extracted_text:
This book makes a
profound contribution. Bassam Tibi’s analysis is both wide-ranging and
incisive, covering the rise of contemporary political Islamism and its
relationship with Islam, as well as explaining how its key concepts are to be
understood in the appropriate historical, cultural and theological context.
Based on over three decades of research, Tibi provides a critical, often
fearless, assessment of political Islam which defies conventional wisdom and
ignores political correctness without losing any of its intellectual rigour.
Yet, Tibi not only evaluates and critiques, he puts forward an inspiringly
positive vision of how Islam and democracy in Europe can prosper and enrich
each other. In doing so, he addresses perhaps the most important political challenge
in Europe today, making this book indispensable reading for anyone with an
interest in how to overcome the threat from cultural division and religious
conflict.
Dr Peter R. Neumann, Director, Centre for Defence Studies,
King’s College London
A deeply honest
and courageous account, written by a European Muslim scholar, of the challenges
posed by political Islam to European values and institutions. Equally committed
to democracy and pluralism as well as to his Islamic heritage, Tibi combines
erudite scholarship with sharp political analysis, and calls for a
transformational reform within Islam which would enable civilizational
co-existence both globally as well as within Europe. A must for all who are
worried by recent outbreaks of religious fundamentalism but nonetheless hope to
avoid a clash of civilizations
Shlomo Avineri, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
This courageous
book identifies Europe as the central location of the 21st century struggle for
world cultural and political hegemony. Tibi deepens his well-known historical,
cultural, political, and religious arguments for crosscultural accommodation between
Muslims and non-Muslims. For him, the solution is a European civil society that
is both democratic and respectful of cultural and religious differences. He
argues that this accommodation must be political, cultural, and religious
because the conflicts are not caused by mere misunderstandings; they are about
fundamental conflicts in worldview and political strategy and must be mediated
authentically. Tibi’s personal style is combined with a strong analytical
framework that links him as a Muslim believer and a social scientist in
precisely the way he argues one must link religion and politics to create
‘‘Euro-Islam’’. For Tibi, the alternative to Euro-Islam is to descend farther
in to violent conflicts over attempts to ‘‘islamicize’’ Europe.
Davydd Greenwood, Goldwin Smith Professor of Anthropology,
Director, Institute for European Studies at Cornell
University and
Corresponding Member, Spanish Royal Academy of Moral and
Political Sciences.
Bassam Tibi is a
twenty-first century Martin Luther of Islam. His plea for a return to the open,
tolerant, creative Islam that served as a beacon of progress for humankind a
millennium ago offers the only real alternative to a jihadism that not only
threatens world peace but also reinforces the root cause of jihadism–humiliation,
as the Islamic world falls further behind the West, East Asia, and now India.
Lawrence E. Harrison, Director, Cultural Change Institute,
The Fletcher
School Tufts University, USA. He is the author, most
recently, of
The Central Liberal Truth: How Politics Can Change a Culture
and save It from Itself.
Political Islam, World Politics and Europe
Is political Islam
compatible with democracy?
The rise of political Islam, as a
new force in world politics, has prompted questions and theories concerning its
nature and compatibility with democratic values and with the present world
order. Not least have been discussions and conflicts within Islamic
communities, particularly in Europe where choices of identity and allegiance
are growing acute.
Bassam Tibi provides a
broad-ranging assessment of political Islam in the world, in all its various
manifestations. In particular he focuses on Europe which is also home to a
significant Islamic minority. Whilst rejecting the ‘‘clash of civilizations’’
theory the author clearly demonstrates the growing conflict and incompatibility
between Islamist movements and European democracy. A devout Muslim himself,
Bassam Tibi makes clear the vital importance of developing a Euro-Islam that
will peacefully accommodate religious beliefs within an inclusive democratic
European culture of citizenship.
This is an innovative and challenging work that will give
readers a clearer understanding of political Islam, particularly in Europe
where the issues of religion, identity and democracy are pressing. Political
Islam, World Politics and Europe will be of interest to students and scholars
studying Middle Eastern and European politics, political Islam and
international relations.
Bassam Tibi has
been Professor of International Relations at the University of Goettingen since
1973 and is a non-resident A.D. White Professor-atLarge at Cornell University,
USA. Professor Tibi has taught and lectured at thirty universities in five
continents including tenures at Harvard, Princeton, UC Berkeley, IRIC/Yaounde´,
Cameroon, Khartoum/Sudan, St. Gallen/ Switzerland, The Islamic University of
Jakarta/Indonesia and at the Diplomatic Academy in Vienna. His work has been
translated into 16 languages. Among his six books in English are in new
editions: The challenge of Fundamentalism (2002) and Islam between Culture and
Politics (2005). The president of Germany Roman Hetzog decorated him in 1995
with the highest Medal/State Decoration for his ‘‘bridging between Islam and
the West.’’

Political Islam, World Politics and Europe
Democratic
Peace and Euro-Islam versus
Global Jihad
Bassam Tibi

First
published 2008
by Routledge
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Milton Park Abingdon Oxon OX14 4RN
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Avenue, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is
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“To
purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks
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# 2008 Bassam
Tibi
All rights
reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in
any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library
Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue
record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of
Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Tibi, Bassam.
Political
Islam, world politics, and Europe / Bassam Tibi.
p. cm.
Includes
bibliographical references and index.
1. Islam and
politics. 2. Islamic fundamentalism. 3. Harakat al-Jihad alIslami fi Filastin.
4. Islam–Europe. 5. Muslims–Europe–Politics and government. I. Title.
BP173.7.T563
2007
320.5’57094–dc22
2007012391 ISBN 0-203-93484-9
Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 10:
0-415-43780-6 (hbk)
ISBN 10:
0-415-43781-4 (pbk) ISBN 10: 0-203-93484-9 (ebk)
ISBN 13:
978-0-415-43780-6 (hbk)
ISBN 13:
978-0-415-43781-3 (pbk)
ISBN 13:
978-0-203-93484-5 (ebk)
Contents
Acknowledgements                                                                                ix
Preface                                                                                xii

Introduction: The impact of the politicization of Islam on world
            politics
as a context for Europe and Islam in the 21st century                     1
PART I
The conflict within
Islamic civilization between jihadism and
democracy. Its pertinence
to world politics and to the Islam
diaspora in Europe:
obstacles and solutions                                         37
1
From classical jihad to global jihadism in an invention of
tradition
          for
mapping the world into dar al-Islam                                                           41
2
Polity and rule: The Islamic quest for civil society and for
democracy against Hakimiyyat Allah as the Islamic system
         of
totalitarian government                                                                                67
PART II
Political Islam enters
world politics: Global jihadism as an
Islamist internationalism
in its Sunni and Shi’ite varieties as a
challenge to safe
democracy and international security                         93
3
The world-political Sunni fallacy: Jihadist internationalism
           as
a cosmic war of irregulars for remaking the world                                 101
4
The Shi’ite option: Internationalism for an export of the
          Islamic
revolution of Iran. A failed effort!                                                    130
viii    Contents
PART III
Europe as a battlefield for the competing options:
Islamization versus Europeanization resulting in Muslim Europe or

Euro-Islam?

153

5

Political Islam and Europe
  in the twenty-first century:
The return of history as
  the return of civilizations

into world affairs

161

6

The European diaspora of
  Muslim migrants and the idea of

Europe: Could they become
  Europeans by choice?

188

7

Political Islam and
  democracy’s decline to a voting procedure:
The political culture of
  democracy is the solution for Islamic

civilization

216

Notes

235

Bibliography

273

Index

289

Acknowledgements
This is a Cornell
University book, even though I began writing it in Jakarta, Indonesia. However,
the invitation extended to me by Professor Peter Katzenstein to lecture at
Cornell on Islam in Europe and also to join the project he chaired on
‘‘Religion in an Expanding Europe’’ created a momentum for the emerging book.
The Cornell impetus was a major one. In fact, the completion of this book would
not have been possible without the unfailing support of many persons and
institutions throughout the world received in the years 2003–6.
First, as an old scholar of a
different age of writing, I acknowledge that I am fully computer illiterate. I
put my thinking as research on paper while undergoing the ordeals of
old-fashioned handwriting. Therefore, it is a fact that the most important
person in technically helping me to complete this book was my staff assistant,
Elisabeth Luft. In the years 2003–6 she most patiently word-processed numerous
drafts and revisions with great professionalism. This book was written in four
continents and completed in all its drafts in handwriting. From all over the
world these drafts were faxed to Elisabeth Luft in the course of my work and
research. She always faxed the texts back a few days later after
word-processing them, to allow further revisions in handwriting. The birthplace
of this book stretches from Jakarta, Indonesia, to other continents, whether
Brisbane or Melbourne in Australia, Singapore in Southeast Asia, or Harvard and
finally Cornell University in the USA. Of course, this encompasses Europe as
well, primarily my home German university of Goettingen.
The next person to thank is my
editor at Routledge, Joe Whiting, without whose commitment this book would not
have seen the light given twists that would not be relevant to describe here.
Next, I acknowledge the great
contribution of my research assistants in Goettingen, Vera Weidemann and Nicole
Klitzsch.
In 2003 I started writing this book in Jakarta during my
tenure as DAAD-Visiting Professor at the Hidayatullah Islamic State University,
teaching Indonesian graduate students a daily course on Islam and world
politics while introducing my ideas on a reform Islam. I owe these students and
my colleagues there, as well as the president of that Islamic university, x   Acknowledgements
great gratitude
for helping me to understand the civil Islam of their country, which has the
largest Muslim population in the world (230 million). I have always admired
this Indonesian civil Islam and found it more appealing than the Salafi Islam
of the Middle East, my own background. I left Jakarta in late summer 2003 to
move to a completely different part of the world: California. In Montclair I
assumed the visiting position of Erma Taylor O’Brian Distinguished Professor at
the European Union Center of California at Scripps College. There I continued
writing this book and presented its material in numerous public lectures also
attended by colleagues and students from other related colleges.
In the following year, 2004, I
returned after the special leaves in Indonesia and California to my home
university of Goettingen, where this book was word-processed in every stage of
its completion by Elisabeth Luft. Despite all my criticisms of Germany and its
retarding university system, I am constantly grateful to the University of
Goettingen for the modest Center for International Affairs it has given me,
along with its foremost staff. I repeatedly mention Elisabeth Luft and two
great research assistants, Vera Weidemann and Nicole Klitzsch, who provided
unfailing assistance and great help in the completion of this book.
In the academic year from
September 2004 through spring 2005 I enjoyed a sabbatical from Goettingen which
allowed me to go back to Harvard, where between 1982 and 2000 – with a few
interruptions – I had a variety of affiliations at the WCFIA (the latest
1998–2000, Bosch Fellow of Harvard). Those years were the richest and most
inspiring part of my entire scholarly life. In fall 2004 I worked on this book
at Harvard, this time as a Visiting Scholar at CMES. I continued the research
in 2005 as a Senior Research Fellow at Asia Research Institute (ARI) at the
National University of Singapore (NUS) until the end of my sabbatical. In the
second half of 2005 I returned to Cornell, this time with the great honor of an
appointment as A.D. White Professor-at-Large, becoming a faculty member there.
At Cornell I held a dozen public lectures on the themes of this book and was
based at the Center for European Studies (CES), which supported this book. In
adding names of colleagues related to the institutions listed, the next
colleague for whom I am most grateful is the Director of the Cornell Center for
European Studies, Professor Davydd Greenwood. He nominated me for the A.D.
White Professorship, supported by Professor Peter Katzenstein, who first
brought me to Cornell in 2003, and then included me as an author in his book Religion
in an Expanding Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2006).
The list of persons I am indebted
to is too long and therefore I have to restrict it to the following, after my
associates in Goettingen, my Routledge editor Joe Whiting and my Cornell
colleagues just mentioned. In Jakarta I am grateful to the president of the
Islamic University, Azyumardi Azra, and his deputy, Professor Masykuri Abdillah;
at Scripps College, CA, to Dr Martina Ebert, who made my research and lectures
there possible and most

Acknowledgements
memorable; at
Harvard, to my friend Professor Cemal Kafadar, by then Director of the Center
for Middle Eastern Studies (CEMES) – Cemal not only facilitated my return to
Harvard, but also like me lives ‘‘between two worlds’’ (the title of his
seminal book). Next to Harvard I need to mention the Fletcher School, Tufts
University, where Professor Lawrence Harrison included me in his ‘‘Culture
Matters Research Project/CMRP’’, at which I acted as a co-author of the
resulting two volumes, also published by Routledge. Furthermore, I need to
thank Professors Y. Raj Isar and Helmut Anheier for an inclusion of my research
in the ‘‘Cultures and Globalization’’ project of UCLA/American University of
Paris (our book: Culture, Globalization and Conflict, was published 2007 by
SAGE in London). In Singapore Prof. Anthony Reid was my host and best source of
inspiration. My gratitude goes also to Professor Kostas Ifantis of Athens,
Greece, and his Hellenic Center for European Studies for which I completed a
research paper on Islam and Europe published as EKEM-Paper 2007. The study of
Islam and conflict in this book owes insights won in cooperation with two
Muslim colleagues in Melbourne, Professor Shahram Akbarzadeh of Monash
University, and Professor Fethi Mansouri of Deakin University, and with my
Jewish colleague Efraim Inbar of Bar Ilan University. My work on Islam and
democracy was integrated in a project at the Centre for European Policy
Studies, Brussels, led by Michael Emerson and in an other project chaired by
Professor Allan Olsen of Boston University. I coauthored books at both
institutions on this subject and related insights are included in the present
book. I also need to add the Madrid enterprise on ‘‘Terrorism, Safe Democracy
and Security,’’ repeatedly mentioned in the book. In this context, I thank
Professors Peter Neumann and Leonard Weinberg for including me as a co-author
in their book on Islam and democracy in the Middle East.
At the top of the list of people
who promoted my work, I must again mention my editor Joe Whiting and his
assistant Natalja Mortensen. Next to Elisabeth Luft, they were the foremost
supporters not only of this book but also of the freedom of academic research
practiced on the following pages. I also want to express my gratitude to my production
editor Paola Celli, who superbly supervised the printing process and also Liz
Jones for straightening my English in their careful copy-editing.
The book was partly completed in
Ithaca, New York, October 2006, at Cornell University, and finalized in Goettingen,
Germany
Bassam Tibi February 2007
Preface
On my way to
Ithaca, New York to resume my A.D. White Professorshipat-Large at Cornell
University and to complete the final draft of this book, I stopped off in
Cambridge, Massachusetts to lecture at Harvard’s J.F. Kennedy School of
Government on political Islam. This was at the invitation of a British
baroness, who shares with me the faith of Islam, though unlike me, a humble
scholar, she is a member of the parliamentarian House of Lords. Baroness Kishwer
Falkner – her forename discloses her Pakistani origin – also shares with me
being a Muslim in Europe who is concerned with bridging Islam and Western
culture. Both of us believe the ultimate bridge is sharing the political
culture of democracy, which is much more than a voting procedure. During her
Harvard tenure on leave from the British Parliament, Kishwer Falkner organized
a lecture series on ‘‘Political Islam and Democracy.’’ In fact, this is the
major theme of this book. At Harvard I was expected to answer the question
whether political Islam – that is Islamism, or the Islamist variety of
religious fundamentalism – is compatible with democracy. This book deals with
this question, while pointing not only to global conflict but also to inner
conflicts within Islamic civilization between those Muslims who embrace
democracy as a political culture and others who adhere to Islamism as a
totalitarian ideology.
To be sure, Islam could
accommodate democracy on grounds of religious reforms which need to be more
than a reinterpretation of the scripture. Islamism, in contrast, could not
achieve this task. This is a most sensitive issue and needs to be addressed
most carefully in view of the bad image of Islam in Western media. Therefore,
the distinction between political Islam and the Islamic faith has to be kept in
mind throughout the analysis, for strategic as well as for analytical concerns.
On these grounds, I strictly distinguish between the religion of Islam (faith
and ethic) – which I share – and Islamism as a political totalitarian ideology
represented by a movement based in transnational religion. I refer to this
distinction so frequently that once an anchorman in German television shouted
at me in a live debate: ‘‘Professor Tibi, stop repeating yourself! We’ve got
it!’’ This seems, however, not always to be the case, as some of my readers in
the process of peergroup reviewing of this book raised the accusation of
‘‘Islam-bashing,’’ overlooking not only the fact that this author is a devout
Muslim committed to an understanding of reform Islam compatible both with
democracy and individual human rights, but also that this book reflects this
commitment in the research for an exit strategy in a peaceful conflict
resolution. Therefore, let it be quite clear that the subject-matter of this
book is political Islam, not Islam as a faith. This is reflected in the title.
Despite the pivotal distinction
outlined, I do not fall into the trap of the politically correct allegation
that Islamism has nothing to do with Islam. In fact, the movement of an
Islamist internationalism placed at the center of this book is a political
reality in all societies of Muslim civilization. Moreover, it is also a popular
choice based ideologically on the resentment of the West and socially on a real
material and normative crisis. I acknowledge that not all Islamists are
jihadists and therefore put forward another distinction, that between peaceful
institutional Islamism (e.g. the AKP of Turkey) and the jihadist branch of
political Islam represented by a variety of movements committed to violence.
These are no ‘‘crazed gangs’’ as Edward Said once contended, but a movement
based on transnational religion with global networks.
Under these conditions and in this
setup all people of Islamic civilization are exposed to dealing with two
pending challenges. One is within their own civilization as they face a
militant minority – albeit a well-organized one – that pretends to lead them as
an imagined umma in a remaking of the world, be it through global jihad or
institutional Islamism. The other challenge Muslims are confronted with is the
need to come to terms with democracy and its pluralism in an international
environment in their relations to others. As stated, secular democracy can be
embraced by Muslims and accommodated to Islamic civilization. In the context of
the return of the sacred, Islam is revived not only as a religion but also as a
system of life in a political shape, and this is the obstacle.
While grappling with the question
I was exposed to at Harvard – that is, political Islam and democracy – I
operate in this book on the firm view that democracy is neither simply the rule
of the majority nor a mere procedure of voting; it is a political culture of
pluralism. Despite my conviction of compatibility I contend that an Islam based
on a worldview of a universal umma united vis-a`-vis non-Muslims (in a variety
of categories) has a problem with democratic pluralism. This problem is
addressed in terms of a predicament, and it can be solved peacefully. To be
sure, cultural pluralism as based on popular sovereignty and democracy is
secular and is not rooted in religious precepts. Is it then compatible with
Islam? My answer in this book is: for the world at large, yes, but conditional
to the will of Muslim believers to allow what my fellow Muslim Mohammed Arkoun
addressed as a ‘‘rethinking of Islam.’’ It is thus dependent on their will to
engage in reforming Islamic thought on a path towards a civil Islam put in line
with democracy. I state candidly that, for Muslims in Europe, even more is
required. In the world of Islam one may reform the shari’a, but to rethink

Preface
and reform Islam
in Europe requires an abandoning of the shari’a altogether – as well as jihad
and da’wa/proselitization – in favor of a concept of Euro-Islam. I claim this
concept and state, against those who present it in a distorted version, that
Euro-Islam is based on a Europeanization and on embracing pluralism. On the
grounds of shari’a there can be no place for Islam in a democratic Europe. The
Islamization of Europe that Islamists envision – and some do not like to
acknowledge – is a threat to European identity and to the civil open society.
In this context I present to my fellow Muslim immigrants the alternative of a
European Islam based on the values of civil society, to be shared by all who
want to live in Europe as citizens of an open society.
This book deals with Islam in the
context of both world politics and the European Union, home to an ever
increasing community of Muslims – more than 20 million in 2006. At Cornell we
addressed this issue in terms of ‘‘religion in an expanding Europe.’’ I look at
these issues through the lens of a Muslim migrant committed to democratic
pluralism seeking a place for Islam within the European culture of open
society. Against the vision of a European Islam (Euro-Islam), Europe is
becoming a battlefield for determining the future of Islam – with regard to its
compatibility with democracy – and of the West itself. Having been an active
member of the ‘‘Culture Matters Research Project’’ at the Fletcher School, I
see in Islam a ‘‘developing culture’’ compatible with democracy through reform:
that is, through cultural change.
One major focus of this book is
Islam in Europe. I argue for the acceptance of democracy by Muslim immigrants
as a minimal requirement. Years ago, I participated in a research project
‘‘Islam and the Changing Identity of Europe’’ at the University of California
Berkeley and co-authored the resulting volume, edited by Nezar AlSayyad and
Manuel Castells and published under the title Muslim Europe or Euro-Islam? In
my view, this question is posed for Muslims, for Europeans and for the world in
the twentyfirst century. In the Cornell project already mentioned on the role
of transnational religion in an expanding Europe, I coined the slogan
‘‘Europeanizing Islam vs Islamization of Europe?’’ This is based on a political
concept for the integration of Islam in Europe. For the other domain of world
politics I draw on the revived debate on the Kantian idea of democratic peace
for bridging between the Islamic civilization and the rest of the world within
the framework of cultural pluralism.
Given the focus on Europe, the
story begins with 11 March 2004, not with 9/11. One year on, the Club de Madrid
summoned more than a thousand people, including hundreds of statesmen and
experts, to commemorate the victims of that jihadist action. Also at issue was
an effort to think about the roots of terrorism with religious legitimation,
which is an indication of global jihad, of course, in the understanding of
jihadism. As one of the invited experts to the Madrid meeting, I was saddened
to see a Saudi shouting at a Western expert and demanding that she abandon the
use of the term ‘‘global jihad,’’ alleging that there was ‘‘no such thing.’’ I
grew even more concerned when the attending Egyptian philosopher Hasan Hanafi,
the author of the term ‘‘al-usuliyya al-Islamiyya/Islamic fundamentalism,’’
which he uses as a title to one of his major books, suggested that Europe is in
crisis and unequivocally stated that the solution would be to apply the model
of ‘‘al-Andalus/Islamic Spain’’ to present-day Europe. The implication of this
recommended ‘‘solution’’ would be, in plain language, the Islamization of
Europe. And indeed, Europe is becoming the battlefield on which the struggle
for the direction of the world in the twenty-first century will be fought.
Therefore this book first outlines the overall conflict between the competing
options of democracy and global jihad in Part I. In Part II the book offers a
detailed description of the vision of an Islamization of the world guiding the pursuit
of Islamist internationalism. Part III is devoted to a discussion of the
European situation with regard to Islam. In this final part, as well as
throughout the book, it is made clear that the ill-guided term ‘‘clash of
civilizations’’ is not useful for explaining the relations of Islam and Europe.
It can be conceded that in the post-bipolar world politics of the twenty-first
century there is a conflict between all varieties of political and jihadist
Islam and the system of international affairs (that continues to be structured
along the Westphalian interstate system), but this is by no way a clash of
civilizations. Underlying this argument is the view that Muslims themselves are
involved in the choice between democracy and Islamist shari’a rule. The challenge
of jihadism as a new variety of an irregular war in world affairs is also a
challenge to Muslims themselves in many ways, and they are the foremost victims
of it.
The work on this book started in
an Islamic place back in 2003 when I was teaching at the Hidayatullah Islamic
State University of Jakarta, Indonesia, and this process of four years is
described at length in the acknowledgements. In this context I also worked in
2005 at the Asian Research Institute of the National University of Singapore
(NUS), where I came across a report published in Singapore’s Straits Times under
the headline: ‘‘Muslims Must Speak Up about Jihad’’ (Straits Times, 28 January
2005, p. 14). The story covered a meeting of fifty Islamic scholars invited by
the
Organization of
the Islamic Conference (OIC) and sponsored by the Malaysian Prime Minister
Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. The Prime Minister opened the meeting by stating:
‘‘Speak out against militant extremism or share the blame for the world’s
misunderstanding of Islam.’’ Two months later, in Madrid, I very much missed
this true sentiment among many of that meeting’s Muslim participants, who
presented themselves as victims of the West instead of joining the call for
‘‘safe democracy’’ against Islamist jihadism. Instead of debating the issue
seriously, some participating Muslims deplorably engaged in blame-games
amounting to anti-Westernism. And in abandoning the rhetoric of a clash of
civilizations, we need also to abandon the confrontational polarization of
Islam vs the West. The conflict is, rather, between democracy and
totalitarianism.
Preface
The cited call of Badawi is
enlightening and courageous, but it stops short of acknowledging the fact that
we are dealing with a movement within Islam. The chairman of the OIC asked that
Muslims seek to correct ‘‘misperceptions about the concept of jihad, which has
often been distorted to justify violence’’ (ibid., p. 14). He insisted that the
exclusive meaning of jihad was ‘‘self-discipline.’’ Unfortunately, even on a
scriptural level this statement is wrong. In the Qur’an, the concept of qital/physical
fighting is a part of jihad, as shown in Chapter 1 in this book. In Islamic
history, the wars of Islamic expansion, called futuhat, were legitimized by
reference to fighting a jihad against the infidels. What we are witnessing now
is a new jihadism, not classical jihad. This jihadism is not only restricted to
Islamic militancy, but also – as Sayyid Qutb put it in his Signposts along the
Road – an effort aimed at remaking the world by establishing a new world order
based on Islam. It was most disturbing in the above-mentioned Madrid meeting to
listen to an Egyptian envoy telling the audience: ‘‘Qutb stated this half a
century ago. Today he has no impact.’’ Again, this is a distortion. The new
Islamist interpretation of jihad as an ‘‘Islamic world revolution’’ (Qutb) is a
popular public choice. The founder of the first fundamentalist movement in
Islam, Hasan al-Banna, detaches the idea of jihad as qital, i.e. as ‘‘violent
struggle,’’ from the rules limiting the jihad-actions as prescribed in the
Qur’an by the traditional concept. This is not a mere ‘‘misunderstanding,’’ but
an indication of a new phenomenon, one which Islamists themselves call ‘‘global
jihad’’ and which is unfortunately much more than a new form of religious
extremism. In Europe it is a popular idea among young Europeanborn Muslims who
feel discriminated against and socially excluded. The French intelligence
service, Direction Ge´ne´rale de la Se´curite´
Exte´rieure (DGSE), completed a report ahead of the London jihadist
assaults in July 2005, in which the strike was predicted. The report stated
that al-Qaeda ‘‘will take the advantage of the pro-jihad sympathies within the
large Pakistani community in the United Kingdom’’ (quoted by International
Herald Tribune, 9 August 2005, front page). This report was submitted to the
British authorities, but ignored. The best strategy for Europe for countering
this challenge is to make it possible for young Muslims to join the democratic
open civil society. If integration fails, the result is a ghettoizing of
oneself in Islamic enclaves awaiting the Islamization of Europe through
fighting jihad. For dealing with the conflict a policy of ‘‘better-informed
Muslims correcting other Muslims’’ is needed. This is the phrasing of the OIC
chairman in the Malaysian meeting mentioned above. In this mindset, this book
is written by a Muslim with a clearly normative approach. Being trained in the
West in philosophy, social sciences and the historical study of Islam, with a
professional focus on International Relations (IR), I see two needs, one
political, one methodological. Politically, I would advise abandoning the
Huntingtonian rhetoric of a ‘‘clash of civilizations,’’ even though I do not
overlook the conflict over values and ideas between the Islamic and the Western
civilizations. I believe that confrontation can be averted in world affairs in
the twenty-first century if we succeed in a cross-cultural bridging based on
commonalities, at the top of which is secular democracy as a political culture.
On both sides one needs to be
honest and acknowledge that the issue is not a ‘‘misunderstanding of Islam,’’
but rather a conflict. The present book is a scholarly contribution, although
imbued with personal references for addressing this conflict. Some Westerners
may not like this. I have had the repeated experience of scholars and many
Western ‘‘peer-group’’ readers – acting as judges on intellectual merit and
summoned with the power to decide on a work’s appropriateness for publication –
deeming this personal style inappropriate. Therefore, I ask for cultural
tolerance and for a crosscultural understanding. In order to ease such possible
differences of literary expectations between me and my readers, a justification
for my personal way of addressing objective issues is needed. To do so, I allow
myself to refer to two authorities beyond dispute: to Thomas Kuhn and his Structure
of Scientific Revolutions and to Rene´ Descartes and his Discours de la
me´thode to underline and support my concern pursued in this book.
Thomas Kuhn was a scientist and he dealt with the place of
established paradigms within the sciences. In his view, the lack of an overall
accepted paradigm in the humanities is related to the very character of the
related disciplines themselves. In Kuhn’s understanding, social sciences – even
if quantified to the bone – could never become a science like physics or
chemistry. In the social-scientific disciplines, where no paradigm could ever
be shared by the entire community, one encounters divergent schools of thought
that must at least be tolerant to one another within a scholarly pluralism, as
is the case concerning differences existing in culture and politics. The same
principle of pluralism applies to writing styles characterized by diversity.
Without a culture of pluralism applied to scholarship, in a culturally diverse
world academia would become totalitarian. Far from being naı¨ve, I see
the power structure inside academia (of which ‘‘peer’’ assessment is a part)
and argue that if a paradigm is subsequently imposed on others, then the
overall endeavor becomes a power-based game, not a scholarly one based on the
freedom of speech. In the social sciences, scholarly views can be compared with
beliefs, as described in the Qur’an: ‘‘lakum dinakum wa liya din/you have your
religion and I have mine.’’ One expects in this situation to be exposed to a
practice of scholarly tolerance – along the lines of general religious
tolerance – a practice which accepts disagreement, and within which there is
restraint from using cliche´s, such as ‘‘Orientalism,’’ ‘‘Islamophobia’’
or ‘‘right-wing,’’ in order to avoid defaming those scholars of a different
mind. Unfortunately I have reason – based on experience – to refer to these
issues in a context in which political positions were confused by readers as
being presented as expressions of scholarly schools of thought, and used for
rejecting submissions. In short, just as there is not one religion for all of
humanity, there is no single true paradigm, school of thought or writing style
for all social scientists and students Preface
of Islam. We need
a real pluralism to be practiced both among religions and among divergent
scholarly schools of thought.
When it comes to my second
authority, Rene´ Descartes, the reference is more succinct. I have
encountered readers who question the scholarly character of my work simply
because I write in a personal manner (e.g. ‘‘I think’’ and not ‘‘one thinks’’)
and refer to personal experience. Subsequently, some ask me to depersonalize my
arguments. However, Rene´ Descartes’ Discours de la me´thode is
based on ‘‘cogito/I think’’ and not on ‘‘one thinks.’’ I act along the term
‘‘thinking is research’’ coined by Hedley Bull, a scholar who in the IR
discipline enjoys my greatest respect. Only individual humans think. For Max
Weber, rationality is a reason-based Entzauberung, which means disenchantment.
Rationality is an achievement of individual reasoning based on the capability
of individual recognition. Ju¨rgen Habermas addresses this rationality as Subjektivitaetsprinzip/principle
of subjectivity which is not to be confused with objectivity, as some do.
Subjective thinking is a rational thinking and also – in Bull’s understanding –
research. Scholars are thinking subjects studying the objective world. Their
objectivity is no more than a claim. Immanuel Kant described the objective
world as a Ding an sich/objectivity – something we could only venture into when
recognizing it for good and all on an individual level. Nevertheless, I do not
believe in postmodern narratives. There is objective knowledge that can be
reached by individuals on subjective levels.
Within such an understanding and
positioning, I offer the present study as a scholarly contribution for
understanding contemporary political Islam, written by a Muslim living in
Europe and experiencing the inter-civilizational conflict on the ground and
under issue on a personal level. Therefore, I refuse to comply with the
depersonalization of knowledge, and ask readers to honor the need to include
personal background in this inquiry. The problems I face in this context are
not restricted to some Westerners who want – in a paternalistic Euro-centric
manner – to ‘‘teach me’’ not only objectivity and scholarship but also my own
Islamic culture. I also have problems within my own Islamic community with some
of my fellow Muslims, who prefer to preach instead of arguing, and in the case
of disagreement often threaten and even excommunicate those who disagree from
Islam, using the obnoxious Islamic tradition of ‘‘tafkir/declaring a Muslim an
‘unbeliever’.’’ There is an Islamist narrative of ‘‘Islam under siege’’ and
this book is a scholarly contribution to its understanding.
The methodology employed in this
book for studying Islam is based on looking at religion as a fait social/social
fact. One needs to study religious jihadist terrorism as such a fact. This is
the way in which I was trained as a social scientist – that is, underpinned by
the mindset of cultural modernity that evolved in Europe. Facts are to be
distinguished from beliefs, even though beliefs themselves are social facts to
be studied accurately. For example, the belief in jihadism by young Muslims,
presented as their way of religious faith, is a social fact in the Durkheimian
sense of a fait social. The view of Islamic jihad as ‘‘a permanent Islamic
world revolution’’ has undeniably become a reality, shaping one direction of
Islam in the twenty-first century. The effects of this doctrine are now
spilling over beyond the world of Islam, touching on world politics in general
and, through migration, on Europe, as home to 20 million Muslim migrants, in
particular. True, the jihadists are a minority, as they are among migrants in
Europe; however, their thought is on all levels a powerful doctrine. It gains
its strength not only by way of its tremendous appeal to a generation of
hopeless Muslim youth, but also through its considerable mobilization of
support systems, stretching from mosques and various religious associations to
welfare societies, foundations and efficient financial infrastructures.
Europeans unwittingly contribute to this strengthening through the exclusion
and marginalization of Muslim immigrants.
At this stage, the argument of pluralism could be turned
against me. I state openly that the Weberian and Frankfurt School perspective
of social sciences, in which I was socialized as part of my own education, is
my frame of reference for studying global jihad as well as Islam in Europe. My
ideas could therefore be contested by some Muslims as an imposition of Western
social sciences on Islam. In fact, Islamists not only want to remake the world
through jihad and thus Islamize it, they also engage in an Islamization of
knowledge. It follows that epistemology is also involved in this war of ideas.
In an article published in Theory, Culture & Society (1995) I respond to
the challenge to my European–Western social-scientific study of Islam. Having
stated this, I refrain from defending Western scholarship. I regrettably fail
to find guiding help from any of the schools of thought currently dominating
the discipline of International Relations while addressing the issues covered
within this book. As Stanley Hoffman rightly put it, this discipline of
International Relations is an ‘‘American science,’’ i.e. dominated by a US
perspective. IR scholars educated in the US tradition are not trained to deal
with the changed world after the demise of bipolarity, nor are they equipped
with scientific tools for dealing with other cultures. When it comes to Islam
and the need to reform it, as I write on this in English and German I have been
intrigued by people asking the question: ‘‘Why are you not writing this in
Arabic?’’ thus overlooking the pertinence of these reforms to Europe. In this
critical mind toward both Euro-centric arrogance and the Islamo-centrism of my
co-religionists, I have been in search of new outlooks while not claiming to
have found the solution, but I assert that the pains undertaken in seeking new
outlooks have been individual efforts, as described by ijtihad in Islam or, to
put it in the Cartesian tradition, ‘‘cogito ergo sum.’’ Despite my Islamic
socialization, my worldview is rooted in cultural modernity. I also openly
profess that I do not share the postmodernist cultural relativist belief in
‘‘multiple modernities,’’ nor the dichotomic Islamic view of the world
splitting the globe into dar al-Islam/ house of Islam, as opposed to dar
al-harb/house of war, or house of the unbelievers. One finds this worldview
even among European-born Muslims Preface
who disparage
Europe as the abode of kufr/unbelief (see the report: ‘‘Jihadist
Self-portrait’’ in International Herald Tribune, 9 August 2005, p. 2). This
book seeks other options based on reason.
Cultural modernity, as outlined in
a major book by Ju¨rgen Habermas and intellectually rooted in the thinking
of Rene´ Descartes, Immanuel Kant and Max Weber, is a European idea. In
addition to it, I have learned in my European education that Europe itself is
‘‘a beautiful idea,’’ a term coined by Rob Riemen, the director of the Dutch
Nexus Institute. This institution ran a research project on this topic,
supported by the Dutch government during its presidency of the European Union
in the second half of 2004. The dialogue had both a European (The Hague,
Berlin, Warsaw, Rotterdam) and a transatlantic (Washington, DC) orientation. I
was in charge of the discussion on Islam, for which the guiding question was:
How could Muslims living in Europe embrace the idea of Europe? To be sure, this
goal cannot be reached without changing the dichotomic Islamic worldview just
described.
The project mentioned had an
impact on this book, as reflected in Part III. The argument raised was that
Europe is challenged by Islam, equally through migration and through Turkey’s
bid for accession to the EU as a full member. It is asked whether the idea of
cultural modernity that establishes the self-awareness of man as a thinking
subject and the possibility of contributing to the Entzauberung (Max Weber) as
disenchantment of the world can be appealing to Muslims, in particular to those
living in Europe. My argument is: As Islam was Hellenized in medieval times, so
this ‘‘rationalization’’ as an accomplishment of cultural modernity in terms of
the Subjektivitaetsprinzip/principle of subjectivity (Habermas) can also be
incorporated into contemporary Islam. Sadly, I feel compelled to note that
there are ‘‘peer-group’’ readers, devoid of philosophical education, who
misread this notion of ‘‘subjectivity’’ to mean ‘‘subjectivism’’ in contrast
with objectivity. With such an awareness of cogito – as the subjectivity of man
– I write my book and therefore do not remove my individuality (as a
subjectivity) while studying the objective world in which I act as a thinking
Muslim engaged in rethinking Islam. Unlike the constructivists, I continue to
follow Kant in believing that there is an objective world – as ‘‘Ding an sich’’
– not constructed by us, even though Kant concedes that we are not fully in a
position to capture this objectivity.
On a personal level, my study of
Islam results from a process of returning to a belief in enlightened Islam
after a decade-long venture into Marxism. When I came from Damascus to Europe
in 1962 at the age of eighteen, I became (under the impact of Adorno’s and
Horkheimer’s Frankfurt School) a follower of Kritische Theorie/critical theory,
a light variety of Marxism. After those years (1965–75), which included
education in European philosophy and a journey through the tiers mondisme/third-worldism
of Frantz Fanon, in around 1975 I started – after a severe identity crisis – to
study Islam, this time no longer as scripture, as had been the case in Damascus.
Among my early
inspirations for engaging in this pursuit was an encounter with the
distinguished Jewish-German philosopher Ernst Bloch, who was not on good terms
with my academic teachers in Frankfurt, but in contrast to them – though
himself a Marxist – was highly knowledgeable about Islam. I first met Bloch in
1965, when he gave me his book Avicenna und die Aristotelische Linke (1963), in
which he praises the Islamic rationalism of Avicenna against ‘‘the mufti
world’’ of Islamic orthodoxy. Six years later – influenced both by Marxism and
by Bloch’s line of reasoning – I published my own first book, Die Arabische
Linke (1969). That book was the grounds for Edward Said to invite me to the USA
to speak on the Arab left, and to contribute to his book The Arabs of Today.
Perspectives for Tomorrow (1973). The Arab left was critical of Salafist Islam
and of Islamism. The point of departure was the shattering and humiliating Arab
defeat in the Six-Day War in 1967, which opened the eyes of my generation and
provided impetus for a new thinking that would go beyond the illusions and
irrational romanticism of pan-Arab nationalism. In this new context, the
reference to the ‘‘Aristotelian Left’’ (Bloch) was an inspiration for a new
Enlightenment by the post-1967 Arab left, correctly described by Said as
‘‘perspectives for tomorrow.’’ Islamic rationalism is regularly associated with
Averroe¨s and therefore the term ‘‘Averroe¨ism’’ is established for
covering this tradition. This Averroe¨ism failed in medieval Islam. The
failure of the Arab left resulted in a success for political Islam.
In an essay published in November 2005 in the German weekly Die
Zeit, I drew a parallel between the failure of Averroe¨ist medieval
rationalism and that of the post-1967 Arab left – both indications of Islamic
Enlightenment. To understand these failures, we need to grasp the meaning
inherent in religion. In his outstanding biography of Thomas Muentzer as a
theologian of the medieval peasant revolution, Bloch warned that religion would
be ill perceived if reduced to economic and social conditions, for religion is
an entity in itself. Though it is embedded in social realities, it is not
simply a reflection of them and can affect both social and economic conditions
of life. In addition to Emile Durkheim, this Blochian view has had a great
impact on my understanding of religion. It is true, as I learned from Adorno
and Horkheimer and their Kritische Theorie, that every example of economic
reductionism, i.e. explaining everything within a reference to economic
constraints, is an expression of vulgar Marxism. But the Frankfurt School
approach itself was not helpful for a proper understanding of religion.
Therefore, I was compelled in my study of Islam to put aside Marxian theory –
and later abandon it from my thoughts altogether. The Frankfurt School taught
me to think rationally and critically and not to refrain from subjecting
everything – even my Islamic beliefs – to reflection in the course of critical
reasoning. I continue to be loyal to this approach, but beyond this the
Frankfurt School gave no further guidance. So what is to be done in the search
for a bridging between cultural modernity and Islam, both in the world at large
and in Europe? What solution can be Preface
found for
overcoming the pending predicament? The present book claims to be a modest
contribution to this end, with a focus on Islam and world affairs on the one
hand and Islam in Europe on the other.
Those who accuse me of
‘‘Islam-bashing’’ fail to understand my work as a continuation of efforts by
enlightened Muslims at ‘‘rethinking Islam’’ (M. Arkoun). My earlier books – The
Crisis of Modern Islam (1980, US edition 1988), ten years later Islam and the
Cultural Accommodation of Social Change (1990) and after another eleven years Islam
between Culture and Politics (2001) – deal with the politicization of Islam as
a misleading perspective for Muslims and their future. In this context I
reiterate my contention: The problem is not Islam as a religion, but its politicization
as a belief system. However, a religious belief is also at work, as dealt with
as politicized religion. The politicization of religion is not simply an
instrumental use of religion. At issue is a reference to the meaning of
religion for political ends. In my view, a civil Islam can be put in harmony
with secular democracy as the better choice for our Islamic civilization. In
Europe, the variety of such a civil Islam compatible with democracy is
characterized by the concept of Euro-Islam, which I claim to have unfolded
since a presentation made in Paris back in 1992. This book is committed to
rethinking Islam and ends with a concluding chapter on Islam and democracy as
the al-hall/the solution for Muslims in their current mihna/crisis. This is my
commitment.
Bassam Tibi
Ithaca, New York
Institute for European Studies at Cornell University

