Rethinking Islamist Politics

Culture, the State and Islamism

Salwa Ismail

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2006
• Print ISBN: 9781845111809
• eBook ISBN: 9780857731326
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Politics

In an atmosphere of growing concern over the threat posed by Islamist violence, political Islamism has become the most important of geopolitical issues. In the process, it has been misrepresented. Contrary to what many believe, Islamist movements are characterised by their diversity. Revisiting the main arguments and explanations that have been used over the past twenty years to understand Islamist activism, moderate as well as militant, Salwa Ismail here proposes a rethinking of Islamist politics. The phenomenon of political Islam is determined by macro and micro-level changes in the Muslim world, such as the retreat of the welfare state across the Middle East, and the subsequent expansion in the role of informal political activists in the popular neighbourhoods of such cities as Algiers or Cairo. Ismail examines both levels to explain the socio-economic and political settings out of which Islamism has developed. Her focus is both the economic and political environments that fomented Islamism, and the structures of Islamist movements themselves (from their ideologies to their modes of action).
Looking at Islamism as a form of contestation politics, Ismail offers a reassessment of its failures and successes - limited, as it is, by its use of violence, but capable of real mobilisation at a popular level. "Rethinking Islamist Politics" will be vital reading for anyone seeking to understand such spectacular expressions of Islamism as the September 11th attacks, but also the everyday struggles of ordinary people which Islamism embodies.

1

The Study of Islamism Revisited

During the 1980s and 1990s, Islamist movements and ideologies emerged as important subjects of scholarly investigation in the fields of politics, sociology, anthropology, history and religious studies. Interest in the subject grew in conjunction with such events as the Iranian revolution (1978–79), the assassination of President Sadat (1981), the Hama uprising in Syria (1982) and the World Trade Centre bombing (1993). Although they are not of the same order, these events have come to form part of a discursive phenomenon carrying the labels of ‘Islamic fundamentalism,’ ‘Islamic revivalism’ and ‘Islamism’ – labels which soon acquired the qualifiers ‘radical,’ ‘traditional,’ ‘militant,’ ‘conservative’ and so on.¹ These labels, qualifications and classifications have been devised in order to account for spectacular events involving groups and individuals who invoke signs and symbols associated with Islamic traditions to justify their activities. They were developed within particular frameworks of understanding and in relation to particular modes of social, political and historical inquiry into the subject of study as constituted. We now have a rather large body of literature designed to help us comprehend the varied events, actors and activities having an Islamic point of reference. The task at hand is to reflect on the tools, concepts and categories of analysis that this literature offers. In this introductory chapter, I begin with a critical survey of the most influential of the various approaches used in the study of contemporary Islamist politics: the historical master-narratives, the Durkheimian-inspired sociological models and the statist/political economy perspectives. I then outline the elements of an alternative approach; one that is both historically informed and empirically grounded.

Before proceeding further, a note on two key terms used throughout this text. The term ‘Islamist politics’ is used here to refer to the activities of organisations and movements that mobilise and agitate in the political sphere while deploying signs and symbols from Islamic traditions. It is also used to refer to political activism involving informal groupings that (re)construct repertoires and frames of reference from Islamic traditions.² The term ‘Islamism’ is used to encompass both Islamist politics as well as re-Islamisation, the process whereby various domains of social life are invested with signs and symbols associated with Islamic cultural traditions. Examples of this process include the wearing of the hijab (veil), the consumption of religious literature and other religious commodities, the publicising of symbols of religious identity, the reframing of economic activity in Islamic terms. In much of the recent literature, re-Islamisation is considered to be broader and, in some ways, distinct from ‘Islamism.’ The distinction is not used in this book. Islamism, as I conceive it, is not just the expression of a political project; it also covers the invocation of frames with an Islamic referent in social and cultural spheres.³

How, then, has Islamism been constituted as a particular subject of study? Which traditions of inquiry frame the formulation of the problématique of Islamism? To answer these questions, I begin by looking at the constitution of Islam as a domain of study and the wider analytical frames that have been used to explain the role of religion in society. A reader of the recent literature on ‘Islam and Politics’ or ‘Islam and the modern age’ is likely to encounter a set of propositions which generalise about the role of the religion in history, and place ‘Islam’ within an established narrative of world history. In this narrative, a major preoccupation is to account for Western modernity. More particularly, its aim is to affirm the factors that lie behind the rise of modernity in the West and thereby confirm Western exceptionalism.⁴ This account of modernity articulates the self-identity of the West by abstracting features found in the West as the essence of modernity.⁵ Integral to this enterprise is to draw contrasts between the West and Islam, wherein the latter emerges as a series of historical gaps.⁶ It is in this tradition of counterposing Islam and modernity that much contemporary analysis of Islamism develops. Islamism’s relation to modernity becomes the main line of inquiry, hinging, essentially, on how the relation between Islam and modernity is conceived. If Islam is seen as incompatible with modernity, then Islamism expresses a rejection of modernity. If, on the other hand, Islam is not viewed as antithetical to modernity, then Islamism is a way of embracing it ‘authentically.’⁷

The view of Islamism as anti-modern rests on the assumption that modernisation is associated with secularisation and the retreat of religion from the public sphere. Islamism thus appears as an expression of an anti-modern strand that, for some, is inherent in the religion. A more interesting proposition is found in Ernest Gellner’s model of Muslim societies, which purports to uncover the internal logic and mechanisms of Islam. The model sets up a dualistic structure of Islam: the High Islam of the city dwellers and the Low Islam of the tribes. The former is scripturalist and ascetic, suitable to the temperament of the city entrepreneurs, while the latter is ecstatic, meeting the needs of the tribes. These two forms of Islam are in perpetual struggle. According to Gellner, with greater urbanisation and the consolidation of the central state in the modern period, Low Islam declines and High Islam becomes ascendant. This occurs because High Islam captures the urban strata’s desire for learning and upward mobility. This desire is frustrated, however, by the laxity of the rulers and their failure to modernise their countries. In this scheme of scriptural High Islam versus ecstatic Low Islam, Islamism is viewed as an affirmation of the scriptural-based egalitarian spirit expressing frustration with the blocked road to modernisation.⁸ In some other accounts, Islamism is a variant of religious fundamentalism that emerges in a normative clash with modernity.⁹

A different understanding of the relation between Islamism and modernity may be found in critical readings of the Western discourse of modernity. In line with post-modernist thought, these readings identify the Western discourse on modernity as a meta-narrative asserting Western hegemony. Islamism’s anti-Western posture is a rejection of that hegemony and the meta-narrative that sustains it. It is not essentially an anti-modern movement, but an effort at dislodging the West from the position of centrality that it claims.¹⁰ Islamism is located in the space that is freed through the deconstruction of the relationship between the West and modernity. These readings situate Islamism in a dialogue with post-modernity defined, following Jean-François Lyotard, as expressing ‘incredulity towards meta-narratives.’ This in turn displaces the issue of the relationship between Islam and modernity, bringing into focus the politics of identity and power relations at the global level. This perspective opens up new ways of looking at Islamism without placing the West as the ultimate referential frame and the supreme global authority. Yet, although the Western discourse on modernity has been subject to a critical reading, the construct of Islam conceived in the production of Western identity continues to animate discussions of Islamism, finding parallels and reinforcement in the discourses of the Islamists themselves.

Historical Master-narratives of Islamist Movements

A number of influential studies of contemporary Islamist movements take the history of Islam as a point of departure. This is a history constructed in particular terms. Before examining them, it should be noted that this construction serves a methodological objective. It is essential for the enterprise of ‘slotting’ Islamist movements into a known chronological narrative. The sequence of events or the chronological unfolding of developments appears to be self-explanatory by virtue of basic patterns that they are presumed to embody. Several prominent scholars of ‘Islam in the modern period’ employ these types of explanatory strategies in their work on Islamist movements. To illustrate, I will focus on two of these works: Islam and Politics by John Esposito (1983) and Islam: Continuity and Change in the Modern World by John O. Voll (1982).¹¹ The perspectives outlined by Esposito and Voll have their echoes in many other writings dealing with Islamist politics.¹²

In Islam and Politics, Esposito anchors his explanation of Islamist movements in a unitary understanding of the religion. Although he acknowledges the specificity of the socio-political contexts in which these movements emerged, his underlying premise is the idea of a totality called Islam explained as the basic beliefs of Muslims and the ideas they all share. Thus, in his introduction, Esposito highlights ‘shared Muslim beliefs’: in God’s revelations, in Muhammad’s prophethood and so on. Most important is the belief in the unity of religion and politics. This is ‘the Islamic imperative’ (p. 4) which functions as the basic belief that motivates Muslims with regard to state and government and guides their assessment of whether or not their government is mandated by God.

The underlying assumptions of these simple propositions need to be spelled out in order to signal the reification and objectification that follow from them. One such assumption holds that social and national collectivities whose members adhere to the Islamic religion share a primary identification as Muslims with common beliefs, and belong to a totality called the Muslim World. In this World, a primacy of religious beliefs in guiding individual and collective action is attributed to those who profess the religion. Esposito pays no attention to how beliefs interact with the sociality of everyday life in various settings. Hence the substantive content of the beliefs that are thought to be determinant of much of Muslims’ lives is not dealt with either.

The assignment of primacy to religious beliefs is questionable on two main grounds. The first is by now somewhat axiomatic. It points out that Muslims occupy differing and multiple positions in various social and national formations that shape how they relate to each other and to their government. Second, beliefs are not transhistorical, but historically and materially grounded. The belief in God in seventh-century Arabia and the belief in God at the end of the twentieth century have to be understood in relation to their material contexts. What the belief represents or signifies is part of a system of meanings that interacts with systems of meaning articulated in other fields of social life. The idea of God may not just differ from one religion to another, but from one group of practitioners to another and from one historical period to another. Islam, as a religion, developed different ideas of God and in this respect is not unlike other religions. For instance, in seventh-century Arabia, notions of agnosticism or atheism did not exist and were therefore not dealt with in the sacred text.¹³ It was thus in relation to other notions that the criteria of belief and un-belief were formulated. It follows from these two contentions that if we are to take account of the role of religious beliefs, we must view them as components of historically produced systems of meanings.

Having assumed the unity of Muslims in the totality of Islam, Esposito develops his discussion around the idea of the continuity of their history conceived as the extension, into the present, of ideas and beliefs from the religion’s formative period. In the early period, the Islamic community was both temporal and spiritual, embodying the unity of religion and politics. According to Esposito, ‘[r]eligion provided the worldview, the framework of meaning for both individual and corporate life.’ (p. 30) This shared view, translated into a public commitment to the Shari‘a (law based on the scripture), is a primary principle (p. 31). In turn, this commitment, and the ideal of the early community, inspired pre-modern revivalist movements. In his view, it is this commitment both to the Shari‘a and the model of the early community that motivates Muslims, in a variety of contexts, to engage in restorative or corrective activity. Esposito, therefore, develops his analysis within the framework of Islamic revival and reform so methodically constructed (as we will see below) by John O. Voll. It emerges that the character and legacy of both pre-modern and modern Muslim societies as well as Islamic modernism responded to ‘the Islamic imperative’ of uniting politics and religion. The need to do so was particularly felt because of the challenge of Western colonialism (p. 32). According to Esposito, ‘pre-modern revivalism’ is a response to the socio-moral decline and reveals much of the patterns of modern Islamic movements, in their worldviews, their ideology, their language and methods’ (p. 32). Subsequently, Esposito postulates a continuity and recurrence of basic patterns. For instance, he asserts that Islamic modernism built on and broadened the pre-modern revivalist legacy (p. 32).

Situated within this continuity, contemporary Islamist movements represent basic responses and express modes of action which have been patterned in earlier historical periods. Although Esposito sketches the variety of specific socio-political contexts in which the movements emerge, he does not accord these contexts adequate explanatory weight. Consequently, contextual specificities are superseded by the shared drive among Muslims to reunite religion and politics: regardless of the differences in conjunctures, all contexts are bound to elicit the same type of response from Muslims. The formation of Islamist groups in various settings is presented as the expression of a mood of discontent towards what they perceive as generalised conditions of decay. The Muslims’ assessment of decay is itself undertaken in relation to the ideal. One may then ask in what way the context influences the positions of the actors and their relations to government and state. Based on Esposito’s analysis, one is led to conclude that the impact of the ideal to which Muslims aspire overrides the effects of the actual conditions in which they live. In other words, regardless of prevailing conditions, as long as the ideal society is not established, Muslims will agitate and engage in reform action.

