Society for Comparative Studies in Society and History

The Revolt of Islam, 1700 to 1993: Comparative Considerations and Relations to Imperialism
Author(s): Nikki R. Keddie
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Source: Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 36, No. 3 (Jul., 1994), pp. 463-487
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The Revolt of Islam, 1700 to 1993:

Comparative Considerations and
Relations to Imperialism
NIKKI R. KEDDIE
Universityof California, Los Angeles
Withinthe Muslim world, revoltswith a religious aspect or ideology have had
a long history. My currentcomparativeresearchon this topic indicates that
these revolts, common in the early centuriesof Islam, became less frequent
thereafter.These revolts may generally be characterizedas either "left" sectarianor "orthodox"revivalist. The latterrevived aftercirca 1700. It is partof
my thesis to see threephases to these modem revivalistrevoltsand to say that
all three phases were, in different ways, tied to interactionwith the West,
althoughthis was far from being theironly cause. These threephases were the
pre-colonial phase, early resistance to colonialism, and the recent Islamic
revival. The scope here covers the whole Muslim world, and the approachis
comparative.
Before discussing these movementsI will give some backgroundaboutthe
relations between Islam and politics, which influenced the movements. It is
widely believed that Islam and politics are unusuallyclosely intertwinedin all
spheres and periods, with the partialexception of the past century.This view
understatesthe close church-state relationsof the EasternOrthodoxchurches
and of religion and politics in the pre-modernWest, with the difference
between Islamic and Christianlands being partlywhen and how they reached
modernity.In practice, despite the often-cited special role of Roman law and
the existence of a clear relationshipbetween church and state in the West,
Christianityand Islam had rathersimilar levels of relationsbetween religion
and politics in pre-moderntimes.
The supposednear-identityof religion and politics in Islam is more a pious
myth thanrealityfor most of Islamic history.Afterthe first four pious caliphs,
there arose essentially political caliphal dynastiesthat workedthroughpolitical appointees and broke religious rules when they wished. The body of
'ulama helped to create the schools of law partlyto create a sphere independent of such essentially temporalrulers,but the 'ulama'srulingsgenerallyhad
less force than those of rulers. The independence of rulers from religious
controlgrew as tribaland militaryconvertstook increasingpower. Authorsof
0010-4175/94/3308-9326 $5.00 ? 1994 Society for ComparativeStudy of Society and History

463

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NIKKI

R. KEDDIE

advice to rulersoften stressedthe importanceof backingreligion, but this was

pragmaticadvice, not really advice to be good Muslims.'
Views similar to mine on the essential separationof religion and politics
have been voiced by Ira Lapidus, Sami Zubaida,MuhammadArkoun, Nazih
Ayubi, and EmmanuelSivan; but the older view remainsdominant.2It would
be useful to do a careful comparisonof the actual relations of religion and
politics and of church and state in pre-moder Europeand the Middle East.
The differencesare not all in the directionof greaterpolitical power for Islam
thanfor the ChristianChurch.I suspectthatde facto the medievalrelationship
between religion and state was a standoffbetween the Muslim Middle East
and the ChristianWest, with Christianinstitutionsstrongerin some ways and
more limited in others than Islamic ones.
Whatdoes seem clearandmay makepeople mistakethe premodemsituation
is thatin modem times religious institutions,movements,andbeliefs have had
more political importancein the Muslim world than in the West. This is often
attributedto special featuresof Islam, which areof some importance,but there
appearto be othercauses, such as, first, the greatchangesin the Westfrom the
late Middle Ages on, including those in trade, production,exploration, the
Enlightenment,andrepresentativegovernment,which occurredin the Muslim
World only recently and in different ways. In this period there was less
structuralchange in the Muslim Worldthanthe West;hence, Muslims entered
modem times with structures,ideas, and religious beliefs quite similarto past
ones, while the West did not. Second, the long history of conflict between
Christiansand Muslimstendedto make Muslimsdefensive aboutIslam and to
define (as did some Westerners)the situationin religious terms.
I do not deny special featuresto Islamic thought. Before discussing these I
note thatit has become fashionable,amongmembersof a groupdifferentfrom
those who point to long-termties of religion andpolitics in the Muslim world,
to attackthe attributionof significantunity or continuityto variousphenomena over time or place as essentialistand ipso facto benighted. In my field it is
almost as bad to be an essentialistas to be an orientalist.In fact, no one calls
herself or himself an essentialist. Much as it is called biological essentialism
is used to say there are significant non-culturaldifferencesbetween women
and men, so it is ideological essentialismto say that Islam has importanten' See, for example, Nizam al-Mulk, The Book of Governmentor Rulesfor Kings (London:
Routledgeand KeganPaul, 2nd ed., 1978), 190-238, stressinghereticalmovementsand revolts.
2 Ira M.
Lapidus, "The Separationof State and Religion in the Developmentof EarlyIslamic
Society,"InternationalJournalof MiddleEasternStudies, 6:4 (1975), 364; Sami Zubaida,Islam,
the People and the State (London:Routledge, 1989), 41-42; Nazih N. Ayubi, Political Islam:
Religion and Politics in the Arab World(London:Routledge, 1991); EmmanuelSivan, Radical
Islam: Medieval Theologyand ModernPolitics (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1985), 175,
with citations to two articles by M. Arkoun. I quote and discuss this point and its literatureat
greater length in "Islam, Politics, and Revolt: Some UnorthodoxConsiderations,"in Nikki R.
Keddie, Iran and the Muslim World:Resistance and Revolution(London:Macmillan, 1994).

THE REVOLT OF ISLAM,

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duringfeatures. AlthoughI sympathizewith much of this, if carriedto its logical end, anti-essentialismmeans that nothinghas any special featuresexcept
those displayed at a particularmoment.3My view is that religions do have a
shape and influence coming from the past, althoughparticularadaptionsvary
with time and circumstance.
Hence, it is importantto note that Muslims themselves have often considered Islam a total world view comprisingreligion and politics, however little
this unity has been realized. This totalizingaspect of Islam appearsespecially
in periods of Islamic revolts and revivals, ratherthan during stable empires.
Although the often radicalIslamic revival of recent decades is in many ways
novel, it has some importantresemblancesto religious revolts of the past.
Among these resemblancesis a returnto the early combinationof religion and
politics with enforcementof Quranicand legal provisions. Looking at several
unconnectedIslamic militantmovementssuggests ideological similaritiesthat
owe something to a widespreadbelief in what relationsbetween religion and
politics in Islam should be.
Not counting the very early civil wars in Islam, its earliest religious revolts were carriedout by the first sectarians,the Shi'is and the Kharijis,both
of whom had a total alternate view of Islam. The Sevener branch of the
Shi'is continued to be frequentlyrebellious throughthe age of the so-called
Assassins. The variabilityof Islam and politics is suggested by the fact that
the line of Assassin leaders ended with the Aga Khans, the wealthy pillars of
order.
An opposite evolution was traced by the Twelver Shi'is. Although many
scholars say that Shi'is as such justified revolt, this is false. The Fifth and
Sixth Twelverimams laid down lines dividingreligion andpolitics and enjoining obedience to rulers. The doctrinethat the Twelfthimam had disappeared
was probably adopted to remove from the world an alternatesource of allegiance, which might encouragerevolution.4
For some centuriesboth Shi'is and Sunnis in the centralMuslim lands had a
3
Any kind of continuitynot caused by immediatefactorscould be characterizedas essentialist, even though few people carrytheir thoughtsto this logical extreme. The views that do carry
anti-essentialismto its logical conclusion are primarilythose called "occasionalism"in the early
modem West, which were put forth earlierby a school of conservativeAsh'arite theologians in
Islam who said that there are no secondary causes and that God recreates the world every
moment. The late Ash'arites said that apparentworldly causation and order were due only to
God's mercy to humanityand that God could equally create a completely new world, or none at
all, at each moment. This is a theorydesigned to combatall naturallaw and, some say, to mirror
arbitraryrule; and it is in some ways ironic that the strongest anti-essentialistsof our day are
mostly on the left, although they have either not thought of the implications of a totally antiessentialist position or would renounce such totality.
4 W. Montgomery Watt, The FormativePeriod of Islamic
Thought (Edinburgh:Edinburgh
University Press, 1973); Idem, "The Significance of the Early Stages of Imami Shi'ism," in
Religion and Politics in Iran, Nikki R. Keddie, ed., 21-32; and Nikki R. Keddie and Juan R.
Cole, "Introduction"to Shi'ism and Social Protest, Cole and Keddie, eds. (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1986).

