Intellectual (Neo-) Imperialism: The Examples of “Islam[ism(s)]” and “Jihad[ism(s)]”

In any scientific endeavour, or considered as such, methodology and epistemology are paramount, not to mention ontology: what is the nature of the reality that we are studying? What is the nature of the knowledge that is being produced and its rationality? What are the methods applied to the field of study? However, when it to comes to “Islam”, the “Middle East”, or the “Orient”, the starting points are assumptions and truisms, particularly in “scientific” fields such as Political Science or International Relations, especially when the subject is the relation between politics and religion. In the last few decades, Islam has become a central point of reference for a wide range of political activities, arguments and opposition movements. The term “political Islam”, or “Islamism”, has been adopted by many scholars in order to identify this seemingly unprecedented irruption of Islamic religion into the secular domain of politics and thus to distinguish these practices from the forms of personal piety, belief, and ritual conventionally subsumed in Western scholarship under the unmarked category “Islam”. There have been tremendous, innumerable websites, voluminous publications and many projects on “Islamism(s)” and “Post-Islamism(s)”, the idea that political Islam had failed. However, when reality did not confirm that prediction, a new term was coined: “neo-Islamism”. This paper aims to explore the thesis that, as in other fields, these labels are nothing more than an attempt by Area Studies within Western academia to mould reality according to preconceived ideas and according to policy-oriented circles and funded by governmental organizations, and that, when dealing with “Islam” and “politics”, we are urgently in need of a different epistemology.

The Axiological and Praxeological Relationship Between Political Islam and Liberal Democracy

The question of the correlation between Islam, political Islam, and liberal democracy has so far been the most exposed topic in exploring the democratic capacity of political Islam and Islamic societies in general. What is particularly intriguing about the relationship between political Islam and liberal democracy is the fact of its Westernized triviality that has received a pejorative tone in Islamic political circles. The following chapter analyzes the relationship of political Islam to specific inherent categories of liberal democracy such as the rule of law, representative government, the separation of powers, and secularism as differentia specifica of liberal Western democratic discourse. This chapter argued how appropriate tangent or divergence is illustrated and how this is reflected in the general ideological positioning of political Islam towards the liberal democracy in the Muslim countries through an axiological and praxeological perspective.

No Country for Muslims? The Invention of an Islam Républicain in France and Its Impact on French Muslims

Since the beheading of the French teacher Samuel Paty on 16 October 2020, the call for a fight against the so-called ‘Political Islam’ has been heard once again, not only in France, but all over Europe (EU). The politicization of Islam is held to be responsible for the increasing attacks by radical Islamic actors within European metropoles, and the EU states’ call for action and revenge in response to this ideology and its adherents, in order to guarantee public security and democratic values. Starting from the major terrorist attacks in France in the last few years, this paper seeks to compare the interlinking between domestic policy and religious radicalization and its impact on neighboring states. With regard to the attacks on 13 November 2015 in France, the attackers were traced back to radical networks in Belgium and Germany. Based on selected interviews that have been conducted by the author with female adherents of jihadist milieus within the years 2015 and 2016 in France and social media examples of Muslim reactions on the current French law enforcement, the tension between domestic policy and religious freedom related to Islam in France will be highlighted in this article. Among other reasons, the interview quotations and social media reactions can be seen as a result of a specific religious understanding and practice related to Islam by some actors. In addition, the ongoing othering of Muslims by France and other European societies can be seen to be in sum to be responsible for the increasing interest of young Muslims in radical Islamic thought that led to jihadist attacks within France in the not-so-distant past. With respect to the aforementioned development, this article will conceptualize the problematique of a (politically motivated) category formation related to one religion that is currently practiced in France, as seen from the perspective of a religious studies scholar.

