A Jihadi Critique of the Modern State: Abū Qatāda in Conversation with Decolonial and (neo-)Marxist Thought

Abstract

This paper analyzes the reception of decolonial and neo-Marxist thought in a jihadist critique of the modern state. The author argues that a study of Abū Qatāda al-Filisṭīnī, a prominent theorist of modern Jihadism and Salafism, reveals his nuanced interaction with theories of hegemony, ideology, and decolonization. An examination of Abū Qatāda’s critique of modern state institutions and ideology shows that he engages with philosophical critiques of sovereignty, hegemony, capitalism, and the nation-state and utilizes both neo-Marxist and decolonial thought. This paper explores how Abū Qatāda theorizes the modern state as a colonial project, leading him to rationalize jihad, or violent resistance, as the only solution to realize paradigmatic change. It further shows how Abū Qatāda justifies opposition to the modern state and hegemony with seamless deployment of scripture and Islamic jurisprudence and insists that his political project builds on premodern Islamic theories of knowledge and government necessary for decolonization, albeit often without offering details. This study reveals a feature of jihadist thought that has remained largely unnoticed in the literature and is the first to explore the interactions between Salafism and critiques of the modern state.

Introduction

Since 9/11, Jihadism has risen to become one of the most popular areas of study in political science. In the field of terrorism studies, studies of Jihadism range from purely strategic assessments of groups like Al-Qaeda and IS (Islamic State) (Bunzel 2016; Hegghammer 2010, 2020) to complex intellectual genealogies examining jihadists’ engagement with the premodern Islamic tradition (Gerges 2009, 2017; Lav 2012; Wagemakers 2012, 2016). In the subfield of terrorism studies, it is common to analyze Salafism and Jihadism under the framework of religious extremism, which are some of the main reasons for the field’s lack of nuance and oversimplification of a complex religious and ideological tradition (as observed by Devji 2017, 2019). In many ways, the image of the jihadist represents the “enemy” as part of the Schmittian friend-enemy dichotomy, or in the words of Scheuerman (2006), “the embodiment of all western anxieties (and misunderstandings) concerning the nature of religion, politics . . . progress, and the nation-state” (p. 111). Following this framework, few studies in the field have undertaken nuanced analyses of individual thinkers—their lives, backgrounds, ideological influences, and struggles (e.g., Hegghammer 2020; Lav 2012; Wagemakers 2012, 2016). Even in these studies, however, little attention has been given to the influence of contemporary political thought on these thinkers, who are often represented as frightening embodiments of the enemy and peripheral exceptions with little-to-no relationship to contemporary or premodern Muslim thought (as noted by Devji 2017; Sulaiman 2018).

This paper both challenges and builds on the dominant narratives in the field by analyzing the reception of neo-Marxist and decolonial thought in Jihadi-Salafist ideology and is the first study to reveal the depth and sophistication of jihadi critiques of the nation-state. It examines the ways that Jihadi-Salafism has been influenced by dialogues surrounding hegemony, ideology, secularism, and critiques of the modern state. In analyzing a central figure to Jihadi-Salafism, Abū Qatāda al-Filisṭīnī (b. 1960), I show how his thought has been shaped by these discussions as an essential step to theorizing on the nature of Islamic governance.

This article examines the influence of two overarching themes in contemporary political thought that have influenced Abū Qatāda. The first of these themes is the modern state. With its powerful physical and ideological capacities, the state has superimposed secular institutions, bureaucratic centralization, and ideological conformity in a way designed to reinforce its authority and legitimacy (Ali Agrama 2012; Cavanaugh 2009; Hallaq 2012; Sayyid 2014). Muslims living in mostly former colonies have striven to undertake political change through a variety of interactions, including advocating for an ideal-typical “Western” secularism (e.g., in Turkey: Özyürek 2006) and merging Islamic and cultural ideals with the nation-state, its institutions, and disciplinary powers. The latter interaction is defined by Talal Asad (2003) as “Islamism,” a political phenomenon wherein Islamic principles are infused with state ideology that are then reinforced among the population. ¹ In contrast to both nationalism and Islamism, I show how jihadist thought is defined by the attempt to physically resist and overthrow the powers of the modern state in the hope of reviving a society grounded in premodern Islamic ethics. This explains why a key aspect of jihadist thought is dedicated to studying premodern Islamic law, including the genre of “political jurisprudence” (fiqh al-siyāsa) in an attempt to revive a normative theorization for Islamic government (Islam 2022).

In showcasing Abū Qatāda’s critique of the modern state, I divide the substantive sections of the study into four conceptual parts (in sections 4, 5, and 6). The first section demonstrates how in his engagement with Wael Hallaq, Abū Qatāda deploys the former’s critique of the modern state in an attempt to rationalize what he calls a “postmodern” Islamic state. In section 5, I discuss the implications of Abū Qatāda’s ideal “Islamic state” by situating his critique of modernity within debates concerning Islamic government and the modern state.

The last two sections (6.1, 6.2) examine Abū Qatāda’s engagement with neo-Marxist critiques of the nation-state as part to his intellectual project and focuses especially on the importance of hegemony and ideology. I show that Abū Qatāda identified the modern state’s laws, institutions, and religious bodies as the byproduct of a colonial project and the success of its secularization, a popular theme in critical literature on the state, neocolonialism, and secularism (e.g., Ali Agrama 2012; Hallaq 2012; Said 1985). In Althusser’s (2006) reading of Gramsci, religious institutions are viewed as supporting and eventually comprising state ideology to maintain hegemony over its subjects. In my analysis of Abū Qatāda, I show how he developed a critique of the state monopoly over religious institutions, which he charges with manipulating scripture to conform to state ideology. Abū Qatāda examines state institutions and ideologues and opposes formal religious institutions for assisting in the secularization of Islamic terminology and for implementing state-conformant curricula of Islamic universities.

