36. Progressive Muslims

Islamic Modernism 

As pointed out by Daniel Pipes, son of Richard Pipes, who headed the Team B disinformation unit of the CIA, while otherwise known for his Islamophobia, in a 2008 interview, Muslims can be divided into three categories: “traditional Islam,” which he sees as pragmatic and non-violent, “radical Islam,” which he sees as a twentieth century phenomenon comparable to communism and totalitarianism, and “moderate Islam,” which is for the most part today just a hypothesis which exists in the minds of a few intellectuals. As a movement, however, modernist Islam doesn’t yet exist, but he believes it should become a policy of the American government to help it come into existence. Interestingly, however, he did concede that he did not have the “theological background” to determine which group follows the Quran the closest and is truest to its intent.[1] While the media tout the value of “moderate Islam,” the Western world is as yet unaware of the possibilities of traditional Islam, a heritage which even the Muslims themselves have forgotten. As identified by the late historian Marshall Hodgson, Islam’s “great pre-Modern heritage” is possibly the richest source Muslims possess for creating a coherent vision of their religion’s place in the world today. Yet, he comments: “One of the problems of Muslims is that on the level of historical action their ties with relevant traditions are so tenuous.”[2]

Khaled El Fadl, who contributed to Islam and Human Rights, published in 2005 by CSIS, is an example of a grouping of Muslim intellectuals today, other than the Salafis and the Sufis, known as “modernists”—typically dominated by Ismailis working within Sunni organizations—who unabashedly call for the wholesale modification of Islam according to Western values. Muslims who join Abou El Fadl in advocating moderation include those associated with the Washington-based Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy (CSID) and authors in the anthology Islamic Democratic Discourse.[3] On the board of directors of CSID are John Esposito, founding director of the ACMCU, and Akbar Ahmed, an admirer of Aga Khan IV. Ambassador Akbar Ahmed is the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at American University in Washington, D.C and the former Pakistani High Commissioner to the UK and Ireland. He has served as a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and was the First Distinguished Chair of Middle East and Islamic Studies at the U.S Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD. Ahmed, who refers to the Aga Khan IV as a “quiet revolutionary,” explains that the world is divided by those who identify Western modernism as corruptive, and those who seek to adapt to it while retaining their identity, and that:

 

For the latter one of the most interesting and important voices to emerge recently is that of the Aga Khan.

Here is irony. For the Aga Khan is the head, the hereditary Imam, of the Ismailis, one of the most close-knit and traditional Muslim sects. More irony, as this soft-spoken, even shy, person is bringing about a quiet but far-reaching economic and social revolution in the lives of his followers. Final irony: his work now brings together Ismailis and non-Ismailis as never before in history and thus provides a lead to mainstream Muslims, too many of whom consider the sect unorthodox.

In the West the name Aga Khan is synonymous with fabulous riches, exotic, Oriental mystery. What seldom comes to light is the serious work performed in the last decade by the present holder of the title to relate Islamic ideas to contemporary life…

Because of his great personal prestige the Aga Khan is able to attract the support of heads of state and royalty; his education at Harvard, to which he is constantly drawn, keeps open international academic networks.[4]

 

More generally, modernism is associated with the revivalist trend in Islam, like Jamal ud-Din al-Afghani, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, Muhammad Abduh, Namik Kemal and Muhammad Iqbal. However, the standard definition of the more recent trend in modernism was published in The 2010 edition of The 500 Most Influential Muslims:

 

Islamic modernism is a reform movement started by politically-minded urbanites with scant knowledge of traditional Islam. These people had witnessed and studied Western technology and socio-political ideas, and realized that the Islamic world was being left behind technologically by the West and had become too weak to stand up to it. They blamed this weakness on what they saw as “traditional Islam,” which they thought held them back and was not “progressive” enough. They thus called for a complete overhaul of Islam, including—or rather in particular—Islamic law (sharia) and doctrine (aqida). Islamic modernism remains popularly an object of derision and ridicule, and is scorned by traditional Muslims and fundamentalists alike.[5]

 

However, despite their differences with the Salafis, the modernists share with them a call for the reopening of the Doors of Ijtihad. According to the New York University Center for Dialogues: Islamic World–US–The West, in a publication entitled Who Speaks for Islam, the renewed call for reform is referred to a “New Ijtihad.” Present-day modernists, the publication explains, differ from their predecessors in the scope of their intellectual sources. In other words:

 

Whereas the early modernists worked exclusively within an Islamic frame of reference, today’s thinkers avail themselves of multiple critical and interpretive frameworks. Most of these thinkers combine knowledge of Islamic learning and scripture with secular training (often undertaken in the West) in the social sciences, including anthropology, sociology, philology, philosophy, and hermeneutics. Their roots in Islamic and Western intellectual processes offer them a unique critical perspective on Islamic scripture and heritage.[6]

 

The American strategy to manipulate the topic of Ijtihad was laid bare in a conference in 2004, sponsored by an organization with links to the CSID, the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), which was created by Congress as a non-partisan, federal institution and publishes works on interfaith dialogue and peacebuilding. The conference was titled, tellingly enough, “Ijtihad: Reinterpreting Islamic Principles for the Twenty-first Century.” The four presenters, all considered “experts” on Islamic law and interpretation, included Muzammil H. Siddiqi, a member of the Fiqh (Islamic Law) Council of North America who teaches at California State University and Chapman University; Imam Hassan Qazwini, director of the Islamic Center of America, based in Detroit; Muneer Fareed, associate professor of Islamic studies at Wayne State University; and Ingrid Mattson of ISNA.

Despite the USIP conference attendees’ known ties to Islamic extremism, it included on its board the rabid Islamophobe Daniel Pipes, who was appointed to the Middle East Forum by George W. Bush in 2003. Pipes was named in a 140-page report titled Fear, Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America by the Center for American Progress as one of five who form a “small, tightly networked group of misinformation experts guiding an effort that reaches millions of Americans through effective advocates, media partners, and grassroots organizing.” Other than Pipes, they include Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy, David Yerushalmi of the Society of Americans for National Existence, Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch and Stop Islamization of America, and Steven Emerson of the Investigative Project on Terrorism. The group received more than $40 million from the typical Rockefeller and CIA-connected right-wing donors, like Richard Scaife, the Bradley Foundation and others who also fund Zionist activities. Despite confessing to not known which tradition is truer to the Quran­—traditional Islam, Islamism or “moderate” Islam­—Pipes has written, “It’s a mistake to blame Islam, a religion 14 centuries old, for the evil that should be ascribed to militant Islam, a totalitarian ideology less than a century old. Militant Islam is the problem, but moderate Islam is the solution.”[7]