Introduction
The impact of
the politicization of Islam on world politics as a context for Europe and Islam
in the 21st century
In a pre-modern sense, i.e. in an
understanding of world politics prior to the creation of the Westphalian system1
of sovereign states, the Mediterranean2 was the center of
world history. At present, the combination of an expanding European Union in
the North and continuing surge of political Islam in the South has been
contributing to making this region pivotal for contemporary international
politics. Historians are familiar with the civilizational centrality of the
Mediterranean that predates the rise of Islam in the past and of Islamism at
present: The Roman Empire viewed the Mediterranean as mare nostrum/our sea.
This understanding was challenged when the foundation of Islam took place not
only as a religion, but also as a competing civilization. The new monotheist
message of the Prophet Mohammed3 (610–32) changed the Mediterranean.
The ensuing rise of an Islamic empire based on Islamic futuhat-expansion4 aimed
at mapping the globe into dar al-Islam and transferred the Mediterranean into
an Islamic sphere. This Islamic model of globalization was the first of this
kind in world history.5 Following the conquests in the
Mediterranean, ArabMuslims invaded Europe from the south-west (Spain) in a
first wave and, centuries later, in a second wave from the south-east (the
Balkans). The Turk-Muslims were able to accomplish what Arabs failed to do: to
conquer Constantinople in 1453 and to bring Byzantium to an end. Is this a
model for the present? Some believe they see Islamic civilization threatening
to engulf Europe by Islamizing it. The announced end of history has proven to
be a fallacy, given the lie by a return of history. This book asks whether
massive Islamic migration to Europe is creating a third wave related to the
history just outlined, or whether Europe will be able to absorb Muslim
immigrants by integrating them as citizens. Could Islam become European, as a
Euro-Islam? In the spirit outlined in the preface, I have been writing this
book as a scholar who combines a Muslim background of immigration with the will
to embrace the idea of Europe, and who thus rebukes the rhetoric of a clash of
civilizations. To be sure, European realities of other-ing Muslims and
marginalizing them are not in line with the idea of Europe. Both Europeans and
Muslims need to change, to avert an unfolding of the announced clash of
civilizations in a self-fulfilled prophecy. The present book is a contribution
to this needed change on both sides.
The issue: not the end, but the return of history
Despite all the
romance of medieval Islamic Spain, the heritage of that historical experience
is not a model for European–Muslim relations, either in Europe itself or in the
Mediterranean neighborhood of the European Union. The moderate Egyptian
Islamist Hasan Hanafi – as quoted in the preface – proposed, in all
seriousness, in the Madrid meeting of March 2005 that Europeans consider the
model of Andalusia, i.e. of an Islamized Iberia, as a solution for the whole of
‘‘crisis-ridden’’ Europe in the twenty-first century.6 Underlying
this proposition is the coincidence of the end of bipolarity, with both an
intensifying Islamic migration to Europe and a civilizational identity crisis
in Europe. Does the claim expressed by Hanafi hold? Does it reflect the return
of history as a return of Islam to Europe?
Muslims – like myself – no longer
come to Europe as part of a classical jihad, but instead peacefully, within the
framework of hijra/migration. Students of Islam will know that the Islamic futuhat-wars
of the classical jihad were traditionally accompanied by the hijra of entire
tribes from Arabia to the conquered and Islamized areas.7 The
history of combining jihad with hijra is related to a practice of the Islamic
faith which urges Muslims to migrate in order to spread Islam (da’wa). This
very history seems at present to return to Europe, putting the prediction of
the end of history into question. As quoted in an editorial in the International
Herald Tribune, Francis Fukuyama acknowledged in view of Islamic migration that
Europe is under pressure to defend the validity of its values within Europe
itself. According to this report, Fukuyama asked Europeans in Berlin not to let
themselves be intimidated by Muslim migrants demanding the recognition of
Islamic values as a space for Islam at the expense of European ideals. Is this
‘‘the end of history’’ that Fukuyama proclaimed after the end of the Cold War,
or rather the return of it?
To reiterate, in Islam migration
is a religious duty with much greater meaning than simply technical migration,
i.e. moving from one geographical place to another; rather, it is linked to da’wa/proselytization
and also to creating amsar as hijra settlements. In relation to this Islamic
process, migrants are claiming Islamic values for Europe, and some of their
leaders draw instrumentally on the ideology of multi-culturalism to put
communitarian views at the service of creating a space for the Islamic da’wa.
The earlier failed Islamization of Europe by jihad from the south-west and from
the south-east between the eighth and seventeenth centuries can therefore now
be seen as resurfacing peacefully in the twenty-first century. The context is
the increasing Islamic migration to Europe and the related creation of Islamic
parallel societies as ‘‘enclaves’’ (Kelsay) emerging throughout Europe. In
short, at issue is not ‘‘the end of history,’’8 but rather the
return of the history of civilizations,9 both to Europe and to world
politics. The core question once again is how Islam is challenging Europe. This
is a major theme of the present book, alongside proposing an accommodation for
averting any polarization on the grounds of maintaining the identity of Europe.
It is regrettable that this debate
– as resumed in this book – is highly burdened by the work of Samuel P.
Huntington, which is itself unfortunately biased and in many ways flawed
through many misinterpretations of the history both of civilizations and of
Islam. The work of the founder of the science of civilization/ilm al-umram,
namely Ibn Khaldun, is completely ignored in Huntington’s Clash of
Civilizations.10 In contrast, Arnold Toynbee’s inquiry about
civilizations acknowledges the centrality of Ibn Khaldun.11 This distinguished
Muslim philosopher of the fourteenth century was the first to conceptualize the
history of humankind as ilm al-umran/science of civilization. The
twentieth-century seminal historian Arnold Toynbee,12 who considered
himself a disciple of Ibn Khaldun, perceived his own study of history as a
study of civilizations in the path of this Muslim philosopher. Two other major
scholars pertinent to this inquiry are also missing in Huntington’s thinking.
The first is the Belgian historian Henri Pirenne, who related the rise of
Europe under Charlemagne to the challenge of Islam. The Islamic incursion into
the Mediterranean contributed to the decline of the Roman Empire – which was
basically Mediterranean rather than European. In a sense, Western Christendom
shaped Carolingian Europe in the process of this formation of Europe, which
would have been inconceivable without the impact of Islam. As Henri Pirenne put
it forcefully: ‘‘Sans Mahomet, pas de Charlemagne.’’13 Nevertheless,
at issue are not the rival religions of Christianity and Islam, as is often
contended, but rather the civilizations related with each. The historical
product has been their competition with one another. The other scholar missing
in Huntington’s work is Raymond Aron, who in his Paix et guerre entre les
nations14 rightly notes that the real division of humanity lies not
in the ‘‘blocs’’ of the Cold War but rather in the heterogeneity of
civilizations. In that book, published in 1962 (i.e. at the height of the Cold
War) Aron predicted that bipolarity – a veiling of the heterogeneity of
civilizations – could not be a lasting divide, and that with its disappearance
the true civilizational divide would emerge. This is, in fact, what is
happening at present and is determining world politics in the twenty-first
century, as described in this book in terms of the return of history as a
history of civilizations.
In my view, the surge of political
Islam, viewed by its exponents as a civilizational sahwa/awakening,15 is
ill perceived if it is viewed merely as, negatively, a case of religious
extremism or fanaticism, or, positively, a religious renaissance. Both
interpretations are flawed. At issue is a revival of a civilizational
worldview, based on the vision of a new idea of an Islamic world order16 in
which a reinventing of the historical tradition of jihad takes place. In
Chapter 1 this revival is addressed as a rise of ‘‘a deadly idea’’ that does
harm equally to Muslims and to others. The goal of the Islamists is to replace
the existing order based on the secular foundations of the 1648 Peace of
Westphalia with Hakimiyyat Allah/God’s rule. Thus the targets are the
nation-state and subsequently the existing world order.
At present, world politics is
being shaped by US-American hegemony. The concept of ‘‘the West’’ consists,
however, of both Europe and North America, and therefore while Islamic
anti-Western attitudes may reflect an anti-Americanism on the surface, Europe
is much more affected by the civilizational claims of political Islam targeting
the ‘‘crusaders,’’ who were in fact Europeans. In contrast to the propaganda of
the new conservative right in the US, there is no trace of Islamization in
North America. In Europe, on the other hand, this issue is a genuine concern,
reviving collective memories – on both sides – be they of the efforts for an
Islamic mapping of Europe, or the crusaders conquering the world of Islam. A
‘‘war of memories’’ is at issue. As quoted above, Hasan Hanafi’s words in
Madrid voiced what many Muslim migrants in Europe have in their minds. In this
book, however, I pointedly refuse to contribute to such divides and strive to
study the conflict on its own terms, avoiding a mindset of conquest. Instead,
when exploring the ‘‘Islamization of Europe,’’ I adopt a mindset of accommodation
and consider the ‘‘Europeanization of
Islam’’17 as the alternative.
In Islam, the mindset of conquest
is that of jihad. In every case, jihad is an effort to spread Islam for mapping
the world into dar al-Islam. This may be done peacefully through Islamic da’wa/proselytization,
or – as at the present time – by resorting to ‘‘terror in the mind of God’’18
– a term coined by Mark Juergensmeyer. As will be shown in Chapter 1,
according to the Qur’an jihad becomes an expression of violence when it is combined
with qital/physical fighting, but it is definitely not ‘‘terror.’’ However,
today’s jihad, called jihadiyya/jihadism or global jihad/al-jihad al-alami, is
something new based on a reinvention of tradition19 and it heralds
the return of history in the addressed sense. The packaging and language are
traditional but the substance is new, and this is precisely what makes this
return of tradition not merely a revival, but a reinvention. In this new
language of global jihad is expressed the return of Islam – not as a religious
faith – and of the historical claims of its civilization to world politics. The
target of this jihadism is not only the US (9/11), but also, and most
significantly, Europe (Madrid on 11 March 2004; Amsterdam on 2 November 2004
and London in July 2005). The Club de Madrid has responded to this challenge
with a call for ‘‘safe democracy and security’’ (see note 6). Does democracy
prevent jihadism? In Chapter 2’s discussion of democracy and Islam, I ask how
Muslims could embrace the idea of democracy and of democratic peace as the
alternative to political Islam. Civil Islam is compatible with democracy, but
Islamism is not.20 The message of political Islam to Europe is
conveyed in an Islamist expression of the new ‘‘revolt against the West’’21
bringing history back to the fore!
The deadly idea of global jihad – used here interchangeably
with jihadism – can be traced back to Hasan al-Banna;22 a new
concept is at issue, no longer the same as classical jihad. The grandson of
al-Banna, Tariq Ramadan, presents his grandfather not only as an
‘‘anti-colonialist’’ but also as one of the major sources of Renouveaux
musulman. This is utterly wrong. Sayyid Qutb23 is the other
authority for jihadist political Islam. The major point is twofold: First,
global jihad is not only and simply jihadist terror, but also implies a concept
of new order; second, it is directed not only against Western hegemony, but
also primarily against the idea of the West as perceived to be opposed to the
idea of Islam. This polarization is the content of the war of ideas at issue
related to a process of remaking the world24 in the context of the
return of history.
In a nutshell, the contemporary
post-bipolar ‘‘revolt against the West’’ supports the already stated assumption
that it is directed not only against Western hegemony, but foremost against
secular Western values and the rational worldview underlying them.
Conceptualized in traditional International Relations (IR) terms, the Islamist
revolt is a global jihad against the present world order and the secular
structure of authority on which it is based. It is true that non-Western
civilizations were exposed to modernity within the framework of European
expansion. In a colonial context they also encountered cultural modernity, but
the difference was that decolonization movements actually embraced European
ideas – such as the right to self-determination and to national sovereignty –
to legitimize their fight against colonialism. This is not the case with the
new revolt of religious fundamentalisms, as it is directed against Western
values altogether. In contrast to early decolonization, this revolt refuses to
honor the distinction between Western hegemony and cultural modernity. One can
reject Western rule and at the same time embrace cultural modernity. Religious
fundamentalist movements are based on cultural purisms and reject any
hybridity. In bringing ‘‘culture’’ into the debate, I would argue that neither
cultural relativism nor so-called post-colonial studies can help in
understanding the conflict-triggering dichotomy between purist jihad in pursuit
of ‘‘Islamic world peace’’ (Pax Islamica) and an Islamic embracing of the
Kantian principle of democratic perpetual peace/ewiger Friede. Global jihad
reflects a variety of neo-absolutism, opposed to ‘‘democratic peace’’
underpinned by cultural pluralism. In addition, cultural modernity can neither
be equated with ‘‘colonial Orientalism,’’ as some Westerners and Islamists
jointly do, nor should it be undermined by the flawed concept of ‘‘multiple
modernities.’’ It is argued in this book that this conflict matters to Europe
becoming the battlefield described. The project of integrating Muslim migrants
as European citizens has not been successful, as the Muslim uprising in the banlieues
de l’Islam of Paris, France (October/November 2005) demonstrates.
The outlined context makes clear
that the call for a global jihad, viewed by Sayyid Qutb as an Islamic world
revolution for the introduction of a new world order, is a concept that
predates the end of the Cold War. This jihadism is no longer classical jihad
and it can be traced back to Hasan alBanna and his Risalat al-jihad/essay on
jihad. This neo-jihad is essential to the foundations of the movement of the
Muslim Brotherhood25 as the very first movement of political Islam.
This legacy, as well as the ideas of Sayyid Qutb, currently enjoys great appeal
under conditions of postbipolarity, and this mobilizatory ideology brings back
history. Though only a fringe phenomenon when the Muslim Brothers were founded
in Egypt in 1928, the movement eventually moved towards the center to become
the mainstream of political opposition in the post-196726 context.
However, it was not until the assaults of September 11 in New York and
Washington, and the chain of 11 March in Madrid to 7 July in London that people
in the West developed an awareness of global jihad lying at the hub of world
politics. It is sad to see that Islam in general and political Islam in
particular have since that time been wrongly associated with an understanding
of jihad as terrorism. Let us not forget: the religion of Islam does not
endorse terrorism, but forbids it. In addition, political Islam is not
identical with jihadist terrorism. All Islamists are Muslims, but not all
Muslims are Islamists involved in a ‘‘revolt against the West’’ for the
restoration of the history of Islamic dominance. To be sure, not all Islamists
are jihadists who resort to violence. Despite all of these differentiations, it
is clear that the world at large, Europe and the people of the Islamic
civilization need other options than political Islam,27 in its both
jihadist and its peaceful institutional varieties. In an effort to counteract
flawed understandings, this book suggests options for Islamic civilization in
its contemporary crisis.28 A distinction is made between two levels:
world politics and Europe. On the first level a global move for democratic
peace is needed. For Europe a Euro-Islam for the integration of Muslim
immigrants is recommended.
In addressing these issues one
finds that the Middle East continues in a Mediterranean tradition to be the
civilizational core of Islam. All events and developments there have a
spillover effect, not only on the rest of this civilization but also on the
neighborhood, i.e. on Europe. The competing options presented by the neo-jihad
of an ‘‘Islamic world revolution’’ are the creation of the divine order Qutb
termed Hakimiyyat Allah/God’s rule. This is viewed as an alternative to the
democratization of the Arab world as a neighborhood of Europe. The option
touches greatly on the future of the European Union.29 It is known
to me that some contemporary Islamists believe that political Islam could
peacefully achieve its concepts of the ‘‘Islamic state’’ viewed as a nucleus
for an Islamic world order. The idea of an Islamic world revolution, as taught
today in madrasas/Islamic schools has, however, never been abandoned. I do not
buy into this trading. Islamists in the world of Islam and in Europe continue
to be dedicated to the concept of the classical Islamicate30 being
revived in an ‘‘invention of tradition.’’ This revival replaces not only the
needed rethinking of Islam in the new international environment, but also the
needed democratization in the neighborhood of Europe.
The Islamist vision of the state
and of a new world order compels us to look at the systemic structure of
international relations in a historical perspective. The bipolar age was shaped
by the existence of two competing quasi-empires, the United States and the
Soviet Union, both embedded in a global structure concealing the existence of
another structure, namely the ‘‘heterogeneity of civilizations.’’ In pre-modern
times, there were no such global structures. Instead, there existed a diversity
of regionally competing civilizational empires, which were not connected with
one another nor able to become completely global. The one exception in world
history was the period of futuhat or ‘‘opening’’ of Islamic civilization, which
occurred between the seventh and the seventeenth centuries and ended the
dominance and rivalry of the Byzantines and the Sassanides. During that period,
Arab and Turkish Islamic empires successively dominated major parts of the
world, with the goal of enhancing the territoriality of dar al-Islam through
classical jihad and ultimately of mapping the entire globe in accordance with
this model. But while the then established Islamicate (see note 30) was
successful in its own terms as an effort at globalization, it was not so to the
extent of becoming fully global. Therefore its order was never a world order in
our modern understanding. By contrast, the later military revolution in Europe,31
based on modern science and technology, paved the way for an emerging
West to become the civilization that would succeed at establishing the global
world structure.32 The Islamic civilization had failed to accomplish
this goal through processes of what is often called globalization. In view of
the inflationary use of the term ‘‘globalization’’ it is important to state
firmly that the understanding of globalization is limited here to an
‘‘ability’’ of a structure and the related idea to map the entire globe. In
this understanding, Islamic expansion was the first globalization in history,
even though it never reached the completion it envisioned.
The history of the international
system shows that only the Westphalian order of sovereign states – as both a
structure and an idea, and as determined by Western standards – gained global
dominance. In the twenty-first century, political Islam is challenging these
realities and is at pains to reverse them. This is the meaning of
de-Westernization for a remaking of the world along a return of history. It can
be viewed as a backlash against Western dominance and as an indication of a
return of the history of civilizations in the shape of reinvented traditions.
De-Westernization is not to be equated with political Islam, for it is also a
sentiment shared by other non-Western civilizations, which were subjected to
the Western-dominated globalization.
It is true that the issues
discussed are not only pertinent to the world of Islam. The Islamic
civilization is, however, the only one that – next to the West – claims
universality. Therefore the effort of political Islam to mobilize Islamic
civilization as an expression of a return of history matters most to
post-bipolar developments in world politics and to Europe under conditions of
Islamic migration. Since the time of bipolarity and the decline of Europe as
the perceived core of the West, the world has radically changed. Today, people
who blame the USA for globalization and its effects seem to forget that the
origins of these globalizing processes lie in events and factors triggered by
European expansion (see note 32) and conquests worldwide. Therefore,
globalization is not a Pax Americana. In the meaning suggested earlier,
globalization is a process for mapping the globe around one model and one
structure, and in this understanding we are not only dealing with a
contemporary phenomenon. The Islamic futuhat expansion as well as the European
expansion were the earlier competing models of globalization. The Islamic
expansion of an expansive jihad was halted and replaced by a Western model of
globalization, which subsequently extended into the world of Islam itself. Here
we find the roots of today’s Islamic outrage directed against US hegemony. The
origin of this process was, however, a revolt against Europe as a resistance to
the colonial rule of the nineteenth century. The first revivalist Muslim leader
al-Afghani33 called for jihad against the West – but only to deter
European expansion. Unlike the expansive jihad from the seventh to the
seventeenth centuries, this pattern of the nineteenth-century jihad was
basically an anti-colonial and culturally defensive mobilization, definitely
not for expansive ends. The jihadism of today is a new pattern in a situation
that has changed yet again. This global jihad or jihadism is neither classical
nor anti-colonial jihad. It is an instrument in a strategy to replace the
existing world order with an Islamic one. Therefore the anti-colonial jihad of
al-Afghani in the nineteenth century has to be dissociated from the global
jihad of Hasan al-Banna and his Muslim Brotherhood. There is a significant
distinction between the two that belies the claimed continuity, contended for
instance by the grandson of al-Banna, the Swiss-born Tariq Ramadan,34 a
person often accused, rightly or wrongly, of Islamism.
In concluding this preliminary debate – focused on Francis
Fukuyama’s premature conclusion that, after the breakdown of communism, a
triumph of Western values and thus ‘‘the end of history’’ is taking place – an
update is needed. It is suggested that the visions and values related to global
jihad rather indicate a return of history of civilizational conflict
determining the present. An insight into this change led Fukuyama to reconsider
his assumption and to express his concern over the claims of some leaders of
the growing Islamic diaspora in Europe. In considering this background he
joined me in proposing a European Leitkultur (culture of guiding values) for
Muslim migrants to share with Europeans as an alternative to jihad. At a summit
meeting of European and US opinion leaders addressing the question of ‘‘Europe
– A Beautiful Idea?’’ under the EU presidency of the Netherlands, I presented
my ideas35 and received the support of Fukuyama when he recommended
in his presentation that Europeans ‘‘embrace the views of Bassam Tibi.’’ His
words were of great comfort to me, both on a personal level and for the sake of
Europe’s future as a continent shared by Muslims and Europeans. I conclude by
stating that, instead of an Islamization, a secular-democratic, cultural and
religious pluralism needs to be the basis for the guiding values. This is not
multi-culturalism but a civic culture also shared by Muslim migrants, and it is
the meaning of the slogan coined in a Cornell project (see note 17):
‘‘Europeanizing Islam’’ as an alternative to the ‘‘Islamization of Europe.’’ At
issue is a competition as a war of ideas in the context of a return of history.
The major theme of this book and its structure
The major theme of
this book is the competition of global jihad and the secular culture of
democracy in Europe, both in world politics and in view of a diaspora of Islam.
Despite allegations by some Muslim apologists, who deny any relation between
jihadism and Islam or tensions with democracy and pluralism, this book deals in
honesty with a current political and cultural reality in Islamic civilization
reaching out to Europe. At issue is a message originally given by Sayyid Qutb
and continued at present. The preoccupation with al-Qaeda and its terror is
misleading: the challenge under issue is not restricted to an organization,
since a ‘‘deadly idea’’ elevated to a popular public choice is also involved.
In March 1997, the religious zealot Osama bin Laden told Peter Arnett, then a
CNN reporter, that ‘‘the most important experience we made in the war in
Afghanistan [against the Soviet Union] is that we have been able to defeat a
superpower.’’ The implication of his message was clear: Having brought the
Soviet Union to its knees, the Islamist global jihad was ready to turn against
the USA. On the invitation of the Club de Madrid, the Islamist Hasan Hanafi
repeated this idea (see also note 16), now upgraded to a mobilizatory ideology.
To be sure, the real issue is neither a push for anti-globalization nor a call
for more justice in the world, but rather an effort at remaking of the world
within the framework of a Pax Islamica. Even if bin Laden were to be captured
or killed and even if al-Qaeda subsides, the vision and the claim for Islamic
supremacy as a ‘‘deadly idea’’ remain. It is acknowledged that this vision
cannot be accomplished in the foreseeable future. Nevertheless, it creates
disorder in world politics and undermines the integration of Muslims in Europe.
Two steps are taken in this book:
the first is to establish the place of Islam in world politics and the second
is to determine its space in Europe. In this succession, I refer to security
problems related to global migration. Problems of the world of Islam are
transferred to Europe. In Afghanistan under Soviet occupation, the Soviet Empire
received a tremendous blow. That jihad was providing the backdrop for an
ultimate Soviet breakdown was made clear by experts such as Anthony Arnolds,
who on the one hand acknowledges the great ‘‘social and political problems in
the waning years’’ of Soviet history, yet on the other points to the war in
Afghanistan as the ‘‘pebble’’ that brought down the Soviet Union.36 Could
such a destructive