One major aim of this paper is to show that insofar as jihadist thought embraces a rejection of modernity (Devji 2017; Euben 1999), theorists of jihad have formulated their thought in conversation with critiques of the modern state. I do not, however, claim to analyze the influence of their normative political thought. Groups like IS have been critically studied for perpetuating visions of the state that mirror modern notions of empire and utopia, grounded in a worldview defined by a grand, universalizing narrative (Li 2019; Maher 2016; Sayyid 2014). I do not argue, further, that in critiquing modernity or nation-state, Jihadi-Salafists have avoided authoritarian or rationalistic tendencies in their own thinking. The intervention of this study, rather, is two-fold. First, I seek to show that major figures of Jihadism have rationalized their political theology in conversation with debates in contemporary political thought—as opposed to in a vacuum or a state of ideological isolation from the world. Second, this study demonstrates that Abū Qatāda actively sought to utilize the decolonial tradition to level a sustained critique of modernity, the colonial state, and hegemony.

Conceptualizing Salafist-Jihadism: Methodology and Theoretical Concerns

Literature on Jihadism seldom recognizes—as opposed to other Muslim movements—that jihadists are products of a postcolonial political order (Devji 2017, 2019; Li 2019). This is despite the fact that many important figures who would influence jihadists, such as Sayyid Quṭb and Abul A’la Mawdūdī, are studied within the framework of a conversation between Islamic and colonial traditions (e.g., Euben 1999; Hartung 2014; March 2019). The intervention of this paper, then, is in articulating the influence of critiques of the modern state among Muslims who view armed struggle as the only solution to establishing Islamic government. As such, it is important to acknowledge that Jihadism, much like other Islamic movements, does have a premodern Islamic inheritance and that their primary form of expression is in terms of traditional Islamic jurisprudence (Islam 2023).

The historical distinction between premodern Islamic jurisprudence and Western colonial thought, furthermore, remains a necessary distinction in the early modern Muslim world (Dallal 2018). In a postcolonial context, however, it is unhelpful to conceive of Muslim critiques of modernity as belonging to one of either Western or Islamic traditions, where normative Islamic thought is expressed in reference to intellectual traditions that often transcend these categories. At the same time, the epistemological assumptions of many jihadist thinkers lead to this dichotomization, and Abū Qatāda is clear to cautiously approach translation between Western and Islamic intellectual traditions for his audience. For this reason, the epistemological uncertainty of translation branches in both directions. It is important to be aware of the potential untranslatability in, for instance, Abū Qatāda’s (2016) reception of Hallaq (2012), in which the former seeks to incorporate the latter in the intellectual project of constructing an Islamic state (section 4). More importantly, it is important to not confuse Islamic legal concepts with their assumed secular equivalents (Asad 2018). ² This includes the equivalence of Sharīʿa to “law,” jihad to war, and crucially, Islamic government to the modern state. In the following sections, it is significant that Abū Qatāda, notwithstanding his own assumptions, critiques Muslim normativities that he perceives deliberately make these equivalences in order to legitimize state authority.

Another theoretical concern in this paper is terminology. The terms “Salafist” and “jihadist” are subject to disagreement and constant reconceptualization in the literature. As Faisal Devji (2019) points out, similar descriptors have “no comparative reference” and are often not used in a scholarly manner (p. 2). In various histories and typologies of the movement known as “Jihadi-Salafism,” a popular position is to contrast the jihadist variety with other types of Salafism, including quietist Salafism and politico-Salafism, which advocates for nonviolent political change (Wiktorowicz 2006). These typologies have been challenged in recent literature, including the notion that Salafist-Jihadism has a distinct ideology or unified political origin (Islam 2023). A strong challenge to this categorization is that there are many Salafī thinkers who disavow the title “Jihadi” along with its central teachers (e.g., Safar al-Ḥawālī), and even further, others (e.g., ʿAbdullāh ʿAzzām) who practiced and preached a life of jihad despite living before the term’s existence (ibid.). For the purpose of this study, I define Jihadi-Salafism as a Salafist ³ intellectual trend that emphasizes armed resistance as the only method to the self-stated end of establishing a global Islamic state (Lav 2012; Wagemakers 2012, 2016). I use this term despite its conceptual problems for the instrumental classification of a group based on its political goals and methods, especially as characterized by resistance against hegemonic power.

One final theoretical question concerns the concept of Islamism and its criticism in decolonial literature, as this will be critical in the following sections. Perhaps the most powerful critique of Islamism has been that in its attempt to blend religion into the identity of the nation-state, it merely reinforces the legitimacy of oppressive state structures in its constant assertion of sovereignty into every aspect of its subjects’ lives (Ali Agrama 2012; Ahmed 2018; Asad 2003; Hallaq 2012). This is not a critique of the religiosity of the movement as much as it is an indictment of the modern state and its capacity to assert its sovereignty in all areas of human life. “No one,” Asad (2003) opines, “can avoid encountering [the state’s] ambitious powers,” over “even the most intimate” aspects of human life (p. 199). Islamism as referred to in the following sections, then, is characterized as an attempt to infuse Islamic identity together with the state’s national identity, much like how national principles in European states inform its interpretation of religion and human rights (Asad 2003; Fernando 2014; Mahmood 2015). To this end, few decolonial thinkers have theorized concrete alternatives to the nation-state (Islam 2022). Abū Qatāda is one of the few to both require nonmodernity as necessary for decolonization ⁴ and, contrary to Hallaq, view the possibility of successfully overturning the colonial world order.

With regard to the paper’s methodology, I study Abū Qatāda’s critique of the modern state by engaging in a history of ideas analysis that traces his thought within his political and ideological context and with reference to those ideologies, theories, and authors to which he refers. Developed by the Cambridge School, this approach requires both analysis of the source material in addition to those works that are referred and knowledge of the political and ideological context of the writer (Skinner 1969, 1988). Similar approaches have been developed in Islamic history—especially important for this study are those that study Islamic scholarly literature under the framework of traditional forms of knowledge production and education (Bowen 2018). In studying Abū Qatāda, these approaches recognize his primary role as a Muslim jurist engaging in translation of non-Muslim sources, as well as the sociopolitical context defined by armed struggle between jihadist groups and various nation-states. It is important to note that much of the information pertaining to these social processes require first-hand observation as discussed below. In this study, I rely on information collected as a Muslim researcher through semiformal interviews with both scholars and their close students ⁵ —although not with Abū Qatāda himself. My social role as both an academic researcher and traditional “student of knowledge” has given me insight into the knowledge production and transmission processes of Salafī scholarly circles.

