Changing Worldviews and Friendship. An Exploration of the Life Stories of Two Female Salafists in the Netherlands more

IN: Global Salafism: Islam’s New Religious Movement. Edited by Roel Meijer. May, 2009. London / New York: Hurst Publishers 18 Changing Worldviews and Friendship An Exploration of the Life Stories of Two Female Salafists in the Netherlands Martijn de Koning Introduction1 “About four years ago I had many personal problems. My future was all planned but I did not know anymore whether I wanted that future myself or because other people had influenced me in my choices so that I would become like they wanted me to be. […] Something had to change. I wanted peace in my life, answers to my questions. So I asked Allah to guide me, to help me, to lead me on the ‘straight path’ but I never expected Allah to lead me to Islam.” The above quotation is from Umm Salamah, a Moroccan-Dutch woman when she explained to me why, after years of “not really practicing Islam” she turned to Islam in order to rearrange her life. Umm Salamah is one of the Salafi women who are willing to talk to me about their lives, the choices they have made and in particular about their religious lifestyle. The aim of this 1 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: I would like to thank Roel Meijer, Joas Wagemakers, Edien Bartels and all the participants of the conference “Salafism as a Transnational Movement” held in Berg en Dal (The Netherlands) in September and October 2007 for their comments and suggestions. The usual disclaimers apply. 372 changing worldviews and friendship research is to gain insight into how Salafi men and women are actively creating their own notion of what the correct Islamic beliefs and practices are, based on their interpretation of Salafi doctrines. I will be looking at their “personal myths”: the continuously revised biographical narratives of those behaviours and episodes in life that form answers to the question: “Who am I?”.2 In this chapter I will focus on the lives of two young women: Umm Salamah and Aicha. Research on Salafism has paid little attention to female Salafis, particularly in the Netherlands. In the Netherlands journalists Janny Groen and Anieke Kranenberg3 have done thorough research on this theme by looking at the women of the Hofstad network. The Hofstad network is the network of Jihadi Salafists such as Mohammed Bouyeri (the murderer of film director and writer Theo Van Gogh who made the film Submission I together with Ayaan Hirsi Ali). Another important member of this network was Samir Azzouz who first came into the picture after he tried to reach Chechnya in order to fight with the Jihadis against the Russians. Later, in 2004, he was arrested for having plans for an attack at Schiphol Airport, an accusation from which he was acquitted at first but later (recently) convicted to six years. In 2006 he was sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment again for planning a terrorist attack (the so-called Piranha-case). In another study, Withuis4 compares communist women and Dutch “Islamist women”, focusing on the paradox of subordination disguised as emancipation: women who are victims of patriarchy but seem to acquiesce or even seek to subordinate themselves to the males in these movements.5 This is a theme that frequently emerges in much of the literature on women and “fundamen2 Marjo Buitelaar, ‘Staying close by moving out. The contextual meanings of personal autonomy in the life stories of women from Moroccan descent in the Netherlands’, Contemporary Islam, vol. 1, no.1 (2007), pp. 3–22. L. Langenhove and R. Harré, ‘Positioning and Autobiography: Telling your life’, in N. Coupland and J. Nussbaum (eds), Discourse and Lifespan Identity, Language and Language Behaviors, Newbury Park, London: Sage Publications, 1993, p. 82. McAdams, D., The Stories We Live By. Personal Myths and the Making of the Self, New York: William Morrow, 1993, p. 266 3 Janny Groen and Annieke Kranenberg, Strijdsters van Allah. Radicale moslima’s en het Hofstadnetwerk, Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 2006. 4 Jolande Withuis, “Sekse en sekte. Moslima-terrorisme geanalyseerd en vergeleken”, in K. Shahbazi (ed.), Radicaliserende vrouwen. Nederlandse communistische vrouwen (1945– 1970) en de Nederlandse islamistische vrouwen (1989–heden), een comparatieve analyse, Den Haag: Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken en Koninkrijksrelaties. 5 Sarah Bracke, “Author(iz)ing Agency”, The European Journal of Women’s Studies, vol. 10, no. 3 (2003), pp. 335–46. 373 global salafism talist” movements: the question of why women participate in these movements when the creed of these movements enhances women’s subordination to men? Gender itself is an important theme for these movements and it is often used as an issue to mobilise supporters and discredit oppositional forces.6 In the Netherlands for example it was one of the Salafi groups that launched the campaign against the proposed ban on the burqa. According to Hawley,7 in “fundamentalist” movements women’s behaviour is not only seen as a symptom of a moral crisis but as one of the causes of that crisis. This crisis seems to be felt by women as well when we look at Meertens’8 focus on explanations in terms of relative deprivation and groupthink to explain the radicalism among women. According to him feelings of anger and frustration about discrimination, insecurities about the self and the social group they belong to, make people susceptible to radical movements that provide them with a strong counter-identity. Neither Meertens nor Withuis, however, provide an indepth analysis of the lives of female members of these groups themselves, which leaves many questions unanswered concerning their choices as to why they join particular radical movements (since not all women who experience deprivation or seek to empower themselves by subordination align with Salafi movements) and how this is related to the social networks they are in. In other words: an analysis of the agency of women is lacking. In this chapter I will show that focusing on the themes of changing worldviews and friendships in the life stories of women provides us with more adequate answers. I will start with an account of the most important developments among Moroccan-Dutch Muslim youth, the Dutch Islam debate and the emergence of Salafi movements in the Netherlands. Subsequently I will describe and analyse the life stories of Umm Salamah and Aicha. Umm Salamah is a young Moroccan-Dutch woman who was arrested in 2006 and was accused of failing to disclose information about her husband’s plans for terrorist attacks. Aicha is a young Moroccan-Dutch woman who was part of the Hofstad network until the end of 2004. 