 67 Birol Baskan and Steven Wright, “Seeds of Change: Comparing State-Religion Relations in Qatar and Saudi Arabia,” Arab Studies Quarterly 33, no. 2 (2011): 96–111 (3). 68 Freer, Rentier, 55–61; Roberts, “Pragmatism.” 69 Freer, Rentier, 55. 70 Baskan and Wright, “Seeds.” 71 Farquhar, Circuits, 48–55. 72 Qaradawi, Ibn, 2:333–336, 340–341, 367–374. See also Baskan and Wright, “Seeds,” 3–4; Kobaisi, “Development,” 67–72. 73 Qaradawi, Ibn, 2:367. 74 Baskan and Wright, “Seeds,” 5. 75 See Mona Abdel-Fadil, “The Islam-Online Crisis: A Battle of Wasatiyya vs. Salafi Ideologies?,” CyberOrient 5, no. 1 (2011): 4–36. 76 See Bettina Gräf, “IslamOnline.Net: Independent, Interactive, Popular,” Arab Media & Society, 2 February 2009, www.arabmediasociety.com/ islamonline-net-independent-interactive-popular/. 77 Jack Shenker, “IslamOnline Website in Crisis as Employees in Egypt Stage SitIn,” The Guardian, 16 March 2010, www.theguardian.com/world/2010/mar/16/ egypt-islam-online-crisis-workers-protest. 78 Interview between Michael Stephens and Courtney Freer. Freer, Rentier, 153. 79 For example, one of ʿAbd Allah Al Mahmud’s 17 sons, ʿAbd al-Rahman b. Abd Allah Al Mahmud, followed in his father’s footsteps and became head of Qatar’s Islamic Courts. 80 See for example Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Dirāsa fī Fiqh Maqāṣid al-Sharīʿa bayn al-Maqāṣid al-kullīya wa-l-Nuṣūṣ al-juzʾīya (Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 2006), 39–58, 83–96. 81 Tammam, “Qaraḍāwī and the Muslim Brothers,” 18. 82 Cherribi, Fridays, 145–146; Ehab Galal, “Yūsuf al-Qaraḍāwī and the New Islamic TV,” in Global Mufti, 149–180 (3–6). 83 Skovgaard-Petersen, “Qaraḍāwī and al-Azhar,” 11. 84 Freer, Rentier, 66. 85 See Steven T. Brookes, Winning Hearts and Votes: Social Services and the Islamist Political Advantage (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2019). 86 Roberts, Qatar, 40–45. 87 Roberts, Qatar, 35–45. 88 Roberts, Qatar, 65–69, 71–82. 89 Roberts, Qatar, 93. 90 Roberts, Qatar, 98–99. 91 See further Marc Lynch, Voices of the New Arab Public: Iraq, Al-Jazeera, and Middle East Politics Today (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006). 92 Cherribi, Fridays, 47, 67, 73. 93 Roberts, Qatar, 95. 94 Cherribi, Fridays, 10–14. 95 Cherribi, Fridays, 60. 96 Grewal, Islam, 187–192. 97 Cherribi, Fridays, 12. 98 Roberts, Qatar, 96. 99 See further Alexandre Caeiro, “The Power of European Fatwas: The Minority Fiqh Project and the Making of an Islamic Counterpublic,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 42, no. 3 (2010): 435–449 (5–9).

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39

100 See Bettina Gräf, “The Concept of Wasaṭiyya in the Work of Yusuf al-Qaraḍāwī,” in Global Mufti, 213–238. 101 Bano, “Protector,” 73–92; Razavian, “al-Azhar,” 3. 102 Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Min Fiqh al-Dawla fī l-Islām Makānatuhā. Maʿālimuhā. Ṭabīʿatuhā: Mawqifuhā min al-Ḍīmuqrāṭīya wa-l-Taʿaddudiyya wa-l-Marʾa wa-Ghayr al-Muslimīn (Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 1997), 130–146. In the following passage I have used Roxanne Euben and Muhammad Qasim Zaman’s translation. See Yusuf al-Qaradawi, “Islam and Democracy,” in Princeton Readings in Islamist Thought: Texts and Contexts from al-Banna to Bin Laden, ed. Roxanne L. Euben and Muhammad Qasim Zaman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 230–245. 103 Qaradawi, “Democracy,” 3. 104 Qaradawi, “Democracy,” 9–10. 105 Qaradawi, “Democracy,” 10. 106 Khaled Abou El Fadl, “Reply,” in Islam and the Challenge of Democracy: A Boston Review Book, ed. Joshua Cohen and Deborah Chasman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 109–128 (13). 107 Abou El Fadl, “Reply,” 12. 108 Qaradawi, Dawla, 138. 109 Abou El Fadl, “Reply,” 13. 110 See Yusuf al-Qaradawi, 25 Yunāyir Thawrat Shaʿb: al-Shaykh al-Qaraḍāwī wal-Thawra al-Miṣriyya (Cairo: Maktabat Wahba, 2011), 22; Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Fiqh al-Jihād: Dirāsa Muqārana li-Iḥkāmihi wa-Falsafatihi fī Ḍawʾ al-Qurʾān wa-l-Sunna, vol. 1, 1st ed. (Cairo: Maktabat Wahba, 2009), 204–209. 111 Cherribi, Fridays, 60. 112 Cherribi, Fridays, 33, 49–51. 113 Tammam, “Qaraḍāwī and the Muslim Brothers,” 18. 114 Muhammad Qasim Zaman, Modern Islamic Thought in a Radical Age: Religious Authority and Internal Criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 153–156. 115 Roberts, Qatar, 103–122.

2

Qaradawi, Qatar, and the Arab Spring

“This is Egypt when it believes. We saw these people, from all the corners of Egypt, from all the classes – rich and poor, learned and illiterate, workers and intellectuals, and most of them were from the learned and intellectuals, their differences melted away. They melted together in one pot: Muslims and Christians, radicals and conservatives, rightists and leftists, men and women, old and young, all of them were united. All of them are working on behalf of Egypt, to liberate Egypt from oppression and tyranny.” Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Cairo, 18 February 2011

I consider the Arab Spring period as beginning with the Tunisian fruit vendor Mohamad Bouazizi’s act of self-immolation on 17 December 2010 and ending with the military coup ousting the Egyptian President Mursi on 3 July 2013. The protests began in Tunisia and swiftly spread throughout the region. During this time, Qaradawi, al-Jazeera, and Qatar were respectively the most enthusiastic ʿālim, media outlet, and state to support the protests. This support was not simple opportunism or realpolitik, but rather the result of Qaradawi and his IUMS peers’ vision of an umma animated by the principles of wasaṭiyya and made up of democratic civil states with Islamic references. Over the course of a decades-long relationship, generations of Al Thanis had come to share this vision. They did so because it coincided with their aspiration for Qatar to be a state independent of Saudi Arabian hegemony with a unique niche in the region. Developing a niche as a statesupporting democracy (abroad) and free speech (within limits) served the core Qatari interest of maintaining US concern for its security. Qaradawi, al-Jazeera, and the Al Thanis saw the Arab Spring as a mobilization of the people in the name of democracy. However, to them, “the people” were the national majorities that they imagined as having a particular orientation toward Islamic norms and supporters of political projects exemplified by the MB.

Qaradawi, Qatar, and the Arab Spring

41

The events of early 2011 appeared to vindicate this view. The Tunisian dictator Zine Abidine Ben Ali’s resignation was followed by Mubarak’s, and the MB succeeded in both the Tunisian and Egyptian elections. The Egyptian Revolution took 18 days. During that time, as he built an image as an authoritative voice of the people, Qaradawi’s media interventions and fatwas in support of the protests became al-Jazeera news stories in their own right. After the Revolution, Qaradawi and his IUMS allies then began to produce a new Jurisprudence of Revolution to provide legitimacy for further protests. The structure of this new genre of jurisprudence was shaped by the assumptions that underpinned Qaradawi’s understanding of wasaṭiyya, most notably the need for a jurisprudence to correspond to a deep and true understanding of the social reality (wāqiʿ). The uprising in Qatar’s near neighbor Bahrain, with its Shiʿi majority, exposed particular problems for the Al Thanis and Qaradawi’s majoritarian view of the people as Sunni Muslims supportive of the MB.

Qaradawi’s legal arguments in support of the Arab Spring Bouazizi’s self-immolation sparked waves of demonstrations in Tunisia and caused Ben Ali to flee to Saudi Arabia on 14 January 2011. Activists in Egypt soon called for similar demonstrations to begin on Friday, 25 January 2011. After 18 days of sustained mass protests, Mubarak’s almost 30-year rule also came to an end. Al-Jazeera’s counter-hegemonic branding left the channel well-placed to influence events through its reportage. During the Egyptian Revolution, al-Jazeera’s journalists became central characters in events as they were shown braving teargas, outwitting government censors, and giving voice to the people against the regime. Al-Jazeera also inserted Qaradawi into the narrative. Almost every major news event over the course of the 18 days of protests was coupled with a fatwa, interview, or comment from Qaradawi. Al-Jazeera’s round-the-clock coverage of Tahrir Square used split screens to show Qaradawi in the studio giving his commentaries, encouragement, and Islamic legal justifications side-by-side with the protesters on millions of televisions throughout the Arabic-speaking world. His fatwas were billed as breaking news and reported upon as stories in their own right. While Sharia and Life naturally devoted all its airtime to the Revolution, so too was Qaradawi a frequent guest on al-Jazeera’s other popular programs. These interviews were in turn reported upon by other news outlets throughout the region. As Sam Cherribi notes, Egypt’s protesters “saw al-Jazeera as an ally” during the Revolution. Qaradawi became al-Jazeera’s most recognizable figure at the time, the subject of 700,000 Google searches in January 2011 alone.1

42

Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Al Thanis, etc.

By contrast, Qaradawi’s ʿulamāʾ rivals in Egypt such as the Rector of the Azhar Ahmad al-Tayyib (b.1946) and the Grand Mufti of Egypt ʿAli Jumʿa (b.1952) became objects of derision for their attempts to dissuade the protesters in Tahrir Square. Indeed, their nationalistic appeals to “the good of the country” (maṣlaḥat al-balad) and “national unity” (al-waḥda al-waṭaniyya) fit neatly into al-Jazeera’s binary framing. Tayyib and Jumʿa’s appeals for calm for the sake of national unity, and criticism of Qaradawi and his peers as charlatans “beckoning toward the gates of Hell,”2 meant they were easily branded as state-ʿulamāʾ in contrast to Qaradawi’s sweeping rhetoric in the name of “the people” (al-shaʿb). Qaradawi’s fatwas and other interventions (mudākhalāt) issued through the media to legitimize the protests and debate ʿulamāʾ supporting the Egyptian regime used 4 primary techniques:3 contesting key definitions, citing authoritative statements from the Qurʾan and Sunna, expanding the remit of pre-existing Islamic legal concepts, and incorporating the language of human rights and citizenship into his argumentation. For example, Qaradawi contested those who defined the protests as a rebellion (khurūj) by emphasizing that such a definition was only valid for an armed rebellion (al-khurūj al-muṣallaḥ) against a government. Since the protesters were unarmed and were using only their “tongues,” the protests could not be defined as a rebellion. Qaradawi also contested his ʿulamāʾ rivals’ use of concepts such as “obedience to the ruler” (ṭāʿat awwalī al-amr) by citing hadith such as “The best form of Jihad is to speak a word of truth to an oppressive ruler” and “There is no obedience to that which is disobedient to the creator.” Qaradawi also expanded pre-existing concepts. He argued that the obligation upon an individual to command the right and forbid the wrong (al-amr bi-l-maʿrūf wa-l-nahī ʿan al-munkar)4 included an obligation to advise a ruler who has strayed (naṣīḥa).5 Qaradawi then expanded this individual obligation to give advice to a ruler into a collective obligation upon the Muslim community as a whole. The peaceful protests were, Qaradawi said, legitimate because they represented a fulfillment of this collective obligation.6 In instances where individual texts to support his arguments were lacking, Qaradawi referenced “the spirit (rūḥ) of the Qurʾan, and the spirit of the Sunna.”7 Qaradawi argued peaceful protests were simply a tool that could be used to achieve good or ill and were therefore valid.8 As he put it, peaceful protests were “a means to bring about positive change worldwide” as they often led “to the fall of dictatorships;” Islam welcomed such new practices.9 Additionally, Qaradawi incorporated the language of human rights into his arguments saying, “I want Egypt to become like other countries, that treat protesters with respect, and not be subjected to violence. The

Qaradawi, Qatar, and the Arab Spring

43

expression of an opinion is a human right.”10 He also used the language of national citizenship, stating that the protesters “represent Egypt,”11 as he called upon the police to remember they are “servants of the citizenry” rather than the ruler.12 Qaradawi urged Egyptians to abandon Mubarak and ignore the state-ʿulamāʾ (ʿulamāʾ al-sulṭa) who supported him.13 Instead, he said people should join the popular marches (masīrāt shaʿbiyya) and listen to him and other ʿulamāʾ who were speaking in support of “our believing public” (jamāhīrinā al-muʾmina).14 As the Revolution unfolded, Qaradawi categorized this independent reasoning (ijtihād) using terms such as the “jurisprudence of balancing” (fiqh al-muwāzanāt) that he had been systemizing under the heading of wasaṭiyya since the 1990s.15 After the Revolution, he and his IUMS peers would begin to structure this ijtihād according to the terms of a new genre they called the Jurisprudence of Revolution. Mubarak finally resigned on 11 February. Amid the celebrations that day, Qaradawi made a special point to thank the Amir Hamad b. Khalifa. “I will be candid with you,” Qaradawi said at a celebration of the Egyptian community in Doha. “When I learned about the victory of the Revolution, I called the Amir [Hamad b. Khalifa] of Qatar to congratulate him and thank him. He told me that I played an essential leadership role. I told him that if al-Jazeera had not been there, my voice would not have reached [Tahrir] Square and the people of Egypt.”16 Qaradawi returned to Cairo to deliver a sermon in Tahrir Square the following Friday, 18 February. The sermon was a carefully crafted media event that involved close collaboration between Qaradawi’s staff in Doha, key figures from the MB leadership in Egypt, and al-Jazeera executives.17 As Qaradawi spoke to the crowds that day, his words echoed familiar themes: This is Egypt when it believes. We saw these people, from all the corners of Egypt, from all the classes – rich and poor, learned and illiterate, workers and intellectuals, and most of them were from the learned and intellectuals, their differences melted away. They melted together in one pot: Muslims and Christians, radicals and conservatives, rightists and leftists, men and women, old and young, all of them were united. All of them are working on behalf of Egypt, to liberate Egypt from oppression and tyranny.18 Qaradawi praised the national unity that made the Revolution possible, and he attributed its success to the Egyptian people’s believing nature. As a media event, the sermon was a spectacular success. Al-Jazeera reported crowds numbering over a million.19

44

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Hijacking the revolution? The image of an ʿālim returning from exile following a revolution led to inevitable comparisons with the 1979 Iranian Revolution, and Qaradawi was soon given the label of “the Egyptian Khomeini.”20 While Qaradawi’s return was praised in some quarters of the Egyptian media, it was criticized by others, as part of an MB effort to hijack the Revolution.21 As Cherribi put it, The sound of young Egyptian voices demanding change [was] replaced on al-Jazeera by the voice of Qaradawi. . . . The Egyptian Revolution was hijacked, absorbed, as it were, by al-Jazeera Inc. All the revolutionaries in Egypt . . . became part of one great al-Jazeera revolutionary narrative. In the Egyptian case, where the MB was not a factor in the first catalyzing days of the revolution, al-Jazeera wrote into the narrative a starring role for the group.22 To Cherribi, al-Jazeera’s narration of the Revolution with Qaradawi in a starring role was a key part of the process of steering it away from its original, secular impulse. He argued that al-Jazeera aided Qaradawi and the MB in supplanting the voices of a liberal secular Egyptian youth. However, the image of the Egyptian revolutionary as young, liberal, and middle-class has been thoroughly deconstructed since 2011 as the product of a particular media narrative among segments of the Egyptian and Euro-American press about what a revolutionary ought to look like and demand.23 To be sure, al-Jazeera did create a story of the Egyptian Revolution that subsumed its diverse actors and outlooks under a single narrative. This narrative was underpinned by the channel’s wasaṭiyya frame, and it indeed gave Qaradawi a starring role. Yet, rather than viewing Qaradawi’s interventions as part of an organized MB-hijacking,24 Schielke’s concept of normative registers is useful: Speaking of registers rather than systems, discourses, or traditions highlights the performative, situational, and dialogic character of norms. A normative register is a way of speaking about a specific range of topics with a specific style of argumentation, embodying a specific emotional tone, acting in specific ways. It contains not only a set of arguments and affects but also an implicit ontology of the subject matter: the kind of categories in which it can be described and the kinds of actions that are possible. The choice of register in which a subject is described and discussed is, in itself, a key form of normative debate. To declare an issue a religious matter . . . is also to draw different conclusions about it, to suggest different paths of action.25

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Qaradawi engaged with the events of the Egyptian Revolution in a register shaped by Islamic norms and using an Islamic legal vocabulary. That choice of register stemmed from his ontological belief that the Revolution represented the demand of an inherently faithful Egyptian public that were in need of his interventions, rather than an attempt to co-opt the Revolution. Nevertheless, Qaradawi took criticisms of his return to Cairo seriously enough to respond. In his attempt to justify his role, he reiterated the tension between his view of the believer as self-governing and in need of authoritative guidance. Consequently, he rejected the comparison with Khomeini. Instead, Qaradawi argued that in the face of ʿulamāʾ from the Azhar, Salafists, and Sufis who sought to “destroy” (ightiyāl) the Revolution, there was a need for legitimate fatwas and guidance. Qaradawi added that, though the public needed the ʿulamāʾ to provide fatwas, they could decide for themselves whom to trust.26

Producing a Jurisprudence of Revolution To Qaradawi, the success of the Egyptian Revolution could be made to serve as a pedagogical model for the Arab World. In the months that followed, he and IUMS peers such as Ahmad al-Raysuni (b.1953) and Salman al-ʿAwda (b.1955) developed a Jurisprudence of Revolution based on the Egyptian example.27 The genre followed Rida’s model of bringing a previously marginal form of expansive utilitarian reasoning (istiṣlāḥ) to the center of Islamic legal thought. Bringing istiṣlāḥ to the center of their model enabled Qaradawi and his colleagues to overturn the well-established Islamic legal precedent of maintaining obedience to an unjust rule for the sake of avoiding civil strife.28 Proponents of the Jurisprudence of Revolution argued for the need to respond to the social reality (fiqh al-wāqiʿ), and their model worked by narrowing the remit of some pre-existing Islamic legal concepts while expanding others. For example, they followed Qaradawi’s example by redefining “rebellion” to specifically mean “armed rebellion” in order to exclude peaceful protests from this broad category. They also expanded the individual duty to command the right and forbid the wrong into a collective duty to hold the ruler to account. In addition, they cited textual evidence from the Qurʾan, Hadith, as well as Islamic legal maxims (qawāʾid fiqhiyya) and presented historical examples of ʿulamāʾ siding with rebellions, such as Saʿid b. Jubayr’s siding with Ibn al-Ashʿath’s rebellion in Iraq in 699–701 CE or the Algerian ʿAbd al-Qadir’s rebellion against the French in the 19th century.29 Though some Jurisprudence of Revolution texts did not focus on Qaradawi, others used his personal ijtihād during the 18 days of the Egyptian Revolution as a model. These texts included 25 January: A People’s Revolution, published under Qaradawi’s name and produced by Muhammad

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Khalifa Hasan and his staff at the Qaradawi Center for Research in Moderate Thought,30 and Wasfi Abu Zayd’s Qaradawi: The Revolutionary Imam. Both were designed to buttress his personal authority, particularly against the accusation that his support for the Revolution was opportunistic and partisan in favor of the MB. However, Zaman has suggested that one should not accuse the ʿulamāʾ of hypocrisy or opportunism on the basis of seeming inconsistencies between their fatwas and their intellectual thought.31 Instead, he argues that academics should view the ʿulamāʾ as activists who respond to unfolding events. Nevertheless, in the Jurisprudence of Revolution, texts like 25 January clearly attempt to create the appearance of consistency between Qaradawi’s thought prior to 2011 and his arguments during the 18 days of protests in Egypt. This is because the accusation that an interpreter of Islamic texts is twisting those texts to suit their whims (awhām) can damage an ʿālim’s credibility. This accusation is commonly leveled against Qaradawi, and he has also leveled it against others.32 To create the effect of consistency between Qaradawi’s pre-2011 thought and 2011 practice, 25 January begins by reproducing several pages from his 2009 Jurisprudence of Jihad. Significantly, the reproduced pages include the passage quoted in Chapter 1 in which Qaradawi distinguishes between the ʿulamāʾ bound to the state and those who are outside state institutions and bound to Muslim public opinion and the public’s Islamic conscience. This passage is then followed by a fatwa published in 2009 that argues for the legitimacy of peaceful protests.33 Once this chronology has been established, what follows is a verbatim reproduction of all of Qaradawi’s fatwas, interviews, and other interventions over the course of the 18 days of protests. The effect of this arrangement is not only to preserve Qaradawi’s words for posterity but also to create the effect that his ijtihād as the protests unfolded was consistent with his writings prior to 2011. Like al-Jazeera, 25 January gives Qaradawi a starring role in the Revolution, using images to create a visual narrative of him and the protesters working side by side. The book’s cover depicts Qaradawi’s smiling face overlooking a crowd of cheering protesters waving Egyptian flags. The final chapter of the book is 40 pages of photographs that chronicle the Revolution and interweave pictures of protesting crowds alongside images of Qaradawi. The images of Qaradawi first show him alone speaking to the media or talking on the phone in his office, and these are captioned as his “interventions” (mudākhalāt) to support the protesters. The chapter concludes with images of Qaradawi united with the crowds in Tahrir Square on 18 February 2011.34 Abu Zayd’s Qaradawi: The Revolutionary Imam also depicts Qaradawi’s face on the cover, speaking into a microphone with flag-waving protesters in the background behind him. In a manner comparable with 25 January,

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Abu Zayd produces his text to shape the reader’s understanding that Qaradawi’s interventions during the Revolution were grounded in objective interpretations of Islamic texts. The first chapter of the book, “Qaradawi’s Sharia-based points of departure during the Revolution,” lists dozens of Qurʾanic verses and hadith that he connects thematically to the principle of resisting oppressive rule.35 These lists take the form of bullet points and are surrounded on the page by empty space. Arranging these excerpts in this way allows them to float free of pre-existing interpretations so that Abu Zayd can attribute new meanings to them.36 As Abu Zayd argues, “Truly, these Qurʾanic verses and Hadith confirm place a special emphasis on one meaning and one concept, and that is resisting oppression.”37 This move is significant because, though Qaradawi did cite Qurʾan and Hadith to buttress his arguments during the Revolution, he did not do so exclusively or on every occasion. Consequently, Abu Zayd argues that these texts gave “nourishment” (ghadhā) to Qaradawi’s ijtihād during the Revolution, even if he did not cite them explicitly.38 In addition to visual and verbal arguments, Abu Zayd’s texts also use numerical techniques to establish that Qaradawi’s ijtihād was grounded in a jurisprudence of the reality and an expression of the people’s Islamic conscience rather than opportunism. For example, Abu Zayd provides a statistic stating 40% of Egyptians live in poverty to provide seemingly objective evidence for the necessity of Mubarak’s departure. He then argues that Qaradawi’s call for Mubarak’s departure was not the result of partisan opportunism but his attentiveness (waʿī) to the social reality (wāqiʿ). Here, Abu Zayd reports that when Qaradawi heard that 8 million young Egyptians had joined the protest, he concluded that their actions represented the true will of the people, to which he was bound. Qaradawi arrived at this conclusion, Abu Zayd says, on the basis that these 8 million represented not only themselves as individuals, but the will of their extended families as well, who “supported [the revolutionaries] in their hearts, but were not themselves able [to go out and protest].”39 Abu Zayd also uses numerical arguments to buttress Qaradawi’s authority against the rival ʿulamāʾ at the Azhar who sought to dissuade the protesters. Abu Zayd cites an interview Qaradawi gave on Sharia and Life in which he said, I am truly sorry that the great ʿulamāʾ accuse these youth of going astray, rebelling against Islam, and causing fitna, this is very strange, these youth who are resisting oppression, I do not know how [the ʿulamāʾ] could have forgotten the verses and Hadith that reject oppression! Hundreds of verses in the Holy Qurʾan reject oppression, and curse the oppressors.40 Abu Zayd then gives his commentary, “So the Shaykh here is explaining that it is not correct jurisprudence and not rational that we abandon clear

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texts and explicit rulings, and become preoccupied with speculative interpretations and unclear texts. . . . How can [anyone] oppose the hundreds of verses and sound hadiths that make explicit the matter [of opposing oppression] without any doubt or hesitation?”41 In Abu Zayd’s presentation of Qaradawi’s argument, it was the sheer number of Qurʾanic verses and Hadith (which Abu Zayd lists in his book) that condemned oppressive rule that then established resistance to oppression as a “fixed principle.”42 This fixed principle outweighed any individual verse or hadith that another might cite to dissuade the protesters of the Arab Spring. Though ultimately a short-lived venture, the Qatari Amir provided notable financial support for the production of Jurisprudence of Revolution texts. The Amir instituted an annual prize worth approximately $50,000 for the best book on the subject of the Jurisprudence of Revolution.43 However, despite Qaradawi and the Al Thani’s support for the Egyptian Revolution and other uprisings spreading across the region, this support was not absolute, as the case of Bahrain would show.

From mediation to armed intervention The uprisings in Bahrain and Libya began with peaceful protests on 14 and 15 February respectively. Qatar intervened in both uprisings. In Bahrain, Qatari police joined the UAE and Saudi Arabia to crush the protests. In Libya, Qatar and the UAE were the only two Arab states to join the NATOled military intervention to overthrow Gaddafi.44 Qaradawi’s own interventions in the Bahraini and Libyan contexts were in accordance with Qatari foreign policy. With the uprisings in Bahrain, Libya, and then Syria, Qaradawi’s imagining of a faithful public as sharing his outlook and needing his guidance became difficult to sustain. In Qaradawi’s perception, the faithful public comprised a majority of Sunni Muslims who shared his views. However, his view did not account for the large Shiʿi populations in Bahrain and Syria. Consequently, Qaradawi was unable to imagine a popular uprising, in which the majority of the protesters were Shiʿi, as a legitimate expression of Bahraini public opinion. Therefore, he repeated the narrative produced by staterun media in the Gulf states that the Bahraini uprising was violent, sectarian, and an Iranian plot. Here, Qaradawi’s narrative overlooked the fact that the Bahraini uprising enjoyed Sunni support as well. On Libya, he issued a fatwa live on al-Jazeera calling for Gaddafi’s killing. Lastly, regarding Syria he called upon all able-bodied (Sunni) men to travel to Syria to fight. As a result of these interventions, his image as the archetypal outsider and independent became impossible to maintain. Prior to the Arab Spring, Qaradawi had been an asset to the Al Thanis. However, as the events of the Arab

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Spring became increasingly divisive, and Qaradawi’s interventions more controversial, he became a risk to Qatar’s carefully cultivated state brand. The uprisings in Bahrain and Libya began peacefully but were soon met with violence by Bahraini and Libyan security forces. In the Libyan case, Qaradawi moved quickly to “protect the people” on 21 February 2011. During a live interview on al-Jazeera, he gave the following statement: I issue this fatwa: To the officers and the soldiers who are able to kill Muammar al-Gaddafi, to whoever among them is able to shoot him with a bullet and to free the country and God’s servants from him. Do it! That man wants to exterminate the people. As for me, I protect the people and I issue this fatwa: Whoever among them is able to shoot him with a bullet and to free us from his evil, to free Libya and its great people from the evil of this man and from the danger of him, let him do so!45 As Qaradawi elaborated on his fatwa in a sermon the following Friday, he drew upon his wasaṭiyya motifs saying, “It is from the jurisprudence of balancing (fiqh al-muwāzanāt), and the jurisprudence of consequential outcomes (fiqh al-maʾālāt), and the jurisprudence of priorities (fiqh al-awlawiyyāt), that we sacrifice one man for the sake of the salvation of a people.”46 Though Qaradawi’s fatwa was striking and drew considerable media attention,47 at the time he could plausibly maintain his view that it was in support of a united Libyan people resisting a tyrant. At this point in the Arab Spring, Qaradawi was a clear asset to the Al Thanis. His fatwa and stature lent legitimacy to Qatar’s joining the NATO-led intervention in Libya to overthrow Gaddafi. His networks proved useful too, as Qatari officials worked with his Libyan student ʿAli al-Sallabi to send support to MB-affiliated militias.48 However, Qatar’s military intervention in Libya damaged its brand as an independent outsider on the periphery of events. Even al-Jazeera’s brand came under increasing scrutiny. The day Qaradawi issued his fatwa, al-Jazeera reported a story that Gaddafi was using the Libyan Air Force to attack peaceful protesters around the country. This story soon spread around the world. After an investigation, the International Crisis Group debunked it as false.49 The uprising in Bahrain would damage Qatar’s, al-Jazeera’s, and Qaradawi’s brands even further.

