Although I am politically on the Centre-Right, I like to read and hear what the more sensible parts of the Left have to say. After all it’s not good for the mind to live in an echo chamber. One of those more sensible left/centre left outlets that I read is the Harry’s Place blog. Harry’s Place has been a major critic of Trotskyism, Stalinism, Corbynism, Islamism and their fellow travelers and useful idiots. Even when I disagree with a Harry’s Place writer or below the line commentator, what they have to say still gives me food for thought and intellectual stimulation.

One of the Harry’s Place writers that has most impressed me in recent years is a writer who goes by the name ‘Wasiq’. Wasiq is extremely well informed about Islamism and the motivations behind it and how Islamic theology is used to create and spur on violent extremists.

In the piece from which I’ve given but a small excerpt below, Wasiq talks about a particular aspect of Islamic theology that goes a long way to explain how and why so many Muslims are enslaved to Islam. In my own view it could also explain why those Muslims who may wish or desire reform or to engage in critical reading or textual analysis of Islamic scripture are unable or unwilling to do so.

Wasiq’s piece is all about how the Islamic concept of The Authority aka Allah contained in the word ‘hakimiyya’ is used by both Jihadists and non-violent extremists to enforce belief. The issue of hakimiyya also governs who is inside Islam and who is outside of it. Going outside of Islam could be as major as becoming a public apostate and possibly as minor as asking an awkward question about theology or decrying the Shariah Hudud punishments. Whether the Muslim is an outright apostate or merely someone with questions or a desire to reform Islam, both paths put the individual outside Islam.

Wasiq said:

Prominent Islamists sought to use the concept of hakimiyya to realise their ambitious political goals. One such Islamist theorist, in many ways the ideological godfather of Islamism, is Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian member of the Muslim Brotherhood sent to the gallows in 1966, who developed the concept of hakimiyya into a political theory that could be used by all those wishing to establish a Caliphate and rule according to what Allah had ordained.

Qutb would use verses from the Qur’an to justify his position of hakimiyya. For example, “Whoever does not judge by what Allah has revealed — such are disbelievers” [5:44]. With the use of this verse, he sets out the conditions of what a true Muslim is and isn’t. This is largely a position of compliance, rather than a position of identity. Qutb doesn’t concern himself with who is a Muslim, but rather what is a Muslim. He advances his position beyond the acceptance of this verse and into the enforcement of it.

I would strongly advise people to read the entirety of Wasiq’s article over at Harry’s Place. This is because not only does it go a long way to explain why reform in Islam is so fraught with problems and how individual questioners are crushed, but it also helps us to understand that when it comes to Islamic extremists and terrorists, it may be difficult if not impossible to reform or de-radicalise them and that this policy should be abandoned by the governments that use it.