Islamism in UK, SE Asia and Oz
Went to a talk this evening by an academic on Islamism and the response to it in the UK, SE Asia and Oz.
He described Islamism as very much a Western-derived ideology. It uses essentially Trotskyite (i.e. Socialist Workers Party) modes of organisation. It adopts the language of post-modernist, post-colonialist, "hard" multiculturalism, particularly authenticity, aiming to create a post-national superstructure (the Caliphate). It is a political religion, in the terms of Michael Burleigh.
He described the intellectual origins of Islamism as a series of responses to the West, starting with al-Afghani. He noted that its key thinkers do not come out of classical Islamic scholarship but often had "broken" lives, reacting to urban anonymity.
He made a striking point about the appeal of Islamism to second-generation Muslims in the West. Since the key identity for Islamism is Muslim, it meant they could marry any Muslim (woman) rather than being compelled to follow the kin-based choices of their parents. Islamism operates as a rejection both of their parents cultural parochialism -- folk Islam (broadly the Sufi traditions) -- and the secular modernism of the West.
Islamism focuses everything on the purity of the text -- thereby jettisoning most Islamic scholarship -- while adopting Western ideas such as constitutionalism, rule of law, accountability, independent judiciary. But a constitutionalism enshrining the sovereignty of Allah, the rule of sharia and accountability solely to the ummah.
The striking difference was in official responses. In Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia there are both repressive measures (licensing of who can preach, what can be sold, etc) and intellectual counter-attack -- point-by-point rebuttal of jihadi claims in particular and Islamist claims in general.
In the UK and Oz, the notion that jihadi violence is motivated by an ideology -- that it is not just a policing problem -- has little official or intellectual acknowledgment. Indeed, the use of fashionable academic themes, the pose of Muslim authenticity and the West=oppression/non-West=victims dynamic largely shields them from critique.*
A lively discussion ensued.
I pointed out that the dynamic of purifying-return-to-original scriptures is endemic to monotheist scripturalism -- going right back to King Josiah in the Old Testament, the Zealots, Martin Luther and John Knox. The jihadi urge based on a purifying return to original sources is a perennial in Islam.
Also endemic to monotheist scripturalism is scriptural purification competing with "modernising" (i.e. adapting) elements. Again, a theme in the Old Testament. A dispute one sees in 1st AD Palestine (the purifying Zealots versus the "these Romans and Greeks have some interesting ideas" folk). And which plays out in the contemporary Islamic World as Attaturk/Nasserism/nationalism versus Khomeinism/Islamism.
*An example of his point is comments on a gay website about this piece show how for many it really isn’t kosher to suggest that there might be any sort of problem within Muslim communities in Europe. Yet pale shadows of the same by Christians would invoke all sorts of outrage.
He described Islamism as very much a Western-derived ideology. It uses essentially Trotskyite (i.e. Socialist Workers Party) modes of organisation. It adopts the language of post-modernist, post-colonialist, "hard" multiculturalism, particularly authenticity, aiming to create a post-national superstructure (the Caliphate). It is a political religion, in the terms of Michael Burleigh.
He described the intellectual origins of Islamism as a series of responses to the West, starting with al-Afghani. He noted that its key thinkers do not come out of classical Islamic scholarship but often had "broken" lives, reacting to urban anonymity.
He made a striking point about the appeal of Islamism to second-generation Muslims in the West. Since the key identity for Islamism is Muslim, it meant they could marry any Muslim (woman) rather than being compelled to follow the kin-based choices of their parents. Islamism operates as a rejection both of their parents cultural parochialism -- folk Islam (broadly the Sufi traditions) -- and the secular modernism of the West.
Islamism focuses everything on the purity of the text -- thereby jettisoning most Islamic scholarship -- while adopting Western ideas such as constitutionalism, rule of law, accountability, independent judiciary. But a constitutionalism enshrining the sovereignty of Allah, the rule of sharia and accountability solely to the ummah.
The striking difference was in official responses. In Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia there are both repressive measures (licensing of who can preach, what can be sold, etc) and intellectual counter-attack -- point-by-point rebuttal of jihadi claims in particular and Islamist claims in general.
In the UK and Oz, the notion that jihadi violence is motivated by an ideology -- that it is not just a policing problem -- has little official or intellectual acknowledgment. Indeed, the use of fashionable academic themes, the pose of Muslim authenticity and the West=oppression/non-West=victims dynamic largely shields them from critique.*
A lively discussion ensued.
I pointed out that the dynamic of purifying-return-to-original scriptures is endemic to monotheist scripturalism -- going right back to King Josiah in the Old Testament, the Zealots, Martin Luther and John Knox. The jihadi urge based on a purifying return to original sources is a perennial in Islam.
Also endemic to monotheist scripturalism is scriptural purification competing with "modernising" (i.e. adapting) elements. Again, a theme in the Old Testament. A dispute one sees in 1st AD Palestine (the purifying Zealots versus the "these Romans and Greeks have some interesting ideas" folk). And which plays out in the contemporary Islamic World as Attaturk/Nasserism/nationalism versus Khomeinism/Islamism.
*An example of his point is comments on a gay website about this piece show how for many it really isn’t kosher to suggest that there might be any sort of problem within Muslim communities in Europe. Yet pale shadows of the same by Christians would invoke all sorts of outrage.