I have consulted all available material in which Abū Qatāda critiques the concept of the modern state, especially where he refers to decolonial and neo-Marxist thought. Substantively, this study engages in archival analysis of both video recordings and written archives published on websites and social media channels with minimal regulation (e.g., Telegram) ⁶ and that are often difficult to obtain due to government censorship of “extremist” material. Within Salafī “knowledge” circles, Telegram is a highly effective and preferred method of dissemination due to ease of broadcasting and communication. A common format followed by these scholars, including Abū Qatāda, is to tape a recording (Friday sermon or lesson) or draft a book in PDF format and publish this content online for students to study. These materials are nearly always prepared by a Shaykh’s closest “students” who act as teaching assistants with the understanding that there will be both a core academic and popular following of these works. For Abū Qatāda, scholarly content comprises both asynchronous “classes” (dars, pl. durūs) and written materials—especially transcriptions—that serve as systematic treatments of different Islamic sciences, including legal theory, jurisprudence, and exegesis. The editing and dissemination of Abū Qatāda’s work is managed by his closest students including his eldest son, Qatada. ⁷ The material is dedicated to traditional “students of knowledge,” often with the understanding they are seeking to become scholars themselves. As a result, the work analyzed in this study serves as the theoretical foundation of political change for Abū Qatāda’s school of thought. Although this is the case, far less is known about the effect, if any, this work has on the praxis of Al-Qaeda and other groups that often suffer from lack of constructive communication with scholars for several reasons (Lia 2009).

Finally, as all the primary-source material is in modern standard Arabic, I have translated all excerpts and terms into English and occasionally provide transliteration. With regard to the translation style, I have adopted a “faithful translation” approach that forgoes literal word equivalents to translate the intent of the author and maintain an idiomatic writing style. In the following section, I provide a brief biography of Abū Qatāda and his intellectual background.

Abū Qatāda: A Brief Intellectual Biography

Abū Qatāda, born ʿUmar b. Maḥmūd b. ʿUthmān al-Maqdisī (b. 1960), is one of the most prominent thinkers associated with Jihadism and one of the few scholars who remain highly prolific since the 1980s. Abū Qatāda is a Palestinian-born Jordanian national who served as a Mufti (jurisconsult) for the Jordanian Army before moving to Pakistan and earning a Master’s degree in Islamic law from Peshawar University. Since his time in Pakistan, where he accompanied major jihadist figures such as Ayman al-Ẓawāhirī (d. 2022, second Emir of Al-Qaeda), Abū Qatāda emerged as an influential ideologue for Al-Qaeda and affiliated groups (Wagemakers 2016, 185). He would settle in the United Kingdom after being granted asylum in 1994 and continue to support global jihadist efforts through his scholarship and by providing material support (ibid.; Lia 2009). Abū Qatāda was deported to Jordan in 2013 after a long legal battle with the UK government and currently resides in the city of Zarqa (Speckhard 2018).

While in the United Kingdom, Abū Qatāda was at the forefront of Muslim religious debates. He frequently engaged with different groups, particularly within the British Salafī community. At the time, especially in the 1990s, in mosques like Greenlane Masjid in Birmingham and Finsbury Park Mosque in London, there would be significant tension between pro- and anti-Saudi Salafis, and London served as a melting pot of these Muslim communities. Abū Qatāda found common ground with Abū Baṣīr al-Ṭarṭūsī (b. 1959, another London-based jihadi ideologue), and Abū Ḥamza al-Masrī (b. 1958, “the hook-handed imam”), the then-Imam of Finsbury Park Mosque. He would, furthermore, regularly contribute to Ansar—along with major figures such as Abu Musʿab al-Suri (b. 1958, Lia 2009)—a London-run magazine published by the Algerian GIA (Groupe Islamique Armé). In 1995, he released a fatwa, causing his lasting notoriety entitled “The Permissibility of Killing Children and Women.” This instantly made him a highly controversial jurist, including within the jihadist community (Speckhard 2018). ⁸ Abū Qatāda was eventually deported from the UK in 2013 after facing terrorism-related charges in Jordan and was freed without conviction due to lack of evidence (Islam, 2023). After IS’s declaration of a global “caliphate” in 2014, Abū Qatāda has cemented his position as highly critical of the group along with most Al-Qaeda-aligned thinkers (who constitute the vast majority: ibid.).

Publishing for over three decades, Abū Qatāda has built an impressive oeuvre of literature and a large scholarly output. Before his engagement with jihad, he published a Salafī refutation of Ashʿarite creed, an evaluation of the probity of ḥadīth narrators quoted by major Analusian jurist Ibn Ḥazm (d. 1064), and major works by other Muslim theologians (Lav 2012).

What makes Abū Qatāda especially unique is his relatively wide engagement with a range of philosophical traditions. As with most jihadist scholars, Abū Qatāda’s primary intellectual tradition from which he draws in his work is premodern Islamic law and is a legal theorist (uṣūlī) of the Shāfiʿite school (Islam 2022). This is evidenced in all of his publications, including a recent multi-volume explanation of the main reference textbook of Shāfiʿite legal theory written by Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 1111) (Abū Qatāda 2022b). Since his time in London, however, he has significantly expanded his research interests, and unlike his contemporaries, actively engages with ideologies and philosophies outside of Salafī theology, including liberalism, postmodernism, Marxism and reformism. In an ongoing series entitled A Thousand Books before Death, Abū Qatāda reviews over 200 books in 90-minute long segments, including Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, The Poverty of Historicism by Karl Popper (Abū Qatāda 2022a), Das Kapital by Karl Marx (Abū Qatāda 2021a), and most importantly, The Impossible State by Wael Hallaq (Abū Qatāda 2016, 2022a). In nearly all of his writing, Abū Qatāda is addressing his students and holds the relationship between “Shaykh” and “students of knowledge” (ṭālib/ṭullāb al-ʿilm) common in traditional Islamic learning. Although he refuses to be formally associated with a specific group, his followers and students are largely either supporters of or fighters for various jihadist groups.

