2. Running to Lose? Elections, Authoritarianism, and Islamist Movements

2019 ◽  
pp. 15-31
Keyword(s):  
Islamist Movements

Coevolution

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Avi Max Spiegel
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Islamist Movements

This chapter seeks to understand how Islamist movements have evolved over time, and, in the process, provide important background on the political and religious contexts of the movements in question. In particular, it shows that Islamist movements coevolve. Focusing on the histories of Morocco's two main Islamist movements—the Justice and Spirituality Organization, or Al Adl wal Ihsan (Al Adl) and the Party of Justice and Development (PJD)—it suggests that their evolutions can only be fully appreciated if they are relayed in unison. These movements mirror one another depending on the competitive context, sometimes reflecting, sometimes refracting, sometimes borrowing, sometimes adapting or even reorganizing in order to keep up with the other.

Young Islam

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Avi Max Spiegel
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Political Islam ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Religious Ideology ◽  
Secular World ◽  
New Recruits ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Islamist Movements

Today, two-thirds of all Arab Muslims are under the age of thirty. This book takes readers inside the evolving competition for their support—a competition not simply between Islamism and the secular world, but between different and often conflicting visions of Islam itself. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research among rank-and-file activists in Morocco, the book shows how Islamist movements are encountering opposition from an unexpected source—each other. In vivid detail, the book describes the conflicts that arise as Islamist groups vie with one another for new recruits, and the unprecedented fragmentation that occurs as members wrangle over a shared urbanized base. Looking carefully at how political Islam is lived, expressed, and understood by young people, the book moves beyond the top-down focus of current research. Instead, it makes the compelling case that Islamist actors are shaped more by their relationships to each other than by their relationships to the state or even to religious ideology. By focusing not only on the texts of aging elites but also on the voices of diverse and sophisticated Muslim youths, the book exposes the shifting and contested nature of Islamist movements today—movements that are being reimagined from the bottom up by young Islam. This book, the first to shed light on this new and uncharted era of Islamist pluralism in the Middle East and North Africa, uncovers the rivalries that are redefining the next generation of political Islam.

Rentier Islamism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Courtney Freer
Keyword(s):  
United Arab Emirates ◽  
Muslim Brotherhood ◽  
State Theory ◽  
Government Policies ◽  
The Political ◽  
Contemporary History ◽  
Rentier State ◽  
Oil Rents ◽  
History Of ◽  
Islamist Movements

This book, using contemporary history and original empirical research, updates traditional rentier state theory, which largely fails to account for the existence of Islamist movements, by demonstrating the political capital held by Muslim Brotherhood affiliates in Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). While rentier state theory predicts that citizens of such states will form opposition blocs only when their stake in rent income is threatened, this book demonstrates that ideology, rather than rent, has motivated the formation of independent Islamist movements in the wealthiest states of the region. It argues for this thesis by chronicling the history of the Brotherhood in Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE, and showing how the organization adapted to the changing (and often adverse) political environs of those respective countries to remain a popular and influential force for social, educational, and political change in the region. The presence of oil rents, then, far from rendering Islamist complaint politically irrelevant, shapes the ways in which Islamist movements seek to influence government policies.

scholarly journals Post-Islamism Redefined: Towards a politics of post-Islamism

2020 ◽  
pp. 28-54
Author(s):  
Milad Dokhanchi
Keyword(s):  
State Power ◽  
The State ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Alternative Definition ◽  
Philosophical Foundations ◽  
Current Conception ◽  
Sharia Law ◽  
Radical Critique ◽  
Modern Condition ◽  
Islamist Movements

Problematizing Asef Bayat’s notion of “post-Islamism,” this article proposes an alternative definition for the concept, having in mind the case of Iran. The current conception of the term “post-Islamism” may be challenged via a survey of post-revolutionary Islamist movements that resisted the state and as well as Ayatollah’s Khomeini’s concession to the concept maslahat (expediency), through which state expressed preference for modern reason over sharia law. The case of Islamists contesting state power questions the monolithic image of Islamism drawn by Bayat as movements longing to create a state based on the doctrine of velāyat-e faqih. Also Khomeini’s concession to maslahat indicates that the Islamic state must be seen as one of the participants in “post”-Islamist secularizing trends in Iran. Hence, Bayat’s post-Islamism was more of an inevitable political phenomenon adopted by the state itself than a conscious project adopted by Muslim secularist intellectual figures seeking to put an end to Islamism. Unlike Bayat’s post-Islamism, which celebrates the end or a “break” from an Islamist paradigm, this article then invites readers to expose Islamism to post-modern critique, the result of which would not be a negation but rather a revival of Islamism that takes into account the contingencies of the post-modern condition. Similar to post-Marxism and post-anarchism, post-Islamism maintains the ethos of the traditional canon, Islamism in this case, while rejecting its authoritarian and universalist tendencies. A post-Islamist politics has yet to emerge, yet its introductory philosophical foundations have been already developed in the 1990s by figures such as Abdolkarism Soroush and Morteza Avini. Soroush’s post-Islamism, however, ultimately landed in a modernist liberal episteme, hence remained Islamist, while Avini, despite his support for the state, offered a much more radical critique of Islamism while remaining faithful to its ethos.