process be
repeated against the US Empire in its post-9/11 exposure to the challenge of
global jihad?
In an earlier book I addressed
this question and reached the conclusion that for a number of reasons such a
crashing defeat of the USA could not materialize. In that 1998 book, The
Challenge of Fundamentalism, I maintained, however, that political Islam was in
a position to destabilize existing political structures equally at home and
internationally, and that it could contribute to shaking US dominance. Since
then, the actions of the jihadist Islamist movement have contributed to a trend
earlier described as a ‘‘new world disorder.’’ The developments following 11
September 2001 in the USA and 11 March 2004 and 7 July 2005 in Europe are
supportive of this prediction. In this line of events, the war in Iraq did not
lead to the envisioned reordering of the Middle East, but rather to a
strengthening of the power of global jihad and to more destabilization as well
as to disorder. It is really the case that the irregular war labeled an
‘‘insurgency’’ is leading to still greater disorder, not only in Iraq but
throughout the world of Islam through spill-over effects. Another concern is
the link to Europe. It is a fact that French- and British-born Muslims are
participating in the jihad in Iraq and that the recruitment of so-called
‘‘insurgents’’ includes immigrants in countries like Germany. This is not the
‘‘safer world’’ President George W. Bush promised when he launched his ‘‘war on
terror.’’ The world has become less safe than it was before.
Given the IR character of this
book, it is asked what theories are helpful for the present enquiry. Most IR
theories are based on abstract models not derived from the study of realities
and therefore they often prove to be of little relevance. To be sure, this
great flaw is not remedied by models of statistical correlations established
indiscriminately on quantified data. There are prominent US scholars who
quantitatively study the so-called ‘‘Islamic insurgency’’ who never have been
to Iraq or ever dealt with Islam. These scholars prove to be a joke even though
the scholarly community continues listening to them. The models on which they
operate do not explain the cultural factors involved. In contrast to IR
discipline, traditional Islamic studies are largely uninterested in theory.
Moreover, many scholars refrain from dealing with jihadism for reasons of
political correctness. They compensate for their Orientalism by becoming
Orientalists in reverse. This unpromising state of the field explains existing
gaps of knowledge, difficulties, and also the confusion of political Islam with
terrorism and at times with Islam itself.
Political Islam consists of two directions, jihadism and
institutional Islamism, both constituting different pathways for accomplishing
the goals of Islamism, i.e. an Islamic order. Unlike jihadists, institutional
Islamists are peaceful and represent a movement willing to participate within a
democratic format. Both, however, share the same worldview, i.e. the way of
viewing oneself and looking at the other. Traditionally the dichotomy of
believers/Muslims versus unbelievers has never ceased to determine the Islamic
worldview. Therefore it is also shared by jihadist and peaceful Islamists,
although in different political shapes. Among the commonalities one finds the
concept of order in pursuit of a new world order shaped by Islam. In the main,
they diverge on the employed means: jihadism as a form of terrorism or
participation in existing institutions. As much as I warn against identifying
Islam with political Islam, it is equally important to beware of confusing
jihadism and Islamism. Both directions, jihadism and institutional Islamism,
exist equally in the world of Islam and in its diaspora of Europe, distinct from
one another. In world politics, an adherence to democratic peace is required
from Muslims for living in peace with peoples of other civilizations. In Europe
much more is needed, namely a Europeanization of Islam. This is not only the
best choice, but also the bottom line. These contentions reflect the major
ideas on which the assumptions of this book rest. In terms of methodology and
discipline, I propose that this study, which as far as possible combines IR
theory with both Islamic and European studies, integrates the cultural factor
in a new post-bipolar approach to IR in acknowledging that culture matters.37
This book is organized into three
parts. In Part I I introduce the basic notions underlying the civilizational
competition in world politics: the envisioned Nizam Islami/Islamic order and
the vision of democratic peace for a post-bipolar world order. I first inquire
into the classical Islamic concept of jihad and how Muslims have debated it,
both in the past and in the present, as an instrument of an Islamic world
revolution (Chapter 1). This chapter is fundamental to the rest of the book,
given the often false contentions made on this issue both by Salafist Muslim
and biased Western commentators. Living with Islam requires abandoning not only
any education in global jihad, but it also demands to abandon Western
Orientalism. This sounds tough, but violence cannot be admitted in a global
civil society. Casting accusations of Islamophobia on those who criticize
global jihad is no contribution to the dialogue but is part of the war of
ideas. In making such contrasts, I attempt to reinterpret Islam alongside the
concept of democracy (Chapter 2) in supporting the idea of a civil Islam
compatible with democracy. In acknowledging the cultural factor and the cultural
turn, I also recognize cultural diversity. However, I put democracy above it. I
admit that people of different cultures have different ways of thinking and
thus adhere to different ways of looking at democracy. But culture is always in
flux and one should beware of essentializing cultural diversity. There are
limits to it. For this kind of study one needs to establish epistemological
grounds for an inter- and cross-cultural understanding that seeks
commonalities. This goal cannot be reached through quantitative methods. In
short, in studying Islam and democracy, one needs also to address the question
of cultural diversity without abandoning the need for commonalities. As much as
a reason-based universal understanding of knowledge is required, one needs to
be sensitive to cultural differences, but never to put these above political
democracy. In my work I beware of the traps of both cultural relativism and
essentialization. It is most disturbing to see cultural relativism being put at
the service of neo-absolutism. Islamism is an indication not of difference but
rather of a totalitarian neo-absolutism.38 Therefore I preclude any
real democratic pluralism on the grounds of Islamism. In contrast, Islam can be
put in harmony with pluralism on the grounds of religious reforms for
overcoming the view of others as subjected minorities within the framework of dhimmitude.39
In Part II, I move on to deal with
Islamist internationalism as an expression of the politicization of a
transnational religion bringing the sacred to the core of world politics. At
present Islamism is replacing communist internationalism in world politics.
Throughout history, the world of Islam has been subdivided along sectarian
lines (Sunni and Shi’ite) while simultaneously being characterized by
ethnic-local cultural diversity. These real inner differentiations within the
ideal of an universalist umma are also reflected in the ideology and realities
of Islamist internationalism. Chapter 3 deals with the Sunni variety of
jihadist internationalism. Originally it was an Arab phenomenon articulated and
represented (1928) by the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt as a non-state actor.
Similar global aspirations are to be found in the more recent Shi’ite
internationalism, represented by a nation-state, the Islamic Republic of Iran,
analyzed in Chapter 4. This state has aimed at exporting its model of
governance, and in this pursuit has also promoted jihad in the understanding of
terrorism. Many people took at face value the call of the then president of Iran,
Mohammed Chatami, for a dialogue of civilizations. They were shocked, however,
when the new president ‘‘elected’’ in 2005 revived Khomeinism as an ideology of
jihadist terrorism. The ‘‘critical dialogue’’ between Europe and Iran has so
far been based on the ignorance and naı¨vete´ of EU politicians,
who confuse business with intercultural communication.
Part III of the book focuses on
Europe; it addresses the relationship between Islam and Europe in two steps. In
Chapter 5 it is shown how much Europe and the Mediterranean core of Islamic
civilization are historically intertwined, both in terms of mutual threat of
conquest – be it jihad or crusade – and in positive terms of inter- and
cross-cultural fertilization. Chapter 6 moves to the present, characterized by
a massive Islamic migration to Europe creating a sizable presence of Islam as a
diasporic enclave within Western civilization. In view of this expanding
demographic and religious-cultural presence, it is asked whether Muslim
migrants would continue to be aliens living in parallel societies (ghettos)
enhancing dar al-Islam in Europe as an enclave, or whether they could embrace
the idea of Europe and become European citizens at heart instead of quasi
settlers aiming at Islamizing Europe. This task is not only a Muslim one; it is
also incumbent upon the Europeans themselves to determine whether this project
of integration ever succeeds.
In all three parts of the book I
operate on the assumption that Islamic civilization and the West as a whole
(Western Europe and USA) stand at the center of post-bipolar world politics. In
contrast to the USA, Europe is the battlefield both for possible rapprochement
and of political conflict with cultural undercurrents. Islam’s relations with
Europe are burdened historically with an ambiguity. Islam faced Europe with a
predicament with cultural modernity and simultaneously the political-military
challenge of Western hegemony. The incursion into the world of Islam by
expanding colonial Europe preceded the American–Islamic rivalry. Muslims
equally emulate Europe and repel it. At present, the US politics of the ‘‘war
on terror’’ distorts the conflict and gives it the shape of a US–Islamic
rivalry that distracts from basic realities. The Europe of the EU is now a
continent for massive migration from Islamic civilization – a home to some 20
million Muslims – creating a complex array of issues more pertinent to Europe
than to the USA. Europe needs its own distinct approach; it cannot and should
not treat every Muslim as a suspect. As a friend of the USA, I am deeply
disturbed every time I enter the USA and am treated as a suspect on the grounds
of religion and ethnicity, only because I am a Muslim who was born in Damascus.
This is counter-productive, for there is a desperate need to incorporate
Muslims into a pluralistic world both on the level of international community
and within Europe itself. The West needs to beware of a derailed ‘‘war on
terror’’ that alienates Muslims and makes them feel that they are the target of
this war.
Europe today with 20 million Muslim migrants needs to engage
in a Europeanization of Islam and to differentiate between ordinary Muslims and
Islamists. Since Madrid 11 March 2004, the slaying of Theo van Gogh as an
unbeliever by an Islamist in November the same year and London 7 July 2005,
European governments and civil societies have started to perceive the
challenge. To be sure, the Islamists are a tiny minority (3 to 5 per cent)
within the European diaspora of Islam. But it is acknowledged that we are in
reality dealing with a very powerful minority, at times controlling major
institutions of the diaspora including mosques, faith schools and so-called
religious welfare associations engaged in ‘‘alms for jihad.’’40
To sum up the presentation of this
book, it is in its structure and content a study of International Relations,
including European and Islamic studies in a radically changing world. The book
ends in its Chapter Seven with a proposition: democracy as a political culture
is the solution to be shared by the conflicting parties. I believe the
established discipline of IR has not yet met the current challenge, perhaps
because the discipline has been predominantly a narrow-minded American social
science preoccupied with the study of state and power from a Western point of
view, a study that
overlooks the place of religion in world
politics.41
Ironically, theories share certain
aspects of religions – in religion you pay dearly for suspicion of disbelief,
just as you may in scholarship if you happen to stand outside the
‘‘mainstream’’ and do not share the views of the dominant schools of thought
believed to provide ‘‘robust theories and models’’ – in other words, the true
belief. To state it bluntly: Peer-groupreading is a power game, not a scholarly
assessment and evaluation. I take this risk, just as I do within my own
religion as a reform Muslim. The birth of this book supports this assessment.
The study of religion is a recent
addition to world politics, and it is the subject-matter of this book. Today in
the USA and in Europe, no prudent scholar of International Relations would deny
the relevance and significance of the study of religions, such as Islam as a
transnational religion, to international studies. However, scholarly and
professional contributions from an IR perspective to the field of religious
studies are rare, a shortage reflected clearly in scholarly journals. Religion
is a ‘‘cultural system.’’ The growing prominence of the insight that ‘‘culture
matters’’ (see note 37) is a head-start and continued efforts are needed. There
must be a change in cultural attitudes, not just by Muslims but also by the
Western academic establishment itself. IR scholars strive to preserve their
‘‘theoretical’’ heritage, while scholars of the Middle East and Islam waste
their energies on accusing each other of the sin of ‘‘Orientalism.’’ It is most
regrettable that even the propaganda of political Islam now finds its way to
the scholarly language of US Islamic studies. Despite all its flaws, the ‘‘war
on terror’’ is not ‘‘the new crusade’’ that the title of a book published by a
prominent US university press suggests. With few exceptions, there is little
grasp of the politicization of religion in post-bipolar international relations
heralding the ‘‘return of the sacred.’’ In the world of Islam, the ‘‘sacred’’
is returning in the form of political Islam rather than as a religious
renaissance.
The concluding chapter of this
book focuses on the difficulties of democratization in the present age of
Islamism. The major slogan of the Islamists is ‘‘al-Islam huwa al-hall/Islam is
the solution.’’ In Chapter 7 I argue that democratization is the solution.
Various deliberations are needed to establish a cultural-Islamic underpinning
of democracy in the world of Islam.
The present contribution claims to belong equally to the
diverse fields of Islamic, European and international studies and I do not wish
to see it classified as an Islamic-area study only. In my own experience,
gaining acceptance for this kind of inquiry and approach is becoming very
difficult. However, I continue to speak out and write with a belief in academic
freedom and the civil right of free speech, even though – regrettably –
realities in Europe and the USA run counter to this belief for a Muslim, like
this author. I am acting in a Western environment seeking to bridge the two
worlds without, however, overlooking existing conflicts, which I approach
candidly.
Transnational religion and world politics: the scope of the study and
its approach
Sadly, in the aftermath of 9/11 and 11 March
2004, as well as 7 and 21 July 2005, only a few IR scholars have recognized the
role of Islam in the new development of world politics in a professional manner
of the discipline. Among them is Daniel Philpott, who argues, ‘‘radical Islamic
revivalism ... challenges the authority structure of the international system.
This is the tradition behind al-Qaeda’s attacks.’’42 In a broader
sense, the rise of Islamism as an indication of the politicization of religion
is related to a global phenomenon of religious revival articulated as the
‘‘return of the sacred’’ – a challenge to the secular worldview established in
Western societies, but not yet in non-Western civilizations. The study of
religion and politics has also become an area of concern for the discipline of
IR in view of the impact of transnational religion. The ascendance of Islamist
movements as non-state actors makes clear that the overall issue is the
‘‘return of the sacred’’ taking place as a politicization of religion. This
process also affects International Relations based on secular foundations. When
it comes to Islam, the study of jihadism as terror (professionally phrased: the
violence of irregular warfare) is important; however, more pertinent are the differences
in worldviews and values. At stake is not simple terror, but rather the quest
for a new world order. In this context, the distinction between the
international system and the international society is of fundamental importance
for understanding the ‘‘return of the sacred’’ and the related discord with
regard to world order. As Bull argues:
a society of states (or international
society) exists when a group of states, conscious of certain common interests
and common values form a society ... bound by a common set of rules in their
relations with one another ...
An international
society in this sense presupposes an international system, but an international
system may exist that is not an interna-
tional society.43
In relating this
distinction to the ‘‘revolt against the West’’ (see note 21) articulating a
contestation of European values, it becomes clear that this revolt is ‘‘best
exemplified’’ (ibid.) in the case of Islamic fundamentalism, as Bull contends.
In this understanding there can be no stable international system or perpetual
world peace if the related values are not shared. The same applies to inner
peace in Europe in the age of migration. The call for global jihad in the
pursuit of an Islamic order – in contrast to the need to incorporate the world
of Islam into a system of democratic peace or, more specifically, Muslim
migrants into European citizenry – is the source of tension. This issue of the
‘‘return of the sacred’’ with a concept of order is of crucial importance to
the West. This matter is related to the question of shared values. To put it in
Bull’s language, the world of Islam is a part of the present international
system, but not yet of an international society sharing common values. To
reiterate the concern: While such an understanding is useful in exploring the
nature of war and peace in world politics, it is equally valid for the case of
Muslim migrants living in ‘‘enclaves in the West, but not of it.’’44 As
a continent of rising Islamic migration, Europe is beginning to feel the heat
of the conflict between secularity and politicized religion. Islamists call
upon civil rights, in particular freedom of faith, to ensure their safe havens.
The accusation of Islamophobia has become a most useful instrument to beat any
critique in the respective war of ideas.
Europe is a recipient or an
importing place of political Islam. The movement of the Muslim Brotherhood,
established in 1928 in Cairo, was the beginning. Egypt was the birthplace of
this development and continues to be the core place of political Islam. In
addition, the Muslim Brotherhood of today has its mosques and infrastructure in
Germany and throughout Europe. This movement is an example of a transnational
religion. Despite all differences between Salafi-Wahhabi and political Islam,
the notion of transnational religion applies to both. Islam in Europe is being
promoted today through Saudi funding of mosques and madrasas. Islamists
throughout the world do not mind receiving Wahhabi petrodollars. What do
Islamists want, and why Europe?
One of the diaspora Islamist
movements, Hizb al-Tahrir, established in Jordan in the early 1950s but now
acting in the UK and Germany (despite its ban), rejects the existing secular
nation-states established in the Muslim world following the dissolution of the
Ottoman Empire. This movement, an offspring of the Muslim Brotherhood, claims
from London to be re-establishing the Islamic order of the caliphate. It is,
however, utterly wrong to conclude that the ‘‘restoration of the caliphate’’ is
the foremost goal of political Islam. Unlike Hizb al-Tahrir the majority of the
Islamists adhere to the notion of Nizam Islami/Islamic system.
When the caliphate was dissolved
in 1924, the context was one of colonization and de-colonization. Today,
Islamists want to reverse this process by de-Westernizing the world at large
within the framework of an Islamic system. When it comes to the diaspora in
Europe, they seek to undermine the integration of Muslim immigrants into
European society, because they want to use the diaspora as an enclave and
logistics base for their two-step strategy. The first step is to topple the
nation-state at home, while the second is to topple the present international
order, which is to be replaced by an alternative Islamic one. The aim is justified
in the belief that Islamic principles of order are universal. Therefore this
section began with ‘‘the return of the sacred’’ viewed as a challenge to the
‘‘authority structure of the international system.’’ In relating this
phenomenon to political Islam and Islamic migration to Europe I determine the
scope of the present study. Again, a new Islamic order and not the restoration
of the caliphate is at issue.
The addressed ‘‘return of the
sacred’’ runs counter to any ‘‘disenchantment of the world/Entzauberung der
Welt’’ (Max Weber). The outcome of this process of ‘‘disenchantment’’ is
cultural modernity as a secular discourse. Secularization has been an essential
part of cultural modernity (the term ‘‘multiple modernities’’ is misleading)
and de-secularization is the ‘‘revolt’’ against it. Any inclusion of Islam in
European democracies within the framework of the proposed Europeanization of
Islam requires coming to terms with Islam’s predicament with cultural
modernity. Can Muslims share secular values with non-Muslims?
Unlike Christianity, which
underwent a process of secularization and then privatization of faith, Islam
never ceased to have an impact on politics. In modern times, however, Islam has
been exposed not only to Western hegemony but also to secular cultural
modernity. Ju¨rgen Habermas, the preeminent European theorist of cultural
modernity, identifies modernity with secularization by borrowing the Weberian
formula of ‘‘the disenchantment of the world/die Entzauberung der Welt.’’ Weber
– and in his footsteps Habermas – sees the separation of the worldly and the
divine as one of the foundations of cultural modernity. In this sense, there
exists only one reason-based modernity and the claim of ‘‘multiple
modernities’’ is left meaningless. As Habermas puts it: ‘‘Weber described ... as
rational the process of disenchantment which led in Europe to a disintegration
of religious worldviews that issued in a secular culture.’’45 In
acknowledging cultural diversity, it is to be asked whether this Western notion
is based on a universally valid knowledge. Does this knowledge underpin a
worldview that can be shared on cross-cultural grounds by all of humanity? Is
cultural modernity – as Islamists contend – an ‘‘epistemological imperialism’’46
of the West? The epistemological aspects of this issue are discussed
elsewhere and therefore put aside here. In drawing on it, only one aspect has
to be addressed, namely the political ramifications of the rejection of modern
Western knowledge by the Islamists.
In fact, the Islamist accusation
of ‘‘epistemological imperialism’’ serves as a denunciation of cultural
modernity and subsequently of the secular concept of order. There are also
those Western cultural relativists who give in and speak of ‘‘multiple
modernities’’ in applying their relativism to their own culture. These
Westerners are blamed by Ernest Gellner for continuing to overlook the
neo-absolutism of the others.47 It becomes clear that an analysis of
political Islam and world politics encroaches on issues of dealing with
knowledge (see note 46). This issue leads us to cultural analysis, and dealing
with it requires breaking taboos. This subject is pertinent to broadening the
scope of international studies for including the role of transnational religion
in world politics – especially in view of the ‘‘return of the sacred’’ and
related conflicts between religious and secular values with regard to political
order. Back in the 1960s, when the American-inspired modernization theory48
dominated social sciences, Westerners believed that all societies,
regardless of their civilizational origins, were heading towards secularism,
which would be the natural outcome of the development of society toward more
complexity and functional differentiation. Since that time the world has
radically changed. Today we most assuredly know that this is not happening.
Secular legitimacy is questioned and transnational religion is back as ‘‘a
return of the sacred’’ in political guise. In Europe this development is one of
the great obstacles in the way toward integrating Muslims as European citizens
of a secular polity. Leaders of the Islamic diaspora demand a redefinition of
the relationship between religion and the state, as well as a ‘‘place for Islam
in Europe,’’ in a power game. In this context even Habermas suggested
considering a ‘‘post-secular society’’ in Europe itself. The Islamic uprising
of October/November 2005 in France illustrates the pertinence of the issue.
During the Cold War era IR
scholars were even more blind to religion and culture. They thought that the
only obstacle to the equating of universalization and Westernization was to be
found in world communism and the related structure of bipolarity in
international politics. With this mindset, the breakdown of the Soviet Union
prompted triumphal sentiment as expressed by Francis Fukuyama’s End of History –
earlier quoted – and also by Huntington’s ‘‘third wave of democratization,’’49
suggesting an overall victory of the secular democratic nation-state. The
latter process was believed to be of global magnitude. It took only a few years
to see one of these authors revising his concept radically in a claim of a
‘‘clash of civilizations.’’ Among the results of this revision has been
Huntington’s coming to believe in the uniqueness of Western accomplishments
such as democracy and human rights. Fukuyama is both more balanced and more
subtle than Huntington, restricting himself to the effort of protecting Western
democratic values against the claims of Islam in the European diaspora. In this
debate Fukuyama thus indirectly concedes that ‘‘the end of history’’ was a
premature contention and he acknowledges that Europe is becoming a battlefield
for the fight over the validity of Western values, now challenged by the
Islamic diaspora in the continent itself. This introduction therefore began
with addressing the return of history in the twenty-first century and continues
in addressing the ‘‘return of the sacred.’’ In fact, the return of history is a
return of civilizations to the fore; each civilization has its own distinct
values and worldviews. However, fault-lines should be avoided, even though
politicized religion contributes to this very end in challenging the existing
secular order.
Given the fact that we live in one
world structured by a comprehensive order of nation-states, there is a need for
common values that not only underpin the international system but also make a
global civil society possible. These values need to be cross-cultural and
therefore secular. Even though some – even Western-educated – Muslims argue
that ‘‘civil society does not translate into Islam,’’50 Muslims
cannot be part of an international society which is intrinsically secular and
based on an authority structure reflected in the ‘‘Westphalian synthesis’’ if
the values on which it rests are rejected. The continued rise of political
Islam and its extension to Europe challenges these foundations of the existing
international order. In this situation one must ask: What is at stake and what
is to be concluded for the future? Is Huntington’s ‘‘uniqueness’’ argument
correct, or despite diverging cultures is there – conversely – a hope for a
universality of values on cross-cultural grounds? Does transnational religion
undermine this pursuit?
It is within the scope of the
present study to deal with questions regarding ‘‘the return of the sacred’’ and
the related de-secularization. This issue compels us to inquire into the
conflict and the commonalities between Islam and the West in order to avert the
divides presented by Huntington as fault-lines. One way of doing so, as a
contribution to bridging, is to revive the early heritage of Islamic
rationalism. Unlike contemporary Islamists, medieval Islamic rationalists
affirmed universal knowledge. In drawing lessons from Islamic history for the
present, the precedents of Western–Islamic cultural borrowing can be offered as
proof against the assumption of ‘‘cultural fault-lines’’ that has been made
both by Islamist and by some Western authors. I have chosen the battlefield ‘‘Europe’’
in the context of Islamic migration to propose Euro-Islam as an alternative,
both to the ‘‘clash of civilizations’’ and to the envisioned Islamization of
Europe. Regrettably, a chapter on Islamic heritage had to be taken out of this
book in order to comply with page limits. It suffices to summarize its
substance: Islam had in its medieval glory a tradition of Enlightenment, of
being open to learning from others. In contrast, today’s political Islam closes
the minds of contemporary Muslims. It presents neither a case of ‘‘multiple
modernities’’ nor a post-secular society, but rather a new form of
totalitarianism.51 An essential part of the heritage of Islam that
cannot be discussed at length in this book is its Hellenization. Muslim
rationalists adopted the Greek legacy. Given the very roots of democracy in the
Greek polis which the great political philosopher of Islam, al-Farabi, embraced
as a model in his magnificent work al-madina al-fadila [The Perfect State],
Muslims of today could embrace democracy and the idea of democratic peace on
similar grounds. Could the return of history be shaped by earlier
cross-cultural fertilization instead of being shaped by jihad and crusades?
These are the two competing sides of the coin presented here as the history of
civilizations.
In repeating the notion that
culture matters and subsequently in including transnational religion as a
cultural factor, I distinguish between a globalization of structures and a
universalization of norms and values. The claim that globalization is sweeping
and encompasses all aspects of life fails to recognize this distinction. The
message is: cultural modernity can be universalized (norms and values), but
structures are to be globalized. This is not the same process. To claim that
both are the same is belied by the reality in which global economic structures
are converging while cultures are diverging. In my work, I address existing
tensions in terms of a simultaneity of cultural fragmentation (divergence over
norms and values) and globalization (convergence of structures). The argument
follows that structures are globalized, but with no cultural acceptance
underpinning this globalization. The term ‘‘cultural globalization’’ is thus
based on a wrong concept and is a contradiction in terms because culture by
definition (a system of meaning) is always local. In view of the lack of a
cultural underpinning, i.e. indigenization, for these globalized structures,
there is the perception of an imposition from outside – a case in point is the
introduction of secular democracy in post-Saddam Iraq, related to an
unfavorable perception. Applying this to the secular nation-state and to
democracy in the nonWestern world in general, and in the world of Islam in
particular, one is in a position to understand the repeatedly addressed
‘‘revolt against the West’’ (see note 21). In much of the Muslim world there is
a crisis – both normative and structural – in which the appeal of political
Islam and the alternatives it presents to the nation-state is growing and
anti-Western sentiments are running high. It is too simple to view this revolt
as an indication of an antiglobalization, because, rather, a legitimacy crisis
of the international order is at issue. The crisis reflects the existence of an
international system (interaction between states) that lacks necessary
commonalities needed to establish an overall international society (shared
rules, norms and values). This is the distinction made by Bull, introduced at
the outset of this section. The described situation leads to world disorder and
to the conclusion that a new approach is needed. Islamists state ‘‘al-Islam
huwa al-hall/Islam is the solution.’’ Enlightened Muslims must reject this
claim in a plea for democracy, as done in the concluding chapter to this book.
These deliberations on the return
of religion challenging the mostly secular international environment focus on
the world of Islam and on the new pattern of transnational religion, because
this is the most pertinent case for world politics. The Middle East is, next to
Europe, the prominent region in point.52 In this context the nominal
nation-states in the world of Islam stand in conflict with the inherited
dichotomous religion-based division of the world into the house/abode of Islam/dar
al-Islam and the house of unbelievers/dar al-kuffar or house of war/dar al-harb.
53 This dichotomy is based on a Weltanschauung/worldview not
supported by political structures. But now these states are also exposed to the
demand of Islamists to be replaced by a divine order of an ‘‘Islamic state’’
consonant with the Islamic worldview. Until the rise of political Islam as
articulated by Sayyid Qutb, the world of Islam seemed to have succumbed to the
realities of a world of nation-states. The current rise of political Islam –
both institutional and jihadist – reflects the crisis of the nation-state in
the world of Islam. Some Western scholars, such as Mark Juergensmeyer, grasp
this conflict between religious and secular concepts of order well, while
others – such as James Piscatori – contend that no problem exists between Islam
and the nationstate and thus fail to understand that the call for global jihad
is not simply terrorism.54 It is a call against the nation-state in
current world affairs. In Qutb’s book Islam and World Peace we read that the
goal of political Islam is ‘‘to defeat any power on earth that prevents the
mapping of the world under the ‘call to Islam/da’wa’.’’55 This is
the contemporary definition of Islamic global proselytization. Jihadism
attaches this da’wa to military action heralding the context of religion and
world politics in a bid for a remaking of the world.
The succinct phrase by Qutb for
determining the Islamic uprising reads: ‘‘Islam needs a comprehensive
revolution ... being a jihad prescribed on Muslims to lead this revolution to
success for establishing the ‘Hakimiyyat
Allah/rule of God’.’’56 In short,
jihad envisions a
world revolution/thawra alamiyya ... for the realization of (Islamic) peace ...
for the entire humanity ... These are the outlines for world peace in Islam ...
This does not mean to avoid war/ qital at any price ... Islam is a permanent
jihad which will not cease until Allah’s mission rules the world.
(ibid., pp. 172–3)
In fact, this
declaration of an Islamic world revolution is tantamount to a declaration of
war on the present world order and is therefore, regardless of what it claims,
most definitely not a message of peace, neither for global Islamic–Western
relations nor for Europe’s relations with its Islamic diaspora. This is what is
meant when one talks about transnational religion in world politics and in
Europe.
Transnational religion in a political shape is a challenge
creating faultlines. Is Preventing the Clash of Civilizations57 feasible?
Yes, if my fellow Muslims join in and bid farewell to jihad. I have presented
this option in many parts of the world of Islam, for instance in Indonesia,
where ‘‘civil Islam’’ is partly a reality, and also in Turkey. Despite all
odds, there seem to be no alternatives to democracy as the most promising
option for the world of Islam (Chapter 7). In addition, I maintain that
‘‘Europe is a beautiful idea’’ (Chapter 6), also, for Muslim immigrants. In
educating Muslims for democracy, for embracing Europe as ‘‘citizens of the
heart’’ (Charles Maier, Harvard, September 2001), secular, neither Islamic nor
Christian values are the common grounds for living together peacefully.
Transnational religion is a reality, but it is not imperative to accept the attached
political claims. Democracy could be established on ethical Islamic grounds in
the world of Islam, but one should beware of the confusion with an Islamist
state that runs counter to democratization.
From bipolarity to uncertainty: political Islam, global jihadism and
the ‘‘new Cold War’’
Instead of dealing
with the changed world after the end of bipolarity one encounters ridiculous
allegations put forth since the end of the East–West conflict. Some argue that
with the breakdown of communism, the West lost the enemy it needed to maintain
its unity. This conspiratorial approach suggests that the West was on the
lookout for a substitute enemy, and has supposedly found one in political
Islam. No doubt, ‘‘the revolt against the West’’ as defined by Bull (see note
21) and exemplified by the rejection of the secular nation-state by Islamic
fundamentalism is a reality and nobody’s invention. The existing conflict can
be seen as the triggering of a ‘‘new Cold War’’ (see note 54). World peace,
much desired for the twenty-first century, needs to be combined with European
inner peace in the age of cultural diversity. Through migration, transnational
religions touch also on Europe in the context of politicization and the
world-wide drive towards desecularization, thus threatening peace. Political
Islam is a phenomenon documented by facts, and not an invention in a search by
the CIA or Mossad for a substitute enemy. An analysis of political Islam and
its jihadism in the age of ‘‘the new Cold War’’ clearly has to be free of any
such conspiratorial approaches to open our eyes to occurring uncertainties
creating the real challenge.
As consistently argued, the rise
of political Islam and the uncertainties it engenders are related to the
overall phenomenon of the ‘‘return of the sacred.’’ Not merely an indication of
a renaissance of religion, this movement serves as an articulation of the
‘‘revolt’’ against Western values presented in religious garb. In this process
of politicization of religion in Islamic civilization, Islamists unfold a new
anti-Western ideology engendering a ‘‘new Cold War’’ with the rest of the world
at large. In the Islamic ghettos in Europe one encounters hatred-Imams
undermining the integration of Muslim immigrants into society. An international
security dimension is involved. Having said this, I do not wish to
indiscriminately defend ‘‘secularism’’ against religion nor do I dismiss the
‘‘return of the sacred’’ in simple terms. The concern is to accommodate the
‘‘return of the sacred’’ for
a better future without
a ‘‘clash of civilizations.’’
Clearly, the areligious European
secularism of the nineteenth and twentieth century is no longer a useful venue
for the twenty-first century’s crisis of meaning, particularly not in the hub
of Islamic civilization, the Middle East. There was once, however, an opening
for secular thought during the age of ‘‘Arab liberal thought.’’ At that time,
secularism appealed to Western-educated Muslim elites, but today it has lost
its spell. The emerging counter-elites have a religious worldview. Again, a
rejection of the militancy and the proselytizing spirit of political Islam does
not lead to accepting whatever dogmatic secularism. At issue is the need for an
establishing of a religio-cultural underpinning that smoothes an embracing of
cultural modernity and democracy in a culturally and religiously diverse world.
The great diversity of religious communities precludes that one religion-based
order of a single community can be accepted by all others, let alone imposed on
them. In view of this fact, it is not an indication of a dogmatic secularism to
argue that religious pluralism needs to be based on a separation of religion
and politics and thus be acceptable to all religious communities. Such a policy
reflects strategies for conflict prevention and no pursuit of secular beliefs.
Clearly, today’s non-Muslims are not willing to live as dhimmi – as explained
above – under Islamic rule. In the context of ‘‘the return of the sacred,’’ the
choice therefore falls between the secular international order of democratic
peace and the jihadism of political Islam for a Pax Islamica. There are no
solutions in between, such as the vague concept of ‘‘post-secular society’’
proposed by Habermas.58 The end of bipolarity combined with ‘‘the
return of the sacred’’ to politics has led to an age of uncertainty in world
order. There is nevertheless no alternative to an Islamic embracing of cultural
modernity of which pluralism is part and parcel. This kind of thinking has been
pursued by, for example, the reform Muslim Abdullahi An-Na’im59 in
his efforts to create cultural grounds for an Islamic acceptance of human
rights. If such innovations are not accepted in Islamic civilization, then
‘‘the new Cold War’’ related to Weltanschauungen, i.e. a war of ideas, cannot
be prevented. If religious-cultural concepts and worldviews that naturally
create divides among people were to prevail, the outcome would be more
uncertainty.
For overcoming existing divides,
commonalities can be constructed such as a separation of religion and politics
that could serve as a bridge between people of different religions. In
contrast, politicized religions of all kinds present their own concepts of
order unacceptable to others and thus contribute to ‘‘the new Cold War’’ based
on the pattern of conflict addressed in Mark Juergensmeyer’s work (see note
54). This conflict is not restricted to Islam and the West in that it can be
observed internationally in regional and local conflicts. We can see this in
India, Russia, China and Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia, where
tensions involve other religious communities and their civilizations. In
Europe, however, the related conflict is domestic and focused on Muslim
immigrants placed in the triangle of Europe, the world of Islam and its diaspora.
The overall context is the networking of transnational religion.
The addressed ‘‘new Cold War’’ is
a general issue related to the return of the sacred. In the world of Islam this
war is ignited by the Islamist concept of a neo-Islamic order (Hakimiyyat Allah/Allah’s
rule) that adds fuel to the fire in the war of ideas. The concept originates in
the writings of Qutb, who prescribes fighting jihad to establish a new world
order based on an ‘‘Islamic world peace.’’60 At issue is a global
enhancing of dar al-Islam to map the entire world. Non-Muslims aside, there are
also millions of Muslim women and men who not only reject this vision of Sayyid
Qutb, but also refuse to live under the conditions of a totalitarian Islamic
shari’a state. In post-Saddam Iraq, Muslim women’s groups have been most vocal
in opposing the shari’a. It is unfortunate that at present the vision of an
Islamic state does attract a few million active Islamists, though they remain a
minority, albeit a politically most powerful one. In positive terms Europe
holds the potential to become an example of an Islamic embracing of cultural
modernity on cross-cultural grounds. If Euro-Islam were to become a reality,
incorporating Muslims into a citizenship-based polity and secular democratic peace,
it could set a precedent for the world of Islam at large. To be sure, the
opposite negative scenario, i.e. Europe as a battlefield between jihadism and
democracy, could also set a precedent if Euro-Islamic perspectives fail. Sad to
say, a negative scenario is currently at work. The Islamic uprising of Paris in
2005 is not only a case in point, but also a warning valid for all of Europe.
In facing the challenge there is a
need to rethink secularism, although without giving up the separation of
religion and politics. I need to add my discomfort with all forms of isms;
therefore in this case and for this reason I prefer to speak of ‘‘secularity’’
or to use the French term laı¨cite´. A rejection of the effort
of de-secularization61 by political Islam should not amount to a
dismissing of religion. I emphasize that the present analysis is not at all
anti-religious. Thus, I restrict my commitment to secular modernity as a
decoupling of religion from politics. At the same time, I accept religion as a
source of ethics for a cultural underpinning of international morality. This is
no contradiction. In this spirit, I draw on the Hellenized tradition of Islamic
rationalism, addressed earlier as a positive heritage of Islam, to support the
argument that religion – as ethics, not as a concept of order – in a
cross-religious and cross-cultural morality could contribute to a bridging
between Islam and other religions and civilizations. However, this task is not
fulfilled by the contemporary revival of religions arising in a political
shape. On the contrary, ‘‘political religions,’’ since they are clearly based
on a concept of order, actually hamper peaceful pursuits. The politicization of
religion contributes to establishing civilizational fault-lines. I would call,
in the name of Islamic Enlightenment, for an ‘‘open civil Islam’’ analogous to
Karl Popper’s call for the defense of ‘‘open society’’ against its enemies.
This position is compatible with the Islamic tradition of Averroe¨ism that
once placed Islam in harmony with the rational worldview of Hellenism. One
could establish an analogy between Hellenism in the past and cultural modernity
at present in order to provide legitimacy for the much needed spirit of
cultural innovation and religious reform. This is not an imposition of
secularity and modernity on Muslims, but a double-track effort, first to revive
the heritage of Islamic rationalism in order to present it as a variety of an
‘‘open Islam,’’ and second to view it as an Islamic model in contrast to
political Islam. Is this promising perspective real for averting the ‘‘new Cold
War’’ and the related ‘‘clash of civilizations’’?
The age of uncertainty that gives
rise to political religion is not coming to an end, as some experts prematurely
announced; the assumed failure of political Islam62 did not lead to
its decline and will not do so as long as the related uncertainties continue to
prevail. The truth is that political Islam will continue to be with us for
decades to come, waging its ‘‘new Cold War’’ as a ‘‘revolt against the West’’
in the outlined meaning. Political Islam is not only alienating Muslims from
non-Muslims, i.e. from the rest of humanity, but also creating rifts within the
Islamic umma itself. It is an illusion to believe that jihadism can be
extinguished by a military US-led war on terror, because at issue is a war of
ideas and the related worldviews, in addition to this being an irregular war
difficult to win. The task of change must fall to Muslims themselves. A model
for such an effort is the work done at the Hidayatullah Islamic State
University of Jakarta where a dialogue between Islam and the West – not only as
dialogue between civilizations but also as a security dialogue – has been
taking place.63 There it was also possible to conduct an experiment
with graduate students and other liberal Muslims favorable to democratic peace
and critical of global jihad. These students welcomed democracy, rejected
jihadism and showed themselves to be willing to accept the separation between
religion and politics as well as to learn from others in the tradition of the
medieval Islamic rationalists who embraced the Greek legacy. These individuals
represent a variety of Islam existing in Indonesia, earlier addressed in a
general manner as ‘‘civil Islam.’’ Unfortunately, Wahhabi Islam64 and
other varieties lacking such a civilsociety-based understanding of religion are
spreading from Saudi Arabia throughout the world of Islam and – as already
stated – are even reaching out to the Islamic European diaspora. In Europe, Wahhabi
Islam can be countered by the concept of Euro-Islam.65 To be sure,
Wahhabi Islam is a reality in Europe’s mosques; Euro-Islam, however, is only a
vision and a policy proposal waiting to be implemented.
In dealing with political Islam
one finds it sometimes erroneously associated solely with jihadist views, but
there are of course Islamists who are not jihadists. Earlier, I made the
distinction between jihadists and institutional Islamists, who pursue a
peaceful variety of political Islam. Some Western experts refer positively to
the new Islamists as they exist in Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development
Party (AKP) and in Egypt66 and take their approval of democracy at
face value, but I admit to a strong degree of skepticism. Though it is true
that in Turkey there is a political Islam in power under conditions of
parliamentarian democracy, I nevertheless contend that all Islamists share the
same worldview centered on Islamic order, even though they differ on the
instruments employed. When it comes to the Cold War of ideas, both jihadists
and institutional Islamists share the goal of de-Westernization. The worldview
of Turkey’s AKP is definitely not European.
Under conditions of post-bipolar uncertainties related to
what has been earlier addressed as cultural fragmentation,67 there
is a need today for pluralism of cultures and religions. This requires a
combination of diversity and consensus over core values. Muslims need to
abandon jihad and da’wa/ proselytization altogether. They also need to engage
in an Islamic reform based on a new reasoning in this direction to avert the
shari’atization and jihadization of Islam in favor of an Islamic embracing of
cultural and religious pluralism in world politics and in Europe.
Neo-Jihad, world politics and Europe’s jihadist dilemma; the place of
civilizations
The meaning of the
return of history is that in the twenty-first century Europe is again
encountering Islam, even though under very different conditions and
circumstances. Historical references to positive encounters are useful but
insufficient, even misleading, if they bypass the real issues of conflict.68
Along with Islamic migration to Europe the old world faces a ‘‘jihadist
dilemma.’’69 For Ibn Khaldun every civilization is based on asabiyya,
i.e. awareness of itself. Europe’s asabiyya is challenged. This concept, first
established by the last great philosopher in Islam, Ibn Khaldun, becomes
equally pertinent and topical when asking the question: Does the concept of asabiyya
matter to Europe in the new encounter with Islam? I seek to establish my
concept of Euro-Islam as a Euro-Islamic asabiyya on these grounds to respond to
the Islamic and Islamist challenge now creating fault-lines in the heart of
Europe. This is admittedly my wishful thinking in establishing an accord with
reality; I leave it to one side in order to address the real issues and ask:
Where does the Europe of today stand? After two world wars Europe ceased to be
not only a center of world politics, but also a center of international
scholarship. The academic study of Islam was first centered in Europe, but the
international studies’ related interest in Islam as well as the political
attention given to the world of Islam is now based in US academia. Two events –
stretching over a time span of almost a quarter of a century – brought Islam to
the center of world politics with a slight but continuing impact on Europe.
Both events were distorted through sensational media coverage that failed to
transmit the deeper meanings behind them. Below the surface of the media
barrage, one finds in each case the reality of a tragic situation emanating
from the inability of a civilization to cope with a predicament with modernity,
resulting in a crisis (see note 28). The two events triggered off a variety of
responses, none of which were related to Islam as a religion, but rather to it
as a civilization.
The first event was the ‘‘Islamic
revolution’’ in Iran in 1979. Academically speaking, this event gave a boost to
the study of Islam in world affairs.70 Among the reasons underlying
the pertinence of that revolution to world politics was its claim to
universality, accompanied by the pronouncement of its leaders’ intention to
export it to the rest of the world of Islam, first and foremost the neighboring
Arab states. The Mullahs compared their uprising with the French Revolution and
claimed a universal place in history at large.71 In emulating the
universality, but not the values of the French Revolution, the Iranian leaders
of the Islamic revolution envisioned a remaking of the world. However, despite
its universalist rhetoric, the revolution had an overtly Shi’ite character.
This is the theme of Chapter 4 of this book.
Conversely, the second major
event, the jihadist assault of al-Qaeda in the USA on 11 September 2001, was a
Sunni challenge in its character. In their respective cases, the Shi’ite
Ayatollah Khomeini and the Sunni-Wahhabi bin Laden each claimed for these
events the character of an Islamic internationalism. In view of these claims,
Part II of this book has a chapter on each of the two events, documenting these
two different varieties of Islamic internationalism in world politics. Given
their character as watershed events, they continue in the twenty-first century
to be a challenge for Europe, although with little awareness of the issue by
the Europeans themselves. The nuclear proliferation of Iran is a threat to
world politics and foremost to Europe itself. The so-called Iran–EU dialogue
did not bear fruit, but instead helped the Mullahcracy of Iran to win time for
their ‘‘Islamic revolution’’ and to establish the legitimacy internationally
claimed. In the years 2004–5 the appeasement approach of the EU proved
incapable of preventing Iran from continuing its nuclear proliferation.
Europe faces political Islam as a
state – i.e. Iran – and as a transnational movement of the radical political
Islamism – committed to global jihad as the expression of a new
internationalism. Islamists come to Europe as asylum-seekers. Europe has not
been successful72 in dealing with them. It is intriguing to see
jihadism ignored by the Europeans, who provide a safe haven for the Islamists
in the name of human rights. In the Madrid meeting mentioned earlier, Hasan
Hanafi took the liberty of stating – as already quoted – that Europe should
become a new al-Andalus, i.e. in other words a territory under the banner of
Islam. He also interpreted the ‘‘physical missiles’’ of suicide bombers as a
resort of the weak to their bodies to face the strong with their sophisticated
technology. Islamists seem to be more favorable to Europe than to the USA. The
reason is not only their belief that Islam is more likely to take hold of
Europe than of the USA, but also the safe haven Islamists enjoy in Europe. Will
Europe become Islamized?
In the study of the twenty-first
century, world politics needs to deal with the challenge of an Islam with a
mindset of religious conquest facing a Europe that is relinquishing its
civilizational identity in the name of multiculturalism, indifferent tolerance
and dialogue. As hinted at the beginning of this section, Europe is uncertain
about its asabiyya in the age of Islamic migration. No wonder that Hanafi’s
message failed to elicit contradiction or criticism from the Europeans present,
even as he proposed Islam as a solution for Europe’s crisis of identity,
clearly meaning an Islamization of Europe. Is this polemics or a real issue?
Post-bipolar world politics is
characterized by civilizations competing for a new world order. The dichotomy
of secular democratic peace and of an order envisioned as a Pax Islamica for
the world is the expression of this competition, heralding ‘‘the new Cold War’’
now reaching the heart of Europe. The historical background is that Islam and
Christianity are transnational religions that share a centuries-old history of
mutual conquests, cultural borrowing and, on the basis of these, a mixture of
reciprocal admiration and antagonism.73 Today this special
relationship between both civilizations becomes – through contemporary Islamic
migration to Europe and the drive of Muslim Turkey to join the European Union –
an even more compelling issue for Europe. The head-scarf is viewed as a
fault-line.74 As John Kelsay suggests, we are in a situation in
which we can no longer speak of ‘‘Islam and the West, but of Islam in the
West.’’75 Clearly, this message matters more to Europe than to the
USA. Political Islam seeks to establish itself on all levels in the European
Islamic diaspora and has proven successful in doing so. To be sure, Europeans
have no policy for dealing with this challenge, nor a civilizational awareness
of its meaning.
In the age of terrorism, Myron Weiner’s
effort to introduce the study of migration to the themes of international
security also gains great topicality.76 The existence of al-Qaeda
cells and the related logistical elements of Islamist movements in the safe
haven of Western Europe contribute to an obstructing of average Muslim
migrants’ integration into European citizenry. So while it is the USA that has
created a department of homeland security, the real problem is a European one,
for it is in the core of Europe that global jihad is taking hold. The
perpetrators of 9/11 came from Europe, not from the world of Islam.
Long before Huntington announced
his famous formula, Islamists have been reversing his formula ‘‘the West and
the rest’’ into ‘‘Islam and the rest.’’ In the words of one of the Indonesian
jihadists involved in the Bali assault of 2002, speaking in front of the
Indonesian court: ‘‘Islam is at war with the rest of the world.’’ For me and
for most of my fellow liberal Muslims, this jihadist declaration of war is
unacceptable, as we refuse the alleged fault-lines between Islam and the West –
whether they come from Huntington or the Islamists themselves. The rejection of
the ‘‘clash’’ approach should not, however, amount to ignoring the place of
civilizations in world politics, nor to overlooking the war of ideas taking
place. The stated or alleged deplorable fault-lines, though constructed, can no
longer be ignored by the state-centric discipline of International Relations.
Jihad in Europe matters for world politics, but is not a state-centered matter.
It indicates, and also compels us to acknowledge, that ‘‘culture matters’’ to
the study of International Relations (see note 37). Religion is a cultural
system and its return demands reasoning about Islam’s predicament with
modernity becoming a political concern in the twenty-first century that touches
heavily on Europe. The context is a war of ideas in which fault-lines between
the civilizations are established. For a countering strategy, bridges for
democratic peace are needed.
Within Islamic civilization and its diaspora in Europe there
is a need for a revival of the reason-based view of the world established by
the Islamic rationalism that thrived between the ninth and fourteenth
centuries. This would be most helpful to legitimate cultural borrowing.
Medieval Muslim rationalists, from al-Farabi to Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and Ibn
Rushd (Averroe¨s), up to Ibn Khaldun, were able to base their thinking on
Hellenized Islamic foundations.77 In referring to these historical
records of cross-cultural fertilization I draw on Leslie Lipson’s work on
civilizations78 to underpin two major arguments:
1
The introduction of Hellenism to Europe took place via the
rationalist line of thought in Islamic civilization.
2
With the assistance of Hellenism, adopted from Islamic
rationalism, the first civilization of Europe based on Christendom was
developed into a new civilization named ‘‘the West,’’ which has ever since been
a secular one.
These references
to the history of ideas in an ongoing war of ideas have been made in a book on
International Relations not simply to show that relations among civilizations
also include cross-cultural fertilization through cultural borrowing. It is too
simple just to talk of a ‘‘clash.’’ In this regard I refer to the authority of
Hedley Bull, who in his book The Anarchical Society made it crystal clear that
the history of ideas is most essential for establishing consistent foundations
of thinking for IR scholars. References to the Hellenization of Islam support
the conclusion that Muslims of today could embrace cultural modernity
(Habermas) much as their Muslim ancestors were receptive to Hellenism. To
reiterate: cultural modernity is secular and not a reflection of Christianity.
Hellenism belongs to the heritage of Islamic rationalism,79 as much
as it does to Europe’s own Renaissance. In so arguing, I refer to the Muslim
adoptions from Hellenism in a positive manner as a civilizational encounter
that creates a precedent which – if revived – could provide a cultural
underpinning for embracing modernity and its vision of democratic peace as an
alternative to global jihad. These references contribute to clarifying the
meaning of the concept of Euro-Islamic asabiyya earlier introduced.
In the outlined tradition of
medieval Islamic defenders of reason, the contemporary Islamic rationalist
Mohammed Abed al-Jabri has argued that a ‘‘promising future can only be
Averroe¨ist.’’80 In so doing, al-Jabri means that a reason-based
or a rational worldview has to be established in contemporary Islamic civilization.
Without a doubt, rationality is the meaning of modernity. I reiterate my
serious concerns about the notion of ‘‘multiple modernities,’’ seeing it as a
baseless postmodern construction. What is at stake are Muslims and modernity,
in the understanding of primacy of reason, not some postmodern Western fashion.
Cultural modernity can serve as the best bridge between the rival
civilizations. Muslim civilization had known rationalism, but never underwent
cultural modernity in its entity, so how could it adopt the construction of
postmodernity?
In summing up the argument, I
contend that the development of jihad to jihadism is an invented tradition.
Muslims should counter it with a revival of the tradition of Islamic
rationalism, which flourished in medieval Islam. The underlying argument is
that establishing a rational worldview would ease the acceptance of democratic
peace. The Islamic civilization of today needs to emulate medieval Islam.
Rationalism was by then largely in conflict with the fiqh orthodoxy, which
succeeded in preventing the institutionalization of a scientific view of the
world established by Islamic philosophy, without which no cultural innovation
could endure.81 It was able to prevent this institutionalization via
orthodoxy-controlled institutions of learning, which undermined the
introduction of the reasoning of Islamic philosophy into the curriculum.82
This tradition of fiqh orthodoxy is comparable with the work of the
Wahhabi orthodoxy, which today fulfills the same task. Wahhabi education of the
madrasas promotes the mindset of global jihad, not of democratic civil and open
Islam. I contend the pertinence of this issue to world politics and to Europe.
It is sad to see Europe tolerating political and Wahhabi Islam, not promoting
Euro-Islam.
For bridging between civilizations in world politics, be it
in Europe or worldwide, education for democracy – instead of global jihad – is
a paramount concern. Europeans need to understand that education is and must be
one of the foremost weapons against political Islam and therefore this book
concludes with a discussion of this topic. In Europe Imams trained in the
spirit of Islamic rationalism and Euro-Islamic asabiyya can teach Muslims born
in Europe how to become European ‘‘citizens of the heart,’’ instead of
importing Salafist and Islamist hatred-Imams who preach jihadist anti-Semitism
and anti-Westernism. This hatred is more than an antiAmericanism: it is also
directed against Europe. The European Union needs a policy for dealing with the
civilizational challenge of Islam in world politics and also for coming to
terms with ‘‘Europe’s jihadist dilemma’’ (see note 69), ignored for reasons of
political correctness.
Islamic civilization between cultural modernity and the vision of an
Islamic world order
The debate pursued in this introduction
makes clear the contention of this book, namely that world politics in the
twenty-first century is about the politics of civilizations, i.e. the return of
history. Europe is the battlefield of the new development. It makes sense to
refer to the philosophy of Ibn Khaldun and forget about the work of Samuel
Huntington. Ibn Khaldun is my source of inspiration. Huntington not only misses
the point when he establishes the argument of ‘‘fault-lines’’ between Islam and
the West, but also shows his lack of historical knowledge about Islam and
Hellenism forming a synthesis of civilizations in the past useful as a model
for the future. Fault-lines between the civilizations – even constructed ones –
are detrimental to living in peace with one another. Not only the ideas of
Huntington but also those of global jihad are a point in favor of fault-lines;
the alternative is cross-cultural bridging. The concern behind this discussion
is not merely an intellectual undertaking, as is the nonsense theological idea
of a ‘‘world ethics.’’ In reality, each civilization has its own ethics. It is
feasible, however, to establish a consensus over a political order for the
world. Hedley Bull’s understanding of world politics as evolving around the
concept of ‘‘order’’ is central to this book. Viewed in this manner, at issue
is a competition between two concepts of order for the twenty-first century.
This is the substance of the contended war of ideas. In his inspiring book Islam
and War, John Kelsay asks the pc-free question: ‘‘Who will determine the future
of world order?’’ This question is certainly not a rhetorical one and justifies
quoting the statement underlying it at length:
Much of the contemporary return to Islam is
driven by the perception of Muslims as a community ... having a mission to
fulfill. That this perception sometimes leads to conflict is not surprising. In
encounters between the West and Islam, the struggle is over who will provide
the primary definition of world order. Will it be the West, with its notions of
territorial boundaries, market economies, private religiosity, and the priority
of individual rights? Or will it be Islam, with its emphasis on the universal
mission of a trans-tribal community called to build a social order founded on
the pure monotheism natural to humanity? The question for those who envision
world order, then, is, ‘‘Who determines the shape of order, in the new
international context?’’ The very question suggests a competition between
cultural traditions with distinctive notions of peace, order, and justice. It
thus implies pessimism concerning the call for a new world order based on
notions of common humanity.83
If this
perspective is considered, then the conclusion would be that the relationship
between world politics and Islam in the twenty-first century revolves around
the competition between two conflicting understandings of order for the future
of humanity: Sayyid Qutb’s popular Islamist vision of global Islamic expansion,
by means of jihad or peaceful proselytization, to map the entire globe along an
Islamic order of Hakimiyyat Allah/God’s rule, and the Kantian vision of
‘‘democratic peace’’ as a secular order for the world. This is the real issue
and nothing else. Avoidance of acknowledging this reality for reasons of
political correctness only conceals the real conflict. A choice must be made by
Muslims themselves between Qutb and Kant, or, in the case of Europe, between a
Muslim Europe or Euro-Islam – that is, the Islamization of Europe or the Europeanization
of Islam (see note 17). If Islamic civilization embraced pluralistic democracy
as an essential part of cultural modernity in the context of a reform Islam,
then the war of ideas over the question ‘‘Who determines the shape of order in
the new international context?’’ would end.
In this book it is argued that an Islamic embracing and
acceptance of democracy need to be attached to a proper understanding of
cultural modernity. To be modern is more than the ability to use modern
instruments like computer technology. Similarly, democracy cannot be reduced to
just a process of voting. Modernity is based on a worldview related to secular
values and democracy is a political culture. In the twenty-first century we
need to abandon the twentieth century’s extreme universal choice between
Islamization and Westernization. Kemalism and similar varieties of secularisms
– equating progress/tarakki with Westernization – have failed,84 because
they overlooked Islam, but that does not mean that the political Islam of the
AKP is the right alternative. The approach of Islamist deWesternization as a
response to Westernization, such as the Egyptian Islamist al-Sharqawi’s
rejection of Kemalism as a strategy for Westernizing the world of Islam, is not
a promising option. Moreover, it contains the intriguing, some might say
ironic, call for Islamists to both resent the West and at the same time adopt
Western weaponry for fighting jihad against it:
Our goal cannot be to Westernize (as
Kemalism envisions), but to learn from the West how to deal with modern weapon
systems, and even more: to produce these systems by ourselves to be in a
position to beat the West as our enemy.85
The quote clearly shows that the Islamist
al-Sharqawi accepts modernity as techno-scientific instrumentality86 but
rejects it as a value-system. In reviving the nostalgia of Islamic growth, his
nostalgic mindset is not simply an expression of cultural self-assertion, as
some Western experts believe, but rather a dream of restoring and reinventing
the medieval Pax Islamica in a modern vision of an Islamic world order. This is
– as argued earlier – not the restoration of the caliphate. Among the very few
Western scholars who grasp this reality is again John Kelsay, who repeatedly
deserves being quoted at length:
it would be wrong ... to understand the
contemporary call for revival among Muslims as simple nostalgia ... Some
authors long for the glory of the past ... [and] have argued that the ascension
of European and North American civilization in world affairs has been based on
a failure of leadership in the Islamic world and on the Western willingness to
shamelessly exploit, in the name of profit, the human and material resources of
the developing countries. The mood of such writers is not nostalgia but outrage
over the state of the world, in particular the state of the Muslim community.87
The outrage
mentioned does not stop at voicing nostalgia and is not limited to an Islamic
romanticism. It results in a call for global jihad aimed at toppling the
existing order within a strategy of remaking the world. That strategy would see
the pursuit of an Islamic world order for mapping the entire globe in dar
al-Islam as a primary goal. To counter this endeavor, the West, in particular
Europe, needs a dual strategy: a new security approach combined with an effort
at an inter-civilizational dialogue with liberal and open-minded Muslims as a
means of conflict resolution. This double-track strategy is the most promising
pursuit in this costly and mutually detrimental conflict. However, the needed
inter-civilizational dialogue88does not mean talking in the sense of
l’art pour l’art, but rather addressing the real issues in a kind of peaceful
conflict resolution aimed at establishing and accepting core shared values, led
by those for religious and civilizational pluralism. We also need to assume a
security dialogue to cope with the threat jihadists pose.
In this context, a revival of the
heritage of Islamic medieval rational philosophers,89 as called for
by Mohammed Abed al-Jabiri, is a more helpful route for contemporary Muslims to
consider than nostalgia for a former era of Islamic superiority. Self-assertive
and defensive-cultural responses do not contribute to a ‘‘coming to terms’’
with others. Among the positive contributions one can locate in the heritage of
Islam is al-Farabi’s al-Madina alfadila [The Perfect State], referred to
earlier.90 In contrast to the concept of Hakimiyyat Allah/God’s
rule, al-Farabi’s secular understanding of the state is also acceptable to
non-Muslim parts of humanity, because it revolves around a rational order. The madina
al-fadila as a perfect state is ruled by a philosopher (in the Hellenistic
sense), not by an Imam in the understanding of shari’a. On the contrary, any
imposition of a Hakimiyyat Allah on nonMuslims – which is, by the way,
mentioned neither in the Qur’an nor in the hadith – is tantamount to a
declaration of war, be it rhetorical (war of ideas) or a practice in jihadism
as irregular war of terror. Obviously, non-Muslims would never accept their own
subordination as dhimmi to an alien Islamic order in which the Muslims are
considered to be superior to them, even if done in the name of ‘‘Islamic world
peace’’ (Qutb). The alternative to such totalitarian rule must be democratic
pluralism on the grounds of equality and mutual acceptance of all religions in
a setup with shared rules.
Sudan is a case in point91 for illustrating the
situation of the non-Muslims under Islamic rule. In the past and present this
country has continued to provide a strong case of the problem at issue. The
shari’a was imposed on non-Muslim Sudanese peoples in September 1983, and since
that time Muslims in the north have been fighting a jihad against the
non-Muslims in the south.92 The 2004 crisis in Darfur, continued
2005, has resulted from the unabated attempts to subdue the non-Muslims living
there to an Islamic order under the shari’a rules. In Europe, on the other hand,
Muslims find themselves in the opposite position: they are the minority, but
they are offered the equality of citizens. The acceptance of reason-based
knowledge by Muslims would for them smooth the way to secular democracy, human
rights, peace among democratic nations and above all cultural-religious
pluralism. If Muslim migrants embrace these values and the related rules, it
matters little whether Muslims constitute a minority or a majority. Some
leaders of the Islamic diaspora are not favorable to this embracing and make
the accusation of Islamophobia every time the shari’a is rejected. This
accusation becomes an instrument for deterring any call for change and for
incriminating any rational criticism. A call for an embracing of cultural
modernity as a platform of peace between civilizations becomes in this
perception an expression of Islamophobia.
Preliminary conclusions
Ahead of the
analysis to follow in the seven chapters of this book on Islam in world
politics and in Europe, the tensions between democracy and jihadism have been
outlined in this introduction. In candor and sadness I acknowledge that the
views presented in the following chapters are shared by only a minority of
enlightened Muslim liberal thinkers (e.g. al-Jabri, Arkoun, al-Azm, An-Na’im,
Shahrur, etc.), and are not among the popular public choices unfortunately
shared by the majority of Muslims, including the diaspora of Islam in Europe.
To pretend the opposite would be to overlook existing realities. I also
disclose the fact that my life has been repeatedly threatened, because of my
commitment to the ideas of civil society, secular democracy and human rights
against political Islam. Ideologues like Yusuf al-Qaradawi,93 who
incites on al-Jazeera TV as a global mufti and argues in favor of shari’a and
jihad, are more popular and far more influential than alJabri. These ideologues
are the source of contemporary public choices in the world of Islam and its
diaspora in Europe. In contrast to civil and open Islam, the Islamist
internationalism of global jihad and global shari’a presently enjoys great
popularity – though of course to varying degrees – among young Muslims.
Education in the Islamist and Wahhabi interpretations of Islam does not favor a
remaking of Muslim politics along the lines of a ‘‘civil Islam.’’94 Therefore,
policies of further Islamization continue to prevail while an embracing of
cultural modernity combined with a rethinking of Islam remains an unrealized
hope. Without cultural innovations leading to cultural change, no successful
coping with a structurally changing world will be on the horizon. Successful
transformation requires that the Arab-Islamic mindset as it dominates Islam
honors the insight that culture matters (see note 37), that Islam is
changeable, and that cultural change is as important as economic, political and
social change.
The UNDP reports on the Arab Middle East95 make
it shatteringly clear that existing grievances are basically homegrown. A
culture that lacks democracy and human rights and promotes authoritarian
regimes is itself responsible for existing deficits. The Moroccan philosopher
al-Jabri coined the phrase: ‘‘takwin al-aql al-Arabi/the creation of the Arab
mind’’96 to depict cultural attitudes existing in the Arab world.
Another enlightened Muslim, the Syrian Mohammed Shahrur, demands a radical
cultural change. He criticizes Arabs for being committed to what they have
inherited unquestioned from their forefathers, and therefore of being unwilling
to welcome innovation and change. In supporting his argument, he cites the sura
al-baqara of the Qur’an (2:170) which reads: ‘‘When asked to follow what Allah
revealed, they answer, no, we only follow what our forefathers have passed to
us.’’97
In this verse, the Qur’an is
speaking of al-kafirun/unbelievers, but Shahrur extends this argument to most
contemporary Muslim Arabs, concluding that: ‘‘there is no one single nation on
earth like we Arabs which is infected by this disease on a permanent basis,
i.e. unquestioned submitting to what is inherited from the ancestors’’ (ibid.).
At the end of 2004, Shahrur was
among a group of Muslim intellectuals meeting in Cairo to discuss the Qur’an.
At that gathering he rightly argued for the primacy of reason in the tradition
of Islamic rationalism. According to an International Herald Tribune report of
December 2004, he received in response shouts and name-calling, including
accusations of being ‘‘a liar’’ and even a kafir/unbeliever. Such is the
culture that has spread in the Middle East and is now spilling over via the
Islam diaspora to Europe. I acknowledge being exposed in Europe to what Shahrur
experienced in Cairo. To state this is not an ‘‘Orientalism.’’ As an Arab
Muslim living in Europe, and as someone who has been exposed physically to
threatening experiences similar to Shahrur’s – or even worse – within Europe, I
strongly object to the admittance of such a culture to Europe in the name of
‘‘tolerance,’’ or multi-culturalism. This ‘‘Arab Islam’’ is being exported not
only to Europe, but also to Asia and Africa with Wahhabi support. I would wish
for the reverse, i.e. for an exporting of Southeast Asia’s ‘‘civil Islam’’ to
the Middle East. The exportation of the ‘‘Arab Islam’’ comprising the belief in
the authority of the text is pursued by the Wahhabi education in Europe, which
also focuses on teaching Arabic among the European diaspora. The New Yorker
inventor of tradition, the late Edward Said, and his followers would
discriminate against any critique of such teachings as an expression of
Orientalism – and in fact they have done so repeatedly. My response remains
firm: Without criticizing this way of thinking and arguing in favor of
reason-based modernity, one cannot establish the kind of cultural innovation
that could smooth the way for accomplishing the needed democratic freedom for
the people of Islam. I reiterate, it is possible to establish democracy in
Islam, but political Islam – as Islamism or the Islamic variety of religious
fundamentalism – does not contribute to this end. Islamists make use of
democracy as a voting procedure, as in Palestine, Iraq and Lebanon, but reject
its political culture of dissent and pluralism.
In concluding this introduction to
the conflict over the choice between jihadist Islamism and democratic peace in
general, and between Wahhabiinspired ghetto-Islam and Euro-Islam in particular,
I make an addition to the argument that culture and modernity matter by noting
that security matters, too. In the French Declaration of Human Rights
paralleling the French Revolution, one finds in the same clause that the
‘‘right to security’’ is among ‘‘the rights of man.’’ Therefore there can be no
democratic peace under the insecure conditions of global jihad. If we consider
the fact that among the victims of global jihad are more Muslims than Westerners
(e.g. in Iraq and Algeria), the conclusion is clear that the necessary security
must matter to Muslims as much as it does to Westerners. As already argued, a
security approach should be added to the discourse of dialogue outlined in this
introduction. Let it be reiterated: This combining of dialogue with security
constitutes the needed double-track strategy for coping with jihadist Islamism98
applicable in world politics to both Islam and the West in general, and
to Europe in particular.
In Europe, where major countries
are challenged by increasing Muslim migration, the situation is more complex.
It is certainly an exaggeration when Bernard Lewis states in an interview that
‘‘by the end of the century’’ Europe will become ‘‘an Islamic space.’’ It is, however,
certain that Muslims are on their way to becoming in the next few decades a
very powerful and major segment of the European population. The Islamic
uprising in France in winter 2005 and the ensuing Danish cartoon crisis of 2006
were just a warning. For this reason, it matters whether a political jihadist
Islam or a civil Euro-Islam will prevail among Muslims living in Europe and
will affect their worldview.
It is not only Muslim homework,
but also a task for the Europeans themselves to think what can be done to help
insure that Muslim migrants embrace the idea of Europe and become European
citizens of the heart. This is the most crucial question facing Europe in the
twenty-first century, as addressed in Part III of this book. Given Europe’s
centrality in the West, it is of vital importance to world politics in general
to help accommodate the predicament of Islam with freedom and modernity, which
is in view of Islamic migration also a European problem on the soil of Europe.
I refrain from joining those who predict a Europe as ‘‘Eurabia,’’ but do not
close my eyes when I see the culture of Islamization (see note 17) pursued in a
variety of mosques throughout Europe. The issue is a burning one and blamegames
are just the wrong approach. However, in pointing at the inappropriate way
Europeans deal with Muslims a way which is itself a source of the malady – next
to the ills of political and jihadist Islam – I do not engage in these
blame-games. My life in Europe is a case in point. After spending most of my life
in Germany, the balance that I can best draw is most unpromising. I acknowledge
with all clarity that I have failed to become a European in Germany. Despite
all assurances to the contrary, European societies continue to be ethnically
exclusive entities unable to integrate non-European immigrants to citizens
heart.99 This is not in line with the idea of Europe as an ‘‘open
society’’ (Popper) and ‘‘island of freedom in an ocean of violent rule,’’ and
therefore I do not give up referring to the idea of Europe from the perspective
of being equally against ethnic as well as Euro-centric Europeans and against
totalitarian Islamists. The present book is written in this spirit. Not only
Muslims need to become European citizens of the heart, also Europeans themselves
are challenged to deliver what the ‘‘idea of Europe’’ promises.

