Understanding Political Islam PDF

12/22/2020 Understanding political Islam - DAWN.
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TODAY'S PAPER | DECEMBER 22, 2020
Understanding political Islam

Nadeem F. Paracha | 30 Sep 2010
Islamic Fundamentalism: Though usually attributed to the beliefs of modern-day

extremist movements in Islam, Islamic Fundamentalism (in the political context), is
basically a firm belief in the theological musings of ancient Islamic jurists and
scholars.
Islamic Fundamentalists all agree with Imam Ghazali’s dictum (in the twelfth century), that the
‘gates of ijtihad (rational debate) in Islam are now closed.’
After about three hundred years of open debate in the Islamic world between conservatives and the
rationalists (Mu’tazilites), Ghazali insisted that a perfect synthesis (between the two) had been
reached and that Islam’s social and spiritual philosophy had achieved completion.
The Mu’tazilites’ influence began declining during the rule of the ninth Abbasid caliph, Al-
Muttawakkil, and the conservatives, who had ferociously debated with the rationalists, began their
ascendance.
Modern-day Islamic Fundamentalism is rooted in this bygone intellectual triumph of the

conservatives. Nevertheless, Islamic Fundamentalism never did attempt to form a so-called ‘Islamic
state.’ Islamic Fundamentalists in the shape of scholars (ulema) and clergymen (maulvis and
imams), mostly worked as advisers to caliphs and kings, or in the mosques. They were only
interested in advocating Islamic laws, but never articulated a political plan that would carry these
laws.
At the dilapidation of the Muslim empires starting from the eighteenth century onwards, the many
reformist Islamic movements which then emerged, criticised the performance of Islamic
Fundamentalists, blaming them for getting too close to the ‘decadent’ kings due to whose ‘negligence
of Islam,’ Islamic political power had crumbled.
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12/22/2020 Understanding political Islam - DAWN.COM
Islamic Fundamentalism has historically been more interested in rectifying ‘cultural and social
deviances’ in a Muslim society and for this it used the mosque and evangelism – not politics. It
continues to be frozen in an understanding of the Quran, the hadith and Shariah developed
centuries ago by ancient Islamic scholars. Though it is vocal in its rhetorical demands for the
imposition of Islamic laws, it has little or no political agenda as such. It never did.
It remains largely associated with apolitical Muslim individuals, conservative ulema, the clergy and
Islamic evangelists.
Noted Islamic Fundamentalist Groups: The Tableeghi Jamaat (Pakistan/Bangladesh/India); Al-

Huda (Pakistan/Canada); Islamic Research Foundation (India).
Islamism: Word coined in the early 1970s (in France), to explain a series of (post-nineteenth
century) Islamic movements which advocated Islam not only as a religion, but also as a political
system.
Islamism’s roots can be found in the Islamic reformist movements that appeared in the subcontinent
and in Arabia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Incensed by the largely pluralistic
dispositions of the crumbling Mughal and Ottoman empires, a series of reformist movements
emerged, advocating a so-called return to Islam followed by the first four pious Caliphs.
Some of these movements emphasised on applying reason in religion, but many also added the
importance of ‘jihad’ not only against western colonialism but also against the clergy and especially,
against Sufism which these reformists believed was a ‘negative innovation’ and an anathema to ‘true
Author should differentiate here b/w revivalism & reformism latter used reason former used imitation
Islam.’
Such movements though animated, came to a naught, mostly due to the adjustments the more
moderate/modern as well as traditional schools of Islam made at the wake of the rise of western
colonialism.
At the collapse of the Ottoman Caliphate (1922), a bulk of Muslim regimes (especially in Iran,
Afghanistan and Turkey) vigorously adopted modern western economic, social and political models
(i.e., capitalism, social liberalism and nationalism [but sans democracy]).
One of the first experiments in Islamism took off when (in the early twentieth century) the Al-Saud
family conquered a vast tract in Arabia (with the tacit support of the British who were trying to
undermine the crumbling Ottoman rule in the region).
The Al-Saud were ardent followers of Abd Al-Wahhab – an eighteenth century puritanical Islamic
reformist. The Saud family soon enacted the world’s first ‘Islamic State,’ but under the control of a
monarchy.
The Saud family’s adherence to puritanical Islam and imposition of harsh Islamic laws went down
well with the early Islamists, but the family’s growing ties with the British and it monarchical
tendencies, made a lot of them uncomfortable.
As secular-nationalists dominated the liberation movements in most Muslim countries (including