The USIP study was co-chaired by David Smock and Radwan Masmoudi, president of CSID. Smock was a past staff member of the Ford Foundation and executive associate to the president of the United Church of Christ, which places high emphasis on worldwide interfaith efforts. According to Masmoudi, paraphrased in the USIP report, the closing of Ijtihad “was the beginning of the decline of Muslim civilization. Since then, Islamic law has become increasingly detached from reality and modernity. Old interpretations no longer provide suitable answers to the difficult questions facing the Muslim world.”[8] Likewise, another panelist was Muzammil H. Siddiqi, a member of the Fiqh Council of North America, who was educated at the University of Medina, the preeminent Wahhabi institution. According to Siddiqi, there cannot be true Ijtihad unless scholars are free to express their opinions and therefore, that the “democratization” of Muslim societies is necessary for the process to work. Siddiqi also proposes undermining the authority of the Madhhabs, suggesting that students should learn from all of them, but then further dilute the process through the study as well of comparative religion, modern logic, philosophy and history, economics and political theory. As the report summarizes:

 

As Masmoudi pointed out, all four panelists mentioned the lack of freedom and democracy as serious impediments to Ijtihad. Without freedom and democracy, which are sharply limited in the Muslim world and particularly in Arab countries, Ijtihad cannot be performed. Democracy is the key to opening up Ijtihad, and Ijtihad is the key to solving the principle problems confronting the Muslim world today.[9]

 

Past directors of CSID have included Louay M. Safi, executive director of ISNA and executive director and Director of Research for the American IIIT, that originated in the Lugano meetings of the Muslim Brotherhood headed by Youssef Nada[10]; Joe Montville, Director of Preventive Diplomacy at CSIS[11]; Irvin J. Borowsky, founder of the American Interfaith Institute; Abdulwahab Alkebsi, Executive Director of the Islamic Institute and as Deputy Director of the American Muslim Council (AMC); Antony T. Sullivan is a distinguished senior scholar at the University of Michigan, who was affiliated for thirty years with Earhart Foundation, which has been funded the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI)[12]; Robert A. Schadler, with the US Information Agency and the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and the CIA front Voice of America[13]; John P. Entelis, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Middle East Studies Program at Fordham University, Academic Associate of the Atlantic Council, invited participant of several discussion groups of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the Lehrman Institute, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and others. Entelis consults frequently for private and public institutions including the U.S. Department of State, USIA, IFES, the Foreign Service Institute, PBS, ABC, CBS, MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour, Charlie Rose, CNN and The New York Times.[14]

Another past director of the CSID was Muqtedar Khan, who earned his Ph.D. in international relations, political philosophy and Islamic political, thought from Georgetown University.[15] He is also a Non-Resident Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC.[16] In 2008, Muqtedar Khan received the Sir Syed Ahmed Khan Award for service to Islam from Aligarh Muslim University. He also writes for the “On Faith” Forum of Washington Post and Newsweek. Khan frequently comments on BBC, CNN, FOX, VOA TV, NPR and other radio and TV networks.[17] Khan operates Itjihad.com, “for freedom of thought and independent thinking among Muslims everywhere.”[18] He has written, “I remember telling my wife; maybe I will be our Henry Kissinger, the first Muslim to become the Secretary of State. Then came Bin Laden and his bloody men and along with the World Trade Center, American Muslim dreams and aspirations came crashing down.”[19]

Muqtedar Khan was the editor of the anthology, Islamic Democratic Discourse: Theory, Debates and Philosophical Perspectives, featuring articles from Tamara Sonn, Osman Bakar, Ali Paya and Tariq Ramadan, son of Muslim Brotherhood leader Said Ramadan, and grandson of Hassan al Banna. Tamara Sonn, who is the Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani Professor Emerita in the History of Islam at Georgetown University, studied under Fazlur Rahman.  Osman Bakar is Rector of International Islamic University Malaysia influenced by Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Ali Paya is Professor of Philosophy at the Islamic College. Completely disregarding the traditions of the Madhhabs, in Western Muslims and the Future of Islam, Tariq proposes that Muslims in the West must create a “Western Islam,” just as there is a separate “Asian Islam” and an “African Islam,” which supposedly take into account cultural differences. European Muslims, he believes, must re-examine the fundamental texts of Islam and interpret them in light of their own cultural background, but influenced by European society. In November 2017, Tariq Ramadan took leave of absence from his job professor of contemporary Islamic Studies at St Antony’s College at Oxford to contest allegations of rape and sexual misconduct. Between 2018 and 2020, Ramadan was charged with raping at least five women, one of them a disabled woman in 2009.[20]

Despite the earnest sounding calls for reform and democracy, these pronouncements serve to disguise the plans of Western imperialism. CSID program officer Aly Abuzakuk was a founding member of the National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL), a group dedicated to assassinating Muammar Qaddafi and overthrowing his regime. According to several sources, the NFSL was supported by Saudi Arabia and the CIA.[21] On March 16, 2011, Masmoudi was signatory to a letter to President Obama requesting him to “assume a leading role in halting the horrific violence being perpetrated by Colonel Qaddafi’s forces,” urging him to create a coalition to impose a no-fly zone over Libya.[22] The rebel forces in Libya were led by Abdelhakim Belhaj, who had fought with the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, before being arrested by the CIA in 2004 who “renditioned” him back to Libya, where he underwent “deradicalization.”[23] Belhaj and his associates formed the “Islamic Movement for Change” and called for NATO to intervene on the rebels’ behalf.[24]

IIIT founder Totonji has been instrumental in the establishment of many Islamic based think tank organizations and charity groups, including SAAR Foundation in USA, International Islamic Forum for Science, Technology and Human Resources Development IFTIKHAR  in Indonesia with B.J. Habibie who became the President of Indonesia after Suharto, International Islamic Charitable Organization in Kuwait, Islamic Call Society in Tripoli, Libya and others.[25] In the aftermath of 9/11, IIIT was targeted by the U.S. federal authorities as part of Operation Green Quest. Formed in October 2001, the operation involved an interagency task force set up to investigate the financing of Al-Qaeda and other international terrorist groups. In March 2002, the unit raided the offices of nineteen Muslim charities and educational institutions. Though it confiscated a significant amount of documents and computer files, the investigation did not find any incriminating evidence. In 2019, investigative journalist and academic Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, claimed the investigations were driven by right-wing Islamophobia, and defended the organization, stating, “By defaming and denigrating organizations like IIIT, the far-right are ironically disempowering the very forces among Western Muslims that are on the frontlines of the fight against Islamist extremism.”[26]

SAAR Foundation, which became an umbrella organization for a cluster of over a hundred charities, think tanks, and businesses, was also part of the raid of Operation Green Quest, for tied to the Al Taqwa Bank and the Muslim Brotherhood.[27] SAAR’s  founder Saudi billionaire Sulaiman Abdul Aziz Al Rajhi, who had close to the Saudi royal family was on the Golden Chain of al-Qaeda supporters.[28] Also involved with SAAR as well as World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), founded in 1972 in Saudi Arabia by Mohammed Qutb, with IIIT founders Barzinji and Anwar Ibrahim.[29] A University of Malaya graduate, Ibrahim served as president of the National Union of Malaysian Muslim Students as well as Malaysian Islamic Youth Movement of Malaysia.[30] Faruqi played an important role in Ibrahim’s political career by advising him to join the United Malays National Organisation (UNMO), a nationalist right-wing political party in Malaysia, in 1981.[31] current Prime Minister of Malaysia since 2022. He served as the seventh Deputy Prime Minister and in many other cabinet positions in the Barisan Nasional (BN) administration under former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad from 1982 to his removal in 1998, and is current Prime Minister of Malaysia since 2022.[32]

