¹ For an extremely early and suggestive insight to this problem, see Moore, Clement Henry, “On Theory and Practice Among Arabs,” in World Politics, 24:1 (1971), 106–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Moore' concern is primarily with the Egyptian Muslim Brothers. Looking at contemporary Sunni activists, Ajami, Fouad refers to them as having “[t]he perseverance of reformers and ‘saints’ we can admire” in Islam in the Political Process, Piscatori, James, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 34.Google Scholar The reference is, of course, to Walzer's, MichaelRevolution of the Saints (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965),Google Scholar a study of Protestantism, of which more below. Nazih Ayubi argues that “[a]s in Protestantism, the importance of discarding the church's teachings and “going back to the sources” is the egalitarian and participatory ethos that makes everybody capable of understanding and interpreting the word of God without barriers based on clerical ranks or theological education.” See “The Politics of Militant Islamic Movements in the Middle East,” Journal of International Affairs, 36:2 (1982), 272.Google Scholar Said Amir Arjomand has also tried to relate the Shi'i-led revolution in Iran to this paradigm. See “Iran's Islamic Revolution,” World Politics, 38:3 (1986), 384–414,Google ScholarPubMed especially the argument that the Shi'i ‘ulama are the equivalent of Calvinist preachers (p. 390). The most sustained arguments are by Emest Gellner. See especially “Flux and Reflux in the Faith of Men” in the collection of his essays, Muslim Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).Google ScholarPubMed

² Weber was vague regarding the possibility of non-Christian religions undergoing a shift toward Protestant ethics. On the one hand, see Weber, Max, The Protestant Ethic, Parsons, Talcott, trans. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958),Google Scholar especially 227: “Because the Mohammadan [sic] idea was that of predetermination, not predestination, the most important thing, the proof of the believer in predestination, played no part in Islam. Thus only the fearlessness of the warrior (as in the case of moira) could result, but there were no consequences for rationalization of life; there was no religious sanction for them.” On the other hand, the logic of some Weberian formulations reinforces a possible comparison of Calvinism and Islam on several dimensions including that of predestination. See Economy and Society, Roth, Guenther and Wittich, Claus, eds. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 522.Google Scholar Weber's knowledge of Islam was weak in comparison to his knowledge of other religions. See Turner, Bryan, Weber and Islam (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974), 140–1.Google ScholarPubMed A good selection on various approaches to the problems raised by Weber is Eisenstadt, S.N., The Protestant Ethic and Modernization: A Comparative View (New York: Basic Books, 1968).Google Scholar Also worth looking at is Gellner's, Ernest “Trust, Cohesion, and the Social Order,” in Trust, Gambetta, Diego, ed. (London: Basil Blackwell, 1988), 152.Google Scholar

³ Poggi, Gianfranco, Calvinism and the Capitalist Spirit: Max Weber's Protestant Ethic (London: Macmillan, 1983), 78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴ The major contribution to this extension is Rodinson, Maxime, Islam and Capitalism (New York: Pantheon, 1973),Google Scholar which explicitly confronts the issue at several points (notably pp. 7–9). Other contributions in the area of Islam include Ernest Gellner, “ Sanctity, Puritanism, Secularization, and Nationalism,” in Eisenstadt, The Protestant Ethic and Modernization, 289–308.

⁵ For the most recent summation of this argument, see Mann, Michael, The Sources of Social Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 465,CrossRefGoogle Scholar regarding the tensions in Christianity as a system of meanings faced with emergent capitalism. For an older but still useful summary of the problems regarding the causal mechanisms involved, see Sidney A. Burrell, “Calvinism, Capitalism, and the Middle Classes: Some Afterthoughts on an Old Problem” in Eisenstadt, The Protestant Ethic and Modernization, 135–154.

⁶ See Wolin, Sheldon, Politics and Vision (Boston: Little Brown, 1960), 191.Google Scholar

⁷ Revolution of the Saints.

⁸ Ibid., 310–1.

⁹ See Mann, The Sources of Social Power, 476.

¹⁰ See, for example, Lewis, Bernard, The Political Language of Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 2:Google Scholar “Throughout the history of Christendom there have been two powers: God and Caesar … always there are two, with its own laws and jurisdictions, its own structure and hierarchy.”

¹¹ Wolin, Politics and Vision, 179.

