Introduction.

Especially after September 11, the scholars working within the disciplinary area of Islamic and Arabic Studies have been engaged in a massive process of theoretical reconfiguration. In this context, the urgent need to configurate a hermeneutically informed critique of religiously justified violence seems to constitute an important analytical challenge for the contemporary study of Islam. My paper seeks to provide an analytical sketch for a possible phenomenology of violence within the Islamic Fundamentalist paradigm, by comparing two important textual codifications of radical violence: The Neglected Duty by Abd al Salam Faraj and The Catechism of a Revolutionary by Sergei Nachaev. I seek to demonstrate not only that a basic structure of similarities is at play here but also that the fundamentalist and the nihilist violence is two complementary sides of a larger conceptual category of violence. 1. Two Catechisms of Violence. Towards a common violent forma mentis? Arguably, the Neglected Duty and the Catechism of a Revolutionary are two seminal textual constructions produced in the last two centuries in the space of the radical thought. Sergei Nachaevs text, written in exile in 1869 represents a model for the entire paradigm of modern political extremism, while al-Faridah al-Gha'ibah/The Neglected Duty, published in 1981 has been considered one of the blue prints of the contemporary Sunni Islamic radicalism. Both texts could be regarded as catechisms of violence, as concise and powerful distillations of a diffuse revolutionary ferment into a coherent and persuasive rhetorical constructions, designed to capture and instrumentalize the capital of social and political discontent. In this context, seen from the outsider perspective, both texts appear to have

in common an almost incomprehensible radical inversion of conventional vision on life, society and ethical action. The extreme violence is not only justified but it is raised to the status of ultimate standard of moral excellence. The recourse to violence is not regarded as the last resort solution but as the only morally acceptable instrument of political change and as an individual duty, which transcends all alternative socially determined axiological values. The revolutionary despises public opinion. He despises and hates the existing social morality in all its manifestations. For him, morality is everything, which contributes to the triumph of the revolution. Immoral and criminal is everything that stands in its way. For Nachaev, the real revolutionary has no other frames of belonging than his revolutionary group and no loyalties except the ideal of buntarstvo (explosive release of all destructive powers channeled by a rutless professional revolutionaries) He is not a revolutionary if he has any sympathy for this world. He must hate everyone and everything in it with an equal hatred. All the worse for him if he has any relations with parents, friends, or lovers; he is no longer a revolutionary if he is swayed by these relationships. The mystique of revolutionary violence provided a new beginning and a novel frame of belonging. The revolutionary is a doomed man. He has no personal interests, no business affairs, no emotions, no attachments, no property, and no name. Everything in him is wholly absorbed in the single thought and the single passion for revolution At the other end of the spectrum, Faraj, by concentrating the reading of Jihad to a single focal point: the violent destruction of corrupted political leaders of Egypt, removes all traditional restrictive conditions associated with a classical definition of Jihad. Being

assimilated with prayer and fasting, the Jihad is transformed from a collective duty ( fard al-kifaya) into individual duty (fard al-ayn), and therefore escapes all legal and moral constraints. No parental permission is necessary and all forms of violence (deceit, lying, attacking without warning, killing the dependents of the infidels) are acceptable if the jihad is conducted exclusively for making Gods religion reign supreme. For Faraj, the only true Islamic definition of Jihad (the one that has been progressively neglected and obscured by the Ulama) is fighting, confrontation and blood. Accordingly, the famous dichotomy between Jihad al-Asghar and Jihad al-Akbar is rejected as a complete fabrication, created by Ulama in order to devaluate the Jihad with sword against the infidels and hypocrites. When all modern accretions and all parasitical senses (pietistic and dawacentered) are brushed aside, the single, canonical sense of Jihad is revealed in its full rigor by the famous Quranic ayat as-saif (verses of the sword) 9:5 and 9:123. Islam was spread by military action and it will be reinforced once again through a violence purified by faith and assumed as the normal individual destiny of the real believer. Islam was spread by the sword and under the very eyes of those leaders of unbelief who conceal it from mankind. After the removal of those leaders, nobody has an aversion to Islam . This is- in Farajs view- the genuine Jihad now buried under layers of scholarship and scholastic sophistication. 2. Toward an axiomatic of action and a cult of direct action. The antiintellectualist ethos in Faraj and Nachaevs theory of violence. The second common trait between The Catechism of a Revolutionary and the

