Framing the "threat to Islam": al-wala' wa al-bara' in Salafi discourse

Arab Studies Quarterly (ASQ), Fall, 2008 by Joas Wagemakers

The Salafi scholars who use al-wala' wa-l-bara' to frame the perceived threat to Islam as political in nature do so by portraying the diplomatic and military relations with non-Muslim states as manifestations of misguided wala' on a political level. One could say that scholars from this group simply apply the same strict standards of al-wala' wa-l-bara' that their fellow 'ulama' use in dealing with personal piety but extend the concept's validity to the political sphere. This way, Muslim kings, presidents and prime ministers are no longer left to rule more or less as they please but are heavily scrutinized through the prism of al-wala' wa-l-bara' and thereby become part of the threat to Islam because of their supposed loyalty to non-Muslim countries.

One of the main figures behind the development of the idea that diplomatic or military ties with non-Muslim rulers are forms of sinful wala' is Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, a Palestinian-Jordanian scholar. Influenced by the writings of the Saudi rebel leader Juhayman al-'Utaybi, who uses al-wala' wa-lbara' to criticize the political leadership in his country but in a rather disorganized and unclear way, (50) al-Maqdisi states that a country like Saudi Arabia "has left the religion of Islam" (qad kharajat min din al-Islam) because of (1) its loyalty to un-Islamic laws and (2) its "loyalty to the infidel enemies of God" (muwalat a 'da' Allah min al-kuffar). According to al-Maqdisi, this second dimension, which is the dominant interpretation among those Salafis framing a political threat, (51) is expressed in--amongst other things--Saudi Arabia's "strengthening of brotherly ties" (tawthiq rawabit al-ikhwa) and its "love, affection and friendship" (al-mawadda wa-l-hubb wa-l-sadaqa) with non-Muslims Muslims. (52) Because of this and other reasons, al-Maqdisi concludes that Saudi Arabia, in spite of its pious Wahhabi image, is no different from "the other idolatrous Arab systems" (al-anzima al-taghutiyya al-'Arabiyya al-ukhra). (53)

Al-Maqdisi's reasoning that international relations with "infidel" countries and their leaders should be seen as wrong wala' and thus as a threat to the purity of Islamic politics seems to have been adopted by other Salafi scholars. Al-Shu'aybi, for example, states that it is wrong to ask Jews and Christians for help since this requires becoming loyal to them, (54) which is strictly forbidden for reasons given earlier in this article. After having pointed out that al-wala' wa-l-bara' is part of the basis and the root of Islam (qa'ida rain qawa 'id al-din wa-asl min usul al-iman wa-l-'aqida), (55) al-Shu'aybi states that the prohibition of asking non-Muslims for help applies even more on a state-level since states are more powerful than individuals and, he implies, can thus do greater damage to Islam. (56)

The political interpretation of al-wala' wa-l-bara' and its use as a means to frame the threat to Islam have been adopted by prominent militant Salafi thinkers such as Ayman al-Zawahiri (57) and Abu Mus'ab al-Suri (58) but has also been developed in more detail by students of al-Shu'aybi such as Nasir Bin Hamd al-Fahd and 'Ali Bin Khudayr al-Khudayr. The latter two distinguish two different forms of loyalty: tawalli and muwala, which are both linguistically related to wala' but differ in seriousness. Whereas tawalli to non-Muslim states amounts to unbelief (kufr) and turns the person guilty of such a sin into an unbeliever (kafir), muwala to "infidels" is less serious and means the culprit is only a sinner. The main difference between the two is that tawalli involves the belief in one's heart that loyalty to non-Muslims is good, whereas muwala is a form of wala" that may happen out of ignorance, misinterpretation of the sources of Islam or because one was forced to. (59) Although the distinction between tawalli and muwala had been made before, (60) al-Fahd and al-Khudayr are more explicit in their labeling of political forms of misguided loyalty as the more serious tawalli. (61)