Middle-east Arab News Opinion | Asharq Al-awsat

The Fail of the ‘Fundamentalist Promise’ from ‘Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist’ to ISIS | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Reuters


Dubai – Before Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and his predecessor Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Shukri Mustafa, head of Takfir wal-Hijra (executed in 1978) requested the Egyptian government to allow him and his group to migrate to Damascus aiming at establishing an “Islamic” state to wait for the “end-of-time battles” and the appearance of Imam Mahdi. Baghdadi was not the only one to prepare his supporters for the “end-of-time battles”, as the radical and extremist Shiite militants who support the Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist (Wilayat al-Fakih) also act based on similar slogans waiting for the “Battle of Harasta”.

An ideology can never survive without a promise, and if the ideology was religious, a prophecy is a must to embody this promise.

The ideological promise has been the core of the fundamentalist call and represents the origin and the goal of any fundamentalist path. However, such narrow-minded ideologies often drop these promises once they reach authority, whether they were religious or not; this drop proves the deep ideological failure like the experiences of Nazis in Germany, Baath in both Iraq and Syria (which ended with sectarian discord), Iran-Khomeini revolution in 1979, and Morsi rule in Egypt in 2013.

The one-year Morsi experience concluded through a popular rebellion and ISIS’s “Caliphate” dream retrograded and left people with the damages it caused since the announcement of its alleged ISIS in June 2014.

*Ideological basics and promises

Any ideological speech requires basics and promises:

1-Basics: Basics are related to the heritage of rationality, its sanctities, identity, and tragic reality, like the return of “Caliphate” or applying Shariaa and “Imama”, or the Guardianship (Wilayat al-Fakih), which all consider those who oppose them as non-believers or apostates and call for Jihad against them, after recruiting followers and acquiring legitimacy.

2- Ideological promises: no one can deny that ideological promises have been more influential than the ideological basics calling for change; promises always seduce the public by seducing them with dreams of victory and problems’ settlements; they always call for solutions and seek to export their revolution to the world through many slogans and goals to change the reality of the nation and the citizen, which however, ends with failure.

Ideological promises in religious fundamentalism usually go beyond solving problems, ending crises, and achieving wealth, change, and social justice like other ideologies; they also exaggerate with their promises trying to convince their supporters with thoughts like “the end of the world” and “the savior” and how to pave the world for his appearance.

*Iranians and “Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist” (Wilayat al-Fakih)

The Iranian newspapers released in the past few days reflect a clear state of clear criticism and despair among people from the promises of the regime and its government, which focuses on its exterior projects and cupidities in the region and neglect people’s needs and problems like corruption and crises.

On the Student Day and before President Hassan Rouhani, who attended celebrations in Tehran, many students accused the regime of corruption and restriction of liberties, according to an Emirati newspaper, a student accused Rouhani himself and his government of raising unemployment rate instead of reducing it as he promised in his electoral campaign.

An Iranian magazine also reported that Member in the Iranian Islamic Consultative Assembly Kamal ud-Din Shahryari loudly criticized the government performance saying it has failed and led the people toward despair.

In fact, many reports said that Iran suffers from many crises in its infrastructure, environments issues, and severe lack of water along with the retreat of economy and currencies to unprecedented levels.

Finally, narrow-minded ideologies have witnessed many failures along with the fall of all its private and public promises, which has proven that seclusion can never be an option for success.