In the early morning of May 27, 1986, after Faruqi returned home from attending an Iftar dinner with the local chapter of the MSA, he and his wife, Lois Lamya al-Faruqi (née Lois Rachel Ibsen), a respected Islamic art historian in her own right, were stabbed to death by Joseph Louis Young, a man identified as a “Black Muslim,” also known as Yusuf Ali. Potential motives were believed to have been Faruqi’s outspoken views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Reactions within some of the local Muslim community speculated that the murders were carried out by the Jewish Defence League (JDL).[33] The Jordanian ministry of Islamic Affairs also claimed that extremist Zionist groups in the US were responsible for the murders.[34] In the same month, the magazine Spotlight, a publication of the Liberty Lobby, a white nationalist organization, reported that Victor Vancier, the head of the JDL in New York, called for violence against Arab-Americans and others perceived as opponents of Israel, stating that a “prominent Palestinian-American professor” had been “marked for liquidation.”[35] However, Young confessed that he wanted to kill Faruqi because he had been told that both Faruqi and his wife had engaged in homosexual activities with Malaysian students at Temple. Young’s attorney was going to attempt to prove that his client was a psychotic schizophrenic, suffering delusions triggered by a homosexual assault early in his childhood, and therefore not criminally responsible for his actions.[36]

 

Muslim WakeUp!

When “Islamic feminist” Amina Wadud led a mixed-gender Friday prayer in March 2005, at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Fadl celebrated that, “What the fundamentalists are worried about is that there’s going to be a ripple effect not just in the U.S. but all over the Muslim world. The women who are learned and frustrated that they cannot be the imam are going to see that someone got the guts to break ranks and do it.”[37] Wadud’s prayer was sponsored by the Muslim Women’s Freedom Tour, under the leadership of an Ismaili Muslim woman, Asra Nomani, and by the website Muslim WakeUp!, as well as by members of the Progressive Muslim Union (PMU).[38] Nomani worked as a correspondent for The Wall Street Journal with her colleague Daniel Pearl in Pakistan post-9/11.[39] Nomani has expressed respect and admiration for Princess Zahra, the daughter of the Aga Khan IV, whom she saw at the Ismaili Health Professionals Conference in Atlanta. Zahra was a Harvard graduate, and was working for the Aga Khan Development Network.[40] Nomani’s Tantrika, which caused a stir when it was released in 2003, was an account of her experiences while experimenting with Tantric sex. Nomani’s Standing Alone in Mecca, the story of her Hajj pilgrimage and an exploration of the historical rights of Muslim women, includes what Nomani calls the “Islamic Bill of Rights for Women in Mosques” and the “Islamic Bill of Rights for Women in the Bedroom.” Along with the book, Nomani launched the Muslim Women’s Freedom Tour, a series of women-led Muslim prayer services in cities across the U.S, which was kicked off on March 18, 2005, in New York, led by Wadud, an advisory board of the PMU.[41]

Muslim Wakeup! is a publication which “seeks to bring together Muslims and non-Muslims in America and around the globe in efforts that celebrate cultural and spiritual diversity, tolerance, and understanding.”[42] MuslimWakeUp.com is an upstart online magazine that Patricia Dunn, Ahmed Nassef and Jawad Ali, both business and technology consultants, started in 2004 and to which Eltantawi, a long-time Muslim activist, contributes. On the eve of what the founders, in what they considered to be a watershed event in more than 1,400 years of Islamic history, sitting in Amir’s, a small Lebanese diner on Manhattan’s upper west side, and planned a party the theme of which would be to the end of patriarchy, to commemorate a female-led, mixed-gender prayer that would take place the following day at St. John of the Divine. Ali suggested passing out a “Muslim Girls Gone Wild” calendar at the imaginary party, spoofing the Girls Gone Wild videos, in which co-eds bare their breasts, but instead of with Muslim girls lifting veils to show their faces.[43]

Nassef and Ali were inspired to found Muslim WakeUp in response to a 2001 study by CAIR, “The American Mosque: A National Portrait,” which showed that only about seven percent of America’s estimated 6 to 7 million Muslims attend mosques once per week, while about a third “associated” with a mosque.[44] Muslim WakeUp took note that established Muslim organizations, like Ingrid Mattson and ISNA, “agree that mosques can do a better job.”[45] Mattson said, “The whole point is to give people some hope in their lives to give them a spiritual charge. It's not supposed to be a place primarily for political discussion. People are tired. They have a lot of stresses in their lives. They need to know that God is living and is there.”[46] ISNA is working on these issues, Mattson claimed, and has set up programs that teach community outreach, to both Muslim and non-Muslims, and encourage civic engagement. As for Muslim WakeUp, Mattson remarked she sees them as “reacting to sexism, narrow-mindedness, and xenophobia in the Muslim community,” and that they have “a legitimate agenda of community transformation.”[47] As Muslim WakeUp noted, Mattson “also disapproves of what she said is a disrespectful tone, as well as the proposal of a female-led, mixed gender prayer.” According to Mattson, “I think that reflects a lack of either training in traditional Islam or a rejection of traditional Islamic disciplines.”[48]

The PMU advisory board also includes the CSID’s Akbar Ahmed and Muqtedar Khan, as well as Ali Abunimah, a writer and commentator on Middle East and Arab-American affairs, who lives in Chicago. He is co-founder of Electronic Intifada and Electronic Iraq; Ziad J. Asali, MD, the President and founder of the American Task Force on Palestine and past-president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), the largest Arab-American grassroots civil rights organization in the United States. PMU founding member Omid Safi is the editor of Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender, and Pluralism. Safi is the Director of Duke University’s Islamic Studies Centre, has been featured by the Institute for Ismaili Studies and presented lecture at the Aga Khan Centre.[49] PMU’s co-chair, Pamela Taylor, joined hands with the Muslim Canadian Congress (MCC) and the United Muslim Association to be the first woman to deliver the Friday sermon and lead the mixed-gender congregation in a mosque on July 1, 2005, at the United Muslim Association mosque in North Etobicoke. The MCC was organized to provide a voice to Muslims who support a “progressive, liberal, pluralistic, democratic, and secular society where everyone has the freedom of religion.”[50] “Canada is the Islamic ideal,” said Taylor, as its lack of “imperialistic escapades” allows its citizens to act as the conscience of the Muslim world and to speak out against repressive regimes.[51] Taylor has served as Director and Publications officer of the Islamic Writers Alliance, and has worked for the Islamic Media Foundation and ISNA.[52]

Taylor co-founded Muslims for Progressive Values (MPV), a non-profit organization with Zuriana (Ani) Zonneveld and Ahmed Nassef in 2007, which is “Creating a Culture Rooted in Human Rights in Muslim Societies,” and calls for a “new Ijtihad.”[53] The MPV has chapters in Los Angeles, New York, Washington D.C., Atlanta, and Ottawa, Canada. In their prayer spaces, families are permitted to pray together, women may lead mixed congregations, and mixed faith couples and LGBTQ Muslims are welcomed.[54] Zonneveld is a Malaysian singer, songwriter who has participated in the writing of Grammy-winning songs. Zonneveld is also the editor, along with Vanessa Karam and Olivia Samad, of Progressive Muslim Identities: Personal Stories from the U.S. and Canada, with a foreword by Aasif Mandvi, a British Ismaili Muslim, who was a correspondent on The Daily Show. Also associated with the movement is Mona Eltahawy, whose work has appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, and the Miami Herald among others. In 2015, Eltahawy published Headscarves and Hymens: : Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution.