Neglected Duty is a distinct anti-speculative dimension. For both Faraj and Nachaev, the split between theory and direct action should be dissolved as a mandatory step for a successful radical political change. Moreover, the order of discourse represents nothing more than a propaedeutic for action. Its aim is not to create an ideological system or a new philosophical model but to lead to the birth of a revolutionary prototype (Nachaev) and to a reinvention of the Islamic martyr (Faraj). Furthermore, since both catechisms were created as textual expressions of specific extremist organizations- Narodnaya Rasprava in the case of Nachaev and Jama'at al-Jihad in the case of Abd al-Salam Faraja programmatic critical dimension oriented against passivity and theory oriented visions is pervasive. Sergei Nachaev emphasizes in several occasions that real nihilism is not a mere philosophical current organized around radical scientism, positivism and utilitarianism, but a doctrine of total destruction where the distinction between thought and action is dissolved into a new revolutionary ethos: Aimless propaganda not setting forth a definite time and place for the realization of the goals of the revolution are no longer neededWe lost faith in words. Words have significance for us only when actions follow immediately after them. Consequently, Nachaev sharply criticizes the propensity of the Russian intelligentsia for theoretical configurations and for endless doctrinal confrontations as mere scholasticism or even more brutal as spiritual onanism. In the case of Abd al-Salam Faraj, the critique of intellectualized Islam is focused against the Ulama, which tamed the radical dimension of Jihad by transforming it into a theoretical concept by equating it with either dawa or with the quest for knowledge. According to Faraj, both equations are in effect bidah (innovations).

Since the ultimate objective is the creation of an Islamic state and an Islamic community of faith, the acts of devotion and dawaa cannot replace jihad as an instrument of radical change. Dawa remains important as a call to embrace Islam as a whole but it is unable to provide the necessary tools for effacing the all-embracing Kufr system. Moreover, Jihad is primarily the obligation to fight for God ( qital fi-sabillah) and it cannot be assimilated with a collective duty such as the quest for knowledge: Scholarship is not decisive weapon which will radically put an end to paganism. This can only be done with the weapon the Lord mentioned in His word Fight them, and God will punish them at your hands (Quran 9:14) According to Faraj, Islam does not need new or actualized ideological terminology or a novel lexicon. Jihad purified from all scholastic weight and freed from the grip of the powerless Ulama, is sufficient for a reinforcement of Islam in all aspects of the life-world. For Faraj as well as for Nachaev, the speculative dimension is more a luxury of thought which can derail the course of revolutionary action. In other words, the acute sense of urgency and the focus on praxis prevail over any doctrinal constructions. 3. Two convergent visions on Tyrannicide: political assassination and the Internal Jihad. Perhaps the most discernable common ground between al-Faridah al-Gha'ibah and The Catechism of a Revolutionary resides in the fact that both of them are essentially open apologies for political assassination. The violence-that infuses the entire textual architectures- is in my opinion neither a disjecta membra, nor an irrational, incoherent expression of a pathological world-view. On the contrary, the violence professed by Faraj and Nachaev might be better understood through a well-established conceptual

category of political theory: the tyrannicide. Fro here it extracts its legitimacy and the rhetorical force. The physical elimination of the corrupted leader could serve as the master key for decrypting the entire concept of revolutionary violence in both Islamist and Nihilist readings. The cornerstone of Nachaevs Catechism is arguably the thesis of the Tsaricide. The assassination of the Tsar, made necessary by the complete and irreversible corruption of the entire political class represents the essential aim of the revolutionary work of destruction. However, the elimination of the Tsar is just the trigger of a larger process of making tabula rasa of all Russian political system: Anything must be destroyed, a person, a thing, an institution, anything which appeared to stand in the way of freeing the people The only form of revolution beneficial to the people is one which destroys the entire State to the roots and exterminated all the state traditions, institutions, and classes in Russia. Our task is terrible, total, universal, and merciless destruction.

No negotiation, no compromises are possible with a system based on systematic injustice, vileness and abuse, which transformed the social life into a kingdom of the mad. The total destruction of the mundane order will bring the chaos from which the new and pure order of a classless society will emerge. But in order to reach the revolutionary paradise, the price of death should be paid in full. The mystique of violence and death is gradually transformed in an old fashion political Jacobinism. In Abd al-Salam Farajs text, the concept of internal Jihad against the unjust ruler is the instrumental category in what might be called the Islamic version of Tyrannicid.

