International Journal on Criminology Volume 4, Number 2, Winter 2016 | Page 30

International Journal on Criminology
assertions. Therefore, the art of speaking to crowds requires special skills: 8 “the
creation of legends that circulate easily through crowds is not only the result of total
credulity but also the prodigious deformations that events undergo in the imagination
of the assembled individuals. The crowd thinks in images,” asserts Gustave Le Bon.
The “reformist” movement with the most activist legal experts is Wahhabism.
Historically, it was the first to appreciate the audacity of Ibn Taymyya, who is one
of the main sources for Mohammed Ibn Abdel Wahhab (1703–1791), a theologian
whose alliance with the Sauds led to Saudi Arabia in 1924. Proposing an Islam purged
(according to them) of the disputes between the four schools, the Wahhabis called for
a return to authentic Islam by means of idjtihad. Refuting recent interpretations, the
Wahhabis adopted Salafism: the return to ancestors. This movement also reproached
the four schools for only engaging with legal interpretations and avoiding the social
and political domains secularly. Thus an official clergy of Wahhabi scholars appeared
in Saudi Arabia, while the Al Saud tribe was mainly warriors.
In the rest of the Arab-Muslim world, the reform began in the nineteenth century
with Djamel Eddine El Afghani (1838–1897) and continued with his successors, the
Egyptian Mohammed Abdou (1849–1905) and the Syrian Rachid Redha (1865–
1935). Denouncing medieval Islam, El Afghani promoted “nahdha,” awakening, a
rationalist and dynamic Islam; against the four schools, he preferred the freedom of
interpretation—for which some domains remained prohibited for any idjtihad. He
also called to fight against the colonizers who, in his view, had contaminated the
leaders of Muslim countries. Redha was the first to call for an Islamist party. During
his time, the fall of the Turkish caliphate provoked, among other things, calls for its
restauration.
The first Society of the Muslim Brothers was created in 1928 by the “reformist” (and
maternal grandfather of the preacher Tarik Ramadan) Hassan El Banna, assassinated
in February 1949, most probably by the Egyptian government, because of his activism.
In Egypt, the “Brothers” constantly criticized the government for betraying Islam;
according to them, the liberation of the country and the nationalization of the Suez
Canal were due to Islamists, as the assaults were led by the cry “Allah ou Akbar,” God
is great, and not the name of the country.
Today, the Islamists still use the same arguments. On November 11, 2003,
Abassi Madani, leader of the disbanded ISF, 9 said the same thing on the program
“Sans frontières” on the Al Jazeera network, calling the Algerian government the
successors of the colonizers. Soon before, the same talk came from the Saudi Islamist
Taki El Dine El Aouadji. On the same television channel, he called the Wahhabi priests
official clergy and accused Saudi leaders of being allied with the Americans against
the Arab nation.
8
Gustave Le Bon, Psychologie des foules (Paris: PUF, 1998), 26.
9
Islamic Salvation Front, an extremist party that dabbled in terrorism before and after its legalization,
was officially disbanded by the authorities in March 1992.
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