The Axis of Compliance
Sufi or Salafi, it did not matter. All Muslim factions were fought by the powers-that-be; unless they complied.
In this Substack and elsewhere I have written amply on the seldom discussed theme of Sufi resistance to oppression. But it is imperative to stress that all Muslim groups and factions have resisted colonialism and injustice to varying degrees in the 19th and 20th centuries, until this day. It did not matter to the colonial apparatus whether a Muslim group was Sufi, Salafi or neither: to the powers-that-be, it only mattered if they were compliant or not.
I call this: the axis of compliance.
According to the Western colonial powers and their inheritors—the authoritarian state apparatus—the ulama were tolerated so long as they fell on the right side of this divide. We can see the dynamics of this axis in play in our present day, especially during the genocide in Gaza when even popular calls for boycotts require "the ruler’s permission."
To explain the origins of this ‘axis of compliance’, let us take the case of colonial Algeria as an example. Perhaps the case with closest resemblance to the ongoing Zionist occupation of Palestine is the French colonization of Algeria (1830–1962). It is widely known that Algerians hold a special affinity and popular support for the Palestinian struggle. Known as “the country of a million and a half martyrs”, Algeria endured a bloody and fierce liberation struggle against French colonization, which ravaged the North African nation for over a century.
In a previous post, the Crucible of the Wicked, I wrote of an Algerian anti-colonial scholar and a Maliki jurist by the name Al-Arabi al-Tibsi (or Larbi Tbessi in the colloquial dialect) who was burned to death by being placed in boiling hot oil cauldron by French colonial forces in 1957, despite never carrying physical arms in his resistance to French occupation. It is important to stress that al-Tibsi was a student of Ibn Badis, the representative of the Salafiyya movement in 20th century North Africa and founder of the Association of Algerian Muslim Scholars. Al-Tibsi was trained in both al-Azhar University and the Zaytuna in Tunisia.
Both al-Tibsi and ibn Badis were on a reformist bend to clean out Algeria from “the superstitions of Sufism” and their “innovations.” More than 50 years after the death of the Qadiri resistor Emir Abdul Qadir and the Rahmaniyya orders’ flurry of active military resistance to French presence in Algeria, the anti-Sufi scholar al-Tibsi and his students carried the baton of the resistance to French colonialism in his homeland in the decisive years preceding the Algerian revolution.
In a striking similar sentiment to the steadfast people of Gaza today, the aging Shaykh al-Tibsi was repeatedly asked by his supporters and students to leave Algeria, knowing full well his life was in grave danger due to his vocal resistance of French colonial presence, to which he famously replied:
إذا كنا سنخرج كلنا خوفا من الموت فمن يبقى مع الشعب؟
If we were all to flee in fear of death, then who will remain from the people?
Though he himself never picked up arms, the French tried numerous times to entice him to accept compromising deals, however, he refused, citing that it would be a betrayal to the mujahidin laying their souls and lives for liberation. It is this position which cost him his life, which ended in the most brutal forms of unimaginable, inhumane torture.
*Warning, the following account is graphic.*
The French commandos filled a cauldron with oil from cars, military trucks and black asphalt and lit it to the point of boiling. Hired mercenaries tied the Shaykh’s hands and feet, raised him above the smoldering pot and asked him to accept negotiations and quell the revolutionaries and the fury of the people. Al-Tibsi silently and calmly repeated the word “martyrdom,” declaring, “there is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the Messenger of God.” They then lowered his feet and he fainted, little by little, until he completely burned, evaporated, and vanished. His remains are held by France to this day, and they never returned them to his family.
In Algeria and elsewhere, Sufi or not, the Muslim enemy to the French was one: any Muslim who did not comply.
Archival Demonization
In my previous posts, I write about how Sufis were demonized in the colonial archives first, before they were attacked by modernists and anti-Sufis like ibn Badis and al-Tibsi. In the 19th century, French colonial officers classified all Sufi orders in Algeria as either “docile” or “rebellious.” This was done, of course, under the guise of the “civilizing mission” that guided the study of Islam in the “near east” as introduced by Goldziher and other Orientalists. You can read the entirety of one such archive, which was published in 1897 by Coppolani and Depont, online, here. In their Les confréries religieuses musulmanes, they go through a painstaking effort to explain the ‘psyche’ of the Muslim mind, the intricacies of Sufi belief and ‘fanaticism’, as well these groups’ ‘superstitions.’
It is important to stress that French colonial scholars adopted Islamic “orthodox” theological reasoning to de-legitimize Algerian Muslim groups. They claimed that the marabouts (French word for shuyukh) constituted a “surrogate priesthood” and that as such, “clergy” have no place within a Muslim society. They described Sufis as members of “a parasitic priesthood,” which preyed on the poor, and they questioned the Islamic legal legitimacy of the concept of intercession.
