Islamism and Islam

368 Pages·2012·2.45 MB·English

by  Bassam Tibi

Islamism and Islam
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Islamism and Islam
Bassam Tibi
New Haven & London
Copyright © 2012 by Bassam Tibi.
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tibi, Bassam.
Islamism and Islam / Bassam Tibi.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-300-15998-1 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Islam and world politics. 2. Islamic
fundamentalism. 3. Islamic renewal. 4. Religious awakening—Islam. 5. Islam—
21st century. I. Title.
BP173.5.T534 2012
320.5'57—dc23
2011037442
A cata logue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1 992 (Permanence of Paper).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Preface vii
Ac know ledg ments xv
1. Why Islamism Is Not Islam 1
2. Islamism and the Po liti cal Order 31
3. Islamism and Antisemitism 54
4. Islamism and Democracy 94
5. Islamism and Violence: The New World Disorder 134
6. Islamism and Law: Shari’atization as an
Invention of Tradition 158
7. Islamism, Purity, and Authenticity 177
8. Islamism and Totalitarianism 201
9. Civil Islam as an Alternative to Islamism 225
Notes 243
Glossary of Arabic Terms 293
Bibliography 297
Index 325
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Preface
The fi rst message of this book is that there is a distinction between the faith
of Islam and the religionized politics of Islamism, which employs religious
symbols for pol itic al ends. Many will deny this distinction, including most
prominent Islamists themselves. There is no doubt that many Islamists hold
the sincere conviction that their Islamism is the true Islam. In fact, however,
Islamism emanates from a pol itic al interpretation of Islam: it is based not on
the religious faith of Islam but on an ideological use of religion within the
pol itic al realm. Islamism and Islam are thus different entities, not to be con-
fused with each other, and in this book I aim to explain this difference.
In the fi eld of Islamic studies, the difference between Islamism and Islam
is largely ignored or even dismissed. But for reasons that will become clear,
the distinction is crucial to any belief that Muslims can live in peace with
non- Muslims. The religious faith of Islam is not an obstacle to peace or a
threat to the non-M uslim other. Islamism, on the other hand, creates deep
civilizational rifts between Muslims and non-M uslims. It not only labels
“Jews and crusaders” as the enemy but also targets other non- Muslims:
Hindus in Kashmir and Malaysia, Buddhists and Confucians in China and
Southeast Asia, people of African animist religions in Sudan. Islamism clas-
sifi es all non- Muslim people as kuffar— infi dels—and thus “enemies of
Islam.” Liberal Muslims are not immune either. As well as contributing to
polarization between Muslims and the non- Muslim other, Islamism also gen-
erates ferocious infi ghting within the community of Islam. In its jihad against
“enemies of Islam,” Islamism seeks to excommunicate even liberal Muslims
from the umma— the worldwide Muslim community. To protect themselves
against criticism, Islamists have invented the formula of “Islamophobia” to
viii Preface
defame their critics. In contrast, in this book I combine respect for the faith
of Islam with a staunch critique of Islamism. It is no contradiction to defend
Islam against prejudice and to criticize Islamism.
Islamism is not what Islamic civilization needs today in its current state
of crisis. Instead, we need to subscribe to a civil and liberal Islam with a secu-
lar perspective. In so doing, we non-I slamist Muslims not only approve plu-
ralism but also seek a place for Islam in the diversity of cultures and religions
that makes up the modern world. Liberal Muslims are not, as the journal
Foreign Affairs characterizes us, “a small slice.” To describe us this way, with
the implication that we may therefore be ignored, is not only a factual error but
a tactical one, as this assumption tends to alienate precisely the non- Islamist
secular Muslims who are most friendly to the West.
Diversity is a most precious good. Can the Islamist mindset be admit-
ted in the name of diversity? Can we trust Islamists who forgo violence to
participate in good faith within a pluralistic, demo cratic system? I believe
we cannot. Liberal Muslims and unbiased Westerners are able to accomplish
the cross- cultural bridging necessary for a pluralist society. For reasons I ex-
plain in this book, those who subscribe to Islamism, regardless of whether
they engage in violence, only infl ame the tensions between secularism and
their po liti cal religion and therefore cannot be partners in the search for a
demo cratic peace for the twenty- fi rst century. I hasten to point out that this
is not a judgment of the personal characteristics of any part icu l ar Islamist
or on Islamists as a group. It is a statement about the ideology of Islamism.
The second message of this book is that Islamism is a totalitarian ideol-
ogy in Hannah Arendt’s understanding of this term. Its totalitarian outlook
is deeply linked to its antisemitism. Antisemitism is, as Arendt notes on the
fi rst page of her famous book The Origins of Totalitarianism, “not merely the
hatred of Jews” but a genocidal ideology. This distinction, too, is important:
it is the difference between wishing to relegate Jews to a despised place in
society and denying the Jewish people the right to exist.
Islamists speak of a united umma but in reality dig deep trenches and
arouse strong and dangerous passions. Living in Germany and having sur-
vived attempts on my life by jihadists (as well as by neo- Nazis), I know these
passions from up close. Yet as a devout Muslim, raised in Damascus as the
Preface ix
son of an ashraf family (Muslim nobility), I declare myself immune to the
charge of Islamophobia. Hating Islam would require me to renounce myself,
my family, my faith, and my heritage. I write not to denigrate these things but
in part to defend them.
I write also as a pol itic al scientist who has devoted his career to the
study of Islam. But my work differs from the currently fashionable Ameri-
can style of Islamic studies. My method is not primarily descriptive, nor is it
a cultural- narrative approach. I study Islam within the framework of what
I term Islamology, a social science– based inquiry that relates Islamic reali-
ties to the study of international confl ict in world politics. In a way, Islamo-
logy resembles the old Sovietology, with the very basic difference that it
replaces the latter’s cold war mentality with a spirit of intercultural bridging.
Nonetheless, I do not overlook what Mark Juergensmeyer has termed a “new
cold war” being fought between the secular concept of order and religionized
politics.
Islamology deals with the relations of Islamic civilization not only with
the West but more generally with the world at large. The pattern of post-
bipolar politics generated by the politicization of Islam involves non- Muslims
as well as Muslims. As a po liti cal inquiry, Islamology studies Islamism, not
Islam as a faith; it is also a discipline for studying how political- religious
tensions develop into confl icts. The best example of this kind of confl ict is
the one that has emerged over the past century between Muslims and Jews.
Having had the opportunity to study in Frankfurt with the Holocaust sur-
vivors Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, two great and philo-
sophically astute social scientists, I believe I am one of the few Muslims with
some insight into the meaning of the Holocaust. Because this subject is
often invoked by Islamists— they claim to be suffering its equivalent in today’s
Europe—i t is important to know something not only of the horrifi c prac-
tices of the Holocaust but also of its underlying ideology. I will show that
this ideology has more in common with Islamism itself than with the ideas
of those the Islamists claim are oppressing them.
Others will no doubt strongly disagree with this assessment and even
accuse me of Orientalism and Islamophobia. Identifying Islamism as a to-
talitarian ideology mobilizes all kinds of polemics, but name-c alling should