The Power of Friday: Jum‘a and the Withdrawal of Consent

By now I think anyone interested enough in the Middle East to be reading this blog is probably aware of the power of Fridays: both Ben Ali and Mubarak stepped down on Fridays, and each Friday marks new high water marks in the growing protests in Yemen, Syria, and elsewhere. (And before the Libyan bloodbath was fully under way, the joke went around that Qadhafi had decided to abolish Fridays.)

At the basic level, the reason is obvious. One of the five pillars of Islam is salat, communal prayer. While Islam also recognizes the role of private prayer (du‘a), it is the communal prayer, five times a day, when Muslims pray at a common time and with a common ritual (with minor variations), that the umma, the community of believers, is most in evidence. The weekly noon prayer on Friday, the Jum‘a, literally the "assembly" or "coming together," is the most important outward symbol of the faith. It is simply not possible to order people to stay in their houses when they are required by religious law to pray together.

Other days of the week are mostly just given a number, but Friday is yom al-jum‘a, the day of communal prayer. Not every mosque (masjid) is a Friday Mosque (masjid jum‘a or simply and most commonly Jami‘): traditionally each town, or each major quarter of a city, would have one Friday Mosque, where the Imam would give a sermon. Therefore, while daily prayer might be performed in small neighborhood prayer halls or at home, Friday prayer would mean a large gathering of people in a public place. With an Imam giving a sermon. The most important would be the main mosque in the capital city. "Friday prayer leader in Tehran" is still a powerful post in Iran's clerical system.

So no autocrat can really dare tell people not to pray. And he had better hope that the sermon given by the imam is favorable.

It goes back, though, quite a ways. In classical Islamic times, under the Caliphs, the legal definition of what today we would call "sovereignty" or "legitimacy" was whoever enjoyed the khutba wa sikka. The khutba is the Friday sermon given at the main Friday mosque; part of it is devoted to asking God's blessing on the local ruler. Sikka means the coinage (wa just means "and").The rightful ruler was, then, the person (usually a man, but I'll tell you about Sultana Shagarat al-Durr one of these days), who is mentioned in the Friday sermon and whose name appears on the coinage.

You can probably see the next step. One of the surest signs of rebellion, coup, or a son displacing his father was when a new name was mentioned in the khutba, thus (ritually at least) transferring power to a new leader. If the ‘ulama' (the "clergy," though the term is really inappropriate in Sunni Islam) wanted to bring down a leader, they could replace his name in the khutba, though then as now that could incur serious consequences. But the Friday sermon could be, and sometimes was, the means of announcing a change of leadership — or of instigating one. The Friday prayer was the place many rebellions began, or at least were publicly proclaimed, when someone else's name was read in the khutba. To transfer the name marked a withdrawal of legitimacy, a religiously sanctioned (attempt at least at a) transfer of power.

A related concept is the bay‘a, the offering of allegiance to a ruler. Withdrawal of the bay‘a amounted to withdrawal of consent (of the governed, if you will) in recognizing the legitimacy of the ruler. Changing the name in the khutba was a sign of withdrawal of the bay‘a.

The concept of khutba wa sikka may not be familiar to a lot of people in the Arab street today, but the Friday prayer is still a rallying point where the government cannot (dare not) prohibit crowds from gathering, and where, if the man in the minbar or pulpit is not a government sycophant, people can be roused up before leaving the mosque. And this is nothing new: many of the revolutions in Islamic history began with a withdrawal of the khutba invocation.

Friday is yom al-jum‘a, the Day of Assembly, and Friday prayer is Jum‘a, the day the umma assembles together. When our First Amendment speaks of "Freedom of Assembly," I doubt if the framers had a clue about Friday prayer, but it is the one free assembly Muslim rulers dare not restrict. And when Teddy Roosevelt talked about a "bully pulpit," I doubt if he thought of the imam giving a khutba from the minbar, but the concepts are not unrelated. Nor is withdrawal of the bay‘a from a ruler that far from the concept of "whenever a government becomes destructive of these ends ..."

I certainly don't want to carry this too far: the Caliphate was not a democracy. But when the religious establishment rejected a ruler, it could bring him down (sometimes).

Just as withdrawing the khutba recognition could signal the end of a Caliph or Sultan, so is the Friday mosque still a center for potential dissidence. Hence, (‘Alawite minority) President Bashar al-Asad's meeting with the (Sunni) Imams of major Syrian cities just days before tomorrow's Friday prayers.

Let's see what happens today.

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Asad Reaches Out to Sunni Clerics, Kurds

Syrian President Bashar al-Asad is taking steps to reach out to some potential opponents, presumably hoping to dampen the force of a new wave of demonstrations during tomorrow's Friday prayers. The ‘Alawite President has met with the Sunni Imams of Syria's major cities, and has otherwise reached out to the conservative religious community by closing Syria's only casino, lifting a ban on wearing full veil in the classroom, and other similar gestures.

