Apart from a few early studies, scholarship on Islamism took off in the 1980s, due to political developments. The Iranian revolution of 1979 made it clear that Islamism was a force to be reckoned with in political life. The Jihadist assassination of President Anwar al-Sadat in 1981 further demonstrated that Islamism was to be found in both a Shia and a Sunni variety. On the Sunni side, some of the early books such as Gilles Kepel’s Le Prophéte et Pharaon (1985) and Emmanuel Sivan’s Radical Islam (1985) traced the violent strains in Sunni Islamism back to ideological splits within the Muslim Brotherhood (henceforth MB) movement. These authors rightly noted that jihadism was a product of political struggles and cultural wars in the recently independent Muslim countries. A massive literature on Islamism emerged, with particular interest in the performance of Islamist parties, and the classical figures of Islamism such as Sayyid Qutb.
With continued jihadist eruptions over the next decades, it is perhaps inevitable that extremism and violence remained central in the scholarly treatment of Sunni Islamism. The fact that, from the 1980s, Islamist thinkers and organizations such as the MB had also moved in an opposite direction, towards more democratic positions, was only fully appreciated in scholarship after the turn of the millennium. Gudrun Krämer’s Gottesstaat als Republik (1999), Raymond Baker’s Islam without Fear: Egypt and the New Islamists (2003), and Bruce Rutherford’s Egypt after Mubarak: Liberalism, Islam, and Democracy in the Arab World (2008) set out to study this pro-democracy trend among Islamists in Egypt.
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These studies identified a group of interlinked revisionist authors who had opened a discussion about the features and institutions of a future Sunni Islamist states. These authors—the lawyer Muhammad Salim al-Awwa, the judge Tariq al-Bishri, the journalist Fahmy al-Huwaydi, the politician Kamal Abul-Magd, and the writer Muhammad Imara—were not members of the MB. But they had links to it and inspired the members who worked in politics and were elected to parliament. More importantly, they inspired the classical Muslim scholar (`alim) Yusuf al-Qaradawi (1926-2022) who in the 1990s through his program Sharia and Life on the al-Jazeera television channel clearly became the most authoritative Sunni Islamist scholar in the Arab world. In books such as The Jurisprudence of the State in Islam, Qaradawi began to espouse similar ideas (al-Qaradawi, 1997). Al-Qaradawi had grown up as an active member of the MB but left it as he preferred to be an independent scholar. He remained, however, closely connected and influential within it. According to his memoirs, he was invited by the MB to become its leader (Qaradawi 2010:43).
Ultimately, the revisionist authors were successful. In the 1990s, a splinter group from the MB sets up its own party, the Hizb al-Wasat (“Party of the Middle Way”) employing much of their vocabulary (Utvik 2005). A few years later, in 2007, the MB itself issued a “party program” for the party it was not allowed to set up. This program stated clearly that while sovereignty ultimately belongs to God, He has delegated man to govern his own affairs. The sovereignty of the people, parliamentarism, the division of the powers, and the day-to-day rule of man-made laws were thus recognized as the basis of politics, and the MB’s party, if it were to be allowed, would contest on this basis in a so-called “civic state.” However, the fact that an even more liberal version of the program had been leaked a month before the publication of the MB program pointed to a heavy contestation inside the MB. Critical observers raised the question of just how profound was the revision and how deep were the new ideas rooted inside the organization. Leading Egyptian critics of the MB, such as the head of the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, Abdel Moneim al-Said, considered the new emphasis of a “civic state” a ruse set up to catch attention and recognition while avoiding harder revisions of the Islamist ideological base (Said, 2007).
This is an easy claim to make, not least in a state which itself was only superficially democratic; despite a seemingly democratic set up with parliament, parties, press, and constitutional freedoms, underneath Egypt was ruled by its president as an autocracy. Even so, Said and other critics could well be right; the very authoritarian character of Mubarak’s rule made it easy for the MB to appear as democratic, and its leadership must have been fairly convinced that their democratic posture would not be tested in real life. As it happened, such a testing moment occurred only 4 years later when the revolution changed their fortunes.