scholarly journals Is Islam Compatible With Democracy? Islamist Movement’s Trajectory on Democratization in Indonesia

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 139
Author(s):  
Muzayyin Ahyar
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Values ◽  
Historical Approach ◽  
Research Results ◽  
Independence Era ◽  
State Relations ◽  
New Formula ◽  
Islamist Movement ◽  
Democratic Country ◽  
Islamist Movements ◽  
Islam And Democracy

<p class="ABSTRACT"><span lang="EN">The democratization process in Indonesia is in line with the emergence several Islamic mass organizations which accept or rejected the concept of democracy. Since the pre-independence era, Indonesia has been facing some Islamist groups that opposed to state’s ideology of democracy. This article presents the discussion among scholars about the compatibility between Islamic norms and democratic values, and in what position Indonesia is. The dealing question with the discussion is; does the proliferation of radical Islamist movement signify the incompatibility of Islam and democracy? By using sociological and historical approach, this paper analyzes in order to what extent the values of democracy and Islamism adapt in the frame of a democratic country. The analysis of this research results that the existing radical Islamist movement is not a failure of Indonesia’s effort to harmonize Islam with democracy. Thus, neither the presence of pro-democracy Islamic mass organizations nor the radical Islamist movement cannot be used as the final argument to answer whether Islam compatible with democracy or not. The results of this study reveal that democratization in Indonesia has been accompanied by the proliferation of Islamist movements. The proliferation of Islamist movements nowadays precisely indicates that democracy in Indonesia has a special experience regarding new formula of peacefully religion-state relations.</span></p><span>Proses demokratisasi di Indonesia berjalan seiring lahirnya berbagai organisasi masyarakat Islam yang mendukung maupun menolak demokrasi. Sejak era pra-kemerdekaan hingga era reformasi, Indonesia terus dihadapkan dengan fenomena gerakan Isalmisme yang bersebrangan dengan ideologi Negara. Artikel ini menghadirkan diskusi yang selama ini masih banyak didiskusikan mengenai kesesuaian Islam dan demokrasi, dan di mana posisi Indonesia dalam hal kesesuaian dan ketidaksesuaian Islam dan demokrasi tersebut. Pertanyaan kunci dari artikel ini apakah proliferasi gerakan Islamis radikal menandakan ketidaksesuaian Islam dan demokrasi? Dengan menggunakan pendekatan sosiologi dan historis, artikel ini menganalisis sejauh mana nilai-nilai demokrasi dan Islamisme beradaptasi dalam bingkai Negara yang demokratis. Hasil analisis dari kajian ini menemukan bahwa eksistensi gerakan Islamis radikal bukan sebuah pertanda akan kegagalan usaha keras Indonesia dalam mengharmonisasikan Islam dan demokrasi. Sehingga, kehadiran ormas Islam, baik pendukung maupun penolak demokrasi, keduanya tidak dapat dijadikan jawaban final bahwa Islam sesuai atau tidak dengan demokrasi. Hasil dari kajian ini menekankan bahwa demokratisasi di Indonesia selalu diwarnai dengan proliferasi gerakan Islamis. Proliferasi gerakan Islamis akhir-akhir ini justru membuktikan bahwa demokrasi di Indonesia memiliki pengalaman khusus terkait formula hubungan agama-negara dalam masyarakat yang demokratis.</span>

Islam in a Changing Middle East: Local Politics and Islamist Movements

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen Lust ◽  
Janine Clark ◽  
Yuree Noh ◽  
Melissa J. Marschall ◽  
Marwa Shalaby ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Local Politics ◽  
Islamist Movements

Prospects for global jihadism in Southeast Asia

2021 ◽  
pp. 46
Author(s):  
Natalia A. Zherlitsyna
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Local Population ◽  
Political Islam ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Main Pole ◽  
The World ◽  
Secular Power ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Islamist Movement ◽  
Islamist Movements

The article examines the relationship between local and global radical Islamist movements in the countries of Southeast Asia: Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. The author set out to determine the reasons for the attractiveness of the rhetoric of modern global jihadist movements for the local population in remote regions of the world.  The study showed that the ideology of jihadism is based on a return to identity, the main pole of which is religion. After examining the origins of radical Islamist movements in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, the author concluded that the Afghan War was the impetus for their development. The purpose of this study is to find common and distinctive characteristics of the situation with Islamist radicalism in each of the countries of the region.  Analyzing the situation in Indonesia, the author concludes that the priority for local groups is local goals, and the issue of armed jihad has split the Indonesian Islamist movement into a moderate and radical wing associated with Al-Qaeda and ISIS. The article traces the evolution of secular power in Malaysia to the institutionalization of political Islam, starting in the 1970s.  The author argues that the grows of the Islamization in Malaysia led to the fact that the modern religious and ethnic discourse of the country as a whole was prepared for the perception of the ideology of radicals when ISIS appeared in the region. The author found that the jihadist movements in the Philippines are motivated by the separatist conflict, they pursue local goals and use the rhetoric of global jihad to stimulate the struggle and intimidate opponents.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document