Abū Qatāda’s unique position as a traditional jurist who rationalizes Islamic government through decolonial and (neo-)Marxist thought makes him an ideal figure for comparative analysis. This is because most jihadist thinkers articulate their normative political thought solely within premodern Islamic legal terms, making it difficult to translate their implications in the context of a modern world of nation-states. This has led to the popular notion in the literature that jihadist political thought espouses a totalitarian ideology which legitimates state power in the conditioning of a new generation of extreme Muslims (e.g., Hodge 2020; Maher 2016). While this paper does not study the nature of an ideal Islamic state as theorized by Abū Qatāda or others, it takes a first step in analyzing how he views his political project as a negation of the modern state.

A Critique of the Modern State: A Conversation Between Abū Qatāda and Hallaq

Abū Qatāda (2016) begins his lecture on the Impossible State by delivering a general summary of the book, a ringing endorsement of Hallaq’s (2012) critique of modernity and the nation-state: “look at this man, he is a Christian, but still understands the Islamic state better than the Muslims!” Abū Qatāda notes that The Impossible State does not claim as a cursory look may indicate and that Islam imbued in its scripture and tradition has no space for a conception of politics. It is, rather, the “modern state” and its coercive capabilities that resulted in the world’s “distancing from morality and self-governance” in favor of a system whereby the state, identified as the sole interpreter of religion and all other aspects of life, replaces the sovereignty of God in premodern Islamic societies (Abū Qatāda 2016, para. 42). These are two opposing systems of governance, and in this sense, one may say it is “impossible” for a state to be Islamic. For this reason, Abū Qatāda (2016) criticizes Islamists, especially the Muslim Brotherhood, for not realizing this and for taking the authoritarian state as a given while merely “inserting Islam into the mix, entering parliament all within this system” instead of proposing an Islamic conception of morality. For Abū Qatāda, the state is not a neutral amalgam of objective principles but rather an empty and contradictory construct, permitting for any ideology provided its subservience to the state as sovereign (Hallaq 2012):

[The Impossible State] is an indictment of Muslims who want a modern state, do we not have such Muslims? When we read the Public Liberties of Rached Ghannouchi, he wants a modern Islam, and likewise the trend of thought that followed him, it’s a modern state of thinking . . . they do not have any space for an Islamic inversion of modernity [lā yabqā li-l-Islām inqilābā li-l-ḥadātha]. (para. 25–28)

What is an Islamic inversion of modernity? This is where he tackles the question of the Islamic state’s feasibility, a theoretical possibility discussed by Hallaq (2012) in his conclusion, through a discussion of the nature of premodern Islamic governance. Abū Qatāda is acutely aware of both the features of such a state, including a significantly decreased and “decentralized” government allowing for the “flourishing of Islamic normativity” embedded in the cultivation of Islamic piety, the starting point of which is the self. Abū Qatāda reads from the Arabic translation Hallaq’s (2012) verdict for the possibility of a future Islamic state, “Capitalizing on the technologies of the self thus in no way involves a retrieval of premodern Sharʿī institutions, practices, or even education. It is a moral project of the first order, an attempt to draw on the historical self for moral guidance” (p. 13). Abū Qatāda declares, this is “undoubtedly true”:

[Wael Hallaq] is not saying that the Islamic state is impossible . . . that the barriers are regarding the possibility of realizing Islamic morality in an Islamic state are too great, but rather, [he is saying] that the inability of Muslims to realize this in modernity . . . to face the modern powers of America and Europe, against the modern state, — how wonderful a saying! And undoubtedly true . . . — that they require the possession of great strength to produce a postmodern state in the face of modernity, the same way Europe and America established the modern state against the Church-centric Feudal society from which it arose. (Abū Qatāda 2016, para. 16)

Hallaq (2012) indeed discusses the question of a revival of the premodern governance of the Islamic tradition. His verdict is less hopeful, identifying that because the modern state-system and its sheer military power “remains in a preeminently material world of fact,” “an Islamic governance would suffer multiple and incremental challenges that will quite likely cause its decline and, as likely, total collapse” (Hallaq 2012, 162). Abū Qatāda’s interpretation is the reverse end of Hallaq’s statement—regardless of its likelihood, any success that should be made against modernity “requires great [military] power,” one that possesses the potential of paradigmatic change. This view ascribed to Hallaq conveniently aligns with his narrative of the need for global jihad as the only option to defeat the modern state. Nothing short of a fundamental physical and ideological inversion of the world’s state-system and impeding world war could invert state sovereignty on its head, not to mention the level of ideological change that it would require in modernized Muslim societies.

In response to the obstacles posed by the modern state, Abū Qatāda (2016) offers two hypothetical reactions to this problem. The first, “despair,” is chosen by most postmodernists—he has existential philosophers in mind—and involves passive acceptance of state oppression. The second path, which Abū Qatāda highlights as the path of faith, īmān, is taken by true believers. This requires both the necessary faith required to attain paradigmatic change and the willpower to physically act in resisting the nation-state. As optimistic as he is about the success of the jihad to reverse modernity, he is aware of the postmodern tradition as well as critics of the global jihad for its inability to produce political success. Giving his students a flavor of tropes they are used to hearing, Abū Qatāda polemically associates the critics of jihad with postmodern defeatism: “you are weak, you hold onto morality with no chance of success”—that is, against the coercive powers of the state. He further castigates critics within the jihadist movement: “even those in the jihadi movement you will find repeating these tropes, ‘why have we failed while other parties succeeded?’” (Abū Qatāda 2016, para. 45–46).