The Bahrain exception The Qatari intervention in Libya alongside the UAE and NATO came just five days after the combined intervention by Qatar, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia to crush the uprising in Bahrain.50 On 14 March 2011, the GCC

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deployed a force to Bahrain consisting of the Saudi Arabian National Guard alongside Qatari and Emirati police. Bahraini state-media sought to delegitimize the protests with reports of sectarian violence being perpetrated by the country’s Shiʿi majority with assistance of Iranian and Hezbollah agents.51 Other state-media in the Gulf spread similar stories, and there was a marked difference between the coverage of Bahrain by al-Jazeera’s Arabic and English-language channels.52 Two days after the GCC intervention, Qaradawi commented on the events in Bahrain in a televised sermon. Rather than lend his support to the protesters, Qaradawi spoke of his closeness to the Al Khalifa family and referred to the protests in Bahrain as an armed sectarian uprising. Qaradawi was not “against the Shiʿa” he said, only against “fanaticism” (taʿaṣṣub).53 Prior to 2011, Qaradawi had long been an advocate of rapprochement (taqrīb) between Sunni and Shi’i Muslims,54 and IUMS had always included prominent members from among the Shiʿi ʿulamāʾ such as the Iraqi Muhammad ʿAli al-Taskhiri (b.1944). Taskhiri wrote an open letter to Qaradawi expressing his fury at his response to the uprising in Bahrain. The repression that the protestors [in Bahrain] faced was vicious . . . killing, wounding, and imprisonment, but the [Bahraini] government has succeeded in casting the protesters as sectarian. You have assisted these reactionary media operations and colonialist mouthpieces. Truly, we are demanding you participate in [these events] in accordance with the role that we have entrusted to you. . . . We demand that you take a strong and honorable stand to defend the oppressed people [of Bahrain].55 Qaradawi did not change his position. At a conference in Bahrain on 24 May 2012, Qaradawi “called upon the people of Bahrain to defend the Arab and Islamic nature of Bahrain and combat the sectarian project.” This sectarian project (mashrūʿ ṭāʾifī), Qaradawi said, was being instigated by those who sought to “kidnap” the country’s “Arab and Islamic identity,” presumably a reference to an Iranian conspiracy.56 Prior to 2011, Qaradawi had constructed an image of himself as an independent ʿālim who supported democracy throughout the Arab World. His failure to support the uprising in Bahrain may have been disappointing to those who expected something different given his high-profile support for the revolutions in Egypt and Libya. Zareena Grewal likewise articulates her disappointment in Jumʿa, the widely respected Grand Mufti of Egypt, for his failure to support the protesters against Mubarak in 2011. Grewal reflects that Jumʿa, and also Barack Obama, despite their public commitments to democracy both shied away from supporting the Egyptian Revolution at a

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critical juncture. Reflecting on her disappointment Grewal says, “I should have known better. . . . I imagined what their [Jumʿa’s and Obama’s] moral and political calculus was at the time, its logics, its constraints. Their awesome responsibility meant they could not risk what it might take to make [Mubarak] fall, or they could not risk not knowing the political landscape that might emerge if he fell.”57 Here, Grewal opines that Jumʿa’s public responsibilities may have limited his willingness to take a stronger position against Mubarak. Her gesture at the private calculus of the ʿulamāʾ provides a way to think about Qaradawi’s support for the regime in Bahrain without delving into apologetics. Over the course of my visits to Doha between 2012 and 2014, I met Qaradawi for interviews and visited his home several times. Waiting in his library, I took the opportunity to chat with several of his staff and peers at IUMS. When the subject of Qaradawi’s support for the Bahraini regime arose, these colleagues offered an apologetic narrative. As the uprising grew to pose a genuine threat to the Bahraini regime, they said, Iraqi Sunni IUMS members, perhaps Harith al-Dari (d.2015) whom Qaradawi knew well,58 pressed him to come out in support of the ruling family. The argument the Iraqi ʿulamāʾ presented to Qaradawi, so I was told, was that the fall of the Bahraini regime would lead to sectarian bloodshed comparable to that of Iraq, or “like in Rwanda,” an image one interlocutor presumed would be more relatable to me as a non-Arab. While this narrative is clearly apologetic, it hints at Qaradawi’s private calculus at the time. It also gestures at the role that the occupation of Iraq has played in shaping the Sunni ʿulamāʾ’s view of democracy, particularly in the Gulf. This is a theme that will emerge again in our discussion of Abdullah Bin Bayyah in Part 2. It is also possible that Qaradawi’s view of the Bahraini uprising was indebted to his internalizing of al-Jazeera’s narrative. At the time, Qaradawi watched al-Jazeera regularly, and it was the main source of news about the Arab Spring for him, as it was for everyone else at the time. The Managing Director of al-Jazeera, Wadah Khanfar, was replaced in September 2011 by Ahmad b. Jassim Al Thani, a member of the royal family. The move was understood as the Al Thani’s attempt to bring the channel under firmer editorial control as the Arab Spring laid bare deep divisions in Arab societies, especially Syria.59

Notes 1 Cherribi, Fridays, 27, 125–133. 2 See further David H. Warren, “Religion, Politics, and the Anxiety of Contemporary Maslaha Reasoning: The Production of a Fiqh al-Thawra after the 2011 Egyptian Revolution,” in Locating the Sharīʿa: Legal Fluidity in Theory, History and Practice, ed. Sohaira Siddiqui (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 226–248 (5–10).

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3 See further Adnan A. Zulfiqar, “Revolutionary Islamic Jurisprudence: A Restatement of the Arab Spring,” New York University Journal of International Law and Politics 49, no. 2 (2017): 443–497; Muhammad al-Atawneh, “Khurūj in Contemporary Islamic Thought: The Case of the ‘Arab Spring,’” Ilahiyat Studies: A Journal on Islamic and Religious Studies 7, no. 1 (2016): 27–52; Aria Nakissa, “The Fiqh of Revolution and the Arab Spring: Secondary Segmentation as a Trend in Islamic Legal Doctrine,” The Muslim World 105, no. 3 (2015): 398–421; Muʿtaz al-Khatib, “al-Faqīh wa-l-Dawla fī l-Thawrāt al-ʿArabiyya,” Tabayyun 9, no. 3 (2014): 63–84. 4 See further Michael Cook, Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 5 For a summary of Qaradawi’s understanding of these concepts see “al-Thawra . . . Fitna am Raḥma?,” Sharia and Life, 11 September 2011, www.aljazeera.net/ programs/religionandlife/2011/9/15/ ‫الثورة‬-‫فتنة‬-‫أم‬-‫رحمة‬. 6 “Thawra.” 7 Qaradawi, 25 Yunāyir, 159. 8 Yusuf al-Qaradawi, “Sharʿiyyat al-Muẓāharāt al-Silmiyya,” Qaradawi.net, 24 April 2016, www.al-qaradawi.net/node/3885. 9 Qaradawi, 25 Yunāyir, 58. 10 Qaradawi, 25 Yunāyir, 58. 11 Qaradawi, 25 Yunāyir, 36–37. 12 Qaradawi, 25 Yunāyir, 143. 13 Qaradawi, 25 Yunāyir, 42–43. 14 Cherribi, Fridays, 135. 15 Qaradawi, 25 Yunāyir, 60. 16 Cherribi, Fridays, 147. 17 Qaradawi, 25 Yunāyir, 10–14. 18 Yusuf al-Qaradawi, “Khuṭbat al-Shaykh al-Qaraḍāwī fī Mīdān al-Taḥrīr 18 Fibrāyīr 2011,” Youtube.com, 12 February 2011, www.youtube.com/ watch?v=kt21n0ScrfE. The translation is taken from Yahya Michot and Samy Metwally, “The Tahrir Square Sermon of Shaykh Yûsuf alQaradâwî,” Scrid.com, 23 February 2011, www.scribd.com/doc/65022521/ The-Tahrir-Square-Sermon-of-Shaykh-Yusuf-al-Qaradawi. 19 Calls for “Million Man Marches” were a common slogan at the time. Schielke, Egypt, 179; Neil Ketchley, Egypt in a Time of Revolution: Contentious Politics and the Arab Spring (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 141; “Milūnan Mutaẓāhir bi-Mīdān Taḥrīr,” al-Jazeera, 18 February 2011, www.aljazeera.net/news/pages/c3b14752-8169-466e-86f0-529d87fca4e2. 20 See for example Dennis Landry, “Egypt’s Khomeini Figure,” Washington Times, 22 February 2011, www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/feb/22/ egypts-khomeini-figure/. 21 See for example Amani Majid, “al-Qaraḍāwī: lā ʿAlāqa lī bi-Tanẓīm al-Ikhwān,” al-Ahram, 21 February 2011, http://digital.ahram.org.eg/articles. aspx?Serial=434717&eid=1734; Wahid ʿAbd al-Majid, “al-Qaraḍāwī . . . wa-lIslām al-Thawrī,” al-Misri al-Yawm, 7 March 2011, www.almasryalyoum. com/News/Details/207021; Samir Farid, “al-Qaraḍāwī fī Iḥdā Aʿẓam Khuṭab al-ʿAṣr al-Ḥadīth Yuʾakkid Istimrār al-Thawra,” al-Misri al-Yawm, 19 February 2011, http://today.almasryalyoum.com/article2.aspx?ArticleID=288341; Qutb al-ʿArabi, “Haykal wa-l-Qaraḍāwī wa-l-Khumaynī,” al-Yawm al-Sabiʿ, 20 February 2011, www.youm7.com/News.asp?NewsID=355329; Muhammad Zidan

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31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

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and Abdel Hadi Abu Taleb, “Govt Pressures Ban Qaradawi from Egypt TV,” OnIslam, 22 February 2011, https://web.archive.org/web/20110226141028/ http://onislam.net/english/news/africa/451164-govt-pressures-ban-qaradawifrom-egypt-tv.html. Cherribi, Fridays, 152. See Ilka Eickhof, “All That Is Banned Is Desired: ‘Rebel Documentaries’ and the Representation of Egyptian Revolutionaries,” Middle East: Topics & Arguments 6, no. 1 (2016): 13–22; Giedrė Šabasevičiūtė, “Intellectuals and the People: Portrayals of the Rebel in the 2011 Egyptian Uprising,” Middle East: Topics & Arguments 6, no. 1 (2016): 23–32. This view also derives from the perceived (in)actions of the MB leadership in Egypt during the early days of the Revolution. See Wickham, Evolution, 154– 195; Eric Trager, Arab Fall: How the Muslim Brotherhood Won and Lost Egypt in 891 Days (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2016), 13–36. Schielke, Egypt, 54. Qaradawi, 25 Yunāyir, 9. The core texts that comprised this genre were, Ahmad al-Raysuni, Fiqh alThawra: Murājaʿāt fī l-Fiqh al-Siyāsī al-Islāmī (Cairo: Dar al-Kalima, 2013); Salman al-ʿAwda, Asʾilat al-Thawra (Cairo: Dar al-Salam, 2013); Muhammad ʿAmara, Thawrat 25 Yunāyir Wa-Kasr Ḥājiz al-Khawf (Cairo: Dar al-Salam, 2012); ʿAli Muhyi al-Din al-Qaradaghi, “al-Taʾsīl al-Sharʿī li-l-Muẓāharāt alSilmiyya,” Qaradaghi.com, 8 July 2011, www.qaradaghi.com/portal/index. php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1978:2011-07-0806-57-23&catid-14:2009-04-11-15–11–36&Itemid=8; Wasfi Abu Zayd, al-Qaraḍāwī al-Imām al-Thāʾir: Dirāsa Taḥlīliyya Uṣūliyya fī Maʿālim Ijtihādihi li-l-Thawra al-Miṣriyya (Britton Farms, OH: Sultan li-l-Nashr, 2011); Qaradawi, 25 Yunāyir. Nakissa, “Fiqh,” 20. Nakissa, “Fiqh,” 14–20; David H. Warren, “The ʿUlamāʾ and the Arab Uprisings 2011–13: Considering Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the ‘Global Mufti,’ between the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic Legal Tradition, and Qatari Foreign Policy,” New Middle Eastern Studies 4, no. 1 (2014): 1–33 (12–16). Qaradawi is listed as the author of 25 January but the text was arranged by the staff the Qaradawi Center for Research in Moderate Thought, formerly part of the Qatar Faculty of Islamic Studies. The Center has now been renamed the alQaradawi Center for Islamic Moderation and Renewal (QCIMR) and absorbed into the College of Islamic Studies at Hamad bin Khalifa University. Zaman, Radical, 310. See further Ron Shaham, “The Rhetoric of Legal Disputation: Neo-Ahl al-Ḥadīth vs. Yūsuf al-Qaraḍāwī,” Islamic Law and Society 22, no. 1 (2015): 114–141. Qaradawi, 25 Yunāyir, 19–35. Qaradawi, 25 Yunāyir, 227–268. Abu Zayd, al-Imām al-Thāʾir, 44–48. See Nakissa, “Fiqh,” 19. Abu Zayd, al-Imām al-Thāʾir, 49. Abu Zayd, al-Imām al-Thāʾir, 44. Abu Zayd, al-Imām al-Thāʾir, 59. Abu Zayd, al-Imām al-Thāʾir, 133. Abu Zayd, al-Imām al-Thāʾir, 133. Nakissa, “Fiqh,” 16.

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43 Warren, “ʿUlamāʾ,” 12 fn 59. 44 Ulrichsen, Qatar, 115. 45 Yusuf al-Qaradawi, “Fatwā al-Shaykh al-Qaraḍāwī fī Qatl al-Gadhdhāfī,” Youtube.com, 22 February 2011, www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qQ8eJUwxXs. 46 For further analysis of the fatwa see Warren, “ʿUlamāʾ,” 14–16. 47 See for example Emad Mekay, “Too Late, Qaddafi Seeks the Aid of Muslim Clerics,” The New York Times, 2 March 2011, www.nytimes.com/2011/03/03/ world/africa/03iht-M03-FATWA.html. 48 Nidal Hamada, al-Wajh al-Ākhar li-l-Thawrāt al-ʿArabiyya (Beirut: Dar alFarabi, 2012), 166; Lina Khatib, “Qatar’s Foreign Policy: The Limits of Pragmatism,” International Affairs 89, no. 2 (2013): 417–441 (7); Guido Steinberg, “Katar und der Arabische Frühling: Unterstützung für Islamisten und antisyrische Neuausrichtunag,” Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, February 2012, 5, www.swp-berlin.org/fileadmin/contents/products/aktuell/2012A07_sbg.pdf. 49 Ulrichsen, Qatar, 125. 50 Ulrichsen, Qatar, 125–126. 51 See Madawi al-Rasheed, “Sectarianism as Counter-Revolution: Saudi Responses to the Arab Spring,” Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 11, no. 3 (2011): 513–526; Marc Owen Jones, Political Repression in Bahrain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 98. 52 David Pollock, “Aljazeera: One Organization, Two Messages,” The Washington Institute, 28 April 2011, www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/ aljazeera-one-organization-two-messages. 53 Yusuf al-Qaradawi, “al-Shaykh al-Qaraḍāwī wa-Muẓāharāt al-Baḥrayn,” Youtube.com, 19 March 2011, www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tGJvhR0hYg. 54 Sagi Polka, “Taqrib al-Madhahib: Qaradawi’s Declaration of Principles Regarding Sunni-Shi‛i Ecumenism,” Middle Eastern Studies 49, no. 3 (2013): 414–429. 55 Muhammad ʿAli al-Taskhiri, “Risālat Āyat Allāh al-Taskhirī ilā al-ʿAllāma al-Qaraḍāwī,” Rohama.org, 5 April 2011, http://web.archive.org/web/ 20131012110809/www.rohama.org/ar/pages/?cid=5217. 56 “al-Qaraḍāwī Yadaʿū Abnāʾ al-Baḥrayn ilā Muwājahat al-Mashrūʿ al-Ṭāʾifī,” Qaradawi.net, 24 May 2012, www.al-qaradawi.net/node/1154. 57 Grewal, Islam, 348. 58 Harith al-Dari was a leading figure among the Sunni Iraqi ʿulamāʾ, whom Qaradawi praised as “the spiritual father of the Iraqi resistance” to the US Occupation. Yusuf al-Qaradawi, “Ḥārith al-Ḍārī. al-Ab al-Rūḥī li-l-Muqāwama al-Iʿrāqiyya,” Qaradawi.net, 13 March 2015, www.al-qaradawi.net/node/2564. 59 Cherribi, Fridays, 69.

3

War in Syria, coup in Egypt, crisis in the Gulf

“Did we not all participate in the Revolution together? Have not all of us been victims of a tyrannical, oppressive regime that stole our wealth, violated our rights, and threw people in jail? Now as God has relieved us of that [regime], why should not we become united again?” Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Cairo, 30 June 2013

The Syrian civil war Qaradawi, al-Jazeera, and Qatar were widely criticized in the international media for their respective positions on Bahrain. However, it was in relation to the conflict in Syria that Qaradawi’s image would be severely damaged and threaten Qatar’s state-brand. On 6 March 2011, a group of boys were detained in the town of Daraa for anti-government graffiti. Over the following weeks, protests had grown to the extent that ʿulamāʾ close to the Asad regime such as the Grand Mufti Ahmad Hasun (b.1949) and Muhammad al-Buti (d.2013) issued statements in support of the government to defuse the tension. On 25 March 2011, Qaradawi dedicated his Friday sermon to supporting the Syrian protesters and strongly criticized Hasun and Buti. Yet, he did not perceive any parallels between their support for the Asad regime and his own backing of the Al Khalifa family in Bahrain.1 The seeming contradiction between Qaradawi’s backing for the ruling family in Bahrain out of fear of bloodshed and his full-throated backing of the protesters in Syria and condemnation of Syrian ʿulamāʾ who counseled caution and supported Asad did not go unnoticed. Over the course of March and April, both Hasun and Buti responded to Qaradawi’s criticisms. Hasun suggested that Qaradawi’s rhetoric “called people to [the spilling of blood]” and that Qaradawi wanted “the Syrian people to be torn apart with sectarianism.” Likewise, Buti contrasted his own method of advocating for reform through wise advice (naṣīḥa) with Qaradawi’s seemingly cavalier encouragement of further protests.2

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As Hezbollah’s Lebanese TV station al-Manār began to run negative stories about him, Qaradawi’s office (maktabat al-qaraḍāwī) adopted a strategy of writing or re-publishing sympathetic narratives about him on his personal website Qaradawi.net. One such article published on 10 April 2011 by the journalist Fadi Shamiyya acknowledges that Qaradawi’s description of the uprising in Bahrain as “sectarian (madhhabī), violent and treasonous” and his support for the Syrian protests had caused “great resentment among the Shiʿa of Bahrain in particular, and in the Gulf more broadly, to say nothing of the tension in his relationship with Hezbollah and Iran.” In the article, Shamiyya did not offer a justification for the contrast between Qaradawi’s stances, but rather appealed for sympathy by highlighting the threats to Qaradawi’s life and emphasizing the respect Syrians had for him.3 On 7 February 2012, Qaradawi and his IUMS colleagues issued a fatwa that made explicit their support for the armed uprising in Syria. The fatwa urged soldiers in the Syrian army to disobey orders and desert. It also called for Muslims worldwide to create committees to “support the revolutionaries in Syria with all that they might need, both matérially and morally.”4 The IUMS fatwa aligned with Qatar’s policy of sending arms to the Syrian rebels, part of Prime Minister Hamad b. Jassim Al Thani’s (b.1959) new interventionist policy of finding “Arab solutions to Arab problems.”5 As the violence in Syria increased, Hamad Al Thani played a leading role in diplomatic efforts to negotiate a settlement. However, stories abounded that Qatar was also sending weaponry to Syrian Sunni armed groups, and the country’s interventions in Libya and Bahrain had damaged its image as a credible and independent mediator.6 As Michael Stephens remarked, “Qatar thinks it’s Libya all over again. But at this point, they cannot just insert themselves into the diplomatic process and appear free of an agenda.”7 In 2013, the Syrian conflict would continue to discredit the Qatari state-brand. Qaradawi’s own statements played a large role in discrediting Qatar in 2013. On Friday 31 May, Qaradawi dedicated another sermon to Syria. The sermon, broadcast live, addressed the battle being fought over the town of Qusayr. This battle was the moment that Hezbollah definitively entered the conflict on the side of the Asad regime, a move that changed the course of the conflict. Qaradawi spoke of the battle in a tone that mixed anger and horror: You know these men from Lebanon? They’re called the Party of God! The Party of God! They’re the party of tyranny! The party of Satan! . . . They’re killing the people of Qusayr! They’re killing the men, the old men, the women, the children! . . . Tens of thousands of these men have come from Iran! From Iraq! From Lebanon! From such a multitude of countries, from all the countries of the Shiʿa! They’re coming from all

War in Syria, coup in Egypt, etc. 57 over the place to fight the Sunnis, and all those who stand with them, the Christians, the Kurds.8 As Qaradawi continued his sermon, he turned his attention to the Syrian ʿAlawi community. Historically and also pejoratively known as Nusayris, Qaradawi paraphrased a fatwa from Ibn Taymiyya: I’m not talking about all the Nusayris, there are some among the Nusayris who are standing up alongside the people, but the majority of the Nusayris, this group whom Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyya said were “more unbelieving than Jews or Christians” (akfar min al-yahūd wa-lnaṣāra), we have seen them start to kill the people. He then called upon all able-bodied men to travel to Syria to support the rebels, “Everyone who is able, who knows how to fight, who knows how to use weapons . . . everyone who is able, must go to Syria to aid their brothers.”9 The sermon prompted a global outcry and was particularly damaging to Qatar. Since 2012, Qatar had been accused of fomenting sectarianism in Syria, and Qaradawi’s sermon seemed to confirm those assumptions. Media commentary on Qaradawi’s sermon spread worldwide. The reportage highlighted his condemnation of Hezbollah as “the party of Satan” and described his call on able-bodied men to fight in Syria as a declaration of a sectarian Jihad.10 These reports were extremely damaging to the Qatari brand. Back in 2003, journalists such as Anthony Shadid had once praised Qaradawi “as one of the most celebrated figures in the Arab World,” with headlines like “Maverick Cleric is a Hit on Arab TV; al-Jazeera Star Mixes Tough Talk with Calls for Tolerance.”11 In 2013, headlines like “Is Qatar Guilty of Sectarianism in Syria?” and op-ed pieces saying, “It is time that Qatar began to take some responsibility for things Qaradawi has said, and is saying with regards to Syria” became the norm.12 The global outcries over Qaradawi’s Syria sermon embarrassed the Al Thanis. Nevertheless, their interests remained aligned. However, Qaradawi and the Al Thanis’ interests diverged over Egypt and the fate of the Mursi government.

The Egyptian Coup By 2013, a general dissatisfaction with President Mursi’s government and perception that the MB was monopolizing power escalated into frequent street protests.13 Qaradawi dismissed the protesters as thugs (baltagiyya) hired by the former regime, echoing the language of MB spokesman Mahmud Ghuzlan, who described the protests as “an evil force sabotaging

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the Revolution.”14 On 1 May 2013, the tamarrud (rebel) protest movement launched its official petition calling for Mursi’s resignation and fresh elections, accusing the MB of “hijacking” the Revolution.15 Tamarrud called for protests to demand Mursi’s resignation, which they did on 30 June. Qaradawi made an appeal through al-Jazeera to the demonstrators in Tahrir Square. He called for national unity and patience, voicing his despair at the course the Revolution had taken since 2011: Did we not all participate in the Revolution together? Have not all of us been victims of a tyrannical, oppressive regime that stole our wealth, violated our rights, and threw people in jail? Now as God has relieved us of that [regime], why should not we become united again? . . . We have an elected President with whom we disagree in some matters. Well, all issues can be solved. The President is not infallible. . . . If Muhammad Mursi makes mistakes, then it is our right to correct him, to sit with him and question him. . . . This is Islam. There is no one above questioning.16 On 30 June, huge crowds occupied Tahrir Square. On 3 July, the army ousted Mursi. Counter-protests sprung up around Cairo, which the army violently repressed over the course of July and August, killing over 1,000 people. The most notorious massacres occurred at the square by the Rabaa al-ʿAdawiyya mosque, which was cleared with extraordinary violence on 14 August.17 Mursi would remain imprisoned until his death on 17 June 2019, reportedly after being held in poor conditions and denied medical care. The 3 July Coup represented the end of the Arab Spring. It also marked the end of Qaradawi and Qatar’s project for the region. The tamarrud protest movement was to an extent manufactured.18 Tamarrud’s message was amplified by a compliant media, its leadership drew on a bank account administered by the Egyptian Ministry of Defense and replenished by the UAE government, and Egyptian police refused to protect the offices of the MB Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) from organized attacks.19 However, the tamarrud protests also had substantial support from Egypt’s liberal elite and the working classes. Indeed, the ransacking of FJP offices often revealed documentation of nepotism and corruption.20 To be sure, the failure of the Egyptian Revolution can be attributed to multiple factors. Academics have noted that in Egypt the democracy that emerged under the MB government was majoritarian and illiberal.21 Nevertheless, it was a government that won free and fair elections. For Qaradawi’s part, prior to 2011 his view of democracy as empowerment of the people was indeed imprecise but sincerely democratic, nonetheless. His first fatwa issued in response to the Coup evidences this stance. In the fatwa,

War in Syria, coup in Egypt, etc. 59 Qaradawi emphasized that Mursi had won a democratic election and consequently should have been allowed to finish his term. He then said that Mursi’s victory in the 2012 elections represented a contract (ʿaqd) with the Egyptian people. Under the terms of this contract, the Egyptian people had committed to obey Mursi “in times of both hardship and ease, whether they liked or disliked him.”22 For Qaradawi, this contract represented an authoritative consensus (ijmāʿ) on behalf of the people to be obedient. Truly the Islamic law that is desired by the Egyptian people as an authoritative reference in a civil state (al-dawla al-madaniyya), not a religious theocratic state, makes it a duty for all those who believe in it and refer to it to be obedient to the legitimately elected President, implement his commands, and respond positively to his directives in all matters of public life. This is on the basis of two conditions. First: That the people not be commanded to do something that is disobedient (maʿṣiya) to God, this is indisputable for Muslims. . . . Second: That they not be ordered to do something that would put them outside their religion and into outright blasphemy.23 This quote demonstrates Abou El Fadl’s earlier critique that Qaradawi had only a “casual knowledge of the institutions and theories of democracy,” which he understood “basically as an institution that gives effect to the will of the majority.”24 In Egypt, Qaradawi assumed that the majority, whom he called “the people,” desired an Islamic civil state. As he said in On the Jurisprudence of the State in Islam, while the people could elect their rulers, once elected they should be obedient to that ruler cum president until the end of the term. When protests against Mursi first emerged, Qaradawi’s response was to dismiss them as thugs hired by the old regime. Neil Ketchley has shown that the protests against Mursi did enjoy substantial backing from the Egyptian army and the UAE government. Yet, this response evidences a lack of appreciation for the democratic norm of non-violent protest. Qaradawi’s interpretation of the anti-Mursi protests also calls attention to how his view of the reality (wāqiʿ) was constructed socially. Individuals’ commonsensical knowledge of everyday reality is constructed and maintained through their everyday social interaction.25 As noted previously, Qaradawi gained his understanding of events through watching al-Jazeera and also through his daily interactions with this staff and peers. During my visits to Qaradawi’s home, I observed that each day after the midday prayer, he and his staff would have a regular meeting (jalsa). The topics under discussion would vary, but they would generally always include a discussion of the political issues of the day. I observed that Qaradawi’s staff was exclusively made

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up of young men from Cairene neighborhoods that would imply an affiliation with the MB. Consequently, it is not surprising that Qaradawi and his staff’s shared experience of brutalization at the hands of regime thugs back in Egypt led them to view opposition to Mursi as little more than a longrunning plot to oust him. In any case, they were at least partially correct. From Mursi’s election in 2012 until the 3 July 2013 Coup, Qatar had provided massive financial support to Egypt. Following the Coup, the UAE and Saudi Arabia stepped in to provide the new Egyptian government with even greater largesse.26 The summer of 2013 was a time of heightened tension, not only between Qatar and its neighbors, but between the Al Thanis and Qaradawi, due in large part to the outcry over his sermon at the end of May. On 25 June, as the discontent against Mursi’s government intensified and the Syrian civil war continued its downward spiral, the Qatari project for the region appeared to unravel. In the face of increasing Qatari isolation by its neighbors, Amir Hamad b. Khalifa abdicated in favor of his fourth son, Tamim b. Hamad. This move allowed the Al Thanis to shift in foreign policy, as Hamad b. Khalifa’s influential Prime Minister Hamad b. Jassim resigned as well. Hamad b. Khalifa’s abdication speech was brief. In it, he pointedly stated, “We believe that the Arab World is one human body, one coherent structure, that draws its strength from all its constituent parts.” His son Tamim b. Hamad’s inaugural speech also emphasized Qatar’s “rejection of divisions in Arab societies on sectarian lines.” Both speeches make clear that the perception that the Al Thanis were fueling sectarian strife in Syria had been particularly damaging.27 Their comments also hint at a tension with Qaradawi for his role in inflaming the Syrian conflict.28 After Tamim b. Hamad’s speech on 25 June, rumors began to circulate in the media that Qaradawi had been expelled from the country and his citizenship withdrawn.29 Qaradawi, for his part, disappeared from the airwaves for several days. He reappeared in Cairo on 29 June and then returned to Doha a few days later as it appeared that rumors of his expulsion had just been rumors after all. Nevertheless, his office felt compelled to respond. The clarification published on his personal website was that he had left Doha and returned to the turmoil of Cairo for his “summer vacation.”30 Though Qaradawi did travel to Cairo regularly to escape the hot Doha summer, June 2013 would seem an unusual time for such a trip. It could have been the case that the Qatari government circulated the rumors as a subtle threat that could be plausibly denied later, as they were after Qaradawi returned to Doha. In this instance, then, the Al Thanis made use of a disciplinary measure that is unique in the Gulf monarchies with émigré ʿulamāʾ establishments: threats of deportation. This was the first time the Al Thanis applied subtle pressure on Qaradawi, a process that continued as the summer progressed.

War in Syria, coup in Egypt, etc. 61 On 27 July 2013, Qaradawi appeared on television again as the Egyptian security force’s repression of anti-Coup demonstrations increased in intensity. He called upon Muslims to come to Cairo “so that they may be witnesses” (li-yakūnū shuhadāʾ). Another media furor erupted, this time around the word shuhadāʾ. Though the word shuhadāʾ occurs in the Qurʾan with the meaning of “witnesses,” in modern Arabic it more commonly means “martyrs.” Consequently, Qaradawi was either calling upon Muslims to come to Egypt to bear witness to the violence, or he was calling upon Muslims to come to Egypt for martyrdom.31 In any case, Egyptian media reported that Qaradawi had issued a fatwa declaring a Jihad in Egypt against the army, and the Azhar issued a “counter-fatwa” of their own.32 Qaradawi’s staff were forced to issue a clarification that he had done nothing of the sort.33 Nevertheless, Qaradawi’s image was damaged. The Egyptian media published satirical cartoons mocking him as the inspiration behind attacks on the army in the north Sinai region.34 More significantly for his Al Thani sponsors, Qaradawi was increasingly satirized as a Qatari stooge. One cartoonist published a vivid picture in the Egyptian daily al-Shuruq showing him as a jack-in-the-box toy with a caption depicting a man saying, “I have a brand-new toy that I got just yesterday. It operates on Qatari Riyals. You put a Riyal in here and a fatwa against the Egyptian army comes out the other side!”35 Later, a doctored video was circulated using comments from Qaradawi’s support for Palestinian “martyrdom operations” (ʿamalīyāt istishādiyya) to suggest he supported a similar campaign in Egypt, again forcing his office to clarify his views.36 In Egypt, the most vocal ʿālim to support the Coup was Jumʿa, who had held the post of Grand Mufti of Egypt until February 2013.37 In July and August he appeared frequently on Egyptian television to voice ex post facto arguments in support of the Coup. As he did so, a highly acrimonious exchange broke out between Jumʿa and Qaradawi. In an interview on Sharia and Life on 25 August 2013, Qaradawi railed against Jumʿa and the coupists. He used the term “the people” (al-shaʿb) as an endonym to refer Mursi’s supporters and to “the rebels” (al-khawārij) as an exonym to refer to supporters of the Coup. Here, Qaradawi was repeating the bifurcated language Jumʿa had originally used to describe the anti-Coup protesters. Nevertheless, Qaradawi’s use of the term khawārij,38 alongside nebulous references to hadith such as “he who comes to you when you are united and wants to divide your community, kill him” created the impression that he was a firebrand promoting violence in Egypt. However, Qaradawi emphasized the non-violent nature of the antiCoup resistance and appealed to the Egyptian Constitution and integrity of the election to justify his continued support for Mursi,39 in contrast to Jumʿa, who encouraged the army to kill the protesters.40 By August 2013 Qaradawi’s public railing against the Coup had become intolerable for the Al Thanis. This was because it coincided with a US-led

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initiative to repair relations between Qatar and the UAE, who supported the new regime in Egypt.41 Amid efforts to improve relations between the Qatar and the UAE, Sharia and Life was abruptly cancelled, and Qaradawi was silenced. In an acknowledgement of the new status quo in the region, the new Amir Tamim b. Hamad sent a belated message of congratulations to the army-appointed interim President in Egypt Adli Mansour. He made no mention of the Coup and praised the Egyptian military for “defending Egypt and its national interests.”42 Sharia and Life never returned to the airwaves. In the past, Amir Hamad b. Khalifa had always said he rebuffed Arab rulers whenever they complained to him about Qaradawi or al-Jazeera.43 However, secret cables published by WikiLeaks suggest that the prospect of positive or negative by al-Jazeera was commonly used as a bargaining chip in negotiations with other countries.44 Here, the fact that the Al Thanis moved so swiftly to cancel al-Jazeera’s most popular program and most popular ʿālim demonstrates that their sponsorship of Qaradawi was contingent upon Qatar’s foreign policy goals. This was not the first time that a well-established and ostensibly independent Qatari-sponsored project linked to Qaradawi had been shut down when it became problematic. By early 2010 IslamOnline.net, co-founded in 1997 by Qaradawi’s aforementioned student Hajari, had grown to become one of the most popular Arabic language websites on the Internet. The popular fatwa website, with a Cairo-based staff numbering in the hundreds, was financially supported by Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Qaradawi was a prominent member on the board and lent his prestige to the project. However, in early 2010 a crisis emerged as the website’s Qatari backers attempted to exert editorial control over the website’s content. Following reports of a mass walkout from IslamOnline’s staff and Hajari’s resignation, the website was dismantled and refashioned entirely. Qaradawi initially attempted to intervene behind the scenes. When he commented publicly, he too was sacked from the board.45 Following his removal from Sharia and Life, Qaradawi was silent for several months before returning to public life in late 2013. The US attempt to repair relations between Qatar and the UAE soon failed, leading to the first phase of the current Gulf Crisis.