Along with the Aga Khan Council for Western U.S, MPV are partners of NewGround: A Muslim-Jewish Partnership for Change.[55] MPV has a board of advisors including scholars and activists such as: Reza Aslan, Amir Hussein, Karima Bennoune, Daayiee Abdullah, Zainah Anwar, Saleemah Abdul-Ghafur, and El-Farouk Khaki. Aslan is the author of No God but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, which argues for a liberal interpretation of the religion. Saleemah Abdul-Ghafur is an author and activist focused on faith-based initiatives who currently serves as the chief of staff and chief communications officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.[56] El-Farouk Khaki is a Tanzanian-born Muslim Canadian of Indian origin, and lawyer, and human rights activist on issues including gender equality, sexual orientation. Khaki founded Salaam in 1991, a support group for gay Muslims, which Rahim Thawer, co-founder Ismaili Queers.[57] Zainah Anwar, ex-chairman of the Malaysian Securities Commission, was the head of the civil society organization Sisters in Islam, who was named by the International Museum of Women as one of its 10 most influential Muslim women.[58]

 

Punk Muslims

Nomani was inspired to organize Wadud’s prayer after reading the novel The Taqwacores, where a burqa-wearing riot grrrl, Rabeya, leads her fellow punks in a mixed-gender Friday sermon.[59] The Taqwacores was written in 2002 by PMU member Michael Muhammad Knight, who worked security at Waddud’s prayer.[60] After reading Alex Haley’s Autobiography of Malcolm X at the ate of fifteen, Knight converted to Islam, and at seventeen he traveled to Islamabad, Pakistan, to study the religion and came close to making the decision to join the “Jihad” against Russian rule in Chechnya. Knight was described in an article for the Guardian titled “Punk Muslims” as “the Hunter S. Thompson of Islamic literature.”[61] Knight explains that a “punk Muslim” is “that guy at a party who just stands in the corner and talks shit about everyone.”[62] Knight claims, for example, to have stink-palmed Yusuf Islam, formerly Cat Stevens, and other Muslim celebrities. Knight also wrote a series of reports about ICNA’s conferences in a style similar to Rolling Stone magazine.[63]

The San Francisco Chronicle described Knight as “one of the most necessary and, paradoxically enough, hopeful writers of Barack Obama’s America.”[64] Characters in The Taqwacores included a straight edge Sunni, a drunken mohawk-wearing Sufi punk, a burqa-wearing riot grrrl and a Shiah skinhead. Although The Taqwacores is now studied in courses at several American universities, it took some time for the book to be formally published. The book was later picked up for distribution by Alternative Tentacles, the punk record label founded by Jello Biafra, the lead singer of The Dead Kennedys, who was also connected to the Discordian spoof religion, the Church of the SubGenius. The novel has since inspired an actual Taqwacore scene, including bands such as the Kominas, Vote Hezbollah, and Secret Trial Five. One of the Kominas’ most controversial songs, “Rumi Was a Homo,” attacks Siraj Wahhaj, a prominent Brooklyn Imam who was accused of homophobia.[65]

An encounter with Peter Lamborn Wilson, a.k.a. Hakim Bey, founder of the Moorish Orthodox Church, led to The Taqwacores being published by Autonomedia in 2004. Knight’s 2012 book, William S. Burroughs vs. The Qur’an, covers his relationship with Wilson, as well as his literary experimentation with the Quran using Burroughs’s cut-up techniques. Knight obtained a Masters degree from Harvard University in 2011 and was a PhD student in Islamic studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Knight became involved with the Five Percenters, aka the Nation of Gods and Earths, a movement that broke from the Nation of Islam in 1964, and which taught that the black man was himself God personified. Knight wrote the first ethnography of the movement, The Five Percenters: Islam, Hip-hop and the Gods of New York. An excerpt from the book appears in the booklet included with The 5% Album by Lord Jamar of Brand Nubian, which also features members of Wu-Tang Clan such as the RZA and GZA. Knight’s tenth book, Why I am a Salafi, released in 2015, begins after Knight’s ayahuasca vision in Tripping with Allah, visiting a mosque in Los Angeles and performing prayer while still under the drug’s effects. Knight’s eleventh book, Magic in Islam, released in 2016, examines traditions such as astrology, Hermeticism, amulets and talismans as practiced in an Islamic contexts.

Neo-Traditionalism 

Rounding out the circuit of modern Muslim trends who continue to complicate the Muslims’ ability to recognize the true Sunni tradition, in addition to Salafis and Modernists, are the Neo-Tradiationalists, also known as Wasatism. However, while the Wasatim tend to be among the few defenders of adherence (Taqlid) to the four principal Sunni schools of law (Madhabs), and belief in one of the Ash’ari, Maturidi and Athari creeds, they tend to simultaneously defend some fringe traditions of Sufism, particularly Ibn Arabi, thus feeding into the dialectic dividing Islam. Islamic neo-traditionalism emerged in the West during the 1990s following the return of several Muslim scholars who had studied at traditionalist centers of Islamic learning in the Arab world.

Such devotion to Ibn Arabi is exemplified in Sufis like Dr. Gibril Haddad and Muhammad Said Ramadan al-Bouti (1929 – 2013). Al-Bouti, a highly popular doctor of Islamic Law from the University of Damascus and a noted critic of Salafism, is listed among the Top 50 of the 500 most influential Muslims in the world. Al-Bouti is also affiliated to the Naqshbandi branch in Syria, the only Sufi organization in the country to be allowed freedom of action by the Asad regime, with whom it is closely associated. This is despite the fact that the Asad family are members of the Alawi sect. Sheikh al-Bouti is the leading Islamic scholar in Syria. An active opponent of the Salafis, al-Bouti is the author of Abandoning the Maddhabs is the Most Dangerous Bid’ah Threatening the Islamic Shari’ah.