For the author of al-Faridah al-Gha'ibah, the transformation of Dar al-Islam into Dar alKufr has become irreversible and political leaders of Egypt are de facto et de jure in the state of Apostasy from Islam. The state of Egypt in which we live today is rulled by the laws of Unbelief, although the majority of the inhabitants are Muslims Accordingly, once established, the state of Apostasy should be punish by death. It should be noticed here that this vision is not necessarily an ideological deformation of a classical concept but the reaffirmation of a traditional view shared-with few exception- by the interpretative and jurisprudential tradition of classical Islam. In this context Faraj employs as normative Ibn Taymiahs and Ibn Kahtirs views on apostasy: An apostate has to be killed in all circumstances . The persuasive force of Farajs message and the cause of its perennity resides in the capacity to provide a radical and contextualized reinterpretation of the classical concept of internal jihad. Since Anwar al-Sadat derives his authority from a legal order other then Sharia, refuses to enforce the jyzia, and the jihad, and introduces bidah into the established moral code of Islam, he officially ceases to be the Guardian of the Faith. Consequently, all bonds of loyalty (mandatory for the Muslim community) are dissolved. Moreover, since the definition of the Islamic State is the state that is ruled exclusively by the laws of Islam, the pledge of allegiance claimed by the political leaders of Egypt is according to Faraj nothing more than a deception and a blunt ideological manipulation. The rulers take advantage of the nationalist ideology in order to realize their un-Islamic aims by giving them an Islamic appearance. One of the three situations that make the Jihad an individual duty is when infidels invade the Muslim land, and for Faraj, the internal jihad against an unjust leader and the

external jihad against the infidels are in effect complementary With regard to the lands of Islam, the enemy lives right in the middle of them. The enemy even has got hold of the reigns of power, for this enemy is none other then these rulers who have illegally seized the leadership of the Muslims. Combining the entire spectrum of negative classical terms: munafiq (hypocrite), the apostasy (irtad), the forger (muftarin), taghut and shirk, the corrupted leader is considered ab initio beyond repentance and the only solution remains immediate punishment by death There is no doubt that the first battlefield of jihad is the extermination of those infidel leaders and to replace them by a complete Islamic order. From here, we should start. Instead of conclusion. Law-making violence versus Law-preserving violence. Conflict of conciliation? From my perspective, the real difference between Nachaev and Faraj resides, beyond and above the distinction: secular /religious in the same concept of violence. What makes them akin also sets them apart. In 1921, Walter Benjamin in his essay A Critique of Violence coined a dichotomy between the law-making violence and lawpreserving violence that could constitute one of the most important analytical frameworks for the study of contemporary political violence. My conjecture is that this conceptual couple is applicable in the case of nihilism and fundamentalism. Nachaevs theory could be regarded as pure and immediate violence functioning outside the established law. It seeks to create a new law, by radically destroying all systems of values and transforming the status quo into a perfect tabula rasa. It is a creative violence designed to inaugurate a pure ontological and political sphere. In this effect, it remains a mythical, power making violence: the executive violence of omni

destruction. On the other hand, in Farajs case, we have at play a law-preserving violence design to restore a purely Islamic system and organized as a violent re-establishment of an initial contract between God and His community. Farajs conceptualization of

violence implies a regressive movement, searching within the interpretative corpus of Islam canonical positions that can validate his radical view. Using jihad as the metacategory, Faraj justifies violence through the key element of the divine contract. Since the prescribed contract between the leader and his community under Shariah is broken by unbelief and oppression, and the minority of true believers has the right, and more importantly, the duty to take recourse of violence against the transgressors, in order restore Gods law on earth. Farajs hermeneutics of violence is not creative but transformative; it starts from canonical fundaments and rejects the corrupted present through the lens of a pristine golden age of Islam. However, as Benjamin emphasizes, both law-making and law-preserving violence are equally pernicious and dangerous. The assassinations of the Tsar Alexander II in 1881 and the violent death of the Egyptian president exactly one hundred years later are the proofs of the dangerous extra-textual dimension of the two Catechisms of violence analyzed briefly by this paper. And the contemporary disciplinary field of Islamic Studies cannot ignore this dangerous dimension without the risk of losing its essential critical edge.

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