This paper will try to pursue a new way to gauge the depth of MB democratic revisionism by analyzing a genre of literature which is relevant in so far as it is being studied by new members of the MB in its basic cells, the usra (family) where an ideological indoctrination takes place. The study of the Prophet’s life, the sira, is a stable element in this training, and so far as I have been informed by former Muslim Brothers, they read this literature as reformulated by important MB authors. The sira is generally of secondary relevance to the new democratic thought of Islamists. But there are a couple of incidents in the Prophet Muhammad’s life which are reinterpreted by the new Islamists. The question is therefore as follows: how are these incidents interpreted in the instructional literature of the MB?
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The sira in the work of the revisionist Islamist thinkers
The revisionist Islamist thinkers embraced an idea of popular sovereignty, parliamentarism, political pluralism, and contestation. Islam was, of course, still relevant, often in the phrase “a civil state with an Islamic reference.” This reference to the Sharia as a set of unspecified broader principles rather than a full-fledged law is what has made scholars such as Wagemakers refer to them as “Post-Islamists” (Wagemakers 2022:176-78). They dismissed the idea of non-Muslim Christians and Jews as subordinate, protected people (ahl al-dhimma), and spoke for a right of citizenship (muwatana) to all, including non-Muslims and women. A “civil state” precluded an authoritarian, military, or clerical state but placed all citizens as having a say in the running of the state through parliamentary democracy. It was, however, not a secular state, either; its democracy was to be based on the principles of Islam as enshrined in the Constitution. This would mean that legislation that contradicted the Sharia could be taken to court and annulled. Despite assurances to the contrary, the political framework would be if not the laws then the norms of the religion of the majority (Skovgaard-Petersen 2017:331, 334).
Nevertheless, the revisionist thinkers clearly adopted an idea of participatory politics for all, and they considered the “Islamic reference” a foundation of changeable norms, rather than fixed dogma. This was clearly in tune with many other Egyptians’ political convictions, not to mention with the majority of Muslim states around the world, which were constitutional democracies, at least on paper. The novelty was that this thinking was coming from the Islamist movement itself. In the late 1930s, the Muslim Brotherhood had adopted the slogan “Islam is religion and state,” and since then, Islamists had defined themselves in opposition to secularism. Introducing the “civil state” (dawla madaniya), these revisionist thinkers believed that they could adopt democratic political institutions while preserving an Islamic imprint on their policies. In order to do so, they would be required to make an argument based on Islamic sources.
This is where the Prophet’s sira comes in. In classical Islamic sources, Muhammad led a model life that must be emulated as Sunna. The hadith collections have recorded in minute detail what Muhammad said and did, but very fragmented, not so with the sira. As the recorded Muslim narrative of the Prophet Muhammad’s life, it is also the main source of information on his reign in Medina. While the Qur’an is God’s word about God’s rule on earth, the sira gives contextual information on Muhammad’s implementation of God’s rule in a particular locality and polity. Hence, to the Islamist revisionist thinkers, the sira provides information about the Prophet’s style of governance and guiding principles. This lends authority to their claims to a civil state which is not secularist, but still democratic, at least in the sense of being based on public deliberation, elections, and parliamentarianism.
The centerpiece in this reading of the sira is the so-called Medina Constitution, a written agreement between Muhammad and the tribes of Medina soon after his arrival in the town (then known as Yathrib). This agreement is quoted in the sira of ibn Hisham (d. 820) and later historians, but it seems to have been of little interest to Muslim rulers and scholars until the late nineteenth century when it was “rediscovered” by the German Orientalist Julius Wellhausen. Based on analyses of its language and style, modern scholarship has tended to consider it very old, possibly dating back to Muhammad’s time and probably being an amalgamation of several minor agreements (Humphreys 1995:91-103). As Lecker points out, it is a treaty between tribes and not a constitution in the proper sense of the word (Lecker, 2012). But Arjomand is surely right that the modern title of constitution has greatly enhanced its popularity in the twentieth century (Arjoman 2009:555-56). In 1935, the Indian Muslim scholar Muhammad Hamidullah (1908-2002) pioneered a study of Muhammad’s diplomacy and the documents related to it, and in a separate volume the following year, he introduced the Medina document as “The Oldest Written Constitution in the World” (Hamidullah, 1936). Also in 1935, the Egyptian journalist Muhammad Hussein Haykal in his famous “Life of Muhammad” considered the treaty a “one of the most remarkable political documents in history” (Haykal 2017:226). The idea of a Medina Constitution gained new relevance after the Iranian revolution when Sunni Islamists began discussing the feasibility of a Sunni constitution, and other studies disseminated the idea of a Muslim tradition of constitutionalism dating back to the Prophet Muhammad himself (Warren & Gilmore 2014:226).
