The fundamentalism of the religious discourse

As soon as a terrorist incident occurs in Egypt, calls are invoked for a renewal of religious discourse. The official institutions, whether in Egypt or other countries, rarely miss a chance to reiterate and reaffirm the importance of this renewal and the need for it as an important step in the fight against extremist ideology.

Although all elites, whether religious or ideological, agree in principle on the importance of renewing religious discourse, they have sharp differences in their views on how to put the concept into practice, which allows extremist terrorist organizations to constantly disseminate their destructive ideas and principles.

The renewal of the religious discourse in Egypt

First, discourse must be defined. From the linguistic point of view, discourse is defined by Arab linguists as "the reiteration of speech involving address and conversation, and conversation is the interactive aspect of discourse.” However, in terminology it is defined as “delivering ideas to others through the comprehensible speech, with language used as a tool for discourse, as it serves as a vessel of ideas.”

Meanwhile, there is radical disagreement over the concept of renewal, as there are two perspectives regarding its definition: the perspective of tradition and the perspective of ijtihad (independent reasoning).

From the perspective of tradition, the process of renewing the religious discourse is to restore religion to its maturity, splendor and glory, and to revive all its traditions and features, bringing back the ceased statutes and removing all distortions and deviant concepts in order to restructure the Muslim's awareness. This perspective is generally adopted by radical groups.

On the other hand, there is another perspective that believes the renewal of the discourse is through opening the door of ijtihad, employing the mind, liberation from the control of some interpretations of religious texts, and wider openness to other civilizations. Supporters of this perspective include the intellectuals of the Egyptian liberal movement, which began in the era of Mohammed Ali and continues to this day.

The intellectual conflict between the two schools of thought has continued over the past two centuries. However, this has not prevented the emergence of many intellectual attempts that try to combine the two schools, where adherence to religious constants such as prayer and fasting is combined with the application of ijtihad in many matters concerning daily affairs and community life.

Trends of religious discourse

Reflecting on the reality of religious discourse, its diversity is understood by five prominent types:

1. Institutional discourse

This typeof discourse is issued by the official religious institutions of the state, through which the government and the political system try to convey some religious concepts to the people, such as obedience to the ruler and the inadmissibility of attacking the ruler. The state often uses this type of discourse to criticize political opponents, and the positions taken by the official religious institutions towards major problems that shake the political system are supported by the state.

The official religious institutions produce this religious discourse by relying on a number of tools, including control of mosques, schools, and institutes for the preparation of religious cadres. This type of discourse is characterized by certain features, most notably its identification with the state’s political discourse.

2. Radical extremist discourse

On the other side of the official discourse, the radical extremist discourse stands opposed not only to the state but also to the society, seeking a return of the application of Islamic law and a revival of the Islamic caliphate. This type of discourse is embraced by many religious groups engaged in politics. They seek opportunities to acquire power and governance, resorting to making takfir against the society and ruler, and they do not hesitate to use violence to achieve their goals. The most prominent of these groups are the Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS and al-Qaeda.

Extremist groups rely on many tools, including charity and relief activities, to spread their ideology. They also harness technology through the use of satellite channels and social media. Most satellite channels serving as a mouthpiece for the Muslim Brotherhood are exported from Turkey, and Qatar’s Al-Jazeera channel has been promoting terrorist leaders for years.

This type of discourse has certain characteristics, most notably:

– Claiming righteousness: These groups claim to seek to reform the conditions of the Muslims and lift them out of injustice. Their discourse is usually accompanied by some practical action, such as engaging in relief and charitable work in order to attract more adherents, especially among students and the marginalized, thus spreading their ideas.

– Nostalgia: According to this type of discourse, the Arab and Islamic worlds are living in a state of civilizational and cultural decline after centuries of civilizational and cultural enlightenment during the Middle Ages. This reflects a state of frustration in the hearts of many, and extremist groups try to claim that the decline of Islamic and Arab civilization is due to people’s distance from the true religion and that the nation must therefore revive the religious obligations in order to return to its past glory.