6 S. Gerami and M. Lehnerer, ‘Women’s agency and household diplomacy. Negotiating Fundamentalism’, Gender & Society, vol. 15, no. 4 (2001) pp. 556–73. 7 J.S. Hawley, “Introduction”, in J.S. Hawley (ed.), Fundamentalism and Gender, New York / Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994, p. 27. 8 Roel Meertens, ‘Radicaliserende moslims en moslima’s sociaal-psychologisch bekeken’, in K. Shahbazi (ed.), Radicaliserende vrouwen. Nederlandse communistische vrouwen (1945– 1970) en de Nederlandse islamistische vrouwen (1989–heden), een comparatieve analyse, Den Haag: Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken en Koninkrijksrelaties, 2007. 374 changing worldviews and friendship Emergence of Salafi movements in the Netherlands Moroccan-Dutch Muslim youth and the search for a ‘pure’ Islam Many of the discussions in the Netherlands focus on Muslim youth and in particular Muslim youth of Moroccan descent. Given the fact that in the age category ten to nineteen they represent 20 per cent of the Moroccan migrant population and in the category twenty to thirty again 20 per cent it is clear that youth constitute an important part of the Moroccan-Dutch community in the Netherlands.9 Most studies pay little attention to the way people are religious and to the question of how they construct their religious identity. In my Ph.D research I tried to fill that gap and I will summarise the most important points here.10 The way young people construct their religious identity can best be described as a quest for a true or pure Islam. The idea of “one’s true self ” is combined with the idea of an authentic core of Islam that is neither “Moroccan” nor “Dutch”. The ideas of purity and truth are constantly negotiated with non-Muslims in different contexts. With regard to the Dutch population Moroccan-Dutch youth increasingly are confronted by the native Dutch tendency to categorise them as Muslims. During the last decade both native Dutch as well as Moroccan-Dutch youth interpret perceived differences between them in religious terms. According to Moroccan-Dutch youth the native Dutch usually categorize them negatively; Islam is portrayed as suspicious, related to terrorism, intolerance, and the oppression of women. This leads to a confusing situation wherein the search for a Muslim identity means, in relation to native Dutch people, an attempt to transcend the perceived dichotomy between “Moroccan” and “Dutch,”. Thus, one boy’s statement: “When I’m a Muslim, it doesn’t matter whether I’m Moroccan or Dutch.” At the same time it also means trying to maintain an attitude of distance towards Dutch society and their parents.In constructing their own identity MoroccanDutch youth not only have to deal with non-Muslims and their views about V. van den Maagdenberg, ‘Jaarrapport Integratie,’ Onderzoek verricht in opdracht van het Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau (SCP): Instituut voor Sociologisch-Economisch Onderzoek (ISEO) Erasmus Universiteit, 2004, pp. 13–14. 10 Martijn de Koning, ‘“You Follow the Path Of the Shaitan: we try to follow the righteous path.” Negotiating Evil in the Identity Construction of Young Moroccan-Dutch Muslims’, in L. Minnema and N. Van Doorn-Harder (eds); Coping with Evil in Religion and Culture: Case Studies, Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2008., pp. 137–48. Martijn de Koning, Zoeken naar een ‘zuivere’ islam. Geloofsbeleving en identiteitsvorming van jonge Marokkaans-Nederlandse moslims, Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2008b. 9 375 global salafism Islam, but also with other Muslims and their beliefs and practices. Parents frame the behaviour of their children in terms of halal (permissible) and haram (forbidden), they tell stories about the life of the prophet Muhammad, who serves as a role model, and they teach the children how to pray. For the parents, Morocco remains important as a continued frame of reference for their presence in Dutch society and also for their religious beliefs and practices. This is not the case for second generation Moroccan-Dutch youth. Partly this is a normal process during which the new generation tries to adapt an existing religious tradition to the challenges of modernity. Because of the inevitable changes that come with this re-interpretation, many older people often experience these developments with regret and nostalgia. Sometimes this may lead to conflicts over the question of who interprets Islam the right way and who represents “the truth”. Girls have an important position in the identity politics of young Muslims because they are held responsible for reproducing the culture of their parents and Islam. Girls, much more than boys, are frequently scrutinised by other Dutch Moroccans and native Dutch people who focus on their behaviour and attire. By politicising gender in relation to Islam, young girls become the core of the struggle between Muslims and native Dutch people over the control of the Moroccan-Dutch Muslims in