The attraction of the Medina Constitution to the Islamist revisionists is clear. In their eyes, it authorizes constitutionalism, all the while it states that the final decision lies with God and Muhammad. Moreover, it operates with mutual obligations and equality of all members of the community, called umma, and that community includes the Jewish and pagan tribes of Medina. Contrary to historical Muslim practice and earlier Islamist thinking, which maintained a sharp division between the Muslim umma and non-Muslim dhimmis (“protected people”), the Medina Constitution incorporates non-Muslims and even polytheists as equal citizens in the umma. To the revisionists of the 1980s, this incorporation of the non-Muslims should be extended to a future Islamic state. Yusuf al-Qaradawi, too, promoted the idea that Medina was the model for Dar al-Islam and the document was therefore truly a blueprint for future Muslim states (al-Qaradawi 1997:13). In a later book on the Islamic concept of citizenship, he explained that the Medina Constitution operates with four meanings of umma: a confessional, a political, a geographical, and a social. This allows for the formation of a politico-geographical community, a state, inhabited by people of different faiths, but with equal political rights (Warren & Gilmore 2014:226-27). Al-Qaradawi concludes that “The Islamic state established by the Medina document is not synonymous with a state for the Muslims; rather, the state is called ‘Islamic’ in terms of its dominance and its authoritative reference [marja`iyya]. Apart from that it is a state for Muslims and non-Muslims alike, governed by the law of Islam.” (Al-Qaradawi 2010b:33). This is the formula of the “civil state with an Islamic reference” adopted by the Freedom and Justice Party in its program in 2011.
Another event worth looking at in the Islamist siras is the so-called “Farewell Sermon” (khutbat al-wadda`) delivered by Muhammad during his last pilgrimage. Like the Medina Constitution, it is a long and repetitive text in need of some explanation and comment. At one point, it stresses a notion of a common humanity all derived from Adam and Eva and rejects any discrimination between Arab and non-Arab and between black and white. The modernist Muhammad Hussein Haykal in his “Muhammad’s Life” gave a vivid depiction of this historical moment when the religion had become completed and Muhammad addressed not just his audience but a coming civilization, indeed humanity (Haykal 2017:456-58). This was taken up in the famous film about the life of the Prophet, al-Risala (“The Message”, 1976), where Muhammad addresses “mankind” while the camera pans over a motley assembly of men and women, white and black, young and old, later moving on to pictures of Alhambra and other masterpieces of Islamic civilization. Although less concrete than the Constitution of Medina, the Farewell Sermon has thus provided an opportunity to stress the notion of a shared humanity, also between Muslims and non-Muslims.
The Muslim Brotherhood siras
Becoming a member of the MB is not simply a case of registering; rather, it is the brothers themselves who identify prospects and observe them for some time, before they invite them to join. This requires participation in instructions, prayer, and training in a small cell, called the family (usra) (Al-Anani 2016:87-88). As noted, studying the life and works of the Prophet Muhammad is a stable feature of the internal education in the usra. In a long exposé of its educational philosophy (tarbiyya) on its website Ikhwanwiki, the MB stresses the importance of the study of the Prophet’s life at various levels of its program, in order to make it serve as a practical model for Muslim work today. Muslim “sisters” are particularly encouraged to study the Prophet’s wives who are the “mothers of the believers.” Internal instructors are also advised to study the example of Muhammad’s preaching and call to Islam (da`wa) (Ikhwanwiki, n.d.).