The Diminishing Agency of Urbanised Alevis Against the Rise of Political Islam in Turkey

This paper critically examines the diminishing agency of the first-urbanised Alevi generation vis- à-vis the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and their sectarian agenda mediated by political Islam. The conceptual position is underpinned by Foucault’s concept of governmentality and theory of agency in broader cultural terms. These theoretical frameworks interweave to present a rich and complex set of snapshots that document the first-urbanised Alevi generation’s decreasing possibilities of action in the urban context. Accordingly, the empirical data that informs this piece has been collected by a series of qualitative and semi-structured interviews with the first-urbanised Alevi generation, children of those who migrated to urban areas in the 1960s and wittingly or unwittingly kept their identities undisclosed to varying degrees. Those interviewed come from a range of different professional backgrounds, with the only common point being that they have spent their childhoods and adult years in Istanbul, Turkey. Through a close engagement with the empirical material, this paper addresses the effects of the AKP’s Sunnification process centring around political Islam on the first generation urbanised Alevis and to what extent the systemic nature of this process attenuates or takes away their agency in the urban context. The account is focused around three key themes including daily life, institutional forms of discrimination and the workplace.

The Islamist Challenge in the Greater Mediterranean

The article examines and analyzes the spread of Islamism or Political Islam movements in the Greater Mediterranean and their increasing influence on the socio-political situation in 2011-2021. The historical factors, which contributed to the emergence of the hearths of Islamic culture in the countries which entered the Arab Caliphate in the Greater Mediterranean parallel with the Antique centers of European civilization, are retrospectively exposed. The Islamist ideologues called the Ottoman Imperia the heir of the Arab Caliphate. The main doctrinal conceptions of Political Islam and its more influential movement Muslim Brotherhood (forbidden in Russia) are discovered. The factor of the Arab Spring, which considerably influenced the strengthening of the Islamist movements, as well as its continuation of the protests in the Arab countries in 2018-2021, is examined. The main attention is allotted to analyzing the actions of the Islamic movements in Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria, and in the Libyan and Syrian conflicts too. The influence of external actors, the most active of which was Turkey, is revealed. The author also analyzes the situation in the Arab-Muslim communities in the European Mediterranean on the example of France, where social-economic problems, aggravated by COVID-19, have contributed to the activation of radical Islamist elements. It is concluded that confronting the Islamist challenge is a complex and controversial task. Its solution depends on both forceful opposition to radical groups and an appropriate foreign policy. An important negative factor is the aggravation of socio-economic problems and crisis phenomena in the institutions of Western democracy, in response to which the ideologues of Islamism preach an alternative world order in the form of an Islamic state. At the moment the Western society and the countries which repeat its liberal model do not give a distinct response to this challenge.

PENDIDIKAN POLITIK DALAM PERSPEKTIF AL-QUR’AN DAN HADITS

Islam is a perfect religion that not only regulates ritualistic relationships between humans and their creators, but Islam is a comprehensive religion that regulates all aspects of human life both spiritually and physically, as well as regulates human affairs in social life and lays down the principles of the nation and state. State, including matters related to politics, power and government, political education, in political Islam known as siyasa which studies matters concerning matters concerning the affairs of the people and the state with all forms of law, regulation, and policies made by the holder of power. The Qur'an also uses the term Sulthan, "Physical ability to exercise influence and or coercion on other people or society" Mulk, "Power as an object of right (ownership)", and bukm "Organizing order in human life. What is more discussed is related to the principles of leadership where humans are the main subject and at the same time the object in politics. These principles are deliberation, trustworthiness, fair dealing, leadership is responsibility, leaders must not deceive their people, leaders do not do wrong to their people, leaders must pay attention to the condition of the Islamic Ummah (welfare), leaders must act fairly in governing, leaders love their people and their people love him, positions because they are trusted are mandated not requested. This research is a research library (library research).

Myths of nationhood: Cultural nationalism, political Islam, and the movement against sculptures in Bangladesh

In November 2020, the government of Bangladesh announced plans to erect a 25-foot-tall sculpture of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in the national memorial located in the country's capital, Dhaka. This announcement caused a massive uproar among the religious ulema and quickly turned into a quasi-mass scale movement, sparking a torrent of political and religious rhetoric from both sides. This article argues that behind the religious rhetoric, the true cause underlying this fracas was purely political in nature, and tied to the clash of two contrasting nationalist dogmas. The country's Islamic political parties and the Qawmi madrasas leaders face a clear and perceived threat from the nationalist narratives expounded by the ruling political party, the Bangladesh Awami League, and this movement was a retaliatory attempt and will not be the last.