¹² Calvin, John, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Allen, John, trans. (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Christian Education, 1936), IV, 20, xxxii, 804–5.Google Scholar [The numbers for Calvin's Institutes in this and subsequent citations represent, in order, the particular book, chapter, and paragraph.]

¹³ See Muhammad Ali, Maulana, A Manual of Hadith (London: Curzon Press, 1944), 396;Google Scholar The hadith is from Bukhari, 56:108. In Arabic the word for “disobeying” (ma'siyyah) has overtones of revolt, sin, and seduction somewhat similar to Calvin' wording. [Imam Bukhari's Sahih is widely considered to be an important classical edition of hadith, and Maulana's numbers refer to a book and chapter in which a particular hadith can be found.]

¹⁴ See “Beyond Ideology and Theology: the Search for the Anthropology of Islam,” Annual Review of Anthropology, 6 (1977), 227–54,Google Scholar especially at 248–52.

¹⁵ Eire, Carlos M.N., War Against the Idols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 197.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁶ John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, I, 3, iii [hereafter indicated by Institutes].

¹⁷ Ibid., I, 7, ii.

¹⁸ Locher, Gottfried W., Huldrych Zwingli's Concept of History (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1981), 102.Google Scholar

¹⁹ See Chenu, M.D., “Monks, Canons, and Laymen in Search of the Apostolic Life” in Nature, Man, and Society in the Twelfth Century, Taylor, Jerome and Little, Lester K., trans. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 203.Google Scholar

²⁰ Chenu, Nature, Man and Society, 219.

²¹ Institutes, I, iv.

²² Institutes, IV, i, iv–v, and IV, ii, ii–iii, and especially: “The communion of the Church was not instituted as a bond to confine us in idolatry, impiety, ignorance of God, and other evils; but rather as a means to preserve us in the fear of God, and obedience of the truths.”

²³ Institutes, IV, 5, x.

²⁴ Eire, War Against the Idols, 54.

²⁵ Ibid., 202.

²⁶ Institutes, I,12,1.

²⁷ Institutes IV, v, ii.

²⁸ Russell, Paul, Lay Theology in the Reformation: Popular Pamphleteers in Southwest Germany 1521–1525 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 222.Google Scholar Russell himself quotes Hans Sachs, an early sixteenth-century pamphleteer.

²⁹ Smith, William Cantwell, Islam in Modern History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), 20.Google Scholar

³⁰ Coulson, Noel, A History of Islamic Law (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1964), 78.Google Scholar

³¹ See The Shorter Encyclopedia of Islam [hereafter, El], Gibb, H.A.R. and Kramers, J.H., ed. (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1974),Google Scholar s.v. “Idjma” (pp. 157–8).

³² Ibid., s.v. “djihad” (p. 89).

³³ Gustave von Grunebaum argued that an inherent complementarity of good and evil could be found in classical Islamic theology that “conceived of evil as the muqabal of good, that is, its correlative opposite, and hence possessed of equal ontological reality.” Today's militants take the existential implications of such a position quite seriously. See von Grunebaum, Gustave, “Observations on the Muslim Concept of Evil,” Studia Islamica, 31 (1970), 117–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar [reprinted in Islam and Medieval Hellenism: Social and Cultural Perspectives, Wilson, Dunning S., ed. (London: Variorum Reprints, 1976),Google Scholar article XIV, p. 124.

³⁴ Peters, Rud, Islam and Colonialism: The Doctrine of Jihad in Modern History (The Hague: Mouton, 1979), 130.Google Scholar Peters uses the terms “modernist” and “fundamentalist” to distinguish those who might also be differentiated as “humanist” and “fundamentalist.”

³⁵ See the articles by Moore and others cited above.

³⁶ Al–‘Itisam, 06 1944 (Cairo).Google Scholar

³⁷ Smith, Wilfred Cantwell, Islam in Modern History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), 19.Google Scholar

³⁸ Hasan al-Banna, “Nazrat fi islah al-Nafs.”

³⁹ El, s.v. “shaitan,” 523.