Ironically, these very same colonial accusations became mainstream Muslim arguments against Sufism in the 20th century. Such framings can be found in Les confréries musulmanes nord-africaines by Bruzon and other French colonial works. In looking at the French colonial archives, and later Salafi and modernist writings by Muhammad Abduh and others, the pattern of colonial rhetoric becoming weaponized to sow disunity in Muslim-majority societies’ rhetoric becomes clear. Henri Lauziere has found that even the notion of a modernist salafiyya movement originated in the work of French scholar Louis Massignon and later came to be adopted by ‘Salafi’ scholars themselves.
More often than not, the pattern goes like this: first, Orientalists and colonial officers demonize a group and cast a shadow of doubt on it using ‘orthodox’ Islamic theological terms. Another Muslim group comes to adopt and internalize these colonial critiques, meanwhile becoming the new rebellious pariah for the powers-that-be. The colonial forces/nation state apparatus proceed to destroy the new pariah and their dissent. Divide, conquer and divide again, all while sustaining itself on the fruits of the ambiguity and disunity it has sown. Arguably, when it comes to contemporary Muslim groups, we are still stuck in this quagmire to this day.
To summarize:
Cast doubt on dissenting group (Sufis)—> Crush —> Colonial rhetoric internalized by opposing dissenting faction (Salafi)—> Crush —> Repeat until compliance is achieved
Similarly in 20th century Palestine, the more secular, Arab nationalist Fatah movement prominent in the West Bank was once the biggest source of resistance to Israeli occupation. Their resistance was fiercely crushed, and then pacified, by the Israeli state. Now, it is “Islamic jihad” and Hamas in Gaza that are the enemy, when they once started as simply a grassroots Islamic educational and social welfare organization in Gaza, and even received active official support from Israel to offset and weaken the influence of Fatah in Palestinian society!
Much like in French Algeria, Zionist Orientalists have devoted much time and energy to studying Arab and Muslim culture through the lens of their racial, colonial superiority. Mimicking the language, food, culture, studying Islam, and adopting Palestinian dress and customs all in an effort to thwart, infiltrate and weaken Palestinian society. We have recently seen footage of the genocidal army taunting displaced women and children fleeing their homes in the “safe road” from Khan Yunus to Rafah in Arabic. We have also seen IOF soldiers disguise themselves as Muslim men and women in hijabs as they carry out their extra-judicial war crimes, executing three men in a hospital in Jenin last month.
Arab Regimes and the Axis of Compliance
One of the main goals of the anti-Muslim animus that undergirds both European and Zionist colonial rhetoric is to create and sustain intra-Muslim chasms. These chasms are well sustained and enforced under the chokehold of the authoritarian nation states.
The existence of these chasms became a lifeline for sustaining the totalitarian power of Arab regimes in choking and confining Islamic dissent. Today in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, Madkhali scholars provide religious cover for tyranny. Madkhalism is a strain of quietist thought within the Salafi movement whose edicts are based on giving unlimited fealty and support to governments and rulers no matter what. Currently, at the height of the Gaza genocide, global calls were made to increase BDS pressure on Israel, but Saudi scholar Saleh al-Fouzan and others voices from the UAE have said that is impermissible to boycott products without the permission of the ruler and urged the masses not to partake in a boycott against Israel.
It does not take a genius to see whose interests such a fatwa serves.
Similarly in the context of 20th century Ba’thist Damascus, and specifically in the aftermath of the Syrian uprising of 2011, I wrote an academic paper entitled, “The rhetoric of twentieth-century Damascene anti- Salafism” which discussed the famous rift between Salafi scholar Al-Albani and traditionalist scholar Al-Buti. In it, I show how their dueling discourse did not account for the effects of the nation state in deepening and widening their theological and legal split. In the conclusion, I write:
The backdrop of the authoritarian secular state heightens intra-Muslim religious subjectivity, thereby exacerbating the polarization of scholars like al-Buti and al-Albani, who aid in pitting two Islams against one another; a ‘good’ Islam, and a ‘bad’ one (Mamdani 2005). The effects of the state are heightened all the more when neo-traditionalist scholars find themselves forced to align with the regime, as in the case of al-Buti for the greater part of the Syrian uprising of 2011. The coercive ambiguity of the state leaves no recourse for the ulama except to take part in cul-du-sac polemical duels that fortify and deepen categories of contemporary intra-Muslim discord and subjectivity.
There is no starker proof of this catch-22 than the manner in which al-Buti and Albani met their demise: one died in a bomb blast while teaching in the mosque, and the other in political exile. Despite the polar degrees of variance in loyalty to the leviathan state, both stances were perilous. What could have been salvaged, however, was a sense of unity, affinity and shared ground against a common enemy: the fact that the state was a friend to no one. In fact, the state cannot be the friend of any alim looking to preserve his or her voice or scholarly and moral integrity in this life before the next. This is perhaps a neglected feature of Hallaq’s thesis of The Impossible State: Muslim scholars do not see the extent in which the invisible hand of pervasive state domination dictate not only their legal rulings, but their positions vis-a-vis one another and even their livelihoods.