466

NIKKI

R. KEDDIE

doctrineof obedience to existing rulers. It was only afterIranbecame Shi'i in

1501 that a more centralized,independentclergy arose and was given doctrinal power that Shi'i clerical resistancebegan.
Another widely held myth is that the denial of legitimate resistance and
revolt by normative Islam left people without any but sectarian means to
justify revolt. Here again, comparison with pre-modem Europe would be
useful. Did main-lineEuropeanChristianityprovideany morejustificationfor
revolt than did Islam? Although leading Muslim thinkers spoke and wrote
againstrevolt, consideringit worse thanan evil ruler,therewere ways around
this in the Islamic tradition. It was almost unknownto speak of one's own
movement as a revolt, and the words we translateas "revolt"were pejorative
(again as in Europe?). But there were other importantways to conceive a
revolt. One was millenarian:A rebel could claim to be the renewerof Islam or
the precursorof the messianic Shi'i or Sunni mahdi or the mahdi himself.
Another was to declare one's ruler an unbelieverand the war against him a
holy war. The possibility of declaring Islamic rulers unbelieversis found in
the great theologians, Ibn Taimiyyaand the NorthAfrican al-Maghili, whose
ideas were cited by West African rebels. Both jihad and mahdismwere frequently used, often both at once.
Before going into the eighteenth-and nineteenth-centuryrevolts, I note that
the idea that Muslims were so hostile to revolt is partlybased on a simplistic
translationof ideas of revoltfromthe modem West. The words in fact used for
revolt do not translateas revolt and have a positive meaning. It should again
be stressed that Sunnis used these ideas as much as Shi'is. The notion that
Shi'ism as such is especially prone to revolt comes not only from the early
centuriesbut also from a false belief that Shi'is generallyjustified revolts by
appealing to the model of Imam Husain's martyrdomin battle. A recent
investigationindicatesthis paradigmwas not used for revoltuntil very recently and that earlier Shi'i revolts usually had a Mahdist paradigm, much like
many Sunni revolts.5
My remarkscontainingsome reservationsaboutanti-essentialismshouldbe
noted here. From one end of the Muslim world to the other-Senegal to
Sumatrain my travels-Muslim revoltsused manyof the same themes:mahdism, jihad, and a returnto stricterQuranicand Islamic laws and practices,
including those affecting gender. Hence, there is almost surely something in
Islamic content that helps determinethe form and ideology of movements in
differentparts of the Muslim world, even lacking direct contact.
MILITANT
NINETEENTH

ISLAMIC

REVIVALISM

IN THE

EIGHTEENTH

AND

CENTURIES

The rise of militantpoliticized Islamic movementsin the 1970s and 1980s in

Iranand elsewhere has increasedinterestin the past of militantIslam. There
5 Interview with Mansour Ehsan, based on his University of Oregon Ph.D dissertation.

THE

REVOLT

OF ISLAM,

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TO 1993

467

has, however, been little new seriousmonographicstudy and also little serious
comparativestudy of militantmovements, thoughthereare exceptions.6I will
here attempta comparativestudy of some militantMuslim movements that,
like most recentones, claimed to be revivingpureIslam and its holy law. The
movementsstudiedcomparativelyhere are relatedto differentphases of interaction with the West, althoughthey have indigenous roots. The past movements are sometimes called puritanicalmovements or reform movements.
The latter phrase, reform movements, seems unsatisfactory,since the term
Islamic reform is equally used for a liberal modem school with tenets and
practices very differentfrom those of the revivalists. Anything that changes
ideas and practicesin a way thatits proponentsconsidera majorimprovement
may be called reform, but the termmay be confusing if othersuse it to referto
very differentmovements. Similarly,the word puritanmay be objected to as
referringto a particularWesterngroup; and so both will be used sparingly
here.
Anothername for these movementsis jihad movements, meaningthatthey
called for holy war against external non-Muslimenemies or that they practiced jihad against local rulers and enemies whom they considered not truly
Muslim. These movements wished to replace these rulersand practices with
truly Islamic ones. Among such movements were those of the Wahhabisof
Saudi Arabia, movements in West Africa in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, and a majorjihad in Sumatrain the early nineteenthcentury.
These occurredwithout Westernconquest, while in the period of early Western conquest there were similarmovementsdirectedwholly or in partagainst
the Westerners.These included the Wahhabisand Fara'izis of South Asia,
Shamyl in the Caucasus, Abdel Qadir in Algeria, and the Senussis in Libya;
while the Mahdistsin the Sudanshow similarities.The causationof the latter
movements include Western, infidel conquest; while the causes of the preconquest movements are more complex and less obvious. There are some
features and causes found in both groups.
Most of these movements have only recently become the topic of serious
study, and this-plus the fact that they occurred in such widely dispersed
places and cultures-has meant that there has been very little comparative
study of them. Yet it remains a dramaticand puzzling fact that, after many
centuriesin which such large-scalerevolutionaryjihad movementswere quite
infrequent,there was a sudden concentrationof them in a period of about a
6 Some of these movementsare discussed
comparativelyin the following works, which I have
used with profit:John ObertVoll, Islam: Continuityand Change in the Modern World(Boulder,
CO: Westview Press, 1982); Nehemia Levtzion and JohnVoll, EighteenthCenturyRenewal and
Reform in Islam (Syracuse:Syracuse University Press, 1987), especially relevantarticles in the
book by Levtizan Voll and Louis Brenner. See also William Roff's argumentsin the book he
edited, The Political Economy of Meaning (Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress, 1987). I
have also benefitedfrom travelto, anddiscussions in, Senegal, Nigeria, NorthAfrica, the Middle
East, Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia, England, and France.

468

NIKKI R. KEDDIE

century.It seems unlikely that this is a coincidence, and it should be instructive to ask what common factors may have operatedin some or all of these
diverse regions to produce similar results.
In the past, one common factor adduced regardingsome of these movements was the purportedinfluence of the ArabianWahhabimovement, which
stood for a puritanicalIslam and for holy war againstthose not consideredto
be true Muslims. Recent researchershave generallyconcludedthat the influence of the Wahhabishas been overstated.This influenceis no longer considered key in the main West African movement, the Nigerianjihad of Usman
dan Fodio; and it could not have entered into the Senegambianeighteenthcentury movements, which came too early. South Asia's jihad movements
also seem to have been less Wahhabi-influencedthan was once thought. In
Sumatrathe fact that three movement leaders made the hajj at the time the
Wahhabiscontrolledthe Hijaz is of some importance,but it was probablyonly
a minor factor in a movement that can be shown to have had strong local
roots. Wahhabismretainsa place among the causes of the simultaneousjihad
movements in the Muslim world, but it no longer appearsto be the major
explanatorycause.
One reason why there have been few comparativestudies of Islamic revivalist movements is that scholars of Islam tend to be divided by geographic
specialty,with MiddleEast specialistsconfidentthatthey representthe central
Muslim world and are happy to ignore the great majority of the world's
Muslims who live outside the Middle East. There has begun to be a recognition of the role of SouthAsia in eighteenth-centuryreligiousreformand in the
origins and spreadof eighteenth-centuryneo-Sufism, but this has not yet led
to a comprehensive interest in what was happening in the Muslim world
outside the Middle East. If one is studying militantrevivalist movements of
the eighteenth and nineteenthcenturies, however, one finds the first major
examples in what may be called the peripheryand the semi-periphery,and
even laterexamplesare concentratedin tribalareasnot nearimperialor power
centers. (Here the words peripheryand semi-peripheryare used purely geographicallyfor areas near the edges of the Muslim world or far from urban
imperialcenters.) Thus, in the latereighteenthand early nineteenthcenturies,
the largestmilitantpuritanicalmovementsoccurredin present-daySaudi Arabia; in West Africa; and in Sumatra,Indonesia. Latermovements, largely in
response to Westernconquests, occurred in South Asia, North Africa and
adjacentAfrican lands, and the Caucasus.
Therewere a numberof conditionsthathelp explainthe rise and location of
these movements, although available sources and scholarshipdo not allow
convincing comparisonon all points. I would suggest the following factors as
probablyimportantin most of the movements.
First, in West Africa and Sumatra, the impact of the significant rise of
Europeantradeweakenedsome classes, strengthenedothers, and helped cre-