The instruction in the family is not a study of historical sources. It is concentrated on reading the Muslim Brotherhood’s own educational material, in particular the treatises of Hassan al-Banna. Hence, the sira is studied through the writings of modern Islamist authors. Former brothers have pointed to three such books: Mustafa al-Siba`i’s al-Sira al-nabawiya. Durus wa `ibar, Muhammad al-Ghazzali’s Fiqh al-sira, and Ali al-Sallabi’s al-sira al-nabawiya. `Ard waqa’i` wa tahlil ahdath. Mustafa al-Siba`i (1915-64) was the founder and leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria; his sira is a collection of lessons he gave at the Sharia Faculty in Damascus and published posthumously in 1970. Muhammad al-Ghazzali (1917-96) was one of the leading ulama members of the Muslim Brothers but left it in 1953 and criticized its new leadership harshly. Nevertheless, he remained a popular preacher and much admired in MB circles (Tammam 2009:77). Al-Ghazzali’s sira seems to have been written already in the 1950s but went through several revisions and editions; I quote from the edition of 1989, when Egyptian MB organized mass gatherings at the `id with al-Ghazzali as the preacher. Finally, Ali al-Sallabi (b. 1963) is a Libyan Islamist politician and historian and an associate of Yusuf al-Qaradawi. His sira is from 2001.
What makes these siras stand apart from classical or ordinary modern siras is their insistence that the reader should learn practical lessons from the Prophet’s life. Hence, each episode ends with a section of lessons and advice to the contemporary Muslim activist. Like so much of the other Muslim Brotherhood literature, this is tarbiyya, in the sense of ideological training. This format provides an opportunity to draw political lessons from Muhammad’s struggles. We shall therefore look into the lessons derived from Muhammad’s rise to power and his governance in Medina, in particular, the treatment of the agreement with the Medinan tribes and his Farewell Sermon.
Mustafa al-Siba`i
Addressed to the Muslim missionary (al-da`i) and summing up basic “lessons,” Mustafa al-Sibai’s sira has all the hallmarks of an MB tarbiyya text. The chapters follow chronology of Muhammad’s life, but there is little interest in details, characters or sacred moments, and beloved elements such as the cleansing of Muhammad’s heart by angels is omitted. Instead, we see a man with a mission, willing to sacrifice his life to execute God’s will. The Prophet himself was a da`i. Muhammad spoke plainly, concentrated on his mission among the poor, and did not seek material gain.
And in Medina, he became a statesman. The chapters on Muhammad’s emigration and arrival in Medina show him as a far-thinking politician, and the lessons conclude that he founded a nuclear state that can serve as an inspiration for Muslims, even given the differences to a modern state, as it is focused on social justice, pious collaboration, and serving the people (Al-Siba’i n.d.:76). The Constitution of Medina is summarized with lessons for modern readers (Al-Siba’i n.d.:65-66). It is not named a constitution but is considered a blueprint for a modern state. That state makes rooms for Jews and allows them to maintain their religion, as long as they cooperate with the Muslims, also in military matters—something the Jews later failed to do and were punished accordingly. Produced in Syria in the 1960s, the text is markedly anti-Jewish (Roded 2006:866). Earlier modern siras such as that by Haykal from 1935 excused Muhammad’s later treatment of the Jews of Medina by stating that this was the type of war conducted at the time. Al-Siba`i and later Islamist authors tend to defend his expulsion and killing of Jewish tribes as the right thing to do. While thus stressing the incorporation of the Jews in Medina, al-Siba`i treats it as a generous gesture which they shamefully betrayed. And he omits the point that the document considers them part of the umma. Instead, they are seen as ahl al-dhimma.
The Islamist character of al-Siba’i’s sira is also discernible in a later episode, that of the Farewell Sermon (khutbat al-wadda`). Al-Siba`i also considers it a message for all times, but specifically to the Muslims. In his rendering, however, it is addressed to the nascent community which he marvels already counts no less than 114,000 souls. Achieving this within a time span of just 23 years was truly miraculous, he asserts, and a proof that Islam’s message was stronger than that of any other religion (Al-Siba’i n.d.:166-67).
Muhammad al-Ghazzali
Al-Ghazzali’s Fiqh al-sira (“jurisprudence of the sira”) is also a sira with lessons to the committed Muslim (al-Muslim al-multazim) the number of which is far from impressive; he reports how the city of Medina today is full of Muslims who worship Muhammad when in fact they ought to go home to their countries, find a vocation, and work for the success of Islam (Al-Ghazzali 1989:7). The book is much more stern and polemical, mainly against Muslims.