the Netherlands. The girls themselves are, however, not passive agents in these debates. By articulating their own construction of true Islam they try to accomplish gender equality. With regard to native Dutch people, girls also use the discourse of true Islam to defend themselves and Islam and to criticise the stereotypes that native Dutch entertain about them. In order for young people to structure the available repertoires of knowledge they have to gather knowledge about Islam. The Internet has become one of the most important tools that young people use when looking for authoritative sources and persons. Although most of them tend to look for information on Moroccan-Dutch11 sites, the sites of the Salafi movements in the Netherlands stand out for their user-friendliness and huge amount of texts and answers to the specific questions the younger generations have. In almost all discussions, therefore, texts from these sites are used to answer other people’s questions or convince them of the validity of their own opinions. 11 Moroccan-Dutch here refers to websites that in name and outlook make references to Morocco and are aiming at a public of Moroccan-Dutch visitors. 376 changing worldviews and friendship Globalisation, secularisation and security: rise of the Dutch Salafi movements In particular “9–11” and the murder of Van Gogh by Mohammed Bouyeri in November 2004 serve as the exemplary events in the public debate that are used to explain what is wrong with Islam, or, conversely, what is wrong with the host countries of Muslim migrants. In the Netherlands, Muslims and nonMuslims recognise that since 9–11 criticising Islam and Muslims is no longer taboo and in some cases it is almost customary to do this in the strongest way possible: the critique of Islam has sometimes been expressed in the harshest and the bluntest terms. Already after 9–11, but especially after the murder of Van Gogh, on 2 November 2004, the discourse on Islam in the public debate was not only a mixture of issues relating to the role of religion in the public sphere in a secularised country, immigration and integration, but is also related to security and the “war on terror”. Salafi movements in particular have become the focus of attention, linking them to intolerance, promoting violence against “infidels” and inciting hatred against politicians and other opinion leaders. However, besides the insightful publication of Buijs and his research team12 and some publications from intelligence and security services, not much is known about the emergence of the Salafi groups in the Netherlands. What we know is that most of their leaders migrated to the Netherlands in the 1980s and 1990s. Their migration and the emergence of the Salafi groups in Europe should be seen in the context of internal developments in Saudi Arabia (where the regime co-opted the Sahwa sheikhs or forced some of them to take refuge in Europe), Syria and Egypt, in combination with global migration and developments in international politics.13 During the 1990s and with increasing speed after 9/11, the different branches of Salafism have developed into social movements by building their own mosques, web-sites and informal networks used for resource mobilisation and dissemination. Nowadays we can distinguish between three main groups, each with its own internal divisions. First of all there are the Selefies (Salafi as it can be pronounced in Dutch, Selefie is the label they give themselves), a quietist group that follows sheikh Rabi’ alMadkhali, who is loyal to the Saudi state. This group refuses to take part in 12 Frank Buijs, Froukje Demant and Atef Hamdy, Strijders van eigen bodem. Radicale en democratische moslims in Nederland, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006. 13 W. Waardenburg, Institutionele vormgevingen van de Islam in Nederland gezien in Europees perspectief, Den Haag, 2001, pp. 85–6. 377 global salafism (Dutch) politics or to become involved in societal issues and claims to be non-violent. One of the main preachers within this group is Abdelillah Boushta as well as several native Dutch Muslims who have studied in Saudi Arabia. The second group consists of the more politically involved Salafis, which is also non-violent but does engage in national and international politics. In 2001 the most important leaders of this group in Amsterdam (Imam Shershaby), The Hague (Imam Fawaz Jneid) and Tilburg—in the south of the Netherlands (Imam Ahmad Salam) established the Foundation Islamic Committee for Ahlu-sSunnah in the Netherlands. Imams Fawaz Jneid and Ahmad Salam are both of Syrian descent and have been associated by the Dutch security services with the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood. The Foundation is part of the Committee for Ahlu-sSunnah in Europe with members in Spain, France, Germany, Belgium and England with Adnane Al-Aroor (also from Syria) as president. The third strand can be called the jihadi/takfiri branch of Salafism in the Netherlands, which in almost all instances is directly or indirectly connected to the core of the old Hofstad network (of which the assassin of Van Gogh, Mohammed Bouyeri, and his friend Samir Azzouz are the most well-known members). In all these currents, but in particular in the Hofstad network, young women play an important role as translators, facilitators and thinkers. Snapshots of the lives of two women Aicha and Umm Salamah are both of Moroccan descent and both of them became affiliated with Salafi movements after they went through a period of not “really practicing” the faith. This transitional period should be regarded as a type of conversion. Before I turn to their life stories I will elaborate on some important conceptual issues that are involved with the changes they have experienced. Conversion is regarded here as a “(radical) change of worldview and identity”.14 There is a large amount of literature on conversion, mostly dealing with people going from one major religious tradition to another. Research has compared the competition between religions as ideas on the religious market. Religion in this sense is seen as a commodity that is offered on the expanding market of religious goods that can be picked and bought by religious actors. This type of approach has gained widespread adherence and 14 Henri Gooren, ‘The religious market model and conversion: towards a new approach’, Exchange, vol. 35, no. 1 (2006), pp. 52. 