THE REVOLT OF ISLAM,

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469

ate preconditionsfor a united state with a united law and ideology and were
importantto internalsocioeconomic change. A similarchange in class structures and demands may also be found in the areas of some of the Muslim
revivalistmovementsoccurringafterEuropeanconquest, and it is conceivable
the growing Westerntrade in Persian Gulf ports had an influence in inland
Najd.
Second, European-inducedchanges interactedwith internalsocioeconomic
changes. These may include a growth of population, which some scholars
have seen as characterizingthe eighteenthcentury world-wide.7Along with
apparentpopulationgrowth, there was more clearly new tradeand urbanism,
as well as new social tensions, problems, and possibilities. It is significant
thatNajd, WestAfrica, and WestSumatrawere all areaseitherwithouta state,
as was the case in Najd and Sumatra,or with weak states, as in West Africa,
so that a rise of trade,population,and economic quarrelsprovidedan impetus
for strongerstates, in which original Islam could provide effective law and
ideology.
Third, in religion and ideology, the eighteenthand nineteenthcenturiessaw
a spread of Islamic learning and the rise of so-called neo-Sufism, including
strong Sufi orderswith types of scholarshipand practicescloser to normative
Islam and classical scholarshipthan were most of the earlier Sufi orders. In
the peripheryand semi-peripheryof the Muslim world, neo-Sufi orderswere
especially important,often providingthe main force for spreadingIslam and
its teachings.8Notably, althoughthe Islam of the ArabianWahhabisis associated with hostility to Sufism, most of the non-Arabianpuristleadersbegan as,
and often continued to be, leaders of the Sufi orders. This includes such
charismaticgiants as Usman Dan Fodio in Nigeria, Abdel Qadir in Algeria,
and Shamyl in the Caucasus. Sometimes, as with Shamyl, stress on the strict
shari'a was combined with the Sufi idea that the Sufi path was only for the
select few, while the literal shari'a was for the majority.In additionto neoSufism, there was a general spreadof Islamic learningand an increase in the
number of Islamic scholars that was especially importantin lightly Islamicized areas.
Fourth,in the political sphere, the eighteenthcenturysaw the decline of the
great Islamic empires-Ottoman, Safavid, and Moghul-and their breakup
into smaller states or regions. This providedthe Wahhabisthe opportunityto
expandinto territoriesthathad been loyal to the Ottomans,until the Ottomans
were able to enlist MuhammadAli of Egypt to send troops against the Wah7 See Jack Goldstone, "East and West on the Seventeenth
Century:Political Crises in Stuart
England, OttomanTurkeyand Ming China"(unpublishedpaper);Joseph Fletcher, "Integrative
History: Parallels and Interconnectionsin the Early Moder Period, 1500-1800," Journal of
TurkishStudies, 9 (1985), 37-57.
8 There is some controversyamong scholarsaboutneo-Sufism. See R. S. O'Fahey,Enigmatic
Saint:AhmadIbn Idris and the Idrisi Tradition(Evanston:NorthwesternUniversityPress, 1990),
ch. 1.

470

NIKKI R. KEDDIE

habis in the early nineteenth century. Eighteenth-centurypolitical fluidity,

along with economic changes, made it a propitiousperiodto build new states.
Nineteenth-centurymovements in Algeria, Libya, and Sudan were clearly
influenced by Ottomandecline. And South Asian state-buildingpuritanical
movements were reacting, among other things, to the decline of the Moguls
and the Muslim power vacuum it left.
Fifth, also importantin the sphere of religious intellectualswas the development of learning, of travel over large distances to learning, and of the
pilgrimage to Mecca-factors importantin the personal history of several
leaders of revivalist movements. John Voll has tracedthe eighteenth-century
spreadof learningnetworkswhich tied many 'ulama to the same scholars in
the Hejaz or Yemen, and Juhanyhas noted the growth of learned 'ulama in
eighteenth-centuryNajd, some with ties to the network discussed by Voll.9
Severalleadersof revivalistmovements, such as those in Sumatraand some in
West Africa, had histories of pilgrimages to, or education in, Mecca and
Medina. There was a growing understandingof early Islamic tenets arising
from greatereducationin Hejaz, Egypt, and Syria. Cumulativeimprovements
in transportand communication,which mostly originatedin the West, were
importantto the rise in pilgrimageto and education in Arab territories.The
sixth and final point is that, unsurprisingly,nearly all these movements had
charismaticreligio-politicalleaders.
Several of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-centuryjihad movements echo
partsof the original Islamic experience.1 Like early Islam, these movements
arose in a period of the decline of empires, often near the borders or just
beyond those empires. Islam in most of these regions was especially the
religion of traders,and in all the so-called Fulanijihads of West Africa, the
jihadists were composed, like the early Muslims, of traders, scholars, and
fighting nomads. Similar alliances were found in Arabia and South Asia,
although the tradeelement may have been less importantthere. Tradersand
scholars were very importantin the Sumatranmovement, where the tropical
terrainprecludedpastoralnomadism.
I have not consideredhere deliberateimitationsof Muhammad,notablythe
hijra emigrationsof believers undertakenby Usmandan Fodio and otherWest
Africanjihad leadersbefore they launchedtheirjihads;the list above includes
only structural similarities that presumably were not deliberate but,
9 JohnObertVoll, "LinkingGroupsin the Networksof Eighteenth-CenturyRevivalist Scholars," in Levtzion and Voll, eds., Eighteenth Century Renewal; and Uwaidah Metaireek AlJuhany,"The History of Najd Priorto the Wahhabis;A Study of Social, Political and Religious
Conditionsin Najd duringThree CenturiesPrecedingthe WahhabiReform Movement"(Seattle:
Ph.D dissertation,History Department,University of Washington, 1983).
10 W. Montgomery Watt, Muhammad at Mecca (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953), and
Muhammadat Medina (Oxford: ClarendonPress, 1956); and Maxime Rodinson, Mohammed,
Anne Carter,trans. (New York:VanguardBooks, 1974). This interpretationhas been opposed by
various recent scholars, including PatriciaCrone and Michael Cook.

THE REVOLT OF ISLAM,

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TO 1993

47I

rather,may express a similarityof movements occurringin partiallysimilar

socioeconomic and intellectualenvironments.
The revivalist movementsof the eighteenthand nineteenthcenturies, all of
which engaged in jihad (holy war) either against local rulersor against westerners, were in partrespondingto a combinationof economic, political, and
culturalchanges which had some similaritiesto the changes felt at the time of
the rise of Islam. Naturally,therewere also differences;these, in particularthe
growing role of capitalism and of Western trade and conquest, made the
eighteenth-and nineteenth-centurymovementsinto new phenomena.Modem
Westerntrade, even before colonial conquest, had a more dramaticstructural
effect on societies than did the more restrictedtradeof ancient times.
THE

ARABIAN

WAHHABIS

Despite theirrecognizedimportance,the early Wahhabisof SaudiArabiahave

been the subject of very little scholarlypublication, althoughthere are some
dissertations about them.1 The most important discussion of the socioeconomic and culturalbackgroundof the eighteenth-centurymovementof Ibn
'Abd al-Wahhaband his followers in Najd is found in the recent dissertation
by UwaidahAl-Juhany.By means of painstakingwork in the sources, Juhany
tries to demonstratethe growthof populationand of settlementsin eighteenthcentury Najd.12 Others have spoken of a world-wide trend in population
growth in the eighteenthcentury,possibly the resultof favorableclimatic and
agriculturalconditions. Juhany's work also suggests a rise in trade and a
growing need for economic rules and laws in an increasinglystratifiedsociety
with a growing number of tribal conflicts between nomadic and settled
people.
Also, the rise in Najd of Islamic scholarshipand the growth of its 'ulama
createda group competentto carryout Islamic legal rules in the face of dominant tribal customary law. There was no state structurein Najd, and there
were increasing problems and divisions that could best be met by a unified state and legal system. The decline of Ottomanpower in Arabiaopened
the way for the rise of an independent and powerful state, at least until
" In addition to the Juhanydissertationin note 3, above, see especially George W. Rentz,
"MuhammadIbn 'Abd al-Wahhab(1703/4-1792) and the Beginning of UnitarianEmpire in
Arabia" (Berkeley, Ph.D dissertation, History Department, University of California, 1948);
MuhammadS. M. El-Shaafy, "The First Saudi State in Arabia"(Leeds, Ph.D. dissertation,
University of Leeds, 1967). A vivid and instructive contemporaryaccount is in John Lewis
Burckhardt,Notes on the Bedouins and Wahabys,2 vols. (London:Henry Colburnand Richard
Bentley, 1831). On Wahhabidoctrine, see Henri Laoust, Essai sur les doctrines sociales et
politiques de Taki-d-DinAhmad b. Taimiya(Cairo: Institut Francaisd'archaeologie orientale,
1939), Book III, ch. 2. For contemporaryinformation,see John Lewis Burkhardt,Notes on the
Bedouins and Wahabys(London:Colburnand Bentley, 1831), and M. Niebuhr,Travelsthrough
Arabia and Other Countries of the East, Robert Heron, trans. (Edinburgh,1792).
12
Juhany, "Historyof Najd, " first chapters. Goldstone, "East and West";Joseph Fletcher,
"IntegrativeHistory."