Part I
The conflict
within Islamic civilization between jihadism and democracy
Its
pertinence to world politics and to the Islam diaspora in Europe: obstacles and
solutions
Introductory remarks
The bottom line
for living in peace and with mutual respect in the twentyfirst century is the
acceptance of people of all cultures and civilizations of the values as well as
the institutional safeguards of religious and cultural pluralism. This
pluralism that combines diversity with a consensus over core values should be the
house order for the entire world, but this goal cannot be achieved without the
participation of the people of Islamic civilization who count as one quarter of
humanity.
To set the record straight:
Cultural and religious pluralism – as an essential part of democratic peace –
is an adoption from the political theory of multiparty parliamentarian
democracy. Political pluralism acknowledges diversity, but requires the
acceptance of shared rules and common values. This idea is applied to religion,
but this undertaking is hampered by the obstacles related to religious
absolutism shared by all religions. The foremost Islamic revivalist of the
nineteenth century, al-Afghani, called for anticolonial jihad not only to
reject a foreign rule, but also in contesting the fact that world political
realities are not in line with Islam’s self-image of being superior to others
in its claim for ruling the world. In al-Afghani’s view the ‘‘ghalab/superiority’’
is among Islam’s central features. As a young boy born in Damascus to the
centuries-old Damascene ‘‘ashraf/notables family’’ – according to the history
of Damascus by Taqiul-Din al-Husaini – of Banu al-Tibi, I learned at school
along with the respective Qur’anic verse that we Muslims are the khair umma/best
community God created on earth (sura al-Imran 3:110). This is the inherited
image that Muslims have of themselves. It follows that not only are Pax
Americana and hegemonic US unilateralism obstacles in the way of global
pluralism, but there are also Islamic barriers. Muslims lack power, but
nevertheless adhere to a powerful Islamic worldview which teaches ‘‘al-Islam
ya’lu wa la yu’la alayhi/Islam is superior and no one can stand above it.’’
Muslim preachers teach this formula, which runs counter to the need for
cultural and religious pluralism.
When I was taught this Muslim
self-image as a young schoolboy in Damascus, I contradicted our teacher, who
was preaching Islamic superiority to us. To support my objection I referred to
the facts perceived by the media. Our teacher responded, however, in a
self-righteous manner and had no other argument to present than the scriptural
one he gave to us in quoting the Qur’an. The tension between reality and the
Muslim self-image was explained by the reference to a mihna/crisis that we are
undergoing. In Arabic, mihna also means a test: in this case a kind of
civilizational exam. The message is: Muslims are expected to prove that they
are really better than the realities, and of course better than the others,
i.e. the non-Muslims classified either as dhimmi (Christians and Jews living as
protected minorities under the banner of Islam) or as kafirun/infidels. Again,
this inherited worldview stands in contradiction to any religious or cultural
pluralism. The reported Damascene story is the personal background for my
dealing with Islam. Therefore, my first book on Islam in 1980 bore the title The
Crisis of Modern Islam. To be sure, any objective scholarly findings always
have a personal background. I have addressed this issue at length in the
preface and refrain from repeating it. It is self-deception to think that
scholars can keep their ‘‘selves’’ out of their work in terms of objectivity.
The question I asked my Damascene
teacher never left my mind. In 1962, I moved from Damascus to Frankfurt to
study philosophy, history and social sciences with, among others, Theodor W.
Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Iring Fetscher and Ju¨rgen Habermas. For a young
Muslim that meant a window of opportunity, the opening of an avenue. The
conservative education I received as a Muslim in Damascus was not much help in
finding convincing answers to questions that stemmed from thinking about Islam.
The education of the Islamic tradition internalized in Damascus, combined with
the cultural modernity of the Frankfurt School which I perceived in Europe,
built up my background when I switched from philosophy to international
studies. In following the philosophical approach of ‘‘thinking is research’’
introduced by Hedley Bull, I came to the conclusion that contemporary Muslims
in their exposure to cultural modernity and the related globalization are torn
between the tradition of jihad – including its present reinvention as jihadism
– and the need to incorporate their civilization into international society
based on shared values and a culture of democratic peace. This is the theme of
Part I of this book.
The study of Islam as a civilization in a scholarly but not
in an Islamic apologetic or an Orientalist manner (and, to be sure, also not in
the Saidian way of Orientalism in reverse) helped me to understand the history
of Islamic civilization and its current dilemmas. Islam succeeded in ruling
most The conflict between jihadism and democracy  39
parts of the world
in its imperial history after the Islamic conquests. The latter were conducted
as jihad in the form of qital/physical fighting and contributed to an
Islamization of vast parts of Asia, Africa and parts of Europe. Between the
seventh and the seventeenth centuries Muslims formed the leading civilization.
As a student of history in Europe
and the USA, I learned in my academic studies that the decline of the Islamic
civilization was related to both an emerging inner weakness and the rise of the
technologically superior West within the framework of ‘‘the military revolution,’’
as Geoffrey Parker puts it. In contrast to what I had learned in Damascus, I
was exposed to the telling story of the consequences of new industrial power
translating its capabilities into warfare, characterized by the
‘‘industrialization of war,’’ as Anthony Giddens argues. This new power
underpinned the European expansion. Through its technological advantage, the
West was in a position first to contain the jihad expansion, then to overtake
the place of the earlier superior Islamic civilization, and later even to
conquer the abode of Islam itself while subjecting it to European colonial
rule. This development caused deep wounds, to the extent that Muslims in their
collective memory relate colonization and crusades to one process of
humiliation of Islam by the Christians of Europe. When colonial rule ended,
decolonization never meant more than an inclusion into the system of sovereign
states. Europeans had successfully managed ‘‘to impose [this system; B.T.] on
the entire world,’’ to put the story in the phrasing of Charles Tilly.
The twenty-first century is
characterized by a Muslim revolt. A distinction between early decolonization
based on European ideas and the contemporary civilizational ‘‘revolt against
the West’’ (H. Bull) continuing in the twenty-first century is needed in order
to understand the issues involved. There is a contestation of the European
pattern of the nation-state that prevails throughout the world, i.e. also in
the world of Islam. Given the fact that the imposed European nation-state in a
civilizationally alien environment lacks the needed substance and basically
exists therein as a nominal nation-state, a crisis is the outcome. Unlike early
anti-colonial nationalists who were seeking inclusion, the jihadist Islamism is
a challenge to the secular nation-state as such. Most of the nation-states in
the world of Islam are undergoing both a structural – i.e. development-related
– and a legitimacy crisis. In this crisis of modernization Islamists speak of a
sahwa Islamiyya/Islamic awakening, which is nothing other than an effort to
reverse the development that has been taking place in the past few centuries
since the universalization of the principles of Westphalian peace. As Daniel
Philpott rightly argues, this return of a vision of an Islamic political order
is targeting the structure of the ‘‘Westphalian synthesis’’ (World Politics,
2002). The envisioned shift from Europeanization to de-Westernization is not
only directed against Western dominance, but is also a neo-jihad against the
present world order and its expanded Westphalian system mapping the entire
globe. This jihadism is no longer the classical jihad, as shown in Chapter 1.
In Chapter 2, I ask: Could Muslims instead embrace democracy and democratic
peace?
At issue is an ‘‘invention of
tradition’’ and not the tradition itself. The neo-jihad – or jihadism – is an
irregular war, which means a war with no rules, and can therefore be addressed
as a variety of modern terrorism. However, it would be wrong to use the terms
Islamism and terrorism interchangeably, as is done in the media for describing
acting jihadists. The concern is the mihna/crisis of Islamic civilization, not
terror itself. Jihadism is a bid for the remaking of the world.
The chapters of Part I refer to
Islamic civilization at a crossroads seeking its future. I normatively envision
these future prospects: a choice between global jihad as an invented tradition,
and joining democratic peace to become a part of the entire human community on
an equal footing within the framework of pluralism outlined in the outset of
these introductory remarks. It is argued that these choices pertain equally to
world politics and to Europe affected through massive Islamic migration. The
existing Islamic enclaves in Europe, called ‘‘parallel societies,’’ indicate
that Muslim immigrants are not integrated and are not yet a part of Europe.
Some of them read the works of the intellectual father of political Islam,
Sayyid Qutb, who teaches all Muslims that their civilization is in crisis and
needs ‘‘ma’alim fi al-tariq/signposts along the road.’’ Are the solutions he
offers, including an ‘‘Islamic world revolution’’ to map the entire globe into
this divine order, envisioned to replace the Westphalian one also valid for
Europe?
As a European Muslim I contest,
but acknowledge, the tensions between the envisioned Islamization of Europe by
the Islamists and the Europeanization of Islam as an alternative to it proposed
by the concept of EuroIslam to be introduced in Part III. At the level of Part
I, the focus is on contrasting jihadism and democratic peace as competing
options. In subscribing to the view of Hedley Bull that ‘‘thinking is
research,’’ I look first at the development of jihad to jihadism and then
question the Islamization of democracy. In my view, there can be no Islamic
epistemology, because knowledge is human and universal. Along these lines, I
argue that there is no specific Islamic democracy. In contrast, there can be
with nuances a democracy in the world of Islam, as in any other civilization.
1 From classical jihad to global jihadism in an
invention of tradition for mapping the world into Dar al-Islam
As much as Khomeini made the Islamic term fetwa
popular, so did bin Laden with jihad. Today, one barely finds a Westerner who
has not heard these Islamic terms. However, fetwa is not a death sentence, just
as jihad is not terrorism. These are the wrong meanings spread in the West
along with many misconceptions of Islam itself. The present chapter will
elucidate, explain and claim to change the described situation. The development
of the classical jihad to jihadism lies at the center of the analysis. It is
asked: Is the jihadist path a promising option for the future of the Islamic
civilization? In Chapter 2, I present democracy as a competing option.
The different meanings of jihad and jihadism
It is true that at
present Islamists think of violence and fighting when they speak of whatever
practice of jihad. However, in the Qur’an jihad does not mean terrorism, but it
is also not simply a peaceful ‘‘self-exertion,’’ as some suggest. In most
Western contemporary popular writings on jihadist actions – particularly since
9/11 – the readers are exposed to an equation of Islamic jihad with terrorism.
In this distorted context, jihad1 and jihadism are consistently
confused. In contrast, this book subscribes to the clear distinction between
classical jihad and modern jihadism. Jihad combines qital/fighting with
proselytization in wars for Islamic futuhat/expansion. This fight is subject to
binding rules that also limit the targets. In contrast, contemporary jihadism
is a pattern of the new irregular war waged as global jihad by those Islamists
who subscribe to violence for fighting against the West and its believed
Islamic allies. It is a war without rules. The distinction between jihad and
jihadism pertains to the other basic distinction between Islam and Islamism.
This is most crucial. To be sure, not all Islamists are jihadists. There are
peaceful Islamists who believe in pursuing their goal within institutions.
These are the institutional Islamists who reject jihadist terrorism. After
these distinctions I hasten to add that it is not enlightening when – as is
sometimes done, with misleading intent – some translate jihad as pure peaceful
‘‘self-exertion.’’ In fact, jihad2 is also related to qital, which
means physical fighting that includes the use of weapons.
However, long
before Clausewitz, the Qur’an made it obligatory on those Muslims fighting
jihad-wars to honor prescribed rules during the qital, as will be shown in this
chapter. It follows that classical jihad, unlike jihadism, is a regular war
subjected to clear rules and limited targets; it does not allow ambush fighting
and prohibits the killing of civilians in general and fellow-Muslims in
particular. In short, a war without rules is strictly forbidden in the Qur’an.
In the history of Islam, jihad stood always in the service of da’wa/proselytization
and therefore it was and continues to be in conflict with pluralism and
democratic peace. On these grounds the plea is presented to Islamic
civilization to move forward from global jihad to democratic peace as a
positive perspective for the twenty-first century.3 Professedly,
this is the normative commitment of this book, which nevertheless is at pains
not to confuse analysis with wishful thinking. I acknowledge the spread of the
present understanding of jihad as jihadism and qualify this as a deadly virus
which is also detrimental to the people of Islam.
In turning to the analysis of the
Islamic concept of jihad, it is clear that it is equally based on both
normative and real grounds, by which the scripture as well as historically
practiced Islam are to be considered. On normative grounds, the concept of jihad
is scriptural as it is derived from Islamic revelation. To orthodox
scripturally minded Muslims, the Qur’anic revelation is the divine source of
knowledge which includes the obligation to jihad. This is viewed as the
ultimate source of any knowledge of the world. It is for this reason that the
study of jihad as contrasted with pluralistic democracy also touches on the
problem of knowledge. Religious knowledge – determined in Islam by the
discipline of the fiqh/sacral-juridicial knowledge, i.e. knowledge par
excellence – is mostly an interpretation of the scriptural revelation.
Logically it follows that fiqh as an interpretation is human knowledge, too,
but nonetheless often presented as Allah’s knowledge by the Salafists, who
dismiss any objection as a heresy. This is one of the major obstacles to an
Islamic reformation and it also matters to rethinking the Islamic concept of
jihad. This reasoning in the context of clarifying the terms creates the
starting point of the ensuing analysis.
In moving away from the normative
to the historical meaning of jihad, one no longer faces any peaceful effort at
proselytizing for Islam (da’wa), but rather war. In historical Islam, Islamic
proselytization was carried out within the framework of jihad-wars.4 It
included the use of force in the service of Islamic expansion legitimated by
spreading Islam. At issue, in the pursuit of globalizing dar al-Islam, is the
mapping of the entire world.5 This is the Islamic idea of world
peace that can only be achieved when the globe becomes identical with dar
al-Islam. This Islamic utopia is part of classical Islam, but it has been given
a new shape by Sayyid Qutb (see note 23). He argues that world peace
presupposes jihad, including qital. This is a reinvention of the classical Islamic
concept of peace, attached to a new doctrine of jihadism and becoming a
mobilizatory ideology in the service of jihadist