378 changing worldviews and friendship is applied to new religious movements,15 Christians16 and Muslims.17 Within this research different types of motives for conversion are explored, which is a warning to refrain from essentialising Islam but instead to analyse the kinds of answers different modalities of Islam provide for converts in different times and places.18 Wohlrab-Sahr sees conversion as a symbolic transformation of crisis experiences that offers a solution to several autobiographical problems. In her study, which especially focuses on the conversion from another major religious tradition to Islam, she argues that this process brings a new kind of belonging and community into existence, while providing the greatest contrast with their culture of origin and a critical framework with which to engage with society.19 Although this study is not about conversion from one major tradition to another, many of the aspects mentioned above are also evident in the life stories of Umm Salamah and Aicha. Their conversion is what Stark and Finke call a reaffiliation within the same religious tradition.20 In order to analyse this, I focus on the choices women have made in the religious market. Making choices and reflecting upon them are important aspects of the construction of an identity.21 An important issue that is related to the process of making 15 L.R. Iannaccone, ‘Rational Choice: Framework for the Scientific Study of Religion”, in L. E. Young (ed.), Rational Choice Theory and Religion: Summa y Assessment, New York: Routledge, 1997. R. Stark and R. Finke, Acts of Faith: Explaining the human side of religion. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. 16 Henri Gooren, “The religious market model and conversion: towards a new approach”, Exchange vol. 35, no. 1 (2006), pp. 39–60. 17 S. Allievi, Les converts à l’islam. Les nouveaux musulmans d’Europe. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1998. G. Hoffmann, Muslimin werden. Frauen in Deutschland konvertieren zum Islam, Frankfurt am Main: Institut für Kulturanthropologie und Europäische Ethnologie, 1997. M. Wohlrab-Sahr, “Symbolizing Distance: Conversion to Islam in Germany and the United States”, in K. Van Nieuwkerk (ed.), Gender and Conversion, Austin: University of Texas, 2006, pp. 71–92. 18 Karin van Nieuwkerk, ‘Introduction. Gender and Conversion to Islam in the West’, in K. Van Nieuwkerk (ed.), Women Embracing Islam. Gender and Conversion in the West, Austin: University of Texas, 2006, pp. 1–17. 19 M. Wohlrab-Sahr, ‘Symbolizing Distance: Conversion to Islam in Germany and the United States’, in K. Van Nieuwkerk (ed.), Gender and Conversion, Austin: University of Texas, 2006, pp. 71–92. 20 R. Stark and R. Finke, Acts of Faith: Explaining the human side of religion, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000, pp. 114. 21 Edien Bartels, “‘Die hoofddoek is mijn eigen keuze’”, in E. Bartels, A. v. Harskamp and 379 global salafism choices and reflecting upon them is the issue of agency. Often women’s involvement in religious movements is seen as a sign of mere female superstition, irrationalism, fanaticism, or the result of a false consciousness22 and their perceived submission to male supremacy is often poorly understood. Women, however, are more than just the object or symbols of the religious movements, as for example Franks shows in her research on Christian and Islamic revivalist movements.23 Umm Salamah: Who am I? Umm Salamah is 23 years old and lives in a small and historical provincial town in the south of the Netherlands. She is of Moroccan descent and was born and raised in the Netherlands. She attended a Christian primary and secondary school. Subsequently, she enrolled in a secondary vocational school (MBO), where she studied for an international business degree. During most of her childhood she had mostly native Dutch friends and only a few Moroccan-Dutch and Turkish-Dutch friends. She enjoyed going out with her friends, drinking alcohol and she had a few boyfriends. According to her female friends, she loved the company of boys and had one boyfriend for a longer period of time. After a while she became engaged to him and they planned to marry. According to Umm Salamah she and her family were not really practicing Muslims, but this past she tries to forget with her new identity. Umm Salamah:24 “I do not like to talk in detail about my life before I got to know Islam. What I can tell you is that I come from a Muslim family, but was not brought up really ‘Islamically’, more in H. Wels (eds.), Cultuur maken, cultuur breken. Essays voor Hans Tennekes over mogelijkheden en onmogelijkheden van invloed op cultuurverandering, Delft: Uitgeverij Eburon, 2001, pp. 56. 22 Sarah Bracke, “Author(iz)ing Agency”, The European Journal of Women’s Studies, vol. 10, no. 3 (2003), pp. 335–346. Linda Duits and Liesbet van Zoonen, ‘Headscarves and Porno-Chic. Disciplining Girls’ Bodies in the European Multicultural Society’, European Journal of Women’s Studies, vol. 13, no. 2 (2006), pp. 103–117. 23 M. Franks, Women and Revivalism in the West: Choosing ‘Fundamentalism’ in a Liberal Democracy. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001. 24 The fragments are based upon letters from Umm Salamah, written to me in 2006 and 2007 unless otherwise indicated. 