Insurgents, Terrorists, and Militias: The Warriors of Contemporary Combat by Richard H. Shultz Jr. & Andrea J. Dew

Author:Richard H. Shultz Jr. & Andrea J. Dew [Shultz, Richard H. Jr. & Dew, Andrea J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Political Science, Political Freedom, History, General
ISBN: 9780231129831
Google: NswzCgAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 6979630
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2006-06-27T00:00:00+00:00

The Role of Islam in Afghan Society

Both the British and the Soviets faced Islamic jihad warriors—Muslim Afghan tribesmen willing to overcome tribal rivalries and work together to expel infidel invaders. And no discussion of Afghanistan’s interaction with the outside world is complete without a discussion of the role of Islam, which made a very early appearance in Afghanistan with the first Arab invaders in the seventh century.21 Carrying the message of the prophet Muhammad, these early Muslims invaded from the southeast along the flat open plains of Afghanistan, staying away from the mountains with their fierce tribes. The first centers of Islam were in the cities that lay along their path of conquest. Thus, it was Kandahar, Heart, Balkh, and eventually Kabul that became the locations of Islamic art, architecture, and culture, as Islam replaced Buddhism as the most important urban religion. The mountain tribes, on the other hand, continued to practice Buddhism and forms of the Hindu religions brought from India.22

By the end of the seventh century, Islam had split into its Sunni and Shi’ia divisions. The Sunni variation was what the Arab invaders had originally brought with them and, in the centuries after the Mongol hordes, would reemerge as the dominant religion in Afghanistan. Sunni Islam is particularly suited to the independent Afghan tribal culture; it emphasizes the appointment of qualified religious scholars and jurists as spiritual leaders who offer nonbinding opinions, but do not challenge the authority or attempt to replace tribal council rule. Moreover, it is the people who grant the spiritual leader his authority, and they are free to take away his leadership position. This is in contrast to Shi’ia Islam, in which leadership is hereditary and the spiritual leader, the Imam, is considered to have divine authority because he is the direct descendent of the prophet Muhammad. As described later in more detail, the Mujahideen warriors who took on the Red Army were predominantly Sunni Muslims, although there is a Shiite minority in Afghanistan who also played an active role.

In Afghanistan, the spread of Islam to the countryside from the cities was ultimately slowed by the arrival of the Mongol hordes early in the thirteenth century. They destroyed everything in their path, including the mosques.23 Although Islam survived and religious schools—the madrasas—were organized to teach Islam to a broader population, religious beliefs did not become entangled with Afghan politics until the 1960s, a period of political and religious upheaval throughout the Islamic world.

Three radical movements have influenced Sunni Muslims in Afghanistan since the 1960s. They include: a scriptural movement, Sunni Hanafi, with Indian ties based on Sufism; a Sunni political movement the Muslim Brotherhood, with Egyptian ties; and a Sunni reformist movement with Saudi ties, known as Wahhabism.24

The Hanafi scriptural movement emphasized the Sufi approach to Islam. Sufism, as discussed in the Somali case study, is a mystical and spiritual approach to Islam in which personal piety and the power of personal belief are emphasized. This has given the Sunni Hanafi movement a broad

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.