Islamism. Having clarified the terms under
issue, we now have to go back to history in order to understand the present.
The context and the sources of jihad, past and present
In classical Islam
the concept of jihad is based on ethical foundations. The Islamic tradition of
jihad legitimates waging war, although clearly for ethical reasons, and it
determines the rules for its conduct as an Islamic ethics of war (see note 3).
Jihad is among the basic beliefs underlying the Islamic worldview as a Weltanschauung
that seems to be resistant to change6 because it is believed to be
immutable as it was revealed by Allah. However, the real world is in flux and
keeps changing, to the extent that the believed and text-based dichotomy that
divides the world in a rival Islamic and a non-Islamic territoriality is no
longer a reality of our world in the twentyfirst century. In ignoring the
realities, jihadists revive the jihad in a new meaning, abandoning the
perceived dichotomy through establishing an Islamic peace uniting the world
under the banner of Islam.7 In this perception imagination and
realities are confused with one another. What origins do these concepts have in
the basic scriptures of Islam, the Qur’an and the hadith? And what is their
pertinence to the present?
Islamic thinking on war and peace
mostly refers to the Qur’an and to the authoritative interpretations of Islamic
tradition. Of course, there are basic differences between Sunni Islam, as the
expression of the major stream in Islam, and Shi’ite Islam, represented by a
sectarian minority in Islam. These differences are crucial in our present
examination of the transformation of classical jihad into a jihadist
internationalism. This contemporary manifestation of transnational religion is
extremely important and is the subject of Part II.
In keeping up with the sources of
jihad, both past and present, the Arabic Qur’an is acknowledged as the major
source. In recognizing Sunni Islam as the mainstream and looking for
institutions of Islamic thought and meaning, one finds the al-Azhar University
of Cairo to be the most authoritative. The focus on authoritative Arab sources
in this chapter definitely does not reflect any Arab-centric view, but rather a
consideration of the prevailing and major tradition in Islam, as well as the
related dominating worldviews and historical realities.
In this chapter the interpretation
of the Qur’an by Maxime Rodinson8 is adopted. It views this
scripture as chronicles of the establishment of Islam in Arabia between the
years 610 and 632 AD. In
early Meccan Islam, before the founding of the first Islamic polity at Medina,
in a Bedouin culture hostile to state structures, one fails to find Qur’anic
precepts related to war and peace. Most Meccan verses focus on spiritual
issues. It is for this reason that Islamic reformers like Abdullahi An-Na’im9
prefer to draw on Meccan Islam for establishing new ethical foundations
for an Islamic embracing of individual human rights.
In an Islamic understanding,
history begins with the Islamic hijra, which is the migration of the Prophet
and his supporters to Medina in 622. There he established the first Islamic
political community (umma), which was not a state, as contemporary Islamists
wrongly read Islamic history. The term ‘‘dawla/state’’ never occurs in the
Qur’an nor is it used in the hadith (the sayings and deeds of the Prophet).
Those Qur’anic verses revealed between 622 and the death of the Prophet in 632
all speak of the polity of Medina addressed as umma, not as state. The fact
that the Prophet never employed the term ‘‘state/dawla’’ and that it is not
included in the language of the Qur’an uncovers the term ‘‘Islamic state’’ as a
recent invention.
In the formative years of Islam,
jihad as physical fighting/qital was waged against hostile tribes surrounding
the polity of Medina. Jihad was aimed at subduing these tribes to the new
supra-tribal community of the umma. In this historical Medina context we find a
variety of Qur’anic verses pertaining to jihad. It is by no means an
essentialization or an Orientalism when one refers to the persistence of Muslim
thinking towards change, since it is related to an Islamic belief in the
absolutely eternal validity of the Qur’an and the hadith. But in reality, the
understanding of these texts is subject to time and space. Therefore, there is
no essential Islam in that this religion and its civilization are always placed
in a time–space context. However, common Muslims are generally reluctant to
take a historical view of their religion and its culture. It is not only some
Western Orientalists but also many Muslims themselves who are inclined to
essentialize what is truly historical. During the Madrid summit (March 2005) on
safe democracy and terrorism, it was a pleasure to listen to an Israeli,
supported by a prominent Indonesian Muslim, correcting the claim made by an
Egyptian participant that ‘‘There is only one immutable Islam’’ and stating
diversity within Islam.
While acknowledging the primacy of the text for Muslims, it
is argued that the first step in a thinking oriented towards a reform Islam is
to subscribe to historizing Islamic sources. This is also to be applied to the
scriptural concept of jihad. The point of departure for presenting the
religious sources of jihad needs, however, to be based on scriptural Qur’anic
traditions themselves, while placing them in a historical context. In pursuit
of this, it can be shown that these verses are related to particular events and
therefore are not general provisions. When Qur’anic verses at times seemingly
contradict one another, then different historical circumstances are at issue.
It follows that it is not easy to reconstruct a single Islamic overall concept
of jihad from these verses. Instead, there are a number of different
traditions, each of which draws selectively on the Qur’an to establish
legitimacy for a human view of war and peace, even though it is claimed that
this is divine in the meaning of a revelation by God. In the following –
despite these differentiations – I shall try to synthesize these elements in an
effort at outlining an overall Qur’anic concept of jihad.10
In Islam the concept of jihad is
based on the already mentioned division of the world into an abode of Islam,
viewed as the house of peace/dar al-salam (Qur’an, sura Jonah 10:26),11and
the non-Muslim world, the house of war/dar al-harb. The politics of jihad was
related to this distinction, and it determined world history for one millennium
until the rise of the West12 and the expansion of its European
society13 at the expense of Islamic jihadexpansion. At this stage, I
wish to make it clear that the rejection of the outlined Islamic dichotomy
consequently leads to abandoning the concept of jihad. The anticipation of this
conclusion, to be made at the end of the analysis, is not premature but
logically consistent.
The evolution of the modern
international system is related to basic developments introducing a change in
the structure of the world.14 In this historical context, the
dichotomic division of the world, created in medieval Islam, lost all its
foundations. The scriptural reference to it today by political Islam and by
Salafism is belied by the historical realities. This way of thinking – perceiving
historical realities through religious doctrines fixed in the scripture, and
not the reverse, i.e. juxtaposing doctrines to the realities themselves –
existed long before the incursion of Europe into the Muslim world. An example
of this thinking is the belief in Islamic unity contradicted by the facts of
the Middle Ages, showing that dar al-Islam was already at that time dismembered
into a ‘‘multiplicity of separate, often warring sovereignties,’’ as Bernard
Lewis rightly notes. It is utterly wrong to view this dismemberment as
‘‘territorial pluralism,’’ as for instance James Piscatori does, thereby
overlooking the meaning of ‘‘pluralism’’ in political science in which this
term is based. The issue is, as Lewis maintains, that ‘‘in international ... matters,
a widening gap appeared between legal doctrine and political fact, which
politicians ignored and jurists did their best to conceal.’’15 However,
in terms of Islamic perception and the prevailing worldview, the unity of the umma
has been a hallmark of Islamic thought, and no ‘‘territorial pluralism’’
whatsoever has ever been acknowledged. To this day, Muslims commonly believe
that this unity was first shattered by the Christian crusaders and the
colonizing West, who destroyed the Islamic order of a united umma. In
contemporary writings of political Islam, a historical continuity between the
crusades and colonial rule is established. It is argued that the appropriate
response to this still perceived challenge is best achieved by combating it
through jihad. The revival of jihad occurs in the guise of ‘‘the revolt against
the West’’ (Bull), discussed at length in the introduction. Religious sources
are read in the light of the present leading to a new understanding of jihad
currently interpreted as jihadism/jihadiyya on the grounds of an invention of
tradition. Therefore, the reading of the sources needs to be contextualized and
historicized.
In going back to the classical
history of Islam as an Islamic expansion between the seventh and seventeenth
centuries, the jihad of Muslims against the other, conceived as kuffar/infidels
and thus the enemies of Islam, was the centerpiece. Islamic jurists never dealt
with relations with non-Muslims under conditions other than those of ‘‘the
house of war,’’ except for the temporary cessation of hostilities under a
limited truce, when dar al-ahd/ house of contract was allowed.16 The
superiority of Islam existing in medieval history ceased in reality when the
‘‘military revolution’’ of the West (see note 12) took place between the years
1500 and 1800. It signaled the start of modern times, and ultimately
contributed to the rise of the new, militarily most powerful civilization of
the West. This rise touches mostly on Islamic civilization. In this context,
the concomitant decline of the world of Islam is the substance of the question:
‘‘What went wrong?’’ asked by Bernard Lewis.17 The West took over
the place of Islam, and this is the problem of what went wrong. Muslims have
tried ever since to establish armies along the European model18 to
offset the increasing weakness of the abode of Islam. In this historical
context, the globalization model of the Islamicate was replaced by the one of
European expansion. The changed historical balance exposed Muslims to a major
challenge, but it never changed their worldview based on their image of
themselves as superior. As noted in the introductory remarks to this Part I, I
grew up in Damascus as part of a generation educated in this thinking. This
education has never changed, but I changed through my European education and
therefore read the sources in the light of the historical facts, not vice
versa.
In international relations since
the ‘‘Westphalian synthesis,’’ the believed dichotomy between dar al-Islam and dar
al-harb has become incongruent with the existing realities. Following the Peace
of Westphalia, the modern world was composed of sovereign states that further
developed into nationstates in the aftermath of the French Revolution. Muslims
were challenged to rethink their dichotomic worldview and consider new
approaches in the light of changed realities. But despite its incompatibility
with the modern world order, there has not yet been any authoritative revision
of this worldview, as the Muslim scholar Najib al-Armanazi rightly argues (see
note 16). In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, ideologies of Islamic
liberalism and the ensuing military praetorianism failed to cope with the
challenge. They did not contribute to the needed cultural accommodation and to
the cultural modernization of the world of Islam. This failure triggered a
crisis addressed in the introduction to this book. The crisis contributed to
the revival of the jihad-doctrine, though in a revised version, which is
jihadism. Those who reduce jihadism to a response to the US unilateralism
during the war against Iraq, or trace it back to al-Qaeda, lack knowledge about
the historical background and about sources much older than this phenomenon and
pre-dating bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and all of the related topicalities.
Having contextualized the
scriptural source of the Islamic religious doctrine of jihad in both the past
and the present, it becomes clear that the belief that Islam is a religious
mission to all of humanity is a driving force. Muslims are religiously obliged
to disseminate the Islamic faith through jihad throughout the world. As the
Qur’an pronounces: ‘‘We have sent you forth to all mankind’’ (sura saba 34:28).
If non-Muslims submit to Islam through conversion or subjugation, this call/da’wa
can be pursued peacefully.
If they do not,
Muslims are then obliged to wage jihad-war to subdue them. It is only in this
meaning that jihad is understood as a defensive action of violence. In Islam,
peace requires that non-Muslims submit to the call of Islam, either by
conversion or by accepting the status of a religious minority of dhimmi obliged
to pay an imposed tax/jizya. This ‘‘privilege’’ of ‘‘dhimmitude’’ applies,
however, exclusively to Christians and Jews, i.e. to monotheists. Peoples of
other non-monotheist religions are considered to be kafirun/infidels. World
peace is perceived as the result of successfully carrying out the da’wa, being
the Islamic proselytization, leading to the submission of all humankind to
Islam, thus mapping the entire globe. In this context, it is important to note
that the expression ‘‘dar al-harb/house of war’’ is not Qur’anic; it was coined
in the age of Islamic military expansion and thus relates to historical Islam,
when Islamic jihad-wars were waged to spread Islamic faith through the
enhancement of dar al-Islam.
Contemporary Islamists use the
term ‘‘dar al-kuffar/house of infidels’’ for Europe and the USA, even though
Christians and Jews – in the scriptural understanding of Islam – are dhimmi,
not kafirun. Moreover, in Europe Muslim immigrants themselves are a minority, a
fact that creates a challenge to inherited Islamic thinking of viewing only
non-Muslims as minorities.
In summing up the context of the development from the
classical jihaddoctrine, when historically jihad was the instrument of war for
Islamic expansion, to the present of jihadism, it can be stated that a
fulfillment of the Qur’anic command to spread Islam is understood as a message
of peace. Consequently, the relations between dar al-Islam, as the abode of
peace, and dar al-harb, as the world of unbelievers, were defined in terms of
war, according to the authoritative commentaries of Islamic jurists. An
exception is allowed to be applied when Muslim power becomes weak; then a
temporary truce/hudna is permitted. In passing it can be noted that Islamic
jurists differ on the definition and length of ‘‘temporary.’’ This notion of
temporary peace as a truce defined in the terms dar al-sulh/reconciliation or,
at times, dar al-ahd, dominates Islamic thought even today.19 It is
true that the religious doctrine of jihad determines the attitude of common
Muslims and that there is, except in Sufi Islam, no Islamic tradition of
nonviolence. However, the violent jihad as a war has never been glorified in
Islam. At issue is the obligation of da’wa to disseminate Islam for which jihad
is considered an instrument. The aggressive language of jihadism and its
glorification of violence are recent and have no roots in classical Islam. It
is therefore wrong to describe Islam in general as a ‘‘religion of the sword.’’
The late Edward Said would have described this formula as ‘‘Orientalism.’’
However, contemporary jihadists speak the language of the sword, and Hasan
al-Banna can be considered the Georges Sorel of Islam with regard to the
glorification of violence, a language alien to classical Islam. Qadhafi of
Libya is not an Islamist, but he gave his son the name of saif al-Islam/the
sword of Islam. Is Qadhafi infected by Orientalism? At issue is a Muslim, not a
Western, mindset.
Jihad and the doctrine of just war
In view of the fact that Muslims do not see
their jihad as a war of aggression, but rather as a defensive measure, it has
been suggested that jihad can be interpreted as a just war. Students of Islam
know, however, that the Western distinction between just and unjust wars, as
discussed by Michael Walzer,20 is unknown in Islam. This can be
safely stated although these very terms are at present employed by some
Western-educated Muslims, as by Islamists as well. However, this is often done
within a different frame of reference. In Islam, war against unbelievers,
whatever its immediate ground, is in general morally justified and in this
sense perceived to be a just war, even if the term itself is not used. In the
past, when Muslims waged wars for the spread of Islam, labeled as ‘‘futuhat/openings,’’
they did not believe themselves engaged in a war of aggression, despite the
fact of the conquest and killing of those who resisted them. In the Muslim
view, when nonMuslims fight against Muslims, then an unjust war/idwan (or
aggression) is perceived to be at issue. In the West, jihad is interpreted by
some as an Islamic concept of ‘‘just war.’’ One of the sources for the use of
the terms ‘‘just/unjust’’ with regard to Islam is an old pioneer study by Majid
Khadduri – albeit now outdated. In this study, one encounters the benign
interpretation of jihad as bellum iustum. Khadduri’s contention is:
The universality
of Islam provided a unifying element for all believers, within the world of
Islam, and its defensive–offensive character produced a state of warfare
permanently declared against the outside world, the world of war. Thus jihad
may be regarded as Islam’s instrument for carrying out its ultimate objective
by turning all people into
believers.21
From this point of
view, the Western concept of bellum iustum in the sense of a just war may apply
to Islam. Khadduri’s writing back in 1955 was dealing with history. By then,
there existed no mobilizing ideology of global jihad: even though the intellectual
seeds already existed in the writings of Qutb and al-Banna, they were not known
to Khadduri, who prematurely stated that ‘‘at the present it is not possible to
revive the traditional religious approach to foreign affairs ... The jihad has
become an obsolete weapon.’’22 This assessment and the related
prediction proved to be utterly wrong: Jihad is back as jihadism, and it has
proved to be a successful threat of irregular war against the West,
destabilizing world politics in the twentyfirst century.
A closer look at the classical
religious doctrine of Islam reveals two ways of dealing with war. The first
refers to war in the concrete situation of fighting a battle/qital as a resort
to jihad in following the Qur’anic precept to proselytize for the spread of
Islam, usually when non-Muslims hinder the effort of Islamization. The other
understanding is more general, namely war as a permanent condition between
Muslims and non-believers which can only be brought to an end by an
accomplishing of the global dominance of Islam after a victory over the
infidels. We find this understanding of ‘‘global’’ and ‘‘permanent jihad’’
revived in Qutb’s booklet World Peace and Islam,23 which Khadduri
should have known by 1955 but did not. This booklet is among the most popular
writings in the contemporary world of Islam. Together with the risalat al-jihad
of 1930 by Hasan al-Banna (see note 40), it never ceased to enjoy broad
dissemination.
In ethical terms the Qur’an makes
a clear distinction between ‘‘fighting/ qital’’ and ‘‘aggression/idwan’’ and
asks Muslims not to be aggressors: ‘‘Fight for the sake of Allah against those
who fight against you, but do not be violent, because Allah does not love
aggressors’’ (sura al-baqara 2:190). However, the very same Qur’anic passage
continues with this phrasing: ‘‘Kill them wherever you find them. Drive them
out of places from which they drove you ... Fight against them until idolatry
is no more and Allah’s religion reigns supreme’’ (sura al-baqara 2:190–2). Is
this a contradiction? The Qur’anic term for fighting is here qital, not jihad.
The Qur’an prescribes fighting for the spread of Islam: ‘‘Fighting is
obligatory on you, much as you dislike it’’ (sura al-baqara 2:216). The qital of
Muslims against unbelievers is also a religious obligation: ‘‘Fight for the
cause of Allah ... how could you not fight for the cause of Allah? ... True
believers fight for the cause of Allah, but the infidels fight for idols’’
(sura al-nisa 4:74–6). It follows that qital is the more concrete implementation
of jihad. In the logic of the Qur’an, there is no contradiction between
condemning the idwan/aggression of unbelievers and prescribing jihad in the
form of qital as a religious duty/farida on Muslims. In this context, it seems
to be justified to interpret idwan as unjust war, whereas qital for Islam could
be seen as bellum iustum. This is, however, clearly a modern, not an authentic,
reading!
In addition to engaging in
multiple interpretations, it is also possible to refer to the Qur’an
selectively for supporting one’s own standpoint. These practices combined have
caused a loss of specificity of the meaning of jihad used by Muslims
themselves. Some Muslims allege that jihad is merely a self-exertion, while
contemporary jihadist groups legitimize their action against the West, carried
out as terrorist attacks, as jihad. Literal references to the Qur’an are made
in each case. The Islamic fundamentalist groups invoke the idea of jihad to
underpin their view of the fight ‘‘against crusaders and Jews’’ as a just war.
In the nineteenth century,
al-Afghani called for jihad against colonial powers.24 This violent
‘‘Islamic response to imperialism’’25 is, however, quite different
from the Sorel-like ‘‘action dire´cte’’26 of the contemporary
jihadists; they mostly lack intimate knowledge of Islamic sources and
politicize Islam to justify their atrocities of terror as jihad. Nevertheless,
this reference cannot be played down as merely instrumental, for the simple
reason that Islamists view themselves as true believers, and this is honest.
This new understanding of jihad and the related practice first occurred in
Egypt, then Lebanon, and also in the civil war in Sudan, not to forget
Afghanistan, Palestine and Iraq.27 Through respective
interpretations, the concept of jihad has been identified with the related
Islamic concept of ‘‘armed fighting/qital’’ and, moreover, a qital without
rules and with unlimited targets, i.e. an irregular war of terror, which is the
dominant case in our present. Those who continue to view jihad exclusively as
self-exertion help the jihadists to legitimate their action as divine terror,
as ‘‘terror in the mind of God.’’28 This is a formula coined by Mark
Juergensmeyer for conceptualizing religion-based terrorism, of which jihadism
is a major variety, but the phenomenon as such is not restricted to the world
of Islam.
In focusing on the scriptural references
to jihad while placing them in a historical context, one encounters again and
again Islam’s self-image as a mission of peace for all of humanity. In this
universal understanding, the da’wa/proselytization is justified as a
declaration of war on unbelievers. Therefore, the da’wa includes a call to
jihad. Literally, jihad means ‘‘to exert oneself.’’ In this pursuit, one can
involve either military or non-military efforts and means. However, jihad can
definitely become a war/qital against those who physically reject or oppose the
spread of Islam. Fighting against these people is considered in Islam to be
defensive, not aggressive, in the sense of removing the obstacles in the way of
the spread of Islamic faith. This is the doctrine in history. In the present,
jihad has predominantly become a jihadism. It is not only terrorism, but also
an expression of a religious imperialism of the ‘‘Wahhabi International,’’ as
shown in the work of Stephen Schwarz.
Again going back to history, the
reader is reminded that the Meccan years of Islamic revelation (610–22) can be
indicated as referring to the fact that the Meccan parts of the Qur’an are
basically spiritual and contain no reference to violence as a use of force. For
instance, in the Meccan sura alkafirun/the unbelievers of the Qur’an, the
supporters of the new religion are asked to respond to their contestants by
advocating their faith in this manner: ‘‘You have your religion, and I have
mine’’ (sura al-kafirun 109:6). In another Meccan verse, the Qur’an simply
demands from the believers that they will not obey unbelievers, and that they
will refrain from attacking them. Qur’anic verses from this Meccan period use
the term jihad to describe efforts to convert unbelievers peacefully, i.e. not
in connection with any qital/fighting. To be sure, there is no mention of qital
in the Meccan Qur’an. By then, Muslims were, in fact, a tiny powerless minority
not yet able to wage wars. The verse ‘‘Do not yield to the unbelievers and use
the Qur’an for your jihad/effort to carry through against them’’ (sura al-furqan
25:52) clearly illustrates this mindset of a persuasive rather than a military
jihad: In the Meccan formative years of Islam, the foremost undertaking the
Qur’an requires from the believers is to engage in presenting the argument of
faith. Again, this is history. After the death of the Prophet, Muslim rulers
engaged in violent global conquests (see notes 4 and 5), not in a discourse of
persuasion and argumentation. The futuhat-wars in Asia, North Africa and Europe
were, like any war, an act of violence, albeit within prescribed rules. In
contrast, contemporary global jihad is a war without rules: it is an irregular
war and therefore a variety of terrorism.
With the gradual move from Meccan to Medinan times in early
Islam comes the emergence of new precepts in which jihad assumes the shape of
global qital/fighting. The futuhat-wars, as an Islamic expansion, should not
distract from the existing ethical justification of war. The Qur’an provisions:
‘‘You shall not kill – for that is forbidden – except for a just cause’’ (sura alan’am
6:151). This verse might tempt the scholar to read this Qur’anic expression in
a modern way and to see in it – as earlier discussed – a concept of just war.
Even though this procedure, as already noted, is not quite accurate – since the
distinction between just and unjust war is a Western view alien to Islam – it
is legitimate to engage in a modern interpretation. There is also a need to
outline the other distinction: The ‘‘just cause’’ (Qur’an) of killing is only
permissible along rules prescribed by the Qur’an. Therefore, it is incumbent
upon us to distinguish between allowed ‘‘killing’’ during war waged on ethical
grounds and the unethical slaughtering of ‘‘infidels’’ by the jihadists in acts
of terrorism. In Iraq – and earlier in Algeria – jihadists were primarily
killing fellow Muslims, accusing them of collaboration with the ‘‘infidels.’’
These are crimes committed in the name of jihad. The perpetrators in Algeria,
Chechenya and Iraq believe they are waging an Islamic jihad and view themselves
as jihadists. For a sociologist of religion, faith is not a text but rather a fait
social (Emile Durkheim). The confusion of justice and terrorism is a ‘‘social
fact’’ today. If one views jihadists as criminals one denies one self an
understanding of the image these Islamists have of the self.
The conduct of jihad as qital is a war with rules, in contrast to the
jihadism of irregular war
In covering Islam,
Western journalists share with jihadists the obsession with jihad. In putting
aside this disturbing observation, it is a historical fact that Muslims never
waged jihad as an end in itself; they employed it as an instrument in the
pursuit of da’wa/proselytization for mapping the world into dar al-Islam. In
addition to this end, traditional jihad prescribes rules for the conduct of
this kind of war and puts moral constraints on military warfare in the fight
against non-Muslims. As in other traditions of waging war, in Islam two
categories of restrictions can be distinguished: restrictions on weapons as
well as on methods of war, and restrictions on permissible targets. Having done
justice to the doctrine of jihad, the historical truth obliges us to add that,
despite the rules, in extreme situations it is allowed by Islamic law/shari’a
to practice the precept that ‘‘necessity overrides the forbidden/al-darura
tubih al-mahzurat.’’ In short, this precept allows moral constraints to be
overridden and to be put aside in emergencies. It is true that the Islamic
criteria for determining whether an emergency exists are vague; however, this
is not to the extent of putting the jihad-doctrine aside altogether and making
out of jihad a jihadist terrorism in the understanding of a war without rules,
as in the case of political Islam of our time.
In apologetic Islamic writings we
often read that jihad-wars were not violent. This is presumptuous, because
Islamic jihad-wars were violent. In history, non-violent warfare does not
exist. Despite the high ethical standards imposed by the classical doctrine,
Islamic jihad-wars were also related to blood-letting. The distinction between
the normative and the historical level in the study of jihad reveals many
self-deceptions most Muslims continue to believe in, and are still at work in,
the view that jihadism is a resurgence against US globalism.
It is true that the Islamic
doctrine regarding the conduct of war was developed in an age in which the
destructive weapons of industrial warfare were not yet available, and therefore
the Qur’anic doctrine on the conduct of war does not take this into account. It
is also shaped by pre-Islamic tribal notions of honor. The Qur’an asks
believers to honor their promises and agreements: ‘‘Keep faith with Allah, when
you make a covenant ... Do not break your oaths’’ (sura al-nahl 16:19). And:
‘‘Those who keep faith with Allah do not break their pledge’’ (sura al-ra’d 13:19).
It also prescribes that the enemy is to be notified before an attack. Surprise
attacks or acts that one addresses today as terrorism are therefore prohibited
by the Qur’an. These are binding rules for the conduct of jihad-war. In this
understanding, the contemporary global jihad waged by the jihadists as an
irregular war is not in line with the code of honor prescribed by classical
jihad, as ruled in the Qur’an. A war without rules and ambush fighting are not
permissible according to the classic jihad-doctrine. Ghadr – that is, deceptive
fighting – is unlawful in the teaching of the Qur’an.
In classical jihad there also
exists another category of restrictions, i.e. permissible targets of war. Here,
the Qur’anic doctrine is in line with the pre-Islamic norm of ‘‘man’s boldness/shahma’’
in strictly prohibiting the targeting of civilians, in particular children,
women and the elderly. This prohibition is consistent with the pre-Islamic
tribal belief that it is not a sign of honor for a man to demonstrate his power
to someone who is weaker. Therefore, the precept follows that prisoners have to
be fairly treated (sura al-insan 76:8–9). And because the goal of war waged
against unbelievers is not to kill them but to compel them to submit to Islam,
one finds among the rules of war the precept to honor life and the banning of
plundering as well as destruction. All of the jihadist actions of al-Qaeda
worldwide, as well as the so-called jihad of the Zarqawi group in Iraq, are
pure violations of the classical jihad-doctrine.
Having outlined how the Qur’an
determines jihad as governed by strict rules of conduct and by limiting
targets, the question arises: Why, then, have 11 September and all the ensuing
assaults been legitimized as an act of jihad violating the outlined rules and
the indicated restrictions? The answer is simple: At issue is a new
understanding of jihad, a kind of neo-jihad or, better, jihadism/jihadiyya. As
argued earlier, the origin of the new concept goes back to the movement of the
Muslim Brothers and to its foundation by Hasan al-Banna in 1928. There existed
another earlier reference to jihad in Islamic history. It was made when
al-Afghani in the nineteenth century called for an anti-colonial jihad. That
jihad was, however, a real defensive war against colonial rule, not terrorism.
Afghani and al-Banna do not belong to the same school of thought; there are
extreme differences. An equation would only contribute to legitimating the
terror of 9/11. Even though the irregular war of jihadism is not in line with
the Islamic conduct of jihad, it would be wrong to deny that the jihadists are
Muslims acting in this belief. Truly, jiihadists are not scriptural scholars,
but men acting in the belief of ‘‘terror in the mind of God.’’
The outlined historical development of the Islamic doctrine
of jihad, legitimating Islamic expansion and the related conquests for one
millennium between the seventh and the seventeenth centuries as well as
contemporary jihadism, has to be placed in the Islamic decline which began in
Vienna back in 1683. It was the beginning of the story of one defeat after
another in a series of wars. Islamic armies were not in a position to hold
their own against their technologically superior enemies in a time described by
Anthony Giddens as an age of ‘‘industrialization of warfare.’’29 In
this asymmetrical situation, jihadism, a war without rules, becomes the weapon
of the weak against technologically superior foes.
The other option: Islamic conformism as an attempt to pacify jihad in
order to adjust to Islamic weakness
Prior to the
development of jihad to jihadism, Muslim ulema/scribes engaged in conformist
thinking in the nineteenth century to adjust to the new situation. The Islamic
Moroccan scholar Ahmed bin Khalid al-Nasiri (1835–97) was a pioneer of this,
and his thought was followed in the late twentieth century by several sheykhs
of al-Azhar. This kind of conformism seeks, in an altered world, to perpetuate
the traditional religious doctrine of jihad, i.e. to reinterpret it under the
changed conditions but definitely not to rethink it or to speak of abandoning it
altogether, as this book suggests. The new effort focused on absolving the
Islamic rulers from the obligation of conducting jihad as a war of expansion
for the spread of Islam.
In the following, I shall
illustrate this conformism through the example of the nineteenth-century
Moroccan Islamic thought of al-Nasiri. To understand this thought, it is useful
to have some information about the historical situation. Unlike most Islamic
countries, Morocco has a continued centuries-old tradition of statehood. It also
enjoyed independence for more than three centuries prior to its colonization
and it was not subjected to Ottoman rule. Moroccan dynastic history is state
history, and in this capacity Morocco was the only Arab country the Turks had
failed to subdue to their empire. Political rule in Morocco was legitimized by
Sunni Islam in the sultanate, just as Ottoman rule was legitimized by Sunni
Islam in the caliphate. Most of the nineteenth-century Muslim thinkers were in
a general situation of uncertainty caused by the ongoing decline of the
jihad-project in the context of a changing global balance of power to the
benefit of the technologically superior West. In considering the change, the
Moroccan ulema were more realistic in their reasoning and were the first to
unfold a conformism which would put them in a position where they were able to
come to terms with the new reality. In this situation, Ahmed bin Khalid
alNasiri was the first Muslim alim/scribe of his age to honestly acknowledge
the lack of unity in the Islamic community/umma, as well as Islam’s weakness in
the face of its rival powers. The conclusion of the Islamic Moroccan
conformists was to admit the umma’s inability to pursue jihad for the expansion
of the Islamicate. However, their conformism never went as far as abandoning
the concept of Islamic superiority. The Islamic scribe al-Nasiri restricted his
thinking to legitimizing the politics of his Moroccan sultan, Hassan I, who was
no longer in a position to fulfill the obligation to jihad as expansion. The
issue therefore was not to abandon the concept, but merely to dispense with the
duty of waging war against unbelievers in a historical situation of weakness.
This is the nature of Islamic conformism, exemplified in the thinking of
al-Nasiri, that remains to date the typical pattern among Muslim statesmen and
their advisers, many of whom do not even know of al-Nasiri. This pattern is
characterized by pragmatic submission to international standards of law and
order among states, and by the acceptance of peaceful relations with
non-Islamic countries; it is not a commitment of heart in the sense of
accepting the substance within a context of rule of (un-Islamic) law, but is
rather an adjustment. The compliance with modern international law, which
includes law of war, takes place without submitting to the ‘‘esprit de loi’’ in
Montesquieu’s sense. In short, the principle of Islamic ghalab/superiority has
never been abandoned. This is a real Islamic problem that hampers an embracing
of a real pluralism. Islamic conformism to diversity is not an acceptance of a
real pluralism. Yet, this pattern of conformism determines Islamic thinking.
The belief in the moral superiority of Islam and the
validity of its law over non-Muslims is to be placed in the dichotomy related
to separating the world into Islamic and non-Islamic realms. It is maintained
by al-Nasiri, who constantly refers to the ‘‘abode of Islam/dar al-Islam,’’
even though he has only his own country, Morocco, in mind.30 At
present, this Islamic territoriality is formally united in the Organization of
the Islamic Conference (OIC), the only one in our time based on religion. The
Organization has refused to condemn contemporary jihad – such as the jihad of
Hamas – as terrorism, even though this practice does not comply with the
outlined Islamic conduct of jihad-war. The call of Malayan Prime Minister
Badawi, cited in the preface, remains an exception in our age in which the
world of Islam is moving from Islamic conformism back to jihad. The Islamist
movements, being at present the major political opposition, do not provide any
solution to this predicament. Islamic conformism as represented by the Islamic
establishment of scribes/ulema still exists. The ulema continue to argue on
twofold grounds, one scriptural, the other expediential. Along these lines, the
already cited al-Nasiri selectively and repeatedly refers to the Qur’anic
verse, ‘‘if they incline to peace then make peace with them’’ (sura al-anfal 8:61).
In so doing, he recommends on a normative basis to his sultan that he should
establish peace between his state, Morocco, and Europe. The expediential
argument of al-Nasiri pertains to the conditions of the Islamic community/umma:
No one today can overlook the power and the
superiority of Christians. Muslims ... are in a condition of weakness and
disintegration ... Given these circumstances, how can we maintain the opinion
and the politics that the weak should confront the strong? How could the
unarmed fight against the heavily armed power?31
A close reading of this statement shows that
the obligation to jihad is suspended through darura/necessity, but not
abandoned. In his reasoning alNasiri maintains that Islam is equally a
‘‘shari’a of war’’ and a ‘‘shari’a of peace.’’ He argues that the Qur’anic
verse, ‘‘if they incline to peace then make peace with them,’’ rests on the
notion of Islamic interest/al-maslaha. Under contemporary conditions, in
al-Nasiri’s view, the interest of Islam forbids Muslims to wage war against
unbelievers, because they are not in a position to win it. As al-Nasiri states:
The matter depends in the main on the Imam
who is in a position to foresee the interest of Islam and its people with
regard to war and peace. There is no obligation that Muslims must fight forever
or accept peace forever ... The authority that cannot be contested by anyone is
the ruling of the Sultan Hassan I ... whom we trust, because Allah has assigned
him to run our affairs and to fix our destiny; Allah authorized him to decide
for us.32
The ruler obliged
to jihad has the right to determine the Islamic interest/ maslaha. The
conformist shari’a-related interpretation of maslaha is strongly reminiscent of
the Western IR-realist school’s idea of the ‘‘national interest’’ of the
nation-state, even though phrased in divine language. It reflects the view of a
then leading alim/scribe on matters of war and peace, voicing Islamic
conformism as a response to the challenge of a changed world.
Even in Islamic conformism the
ethics of peace is implicitly determined by the view that non-Muslims are
enemies with whom Muslims can, at best, negotiate a truce/hudna. The belief
that lasting peace with non-Muslims is not possible persists to date. Islamic
conformism does not make a reasonable effort at placing Islam in a pluralistic,
secular international society, it simply adjusts Islamic views to a changing
environment, although without rethinking Islam or ever revising the Islamic
concept of jihad or of dhimmitude. Thus, the idea of democratic peace remains
alien to the Islamic ulema, because they insist on Islamic dominance/taghallub.
Seen from the intellectual frame of reference of this book, this is a core
issue of Islam’s predicament with modernity. In narrowing the scope from the
world at large to Europe as a continent for Islamic migration, we face similar
problems. The fact that the Muslims, not the others, are the minority does not
alter the worldview. It is not explicit: at issue is a transition. In the
future, Muslims believe be the majority, and in this spirit no rethinking takes
place.
The development from colonial rule
to the creation of sovereign states in the world of Islam33 brought
conditions leading to a need for a new variety of Sunni Islamic conformism. It
was provided by the Islamic establishment, as reflected in the scholarship at
the al-Azhar University. The new variety continues the tradition of Islamic
conformism in reinterpreting the Islamic notion of jihad, this time, however,
to discourage the use of force: At issue is an effort at pacification of jihad.
This development as a pacification of jihad has never led to questioning the
concept of jihad itself, nor to abandoning the believed dichotomy existing
between the dar al-Islam and the dar al-harb. This new thinking can be found in
the authoritative textbooks of alAzhar which are characterized both by the
selective use of religious scripture and by an arbitrary interpretation of it.
These are the confines of Islamic conformism even when it aims at pacifying
jihad.
In the most authoritative textbook of this school of
thought, the then head of al-Azhar, sheykh Mahmud Shaltut, reasserts the
universal claim that Islam is a religion for all humankind, but nevertheless
contends – contradicting himself – that Islam is open to pluralism.34 Shaltut
quotes the Qur’anic verse, ‘‘we have created you as peoples and tribes to make
you know one another’’ (sura al-hujrat 49:13), that acknowledged diversity in
supporting the claim for a pluralistic approach to interpreting the scripture.
Yet, the diversity in existing realities cannot be equated with pluralism as a
discourse. It is fine that Shaltut rejected any imposition of Islamic belief
again by quoting the Qur’an: ‘‘Had Allah wanted, all people of the earth would
have believed in Him, would you then dare force faith upon them?’’ (sura Jonah 10:99).
The conclusion that war is not a proper instrument for pursuing the call to
Islam/da’wa is new. Shaltut states that ‘‘war is an immoral situation,’’35
and Muslims must adjust the da’wa to the need of living in peace with
non-Muslims. Shaltut takes pride in the fact that centuries ago Islam laid the
foundations for a peaceful order of relations among peoples, whereas
the states of the present [that is,
Western; B.T.] civilization deceive the people with the so-called public
international law ... Look at the human massacres which these people commit all
over the world while they talk about peace and human rights!36
Shaltut pleads for
peaceful coexistence and goes to the furthest extent possible in stretching the
opening for an Islamic conformism, but he does not go beyond it. The intention
of putting aside violence is, however, not accompanied by a mechanism for
revising the concept of jihad. Today, the return to jihad is determined by a variety
of reasons: one of them is certainly the failure of the Islamic ulema-establishment
to provide the theological grounds for historicizing jihad and consequently
abandoning it as a legitimation of violence from Islamic thought.
Among the valuable pronouncements
of the religious Sunni establishment is the work of a later sheykh of al-Azhar,
Jadul-haq Ali Jadulhaq, composed in a two-volume textbook, which is a most
powerful work.37 It includes a more significant conformist
reinterpretation of the concept of jihad. Also, there is no mention of states:
At issue is the Islamic community/umma as a whole on the one hand and the rest
of the world on the other, thus the division of the world into Islamic and
non-Islamic continues to prevail. The Islamist paradigm of world affairs is
charged with contradictions: on the one hand the Islamists do not acknowledge
the international system as a system of states, while on the other they call
for an Islamic state. In a chapter on jihad in the first volume of the quoted al-Azhar
text, Jadulhaq emphasizes that jihad in itself does not mean war. If we want to
talk about jihad as a war, he argues, we would have to add ‘‘armed’’ and speak
of ‘‘aljihad al-musallah,’’ to distinguish between this kind of armed jihad and
the everyday ‘‘Jihad against ignorance, jihad against poverty, jihad against
illness and disease ... The search for knowledge is the highest level of
jihad’’ (vol. 1, p. 277).
Having made this distinction, the al-Azhar textbook
downgrades the importance of ‘‘armed jihad’’ in arguing that the da’wa can be
pursued without qital/physical fighting:
In earlier ages
the sword was necessary for securing the path of the da’wa. In our age,
however, the sword has lost its importance, although the resort to it is still
important for the case of defense against those who wish to do evil to Islam
and its people. However, for the dissemination of the da’wa there are now a
variety of ways ... Those who focus on arms in our times are preoccupied with
weak instruments.
(vol. 1, pp. 278–9)
The al-Azhar
sheykh Jadulhaq dissociates the da’wa from violent proselytization as an
imposition of Islam on others: ‘‘The da’wa is an offer to join in, not an imposition
... Belief is not for imposition with force’’ (vol. 1, p. 281). To support
this, earlier Meccan spiritual verses are repeatedly quoted in an effort to
downgrade the notion of qital as armed jihad: ‘‘Islam was not disseminated with
the power of the sword. The qital (fighting) was an exception only for securing
and also for the defense of the da’wa (call) to Islam’’ (vol. 2, p. 268).
Despite this most significant reinterpretation the al-Azhar textbook insists on
the uncompromising traditional claim of Islam to universality, i.e. as a
mission for all of humanity (vol. 1, p. 280), in quoting the Qur’an: ‘‘We have
sent you forth as a blessing to mankind’’ (sura al-anbiya 21:107). Instead of
jihad carried out as qital for the spread of Islam, this sheykh of al-Azhar
calls on Muslims in the modern age of communication to use the networks of this
medium to avoid armed conflict for the pursuit of the da’wa without giving up
the worldview that humanity should adopt Islam.
The outlined effort at an appeasement of jihad is combined
with an encouraging abandonment of violent proselytization; however, it fails
to lay grounds for perpetual democratic peace between Muslims and nonMuslims.
According to al-Qurtubi’s classical commentary of the Qur’an, quoted by Jadulhaq
(vol. 2, p. 371), treaties creating an armistice/hudna between Muslims and
non-Muslims can be valid for a period of no more than ten years, but never
forever. If the Muslims are powerful, they may not hold an armistice for more
than one year; if they are militarily weak, a truce can be extended up to ten
years. There is silence on what occurs after a time of limited peace. It is
viewed as heretical to revise the classical doctrine of permanent jihad. Even
in this al-Azhar handbook we see no desire to thoroughly rethink the
jihad-doctrine in the light of changed international circumstances. The result
is conformity to or acquiescence in the new international system, but no effort
is made at altering the classical categories standing in contrast to international
legal and ethical standards. Scriptural Islam again proves an obstacle in the
way of Muslims coming to terms with modernity and abandoning global jihad for
embracing democratic peace. Given the conformism on the surface, the
pacification of jihad by al-Azhar did not last long. The contemporary jihadist
movements (see note 27) had their head-start in Cairo, the seat of al-Azhar.
Today, they also exist in Europe. The challenge is tremendous, and not least
for Muslims: in the deceptive rhetoric, jihad is only peaceful self-exertion,
and if it turns violent, then this is only for defense.
The road to jihadism: al-Banna and Qutb were no Islamic revivalists,
but Islamist precursors of the ‘‘Islamic world revolution’’
In contrast to Islamic conformism as a way
of accommodation, the reinvention of jihad as irregular war indicates a return
to the Islamic claim of supremacy. The failure of the al-Azhar-ulema, and of
the Islamic establishment in general, to subject the scripture to reasoning in
the light of changed conditions restricted their conformism to an adjustment
that was merely superficial. This Islamic tradition is challenged by the
representatives of contemporary political Islam in an inclination to reverse
the procedure: A true Muslim has to measure reality by the text itself. Unlike
the Islamic establishment, these Islamists read the scripture selectively in a
new mindset. The roots of political Islam can be traced back to the year 1928,
when the movement of the Muslim Brotherhood/al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun was created
in Egypt.38 The leading authorities of the political thought of this
Islamism are the founder Hasan al-Banna and later on Sayyid Qutb; these
ideologues continue to date to provide the prominent intellectual guidelines of
political Islam.39 In addition, the works of both are the political
pillars of jihadism.
In his Risalat al-jihad al-Banna
laid the grounds for the reinterpretation of jihad as irregular war, not for an
Islamic revival as his grandson Ramadan suggests. The quoted essay by al-Banna
is the major source for the orientation of contemporary jihadism.40 In
the mentioned treatise of al-Banna on jihad, he makes literal use of the Qur’an
and the hadith to support conclusions opposed to those made by authorities of
Islamic conformism. In contrast to pacifying jihad, al-Banna argues first that
jihad is an ‘‘obligation [farida] on every Muslim’’ (p. 275), adding that jihad
and qital can indiscriminately and interchangeably be referred to in the
meaning of ‘‘use of force.’’ The targets are existing regimes in the world of
Islam as well as unbelievers. In the Islamic non-state-centered tradition,
contemporary jihadists view ‘‘war’’ to mean fighting, basically between
non-state-related parties of believers and unbelievers, no matter how they are organized
politically. This new approach reflects an Islamist thinking adopted by
al-Qaeda. The distinctions between regular war, i.e. jihad subjected to rules,
and other patterns of violence are fully blurred in jihadism as a doctrine of
irregular war. The idea that the basic conflict is between ‘‘iman/the faith of
Islam’’ and ‘‘al-kufr al-alami/international unbelief’’ was put forward by
Osama bin Laden in a speech ahead of the 2001 Afghanistan war in retaliation
for the al-Qaeda 9/11 assault. As argued earlier, this thinking is new, and it
transforms classical jihad into the contemporary idea and practice of jihadism.
The precursor of the new
interpretation of jihad, al-Banna, begins the treatise referred to above by
quoting from the Qur’an, from the sura al-baqara: ‘‘Fighting is obligatory on
you, much as you dislike it’’ (2:216). He continues with two other quotations
from the Qur’an: ‘‘If you should die or be slain in the cause for Allah, his
mercy will surely be better than all the riches you amass’’ (sura al-Imran 3:158).
And: ‘‘We shall richly reward them whether they die or conquer’’ (sura al-nisa 4:74).
These and similar quotations are selectively chosen by al-Banna for a
glorification of fighting and death in fi sabil Allah/the path of Allah. The
close resemblance to Georges Sorel’s fascist glorification of violence (see
note 26) in his Re´flexions sur la violence is most obvious. In their
context, the cited verses do not glorify violence.
In rejecting al-Banna in Islamic
terms one can cite the tolerant Qur’anic verse from the sura al-kafirun: ‘‘You
have your religion and I have mine’’ (109:6). Instead of honoring this Qur’anic
provision, al-Banna extended the obligation to a qital against unbelievers to a
fight against the ‘‘people of the book/ahl al-kitab’’ – i.e. Christians and
Jews – in quoting the Qur’anic verse: ‘‘Fight against these who neither believe
in Allah nor in the Last Day ... until they pay tribute out of hand and are
utterly subdued’’ (sura al-tauba 9:29). As al-Banna concludes, Allah ‘‘has
obliged Muslims to fight ... to secure the pursuit of al-da’wa and thus of
peace, while disseminating the great mission which God entrusted to them’’ (p.
287). The reader of the jihad-essay by al-Banna misses all of the Qur’anic
verses included in the work of al-Nasiri quoted above. Nor does one find in
al-Banna’s essay any reference to the Islamic call for tolerance and peace, for
he is preoccupied with the armed jihad/jihad al-musallah, to refer to the cited
al-Azhar formula. In contrast to al-Azhar, al-Banna does not downgrade the
status of fighting/qital for the benefit of upgrading the nonmilitary jihad
against such evils as ignorance, poverty and disease. In fact, he does exactly
the opposite in drawing a distinction between ‘‘low jihad/ al-jihad al-asghar’’
and ‘‘high jihad/al-jihad al-akbar,’’ ridiculing those Muslims who consider the
physical fighting of qital to be a ‘‘low jihad.’’ Any downgrading of qital to a
‘‘low jihad’’ is a misunderstanding of the duty of qital, al-Banna believes,
and for him the true essence of the jihad is this: ‘‘The great reward for
Muslims is to fight, to kill or to be killed for the sake of Allah’’ (p. 289).
This is the spirit of jihadist Islam, which provides the religious foundations
for terrorism ‘‘in the mind of God’’ put forward in alBanna’s treatise. Those
who are at pains to rehabilitate al-Banna by presenting him as an anti-colonial
Muslim thinker – as does his grandson Tariq Ramadan – overlook this dimension
of his thinking, documented in the cited quotes from his major essay on jihad.
Instead of drawing a wrong line –
as I believe – from al-Afghani to alBanna, I would rather establish
commonalities with Georges Sorel (see note 26), based on those thoughts from
al-Banna permeated with a rhetoric glorifying violence and death. The
clandestine work of the Muslim Brothers between the 1930s and 1960s included
killing and assassinations. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, more
than half a century after the slaying of al-Banna (1949), jihadism in the
understanding of irregular war spilled over the world of Islam and has become a
central issue in international affairs. It looks as if the dreams of the
perpetrator are coming true.
When jihadist Islamists today
preach to Westerners, boasting: ‘‘You love life and we love death,’’ in
justification of the ‘‘heroic deeds’’ of suicide bombers, one is reminded of
al-Banna’s statement in his quoted jihad-essay reflecting this mindset: ‘‘Allah
rewards the umma which masters the art of death and which acknowledges the
necessity of death in dignity ... Be sure, death is inevitable ... If you do
this for the path of Allah, you will be rewarded’’ (p. 291).
Being a Muslim myself and a
student of Islam, I fail to find this glorification of death and terror in the
Qur’an or in the hadith of the Prophet. Islam honors life, and it is no
contradiction to be a Muslim and to prefer life to death. The quoted death
poetry of al-Banna reflects neither the mindset of Sufi Muslims nor that of
those bright Muslims who established Islamic rationalism.
Despite their rhetoric of death
and glorification of violence, jihadist Islamists argue that their jihad is a
message of peace. This creed can be traced back to al-Banna, who waged jihad
for Islamic peace. However, Islamic peace is viewed on the basis that peace is
only possible under the banner of Islam. Monotheistic non-Muslims should be
permitted to live only as members of protected minorities/dhimmi under Islamic
rule.41 In all other cases, war against unbelievers is a religious
duty for Muslims. This is not new. What is new, however, is the definition of
jihad-war which ends in justifying terrorism. This is also the spirit of Sayyid
Qutb, who has politically revived the dichotomous Islamic division of the world
into the abode of peace/dar al-Islam and the world of unbelievers/dar al-harb.
Qutb employs this dichotomy to establish the view that war against
‘‘unbelievers’’ is a religious duty for Muslims. Giving the old dichotomy a new
twist, he coins the expressions ‘‘the world of believers’’ and ‘‘the world of neo-jahiliyya’’
(jahiliyya is the Islamic term for the pre-Islamic age of ignorance). For Qutb,
modernity is nothing more than this new form of jahiliyya,42 a
setback for the world and also for Muslims attracted to its spell and
sympathetic to it.
Qutb claims that ‘‘the battle
lying ahead is one between the believers and their enemies ... Its substance is
the question kufr aw iman? (unbelief or belief?), jahiliyya aw Islam?
(ignorance or Islam?).’’43 The confrontation, then, is ‘‘between
Islam and the international society of ignorance’’44 – a
civilizational confrontation in which victory is reserved for Islam, as Qutb
believes. Qutb invented this ‘‘clash of civilizations’’ ahead of Huntington.
One finds these phrases copied almost word for word in many of the jihad
speeches of Osama bin Laden. The idea of the ‘‘clash of civilizations’’ is an
essential part of the Islamist repertoire.
The thoughts of jihadist political Islam are documented in a
great number of pamphlets industriously produced during the decades since 1970.
In substance, this literature rarely goes beyond quoting passages from al-Banna
and Qutb. When an Egyptian representative to the Madrid summit on safe
democracy and terrorism told the audience that ‘‘Qutb’s writings have no impact
today,’’ he was clearly lying to them, relying on European ignorance of the
issue. Contemporary Muslim fundamentalists often cite passages from his
writings, like the following:
The dynamic spread of Islam assumes the
form of jihad by the sword ... not as a defensive movement, as those Muslim
defeatists imagine, who subjugate themselves to the offensive pressure of
Western Orientalists ... Islam is meant for the entire globe.45
It is most
intriguing to see this polemic against Western Orientalists adopted in the West
itself as a discourse wrongly qualified as a critique of Orientalism: this is,
however, nothing other than reversing the arguments of Orientalism. This
mindset does disservice to Islamic and Middle Eastern studies in the West, and
it helps to distract Muslims from doing their homework by blaming the West for
their home-made ills. The three UNDP reports of 2002, 2003 and 2004 suggest
that the truth is otherwise. At issue here is jihad, neither ‘‘Orientalism’’
nor the development ills in the failed Arab-Islamic states. The pertinence of
the Orientalism debate to the pending issue in a war of ideas is its belittling
of the intellectual impact of jihadism, which is spreading like a virus through
Islamist and jihadist teaching as a means of indoctrinating frustrated young
Muslims in related schools. The writings by Qutb, and not those produced by the
conformists willing to accommodate, are taught in the Islamist madrasas. This
is becoming the basic religious training of the jihadists, once assembled in the
al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. The influence of Qutb is sweeping and can be
illustrated with reference to a vast literature on this topic. An example is
Muhammed Na’im Yasin’s 1990 book on jihad. The book establishes an
understanding of a global war between believers and unbelievers as a gradual
process in which, at the last stage, ‘‘regardless of an attack of the Muslim
lands by unbelievers, ... fighting of Muslims against them ought to take
place.’’46 Yasin then quotes the Qur’anic verse: ‘‘Fight against the
unbelievers in their entirety as they fight against you in your entirety’’
(sura al-tauba 9:36), commenting on the verse as follows: ‘‘The duty of jihad
in Islam results in the necessity of qital against everyone who neither agrees
to convert to Islam nor to submit himself to Islamic rule.’’47 This
jihadist Yasin then concludes that the ultimate ‘‘return to Allah cannot be
pursued through wishful thinking but only through the means of jihad’’ (ibid.).
According to another jihadist thinker, Colonel Ahmad
al-Mu’mini, an officer in the Jordanian army, this offensive view of jihad must
determine the military policies of all Islamic states.48 The book by
al-Mu’mini, first published in the Mashreq/Arab East, enjoys a wide circulation
and was also reprinted in the Arab West in the Algerian city of Constantine and
used by the jihadists. I obtained it in 1992 while doing fieldwork in Algeria.
This jihadism cannot be fought by armies, but rather by an alternative Islamic
education favorable to democracy and pluralism. In a valuable recent study by
the Pakistani diplomat Husain Haqqani, published by the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace in 2005, the role of the madrasas spreading shari’a49 and
jihad is rightly presented as a great concern, both to the people of Islamic
civilization and to the international community.
Conclusions:
Whither the world of Islam? What future for jihad?
World politics is
the overall context of the return of jihad in the new guise of jihadism
reflected both in the world of Islam and in Europe. The phenomenon is
incorporated into political Islam (Islamism), being an Islamic variety of the
religionization of politics, the politicization of religion and the
culturalization of conflict in the post-bipolar international environment.
This development
creates a challenge to Muslims themselves. They engage in pragmatic adjustments
but stop short of rethinking the doctrine of jihad itself. It is true that the
states of the world of Islam comply with the rules of international law by
virtue of their membership in the United Nations and their accepting of its
charter. But while they are committed to international law that prohibits war,
their educational system teaches Islamic law/shari’a that prescribes jihad-war
against unbelievers. Does their recognition of international law really
indicate a revision of Islamic ethics of war and peace? Or does this
recognition indicate no more than outward and temporal conformity as hudna complied
with by the Islamic civilization in its present weakness within the
international system?
To be sure, shari’a can be viewed
as morality, not as a legal system or international law. There is a need for a
decoupling of Islamic thinking from jihad, and from shari’a as well. In fact,
the Muslim reformer Ashmawi asks us to consider that the term ‘‘shari’a’’
occurs only once in the Qur’an.50 Looking at shari’a as morality
would be an achievement in overcoming jihadism, with Muslims themselves doing
their homework to change prevailing cultural attitudes in a changed
international environment. This need also includes Muslims living in the
diaspora of Europe, who are exposed to the challenge of jihadism.
What are the roots of jihad and
jihadism? Many Western authors who write on concepts of war and peace in Islam
overlook the fact that there is no consistent theory of the territorial state
in Islam.51 In general, Islamic thinkers view war as a struggle not
between states but between Muslims as a community (umma) and the rest of the
world, inhabited by unbelievers (dar al-harb). In contrast to this tradition,
the French-educated Muslim legal scholar Najib al-Armanazi acknowledges that
the international order established on the grounds of the treaty of Westphalia
is based on relations among states and their mutual recognition of each other’s
sovereignty. This order is in contradiction to ‘‘the spirit that inflamed the
great Arab conquerors, namely to impose their power all over the world.’’52
But despite this tension, al-Armanazi argues, Muslims do in practice
recognize the sovereignty of non-Muslim states with which they conduct
relations on the basis of ‘‘the aman, customary law or the rule of honoring
agreements (ahd, ‘uhud)’’ (ibid., p. 226). Nevertheless, ‘‘for Muslims war is
the basic rule and peace with infidels is understood only as a temporary
armistice. Only if Muslims are weak vis-a`-vis their adversaries are they
entitled to reconciliation with their enemies’’ (ibid., p. 157). As al-Armanazi
continues, ‘‘for Muslim jurists peace only matters when it is in line with the maslaha
[interest] of
Muslims’’ (ibid., p. 163).
Given the provision of the Islamic
shari’a doctrine that in the relations between Muslims and non-Muslims peace is
only a temporary armistice and that jihad-war remains the rule until Islam
succeeds in mapping the entire globe, it becomes clear that the problem is not
restricted to contemporary jihadism. In short, not only for the jihadists but
also for traditional Islamic scribes/ulema, permanent world peace is only
possible under the rule of Islam, and only then could jihad subside. What can
be done to make Muslims abandon this thought and to embrace democratic
pluralism?
In view of the fact that the
culturally diverse Islamic umma makes up only 1.6 billions out of a humanity
comprising more than 6.5 billions one is inclined to ask: How could world peace
be established if the universality of Islamic law is claimed? An Islamic
shari’a order is certainly not acceptable for non-Muslims, nor for those
Muslims who embrace democracy and pluralism. Therefore, the contemporary drive
of political Islam to re-introduce the shari’a within a commitment to jihad
alienates Islamic civilization from the international law community and its
existing international order. The combined call for the shari’a and for jihad
is also a threat posed by Islamism to world peace.
In considering the failure of
Islamic conformism, Muslims need a ‘‘cultural accommodation’’53 that
includes a rethinking of Islamic tradition in a process of cultural change.
They are challenged to accept a more universal law for regulating war and peace
on secular grounds to replace the inherited Islamic doctrine. In Islam, the
will to such a ‘‘cultural accommodation’’ of the religious doctrine to the
changed social and historical realities presupposes the will to engage in
religious reforms. Therefore, the substance and the role of the religious
doctrine itself as the cultural underpinning of the Islamic ethics of war and
peace are at issue. If this statement is correct, then Elisabeth Mayer’s
conclusion that ‘‘Islamic and international legal traditions, long separated by
different perspectives, are now starting to converge in areas of common
concern’’54 is far too optimistic and – as wishful thinking – does
not convey existing realities. This is a nice way of saying in plain language
that Elisabeth Mayer is wrong in her views on Islamic law. The alleged
convergence is pragmatic and only limited to practical matters. In short, it
does not reflect more than a conformism and is definitely not the accommodation
to the new international environment necessary to a basic rethinking of
inherited conceptions of war and peace. The inherited Islamic perception of
non-Muslims either as dhimmi (Christians and Jews as protected minorities) or
as kafirun/unbelievers should be abandoned altogether and replaced by an
Islamic acceptance of democracy and pluralism for overcoming the Muslim
dichotomic worldview. In this book it is argued that the rise of political
Islam and its jihadism as related to the crisis of the nation-state in the
world of Islam are not a contribution to the needed change.
It is acknowledged that the issue is not merely cultural.
There is a Middle East conflict leading a delegitimation of the nation-state
throughout the world of Islam in an overall context.55 In fact,
there is no generally accepted concept of the state in Islam; the community of
believers/umma, not the state, has always been the focus of Islamic doctrine.
The idea of ‘‘the Islamic state’’ promoted by political Islam is a recent
addition. With a few exceptions, Islamic jurists do not deal with the notion of
the state/dawla. As the Moroccan scholar Abdullatif Husni writes in his study
of Islam and international relations, recent defenders of the classical Islamic
division of the world
confine themselves to quoting classical
Islamic jurists. In their writings we do not even find the term ‘‘state.’’ This
deliberate disregard indicates their intention to ignore the character of the
modern system of international relations. They refuse to acknowledge the
multiplicity of states which are sovereign and equal in maintaining the notions
of dar alIslam and dar al-harb.56
In the context of
the exposure of the world of Islam to the West, many adjustments to the modern
international system have been made, but none of these conformist efforts were
accompanied by a will to a cultural accommodation. Apart from a few individuals
(al-Jabri, al-Azm, Shahrur), one cannot find any rigorously critical rethinking
of Islamic tradition. Throughout this book I suggest a view of Islam’s
predicament with cultural modernity. The related crisis of development has
contributed to the evolution of jihad to jihadism. In the past, the ground for
jihad-war was always the envisioned dissemination of Islam throughout the
world. Truly, in their conduct of war, early Muslims were at pains to avoid
destruction and to deal in fairness with the weak. This is no longer the case
for the combatants of neo-jihad, who are waging an irregular war of terror.
Islamic civilization, despite its universal religious
mission of Islam, is today institutionally embedded into an international
system but without accepting its values. If this attitude is extended to the
diaspora of Islam in Europe, then great conflicts are ahead. There is only one
international system in the history of humankind which became global as it grew
from the expansion of the European model. As Charles Tilly puts it:
All of Europe was
to be divided into distinct and sovereign states whose boundaries were defined
by international agreement. Over the next three hundred years the Europeans and
their descendants managed to impose that state system on the entire world. The
recent wave of decolonization has almost completed the mapping of the globe into
that
system.57
In their
‘‘remaking politics,’’ contemporary jihadist Islamists envision undoing the
mapping of the world into a European system that also includes the world of
Islam itself and reviving the doctrine of war and peace. Their thought continues
to be scriptural and pre-modern58 and fails to take into account the
reality of changed conditions based on relations among sovereign states, and
not on the religion of the people living therein. However, their bid for a
return of history in a jihadist world revolution becomes a source of conflict.
The real world is not based on a division into dar al-Islam and dar al-harb, as
the Islamic shari’a law suggests and Islamists reinvent in their dichotomic
worldview.
The alternative to the outlined
conflict is democratic peace both for the world of Islam and for Europe’s Islam
diaspora. The present international crisis is also a crisis of Islam itself,59
and democratic pluralism is suggested as a solution for Islam’s relations
to non-Islamic civilizations. In the next chapter an embracing of democracy and
its related concepts of pluralism and peace are presented to the Islamic umma-civilization
as an alternative to the empty promises of jihadism.