380 changing worldviews and friendship a traditional way. Many Muslims, in particular the first generation, confuse culture or tradition with Islam. […] was I “Moroccan” or was I “Dutch”? I was going to “Dutch” schools and had mostly “Dutch” people as friends. That was very confusing for me because I could not identity myself with anyone.[…] After Allah lead me to Islam, […] I realised I was first and foremost a Muslim with a Moroccan background, born and raised in the Netherlands. Proud of my Moroccan roots, but also of my Dutch qualities. […] Being Dutch or Moroccan was not that important to me anymore.” Umm Salamah expresses her quest for authenticity against the culture of her parents and against the dominant Dutch culture. More than just a break with both her parents’ and Dutch culture, this quest represents a merging of the idea of the authentic self with the idea of a pure Islam as revealed by Allah.25 This quest for individuality and authenticity is not only important for Muslim youth but also for Christian youth nowadays.26 It reflects a transformation in society that enhances self-fulfilment, individual choice and assertiveness.27 Combining the idea of one’s true self with the search for the true Islam forces people to study Islam themselves and to ask the question “what does Islam really say?”. In the case of Umm Salamah, she embarked on this quest by starting to visit mosques, attend lectures and surf on the Internet. After a while she moved to another city. In this new city she became active in one of the Salafi mosques, where she gave Arabic lessons. This step was taken at the end of a very turbulent period in her life that was full of personal problems. Her self-doubt about her future is expressed in the second quote given above. At this juncture in her life, Islam gave her a sense of inner peace, a direction in life and provided the right answers to her questions: Umm Salamah: “Questions I had back then were: Why am I here? What is the meaning of this life? What happens after death? Etcetera. I know now that I am here to worship Allah and that this 25 C. Jacobsen, “The Quest for Authenticity: Islamization Amongst Muslim Youth in Norway”, in J. Cesari and S. McLoughlin (eds.), European Muslims and The Secular State, Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2005, pp. 160. Oliver Roy, Globalised Islam. The Search for a New Ummah, London: Hurst, 2004, pp. 23. 26 M. Prins, The Fragmentization of Youth, Nijmegen: MacDonald/SSN Nijmegen, 2006. 27 Trees Pels, “Respect van twee kanten: Over socialisatie en lastig gedrag van Marokkaanse jongens”, Migrantenstudies, vol. 19, no. 4 (2003), pp. 228–39. G. van den Brink, Geweld als uitdaging. De betekenis van agressief gedrag bij jongeren, Utrecht: NIZW, 2002. 381 global salafism life is a test, that I have to follow what is good and stay away from evil, that I can reach that by following the Qur’an and the Sunnah and that I have to earn Allah’s satisfaction in order to deserve a place in Paradise where there is eternal life, contrary to this life that is temporary and can be over any moment.” What Umm Salamah has done can be characterised as a self-conscious attempt to define and analyse the difficulties in her life and to plan how to change it and rewrite her own life-story. Her reaffiliation started for the most part as an individual quest that involved embracing another world view and an affiliation with Salafi thought, albeit without a clear association with one of the Salafi movements in the Netherlands. Although at times she participated in teaching Arabic, she can be regarded as an “engaged observer”: someone who visits meetings, provides moral support, but has no leadership or activist role.28 The transition she made was reflected in her choice for a husband who shared the same ideas about Islam and who helped her with her religious studies. She had met him during a course in England after which they got married. Umm Salamah’s old friends and classmates had the impression that it was her husband who forced major changes upon her. This is doubtful however since already in 2004, after she came back from a visit to Morocco, she started wearing the headscarf, and in 2006, when she became more interested in political issues and moved to the UK, she began to wear the niqab. The headscarf and later on the niqab express Umm Salamah’s embodiment of the changes in worldview she has experienced. Since the niqab is highly contested in Dutch society in general and in the Moroccan-Dutch community in particular (especially among first-generation Moroccan-Dutch Muslims), her niqab also articulated the sharp contrast with Dutch fashion customs and the Islamic traditions of her Moroccan parents. Seeking an Islam that is neither “Moroccan” nor “Dutch”, the change in worldview was therefore not only a matter of inward experiences but also of outward appearances. Although her husband certainly exerted considerable influence on her and she sometimes resented his dominant behaviour, she also supported him in his ideas and endeavours. The relationship is therefore too complicated to frame in a dichotomy of the dominant husband and subservient wife with a “false consciousness”. She was attracted to him partly because he seemed to be a pious Muslim. This mirrored the choices she already made, and becoming a wife to a pious man gave her the opportunity to fulfil one of her dreams to become a pious Muslim mother. The couple had a young child and her position as 28 A.J. Stewart, ‘Women and the Social Movements of the 1960s: Activists, Engaged Observers, and Nonparticipants’, Political Psychology, vol. 19, no. 1 (1998), pp. 63–95. 