The true answer, Abū Qatāda intimates, lies in faith. The same faith and morality that causes one’s political failure against the state (due to a lack of physical capability) is the one that will guarantee its eventual victory. God says, “the destiny is for the pious” [Q11:49] (ibid.). The answer is not to become the enemy, using the same tools of the nation-state—biopower, oppression, deception—but rather stay steadfast to one’s principles, “to tread the path of morals” and prepare for a life of defeat (ibid., para. 47). Although Abū Qatāda is the first jihadist thinker to articulate resistance to the nation-state with reference to decolonial theory, the theme of military resistance as the peak of moral refinement is a central feature in Jihadism. Concepts such as martyrdom and sacrifice with the goal of earning divine mercy have long been central to the self-expression of jihadists, who view themselves as underdogs in prolonged military conflicts with powerful state militaries (Hegghammer 2020; Li 2019). The notion that the mujahid is serving the divine law through his sacrifice of life and wealth, furthermore, has long been idealized in the premodern Islamic conception of martyrdom (Cook 2014). In his dialogue with Hallaq, Abū Qatāda contends that an affirmation of the Qurʾanic promise of victory (Q24:55; 28:83) necessitates that Muslims believe in and act to resist and overturn the modern world order.

Contrary to studies of Jihadism that have associated the movement with totalitarianism and illusions of political success and utopia (Maher 2016; Nielsen 2017; Tibi 2012), Abū Qatāda’s engagement with Hallaq shows, if anything, an internalized indifference toward life—despite finding meaning in divine purpose—and the knowledge that any attempt to reverse the damage of morality begins with a deconstruction of the modern institutions responsible for colonial oppression. In the following section, I expand on the implications of Abū Qatāda’s critique of the modern state on his intellectual project of recreating Islamic government. I show that, far from an isolated criticism, Abū Qatāda consciously encourages a revival of premodern Islamic epistemology and knowledge production as a method of resistance to hegemonic power.

Abū Qatāda on the Possibility of Resurrecting ‘Islamic’ Government

In his various writings, Abū Qatāda proposes a legal system based on the practice of the first generation of Muslims under the caliphate that would succeed the Prophet Muhammad’s death in 632 (Cook 2014). ⁹ The first caliph, Abū Bakr, who despite facing the caliphate’s extinction plagued by rebellions, would proclaim in a manner similar to an oath of office “Obey me so long as I obey God, and if I am mistaken, do not take my judgement!” (Abū Qatāda and Al-Busīfī 2014; Cook 2014, 329). In the early Islamic state, embodied by the practice of the first and most beloved Caliph in Sunni Islam, Abū Bakr, it is with the assumption that the text—the divine law—has its own voice and that it contains explicit rulings delineating obedience from sin (ṭāʿa and maʿṣiya), that it becomes possible, even enshrined in the Sharīʿa that God himself is the sovereign, the final manifestation of which culminates in the divine judgment in the afterlife (ʿAzzām 1975).

Here is where Abū Qatāda critiques Islamism and other projects that view the state as a vehicle for potential change, contributing to debates concerning the relationship between “Islamic” government and the nation-state. In March’s (2019) reading of Quṭb and Mawdūdī, the project of the caliphate takes place within the institutions of the modern state to instill an Islamic religiosity among the Muslim umma. This includes utilizing state institutions of former colonies, such as legislative assemblies and procedures and standardized legal codes that may potentially be democratic (ibid.). Abū Qatāda’s critique of the modern state utilizes Hallaq’s (2012) assessment in differentiating between “pristine” Islamic ethics and modern articulations of Islam that ultimately reciprocate the state’s oppressive and counter-Islamic powers. A true Islamic ethics must hold the same epistemological assumptions and engage Islam’s primary sources through adherence to the Islamic legal and spiritual tradition. On this, Abū Qatāda (2022a) quotes Hallaq on the necessity of this tradition in building Islamic ethics, something he emphasizes that no secular philosophy has the capability of realizing: “‘it is not possible for ethics to follow from philosophy’ . . . that is, neither philosophy nor ethics have a criterion, meanwhile a criterion is required to differentiate right from wrong . . . and all criteria besides the religion are linguistically void and without value” (p. 309).

This is where Abū Qatāda’s role as a Muslim jurist becomes central to his theorization of an alternative Islamic state. Here, he utilizes the fundamental premises of Islamic legal theory (uṣūl al-fiqh), which holds a number of epistemological and ontological assumptions. Principal among them is that legislative authority belongs to God and that it is communicated to man through clear and precise Qurʾanic language (Q12:2, 16:103, 20:113, 26:7, 195). Abū Qatāda (2022b) draws from the legal manual of al-Ghazālī, the Musṭaṣfā, and other central works, which all begin with a discussion of these assumptions, both ontological—relating to the existence of God and legislative authority—and hermeneutical, that humans are capable of understanding divine speech. Thus, for Abū Qatāda, while the struggle and critique of state power and ideology are informed by the decolonial tradition, the solution is nonetheless grounded in an eternal solution to the world’s problems. This is also logically consistent, he assures us, because it is the same assumptions we hold true to critique state ideology that we do to affirm its divine solution. One reconfigures religious terms and concepts in a state-centric mode at their own peril: “because legal terms are used to implement divine rulings and it is not possible to know the substance of a ruling without these terms, it is heresy to modify the rulings of Allah through these changes” (Abū Qatāda n.d., 8).

This discussion raises further questions debated by legal theorists and anthropologists. As discussed in the previous section, Abū Qatāda adopts Hallaq’s theorization that any Islamic decolonial project requires a paradigmatic political and ideological shift, which the former compares to the overturning of the feudal order in Europe. This assumes, of course, the possibility of maintaining Islamic ethics independent from the gaze of the modern state, which as Rock-Singer (2018) observes, “significantly overstates the continuity between contemporary practices of piety and a longer Islamic tradition of ethical cultivation” (p. 8). For Abū Qatāda, this objection—one also made against Hallaq—finds difficulty gaining acceptance because the subject formation of mujahedeen vis-à-vis the modern state cannot be compared to those of Islamists studied by Saba Mahmood (2011), for instance (Li 2019). In any case, the jihadist position is that developing an Islamic ethics independent from the modern state is both necessary and possible, and the solution lies in the cultivation of Islamic morals and knowledge of the timeless Sharīʿa, both of which can be found in premodern historical and legal literature. Ultimately, this requires further study into both the genealogy of Salafism as well as the substantive rules and procedures outlined in jihadist legal manuals. Notwithstanding criticisms of Hallaq’s approach, the purpose of this study is to establish jihadist thought as both a subject and interlocutor in these debates.