The Muslim Brotherhood Faultline in Saudi-Qatari Relations: Domestic Divisions and Regional Rivalry

The commentary argues the Saudi-Qatari tensions lie in conflicting perspectives about the role of political Islam within the fabric of both states and their actions regionally. Funda-mentally, the rivalry stems from contrasting relations between political and religious elites in each country which has taken on an increasing political importance in tensions between Riyadh and Doha. Central to much of this are questions about the role played by the Muslim Brotherhood (and its various affiliates). More relatedly, the Saudi-Qatari rifts emerge out of competing understandings of authority and legitimacy, and with it, concern at the contesta-tion of these claims.

A DISCURSIVE STRATEGY TO MAINTAIN THE CULTURAL ISLAM-POLITICAL ISLAM POWER RELATION IN INDONESIA IN TRIWIKROMO’S “LENGTU LENGMUA” (2012)

This study aims to reveal the discursive play of the short story “Lengtu Lengmua” (2012) by Triyanto Triwikromo in maintaining the unequal power relation in Indonesia. The study is carried out on the basis of Norman Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis that elaborates intertextuality theory and social theory of discourse. The research questions are what discourses influence “Lengtu Lengmua”’s celeng construction? and what political interests are supported and legitimized by “Lengtu Lengmua”’s celeng construction? It is a descriptive qualitative study for which data were collected using a note-taking technique. The relationships between data are elucidated by describing how the text of the short story, its production and the interpretation process are connected to the prevailing social conditions in Indonesia. The results show that: (1) “Lengtu Lengmua” represents, manipulates, negates, and transcends the discourse that sees that “celeng is a despicable animal” from the texts of Berburu Celeng (1998), Celeng Dhegleng (1998), and Tak Enteni Keplokmu (2000); and (2) to generate a notion of celeng as a noble animal, “Lengtu Lengmua” also configures the existing discourse conventions, namely conventions that are related to magical realism, Javanese society, children, Islamic shari’ah, and Islamic makrifat. These two results indicate that “Lengtu Lengmua” gives a new meaning to celeng and recontextualizes the celeng, which in previous texts is associated with human greed (i.e. capitalistic and corrupt), in religious issues especially those related to the contradiction between political Islam and cultural Islam. In turn, this discursive play has contributed to the formation of political Islam-cultural Islam power relation in recent years in Indonesia where cultural Islam occupies a dominant position. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengungkap permainan diskursif cerpen “Lengtu Lengmua” (2012) karya Triyanto Triwikromo dalam pemertahanan relasi kuasa yang tidak setara di Indonesia. Kajian dalam penelitian ini mengacu pada Analisis Wacana Kritis dari Norman Fairclough yang mengelaborasi teori intertekstualitas dan teori sosial wacana. Pertanyaan yang ingin dijawab dalam penelitian ini adalah wacana apa yang memengaruhi konstruksi celeng “Lengtu Lengmua” dan kepentingan politik apa yang didukung dan dilegitimasi oleh konstruksi celeng “Lengtu Lengmua”. Kajian ini menggunakan metode penjabaran deskriptif kualitatif dan teknik pengumpulan data simak-catat. Hubungan antardata dikaji melalui deskripsi atau penjelasan bagaimana teks cerpen, proses produksi dan interpretasinya berkaitan dengan kondisi sosial yang melatar belakangi cerita dalam cerpen. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa (1) “Lengtu Lengmua” merepresentasikan, memanipulasi, menegasikan, dan melampaui wacana “celeng adalah hewan hina” dari teks Berburu Celeng (1998), Celeng Dhegleng (1998), dan Tak Enteni Keplokmu (2000); (2) “Lengtu Lengmua” juga mengonfigurasikan konvensi-konvensi wacana yang ada untuk menghasilkan konstruksi celeng sebagai hewan mulia, yaitu konvensi wacana realisme magis, masyarakat Jawa, anak-anak, Islam syariat, dan Islam makrifat. Kedua hasil penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa “Lengtu Lengmua” memberikan makna baru atas celeng dan membawa representasi celeng, yang pada teks-teks sebelumnya diidentikkan dengan kerakusan manusia yang kapitalistik dan korup, ke dalam konteks persoalan keagamaan khususnya yang terkait dengan pertentangan antara Islam politik dan Islam kultural. Pada gilirannya, permainan diskursif ini berkontribusi pada pembentukan relasi kuasa Islam politik-Islam kultural pada tahun-tahun terakhir di Indonesia di mana Islam kultural menduduki posisi yang dominan.