472

NIKKI R. KEDDIE

the Ottomanscould suppress it via MuhammadAli in the early nineteenth

century.
Michael Cook, while recognizingthe importanceof Juhany'swork, thinks
he has overstrainedlimited evidence of indigenous socioeconomic change.
Cook says that Juhanytakes immigrationas a sign of populationgrowth and
emigrationas a sign of overcrowding, so that both are seen as evidence of
population growth. While some evidence points to internal socioeconomic
change or exogenous influences from foreign trade, Cook believes that this
evidence is not strong enough to make it certain that either indigenous or
exogenous socioeconomic changes were great enough to be major factors in
the Wahhabimovement.13Although Cook's argumentis effective, it appears
to me that it does not destroyall of Juhany'scase. As majornew sources may
not be found, the non-specialistshouldkeep in mindCook's points and realize
that the economic evidence concerningNajd is weaker than it is for Sumatra
and West Africa. Sumatraand West Africa in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centurieswere heavily involved in foreign trade, which left records;but Najd
was not. It seems fair to say that the case for importantsocioeconomic
influences on the early Wahhabisis weaker than it is for most other militant
revival movements, but such a case may still have some validity based on the
evidence. Alternatively,one may accept that not all major revivalist movements have socioeconomic causes. Since the original Wahhabimovement
seems barely relatedto the West or its trade, I will omit discussion of it here.
THE PADRI MOVEMENT IN SUMATRA

For the Islamic Revival movementin West and CentralSumatra,we have the
convincing and documented study by Christine Dobbin, which takes into
account socioeconomic and ideological factors.14 Dobbin's book and articles
provide a uniquetotal study of a jihad movement, for which there are, unfortunately, no equivalents for the other movements under consideration. Her
works deserve considerationby all studentsof similarmovements. Her stress
on the socioeconomic impact of early modern Westerntrade is especially
important.There are no otherworks on the subjectthatmake extensive use of
primarysources in several languages.
West Sumatra, usually called Minangkabau,comprises an ethnically related, matrilineallyorganizedsociety speakinga dialect of Malay.The society
13 Michael
Cook, "The Expansion of the First Saudi State: The Case of Washm," C. E.
Bosworth et al., eds., The Islamic Worldfrom Classical to Modern Times:Essays in Honor of
Bernard Lewis (Princeton:Darwin Press, 1989), 661-700.
14 ChristineDobbin, Islamic Revivalismin a ChangingPeasant Economy:Central Sumatra,
1784-1847 (London, 1983). Dobbin has also published related articles. The padris are also
discussed in a numberof Dutch sources and writings, as well as in a smallernumberof English
works that have been largely supersededby Dobbin's book. O'Fahey,Enigmatic Saint, 188, n.
48, says: "ProfessorAnthony Johns of the AustralianNational University points out (personal
communication)that no study of the religious writingsgeneratedby the movementhas yet been
made; this he hopes to undertake."

THE REVOLT OF ISLAM,

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is based on agriculture,particularlywet-rice cultivation. Its basic organizational unit was long the negari, or cluster of villages. We know little about
change within Minangkabausociety before Hindu rulers came from Java to
create a state in the fourteenthcentury,but it seems probablethat the population grew and that most of the good inland territorywas occupied in this
period. Also, gold was mined and tradedbefore the fourteenthcentury.Dobbin cites convincing evidence that the Hindu rulerswho came from Javaand
set up the first Minangkabaukingdomwere seeking gold and remaineddependent on the gold trade, which at first flourishedbut laterdeclined. They never
controlledenough wealth to have effective armedforces, and the local negari
remainedvirtuallyautonomous.Underthese kings Muslim tradersapparently
entered Minangkabauand made many conversions, and by the seventeenth
centurywe find a triumvirateof rulersin the originallyHinduroyal family, all
with titles whose second words were Arabic and Islamic in origin. At the top
was the Raja Alam (King of the World),and below him were the Raja Adat
(custom) and the Raja Ibadat (Islamic worship). It is significantthat we find
no mentionof the non-ibadatpartof Islam-mu'amalat (this-worldlytransactions), which cover the great majorityof this-worldlyquestions dealt with in
Islamic law. From the first, MinangkabauIslam centered on worship and
ritual, primarilythe so-called Five Pillarsof Islam, while this-worldlymatters
came mostly underadat, or customarylaw, as they still do in most Minangkabau villages.15
Islam was apparentlybroughtto Minangkabauby tradersand spreadlargely
throughteachers from three internationalSufi orders. All three were among
the more orthodox orders, but they still stressed the individual'srelations to
God, ratherthan Islamic law or the this-worldly side of Islam. Once, however, Minangkabausocioeconomic conditionsdeveloped sufficientlyto make
the this-worldly side of Islam relevantto Minangkabausociety, a movement
of Islamic Revival grew up in the late eighteenthand early nineteenthcenturies that addressedmany new needs.
With the decline in the monarchyafter the depletion of known sources of
gold, which formedthe monarchy'smain support,there were increasingwars
between negaris. At the same time, new forms of trade developed from
's See Nikki R. Keddie, "Islamand Society in Minangkabauand in the Middle East:Comparative Reflections,"Sojourn(Singapore),2:1 (1987); TaufikAbdullah,"Adatand Islam:An Examination of Conflict in Minangkabau,"Indonesia, II (October)(CornellUniversity, 1966); Harsja
W. Bachtiar, "Negari Taram:A MinangkabauVillage Community,"in Koentjariningrat,ed.,
Villages in Indonesia (Ithaca: Corell University Press, 1967); Elizabeth Graves, The MinangkabauResponse to Dutch Colonial Rule in the NineteenthCentury(Ithaca:Cornell Moder
IndonesiaProject, 1981); F. Benda-Beckman,Propertyand Social Continuityand Change in the
Maintenanceof PropertyRelationsthroughTime in Minangkabau(The Hague:MartinusNijhoff,
1979); FrederickK. Errington,Manners and Meaning in WestSumatra:The Social Context of
Consciousness (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984); Joel S. Kahn, MinangkabauSocial
Formations: Indonesian Peasant and the WorldEconomy (Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity
Press, 1980).

474

NIKKI R. KEDDIE

increasingtradecontacts within Sumatra;India, Indonesia, China, Malaysia;

and, importantly,such Westernstates as Portugal,Holland, GreatBritain, and
the newly independentUnited States. These foreigners, in addition to their
interest in what gold remained, developed an even greater interest in what
became very lucrative Sumatranexport crops-chiefly pepper, gambir, cassia, and especially coffee after Arabicacoffee was introducedfrom Yemen.
These crops were mainly grown in hillside areas not suitable to Sumatra's
older staples, and the growth and transportof the new export crops attracted
persons in search of new means of making profits. Transportingcrops that
were much bulkierthan gold was difficult and costly, given the area's mountainous terrainand lack of roads; and traderswere subjectto robberyand to
village tolls. Nonetheless, internationaltradegrew rapidly,so that by the late
eighteenthcenturythere was a socioeconomic situationwith significantparallels to the Hijaz in Muhammad'stime. The old local adat did not cover the
needs of traders,who requireda supra-villagelaw, morality,and enforcement
mechanism, and indeed a new state that could enforce law and order better
than the old monarchyever had. The applicationof Islamic law, including its
this-worldly protectionof trade and traders,could provide an ideal, already
available, solution to many of the problems of a society with a growing
trading interest but without centralizedlaw or government. In this situation
an outstandinglate-eighteenth-centuryIslamic reformer,who had many important pupils, began to advocate the more thorough application of Islam
and its laws. His stress on trade was such that he was called the "patronof
traders."
Minangkabau'snew wealth and increasedinterestin Islam led to a rise in
the numberof its pilgrims to Mecca. In 1803, three importantsuch pilgrims
witnessed the rule of the militantpuritanicalWahhabisapplied in Mecca and
returnedto Minangkabaudeterminedto apply uniformIslamic laws, forcibly
if necessary.The reformist"Patronof Traders"who had been their teacherat
first backed them, but later opposed their use of force. These militant Muslims became known as Padris, apparentlyafter the name of the port from
which they went to Mecca (althoughsome derive it from the Portugueseword
for priest). For almost three decades, they spreadtheir influence throughout
Minangkabauby both peaceful and violent means. They were only defeatedin
the 1830s by the Dutch, who had received appeals from that section of adat
leaders who opposed the Padris. The last Padri leader to resist the Dutch, a
man called ImamJombol, after the town on the equatorfrom which he came
and in which he fought, has become a Sumatranand Indonesiannationalhero.
He representstoday not so much puritanicalIslam as one of the first to offer
sustained resistance to Dutch conquest and rule.'6 The Dutch were glad to
16 In ImamJombol'shome town of
Jombol, on the equatorin Sumatra,I saw a fighting statue
of him, in which he was characterizedin a typical Malay lingua-francamixtureof words from
Arabic, Persian, and Dutch, as the "MartyredNationalHero."