Global Capitalism, Hegemony, and Ideology: Abū Qatāda in Conversation with Marxist Thought

In the previous section, I provided an overlook of Abū Qatāda’s critique of the modern state and the importance of his interaction with decolonial thought in his intellectual project of “postmodern” Islamic resistance. What remains to be discussed is a thorough treatment of Abū Qatāda’s reading of (neo-)Marxist ideology and its role in this project. This section analyzes Abū Qatāda’s engagement with Marxist thought and contains two subsections. The first provides an overview of Abū Qatāda’s reading of Marxist thought and establishes the depth of this engagement under the framework of theorizing the modern state. The following subsection explores Abū Qatāda’s reading of Gramscian thought and shows that despite questions left unanswered, his engagement with neo-Marxism is important for his critique of the modern state articulated in the previous sections. This subsection further extends this conversation by examining Abū Qatāda’s use of a Gramscian framework to critique state-centric religious institutions.

Abū Qatāda’s Relationship with Marxism: A Background

Jihadists’ limited engagement with neo-Marxist thought has previously been mentioned in the literature. Rumman (2014) notes that at least one of Abū Qatāda’s colleagues had read Antonio Gramsci to propose a model of “radical change” grounded in the development of an Islamic counterculture (p. 208). Despite this, Abū Qatāda states that many jihadists have been suspicious of reading and using Marxist ideas in their critique of capitalist hegemony. The reason for this, he remarks in his review of Capital, is that Marx is “often treated solely emotionally” due to his views on religion and religious institutions, and as a result, “is not analyzed as a philosopher [i.e., someone] with both correct and incorrect [ideas]” (Abū Qatāda 2021a, 2:30–3:00). Abū Qatāda urges his readers to read Capital in order to understand the modern world undoubtedly enabled and created by capitalism (ibid.). ¹⁰

Abū Qatāda’s (2021a) review of Marx (1992 [1867]) is general and avoids a detailed introduction of Marxist theory to his students, assuming they know the basics. In his review, he touches on several points, including the exploitation of “laborers’ sweat and effort” and the role of surplus value as “allowing for a redistribution of wealth” to the bourgeoisie (12:30–13:30). Specifically, Abū Qatāda (2021a) praises the Marxist perspective for its ability to identify the causes of extreme wealth inequality, showing that at least part of his affinity with Marxist thought is grounded in a critique of capitalism as a system. While this would seem to oppose principles of Islamic economics, he assures us that making sure “wealth does not remain in the hands of a single group” is prescribed in the Qurʾan, quoting a verse on foreign property seized by Muslims (Q59:7). ¹¹ Although he does not indicate how Islamic property rights would differ from those in a capitalist or socialist system, he signals toward an Islamic system with some sort of profit-sharing arrangement as theorized by Abul A’la Mawdūdī (Abū Qatāda 2021a, 29:45–30:15; Islam 2019).

More important for the aims of this paper is how Marxist thought influenced Abū Qatāda’s view of the modern state. In several instances in the review, he signals that it is necessary to understand the modern state as a vehicle of capitalist oppression. Interpreting Marx (1992 [1867]), he states that the maintenance of private property with minimal regulation is “responsible for the maintenance of wealth inequality” (Abū Qatāda 2021a, 17:15–30). Gesturing with his hands around him, he remarks, “this is the state described by Marx in Capital” (ibid., 17:00–15). Importantly, then, global capitalism is propelled and maintained by the modern “state created by the Bourgeoisie and imposed through the political economy using capital” and is what consequently permits for multinational corporations to operate in Muslim countries, leading to international wealth imbalances and dependency of Muslim populations on this system (ibid., 11:00–45). For Abū Qatāda, global capitalism manifests itself through the secular legal institutions enforced by the modern state’s disciplinary powers (including the law). In this sense, it is possible to view his critique of capitalism as connected to his overarching critique of the modern state. He makes this clearer in the following subsection, where he formulates a more comprehensive critique of state hegemony and ideology.

While Abū Qatāda does not offer an account or definition of ideology directly, he refers to it in passing, informing his readers of its central role in upholding the capitalist system, because “capitalism is based on doctrine” (Abū Qatāda 2021a, 27:00–15). In an act of translation, Abū Qatāda takes the concept of ideology by drawing an explicit parallel between ideology and religious doctrine (ʿaqīda) in traditional Islamic thought, arguing that they must be considered within the same general category, because they both aim to construct normativity by means of intangible thought (ibid.). From this, we can surmise that Abū Qatāda’s critiques of state hegemony and ideology discussed in the next subsection are influenced by this reading.

A Critique of Hegemony: On State Patronage of Religion

According to Althusser, hegemony is maintained through the state’s shaping of normativities reproduced in education, media, bureaucracy, and socioreligious institutions. Comprising of its various institutions, personalities, and texts, the church “teaches ‘know how’ . . . in forms which ensure subjection to the ruling ideology or the mastery of its ‘practice’ [emphasis original]” (Althusser 2006, 88). In the Islamic context, as discussed previously, the state and its co-opting of religious institutions remains a significant concern to Muslim critical theorists, whether in the creation of nationalism (as in Turkey) or the globalization of a religiosity ultimately legitimizing authoritarian regimes and economies (as in Saudi Arabia) (Hallaq 2012; March 2003; Pasha 2005; Simms 2002; Yaman 2012). This section explores a more sustained critique proposed by Abū Qatāda in an attempt to mediate between state hegemony’s propagation of “faux religion” and what he believes to be true Islam. Finally, this section informs literature that has lacked differentiation between Islamism and Salafism. While Islamism has been critiqued for participation in the same secular, hegemonic institutions it supposedly resists (ibid.; Abou El Fadl 2014; Tibi 2012), as discussed earlier, Abū Qatāda is highly critical of this approach.

