ISIS and Ghazali: the Smoking Gun

In a recent talk, The Islamic in Islamic State, I argued that to understand ISIS, you need to understand the 11th Century Muslim scholar Abu Hamid Ghazali. Ghazali is revered in the Muslim world; some have called him the greatest Muslim after Muhammad. During my talk, I cited examples of Ghazali’s disdain for science, and hatred of Jews and Christians. I then showed the resemblance to statements made by ISIS.

But it turns out the evidence for Ghazali’s influence on ISIS runs deeper than mere resemblance. Last week ISIS released a propaganda pamphlet in which it argued for the legitimacy of its leader Abu Bakr Baghdadi’s claim to rule the Muslim world as caliph. In the pamphlet, which was titled Extend your Hands and Pledge Loyalty to Baghdadi, I found the following quotation about the ascension of the first caliph, who not coincidentally was also named Abu Bakr:

The Imam Ghazali, the mercy of Allah upon him, said, “If Umar had been the only one who swore allegiance to [Abu Bakr] as caliph, and the rest of the world remained opposed, or were divided into equal factions, with no distinct majority among them, then [his bid for the caliphate] would have been defeated. For the primary prerequisite for the caliphate is unity: when it is unified, [the caliph’s] influence rises and hearts turn away from partisanship.

The quotation is from Ghazali’s book Exposing the Batinites. In an age when regime change was common, the question of the legitimacy of a ruler was of great interest to medieval Muslim intellectuals. Ghazali set out to demonstrate the legitimacy of the Sunni caliph of his time against the claims of the rival Shiite sect known to Muslims as the Batinites and in the West as the Assassins.

ISIS uses the quotation to argue that Abu Bakr Baghdadi, like his seventh century namesake, is qualified to be caliph because his people have overwhelmingly sworn allegiance to him. The argument is firmly in line with the medieval Muslim tradition, and demonstrates that the ISIS propagandists are familiar with even the minor works of Ghazali, and that they hold him in high enough regard to cite him as an authority for their own legitimacy.

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com