THE REVOLT OF ISLAM,

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have a pretext to conquer Minangkabau.The adat leaders who appealed to

them had no more legitimacy thanthe adatand Islamic leaderswho sided with
the Padris who were probablygreaterin numberand certainly in power.
The doctrinesof the Padrishad the same puritanicaland strictIslamic flavor
as those of the Wahhabis,althoughthey were not carriedas far. Also, the Padris
became milder and more compromisingover time, as they had to win over
people tied to a matrilineal,village-centeredcustomarylaw radicallydifferent
from strict Islamic law. Originally, in addition to protecting traders from
robberyand extortion,the Padriscalled for the abolitionof opium and alcohol,
along with the cockfighting and the gambling that accompaniedit. The latter
was a more importantchange than it might seem, as villages featuredpublic
space devoted largely to this highly popularpractice. The Padriscalled upon
men to wear beards and on women to use the veil, which they had not done
before (and have done rarely since) and made other demandsconsonantwith
puritanicalIslam. Overtime, as noted, theycompromisedwith adat, which was
widely practiced and had powerful representativeswho could not be totally
converted. Had the Dutch not conqueredMinangkabau,the Padrismight have
set up a statein which Islamic law played a greaterrole thanit did eitherbefore
or since but in which adatand its officials also continuedto have some power.
Internaldivisions in the movementsmeantthatthis was only a possibility and
not a certain outcome, however.
The Sumatrancase is one in which the spread of Orthodox Sufi orders,
often together with Muslim tradersand scholars, and especially the need for
state formation felt with the growth of internationaltrade, helped create a
situation in which a handful of Wahhabi-influencedleaders could rapidly
influence a society for which large partsof their message were then appropriate. Like othercontemporaryjihad movements, the Padrimovementevinces a
socioeconomic change and dislocationbroughton partlyby a growthin Western trade, a felt need for state formationand unified law in a developing but
decentralizedsociety, charismaticleadership,and an influence of the spread
of Islamic learning.
In both Sumatraand West Africa the process of Islamizationhad for centuries before the jihad movements been a peaceful one carried out not by
conquering states and rulers but largely by traders who either came from
abroad or were influenced by travel in Muslim lands. In Sumatra, these
traderswere often at first identicalwith the membersof tarigas, usually called
Sufi orders in English. This form of peaceful Islamization,largely by means
of traders,contributedto special featuresin Indonesianand most WestAfrican
Islam. Lacking coercive powers, the convinced Muslims were in no position
to make either rulers or believers follow Muslim law; and even relatively
orthodox Sufis were generally more concerned with making converts than
with assuringpracticeof the shari'a. Rulers and village heads in Sumatraand
most of Islamized West Africa, even when they were nominally Muslim,

476

NIKKI R. KEDDIE

generally enforced little Islamic law and practice. They found it more convenient both for popularityand to justify theirown rule on traditionalgroundsto
mix older local religious practiceswith Islamic ones, often giving the lattera
secondaryplace. This situation,both in Sumatraand West Africa, provideda
fertile ground, given other preconditions,for supportersof jihad to say that
existing authoritieswere unbelieversagainstwhom holy war was incumbent.
In West Africa the spreadsince the eighteenthcenturyespecially of first the
Qadiriand then the nineteenth-centuryTijaniordersmay have been important
in generalizing a devotion to Islam that providedfertile ground for the jihad
movements. A similarhypothesismay be made aboutthe spreadof tariqasin
Sumatra,althoughthis phenomenonhas been less studied.
WEST AFRICAN MOVEMENTS

Among the many difficulties in comparing West African eighteenth- and

jihads with Sumatra's,is thatthe natureof documentation,
nineteenth-century
and scholarly orientationof research, is quite different.For Sumatrathere is
good documentationfor internationaltrade and its impact on Islamic reformers, and little known documentationand, to now, little study of what
these reformersactually said and wrote. For West Africa, although certain
kinds of trade are documented, the whole question of trade, particularlythe
size and impact of the slave trade, is highly controversialand difficult for a
non-Africanistto assess. On the otherhand, in recentyears a mass of original
tracts written by jihad leaders has become available, especially in Nigeria.
These tractsprovide an invaluablesource for the study of these movements,
but some scholars have been inclined to limit themselves to analyzing these
documents and to taking the motives and forces behind the jihad to be those
expressed in the ideology of its leaders without looking for others, including
socioeconomic causation.To some degree there is a division between Africanists who study social or economic history and those who study jihads, and
the socio-economic interpretationsof jihads that have been put forth, for
example, by the Senegalese B. Barry,have been controversial.What is said
below is thus provisional.
The influence of trade in West Africa, primarilybut far from exclusively
the slave trade,on WestAfricanjihad movementsis suggestedby the fact, not
noted in any work I have read, that these jihads followed the chronological
path of this trade. They began in Senegambia, which was involved early in
trade with the West, and came only in the nineteenthcenturyto Nigeria and
Mali, where Westerntrade, centeredon the slave trade, also came later. (A
1985 paperby HumphreyFisherdemonstratesconsiderablymore presenceof
the slave trade in Nigeria before its early nineteenth-centuryjihad than most
previous writershad granted, and this supportsthe hypothesis that this trade
influencedthe rise of the jihad movements.) Fromthe early nineteenthcentury, the end of the slave trade and the rise of what was sometimes called
"legitimate"trade with the West broughtfurthertransformations.

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The ways in which Europeantrade appearsto have influenced the rise of

jihad movements were not identical in Sumatraand West Africa, but there
were some similarities; and each situation may suggest importantresearch
questions for the others. The size and effects on Africa of the African slave
trade has been a subjectof intense controversyamong Africanistsfor several
years. Although I am not competent to enter into this controversy,it seems
likely that the slave trade had a very importantdisruptiveeffect in Africa.
Devastationalone, which is stressedby some historians,would not, however,
give rise to militant jihad movements. It is not the most devastated and
depopulated areas that have revolutions, but usually those where socioeconomic and ideological changes have been rapid, bringingaboutthe rise of
new classes and the weakeningof the old rulingclasses. The French,Russian,
Chinese, and Iranianrevolutionsare all examples of this. The majorAfrican
jihad movements may be consideredrevolutionary,and one might expect the
socioeconomic changes that preceded them not to be limited to devastation
and depopulation,whateverweight these factorsmay have, but also to include
a rise of new groups and classes and a weakening of old ruling classes. The
available evidence indicates that this is indeed the case.
Althoughmany,perhapsmost, Africansremainingin Africa may have been
hurtby the slave trade,therewere also groupsand classes who profitedfrom it
and enterednew lines of economic activity. Many Africans and part-Africans
engaged in the slave tradein variouscapacities, and the presenceof European
trade gave rise also to increasedtrade, both in Africa and overseas, in other
products, including kola, gold, ivory, gum Arabic (importantto European
textile industries),and others. There was a rapid developmentof groups and
classes involved in this growing trade, including wealthy long-distancetraders, local traders who dealt with them, and various kinds of middlemen,
despite the prevalenceof elite and statecontrolof trade.The growthof trading
classes increased after the end of the slave trade.
In addition, the eighteenth and nineteenthcenturiessaw a developmentof
large-scale village and plantationslavery in West Africa itself, where slavery
had formerly been predominantlysmall-scale and family-centered.(Slaves,
who sometimes carried out independentrevolts, do not seem to have been
importantparticipantsin the jihad movement.) African slaveholders were
often tradersor men involved in tradein slaves or in the commodities grown
on plantations,so that the growthof large-scaleslaverysuggests anothersign
of the importance of the growth of trade and trading classes. Although
wealthy Africans might be involved in slave trade, it was often not in their
interest to permit this trade to be unregulatedor to catch and enslave local
persons who might be engaged in production.This was perhapsone reason
why jihad movements were generally strict in enforcing Islamic law against
the enslavement of Muslims, who were often taken from among the local
population. Jihad leaders themselves accumulatednon-Muslimor "heretical"
slaves, mainly by warfaredesigned to expand their states, and to take power

478

NIKKI

R. KEDDIE

from those who were, or were consideredto be, non-Muslims. The acquisition of firearmsand horses from the West helped make strongerstates possible.17