In his seminary classes (durūs), Abū Qatāda mainly teaches legal theory (uṣūl al-fiqh) and continues to hold a discussion series where he teaches contemporary developments in contemporary Islamic legal theory (Abū Qatāda 2022c). In “Between Two Traditions” (Bayna Manhajayn, from here on, BM, followed by article number), he dedicates a compilation of 100 short essays to delineating what he identifies as a fundamental divergence in twentieth-century Islamic thought, between those upon the path of the prophetic tradition (sunna) and the myriad “deviant sects” (firaq munḥarifa) who manipulate scripture in order to uphold the oppressive state status quo in Muslim-majority countries (BM, 1). The series discusses such issues as the relationship between church and state, sovereignty, democracy, and jurisprudence of war and rebellion. In identifying those sects that “deviate” from the truth (or misrepresent it), Abū Qatāda is particularly critical of “Islamists” whose political thought is premised upon the introduction of Islam into the political sphere (BM, 1–2). Here, he includes in this group the Muslim Brotherhood, especially as led by Rached Ghannouchi (b. 1941); the Sudanese jurist Ḥasan al-Turabi (d. 2016); and reformists including Muḥammad al-Ghazālī (d. 1996), Salah Alsawy, and Syrian theologian Wahbat al-Zuḥaylī (d. 2015) (BM, 3, 13).

Abū Qatāda’s objections are not, however, that they believe religion has a role in politics—often anachronistically portrayed as the defining feature of Islamism (Mura 2016)—but rather that their political efforts comply with and thus legitimize the nation-state’s conception of sovereignty, which is antithetical to premodern Muslim conceptions of divine sovereignty (BM, 1–3). Importantly, central to Abū Qatāda’s critique of the nation-state is provisions in all state constitutions that identify it as the source of sovereignty—in Ali Agrama’s (2012) terms, the “active principle of secularism” (p. 73)—or the authority to distinguish what is and is not considered a legal manifestation of religion (Ali Agrama 2012; Asad 2003; Fernando 2014; Hallaq 2012; Mahmood 2015). After identifying the power of the state and its prerogative in interpreting scripture, Abū Qatāda identifies three areas where this attempt to enforce a state-centric interpretation of Islam takes place. The first of these is a reframing of vocabulary, such that common words used to imply value judgments in scripture are replaced by those the nation-state (through liberal ideology) deems appropriate. For example, “belief and disbelief” (īmān and kufr) are replaced by their secular equivalents, loyal and disloyal, and “freedom” is stressed instead of obedience to God (ṭāʿa) (BM, 46). Abū Qatāda draws on Althusser’s (2006) critique of ideology, wherein religions create an artificial normativity to maintain hegemony. For Abū Qatāda, it was after the Muslim youth’s exposure to modernity following colonial rule that this would take place:

They no longer spoke in the manner of those guided by the Holy Quran. This trend had lost the terminologies of the Sharīʿa, and the scales of law and judgement have been changed in the essence of these phrases. Instead of the Muslim youth speaking about jihad, they began to talk about revolution, for instance, or political resistance; instead of using terms like “worship,” they began to talk about patriotic duty . . . and instead of Allah's right to implement His laws and limitations, they talked about social freedom, social justice, oppression and dictatorship. (BM, 15)

In the case of the Marxists in a European Christian context, it is precisely the opposite to what Abū Qatāda describes; in Muslim societies, secular terms are used to uphold state hegemony. The religious authorities, and Islamists like the Muslim Brotherhood, are replacing religious with “secular” terminology for the purpose of enforcing a state-centric normativity. For Abū Qatāda, it is rather the insistence on words like jihad, Sharīʿa, and eternal salvation—i.e., “religious terminology”—that summon systematic resistance to state ideology.

Abū Qatāda identifies the height of this blatant disregard for even the most fundamental Islamic principles in his critique of Algerian scholar Abū Bakr al-Jazāʾirī (d. 2018) who exclaimed, speaking on behalf of Kuwait following the Gulf War: “may Allah reward America!” (BM, 17). It is in this spirit that he identifies the nation-state’s education system as being the source for this ideological pivot from Islam; “universities are the home of the ṭāghūt” ¹² and “the laws governing the Islamic university—any Islamic university or faculty of Islamic studies—do not permit for anyone but the ṭāghūt to enter them . . . to seek knowledge . . . [or] to earn diplomas” (BM, 22). Abū Qatāda is aware of the state’s power and the history of the colonial project in the development of what he identifies as counter-Islamic narratives.

For Abū Qatāda, the practical effects of hegemony are very real. For all intents and purposes, Muslim countries have co-opted central religious bodies to either regulate (e.g., Saudi Arabia) or create (e.g., Turkey) a religiosity compatible with the state (Buyruk 2021; Mouline 2014). This means they establish a monopoly over religious education, where again, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and Saudi Arabia are pertinent examples despite having entirely different theological leanings and denominations (ibid.; Ali Agrama 2012; Odabaei 2019). Further critical literature on Muslim countries reveals a deep co-opting of various formerly independent religious institutions. As Ali Agrama (2012) and other anthropologists of Egypt observe, the state especially in the post-Mubarak era has exercised significant powers over the symbolic Al-Azhar University, including curtailing freedom of speech, regulating curricula, and threatening its high-ranking clerics (Mahmood 2015). As noted by Bsheer (2020) and Ongur (2020), states have also co-opted what for a long time had been—even when funded by Sultan or Caliph—within the discretion of each cleric: the content of Friday sermons. Even the physical properties that were once considered essential to the development of religiosity, beneficiary trusts or awqāf, now have ministries dedicated to their management effectively stripping the power from grassroots communities. Some countries like Turkey go as far as classifying mosques as government property as opposed to “places of worship” (Gözaydın 2016).