Fiqh al-sira is also a chronological rendering of the Prophet’s life, but interspersed with Qur’anic verses and hadiths, thus linking them to particular events in his vita. This is not a psychological portrait; Muhammad’s personal thoughts and emotions are peripheral. After all, Muhammad was merely a tool of God, and his relative lack of success in Mecca was God’s way of hardening him and preparing him for the struggles to come. Like al-Siba`i—but contrary to jihadist siras (such as Abu Qatada, 2012)—al-Ghazzali is not particularly interested in the Prophet’s military prowess, but very interested in his missionary work in Mecca and his political rise in Medina.
The Medina Constitution is therefore again of utmost importance. Al-Ghazzali considers it more of a contract or covenant (mu`ahada), mainly with the Jews whom the Prophet respected and treated as equals: “Whoever thinks that Muslims are a people who will never relax until they have isolated themselves from the world which they want to dominate, is mistaken” (Al-Ghazzali 1989:140). But this generous policy was to no avail. The Jews of Arabia were never serious partners; they were depraved, exploiting the Arab tribesmen. They were therefore sworn enemies of the new political entity that Muhammad was establishing (Al-Ghazzali 1989:142).
To al-Ghazzali, this was a political deal, set down in a contract. It was not the world’s first constitution, and although it reflects Islam’s noble principles, it was a particular step, borne out of a particular situation. Al-Ghazzali quotes the document that the Jews are one nation with the believers, but he does not comment upon this use of the word umma. Once again, the interest is concentrated on the ungratefulness of the Jews.
When Muhammad later conquered Mecca and negotiated a treaty with the Christians of Najran, al-Ghazzali extolls the Prophet’s magnanimity in dealing with the people of the book. He personally takes care to protect them and their property, and they accept that from now on, they are subjects, ruled by the Muslims (Al-Ghazzali 1989:328-30).
Likewise, the Farewell Sermon is addressed to a particular audience in a particular situation. Al-Ghazzali even stresses that finally, only monotheists were gathered—all others having been banned (Al-Ghazzali 1989:349). Al-Ghazzali quotes the whole speech and explains that this was the last chance for the Prophet to strengthen and prepare his people—like a father sending away a son for good. His focus was therefore to drive out the last remnants of the jaihiliya, the time of ignorance before Islam (Al-Ghazzali 1989:351).
Ali al-Sallabi
Compared to the two former siras, al-Sallabi’s “The Prophetic sira; Presentation of the Realities and Interpretation of the Events” seems less like an MB tarbiyya text: It is much longer, especially on the battles and Muhammad’s later life. Here, it dwells on many details in the sira that do not so easily lend themselves to moralizing and advice to a prospective Muslim Brother. It does, however, come across as didactic, written as it is in a simple style with a great number of small segments and summaries. It also continuously draws lessons for the contemporary Muslim.
In the preface, al-Sallabi specifically urges the Muslim to study the Prophet’s life, as he was the ideal husband, father, judge, leader, and teacher; the umma, too, must study it to overcome its backwardness, and this will be hard work and demand sacrifices (al-Sallabi 2008:8-9). Al-Sallabi thus insists that the sira is a book of practical instruction, and he warns against unnecessary intellectualism. He ends his preface by referring to the siras which he is drawing upon (classical and modern Islamists, among them al-Ghazzali and al-Siba`i) (al-Sallabi 2008:10).
Once again, the main ordering principle running through the text is that the Meccan period contains lessons for the modern Muslim da`i, whereas the Medinan period outlines the principles of a future Muslim state.
Consequently, it is in the chapter on “The basis of the new Islamic state in Medina” that the Medina Constitution is analyzed. Al-Sallabi considers it the first Islamic document in the sense of a text authored by a Muslim, namely, Muhammad. But the Qur’an continued to be revealed and in some ways superseded the Medina constitution (al-Sallabi 2008:334). Al-Sallabi uses the term sahifa (writing on leaves), but notes that, today, it is referred to as a constitution (Al-Sallabi 2008:323). He explains that any modern country needs a basic law regulating governance; the Arabs had not been able to form a coherent nation, but with this document, the Prophet instituted the first written constitution to them, based not on ethnicity but on religion. He does not see them as potential judges. The central tenet is the word umma which comprises the immigrant Muslims, the newly converted, and “those who follow them by joining them and fighting with them” (Al-Sallabi 2008:327). The new nation was therefore at heart a state for the Muslims, and the Prophet deliberately sets the believers off from other nations such as the Jews, admonishing them, “do not imitate the Jews” and “whomever imitates a people, he is one of them” (Al-Sallabi 2008:328-29).