The few scholarswho have looked into the socioeconomic basis of African
jihad movements note the dislocations formed in the coastal societies of
Mauritaniaand of SenegambianFutaJalonbeginningin the sixteenthcentury.
In FutaJalonthe IslamicizedFulbe (Fulani)became the richest and strongest
social groupand the bearersof militantIslam. The MuslimFulbe spearheaded
a revivalist revolt that set up a more Islamicized state than had previously
existed. The slave tradecontributedto social conflict and reorganization.As
in many previouscases, nomadicwarriorsunitedby a militantIslamic ideology won out. A combinationof traders,religious leaders, and nomadic warriors proved potent, as they did in later West Africanjihads.
Similarly,Peter Clarketies the Mauritanian-Senegalesejihad of Nasir alDin in the late seventeenthcenturyto tensionsarisingfromthe slave trade, the
importof firearms,and the competitionfrom Europeanpowers for control of
trade. He says Europeantradecontributedsignificantlyto socioeconomic and
political change. The growth in firearmsallowed fighting over wider territories and encouragedgreaterwarriorpower. People began to look to the Muslim Fulbe for political leadershipand ideology.18
The jihad movementsin Senegambiain the eighteenthand nineteenthcenturies, even thoughthey did not set up strongand long-lived states, increased
the influence of Muslim scholars and orthodoxyand the identity of Muslim
communities.Such identitywas importantin a situationin which "society was
17 Among those who most convincingly tie jihad movementsto socioeconomic conditions and
trade, includingslave trade, is Peter B. Clarke, WestAfrica and Islam (London:EdwardArnold,
1982). Also suggestive of such ties is the dissertation(unfinishedwhen I saw it in 1985) of B.
Barryof Senegal, which was, however, when I saw it, in partproblematic.Otheruseful works
include Allen Christelow,"Religious Protestand Dissent in NorthernNigeria: from Mahdismto
QuranicIntegralism,"Journal of the Instituteof MuslimMinorityAffairs, 6:2 (1985), 375-93;
Philip C. Curtin, Economic Change in Precolonial Africa: Senegambiain the Era of the Slave
Trade(Madison:Universityof WisconsinPress, 1975);Idem, "Jihadin WestAfrica:EarlyPhases
and Interrelationsin Mauritaniaand Senegal, Journal of AfricanHistory, XII: 1 (1971), 11-24;
MichaelCrowder,WestAfricaunderColonial Rule (London:Hutchinson,1968); M. Hiskett, The
Sword of Truth:The Life and Timesof Shehu Usumandan Fodio (New York, 1973); D. M. Last,
The Sokoto Caliphate(London, 1967); N. Levtzion, Muslimsand Chiefs in WestAfrica (Oxford,
1968); Paul E. Lovejoy, Transformationsin Slavery:A History of Slavery in Africa (Cambridge:
CambridgeUniversity Press, 1983); David Robinson, The Holy Warof Umar Tal: The Western
Sudan in the Mid-NineteenthCentury (Oxford: ClarendonPress, 1985); J. S. Trimingham,A
History of Islam in WestAfrica (London, 1962); J. R. Willis, ed., Studiesin WestAfricanIslamic
History (London, 1979); and a significant body of jihad literaturein translation,such as 'Abdullah ibn Muhammad,Tazyinal-Waraqat,M. Hiskett, trans. and ed. (IbadanUniversity Press,
1963). There are numeroustranslationsand scholarlydissertationsthat are, unfortunately,available only in the universitiesof northernNigeria. There is also a considerablelocal and Western
article literature,of which the articles by MarilynWaldmanmay be singled out.
18 Clarke, WestAfrica, 80. Some similarthemes are voiced in Barry'sthesis and in P. Curtin,
"Jihadin West Africa: Early Phases and Interrelationsin Mauritaniaand Senegal," Journal of
African History, XII (1971), 11-24.

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479

being turned upside down by the slave trade, the importationof arms and
ammunition, the pillaging and devastations wrought by the tyeddo, and
people were crying for protection,stabilityand law andorder."'9But the jihad
leaders in Senegambia, as was the case later in Nigeria, tended to abandon
theirearly egalitariantendenciesto favora few powerfulfamilies and discourage popular-classparticipationin politics. Nearly all the challengersof the old
political and religious authoritiescame from Muslim scholars who had received trainingin mysticism and were membersof a Sufi tariqa.
Some scholars also give a partly socioeconomic interpretationof the famous early-nineteenth-centuryNigerian jihad of Usman dan Fodio. When
rulersfought each other, tradersprofitedfrom the growing trade;but the poor
experiencedterribleeffects from famine, slave raiding,andextortionatetaxes.
There was also tension between pastoralists (mainly Fulani) and peasants
(mainly Hausa). Nineteenth-centuryjihadists referredto the fifteenth-century
Maghrebiwriter,al-Maghili, who spenttime in WestAfrica. He wrote strongly against the still-prevalentpractice of rulers of mixing local un-Islamic
customs, often glorifying rulers, with Islam. He also said that a ruler who
imposed unjust and illegal taxes was an unbelieverand reiterateda prevalent
Islamic belief thatevery centurywould see a renewer(mujaddid)of Islam. He
added that "there is no doubt that Holy War against [the above-mentioned
"unbelieving"rulers] is better and more meritoriousthan Holy War against
unbelievers."20
Usman dan Fodio of Nigeria, probably the most scholarly of the jihad
leaders, learnednot only from al-Maghilibut also from QadiriSufis, although
the importanceof his ties to the Qadiriyya is in dispute. In his dream or
vision, the founderof the Qadiriyyaordergave him the "Swordof Truth"to
Usman built up his orthofight God's enemies. In the late-eighteenth-century,
dox community within the state of Gobir. Usman's jihad began when his
community was attackedfrom Gobir in 1804, which led some to see it as a
defensive war. Many rebellious holy wars and revolts begin defensively,
however, when the religious leader or reformer,unsurprisingly,fails to convert the powers that be to his reforms. It means little to say that if only
the ruling elite had agreed to these changes, there would have been no war.
The same can be said for Muhammadand the Meccans and possibly even
for the Estates General and their monarch, not to mention numerousothers.
In his key manifesto of 1804, the Wathiqatahl al-Sudan, Usman says that
qualified jurists all agree that jihad is incumbentagainst non-Muslims and
againstrulerswho abandonIslam or combine un-Islamicobservanceswith it,
which Usman said was common in Hausaland.He says it is illegal to enslave
free Muslims or attacknon-Muslimswho accept Muslimpeace terms. Jihadis
a duty against oppressors. He says the currentrulers imposed a non-Islamic
19 Clarke, West
Africa, 87.
Hiskett, Sword, 66.

20

480

NIKKI R. KEDDIE

cattle tax (particularlydislikedby Fulanipastorlists,who along with primarily

Fulani scholars played leading roles in the jihad), took bribes, and did not
observe Islamic laws of inheritanceand succession.
Although Usman and the brotherand son who succeeded him were militarily successful and createdin the Sokoto caliphatea long-lived state unparalleled by any other West Africanjihad movement, it is unclear how much
lasting reformthey introducedbeyond a greaterenforcementof certainIslamic rules. Most scholars feel that the strong state structurethat followed owes
much to pre-existingstates in the areaandthatold pre-jihadgovernmentaland
economic elites were often left in place. Abdullahi Mahadi, in his brilliant
dissertationon Kano, notes thatUsman and his followers did not have a really
revolutionarystate model in mind, involvingreferenceto the era of the Prophet and first four elected caliphs. Instead,theirwritingsreferredto late Abbasid
models of the caliphate, which includedthe kind of dynastic and hierarchical
structuresthat Usman and his followers soon reinstalled in the areas they
conquered, with some change in personnelto benefit the largely Fulani conquering class.21 The introductionof a stronger and more centralized state
structurethan before, along with the spreadof a more orthodox Islam, were
importantchanges, but they were not egalitarianand primarilybenefitted the
tradingand ruling classes.
In West African jihads we find the common features of importantand
disruptiveeconomic change influencedby the West, a spreadof learning and
neo-Sufism, a key role of tribes, and a need for strongerstates. Westernrule,
Islamic ideology, and continuing socioeconomic disruptionsand discontents
form a line tying eighteenth-and nineteenth-centurymilitantrevivalist movements to those of recent years. On the other hand, there are today a host of
new factors. This is suggested by the fact that Islamismhas now moved from
the tribalperipheryto the urbancenters, requiringdetailedindependentanalysis of these recent movements.
It is not at all suggested here that the same socioeconomic and cultural
causes lead to militant puritanicalrevival in all cases. Sumatra and West
Africa seem to show similarsituations.In each, Europeanand othertradehad
a disruptiveimpact;and a small but growing orthodoxeducatedcadrerejected
the rulers, people, and policies that they consideredonly nominally Islamic.
Najd appearsto have had the latterfeature, but the socioeconomic causation
was different and perhapsunprovable.Europeanconquest created a clearer
cause for holy war than in the above cases. Othercausative factors and their
differentoperationin differentareas have been discussed above.
21 Abdullahi
Mahadi, "The State and the Economy: The SaarautaSystem and its Role in
Shaping the Economy of Kano with ParticularReference to the Eighteenth and Nineteenth
Centuries"(Ph.D. dissertation,Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria, 1983). I read this in
Zaria and do not know if it is available in the West, though a shortenedpublishedversion may
appear.

