The Many Faces of Political Islam: Religion and Politics in the Muslim World

Chapter 8: The Many Faces of Political Islam

chapter 8 The Many Faces of Political Islam This book has attempted, among other things, to address the potential of political Islam or Islamism to affect, in major ways, the future of major Muslim societies and polities around the world. It has done so primarily by examining manifestations of political Islam in several important Muslim countries where Islamist ideology and rhetoric has been used by parties and movements to further their political, economic, and social objectives in different and varied contexts . In the process, while making references to international factors in the ‹rst two chapters and more extensively in chapter 7, this study has so far largely concentrated on domestic variables to ‹nd explanations for the popularity and strength of Islamist parties and movements and for the weaknesses and contradictions that are inherent in Islamist mobilization. This focus has resulted from my convictions that political Islam in the contemporary era is by and large a national phenomenon and that its trajectories, while subject to international in›uence, are primarily determined by factors that are discrete to particular contexts. International factors that have a major impact on the trajectory of political Islam in a particular context become salient when they are ‹ltered through local conditions and concerns and interact with the latter in such a way that they augment trends already in existence because of domestic factors. As chapter 7 pointed out, international factors appear as major independent variables in determining the goals and strategies of transnational Islamist groups, especially those that take recourse to violence against countries they de‹ne as the “far enemy.” Even here, as the discussion about the origins of al-Qaeda and its af‹liates has clearly demonstrated, local factors, including state failure (in Afghanistan) and/or the inability of radical groups to successfully target local regimes (in Egypt, Algeria, and Saudi Arabia), played very important roles in 152 the emergence of transnational Islamist extremism. Transnational jihadism was therefore as much a product of domestic as of global factors. Additionally, such transnational groups form a very small minority among movements and parties de‹ned as Islamist. The vast majority of Islamist formations are national in character, with their objectives con‹ned to the territories of their nation-states. As chapter 7 has demonstrated, violent transnational jihadi groups form a small percentage even among transnational Islamist movements that include missionary and nonviolent political organizations as well. Thus, despite their dramatic acts of terror, their impact on Muslim societies is very limited, because they are marginal to the political and social struggles going on within predominantly Muslim countries and, unlike their national counterparts, do not have substantial support bases among the populations of predominantly Muslim societies. Nonetheless, some international variables, especially American policies toward the Muslim world, deserve analysis, even if in abbreviated form, in this concluding chapter, because they can have major impact on the fortunes of political Islam within discrete societies when mediated though local concerns and domestic perceptions of the relationship between international and domestic factors. This applies especially to America’s close relationship with several unrepresentative and authoritarian regimes in the Muslim world and to the general perception in Muslim countries that American policies are hostile to Muslim interests broadly de‹ned. The impact of American policies in the Middle East on popular support for Islamist movements and parties clearly demonstrates the validity of this assertion. I shall return to this subject later in this chapter. This book has argued—both in the introductory chapter and in the various case studies in the subsequent chapters—that it is only natural that political Islam is manifested largely as a national phenomenon. The discrete national manifestations of political Islam are due to the fact that there is wide diversity within the Muslim world in terms of socioeconomic characteristics, culture, political systems, and trajectories of intellectual development, making it extremely dif‹cult, if not impossible, for the political expression of Islam developed in one context to be replicated in other locales. Moreover, as territorial boundaries of postcolonial nation-states have solidi‹ed and have come to be seen as legitimate and permanent, politics has become effectively circumscribed within national territorial limits. This is clearly demonstrated by the fact that the overwhelming majority of political actors in Muslim countries, Islamists and non-Islamists alike, has internalized the values of the nation-state The Many Faces of Political Islam / 153 system and is comfortable working within it...