the separatist Muslim manoeuvres in India), politicised conservative Muslim scholars retaliated by
labelling these movements as ‘anti-Islamic.’
Supermacist origins
Pioneering Islamist scholars such as Egypt’s Hasan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb, and the
subcontinent’s Abul Ala Maududi began interpreting the Quran and the hadith by using modern
political concepts and terms. For example, Maududi expanded the Quranic concept of Tauheed
(oneness of God) by suggesting that it also meant the (political) oneness of the Muslim ummah that
can only be achieved by ‘Islamising the society’ and through attaining state power to finally
formulate an ‘Islamic state.’
Qutb, on the other hand, implied that twentieth century Muslim societies were in a state of jahiliyya
– a term used by classical Muslim scholars to define the state of ignorance the people of Arabia were
in before the arrival of Islam.
Qutb suggested that a jihad was required in Muslim countries to grab state power and to rid the
Muslims from the ‘modern forces of jahilyiya’ (i.e., secularism, Marxism, ‘western materialism’).
It must be emphasised that the concept of the Islamic State is thus very much a twentieth century
construct.
That is why the theory of Islamism purposefully eschewed a number of ancient commentaries on
Quran and Shariah. They rejected these scholarly works as being either ‘stuck in the mosque’ or
undertaken to serve kings who had divorced Islam from politics. It is however, ironic that Islamism
(across the Cold War [1947-91]), was largely supported and funded by Western and Arab powers
who were up against what was called the ‘Soviet camp.’
For example, it is now well-known how the United States and its Western and Arab allies (especially
Saudi Arabia), funded various early Islamist movements to undermine left-leaning governments and
elements in the Muslim world.
The exceptions in this respect were the Iranian Islamists. They successfully steered the 1979
revolution in Iran towards becoming an Islamic one. Iran also remains to be Islamism’s only
tangible project.
The arrangement between Islamists and its Western and Saudi backers reached a peak in the 1980s
during the ‘anti-Soviet jihad’ in Afghanistan.
pushed towards the red line & now crossing the red line...
With the fall of the Soviet Union however, and the drying up of the patronage and funds Islamism’s
leading organs were receiving (from the West), movements attached to Islamism started to weaken.
Consequently, Islamism’s less intellectually inclined (and more brutal) cousin, Neo-
Fundamentalism, soon began usurping its agenda.
Noted Islamism groups: Muslim Brotherhood (Egypt); Jamaat-i-Islami (Pakistan); Islamic

Republican Party (Iran); National Islamic Front (Sudan); Hamas (Palestine); Hezbollah (Lebanon).
Islamic Neo-Fundamentalism: Neo-Fundamentalism in Islam is a tendency among certain

modern-day Islamic fundamentalists to politicise the social and cultural aspects of Islamic
Fundamentalism.
Neo-Fundamentalism rose with the emergence of the Taliban in 1996 (in Afghanistan and Pakistan),
and began filling the void created by the post-Cold War weakening of Islamism.
Like traditional Islamic Fundamentalism, Neo-Fundamentalism too maintains that the gates of
ijtihad in Islam are closed. However, unlike Islamic Fundamentalism, Neo-Fundamentalism wants
to impose Islamic laws, morality and piety by force and through the creation of an ‘Islamic State’
(and/or ‘Islamic Emirate’).
Where Islamic Fundamentalists used concentrated evangelical tactics to cleanse Muslim societies of
red line is
‘un-Islamic practices,’ Neo-Fundamentalists use political violence, coercion and terrorism. crossed!
Noted Islamic Neo-Fundamentalist groups: al Qaeda; the Taliban (Pakistan/Afghanistan); Islamic