– Exploiting crises: The extremist discourse always resorts to exploiting political and social crises by placating religious and national feelings. This was recently witnessed when extremist groups exploited the incident of the US transferring its embassy to Jerusalem.

– Secrecy: Most extremist groups throughout history have operated under secrecy since they work to antagonize the existing systems and communities. They thus resort to secrecy and confidentiality in the beginning before reaching an advanced stage of empowerment with which to confront.

– Claiming exclusivity and salvation: Those who embrace this type of discourse usually resort to claiming exclusivity that they alone are responsible for matters of religion and the Islamic nation and its interests, and they alone will gain salvation.

– Division: As exaggeration and extremism are among the main features of this type of discourse, its advocates become more extreme, and thus divisions occur within the extremist groups. This was witnessed with the dispute between al-Qaeda and ISIS.

– Shedding blood: Extremists do not hesitate to shed blood in order to implement their rhetoric, on the grounds that it is jihad for the sake of God. They justify killing innocents under many pretexts, most notably that society is infidel and may be fought in order to establish God’s law.

3. Behavioral discourse

In parallel to radical discourse is another religious discourse similar to extremism, the behavioral discourse, but it does not resort to violence as a means to achieve its goals, instead working to appease the government to achieve security in the practice of sectarian rhetoric.

Religious texts are followed without the mind coming to a realization and understanding of the legitimate purposes of these texts. Those who embrace this type of discourse are dominated by a serious concern for formalities and rituals without any attention to the inner aspects of the religion.

This type of discourse is based on sectarianism and intolerance. A good example of this is the position of the Salafis against the Sufis, believing that they are worshipers of graves and that the mausoleums must be destroyed.

4. Sufi discourse

Sufism focuses on the moral and emotional side of the religion, seeking to reform the hearts and struggle against the soul. Sufis rely on and are bound by the Quran and Sunnah, free from any intellectual or behavioral deviations, heresies, or myths that are incompatible with the principles of the religion.

The Sufis did not have any political orientations before the Arab Spring, but following those events talk began about the political role of the Sufi movements. However, they are still weak politically so far.

It is worth mentioning that Sufism has been pointed to as in important component to confront takfirist groups in the face of terrorism. Therefore, many Arab and Islamic countries have begun to establish Sufi currents to counter terrorism.

5. Secularization of the religious discourse

Secularization embraces the universal values ​​that include the culture of democracy, citizenship and human rights. There is a belief in the civil state and a respect for the various constitutional legislations and codes of law. Secularists seek to transform the mosque into a body subject to the "values ​​system" created by the secular system, along with everything that stems from it, including behavior and laws, an imbalance in social relations at various levels, and the breaking of religion’s monopoly on the system of social values.

Towards a clearer vision for handling the religious discourse

Moderate discourse is a constructive concept based on assimilating attitudes, opinions, ideas and commitment to religion, and then coming out with a vision and idea that combines the virtues and develops the ideas and attitudes. It is a continuous dialectic process in the assimilation of the past and the novelty of the present. What is today novel and moderate will tomorrow be a legacy subject to trial and review. Thus, the process of reviewing and searching for the truth continues, and what is more right.

This type of discourse is based on the principle of religious assimilation with the application of reason. As the Iranian intellectual Ali Shariati explained, Islam is based on “deen” (dogmatic religion) and “marifah” (true spiritual knowledge). Deen, or religion, here refers to the fixed Quranic texts that are not altered or distorted, and we are committed to its literal application.

Meanwhile, marifah, or definitive knowledge, refers to our understanding and realization of the Islamic religion and its essence, as our understanding differs from one individual to another and from one time to another. A good example of this is Imam Shafi'i, whose jurisprudential opinions and writings changed when he came to Egypt from Iraq because of the different environments.

In the end, this type of discourse is based on tolerance, friendliness and good relations with the other, without extremism.

In order to reach a developed religious discourse, we must first develop religious education by developing the religious curricula and linking it to issues of concern to our societies, such as environmental issues and women's rights.