The notion of recurrence with respect to movements, their symbols and ideas, results in a static vision of Muslim societies. From an empirical point of view, there is no evidence that Muslims have assessed their states and societies as being decayed whenever the Shari‘a was not applied or when rules of moral propriety were transgressed.¹⁴ However, it is not only on empirical grounds that I take issue with the conception of Islamist movements as reformist organisations seeking moral reconstruction. Rather, as I will elaborate below, I contest the assumption that the moral and moralising discourses articulated by the various Islamist groups express some agreement on unchanging core ideas and beliefs.

The idea that the continuity of Islamic history provides the basic framework for understanding Islamist movements is best articulated by J.O. Voll. Criticising the view that Islamic activism expresses social, economic or nationalist interests, Voll argues that ‘[it] is possible to see the current resurgence as a continuation of basic themes, even though those themes may be expressed in new ways’ (p. 4). Two points are central to Voll’s position: religious motivation lies behind the ‘revival,’ and the past plays an important role in guiding action in the present (p. 4). ‘Islamic resurgence,’ in his view, ‘... involves the creation of new and effective forms of continuing the vitality of the Islamic message’ (p. 4). Voll’s reading of Islamic history aims to construct ideal type categories of Muslim action, what he terms ‘styles of action.’ Four such styles are characteristic of Muslim activism in relation to government: adaptationist, conservative, fundamentalist and individualist.

In what way do these four styles serve as a framework for comprehending the entirety of Islamic history in general and the experience of ‘revivalism’ in particular? First, it should be noted that Voll posits action as a response to events and actual conditions – it is more of a reaction. In this sense, the four styles are conceived as particular ways of responding to given challenges. To illustrate, Voll sees the emergence of a fundamentalist style of action embodied in eighteenth-century revivalism – an archetype of modern revivalism – in the following manner:

Just before the time of European dominance, a reformist-revivalist tradition had been established in the mould of the fundamentalist experience. Social groups and associations had been created to meet the issues raised by the adaptationists within the Islamic community, and those groups had a fundamentalist mood, which has always been close to the surface over the last two centuries. Thus, the style of the eighteenth-century spirit of socio-moral reconstruction has provided the counterpoint to the adaptationists’ secularising reforms. When the latter weaken or appear to have failed, as was frequently the case by the 1970s, the more fundamentalist style emerges into full view (p. 30).

In this framework of constructing and understanding Islamic history, modes of action identified with ‘the Islamic experience’ appear in cyclical or recurrent patterns. These modes of action are posited as responses to challenges unleashed by changes at the local and global levels, in particular, the challenge of modernity. Voll contends that different styles of action predominate at different historical periods. For instance, adaptationist reformers prevailed under eighteenth-century Ottoman rule while fundamentalism and conservatism were in minority positions. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, reform continued to be the major issue for Muslims but came to involve adaptation to Western techniques and ideas (p. 92). Adaptationism in the twentieth century took the form of Islamic modernism, secular reformism and radical reformism (p. 158). Other styles, namely fundamentalism and conservatism, were present but only at the level of everyday life or at moments of contestation. While adaptationism was the main response to the challenge of modernisation and Western dominance during the first three-quarter...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• Preface to the Paperback Edition
• Preface
• 1 The Study of Islamism Revisited
• 2 Confronting the Other: Conservative Islamism in Egypt
• 3 Religious ‘Orthodoxy’ as Public Morality: The State, Islamism and Cultural Politics in Egypt
• 4 Contemporary Islamism as a Popular Movement: Socio-Spatial Determinants in the Cairo Urban Setting
• 5 Islamist Politics in Algeria and Tunisia: A State-Society Perspective
• 6 The Paradox of Islamist Politics
• Notes
• Bibliography