Haddad, a well-known scholar and religious leader of Lebanese-American background who converted to Islam, was also listed amongst the inaugural 500 most influential Muslims in the world. After also exploring Shadhili Sufism, Haddad became a disciple of Sheikh Nazim Al-Haqqani, leader of the Naqshbandi-Haqqani Order. Haddad was also a former teacher on the traditional online Islamic institute Sunnipath, and is a major contributor to the website ESheikh.com, which gives traditional teachings on Islamic spirituality. Sheikh Kabbani supervises Sunnah.org, which touts itself as one of the top Islamic websites in the world. Also associated with Kabbani’s wing of Shaikh Haqqani’s Naqshbandi-Haqqani order is Stephen “Suleyman” Schwartz, Jewish convert to Islam and author who has been published in a variety of media, including The Wall Street Journal. Schwartz is also a vocal critic of the “Wahhabi lobby,” having written The Two Faces of Islam: The House of Sa’ud from Tradition to Terror, and a defense of Sufism titled The Other Islam: Sufism and the Road to Global Harmony.

The leading exponent in this camp is Nuh Ha Mim Keller, an American convert to Islam who resides in Amman, Jordan, and was also a signatory of the Amman Message. Keller has cited the writings of Seyyed Hossein Nasr as one of the reasons for his conversion to Islam.[66] Keller initiated into the Shadhili Sufi order by Sheikh Abd al Rahman Al Shaghouri, a student of Ahmed al-Alawi, who was a friend of René Guénon and who initiated Frithjof Schuon, founder of the Maryamiyya. Keller denounces the universalist teachings of Guénon and Schuon, but nevertheless defends Ibn Arabi and Freemason Abdul Qadir al Jazairi. In order to corroborate his claim that Sufism is a legitimate aspect of Islamic study, Keller likes to quote the eminent historian Ibn Khaldun to the effect that Sufism is “dedication to worship, total dedication to Allah most High, disregard for the finery and ornament of the world, abstinence from the pleasure, wealth, and prestige sought by most men, and retiring from others to worship alone.”[67] However, the Ibn Khaldun differentiated practices founded in the Sunnah from those that characterized many of the Sufis of his time, criticizing that, “Among the followers of the Sufis are a group of simple fellows and idiots who resemble the insane more than they do rational people…,” and issued a Fatwa that Ibn Arabi’s books ought to be burned.[68] Keller established a Zawiya (seminary) in Amman, Jordan, in the early 2000s, but in 2022 dozens of former adherents left the organization after complaints of children as young as two were being subjected to beatings.[69]

 

Zaytuna College

Leading examples of Wasatim include Hamza Yusuf, Abdal Hakim Murad and Umar Faruq Abd-Allah, who intended to disseminate the knowledge they had learned throughout their communities. Yusuf is co-founder with Zaid Shakir (born Ricky Daryl Mitchell) of Zaytuna College, which has featured sessions by Alan Godlas, another member of Schuon’s Maryamiyya.[70] The college was built on the foundation of an educational institute, founded in 1996 by Hamza Yusuf and Hesham Alalusi as Zaytuna Institute. Describing itself as “the first Muslim liberal arts college in the West,” Zaytuna College was influenced by the Great Books course.[71] Yusuf studied philosophy and educational theory with Mortimer Adler, a pioneer of the Great Books program, and co-founder of the Aspen Institute with Robert Maynard Hutchins, chancellor of the Rockefeller-funded University of Chicago.[72]

In September 2001, shortly after after 9/11, Yusuf’s prominence led him to take on the role as the sole Muslim representative in a delegation of religious leaders who met President George W. Bush and endorsed his decision to launch a military campaign against “terrorism.” Yusuf also served as a member in Mike Pompeo’s Committee of Unalienable Rights, created under the U.S. State Department in July 2019. The State Department announced its intention to create the commission after it hosted its first annual Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom July 2018. At a Heritage Foundation panel discussion, the Christian conservative attorney Benjamin Bull claimed that the left-wing was using “newly manufactured human rights” to “crush” the “traditional” and “natural” rights recognized by Christians.[73] When Trump was elected president in 2016, Yusuf discouraged protesting against an administration that was elected on a promise to erode the rights of the most vulnerable. “We have too much work to do, not protesting, not lighting fires, not saying, ‘Trump is not my president,’” he wrote on his website. “He is, and that is how our system works: by accepting the results and moving on.”[74] In 2017, Yusuf caused substantial backlash on social media for his comments on the Black Lives Matter protests. “The United States is probably, in terms of its laws, one of the least racist societies in the world,” he insisted. “We have between 15,000 and 18,000 homicides per year. Fifty percent are black-on-black crime, literally… There are twice as many whites that have been shot by police, but nobody ever shows those videos.” According to Yusuf, “It’s the assumption that the police are racist. It’s not always the case. Any police now that shoots a black is immediately considered a racist.”[75]

Yusuf worked closely with converts Umar Faruq Abd-Allah and Abdal Hakim Murad. Born Wymann-Landgraf, Abd-Allah converted to Islam and earned a PhD on the origins of Islamic law from the University of Chicago, and in 1984, he was appointed to the Department of Islamic Studies at King Abdul-Aziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.[76] John Winter, also known as Abdal Hakim Murad, is the Founder and Dean of the Cambridge Muslim College, Aziz Foundation Professor of Islamic studies at both Cambridge Muslim College and Ebrahim College, Director of Studies at Wolfson College and the Shaykh Zayed Lecturer of Islamic Studies in the Faculty of Divinity at University of Cambridge. In March 2016, at the Cambridge Muslim College Retreat, Murad delivered a lecture on the challenges of modernity, titled “Riding the Tiger,” pulled from a similar book title from Julius Evola. Returning to Evola, as a “prophetic yet tragic figure,” Murad discards his racist ideas while proceeding to look at the rest of Evola’s thought, which he insists can be useful for an Islamic critique of modernity.[77]

On December 28, 2021, Yusuf and Canadian right-wing psychologist Jordan Peterson recorded an interview in which they talked about Islam and postmodernity. Canadian author Troy Parfitt has conclusively demonstrated that not only does Peterson repeatedly betrays his admiration for Hitler, but he has extensively plagiarized his ideas from Aleister Crowley.[78] Peterson, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, attained notoriety after a video appeared of him refusing to use gender-neutral pronouns at a university protest.  As summarized by Walaa Quisay, “Dubbed ‘custodian of the patriarchy,’ Peterson decries the attack on masculinity and the purported attempts to feminize men by the Left. This distinct critique of feminism attracted young men across cultures—including many of Yusuf’s avid fans.”[79]

Yusuf and the Zaytuna College, like the Cambridge Muslim College and the online Islamic seminary SeekersGuidance, are considered considered exponents of Islamic “neo-traditionalism,” also known as Wasatism, a contemporary movement within Sunni Islam. Younger scholars who are linked to neo-traditionalism include Hasan Spiker and Yahya Rhodus.[80] Yasir Qadhi, also consistently been listed in the annual listicle The 500 Most Influential Muslims, was previously a Salafi, but now identifies himself as a Wasatist, though he has also referred to himself as “post-Madhab.”[81] Qadhi studied at the Islamic University of Madinah in Saudi Arabia, earned his PhD from Yale University where his dissertation focused on the writings of Ibn Taymiyyah.