THE REVOLT OF ISLAM,

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What seems clear is thatIslamic belief and doctrinesprovidethe idioms for

two major types of revolt, namely, the messianic and Wahhabitype. The
messianic revolt usually centeredon the Mahdi figure and rangeddoctrinally
from occasional mainstreamconservatism to various kinds of heterodoxy.
(These movementshave been especially prevalentamongthe Shi'a but are not
exclusive to them.) The other, Wahhabitype, is puritanicaland literalistand
predominatesin the movements discussed above. These two categories are
permeable.Militantmessianistscan be puritanical,and militantpuristscan be
messianic. The Sudanese Mahdi seems an example of the former, and the
Khomeini movement of the latter. The militance and relative clarity in basic
legal provisions that characterizedearly Islam have provided a continuing
model for internal and external militance. It is striking how much unconnected militant movements used some of the same early Islamic modelsleaders' hijras, deputies called khalifas, the institutionof Islamic taxes, the
veiling of women, and so forth. When a charismaticleader has been able to
use these traditionsin favorablesocioeconomic and political circumstances,
major and significant militantrevival movements have occurred.
THE

NINETEENTH

CENTURY

The second group of Islamic movements occurredchiefly in the nineteenth

centuryand were, as a whole or in part, directresponsesto Europeanimperial
conquests. In these movements, the desire to keep out the conquerorand to
form a united state were often strongerthan the goal of Islamic orthodoxy,
althoughmost of the movementsalso had strongrevivalistfeatures. Clearly,a
unified Islamic ideology was an effective one for a war against infidels and
also for state building. The similarities of ideas and practices among these
movements and between them and earlier ones suggests some "essential"
featurescoming down throughthe Islamic political traditionin very different,
distantand unconnectedlands. At the same time, their appearanceonly under
certaindefined kinds of conditionssuggests thatthese essential featurescould
be dormantor unimportantfor long periods before they burst forth, owing
largely to new social circumstances.
Like the earliergroup of movements, the nineteenth-centuryjihads against
infidel conquests occurred in ratherperipheralareas and have seldom been
compared to one another. They do, however, show a number of similar
featuresto one anotherand to earliermovements. Theirleadershipstill tended
to come from powerful figures in majorSufi orders(Shamyl in the Caucasus,
'Abd al-Qadir and others in Algeria) or from disciples of leaders of new
Islamic movements (Sayyid Ahmad Brelwi of the South Asian jihad movement). These movements again stressed orthodoxy and state building; the
Indianmovementswere called Wahhabi,especially by outsiders,because they
resembled and presumablywere inspiredby, the ArabianWahhabis.
Some movements moved from the pre-colonial to the colonial situation

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NIKKI R. KEDDIE

without real changes in ideology: The Padris ended up fighting the Dutch;
some West African leaders ended up fighting the French;the South Asian
jihadists based in the NorthwestFrontierstartedout fighting the Sikhs, then
only later clashed with the British. These similarities to early movements
and to one anothershould guard us against seeing these movements simply
as a supposedly naturalMuslim resistance to imperialism. In most Muslim
areas there was little or no initial armedresistance, so althoughthese movements clearly had a strong aspect of "Muslimresistanceto the infidel," this
is not enough to explain them. In general, settled peoples underurbanleaders and accustomed to strong imperial rule on the whole did not support
Islamically based resistance to Western imperialist conquest. The 'Urabi
movement in Egypt in the early 1880s is a partialexception to this but was a
somewhat different kind of resistance from the Islamic revolts named
above.22 As was the case in pre-imperialrevolts, the immediately postimperial armed struggles against conquest were mostly based on tribal
fighters and leaders with importantpositions in a preexistingreligious order.
The leaders tended to have an overall vision of a new, united and militant
Islamic society; they tended to come from, or (in the case of the South Asian
Wahhabis)settle in, peripheralareas not closely tied to an existing or recent
empire. Although they were not quite as peripheralgeographically as the
eighteenth-centuryjihad leaders, they were not near the center of major Islamic states.
To some degree, the appearanceof the SouthAsian movements, despite the
above-noted similar features, was based on where Europeanpowers made
their first modernconquests. Hence, South Asia, an areaof some of the first
Western conquests of Muslims, saw two important and long-lasting
nineteenth-centurymovements, the Wahhabisand the Fara'izis. The first
Frenchconquestof Algeria led to the firstjihad movementin the Middle East.
Similarly, Russia's conquest efforts in the Caucasus, beginning in the early
nineteenthcentury,led to the first and most importantjihad movementagainst
them. Like that of the Indian Wahhabisand of 'Abd al-Qadir, Shamyl's
resistance was very longlasting. Some of these movements' peripherallocation was thus due to the fact that the first Europeanconquests in Muslim
territoriesavoided major Ottomanand Iraniancenters. Even when Ottoman
urbancenters were taken, however, this rarely gave rise to major revivalist
resistance, which indicatesthatperipheralfeatures, such as the predominance
of nomadic tribes and of non-urbanreligious forms, were also importantin
encouragingjihad-orientedresistanceto Westernconquest. The Indianmovements that took place in a context of settled agriculturehad an explicit socio22 For a work
stressingthe revolutionarynatureof the 'Urabimovement, see JuanR. I. Cole,
Colonialism and Revolutionin the Middle East: Social and Cultural Origins of Egypt's 'Urabi
Movement(Princeton:PrincetonUniversity Press, 1992).

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economic dimension, the Bengali movementbeing especially a partisanof the

poor.23

Two latermovementsalso belong in this generalcontext. First, the Mahdist

movement in Sudanemployed the messianic more thanthe jihad argumentfor
revolt but had importantelements of fundamentalismand jihadism. P. Holt
sees the Mahdiststruggle as largely a result of the forced ending of the slave
trade, which caused economic disruption;and R. Petersties this movementto
various disruptive features of Egyptian and British colonialism.24 Second,
therewas the revolt againstItalianrule in Libya led by the Senussi orderin the
early twentieth century, later than the other movements because the Italians
took over Libya later. This movement has many similarfeaturesto the other
jihads, however, including the importance of a Sufi order. Mahdism and
revivalist jihad are two alternativeways of justifying revolt in Islamic contexts, with mahdism more frequentlybeing unorthodox,sometimes "heretical" (notably,the IranianBabis), while jihad movementstend toward"fundamentalism"or a returnto literal observanceof the scriptures.The Sudanese
mahdistmovement and some others among the movements discussed in this
essay had some combinationof mahdist and jihadist elements, but the latter
usually predominated.There were also a number of other significant antiimperialistrevivalist revolts in Africa and SoutheastAsia.
Although it is often said that religion and politics in Islam are always
intertwined,Islamic principlesare often only loosely enforcedduringperiods
of normal government. These principles are, however, far more enforced in
Islamic militant movements, such as those discussed above, which wish to
remake society in an Islamic image. The militanceand injunctionsregarding
morality and gender relations that are believed to characterizeearly Islam
23
Among the useful works on nineteenth-centuryrevival movements respondingto Western
conquest are
(1) on Shamyl: John F. Baddeley, The Russian Conquestof the Caucasus (London:Longmans,
Green and Co., 1908); Baron August von Haxthausen, The Tribes of the Caucasus (London:
Chapmanand Hall, 1855); Louis Moser, The Caucasus and Its People: Witha Brief History of
Their Wars;and Moshe Gammer,Muslim Resistance to the Tsar: Shamil and the Conquest of
Chechnia and Daghestan (London:Cass, 1994).
(2) South Asia: QeyamuddinAhmad, The WahabiMovementin India (Calcutta, 1966); K. K.
Datta, History of the FreedomMovementin Bihar, I (Patna:Governmentof Bihar, 1957); Peter
Hardy,TheMuslimsof BritishIndia (London:CambridgeUniversityPress, 1972); W. W. Hunter,
The Indian Musalmans:Are They Bound in Conscience to Rebel against the Queen? (London:
Trubnerand Co., 1871); Hafeez Malik, MoslemNationalismin India and Pakistan(Washington,
D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1963);
3. Abd al-Qadir:Col. Paul Azan, L'EmirAbd el Kader 1808-1883 (Paris: LibrairieHachette,
1925); RaphaelDanziger,Abd al-Qadir and the Algerians (New York:Holmes and Meier, 1977).
There is a need of further study of these movements and the Senussis by historians with a
knowledge of the requisite languages and of Islamist movements elsewhere.
24 Peter Holt, The Mahdist State in the Sudan, 1881-1898: A
Study of its Origins, Developmentand Overthrow(New York:OxfordUniversityPress, 2nd ed., 1977); RudolphPeters, Islam
and Colonialism: The Doctrine of Jihad in Modern History (The Hague: Mouton, 1979).

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provide a model for these movements. It is strikinghow much movements in

disparategeographicalregions and without obvious ties to one anotherused
the same early Islamic models; most of them, for example, insist on women's
veiling and segregation. Such gender separationwas not only the result of
copying early Islambut also arose fromthe desire of these movementsto form
states. This was generally accompanied by a stratificationof classes and
gendersand by an ideology thatincludedthe observationof normsconsidered
Islamic. Often, from the eighteenthcenturydown throughthe Iranianrevolution, Islamic movementsbecame more lax and more centeredon the leader's
desires after they took power.
ISLAMIC REFORMISM

Fromthe late nineteenthcenturyuntil afterWorldWarII, the main intellectual

trendin the Muslim world was Islamic reformism,not militancy.Reformism
centered in differentareas and classes, especially the urbanintellectuals and
new middleclass. Althoughthis is an essay chiefly aboutmilitancy,it shouldbe
noted that most people whose works have been studiedin modem times have
taken a reformist ratherthan militant approach, especially as the militants
everywherewere defeatedmilitarilyby Westernarmsor were otherwiseunsuccessful until very recenttimes. The reformistsbelieved thatthey could achieve
strengthandindependenceonly by imitatingandnaturalizingWesternthought.
Fromsuch YoungOttomansas NamikKemalonward,earlyIslamicinjunctions
were reinterpretedto make them more in accord with Westernliberalism on
matters ranging from parliamentsto women's rights. Periodic backlashes
againstwesternizedmodernismtendedto come in responseto Westernaggressiveness, as in the dismembermentbetween 1878 and 1882 of the Ottoman
Empire and the occupationof Egypt and Tunisiaby Britain and France.25
The recent large-scale repudiationof modernism came in part because
Muslims were more inclinedthanothersto rejectthe Westand its ways, due to
the centuries-oldhostility between Christiansand Muslims, to the new obstacle of Israel, and to the failures of rule by Westernizedreformersor those
who called themselves reformers.
One person tied to reformism who has, nonetheless, remained popular,
largely because of his anti-imperialistmilitancy,is Sayyid Jamalal-Din "AlAfghani." He grew up in an Iranian Shi'i tradition that simultaneously
stressed rationalistphilosophy and Islamic theorizing. He had knowledge of
Shi'i strugglesand of the militanthereticalBabi movementin mid-nineteenth
century Iran and sensed the potential of militant Islamic identificationas a
wellspring of political action in the moder world. Afghani responded to
shifting moods. Until the early 1880s his writingswere nearly all in a liberal
and local nationalistvein, with a strong dose of Islamic modernismand of
25 See Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798-1939 (London: Oxford
University Press, 1962), 103.