Nevertheless, the document allowed the Jews to be part of the Medinan polity as citizens within the same nation: “Hence we see that Islam considers the people of the book who live among them as citizens (muwatinun), and that they form a nation with the believers, as long as they uphold the duties that have been prescribed to them. Difference of religion is not, according to the document, a reason to prohibit their citizenship.” (Al-Sallabi 2008:329). Going into much more detail than the previous siras, al-Sallabi considers the document a constitutional text which established “freedoms and human rights” (Al-Sallabi 2008:333), in the sense of equal treatment of rights in the courts. The equality of the Jews is thus an insistence that the Jews were, and should me, given fair and equal treatment by the courts, despite their “odious nature.” He does not envision that the Jews could be judges, let alone taking part in political deliberation and decision-making.
Rather, al-Sallabi stresses that right from the outset Medina was an Islamic state. The Jews could be accepted as “citizens” only if they accepted this fact. They did not and secretly worked to undermine it; indeed, breaking agreements is a characteristic feature of the Jewish people. He spends 20 pages explaining the misdeeds of the Jews, often conflating the Jews of Medina with Jews of all ages, as when he characterizes Jews as being miserly, arrogant, and hateful towards non-Jews (al-Sallabi 2008:351-53).
Moving on to the Farewell Sermon, it is only given in summary in a more lengthy exposé of the right way to perform the hajj. After that description, al-Sallabi deducts the lessons for the individual Muslim, for the Muslim community, and finally a number of more specific ritual and legal rulings. The individual rules brotherhood, abstention from sin, and a complete break with the culture of jahiliyya. The lessons for the community are again Muslim Brotherhood and solidarity, the collaboration between ruler and subjects who must remain loyal, unless the ruler deviates from the rulings of the Qur’an and the Sunna (Al-Sallabi 2008:875-77).
Conclusions
The three texts under study have been employed for the ideological education (tarbiyya) of Muslim Brotherhood initiates. They address themselves to the “missionary” or committed Muslim who is interested in learning about the Prophet not to dwell in his sanctity but to use him as a model for a practical, committed Muslim life. This is particularly in evidence in the chapters on Muhammad’s struggle with his few followers in Mekka. This analysis has focused on the Medinan period where Muhammad soon emerged as a political leader. It has selected two distinctive events: the “Medina Constitution”—a written covenant with the polytheist tribes and the Jews—and the “Farewell Sermon” where Muhammad gave the last instructions to an audience of pilgrims.
The Islamist siras’ comments on these two events provide a good opportunity to gauge their priorities in forming the future Muslim Brother. The Medina Constitution has been used by Islamist revisionists to posit a democratic Islamic state where non-Muslims have the same rights and obligations and can participate in governing. The Farewell Sermon has been seen by Muslim modernists and liberals as transcending a Muslim setting and confirming Islam’s universalist humanist message, but it has been largely neglected by the Islamist revisionists. While the siras do represent brotherhood teaching, they are no exploration of Islamist political theory. It is, of course, common in most if not all religious traditions to embrace and practice political equality and human rights, all the while holding religious beliefs that uphold a strong division between the believers and non-believers. And over the years, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has taken numerous steps towards a more pluralist and democratic political platform—accepting women’s vote and candidature and accepting equal political rights to Christian Egyptians—despite the fact that this was not part of their ideological training. The tarbiyya does not determine the orientation of the Muslim Brothers, neither individually nor as an organization.
That said, in deriving “lessons” from the Prophet Muhammad’s life, the brotherhood siras are relevant to understand the MB today, as the tarbiyya program does reflect a dominant thinking. It is therefore still worth noting that the three Islamist siras do not follow the revisionist interpretations. The Medina Constitution is considered by Muhammad al-Ghazzali to be a treaty with the Jews which they do not honor, thus legitimizing the brutal punishment for treason which was later meted out to them. Mustafa al-Siba`i, too, sees the agreement in this light, but he is also stressing the document’s social commitment and general value as a blueprint for a modern state which allows for the inclusion of non-Muslims. Writing after decades of discussion of the Islamist revisionists, Ali al-Sallabi is well aware that the document could be akin to a modern constitution lying down the basic rules of government. He employs a language much akin to that of the revisionists in stressing equality between citizens and the notion of basic human rights. But his concern is very much the difference between Muslims and non-Muslims and the imperative of maintaining Muslim supremacy. None of the three siras thus follows the Islamist revisionists reading of the document, which serves as way of breaking with the traditional view of Jews and Christians as “protected people” (ahl al-dhimma) in the Muslim community with particular rules and demands for them.
