Despite the intense media focus on Muslims and their religion since the tragedy of 9/11, few Western scholars or policymakers today have a clear idea of the distinctions between Islam and the ...politically based fundamentalist movement known as Islamism. In this important and illuminating book, Bassam Tibi, a senior scholar of Islamic politics, provides a corrective to this dangerous gap in our understanding. He explores the true nature of contemporary Islamism and the essential ways in which it differs from the religious faith of Islam.
Drawing on research in twenty Islamic countries over three decades, Tibi describes Islamism as a political ideology based on a reinvented version of Islamic law. In separate chapters devoted to the major features of Islamism, he discusses the Islamist vision of state order, the centrality of antisemitism in Islamist ideology, Islamism's incompatibility with democracy, the reinvention of jihadism as terrorism, the invented tradition of shari'a law as constitutional order, and the Islamists' confusion of the concepts of authenticity and cultural purity. Tibi's concluding chapter applies elements of Hannah Arendt's theory to identify Islamism as a totalitarian ideology.
Islam's Predicament with Modernity presents an in-depth cultural and political analysis of the issue of political Islam as a potential source of tensions and conflict, and how this might be ...peacefully resolved.
Looking at the issue of modernity from an Islamic point of view, the author examines the role of culture and religion in Muslim society under conditions of globalisation, and analyses issues such as law, knowledge and human rights. He engages a number of significant studies on political Islam and draws on detailed case studies, rejecting the approaches of both Orientalists and apologists and calling instead for a genuine Islamic pluralism that accepts the equality of others. Situating modernity as a Western product at the crux of his argument, he argues that a separation of religion and politics is required, which presents a challenge to the Islamic worldview.
This critical analysis of value conflicts, tensions and change in the Islamic world will be of interest to scholars and advanced students of international relations, social theory, political science, religion, Islamic studies and Middle Eastern studies.
'Bassam Tibi has written the rarest of books: a book of learning and a daring one as well. One of the most formidable books to appear on modern Islam in a very long time. Arguable the leading singular authority on European Islam, Professor Tibi has looked, unsentimentally, at the modern dilemma of Islam and come forth with a book of startling originality. This is scholarship of the highest level: Professor Tibi neither apologizes for Islam's troubles nor hacks away at the Islamist utopia. In this "cool" and authoritative book, we have an unflinching depiction of Islam's modern predicament. An exemplary work.' - Fouad Ajami, Director of Middle East Studies, the Johns Hopkins University
"A wide-ranging and thought-provoking book." - Richard Bonney, University of Leicester; The Muslim World Book Review, Volume 31, Number 1, 2010
Bassam Tibi is Professor of International Relations at the University of Goettingen and A.D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University
Introduction: Cultural Tensions, Modernity, Globalization, and Conflict 1. The Predicament: The Exposure to Cultural Modernity, and the Need for an Accommodation. Religious Reform and Cultural Change in Islamic Civilization 2. Issue Areas of the Predicament I: Modernity and Knowledge. Torn Between Reason and Islamization 3. Issue Areas of the Predicament II: Cultural Modernity and Law. The Contemporary Reinvention of Shari’a for the Shari’atization of Islam 4. Issue Areas of the Predicament III: Islam, the Principle of Subjectivity and Individual Human Rights 5. Islam’s Predicament as a Source of Conflict. Cultural-Religious Tensions and Identity Politics 6. Cultural Change and Religious Reform I: The Challenge of Secularization in the Shadow of De-Secularization 7. Cultural Change and Religious Reform II: Pluralism of Religions vs. Islamic Supremacism 8. Authenticity and Cultural Legacy. The Revival of the Heritage of Islamic Rationalism: Falsafa/Rational Philosophy vs. Fiqh-Orthodoxy 9. Case Studies I. The Failed Cultural Transformation in Egypt: A Model for the World of Islam? 10. Case Studies II. The Gulf Beyond the Age of Oil: The Envisioned Cultural Project for the Future 11. Conclusions and Future Prospects. Cultural Modernity and the Islamic Dream of Semi-Modernity. Conclusions
Some prominent discussions of contemporary Islam focus on the tradition of Shari'a reasoning. This is not without reason. Not only is this tradition important in understanding militancy; it has ...re-emerged in connection with the Arab Spring. The present article, however, seeks to revive an alternative tradition—namely, Islamic humanism. The importance of distinguishing this alternative is not only a matter of clarifying the intellectual heritage of Islam. Reviving Islamic humanism has social-political consequences. It makes possible a view of the modern state that is more democratic and pluralistic than the Shari'a state envisioned by Islamists.
Abstract Scholars, and in general writers, who critically study the politicization of religion characteristic of Islamism, are often accused of essentializing Islam. This is so, even though they are ...describing a process of change. Yet essentialism “precludes an investigation of change … in the name of natural and fixed characteristics” (Howarth 2010, 457). The present article argues that both Islam and Islamism are open to change. I begin with a description of the method by which such change may be identified. I then explain the way in which the argument fits with two articles previously published in Soundings, before proceeding to outline the kind of change Islamism represents and the meaning of recent changes in the program of some Islamist groups.
This feature article acknowledges the fact that neither Islam, understood as the umma community, nor the modern civic European nations, are ethnic identities. Why then are both related to the notion ...of ‘ethnicity’ in the present article? Why does the analysis of the Muslim diaspora in Europe prompt an alert of an ‘ethnicity of fear’? In order to answer these questions the analysis departs from the supposition of an ongoing ethnicization process that results in an ethnic conflict. The question and the supposition furnish the subject matter of the present study.
Scholars, and in general writers, who critically study the politicization of religion characteristic of Islamism, are often accused of essentializing Islam. This is so, even though they are ...describing a process of change. Yet essentialism “precludes an investigation of change … in the name of natural and fixed characteristics” (Howarth 2010, 457). The present article argues that both Islam and Islamism are open to change. I begin with a description of the method by which such change may be identified. I then explain the way in which the argument fits with two articles previously published in Soundings, before proceeding to outline the kind of change Islamism represents and the meaning of recent changes in the program of some Islamist groups.
A review essay on books by (1) Stephan Stetter, World Society and the Middle East: Reconstructions in Regional Politics (New York, NY: Palgrave, 2008); (2) Marina Ottaway & Julia Choucair-Vizoso Eds, ...Beyond the Facade: Political Reform in the Arab World (Washington, DC: Carnegie, 2008); & (3) Ellen Lust-Okar & Saloua Zerhouni Eds, Political Participation in the Middle East (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2008).
The article seeks to establish a basic distinction between Islam, as a religious faith, and Islamism, as a political ideology, without denying Islamists to be based in Islam, however, in an invention ...of tradition. All Islamists share the goal of Islamist governance and are in disagreement, however, over the strategy/tactic: violent Jihadism or institutional participation. Despite their approval of the ballot-box, institutional Islamists reject the political values and culture of a democracy. Therefore, the compatibility of Islamism and democracy is questioned.