Qaradawi, the Al Thanis, and the Gulf Crisis The contest between Qatar and the UAE over the course of the Egyptian Revolution was at the heart of the dramatic fallout between Qatar and the GCC. In the aftermath of the Coup, it initially appeared that the Al Thanis had reconciled themselves to the new status quo, evidenced by Hamad b. Khalifa’s abdication and Qaradawi’s removal from al-Jazeera. However, Qatar soon made clear that it had not abandoned its policy of exerting

War in Syria, coup in Egypt, etc. 63 independence from its neighbors. Consequently, relations between Qatar and the UAE in particular have followed a pattern of rising tensions interspersed with brief periods of détente. These tensions culminated in a breakdown of relations known as the Gulf Crisis, as Qatar was presented with a list of demands that would have effectively rendered the country a client state. Qatar refused, and a group of states known as the Quartet (the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Egypt) led a diplomatic and economic embargo that continues to this day. In response, Qatar abandoned relations with the Quartet and cultivated ties with a new partner: Turkey. During this period, the state of relations between Qaradawi and the Al Thanis reflected the state of relations between Qatar and the UAE. During times of tension between Qatar and the UAE, Qaradawi was given a platform to speak, either in the media or through his televised sermons. When given that opportunity, Qaradawi would freely express his anger at the states leading the counter-revolutionary wave, notably the UAE. During the brief periods of détente between Qatar and the UAE, Qaradawi would once again go silent, only to reappear later. As Qatar abandoned the Quartet and deepened security and economic and relations with Turkey, Qaradawi’s relationship with Erdogan once again showed him to be an important asset. Qaradawi had returned to the public eye in December 2013 with an interview published in the Qatari daily al-Waṭan. During a lengthy interview, it became clear that Qaradawi recognized that his image as an independent ʿālim had been damaged. He emphasized, “My opinions are completely separate from Qatari politics, I am just a part-time university professor, I have never held a political state-post in all my life.”46 Indeed, Qaradawi has never held a state-post, nor has Qatar ever created an official position such as a Grand Muftiship that he might have occupied. This marks the country out as exceptional in contrast to other states in the Arab World that have generally all created such posts to bring the ʿulamāʾ into the state bureaucracy. However, just as al-Jazeera differentiated itself very effectively from rival state-media by branding itself as free of state influence, so too did Qaradawi distinguish himself from rival state-ʿulamāʾ. Nevertheless, in both cases the Al Thanis maintained an informal influence that they rarely made explicit. This arrangement suited the Al Thanis well. They could draw upon al-Jazeera and Qaradawi’s prestige when it suited them, and distance themselves when it did not. When necessary, the Al Thanis exerted direct control. In early 2014, relations between Qatar and the UAE had begun to thaw following the First Riyadh Agreement. However, in his Friday sermon commemorating the fourth anniversary of the Egyptian Revolution, while Qaradawi praised Qatar for its support of the Arab Spring, he condemned the UAE for working “against every Islamic government.”47 As the Twitter hashtag “Qaradawi torments the UAE”48 began to trend online, Qatar’s

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Ambassador to the UAE was summoned to the Foreign Ministry in Abu Dhabi for an official complaint.49 In response, the Qatari Foreign Minister issued a formal clarification that Qaradawi was not a representative of the Qatari state, which placed a high value on its strategic relations with the UAE. Following this incident, Qaradawi’s sermons ceased for a period of 3 weeks. On his return to the pulpit, he explained he had been suffering from ill health due to his advancing years and the weather, and he called whoever suggested that the Al Thanis had silenced him liars and hypocrites.50 Reports to that effect continued to circulate in the media nevertheless.51 In March 2014, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain withdrew their ambassadors from Qatar. They argued that Qatar was failing to abide by the terms of the First Riyadh Agreement that stated each signatory “agreed to a policy of non-interference in the internal affairs of any other member state.” The First Riyadh Agreement specified “supporting hostile media” as an example of such interference, a clear reference to al-Jazeera. Tensions eventually cooled, another Riyadh Agreement was signed in November 2014, and the withdrawn ambassadors returned to Doha.52 The new regime in Egypt remained unsatisfied, however, and on 6 December 2014 appealed to Interpol for Qaradawi’s arrest. The UAE also pressed Qatar to expel him.53 On 16 May 2015 an Egyptian court sentenced Qaradawi to death in absentia.54

Pursuing closer relations with Turkey However, Qaradawi was not easily cast aside. The relationship between Qaradawi and the Al Thanis goes back decades, and he also enjoys substantial support among Qatari society at large. Had Qatar expelled or definitively silenced Qaradawi, such a move would have been an embarrassing admission of defeat. It would only have served to confirm that Qaradawi was not as independent as both he and the Al Thanis had claimed. Moreover, Qaradawi was an asset as Qatar pursued closer relations with Turkey. The then Turkish Prime Minister (and later President) Recep Tayyib Erdogan had been the most vocal foreign leader to condemn the 3 July Coup.55 He also publicly came to Qaradawi’s defense when Egypt issued a warrant for his arrest in 2014,56 and IUMS issued a public statement of thanks in response.57 Qatari efforts to bolster its security through relations with Turkey soon bore fruit, and in 2 December 2015 Tamim b. Hamad and Erdogan jointly announced the opening of a Turkish military base in Qatar.58 As ties between Qatar and Turkey deepened, Qaradawi and IUMS also played their part in fostering closer relations between the two countries. On 23 April 2016, a multi-day festival titled “Thank You Turkey!” was held in Istanbul. The festival was billed in the Turkish press as having been organized by Arab communities within Turkey. Aside from various cultural

War in Syria, coup in Egypt, etc. 65 events, the festival centered around the delivering of “a message of thanks from the suffering peoples of the Arab Spring to the people and government of Turkey for their support.” The most high-profile speaker at the event was Qaradawi, who addressed Erdogan using the title “Sultan” and praised him for “defending the umma in the name of Islam” and “standing up to tyrants” by supporting rebels in Syria.59 Erdogan appreciated the honorific, perhaps in light of his pursuit of a “neo-Ottoman” foreign policy,60 and in return he gifted Qaradawi a copy of his book, A Vision of Global Peace.61 After the failed coup attempt against Erdogan on 15 July 2016, in which an estimated 300 people were killed, Qaradawi was vocal in his support. He told Erdogan, “God is with you, the Arabs are with you, the Muslims are with you, all the free people in the world are with you, and we the ʿulamāʾ of the Islamic umma in the East and the West are with you.”62 As Qatar and Turkey grew closer, tensions between Qatar and its Gulf neighbors came to a head in June 2017. The spark for the Gulf Crisis were comments attributed to Tamim b. Hamad in which he reportedly emphasized the close relations between Qatar and the MB and between Qatar and Iran. Though the Amir denied making the comments, the Quartet responded by arguing that Tamim b. Hamad’s words were evidence that Qatar had never abided by the Riyadh Agreements of 2013 and 2014. As a result, the Quartet, soon followed by the Maldives, Mauritania, Senegal, Djibouti, the Comoros Islands, Jordan, and the Saudi/UAE backed-governments in Libya and Yemen severed diplomatic relations with Qatar. As these states banned Qatari planes from their airspace, Saudi Arabia closed Qatar’s only land border. These concrete methods of isolation were accompanied by “a media onslaught” that argued Qatar was a key supporter of terrorism in the region.63 The Quartet’s accusation collapsed any distinction between the MB and the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), which at that time still controlled large portions of Syria and Iraq. Once again, Qaradawi’s place in Qatar and his close relationship with the Al Thanis came to symbolize the feud.64 On 11 July 2017, Kuwait, acting on behalf of the Quartet, presented a list of 13 demands to Qatar. This list of demands included: “2) Sever all ties to terrorist organizations, specifically the MB, ISIS, al-Qaeda, and Hezbollah; 3) Shut down al-Jazeera and its affiliates; . . . [and] 5) Immediately terminate the Turkish military presence currently in Qatar.” Notably, demand “7) Hand over terrorist figures and wanted individuals from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, and Bahrain to their countries of origin” and demand “8) Stop granting citizenship to wanted nationals from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, and Bahrain. Revoke Qatari citizenship for existing nationals where such citizenship violates those countries’ laws” clearly referred to Qaradawi.65 Taken as a whole, acceding to these demands would have effectively rendered Qatar a client state, and

66

Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Al Thanis, etc.

they were soon rebuffed. Leading Turkish ʿulamāʾ also quickly published a statement lending their support to Qaradawi.66 In November 2018, IUMS held its annual conference in Istanbul instead of Doha.67 It was here that Qaradawi formally announced he was stepping down as the head of IUMS. Raysuni was elected to be his successor.68

The making of a global mufti Over the course of the first half of the 20th century, Ibn Maniʿ’s students formed the nucleus of a Wahhabi establishment in Qatar. The opening of the Azhar Mission and Qaradawi’s arrival in 1961 had important ramifications for the Qatari ʿulamāʾ, which was eventually supplanted by Qaradawi and his IUMS peers. As Qaradawi developed close links with the Al Thanis, he was given a prime position on al-Jazeera. As a result, the concepts he had derived from his understanding of wasaṭiyya diffused into Qatari society as a whole. As Stephens put it in Chapter 1, supporting Qaradawi came to be understood as simply “being religious.” For his part, Qaradawi’s wasaṭiyya project had developed over decades and, like any body of thought, had its share of contradictions, nebulous concepts, and inaccurate assumptions. His project was indebted to Rida and the broader de-traditionalization of Islam in important ways. He acknowledged the need to engage the social reality of the time (wāqiʿ) by renovating key Islamic concepts. An important tension in his thought was his imagining the Muslim believer as capable of self-governance, while emphasizing the continued need for a suitable Islamic authority. Since 1995, the Al Thanis have pursued a policy of preserving independence from their larger neighbors, which has focused on ensuring that the US remains invested in Qatari security. Qaradawi was an important asset in this effort. He was taken seriously by ʿulamāʾ elites worldwide, and through al-Jazeera he became a household name in the Arab World. Consequently, Qaradawi was integral to the Islamic element of Qatar’s state-brand. However, because he never held an official position in the Qatari bureaucracy, the Al Thanis could plausibly attenuate their relationship when it suited them. Eventually, that became impossible, and when the Quartet demanded Qaradawi’s expulsion in 2017, the Al Thanis did not comply. Qaradawi’s most important set of ideas was that among the nation-states of the Arab World there was a Muslim counterpublic, whom he referred to as “the people” or the umma, who desired democratically elected Islamic governments. He shared these ideas with the Al Thanis, and al-Jazeera diffused them throughout Qatar and the Arab World. For a brief period, book-ended by the 25 January 2011 Egyptian Revolution and the 3 July 2013 Coup, Qaradawi and the Al Thanis put this vision into practice by supporting

War in Syria, coup in Egypt, etc. 67 popular uprisings around the region. As the Arab Spring unfolded, Qaradawi and the Al Thani’s overlapping projects appeared unstoppable. Qaradawi spoke his mind, and the Al Thanis were happy to give him the platform from which to do so, so long as his interests cohered with their own. Initially this was the case, even in Bahrain, as both Qaradawi and the Al Thanis showed that their commitments to democracy were not absolute. Qaradawi and the Al Thani’s relationship came under strain as the crisis in Syria deepened into civil war and Mursi was ousted in Egypt. Qaradawi’s language damaged Qatar’s state-brand, which was key to the country’s security. As a result, the Al Thanis adopted a pattern of disciplining their recalcitrant ʿālim, a pattern that continued into the Gulf Crisis. Raysuni replaced Qaradawi as head of IUMS in 2018, but the organization no longer had the stature it once did. Moreover, Raysuni does not appear to be pursuing the kind of global stature that Qaradawi had. In any case, IUMS is now closely associated with the Qatari state, thereby weakening its influence in a region where associations with a state arouse deep suspicion. Indeed, if we were to look for an ʿālim cultivating a global stature comparable to Qaradawi, we would not find them in Qatar. Instead, we should look to Qatar’s neighbor, the UAE. In Abu Dhabi, Abdullah Bin Bayyah, Qaradawi’s former deputy at IUMS, has been working with the Al Nahyans to build a brand to eclipse their Qatari rival.

Notes 1 Jawad Qureshi, “The Discourses of the Damascene Sunni Ulama during the 2011 Revolution,” in State and Islam in Baathist Syria: Confrontation or CoOptation?, ed. Line Khatib, Raphael Lefevre, and Jawad Qureshi (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2012), 59–91 (13). 2 Qureshi, “Discourses,” 14, 19. 3 “al-Āthār al-Siyāsiyya al-Silbiyya li-l-Ḥamalāt ʿalā al-Qaraḍāwī,” Qaradawi. net, 10 April 2011, www.al-qaradawi.net/node/3206. 4 “Aftā Akthar Māʾitat ʿĀlim wa-Mufakkir min Mukhtalif al-Tayyarāt al-Islāmiyya wa-l-Siyāsiyya fī Bayyān bi-Shaʾan Sūriyya,” Iumsonline.com, 7 February 2012, www.iumsonline.net/ar/print.asp?contentID=3766. 5 Ulrichsen, Qatar, 122. 6 Ulrichsen, Qatar, 131–140. 7 Elizabeth Dickinson, “Qatar’s Role as Peace Broker at Risk in Syria,” The National, 24 September 2012, www.thenational.ae/world/mena/qatar-s-role-aspeace-broker-at-risk-in-syria-1.443294. Quoted in Ulrichsen, Qatar, 139. 8 Yusuf al-Qaradawi, “Khuṭbat al-Jumʿa li-l-Duktūr al-Qaraḍāwī 31–5–2013,” Youtube.com, 31 May 2013, www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLHXSWCar78. 9 Qaradawi, “Khuṭbat al-Jumʿa li-l-Duktūr al-Qaraḍāwī.” 10 See for example, “al-Qaradāwī: al-Nuṣayriyyūn Akfar min al-Yahūd,” CNNArabic, 2 June 2013, http://archive.arabic.cnn.com/2013/middle_east/5/31/qardawi. syria-speech/; Richard Spencer, “Muslim Brotherhood Cleric Calls for Sunni

68

11

12 13

14

15 16 17 18 19 20

21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Al Thanis, etc. Jihad in Syria,” The Telegraph, 2 June 2013, www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/10094590/Muslim-Brotherhood-cleric-calls-for-Sunnijihad-in-Syria.html. Anthony Shadid, “Maverick Cleric Is a Hit on Arab TV; Al-Jazeera Star Mixes Tough Talk with Calls for Tolerance,” Washington Post, 14 February 2003, http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost/doc/409397967.html?FMT=ABS &FMTS=ABS:FT&date=Feb+14%2C+2003&author=Shadid%2C+Anthony& desc=Maverick+Cleric+Is+a+Hit+on+Arab+TV%3B+Al-Jazeera+Star+Mixes +Tough+Talk+With+Calls+for+Tolerance. Michael Stephens, “Is Qatar Guilty of Sectarianism in Syria?,” Open Democracy, 10 June 2013, www.opendemocracy.net/en/is-qatar-guilty-of-sectarianismin-syria/. Schielke, Egypt, 191–215; Stephane Lacroix, “Religious Sectarianism and Political Pragmatism: The Paradox of Egypt’s al-Nour Salafis,” in Beyond Sunni and Shia: The Roots of Sectarianism in a Changing Middle East, ed. Frederic Wehrey (London: Hurst, 2017), 265–282; Trager, Fall, 205–226. “Ghuzlān: Quwā al-Sharr al-Mutarabbaṣa bi-Miṣr Tastakhdim al-Iʿlām li-Ijhāḍ al-Thawra,” al-Misri al-Yawm, 10 April 2013, www.almasryalyoum.com/ node/1635786; “al-Qaraḍāwī: Man Yuḥāṣirūn Miqār al-Ikhwān Balṭagiyya Yataqāḍūn al-Milābiyyin li-l-Fawḍā,” al-Misri al-Yawm, 22 March 2013, www. almasryalyoum.com/node/1587151. Ketchley, Contentious, 103. Yusuf al-Qaradawi, “Kalimat al-Shaykh al-Qaraḍāwī li-kull al-Miṣriyyīn . . . Muʾayyidīn wa-Muʿāriḍīn,” Youtube.com, 30 June 2013, www.youtube.com/ watch?feature=player_embedded&v=N8-EXYEWczM. Ketchley, Contentious, 142. Ketchley, Contentious, 103–129. Ketchley, Contentious, 113–117. Khaled Abou El Fadl, “Egypt’s Secularized Intelligentisa and the Guardians of Truth,” in Egypt and the Contradictions of Liberalism: Illiberal Intelligentsia and the Future of Egyptian, ed. Dalia Fahmy and Danish Faruqi (Oxford: Oneworld, 2017), 235–252; Schielke, Egypt, 186–189, 191–215. See for example Shadi Hamid, Temptations of Power: Islamists and Illiberal Democracy in a New Middle East (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 167–189. “al-Qaraḍāwī Yuftī bi-Wujūb Taʾyīd al-Raʾīs al-Maṣrī al-Muntakhab Muḥammad Mursī,” Qaradawi.net, 24 July 2013, www.qaradawi.net/new/ takareer/6738-2013-07-06-17-00-44. “Taʾyīd al-Raʾīs.” Abou El Fadl, “Reply,” 12. For the classic formulation of this concept see Thomas Luckmann and Peter L. Berger, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (New York: Anchor, 1966). Ulrichsen, Gulf Crisis, 51–53. Shibley Telhami, “Behind the Abdication of Qatar’s Emir,” Brookings, 26 June 2013, www.brookings.edu/opinions/behind-the-abdication-of-qatars-emir/. “Awwal Kalima li-l-Amīr Qaṭar al-Shaykh Tamīm bin Ḥamad Āl Thānī,” Youtube.com, 26 June 2013, www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMsrQpi7D9g. Withdrawing citizenship is a common disciplining practice in the Gulf. Fromherz, Qatar, 92–93; Jones, Repression, 101.

War in Syria, coup in Egypt, etc. 69 30 “al-Qaraḍāwī fī Ijāzatihi al-Ṣayfiyya wa-Yaʿūd al-Dawḥa Maṭlaʿ Sibtimbir,” Qaradawi.net, 30 June 2013, www.qaradawi.net/news/6734-2013-06-30-0524-14.html. 31 Yusuf al-Qaradawi, “al-Shaykh al-Qaraḍāwī: Adaʿū al-Muslimīn min Kull Makān li-Yakūnū Shuhadāʾ,” Youtube.com, 27 July 2013, www.youtube.com/ watch?v=46G0jhlV7pk. 32 “al-ʿUlamāʾ Yuraddidūn ʿalā Fatwā al-Qaraḍāwī li-Iʿlān al-Jihād fī Miṣr . . . Daʿwa Shayṭāniyya wa-Khurūj ʿalā al-Taʿālīm,” al-Ahram, 16 August 2013, www.ahram.org.eg/NewsQ/226811.aspx. 33 “Dufāʿan ʿan al-Ḥaqq . . . Lā ʿan al-Qaraḍāwī,” Qaradawi.net, 30 July 2013, www.qaradawi.net/new/takareer/6792-2013-07-30-14-33-24. 34 Warren, “ʿUlamāʾ,” 32. 35 Warren, “ʿUlamāʾ,” 29. 36 “Bayān Tawḍīḥī Ḥawl Raʾī al-ʿAllāma fī al-ʿAmalīyāt al-Istishhādiyya,” Qaradawi.net, 27 July 2015, www.al-qaradawi.net/node/433. 37 For more on the rhetoric of Azhari ʿulamāʾ during the 2013 crisis see Basma ʿAbd al-ʿAziz, Saṭwat al-Naṣṣ: Khiṭāb al-Azhar wa-Azmat al-Ḥukm (Cairo: Sefsafa, 2016). 38 For more on the history of this term see Jeffrey T. Kenney, Muslim Rebels: Kharijites and the Politics of Extremism in Egypt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). 39 Warren, “ʿUlamāʾ,” 27 40 David H. Warren, “Cleansing the Nation of the ‘Dogs of Hell’: ʿAli Jumʿa’s Nationalist Legal Reasoning in Support of the 2013 Egyptian Coup and Its Bloody Aftermath,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 49, no. 3 (2017): 457–477 (11–12). 41 Warren, “ʿUlamāʾ,” 30; Ulrichsen, Gulf Crisis, 52. 42 “Qatar’s Emir Congratulates Egypt’s New Interim Leader,” Reuters, 4 July 2013, www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/04/us-egypt-protests-qatar-idUSBRE9630C 420130704. 43 Polka, Spiritual, 113. 44 See further, “The Results of Embassy Doha’s Third Field Assessment,” WikiLeaks, 19 November 2009, https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/09DOHA677_a. html. 45 Abdel-Fadil, “Crisis,” 4–36. 46 “al-Qaraḍāwī: Qaṭar Taqif maʿ al-Ḥaqq wa-l-ʿAdl,” Qaradawi.net, 23 December 2013, www.qaradawi.net/component/content/article/7065.html; Yusuf al-Qaradawi, “Mundhu Mujīʾī ilā Qaṭar lam Aʾayyid Ḥākiman Ẓāliman,” Qaradawi.net, 24 December 2013, www.qaradawi.net/component/content/article/7064.html. 47 Yusuf al-Qaradawi, “Khuṭbat al-Jumʿa li-l-Qaraḍāwī ʿan Dhikrat Thawra 25 Yunāyir,” Youtube.com, 25 January 2014, https://youtube.com/watch?v= 7KtflQyT6cw. 48 “al-Qaraḍāwī Yusīʾ li-l-Imārāt,” CNNArabic, 24 January 2014, https://arabic. cnn.com/middleeast/2014/01/24/qardawi-uae-friday-speech. 49 “UAE Summons Qatar Envoy over Qaradawi Remarks,” al-Jazeera, 2 February 2014, www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/02/uae-summons-qatarenvoy-over-qaradawi-remarks-20142215393855165.html. 50 “al-Qaraḍāwī: Lā Aʿādī Aḥadan,” Qaradawi.net, 2 August 2015, www.al-qaradawi.net/node/421.

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51 “Sheikh Qaradawi to Resume Friday Sermons amid Gulf Rift,” al-ʿArabiyya, 2 April 2014, https://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2014/04/02/ Sheikh-Qaradawi-says-to-resume-Friday-sermons-amid-Gulf-rift.html. 52 Jim Sciutto and Jeremy Herb, “Exclusive: The Secret Documents That Help Explain the Qatar Crisis,” CNN, 11 July 2017, www.cnn.com/2017/07/10/politics/secret-documents-qatar-crisis-gulf-saudi/index.html. 53 Islam Khalid Hassan, “GCC’s 2014 Crisis: Causes, Issues and Solutions,” alJazeera Centre for Studies, 31 March 2015, https://studies.aljazeera.net/en/ dossiers/2015/03/201533172623652531.html. 54 “Influential Cleric Qaradawi Condemns Egypt Death Sentences,” Reuters, 17 May 2015, www.reuters.com/article/us-egypt-muslim-brotherhoodqatar/influential-cleric-qaradawi-condemns-egypt-death-sentences-idUSKBN0O206X20150517. 55 ʿAbd al-ʿAziz, Saṭwat al-Naṣṣ, 82–84. 56 “Erdogan Defends Brotherhood’s Qaradawi after Arrest Warrant,” al-Monitor, 12 December 2014, www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/12/qaradawiegypt-turkey-interpol-arrest-warrant-brotherhood.html. 57 “Qaradawi: Thanks to Turkey and to the President Erdogan,” IUMSonline, 23 April 2016, www.iumsonline.org/en/ContentDetails.aspx?ID=6176. 58 “Turkey to Set Up Qatar Military Base to Face ‘Common Enemies,’” Reuters, 16 December 2015, www.reuters.com/article/us-qatar-turkey-militaryidUSKBN0TZ17V20151216. 59 “Isṭanbūl Inṭilāq Mahrajān ‘Shukran Turkiyā’ bi-Ḥuḍūr al-Shaykh Yūsuf al-Qaraḍāwī,” Daily Sabah, 23 April 2016, www.dailysabah.com/arabic/ turkey/2016/04/23/arabs-launch-thanks-turkey-campaign. 60 See further M. Hakan Yavuz, Nostalgia for the Empire: The Politics of NeoOttomanism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 144–178. 61 “Raʾīs Urdūghān Yuhdī al-Qaraḍāwī Nuskha min Kitābihi,” Qaradawi.net, 4 May 2016, www.al-qaradawi.net/node/174. 62 “al-Qaraḍāwī bi-Risāla li-Urdūghān: Allāh wa-Shuʿūb al-ʿArab wa-l-Muslimīn wa-Jibrīl wa-Ṣāliḥ al-Muʾminīn maʿak,” CNNArabic, 17 July 2016, https:// arabic.cnn.com/middleeast/2016/07/17/qardawi-erdogan-coup-reaction. 63 Marc Owen Jones, “Propaganda, Fake News, and Fake Trends: The Weaponization of Twitter Bots in the Gulf Crisis,” International Journal of Communication 13 (2019): 1389–1415 (1–2). 64 Sudarsan Raghavan and Joby Warrick, “How a 91-Year-Old Imam Came to Symbolize the Feud between Qatar and Its Neighbors,” The Washington Post, 27 June 2017, www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/howa-91-year-old-imam-came-to-symbolize-feud-between-qatar-and-itsneighbors/2017/06/26/601d41b4–5157–11e7–91eb-9611861a988f_story.html. 65 For a list of the 13 demands see Ulrichsen, Gulf Crisis, 257–258. 66 Meryem Goktas, “Muslim Scholars from Turkey Support al-Qaradawi,” Anadolu Agency, 15 May 2017, www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/muslim-scholarsfrom-turkey-support-al-qaradawi/842476. 67 Suhaib Qilawa, “Isṭanbūl: Inṭilāq Jamaʿiyya ʿUmūmiyya li-Ittiḥād ʿUlamāʾ al-Muslimīn,” Anadolu Agency, 3 November 2018, www.aa.com.tr/ar/// ‫إسطنبول‬/‫تركيا‬-‫انطالق‬-‫جمعية‬-‫عمومية‬-‫لـاتحاد‬-‫علماء‬-1302125/ ‫المسلمين‬. 68 “al-Raysūnī Raʾīsan li-Ittiḥād al-ʿĀlamī li-ʿUlamāʾ al-Muslimīn,” al-Jazeera, 7 November 2018, www.aljazeera.net/news/international/2018/11/7/‫الريسوني‬‫رئيسا‬-‫لالتحاد‬-‫العالمي‬.

Part 2

Abdullah Bin Bayyah, the Al Nahyans, and Emirati foreign policy

4

Abdullah Bin Bayyah and the Al Nahyans

“It is said that, behind every act of terrorism, there is a fatwa.” Abdullah Bin Bayyah, Abu Dhabi, 17 September 2008

On arriving in Abu Dhabi in December 2019, it was impossible not to notice the signs and banners across the city proclaiming 2019 “The Year of Tolerance” (ʿām al-tasāmuḥ). The banners featured the Ruler of Abu Dhabi and President of the UAE,1 Shaykh Khalifa b. Zayed Al Nahyan (b.1948, r.2004–present), who had made the declaration.2 The marquee events bookending the year were the historic visit of Pope Francis in February3 and the annual interfaith conference hosted by the Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies (FPPMS) in December. FPPMS is a transnational grouping of mostly Neo-traditionalist ʿulamāʾ headed by Qaradawi’s former IUMS deputy, Abdullah Bin Bayyah. He founded FPPMS in 2014 to further his new project, the development of a Jurisprudence of Peace (fiqh alsilm). FPPMS conferences include prominent Christian and Jewish leaders as interfaith guests as well as academics, drawn primarily from the US. In 2019, the highlight of the conference was Bin Bayyah’s official unveiling of an interfaith declaration of values called the “Alliance of the Virtuous” (ḥilf al-fuḍūl). For Bin Bayyah, FPPMS, and the Al Nahyans, peace and tolerance were the watchwords for a new state-brand. This state-brand aimed to eclipse the rival vision promulgated by Qaradawi, IUMS, al-Jazeera, and the Al Thanis in Qatar. The Qatari project had reached its zenith in 2011 only to be crushed in Egypt and discredited amid the bloodshed of Syria in 2013. Like Qaradawi and the Al Thanis, the relationship between Bin Bayyah and the Al Nahyans goes back decades. Bin Bayyah first came to know Shaykh Zayed b. Sultan Al Nahyan (d.2004), the founder of the UAE (r.1971–2004), in the 1970s while he was still a minister in the Mauritanian government. However, Bin Bayyah’s influence on the Al Nahyan’s ideology is more recent. As the Arab Spring unfolded, Bin Bayyah became concerned

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as the deep divisions in Arab societies appeared to confirm his long-held skepticism toward democracy. In 2012, Bin Bayyah began to formulate an alternative project by hosting a series of forums in Nouakchott and Tunis when, as he later put it, he saw that the Arab Spring “had departed from the path of reason, noble-mindedness (nabl), virtue, and the common good.”4 Eventually, in September 2013 he resigned from IUMS and launched his project to articulate a Jurisprudence of Peace with the support of the Al Nahyans. FPPMS and Bin Bayyah’s Jurisprudence of Peace, a rival to Qaradawi’s defunct Jurisprudence of Revolution cohered with the UAE’s foreign policy goals and efforts to create a new state-brand. The UAE had viewed the rise of the MB in 2011 – both abroad and at home – as an existential threat. This led the UAE to adopt an activist counter-revolutionary foreign policy. Following the rise of ISIS in 2014 the UAE, whose foreign policy resembles that of Qatar inasmuch as it rests upon cultivating US interest in maintaining its security, sponsored Bin Bayyah’s Jurisprudence of Peace project and FPPMS to cultivate an Islamic state-brand of peace and tolerance. That branding intersected with the US policy of promoting international religious freedom. Like Qaradawi, Bin Bayyah approves of wasaṭiyya’s attentiveness to the social reality and follows Rida’s model of refashioning once-marginal classical concepts and modes of reasoning and bringing them to the center of Islamic legal thought. Unlike Qaradawi, Bin Bayyah generally adheres to the Maliki legal school predominant in his native Mauritania. As an important figure among the West African Sufi Orders, Bin Bayyah is naturally more sympathetic to Sufism than Qaradawi,5 who in the past has been critical of what he viewed as some Orders’ excesses.6 Consequently, though Bin Bayyah and Qaradawi share many commonalities in their views, Bin Bayyah’s valorization of a legal school and Sufi sympathy mean his outlook also overlaps with that of well-known Neo-traditionalists such as his junior FPPMS colleague Hamza Yusuf. Bin Bayyah’s and Qaradawi’s basic understanding of democracy is very similar. They view democracy as the empowerment of the majority and give little consideration to the rights of the individual in the face of state power. Their basic view of the state is also similar. They both consider the state to be, in Wael Hallaq’s parlance, “a neutral tool of governance, one that can be harnessed according to the choices and dictates of its leaders.”7 Here, their outlooks differ over how the state should be used and to what purpose. Qaradawi and his like-minded peers consider the state a tool that they can mold into what they call a civil state with an Islamic reference. Here, the “Islamic reference” refers to the Islamic public order (al-niẓām al-islāmī al-ʿāmm). Public order is a genealogically European concept that assumes societies have certain inalienable values that state law cannot impinge upon. A civil state with

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an Islamic reference, then, is a democratic state that acknowledges Muslim societies have inalienable Islamic values that the state must protect.8 Bin Bayyah and his staff at the Al Muwatta Center share this understanding of an Islamic public order, yet they do not aim to utilize the tools of the state themselves. Instead, the state and those who control it are an ally who intervenes in religious life. This intervention is necessary to rectify what Bin Bayyah and his like-minded peers call the “chaos of the fatwa” (fawḍā al-fatwā) or the “chaos in religious discourse” (fawḍā al-khiṭāb al-dīnī). Bin Bayyah has been referencing this trope of chaos in his rhetoric since the 2000s. He was a frequent visitor to the UAE during that time, and he developed a close relationship with Shaykh Zayed’s heirs. The Al Nahyans then incorporated Bin Bayyah’s chaos of the fatwa trope into their ideology. Consequently, while for Qaradawi state-sponsorship was something to be disavowed and an image of independence was key to his brand, for Bin Bayyah state-sponsorship is a necessity to be welcomed. As Bin Bayyah became increasingly concerned at the chaos of the Arab Spring, which (as he viewed it) resulted from the chaos of religious discourse, the Al Nahyans shared this view. In 2014, together they created FPPMS as a response. When the UAE created a new state-run fatwa council in 2018, Bin Bayyah accepted the position as its head, becoming an Emirati state employee.