Similarly, the Farewell Sermon is not interpreted in any ecumenical and humanist sense. It is seen as solely directed to the Muslim umma and stressing its internal solidarity. Here, al-Sallabi even considers it an endorsement of a non-democratic polity of paternalist rulers and loyal subjects, where ordinary people should only interfere in politics if the ruler disregards rulings in the Qur’an and hadith.
This pattern is, I believe, also evident in the Islamist version of the sira on the screen, the 30-episode TV drama Omar (2012). As mentioned, the famous film al-Risala (1975) drew on Haykal’s Life of Muhammad to promote a liberal version of the sira, with the Farewell Sermon as the humanist culmination of Muhammad’s spiritual vocation. In al-Risala, the Medina Constitution is truly a constitution giving rights to everyone in Medina; the Jews are favorable towards the Muslims, and the theme of Jewish treason is not pursued.
2012, the year after the Arab revolutions, was the year of the Islamists. Islamist parties won elections in Egypt and Tunisia, and an Islamist prime minster was appointed in Morocco. The most popular Ramadan TV series that year was also Islamist. Funded by Qatar, it was the most expensive Arab TV series to date, with more than 30,000 extras. Omar told the story of the caliph Omar, but the first 17 episodes were mainly about Muhammad’s life, interspersed with Omar’s career. Omar was chosen, partly as an affront to the Shia (who consider him a usurper of the caliphate), and partly as a way to bridge the story from Muhammad’s time to that of the two first caliphs and the institutionalization of the first Islamic state. Although the director and scriptwriter team, the Syrian Hatem Ali (1962-2020) and the Palestinian Walid Seif (b. 1948) should rather be considered radical Arab nationalists than Islamists; the producers and funders clearly wanted an Islamist-leaning version. Therefore, each episode begins with a written endorsement by six leading Muslim scholars, all Islamists, and among them Yusuf al-Qaradawi and Ali al-Sallabi (Baptiste & Bouali 2020; Skovgaard-Petersen 2021). Muhammad does not figure in person on the screen, but contrary to earlier films such as al-Risala, in Omar, we do see the four caliphs Abu Bakr, Omar, Uthman, and Ali appear. They are central as the announcers and implementers of Muhammad’s decisions.
We therefore see Omar reading aloud the Medina document. Here, it is clearly not a constitution but a written pact with the Jews at a time when Muhammad still believes that they have a faith, monotheism, in common (episode 10). However, we see that, apart from one Jewish rabbi, right from the beginning, the Jews never intend to honor the pact, but actively work to undermine Muhammad. In a later episode (14), they enter into a secret alliance with the Quraish when the latter lay siege to the city. This plot does not succeed, due to mistrust and duplicity even between the conspirators—in stark contrast to the unity and sense of purpose of the believers.
The Farewell Sermon is also central in Omar. In episode 17, Abu Bakr recounts it to his daughter Asma, all the while we get some glimpses of the scene. Here, we see the audience: battle-hardened men with Omar, Abu Bakr, Uthman, and Ali in front. This is not spiritual inspiration, but the last orders and a passing of responsibilities to those who are now tasked with the consolidation of Islamic rule. A young man known for his temper and Arab manliness, Omar has greatly matured under the fatherly guidance of the Prophet. Shortly after Muhammad’s death, Omar delivers a long speech to his household, explaining the new situation wherein the believers will have to manage by themselves. No longer do they have their infallible prophet, but they do have the Qur’an and his Sunna (episode 18). They must select the best among them and support him valiantly. The elected one, the caliph, in turn must be humble towards everyone and consult the believers for advice before he makes his decisions. This ideal of benevolent and enlightened rule must be an attractive one for the emirate of Qatar to propagate. But it is not limited to this Islamist TV drama. It seems to be the same political lesson as the one presented in the siras of the Muslim Brotherhood.
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