He has also reached out to Syria's restive Kurdish minority, issuing a decree granting Syrian nationality to stateless Kurds in the Hasaka region, up to 300,000 of whom lacked nationality papers. A census in 1962 took away the nationality of about 120,000 Kurds, in some cases dividing families; some 300,000 descendants of those stateless Kurds have been seeking to have their Syrian nationality recognized for years.

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Egyptian Protest Against Sectarianism Friday

Given the sectarian clashes in Egypt in recent days, the protesters, including the "We Are All Khalid Said" group that helped start it all, are organizing an effort to get Christians and Muslims to hang Egyptian flags on Friday between churches and mosques. (Link is in Arabic.) This follows an earlier display (left) when after an attack on a church in Alexandria, local Egyptians of both faiths stretched a flag between the church and the mosque across the street to show solidarity between the two faith communities.

Obviously not every church is across from a mosque (though you might be surprised how many are, presumably due to past one-upmanship), but it seems an encouraging idea, and a healthy one.

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Rachid Ghannouchi and Al-Nahda: Will They Return?

Yesterday the interim Tunisian government indicated that it would legalize all banned political parties. Some reports certainly indicated that this would include the Al-Nahda (Renaissance) Party, the main Islamist party, suppressed after 1989. Meanwhile, Al-Nahda's leader in exile, Rachid Ghannouchi (unrelated to Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi), living in exile in London, gave an interview to the Financial Times last Sunday indicating he intends to return to Tunisia soon, despite the fact that he is under a sentence (in absentia) of life imprisonment. (On the other hand, along with legalizing banned parties, the new government said it would free all political prisoners.)

As many have noted, despite Western stereotypical assumptions about the Arab/Islamic world, political Islamism played no detectable role in the Tunisian upheaval; nor would one expect it to in such a determinedly secular society, where Habib Bourguiba used to publicly eat during Ramadan. But Tunisia did have an Islamist movement, Al-Nahda, which showed some electoral strength during the brief liberalizing period after the fall of Bourguiba (when Ghannouchi actually met at least once with Ben Ali), and was subsequently (and ruthlessly) crushed. Ghannouchi left the country in 1989, and was later tried and sentenced to life in absentia.

So will Al-Nahda and its leader re-emerge onto the Tunisian political scene after two decades of suppression? As it happens, back in the early 1990s I published a few articles and a monograph on Al-Nahda, and was accused by the Islamists of being a flack for Ben Ali and by the Tunisian government of being too soft on Al-Nahda, because I wasn't a particular enthusiast for either. What happens next will be of interest. Tunisia's secular history and prominent role for women's rights makes it seem an improbable breeding ground for Islamism in the traditional form, but Al-Nahda has always marched to its own drummer, and Ghannouchi is these days comparing his party to Turkey's AKP, a democratic party in a highly secularized state. Although I've met members of Al-Nahda, I've never met Ghannouchi.

Ghannouchi's track record is controversial; some members of Al-Nahda did engage in political violence in the early 1990s, but the government crackdown on them went far beyond the few provocative acts some committed. And Ghannouchi has always claimed to be a disciple of non-violence. He is not himself a trained cleric (though neither were such Muslim Brotherhood thinkers as Hasan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb, who, like Ghannouchi, started as schoolteachers), and pursued a secular educational track, studied in Syria (a philosophy degree from Damascus University), flirted with Baathist-style socialism, and still insists he is an advocate for labor unions, worker's rights, and women's rights. In a country where the elites come from Tunis or from the Sahel (Bourguiba and Ben Ali), he comes from the deeper south, from the Gabes region. His Syrian period is particularly atypical of Islamists: he reportedly worked for a while as a correspondent for Radio Tirana in then-ultra-Stalinist Albania, studied European philosophers, and flirted with the Baath. He is, in other words, complicated.

In his British exile he has maintained this reputation as a rather progressive Islamist. He has been demonized for decades in many Western countries, in part due to accusations against him by the Ben Ali government. He has been in exile for over 20 years and will turn 70 in June of this year. He says he has no personal political ambitions.

Does Al-Nahda have a residual following in Tunisia, or is Ghannouchi a relic of a different era? I don't know. Probably few Tunisians do. If the new government means what it says about legalizing all parties, we may have a chance to find out.

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‘Ashura 1432

Okay, before somebody starts denouncing me, the above artwork is from Hizbullah's Al-Manar TV English website. If you think I'm a Hizbullah sympathizer you haven't been paying attention, but I needed some Shi‘ite graphics for ‘Ashura, and there it was. If it makes you feel any better, I'm probably violating their copyright.