UAE foreign policy under Shaykh Zayed After the creation of the UAE in 1971, the country’s foreign policy focused on regional issues.9 Following a model pioneered by other wealthy Gulf neighbors, the UAE built its state-brand through high-profile humanitarian aid projects. UAE aid policy foregrounded Arab-Muslim solidarity, notably the plight of the Palestinians. Led by Abu Dhabi, the senior Shaykhdom ruled by the Al Nahyans, the UAE participated in the 1973 Oil Embargo. During the 1980s and 1990s, the UAE directed the vast majority of its foreign aid contributions to the Palestinians and the “front-line states” neighboring Israel.10 What made UAE policy distinct from other comparably small states was that this aid was disbursed unilaterally, rather than through contributions to the budgets of pre-existing multi-national aid organizations. Under Shaykh Zayed, the purpose of UAE humanitarian aid was to boost the new country’s prestige and state-brand, rather than to serve as a blunt tool for quid pro quo exchanges.11 Just as Qatar has always been wary of Saudi Arabian encroachment, the UAE was also wary of its larger neighbors in the region. On the eve of Emirati independence, Iran occupied the islands of Abu Musa and the Greater and Lesser Tunbs.12 As a result, UAE officials also saw the

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need for the protection of a powerful outsider to guarantee the country’s territorial integrity.13 Initially in the 1970s, the UAE invested heavily in humanitarian aid (up to 10% of GDP) to foster Arab states’ interest in preserving its independence.14 However, by the 1990s, following the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the Gulf Wars of 1980–1988 and 1991, the UAE began to direct its efforts toward cultivating US interest in Emirati security. This trend accelerated after the deaths of both Shaykh Zayed and the ruler of Dubai Shaykh Maktoum b. Rashid Al Maktoum in 2004 and 2006 respectively.15 This shift required the UAE to cultivate its own unique niche in the Gulf region. The UAE invested heavily to develop itself into a global hub for finance, transport, and trade, integral to the smooth-functioning of the global economy.16 This increasingly close cooperation between the US and the UAE had been in jeopardy after 9/11. UAE nationals were the second-largest group of hijackers after Saudi Arabia, and the 9/11 Inquiry highlighted the role of the UAE as a hub for the ḥiwāla system of micro-financial transfers that was also implicated in these attacks. These developments led to the portrayal of leading figures among the UAE citizenry, if not the UAE royal families themselves, as supporters and sympathizers with designated terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda and the Taliban. In response, the UAE redoubled its efforts to ensure the integrity of its relationship with the US. Rather than craft an image as a credible mediator like Qatar, the UAE sought instead to become an indispensable supporter and facilitator of US military and soft-power efforts in the region. The UAE was the only Arab country to station military forces in Afghanistan and support the US-led military effort after 2001.17 Indeed, as one US official reflected, the UAE had been “the only Arab nation to participate with the US in six coalition actions over the last 20 years: Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Bosnia-Kosovo, the 1990 [sic] Gulf War and the fight against ISIS.”18 The UAE policy of cultivating US support has been successful. The US military presence has continually increased, and it ensures the UAE and the Al Nahyans (as in Qatar) are protected both from external threats to its territorial integrity and local demands for democracy.19

Education in the UAE and the Muslim Brotherhood In the first half of the 20th century, Islamic education in the Shaykhdoms that came to comprise the UAE bore many similarities to Qatar. Smaller communities hosted a kuttāb where students would learn Qurʾan alongside general literacy at the feet of a teacher known locally as a muṭawwaʿ. In some instances, local rulers would invite well-known ʿulamāʾ to establish madrasas for more advanced students.20 The most gifted of these students

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would then travel to the Azhar for further Islamic study.21 Beginning in the 1950s, the individual Shaykhdoms began to develop centralized education systems (al-taʿlīm al-niẓāmī) that, like Qatar, followed Egyptian and Kuwaiti models for developing their curricula.22 To fill the shortage of educated labor, foreign workers came from Egypt to serve as educators. As in Qatar, many of them were affiliated with the MB.23 In the 1960s, Qaradawi and his fellow MB-affiliated ʿulamāʾ were frequent visitors to the UAE. They were involved in social and pietistic activities, and Qaradawi was a common guest lecturing at the Dubai public library at the time. It was not until 1974 that a local MB branch emerged, known locally as al-Islah (al-Iṣlāḥ, Reform). Initially, certain rulers in the UAE like Shaykh Saqr b. Muhammad Al Qasimi of Ras al-Khaima cautiously tolerated al-Islah and allowed the group to grow.24 During the 1970s, Emirati rulers’ toleration, or even patronage, of local MB groups was a common trend across the Arabian Peninsula. Patronizing the MB was an easy way for a ruler to bolster their image as an advocate of pan-Islamic solidarity as a foil to pan-Arab nationalism. At the time, Emirati rulers considered pan-Arab nationalism’s socialist underpinnings to be a far greater threat.25 As Christopher Davidson put it, for countries such as the UAE “there was a tacit understanding that these [MB] groups would be tolerated and given some influence over the religious and educational establishments.”26 As in Qatar, after independence the UAE saw no cause to invest in cultivating a native Emirati ʿulamāʾ establishment. Instead, the rulers of the UAE imported ʿulamāʾ and imams from abroad, and the vast majority of personnel at the country’s mosques were, and remain, foreigners. As is the case in Qatar, the threat of deportation is a powerful yet relatively subtle tool for exerting discipline over recalcitrant scholars.27 However, by the 1990s Emirati rulers’ toleration of the MB was replaced by paranoia, which led to a series of crackdowns.28 This shifting attitude toward the MB was part of a broader trend across the Arabian Peninsula, with the exception of Qatar. In 1991, groups connected with the MB had organized surprising large and determined protests against the stationing of US forces in Saudi Arabia, which caught many rulers off guard.29

Abdullah Bin Bayyah and Shaykh Zayed Abdullah Bin Bayyah was not a part of this earlier history in the UAE, but his relationship with Shaykh Zayed Al Nahyan dates back to the 1970s. Born in 1935 in the South-Eastern Mauritania region of Timbedra near the border with Mali, Bin Bayyah trained as an ʿālim under his father before going on in the 1970s to hold a number of senior positions in the Mauritanian government and judiciary, rising to the post of Deputy Prime Minister.

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Since independence in 1960, Mauritania had been governed by President Moktar Ould Daddah (d.2003), who had ruled the country as a one-party state under a program of “Islamic socialism.”30 Following a military coup that deposed Daddah in 1978, Bin Bayyah left Mauritania in 1981 for Jeddah. In so doing, he joined a long-running trend in the 20th century of West African ʿulamāʾ who, like their Egyptian counterparts, also migrated to the Arabian Peninsula as educators.31 Bin Bayyah became a professor of Islamic jurisprudence at Jeddah’s King ʿAbd al-ʿAziz University. As noted previously, unilateral aid to Arab states was an important element of UAE foreign policy in the 1970s. The Abu Dhabi Fund for Arab Economic Development, established in 1971, invested substantially in Mauritanian education and health. Indeed, today one of the largest and best equipped hospitals in Nouakchott is named after Shaykh Zayed.32 In 1974 and 1975 Shaykh Zayed made several high-profile visits to Mauritania. Bin Bayyah was then a member of the Mauritanian cabinet, which is how they met.33 As Bin Bayyah recalls, at the time Mauritania was faced with an “infrastructure crisis,” a crisis Shaykh Zayed solved.34 The UAE financed the iconic Road of Hope (ṭarīq al-aml) that crosses Mauritania’s vast desert from Nouakchott on the West coast to the border with Mali in the South East.35 By 1975, the UAE had become Mauritania’s most generous donor, contributing over $60 million. This amount was nearly double that contributed by Mauritania’s second largest donor, Kuwait.36 The UAE’s enormous unilateral donations have continued and include similarly high-profile projects. The largest solar panel installation in Africa is located in Mauritania. It was funded by the UAE and named after Shaykh Zayed.37 From this beginning, Bin Bayyah developed a close relationship with Shaykh Zayed, which he then maintained with his successors after his death in 2004. Shaykh Zayed’s humanitarianism (ʿamal insānī) has become an important element of the UAE’s state-brand and Emirati identity. Zayed Humanitarian Day is an annual celebration held across the country on the 19th day of Ramadan that features prominent guests who come to together to praise his humanitarian work. Given their long-running relationship, Bin Bayyah is a common guest at these types of events.38 Bin Bayyah recalls his relationship with Shaykh Zayed with affection, and Zayed’s gifts of humanitarian aid to Mauritania are an important part of that memory.39 Bin Bayyah’s affection for the Al Nahyans extends to Shaykh Zayed’s children. In a speech at the 2013 Zayed Humanitarian Day, Bin Bayyah said to the assembled Al Nahyans, “You are his legacy (athar). The fruitful and goodly branches that could only have sprouted from a noble tree. For you carry on his humanitarian work in Africa, Asia, and worldwide.”40 Indeed, by 2018 the UAE had come to rank in the top five humanitarian aid donors in the world.41

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Bin Bayyah, wasaṭiyya, and Qaradawi After his move to Jeddah, Bin Bayyah developed a close relationship with Qaradawi, who was a regular visitor to the city as a fellow member of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). He also developed a close relationship with the Azhar, where his scholarship is respected and he is a regular visitor.42 Bin Bayyah echoes Qaradawi in his understanding of wasaṭiyya, and he has also been influenced by Rida. Bin Bayyah says wasaṭiyya entails a careful balancing between the general (kullī) and particulars (juzʾī) of the source texts while recognizing the distinction between that which is fixed (al-thawābit) and that which is changing (al-mutaghayyirāt).43 In 2004, Bin Bayyah said it was Qaradawi who best exemplified the wasaṭī approach. In an essay published in honor of Qaradawi’s 70th birthday, he quoted Qaradawi’s definition of wasaṭiyya as “the most excellent description.” Moreover, to Bin Bayyah, Qaradawi was more than a scholar and also “a man of action, who takes his knowledge and applies it in the field by assisting in the establishment of research centers, universities, and benevolent organizations.”44 When Qaradawi initiated his Qatari-sponsored projects like the European Council for Fatwa and Research (ECFR) and IUMS, Bin Bayyah was among the founding members of the organizations. Prior to the founding of FPPMS in 2014, Bin Bayyah’s oeuvre was compact and comprised erudite works of Islamic jurisprudence.45 The contribution to Islamic jurisprudence that Bin Bayyah is most known for is based on Rida’s model. Following Rida’s example, Bin Bayyah redefines a classical legal concept called “refinement of the cause” (taḥqīq al-manāṭ). The manāṭ is the underlying cause, reason, or justification for a particular Islamic legal ruling. If one correctly understands the justification (manāṭ) underlying a particular ruling from the premodern period, Bin Bayyah says, then one can issue a new ruling appropriate to the reality of the modern period while still remaining faithful to the original justification. The concept of taḥqīq al-manāṭ had historically only been applied to issues for which no previous ruling existed. Bin Bayyah, however, applies this concept to issues for which premodern rulings already exist. In the case of Jihad, for example, Bin Bayyah argues that the justification underlying violent, expansionist Jihad in the premodern period was to spread Islam in an era when sending missionaries vast distances to proselytize was impossible. Today, however, not only is it easy to send missionaries abroad to proselytize, but the harm and destruction caused by warfare is immeasurably greater. Consequently, one can prohibit expansionist Jihad in favor of missionary proselytization. For Bin Bayyah, this argument represents a correct application of refining (taḥqīq) the underlying cause (manāṭ) of spreading Islam.46 This emphasis on taḥqīq al-manāṭ as a means to engage the social reality is what Bin Bayyah had been best known for prior to the Arab Spring.

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Violence and extremism were among Bin Bayyah’s key concerns prior to 2011.47 At the OIC annual meeting in Jeddah in 2007, Bin Bayyah gave an important speech on terrorism, later published as a book, Terrorism: Diagnosis and Treatments (al-Irhāb: al-Tashkhīṣ wa-l-Ḥulūl). In the book, it is clear that Bin Bayyah’s understanding of terrorism informs his understanding of democracy. The themes he raises in the speech then shape his understanding of the Arab Spring. The 2007 OIC Jeddah conference followed the 2007 meeting of the Arab League at the Riyadh Summit, where addressing the violence in Iraq was a key issue.48 Bin Bayyah devoted a substantial portion of his lecture on terrorism to the theme of governance. In the lecture, he notes that democracy is commonly cited as “the cure for all ills, particularly terrorism” and that there is a campaign (ḥamla) to install democracy around the region. However, Bin Bayyah says that installing democracy is in itself not a solution to the problem of terrorism. Rather, he argues that the “medicine” for terrorism is justice, which “is achieved through shūra,” that is, consultation.49 Bin Bayyah elaborates that shūra is a divine principle of consultation that pertains to authoritative relationships throughout social life (niẓām ḥayāt). Bin Bayyah gives the example of a relationship between a husband and a wife. Though a husband has authority over a wife, the marital bond is characterized by mutual compromise (tarāḍī) and mutual consultation (tashāwūr), rather than imposition (imlāʾ) and absolute authority (al-sulṭa al-muṭlaqa). A husband exercising his authority without consultation or compromise would negate “the love and mercy that is the essence of the marital relationship.”50 Yet, just as Bin Bayyah does not imagine any legal constraints on the authority of the husband, he does not envisage any constitutional constraints on the authority of the ruler. The next example Bin Bayyah gives is Muhammad’s own practice of consultation. This consultation took two forms. Sometimes, Muhammad would consult with the people as a whole, and other times with representatives of the people (nawāb al-nās). In particular, Bin Bayyah cites a well-known hadith in which Muhammad directed the Hawazin tribe to consult with their representatives (ʿurafāʾ) on a matter pertaining to captives taken after the Battle of Hunayn. Significant for Bin Bayyah is the word ʿurafāʾ (sg. ʿarīf). He cites classical exegetes such as Ibn Hajar who have interpreted the word ʿarīf to denote someone from within a community who knows that community’s affairs intimately. Consequently, the fact that a representative must be selected (ifrāz) from within community is what makes them a legitimate partner for consultation with a ruler, not the manner in which they were chosen.51 Bin Bayyah’s reference to Ibn Hajar and the example of the ʿurafāʾ is significant because Qaradawi and his peers use the same example to advocate for democratic elections. To them, the example of the ʿurafāʾ is evidence of Muhammad’s approval of elections as a means for choosing a

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representative. As Raysuni put it, “What concerns us here is the fact that such chiefs and leaders came to occupy these positions as a result of a kind of spontaneous election process.”52 By contrast, Bin Bayyah emphasizes that the ʿurafāʾ, that is, a community’s representatives, must come from within that community, but they “may be selected by the ruler or chosen by the people.”53 Bin Bayyah says that Muhammad’s Companions would apply the principle of consultation in different ways (ashkāl), since seeking guidance (istishāra) in weighty matters is different than in matters of lesser consequence. As a result, Bin Bayyah says that “elections are one way of implementing consultation” but not the only one, because shūra is a divine system (niẓām ilāhī), while democracy is human system (niẓām insānī). While for Qaradawi, democracy and shūra are essentially one and the same, for Bin Bayyah, democracy is one model among many for practicing shūra, but democracy has no inherent moral valence.54 Bin Bayyah gives additional justifications for his skepticism toward democracy in his 2007 speech. There is a clear discrepancy, Bin Bayyah says, between democracy as a universal message (risāla insāniyya) and the fact that the Western messenger (al-rasūl al-gharbī) who bears it does not act in accordance with democratic principles. For example, though democracy is enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, the strong states in the assembly dominate the weak. Moreover, democracy is not suitable for implementation in every society and in fact “might open the door to terrorism” and lead to violence as in the Algerian civil war.55 He says that, in societies that are immature (ghayr nāḍija) because they lack common ground (arḍīya mushtaraka), electoral fraud and coups become commonplace, since the risks for those who lose elections are so great that they hold on to power by any means necessary. Bin Bayyah concludes, “I absolutely believe that the establishing of a centralized, strong, and stable government (sulṭa markazīya qawīya mustaqirra) is one of the higher intentions and purposes (maqāṣid) of the Sharia; because opening the door to unstoppable change, and setting out on a journey without any settled destination, is a situation that leads to civil strife, unrest, and greatly contravenes the common good.”56 At this point, Bin Bayyah allows for the possibility that peaceful democratic elections may produce strong and stable governments. However, with Iraq and also Algeria in mind, he adds that societies can come to democracy gradually, “without being set aflame.”57 In the 2000s Bin Bayyah was a frequent visitor to the UAE. In a lecture titled “The Fatwa in the Age of Globalization” delivered in Abu Dhabi on 17 September 2008, he raises another key concern. In the lecture, Bin Bayyah notes that globalization posed unique challenges to the ʿulamāʾ given scientific advancements in fields such as cloning. Yet, though the

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fatwa still enjoyed a level of prestige in some Islamic countries, the controversy around a recent fatwa issued by a Saudi Arabian mufti that permitted the killing of TV moguls disseminating immoral content in the Kingdom suggested that many muftis were ill-prepared to meet this challenge. However, for Bin Bayyah a key issue is that “in our time the fatwa has become an issue of global concern due to a connection between the fatwa and terrorism. It is said that behind every act of terrorism there is a fatwa.” Here, Bin Bayyah is introducing the “the chaos of the fatwa” trope, which he considers a key cause of terrorism that must be addressed. For Bin Bayyah, it is primarily the role of the state to address this issue. Governments need to form partnerships with distinguished muftis (al-muftīn al-mutamayyizīn) and establish centers that specialize in the training of muftis. With this state support, the ʿulamāʾ can then educate the public in the Islamic sciences and the Arabic language so that the fatwa might regain its prestige in the region. If the public understand how fatwas are formulated, Bin Bayyah supposes, they will become fond of them once again.58 In the Al Nahyans, it would seem that Bin Bayyah had found the ally he was looking for. The Crown Prince, Muhammad b. Zayed Al Nahyan (b.1961) and other leading members of the royal family were in audience that day. Over time, the chaos of the fatwa would become an increasingly prominent, and urgent, theme in Bin Bayyah’s discourse.59 In turn, the Al Nahyans would internalize and repeat Bin Bayyah’s argument that the chaos of the fatwa was the cause of conflict in the Arab World. When Bin Bayyah resigned from IUMS in September 2013, the Al Nahyans were ready sponsors of his new project.

UAE policy during the Arab Spring: countering Qatar and the Brotherhood The fall of Mubarak was a shock to the Al Nahyans. It showed them that US support could not be taken for granted. A more activist UAE foreign policy was required both to protect the country’s interests and further demonstrate to foreign partners its usefulness as an independent state.60 Participating in the NATO-led intervention in Libya was a unique opportunity for the UAE to not only show itself to be an important NATO partner, but also to begin aggressively asserting itself abroad. Though the UAE and Qatar both joined the NATO intervention, they soon found themselves supporting opposite sides in the Libyan civil war that developed after Gaddafi’s fall. The Arab Spring caused UAE suspicion of al-Islah to rise further. On 3 March 2011, a group of 133 UAE citizens sent a petition by courier to President Khalifa b. Zayed Al Nahyan. The signatories included prominent judges, journalists, university professors, and other well-known public

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figures. The petition called for a range of modest political reforms, such as the election of all 133 members of the Federal National Council.61 Though these demands seem mild, Kristian Coates Ulrichsen notes that the petition “struck a nerve” with the Al Nahyans as it “marked the first time that liberal and Islamist opposition had come together in such a public political undertaking.”62 In response, the UAE launched a country-wide crackdown on any hints of dissent. Abu Dhabi was the most aggressive Shaykhdom in the crackdown, and the Al Nahyans focused in particular on arresting suspected al-Islah members. Yet, Courtney Freer notes that the Al Nahyan’s focus on al-Islah was “extreme and illogical” given that the group had only a marginal presence in Abu Dhabi in 2011 and focused on social and pietistic activities rather than political organizing.63 Nevertheless, since 2011 “the Muslim Brotherhood” has become the Al Nahyan’s “generic term for extremists,” part of a pattern of “extreme rhetoric” about the group as Abu Dhabi has advocated for repressive measures against the MB both at home and abroad.64 The UAE’s anti-MB efforts abroad were the most extensive in Egypt, and it was over Egypt that the tensions with Qatar became most acute. Initially, the UAE was a generous financial backer of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) that assumed power in the immediate aftermath of Mubarak’s resignation. The UAE supported SCAF in the hope of preserving an element of continuity with the previous regime. UAE support for Egypt ceased after Mursi’s election in July 2012. After the election, Mursi’s rival Ahmad Shafik, former Egyptian Prime Minister under Mubarak, went into exile in the UAE. After Mursi’s electoral victory, Qatar stepped in to provide billions of dollars to support the Egyptian economy. The UAE perception that Qatar was the driving force between the MB ascendency in Egypt and across the region in 2011–2012 was the source of growing alarm.65 Consequently, in July 2013 the UAE was the chief external provider of planning and financial support for the coupists in Egypt. That year, the UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah b. Zayed Al Nahyan (b.1972) sought to mobilize a GCC and international coalition against the MB.66 Notably, Qatar did not participate in this international effort, setting the stage for the Gulf Crisis. The Al Nahyan’s fear of the Arab Spring was rooted in the perception that the MB, who they viewed an existential to their rule, were becoming ascendant throughout the region with Qatari support. Moreover, the fall of Mubarak had confirmed to the UAE that US protection could not be relied upon in the face of a determined popular uprising. Bin Bayyah also watched events unfold across the region with increasing concern. To him, it soon became clear that Qaradawi’s fatwas and the Jurisprudence of Revolution were a driving force behind the chaos in the region. This view led Bin Bayyah to resign from IUMS and advance his own project.

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Bin Bayyah and the Arab Spring Over the course of 2011, Bin Bayyah gave a series of interviews on Sharia and Life. Those interviews show him to be far more circumspect regarding the unfolding events than his IUMS colleagues. Bin Bayyah was also far less vocal than Qaradawi in 2011. For Bin Bayyah, being silent on certain issues became an important, and effective, media strategy. An early example of the coming divergence between Bin Bayyah and his IUMS colleagues was visible at a seminar in Doha on 28 April 2011. The event, titled “The Future of the Islamic Umma in the Light of Current Developments,” was broadcast on al-Jazeera. Among the panelists Bin Bayyah stands out in contrast to the euphoria of his colleagues such as Qaradawi and Rashid al-Ghannushi. While Qaradawi and Ghannushi hailed the success of the revolutions so far and expressed hope for future uprisings, Bin Bayyah characterized the Arab Spring as a time of danger and risks (makhāṭīrāt). Using a metaphor of the Titanic hitting an iceberg, Bin Bayyah said, “The role of the ʿulamāʾ . . . is to steady the ship” of the umma in the hope of avoiding a similar fate.67 In the Fall of 2011, Sharia and Life hosted a series of episodes devoted to the Arab Spring featuring interviews with Qaradawi, Raysuni, and Bin Bayyah. Bin Bayyah’s interview aired on 9 November 2011. In this wideranging interview, Bin Bayyah echoes his earlier circumspection toward democracy, which he had voiced in his 2007 OIC speech. In the episode, the interviewer Uthman Uthman asks Bin Bayyah for his views on whether or not revolutions that begin peacefully, but then become violent, represent a departure from an ethical revolutionary framework. In his response, Bin Bayyah emphasizes that “revolution must be peaceful” and praises the nonviolent nature of the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt. He then acknowledges that “some of the revolutions were forced to abandon their peaceful nature, as was the case in Libya for example.”68 At the same time, with Syria in mind, Bin Bayyah is keen to emphasize that the Libyan case is exceptional and does represent a precedent for other revolutions. However, as Uthman presses him to compare the Libyan and Syrian cases, Bin Bayyah is notably hesitant to pass judgement: “In truth, Brother Uthman I want to say that because I have not lived in that kind of a situation, I cannot comment on it definitively. So far as I have heard, there has indeed been bloodshed and violations and it is incumbent on everyone who is able to put a stop to this.”69 Here, a clear difference emerges between Bin Bayyah’s approach to the social reality and the role of the social reality in justifying Qaradawi’s Jurisprudence of Revolution. Here, Bin Bayyah cites his lack of certainty about the reality in Syria saying, “We only hear things via the media, from our observations, and from talking with some of our Syrian brothers”70 as a reason to refrain from passing judgement. By contrast, Abu Zayd argued

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that it was Qaradawi’s attentiveness to the reality in Egypt that led him to realize Mubarak’s downfall was the true will of the people, which then justified Qaradawi’s fatwas in support of the Egyptian Revolution. In the interview, Bin Bayyah then argues that the restoration of peace in Syria is the first and only priority, describing himself as one of the advocates for reform (duʿāt al-iṣlāḥ) rather than revolution (duʿāt al-thawrāt). To him, the solution to violence in Syria and elsewhere requires that both the rulers and the ruled (al-ḥukkām wa-l-maḥkūmīn) reform themselves. These views will become central elements in his Jurisprudence of Peace project. Referring to the worsening situation in Syria, Bin Bayyah describes the struggle as not only a “futile situation” but represents “a disdain (istihtār) for the people’s blood that is being shed.” Consequently, Bin Bayyah calls upon “those who rule that country to stop this war and make every effort to restore security in the country by restoring social cohesion and reconciliation among the people.” This emphasis on social cohesion (riḍā) and mutual reconciliation (tarāḍī) are not only important themes in his understanding of the Syrian conflict, but they shape his attitude toward democracy in the region.71 Mistrust (takhwīn) and fear of the MB coming to power in the region are also important themes in the interview. Uthman notes the mistrust and anxiety felt by some at the sight of MB-affiliated political parties winning elections in Tunisia and Egypt, and MB-affiliated militias fighting in Libya and Syria. Bin Bayyah responds by suggesting people have a valid fear that MB-affiliated parties might mete out retribution (tankīl) if they take power. As a contrast, Bin Bayyah highlights post-Apartheid South Africa and Morocco as laudatory examples where those who had been repressed in the past “behaved with great dignity.”72 Here, though he does not say explicitly, Bin Bayyah is likely characterizing positively King Muhammad VI’s decision to a call a referendum for a new constitution and hold early elections as a response to protests in Morocco. Two weeks after this Sharia and Life episode aired, the MB-affiliated Justice and Development Party won the Moroccan elections for the first time on 25 November 2011, and it has led the government there ever since. In 2007, Bin Bayyah portrayed democracy as a historically specific means of implementing shūra, which had no inherent moral value above any other form of consultative government. In this interview, he elaborates on his view of the relationship between shūra and democracy: Shūra is the foundation of democracy, and democracy is the framework for shūra. We apply both of them together, shūra and democracy. This is because it is shūra that ensures social cohesion (riḍā) while democracy has become the framework for implementing (sabīl al-iḥtikām) shūra.

