The New Political Islam: Human Rights, Democracy, and Justice (Haney Foundation) - Hardcover

Karagiannis, Emmanuel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0812249720 ISBN 13: 9780812249729

Verlag: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

Explains how various Islamists have endorsed human rights, democracy, and justice to gain influence and mobilize supporters

Islamist political parties and groups are on the rise throughout the Muslim world and in Muslim communities in the West. Owing largely to the threat of terrorism, political Islam is often portrayed as a monolithic movement embodying fundamentalism and theocracy, an image magnified by the rise of populism and xenophobia in the United States and Europe. Reality, however, is far more complicated. Political Islam has evolved considerably since its spectacular rise decades ago, and today it features divergent viewpoints and contributes to discrete but simultaneous developments worldwide. This is a new political Islam, more global in scope but increasingly local in action.

Emmanuel Karagiannis offers a sophisticated analysis of the different manifestations of contemporary Islamism. In a context of global economic and social changes, he finds local manifestations of Islamism are becoming both more prevalent and more diverse. Many Islamists turn to activism, still more participate formally in the democratic process, and some, in far fewer numbers, advocate violence—a wide range of political persuasions and tactics that reflects real and perceived political, cultural, and identity differences.

Synthesizing prodigious research and integrating insights from the globalization debate and the literature on social movements, The New Political Islam seeks to explain the processes and factors leading to distinctive fusions of "the global" and "the local" across the landscape of contemporary political Islam. Examining converts to Islam in Europe, nonviolent Islamists with global reach, Islamist parties in Turkey, Egypt, and Tunisia, and militant Shia and Sunni groups in Syria and Iraq, Karagiannis demonstrates that Islamists have embraced ideas and practices from the global marketplace and have attempted to implement them locally. He looks closely at the ways in which Islamist activists, politicians, and militants have utilized the language of human rights, democracy, and justice to gain influence and popular support and to contend for power.

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Emmanuel Karagiannis is a Senior Lecturer in King's College London's Department of Defence Studies.

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Preface

The rise of political Islam has attracted great public, government, and academic attention in the West. It is fair to say that Islamism has been largely viewed by many with dismay and fear due to its perceived anachronistic and totalitarian nature. In an era of globalization, the blurring of politics and religion seems antimodern and irrational. In 2012, Farhad Khosrokhavar, a prominent scholar of the Islamic world, observed confidently that "the age of Islamism is over, not as an ideology or a credo among minority groups, but as a motto that could convince the people of its feasibility." Yet Islamism in its various forms has reached almost every Muslim community in the world and Islamist groups are still on the march.

The term political Islam in itself is contested by both academics and Islamists. Some critics say that it is a redundant term because the distinction between political and nonpolitical domains of social life is not relevant anymore; the modern state has significantly expanded its functions to influence every aspect of organized life. For many Islamists, the term is problematic because Islam is inherently political; thus din (religion) and dawla (state) depend on each other. But such views tend to ignore the diversity that exists within the Muslim faith. In particular, Sufism and its mystical beliefs constitute an important part of Islam that is often despised by those who favor the politicization of the faith. This is not to say that Sufism is apolitical; actually, Sufi orders have been involved indirectly in politics (e.g. the Gülen movement in Turkey). Sufism is rather nonpolitical in the sense of avoiding political interpretations of Islamic concepts, rituals, and practices.

Therefore, it is essential to distinguish ontologically the religion from its political expression. So what is political Islam and what is Islamism? The two terms are often treated as synonymous. Nazih Ayobi defines political Islam as "the doctrine and/or movement which contends that Islam possesses a theory of politics and the state." Guilain Denoeux describes political Islam or Islamism as "a form of instrumentalization of Islam by individuals, groups and organizations that pursue political objectives." Finally, Frederic Volpi argues that Islamism "refers to the political dynamics generated by the activities of those people who believe that Islam as a body of faith has something crucial to say about how society should be organized."