Abū Qatāda, based on ʿAzzām’s (2016, 1975) initial theorization, notes that the doctrine of state sovereignty implies the state possesses the sole authority of interpretation in matters of the law—the law being in the realm of God:

The meaning of sovereignty in the democratic sense is the same meaning of sovereignty in Islam. The leading theorists of positive law have defined it to mean ‘absolute, supreme authority over which there is no authority,’ the right of interpretation over all things and acts, the determination of good and evil, and the legality of actions with regard to their agreement with the law. (BM, 46)

The problem is that the state, in claiming “absolute sovereignty of legislation” (siyādat al-tashrīʿ al-muṭlaqa), established itself as the regulator of religion. Indeed, this applies to the definition of religion itself (BM, 46). The corollary of this authority to shape religiosity, as described by Asad (2003) and Hallaq (2012), is the right of the state to selectively implement Islamic legal principles under the auspices of protecting the public order. In the Egyptian case, secular courts take upon themselves the authority of implementing religious law in matters where the public order deems it fit (Ali Agrama 2012). The state has no single defined aim, nor is it the pure substance of Qurʾanic scripture responsible for these rulings. Rather, the sovereign is, as Ali Agrama (2012) explains, “both inside and outside the law, simultaneously legal and nonlegal,” (p. 142) whereas religion itself, instead of being authoritative divine will, is deliberately “linked to its status as nonknowledge” (p. 75). It is important to note that Abū Qatāda, who is far less concerned with the inner workings of secular institutions than Ali Agrama, Asad, and Hallaq, is likely drawn to this critique of the state due to his concerns of Islam’s erasure from the public sphere (most importantly, law).

Abū Qatāda recognizes the notion of state sovereignty even in areas where religious law is claimed to be in the name of the Sharīʿa (BM, 45–46). The state, being the possessor of sovereignty, has the authority of interpretation. Thus, even if a state like Egypt were to implement the laws prescribed by the Sharīʿa—such as the “prescribed punishments,” ¹³ prohibitions on interest, alcohol and drugs, blasphemy laws, etc.—the state would still be considered to have compromised monotheism (tawḥīd) or ascribing something unique to God to his creation (shirk), the greatest sin in Islam (BM, 46; ʿAzzām 1975b). This is because it is the Parliament, King, or another state body that “permits” the implementation of this law, meaning that it was under the name of popular sovereignty or of the state that these laws were implemented. For Abū Qatāda and ʿAzzām, this is the direct result of delinking “knowledge” from “religion.” Commenting on this, Abū Qatāda states: “no law passed through a legislative procedure of popular sovereignty – even if in agreement with the Sharīʿa in content – can ever be Islamic . . . because if the one identified as the legislator is not God, [the law and its content] amounts to disbelief [kufr]” (BM, 45).

Every “Muslim” constitution, we are told, begins with a statement identifying the state as the source of sovereignty and legislation, as opposed to the divine will articulated in revelation (Abū Qatāda and Al-Busīfī 2014). Abū Qatāda identifies the notion that in the modern nation-state, man, or the sovereign, is the one who decides the exception. That is, in the state of a disagreement, the state has the right to both interpret the law and override it in a state of emergency (BM, 3). In an interesting progression of events, Abū Qatāda calls for a reversal of Schmitt’s famous dictum, “all significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts” (Schmitt 2007 [1932], 42). Instead of affirming the state through a deification of power and sovereignty, Abū Qatāda advocates for a political theory where God himself is sovereign. The question that remains to be answered concerns the nature of such a government: if the ummah can challenge state sovereignty even in the state of exception, what powers and procedures would a truly Islamic government entail? The answer to this question, however intriguing, unfortunately lies outside the scope of this paper.

Conclusion: Jihadists Struggling with Decoloniality

In this paper, I examined the conversation between Abū Qatāda in his theorization of global jihad and decolonial and neo-Marxist critiques of the modern state. For Abū Qatāda, the modern state is problematic because it incorporates a conception of sovereignty where the state is the sole possessor of legal license—to determine legal from illegal; knowledge from nonknowledge; to kill, maim, and control human bodies to sustain its existence. The only remedy to the colonial state is to replace God as the true sovereign through violent resistance and perseverance known as jihad. Furthermore, for Abū Qatāda, the locus of Islamic governance is God, founded by an indigenous technology of the self that is clearly and explicitly conveyed in Qurʾanic scripture and the prophetic example. When incorporating decolonial critiques of the state into his thought, Abū Qatāda interprets global jihad as a premodern revival of Islamic ethics using on the framing of Wael Hallaq (2012), who contends that modernity is colonial, and a truly anticolonial resistance would—however unlikely—require overturning the powers associated with the modern state while realizing an ethical (Islamic) system that rejects them.

In his engagement with neo-Marxist thought, Islamic political thought is juxtaposed to state ideology established through state utilization of religious institutions in upholding the legitimacy of the nation-state. An Islamic political system is then interpreted as a revival of a premodern condition, a counterculture, which opposes the ideological chains of hegemony and the state’s disciplinary and coercive powers. Key to this project is the revival of premodern Islamic law and its political implementation, one that aspires to emulate the “rightly guided caliphate” in the first century of Islam. The key feature of Islamic government is that it relegates sovereignty to God and, by extension, does not necessitate compliance in the event it opposes the divine law. In his theorization, Abū Qatāda vacillates between internalizing postmodern critiques of the state and mirroring modern notions of empire and rationalization of history from the perspective of a universal narrative. The purpose of this study, however, was limited to identifying this conversation between decolonial and Jihadist-Salafī political thought. Conversely, regarding the ways in which these thinkers potentially mirror colonial modernity, a number of questions arise: What would the Islamic state look like? Who will interpret in God’s name? Most importantly, to what extent does the normative political thought of Jihadi-Salafism draw from its modernist detractors? To be sure, while jihadists do not leave these questions unanswered, their responses require nuanced and exhaustive analysis that are best suited for future studies.