 

Islamic Eschatology 

According to a Pew Research survey conducted in 2012, in most countries surveyed in the Middle East and North Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia, half or more Muslims believe they will live to see the return of the Mahdi in their own lifetimes.[82] However, while the Mahdi is mentioned in several canonical compilations of Hadith, he is absent from the Quran and the two most-revered Sunni hadith collections, Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim. Thus, some Sunni theologians have questioned the orthodoxy of the Mahdi.[83] In a chapter of his Muqaddimah, Ibn Khaldun concluded that the expectation of the Mahdi was a heretical innovation introduced by the Sufis, and attributable to Shiism, where it is an essential.[84] Among the Sunnis, the idea of a Mahdi, as Goldziher pointed out, has never become accepted as a dogma: “it never appears but as the mythological ornament of an ideal future, as an accessory to the system which follows from the orthodox conception of the universe.”[85] As Kedourie points out, “But whatever their varying conceptions, both Shi’ites and Sunnis are agreed that the mahdi, if he is anything, is a religious leader, that his coming heralds the renewal of the religious life in an Islamic community henceforth entirely guided by the precepts of the shari’a.”[86]

Within the ecumenical millenarianism of the New Age, the Mahdi is variously equated with the “Christ,” regarded as a reincarnation of the Comte de St. Germain, is known as Lord Maitreya, and said to be awaited also by Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus, though he is known by these believers respectively as the Messiah, the fifth Buddha, or Krishna. Sheikh Nazim believed in the coming of the Mahdi was immanent, and gives his followers the impression that he is in spiritual contact with him.[87] Sheikh Nazim consistently refers to the Mahdi, which he has detailed his biography. The Mahdi was supposedly born in approximately 1945 in Wadi Fatima, Saudi Arabia, to a mother and father from the line of Hassan and Hussein, the grandsons of the Prophet Mohammed. At an early age, he began to display miraculous capabilities, and was taken behind Mount Qaf, where he lived with some Sufi saints, protected by Jinn. Mount Qaf is a legendary mountain in the popular mythology of the Middle East. In Islamic tradition, Mount Qaf is said to be the homeland of the jinn and was created by God out of shining emerald.[88] According to Sheikh Nazim, the Mahdi’s first appearance to the world took place in 1960, when he appeared on Mt. Arafat in Mecca. This was a private appearance for the Sufi saints, where 124,000 swore allegiance to him, including both Sheikh Nazim and Sheikh ad Daghestani.[89]

Dugin’s “Israeli Traditionalist” friend Avigdor Eskin has also collaborated with Adnan Oktar, a Turkish Muslim author who goes by the pen name Harun Yahya, who hints that he might be the Mahdi, and who has been published in Dugin’s Katehon. Despite his former anti-Semitism, Oktar has been embraced by Israeli figures. Oktar has gained some notoriety in the international media, for leading a “feminist” cult or “Muslim sex cult.” He maintains a bevy of heavily made-up women in revealing attire he calls “kittens,” who appear on his shows with blank expressions, and who dance robotically between breaks. The cult is accused of maintaining ties with Fethulla Gülen. There were also lawsuits filed against them that included testimonies to the effect that cult members lured young women into taking part in filmed orgies, which recordings were then used to blackmail the participants into obeying Oktar’s demands. Former members of Oktar’s cult explained to Israel’s Haaretz newspaper their reasons for exposing their former leader, “We only wanted to tell you what’s going on inside, because unfortunately your government and people in your government are helping him, both financially and otherwise. And as they keep receiving this aid, they keep reaching out to new young people and destroying new families.”[90]

Oktar tweeted, “Dugin, foreign policy advisor to Putin, is a person who supports Islamic Union. Being part of the Islamic Union is the right thing for Russia.”[91] Dugin’s apocalyptic vision is being orchestrated by the Russian state as part of his plan to rebuild a revived Eastern Bloc, by proposing an alliance between Muslims and the peoples of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, known as the Eurasian Union. To that end, Dugin has also aligned himself with a popular exponent of End Times prophecies, a self-professed expert in “Islamic eschatology.” His name is Imran Hosein, who has gained a wide following in the Islamic world for his interpretations of Islamic traditions about the Akhiru Zaman (“Last Days”). In a lecture he gave at Moscow State University, at the invitation of Dugin, Imran Hosein went so far as to interpret Russia as the new “Rome,” therefore encouraging Muslims to lend their support to Russia’s imperial ambitions as a moral obligation, in order to combat the forces of Dajjal in America and Britain.[92]

Speaking of his association with Dugin and Alain Soral in France, a Franco-Swiss right-wing activist, Hosein explained:

 

I can only hope and pray that our areas of agreement with each other - Mr Soral in France, Prof Alexander Dugin in Moscow, and others elsewhere who are already showing great interest in our Islamic eschatology - may benefit our common cause of struggling to liberate the oppressed of the earth from an oppression the likes of which have never been experienced by mankind ever since the time of Pharaoh.[93]

 

Soral, who is also associated with Christian Bouchet, used to belong to the Central Committee of the National Front, before leaving it due to ideological differences. In 2007, he founded the group Equality and Reconciliation (ER), whose strategy is summarized in the title of an article written by the founder of the organization: “Left for the workers and Right for morals.” They advocate the union of the “Labour left” and the “Moral Right” in response to globalization, on the model of the Proudhon Circle, which brought together trade unionists, anarchists, and Maurrassians, whose political doctrine derived from Charles Maurras, most closely associated with the Action Française. ER supports the FN and its president Marine Le Pen, and also expressed their approval of non-aligned countries, such as the Russia of Vladimir Putin.[94]

 


[1] “The Middle East with Daniel Pipes.” Uncommon Knowledge (Hoover Institution. Published September 23, 2008). Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7h3i0SHy3A

[2] The Venture of Islam. The Gunpowder Empires and Modern Times, Vol. 3 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), p. 431.

[3] Richard N. Ostling. “UCLA professor battles for the heart of Islam.” Woocester Telegram (June 18, 2006). Retrieved from https://www.telegram.com/story/news/local/north/2006/06/18/ucla-professor-battles-for-heart/53086135007/

[4] Akbar S. Ahmed. “The quiet revolutionary.” Manchester Guardian Weekly (August 18, 1991).

https://ismaili.net/timeline/1991/19910818gw.html

[5] The 2010 edition of The 500 Most Influential Muslims (The Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre, 2025).

[6] Retrieved from http://islamuswest.org/publications_islam_and_the_West/Who_Speaks_For_Islam/Who-Speaks-For-Islam_21.html

[7] Janet Tassel. “Militant About ‘Islamism’.” Harvard Magazine (January–February 2005).

[8] USIP. “Ijtihad: Reinterpreting Islamic Principles for the Twenty-first Century.” Retrieved from http://www.usip.org/publications/ijtihad-reinterpreting-islamic-principles-twenty-first-century

[9] Ibid.

[10] “Bio of Louay Safi.” Center for the Study of Islam & Democracy. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20060102081836/http://www.islam-democracy.org/safi_bio.asp

[11] “Bio of Joe Montville.” Center for the Study of Islam & Democracy. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20060102085320/http://www.islam-democracy.org/montville_bio.asp

[12] Bernard Weinraub. “Institute Plays Key Role in Shaping Reagan Programs.” The New York Times (January 15, 1981).

[13] “Bio of Robert Schadler.” Center for the Study of Islam & Democracy. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20060102085406/http://www.islam-democracy.org/schadler_bio.asp

[14] Ibid.

[15] “The CSID Board of Directors” Center for the Study of Islam & Democracy. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20060210100044/http://www.islam-democracy.org/board.asp

[16] “About Us.” Progressive Muslim Union. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20050405020656/http://www.pmuna.org/archives/2004/10/advisory_board.php

[17] “Muqtedar Khan.” Islam City. Retrieved from https://www.islamicity.org/by/muqtedar-khan

[18] Retrieved from https://www.ijtihad.org

[19] Muqtedar Khan. “American Muslims: In Search of the Third Way.” Retrieved from https://www.ijtihad.org/AM911.htm

[20] “Tariq Ramadan visé par une cinquième mise en examen pour viol.” Le Monde (October 23, 2020). Retrieved from https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2020/10/23/tariq-ramadan-vise-par-une-cinquieme-mise-en-examen-pour-viol_6057081_3224.html; Camilla Tominey. “Former Oxford professor Tariq Ramadan accused of ‘destroying’ alleged rape victim's life.” The Telegraph  (November 8, 2019). https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/11/08/former-oxford-professor-tariq-ramadan-accused-destroying-alleged/

[21] Richard Keeble. “The Secret War Against Libya.” www.medialens.org. Retrieved 20 March 2011; Vandewalle, Dirk, Α History of Modern Libya (Cambridge University Press, 2006); Bob Woodward, Veil: The secret wars of the CIA, 1981-1987 (Simon and Schuster, 2005); John Jacob Nutter, The CIA's black opts. (Prometheus Books, 1999).

[22] SourceWatch, “Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy.” Retrieved from http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Center_for_the_Study_of_Islam_and_Democracy

[23] Justin Raimondo, “Islamist Neocons? The West's latest tactic in the war on terrorism,” Antiwar.com (September 07, 2011).

[24] Ibid.

[25] “Dr. Ahmad Totonji.” IIFSO. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20230928150548/https://iifso.org/Organization/dr-ahmad-totonji/

[26] Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed. “Behind Islamophobia Is a Global Movement of Anti-Semites.” Foreign Policy in Focus (August 26, 2019). Retrieved https://fpif.org/behind-islamophobia-is-a-global-movement-of-anti-semites/

[27]  “SAAR Foundation.” History Commons. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20160313101627/http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=saar_foundation

[28]  Ibid.

[29] P. David Gaubatz & Paul E. Sperry. Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That's Conspiring to Islamize America (WND Books, 2009); “Ibrahim, Anwar – Oxford Islamic Studies Online.” www.oxfordislamicstudies.com. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20231002192921/http://www.oxfordislamicstudies.com/article/opr/t125/e964

[30] Keat Gin Ooi. Southeast Asia: a historical encyclopedia, from Angkor Wat to East Timor (Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 2004).

[31] Yusuf. “Ismail Al Faruqi.”

[32] “Anwar Ibrahim appointed as Malaysia's 10th Prime Minister.” Bernama (November 24, 2022).

[33] Charles D. Fletcher. “Isma’il Al-Faruqi (1921-1986) and Inter-Faith Dialogue: the Man, the Scholar, the Participant.” PhD thesis (McGill University, 2008).

[34] Ibid.

[35] P. Samuel Foster. “Terrorist Reveals Plans for America.” The Spotlight (May 19, 1986), p. 3.

[36] “Confession Details Stalking, Slaying of Islamic Scholars.” Morning Call (October 2, 2021). Retrieved from https://www.mcall.com/1987/07/08/confession-details-stalking-slaying-of-islamic-scholars/

[37] Jordan Lite. “Woman Leads Muslims in Prayers.” NY Daily News (March 19th 2005). Retrieved from http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/news/2005/03/19/2005-03-19__woman_leads_muslims_in_pray.html

[38] Shimaila Matri Dawood. “Interview–Asra Nomani.” Newsline (April 2005). Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20080611185042/http://www.newsline.com.pk/NewsApr2005/bookapr.htm

[39] “GU Class to Investigate Murder of WSJ Reporter.” Georgetown University. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20090214004853/http://www12.georgetown.edu/scs/event_pages/event_pearl_project.html

[40] Shardool Thakur. “Asra Nomani’s ‘Standing Alone in Mecca’: A Study in Identity & Subjectivity.” Pune Research, 5:4 (Julay – August, 2019), p. 18. Retrieved from http://www.puneresearch.com/media/data/issues/5d4c6bddf3ea5.pdf

[41] Shimaila Matri Dawood. “Interview–Asra Nomani.” Newsline (April 2005). Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20080611185042/http://www.newsline.com.pk/NewsApr2005/bookapr.htm

[42] “Muslim WakeUp! MWU!” Library of Congress. Retrieved from https://www.loc.gov/item/lcwaN0012571/

[43] Omar Sacirbey. “The Challenges and Growth of Progressive Muslims.” APF Reporter 22: 2 (2005). Retrieved from http://www.aliciapatterson.org/APF2202/Sacirbey/Sacirbey.html

[44] Ibid.

[45] Ibid.

[46] Ibid.

[47] Ibid.

[48] Ibid.

[49] “Radical Love: Teachings from the Islamic Mystical Tradition.” Institute for Ismaili Studies (May 31, 2019). Retrieved from https://www.iis.ac.uk/learning-centre/multimedia/radical-love-teachings-from-the-islamic-mystical-tradition/

[50] “Curb donations to religious institutions: Muslim group.” CBC (June 13, 2006). Retrieved from https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/curb-donations-to-religious-institutions-muslim-group-1.627965

[51] Jen Gerson. “Woman leads Islamic prayers in mosque, a first for Canada.” Globe and Mail (July 2, 2005). Retrieved from https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/woman-leads-islamic-prayers-in-mosque-a-first-for-canada/article20423850/

[52] “Pamela Taylor.” Interfaith Observer. Retrieved from http://www.theinterfaithobserver.org/contributors/2016/7/24/pamela-taylor

[53] “Sharia Law.” Muslims for Progressive Values. Retrieved from https://www.mpvusa.org/sharia-law

[54] “Progressive Muslim Identities.” San Francisco Public Library. Retrieved from https://sfpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S93C4241809

[55] “Funders and Partners.” NewGround: A Muslim-Jewish Partnership for Change. Retrieved from https://mjnewground.org/funders-and-partners/