This book will maintain the use of the term political Islam to describe a global social movement that seeks to mobilize Muslims into activities that have political ramifications. It is a diverse and nonhierarchical collectivity of different actors who share some ideas and perceptions. Accordingly, Islamism refers to the ideology and practices of parties, groups, and prominent individuals that claim that Islam must regulate every aspect of public and private life. It is a fluid and unsystematic set of beliefs and practices that is open to change and adaptation in accordance with local conditions. Due to its broad character, "Islamism should not be linked exclusively with political violence and militancy."

Political Islam has expanded on all continents, but its internationalization is politically and culturally localized. It is a movement of movements that revolve around the interplay between the global and the local. The interconnectivity of societies has contributed to the spread of Islamism but at a great cost: different versions of this ideology have emerged based on specificities.

In today's world, however, it is necessary to move beyond the global-local dichotomy because there is growing overlap between them. Paul Lubeck has observed that "the new global infrastructure integrates the disparate members of the global umma by encouraging Muslims to communicate, study, travel to fulfill the diverse Muslim obligations." The umma now consists of Muslim communities that interpret political and social realities in their own distinct ways. In this context, Islamist parties and groups have adopted universal political and social norms bypassing the nation-state. Political Islam is the embodiment of a synthesis between global ideas and local applications. Indeed, it is a social movement that must be studied from a new angle.

Political Islam's Manifestations of Glocalization

Islam is projected to be the religion of one-third of the world's population by 2050, reaching parity with Christianity around 2070. The content of Islam is determined by the relationship between universality and particularity. It is a religion of 1.7 billion people worldwide and professes a single message about submitting to God and worshipping him alone. Yet it is practiced differently in many countries and communities. In fact, Islam is divided both horizontally and vertically. The Sunni-Shia divide has raged since the death of Prophet Muhammad in 632, generating dissimilar theological beliefs, rituals, and traditions. In addition, each of the two denominations contains schools of jurisprudence (madhahib) that offer different methodologies of setting Islamic rules and regulations. Ethnic and cultural elements have also significantly diversified the Muslim faith. It has been suggested that one of the reasons why Islam has come to be a global religion is its ability to become local. Many scholars have recorded how Islamic tenets have been blended with native practices and customs. As a result, there is an Ethiopian Islam, a Kazakh Islam, a Thai Islam, and so on. To put it simply, Islam is as highly varied as any major religion.

Similarly, political expressions of the Muslim faith are vastly divergent because they accommodate local circumstances. Islamist parties and groups have utilized a variety of political methods to achieve their aims, ranging from engaging in peaceful activism to participating in the electoral process to using violence and coercion. Political Islam does not exist as a single and homogeneous movement because it constantly incorporates new political realities, different identities, and dynamic cultural influences. Although its extraordinary dynamism is connected to the globalization processes, political Islam has become more fragmented in recent years.

This glocalization of political Islam and, subsequently, of Islamism has accelerated during the post-9/11 era for a variety of reasons that I discuss later. The term glocalization was put forward during the 1990s by Ronald Robertson to describe the relationship between the global and the local. I return to the history of the term in the Introduction. The book attempts to link the concept of glocalization with the framing theory that derives from the social movement paradigm. Islamists of different varieties have consciously syncretized religion, culture, and politics by using certain schemata of interpretation. The book's central claim is that there is a newpolitical Islam consisting of activists, politicians, and militants who have acted as glocalizers by transferring global ideas and norms to local Muslim communities. This categorization of Islamists is based on their preferred method of engagement with Muslim communities. It does not necessarily describe the ideological content of their action, which can be anything from reformism to fundamentalism.

To begin with, Islamist activists have increasingly used human rights language to question the socioeconomic and political status of Muslims living in the West and elsewhere. More specifically, they have employed the master frame of human rights to explain and criticize the marginalization and targeting of fellow Muslims. Religious freedom and respect for Islam are themes that have been at the core of Islamist activism. Simultaneously, some of them advocate the establishment of an...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2017
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0812249720
• ISBN 13: 9780812249729
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 258
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland