Very few scholars have investigated the relationship between religious leaders and sharia on the one hand and the public’s support for militant groups on the other. It makes sense to focus on the internal dynamics of the religion, because unlike other faiths, violence conducted in the name of Islam not only transcends ethno-cultural, linguistic, geographic, and income boundaries, but is also far more prevalent. This report samples the Muslim public’s outlook, among other things, on sharia and religious leaders in nations with Muslim populations of at least 10 million or more-other than Algeria, China, India, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen ( Bell et al.
This article aims to explain how the interplay between religious leaders and sharia came to influence violent radicalism by tracing Saudi Arabia’s spread of the Wahhabi version of Islam and analyzing the 2013 Pew report on the world’s Muslims. R eligious leaders are an influential part of most communities. Not least of all, this approach, as history suggests, has a good chance of reinvigorating modernity in affected Muslim communities. Calling the sharia bluff as a core part of a counterterrorism approach may be central to undermining the influence of religious leaders who espouse violence or undercut the value of modern education, and the ideology of radicals. In particular, the top three terrorist groups in 2013 responsible for the most killings have had religious leaders in very senior positions. A new analysis of the 2013 Pew data shows us that religious leaders’ political and religious influences correlate with sharia’s popularity, and in turn, can correlate with politically motivated violence. However, beginning in the 1970s, thanks to Saudi Arabia’s backing, religious leaders began growing in power due to the popularization of a self-serving theme that sharia is all-encompassing divine law and an essential guide to life. Science not only contests religious leaders’ worldview, but it also offers a credible alternative. This is despite these leaders having had less influence about 50 years ago, due to the encroaching of modernity backed by science. Abstract | Religious leaders have become influential in many Muslim communities.
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