Islamism (fl. 1979- ) is Islam seen as an -ism, a set of ideas suitable for a democratic, revolutionary or ruling political party. Islamists think that Islam should inform government policy. (Before the 1990s, the word “Islamism” was mainly just Voltaire’s old word for what we now call “Islam”.)
Islamism is not a monolith. Some Islamists are extreme and violent, like Al Qaeda, Boko Haram and the Islamic State. Others are mainstream and democratic, like in Tunisia, Egypt and Turkey. Some push sharia (Muslim law), some do not. Some fight holy wars (jihadists). Some fight for the freedom of their people (nationalists). Some provide education and health care that the government does not.
Most older leaders of the Muslim world, like Yasser Arafat, Saddam Hussein and the Shah of Iran, were secularists, not Islamists.
Secularism – keeping religion out of government – is a Western idea, one that grew out of Protestantism. It has been tried in the Muslim world and found wanting. Instead of bringing freedom and democracy, as advertised, it brought banana republicanism: police states led by men who turned their backs on God while they licked the boot of the US. Many people argued for a return to Islam, sometimes to a “pure” form of it: fundamentalism.
Fundamentalism arose in the 1900s in all the world’s main religions. It arose not among the poor or people “stuck in the past”, but among those with university educations. It is an understanding of religion that was rare before 1900, a reaction to secularism.
From 1958 to 1991 the US backed Islamism as a counterweight to communism and socialism. In the 1980s in Afghanistan, for example, the CIA trained Islamist “freedom fighters” to fight communist rule. Some of those same people are now seen as “terrorists” in the West, people like Osama bin Laden, founder of Al Qaeda.
By 1996, just five years after the fall of world communism, Samuel Huntington saw “Islamism” as a new threat to the West in his book “Clash of Civilizations”.
In 2002 Margaret Thatcher wrote that “Islamism is the new bolshevism”:
It is an aggressive ideology promoted by fanatical, well-armed devotees. And, like communism, it requires an all-embracing long-term strategy to defeat it.
– and then she argued for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, who was not an Islamist!
Bernard Lewis saw no need for the word in his history, “The Middle East” (1995), but eight years later used it in “The Crisis of Islam” (2003).
It seems to function as a marketing term used by Western imperialists that means little more than “Muslims we don’t like”.
In the 2000s the word caught on in English, especially among Islamophobes and Western reporters. It was often used with words like “radical”, “extremist”, “militant” and “terrorist”. In the 2010s, some news outlets, like the Associated Press and The Economist, had moved away from that and applied it to democratic Islamists as well. Al Jazeera English went a step further and dropped the term since it seemed simplistic to apply the same word to both Boko Haram and the leader of Turkey.
– Abagond, 2015.
See also:
The name Bernard Lewis makes my skin boil slightly….he was found guilty in France and fined for to rewrite history sometime back.
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In my experience both Islam-haters and islamists reject the term Islamism. They see Islamism just as “uncorrupted Islam”. But I think it has analytical value, because it marks the difference between ideology and religion.
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Islamism—It is a catch-all phrase and not accurate—but nuances would probably be lost on audiences anyway….
Some politicians who wanted to use the public’s desire for integrity, transparency, and justice in government and civic institutions use the platform of “Islam”(religion/way of life based on ethico-moral principles) to get popularity—these are “Islamists”.
Purists are those who want to “revolutionize” their societies to be in line with some (mythic) utopian vision that they feel a “Pure” Islam will bring about…(This is a modern idea—there is no such thing as “Pure” Islam)
Secularism—-In the early history, the Caliphs (Ameer-ul momeneen/Commander of the Faithful) were chosen by the majority (committee)—which is how the Shia Sunni split began—there were two parties, one of whom wanted the Son-in Law of the Prophet to become leader……Later, Caliphs became dynastic…but by this time the Sharia had already been formed. The Sharia(Law) and the Scholars of Jurisprudence acted as the counterforce to the Caliph—in other words, the balance of power was attained by the division of government and law. —the idea is similar to secularism—that is division of religion—which in this case was Law(based on ethico-moral principles)—from Government.
—However, Western secularism fuses Law (which in the case of Islam IS religion) and Government together—which breaks the Islamic paradigm of a balance of power. That is why “Islamism” is not Islam. Islamism is based on the Western paradigm.
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Abagond, you didn’t define “Fundamentalism”. You already went over 500 words, may as well as kept on rolling with it. Isn’t fundamentalism WAY older than that? Ancient and theocratic?
I don’t think Saddam was secularist. He was a known persecutor of religions other than his own (Sunni Islam).
I also disagree with your negative implication about secularism, which arguably Jesus Christ himself is thought to be an earlier supporter of (Mark 12:17). When religion becomes the law persecution of other religions also often becomes legal, then we’re right back to Islamophobia for instance. Even worse than that it’s harder to fight oppression or try to change things because then the theocratic PTBs feel like they don’t have to listen to anyone. What they’re doing has divine approval, it cannot be wrong. It’s part of what justified all that evil imperialism white people did last millenia supposedly with God’s approval.
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“When religion becomes the law persecution of other religions also often becomes legal”
That depends on the religion—For many “religions” the ethico-moral principles they are based on are the basis for Law. Law/Jurisprudence cannot be arbitrary but must have a methodology of arriving at law. In Islam—all religions were allowed to have their own laws and to operate their own court/judiciary systems…In other words, They had a plurality of laws. This was to acknowledge that while some ethico-moral principles (upon which laws are based) may be universal, others are not and each community has a right to decide and live by the principles they believe in…..To a western mind who can only conceive of one law for one nation—this may seem to be a radical idea but it is not…many western countries allow arbitration by religious courts….
In Islam, Sharia/Fiqh is for Muslims, but Non-Muslims can also use it if they wish to. Research into the old court records show that Muslim courts were used by Non-Muslims, particularly women….
The historical trajectory of the West does not necessarily apply to Non-Western countries who have their own historical trajectories and their own historical relationship to religion…..
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Any idea why?
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Any idea why?
Because it is easier than writing down “political islam” all the time?
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Islam does not belong in the west
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@ Jefe
My guess is that it was mainly the Arab Spring in 2011.
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