Today, the ‘axis of compliance’ continues to provide spiritual and religious cover for oppression. It is sad to see even American Muslim scholars, with all the freedom of speech and academic liberty they are afforded in the West, ally themselves with ‘the axis of compliance’ of Gulf governments who boast some of the worst human rights records in the world. The UAE, which has resumed trade deals and normalization with Israel while Gaza’s children starve, and has arrogantly cut out the Palestinians in its “peace treaty” with Israel, the Abraham Accords, has its hand in almost every major fitna (discord) in the world, funding mercenaries in Sudan, Yemen and Congo.
Devils’ advocates might say that the scholars in the ‘axis of compliance’ are actually smart, that the leviathan state is too strong to be challenged, that they are better alive than dead; teaching, enjoining the good to sultans, promoting ‘peace’ and serving the needs of the masses despite the tyranny that abounds in these latter days. They say that compliance is a necessary—and even obligatory—survival mechanism and that it has valid theological legal and basis and historic precedence. Islam does not encourage anyone to end up dead or in exile, like Imam Hussayn or Emir Abdul Qadir, or al-Tibsi, or the thousands of Palestinian martyrs and political prisoners, they might say.
Perhaps this realpolitik understanding of Islam acts as a moral pacifier for scholars who justify their quietism in the face of the dajjalic axis of compliance. Anyone can find plenty of justifications in the Islamic tradition to apply a salve to their conscience, claiming compliance is simply a matter of legal difference, ‘ikhtilaf.’
I truly hope for their sake that their justifications will be accepted by God “on the day the eyes will stare in horror.” But I wonder if their rhetoric will permit them to be in the same vicinity—let alone rank—of the thousands of martyrs, the political prisoners, the persecuted, the oppressed, the starved, the tortured and their families.
Thank God that both the compliant scholars and the non-compliant scholars will both receive Divine judgment. Thank God that there are levels to heaven and God’s favor. Thank God there will be different levels for believers in the Hereafter. In the Qur’an, we are told that ‘the sitters’ are not alike with those who sacrifice their blood, money and souls for the sake of the truth:
فضل الله المجاهدين بأموالهم وأنفسهم على القاعدين درجة
Allah has elevated in rank those who strive with their wealth and their lives above those who stay behind with valid excuses. (Qur’an 4:95)
The Laurel Tree
In 1871, at 80 years old, the elderly Shaykh Mohannad Meziene Ahaddad, leader of the Rahmaniyya order, took up arms in the anti-French revolt, and put 100,000 of his murids at the disposal of the earliest attempts to resist French presence in Algeria. They lost and Shaykh Ahaddad was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment. One of his companions asked him: “since you knew that we were going to lose, why did you call for the mobilization?”
To which the Shaykh said:
I wanted to set a wide gap between our children and France, so that they would not mix with French children and become like them. If there was no blood feud between us, a time would come when we would be unable to distinguish between a Muslim and a Christian. I have planted the tree of bitterness, the laurel, (ilîlî in Berber), so keep watering it and don’t let it dry up.
It is known that the elderly Shaykh Ahaddad, upon receiving his sentence from the French judge, defiantly remarked: “you have sentenced me to five years, but God has sentenced me to five days.”
And surely enough, God returned him in prison on the 5th day of his sentence.
The example of Shaykh Ahaddad and al-Tibsi show us that choosing not to comply, even by merely deploying a just word in the face of tyrant, even when they knew worldly “loss” would be their demise, is not in vain. At the very least, they knew their actions will appear on the records of their deeds and will show that they did not bow down to injustice no matter the worldly pressures. They proved that they fear Allah and the last day than the fickle calculus of the worldly powers-that-be.
They have planted a bitter tree between them and their enemies so that it might act as a faruq for future generations. A tree for the hereafter whose good actions will echo for eternity. They knew they may never see its branches or fruit may in this lifetime, but they planted these seeds of defiance and courage as a witness to God and future generations. They stood as exemplars to warn coming generations of the perniciousness of capitulation, because they understood that accepting weakness is not a principled strategy for any Muslim in any age.
Because they knew that sustained droplets of collective acts of resistance, however small or symbolic, will ultimately lead to a flood, even if they are decades or centuries apart. They choose to be on the legion of justice and the axis of truth, and stood in defiance of the worldly assurances and the comfort of the axis of compliance. May Allah recompense them for their sacrifices and for “standing firm for justice as witnesses for Allah even if it is against themselves.” (Qur’an 4:135)
And may Allah forgive and guide the “sitters.”
Do you not see how Allah compares a good word to a good tree? Its root is firm and its branches reach the sky, ˹always˺ yielding its fruit in every season by the Will of its Lord. This is how Allah sets forth parables for the people, so perhaps they will be mindful.And the parable of an evil word is that of an evil tree, uprooted from the earth, having no stability.
(Qur’an 14:24-26)
Disclaimer: this post is not meant to be an academic paper, I use my Substack to “test drive” ideas and broader reflections.