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Abdullah Bin Bayyah, the Al Nahyans, etc. For example, if a democratic election results in 50% or 51% [for one side] against 49%, then the problem [of mutual distrust] is not going to be solved except through other means. These means are consultation (shūra), coming to a consensus, and all parties reaching an agreement. These means represent higher values, or what we call the public order of Islamic society (al-niẓām al-ʿāmm li-l-mujtamaʿ al-islāmī).73

As Bin Bayyah opined in 2007, democracy can worsen social instability if it is implemented in contexts where there is no common ground. Democracy, as he understands it, is not integral to social cohesion. Rather, it is a historically specific framework for regulating consultation between the rulers and the ruled. Bin Bayyah then criticizes those who would characterize one form of government or one political party as Islamic and other as non-Islamic: The truth is that the situation we have inherited from the past is one of dictatorship and authoritarianism. But everyone is Muslim, so why do we put them outside Islam? Why do we call this [group] Islamic and that [group] non-Islamic? Perhaps we should say that, just as the Islamist Ennahda Party [in Tunisia] did not call itself an Islamic party, that did not mean they were not Muslims and they are part of Islam. Islamists, as far as the Islamic collective is concerned, are part of Islam.74 Here, Bin Bayyah uses the example of the Tunisian Ennahda party to argue that neither democracy nor dictatorship has an exclusive claim to be an Islamic system of government. He commends the Ennahda Party for not calling itself an Islamic party. To him, such a move would be exclusivist as it would imply that other parties and groups in Tunisia were not Islamic. Bin Bayyah expresses no animosity toward dictatorships and authoritarian governments, and no added affection for Ennahda or the MB as a whole simply because they embraced democracy. As Bin Bayyah is expressing his distaste for defining a particular group or system as Islamic or otherwise, a clear difference is emerging between himself and Qaradawi’s words in his 2009 Jurisprudence of Jihad when he exclaimed, “Who is to judge [the rulers’] apostasy when the judges and official mechanisms for issuing fatwas are in their hands?” Bin Bayyah, it seems, prefers to shy away from taking a definitive position. In a second interview on Sharia and Life on 18 December 2012, Bin Bayyah elaborates further on his views on democracy as a contemporary means for regulating consultation between rulers and the ruled.75 In the interview, Uthman asks Bin Bayyah how people ought to address their rulers and express discontent. In his response, Bin Bayyah cites the examples

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of Tunisia and Egypt, where Ennahda and the FJP had come to lead the governments after winning democratic elections: The head of state in these democracies has come to power as the result of a specific framework and in a particular way. Consequently, people may not address him through the print media and on television in the same way they would address any other person. Rather, they must do so with decorum and in an Islamic manner. There is no benefit in pillorying and slandering [the ruler]. I beg our umma to leave behind this state of abusiveness that it has come to.76 Here, we can observe Bin Bayyah repeat his understanding of democracy as a contemporary method of government, but nothing more. Bin Bayyah adds that protesting or seeking to hold a ruler or head of state to account through the media is inappropriate, because advising a ruler (naṣīḥat walī al-amr) “is not the same as advising other people” and must be done gently and respectfully. Uthman appears particularly dissatisfied with Bin Bayyah’s response and asks him how one might address “public wrongdoing [on behalf of the ruler] of the worst and most abominable kind.” Bin Bayyah replies, “This matter is of the greatest importance because most people do not think of the consequences when they issue a fatwa or address wrongdoing that has become manifest in public. They need to ask themselves about the consequences of calling for such a change, and if this change will lead to a greater wrong.” Alongside Bin Bayyah’s ambivalence toward the particular virtues of democracy over any other system of government, he also criticizes those who would issue fatwas calling for the overthrow of governments without considering the possible consequences (maʾālāt).77 Qaradawi was the most vocal ʿālim to issue fatwas supporting the overthrow of the region’s regimes, even promulgating a new branch of jurisprudence to support that endeavor. Consequently, it is clear that Bin Bayyah had his colleague in mind when he referred to reckless ʿulamāʾ who declare regimes un-Islamic and support uprisings with apparently no regard for the consequences. The differences between Bin Bayyah and Qaradawi continued to deepen over the course of the summer of 2013. Throughout all the major events in Egypt that summer (the emergence of the tamarrud protest movement, the 3 July Coup, and the Rabaa massacre of 14 August), Bin Bayyah was silent, in stark contrast to Qaradawi’s fury and exasperation. On 7 September 2013, Bin Bayyah resigned from IUMS. His letter of resignation, published on his personal website, is brief but polite. He explains their parting of ways is necessary due to the “the modest part I am attempting to play in the pursuit of reform and compromise (muṣālaḥa), which requires a discourse that is not compatible with my position at IUMS.”78 In leaving IUMS and breaking

88

Abdullah Bin Bayyah, the Al Nahyans, etc.

with Qaradawi, Bin Bayyah would seek out new partners for a new project, promulgating a Jurisprudence of Peace with the support of the Al Nahyans and the UAE. Bin Bayyah’s resignation was reported as a news event in its own right by the Abu Dhabi-based Sky News Arabia.79

Bin Bayyah, the ʿulamāʾ, and the ruler Bin Bayyah and Qaradawi share a number of foundational assumptions on issues such as reforming Islamic jurisprudence. Their basic understandings of democracy are also similar. They consider democracy a framework for Qurʾanic consultation and a framework by which people may choose their ruler. Moreover, Bin Bayyah and Qaradawi both view democracy as the empowerment of the majority. For Qaradawi, this empowerment of the majority, or empowering “the people” in his parlance, is something to be welcomed in the Arab World. He imagines the people as faithful by their nature and desiring to live under a civil state with an Islamic reference. By contrast, for Bin Bayyah the empowerment of the majority is a source of concern. As he has said since 2007, his view is that in societies where there is no “common ground,” the empowerment of the majority will be viewed with fear by the remainder. For Bin Bayyah, this fear means the disempowered remainder will inevitably resist democracy, undermine it, and overthrow it. The events of the Arab Spring confirmed both their assumptions. In Egypt, the euphoria and unity on display in Tahrir Square in 2011 confirmed Qaradawi’s view of who the people were and what they wanted – that is, democracy and an MB-led government. In Syria, the ferocity with which the Asad regime and its supporters fought against the protesters, and then the rebels, confirmed to Bin Bayyah that democracy could be a source of fear. He said in 2007 that the assumption that democracy was “the cure for all ills, particularly terrorism” was misplaced and oftentimes it had the opposite effect. For Bin Bayyah, a dictatorship can be just as consultative as a democracy, and even a better system, if it maintains social cohesion. Over the course of the Arab Spring, Bin Bayyah had voiced his ambivalence toward democracy in response to unfolding events. In 2014, he articulated his views more fully in a book titled Establishing Authoritative Points of Reference for Interpreting the Social Reality (Tanbīh al-Marājaʿ ʿalā Taʾsīl Fiqh al-Wāqiʿ). In the book, a foundational tension emerges between Bin Bayyah’s validation of an individual believer’s capacity for self-governance and his argument for the need for continued scholarly authority, a tension that permeates Qaradawi’s work as well. However, Bin Bayyah comes to different conclusions about democracy and governance. In Bin Bayyah’s book, he approaches democracy via his trademark concept

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of taḥqīq al-manāṭ (refinement of the cause). He argues that the duty of applying taḥqīq al-manāṭ falls to the individual believer, who is capable of correctly exercising their own judgement. For example, during the month of Ramadan, a sick person can decide for themselves if they are too ill to fast. However, this individual decision must be a “judicious opinion, free from desires,” an admission that personal judgement may be compromised by individual whims. While the ʿulamāʾ have an important role in advising and guiding believers, Bin Bayyah repeats throughout the book that ʿulamāʾ do not have a monopoly (ḥukr) over correct interpretations. Rather, as in the case of (not) fasting during Ramadan, responsibility to exercise taḥqīq al-manāṭ falls upon the one who is subject to the particular ruling in question.80 Bin Bayyah then extends this reasoning to explain the relationship between the ʿulamāʾ and the ruler. The ʿulamāʾ cannot impinge upon the ruler’s decision-making in any formal or constitutional manner, since they inevitably lack sufficient knowledge of the reality of a particular situation. The jurist, Bin Bayyah says, cannot impinge upon the decisions of the ruler because he does “not know the facts of the matter (jalīyat al-amr) or the consequences of particular courses of action.” In particular, and clearly with Syria in mind, Bin Bayyah adds that the jurist may not be aware of a country’s “internal tensions, or external concerns that may lead to civil war, which need to be taken into account in matters of state (al-qarārāt al-waṭaniyya).”81 By contrast, the ruler has a full understanding of the underlying reasons for their decisions, has hidden motivations (al-dawāfiʿ al-khafīya), and has to deal with particular circumstances that are difficult for others to comprehend.82 To Bin Bayyah, then, the jurist does not have sufficient knowledge of affairs of state or the ruler’s reasoning to constrain their decision-making. While the decision to fast during Ramadan is an individual decision with implications only for that individual, there are other instances where the exercise of taḥqīq al-manāṭ has collective implications. This is relevant for Bin Bayyah’s understanding of governance. For example, he says that it is up to the husband to decide whether or not to take a second wife, even though that decision has implications for the husband’s whole family. Similarly, the ruler (al-sulṭān al-akbar) decides to “dissolve treaties and declare war,” with implications for society as a whole.83 In both cases, according to Bin Bayyah, neither the family nor society at large need to have a say in the husband’s or ruler’s decisions in order to function successfully. The opposite of the harmonious functioning of family and society is chaos. Avoiding chaos is an underlying anxiety throughout Bin Bayyah’s book. He gives the Qurʾanic example of the Children of Israel who “demanded from their prophet, when fighting was prescribed for them, that he appoint a king, because without the authority of a king the war would become chaotic.”84

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For Bin Bayyah, the chaos of the region and the chaos of religious discourse serve as the bedrock of his Jurisprudence of Peace, a project he outlines at his first speech at the opening of FPPMS in 2014. In turn, the Al Nahyans internalize and repeat this trope of chaos, and it becomes an important justification for UAE foreign policy.

Notes 1 In the UAE, the President is elected every 5 years by a Supreme Council. Unofficially, the Presidency is hereditary to the Al Nahyan ruling family of Abu Dhabi, and the Vice-Presidency is hereditary to the Al Maktoum ruling family of Dubai. 2 Salam Muhammad, “Raʾīs al-Dawla Yuʿlin 2019 ʿĀm al-Tasāmuḥ,” Arab24. news, 15 December 2018, http://arab24.news/‫رئيس‬-‫الدولة‬-‫يعلن‬- 2019- ‫عام‬- ‫التسامح‬/. Khalifa b. Zayed Al Nahyan suffered a stroke in January 2014. Since then, day-to-day decision making is undertaken by his half-brother, Crown Prince Muhammad b. Zayed Al Nahyan. 3 Sofia Barbarani, “Papal Visit: Pope Francis Lands in Abu Dhabi for Historic First Gulf Trip,” The National, 1 March 2020, www.thenational.ae/uae/thepope-in-the-uae/papal-visit-pope-francis-lands-in-abu-dhabi-for-historic-firstgulf-trip-1.821388. 4 Abdullah Bin Bayyah, “al-Kalima al-Taʾṣīliyya,” in Iʿlān Marākush li-Ḥuqūq al-Aqallīyāt al-Dīniyya fī l-ʿĀlam al-Islāmī: al-Iṭār al-Sharʿī wa-l-Daʿwa ilā al-Mubādara (Dubai: Misar li-l-Tibaʿa wa-l-Nashr, 2016), 35–65 (4). 5 Azami, “Neo-Traditionalist Sufis,” fn 10; Bamba, “Kharīṭa.” 6 Saeed, “Reforming,” 7–12. 7 Wael B. Hallaq, The Impossible State: Islam, Politics, and Modernity’s Moral Predicament (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 155. 8 See further Rachel M. Scott, The Challenge of Political Islam: Non-Muslims and the Egyptian State (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), 46, 87, 153, 159–160; Hussein Agrama, Questioning Secularism: Islam, Sovereignty, and the Rule of Law in Modern Egypt (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), esp., 69–106; Saba Mahmood, Religious Difference in a Secular Age: A Minority Report (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), esp., 149–180; Malika Zeghal, “Competing Ways of Life: Islamism, Secularism, and Public Order in the Tunisian Transition,” Constellations 20, no. 2 (2013): 254–274. 9 In 1971 the UAE was a union of the six Shaykhdoms of Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman, Umm Al Quwain, and Fujairah. Ras al-Khaima joined the union in 1972. 10 Ulrichsen, United, 138–140. 11 Khalid S. Almeziani, The UAE and Foreign Policy: Foreign Aid, Identities and Interests (Abingdon: Routledge, 2011), 110. 12 See Dorota Banaszewska, “The Legal Status of Greater and Lesser Tunbs Islands Including a Brief History of the Legal Dispute,” in Operational Law in International Straits and Current Maritime Security Challenges: Operational Maritime Law, ed. Jörg Schildknecht et al., vol. 1 (New York: Springer, 2018), 85–98. 13 Ulrichsen, United, 138.

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14 Khalid S. Almeziani, “The Transformation of UAE Foreign Policy since 2011,” in The Changing Security Dynamics of the Persian Gulf, ed. Kristian Coates Ulrichsen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 191–204 (4). 15 Ulrichsen, United, 141–147. 16 Christopher Davidson, Abu Dhabi: Oil and Beyond (London: Hurst, 2009), 69–93; Christopher Davidson, Dubai: The Vulnerability of Success (London: Hurst, 2008), 91–135; Ulrichsen, United, 86–129; Khalili, Sinews, 63–69, 94–96, 108–116. 17 Ulrichsen, United, 143–150. 18 “UAE-US Security Relationship,” Embassy of the United Arab Emirates, Washington DC, www.uae-embassy.org/uae-us-relations/key-areas-bilateral-cooperation/uae-us-security-relationship. Quoted in Ulrichsen, United, 146. 19 Ulrichsen, United, 147; Khalili, Sinews, 260. 20 Ibtisam Al Khalid and Moza al-Suwaidi, Tārikh al-Taʿlīm fī l-Imārāt 1900–1993 (Abu Dhabi: Wizarat al-Tarbiyya wa-l-Taʿlim, 1993), 1–17. 21 In a well-known example that bears comparisons with Qatar, in 1907 the ruler of Sharjah Shaykh Saqr b. Khalid al-Qasimi (d.1914) invited a prominent muṭawwaʿ from Najd, ʿAli b. Muhammad al-Mahmud, to found a madrasa, which produced the first student from the area to become an Azhar graduate in 1929. “al-Madrasa al-Taymiyya al-Maḥmūdiyya bi-l-Shārqa,” al-Bayan.net, 2 April 2002, www.albayan.ae/across-the-uae/2002-04-02-1.1328249. 22 Al Khalid and al-Suwaidi, Tārikh, 49–90. 23 Freer, Rentier, 62–63. 24 Freer, Rentier, 62–68. 25 Freer, Rentier, 96. 26 Christopher Davidson, After the Sheikhs: The Coming Collapse of the Gulf Monarchies (London: Hurst, 2015), 194. 27 Freer, Rentier, 160. 28 Freer, Rentier, 96–105. 29 See Stéphane Lacroix, Awakening Islam: The Politics of Religious Dissent in Contemporary Saudi Arabia, trans. George Holoch (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011). 30 For a journalistic overview of this period see Muriel Devey, La Mauritanie (Paris: Karthala, 2005), 149–180. 31 See further Chanfi Ahmed, West African ʿulamāʾ and Salafism in Mecca and Medina: Jawāb al-Ifrῑqῑ: The Response of the African (Leiden: Brill, 2015). 32 Lamiyaʾ al-Saʿid, Mudun al-Shaykh Zāyid: Jighurafiyā al-Khayr al-ʿĀlamiyya (Cairo: Dar al-Saʿid li-l-Nashr wa-l-Tawziʿ, 2018), 105–106; Hamad Ali Alhosani, “Political Thought of the Late H.H. Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan, Founder of the United Arab Emirates (1966–2004)” (Doctoral Dissertation, Durham University, 2012), 188; “Iftitāḥ Tawsiʿa Mustashfā al-Shaykh Zāyid fī Mūrītāniyā,” al-Ain, 16 July 2017, https://al-ain.com/article/uae-mauritania-sheikh-zayed; “al-Imārāt wa-Mūrītāniyā: Ukhuwwat Zāyid Tajammaʿanā,” al-Roeya, 8 February 2020, www.alroeya.com/168-73/2111288-‫اإلمارات‬- ‫وموريتانيا‬- ‫أخوة‬- ‫زايد‬-‫تجمعنا‬. 33 See for example “Ziyārat al-Shaykh Zāyid bin Sulṭān Āl Nahyān li-Mūrītāniyā ʿĀm 1974,” Youtube.com, 25 October 2018, www.youtube.com/ watch?v=3hH72nEPE2g. 34 “al-ʿAllāma Ibn Bayyah Mutaḥaddithan fī Iḥtifālīyat Yawm Zāyid li-ʿAmal al-Insānī,” Binbayyah.net, 30 July 2013, http://binbayyah.net/arabic/archives/ 1448.

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35 Lamine Ghanmi, “UAE Commits to Wider Support to Mauritania after Visit by Ould Ghazouani,” The Arab Weekly, 9 February 2020, https://thearabweekly. com/uae-commits-wider-support-mauritania-after-visit-ould-ghazouani. 36 Francois Constantin and Christian Coulon, “Les relations internationales de la Mauritanie,” in Introduction à la Mauritanie, ed. Dmitri-Georges Lavroff (Aix-en-Provence: CNRS Editions, 1979), 323–360 (31). 37 “al-ʿAlāqāt al-Mūrītāniyya al-Imārātiyya,” Essada, 8 December 2017, www. essada.info/‫العالقات‬-‫الموريتانية‬-‫اإلماراتية‬-‫تطو‬. 38 For example, Bin Bayyah is a board member of Abu Dhabi based organizations such as the Tabah Foundation and was frequently an invited dignitary at Islamic-themed events. “ʿAbdullah bin Zāyid Shakhṣīyat al-ʿĀm min Mahrajān Jawāʾiz al-Maḥabba fī Dubai,” al-Bayan.net, 28 October 2006, www.albayan. ae/sports/2006-10-28-1.957531. 39 “Iḥtifālīyat Yawm Zāyid”; “al-ʿAllāma Ibn Bayyah Mutaḥaddithan fī Yawm Zāyid li-ʿAmal al-Insānī,” Binbayyah.net, 17 July 2014, http://binbayyah.net/ arabic/archives/1494. 40 “Iḥtifālīyat Yawm Zāyid.” 41 Deniz Gokalp, “The UAE’s Humanitarian Diplomacy: Claiming State Sovereignty, Regional Leverage and International Recognition,” CMI Working Paper, February 2020, www.cmi.no/publications/7169-the-uaes-humanitarian-diplomacy-claiming-state-sovereignty. 42 Razavian, “al-Azhar,” 9–10. 43 Bin Bayyah, “Miʿāyīr.” 44 Abdullah Bin Bayyah, “Imām min Aʾimat al-Muslimīn,” in Yūsuf al-Qaraḍāwī: Kalimāt fī Takrīmihi wa-Buḥūth fī Fikrihi wa-Fiqhihi Muhdat ilayhi bi-Munāsabat Bulūghihi al-Sabaʿīna, ed. ʿAbd al-ʿAzim al-Dib (Cairo: Dar alSalam, 2004), 87–88. 45 See further Lena Larsen, How Muftis Think: Manufacturing Fatwas for Muslim Women in Western Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 89–100; Andrew F. March, Islam and Liberal Citizenship: The Search for an Overlapping Consensus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 230–245, 264–272; Ramadan Awlad Bala, “Manhaj Ibn Bayyah fī l-Fatwā” (Doctoral Dissertation, The African University Ahmed Draia of Adrar, 2018). 46 Razavian, “al-Azhar,” 9–14. 47 Bin Bayyah was a key figure behind the famous 2010 Mardin Conference. See Yahya Michot, “Ibn Taymiyya’s ‘New Mardin Fatwa’. Is genetically modified Islam (GMI) carcinogenic?,” The Muslim World 101, no. 2 (2011): 130–181. 48 Dina Ezzat, “Summit Goes to Riyadh,” al-Ahram Weekly, 18 January 2007, www.masress.com/en/ahramweekly/11380. 49 Abdullah Bin Bayyah, al-Irhāb: al-Tashkhīṣ wa-l-Ḥulūl (Riyadh: Obekan, 2007), 56–57. 50 Bin Bayyah, al-Irhāb, 57. 51 Bin Bayyah, al-Irhāb, 58–60. 52 Ahmad al-Raysuni, Al-Shura: The Qur’anic Principle of Consultation, trans. Nancy Roberts (Herndon, VA: International Institute of Islamic Thought Press, 2011), 62. 53 Bin Bayyah, al-Irhāb, 60. 54 Bin Bayyah, al-Irhāb, 61. 55 Bin Bayyah, al-Irhāb, 62. 56 Bin Bayyah, al-Irhāb, 63.

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57 Bin Bayyah, al-Irhāb, 63. 58 “Muḥammad bin Zāyid Yashhadu Muḥāḍara ʿan al-Fatwā fī ʿAṣr al-ʿAwlama,” Binbayyah.net, 17 September 2008, http://binbayyah.net/arabic/archives/102. 59 See for example, “al-ʿAllāma Ibn Bayyah wa-Burnāmij Humūmnā,” Binbayyah. net, 28 February 2017, http://binbayyah.net/arabic/archives/3810; “al-ʿAllāma Ibn Bayyah Yadaʿū ilā Muʾassasa Manẓūmāt al-Iftāʾ fī l-Duwal al-Islāmiyya,” Binbayyah.net, 15 July 2018, http://binbayyah.net/arabic/archives/4025. 60 Jean-Marie Rickli, “The Political Rationale and Implications of the United Arab Emirates’ Military Involvement in Libya,” in Political Rationale and International Consequences of the War in Libya, ed. Dag Henriksen and Ann Karin Larsen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 134–154 (13–14). 61 Ulrichsen, United, 189–190; Freer, Rentier, 164–166. 62 Ulrichsen, United, 190. 63 Freer, Rentier, 163–166; Almeziani, “Transformation,” 6; Ulrichsen, United, 189–191. 64 Freer, Rentier, 163. 65 Ulrichsen, Gulf Crisis, 51–53. 66 Ian Black, “Emirati Nerves Rattled by Islamists’ Rise Abu Dhabi PR Offensive Strikes Out at ‘British-Backed’ Traitors,” The Guardian, 12 October 2012, www.theguardian.com/world/on-the-middle-east/2012/oct/12/uae-muslim brotherhood-egypt-arabspring. 67 “Nadwa bi-ʿUnwān al-Umma al-Islāmiyya fī Ẓill al-Taṭawwurāt al-Rāhina 1,” Youtube.com, 28 April 2011, www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwnJMxFXfFM. 68 “Akhlāq al-Thawra,” Sharia and Life, 9 November 2011, www.aljazeera.net/ programs/religionandlife/2011/11/9/‫أخالق‬-‫الثورة‬. 69 “Akhlāq.” 70 “Akhlāq.” 71 “Akhlāq.” 72 “Akhlāq.” 73 “Akhlāq.” 74 “Akhlāq.” 75 “Fiqh Taghyīr al-Munkar,” Sharia and Life, 21 December 2012, www.aljazeera. net/programs/religionandlife/2012/12/21/‫فقه‬-‫تغيير‬-‫المنكر‬. 76 “Taghyīr.” 77 “Taghyīr.” 78 Abdullah Bin Bayyah, “Khiṭāb Istiqālat ʿAbdullāh b. Bayyah min al-Ittiḥād al-ʿĀlamī li-ʿUlamāʾ al-Muslimīn,” Binbayyah.net, 13 September 2013, http:// binbayyah.net/arabic/archives/1454. 79 Usaama al-Azami, “‘Abdullāh bin Bayyah and the Arab Revolutions: CounterRevolutionary Neo-Traditionalism’s Ideological Struggle against Islamism,” The Muslim World 109, no. 3 (2019): 343–361 (9). 80 Abdullah Bin Bayyah, Tanbīh al-Marājaʿ ʿalā Taʾsīl Fiqh al-Wāqiʿ (Beirut: Namaa for Research and Studies Center, 2014), 83. 81 Bin Bayyah, Tanbīh, 95. 82 Bin Bayyah, Tanbīh, 83. 83 Bin Bayyah, Tanbīh, 83. 84 Bin Bayyah, Tanbīh, 83.

5

The Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies

“In societies that are not ready, the call for democracy is essentially a call for war.” Abdullah Bin Bayyah, Abu Dhabi, 9 March 2014

(Re)discovering Sufism in the UAE In 2014, Bin Bayyah founded a transnational organization of ʿulamāʾ, FPPMS. Like IUMS, the membership of FPPMS is broad in some respects and narrow in others. Notably, the members of FPPMS share many of the characteristics of Neo-traditionalism. They foreground adherence to a legal school, voice a dissatisfaction with modernity, and are favorable toward Sufism. Many prominent members hold high-ranking positions in state institutions like the Rector of the Azhar Ahmad al-Tayyib and the Grand Mufti of Egypt Shawki Allam (b.1961).1 State governments’ interest in sponsoring ʿulamāʾ organizations is not a new phenomenon. Following 9/11, countries such as Morocco, Russia, and the UK developed an interest in sponsoring Sufi organizations in particular. This interest was based on the assumption that Sufism was the apolitical opposite of the activism of groups like the MB.2 The UAE is part of this trend. In an effort to differentiate itself from the Wahhabism of Saudi Arabia’s and Qatar’s association with the MB, the UAE has exhibited a growing official interest in its Sufi history over the past two decades. For example, the UAE has invited leading Sufi figures such as the Yemeni Habib Ali al-Jifri (b.1971) to establish the Tabah Foundation in Abu Dhabi and the Libyan Aref Ali Nayed (b.1962) to base his Kalam Research and Media Center in Dubai in 2005 and 2009 respectively. Additionally, UAE-based research centers have increasingly produced histories of Sufism in the country. In 2011 the Dubai-based al-Mesbar Studies and Research Center published a volume that sought to excavate a Sufi history on the Arabian Peninsula and highlight a long-running presence of the

FPPMS

95

Maliki legal school in the Shaykhdoms of the UAE. In one essay, Rashid Ahmad al-Jumairi argues that the Shaykhdoms of the UAE have a centurieslong Sufi history, which began when Sufi leaders migrated to the area from the Yemeni Hadramout region. Sufism in the UAE suffered a long period of repression after the rise of Wahhabism on the Arabian Peninsula, Jumairi says. However, he then points to the arrival of the Azhari-educated Afghan Sufi Muhammad Umar al-Afghani’s in Dubai in the late 19th century as a moment when Sufism reemerged.3 More recently, in the 1980s, leading figures in the UAE scholarly establishment vocally supported Saudi Arabian Sufi communities with the famous “Dubai fatwa” during a time of intense official Wahhabi critiques of mawlid celebrations in the country.4 To be sure, there is a long history and collective memory of Sufism in the UAE, and in the Gulf more broadly, which dates back centuries.5 Consequently, the UAE’s recent official interest in Sufism is not contrived. Rather, since 9/11 Sufism in the UAE has become securitized, an important part of the country’s foreign policy and state-brand.

Order amid the chaos FPPMS was Bin Bayyah and the Al Nahyan’s answer to the chaos of religious discourse, which they say was the cause of the conflicts of the Arab World. In the words of the FPPMS sponsor (rāʿī), UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah Al Nahyan, FPPMS was a much-needed scholarly response to the “disputes and conflicts that have reached the level of civil strife (fitan).”6 Crown Prince Muhammad b. Zayed Al Nahyan echoed this language, speaking of “great challenges faced by the ʿulamāʾ in countering those who advocate for civil strife.”7 At the opening event on 9 March 2014, Bin Bayyah gave the keynote address in which he laid down a framework (al-waraqa al-taʾṭīriyya) for FPPMS’ project of developing a Jurisprudence of Peace. His address was preceded by speeches from Abdullah Al Nahyan and Bin Bayyah’s junior colleague, the US ʿālim Hamza Yusuf. These speeches were not intended solely for those in the audience. Rather, the speeches were edited, translated into English and French, and disseminated widely as a book that could serve as the foundation for the Jurisprudence of Peace.8 Like many of the books that comprised the Jurisprudence of Revolution genre, the design and arrangement of these texts is significant. Yusuf’s opening speech is the foreword for the book, and his words contextualize the FPPMS project: When Islam appeared as an oasis in the desolate desert where wars were far too common . . . a new world order was born, and though not immune at times to violence, it was one in which learning, science, and

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Abdullah Bin Bayyah, the Al Nahyans, etc. commerce prevailed. . . . But that was then: this is now a turbulent time for Muslims. Failed states, senseless violence, and teeming refugees now characterize large parts of the Muslim world.9

Yusuf characterizes the reality of the Arab World as one of chaos and disorder. This chaos contrasts with the stability and peace that characterized the early years of Islam. Yusuf then casts Bin Bayyah’s project as a revival of Islam’s authentic legacy and a source of knowledge amid the modern turmoil: Shaykh Abdullah bin Bayyah is a peacemaker and has placed his trust in God. He believes that peace is not simply the starting point but the only point. . . . Shaykh Abdullah is calling Muslims to end the madness and restore the way of the Prophet Muhammad, the way of peace and prosperity. He is reminding us by using our own sources – the Qur’an, the Sunnah, and the prescriptions of our pious predecessors – that peace, not war, is the only way out.10 Here, Yusuf echoes Bin Bayyah’s earlier emphasis on establishing peace as the necessary precondition before any other matter can be discussed. Yusuf not only aims to buttress Bin Bayyah’s authenticity but also attempts to create a certain mystique around him. This is part of a broader pattern for Yusuf, who acts as Bin Bayyah’s intermediary and translator on his visits to organizations such as the US State Department or the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Mauritania features prominently in Yusuf’s personal biography. For him, the intense spirituality of Mauritanian ʿulamāʾ like Bin Bayyah renders them quasi-ethereal, an image that Yusuf draws on to present Bin Bayyah as the authentic voice of tradition.11 Abdullah Al Nahyan gives the second speech. He echoes Yusuf’s characterization of the region as one beset by war. Significantly, he also says that “poorly educated men in prominent positions [issuing] misguided fatwas” is the cause of the chaos, reiterating Bin Bayyah’s view from his 2008 lecture in Abu Dhabi.12 Bin Bayyah’s keynote speech is the highlight of the event. While Yusuf and Abdullah Al Nahyan laid the foundations by establishing a context of chaos and war, Bin Bayyah’s speech is intended to represent the authoritative response to that reality. Bin Bayyah begins his speech by outlining his vision of the role of the ʿulamāʾ in such tumultuous times. To him, the current burden on the ʿulamāʾ is a mighty one, for they have “a duty to resolve conflict and extinguish the flames of war.”13 Yet, at the same time Bin Bayyah considers the role of the ʿulamāʾ to be very limited in scope: “We must respond to this explosion of violence like firefighters who strive to extinguish a raging fire instead of trying to first figure out who started

FPPMS 97 it.”14 He says FPPMS is not intended to be a court “that passes judgement and metes out punishment” but instead its goal is fostering reconciliation.15 Seeking accountability or drawing attention to other conflicts outside the region is pointless “if we cannot first establish order amongst ourselves.”16 Amid the chaos of “misleading fatwas that legitimize bloodshed,” it is the equal fault of the region’s “democracies and dictatorships that have led Muslim society into darkness.”17 For Bin Bayyah, peace, by which he means the absence of conflict, is the foundational precondition from which all other rights and benefits flow. In his speech, Bin Bayyah makes a statement that has now become notorious: “In societies that are not ready, the call for democracy is essentially a call for war.” This was a striking sentiment, and the passage in full reads: In societies that are not ready, the call for democracy is essentially a call for war. Since the human and financial costs of establishing democracy may be very high in societies without common ground, justice in its Islamic sense must be established as a foundation for peace and security. This means the system must preserve the five objectives of Sharia, provide protection from tyranny and injustice, promote integrity and good character, cultivate individual and collective peace, and improve living conditions.18 Whereas in 2007, Bin Bayyah expressed concern that installing democracy may lead to instability and “open the door” to terrorism, in this 2014 speech, he expresses certainty that the very call for democracy will lead to war. He views the function of the state to be cultivating social, religious, and economic well-being. For Bin Bayyah, fostering democracy is not one of these basic functions, and it actually threatens them. In his previous statements and publications, Bin Bayyah has demonstrated that his basic understanding of democracy as the empowerment of the majority is comparable to that of Qaradawi. However, in this speech, his early skepticism toward democracy has become outright hostility. Here, Bin Bayyah references the political philosopher Leo Strauss (d.1973) to support his view. Paraphrasing Strauss, Bin Bayyah says, “The pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority . . . where the majority, even if by a small percentage, consolidates wealth and power, while the minority is left poor and oppressed. This could last a very long time since the ruling party will resort to any means to remain in power.”19 Bin Bayyah has never viewed democracy as having intrinsic worth beyond any other form of government. Therefore, as he definitively concludes that democracy is the tyranny of the majority, he suggests that Muslims must abandon it and find an alternative. He says, “Is it not our right and obligation to find a better

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solution than democracy and to establish a system based on the principles of consultation and higher justice? . . . Our approach must employ transparency and goodwill. No party should use victory to inflict financial, moral, religious, or worldly damage on another party.”20 In his Sharia and Life interview in 2011 he had acknowledged peoples’ anxiety over possible retribution if formerly oppressed groups like the MB took power after the Arab Spring. He had referenced post-Apartheid South Africa in particular as a positive example of a deeply divided society coming together and repressed people “behaving with great dignity.” In the Arab World, Bin Bayyah does not consider a similar scenario to be possible. Bin Bayyah’s call for peace above all else relegates justice and accountability into the background. In Bin Bayyah’s view, pursuing justice first, understood in terms of holding governments to account for abuse and corruption, is dangerous because it inevitably leads to violence. He justifies this position by elaborating on the concept of obedience (al-ṭāʿa). To Bin Bayyah, obedience here has two meanings.21 The first meaning is obedience in the sense of compliance (al-imtithāl) with the law and is restricted inasmuch as obedience is only obligatory to that which is good (al-maʿrūf). The second meaning is obedience in terms of toleration or sufferance (al-iḥtimāl). Here Bin Bayyah says that no act on behalf of the ruler could be so egregious as to override this duty of obedience, except in instances of “open disbelief” (al-kufr al-buwāḥ). Bin Bayyah explains that by this he means “there can be no armed rebellion [against the state].”22 Consequently, “Volatile situations [that might lead to armed rebellion] must be approached calmly, and with compromise.”23 Here, Bin Bayyah is not arguing that the people have no agency or rights. Rather, he imagines the people as agents entitled to just, consultative governance. However, that right must be waived for the sake of peace: Waiving one’s rights is a strong moral position that must not be confused with defeat. It earns the admiration of others and forces them to reconsider their positions. . . . It is a sublime and honorable position to take. It must not be misunderstood as surrendering to injustice for the sake of peace for one who makes this choice seeks peace by more just and merciful means, and seeks also to reform the oppressor who is regarded with pity as a victim of his desires.24 For Bin Bayyah, justice is not abandoned but deferred. As in his 2014 book, there is no mention of constitutional checks on a ruler’s power. Strikingly, a tyrannical ruler is only to be pitied for their inability to restrain their desire to mete out violence to the populace. To buttress his argument that people must choose to defer their right to justice and accountability for the sake of peace, Bin Bayyah cites examples

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from Islamic history such as (Muhammad’s grandson) Hasan’s renunciation of his claim to the Caliphate or Muhammad’s relinquishing the right to perform the Hajj in the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah.25 He uses these examples as evidence that the obligation to command the right and forbid the wrong is not absolute and should be restricted. While expanding the remit of that obligation had been an important foundation for the Jurisprudence of Revolution, here, it is restricted as part of the Jurisprudence of Peace. There are a number of structural similarities between the framework Bin Bayyah establishes for his Jurisprudence of Peace and the Jurisprudence of Revolution. Like the Jurisprudence of Revolution, the Jurisprudence of Peace operates by expanding the remit of certain Islamic legal categories, such as obedience, and contracting others, such as the obligation to command the right and forbid the wrong. The Jurisprudence of Peace is also an attempt to undo the Jurisprudence of Revolution’s arguments. Qaradawi and his peers attempted to qualify the category of impermissible rebellion by emphasizing this prohibition referred only to armed rebellion in order to argue for the permissibility of peaceful protests. Here, Bin Bayyah undoes this argument by re-establishing the broad category of rebellion to refer to all forms of dissent. As he does so, he overlooks the possibility of peaceful protest, because to him this inevitably leads to war. Consequently, the only form of dissent he imagines is armed dissent, which he forbids, as to him even peaceful protesters will inevitably take up arms. As a result, Bin Bayyah denies the possibility that any dissent could be permitted at all. While Qaradawi offers historical examples of ʿulamāʾ leading rebellions to support his arguments for a Jurisprudence of Revolution, Bin Bayyah offers the examples of Muhammad and Hasan offering concessions to preserve peace. The arrangement of Bin Bayyah’s speech as a text also bears notable similarities to Jurisprudence of Revolution texts like Abu Zayd’s Qaradawi: The Revolutionary Imam. In the text of Bin Bayyah’s speech, citations from Qur’anic verses and Prophetic Hadith are arranged as lists surrounded by empty space, visually evidencing their detachment from preexisting interpretations. Bin Bayyah uses this arrangement to establish the values of the Jurisprudence of Peace. For example, a quotation from verse 39:10, “Those who patiently persevere will truly receive a reward without measure,” establishes patience as a value (qīma). The hadith, “None of you is a true believer until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself,” establishes the value of love.26 Bin Bayyah’s point-by-point arrangement facilitates the attribution of new interpretations to these textual quotations, while giving the impression that the texts are speaking for themselves. Abu Zayd also used lists of Qur’anic verses and Prophetic Hadith in order to

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argue that, taken as a whole, they demonstrated “a special emphasis on one meaning and one concept [alone], and that is resisting oppression.”27 The framework that Bin Bayyah establishes for the Jurisprudence of Peace is similar to the Jurisprudence of Revolution in its style of argumentation, structure, and textual arrangements. Bin Bayyah also understands democracy in majoritarian terms, like Qaradawi, but comes to the opposite conclusion. For Bin Bayyah, empowering the majority through establishing democracy in societies that lack common ground inevitably leads to a collapse of those democracies as the losing remainder fight to hold on to power. By this logic, a call for democracy is a call for war. Like the Jurisprudence of Revolution, Bin Bayyah uses a rights-based language by acknowledging that the people have agency and the right to justice and accountability. However, as Bin Bayyah puts it, “Those who fight to eliminate corruption usually worsen it, and wars often lead to the loss of all rights.”28 Bin Bayyah’s prioritization of peace and unwillingness to propose any constitutional restraint on the ruler’s power inevitably means that the people must choose to postpone any call to justice indefinitely.