Boko Haram
Salvation Army (Algeria); Armed Islamic Group (Algeria); Union of Islamic Courts (Somalia).
Islamic Socialism: A term first used by the Muslim Socialist community in Kazan (Russia) just
before the 1917 Communist revolution there. Staunchly anti-clerical, the community supported
communist forces but retained its Muslim identity. The term then became popular with certain
Muslim members of the Indian National Congress Party and among some left-leaning sections of the
All Indian Muslim League.
Islamic Socialism, as an ideology, attempted to equate Quranic concepts of equality and charity with
modern Socialist economics, was adopted (as ‘Arab Socialism’) in Iraq, Syria and Egypt, where
secular Muslim leaders fused Islamic notions of parity and justice with socialism and Arab
nationalism.
Though known for its usage of Islamic symbolism, Islamic Socialism was staunchly secular, anti-
clerical, socially liberal and mostly sympathetic to the Soviet Union.
Egypt’s popular leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser, became Arab Socialism’s leading advocate and
practitioner; while in Syria and Iraq the concept became to be known as ‘Ba’ath Socialism.’After the
political success of Islamic Socialism in these countries, the idea also gained currency in Pakistan,
Algeria and Libya.
The National Liberation Front that led Algeria’s independence from France (1962) described itself as
a follower of Islamic Socialism, and so did the populist Pakistan Peoples Party (that swept into
power in 1970).
Libya too, began calling itself an Islamic Socialist state after Muammar al-Gaddafi toppled the old
Libyan monarchy in a coup in 1969. Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) also
described itself as Islamic Socialist.
In Iran, radical leftist anti-Shah militant organisations that fused Islamic symbolism with
Marxist/socialist ideas also appeared. They took an active part in the 1979 Iranian Revolution, but
were then eliminated or banished by the new Islamic regime.
Islamic Socialism was vehemently attacked and criticised by conservative Muslim countries (mainly
Saudi Arabia), as well as by those forces associated with Islamism (such as Jamaat-i-Islami and the
Muslim Brotherhood).The charisma attached to Islamic Socialism began to wither after the death of
Nasser, and when most Muslim countries began getting politically closer to the conservative oil-rich
Arab countries.
The oil crises of 1973-74 (when OPEC initiated an oil embargo) eventually saw the economic policies
of regimes professing Islamic Socialism come under great stress, creating disillusionment among the
masses who began being drawn towards advocates of Islamism. The last major expression of Islamic
Socialism was the (Soviet-backed) ‘Saur Revolution’ in Afghanistan in 1978, led by the People’s
Democratic Party.
Major Islamic Socialist groups: Revolutionary Command Council (Egypt); Egyptian Arab Socialist
Party (Egypt); Iraq Ba’ath Socialist Party (Iraq); Syrian Ba’ath Socialist Party (Syria); National
Liberation Front (Algeria); Pakistan Peoples Party (Pakistan); PLO (Palestine); National Front
(Iran); Mojahedin-e-Khalq (Iran); Peoples Fadaeen (Iran).
Liberal Islam: Though many liberal Muslims consider 8th and 9th century Islamic rationalists
(the Mu’tazilites) to be the first political and philosophical expressions of Liberal Islam, in the
political context) Liberal Islam, just like all other branches of Political Islam, too is a late
nineteenth/early twentieth century creation – despite the fact that there is historical accuracy in the
claim that major Muslim empires of yore were largely pluralistic and secular in orientation.
Again, in the political context, Liberal Islam can find its roots in some nineteenth century reformist
movements (Sir Syed Ahmed Khan in India), and the way Muslim countries such as Iran,
Afghanistan and Turkey adopted secular western economic and social models in the early twentieth
century.
The emergence of the secular-nationalist movements in the Muslim world too, gave impetus to the
thought attached to Liberal Islam, and so did the coming to prominence of effusive ideologies such
as Islamic Socialism. Liberal Islam has been a flexible entity. Both left and rightist political
instruments profess it, as long as they are predominantly secular. Many democratic political parties
of the left and of the right, as well as authoritarian regimes in the Muslim world can be termed as
having liberal views about Islam.
These parties and regimes are highly suspicious of the clergy and repulsed by the political ambitions
of Islamism and Neo-Fundamentalism. They encourage ijtihad in matters like the Quran and
Shariah, and emphasise that Islam is best served through the mosque instead of through the state or
the government.
An emphasis on multiculturalism, nationalism and democratic pluralism too is made, even though,
as mentioned before, some Liberal Muslim organs can be authoritarian as well.
Most mainstream political parties in the Muslim world today can be said to be following various
degrees of Liberal Islam. Not all of them are secular in the western sense of the word, but they are
flexible in their outlook towards matters such as Islamic laws, and concepts and practices that are
deemed as ‘un-Islamic’ by their Islamist opponents (such as co-education, non-segregated events,
women’s rights, films, music, alcohol, etc.).
Noted Liberal Islam political parties with large vote banks: Indonesian Democratic Party; People’s
Alliance (Malaysia); National Liberation Front (Algeria); Bangladesh Awami League (Bangladesh);
National Democratic Party (Egypt); Maldivian Democratic Party (Maldives); Socialist Union
(Morocco); Popular Movement (Morocco); Action Congress (Nigeria); Pakistan Peoples Party
(Pakistan); Muttahida Qaumi Movement (Pakistan); Awami National Party (Pakistan); People’s
Democratic Party (Tajikistan); Republican People’s Party (Turkey); Justice & Development Party
(Turkey); Liberal Democratic Party (Uzbekistan).
Nadeem F. Paracha is a cultural critic and senior columnist for Dawn Newspaper and Dawn.com.
The views expressed by this blogger and in the following reader comments do not
necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Dawn Media Group.
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12/22/2020 Understanding political Islam - DAWN.