382 changing worldviews and friendship a mother and a good wife was an avenue to becoming a good Muslim for Umm Salamah. Slowly but gradually she also left her former circle of friends and entered new friendships with other women whom she met virtually on discussion forums and MSN email groups on the Internet. She did not cut off all of her ties with the past; she kept sending messages by email to some of her old friends. Most of these messages were reminders to her old (and new) friends about the temporality of this life and the need to return to the “true” Islam before it is too late. Her poem “Sudden Realization” is an example of such messages. Sudden realization (excerpt) Don’t let your death become simply another person’s realization Take consideration now and start preparing for your death without hesitation For life isn’t a game that when you lose you get a second round Your deeds all go on record whether hideous or sound Life was not created in jest for amusement and play and utter dismay Indeed our Lord will hold us to account and have the last say So realize now and don’t wait around for yourself to civilize For you know not whether you will get another chance to sit and wonder and all of a sudden realize… These acts of disseminating texts by Umm Salamah can be perceived as attempts to urge other people to reform themselves and to raise their awareness about the “critical state the ummah is in”. This is certainly the case, but based upon an analysis of her discussions with others on the Internet and a few of my conversations with her, I think there is more to it. Her constant reminders to others about the “true” Islam also are signs of a continuous dialogue with herself and an expression of her affiliation with “true” Islam. This should not only be regarded as an act of spreading the call, da‘wa, but also as an ongoing process of asserting one’s own place in the world as a person who tries to be a devout Muslim. Her poems have helped her in her quest for the “truth”, and the act of disseminating them is therefore as much an act of da‘wa as it is a way to recall and relive her “rebirth” as a Muslim.29 More or less the same can be said about a letter she wrote to her husband, with whom she was arrested in 2006 in the UK. On his laptop blueprints for an explosive were discovered together with articles such as “Islamic Ruling on 29 S. Coleman, « Continuous Conversion? The Rhetoric, Practice and Rhetorical Practice of Charismatic Protestant Conversion”, in A. Buckser and S. D. Glazier (eds), The Anthropology of Religious Conversion, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003. 383 global salafism the Permissibility of Self-Sacrificial Operations—Suicide or Martyrdom?” Umm Salamah was charged with failing to disclose information in her possession that might be of assistance in preventing an act of terrorism. On her husband’s laptop a letter was found written by Umm Salamah in which she, according to the prosecutor, offered her son for the violent jihad:30 “[…]I am writing you this letter to let you know you have my support and to remind you to be strong and not let Satan influence you, to remind you that Jihad is now compulsory and you are obliged to protect the well-being of Islam and help your brothers and sisters and fight the Kuffar. I really wish I could go with you because I too feel obliged to do all this and look to participate in any way I can. But everything happens by the will of Allah, may he be praised, only maybe, God willing I can follow you and if I could I will send your son to you so he can follow his father’s footsteps. I will pray to Allah he will release you from (this world) by granting you martyrdom and pray to Allah to reunite us in heaven, as your wife, together with your son in heaven. God willing I will do anything in my power to raise our son the best way I can so he can be a righteous Muslim. I will also tell him all about his father so he can be proud of him and follow in his footsteps.” According to Umm Salamah the text above was not a letter to her husband but merely a poem. Both said in court that they more often wrote about violent jihad and researched the subject extensively. In the end Umm Salamah was found not guilty of all charges; her husband was found guilty on minor charges and sentenced to three years of imprisonment. During my contact with her it was clear that she was very much involved with “injustice against Muslims”. In the past she was never active in political issues although at one time she signed a manifesto against the negative image of Dutch Moroccans in the Netherlands and, according to her old friends, she could react very strongly against discriminatory remarks about Moroccans or sexist remarks against women. The letter she wrote could have functioned as a means to incite her husband to commit terrorist acts, as was alleged by the prosecutor, but, as was the case with her other poems, it was also a sign of her individual continuous quest. The letter and her solidarity with the “suffering of Muslims worldwide” expressed her political thoughts, but also served as a reminder of her spiritual quest, in the sense that fighting the violent jihad is a form of following Allah’s will (and therefore the “true” Islam) and making people aware 30 The excerpts are based upon the transcripts of the court case. 384 changing worldviews and friendship of that (including herself ) gives a feeling of empowerment and moral virtue and it is not necessarily an incentive for action.31 Aicha: Faith(less) through friendship The symbolic transformation of Umm Salamah’s life story does not immediately explain how she became an engaged observer of the Salafi movements. One of the aspects that might shed some light on that issue is the importance of friendship networks. This theme is clearly apparent in Aicha’s life story. Aicha lived with her parents (who came from Morocco), two sisters and her brother in a city in the south of the Netherlands. She went to an Islamic school and there she grew very disturbed by the lack of interest among her fellow pupils in matters concerning the faith. Her