Producing and branding a Jurisprudence of Peace The FPPMS project, including its conferences and production of texts, is supported by the staff of the Al Muwatta Center. The Al Muwatta Center is a research center based in the twofour54 business district on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi near the iconic Shaykh Zayed mosque. Like Qatar, the UAE has invested heavily in developing a MICE sector (meetings, incentives, conferencing, exhibitions), and the Al Nahyan’s sponsorship for FPPMS’ enormous annual interfaith conference (and its annual prize for the best work supporting the Jurisprudence of Peace) is a part of that trend.29 Just as Bin Bayyah called for in his 2008 lecture, the Al Muwatta Center trains Emirati ʿulamāʾ “to safeguard the spiritual security (al-amn al-rūḥī) of Emirati society.”30 The Al Muwatta Center also supports Bin Bayyah by developing a brand for the Jurisprudence of Peace. Prior to 2014, Bin Bayyah’s oeuvre generally comprised erudite works of jurisprudence. Since the founding of FPPMS and the Al Muwatta Center, this has changed. He now produces short texts and pamphlets at the rate of several per year. The staff of the Al Muwatta Center play a key role in facilitating this rate of production, editing his speeches into short pamphlets and republishing old works in new translations to expand Bin Bayyah’s international readership.31 Since 2014, Bin Bayyah’s oeuvre has come to resemble Qaradawi’s in significant ways. Throughout his career, Qaradawi has produced texts at a remarkable rate, and his personal staff and institutes such as the Qaradawi Center for Research in

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Moderate Thought have supported that effort by editing and publishing his sermons, fatwas, and interviews. The texts of the burgeoning field of the Jurisprudence of Peace, many of which are published under Bin Bayyah’s name, have developed a distinct visual brand. The texts are branded with the logo of FPPMS and, for those published in 2019, the Year of Tolerance logo featuring a branch of a Ghaf tree, the national tree of the UAE. The front covers of Jurisprudence of Peace texts are spacious except for the FPPMS logo in beautiful calligraphy with the titles set in clear type against backgrounds of deep blues, reds, and greens. This arrangement creates the impression of an elegant tradition speaking eloquently for itself.32 The visual component of the Jurisprudence of Peace brand is therefore constructing a different model of authority compared to the Jurisprudence of Revolution. Texts in the Jurisprudence of Revolution genre focused on legitimizing Qaradawi’s ijtihād during the Egyptian Revolution so it could serve as a model for future uprisings. The front covers of texts such as 25 January and Qaradawi: The Revolutionary Imam foregrounded Qaradawi as the ʿālim who supported the people, superimposing him alongside flag-waving Egyptian protesters. Though Bin Bayyah’s and Qaradawi’s thoughts bear many similarities, since Bin Bayyah established FPPMS, it is Neo-traditionalist ʿulamāʾ that have coalesced around him. This is noteworthy because one important feature of Neo-traditionalism is a deep antagonism toward the MB, and many of Bin Bayyah’s peers in FPPMS such as Yusuf have been vocal about their dislike for the movement. To ʿulamāʾ like Yusuf, the activism of the MB, their disavowal of the legal schools, and critique of ʿulamāʾ at state-institutions is the very epitome of modernity’s negative consequences and atomization of the Muslim community.33 Yusuf and his fellow Neo-traditionalist ʿulamāʾ collapse any distinction between the MB and avowedly anti-democratic and violent groups such as al-Qaeda and ISIS, even though the MB has renounced violence and embraced democracy. Categories such as Wahhabism, Salafism, and Islamism are not mutually exclusive and share overlapping characteristics. However, conflating these groups is reductive. For example, to demonstrate their argument, Neotraditionalist ʿulamāʾ often cite the example of Qutb. To them, the essence of Qutb’s thought was violent takfīr, a position indebted to Wahhabism. Since his execution in 1966, Qutb has become an inspiration for violent groups that academics categorize as Salafi, or Jihadi-Salafi. Finally, Qutb’s membership of the MB neatly demonstrates to Neo-traditionalist ʿulamāʾ that there is no distinction between any of these groups, notwithstanding the fact that his thought was vigorously critiqued by MB members like Qaradawi.34 Notwithstanding this argument’s logic, there is also a clear politics of nomenclature at work. The Neo-traditionalist attitude toward the

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MB intersects with the policy of states such as the UAE and Egypt, which have designated the MB a terrorist organization.35 It also intersects with the view held by the US and UK counter-terrorism establishments where the Countering Violent Extremism and Prevent policies rest on similar assumptions. In the wake of the 3 July 2013 Coup, the UAE and Egypt lobbied the US and UK governments to follow their lead and designate the MB a terrorist organization using the rationale described previously. That effort failed but is still ongoing.36 Bin Bayyah’s staff at the Al Muwatta Center share this attitude toward the MB. For example, during a conversation in a staff member’s office in December 2019, I observed a whiteboard that still bore diagrams from a previous meeting, possibly from the same day. In the center of the board was Qutb’s name, written in English, in the center of a circle. Arrows extended outward from the circle to other circles with names such as the MB and Salafism written inside. This may have symbolized that the staff at the Al Muwatta viewed Qutb’s thought as representative of the essence of the MB’s thought, since one of Bin Bayyah’s staff suggested as much in our conversation. However, despite the attitudes of Bin Bayyah’s peers and staff toward the MB, to date Bin Bayyah himself has never voiced an antagonism toward the movement. Nor has he made any public statement about the 3 July Coup. This is important for Bin Bayyah’s branding and navigation of the media landscape. Though al-Azami has suggested Qaradawi is the more “media savvy” of the pair,37 I consider Bin Bayyah’s silence on key issues to be a far more effective media strategy, especially given the frequent outcries around Qaradawi’s statements in 2013. Since the 3 July 2013 Coup in particular, academics have debated why key ʿulamāʾ such as Bin Bayyah, Yusuf, and Jumʿa have allied themselves so overtly with regimes like the UAE and Egypt that have since repressed the MB.38 Mohammad Fadel has suggested that ʿulamāʾ like Jumʿa are nostalgic for an idealized premodern order overseen by a pious autocrat in which the military supported their monopoly over Islamic normativity and the masses simply listened and obeyed. In Egypt, ʿAbd al-Fattah al-Sisi is presumably the autocrat Jumʿa had imagined. In the UAE, this view has its merits for understanding Bin Bayyah’s ready alliance with the Al Nahyans. Bin Bayyah’s frequent praise of Shaykh Zayed for his benevolence and humanitarianism, an image he then extends to Zayed’s heirs, suggests that he also views the Al Nahyans as ideal pious autocrats. Additionally, Walaa Quisay has highlighted that ʿulamāʾ such as Yusuf have articulated a distinct cosmology to validate their (re)creation of the premodern order that was lost to modernity.39 Though Yusuf and Bin Bayyah are very close, Bin Bayyah has not articulated a similar cosmology. Consequently, while it can be tempting to use Yusuf’s cosmology as a stand-in for Bin Bayyah’s,

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they are not the same. In terms of Bin Bayyah’s understanding of the people’s agency, he is more like Qaradawi in that he imagines the citizenry as active agents entitled to justice, but he argues that the citizen must choose to (indefinitely) postpone that right for the sake of peace. Bin Bayyah’s concept of chaos, be it the chaos of the fatwa or the chaos of religious discourse, is central for contextualizing his decision-making. He is deeply concerned by the perceived erosion of the ʿulamāʾ’s authority and their consequent inability to combat charlatan muftis whose nefarious fatwas are, in his view, behind every act of terrorism. It is a well-established academic narrative that, in the latter half of the 20th century, postcolonial governments’ nationalization of Islamic institutions eroded the authority of the ʿulamāʾ as the public became suspicious of them as extensions of the state. This suspicion allowed “peripheral ʿulamāʾ” like Qaradawi to mobilize their outsider status to claim authority.40 Yet, in Bin Bayyah’s answer to this crisis, he does not argue that the ʿulamāʾ and their institutions should be independent from state control. Instead, he has repeatedly called for even deeper state involvement in Islamic institutions and religious life. In his 2008 lecture in Abu Dhabi, he called upon states to cooperate with prominent ʿulamāʾ and to establish fatwa centers that specialize in training muftis. The establishment of the Al Muwatta Center, with its training program for Emirati muftis and infrastructure of staff who support FPPMS activities and Bin Bayyah’s textual production, was exactly what Bin Bayyah had in mind. In 2018, when the UAE created a state fatwa council for this first time, Bin Bayyah agreed to lead the organization with Yusuf as his deputy. While Qaradawi had branded himself as the quintessential outsider, Bin Bayyah chose to become the quintessential insider. The emergence of the nation-state in the Arab World had a profound impact on the ʿulamāʾ, not only as a bureaucratic entity that appropriated their institutions, but also as a discursive construct. The existence of nation-states shapes the ʿulamāʾ’s imagination as it opens up particular interpretative avenues and closes others. At first, Bin Bayyah’s call for state intervention to buttress the ʿulamāʾ’s authority may seem counterintuitive, since it was state encroachment upon their institutions that compromised their authority in the first place. Indeed, in his 2008 lecture in Abu Dhabi Bin Bayyah praised the fact that the UAE Ministry of Islamic Affairs Endowments had already been cultivating close co-operating with distinguished muftis for the past 20 years, which was precisely what he was proposing as his solution to the chaos of the fatwa.41 Here, Hussein Agrama’s work is helpful for understanding Bin Bayyah’s logic. Agrama uses a famous lithograph by the Dutch artist M.C. Escher to illustrate how state power works. The lithograph depicts two hands sketching each other into existence, which illustrates how the state defines two realms, the

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religious and the secular. Yet, the state does not act as an arbiter between these two realms, as per the common narrative. Instead, the state continually and inextricably blurs the religious and secular realms. The result is a continued anxiety among the citizenry about where the line between the religious and the secular is to be drawn. To resolve this dilemma, the citizenry increasingly view the state as an essential arbiter, thereby facilitating the continued expansion of state power over ever more aspects of social life.42 This dynamic explains why Bin Bayyah’s answer to the chaos of religious discourse, a product of state expansion into religious life, is to advocate for yet more state expansion into religious life. The Islamic public order is the emblematic concept that illustrates the dynamic of state expansion,43 and Bin Bayyah’s staff at the Al Muwatta frequently referenced it during my visit in December 2019. As noted previously, public order is a genealogically French concept that views societies as having certain inalienable values that cannot be contravened by law. Consequently, in the Arab World it is the state that decides the limits of the Islamic public order, circumscribing the place of Islam in social life, while simultaneously allowing for its expansion.44 The central role of the state is evident in other areas of Bin Bayyah’s argumentation. In 2019, the Al Muwatta Center published a new and expanded edition of his 2007 work Terrorism: Diagnosis and Treatments. The 2019 edition includes a substantial elaboration on Bin Bayyah’s understanding of justice. Here, justice emerges as rights that the state articulates in constitutions and legal codes. In turn, the state educates citizens about tolerance and rights. Finally, the state protects the sacred (iḥtirām al-ḥurumāt), that is, the Islamic public order. In each of these instances, it is the state that defines what justice is and then upholds those definitions, further demonstrating how the state as an entity shapes Bin Bayyah’s arguments.45 The new edition of Terrorism: Diagnosis and Treatments includes additions to Bin Bayyah’s understanding of tolerance. In the 2007 version, Bin Bayyah defined tolerance by highlighting praiseworthy examples from Islamic history of Muslim tolerance of Christian communities in Muslim Spain or the Ottoman Empire. These historical references were interspersed with Qurʾanic verses emphasizing the value of human life and highlighted Muhammad’s and Umar’s examples of tolerance for non-Muslim communities and sites after the conquests of Mecca and Jerusalem respectively.46 The 2019 edition includes a new example from an earlier period. After these aforementioned examples the book also notes the Constitution of Medina (ṣaḥīfat al-madīna) as a text that “legally instituted genuine citizenship and guaranteed tolerance.”47 This addition is in reference to the January 2016 Marrakesh Declaration, which unveiled the Constitution of Medina as an important part of the Jurisprudence of Peace project.

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The Marrakesh Declaration On 25–27 January 2016, FPPMS-affiliated ʿulamāʾ, alongside Arab governmental officials and Western interfaith delegations, convened in Marrakesh for a major conference. Bin Bayyah’s staff at the Al Muwatta Center provided administrative support for the event, which was dedicated to the unveiling of a new declaration that affirmed the rights of non-Muslim minorities in Muslim-majority countries. The conference was billed as a response to the rise of ISIS, which still occupied large portions of Syria and Iraq. Graphic media reports of the group’s atrocities, especially those committed against non-Muslim communities, were commonplace at the time.48 King Muhammad VI opened the conference. In his speech, he acknowledged the extraordinary nature of the times: Under normal circumstances, there would be no need to address a theme such as the one chosen for this conference, “The Rights of Religious Minorities in Islamic Lands,” given the unambiguous position and principles of Islam as well as its legacy in this regard. Nevertheless, recent events have rendered the discussion of such a theme necessary in the current circumstances, and Muslims must show that these events have no basis or justification in Islam’s frame of reference. Muslims have to show that certain events are happening under the guise of Islam [and] are driven or prompted by considerations which have nothing to do with religion.49 For Muhammad VI, “under normal circumstances” there would be no need for a conference of ʿulamāʾ to discuss the rights of religious minorities. To him, those rights are self-evident. However, the rise of ISIS requires that Muslims “must show” (yuwaḍḍiḥū), as he put it, this self-evident fact to the world. The chaos of religious discourse is an important theme in Muhammad VI’s speech. To him, Morocco does not suffer from that chaos because “our management of the religious domain in Morocco focuses on preventing any distorted interpretation of the revealed texts.”50 In his own speech, Bin Bayyah illustrated what the assembled ʿulamāʾ understood the rights of non-Muslims to be. The issue at hand, Bin Bayyah said, is “a discussion of the question of houses of worship, both preserving old ones and building new ones as the need grows. The Prophet and the Rightly Guided Caliphs never destroyed a church, a synagogue, or a Magian temple.”51 To Bin Bayyah, religious freedom is the right to worship freely and the right to build houses of worship. The Constitution of Medina refers to the accord signed after the Hijra between Muhammad and his followers on the one hand and the Jewish and

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polytheistic tribes of Medina on the other. In brief, it established a basic framework for managing relations among the communities of Medina. It included provisions for mutual aid, common defense of the city, and actions to be taken against those who committed crimes.52 The rendering of the Arabic term saḥīfa as “Constitution” refers to the fact that in recent decades Qaradawi and his peers have taken particular interest in the document as an authentic Islamic founding document for inter-communal relations in a modern state. Despite Qaradawi and his peers’ long-standing interest in the Constitution of Medina,53 the signatories of the Marrakesh Declaration overlooked this history and hailed their focus on the document as new. Qaradawi and his peers’ prior interest notwithstanding, what is new about the Marrakesh Declaration is the context and manner in which it presented the Constitution. As Muhammad VI said, the Marrakesh Declaration was unveiled to show to the assembled Western foreign policy officials and interfaith delegations that ISIS atrocities “have no basis or justification in Islam’s frame of reference.” Yet, as the Western delegations noted with disappointment, the Declaration went generally unnoticed in the Arab media. By contrast, it was the subject of substantial commentary in the Western media and policy forums,54 the audiences for whom it was intended. The Marrakesh Declaration was produced to intersect with Euro-American assumptions and foreign policies to promote international religious freedom. Since the end of the Cold War in the 1990s, the promotion of religious freedom has been an increasingly important element in the foreign policies of European governments and the US, as well as non-governmental organizations. Whole governmental departments and ambassadorial posts have been created to promote international religious freedom, and funding has flowed. The categories of religion, religious minority, and religious freedom have meanings that are historically contingent and have a history of legitimizing Western interventions in the Ottoman Empire.55 However, in the register of international freedom promotion, these histories are subsumed under an ontological definition. As Elizabeth Shakman Hurd notes, Advocacy for religious freedom is a specific, historically situated form of governance. . . . Guarantees for religious freedom are neither the instantiation of a stable and universal norm, nor the realization of any particular religious tradition in a secular world. Instead, these projects stabilize and amplify particular forms of religious and religious-secular difference, obscure other contributors to social tension and conflict, and favor historically specific understandings of religion, religious subjectivity, and freedom itself.56 Advocacy for international religious freedom then, necessitates an ontological belief that religion refers to a set of privately held beliefs and that

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religious minorities are communities whose boundaries are circumscribed by those shared beliefs and established numerically within the borders of nation-states. Religious freedom, then, is the opportunity to exchange unhindered those privately held beliefs for an alternate set of beliefs and engage in communal worship.57 Schielke’s concept of register is again useful here.58 The Marrakesh Declaration was held in Morocco and sponsored by FPPMS and the UAE. Bin Bayyah, the FPPMS ʿulamāʾ, along with the Moroccan and UAE governments adopted an Islamic register to describe and discuss ISIS atrocities. In so doing, they shared in the ontological belief that such atrocities were a religious issue and resulted from interpretations of Islamic texts. That ontological belief was, and remains, the hegemonic one.59 Yet, the ʿulamāʾ and those governments did not accept that register passively. Rather, for Bin Bayyah, accepting that the violence of a group such as ISIS as an Islamic problem was an act of authoritative claim-making. If the problem results from the (mis)interpretation of Islamic texts, then it follows that the solution to the problem falls with the purview of the ʿulamāʾ. Similarly, as Muhammad VI demonstrated, when states such as Morocco and the UAE accept an Islamic register to describe and discuss issues such as ISIS, they change the terms of the debate slightly. As Muhammad VI demonstrated in his speech, he views the misinterpretation of Islamic texts to result from the chaos of religious discourse. The solution, then, is increased state management of the ʿulamāʾ and “the religious domain,” as he put it. The Marrakesh Declaration is part of a recent trend in state-branding that began with the Amman Message of 2004. In the aftermath of 9/11, there had been an intense need for small states that were allies of US to (re)brand themselves as essential interlocutors in the War on Terror. As with the rise of ISIS, the hegemonic register of the War on Terror was that Muslim interpretations of Islamic texts were the root cause of Muslim-Christian violence in the Arab World and anti-Western sentiment. In the case of the Amman Message, Michelle Browers and Stacy Gutkowski have noted that there was a sincere concern for the plight of non-Muslim, particularly Christian, communities. Nevertheless, that concern did not belie the fact that the Jordanian government at the time “used the Amman message as a calling card to the West, [as] a way to grease the wheels of increased security and political cooperation”60 and facilitate the repression of domestic dissent.61 The UAE’s sponsorship of the Marrakesh Declaration represents the country’s joining states such as Morocco and Jordan in this state-branding trend, which the UAE would soon develop in a distinctive manner. For its signatories, the Marrakesh Declaration was a huge success as Western governmental officials and NGOs hailed it as an unprecedented attempt to deal with the Islamic roots of religious minorities’ suffering in the Arab World. Nevertheless, some observers noted with unease that there appeared to be few practical initiatives to further the Declaration’s lofty goals.62 Indeed,

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though the Declaration accepted the Islamic register, it contained little by way of practical solutions. On the one hand this is because the Declaration was primarily an effort in state-branding. On the other hand, as Saba Mahmood showed, the roots of modern inter-communal violence lie outside the terms of the Islamic register, and they result from states’ reification and intensification of pre-existing religious hierarchies.63

The Alliance of the Virtuous FPPMS initiatives like the Marrakesh Declaration are part of a UAE statebranding effort that is designed to intersect with the US foreign policy goal of promoting international religious freedom. Though Qaradawi and his peers’ well-established interest in the Constitution of Medina meant that the Marrakesh Declaration was not as novel as its organizers claimed, more recent FPPMS initiatives are original. The most prominent example is an interfaith project led by FPPMS called the Alliance of the Virtuous. The Alliance of the Virtuous was a pre-Islamic agreement among members of the Quraysh, including Muhammad, to solve problems fairly and collectively. Even after Muhammad began to receive revelations, he reportedly continued to stress the excellence of the pre-Islamic Alliance as a problem-solving model.64 Like the Constitution of Medina, then, the Alliance of the Virtuous represents a historical precedent that can be revived and presented as evidence of the UAE’s efforts to combat the Islamic roots of chaos in the Arab World. FPPMS inaugurated the Alliance of the Virtuous project at the 2018 annual meeting in Abu Dhabi.65 The unveiling of the declaration developed as the result of another project called the Peace Caravans that had begun the year before with a similar Washington Declaration, announced in Washington DC. The interfaith attendees at FPPMS conferences and participants in their projects were Christian and Jewish leaders primarily from the US. These close links between US religious leaders and FPPMS are the result of Hamza Yusuf’s longstanding interest in cultivating interfaith ties in the US. Since 9/11, Yusuf has invested in forming a “moral majority” between US Muslims, Christians, and Jews in an effort to combat US Islamophobia. He articulates a concept of a shared “Abrahamic morality” to underpin this moral majority.66 Many of Yusuf’s Christian and Jewish allies in this project have links to the Republican Party, and in 2019 Yusuf accepted a position on the Trump administration’s Commission on Unalienable Rights.67 Bin Bayyah commended Yusuf’s move. As he did so, he noted that his colleagues “serve as global ambassadors who portray a bright image of the UAE, which has become a model for tolerance and a generous aid donor thanks to the directives of President His Highness Sheikh Khalifa b. Zayed Al Nahyan for promoting and upholding human rights and fostering inter-cultural dialogue.”68

FPPMS 109 Bin Bayyah understood Yusuf’s role as important role for burnishing the UAE state-brand abroad. Sam Brownback, the US Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom, is a prominent US interlocutor in the Alliance of the Virtuous project. Brownback was an appointee of the Trump administration. After barely a week in his new post, his first international trip was to Abu Dhabi. In his speech, he praised the Alliance of the Virtuous and noted the importance of religious freedom to the Trump administration.69 However, US involvement in FPPMS is not restricted to those with links to the Republican Party. Other prominent US figures at FPPMS events with a longstanding relationship with Yusuf include David Saperstein, the former US Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom under Barack Obama, the prominent conservative evangelist Bob Roberts, and Mohamad Magid.70 The involvement of ambassadors from both the Trump and Obama administrations in FPPMS projects evidences FPPMS’ success in cultivating US interest in the UAE as an ally in the effort to promote international religious freedom. Nevertheless, there are key differences in the two countries’ definitions of religious freedom. The US State Department’s 2019 Report on International Religious Freedom praises the UAE for having “taken significant, constructive steps to advance the theological basis for Muslim coexistence with adherents of other religions, including but not limited to Christians and Jews.” Yet, the report also foregrounds the US understanding of freedom of religion as freedom for Muslims to convert to other religions, which is illegal in the UAE.71 For Bin Bayyah and the UAE, religious freedom means freedom of worship and, at its limits, extends to the freedom to build or maintain houses of worship. However, the US does not recognize the UAE’s understanding of religious freedom as an alternative vision that its Muslim advocates consider themselves to have already achieved. Rather, the US State Department report considers the UAE’s views to be an unfortunate falling-short of the universal benchmark, which can be rectified over time with sufficient cajoling. The UAE’s success in building this relationship with the US, despite the differences in their understanding of religious freedom, also speaks to a shift in US international efforts in the field of religion. In 2006, Mahmood noted that US efforts in the Arab World focused on promoting streams of thought and figures that the US identified as secular, even if they were critical of US policy.72 Through its interest in FPPMS, however, the US has demonstrated a new concern for a promoting a particular form of Muslim religiosity. Whereas in previous decades Qaradawi’s social conservatism in matters of sexuality prompted outcries on his visits to the West, now Bin Bayyah and Yusuf’s social conservatism is viewed as part of a shared Abrahamic moral majority that the US government is keen to foster.

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The 2014 founding of FPPMS and the 2016 Marrakesh Declaration represented new elements of the UAE state-branding effort. The UAE has fashioned itself as a key US ally in advancing international religious freedom. This effort has a precedent in earlier trends led by states such as Morocco and Jordan, but it is new in the Gulf. In the Gulf, the UAE has carved a new niche that distinguishes it from neighbors such as Qatar. Indeed, since the Gulf Crisis the UAE has sought to counter-brand Qatar as a supporter of terrorism, that is, the MB. On 7 July 2017, as the Quartet initiated its blockade of Qatar, FPPMS released its own statement supporting the Quartet’s initiative. FPPMS and the UAE place inter-communal conflict in the Arab World in an Islamic register. This choice entails the acceptance of an ontological belief about the religious nature of that violence and its solutions. In accepting those terms, the UAE furthers its state-branding as a key US ally, while Bin Bayyah is claiming that solving inter-communal violence falls under purview of the ʿulamāʾ. Bin Bayyah uses the chaos of religious discourse as a trope to express his anxiety about the crisis of authority in the Arab World. Though this chaos is indebted to the rise of modern state and its incorporation of the ʿulamāʾ into state bureaucracies, Bin Bayyah’s solution to this problem is increased state involvement. In 2018, the UAE differentiated itself from Qatar when it established an official state-backed fatwa council, something Qatar has not done. In accepting the position of President of the Council, Bin Bayyah argued, “It is necessary for the state to intervene in order to take the fatwa out of the hands of terrorists and extremists.”73 While Qaradawi attenuated his relationship with the Qatari state for fear it may compromise his claim to authority, for Bin Bayyah state sponsorship is something to be courted and celebrated. For many small states in the Arab World and beyond, state-branding is an essential tool of foreign policy. There are specific features to this dynamic in the Gulf, especially since the regional contest between Qatar and the UAE over the course of the Arab Spring and the Gulf Crisis. Prior to the 2004 death of the UAE’s founding President Shaykh Zayed Al Nahyan, Emirati foreign policy and state-branding emphasized unilateral humanitarian aid. This state-branding effort was highly successful and marked the beginning of a close relationship between Shaykh Zayed and Bin Bayyah. This relationship began in the 1970s when Shaykh Zayed made a number of highprofile visits to Mauritania while Bin Bayyah was a high-ranking minister in the Mauritanian government. By 1975, the UAE had become the largest unilateral donor to the Mauritania by a large margin, and it has continued to fund a number of high-profile aid projects. Since the Arab Spring, the UAE has adopted an interventionist foreign policy. This change was the result of shock at the swiftness with which

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the Mubarak regime fell in Egypt. It also resulted from the Al Nahyan’s long-running paranoia at the presence of the MB in the UAE. After a sustained crackdown on the MB at home, the UAE then launched a counterrevolutionary policy abroad. The UAE’s greatest success was assisting the overthrow of the MB-led government in Egypt in the 3 July Coup. This counter-revolutionary policy brought the UAE into increasing conflict with Qatar, whose vision for the region was indebted to the decades-old relationship between the Al Thanis and Qaradawi. Up until September 2013, Bin Bayyah had been Qaradawi’s deputy at IUMS, and their projects share many foundational assumptions. Notably, they both share an understanding of the importance of engaging the social reality in one’s thought and fatwas. In 2007, Bin Bayyah gave a speech at the OIC in Jeddah in which he detailed his skepticism toward the campaign to promote democracy in the region. Bin Bayyah and Qaradawi both view democracy as the empowerment of the majority. Qaradawi welcomed the empowerment of the majority, because he imagined “the people” to share his worldview. By contrast, Bin Bayyah was concerned at what the consequences of empowering majorities in the region might be, given the wars in Iraq and Syria. Qaradawi made use of his prominent media platform to great effect in 2011. However, by 2013 a number of high-profile controversies made this outspoken strategy harder to sustain. By contrast, Bin Bayyah’s media strategy has been marked by silence and caution. Over the course of 2011, Bin Bayyah’s alternate interpretation of the Arab Spring became increasingly evident through his public statements and interviews on Sharia and Life. Following the 2013 Coup in Egypt, Bin Bayyah resigned from IUMS. In early 2014 he started a new organization, FPPMS, and sought to articulate a new genre of Islamic jurisprudence, the Jurisprudence of Peace. In its structure, style of argumentation, and means of textual production, the Jurisprudence of Peace was similar to Qaradawi’s Jurisprudence of Revolution in a number of ways. The example of the these two ʿulamāʾ, their role and influence on the ideologies of the Al Thani and Al Nahyan families, and their contributions to Qatari and Emirati state-branding and foreign policy raises a number of questions. The first concerns how academics can best think about the connections between the ʿulamāʾ and the state, not only in the Gulf, but across the Arab World at large. The second relates to the importance of Qatar and the UAE or, to be more specific, Doha and Abu Dhabi as key sites from the which the ʿulamāʾ establish and project their authority. The hegemonic positions of Doha and Abu Dhabi also raise questions about how academics can consider those cities alongside great historical centers of Islamic scholarly authority such as Cairo, Medina, or Qom.