[56] “SALEEMAH ABDUL-GHAFUR.” Muslims for Progressive Values. Retrieved from https://www.mpvusa.org/saleemah-abdul-ghafur

[57] “Thomas Trombetta & Rahim Thawer. “Community Highlights: Salaam Canada.” Go Freddie. Retrieved from https://www.gofreddie.com/magazine/community-highlights-salaam-canada

[58] “Sisters in Islam’s Zainah Anwar among 10 most influential Muslim women.” The Star (December 31, 2013). Retrieved from https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2013/12/31/muslim-women-award-zainab-anwar/

[59] Omar Sacirbey. “The Challenges and Growth of Progressive Muslims.” APF Reporter 22: 2 (2005). Retrieved from http://www.aliciapatterson.org/APF2202/Sacirbey/Sacirbey.html

[60] Michael Muhammad Knight. “Huggable Islam.” Muslim Wakeup! (March 19, 2005). Retrieved from http://www.muslimwakeup.com/main/archives/2005/03/by_michael_muha.php

[61] Brian Whitaker. “Punk Muslims.” The Guardian (March 3, 2007). Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/mar/19/sexdrugsandprayer

[62] Ibid.

[63] Ibid.

[64] Jesse Berrett, “Fiction review: Michael Muhammad Knight books.” The San Francisco Chronicle (August 8, 2009).

[65] Brian Whitaker. “Punk Muslims.”

[66] Kasper Mathiesen. “Anglo-American ‘Traditional Islam’ and Its Discourse of Orthodoxy.” Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies. 13 (2013), pp. 191–219.

[67] Nuh Ha Mim Keller, “The Place of Tasawwuf in Traditional Islamic Sciences,” www.masud.co.uk.

[68] Muqaddimah Q I 201-202, and M. al-Tanji’s edition of the Shifa’ al-Sa’il fi Tahdhib al-Masa’il, (Istanbul, 1958), pp. 110-11 quoted from James W. Morris. “An Arab ‘Machiavelli’.”

[69] Areeb Ullah. “Jordan: Sufi community led by US scholar faces child abuse complaints.” Middle East Eye (May 30, 2022). Retrieved from https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/jordan-sufi-community-us-scholar-led-faces-child-abuse-complaints

[70] Wahid Azal. “Dugin’s Occult Fascism and the Hijacking of Left Anti-Imperialism and Muslim Anti-Salafism.” Counter Punch (February 10, 2016).

[71] Mark Damien Delp. “Great Books and Small Colleges.” Revovatio (December 8, 2017). Retrieved from https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/great-books-and-small-colleges-delp

[72] “Hamza Yusuf.” Zaytuna College. Retrieved from https://zaytuna.edu/faculty-details/Hamza-Yusuf

[73] Sarah Posner. Unholy: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump (Random House, 2020).

[74] Maha Hilal. “It’s time for Muslim Americans to condemn Hamza Yusuf.” Al Jazeera (July 15, 2019). Retrieved from https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2019/7/15/its-time-for-muslim-americans-to-condemn-hamza-yusuf

[75] Emma Green. “Muslim Americans Are United by Trump—and Divided by Race.” The Atlantic (March 11, 2017). Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/03/muslim-americans-race/519282/

[76] Walaa Quisay. Neo-Traditionalism in Islam in the West: Orthodoxy, Spirituality and Politics (Edinburgh University Press, 2023), p. 3.

[77] Sami Omais. “Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad on Riding the Tiger of Modernity.” Traversing Tradition (February 18, 2019). https://traversingtradition.com/2019/02/18/shaykh-abdal-hakim-murad-on-riding-the-tiger-of-modernity/

[78] Troy Parfitt. “Beyond Order: Jordan Peterson, Crypto-fascism, and the Occult (Part 1).” YouTube (March 16, 2021). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NF9Rb2424c&t=2s

[79] Walaa Quisay. Neo-Traditionalism in Islam in the West: Orthodoxy, Spirituality and Politics (Edinburgh University Press, 2023), p. 2.

[80] “Shaykh Yahya Rhodus.” SeekersGuidance. Retrieved https://seekersguidance.org/teachers/yahya-rhodus/

[81] “AQIDA | Yasir Qadhi, Asrar Rashid, Shadee Elmasry | NBF 267” Safina Society (Oct 20, 2023). Retrieved from https://youtu.be/YcQaWGITJHo?si=3zAFyo3Hs5FDqM7y&t=5513

[82] “The World’s Muslims: Unity and Diversity. Chapter 3: Articles of Faith.” Pew Research Center (August 9, 2012). Retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2012/08/09/the-worlds-muslims-unity-and-diversity-3-articles-of-faith/

 [83] Editors. “Mahdo.” Encyclopedia Britannica (November 8, 2024). Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/topic/mahdi

[84] James W. Morris. “An Arab “Machiavelli”?: Rhetoric, Philosophy and Politics in Ibn Khaldun’s Critique of ‘Sufism’.” In Roy Mottahedeh (ed.). Proceedings of the Harvard Ibn Khaldun Conference (Cambridge, Harvard, 2003).

[85] D. B. MacDonald. “Mahdi” Encyclopaedia of Islam; and S. Margoliouth. “Mahdi.” Hastings’ Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics; and C. Snouck Hurgronje. Mohammedanism (New York, 1916), p. 107; cited in Kedourie. “Further Light on Afghani,” p. 195.

[86] Kedourie. “Further Light on Afghani,” p. 195.

[87] Itzchak Weismann. The Naqshbandiyya: Orthodoxy and Activism in a Worldwide Sufi Tradition (London: Routledge, 2007) p. 170.

[88] Robert Lebling. Legends of the Fire Spirits: Jinn and Genies from Arabia to Zanzibar (I.B.Tauris), pp. 24–28.

[89] Cited in Rhiannon Conner. “From Amuq to Glastonbury: Situating the apocalypticism of Shaykh Nazim and the Naqshbandi-Haqqaniyya.” PhD thesis submitted to University of Exeter (May 2015).

[90] Asaf Ronel. “Orgies, Blackmail and anti-Semitism: Inside the Islamic Cult Whose Leader Is Embraced by Israeli Figures.” Ha’aretz (April 03, 2018).

[91] Harun Yahya (@harun_yahya). Twitter (2:30 PM, August 14, 2016).

[92] “Islamic Alliance With Eastern Orthodox Christianity Russia by Sheikh Imran Hosein.” (April 17, 2018). Retrieved from https://archive.org/details/IslamicAllianceWithEasternOrthodoxChristianityRussiabySheikhImranHosein

[93] “A Message for my students in France” Iman Husein (Sunday, 20 Muharram 1435). Retrieved from http://www.imranhosein.org/news/474-a-message-for-my-students-in-france.html

[94] Abel Mestre et Caroline Monnot. “Duprat, the idol of soraliens; Sidos on CD and other digital news”, blog “Extreme Rightist(s)” of journalists from the daily Le Monde published by the site on 12 February 2010.

Divide & Conquer