2     Polity
and rule
The Islamic
quest for civil society and for democracy against Hakimiyyat Allah as the
Islamist system of totalitarian government
The French-Muslim contribution to end the
riots in the banlieues de l’Islam in France made the point clear that a coming
to terms of civil society in Europe with Islam is an essential joint task.
Globally, it is argued, there can be no democratic peace in the twenty-first
century without Muslim participation, given the fact that Muslims constitute
one quarter of humanity. In setting the focus on Europe, one can establish the
existence of an increasing Muslim population of 20 million in Europe in 2007,
doubling and even tripling in the foreseeable future. A positive Muslim
contribution to democracy globally and in Europe requires a rethinking of the
concept of expansionist jihad provisioned by the shari’a and its contemporary
development to a terrorist jihadism. In order to counter mere rhetorical
prodemocracy pronouncements, a rethinking of Islam aimed at supporting
religious-cultural reforms has to be placed on the agenda. To put Islam and
democracy in harmony, an Islamic cultural acceptance of the political culture
of democracy, as underpinned by a civil society, is the basic requirement.1
Is this feasible? Can Islamic
civilization deliver? Are Muslims who live in Europe willing to cooperate
towards this end? My response is positive, conditional on a Muslim honest will
to engage in this endeavor.
It is a fact that competition
exists between the idea of a civil society combined with the culture of
democracy and the concept of hakimiyyat Allah/God’s rule of the Islamic state
as constructed by Islamists. A debate on this competition should not be silenced
in the name of political correctness. Muslims living in Europe are challenged
when a co-religionist like S¸erif Mardin blatantly states that ‘‘civil
society does not translate into Islamic terms.’’2 In facing this
challenge I argue in Islamic terms for an acceptance of the culture of
democracy and of democratic peace. I do not engage in philological eyewash
through single-mindedly pointing at jihad as self-exertion and thus do not
share the belief in the fallacy of an ‘‘Islamic jihad for democracy’’ limited
to shura/consultation. I avoid distraction from the pending issues and clearly
state the bottom line: democracy is a political culture of civil society that
requires the establishment of a religious-cultural pluralism. In contrast, the
culture of political Islam is based on a proselytization for Islam on the
grounds of an envisioned Islamic order. Ambiguities are to be avoided.
Throughout this book, I look at religious beliefs in the
Durkheimian sense as a fait social, not as a text. Seen through these lenses,
one can be disillusioned and in the situation of discerning that in today’s
Arabic ‘‘jihadi’’ means terrorist, not a self-exerting pious Muslim. The terms
‘‘jihadi’’ and ‘‘mutatarif/extremist’’ – or even ‘‘irhabi/terrorist’’ – are
often used interchangeably in the Arab press. The core argument of Part I
states that a competition between the project of democratic peace and global
jihad is the closest to reality. This competition requires not only mediation,
but also the search by Muslims, both in the world of Islam and equally in
Europe, for a cultural acceptance of democracy based on an Islamiccultural
underpinning for facilitating a heartfelt commitment. To be sure, this
underpinning does not mean an Islamization of democracy, as some suggest. This
would be an additional fallacy.3 At issue is a rethinking of Islam4
and a venture into religious-cultural reforms aimed at putting Islamic
thought in harmony with democracy. This cultural change is to be viewed as a
democratization of Islam, which is something different from an Islamization of
democracy. The bottom line is that democracy as a notion of cultural modernity
has never existed in any religious tradition. Islam is no exception. Therefore,
I strongly dismiss the notion of the Christian roots of democracy,5 because
this disturbing argument is also used by Islamists, albeit for other reasons.
For in rejecting democracy they argue that democratization is a hidden agenda
for Christianization.6 Instead of this conspiracy-driven thinking, I
engage throughout this chapter in deliberations on the three levels of analysis
covered in this book: world politics, the world of Islam and finally Europe. A
differentiation between these levels of analysis is to be kept in mind even
though they are linked to one another. The strategies needed for each discrete
level are different. In world politics, one needs a joint Islamic–Western
response to the challenge of global jihad. In the world of Islam,
democratization is not only a pending issue, as shown in this chapter: it is
also the solution for the people of the Islamic civilization, as will be argued
in Chapter 7. In Europe, the Europeanization of Islam is the solution, an idea
which creates the focus of Part III.
The quest for an Islamic-civilizational underpinning for democracy and
democratic peace
Muslims favorable
to the cultural acceptance of democracy, and to democratic peace to be shared
by all humanity on cross-cultural grounds, are confronted with the competing
revival of the vision of an Islamic peace, once unfolded by Sayyid Qutb. In an
invention of tradition, the vision of an Islamist peace aims to remake the
world through global jihad. As Qutb phrases the issue, jihad is the ‘‘Islamic
world revolution’’ for re-establishing the rule of Islam, viewed as a prerequisite
for world peace. In the introduction to this book I dealt with this vision and
have shown clearly how much it stands in contrast to the Kantian concept of
democratic peace. Having stated this tension, I hasten to add that, being a
Muslim myself, I am at pains to mediate and therefore continue to dismiss the
confrontational style, be it of the rhetoric of an alleged ‘‘clash of
civilizations’’ or the misleading polarization ‘‘Islam vs democracy.’’ Both
Huntington and the Islamists have been arguing in favor of this clash. Instead,
I argue for an analysis-based pursuit of cross-cultural bridging.7 This
preference by the author is not only a personal one, but a rational choice. At
issue is the insight that Muslim societies need democracy for themselves and
democratic peace to live peacefully with others. World peace could never be
accomplished without the participation of the people of the Islamic
civilization, as put forward at the outset. After all, the international system
includes 57 Islamic states, organized in their own terms in the Organization of
the Islamic Conference (OIC) – as already stated, the only world organization
based on religious grounds.
In concrete terms, to achieve the
pursuit of democracy as a perspective for the Islamic civilization in the
twenty-first century requires an effort at making this order of life culturally
and politically acceptable to Muslims themselves. As argued, this can only be
accomplished through working out an Islamic-civilizational underpinning for the
introduction of democracy into the world of Islam that supplants existing
patriarchal rule,8 and also the mindset related to it. One cannot
reiterate enough that an imposition of democracy from outside would always be
doomed to failure. This insight is supported most notably by the experience of
the failed democratization of Iraq after the toppling of Saddam Hussein.
It is no contradiction to
simultaneously turn down the rhetoric of a clash of civilizations and state the
existence of conflict between democracy and the idea of a global jihad9 (jihadism)
for establishing an Islamic world order. The challenge of religious
fundamentalism is real as a threat, and political Islam is not an invention of
Western media ‘‘covering Islam’’ (Said). The existing world political challenge10
of Islamism is not about religion, but is an invention of tradition
transforming religious faith into a political ideology. At issue is also
Salafist-Wahhabi Islam mobilized to confront the secular authority structure of
the ‘‘Westphalian synthesis.’’11 It follows that the conflict is not
between Islam in general and the West as such,12 but rather between
competing value systems related to the identity politics of civilizations.
Based on this contention, this chapter aims to continue the earlier efforts to
establish harmony between Islam and democracy.13 The pursuit of this
project requires honesty, straightforwardness and scholarly integrity, so that
one can state with candor what this endeavor requires and recognize the real
obstacles standing in the way of making it feasible. Consequently, I do not
overlook or play down civilizational values-related differences, nor do I
essentialize any tensions, but rather I cope with the conflicts they engender.
This is done in an effort at an accommodation, wary of the risk of
essentialization which jeopardizes the entire endeavor and is therefore always
kept in mind.
Having stated the issue at hand, I now move on to addressing
the realities. At present, the most advanced understanding of a ‘‘civil Islam’’14
is not to be found in the Middle East, but rather in the Islamic
civilizational periphery of Indonesia. It is an Islam which subscribes to
creating a democratic and pluralistic polity, i.e. a real civil society. This
project also needs to include efforts at reforming the state by civilianizing
its structures. In this regard, I share the view of Robert Hefner that the
creation of
a public culture of democratic civility
will be impossible unless it can build on the solid ground of civil Islam ... civil
Islam rejects the mirage of the ‘‘Islamic’’ state, recognizing that this
formula for fusing religion and state authority ignores the lessons of Muslim
history itself ... Civil society and civic culture are required to make
democracy work ... a healthy civil society requires a civilianized state.15
The ensuing
arguments are based on these deliberations. In this regard, it is important
that we take a look at the ways Indonesian intellectuals view democracy in an
attempt at a cultural accommodation of this Western concept. At first, one
needs to ask whether these intellectuals recognize the fact that an Islamic
system of government based on the shari’a is in conflict with civil society and
democracy. The study of the Indonesian scholar Masykuri Abdillah16 on
this issue is highly interesting, but it is not informed by the major
assumption that the concept of democratic peace is the requirement for world
peace in the twenty-first century. In arguing that democracies do not wage wars
against one another, one needs to dismiss the concept of jihad as incorporated
into the idea of an Islamic state not organized along democratic principles. By
definition, a democracy is based on popular sovereignty17 and thus
in conflict with Qutb’s view that sovereignty is due only to Allah, i.e. not to
the people. It follows that any effort at establishing a variety of a civil
Islam automatically stands in conflict with a spreading of political Islam. The
prominent Indonesian Masykuri Abdillah evades all these issues. This is a
general problem in Islamic thought.
In his interesting book Responses
of Indonesian Muslim Intellectuals to the Concept of Democracy, Abdillah tells
us that Indonesian intellectuals overtly ‘‘accept the term democracy,’’ which
is fine. Now Abdillah adds that ‘‘their concept ... is not fully in line with the
liberals’ ‘concept’.’’ He points out the ‘‘differences ... concerning the idea
of popular sovereignty ... (because) real sovereignty, according to them, is
vested in God.’’18 This does not reflect an intellectual
contradiction, but rather a real predicament, a cultural one with modernity.
What to do? Muslims need to deal with this predicament properly. Abdillah
suggests the need to ‘‘differentiate between the absolute sovereignty of God
and the political sovereignty of a certain state,’’ but also maintains that one
must keep up with the shari’a ‘‘as the basic standard.’’ Does this mean that
the issue is to Islamize democracy or to democratize Islam? Can there be
something in between? Straightforwardness, not ambiguity, is needed for clear
answers.
In the search for solutions to
these major questions, there is no easy route in coming to grips with the
pending issues. An inquiry on the grounds of free reasoning is an essential
part of this endeavor. To outline and examine the concepts employed ensures a
clear understanding of the problem with no inclination to bypass hot issues.
First, we need to ask questions related to the substance of
democratic peace. Only after outlining this concept can we move forward and
discuss whether or not, and how, Muslims could embrace this modern notion,
seemingly so alien to their civilization but pivotal for the modern world. As
Bruce Russett states in a seminal work on this subject, the idea of democratic
peace rests on the vision of Immanuel Kant. The assumption is that:
democratically organized political systems
in general operate under restraints that make them more peaceful in their
relations with other democracies ... in the modern international system,
democracies are less likely to use lethal violence toward other democracies ...
the relationship of relative peace among democracies is importantly a result of
some features of democracy ... Exactly what those features are is a matter of
theoretical debate.19
Russett engages himself in such a debate and
also addresses ‘‘democratic norms and culture’’ (pp. 30–8), but he ends up
subscribing to democracy as a procedurally fair election, not as a political
culture. In so arguing, Russett is aware of the fact that
A Muslim fundamentalist movement might
achieve power in the name of democracy ... But, conceivably, such a regime
could have been both stable and somewhat democratic; i.e. while promoting
Islamic values of a majority it might have respected minority rights and
tolerated the expression of secular opposition under domestic and international
pressures. Such a government probably would not be seen as a major security
threat to nonfundamentalist neighboring regimes.20
This statement
displays the problem of established IR scholars, already addressed in the
introduction. This IR community discovers Islam as an issue area while
regrettably knowing very little about this subject. The assessment reveals not
only the lack of familiarity with the general Islamic concept of war and peace,
but also a lack of general knowledge about the concept of the Islamic state as
based on a totalizing understanding of Islamic shari’a law. In Islamic
tradition, minorities were viewed as dhimmi21 and this will continue
in an Islamic state. It follows that the concept of perpetual peace
diametrically contradicts the worldview of the dar al-Islam/ abode of Islam and
of its values.
This is not the place to lament
the gap between IR and Islamic studies earlier addressed in the introduction.
In focusing on the issues, suffice it to state that Russett reveals almost no
knowledge about religious fundamentalism. In overlooking all of the findings of
the Fundamentalism Project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he
bypasses established research. In volume 3 of that project, the political
visions of fundamentalists concerning order are dealt with under the titles
‘‘Remaking Politics’’ and ‘‘Remaking the World through Militancy.’’22 The
problem is that, on the one hand, general theorists in the IR discipline rarely
read the works of area studies while, on the other hand, students of Islam
rarely care about IR theory, and may even resent it. It is a welcome exception
when, in contrast to this tradition, a knowledgeable scholar like Mark
Juergensmeyer closely watches the emergence of a ‘‘divine order’’ directed
against the secular state leading to a ‘‘new Cold War.’’23 Had
Russett and other IR scholars read Sayyid Qutb’s booklet World Peace and Islam (see
note 9), these people would have learned that in political Islam there is a
different understanding of peace and order. As shown in the introduction and in
Chapter 1, this ‘‘Islamic peace’’ would be accomplished through a global jihad
for establishing the divine order of hakimiyyat Allah. Therefore, the
assumption regarding the possible incorporation of Islamic fundamentalism into
a democratic peace is flawed to the extent that it can be assessed as an
utterly wrong view, based on ignorance.
In the search for a cultural
underpinning for democracy in Islamic civilization, one finds that the Salafist
or Islamist concept of world peace clearly contradicts cultural and religious
pluralism. Those who advocate an inclusion of political Islam in the name of
relativism and diversity not only miss the point that one is dealing with an
absolutism – as Gellner argues24 – but also fail to see the
distinction between political and civil Islam. It is imperative to address this
differentiation when talking about a global democratic peace encompassing
within it the world of Islam. If we fail to go beyond ‘‘black and white’’ – that
is, to differentiate them – then ill-informed and thus false conclusions will
be the outcome. In this regard, general and thus indiscriminate talk about
Islam is misleading. In focusing on the potential for a civil Islam and on its
likelihood to culturally accommodate the concepts of civil society and
democracy, we encounter the first sticking point. It relates to the fact that
the concepts of democracy, civil society and the vision of democratic peace
rest on European origins. How can Muslims embrace European ideas rooted in a
civilization alien to them? And, moreover, how would they respond if some (see
note 5) emphasized the Christian roots of these concepts?
To complicate the matter, there is
the ‘‘cultural turn’’ of our time, in which we encounter the attitude of
cultural self-assertion spreading and thus creating obstacles to
inter-fertilization generated by inter-cultural mutual recognition. In this
situation, it becomes difficult to be receptive to learning from others –
something that may even be discredited. Therefore, when it comes to a
universalization of democratic concepts the decisive ‘‘final enemy of civil
society’’ is a cultural one, as John Hall puts it (see note 2). In the volume
edited by Hall we read with regard to Islam that it ‘‘possesses a
civilizational vision of its own, radically opposed to that of the West.’’ In
the same volume a leading Muslim scholar, S¸erif Mardin, who spends his
life between the USA and secular acclaimed Turkey, elaborates on this notion in
arguing in his contribution that ‘‘civil society is a Western dream ... part of
the social history of Western Europe ... civil society does not translate into
Islamic terms’’ (see note 2). If these allegations were true, then the idea of
democratic peace would be devoid of cultural foundations in non-Western
cultures and thus not feasible, perhaps even irrelevant for the world of Islam.
In short, in this case it would make no sense to write this book. The fact of
writing this book is an indication that I do not share this view. Democracy and
civil society are not an illusion for Muslims, and therefore I continue with
passion to write this book, where I opt for a global civil society25 in
which people of Islamic civilization are supposed to participate.
To be sure, democracy needs to be
based on a civil society. As John Hall argues, democracy is ‘‘not equivalent ...
to more familiar and valued notions; democracy can be decidedly uncivil.’’
Therefore I follow Hefner, who establishes a synthesis between Islam, civil
society and democracy based on an Islamic legitimacy for the civilianization of
the state which prevents ‘‘uncivil’’ action done in the name of democracy.
A closer look at the political order of the Salafist
orthodoxy or, even worse, at the Islamic state that Islamism envisions, leads
to the finding of an ‘‘uncivil state.’’ Therefore, the choice when talking
about ‘‘order’’ is: a democratic one or none. The exclusiveness of Islam is
best and most forcefully expressed against democracy and civil society, as in
the works by Abu al-A’la al-Mawdudi. He argues for the incompatibility of Islam
with democracy, unequivocally stating,
I tell you, my fellow Muslims, frankly:
Democracy is in contradiction with your belief ... Islam, in which you believe ...
is utterly different from this dreadful system ... There can be no
reconciliation between Islam and democracy, not even in minor issues, because
they contradict one another in all terms. Where this system [of democracy]
exists we consider Islam to be absent. When Islam comes to power there is no
place for this system.26
In contrast, there are other Muslims who
envision a synthesis between Islam and democracy, but their impact is
professedly weak. At issue is therefore – as Jean Franc¸ois Revel phrases
it – not only ‘‘the inability of Islam to adopt itself to democratic
civilization, but also ... the inability of democratic civilization to find an
appropriate response to totalitarian attacks upon itself.’’27
While defending Islam, as both a religion and a
civilization, against the Islamophobia spreading in the West, I cannot deny and
overlook ‘‘fundamentalist Islam’s offensive against the freedom of the rest of
humanity,’’ as Revel phrases the issue while arguing against those Western
democrats who believe they could accommodate anti-Western Islamist
totalitarianism: ‘‘The morbid wish of the enemies of the open society finds
support among politicians ... who think they can come to terms with fanatics ...
If you give all, they cannot be grateful, because morally you no longer
exist.’’28
In a similar manner, I have argued in an earlier work (1998)
that the civilizational identity of Europe is at peril, and I continue this
argument, although without other-ing Islam, in the chapters of Part III of this
book. Revel joins those who acknowledge the distinction between formal
democracy and substantial civil society: ‘‘calling a state secular does not
make it democratic, when only the ... state and not civil society benefits from
this secularism.’’29
Without engaging in a digression,
there is a need to underline the fact that a Muslim acceptance of democracy and
civil society is not a matter exclusive for the world of Islam. As will be
shown in Part III, there exists in Europe an increasing community of Muslim
migrants not integrated in the existing polity, but rather living as an
‘‘enclave’’ in parallel societies.30 In addition, there is a Muslim
country, namely Turkey, seeking accession to the European Union. Based on these
facts it is argued that Islam and democracy are not a matter exclusively pertinent
to Muslims themselves. The acceptance of democracy and civil society or its
rejection by Muslims becomes a European concern. Therefore, establishing
Islamic foundations favorable to democracy and civil society in competition
between global jihad and democratic peace is not only a subject for
international but also for European studies.
Islamic civilization in its
medieval glory days proved to be in a position where it was able to embrace
Hellenism, i.e. the source of the idea of civil society, as addressed by the
historian of ideas, John Ehrenburg. In his study of civil society Ehrenburg
traces the idea back to Plato’s ‘‘vision of a political leader who would unite
knowledge with power,’’31 and adds his conviction that this is ‘‘the
classical effort to rescue humankind from barbarism and secure for it the
possibility of a politically organized civilization. The transition from polis
to republic ... described a man-made civil society where reason and
civilization would be safe’’ (ibid.). Yet, this interpretation of Plato by
Ehrenburg is not alien to medieval Islam. To engage in this debate is not
simply to conduct an exercise in the history of ideas, because the quoted
Platonian requirement is at present highly topical in culturally underpinning
the idea and reality of a civil society as the Islamic civilization of today
lacks both. Readers knowledgeable about Islamic history are reminded that
Plato’s cited vision was shared in medieval Islam by the Islamic rationalists,
and foremost in al-Farabi’s al-madina al-fadila.32 If this was the
case, then why cannot contemporary Muslims refer to this Islamic heritage for
legitimating a modernity-oriented embracing of civil society? Knowledge for
al-Farabi, as it was for Plato, was human- and also reasonbased, and thus was
not restricted to a revelation of a religion or to the exclusive worldview of
one civilization. It follows that the concepts referred to in this book to
promote democratic peace, presented as the alternative to global jihad, are
universal: they are not purely Western. With this line of reasoning this book
gives more credit to this intellectual background which is both Hellenistic and
Islamic.
If the reference to the European
origins of democracy and civil society is used in a discourse aimed at a
de-Westernization of knowledge, this becomes a dangerous undertaking. Islamists
who engage in it want to establish fault-lines between their civilization and
the rest of humanity. In this situation, present-day Muslims are challenged to
emulate al-Farabi and other great Muslim philosophers in discrediting the
options presented by Sayyid Qutb, Hasan al-Banna and Abu al-A’la al-Mawdudi, in
order to pursue an Islamic quest for a better future. At this point, the debate
on knowledge as the source of worldview33 and values is most
pertinent to the present inquiry into Islam and democracy. If rational
knowledge about the secular organization of the polity is dismissed as alien,
then one could proceed in a similar manner and repudiate the political culture
underlying civil society as alien to Muslims. Then, the claim of democracy to
universality would be questioned as well.
Islamic liberal authors34 admit
that historical Islam did not give space to individual freedom, but insist that
the idea of freedom lies at the hub of the Islamic scripture. In responding to
the critique that such ideas were never implemented, these authors concede the
lack of institutions needed for bolstering the Qur’anic idea of freedom – and
indicate this as a reason for such deficits.35 Elsewhere, in an
overall intellectual history of Islam, I have supported the contention with
evidence that in Islamic history the just order was never an issue for itself,
in that the concern was associated with a ‘‘just Imam/Imam adil’’ in contrast
to an ‘‘unjust Imam/Imam ja’ir.’’ The person, not the institution, was the
concern. Throughout their history Muslims have been directed by their yearning
for an Imam adil in the footsteps of the Prophet,36 not for the
proper institution as a safeguard for protecting freedom. However, this ideal
has never materialized. To date, the first four caliphs in Islam continue to be
considered as ‘‘rashidun/righteous rulers,’’ though three of them were
assassinated by Muslims who accused them of deviating from the right path of
being a just Imam.
Unlike Bruce Russett, I do not simply view democracy as a
voting procedure that leads to the rule of the majority (see Chapter 7). As
much as there is an esprit de loi (Montesquieu), there is a culture of
democracy (democracy is not simply a voting procedure) without which no
democracy could ever thrive. The rule of the majority could be very uncivil
without a culture putting civic restraints on it. This culture is the very one
of civil society and its rules. The case of Iraq 2002–6 makes clear that the
toppling of a dictator and the installation of voting makes for little
democracy, just as ‘‘nice words do not make ice-cream.’’ This is one of the
lessons of the war in Iraq. Neither the Bush administration nor its foe, the
French government of President Chirac which opposed the war, was in a position
to grasp that democracy cannot be introduced from outside, whether by order
from Washington or through the UN, as Paris requested. Elections are not the
substance; they create only one aspect of establishing the rule of democracy.
An election is no more than a formal procedure and it cannot be equated with
democracy itself. Elections make little sense if they are not underpinned by a
political civic culture giving democracy legitimacy, supporting it by civil
society and a civilianized state that institutionally provides safeguards for
individual freedom. All of these requirements were and still are missing in
Iraq and in most countries of Islamic civilization. It required generations to
accomplish this task in the West. Taking Iraq as a case in point, one needs to
ask how people of Islamic civilization can cope with secular democracy as the
substance of modernity and lay grounds for a civil society. Only if free
thinking/tafkir is allowed and not dismissed through the accusation of
unbelief/takfir, may one find a way out of this impasse in Islamic
civilization. It is not a digression to end this section with a parallel of
suppressing free expression in Western Islamic and Middle Eastern studies. Instead
of the accusation of tafkir/unbelief, one faces the accusation of Orientalism
ifone speaks of Middle Eastern despotism and Islamist totalitarianism. This is
damaging to democratic scholarly culture in the West, much as Islamism
undermines ‘‘free civil Islam.’’
Rethinking Islam and democracy in Islamic and global contexts
A major argument
of this book is that a predicament with modernity is at work when focusing on
incorporating democracy into Islamic thought. Without rethinking Islam, and
without a wholehearted willingness to engage in this endeavor free of
restriction and without fear of being accused of tafkir, there can be no
progress. Among the questions to be asked in this manner is one concerning the
compatibility of Islam and democracy as a political culture of pluralism and
civil society. One could state that democracy has Greek origins and point to
Plato’s concept of the state and the Hellenistic culture of the polity (polis).
To hark back to these roots may seem like stating a reminiscence of traditional
wisdom. However, in our time this reference has deep meaning. Those Muslims
like Mawdudi, who argue that Islam and democracy are at odds in referring to
the non-Islamic sources of democratic thought and who state that democracy is
alien to Islam, overlook the fact that the Hellenization of Islamic
civilization has contributed to its growth in the past. The same can be said
concerning the work of the contemporary Islamist Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who rejects
democracy as an imported solution/hall mustawrad.
There are also Westerners who –
with a reference to its classical Greek origins – think that democracy does not
apply to the world of Islam. This allegation is based on ignorance of the
history of Islam and it certainly amazes well-informed students of Islamic
heritage. The reason is simple: These students are familiar with the extremely
positive attitudes of the medieval Muslim philosophers in the classical age of
Islam vis-a`-vis the Greek legacy.37 Aristotle was named by these
philosophers the ‘‘al-mu’allim al-awwal/the first master,’’ whereas the most
significant Muslim philosopher, al-Farabi (already quoted) was ranked as al-mu’allim
al-thani, only second to Aristotle.38 In awarding the top ranking in
intellectual history to a nonMuslim thinker, Islamic rationalists proved how
open-minded and flexible Islam can be. As the Hellenization of Islam was
feasible in the past, so the opening for a democratization of Islam in our time
should be possible, too. From this perspective, the exposure to the choice
between global jihad and democratic peace could result in a more favorable
decision for the Kantian model.
Unlike religious traditions in classical Islam that
encouraged learning from other cultures, one finds the opposite in very
influential writings of political Islam. Earlier, the book Islam and Modern
Civilization39 by the late Abu al-A’la al-Mawdudi was quoted, in
which an outlawing of democracy is expressed as a firm conviction in the strong
phrases that there is no democracy where Islam rules and that ‘‘Islam is
absent’’ where democratic rule is in place (see note 26). No US-American or
European, liable to be accused of ‘‘Orientalism,’’ is making these statements.
If the alleged incompatibility of Islam and democracy were correct, then
Muslims would stay out of the so-called third wave of democratization,40 believed
to be global. Islamic and global contexts would contradict one another. In
contrast to this polarization, a view of an intellectual open-mindedness of
Islam vis-a`vis other civilizations, as the one in medieval Islamic history,41
must start with renouncing Islamism and continue with rethinking Islam.
For this and other reasons it is most disturbing to see Esposito and Voll
confusing Islam and Islamism when they deal with democracy while engaging in
blurring generalities.42
In the Islamic rhetoric employed
when playing to the gallery (especially with Westerners), one hears the message
that there is only one true Islam. True, in terms of pillars of iman/belief
there exists only one Islam. In Islamic history, however, there have been many
different approaches to understanding Islam, and thus various schools of
thought. This applies also to the present day, so that we can see diverse
positions in contemporary Islam. One of them is reflected in the quoted
statement by Mawdudi, adverse to democracy, which is clearly an expression of
political Islam,43 being the Islamic variety of religious
fundamentalism based on the politicization of Islam. In contrast, one finds
Muslims expressing liberal and civil Islam, like Mohammed al-Jabri and Mohammed
Shahrur. There can be a democratic Islam, but there definitely can be no
‘‘democratic Islamism,’’ as suggested by Voll and Esposito.
To be sure, there is also another
source of diversity in Islam based on local cultures which this civilization
encompasses. These cultures rally in terms of civilizational outlooks to an
Islamic worldview as the expression of a cultural system, not of a system of
government. Now, the contention that Islam is a specific system of government
opposed to democratic rule is a quite recent phenomenon. As repeatedly stated,
the term ‘‘nizam Islami/ Islamic system’’ occurs neither in the Qur’an nor in
the legacy of the Prophet, the hadith. It is rather a misconception of Islam
when it is identified with political Islam. It is most important to draw a
clear distinction between these two totally different understandings of Islam.
On these grounds, the argument that political Islam of global jihad stands in
the way of democracy and democratic peace is conceivable. The question over the
compatibility or incompatibility of Islam and democracy as related to the
exposure of Islam to a global context can be answered in many ways. Positively,
the first step of rethinking would be an identifying of the obstacles. A proper
solution to them could result in a favorable synthesis of Islam and democracy.
The other perspective is that of political Islam either accepting democracy as
a tool (voting procedure) for seizing power (e.g. Hamas) but rejecting its
political culture, or dismissing it by global jihad (e.g. Taliban).
The issue in rethinking Islam is
not the diversity based on a great variety of local cultures. More pertinent
than this diversity is the claimed unity of ethical standards related to similar
norms and values shared by all Muslims, much like the corresponding worldview.
The Islamic unity in terms of Weltanschauung addressed as the Islamic
civilization is a universalism claimed for the world of Islam. The Islamic and
the Western civilizations both claim universality for their worldviews and the
related concept of order.44 This is the source of the constructed
conflict between democracy and hakimiyyat Allah. A rethinking of Islam could
replace this clash through cross-cultural bridging.
The international context of the
twenty-first century compels people who belong to divergent civilizations, but
who at the same time share the essence of belonging to one humanity, to
establish a consensus over a common core of ethical values that can unite this
very humanity. To do this, one needs to go beyond local contexts to make
democratic peace possible, yet not overlook differences. It follows that global
democracy and universal human rights based on a global civil society constitute
the core issues in this international morality for bridging on cross-cultural
grounds. Certainly, the shari’a cannot be the framework for this endeavor,45
because it alienates Muslim minorities from others in concrete societies
(e.g. India and Western Europe) and the Muslim population as a whole from
humanity in general. Instead of the call for shari’a, Muslims need the call to
rethinking Islam. In this global context, Muslims are challenged to question
the claims of the shari’a to universalism and to honor cross-cultural pluralism
instead.
Change within Islam matters to the West in general and to
Europe in particular. In the West, opening up to other cultures assumes the
shape of cultural relativism. Islamophobia moves to Islamophilia without the
limits of pluralism. In the encounter of Islamist neo-absolutism and European
relativism46 cultural relativists are the losers. In the search for
world peace European relativism and fundamentalist neo-absolutisms seem to be
the extremes opposed to one another, but they do not clash because the relativists
give in, in the name of tolerance.47 It is regrettable that
postmodernists, who subscribe to cultural relativism, fail to see how
consequential their position is, i.e. how it undermines the needed
cross-cultural bridging between competing world civilizations. The notion of a
united humanity goes beyond relativism in furthering the conviction that a
shared international morality essentially requires a cross-cultural
underpinning of an ethical core of binding values, such as individual human
rights and secular democracy. This value-based commitment is valid for all
humanity on cross-cultural – neither universalist nor relativist – grounds. In
this understanding, an effort at establishing a political culture of democracy
in Islamic civilization is a contribution to promoting democratic peace while
denouncing Islamism as ‘‘the new totalitarianism.’’48 This effort
presupposes an effort at rethinking Islam, a process that matters to all
humanity across the globe, and in particular within the European context of a
growing Islamic diaspora. The Islamic context is pertinent to others.
Cultural requirements for overcoming Islam’s predicament in the process
of learning from other civilizations
The earlier
Islamic responses to the exposure to modernity were basically
defensive-cultural. The rejection of the West by the contemporary Islamists is
based in nothing less than a drive toward a wholesale de-Westernization. Islam
has a rich history of opening itself to others and of basing its own
achievements on learning from other cultures and civilizations. The addressed
attitudes, stretching from defensive culture to rejection, are therefore not
typical of Islamic civilization. In contrast to their predecessors’
openmindedness during the early encounters with Europe in the nineteenth
century, Muslims of today do not have this spirit vis-a`-vis cultural
modernity. Can democracy as a political culture of modernity be introduced to
the world of Islam in spite of the prevalence of this mindset?
Given the fact that the final version
of this chapter was completed at the Asia Research Institute in the National
University of Singapore, in answering this question I shall focus on Asia as
another place where these questions are asked and answers are being looked for.
Even in Southeast Asia, though – yet less than in the Middle East – a hostile
attitude towards the West affects the overall atmosphere. Three cases in Asia
are pertinent as models. One is India, a secular state with the largest Islamic
minority (ca. 130 million) in the world; it provides a model for the peaceful
coexistence of people belonging to diverse religions, all living under secular
democracy as the common umbrella. But India’s model is flawed and has potential
to become a model for ‘‘the coming anarchy,’’49 if this secular
multi-religious setup were to break down. In contrast, we see the other model
of Pakistan, which claims to be ‘‘Islamic’’ but is not in a position to
accommodate nonSunni Muslim ethnic and sectarian minorities – indeed, Pakistan
is not even able to integrate the minority of Sunni Mauhajirs, i.e. Indian
Muslims who immigrated to an ‘‘Islamic diaspora’’ after the partition of 1947.
The third model is Indonesia,50 another Asian country where a
relatively enlightened and tolerant (i.e. civil) Islam is embracing democracy
and providing a secular state as an institutional guarantee for inter-ethnic
and religious peace, and above all for religious pluralism (pancasila). An
early version of this chapter was completed in 2003 in Indonesia itself, while
the final revisions were done in 2005 in Singapore, giving a distance of time
and space with regard to Islamic Southeast Asia.
To begin with Indonesia: one may ask whether the Indonesian
example provides significantly favorable conditions for democratization in the
world of Islam as a model for civil Islam despite its flaws. This model could
generate demonstrative effects throughout the Islamic civilization, including
West Asia, i.e. the Middle East, as the center of the Islamic civilization. But
this is not the case. Why? A renowned expert on Indonesia, Fred von der Mehden,
subjected the interaction between Southeast Asia and the Arab Middle East, i.e.
West Asia, to closer scrutiny. As a result he states the telling facts:
Middle Eastern
religious ideas still dominate the exchange between the two regions. There is
relatively little influence by Southeast Asian Muslim intellectuals on the rest
of the Muslim world ... Religious education in the Middle East, and in Cairo in
particular, remains a major source of Muslim thought in Southeast Asia,
especially in
Indonesia.51
Despite the Asian
focus of this chapter, the quoted observation compels us to give West Asia –
or, as it is called in the West, the ‘‘Middle East’’ – more weight, since it is
the cultural core of the Islamic civilization even though its record is poor.
It is not democracy but rather global jihad, as the ideology born in the Middle
East, that enjoys great appeal; it has been exported to Indonesia from the Arab
world. During my work in Indonesia in intervals between 1995 and 2003, I
encountered Saudi Wahhabi education (madrasas) and learned that Indonesian
students go to Egypt and Saudi Arabia to study Islam. In the Middle East, I
never came across Muslims studying Indonesian civil Islam. In Indonesia one
encounters the fact that thousands and thousands of pesantrens (Islamic
boarding schools) teach aqida-Islam.
The Bali bombing
in 2002 was related to the worldview taught at these schools. The founder of
this madrasa-pattern, Abu Bakr Bashir, is an Indonesian Islamist with Wahhabi
views and al-Qaeda links.
The search for asalah/authenticity
is much more pertinent to the Middle East than to Indonesia. Therefore, issues
related to the cultural underpinning for the adoption of democracy as the
alternative to global jihad are highly relevant. With reference to asalah, some
Arab Muslims argue that there is no need for a Western model of democracy,
because Muslims have their shura/consultation, as provisioned in the Qur’an. In
reverse, others are of the view that the reference to the shura could serve as
a cultural underpinning for the adoption of democracy, thus establishing an
accepted frame of reference compatible with Islamic views. In this debate,
there is the need to honestly reiterate the fact stated by the late Hamid
Enayat, that democracy is a cultural addition to the traditional political
concepts of Islam.52 The Islamic awareness of this cultural novelty
is unfortunately still weak, despite all the lip-service paid to it. At this
point there is no difference between the Middle East (West Asia) and Southeast
Asia.
With regard to the context of
globalization, Western hegemony and the exposure of Islamic civilization to
‘‘cultural modernity,’’ there is no doubt about the place of the Middle East as
the core of Islam’s predicament with modernity. It is not an expression of
Arab-centrism to state that neither Indonesia nor Pakistan or India (an entity
only split after partition in 1947) is the center of Islamic–Western encounter.53
At the outset, Arab Muslims were receptive to an embracing of democracy
and to reconciling it with Islam. The first Muslim Imam and student who went to
Europe was the Egyptian Rifa’a Rafi al-Tahtawi; he expressed his deep
admiration for the French democracy. He was to witness the July revolution in
Paris in 1830, and was both amazed and impressed to see that the
representatives of the toppled regime were not killed but instead were treated
lawfully and with dignity, being granted basic human rights. For Tahtawi this
was evidence – as he says – ‘‘for how civilized the French are and how their
state is bound to justice.’’54 This modernist Tahtawi was followed
by other Muslim modernists and reformists who were critical of Europe for its
colonial incursion into the abode of Islam; but despite their criticisms, they
were receptive to learning from the West. Following these Muslim liberals who
pursued the reconciliation of Islam with cultural modernity came another
Egyptian, Mohammed Abduh. In the Islamic liberalism55 of the early
twentieth century, democracy was at the top of the agenda of Muslim thinkers
like Abbas Mahmud al-Aqqad56 and others. However, this liberalism of
Arab Muslims failed to trigger the needed cultural innovations, and so it waned
as a mindset in the wake of the emergence of the radical-secular praetorianism
(Nasserism) of the military, by then viewed as the embodiment of modernizing
elites. In fact these elites did not fulfill what has been attributed to them.
At issue was a superficially secular variety of Islamic authoritarianism that
can also be labeled a neo-patriarchy (see note 8), continuing old patterns in a
new garb. These cultural changes spilled over from the Arab Middle Eastern core
to the Asian fringe. However, there are differences between both regions of the
Islamic civilization, related to the fact that Southeast Asians are
characterized by openness to learning from other civilizations.
In the discussion of the embracing of modernity, it was
asked why Japan succeeded and countries of Islam failed. In their medieval
Islamic history, Muslims were open to other cultures, as is Japan today.
Islamic rationalism of that historical period was in fact a synthesis of the
Greek legacy and the Islamic civilization.57 Western historians of
civilization – such as Leslie Lipson (see note 58) – remind us of the fact that
this Islamic rationalism was one of the major sources of inspiration for the
European Renaissance. In European philosophical discourse, it is acknowledged
that the legacy of the Renaissance has been one of the basic pillars of
cultural modernity. It can further be argued that this very modernity is the
major source of democracy. We should remind ourselves of the historical fact
that the Renaissance is a part of the very same legacy that grew from the
interaction between Islam and Europe. I refer to this legacy in order to
legitimate the plea for an adoption of democracy. I turn again to Leslie
Lipson’s analysis of the European awareness of Hellenism via Islam:
Aristotle crept back into Europe by the
side door. His return was due to the Arabs, who had become acquainted with
Greek thinkers ... The main source of Europe’s inspiration shifted from
Christianity back to Greece, from Jerusalem to Athens.58
This very Athens
was also the source of inspiration within the earlier civilizational
interaction, which led in the course of inter-cultural fertilization to the
Hellenization of medieval Islam. Hellenism is a shared legacy between Islam and
the West. This reference has two meanings: First, the spirit of Western civilization
is Hellenistic (Athens), not primarily Christian (Jerusalem). Second, this very
legacy belonged to Islamic civilization while it was at its height. Islam
succeeded through inter-fertilization and it has decayed through civilizational
fault-lines that Islamists continue to construct at present.
Islamic medieval philosophers shifted in their outlooks and
worldviews ‘‘from Mecca to Athens.’’59 Enlightened contemporary
Muslims view a revival of this rationalist legacy as a requirement for
promoting a cultural underpinning for embracing modernity.60 It is
unfortunate to see that this is not happening. Instead, this Greek legacy, once
transmitted to Europe by Muslim philosophers, continues to vanish along with
the Islamic heritage of rationalism. The rival Islamic orthodoxy gathered
forces around the fiqh/Islamic sacred jurisprudence. In medieval Islam this
Salafism contributed to the banning of rationalism from the institutions of
learning,61 just as Wahhabi Salafism does today in the madrasas. In
the past, the Islamic fiqh-orthodoxy took over after suppressing Islamic
rationalism of the falsafa.62 One asks: Did Islamic rationalism fail
to have a lasting impact? The answer is: Without an institutionalization (e.g.
in the educational system) no cultural innovations can be enduring in society.63
Again, in the core of contemporary
Islamic civilization there have been some efforts to revive this tradition of
Islamic Enlightenment and rationalism, but they have not been very successful
and have waned.64 The defenders of reason had an outreach in
Indonesia, and their reference to this tradition of Islamic rationalism was not
an exercise in intellectual history. Those early Muslim liberals65 who
were at pains to revive this legacy for coming to terms with democracy, and for
facilitating the adoption of its norms and values in an Islamic environment,
failed. To be sure, the failure was not only due to poor performance: it was
caused not so much ‘‘by conceptual incoherence as by absence of specific social
and economic formations,’’66 as the late Oxford scholar Enayat puts
it. He argues that on domestic grounds the constraints were ‘‘educational
backwardness, widespread illiteracy, and the prevalence of servile habits of
thinking and blind submission to authority’’ (ibid.) and adds to these major
obstacles the fact that the West, despite all its lip-service, has not been
favorable to the process of democratization in the world of Islam. Enayat was a
reasoning Muslim and refrained from putting the blame on Western policies. He
also acknowledges the cultural shortcomings of Muslims themselves. In this
sense we need not only to establish a balance between the cultural factor and
the structural constraints, but also to relate each to one another.
In discussing the cultural
requirements for overcoming Islam’s predicament with modernity, a reference was
made to three non-Middle Eastern Asian models with a record of procedural
democratization in the early postcolonial period. Then, after acknowledging the
cultural prevalence of the core of Islamic civilization, I turned to the Middle
East – or West Asia or whatever you choose to name it. Unlike South and
Southeast Asia, the Middle East is an underachiever in democratization. The
rule of praetorian one-party authoritarian regimes, legitimated by the populist
ideology of pan-Arab nationalism,67 marked the end of futile
democratization. Ever since, the levers of power have been residing in the
hands of lifetime presidents and other tyrants of all shapes. The
de-legitimation of these authoritarian regimes, in particular since the
shattering defeat in the SixDay War,68 contributed to the rise of
political Islam being presented as the alternative (al-hall al-Islami). The few
cases of electoral democratization, i.e. democracy as a procedure without the
political culture of democracy (e.g. in Algeria, Jordan, Morocco and most
recently Iraq), produced only poor results.
The reasons for the lack of
democracy are multifaceted, a point that is not ignored while we focus on the
cultural underpinning as a requirement for democratization in countries of
Islamic civilization. The alleged Islamization of democracy via political Islam
by so-called ‘‘new Islamists without fear’’ is not the needed new avenue for
democratization in terms of introducing a political culture for democracy.69
The actions and pronouncements of the exponents of political Islam stand
in contrast.70 I share the view that the Islamists are ‘‘committed
to using the fragile reemergence of democratic processes to destroy any decisive
move in this direction of liberal democracy itself.’’71 My own
observations in Algiers during the democratization process in 1991–2 in Algeria
and similarly in Egypt, Morocco and also in Indonesia support these
conclusions. In two reference articles, first 1995 in the Encyclopedia of
Democracy (The Congressional Quarterly 1995) and, a decade later, in the Encyclopedia
of Government (2004), I express the view that all varieties of religious
fundamentalism are at odds with democratic rule.72 To be sure and to
reiterate, Islam and Islamism are two different issues. In rethinking Islam one
can reach positive conclusions about the compatibility of democracy and Islam,
but this option cannot be achieved by Islamism. The Turkish experience of the
AKP related to the rise of this party while democratically playing the power
game after the election of November 2002 continued 2007 is a great challenge to
this view. To be sure, the AKP presents itself as secular and
‘‘conservative-Islamic,’’ and no longer as an ‘‘Islamist’’ party. For an
evaluation of this experiment the norm would be to ‘‘wait and see.’’ It is too
early for a mature statement. More details will be provided in Part III of this
book.
In assessing the relationship of political Islam and
democracy I refer to the major authorities of contemporary Islamism – from Qutb
in the past through al-Qaradawi in our own time. They argue against democracy,
stating that it is alien to Islam. I have already cited the late Pakistani Abu
alA’la al-Mawdudi (see note 26), who is the major ideological source of
political Islam next to the Egyptian Sayyid Qutb. By the same token, Qutb
(executed in 1966) believed that Islam would replace the West in the leadership
of the world. This belief continues to be with us in the new direction of
global jihad. On the Islamic front, Qutb was also the precursor of the idea of
a clash of civilizations. Like Huntington, Qutb supports the alleged
incompatibility of Western and Islamic views and contended decades earlier that
a conflict on a global scale is looming: ‘‘After the end of democracy to the
extent of bankruptcy the West has nothing to give to humanity ... The
leadership of the Western man has vanished ... It is the time for Islam to take
over and lead.’’73
The quoted statement makes clear
that, for taking over, global jihad is required. In this tradition combined
with Mawdudi’s legacy Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the most influential Islamic writer of
our time, has coined the phrase ‘‘al-hall al-Islami/the Islamic solution’’ as
opposed to ‘‘al-hulul al-mustawradah/the imported solutions.’’ In al-Qaradawi’s
view, democracy is among these imports to be rejected. In this mindset there is
no opening for learning from other civilizations and subsequently no sign of
overcoming Islam’s predicament with modernity.
A brief discussion of al-Qaradawi’s views supports the
stated assessment. In his major book al-Qaradawi states: ‘‘Democracy is a Greek
term which means the government of the people’’ and then continues that
‘‘democratic liberalism came into the life of Muslims through the impact of
colonialism. It has been the foremost dangerous result in the colonial
legacy.’’74 As the reader will notice, al-Qaradawi’s dismissal of
the Greek legacy deliberately overlooks the positive record of Hellenism in
classical Islam. In contrast to al-Qaradawi, it is argued here that any
synthesis of Islam and democracy needs to be based on this very record of
Islamic rationalism and Hellenism as a cultural underpinning. If this is
dismissed, the cultural bridging aimed at will, as a consequence, be dismissed
too. It is wrong to classify the Islamist al-Qaradawi as a representative of
‘‘liberal Islam’’ or of an ‘‘Islam without fears,’’75 as some
Westerners do, who claim to be ‘‘experts on
Islam.’’
The cultural synthesis of democratization of Islamic thought
In Islamic
political ethics the Qur’anic idea of shura could determine the ethical level
in the search for commonalities in the attempt to establish a synthesis between
Islam and secular democracy. This political-ethical approach is both authentic
and flexible and need not to be of a scriptural nature. In this pursuit of an
international cross-cultural morality, I read Islamic sources and hereby share
the position of Hamid Enayat that it is ‘‘neither ... inordinately difficult
nor illegitimate to derive a list of democratic rights and liberties’’76 from
Islamic provisions. Thus the contention that Islam and democracy are at odds
does not hold, since it is based on an arbitrary reading. In addition, we have
to consider the fact that the fundamentalist notion of hakimiyyat Allah is
definitely not an authentic Islamic concept, for it does not exist in the
authoritative sources. As repeatedly stated, one finds it neither in the Qur’an
nor in the hadith, i.e. the tradition of the Prophet. On the grounds of both
these authoritative sources of Islamic faith, one can dismiss most concepts
included in the ideology of political Islam. However, on this scriptural level no
problem can be solved. In order to overcome Islam’s predicament with modernity,
to which the embracing of democracy belongs, Muslims definitely need to go
beyond the scripture and the arguments based on it. Coping with the tensions
between open civil and political Islam is also part of the broader range of
problems involved.
The first obstacle in the way of a
synthesis between Islam and democracy resulting in a democratization of Islam
is the complementary call for the tatbiq al-shari’a/implementation of Islamic
law for establishing an Islamic state. Shari’a law has traditionally been civil
law, but it is advanced in the current Islamist ideology to a state law or
alleged constitutional law. In the Islamist view, shari’a is a decisive
criterion for determining the character of a dawla Islamiyya/Islamic state or
its constitution. Students of Islam who are familiar with the concepts of
Islamic shari’a law77 will have some major corrections to the
fundamentalists’ claims. These scholars know that legal norms of the shari’a
have never been codified as a legal system. The simple reason for this is that
codification runs counter to the nature of the shari’a as an interpretative
divine law. There are four Sunni Islamic legal schools, each of which has its
own tradition of law-making. Thus Islamic law has been a law of the divergent
Hanafi, Shafi’i, Hanbali or Maliki religious Sunni communities. In Islamic
history, shari’a was separated from siyasa as politics of the state, as we
learn from the authoritative book by Joseph Schacht.78 In addition,
Enayat tells us that the shari’a ‘‘was never implemented as an integral system,
and the bulk of its provisions remained as legal fictions.’’79 In
other words, the tatbiq al-shari’a aspired to by Islamists is virtually based on
a fiction expanded to the view of how the state should be conducted and how its
affairs are to be dealt with. This fiction of an Islamic shari’a state is an
agglomeration of inconsistent constructions and consequently leads to rejecting
all realities of the existing international order of states based on secular
foundations. This rejection happens to the extent of putting Islamic
civilization in conflict with the rest of humanity, i.e. not only with the
West. Asia is a case in point: It is neither part of the West nor fully
Islamic. It would not succumb to Islamic claims.
To avert a polarization, Muslims
need to establish harmony between Islam and democracy. At issue is a process of
conflict resolution which encompasses dealing with the existing differences and
real tensions. Having stated this, it is not only for the sake of honesty and
integrity, but also for the sake of a synthesis between Islam and democracy,
that these tensions are addressed as real and fundamental. One has to address
them in plain language, beyond ambiguities. Again, I am in agreement with the
late enlightened Muslim Hamid Enayat when he states: ‘‘If Islam comes into
conflict with certain postulates of democracy it is because of its general
character as a religion ... An intrinsic concomitant of democracy ...
involves a challenge to many a sacred
axiom.’’80
It is tough, but imperative, to
develop a full awareness of this challenge. The mistake of early Muslim
reformers committed to the search for the aspired synthesis was to evade any addressing
of – not to say coping with – hot button issues. Obviously, these reformers
were concerned that such an unpopular endeavor could jeopardize their plea for
democracy. However, an adaptation of religious doctrine to changed historical
realities requires a reform which is more than the conformism discussed in
Chapter 1. There is a challenge which compelled the contemporary Algerian
Muslim thinker Mohammed Arkoun to call for a ‘‘rethinking of Islam.’’81 This
needed reasoning involves, as I argue in an earlier book,82 not
simply indulging oneself in some kind of conformism in a pragmatic manner, but
rather a substantial cultural accommodation to changed social conditions.
For joining democratic peace it is not enough to suspend the
jihad, for reasons of convenience, through conformism. Muslims need to venture
into a rethinking of jihad. The late Oxford Muslim scholar Hamid Enayat
describes the state of affairs as follows:
What is blatantly missing ... is an
adaptation of either the ethical and legal precepts of Islam, or the attitudes
and institutions of traditional society, to democracy. This is obviously a much
more complex and challenging task than the mere reformulation of democratic
principles in Islamic idioms. It is because of this neglect that the hopes of
evolving a coherent theory of democracy appropriate to an Islamic context have
remained largely unfulfilled.83
Instead of continuing this unfinished
business, Islamists abuse these obvious shortcomings of Islamic liberals and
modernists for promoting their own vision. They denounce an alleged deviation
from the true religious doctrine, and some of them argue for an Islamic
democracy. To introduce democracy into Islamic civilization in unequivocal
terms requires a full awareness of the fact that
efforts to synthesize Islam and democracy
are bound to founder on the bedrock of that body of eternal and unchangeable
doctrines which form the quintessence of every religion. Those Muslim thinkers
who face this issue boldly, and free of any compulsion to keep their faith
abreast of ephemeral political fashions, normally come up with the open
admission that Islam and democracy are irreconcilable.84
The only way out
is to reconsider and rethink the claim of the doctrine to eternity and to
immutability, placing it into a historical context that renders it positive and
makes it changeable; merely to engage in a reinterpretation in the spirit of
conformism is not sufficient. In honestly facing these problems, the pending
question relates to an opening for an alternative to the existing options of
superficially phrasing democratic principles in Islamic idioms (e.g. shura) or
to surrender to the Islamist challenge in stating the irreconcilability. This
question best reflects the addressed predicament of Islam with democracy. It
refers to the limits of a morality and political ethics based on religion.
In other words: Any exclusive
religious underpinning of democracy expressed in doctrinal Islamic terms would
fail. Existing approaches are either selective and limited in their scope or
mostly apologetic in their nature. The way out would be a secularization of
politics as a requirement for overcoming the conflict between Islam and democracy
in the states of Islamic civilization. I see no ‘‘Islamic democracy’’ emerging,
because democracy is based on popular sovereignty, not on religious precepts,
even though democracy can be underpinned by religious ethics (e.g. shura in
Islam). Popular sovereignty is a universal principle. The democratization of
Islam is a better formula than the Islamization of democracy.
With an awareness of the
unpopularity of the secular approach in Islamic civilization, it is important
that we clear up the understanding of secularity. Radical-dogmatic or state
secularism can be areligious, a position that I dismiss in admitting religious
ethics while maintaining secularity.85 In short, the secular
argumentation is not areligious in that – as argued – it admits religion as a
source of ethics for a cultural underpinning of democracy. In my understanding,
laı¨cite´ is no more than a separation of religion and politics,
but never a wholesale abandonment of religion from public life. However,
religion is specific. The Qur’an states: ‘‘You have your religion and I have
mine,’’ but democratic institutions and the culture of democracy are universal
and this is exactly the argument underlying the secular approach for an
Islamic–democratic synthesis. I refer to the Islamic shura as an ethics of
democracy, because it is in line with the culture of democracy.
Rethinking Islam in the pursuit of
an Islamic–democratic synthesis is a reasoning, and not a scriptural
undertaking that can be accused of deviation from Islamic precepts. In my plea
for real democratic freedom, I find myself in conflict not only with
orthodox-scriptural Muslims, but also with Western cultural relativists who
contend that democracy, as a Western political model, is of only limited
interest for non-Western cultures. As argued earlier in this chapter, cultural
arguments can be the foremost enemy of civil society.
In moving from the general to the empirical level and
acknowledging the Indonesian background of some parts of this book (see the
introduction), I shall, in the remainder of this section on an
Islamic–democratic synthesis, focus on Asia. Some of my major ideas, including
this chapter, were exposed to my graduate students at the Islamic State
University of Jakarta, and also to the community of the Asia Research Institute
at the National University of Singapore. Sharing the experience of Robert
Hefner in Indonesia, I agree that there are some seeds of a ‘‘civil Islam’’ as
contrasted to the Islam of a ‘‘totalizing shari’a.’’ On the normative level the
possibility is suggested of establishing harmony between an enlightened Islam
and democratic ideas. Of course, more important are the institutions that
safeguard living up to these ideas of a democratic culture in Islam. I agree
with Hefner in his statement that ‘‘democracy ultimately requires a public
culture ... to promote universal habits of participation and tolerance. This
civic culture ... the culture of civility remains vulnerable and incomplete, if
not accompanied by a transformation of state.’’86
These arguments are much more
pertinent than the cultural-relativism this reservations presented by the
Turkish-American S¸erif Mardin (see note 2) vis-a`-vis the universal
validity of democracy in the world of Islam. In addition, these arguments make
it clear that for democratization in the world of Islam to take place, the
envisioned Islamic–democratic cultural synthesis is not enough: It is true that
culture matters, but one needs to add that institutions as a safeguard matter,
too (see Chapter 7).
In arguing for a culture of
democracy and for the institutions of a civilianized state, I establish a
combination of a cross-cultural underpinning of democracy and institutional
democratization, both being requirements on the level of the state for the
pursuit of democratic peace. With this understanding in mind, the current state
of affairs in the world of Islam is to be addressed. The questions that I shall
ask are based on a commitment to democracy. This is an ethical basis for a
global institutional democratization as a precondition for a global civil
society. It is argued against cultural relativists that democracy is not a fond
Western dream – as Mardin contends – but rather a necessity for world peace
that can only be pursued seriously on realistic grounds. To reach this end, not
only ethical but also structural requirements are to be fulfilled in order to
strengthen democracies along with nation-building.
In honoring the fact that the Muslim Arab Middle East is the
core of Islamic civilization, I return to this region to discuss the findings
of a project published in Beirut87 two decades ago. The story of the
project is pertinent. It goes back to November 1983, when a group of 70 Arab
scholars, journalists and former politicians, myself included, addressed issues
dealt with in this chapter under the formula: ‘‘azmat al-demoqratiyya/crisis of
democracy’’ in the Arab world. This gathering took place in Limassol, Cyprus,
after we were denied permission to meet in Cairo or in any other Arab city
under Saudi petrodollar pressure. In Limassol I presented a paper on the
structural requirements of democracy.88 The published volume enjoyed
wide dissemination in the Arab world, through both legal and underground means
and editions. In the ensuing two decades, the concern for democracy and
democratization has become more urgent, and equally the means of repression
employed against it have become more brutal. After the demise of bipolarity the
Arab world continues to be the center of despotic rule. The reference to the
unjust behavior of Israel as an explanation for this state of affairs is no
more than a distraction from the real issue. The basic missing requirements,
such as institution-building, the economic underpinning of democracy and a
supportive social system, as well as education in a culture of democracy, are
related to home-made shortcomings, as the UNDP reports of 2002, 2003 and 2004
clearly reveal.89
In arguing for democratization in the Arab world, a cultural
core of the world of Islam is to go for a change in two major fields:
First, changing
Arab political culture (worldview, values, behavior) requires the development
of favorable pluralistic attitudes towards democracy as a political culture of
its own. This ‘‘civil Islam’’ runs counter to Arab political, quasi-tribal
collectivism and to neo-patriarchy. Citizenship as the bedrock of a democratic
polity is something other than loyalty to a clan or a sectarian group.90 A
democratic polity cannot be based on a tribe, such as the Saudis in Saudi
Arabia, nor on a sectarian or ethnic community, be it Sunna, as was the case in
Iraq under Saddam, or Shi’a as in the course of de-Saddamization. At present
and since the elections in December 2005, the Shi’a majority rules the country
while discriminating upon the Sunni minority.
Second, political development in
the sense of institution-building has to take place in Arab societies now
characterized by varying degrees of low institutionalization and a high degree
of personalization of power.91 The legacy of these obstacles has
deep roots in Islamic history: the Prophet and his Sunna were to be emulated;
no institution was the model. After the death of the Prophet the search was
accordingly for the Imam salih/just Imam, not for a proper institution. In the
UNDP report, we are informed that political development is a requirement for
promoting democratization which is still virtually absent in the entire Arab
world. It was very sad to read in an article by Edward Said, prior to his death
in 2003, that he and his followers accused this UNDP report of ‘‘Orientalism.’’92
To state it frankly: such goings-on made the entire Orientalism debate, a
serious matter, into utter nonsense.
Following the cited democracy
debate of the 1980s and in the aftermath of the Gulf War of 1991, the West was
blamed for not having resorted to pressures to compel Middle Eastern states to
introduce democratization.93 Again, a decade later the
democratization of the Middle East served as a legitimization for the Iraq war,
which instead of being a contribution to democratization gave jihadism a boost.
The lesson is that democracy cannot be imposed, and it cannot thrive if the
local underpinning is lacking. Of course, there is a need to promote
democratization, and Western policies vis-a`-vis the world of Islam should
support this. But this is not tantamount to imposing democracy, even though in
some cases some pressure needs to be exerted on US allies, for instance in the
Middle East, although not by the use of military force. All in all, it is a
sign of the ignorance of Western missionaries of democracy that they address
this issue without taking into consideration the debates94 people of
the region have been conducting for decades.
The problems of introducing
democracy to the world of Islam in general and to the Middle East in particular
can be illustrated in the case of Iraq. The state there is basically a nominal
nation-state without a democratically designed political community. After the
liberation of Iraq from Saddam’s despotism, all political groups seeking to
replace the Ba’th Party by their own power have been divided along ethnic and
sectarian lines related to the artificial emergence of the Iraqi state in 1921.
Iraq is mainly composed of three rival ethnic and religious communities and
their corresponding territories: the former Ottoman province of Mossoul,
inhabited by Kurds; the Sunni province of Baghdad; and the Shi’ite southern province
of Basra. The Ba’th Party of Iraq95 was secular only on the surface.
In contrast to its panArab ideology, it was basically a representation of the
Sunni minority with the Takriti clientele at its core. In Iraq not only the
ruling elites under Saddam, but also the counter-elites, were based on
political communities formed on the basis of religion and ethnicity. In this
regard Iraq is just one case in point. Therefore, at issue is not only Islam’s
predicament with democracy and the lack of institutions, but also the
religio-sectarian ethnic determination of communities as rival collective
identities. These are among the major obstacles to nation-building and
democratization, both in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. In going beyond
the Middle East, we see this problem with variations throughout Islamic
civilization. Ethnic and sectarian subdivisions, at times – illogically –
combined with Islamic universalism, are preventing nation-building and
democratization in the nonArab cases of Indonesia, Pakistan, Malaysia and
India, presented earlier. And it is not only the nation-state, but also the
proclaimed unity of global jihad, that is being undermined by this
ethnic-sectarian fragmentation. The existing and prevailing political
ethnic–tribal culture creates great obstacles in the way of the introduction of
a culture of democracy and its institutions. In view of these facts, efforts at
democratization need to be combined with ethno-politics96 in the
understanding of a political culture of power-sharing as a component of
democracy in multi-religious, sectarian and multi-ethnic societies. In the
Middle East, this power-sharing is essential to any ethnopolitics of
democratization. In the first place, Sunni Arabs need to learn how to view
others as equals, as human beings entitled to rights, and also as being members
of the community as a polity. When Shi’a come to power, as in Iraq, they should
not turn the tables on the Sunni; this is no democratization.
In all Islamic societies in Asia, and particularly in the
Arab world, collective entities are virtually a functional equivalent to the
old Arab tribes or ethnic community. Being a Sunni Arab myself, I state this
and underline the need to respect ethnic and religious minorities living in
Arab societies and to share political power with them. At present there are
many cases that strongly demonstrate the violation of rights of minorities. In
Iraq and the Sudan these consistent violations are most obvious. The minority
rights of the Kopts in Egypt as well as of the Berbers in Algeria are other
examples. The Ibn Khaldun Center, established in Cairo by Saad Eddin Ibrahim,
did substantial research on violated rights of minorities in the Arab world.97
This was not welcomed, and a pretext was found to close the Center, to
outlaw its founder and to jail him until – under international pressure – he
was eventually released and acquitted. Today, going for democracy in the world
of Islam is a personal risk. As a Muslim living in Europe, I have misgivings
that Islamists of the diaspora are making the issue most perilous in Europe
itself, threatening pro-democracy Muslims who disagree with their agenda.
Conclusions
Global democracy
and democratic peace have become a universal vision for the twenty-first
century in post-bipolar world politics. Under the conditions of an Islamic
awakening and the related call to global jihad/jihadism as an Islamist solution
in contrast to democracy, the people of Islam and its civilization are facing
tough choices. The issues also touch on the existing secular authority of the
international system determined by the secular rules of the Westphalian Peace.
The twenty-first century commenced
with 11 September 2001, followed by the wars in Afghanistan 2001 and Iraq 2003.
Then global jihad was extended to Europe after 11 March 2004 and the London
assaults in the following year. For countering Islamist jihadism in a war of
ideas, democracy and democratization are presented as the proper solution next
to security. In this context, the Marxist slogan ‘‘the liberation of the
proletariat can only be the work of the proletariat itself’’ is pertinent to
the people of Islamic civilization. Therefore, I conclude by stating that
democracy and democratization can only be accomplished by Muslims themselves.
They have the choice to engage in cultural change to overcome the culture of
neopatriarchy. Muslims would be alienating themselves from humanity if the
global jihad of the Islamists were to prevail. For the people of the Islamic
civilization in the world of Islam and in Europe, it is more promising to
become part of democratic peace. Instead of quoting Marx here, I refer to the
Qur’an and its provision: ‘‘And Allah does not change people until they change
themselves’’ (sura 13, verse 11).
Without playing down the effects
of globalization I argue that culture matters and that cultural change is
needed in Islamic civilization. What happens in the world of Islam matters to
the future of Europe. Due to Islamic migration there is a long-term possibility
– clearly envisioned by some leaders of the European Islam diaspora – of an
Islamization of Europe. In anticipating the debate in Part III, I state the
opposite strategy: Europeanizing Islam matters for Muslims in Europe, who could
provide a model for the acceptance of democracy. In Europe, Europeans have the
right to actively participate in determining the future of Islam on their
continent. The rest of the book is written in this spirit. Islam and democracy
are also a European concern. To avoid wishful thinking I first return to
world-political realities and address Islamist internationalism in both its
Sunni and Shi’ite directions. The political agenda of this Islamist
internationalism presents options that stand in competition to the culture of
democracy and to a new world order based on democratic peace.