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Notes 1 “Islamic Scholars Establish Prizes for Peace, Recommend Muslim Peace Teams,” Reuters, 11 March 2014, http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2014/03/11/islamic -scholars-establish-prizes-for-peace-recommend-muslim-peace-teams/. 2 See further Muedini, Sponsoring. 3 Rashid Ahmad al-Jumairi, “al-Ṣūfīya fī Dubai min al-Afghānī ilā ʿAbd al-Raḥīm al-Murīd,” in al-Taṣawwuf fī l-Saʿūdiyya wa-l-Khalīj, ed. al-Mesbar Studies and Research Center, 2nd ed. (Dubai: al-Mesbar Studies and Research Center, 2013), 7–46. 4 See further Marion Katz, The Birth of the Prophet Muḥammad: Devotional Piety in Sunni Islam (Abingdon: Routledge, 2007), 184–188. I am grateful to Besnik Sinani for this reference. 5 For a critical history of Sufism in the Gulf see ʿAbd al-ʿAziz al-Badah, Ḥarakat al-Taṣawwuf fī l-Khalīj al-ʿArabī: Dirāsa Taḥlīliyya Naqdiyya (Riyadh: n.p., 2015) esp., 39–138, 170–210, 445–465, 472–486, 545–572. 6 ʿAbdullah b. Zayid Al Nahyan, “Kalimat Rāʿī al-Muntadā,” peacems.com, n.d., https://peacems.com/ar/about-us/sponsor-message/. 7 “Muḥammad b. Zāyid Āl Nahyān: Taḥaddiyāt Kabīra Amām ʿUlamāʾ al-Muslimīn fī Muwājahat Duʿāt al-Fitan,” al-Bayan.net, 11 March 2014, www. albayan.ae/across-the-uae/news-and-reports/2014-03-11-1.2078376. 8 Abdullah Bin Bayyah, ʿAbdullah b. Zayid Al Nahyan, and Hamza Yusuf, In Pursuit of Peace: Framework Speech for the Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies, ed. Krista Bremer, trans. Tarek El Gawhary (Abu Dhabi: FPPMS, 2014). The quotations are taken from the English translation unless otherwise stated. 9 Bin Bayyah et al., Framework, vii. 10 Bin Bayyah et al., Framework, vi–vii. 11 Grewal, Islam, 159–167. 12 Bin Bayyah et al., Framework, 1–2. 13 Bin Bayyah et al., Framework, 6. 14 Bin Bayyah et al., Framework, 6. 15 Bin Bayyah et al., Framework, 6. 16 Bin Bayyah et al., Framework, 7. 17 Bin Bayyah et al., Framework, 7. 18 Bin Bayyah et al., Framework, 22. 19 Bin Bayyah et al., Framework, 21. 20 Bin Bayyah et al., Framework, 21. 21 Bin Bayyah et al., Framework, 22–23. 22 These references to obedience are taken from the Arabic text. See Bin Bayyah et al., Framework, 35–36. 23 Bin Bayyah et al., 22–23. 24 Bin Bayyah et al., 22. 25 Bin Bayyah et al., Framework, 10–12, 29. 26 Bin Bayyah et al., Framework, 25. 27 Abu Zayd, al-Imām al-Thāʾir, 49. 28 Bin Bayyah et al., Framework, 31. 29 “Islamic Scholars Establish Prizes.” 30 “Burnāmij Iʿdād al-ʿUlamāʾ al-Imārātiyyīn,” almuwatta.com, https://almuwatta. com/emirati-scholars-preparation-program/.

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31 See for example, a new edition and English translation of Bin Bayyah’s book Terrorism, Abdullah Bin Bayyah, al-Irhāb: al-Tashkhīṣ wa-l-Ḥulūl (Dubai: Misar li-l-Tibaʿa wa-l-Nashr, 2019); Abdullah Bin Bayyah, The Culture of Terrorism: Tenets and Treatments, trans. Hamza Yusuf (Abu Dhabi: FPPMS, 2014). 32 See for example Abdullah Bin Bayyah, Tanbīh al-Marājaʿ ʿalā Taʾsīl Fiqh al-Wāqiʿ, 4th ed. (Dubai: Al Muwatta Center, 2018); Abdullah Bin Bayyah, Alliance of Virtue: An Opportunity for Global Peace, ed. Peter Welby and Aisha Subhani, trans. Habib Bewley (Abu Dhabi: FPPMS, 2019). 33 See further Quisay, “Quietism,” 4–5; Walaa Quisay, “Neo-Traditionalism in the West: Navigating Modernity, Tradition, and Politics” (Doctoral Dissertation, University of Oxford, 2019), 270–273. 34 See Introduction. 35 “Egypt Designates the Muslim Brotherhood as a Terrorist Group,” Reuters, 26 December 2013, www.reuters.com/article/idUS349107031420131226; “UAE Lists Muslim Brotherhood as Terrorist Group,” Reuters, 15 November 2014, www.reuters.com/news/picture/uae-lists-muslim-brotherhood-as-terrorisidUSKCN0IZ0OM20141115. 36 Steve Holland and Arshad Mohammed, “Trump Weighs Labeling Muslim Brotherhood a Terrorist Group,” Reuters, 30 April 2019, https://de.reuters.com/ article/us-usa-trump-muslimbrotherhood/trump-weighs-labeling-muslim-brotherhood-a-terrorist-group-idUSKCN1S6159. 37 Azami, “Counter-Revolutionary,” 11. 38 See for example Fadel, “Temptation,”; Quisay, “Navigating,” 199–223, 268– 284; Azami, “Counter-Revolutionary”; Warren, “Cleansing.” 39 See Quisay, “Navigating,” 207–210. 40 Malika Zeghal, “The ‘Recentering’ of Religious Knowledge and Discourse: The Case of al-Azhar in Twentieth-Century Egypt,” in Schooling Islam: The Culture and Politics of Modern Muslim Education, ed. Robert Hefner and Muhammad Qasim Zaman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 105–130 (3); Grewal, Islam, 188–191. 41 “Muḥammad bin Zāyid Yashhadu Muḥāḍara ʿan al-Fatwā.” 42 Agrama, Questioning, 1. 43 See Agrama, Questioning, 42–68. 44 Agrama’s approach is also useful for understanding Qaradawi, since the concept of public order is important for his formulation of the civil state with an Islamic reference. 45 Bin Bayyah, al-Irhāb, 2019, 62–64. For comparison, see pages 56–57 of the 2007 edition. 46 Bin Bayyah, al-Irhāb, 2007, 88–97. 47 Bin Bayyah, al-Irhāb, 2019, 106–109. 48 Mahmood, Religious Difference, 1. 49 Muhammad b. Hassan al-Alaoui, “The King’s Speech: Message from His Majesty, King Mohammed VI,” in The Marrakesh Declaration on the Rights of Religious Minorities in Muslim-Majority Lands: A Legal Framework and a Call to Action (Dubai: Misar li-l-Tibaʿa wa-l-Nashr, 2016), 7–10 (1). 50 Alaoui, “Speech,” 3. 51 Abdullah Bin Bayyah, “Religious Minorities in Muslim-Majority Lands: A Legal Framework and a Call to Action,” in The Marrakesh Declaration on the Rights of Religious Minorities in Muslim-Majority Lands: A Legal Framework and a Call to Action (Dubai: Misar li-l-Tibaʿa wa-l-Nashr, 2016), 11–42 (27).

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52 David H. Warren and Christine Gilmore, “One Nation under God? Yusuf alQaradawi’s Changing Fiqh of Citizenship in the Light of the Islamic Legal Tradition,” Contemporary Islam: Dynamics of Muslim Life 8, no. 3 (2014): 217–237 (10). 53 Warren and Gilmore, “Nation,” 10–14. 54 See for example Susan Hayward, “Understanding and Extending the Marrakesh Declaration in Policy and Practice,” United States Institute of Peace Special Report, September 2016, www.usip.org/sites/default/files/SR392-Understanding-and-Extending-the-Marrakesh-Declaration-in-Policy-and-Practice.pdf. 55 Mahmood, Religious Difference, 31–48. 56 Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, Beyond Religious Freedom: The New Global Politics of Religion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015), 38. 57 See further Mahmood, Religious Difference, 91–102. 58 Schielke, Egypt, 53–54. 59 Mahmood, Religious Difference, 1. 60 Stacey Gutkowski, “We Are the Very Model of a Moderate Muslim State: The Amman Messages and Jordan’s Foreign Policy,” International Relations 30, no. 2 (2016): 206–226 (3). 61 Michaelle Browers, “Official Islam and the Limits of Communicative Action: The Paradox of the Amman Message,” Third World Quarterly 32, no. 5 (2011): 943–958 (5–6). 62 See for example Hayward, “Understanding,” 7. 63 Mahmood, Religious Difference, 111–148. 64 This well-known accord was popularized by authors like Tariq Ramadan and Orientalists like Montgomery Watt. Tariq Ramadan, In the Footsteps of the Prophet: Lessons from the Life of Muhammad (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 20–22; Montgomery Watt, Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), 9. 65 Zeshan Zafar, ed., “The Journey to the New Alliance of Virtue,” in The New Alliance of Virtue: A Charter for Global Peace (Abu Dhabi: FPPMS, 2019), 8–10. 66 Yahya Birt, “Blowin’ in the Wind: Trumpism and Traditional Islam in America,” Medium.com, 14 February 2017, https://medium.com/@yahyabirt/ https-medium-com-yahyabirt-blowin-in-the-wind-trumpism-and-traditionalislam-in-america-40ba056486d8. 67 Birt, “Blowin’.” 68 “UAE Fatwa Council Member among Experts of US ‘Commission on Unalienable Rights,’” Emirates News Agency, 9 July 2019, http://wam.ae/en/ details/1395302773134. 69 Sam Brownback, “Ambassador Brownback Speech,” in The New Alliance of Virtue: A Charter for Global Peace, ed. Zeshan Zafar (Abu Dhabi: FPPMS, 2019), 21–22. 70 Transcripts of these speeches can also be found in The New Alliance of Virtue, 25–28, 29–32, 33–36. 71 “2019 Report on International Religious Freedom: United Arab Emirates,” U.S. Department of State, 2019, www.state.gov/reports/2019-report-on-internationalreligious-freedom/united-arab-emirates/. 72 Mahmood, “Secularism.” 73 “Mulakhkhaṣ Ajwibat al-ʿAllāma ʿAbdullāh Bin Bayyah fī Awwal Muʾtamr Ṣuḥufī li-Majlis al-Imārāt li-l-Iftāʾ al-Sharʿī,” Binbayyah.net, 10 July 2018, http://binbayyah.net/arabic/archives/4014.

Conclusion The ʿulamāʾ in the Gulf states

The academic study of the ʿulamāʾ in the Arab World has generally overlooked small Gulf states like Qatar and the UAE. Unlike larger counterparts like Egypt, Qatar and the UAE do not have ancient centers of learning like the Azhar or well-established ʿulamāʾ elites with which post-colonial states have wrestled. In the case of Egypt, and more generally, the common narrative depicts a struggle between the ʿulamāʾ and their institutions on the one hand and the state on the other. As states seek to instrumentalize Islam for the purposes of legitimacy, so the narrative goes, they struggle to co-opt and subdue the ʿulamāʾ and their institutions, who in turn oscillate between periods of resistance and acquiescence.1 In turn, public suspicion of postcolonial states translates into suspicion of the ʿulamāʾ those states support. The ʿulamāʾ themselves are aware of this, and there is a long history of “peripheral ʿulamāʾ,” critiquing rival ʿulamāʾ as the “ʿulamāʾ of the state and agents of the police” (ʿulamāʾ al-sulṭa wa-ʿumalāʾ al-shurṭa).

The ʿulamāʾ and the state: more than co-optation The cases of Qaradawi in Qatar and Bin Bayyah in the UAE offer a different history and dynamic. Though there is a large and detailed literature on Qaradawi, it has generally considered him as part of an Egyptian rather than Qatari milieu.2 In both Qatar and the UAE, foreign policy decision-making is often limited to the Al Thanis and Al Nahyans. Consequently, the decadeslong relationships between these two ʿulamāʾ and these two families are not characterized by state co-optation and struggles for independence. Rather these two ʿulamāʾ have shaped the Al Thani’s and Al Nahyan’s ideologies and their visions for the region. The Al Thanis have sponsored Qaradawi’s projects for decades, and in turn the terms and concepts from his conceptual universe of wasaṭiyya came to underpin other Qatari institutions, most notably al-Jazeera. The Al Nahyans began sponsoring Bin Bayyah’s project in 2014. Since then, prominent members of the royal family have internalized and repeated key tropes drawn from his worldview. Most notably, the Al Nahyans echo Bin

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Bayyah’s description of the crisis of Islamic authority as “the chaos in religious discourse,” which leads to violence. For Bin Bayyah and the Al Nayhans, this chaos necessitates the intervention of powerful states to support the ʿulamāʾ by, for example, creating new state-institutions for training muftis. This is not to say that the Al Thanis and Al Nahyans do not exert discipline over Qaradawi or Bin Bayyah. Rather, the Al Thanis and Al Nahyans have more subtle means of discipline available to them, in contrast to states such as neighboring Saudi Arabia where recalcitrant ʿulamāʾ are imprisoned or executed.3 In 2013 and 2014, clear differences between Qaradawi and the Al Thanis arose over Qatar’s relations with Egypt and the UAE. When those differences began to affect Qatar’s state-brand, the Al Thanis disciplined Qaradawi by removing him from his platforms and publicly hinting at his possible deportation. Were tensions to arise between Bin Bayyah and the Al Nahyans, a similar dynamic would likely unfold. However, Bin Bayyah’s media strategy is far more cautious than Qaradawi’s. Bin Bayyah has been publicly silent on subjects such as the 3 July Coup in Egypt and the UAE’s involvement in the war on the Houthis in Yemen. The support the Al Thanis and Al Nahyans provide Qaradawi and Bin Bayyah extends beyond financing organizations like IUMS and FPPMS. They have also funded infrastructures of research staff and editors who have supported the development of their global profiles. This support is substantial and takes the form of editing and publishing texts, finding correct citations for Hadith, or building personal websites and social media profiles. Brandbuilding is clearly an important element of this support. Qaradawi’s and Bin Bayyah’s points of departure for their intellectual thought are very similar and draw upon Rida’s model and the wasaṭiyya outlook. Rida’s influence extends beyond those who explicitly lay claim to his legacy, like Qaradawi, and includes Bin Bayyah, who also utilizes Rida’s model of reviving and centering once marginal legal concepts to articulate reforms. However, Bin Bayyah and his staff have expended substantial effort to differentiate him from Qaradawi by foregrounding his attachment to the Maliki legal school and sympathies for Sufism. Through this differentiation, ʿulamāʾ obscure the similarities in their points of departure and attenuate the fact that all modern currents are reactions to the de-traditionalization of Islam.4 Most notably, the key tension in both Qaradawi’s and Bin Bayyah’s thought pertains to the authority of the individual in relationship to the authority of the scholar. This tension permeates their understanding of suitable reading and writing practices and extends upward to their view of individuals’ capacity for involvement in their own governance.

Islam and state-branding in the Gulf Academics who study the foreign policies of Qatar and the UAE have foregrounded the importance of state-branding, as these small states attempt to cultivate and maintain powerful outsiders’ interest in their

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security. Since the Carter Doctrine and the 1991 Gulf War, this outside power has been the US, and Qatar and the UAE have branded themselves as important US allies. Their policies have been successful, and the US has maintained an active interest in Qatari and Emirati security. US bases have protected their territorial integrity in the face of their larger neighbors, and they remain a protector of last resort were any serious internal challenges to the royal families emerge. To date, studies of Qatari and Emirati state-branding and foreign policy have foregrounded these states’ assistance to the US, both diplomatic (i.e. mediating with Hamas and the Taliban) and military (i.e. in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya). Additionally, Qatar and the UAE have developed themselves into key actors, maintaining the smooth-functioning of the global capitalist economy, another foundational US interest. When it comes to Islam, academics interested in foreign policy and international relations in the Gulf have either focused on the MB or the ʿulamāʾ establishments in states such as Saudi Arabia.5 Consequently, studies of Qatar and the MB have generally overlooked the importance of the fact that Qaradawi and his fellow-Egyptian ʿulamāʾ came as members of the Azhar Mission. Though they were affiliates of the MB, the curriculum and worldviews they brought with them were shaped first and foremost by the Azhar, an institution that was remarkably successful in exporting its wasaṭiyya vision to Qatar. In Qatar, Ibn Maniʿ and Subayʿi had great respect for the Azhar, an attitude that can seem surprising given the mutual antagonism between Wahhabi and Azhari ʿulamāʾ today.6 The Azhar was also the pre-eminent institution for students in the Shaykhdoms of the UAE. The key moment in Qatar’s state-branding was the creation of al-Jazeera in 1996. For a time, Sharia and Life was al-Jazeera’s most popular program, and the channel as a whole incorporated concepts drawn from Qaradawi’s wasaṭiyya motif to frame its audience as a supra-national Muslim counterpublic. To date, studies of state-branding and foreign policy in the UAE highlight its status as a center of commerce, finance, travel, naval ports, and tourism, and they overlook its position as a key node in a transnational network of ʿulamāʾ. This study has detailed the UAE effort to brand itself a key ally in the US effort to promote international religious freedom. Yet, there is no universal definition of religious freedom. Instead, advocating for universal religious freedom, understood as the freedom to exchange one’s private beliefs and engage in communal worship, derives from an ontological belief in the nature of religion and freedom. That belief is genealogically Protestant.7 Bin Bayyah has a different understanding of religious freedom, which is limited to freedom of worship. Nevertheless, through FPPMS the UAE has successfully positioned itself as an important US ally, a venture hailed by US ambassadors from both the Trump and Obama administrations.

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Qaradawi, Bin Bayyah, and the failure of the Arab Spring This book has centered on the Arab Spring and its aftermath. The Arab Spring was a moment when enormous protest movements emerged to call for democracy across the region. In Egypt and Tunisia, those protests led to the fall of longstanding dictators, while in Syria democratic protests morphed into a brutal civil war. Qaradawi’s and Bin Bayyah’s understandings of democracy are important. To Qaradawi, democracy has an inherent moral good only insofar as its foundational principles, as he sees them, have Islamic precursors. Qaradawi understands democracy to be the empowerment of the majority through free and fair elections. To him, that majority are “the people” whom he imagines as sharing his norms and worldview. Khaled Abou El Fadl criticized Qaradawi for his vagueness and failure to acknowledge the rights of the individual in the face of the coercive power of the state. Yet, Qaradawi, or the MB in Egypt for that matter, are not alone in holding such imprecise views of democracy. Egypt’s liberal elites had also vocally embraced democracy, as they understood it, which was the empowerment and validation of their worldview. Consequently, the Egyptian military and its UAE backers found ready allies among those elites when the opportunity arose to crush any chance of a democratic culture taking root in Egypt. While the course of the Arab Spring in Egypt and Syria certainly affected Qaradawi’s and Bin Bayyah’s understandings of democracy, it appears that so too did the legacy of the US-led occupation of Iraq. Like Qaradawi, Bin Bayyah understands democracy to mean the empowerment of the majority. However, unlike Qaradawi, Bin Bayyah does not view democracy as the equivalent of Qurʾanic shūra. Hence, for Bin Bayyah democracy has no inherent moral good. To him, democracies or dictatorships can be as good or bad as the other. What matters is that governments consult representatives selected from among the people. It does not matter if those representatives are appointed by a ruler or democratically elected. Like Qaradawi, Bin Bayyah is imprecise about what he understands the Qurʾanic vision of consultation to mean in practice. Notably, in his 2014 book he does not envision any formal or constitutional checks on the ruler’s power. However, as he justifies this view, Bin Bayyah acknowledges that the people have agency and a right to justice. This understanding is very different from the premodern ʿulamāʾ’s views of the populace simply as “the masses” (al-awʿāmm) lacking the full capacity for self-governance.8 Instead, Bin Bayyah says the people must choose to postpone, perhaps indefinitely, their rights to justice for the sake of peace. Bin Bayyah’s reticence to propose constitutional checks on a ruler and his closeness to Shaykh Zayed and the Al Nahyans may be considered evidence of his nostalgia for an imagined premodern order overseen by a pious

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autocrat. However, this view overlooks the fact that both he and Qaradawi operate in a context profoundly shaped by the modern state. The state looms large in Qaradawi’s and Bin Bayyah’s thinking as both a discursive construct and bureaucratic reality. For both of them, the state is central to their claims to authority. State sponsorship has also been a key factor in their rises to global prominence. However, Qaradawi has always played down his relationship with the Qatari state and has imagined and branded himself as an outsider. By contrast, Bin Bayyah viewed state intervention to be the solution to the problem of the crisis of authority, though state intervention has contributed to that very crisis by corroding the authority of state-backed ʿulamāʾ in the first place. The Al Nahyans came to share Bin Bayyah’s view and have supported him lavishly.

Doha and Abu Dhabi as centers of Islamic scholarly authority I conclude this book by thinking about the ways we can consider Doha and Abu Dhabi as centers of Islamic scholarly authority in comparison with historical centers of learning such as Cairo, Medina, or Qom. Zareena Grewal has emphasized that the importance of those historical centers derives from their position in a Muslim “moral geography” that, as Masooda Bano and Keiko Sakurai noted, arises from their locations as historical confluences of Islamic scholarship. By contrast, Doha and Abu Dhabi are cites of vast wealth that sit at the center of the global economy. Yet, there is more to those cities than riches. Schielke, in his comments on Egypt sums up the status of the Gulf cities aptly: The Gulf is not only about money – it is about life-style, and its cultural influence on all levels of Egyptian society can hardly be underestimated, be it in terms of migrant remittances, urban planning, religiosity, or styles of consumption. The first world to which Egyptians hope to belong has long ceased to be identical with Europe and the United States. Today, Dubai and Doha [and Abu Dhabi, I would add] feature along with Paris, London, and New York as the magic names of global modernity.9 In a world dominated by “global cities,” Doha, Abu Dhabi, and Dubai now rival the likes of London, Paris, and New York as watchwords for aspiration and modernity. Yet, Schielke also notes that the attitudes non-Gulf Arabs hold toward cities like Doha are “highly contradictory.” On the one hand, the Gulf cities are more accessible as migrant destinations, particularly for women. Nevertheless, positive views “are countered by a very negative image of the Gulf as an uncivilized place of arrogant and immoral

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hypocrites, and ruthless exploitation of workers,” and a distaste for khaljana, or the “Gulfization” of wider Arab culture.10 However, despite these deeply ambivalent views, Schielke notes that “it is the nature of hegemony that certain powers and places cannot be ignored, whether one likes it or not.”11 This captures the impact of Doha and Abu Dhabi and the likes of Qaradawi, IUMS, and Bin Bayyah and FPPMS. In a world of global cities, Doha and Abu Dhabi are undisputed hegemons, both in the region and on the world stage. Importantly, these two cities serve as nodes for rival transnational networks of ʿulamāʾ. Consequently, though ʿulamāʾ like Qaradawi and Bin Bayyah might be ridiculed as hypocrites and stooges, or praised as moral voices in equal measure, what they could never be is ignored.

Notes 1 See for example Zeghal, “Religion”; Masooda Bano and Hanane Benadi, “Regulating Religious Authority for Political Gains: al-Sisi’s Manipulation of alAzhar in Egypt,” Third World Quarterly 39, no. 8 (2018): 1604–1621. 2 Examples of this range of literature include, but are not limited to, the following monographs, Shaham, Rethinking; Polka, Spiritual; Wendelin Wenzel-Teuber, Islamische Ethik und moderne Gesellschaft im Islamismus von Yusuf al-Qaradawi (Hamburg: Verlag Dr. Kovac, 2005); Bettina Gräf, Medien-Fatwas@Yusuf al-Qaradawi: die Popularisierung des islamischen Rechts (Berlin: Schwarz, 2010); Sarah Albrecht, Islamisches Minderheitenrecht: Yusuf al-Qaradawis Konzept des fiqh al-aqalliyat (Berlin: Ergon, 2010); Muhammad ʿAmara, al-Duktūr Yūsuf al-Qaraḍāwī: al-Madrasa al-Fikriyya wa-l-Mashrūʿ al-Fikrī (Cairo: Nahdat Misr, 1997); ʿIsam Talima, al-Qaraḍāwī Faqīhan (Cairo: Dar al-Tawziʿ wa-l-Nashr, 2000); Akram Kassab, al-Manhaj al-Daʿwī ʿind al-Qaraḍāwī (Cairo: Maktabat Wahba, 2007); Mujahid Khalaf, al-Qaraḍāwī bayn al-Ikhwān wa-l-Sulṭān (Cairo: Dar al-Jumhuriyya li-l-Sihafa, 2008). 3 In Saudi Arabia, the Shiʿi ʿālim Nimr Baqir al-Nimr was executed in 2016 after encouraging protests against the regime, while the Sunni ʿālim Salman al-ʿAwda has remained in prison since 2017 after refusing to publicly condemn Qatar at the start of the embargo. 4 In another example, the prominent US Salafi Yasir Qadhi acknowledges that he would have labeled himself and his institution Neo-traditionalist had not that brand already been appropriated by Hamza Yusuf. Grewal, Islam, 331. 5 See for example Madawi al-Rasheed, Muted Modernists: The Struggle over Divine Politics in Saudi Arabia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). 6 See Kristin Smith Diwan, “Who Is Sunni?: Chechnya Islamic Conference Opens Window on Intra-Faith Rivalry,” The Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, 16 September 2016, https://agsiw.org/who-is-a-sunni-chechnya-islamicconference-opens-window-on-intra-faith-rivalry/. 7 Mahmood, Religious Difference, 10, 166. 8 Ovamir Anjum, Politics, Law, and Community in Islamic Thought: The Taymiyyan Moment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 161–163. 9 Schielke, Egypt, 156. 10 Schielke, Egypt, 156; Cherribi, Fridays, 17, 23–24, 40. 11 Schielke, Egypt, 156–157.

Index

Note: Page numbers in italics indicate a figure and page numbers in bold indicate a table on the corresponding page. End note information is denoted by n and note number following the page number. Abou El Fadl, Khaled 33, 59, 118 Abu Dhabi: Al Muwatta Center in 100; Al Nahyans of (see Al Nahyan); dissent crackdown in 83; FPPMS in (see Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies); Oil Embargo and 75; significance of 2–3, 11, 111, 119–120; Tabah Foundation in 94; “Year of Tolerance” in 73 Abu Dhabi Fund for Arab Economic Development 78 Abu Zayd, Wasfi 46–48, 84–85, 99–100, 101 Afghani, Muhammad Umar al- 95 Afghanistan: Soviet invasion of 30; US invasion of 9, 76 Agrama, Hussein 103–104, 113n45 aid projects see humanitarian aid projects al-Azami, Usaama 102 Algeria: rebellion (19th century) 45 ʿālim see ʿulamāʾ al-Islah (al-Iṣlāḥ, Reform) 77, 82–83 al-Jazeera: Arab Spring and aftermath coverage by 1, 40–45, 47, 48–49; Bin Bayyah coverage by 84, 86–87, 98; branding of 32, 41, 49, 117; closure of, calls for 65; Egyptian Coup coverage by 58; foreign policy and 62; The Opposite Direction on 31; Qaradawi on 1, 32, 34–35, 41,

43–45, 47, 48–51, 58, 61–62, 66; Qatar branding via 31–32; Sharia and Life on 1, 32, 34, 41, 47, 61–62, 84, 86–87, 98, 117; wasaṭiyya adoption by 34, 40, 44, 115, 117 Allam, Shawki 94 Alliance of the Virtuous (ḥilf al-fuḍūl) 73, 108–111 al-Manār (Lebanese television station) 56 al-Mesbar Studies and Research Center 94 Al Muwatta Center 75, 100, 102–105 Al Nahyan (Āl Nahyān): Arab Spring and aftermath stance of 75, 82–83; Bin Bayyah and 1, 2, 10–11, 12, 67, 73–75, 77–78, 82, 90, 102, 110, 115–116, 118–119; brand of/ branding by 67, 73; foreign policy of (see foreign policy of UAE); FPPMS support by 95, 100; Jurisprudence of Peace support by 12, 74, 96, 100; see also specific family members Al Nahyan, Abdullah b. Zayed 2, 83, 95–96 Al Nahyan, Khalifa b. Zayed 73, 82–83, 90n2 Al Nahyan, Muhammad b. Zayed 82, 90n2 Al Nahyan, Zayed b. Sultan (“Shaykh Zayed”): Bin Bayyah’s relationship

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with 11, 73, 77–78, 102, 110; foreign policy under 75–76, 78, 108, 110; founding of UAE by 73 al-Qaeda 31, 65, 76, 101 Al Saʿud, ʿAbd al-ʿAziz b. ʿAbd al-Rahman 20–21 Al Thani (Āl Thānī): Arab Spring and aftermath stance of 40–41, 48–49, 51; education establishment by 19, 20–21; foreign policy of (see foreign policy of Qatar); Jurisprudence of Revolution support by 11, 48; Qaradawi and 1, 2, 10–11, 19, 27–28, 30–31, 34, 40, 43, 48–49, 57, 60–67, 115–116; Wahhabism and 21; see also specific family members Al Thani, Ahmad b. Jassim 51 Al Thani, Ahmad b. ʿAli 19, 27 Al Thani, Hamad b. Jassim 60 Al Thani, Hamad b. Khalifa: abdication by 60, 62; foreign policy under 31, 43, 56, 60, 62; IUMS establishment by 35; Qaradawi’s relationship with 43, 62 Al Thani, Jassim b. Muhammad 21 Al Thani, Khalifa b. Hamad 27–28, 30–31 Al Thani, Suhaim b. Hamad 25 Al Thani, Tamim b. Hamad 35, 60, 62, 64–65 Al Thani, ʿAbd Allah b. Qasim 19, 20–21 Al Thani, ʿAli b. ʿAbd Allah 21 al-Waṭan (Qatari newspaper) 63 Amman Message (2004) 107 Ansar al-Sunna al-Muhammadiyya 6 Ansari, ʿAbd Allah al- 25–26 Arab Spring and aftermath: armed intervention in 2, 48–49, 82; Bin Bayyah response to 10, 11, 73–74, 80, 84–88, 111, 118–119; dates of 40, 58; democracy and 33–34, 40, 50–51, 58–59, 66–67, 88, 118; failure of 118–119; “hijacking” of 44–45, 58; Jurisprudence of Peace and 2, 10–12, 73–74, 85, 88, 90, 111; Jurisprudence of Revolution and 1, 10–11, 41, 43, 45–48; legal arguments for 41–43, 45, 47–48; media coverage of 1, 40–45, 47,