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hostility to British colonialism. The latterfeaturestayed with him throughout

his career. After the major losses of 1878 to 1882 of Muslim lands to the
West, Afghani joined those who promotedpan-Islamicunity against Western
imperial conquerors.
Afghani, whose words were diffused in Arabic by his disciples, was a
particularlyinfluentialpan-Islamistbecause he tied pan-Islamismto a strong
stand against British encroachments in Muslim lands. Indeed, his antiimperialist,proto-third-worldistapproachmay be the most influentialelement
in Afghani's thought. This approach had increasing importance after his
death. It is significant that Afghani is the only major writer and speaker
popular with liberal and nationalistthinkerswho retains his popularitywith
today's Islamists.26
CONTEMPORARY

ISLAMISM

Above we have discussed threephases of Muslim thoughtand action since the

eighteenth century, all of which had a relationshipto Westernimperialism.
The early internaljihad movements of Sumatraand West Africa were in part
reactionsto a growthof tradewith a strongerWest, includingthe very unequal
slave trade. This trade helped change the internalclass structureof the affected countries, makingcertainareasripe for state buildingalong the lines of
the original state building of early Islam, while the end of the tradeproduced
furthersocioeconomic needs. NormativeIslam providedan appropriateideology for state formation.The next stage of jihad movementswas a more direct
response to French, British, Russian and Italiancolonial conquest, which in
severalperipheralareaswas respondedto by militantjihads. In the thirdphase
discussed, partly an outgrowth of Islamic modernism, such modernists as
Namik Kemal and Jamalal-Din ("Al-Afghani")respondedto a new wave of
Westernimperialistconquest by appealingto Muslim unity and revival as a
shield against furtherWesternconquest. Muslim unity was in large part a
means to regainterritory.Thoughthe appealof this line of thoughtnever died
completely among intellectualsand many rulers, it lost out in the first decades
of the twentieth century to various forms of secular nationalism, liberalism,
socialism, and communism. Before WorldWarII, there began a new sort of
Islamic political revival and organizationaimed once again at affirming a
vision of original Islam and lessening or getting rid of the political and
ideological influence of Westerncolonialists and neocolonialists in the Muslim world.
Contraryto the views of those who tie the contemporaryIslamic revival
mostly to IranianShi'ism, the first importantmoder revivalists were nonIranian Sunnis: Maududi and his followers in Muslim India, and later
26 See
especially introduction,"FromAfghani to Khomeini,"to the 1983 edition of Nikki R.
Keddie, An Islamic Responseto Imperialism:Political and Religious Writingsof SayyidJamal alDin "al-Afghani"(Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress,-1983).

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Pakistan, and Hassan al-Bannaand the original Muslim Brethrenin interwar

Egypt. The real expansionof these movementsis generallydated to the Arab
defeat in the 1967 Arab-Israeliwar, which discreditedthe hitherto popular
secular nationalistgovernmentof Gamal Abdel Nasser and also made many
Muslims think that the "Jewish"ideology of Israel helped their victory, so a
"Muslim"ideology would be similarlyhelpful. The increaseddiscreditingof
Western-typegovernmentsand the search for an untriedalternativeencouraged many to turn to the promise of Islamic rule. Significantly, Islamist
movements are strongest not in traditionalIslamic states like those of the
Arabianpeninsulabut in countriesthat have had and been disillusioned with
westernized governments:Iran, Algeria, Tunisia, and Egypt, in the Middle
East, for example. Islamism is in part a reactionagainst the failures of such
governments.
Much of Islamismis also militantlyanti-imperialistand anti-neocolonialist.
Often this is presented simply as a question of Muslim "fanaticism"and
"xenophobia."It is true that there is more vocal anti-Westernfeeling in the
Muslim world than in most other areas, partly because Islam brooks nonMuslim rule less than other traditions accept outsiders but also because
Muslim-Westernconflict and the Israeli and Palestine questions have a long
history. On the other hand, we must accept the probabilitythat many young
educated Muslims do not so much reject the West because they are Muslims
but, rather, become Islamists largely because they are hostile to Western
dominance. Islamists often come from the same groups and families and are
sometimes the same individuals,who once were nationalistsor even socialists
or communists.Disillusionmentwith secularsolutionshas as much to do with
practicalpolitical experienceas it does with religiosity.Resistanceto Western
culturaldomination, for example, is seen in the ex-communistIranianintellectual, Al-e Ahmad, whose famous treatise, Westoxication,became a central
text and led him to seek in Islam the solution to Iran's problems.27Similar
things happened elsewhere. So we can speak of radical anti-imperialism,
including culturalanti-imperialism,leading to Islamism as much as or more
than the other way around.
Such radical anti-imperialismwas one reason for the initial popularityof
Khomeiniamong non-Shi'i and even non-Muslimgroupsin the thirdworld. It
also helps account for his initial Iranianfollowing among anti-shahand antiimperialistsecularists,even of the left. Here I may reaffirmsomethingI noted
in one of the first articles I wrote over thirty years ago. It is difficult to
maintainintellectually a totally anti-imperialistand anti-Westernposition at
the same time as one puts forth a Western-basedideology, such as secular
27 Nikki R. Keddie, "WesternRule versus WesternValues: Suggestions for a Comparative
Study of Asian IntellectualHistory,"Diogenes, 26 (1959), 71-96.

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nationalism,liberalism, socialism, or communism.28To many people it seems

a contradictionto reject Westernways, especially as they are felt abroad,and
to adopt Westernviews. This has led to periodic revivals of neotraditionalist
movements, once it was a question of getting an anti-imperialistfollowing
among the more traditionalmasses and not just the educated. In India the
movementsof Tilak, Gandhi,and recentHindunationalismreflect this; and in
the Muslim world the variouspan-Islamicand Islamic revival movements do
the same.
The phases of modem Islamic militance have some common features but
are also diverse, changing from the peripheryto the center, from traditionalism to a kind of modernity,from indirect Westerninfluence to central antiimperialismand from appeal to tribal groups to appeal to the young, urban,
and educated. Islamic forms cover a great variety of contents. We have certainly not seen the last of Islamic permutationsand combinationsto meet the
conditions of an ever-changingworld.

28 The literatureon what those in the field

generally call Islamism is extensive and growing.
Among the most useful works are Nazih N. Ayubii, Political Islam (London:Routledge, 1991);
Said Amir Arjomand,ed., FromNationalismto RevolutionaryIslam (Albany:State Universityof
New YorkPress, 1984); HamidDabashi, Theologyof Discontent: TheIdeological Foundationsof
the Islamic Revolutionin Iran (New York:New YorkUniversity Press, 1993); JohnL. Esposito,
ed., Voices of Resurgent Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983); Michael M. J.
Fischer, Iran: From Religious Dispute to Revolution (Cambridge:HarvardUniversity Press,
1983); FredHalliday and HamzaAlavi, eds., State and Ideology in the MiddleEast and Pakistan
(London:Macmillan, 1988); the entire issue on "Islamand Politics," ThirdWorldQuarterly,10:2
(April 1988), 473-1103; Gilles Kepel, Le propheteet pharaon: Les mouvementsislamistes dans
I'Egypte contemporain (Paris: Seuil, 1990), Imam Khomeini, Islam and Revolution, Hamid
Algar, trans. (Berkeley: Mizan Press, 1981); MartinMarty and R. Scott Appleby, eds., Fundamentalisms Observed, 4 vols. to date (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1991-93); Edward
Mortimer,Faith and Power: The Politics of Islam (New York:RandomHouse, 1982); Maxime
Rodinson, L'Islampolitique et croyance (Paris:Fayard, 1993); EmmanuelSivan, Radical Islam:
Medieval Theology and Modern Politics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985); Sami
Zubaida, Islam, the People, and the State (London: Routledge, 1989).