In his excellent book “Modern Libyan Islamic Movements .. Ideology, leadership .. experiences and future”, Libyan researcher Muhammad Al-Nak’u says that since the Italian occupation of Libya before the WWII untill the fall of Gadaffi, governments that ruled Libya prohibited the formation of political parties. Islamic political activists started to create secret political cells (semi-parties).
Libyan nationalism is influenced through the Islamic faith, which is the actual religion of all the people and an essential source of inspiration to those national movements, which means battle, determination as well as martyrdom.
Al-Nak’u wrote the following:
The Libyan youth became religious, reciting Islamic books and Jihadi audiotapes, including speeches, Abdullah Azzam, and others, along with speeches of Sheikh Mohammed Al-Beshti, and the work of Sayyid Qutb, especially the “Signposts on the Road” and “In the shadows of the Qur’an”, and the views of Ahmed Bin Taymiyah, especially Fatwas and Islamic legal definition on jihad. These are some sources that ignited the enthusiasm of the Libyan youth, and led them to create a secret organisations of few hundreds.
Al-Nak’u in his research argued that the Libyan people resisted the Italian-French-british occupations alone (without any help or support from other Arab-Islamic nations) motivated by Islamic teachings. Secularism in Libya is equal to “lack of nationalism”, and this is the struggle we are going to see in the next phase of Libya’s future.