Movements of political Islam: a study in socio‐cultural dynamics

Abstract

The present study is part of a larger project to chart the socio‐cultural dynamics of the South Western Asian region (1918–2007). It is organized around three basic tenets: (1) that the South West Asian region has been (and still is) in long‐enduring cultural confrontation with the West; (2) that the confrontation with the West is not to reject the ‘modernity’ of the West, but to suggest an alternative to it; and (3) the confrontation with the West, in the contemporary context, is a function of Western imperialist penetration of the region, and its hegemonic practices. The focus of the study will be on the ‘resurgence’ of movements of political Islam, of which Western social science has, so far, failed to understand its causes. The proposition is to analyse the movements of political Islam as New Social Movements in the process of transition into mainstream political parties, dominating the political life of the whole region. It will further be contended that the disillusionment with the West in the region undermines liberal nationalist movements and feeds into the radicalization of social forces, as resistance movements.

Keywords:

• imperial domination
• cultural racism
• cultural shift
• crusading ideology
• Islamic resistance

Notes

*The original version of this paper was presented to the Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi, India, in 2007. A shorter version of the present paper was published in Arabic as ‘Harakat Al Islam Al Siyasi WeI Sulta’ in the journal Al‐Siyassa Al‐Dawliya (Cairo), no. 169, 8–29.

1. According to Albert Hourani, the emergence of the Renaissance movement (or Nahḍah) coincided with, or rather was linked to, these movements.

2. Both Aʿarab (2000, p. 39) and Gellner (cited in Zubaida 1997, pp. 51–65) note the modern character of MPIs (also Roy 2004).

3. For more details on the beginnings of this new phase of politicized religious movements; see Al‐Naqeeb (1997).

4. For an in‐depth study of Khomeini's movement, see Moin (1999); for the case of Central Asia, see Rashid (2002); and for the Arab Maghrib, see Aʿarab (2000).

5. Bacevich (2002, ch. 5) describes the evolution of what he calls ‘Full Spectrum Dominance’; the sort that Kagan and Krystol envisaged has remained a pipe dream.

6. What is meant here are the atrocities and massacres bordering on genocide that were committed in Palestine, Chechnya and Bosnia.

7. The concept of new social movement in Nash (2000) and in the case of the movement against apartheid, Thorn (2007), as a case in point.

8. On the question of Crusade for Democracy, see Al‐Naqeeb (2006, p. 131).

9. Koch and Smith maintain that such intolerance has been generally confined to Christianity and Islam, but I would say that it has even been more prominent with regard to Judaism, an intolerance that is rather rare in the rest of Asia.

10. Although the Justice and Development PaIty (AKP) in Turkey does not profess to adhere to these slogans and focuses only on Islamic identity, its sweeping success in the last elections (22 July 2007) brings this point into high relief and for the rest of Western Asia (Abdul Jabar 2003).

11. For an overview of the process of Islamization of these issues across the Muslim World, see Kepel (2004b). In his book Islam and the Principles of Political Rule (1925), the Egyptian jurist ʿAli ʿAbdul Raziq prevented temporarily the articulation of these slogans. He argues – convincingly in my opinion – that Islam does not contain a specific type of political rule but simply principles of good governance, which coincided with what was exemplified by the forcible secularization in Iran and Turkey.

12. The question of peace with Israel is one of the potent weapons in the arsenal of the MPIs. The proposal that peace should entail a two‐state solution is neither geographically nor politically feasible for many reasons: the simplest of them being that it does not satisfy Israel's security requirements. The only solution would be a unique all‐inclusive civil state that would guarantee the right of return for refugees as is promoted by Sitta (2001) and Tilley (2005) from different perspectives. Unfortunately, it is not high on the international public opinion's agenda.

13. The first level is the direct transaction between Arab states and Israel; the second is Arab states and multinational companies having subsidiaries in Israel; and the third is any transaction between both.

14. This is how Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary‐General of the Lebanese Hezbollah, presents himself as the defender of the ummah's honour, standing up against the Empire, an image which goes beyond simple armed resistance. On the internal consistency of religious narrative, see Kashima (1997, pp. 18–21). On the jihadi religious discourse, see Kepel (2005) and Rodenbeck (2006).

15. Interview with Kilcullen.

16. This quote comes from Packer (2006), who interviewed Kilcullen. The latter came to this conclusion as he noticed that global warming was included in a similar list of grievances.

17. Even the wise men of Europe, the fathers of its liberal tradition, are not immune to cultural racism. Kant commenting on a story about a Negro carpenter advising a certain father Labat, as follows: ‘but in short, this fellow was quite black from head to foot, a clear proof that he was stupid’. Hume was even more straight to the point: ‘I am apt to suspect that Negros, and in general all the other species of men (for there are four or five different kinds) to be “naturally” inferior to the Whites. There never were civilized nations of any other complexion than White, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation. No ingenuous manufacture among them, no arts, no sciences’ (quoted by Juneja 1995, pp. 27–28.)

18. Howard concludes by saying that the West had to be bellicose if it were to survive the threat posed by Magyars, Vikings and Muslims. On the question of the ‘natural’ bellicosity of the West, Rosen (2009) presents an ethnographic explanation of the bellicosity of the Americans by contrasting puritan Anglos with Scot Irish early settlers, such that bellicosity was caused by the ferocity of the Indian wars. But he does not explain the bellicosity of the Europeans, especially since the beginning of the religious wars circa 1638 (the Thirty Years War).

19. When the author was remanded in the State security detention centre for a brief ‘stay’ in 1987, he noticed that most of the prisoners' writings on the cells walls were imploring the ‘Mahdi’ (the disappeared Imam) to save them (Gray 2007). See also Prior (1999) as another example; as well as Chollet and Goldgeigeier (2006), who describe President Truman's use of religion as a political weapon: his exhortation to wear ‘God's holy armor’ to combat Communism.

20. In Schivelbusch (2001, p. 12), ‘[de]feat these becomes synonymous with liberation’, it liberates the vanquished from the old regime.

21. Al‐Jabri (2009) provides an example of how to deal with this issue (also Mahmoud 2005).

22. Cavanagh and Mander (2004) think that such a society is still possible.