TODAY'S PAPER | DECEMBER 22, 2020

Understanding political Islam

Islamic Fundamentalism: Though usually attributed to the beliefs of modern-day

Modern-day Islamic Fundamentalism is rooted in this bygone intellectual triumph of the

Noted Islamic Fundamentalist Groups: The Tableeghi Jamaat (Pakistan/Bangladesh/India); Al-

As secular-nationalists dominated the liberation movements in most Muslim countries (including

Noted Islamism groups: Muslim Brotherhood (Egypt); Jamaat-i-Islami (Pakistan); Islamic

Islamic Neo-Fundamentalism: Neo-Fundamentalism in Islam is a tendency among certain

Noted Islamic Neo-Fundamentalist groups: al Qaeda; the Taliban (Pakistan/Afghanistan); Islamic

Inside Sarwat Gillani's rooftop birthday bash

Clothing brand Daaman is permanently shutting down because of the pandemic

03 Pakistan asks UN to probe Indian attack on observers

04 UAE visa restrictions for Pakistan 'temporary', due to Covid-19: Emirati FM

06 New bylaws allow CDA to regularise PM Banigala house

09 PEOPLE OF THE MEMES

Must Pakistan be so OIC-oriented amid changing geopolitical realities?

Editorial: While the UAE minister's statement is welcome, the country

Striving for a trans-fat free Pakistan

Irfan Husain's courage and fearlessness inspired journalists from

An examination of political dynasticism in Pakistani tradition

Too grand a dialogue

Updated 22 Dec 2020

Di erent idioms, similar stories

Updated 22 Dec 2020

Updated 21 Dec 2020

Insu cient gas

Updated 22 Dec 2020

UAE visa issue

T20 series loss

Updated 21 Dec 2020

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