Today is ‘Ashura, the tenth of Muharram. As the tenth day of the new Muslim year, it originated as a day of fasting exactly analagous to Yom Kippur; the parallel was, according to some hadith, acknowledged by the Prophet himself. I dealt with the background of the day in some detail last year.

While it is still a day of recommended fasting for Sunni Muslims, it has become far more closely identified with Shi‘ism, since it was on ‘Ashura in the year 61 after the Hijra (680 AD) that the third Imam of Shi‘ism, the Prophet's grandson Hussein, and many members of the Prophetic family were martyred in battle at Karbala in Iraq by the Umayyad Caliph Yazid.

At a minimum, Shi‘ites mark ‘Ashura by reenactments of Hussein's martyrdom and by mourning; in some countries self-flagellation and other extreme practices are seen. In Tehran and other Iranian cities, in the Shi‘ite shrines of Iraq, in southern Lebanon and Bahrain and eastern Saudi Arabia, Shi‘ites will commemorate their central martyr. Unfortunately there are likely to be sectarian attacks as well; yesterday's bombing in Chabahar, Iran, claimed by the Sunni Jundallah, was presumably timed to ‘Ashura, and Sunni-Shi‘ite clashes in Iraq often coincide with Shi‘ite holidays. The blood shed on the field of Karbala 1330 years ago still divides Muslims today.

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Ra's al-Sana; 1 Muharram 1432 AH

For my Muslim readers, Ra's al-Sana (exactly cognate with Rosh Hashona), the new Hijri year, begins at sundown today. Tomorrow is 1 Muharram, 1432 in the Hijra calendar. Happy New Year; Kul al-‘Am wa antum bi'l-khayr.

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‘Id Mubarak: The Feast of ‘Id al-‘Adha

‘Id Mubarak to my Muslim readers. ‘Id al-‘Adha, the Feast of Sacrifice or Greater ‘Id (also Qurban Bayram and many other names in many languages), begins today. The major festival of the Muslim year (the other major feast being the ‘Id that ends Ramadan), it coincides with the sacrifice carried out in Mecca in conjunction with the Hajj.

Last year, the ‘Id overlapped with the American Thanksgiving holiday, so my greetings were offered without much background. But since this blog is intended to educate as well as entertain, I'd like to take a little more time with it this year.

The Feast of Sacrifice is generally seen as the most important religious feast, hence the fact that it is often called the ‘Id al-Kabir or "Greater ‘Id," and it coincides with the central ritual of Islam, the fifth pillar of Islam, the hajj. Animals are sacrificed (the meat then distributed to the poor) in a ritual of great antiquity, one Muslims themselves say partially predates Islam itself.

What most non-Muslims probably do not know is the fact that, like the hajj itself, the ‘Id commemorates a story known to Jews and Christians as well: God's demand that Abraham sacrifice his son, only to relent and substitute an animal sacrifice when Abraham had demonstrated his obedience even in such a horrific task. The Qur'an and Islamic tradition say the son was Isma‘il (Ishmael in the Bible) rather than Isaac (Ishaq in the Qur'an) as in the Book of Genesis, but the story and its moral is virtually identical.

Now, these days Abraham, venerated by Judaism (Avraham), Christianity (Abraham), and Islam (Ibrahim) is often more of a source of conflict among the three faiths which claim him than a unifying factor, but he is a shared Patriarch of all three "Abrahamic" faiths: Our Father Abraham to Jews, the "first Muslim" and "friend of God" to Muslims, and a familiar patriarch to Christians, though he is not quite so central for them. Whether you consider Abraham a historical figure, a mythic culture hero, a Bronze Age myth or some combination of these, he is a potent symbol, and as I have noted, his tomb in Hebron is second only to the Temple Mount/Haram in Jerusalem as a disputed holy place.

The story of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son, whether Isaac or Ishmael, strikes most modern people as something incomprehensible, but his absolute obedience is central to the symbolic message of the story: his profound obedience is what led God to proclaim his covenant with Abraham.

The hajj itself is profoundly linked to the Abraham story: the running between Safa and Marwa, part of the ritual, reflects Hagar's search for water for the infant Isma‘il, rewarded by the discovery of the well Zamzam, the water of which is drunk by every hajji, and the sacrifice of an animal today represents the sacrifice of Abraham. The Ka‘aba itself is said to have been first built by Abraham.

Despite the profound divisions Abraham's legacy sometimes creates today, the Abrahamic core of this particular feast could potentially, in some alternate universe, make it a potential meeting place for the three "Abrahamic" faiths.

Interestingly, Arab News, a Saudi English-language daily whose readership includes not only Westerners but many South Asians, including non-Muslims, takes this sort of "ecumenical" tack in its editorial today, seeking to link the interfaith dialogue promoted by King ‘Abdullah with the Abrahamic common ground the feast invokes. If such sentiments could prevail year round and not just on holidays, the region might be a better place.

‘Id Mubarak wa Sa‘id.

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