contact with most of the pupils was quite limited, although they admired her for trying to be a pious Muslim. At a new school one of the few people she came into contact with was Samir Azzouz. Samir caught the attention of the Dutch media earlier when he tried to go to Chechnya to wage jihad; together with his friend he was sent back at the Russian border. Aicha was very critical of and very interested in the Arab regimes which she saw as corrupt and oppressive. She also criticised the attitude of the traditional Muslim umbrella organisations in the Netherlands, which according to her, were too complacent towards Dutch politicians “attacking Islam”. She was already involved in doing volunteer work for a foundation that raised funds for “victims of the Israeli occupation”. In Samir she found someone with kindred interests and views. Also his large collection of Jihadi anasheed 32 music attracted her; this music moved her and made her emotional. Samir gave her a text written by two of his friends that explained the importance of the concept of tawhid and judging the world by Allah’s laws only. This handwritten text was, he told her, a basic tenet of the group with which he followed lessons. It was the same group that Aicha was already acquainted with; she was introduced into this group by Mustafa, a young Moroccan-Dutch man who studied in Syria. The group, now known as the Hofstad network, was led by Abu Khaled, an asylum seeker from Syria. The 31 Pnina Werbner, “The Predicament of Diaspora and Millennial Islam. Reflections on September 11, 2001”, Ethnicities, vol. 4, no. 4 (2004), pp. 451–76. 32 Anasheed is Islamic music. It is sung a cappella, sometimes accompanied by percussion instruments Jihadi anasheed often contain texts about the suffering of the Islamic umma and/or the heroic deeds of Muslim fighters. 385 global salafism fundraising foundation became an increasingly important factor in Aicha’s life since the only friends she had were also members of this foundation. Although Aicha never visited the lessons of Abu Khaled, the spiritual leader of the Hofstad network, she became increasingly involved in its women’s network. Its young women approached Aicha to be part of the “sisterhood”. Aicha:33 “‘You should join us. We all support each other and take care of each other’, one of them said to me.” Her friendship with the other “sisters” and with some of the members of the Hofstad network shows the importance of friendship networks in explaining the participation of people in social movements. People are much more inclined to join religious movements when they are approached by people who they trust on other grounds.34 Research on other movements shows how new members of the movements were recruited in circles with a high proportion of people such as friends and relatives who were already members.35 Networks of friendships and relatives continue to play an important role in the mobilisation of participants as well.36 Identification with and participation in a social movement can also contribute to acquiring friendships. Membership of a social movement brings about feelings of belonging and provides a sense of security, brotherhood (or sisterhood), comfort, trust and solidarity, as research on the Belgian radical right movement shows.37 An important issue is also that social networks make certain beliefs plausible and provide the The fragments are based upon interviews with Aicha in 2005, 2006 and 2007. L.P. Gerlach, and V.H. Hine, People, Power, Change: Movements of Social Transformation, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merill, 1970. 35 C.D. Bolton, “Alienation and Action: A Study of Peace Group Members”, American Journal of Sociology, vol. 78, no. 3 (1972), pp. 537–61. A.M. Orum, “On Participation in Political Protest Movements”, Journal of Applied Behavorial Science, vol. 10, no. 2 (1974), pp. 181–207. K. Wilson, and A.M. Orum, “Mobilizing People for Collective Political Action”, Journal of Political and Military Sociology, vol. 4, no. 2 (1976), pp. 187–202. 36 B. Klandermans and D. Oegema, “Potentials, Networks, Motivations, and Barriers: Steps Towards Participation in Social Movements”, American Sociological Review, vol. 52, no. 4 (1987), pp. 519–31. 37 K. Bilsen, and H.D. Witte, “Waarom worden individuen actief binnen een extreem-rechtse organisatie? Integratie van de beschikbare literatuur in een hypothetisch kader ter verklaring van extreem-rechts militantisme”, Tijdschrift voor Sociologie, vol. 22, no. 1 (2001), pp. 37–62. 34 33 386 changing worldviews and friendship prospect of rewards for conformity and converting.38 The issue of plausibility is important in the life-stories presented here. The questions “Who am I?” and “What is Islam?” mean that the new identity has to make sense for the women involved. In Umm Salamah’s case her Moroccan and Dutch identity did not make sense anymore, given the fact that they seemed contradictory; the Islam that she sought was not the Islam of her parents since they mixed tradition with Islam, according to her. Plausibility also explains why in Aicha’s case she turned to a different type of Salafi movement than members of her family, who had found their niche in the circles of the Dutch Madkhali Salafis. Their loyalty towards political and religious leaders in the Middle East, however, neglected, according to Aicha, the crisis Muslims throughout the world face. Her new network initially provided that plausibility. For example, when she joined the “Lions of Tawhid” chatroom, particular texts of Safar al-Hawali and Salman al-Awdah were discussed and explained by several participants (in particular Mohammed Bouyeri). What particularly attracted Aicha were the clear and unequivocal answers that the texts of these Salafi scholars provided to her questions and their critical stance towards Middle Eastern politics. Aside from the experience