Part II
Political Islam
enters world politics
Global
jihadism as an Islamist internationalism in its Sunni and Shi’ite varieties as
a challenge to safe democracy and international security
Introductory remarks
This Part II moves
from the analyzed inner predicament of Islamic civilization – torn between the
revived spirit of jihad and the one of a quest for democracy – to deal here
with the contemporary post-bipolar entry of Islam into world politics. At issue
are competitive civilizational options, one of which is the Islamist
alternative for the future consisting of a divine order for the world. However,
global jihadism of political Islam predates the postbipolar developments. It
existed earlier, but the end of the East–West conflict has given it a boost. In
this context, 9/11 has been a watershed event, often wrongly related to an
exclusive uprising against US hegemony and thus viewed in this context as a
revolt against the Pax Americana. This view is considered partly wrong, because
Europe is the historical source of the conflict, and equally at present it
forms one of the major pillars. The fact that the world of Islam constitutes
the neighborhood of Europe is honored in the foreign policy concepts of the
European Union. In addition, Islamic presence as a diaspora in the West is more
visible in Europe (ca. 20 million Muslims within the EU) than it has ever been
in the United States. As will be shown in Part III, Europe is becoming the
battlefield for the conflict, in parallel to the continual growth of this
diasporic presence.
Given this reference to Europe,
this section begins with the first anniversary of the assault on 11 March 2004
in Madrid, viewed as the European version of 9/11. The Club of Madrid organized
a huge event to commemorate the tragedy and to mourn its victims in an effort
to understand what was going on the ground and to learn lessons from it.
European and Muslim statesmen, scholars and opinion leaders were among the
participants, coming not only to mark the commemoration, but also to engage in
a debate on a new phenomenon related to the role of terror legitimated by
religion in world politics. Unlike the ‘‘war on terror’’ declared by US
President George W. Bush as a response to 9/11, the European approach to 11
March was designed as a combination of two concerns: ‘‘safe democracy’’ and
‘‘security.’’ A dialogue between the opinion leaders and politicians of the
Islamic civilization and those of Europe is seen as a tool to avert the ‘‘war
on terror’’sliding into an alleged ‘‘war on Islam.’’ The equation of these two
wars is a prevailing Islamic perception incorporated into the prevailing
Islamic narrative of Islam under siege and also used by political Islam in a
war of ideas not to be simply dismissed as propaganda. This perception
constitutes a distraction from the pending concerns, in that it rather
strengthens and exacerbates the sense of victimhood cultivated by Muslims. In
contrast, to engage in a Euro-Islamic cooperative venture against jihadist
terrorism one needs a security dialogue, not a counterproductive perception of
the self within the framework of self-victimization.
In dissociating the thoughts
presented in this book from the rhetoric of the ‘‘clash of civilizations,’’ a
clear distinction is made between the Islamic faith and the ideology of
political Islam as Islamism. The challenge dealt with here emanates thus from
political Islam and its jihadism. In the preface to this book, the Malaysian
Prime Minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, is quoted as stating that Muslims need
to do their homework in the existing world-political situation. Instead, Saudis
and Egyptians attending the European anti-terrorism meeting in Madrid in March
2005 not only flatly denied the existence of global jihad altogether, but
moreover moved to an offensive approach in an effort at turning the tables on the
West. Those who relate global jihad to terrorism were defamed and accused of
Islamophobia. As a result, it looked as if the Madrid commemoration would shift
from being a forum for reasoning about ‘‘safe democracy’’ in the pursuit of
countering terrorism and establishing security and would become a forum for
Europe-bashing. The accusations and the condemnation of Europe were combined
with Islamic efforts at proselytization. This was a version of the ongoing war
of ideas, not a proper inter-civilizational dialogue. Within the context of
these blame-games a prominent Islamist attending the summit suggested that
Europe is suffering an identity crisis and proposed, as a ‘‘remedy,’’ the
adoption of Islam as a ‘‘the solution’’ for the Europeans. Unfortunately, none
of the attending Europeans repudiated this proposal. That was a great
disservice, not only to any ‘‘Islamic–Western understanding,’’ but also to a
serious countering of terrorism. The silence reflected the state of Europe.
In the following two chapters of
this Part II on Islamist internationalism, the issue is frankly addressed
without any silence in the name of political correctness. As a scholar of the
Muslim faith, I value Europe for providing me with the right of free speech and
of practicing the idea of ‘‘thinking as research’’ (Hedley Bull). On these
grounds, I continue to reject the silencing I face – as in the publication of
this book – whenever I tackle the issues addressed. This happens to me
throughout my research activities.
To begin with, I address the
challenge of an Islamist internationalism represented by a movement based in
the global networks of transnational religion. The target is the existing
Westphalian order based on the ‘‘authority of a secular synthesis’’ (Philpott),
to be replaced by an Islamic one. This is the subject-matter of the present
Part II written in a draft completed prior to the Madrid debate on ‘‘safe
democracy, terrorism and security.’’ The text had to be rewritten later, not
only in the light of the Madrid debate but also to include further events in
Europe (from 11 March 2004 through the slaying of Theo van Gogh on 2 November
2004 to the London assaults of 7 and 22 July 2005 and the uprising in the banlieues
de l’Islam in Paris in October/November 2005, continued globally during the
conflict over the Danish Mohammed cartoons in early 2006 and again in the
outrage over Pope Benedict) in the never-ending story of the challenge
addressed.
In the ensuing introductory
remarks, pains are taken to place the addressed issue in an overall context. I
am aware of the risky nature of this undertaking in an environment of a
European shift from one extreme sentiment to the other, i.e. from
‘‘Orientalism’’ (Edward Said) to an ‘‘Orientalism in reverse’’ (Sadiq al-Azm).
In this poisoned atmosphere old-style racism, Islamophobia and prejudice about
other world cultures are certainly not overcome, but rather reversed. This is
the truth, like it or not. The new opposite attitude forbids any critique of
other world cultures by establishing rules of censorship called political
correctness. Despite the positive intention of this sentiment it is clearly not
helpful at all, and it has created great damage to scholarship on Islam. It
also has hampered an uncensored intercivilizational dialogue. Any serious
dealing with the significance of jihadism and its call for an ‘‘Islamic world
revolution’’ (Sayyid Qutb) in the pursuit of an Islamic world order is often
ill presented as panicking and is combined with the weak argument that ‘‘it is
un-Islamic’’ to state that jihadist terrorism ‘‘has anything to do with
Islam.’’ This attitude was discernible in March 2005 in Madrid and elsewhere
throughout Europe. It is for this reason that I feel the need to protect the
analysis provided in this part from any of the currently prevailing accusations
in the public debates. Existing ideological bias in scholarship hampers any
analysis of issues under scrutiny. This is often combined with a lack of
awareness of existing threats. In order to understand this I refer to the
concept of asabiyya of the great Muslim medieval philosopher Ibn Khaldun, who
died in 1406. His model, meaning esprit de corps of a civilizational entity,
continues to be relevant for the twenty-first century. In fact, the European asabiyya
of today is a weak one as proven by the silence vis-a`-vis the cited
accusations made in Madrid. To be sure, tolerance and understanding of other
cultures are precious. However, we need to distinguish between true tolerance
on the one hand and sentiments of indifference and self-denial on the other.
Europe needs a combination of self-awareness (asabiyya) and tolerance to come
to terms with the Islamic civilization in a changed environment, to be
described in this Part II.
With its jihadist internationalism
legitimated by a reference to religion, political Islam tries to mobilize the
Islamic civilization to make it enter the theater of world politics. The
context is transnational religion parallel to a culturalization of conflict and
a religionization of politics. Given the fact of Islam as a universal religion,
the articulated claims are equally universal. If this universalism is
politicized and if its transnational links are mobilized to a networking, then
the grounds for a new internationalism will be at work across borders. The new
process taking place and resulting in this novelty is related to the original
Islamic universalism, although in an invention of tradition. In this new shape,
politicized religion contributes to the ‘‘culture of violence’’ pursued in a ‘‘cosmic
war’’ (Mark Juergensmeyer) against an imaginary enemy. Therefore, the issue is
not only the new place of religion as a cultural system in world politics, but
also the fact that those people adhering to this new interpretation view
themselves as ‘‘true believers’’ while denying most co-religionists and other
believers an equal standing.
The analysis of global jihadism as
an Islamist internationalism acknowledges the fact that jihadists are non-state
actors. However, it also takes account of involved states like Iran and Saudi
Arabia. The Islamist state of Iran presents its Islamic revolution as a model
for export. The other state, Saudi Arabia, also exports its ideology of
Wahhabism. In both cases the state-related networking of a transnational
religion is at work in world politics. Unlike the new Iranian president Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, who revived revolutionary Shi’ite Khomeinism in 2005, the Saudis
for their Sunni part promote Wahhabism abroad mainly for the sake of
convenience and not fully from conviction. The fact of a Wahhabi
internationalism is not related to a Wahhabi call for a world revolution. There
is no such thing as a vision of a Wahhabi world order comparable to the one
once envisioned by Ayatollah Khomeini or by the Sunni Islamists in the mind of
Sayyid Qutb, both outlined in the ensuing chapters. Nevertheless, Saudi Arabia
continues to be more dangerous than Iran has ever been, the threat of nuclear
proliferation notwithstanding. Why? Saudi Arabia provides financial support for
the networks of a worldwide Islamism even though the Islamist–jihadist ideology
of internationalism is not shared, at least not in public.
Contemporary jihadist
internationalism is rooted in political Islam and its culturized politics
matters to world politics in general as well as specifically to Europe. It is
well known that Islamists use the Islamic diaspora in Europe as their logistic
base in the pursuit of jihadist internationalism in the context of
globalization. The following analysis is aware of the flaws of reductionism and
of culturalism. Therefore it is argued that for a proper understanding of
jihadist violence any reductionist thinking would be misleading. Religion needs
first to be viewed in its own terms as meaning employed in discourse, and only
then can it be contextualized. Two issues need to be accounted for: Religion is
embedded in society, economics and politics, but equally based on a tradition
and on a related meaning that stands for itself. Traditions are reborn by a
reinvention which also applies to religion as a cultural system. The Islamic
revival is shaped by such a reinvention of traditions. This process takes place
in a context of structural embedding and it brings the old and new into one
package. In considering both the meaning of religion and its embedment into a
structural context, the flaws of cultural essentialism and sociological
reductionism are avoided.
In this section and throughout
this book the reference to ‘‘religion’’ is persistently made in the Durkheimian
sense of a fait social, not to religion as a faith. This is a social-scientific
study and not a theological analysis of the scripture documenting religious
provisions. However, I engage in this inquiry without overlooking the meaning
of religion. Therefore, the jihad of religious activism is viewed as a social
fact, even though not in line with an authentic understanding of the scripture,
but without ignoring the selfimage of the jihadists as ‘‘true believers.’’ No
doubt, religious texts are important for the scholar, but the scripture in
itself does not provide any guidance for a social-scientific analysis. At issue
is a useful explanation of the realities of religious movements and their
culture of violence. For this reason most Western Islamic studies are lacking,
be they inspired by an Orientalism or an ‘‘Orientalism in reverse.’’ This is
the point of departure of the present Part II, being an effort at a proper
understanding of contemporary religious activism in Islam legitimated in sacral
terms for justifying a ‘‘cosmic war’’ (Juergensmeyer) on non-Muslims convicted
of kufr/ unbelief. Religious activists fight against the infidels not for
personal benefit, but in the service of their religious beliefs. Whether these
are a right or a wrong interpretation of religion is not the concern of this
study, which is focused on existing realities. The worldview, not a material
interest, of the actors is at stake, even though the worldview itself is
subject to change underpinned by material constraints. Therefore, the reference
to religion – and to all culture-related ideas, ideals and attitudes – is
always incorporated or embedded in ever-changing societal realities, economic,
social and political. Nevertheless, religion as a faith and a cultural system
is never a mere reflection of those realities. Since humans are not automata,
they do not mechanically reflect the socio-economic environment in their
worldviews and related thoughts. When it comes to religion, there is a need to
grasp it as an intrinsic body of beliefs on which a cultural view of the world
is grounded. If the meaning of religion is ignored no proper grasp of this
issue will be possible. To state this is definitely not an essentialization of
religion or of culture. In short, religion is an entity in its own terms even
though embedded in realities. To draw attention to this fact is simply an
effort to beware of reductionism, in order not to fall into the trap of
reducing religious views and beliefs to acknowledged socio-economic situations
and circumstances.
The complexity lies in the duality
that religion is both a body in itself and simultaneously embedded in society.
There is an interplay between both. In this understanding, jihadist
internationalism is not a mere protest against an unjust globalization. It is
true that Islamists hate the West, because of its present hegemonic power which
also extends to the world of Islam. However, in its substance political Islam
is much more than simply a rejection of the West because it has its own
intrinsic views, as well as concepts of order and aims for a remaking of the
world. Islamists do not simply lament existing conditions; it is therefore
wrong to reduce the Islamic ‘‘revolt against the West’’ (Bull) to an
anti-globalism. Stated in a nutshell: A new world order shaped by ‘‘hakimiyyat
Allah/God’s rule’’ and not just an expression of anti-globalism is at issue. In
Europe, the matter is more complex. The marginalization of Muslim immigrants is
a social reality. Yet, for Islamists the issue is not equality, but rather
promoting the shari’a in secular Europe, first as a cultural right, and later
as a totalizing order.
It is not a contradiction to acknowledge the great appeal of
the religionbased culture of violence reflected in the jihadist movements and
to state simultaneously that the jihadists constitute a minority among Muslims.
However, if one condemns jihadists and then excommunicates them as
‘‘unIslamic’’ – on the basis of making scriptural references – one ends up
sharing their way of dealing with the other. It is more productive to follow
Juergensmeyer’s proposition, presented at the international conference in Madrid
(8–11 March 2005): namely, to deal with the question: ‘‘Why is religion
involved with terrorism?’’ In an effort at providing an answer one can point to
three issues pertinent for understanding the culture of violence promoted by
Islamist internationalism:
First: Jihadism as
‘‘terror in the mind of God’’ is based on ‘‘ideals and ideas’’ which are
‘‘authentically and thoroughly’’ religious. In relating this general statement
to a serious reading of Sayyid Qutb’s declaration of an ‘‘Islamic world revolution’’
in his al-salam al-alami wa al-Islam, or of Hasan al-Banna’s Risalat al-jihad,
the conclusion can be drawn that the religious-Islamic character is inherent in
such pronouncements. The commitment to violence and terror in the name of
religion results from a specific – of course questionable – understanding of
religion. Islamists deny their Islamic critics membership of the Islamic umma.
Similarly, one would play the same game if the jihadists were – in reverse –
called ‘‘un-Islamic’’ and excluded from the Islamic community in whose name
they believe they fight their jihad!
Second: The idea
of jihadism as religiously motivated terrorism enjoys growing popularity. In
employing the concept of ‘‘public choice,’’ I argue that within the generation
of young Muslims, who are mostly ‘‘no-future kids,’’ there is an increasing
admiration for bin Laden and moreover a consent to his ideas symbolizing the
Islamic ‘‘revolt against the West.’’ The phenomenon of bin-Ladenism becomes a
virus. Clearly, in this context the related religion-based worldview is
definitely endorsed by those prone or susceptible to this appeal. It follows
that the ‘‘minority argument’’ is relative and ought to be placed within a
context. In other words, the reference to the minority argument should not
serve as a belittlement of jihadism.
Third: It is the idea of bin-Ladenism that a
cosmic sacred battle between al-iman/belief and al-kufr al-alami/international
unbelief is the legitimacy of an Islamic world revolution. This claim is the
pending core issue and it pertains to the non-negotiable claim to establish a siyadat
al-Islam/supremacy of Islam which will replace the hegemony of the West after it
has been de-centered (de-Westernization). In this understanding al-iman is
non-negotiable and it would never accommodate itself to what is considered to
be alkufr/unbelief, as seen from the point of view of ‘‘true believers.’’ The
sacred battle in a cosmic war is waged by people who have no concept of time
and who believe they are not dependent on specific or limited practical
resources; therefore this war can continue until the envisioned goal is
reached. Sacrifice/al-tadhiya is viewed by these believers as a permanent act.
For Europeans this is often difficult to understand; they seem to have lost
their beliefs to the extent that they cannot imagine a human sacrificing his
life for religious ends. Certainly, the Islamist ideology reflects extremist views,
but in a specific environment – as is the one of post-bipolarity – it functions
as an ide´ologie mobilisatrice/mobilizatory ideology, a term coined by
Maxime Rodinson. This process is taking place in our time, providing fertile
environment for the neo-jihad as a kind of ‘‘holy terror.’’ The overall
atmosphere is overloaded with the mind and spirit of millenarianism.
The listed issues need to be
grasped beyond culturalism and reductionism in recognizing an interplay between
religion, politics, society and economy. In this context ‘‘religion has become
politicized’’ and ‘‘politics have become religionized’’ in the process of a
culturalization of the conflict. This intrinsic combination of religion and
politics via a culture of violence/terror determines the belief in neo-jihad,
or jihadism as a new concept of irregular war in the pursuit of an Islamic
world order. The fight for the latter is regarded as a sacred battle on cosmic
grounds. The worldview underlying the enduring absolutism under issue ignores an
awareness of time. The belief prevails that the fight will end in a
millennialistic sense with the ultimate victory of al-iman of the true
believers over al-kufr al-alami of the infidels. Again, for the jihadists the
pronounced claims are not negotiable. Therefore it is utterly impossible to
dialogue with them in an effort at accommodating them. In contrast to the
jihadists there are institutional Islamists (e.g. AKP of Turkey), who are
willing to share the game of power and to refrain from a resort to jihad-violence.
Of course, negotiations with them are at least conceivable, however without
falling into the trap of believing that their lipservice to democracy can be
taken at face value. They accept democracy as a procedure of voting, but are
unfavorable to its culture of democracy. This debate will be resumed in the
concluding Chapter 7.
This book subscribes to the notion
of cultural change and applies concepts of development to culture. There are
‘‘developing cultures’’ (L. Harrison).