⁴⁰ Qutb, Sayyid, Fi zilal al-qur' an (Beirut: Dar al-shuruq, 1974), vol. 3, 1306.Google Scholar

⁴¹ See Taj al-arus (Cairo ed., 1306 A.H.), S.V. taghut, 224–5 and Concordance et Indices de la Tradition Musulmane, Wensinck, A.J. and Mensing, J.P. et al. , ed. (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1962), vol. 4, pp. 4–5,Google Scholar especially the reference to Abu Da'ud.

⁴² See especially XX, 43–72 and XXVIII, 32–40 in the Qur'an.

⁴³ Qutb, Fi zilal al-qur'an, 1330–1.

⁴⁴ For a discussion of Calvin's own approach to the problem of princeps legibus solus and insight into developing Protestant thinking on the subject, see Hopfl, Harro, The Christian Polity of John Calvin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 13–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴⁵ See al-Bishri, Tariq, Al-Dimuqratiyyah wa al-nasiriyyah (Cairo: Dar al-Thaqafah al-Jadidah, 1975), 22–24,Google Scholar especially the description of Nasser's use of the power to appoint and remove high officials.

⁴⁶ See Binder, Leonard, In a Moment of Enthusiasm (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 376–7.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Carré, Olivier, Mystique etpolitique: Lecture revolutionnaire du Coran (Paris: Presses de la Pondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1944), 47.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ See, for example, al-Khanajri, Wafa', Al-Amthal al-Sha-‘biyyah fi hayyatina al-yawmiyyah (Cairo: Al-Maktabah al-Qawmiyyah Al-Hadithah, 1982), 10Google Scholar (entry 26).

⁴⁹ Burckhardt, John Lewis, Arabic Proverbs: or the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, 3d ed. (1817, rpt. London: Curzon Press, 1972), 237Google Scholar (entry 671). See also p. 275 (entry 761) for indications of other proverbs regarding Pharaoh as an embodiment of the state.

⁵⁰ See Basha, Ahmad Taymur, Al-Amthal al-'ammiyyah, 4th ed. (Cairo: Al-Ahram Center for Translation and Publication, 1986).Google Scholar See numbers 371 and 372 (pp. 61–2). See also number 3080 (p. 512) with the explication again that the word pharaoh implies oppression and coercion, and counterposes Moses to Pharaoh, asserting the need for active opposition to those who assert that they are “the highest lord.” The text of the proverb is the well-known “Ya, fir'awn, min far'anak qal ma laqitsh hadd yiraddini” (Oh, Pharaoh, how did you become Pharaoh? No one opposed me).

⁵¹ Although there is no doubt that Qutb's vision of secular authority as idolatrous grew during the Nasser years, it is quite possible that something of the populism of Nasserism has actually encouraged the opposition to the state by privileging popular and nonofficial feelings of resistance to that oppression, even if the state did not allow people to act on such feelings. Compare the treatment of the proverb “Oh Pharoah, how did you get to be Pharoah? No one opposed me” in Al-Khanajri, Al-Amthal al-sha'biyyah (p. 191, entry 1591) above (and in Taymur, Al-Amthal al' ammiyyah, as cited above) and in Ibrahim Abu Sina, Muhammad, Falsafat al-mithl al-sha‘bi (Cairo: Dar al-katib al-arabi, 1968),Google Scholar in which it is closely joined with a discussion on the need to resist tyranny (al-tughyan) and the proverb “Silence in the right is like eloquence in the wrong” (p. 61).

⁵² See Kepel, Gilles, Muslim Extremism in Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986);Google Scholar and Davis, Eric, “Islamic Radicalism in Egypt,” in From Nationalism to Revolutionary Islam, (Arjomand, S., ed. New York: Macmillan, 1984), 147.Google Scholar

⁵³ There is certainly reason to believe that Davis is correct in his general proposition. Some survey research data indicates that children of clerical and sales workers were more likely to experience downward than upward mobility. See Ibrahim, Saad Eddin, “Social Mobility and Income Distribution,” in The Political Economy of Income Distribution in Egypt, Abdel-Khalek, Gouda and Tignor, Robert, eds. (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1982), 403.Google Scholar Those drawn into the movements do not seem to have been directly downwardly mobile. Davis, “Islamic Radicalism in Egypt,” 147. Kepel, Muslim Extremism in Egypt, 217.

⁵⁴ See Ibrahim Hassan al-Issawy, “Income Distribution and Economic Growth,” in Tignor and Abdel-Khalek, The Political Economy, 90.

⁵⁵ Ibid., 100–1.

⁵⁶ Ibid., 119.

⁵⁷ See, for example, Waterbury, John, The Egypt of Nasser and Sadat: The Political Economy of Two Regimes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 274,Google Scholar for an account of the Zumr family, two members being arrested for participation in the assassination of Sadat.

⁵⁸ See Abdel-Fadil, Mahmoud, Development, Income Distribution and Social Change in Rural Egypt (1952–1970) [University of Cambridge Department of Applied Economics Occasional Paper 45] (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 114.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Bouwsma, William J., John Calvin, A Sixteenth Century Portrait (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 150.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ None of these groups call themselves by the names commonly used for them. The use of these common names is necessary, however, if this paper is to establish a dialogue with other scholars in the field. The so-called Flight and Repentance group referred to themselves as the jama'at al-muslimin (Community of Muslims); the so-called Military Academy group called themselves as the munazzamat al-tahrir al-islami (Islamic Liberation Organization).

⁶¹ This particular work is so important that it has been translated into English.

⁶² See the translation and commentary by Jansen, Johannes J.G., in The Neglected Duty (New York: Macmillan, 1986), xvii–xviii,Google Scholar and al-Banna, Jamal, Al-Faridah al-Gha'ibah: jihad al-sayf am jihad al-aql? (Cairo: Dar Thabit, 1983), 5.Google Scholar

⁶³ See Al-Fatawaal-Islamiyyah [hereafter FI] (Cairo: Dar al-Ifta' al-misriyyah, 1983), vol. 10, no. 29, 3726–92,Google Scholar for the fatwa and an Arabic text of the booklet itself. See also Muhammad, ‘Amarah, Al-Faridah al-Gha'ibah: ‘ard wa-hiwar wa-taqyim (Cairo: Dar thabit, 1982).Google Scholar

⁶⁴ See Jansen, The Neglected Duty, 160, 162: “If God sends someone on the right path, no one can send him astray. If God sends someone astray, no one can guide him.” See also p. 223 (§130, 131). In FI, see pp. 3762 and 3789–90. This is, of course, the “double decree” whose absence Weber found in conflict with a developed Protestant ethic. All translations are from Jansen. Citations will be to both Jansen and FI to allow general readers, as well as those who read Arabic, to pursue the argument.

⁶⁵ Jansen, The Neglected Duty, 161 (§4); FI, p. 3762. The word for idols here is taghut.

⁶⁶ Jansen, The Neglected Duty, 167 (§21); FI, p. 38.5.

⁶⁷ Jansen, The Neglected Duty, 169 (§25); FI, p. 38.5. Compare Calvin's Institutes, II, xv, i:

“Thus the Papists in the Present age, although the name of the Son of God, the Redeemer of the world, be frequently in their mouths, yet since they are contented with the mere name, and despoil him of his power and dignity [Christ] is not their foundation” (p. 540).

⁶⁸ For support for such a position from the Qur'an, see 111,87 and LXIV,2. The sticky issue of intentionality intrudes here and what led the ‘ulama to orthopraxis is an important and subtle argument. I hope to deal with issues of community and intentionality in the classical Islamic tradition in other works.

⁶⁹ For a lucid presentation of the arguments here, see Peters, Islam and Colonialism, 128–9, especially whether the question of the verse to “slay the unbelievers” should be interpreted in the context of earlier verses regarding treaty–breaking. Ayat al-sayf is IX,5 in the Qur'an.

⁷⁰ That apostasy is the only unforgiveable sin is agreed by everyone writing in this controversy. The question is over what constitutes apostasy: Does it need to be an express and intended repudiation of Islam, or not.

⁷¹ Jansen, The Neglected Duty, 168 (§22); FI, p. 3865. See, Kepel, Muslim Extremism in Egypt, 195–6. Compare Zwingli's “A Christian Town is the Same as a Christian Congregation,” in Lochner, Huldrych Zwingli' Concept of History, 228–9.

⁷² ‘Amarah, Al-Faridah al-Gha' ibah, 47.

⁷³ See Jamal al-Banna, Al-Faridah al-Gha' ibha, 122, regarding justice (‘adl) and an exposition of the need for free discussion of religion.

⁷⁴ This is a staple of writing on Islamist movements. One of the most eloquent examples would be the chapter, “The Question of Authenticity and Collaboration,” in Ajami, Fbuad, The Arab Predicament (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981),Google Scholar but also see Dekmejian, R.H., “The Anatomy of Islamic Revival,” in Middle East Journal, 34:1 (Winter 1980), 1–12.Google Scholar An early and still useful approach is Wilfred Cantwell Smith's chapter “Islam in Recent History” in Islam in Modern History.

⁷⁵ Bouwsma, John Calvin, 64.

⁷⁶ This is fairly well recognized among Arab researchers of the phenomenon and Muslim official figures. See Nadwat al-sahwah al-islamiyyah wa humum al-watan al-'arabi, in Al-Watan (April 15, 1987).

⁷⁷ Spenser, Edmund, The Faerie Queene, I,ii,13.Google Scholar See also Milton, John, Paradise Lost, I, 330–350,Google Scholar in which Satan is perceived by the fallen angels as “thir great Sultan” and II,1–10, for the description of the Satanic “Throne of Royal State, which far/Outshone the wealth of Ormus and ofInd.…”

⁷⁸ As Hopfl puts it in The Christian Polity, for Calvin “the absence of restraint seems to have been of the essence of tyrannical rule for him” (p. 16).

⁷⁹ FI, p. 3743; ‘Amarah, Al-Faridah al-Gha' ibah, 48–50, and especially the comparison of the Mamluks governing Egypt, as described by Ibn Taymiyyah to whose juridical rulings the members of the Jihad group referred in comparison to contemporary Egypt.

⁸⁰ ‘Amarah, Al-Faridah al-Gha'ibah, 46.

⁸¹ Jansen, The Neglected Duty, 8–15.

⁸² Ibid., 222 (§130); FI, p. 3789.

⁸³ Jansen, The Neglected Duty, 225 (§134); FI, p. 3791: “wa yad'uhum ila al-ifsah ‘amma sataruhu.”

⁸⁴ Jansen, The Neglected Duty, 228 (§138); FI, 3792.

⁸⁵ See ‘Abu al-Khayr, Abd al-Rahman, Dhikrayati ma'-a “Jama'-at al-Muslimin” (Al-Takfir wa al-hijrah) (Kuwait: Dar al-Buhuth al-'ilmiyyah, 1980), 9–10.Google Scholar This is essentially a statement of Shukri's at a court proceeding published in the press on October 21, 1977. The word for idols in paragraph 2 is asnam.

⁸⁶ Kepel, Muslim Extremism in Egypt, 79.

⁸⁷ ‘AM al-Rahman Abu al-Khayr, Dhikrayati, pp. 137–9.

⁸⁸ Kepel, Muslim Extremism in Egypt, 204.

⁸⁹ ‘Abd al-Rahman Abu al-Khayr, Dhikrayat, 78.

⁹⁰ Ibid., 98.

⁹¹ Kepel, Muslim Extremism in Egypt, 80–82.

⁹¹ “Uslub al-ta'amul bayna al-hakim wa al-mahkum” (Modes of Interaction between Ruler and Ruled), Al-Ahram, November 5, 1982.

⁹³ Institutes, 772 (iv.xx).

⁹⁴ Institutes, 114 (iv, xx).

⁹⁵ Eire, War Against the Idols, 294–8.

⁹⁶ Walzer, Revolution of the Saints, 105.

⁹⁷ Ibid., 108–9.

⁹⁸ Kepel, Muslim Extremism in Egypt, 234–5; Fischer, Michael M.J., “Islam and the Revolt of the Petty Bourgeoisie,” Daedalus, 111:1 (1982), 112–3;Google Scholar Abd al-Moneim Said Aly and Wenner, Manfred, “Modern Islamic Reform Movements: The Muslim Brotherhood in Contemporary Egypt,” Middle East Journal, 36:3 (Summer 1982), 347–8.Google Scholar

⁹⁹ Hoffman-Ladd, Valerie, “Polemics on the Modesty and Segregation of Women,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 19:1, 23–50, 44.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁰ Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power, 470–1.

¹⁰¹ Ibid., 472.

¹⁰² For a good critique of functionalist explanations, from which this section is drawn, see Elster, Jon, Making Sense of Marx (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 27–29.Google Scholar