of “sisterhood” or “brotherhood” and the creation of plausibility, also a competition of piety seems to play an important role in these networks. Aicha: “You always have to give a hundred per cent. It is difficult to say now I have studied enough. It is difficult to say this is my limit and no further. It is very attractive because you do it for Islam. And when for example you cannot wear a headscarf at work, you feel guilty. It is not allowed and you are the only one…then say yes but later when you have to account for yourself before Allah, you are alone as well.” The young women in the group did not want to be exposed as having a weak faith and stimulated each other to deepen their piety. However, Aicha did not feel satisfied in the end as she believed the piety the group promoted was more concerned with outward appearance than with spirituality. During the summer of 2004 she became more distant from the Hofstad network and sent one of the boys an email explaining why she did not want to be part of the network. She told me: Aicha: “I was really searching and full of doubts, but it [the Hofstad network] did not feel good. And if it does not feel good, you should not do it. But I did feel attracted to it, for a very 38 Henri Gooren, “The religious market model and conversion: towards a new approach”, Exchange, vol. 35, no. 1 (2006), pp. 39–60. 387 global salafism long time I have been angry at the attitude of the Islamic leaders. Also everyone made it seem so romantic; they were a little bit like dreamers.” Another reason for her growing alienation from the network was that she had growing doubts about some of their practices such as marrying a guy in order to secure a residence permit for him: Aicha: “In 2004 I got this call from one of the sisters. Did I want to engage in a fake-marriage?39 For the sake of Allah, she said. I got pretty angry, refused and told her that I did not want her to contact me anymore.” Above all she rejected the promotion of violence against infidels. This particularly made her not “feel good” to be part of the network. She broke with the network on 2 November 2004. On that day, the same day Van Gogh was killed, the women of the fundraising foundation she worked for gathered in the evening, celebrating the “ritual slaughter of the animal Van Gogh”. After five minutes she left the meeting and never came back. The fact that it did not feel good for Aicha anymore can be seen as a symptom of a situation in which an individual becomes the highest authority for herself. At the same time the conclusion was reached because of the lack of plausibility of her network. The sisterhood proved not to be very strong according to Aicha and she found the (in her view) obsessive attention to women’s attire extremely superficial and their inclination towards violence very disturbing. In much of the social movement literature the importance of friendship networks is only considered inasmuch as they contribute to the feeling of solidarity in the movement. This functionalist approach does not suffice for understanding Aicha’s relation to the Salafi movements. At a certain time the plausibility she found in the ideas of the Hofstad network faded away. This had more to do with her deteriorating relationship with the other members of the group and their ideas about violence and the position of women than with the ideas of the Salafi scholars mentioned above as such. From born-again Muslims to Salafists Aicha’s and Umm Salamah’s process of conversion (or reaffiliation) can be seen as a process of revitalisation of their faith resulting in both of them affiliating with Salafi thoughts and networks. Many of the choices they made and the 39 By fake-marriage she meant a marriage that was arranged not out of love but for practical reasons, in this case a residence permit. 388 changing worldviews and friendship motives for their reaffiliation are similar to converts from Christianity to Islam, who feel the need for a strong identity, self-realisation and a symbolic transformation of a personal crisis. For these women Islam and the Salafi doctrines enable them to rewrite their own life stories and to construct their sense of self as strong women who find their purpose of life in Islam, thereby challenging the notions of women as passive victims and subjection. In fact their agency means that both women have the capability, mediated by Salafi thoughts and networks, to connect their own individual experiences with the larger narratives of Islam and the ummah. The choices of Umm Salamah and Aicha should be understood within cultural contexts in which particular kinds of self-presentations are stimulated and others are discarded. Choices based upon free will and authenticity are valued above choices that are forced upon them by their parents, for example. We can see this in the biographies of both young women who talk about the process of re-affiliation as an individual quest, during which they rebuild their own life-stories in relation to their newly found faith. Moreover, in contrast to converts who acquire through Islam a strong counter-identity to the society in which they were brought up, in the case of the two women studied in this chapter the Salafi movement provided a strong counter-identity to both Dutch society as well as the first generation Moroccans and the more traditional form of Islam they adhered to. To distinguish themselves from Dutch society and the Islam of their parents they adopted totally new outlooks and practices. Umm Salamah wears a niqab and Aicha wore a headscarf, Umm Salamah changed her name and both became much stricter with regard to the separation of the sexes. In both life stories we can see a continuous interplay between inner feelings and outward appearances; both reflecting each other and stimulating each other. 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