48–51, 84–87; Muslim Brotherhood and 40–41, 44–45, 49, 53n24, 58, 83, 85; Qaradawi response to 1, 10, 11, 40–51, 55–56, 66–67, 84–85, 101, 118–119; Qatar foreign policy in 1–2, 11, 19, 40, 43, 48–51, 66–67; UAE foreign policy in 1–2, 48, 49–50, 75, 82–83, 110–111; ʿulamāʾ and 1, 42–43, 45–46 ʿAwda, Salman al- 45, 120n3 Azhar, the: Arab Spring stance of 47; Bin Bayyah’s relationship with 79; educational field trips to 27; Egyptian Coup stance of 61; Ibn Maniʿ’s studies at 20, 21, 22; missions from 10, 20, 23–28, 66, 117; Qaradawi’s graduates’ studies at 27, 28, 29; Qaradawi’s studies at 10, 22–23, 24, 26, 34, 117; reforms 26, 27; UAE students’ studies at 77, 91n21; ʿulamāʾ trained at 12n2, 20, 21, 23, 29 (see also specific individuals); Wahhabism and 26; wasaṭiyya and 8, 10, 20, 29, 117 Bahrain: Arab Spring and aftermath in 41, 48–51, 55–56, 67; Qatar blockade/embargo role of 2, 63, 65, 110; Qatar relations with 2, 48–51, 63, 64, 65, 67 Banna, Hasan al- 6, 22 Bano, Masooda 119 Baquri, Ahmad Hasan al- 23, 24 Baskan, Birol 28 Ben Ali, Zine Abidine 41 Bin Bayyah, Abdullah: Al Nahyan and 1, 2, 10–11, 12, 67, 73–75, 77–78, 82, 90, 102, 110, 115–116, 118–119; Arab Spring response of 10, 11, 73–74, 80, 84–88, 111, 118–119; brand of/branding by 9, 10–11, 67, 73, 102, 116, 119; Constitution of Medina interest of 104, 105–106; democracy views of 11, 12, 74, 80–81, 84–89, 94, 97–98, 100, 111, 118–119; educational role of 78, 79, 103; foreign policy of UAE and 75, 82, 90, 102, 115–117; in FPPMS 2, 73–74, 90, 94–111, 117; on globalization 81–82; in IUMS

Index 2, 67, 74, 79, 83, 87–88, 111; Jurisprudence of Peace articulation by 2, 10–12, 73–74, 85, 88, 90, 95–108, 111; Marrakesh Declaration role of 104–108; media coverage of 84–88, 98, 102, 111; modern revivalism influence on 6, 7–8; Muslim Brotherhood concerns of 85–86, 98, 101–102; nation-state sponsorship views of 4, 74–75, 82, 103–104, 110, 115–116, 119; on obedience 98–99; online presence of 87, 116; personal history of 1, 77–78; Qaradawi relationship with 2, 67, 73, 79, 87–88, 111; on religious freedom 105, 109, 117; Syrian civil war stance of 85–86, 88; on terrorism 80, 82, 103; wasaṭiyya advocacy of 5, 8, 10, 74, 79, 116; writings of 79–81, 88–89, 100–101, 104, 116 Bouazizi, Mohamad 40, 41 branding see under specific topics Browers, Michelle 107 Brownback, Sam 109 Buti, Muhammad al- 7, 55 Carter, Jimmy 8 Carter Doctrine (US) 8, 30 chaos of religious discourse (fawḍā al-khiṭāb al-dīnī) 7, 75, 90, 95–100, 103–105, 107, 110, 116 chaos of the fatwa (fawḍā al-fatwā, fawḍā fī l-fatwā) 7, 11, 75, 82, 103 Cherribi, Sam 41, 44 citizenship: Islamism vs. Salafism view of 6; legal arguments for Arab Spring referrals to 42, 43; Qaradawi’s Qatari 28, 60, 65 Cold War-era foreign policy 30, 31 College of Islamic Studies, Hamad bin Khalifa University 53n30 College of Sharia, Qatar University 28, 29 Comoros Islands: Qatar relations with 65 Constitution of Medina (ṣaḥīfat al-madīna) 104, 105–106, 108 consultation (shūra) 33, 80–81, 85–86, 118

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Daddah, Moktar Ould 78 Dari, Harith al- 51, 54n58 Darwish, Jassim al- 22 Davidson, Christopher 77 democracy: Arab Spring and aftermath complexities of 33–34, 40, 50–51, 58–59, 66–67, 88, 118; Bin Bayyah’s views of 11, 12, 74, 80–81, 84–89, 94, 97–98, 100, 111, 118–119; Gulf monarchies’ internal demands for 8, 9, 76; Islamic jurisprudence and 32–35, 59, 80–81, 86, 88–89; Muslim Brotherhood embracing 6, 86, 101; Qaradawi’s views of 11, 32–35, 40, 50, 58–59, 66–67, 74, 88, 111, 118–119 de-traditionalization: of Islam 24, 66, 116; Salafi 5, 6 Djibouti: Qatar relations with 65 Doha: Arab Spring celebrations in 43; Azhar Mission to 10, 20, 23–27, 66, 117; Qaradawi’s writing about 27; significance of 2–3, 11, 111, 119–120; Umar Ibn al-Khattab mosque in 1 Dubai: Al Maktoums in 76, 90n1; al-Mesbar Studies and Research Center in 94; branding by 9; Kalam Research and Media Center in 94; Qaradawi in 77 Dubai Ports World 9 ECFR (European Council for Fatwa and Research) 79 education: Azhar (see Azhar, the); branding of universities for 4; nation-states’ provision and funding of 3, 4, 19–22, 76–77; in Qatar 19–22, 25–29; in Saudi Arabia 21, 28, 78; of scholarly-elite 12n2 (see also intellectuals; ʿulamāʾ); in UAE 19, 20, 76–77, 91n21, 103; ʿulamāʾ role in 4, 19–23, 76–77 (see also Bin Bayyah, Abdullah; Qaradawi, Yusuf al-) Egypt: Arab Spring and aftermath in 40–47, 50–51, 58, 82–83, 84–85, 88, 101, 118; educational field trips to 26; Egyptian Coup (2013) 2, 40, 57–62, 64, 67, 83, 102, 111;

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Egyptian Revolution (2011) 41–47, 50–51, 58, 85, 101; Mubarak of 1, 41, 43, 47, 50–51, 82–83, 85, 111; Mursi of 2, 40, 57–62, 67, 83; Muslim Brotherhood in (see Muslim Brotherhood); Qaradawi of (see Qaradawi, Yusuf al-); Qatar blockade/embargo role of 2, 63, 65, 110; Qatar relations with 2, 40, 43, 58, 60–62, 63, 64, 65, 67, 83; Salafism in 6; Tahrir Square protests in 41–43, 46, 58, 88; UAE foreign policy in 2, 58–60, 62, 82–83, 111 Erdogan, Recep Tayyip 9, 63, 64–65 Establishing Authoritative Points of Reference for Interpreting the Social Reality (Tanbīh al-Marājaʿ ʿalā Taʾsīl Fiqh al-Wāqiʿ) (Bin Bayyah) 88–89 European Council for Fatwa and Research (ECFR) 79 Fadel, Mohammad 102 foreign policy of Qatar: aid projects in 31; in Arab Spring and aftermath 1–2, 11, 19, 40, 43, 48–51, 66–67; Bahrain relations in 2, 48–51, 63, 64, 65, 67; blockade/embargo in response to 2, 63, 65, 110; Cold Warera 30, 31; Egyptian Coup stance in 2, 58, 60–62, 67; Egyptian relations in 2, 40, 43, 58, 60–62, 63, 64, 65, 67, 83; Gulf Crisis and 9, 11, 19, 62–64, 65, 83; interventionist 2; Iranian relations in 31, 65; Israeli relations in 31; Libyan relations in 2, 48–49, 65; Muslim Brotherhood support in 1, 19, 20, 28, 65, 83, 94; NATO intervention participation as 2, 48–49; Qaradawi and 30–32, 48–51, 56–58, 60–67, 115–117; rivalry with UAE foreign policy 1–2; Saudi relations in 2, 30, 31, 63, 64, 65, 110; soft power policies in 31, 35; Sufism in 95; Syrian civil war and 56–57, 60, 67; terrorism claims and 65, 110; Turkish relations in 9, 11, 63, 64–66; UAE relations in 2, 62–64, 65, 110 (see also Gulf Crisis); US relations in 9, 30–31, 40, 61–62, 66, 117

foreign policy of UAE: activist counter-revolutionary 74, 82, 111; Afghanistan war in 9, 76; aid projects in 31, 75–76, 78, 108, 110; in Arab Spring and aftermath 1–2, 48, 49–50, 75, 82–83, 110–111; Bin Bayyah and 75, 82, 90, 102, 115–117; Egyptian Coup stance in 2, 58–60, 62, 83, 111; Egyptian relations in 2, 58–60, 62, 82–83, 111; Gulf Crisis and 9, 11, 19, 62–64, 65, 83; interventionist 1–2; Iranian relations in 75–76; Israeli relations in 75; Libyan relations in 2, 82; Marrakesh Declaration in 107; Mauritanian relations in 78, 110; Muslim Brotherhood response in 74, 83, 102, 111; NATO intervention participation as 2, 48, 82; Palestinian relations in 75; Qatar blockade/ embargo role of 2, 63, 65, 110; Qatar relations in 2, 62–64, 65, 110 (see also Gulf Crisis); religious freedom in 109–110, 117 (see also Alliance of the Virtuous; Marrakesh Declaration); rivalry with Qatari foreign policy 1–2; soft power policies in 76; US relations in 9, 12, 62, 74, 76, 108–110, 117; “Year of Tolerance” in 73, 101 Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies (Muntadā Taʿzīz al-Silm fī l-Mujtamaʿāt al-Muslima, FPPMS): Alliance of the Virtuous with 73, 108–111; Bin Bayyah’s role in 2, 73–74, 90, 94–111, 117; Constitution of Medina interest of 104, 105–106, 108; establishment of 2, 73, 94, 111; interfaith conferences and initiatives by 73, 100, 105–111; Jurisprudence of Peace support of 2, 11, 73–74, 90, 95–108, 111; logo for 101; Marrakesh Declaration role of 104–108; order as response to chaos via 95–100; Sufism and 94–95; tenets of 73, 94 FPPMS see Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies Francis (Pope) 73 Freer, Courtney 28, 83

Index Gaddafi, Muammar 2, 48–49, 82 Ghannushi, Rashid al- 6, 84 Ghuzlan, Mahmud 57–58 global cities 119–120 globalization 81–82 global mufti 66–67, 116 Grewal, Zareena 50–51, 119 Gulf Crisis 9, 11, 19, 62–64, 65, 83 Gulf War (1980-1988) 31, 76 Gulf War (1991) 76 Gutkowski, Stacy 107 Hadith: democracy and references to 80; Egyptian Coup and references to 61; Jurisprudence of Peace citing 99; legal arguments for Arab Spring based on 42, 45, 47–48 Hajari, Maryam al- 29, 62 Hallaq, Wael 74 Hamad bin Khalifa University, College of Islamic Studies 53n30 Hamas 31 Hamed, Hamed A. 21 Hamid, Amir 24–25 Hanbali school 5, 19, 21, 26, 36nn13–14 Hasan (Muhammad’s grandson) 99 Hasan, Muhammad Khalifa 45–46 Hasun, Ahmad 55 Hezbollah 50, 56–57, 65 Hudaybi, Hasan al- 24 humanitarian aid projects: Qatar support for 31; UAE support for 31, 75–76, 78, 108, 110 human rights 42–43, 108 Hurd, Elizabeth Shakman 106 Ibn al-Ashʿath 45 Ibn Hajar 80 Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya 5, 27 Ibn Taymiyya 5, 57 intellectuals: modern revivalism and 5, 6, 7; ʿulamāʾ and 3, 4, 12n2; use of term 12n2 International Religious Freedom Act (1998, US) 9 International Union of Muslim Scholars (al-Ittiḥād al-ʿĀlamī li-ʿUlamāʾ al-Muslimīn, IUMS): Arab Spring stance of 40; Bin Bayyah’s role

125

in 2, 67, 74, 79, 83, 87–88, 111; establishment of 35; Jurisprudence of Revolution support of 1, 41, 43, 45–48; Qaradawi’s role in 1, 35, 40, 64, 66, 67; Syrian civil war stance of 56; Turkish relations with 64, 66 Internet access: Arab regimes’ disruption of 1; social media via (see social media); ʿulamāʾ use of 4, 29, 116 Iran: Arab Spring and aftermath role of 50; Iranian Revolution (1979) 8, 30, 44, 76; Qaradawi’s relations with 56; Qatar relations with 31, 65; UAE relations with 75–76 Iraq: ISIS in 65, 105 (see also ISIS); rebellion in (699-701) 45; US invasion of 9, 118 ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham) 65, 74, 101, 105–107 Islam: de-traditionalization of 24, 66, 116; legal arguments for Arab Spring based on tenets of 42, 45, 47–48; nation-state branding and 8–9, 116–117; sacred texts of (see Hadith; Qurʾan); scholarly-elite (see ʿulamāʾ) Islamic Awakening 24, 30 Islamic book (kitāb islāmī) genre 24–25, 30 Islamic Guidance (Hādī al-Islām) 30 Islamic jurisprudence: Bin Bayyah’s writings on 79–81 (see also Jurisprudence of Peace); democracy and 32–35, 59, 80–81, 86, 88–89; Hanbali school 5, 19, 21, 26, 36nn13–14; Jurisprudence of Peace 2, 10–12, 73–74, 85, 88, 90, 95–108, 111; Jurisprudence of Revolution 1, 10, 41, 43, 45–48, 99–100, 101; Maliki school 8, 74, 95, 116; modern revivalism in 5–8 (see also specific trends); Qaradawi’s writing on 24–25, 30, 32, 59 (see also Jurisprudence of Revolution) Islamic public order (al-niẓām al-islāmī al-ʿāmm) 74–75, 86, 104, 113n45 Islamic register 107–108, 110 Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) 65, 74, 101, 105–107 Islamism 6, 7, 8

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Index

IslamOnline 29, 62 Israel: Qatar foreign policy with 31; UAE foreign policy with 75 IUMS see International Union of Muslim Scholars Jifri, Habib Ali al- 94 Jordan: Amman Message in 107; brand of/branding by 107, 110; Qatar relations with 65 Jubayr, Saʿid b. 45 Jumairi, Rashid Ahmad al- 95 Jumʿa, ʿAli 42, 50–51, 61, 102 Jurisprudence of Jihād, The (Fiqh al-Jihād) (Qaradawi) 34, 46, 86 Jurisprudence of Peace (fiqh al-silm): Al Nahyan’s support for 12, 74, 96, 100; Bin Bayyah and FPPMS articulation of 2, 10–12, 73–74, 85, 88, 90, 95–108, 111; branding of 100–104; Jurisprudence of Revolution comparison 99–100, 101; Marrakesh Declaration and 104–108; order as response to chaos via 95–100; production of 100–104 Jurisprudence of Revolution (fiqh al-thawra): Al Thani support for 11, 48; branding of 101; Jurisprudence of Peace comparison 99–100, 101; Qaradawi and IUMS articulation of 1, 10, 41, 43, 45–48, 99–100 Kalam Research and Media Center 94 Ketchley, Neil 59 Khanfar, Wadah 51 King ʿAbd al-ʿAziz University 78 Kuwait: aid projects in 31; Azhar mission to 25; education in 19; invasion of (1991) 31; Mauritania relations with 78; occupation or territory loss of 8; Qatar relations with 65 Lawful and the Prohibited in Islam, The (al-Ḥalāl wa-l-Ḥarām fī l-Islām) (Qaradawi) 24–25, 30 Libya: Arab Spring and aftermath in 2, 48–49, 82, 84; Gaddafi of 2, 48–49, 82; Muslim Brotherhood militias in 1, 85; Qatar relations with 2, 48–49, 65; UAE relations with 2, 82

Magid, Mohamad 109 Mahmood, Saba 108, 109 Mahmud, ʿAbd Allah Al 25–26 Mahmud, ʿAbd al-Rahman b. Abd Allah Al 38n79 Mahmud, ʿAli b. Muhammad al- 91n21 Maktoum, Al 90n1 Maktoum, Maktoum b. Rashid Al 76 Maldives: Qatar relations with 65 Maliki school 8, 74, 95, 116 Maniʿ, Muhammad b. 19–22, 25–26, 66, 117 Mansour, Adli 62 Maraghi, Mustafa al- 23 Mardin Conference (2010) 92n47 Marrakesh Declaration (2016) 104–108 Mauritania: Bin Bayyah of (see Bin Bayyah, Abdullah); government of 78; Qatar relations with 65; Road of Hope in 78; UAE aid to 78, 110; Yusuf on spirituality in 96 media: Arab Spring and aftermath coverage by 1, 40–45, 47, 48–51, 84–87; Bin Bayyah coverage by 84–88, 98, 102, 111; Egyptian Coup coverage by 58, 61; Marrakesh Declaration coverage in 106; Qaradawi coverage by 1, 30, 32, 34–35, 41–45, 47, 48–51, 56–58, 61–64, 66, 84, 102, 111; Qatar branding via 31–32; Syrian civil war coverage by 56–57; terrorism coverage by 65; see also social media; specific media organizations MICE sector (meetings, incentives, conferences, and exhibitions) 35, 100 modern revivalism 5–8; Islamism in 6, 7; Neo-traditionalism in 7–8; origins of 5; Salafism in 5–6, 7; Wahhabism in 5, 7; see also specific trends Morocco: brand of/branding by 107, 110; government response to protests in 85; Marrakesh Declaration in 104–108; Muslim Brotherhood in 85; Neo-traditionalist promotion in 7; Sufism support in 94 Mubarak, Husni 1, 41, 43, 47, 50–51, 82–83, 85, 111 Muhammad 99, 104, 105, 108 Muhammad VI (King) 85, 105–107

Index Mursi, Muhammad 2, 40, 57–62, 67, 83 Muslim Brotherhood: Arab Spring and aftermath stance of 40–41, 44–45, 49, 53n24, 58, 83, 85; Bin Bayyah’s concerns about 85–86, 98, 101–102; democracy embraced by 6, 86, 101; education role of 22, 77; Egyptian Coup against 57–62, 102; “hijacking” of revolution by 44–45, 58; ISIS and 65; Neo-traditionalist opposition to 101–102; Qaradawi affiliation with 8, 10–11, 20, 22, 23, 26, 30, 34, 46, 49, 117; Qatari support for 1, 19, 20, 28, 65, 83, 94; Sufism support in opposition to 94; terrorist designation for 102; in UAE 30, 77, 83, 111; UAE policy in response to 74, 83, 102, 111 Muslim scholarly-elite see ʿulamāʾ My Cell (Zinzānatī) (Qaradawi) 23 nation-states: Bin Bayyah’s view of 4, 74–75, 82, 103–104, 110, 115–116, 119; branding of 8–9, 10, 107–108, 116–117; citizenship in (see citizenship); education provided and funded by 3, 4, 19–22, 76–77; Islamic institutions and 4, 103–104, 115–116; public order in 74–75, 86, 104, 113n45; Qaradawi’s view of 4, 34–35, 48, 50, 63, 74–75, 115–116, 119; ʿulamāʾ relationships with 1, 3–4, 10, 42–43, 46, 63, 82, 89, 103–104, 107, 110, 115–116, 119; see also specific countries NATO interventions 2, 48–49, 82 Nayed, Aref Ali 94 Neo-Hanbali theology 5, 21 Neo-traditionalism 7–8, 73, 74, 94, 101–102 Nimr, Nimr Baqir al- 120n3 Obama, Barack/Obama administration 50–51, 109, 117 obedience (al-ṭāʿa) 98–99 OIC (Organization of the Islamic Conference) 79, 80, 111 oil industry: embargo of (1973) 75; in Qatar 21

127

On the Jurisprudence of the State in Islam (Min Fiqh al-Dawla fī l-Islām) (Qaradawi) 32, 59 Opposite Direction, The (al-Ittijāh al-Muʿākis) 31 Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) 79, 80, 111 Palestine: Qaradawi’s support for “martyrdom operations” (ʿamalīyāt istishādiyya) in 61; UAE relations with 75 pan-Arab nationalism 77 Peace Caravans 108 Petersen, John E. 8 Prophetic Hadith see Hadith Prophetic Sunna 5, 42 public order 74–75, 86, 104, 113n45 Qadhi, Yasir 120n4 Qadir, ʿAbd al- 45 Qaradawi, Yusuf al-: Al Thani and 1, 2, 10–11, 19, 27–28, 30–31, 34, 40, 43, 48–49, 57, 60–67, 115–116; Arab Spring response of 1, 10, 11, 40–51, 55–56, 66–67, 84–85, 101, 118–119; background and personal history of 1, 22–23; Bin Bayyah relationship with 2, 67, 73, 79, 87–88, 111; brand of/branding by 10–11, 32, 34–35, 49–50, 63, 116, 119; Constitution of Medina interest of 106; democracy views of 11, 32–35, 40, 50, 58–59, 66–67, 74, 88, 111, 118–119; educational role of 19, 20, 23, 25–29; education of 10, 22–23, 24, 26, 34, 117; Egyptian Coup stance of 57–62, 67; “Egyptian Khomeini” moniker for 44–45; foreign policy of Qatar and 30–32, 48–51, 56–58, 60–67, 115–117; “hijacking” of revolution by 44–45; imprisonment of 22, 23; independence of 4, 34–35, 48, 50, 63, 75, 115–116, 119; in IUMS 1, 35, 40, 64, 66, 67; Jurisprudence of Revolution articulation by 1, 10, 41, 43, 45–48, 99–100; legal arguments for Arab Spring by 41–43, 45, 47–48; media coverage of 1, 30, 32, 34–35, 41–45, 47, 48–51,

128

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56–58, 61–64, 66, 84, 102, 111; modern revivalism influence on 6, 7–8; Muslim Brotherhood affiliation of 7–8, 10–11, 20, 22, 23, 26, 30, 34, 46, 49, 117; online presence of 56, 62, 116; Qatar recruitment of 23–25; Qutb critique by 13n32; Syrian civil war stance of 55–57, 60, 67; television programs of 1, 30, 32, 34, 41, 47, 61–62, 117; wasaṭiyya advocacy of 5, 8, 10, 20, 29, 32, 34, 40–41, 49, 66, 79, 115–117; writings of 23, 24–25, 27, 28–29, 30, 32, 34, 45–46, 53n30, 59, 86, 100–101, 116 Qaradawi Center for Islamic Moderation and Renewal 53n30 Qaradawi Center for Research in Moderate Thought 35, 45, 53n30, 100–101 Qaradawi.net 56 Qaradawi: The Revolutionary Imam (Abu Zayd) 46–48, 99–100, 101 Qasimi, Saqr b. Khalid al- 91n21 Qasimi, Saqr b. Muhammad Al 77 Qatar: al-Jazeera of (see al-Jazeera); Al Thani of (see Al Thani); Arab Spring support by 1, 40, 48 (see also under foreign policy of Qatar); brand of/branding by 2, 9, 10–11, 31–32, 35, 40, 49, 55, 57, 66–67, 116–117; Doha in (see Doha); education in 19–22, 25–29; foreign policy of (see foreign policy of Qatar); independence of 30, 31, 40, 49, 66; IUMS based in (see International Union of Muslim Scholars); occupation or territory loss of 8; oil revenue in 21; Qaradawi influence in (see Qaradawi, Yusuf al-); Wahhabism in 11, 19–20, 21, 25–26, 28–29, 66 Qatar Faculty of Islamic Studies, Qaradawi Center for Research in Moderate Thought 35, 45, 53n30, 100–101 Qatar Foundation 9 Qatar University, College of Sharia 28, 29 Quartet see Bahrain; Egypt; Saudi Arabia; United Arab Emirates

Quisay, Walaa 102 Qurʾan: democracy and interpretation of 33, 88–89, 118; educational memorization of 19, 22, 76; Jurisprudence of Peace citing 99; legal arguments for Arab Spring based on 42, 45, 47–48; modern revivalism on 5 Qutb, Sayyid 6, 13n32, 101–102 Raysuni, Ahmad al- 66, 67, 81, 84 “refinement of the cause” (taḥqīq al-manāṭ) 79, 89 registers 44–45, 107–108, 110 religious freedom 9, 11–12, 74, 105– 108, 109–110, 117 Religious Institute (maʿhad dīnī) in Doha 26, 28, 29 Rida, Rashid 6, 8, 45, 66, 79, 116 Riyadh Agreements 63–64, 65 Roberts, Bob 109 Roberts, David 28 Russia: Neo-traditionalist promotion in 7; Sufism support in 94; see also Soviet Union Sakurai, Keiko 119 salaf (first generation of Muslims) 5 Salafi al-Nur Party 6 Salafism: education adhering to creed of 19, 21, 26; Islamism distinction 6; Neo-traditionalist opposition to 7; Qaradawi’s critiques of 30; tenets of 5–6, 21; Wahhabism distinction 21 Sallabi, ʿAli al- 49 Saperstein, David 109 Saqr, ʿAbd al-Badiʿ 22, 23, 27 Sattar, ʿAbd al-Muʿazz ʿAbd al- 23 Saudi Arabia: Arab Spring and aftermath response of 48, 49–50; educational field trips to 26–27; education in 21, 28, 78; Egyptian Coup stance in 60; Ibn Maniʿ from 20–21; media death threats in 82; Qatar blockade/ embargo role of 2, 63, 65, 110; Qatar relations with 2, 30, 31, 63, 64, 65, 110; Sufism in 95; US relations with 77; Wahhabism in 28, 94 SCAF (Supreme Council of the Armed Forces) 83

Index Schielke, Samuli 5, 44, 107, 119–120 Scholar and A Tyrant, A (ʿĀlim wa-Ṭāghiya) (Qaradawi) 23 scholarly-elite see ʿulamāʾ secularism: Arab Spring foundations in 44; nation-state and 104; Qaradawi’s critiques of 30 Sedgewick, Mark 7 Senegal: Qatar relations with 65 Shadid, Anthony 57 Shafik, Ahmad 83 Shamiyya, Fadi 56 Sharia and Life (al-Sharīʿa wa-lḤayāt) 1, 32, 34, 41, 47, 61–62, 84, 86–87, 98, 117 Shaykh, Muhammad Ibrahim Al al26–27 Sisi, ʿAbd al-Fattah al- 102 Sky News Arabia 88 social media: Arab Spring and aftermath on 1; Gulf Crisis posts on 63; ʿulamāʾ use of 4, 29, 116 social reality (al-wāqiʿ): Bin Bayyah and 8, 79, 84, 88–89, 111; Qaradawi and 8, 27, 29, 41, 45, 47, 59, 66, 111 Soviet Union: Afghanistan invasion by 30; Cold War with 30, 31; collapse of 31; see also Russia state governments see nation-states; specific countries Stephens, Michael 29, 56, 66 Strauss, Leo 97 Subayʿi, ʿAbd Allah b. Turki al- 20, 22–26, 28, 117 Sufism 5, 7, 8, 74, 94–95 Sunna 5, 42 Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) 83 Syria: Arab Spring and aftermath in 48, 51, 84–85, 88, 118; civil war in 55–57, 60, 67, 85–86, 88, 118; ISIS in 65, 105 (see also ISIS); Muslim Brotherhood militias in 1, 85 Tabah Foundation 92n38, 94 Tahrir Square protests 41–43, 46, 58, 88 Taliban 31, 76 Taskhiri, ʿAli al- 50 Tayyib, Ahmad al- 42, 94

129

Terrorism: Diagnosis and Treatments (al-Irhāb: al-Tashkhīṣ wa-l-Ḥulūl) (Bin Bayyah) 80, 104 “Thank You Turkey!” festival 64–65 Treaty of Hudaybiyyah 99 Trump administration 108–109, 117 Tunisia: Arab Spring and aftermath in 40–41, 84, 118; Muslim Brotherhood in 85 Turkey: Egyptian Coup stance of 64; Qaradawi’s and Qatar relations with 9, 11, 63, 64–66; “Thank You Turkey!” festival in 64–65 25 January: A People’s Revolution (Qaradawi) 45–47, 53n30, 101 Twitter 4, 63 UAE see United Arab Emirates Ulrichsen, Kristian Coates 83 ʿulamāʾ (sg. ʿālim): Arab regimes and 1, 3–4, 10, 42–43, 46, 63, 82, 89, 103–104, 107, 110, 115–116, 119 (see also nation-states); Arab Spring stance of 1, 42–43, 45–47 (see also under Qaradawi, Yusuf al-); Bin Bayyah as (see Bin Bayyah, Abdullah); branding by 2, 3, 4, 9–10; decline of Wahhabi 28–29; democracy and interpretation of 89; fragmentation of authority of 3–4, 103; global mufti and 66–67, 116; intellectuals and 3, 4, 12n2; modern revivalism among 5–8 (see also specific sects); Muslim Brotherhood support influenced by 19, 28; organizations representing (see Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies; International Union of Muslim Scholars); Qaradawi as (see Qaradawi, Yusuf al-); Qatari education and 19–23 (see also Qaradawi, Yusuf al-); social media and online presence of 4, 29, 116; state- vs. free- 4, 34, 42, 46, 63, 103–104, 107, 110, 115–116, 119; Syrian civil war stance of 55; terminology for 12n2; UAE education and 76–77 (see also Bin Bayyah, Abdullah) Umar Ibn al-Khattab 104

130

Index

Umar Ibn al-Khattab mosque 1 United Arab Emirates (UAE): Abu Dhabi in (see Abu Dhabi); Al Nahyan of (see Al Nahyan); brand of/branding by 2, 9, 10–11, 12, 67, 73–76, 78, 95, 107–110, 116–117; dissent crackdown in 83; Dubai in (see Dubai); education in 19, 20, 76–77, 91n21, 103; foreign policy of (see foreign policy of UAE); founding of 73, 75; FPPMS in (see Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies); governance in 90n1 (see also Al Nahyan); independence of 76; Muslim Brotherhood in 30, 77, 83, 111; occupation or territory loss of 8; Sufism in 94–95; terrorism ties and 76 United Kingdom: Bin Bayyah’s presentations in 96; Muslim Brotherhood views in 102; Neotraditionalist promotion in 7; Qatari independence from 30; Qatari peninsula control by 19; Sufism support in 94 United States: Afghanistan invasion by 9, 76; Alliance of the Virtuous participation from 108–109; Arab Spring and aftermath response of 50–51; Bin Bayyah’s presentations in 96; Cold War with 30, 31; Gulf security investment by 2, 8–9, 30–31, 40, 66, 74, 76, 117; Iraq invasion by 9, 118; Muslim Brotherhood views in 102; Qatar foreign policy with 9, 30–31, 40, 61–62, 66, 117; religious freedom stance in 9, 11–12, 74, 106, 108, 109–110, 117; Saudi relations

with 77; UAE foreign policy with 9, 12, 62, 74, 76, 108–110, 117; Washington Declaration in 108 University of Medina 20, 23, 26, 28 Uthman, Uthman 84–87 Vision of Global Peace, A (Erdogan) 65 Wahhab, Muhammad b. ʿAbd al- 5 Wahhabi Mission 23 Wahhabism: decline of Qatari 28–29; Neo-traditionalist opposition to 7; in Qatar 11, 19–20, 21, 25–26, 28–29, 66; Salafism distinction 21; Sufism support vs. 94, 95; tenets of 5 wasaṭiyya: al-Jazeera adoption of 34, 40, 44, 115, 117; Arab Spring and aftermath goals of 40–41; Azhar advocacy for 8, 10, 20, 29, 117; Bin Bayyah association with 5, 8, 10, 74, 79, 116; education based on 20; limits on 15n51; Qaradawi association with 5, 8, 10, 20, 29, 32, 34, 40–41, 49, 66, 79, 115–117 Washington Declaration 108 Wright, Stephen 28 “Year of Tolerance, The” (ʿām al-tasāmuḥ) 73, 101 Yemen: Qatar relations with 65; Sufism in 95; UAE in war on Houthis in 116 YouTube 4 Yusuf, Hamza 7, 11, 74, 95–96, 101–103, 108–109, 120n4 Zaman, Muhammad Qasim 3, 46 Zawahiri, Muhammad al- 23 Zayed Humanitarian Day 78