Therefore, an
awareness of the trap of essentialism is always on my mind. Being among those
Muslims committed to change and equally committed to ‘‘preventing the clash of
civilizations’’ I plead for a two-track strategy that combinesa
securityapproach againstjihadistIslamismwith a real dialoguebetween
civilizations over pending issues. I refer to dialogue in the understanding of
an effort at a peaceful conflict resolution. In Western–Islamic general
dialogues pursued in Jakarta (2002, 2003), I asked my fellow Muslims to
participate in a security dialogue in the pursuit of countering terrorism,
which can never be successful without an Islamic contribution. Such
participation in a security dialogue also frees the people of Islam of the bad
image imputed to them, and it could accomplish even more than that. In Jakarta,
the Islamic response to this call for a security dialogue was most favorable.
Western policies that fail to be inclusive and that give the impression of
demonizing Islam play into the hands of the jihadists, who want to promote
exactly this perception to ignite polarization for the sake of jihad on cosmic
grounds. The ensuing two chapters on Islamist internationalism are guided by
these insights, and therefore it would be a misconception to view this analysis
as a panicking contribution. The intention is to inform and to enlighten about
facts on the ground, as related to Islam and world politics in the post-bipolar
age of the cultural turn. This is done with a view to Europe.
The following two chapters also
consider the existing divide within the Islamic civilization. The rift between
Sunna and Shi’a is currently revived. The distinction between state-sponsored
terrorism in contrast to the irregular war of non-state actors is embedded in
this political context. At first, jihadism was a Sunni phenomenon established
by the Muslim Brotherhood. However, the Sunni suicide bombing as one of the
practices in irregular war has grown from the Shi’ite impact of martyrdom on
Sunni Islamism and is shaped by it. Sunni internationalism is carried out by
the irregulars of underground groups (non-state actors), whereas the Shi’ite
variety is a statesponsored phenomenon and is incorporated into the Islamist
foreign policy of Iran. Of course, it makes use of these irregulars.
Some moderation which occurred in
the rhetoric during the two presidential terms of Mohammed Khatami contributed
to the false impression that Iran had abandoned its self-perception as the
‘‘center of the universe’’ and as ‘‘the model’’ designed for others. In
practice and with regard to its worldview, however, it never did so. Even
though the term ‘‘Islamic world revolution’’ (Qutb) is not used by Iranian
cleric-politicians, they never shied away from exporting their system into the
neighboring Islamic countries (e.g. Iraq, Lebanon, Gulf states, Palestine). The
Iranian politics of Shi’ite internationalism is a reality contrasted with the
competing Sunni internationalism, which, however, predates Khomeinism. The
virus of binLadenism, spreading in Europe among socially marginalized young
Muslims in a context of a war of ideas and of collective memories, is nothing
more than giving the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideas of Hasan al-Banna and Sayyid
Qutb a practical shape.
3      The
world-political Sunni fallacy
Jihadist
internationalism as a cosmic war of irregulars for remaking the world
The contemporary
Islamist call for global jihad in world politics follows the view of the
foremost thinker of political Islam, Sayyid Qutb, that an ‘‘Islamic world
revolution’’ is at issue. This call has given birth to a real political
movement based on transnational religion. Jihadism can no longer be discarded
as mere rhetoric of political Islam. During the lifetime of Qutb the diaspora
of Islam in Europe was fairly negligible in quantity. Therefore, at its
beginning the movement aimed to topple regimes at home which were charged with
being ‘‘un-Islamic.’’ Over the course of time this has changed. From the first
assault on the World Trade Center in New York back in 1993, followed by 9/11
and combined with the assaults in Europe between 2004 and 2006, jihadism took a
global shape. In this time span there were 31 global jihadist strikes extending
from the USA to Asia and Africa. From 11 March 2004 and 2 November of the same
year in Amsterdam (the murder of van Gogh) this process started mapping Europe.
It also inspired the Islamic uprising of October/November 2005 in the banlieues
de l’Islam of French cities, and furthermore affected the global conflict over
the Danish Mohammed cartoons. One may infer that if Europeans continue to fail
to include Muslim immigrants as true citizens in their societies, Europe could
become a battlefield of jihadism. The foiled plan to blow up ten USbound planes
in London in August 2006 was one of the alerts that should be taken seriously.
In this book a distinction is made in the study of Islamism
between the institutional, i.e. peaceful variety of political Islam, and
jihadism in Qutb’s understanding as a violent world revolution. This neo-jihad
emerges from a new interpretation that gives a new design to classical jihad
within the framework of an ‘‘invention of tradition’’ (see note 14). The
overall context is the contemporary politicization of religion in the countries
of Islamic civilization as they are undergoing a severe crisis situation, both
structural and moral. In reiterating the critique of the reductionist approach,
it is emphasized that the phenomenon under issue is related to, but definitely
not reducible to, a structural crisis. Precaution against any reductionism
needs to be at the top of the agenda in any analysis of religion in the context
of globalization and terrorism. In addition, it has been noted that the
phenomenon of religiously legitimated violence is not restricted to Islam: it
can be observed in other world religions as well. Some scholars are reluctant to
conceptualize the cross-religious politicization of the sacred in terms of
religious fundamentalisms. It is, however, a fact that terror legitimated by a
reference to a religious belief grows from this very context, and it therefore
does not take place outside of Islam or of any other religion. Those involved
in practicing ‘‘terror in the mind of God’’ view their action as ‘‘sacred
terror.’’ It is based on a religious interpretation to be related to the
emergence of the global phenomenon of religious fundamentalisms (see note 9)
resulting from the politicization of religion and the religionization of
politics within the framework of the contemporary ‘‘return of the sacred.’’
The issue: an introduction to the study of Jihadist Islamism in
International Relations
In its formative
years jihadist Islamism was an exclusively Sunni phenomenon first aimed – as
stated – at toppling local regimes and at establishing a shari’a state in the
world of Islam. However, the idea of an Islamist world order was articulated in
the writings of Qutb. Contemporary jihadists subscribe to a kind of ‘‘direct
action’’ reminiscent of Georges Sorel’s glorification of violence. Some leaders
of political Islam learned to make use of democracy in Europe and in the world
at large, and thus paid lip-service to abandoning jihad as a violent action.
Nevertheless both the so-called democratic new Islamists and the jihadists
envision a shari’a-based order that stands in all terms against the idea of an
‘‘open society’’ based on the culture of democracy and its pluralism.
Therefore, I do not see any democratization coming from Islamism, as some
believe. A peaceful pursuit of political Islam does not make a democracy. It
only makes use of the voting procedure. Islamist movements that came peacefully
to power, like the Sunni Hamas, or that just participate in democratic rule,
like the Shi’ite Hezbullah of Lebanon and the Mahdi Army of Iraq, continue to
have their militias as terrorist irregulars and thus engage in irregular war
while others of their movements participate as members of the elected
parliaments. This is by no means an endorsement of democracy.
The focus of this chapter is on
jihadism, not an institutional peaceful Islamism. Therefore the analysis
centers on the Sunni idea of global jihad and its manifestation as a major
theme of world politics in the twenty-first century. This phenomenon predates
the spectacular actions of the jihadists of al-Qaeda. The related terror was
well known to Muslims themselves much earlier. The Muslim victims of jihadism,
be it in Algeria, Egypt, Pakistan or other Islamic countries, were ordinary
Muslims accused of deviation. Since the 1980s Muslims have been victims of the
violence exerted by a variety of jihadist groups. The ‘‘sacred terror’’ is
expressed in two ways. First, there is the call to topple the locally existing
order of the nation-state in the world of Islam. Fellow Muslims who disagree
with the jihadists’ views

are also targetted, being excommunicated
from ‘‘Islam’’ to provide justification for killing them as infidels. In a second
step, jihadists work towards a remaking of the international system. In this
context a war of ideas and worldviews is also involved, and this equally
touches on international security. The goal to be achieved by an ‘‘Islamic
world revolution’’ (Sayyid Qutb) is the Pax Islamica of a new world order that
replaces the present one based on a Westphalian synthesis. The implication is
that violence is accompanied by a war of ideas. In short, the Sunni jihadist
ideology of political Islam, which precedes the emergence of al-Qaeda by a few
decades, can be viewed as an Islamist internationalism supplemented by the
global networks of transnational religion. Its vision of an Islamic world
revolution is a pertinent challenge to the idea and structure of post-bipolar
International Relations.1
Post-bipolar developments have contributed to bringing the
jihadist crossborder threat to the fore, and it is now becoming a major concern
of international security. In a way, jihadism heralds a shift from
Clausewitzian inter-state war to a new type of war waged by irregular warriors.
This neojihad is a new pattern which I suggest should be viewed as an irregular
war. At issue is a de-regularization of war pursued by internationalist
jihadism in world politics which creates a challenge to the wisdoms of
traditional security. In order to safeguard democracy under these changed
circumstances, new strategies for dealing with the challenge of ‘‘terror in the
mind of God’’ are needed. In order to understand the new violence of suicide
bombers, I conceptualize the use of religion in an irregular war waged by non-state
actors, while acknowledging the earlier contributions to this new warfare by
Martin van Creveld and Kalevi Holsti.2
To be sure, jihadism is not simply
terrorism. Given its political agenda, it is in a broader sense much more than
a pure practice of violence. What is targeted by jihadist action is the
international order of secular states known as the Westphalian order. Islamists
envision replacing it by a global Islamicate, in which dar al-Islam/the house
of Islam based on hakimiyyat Allah/God’s rule is enhanced to map the entire
globe. This is the real issue, and therefore the addressed war of ideas
revolves around this competition over the future order of the world. Indeed,
the Islamist vision looks like an expression of madness, but is nevertheless a
policy that enjoys support as a popular public choice. In addition, the mindset
of jihadism spreads among those susceptible to its ideology, including
marginalized youngsters in the Islamic diaspora in Europe, who are ready for
recruitment. Therefore, it has to be kept in mind that the logistics and
networking of jihadism are based in the diasporic cells of political Islam in
Europe, where Islamists use civil rights as an instrumental cover for the
protection of their activities. The assaults in Madrid (March 2004) and London
(July 2005) and the foiled plot of August 2006 are only illustrations of more
to come, if countering strategies – also in the war of ideas – fail.
Islamist Sunni internationalism is
analyzed in the following three steps to explain the background of jihadism and
then relate it to international and European security. In looking at the
networking of jihadism, Myron Weiner’s approach, incorporating global migration
into security studies, seems to be most pertinent and helpful.3 As
already stated, the al-Qaeda global networking is mainly based in the European
diaspora of Islam. There, al-Qaeda and its offspring make full use of the
openings which grow from global migration. This makes the jihad pronounced by
contemporary Islamist groups a migratory theme embedded in International
Relations. Political correctness creates obstacles to an inquiry into this
field and to incorporating Islamic migration into a security approach. To be
sure, at issue is not Islam as a religion, but Islamism as a totalitarian
political ideology embedded in the networks of transnational politicized
religion.
Not only in contemporary world
politics, but also specifically throughout Europe, the call to global jihad is
heard in some major mosques. On the surface it looks as though Islamism is
becoming the heir of international communism, representing the challenge of a
new internationalism. It is, however, a different phenomenon, though
comparable. In addition, it is carried out by a minority among the Muslim world
community, but has to be taken most seriously for a variety of reasons. Prior
to the October Revolution of 1917 Lenin and his comrades were seemingly an
insignificant Russian diaspora circle acting in Switzerland, but they managed
to topple a mighty – though declining – Czarist empire in order to establish a
new one. The Islamist jihadist vision displays great resemblance to Leninist
thought: Just as the Leninist cadres acted in the name of an inactive
proletariat, so jihadists believe themselves to be the spearhead of the
revolution – comparatively speaking – representing the real umma itself,
purifying it from the ills of Westernization. Theirobjective is to put it into
action in the pursuit of a new order. The traditional study of terrorism4 fails
to provide the proper approach for grasping this new phenomenon.
There are two levels for dealing
with the pertinence of political Islam to International Relations. First, there
is the state level, related to the existence of states with Muslim peoples.
Their assemblage in the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) makes them
present in the international system, with its fifty-seven members designed
along the rules of international law as sovereign nation-states. They act in
this capacity in international politics, even though their very state grouping
on religious grounds heralds the return of religion to world affairs. This
return of the sacred in a political shape creates a major challenge in ongoing
post-bipolar developments. Second, the emerging non-state actors in
international affairs are becoming a major concern demanding a new security
approach (see note 2). To avoid any misunderstanding it is imperative to
reiterate that jihadism is in line neither with the faith of Islam nor with the
spirit of Islamic civilization, but nevertheless it is a social fact in both,
pointing to a branch that clearly exists in it in the shape of one direction
within contemporary political Islam. Therefore the distracting argument that it
is ‘‘un-Islamic’’ does not hold, in politics or in scholarship. Jihadism is
moving to center-stage in the International Relations of the post-bipolar age.
This part of the book looks at
these issues with a European perspective focused in the context of the ‘‘global
migration crisis’’ on security concerns combined with the need to integrate
Muslim immigrants to keep them away from the spell of Islamism. The issue was
addressed by Peter Neumann in the IISS’s journal Survival as ‘‘Europe’s
Jihadist Dilemma’’ (2006). The study of jihadism and its Islamist
internationalism should become a part of the study of Islam in contemporary
Europe, as well as of the study of order in world politics5 in the
context of the rise of politicized religion, indicating the return of the
sacred with the claim of a role in international affairs as a challenge to
secular politics. Therefore, interest is focused here on the phenomenon in
general and not on the concrete cases of terror legitimated as ‘‘jihad in the
path of God.’’ Among the major concerns is also the political discourse related
to the use of religion for legitimating an Islamist world revolution. The use
of religion is definitely not instrumental, since it reflects an inherited,
civilizationally determined worldview based on a religious belief, albeit in a
new shape. The goal of jihadist terrorism is, however, to establish a new
divine political order outlined in the new discourse. In short, the reference
to religion in politics underpinning the legitimization of an irregular war is
placed in the pursuit of an alternative Islamic world order. This is the
seminal issue area in post-bipolar security studies. Therefore, it is imperative
to underline the insight that jihadist terrorism is not just a concern of
military studies, not to mention the criminal policing some ignorant
‘‘pundits’’ suggest.
Political Islam is pertinent to
European studies6 and to International Relations, the latter, as
Stanley Hoffmann once noted, being designed as an ‘‘American discipline.’’ I
hasten to add that it was a discipline of the Cold War era. All major schools
of the discipline concurred with the Hobbesian view of the state as the basic
actor in world politics and its power being the issue to consider. Yet, there
were a few exceptions. Long before Samuel Huntington coined the disputed term
‘‘clash of civilizations,’’ Raymond Aron, who was once in Paris the mentor of
Stanley Hoffmann, drew attention to the fact that bipolarity has been the
‘‘veil’’ concealing the real source of conflict in international politics,
namely ‘‘the heterogeneity of civilizations.’’7 In Aron’s view,
people belong by nature and through cultural socialization to civilizations,
and only formally to states. This belonging may have changed in modern
citizenship as an identity pattern, but such a modern development is utterly
restricted to the Western civilization. In the West, citizenship has replaced
pre-modern parochial identities. In contrast, in the world of Islam,
nation-states are a kind of ‘‘quasi state,’’ i.e. only nominal states.8 In
view of this fact, citizenship in the world of Islam – compared to the deeply
seated umma identity – lacks substance and thus is meaningless. Above all it
fails to provide real identity. Accordingly, the identity of the people living
in the Middle East is not bound by nation-states. Under these conditions,
Islamism revives the concept of the umma in Islam as an identity pattern for
opposing the existing nation-states, and this gives Islam as an imagined
community a political shape. The decline of secular pan-Arab nationalism has
been related to the crisis of the nation-state in the Arab world. The end of
pan-Arabism then smoothed the way for the emergence of new identity patterns,
of which the one provided by Islamist internationalism is the most prevailing.
There are also ethnic and religious-sectarian identities, all of which are
embedded in transnational religion.
At present the nominal nation-state is still there, but for
non-state actors identity politics go beyond this nominal institution. In the
study of international conflict one needs to acknowledge that ‘‘culture
matters’’ for dealing with cultural worldviews, however without derailing the
analysis to a ‘‘culturalism.’’ Prior to 9/11 it was risky to maintain that
cultural differences create fault-lines that could lead to violent conflict.
Only a few scholars have dared to point to the potential for bloodshed in
conflicts related to culturalethnic differences being politicized. For averting
such an outcome, a combination of conflict studies with a policy-oriented
effort at reviving the Kantian vision of perpetual peace seems to be promising.
In acknowledging the existing impediments, the mobilizatory ideology of
jihadist internationalism is presented as an ideology of violent conflict
embraced by a political movement. The findings of the ‘‘Fundamentalism
Project’’ of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the ‘‘Culture Matters
Project’’ (CMP) of the Fletcher School, Tufts University, and the
‘‘Transnational Religion Projects’’ run at Cornell University have provided
contributions that shaped my insights employed in this chapter.9
Understanding Islamist internationalism
In a first step of
the analysis three interrelated issue areas, the new identity politics, the
cultural turn and the return of the sacred in a political shape,10 all
imbued with ethnicity, are to be identified as the centerpieces of the study of
conflict in an international environment. At issue is a competition over
remaking the world11 in the twenty-first century. In the pivotal
case of Islamism the major goal is an establishing of hakimiyyat Allah/God’s
rule,12 believed to be the ultimate divine political order. In this
ideology one finds a combination of a new internationalism of a global Pax
Islamica and particularisms related to an inter-Islamic sectarian and ethnic
split as demonstrated in Iraq. Sunni Islamism claims universality for its
worldview, which alienates Muslims from non-Muslims worldwide but at the same
time creates rifts within Islam.
The described phenomenon reaches
Europe via global migration. In this case the Islamist rejection of a pluralism
of religions and cultures threatens internal peace. Without rethinking Islam
and its doctrines for abandoning existing religious absolutism, Islam’s
predicament with pluralism will continue to trouble Muslims including their
diaspora in Europe.13 Islamist internationalism is the jihadist
cosmic fight for siyadat al-Islam/supremacy of Islam; therefore it is not
consonant with the need for pluralism and as such provides no plausible
alternative to secular concepts.
In placing the present
subject-matter among the basic issue areas of postbipolar international
security studies, the following analysis is pursued – as stated – in three
steps. It intends first, to approach the theme in question in the pursuitof
understanding Islamist internationalism;second, to shed light on the
politicization of religion as the source from which the Islamist worldview
emerges; and third, to outline jihadist action as a new pattern of an
‘‘irregular war’’ rooted in political Islam. The overall concern is the new
divine order envisioned for this century by the Islamists, as the solution to
the crisis of the present international order. At the very outset one is
reminded of two facts: first, the roots of this movement in Islam are to be
found in the Sunna, not in the Shi’a as commonly and wrongly believed; second,
it is not an enlightenment but rather a deceit when some leaders of the Islamic
diaspora excuse actions of jihadist terrorism as outrage over wrong Western
policies and related occupation in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon. It
is a fact that jihadism was born in 1928 when none of these issues existed.
In undertaking the first step in
understanding Islamist internationalism, the inquiry compels us among other
things to engage in breaking with established taboos. This is like entering a
minefield. It is true, after 11 September 2001 in the USA and 11 March 2004 as
well as 7 July 2005 in Europe, that it has become easier in a way to speak of
jihadist Islamism as a security threat without running the risk of being
accused of Islamophobia. However, the flawed policies of the Bush administration,
in particular the questionable Iraq war, have contributed to a setback and to a
revival of the obstacles in the way of dealing candidly with the roots of
jihadist terror in political Islam, making the venture a thorny path. As a
Muslim migrant living in Europe, I am aware of an existing Islamophobia and
agree that there is a need to combat it, but I cannot overlook the fact that
the Islamists – in the ongoing war of ideas – are exploiting current suspicions
of Islamophobia attached to constructed images of Islam for camouflaging their
own activities. Thus, the accusation of a demonization of Islam is used as
propaganda against scholars engaged in uncovering political Islam. During the
conflict over the Danish Mohammed cartoons, not only did it become obvious that
there is a lack of understanding of other cultures, but it was also clear that
the Islamists in action were pursuing their agenda to reduce freedom of
expression. The protest movement was orchestrated, not spontaneous.
To begin with, jihadist Islamism
as a new internationalism in world politics is not the religious faith of Islam
nor does it reflect the classical doctrine of jihad. Islamism and its jihadism
are an ‘‘invention of tradition.’’14 Despite this distinction, it
makes no sense to overlook the self-reference of these jihadists, i.e. their
religion-based image of themselves. Again, one is reminded that Islamists view
themselves as ‘‘the true believers’’15 and that they convict others
of being ‘‘un-Islamic.’’ It follows that jihadist Islamism is neither cynicism
nor an instrumental cover for concealing political action in abusing religion.
At issue is a sincere attitude of belief, even though, as an action of terror,
it is clearly not in line with inherited religious doctrines. To reiterate: for
a social scientist religion is a reality and not a scriptural belief. In this
understanding it matters that the jihadists do not perceive their action to be
‘‘irhab/terrorism,’’ but rather ‘‘jihadiyya/jihadism,’’ i.e. a new
interpretation of the Qur’anic jihad. Their claim to act as ‘‘true believers’’
in an effort at ‘‘remaking the world’’ compels us to study what they think and
what they do. It is therefore abundantly clear that the scripture is not the
subject-matter of the analysis, nor is it the source of Islamist inspiration.
So what is Islamist internationalism all about?
To answer this question some
methodological grounds should be clarified. First, the study of transnational
religion needs to be introduced to the discipline of International Relations,
and second, the study of war needs to go beyond legalistic constraints attached
to an inter-state war (e.g. declaration of war by a sovereign state) as well as
beyond the traditional wisdoms of the Clausewitzian thinking on war. These
wisdoms are no longer helpful for grasping the recent current of irregular war,
of which jihadism is a major case in point. In general, we are challenged to
rethink the discipline of International Relations and established theories of
war in the course of introducing needed innovations. The scholastic and the
dividing debates in International Relations not only separate schools of
thought from one another, but also distract from the issue itself. Quantitative
methods are not useful for the study of political Islam because the
subject-matter is not quantifiable. Understanding Islam and Islamism are
matters of cultural analysis applied to social science.
Political Islam is based on reinventing religious concepts
as jihad, shari’a, da’wa, etc., in a context of politicization under conditions
of globalization. Of course, this phenomenon is embedded in a power structure,
but explaining ‘‘revolt against the West’’ simply as an anti-globalism is
pointless. Islamist internationalism is not an anti-globalism, for it is itself
an ideology of a new globalization based on a political-jihadist interpretation
of Islam as a global remaking of the world. The fact that jihadist Islamism is
an idea – albeit embedded in a political movement – makes clear that in order
to counter it as a source of modern terrorism, one needs also to engage in a
war of ideas.16 In Europe the issue is related to ‘‘open society and
its enemies.’’ It is a challenge to ‘‘safe democracy.’’
Jihadist internationalism is not ‘‘religious extremism,’’ but a revolt against
the West based on the politicization of Islam
Next to
understanding jihadist Islamism, the focus in the second step is on the rise of
new challenges related to the return of religion to world politics for the
articulation of political goals. Max Weber’s prediction of a disenchantment of
the world/Entzauberung der Welt, as a process of rationalization of worldviews
being an outcome of secularization, did not materialize globally as a universal
outlook. The return of the sacred is related to reversing secularization into a
de-secularization. This is the meaning of the politicization of Islam. A
civilizational self-assertive ‘‘revolt against the West’’17 is quite
different from the earlier phenomenon of decolonization. The targets of the new
revolt are the secular values of the Westphalian order itself, and as such are
no longer restricted to combatting the political hegemony of the West. This
contestation of European values is a de-secularization; it has been militarized
through the jihadization of the revolt.
In the present study the addressed revolt is placed in the
study of civilization despite the contamination of the issue through
Huntington’s ‘‘clash.’’ My reference to the study of civilization in the
history of ideas is the fourteenth-century Muslim philosopher Ibn Khaldun. In
the year 2006 we commemorated him 600 years after his death in 1406, in an
event in Granada sponsored by the Spanish government within the framework of
its project ‘‘Alliance of Civilizations.’’ Without further specifications,
Huntington speaks of a ‘‘clash between civilizations’’ in an essentializing
manner. Instead I deal with conflict and cite the work of Hedley Bull – not
quoted by Huntington who, moreover, does not know Ibn Khaldun’s work. Bull
unravels the fallacy of the so-called global village in stating that
it is also clear that the shrinking of the
globe, while it has brought societies to a degree of mutual awareness and
interaction they have not had before, does not in itself create a unity of
outlook and has not in fact done so ... Humanity is becoming simultaneously
more unified and more fragmented.18
In considering Bull’s insight and while
stating a cultural fragmentation rooted in the reality of the ‘‘heterogeneity’’
of civilizations pointed at by Raymond Aron, I place the politicization of
Islam in the context of the contemporary civilizational revolt against the
West, for which jihadism is a prominent case in point. Western civilization is
secular, and its structural globalization does not match with a universalization
of its secular values; rather, a cultural fragmentation is the outcome. While
the European expansion has contributed to the structural mapping of the entire
world along the lines of standards designed and unfolded by the civilization of
the West,19 there was no successful overall universalization of
Western values that matches with the degree of globalization reached. It was a
fallacy of the early development studies to equate value-related Westernization
with modernization and secularization. Western scholars continue not to
distinguish between the globalization of structures and the universalization of
values together with related worldviews. Such a distinction is the precondition
for a proper understanding of the mindset of Islamist jihadism as a variety of
the new ‘‘revolt against the West,’’ also aimed at a de-secularization. This is
the meaning of the return of the sacred contributing to a lack of consensus
over universally valid and accepted norms and values determining international
behavior, and is the point of the politicization of religion. There is a
reversal from modernization to re-traditionalization, from secularization to
de-secularization and from Westernization to de-Westernization. The rejection
of Western knowledge20 is essential for this reversal. In this
regard, education is the battlefield of Islamism, using madrasas for
disseminating the jihadist mindset not only in the world of Islam but also in
its diaspora throughout Europe itself. In this regard, the new interpretation
of Islam as Islamism attached to civilizational claims is accepted by some in
the name of multi-culturalism and religious freedom, boosting the mushrooming
of Islamic enclaves of the diaspora that provide shelter to the Islamists. The
processes of de-secularization in the world of Islam are extended to Europe
through education, using the networks of transnational religion. The return of
the sacred in the guise of a politicization of Islam thus becomes a European
phenomenon and also the subject-matter for studies both on Europe and on
education.21
The frame of reference of the
politicization of Islam is a civilizational understanding of all Muslims
imagined as an umma-community22 in international politics. This
understanding of Muslims as a distinct international community is not
restricted to the irregulars of political Islam, but also comprises the states
that constitute their own grouping in the international system as the
Organization in the Islamic Conference (OIC). This is the only one in the world
based on religion. Since the rise of political Islam in that part of the world,
any dealings with Islamist movements have also become a policy issue on
international grounds and are no longer merely an academic concern for the
traditional students of Islam or for Islamic states themselves. Neither those
Orientalist philologians nor the others of cultural anthropology are in a
position to relate the return of the sacred as a politicization of religion to
International Relations. To be sure, jihadist Islamism is an internationalism
pertinent to security studies that cannot be explained with empty phrases such
as ‘‘Islamic politics.’’
In historical terms it can be
stated that the contemporary Islamist internationalism as a civilizational
revolt against the West began with the establishing of the very first Islamist
movement in Egypt. In the year 1928 Hasan al-Banna founded the movement/society
of the Muslim Brothers.23 It was al-Banna himself who, in a most
authoritative essay, reinterpreted the doctrine of jihad, thus laying grounds
for jihadism in the understanding of terrorism against infidels.24 However,
at issue is not terror, but rather a fight in a competition between an
envisioned Pax Islamica and a hegemonic Pax Americana. Yet, Europe is involved,
too, because even though distinct it is a part of the civilization of the West.
The Westphalian order in world politics challenged by the Islamist ‘‘revolt
against the West’’ is a European order that mapped the entire globe.
This section started with a
reference to the Weberian formula of secularization as Entzauberung/disenchantment
of the world, in order to point out that a re-religionization of politics, i.e.
the opposite, is taking place. This process takes shape in world politics as a
conflict between the secular and the religious concepts of order leading to a
‘‘new Cold War.’’25 In short, the civilizational conflict in world
politics is not between Islam and the West as essentialized entities, but is
rather an effect of the de-secularization.
One is inclined to wonder why Islamists who disparage the
Europeans as crusaders/salibiyyun despite this contemp seek asylum in Europe.
The explanation is quite simple and pragmatic: Islamists cannot act freely in
their undemocratic home countries. In contrast, Western democracies provide
safe havens for their activities. In most of the Islamic states there exists no
opportunity to practice political opposition, be it by Islamists or others.
Thus, the rise of political Islam is denied expression through institutional
channels (Turkey and Indonesia are exceptions, even though with limits).
Islamist movements are, however, the basic political opposition in the world of
Islam; there, they operate underground as clandestine actors. In the search for
outlets for free action, Islamist leaders resort to Europe as asylum-seekers,
obtaining both refuge and benefits of the welfare state. They have been
successful so far in establishing a hinterland for their activities in Europe.
Why do European states tolerate Islamism? In a Chatham study published after 7
July 2005, one reads:
The police were
aware that London was increasingly used as a base for terrorism in the Middle
East and elsewhere ... However, these individuals were not viewed as a threat
to the UK national security and so they were left to continue their activities.
(International Herald Tribune, 19 July 2005)
In his ‘‘Lipset
Lecture,’’ published in Journal of Democracy (2006), Francis Fukuyama
identifies Europe as a battlefield of Islamism. This will be discussed later in
Part III in the context of the assaults of 11 March 2004 in Madrid, and 7 July
2005 in London, which are not well understood in Europe. After 9/11 the
Princeton professor Michael Duran contended in his essay on ‘‘Somebody Else’s
Civil War?’’26 that in September 2001 al-Qaeda primarily wanted to
hit its enemies in the world of Islam via the United States. Analogically, one
may say, the jihadists of Madrid and London wanted to hit their Islamic rulers
indirectly. This view is wrong, however. Even though Duran’s essay is very
intelligent, it overlooks or confuses the order of the two levels in the
strategic thinking of the Islamists: First, the replacement of secular regimes
in the world of Islam itself by the nizam/system of hakimiyyat Allah/God’s
rule, and, on these grounds, second, the establishment of a global Pax Islamica
via a thawra alamiyya/world revolution of jihad (Qutb) mapping the globe into dar
al-Islam. Of course, this is a utopia, but it is also a mobilizatory ideology.
To read the Islamist mindset it is
best to read their mentor Sayyid Qutb, who made it clear: the target is the
world order and the goal to be achieved is a remaking of the world.27 When
Islamists hit Western targets in the West itself, one cannot speak of
‘‘somebody else’s war.’’ The strategy of jihadist Islamism combines the levels
of the domestic (the world of Islam) and the global (world politics) in its
internationalism. This internationalism is intrinsic to Islamism embodying a
world-political concept of order, for it is not merely concerned with the world
of Islam, but considers in its views the world at large, of course including
Europe. Pro-Western Islamic rulers are viewed as a ‘‘proxy’’ of the West, and
therefore toppling them is also a part of the ‘‘revolt against the West.’’ In
addition, there is a European dimension of the issue. It is heralded through
the existence of a non-integrated second and third generation of no-future kids
born in Europe but in no way European in their identity. As proven again and
again, this Islamic youth of the Islamic diaspora is susceptible to Islamism.
Another dimension of the Europe
connection of Islamism concerns the outlets of transnational religion. As
stated, Islamists take refuge in Europe in order to make full use of Western
democratic civil rights in establishing Islamist logistic networkings for the
respective movements, as safe havens in Western Europe itself.28 From
this fact follows the need to enhance the study of the internationalism of
Sunni jihadist Islamism as a security concern to include Europe itself in the
scope of the analysis. In other words, the study of Islamic migration to
Western Europe is part and parcel of the needed study of the internationalism
of political Islam as an issue in security politics. This is the subject-matter
of Part III of this book. At this point, I want to warn against any
indiscriminate criticism of the Islamic diaspora in Europe and propose my
concept of EuroIslam as an alternative to jihadism, as will be explained in the
final part of this book.
One of the major areas of Islamist
indoctrination is comprised of some mosques and madrasas in Europe and in the
world of Islam. Among the few Western commentators who understand that a
‘‘deadly idea’’ is at work one finds Roger Cohen. In a remarkable editorial
published in the International Herald Tribune of 20 July 2005, he rejects
simple interpretations and questions the view: ‘‘remove the repression or
exclusion and the catalysts to kill in the name of faith would disappear.’’
Truly, this is not the issue. At issue is a ‘‘bellicose idea whose time has
come’’; it constructs the narrative of an imagined Islamic umma under siege29
in the context of an equally constructed ‘‘history of Western intrusion
into the world of Islam’’ (ibid.). This story of politicization of religion for
the restoration of Islamic supremacy is brought to Europe via Islamic
immigration making full use of ‘‘democracy against itself’’30 in the
war of ideas. It was not Huntington but Sayyid Qutb, in his Mushkilat alHadarah
[The Problem of Civilization],31 who established the rhetoric of a
‘‘clash of
civilizations.’’
World order and the place of civilization in world politics: the return
of the sacred in a political garb
The foregoing
analysis of Sunni internationalism has propounded the jihadist idea of a world
revolution aimed at a remaking of the world order in the context of an
irregular war, and has revealed its religious legitimation. This is the Islamic
variety of ‘‘terror in the mind of God’’32 as related to the birth
of political Islam. As earlier shown, this process precedes the end of the Cold
War. However, it is only in the course of post-bipolar developments that
jihadist Islamism has become a mobilizatory ideology generating a great impact.
At issue is an Islamic variety of the return of the sacred that can be phrased
with Mark Juergensmeyer’s idea of a competition between religious and secular
orders already taking the shape of the ‘‘new Cold War’’ (note 25). In shedding
light on this return of the sacred I continue the analysis still in its second
step dealing further with the politicization of religion.
Despite the activities of Saudi
Arabia in promoting Wahhabi Islam, there is a shift in Sunni Islam from the
state to non-state actors as one of the sources of the ‘‘troubled peace’’ in
the post-Cold-War era. In fact, this is the emerging ‘‘new world disorder’’
heralding the already addressed conflict between religious and secular views over
what order should prevail. In my earlier book on Islamic fundamentalism I
coined the term ‘‘new world disorder’’ to refer to a real threat of
destabilization, but equally to point to the inability of the Islamists to
create the envisaged order through a lack of needed capabilities. The core
issue is the politicization of religion from which jihadism grows. However, it
leads to nowhere, and not to the envisioned vague Islamic world order. The
outcome is international destabilization. It is true, in a way, that the
irregular war of jihad helps Islamists to compensate for the technological
superiority of their enemy in an asymmetrical situation of power. Under the
present conditions the most they can accomplish is to trigger destabilization.
It is within the nature of jihadism to create disorder, and this would be a
step in the direction of the new order of God’s rule they envision. Therefore,
the reference to the ‘‘world disorders’’ caused by a jihadist irregular war
should not be belittling of its serious security challenge; it poses a great
threat in that its nature is based on the concept of order. In this way
Islamism provokes a civilizational competition of two concepts of order
expressed by military means.
At this point a repeated reference
to Huntington and to his view that the new process is a clash of civilizations
is pertinent. I published a book on this subject a year ahead of Huntington’s Clash.33
I look at the issue in terms of an inter-civilizational conflict related
to the return of the sacred, preferring to follow in the footsteps of Ibn
Khaldun’s ‘‘ilm al-umran/science of civilization,’’34 and not to
deal with the issue in a superficial political way. Despite this clear
dissociation I do not join those who demonize Huntington, even though he
burdened the use of this approach. An effort at a synthesis was made in my
contribution to the book of the former president of Germany, Roman Herzog,
published under the title Preventing the Clash of Civilizations.35 There
I take pains to pursue an analysis that seeks an accord without overlooking the
conflict, but seeing a peaceful resolution to it. Despite all disagreement, I
still acknowledge Huntington’s seniority in the debate and also his success in
introducing the theme into International Relations, but I do not refrain from
making corrections to his views about Islam and its civilization, and the
potential of conflict resolution.
In this continuation of the second
step in the present inquiry into Sunni jihadist internationalism, it has by no
means been a digression to refer to Western academia’s way of handling these
issues, as well as the tremendous obstacles limiting liberty of expression. I
honestly hope that this book will see the light of day and will not become a
victim of peer-group readers, who pretend to make a scholarly evaluation but in
fact engage in censorship. The curtailment of the right of free speech in
research is a troubling disservice to Western scholarship. If we forbid stating
that global jihad is rooted in realities and the conflicts of the twenty-first
century, and accept the propaganda that jihadism is ‘‘un-Islamic’’ and that
denies its reality as an Islamic interpretation of jihad, then we deny
ourselves the distinction between the spirit of Islamism and the spirit of
Islam. At issue is the politicization of Islam to Islamism and the
militarization of jihad to jihadism. There are ideas that connect to concrete
realities underpinning the rise of Islamist internationalism in networks of
transnational religion.
In an effort at conceptualization
and in a confession of a major source of inspiration for my study of the
politicization of Islam, I refer to the great multi-million dollar project for
the study of religious fundamentalisms in all world religions, run at the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences. It resulted in the publication of five
seminal volumes on this subject (see note 9). In further reference to the
stated intellectual impediments in scholarship, I emphasize how regrettable it
is to face the fact that these findings are seldom quoted in Islamic studies
and are even denied an appreciation. After 9/11, 11 March 2004 and 7 July 2005,
it has become more than clear to what great extent we need to pursue an
uncensored study of jihadist Islamism and international security. After the
foiled plot of the Islamists in August 2006 to blow up ten US-bound planes, the
Swiss Neue Zuercher Zeitung regretted, in the editorial of its weekend edition
of 11–13 August, that one ‘‘barely finds the adjective ‘Islamist’ added to
terror.’’ This happens also in scholarship. It is sad to state that even many
students of Islam and the Middle East ignore in their work these five seminal
volumes on fundamentalism. It is only recently that some scholars have looked
at religion and international politics in the post-bipolar age, to study the
return of the sacred with an impact on world politics.36 The
contention is: Post-bipolar world politics is determined by the return of the
sacred37 expressed in a context of the religionization of politics
as well as the politicization of religion; it results in a culturalization of
conflict and also in the emergence of a
‘‘New Totalitarianism’’ not
recognized by major political theorists.38 Among the exceptions in
social science is a project by a group at the London School of Economics, which
engaged in creating a team of experts for studying religion and International
Relations. The result was a publication first presented, in an unprecedented
way, at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association in Chicago
(March 2001) in a panel devoted to ‘‘religion and International Relations.’’39
Then followed 9/11 in the same year, displaying the lack of approaches
for the study of politicized religion in terms of international security and
the threat to the existing world order posed by internationalist jihadism.
There are political implications to international politics in the developments
since the end of the Cold War, embedded in the context of the ‘‘cultural turn’’
and the return of the sacred in a political shape. At issue is a cultural
phenomenon in world politics characterized by a drive at de-Westernization as a
challenge to the cultural impact of globalization. In the case of Islam, the
revival of the umma identity connected to these developments is not properly
understood in the West. One finds, for instance, the acclaimed political
philosopher Ju¨rgen Habermas contending that there is an emerging
‘‘post-secular society’’ while turning a blind eye to all political
implications to a real phenomenon, of course with the exception of US- and
West-bashing. Habermas fails to grasp non-Western civilizations and to see the
competition between a secular and a divine order as a part of the war of ideas
waged between two worldviews opposed to one another: neo-absolutism and
relativism,40 arising from the very same context. This war of ideas
also takes place in the post-bipolar Islamic civilization resulting from a
continued politicization of religion. Political Islam is among the prominent
expressions of this neo-absolutism, but uniquely as a universalism. Therefore
it appears in the garb of a political internationalism based on religion
challenging the contemporary world order. In contrast to this revival, one sees
a cultural relativism that has been addressed in Europe in terms of
post-Christian developments. This currently emerging trend in Western Europe
also results from a crisis of identity amounting to civilizational selfdenial.41
Leaders of European opinion fail to recognize the tensions between the
described absolutism and democratic pluralism, and thus overlook the threat of
Islamist internationalism to the inner peace of Europe if the conflict between
the Muslim diaspora and European democracies is not peacefully resolved.
The irregular war of Sunni
internationalist jihadism is not a war of liberation, nor does the movement
that wages it resemble a civil rights movement, as some contend. The claim to
de-center the West in order to replace its Westphalian secular order through a
divine Islamic one, as shown in the analysis by Daniel Philpott and in my work
(see note 1), makes the role of religion clear, although some – like Robert
Pape – dispute this.42 With the exception of Western civilization,
almost all other world civilizations are related to and determined by a concept
of religion and the corresponding worldview. In the case of Islam, an Islamist
concept of order as an essential part of political Islam is becoming a broadly
accepted public choice determining the worldview of the people involved. The
concept of din-wa-dawla/ unity of religion and state is viewed as essential for
the nizam Islami that challenges the validity of the secular nation-state for
the world of Islam. In a further step, the new ideology based on the return of
the sacred enhances its claim to world politics at large in envisioning a dar
al-Islam mapping the entire globe. This is what Sunni jihadism is all about. To
reiterate: it is not mere terrorism in an asymmetrical war of the oppressed,
but rather a vision of a new world order based on Pax Islamica.
This revitalization of religion in a political context is
also related to identity politics in international affairs. In the Islamic
civilization, the outcome is Islamism as an expression of an Islamic revival
being equally political, cultural and religious. One can refer to this issue in
the case of Palestine. The conflict is national and was earlier addressed in
this manner by the secular PLO. The issue was then religionized, which
underpinned the rise of Hamas to power and the emergence of the Islamist elite
of Hamas.43
The world-political perspective
for understanding internationalist jihadism requires going ‘‘beyond left and
right’’ and equally, in the study of International Relations (IR), overcoming
inherited traditional boundaries of a dividing discipline. In this pursuit, an
IR-orientated study of religion needs to be included. The assumption that the
politicization of religion results in the emergence of religious
fundamentalisms, of which the Islamic variety is only exceptional in the sense
that it creates the new internationalism, put political Islam at the core of
world politics. At issue is not a phenomenon to be studied in terms of
‘‘fanaticism, hatred, terrorism and extremism’’ or in terms of prejudice about
Islam. This is not the business of the IR discipline. However, it would be
dishonest to refer to these deplorable images of Islam in the West in order to
dismiss the study of the jihadist threat of Islamism to world order as an expression
of ‘‘Islamophobia.’’ We need to make it clear that what is at issue is
internationalist jihadism as a variety of a politicized transnational religion,
and not Islam as such, although this threat emerges from the politicization of
Islam itself. The Saidian book on ‘‘covering Islam’’44 addresses the
deplorable coverage of Islam by Western media, but instead of enlightening the
subject of political Islam it rather serves to dismiss any critical approach to
it. In the Saidian mindset, not only are academic books written and published
by university presses under titles such as The New Crusaders: there are also
others, published by Islamist propagandists, contending that ‘‘une vaste
conspiration jude´o-chre´tienne’’45 is being spun
against Islam.
Islamist internationalism draws on the fact that Islam is a
transnational religion. In this mindset the jihadists establish transnational
networks on a global level parallel to the politicization of religion. This is
the unique character of political Islam that can be shown in a comparative
manner. For example, one can state that in Hinduism the concept of order is
restricted to the territoriality of the imagined Hindu nation of Hindustan. It
follows that the Hindu-fundamentalist threat to security is regional, as confined
to the territory of the Hindu civilization, i.e. it is exclusively regional and
only pertinent to South Asia. In contrast, Islam is a universalist religion and
its politicization results in an internationalism that touches upon the very
secular nature of the international order. As repeatedly quoted, the
intellectual father of political Islam, Sayyid Qutb, proposed that
international peace can only be achieved on the grounds of establishing hakimiyyat
Allah/ God’s rule as a new world order. As repeatedly quoted, the implication
of this view is that there can be no world peace without the global domination
of Islam.46 This is the very nature of the Islamist–jihadist
internationalism with a bid for a related new international order. Such a
transnational character of a politicized religion is reflected in movements
like al-Qaeda, whose members believe they are acting fi sabil Allah/in the path
of God to establish the Islamist order of Pax Islamica. To point at this
jihadist ideology and the related practice is to refer to a threat that is
neither a representation of a myth47 nor an engagement in any kind
of Islamophobia. Instead of acknowledging that cultural diversity is enriching
for humanity and implied in the ‘‘heterogeneity of civilizations,’’ the jihadists
engage in lethal conflicts in which cultural diversity is transformed into
dividing lines that separate humanity, not only among civilizations but also
within them (e.g. Sunni jihadists killing Shi’ite Muslims in Iraq). The
jihadists, not disputed scholars like Huntington, are those who ignite the
‘‘clash of civilizations’’ as a ‘‘jihad in the path of God.’’48
Sunni political Islam is based on
the visions of Sayyid Qutb, the intellectual source of the new challenge for an
Islamic world order.49 Qutb maintained that a deep civilizational
crisis of the West could be overcome only by re-establishing Islamic dominance.
In his pamphlets, in particular ‘‘Signposts along the Road’’ and also ‘‘World
Peace and Islam,’’ he proposed that only Islam is in a position to overcome
this crisis and to save humanity. At issue is neither a criminal gang nor an
insignificant ‘‘un-Islamic’’ minority, but the public choice of jihadist
internationalism. This is the virus of a deadly idea generated by bin Laden and
his al-Qaeda jihad-fighters. The worldview expressed is clearly not restricted
to these people. They are a minority, but the worldview is shared in the world
of Islam. The target is the Westphalian order in world politics.50 Qutb,
who was an ideologue and not an IR scholar, presented his understanding of
order for world politics and in substance
shares with
Huntington the view that ‘‘civilization matters.’’
Hedley Bull did not know of Qutb
and of his views, but was aware of the fact that the stated civilizational
‘‘revolt against the West’’ is best ‘‘exemplified in Islamic fundamentalism,’’51
even though he was not aware of the ‘‘return of the sacred.’’ It would be
utterly wrong to disqualify the Bull statement in a Saidian manner as an
expression of Islamophobic Orientalism. In the course of the post-bipolar
crisis of international order these ideas (e.g. those of Qutb) of religionized
politics became more pertinent. Gobal jihad transforms this potential into a
‘‘deadly idea’’ – based on the politicization of religion – in action. The
reference to it reinforces political Islam’s new role as well as its appeal as
a public choice that assumes the nature of a mobilizatory ideology.
In summing up the preceding
analysis of Islamist–jihadist internationalism resulting from the
politicization of Islam in a ‘‘revolt against the West’’ it can safely be
stated that the major target is the existing secular order and its Westphalian
origins. In light of this knowledge, one may ask: Are we heading in a direction
‘‘beyond Westphalia’’?52 There is no doubt that the Westphalian
order is not a sacred cow and cannot last forever, but what would follow? A
divine order? And what about the need for more pluralism of cultures and
religions, in particular in an age of the return of the sacred not restricted
to the world of Islam? Would people of other religions accept the claims of
jihadist transnational Islamism related to an order of hakimiyyat Allah as a
divine rule for the world at large?
Humanity is characterized by
religious diversity and needs common political concepts of order not grounded
on one religion being imposed on others. This is the bottom line in answering
these questions. For nonMuslims as well as for pro-democracy-minded Muslims, an
Islamic system/ nizam Islami53 is a totalitarian political system
(see note 38) and can never be acceptable. In addition, there are inner-Islamic
obstacles. The new or traditional concepts of order of the caliphate of the
Sunna that one faction of the Sunni jihadists is yearning for are not acceptable
to the Shi’a. The inner-Islamic conflict and the sectarian Sunni–Shi’ite
violence emerging from it in post-Saddam Iraq is a sad case in point. While
killing their Shi’ite rivals, the exponents of political Sunni Islam believe
that in the long run they will prevail and will be in a position to materialize
Qutb’s vision of world peace under the banner of Islam. The Shi’ite militias
retaliate. In short, the envisioned Islamist peace is a threat not only to
non-Muslims, who according to the shari’a would be discriminated against as
subdued dhimmi,54 but also to Muslims themselves, in particular to
those who prefer to live under democracy. It follows that the prescription of
religious and cultural pluralism55 in an age of Islamism is the only
promising future prospect, not only for Islam and Europe, but also for Muslims
themselves.
Like those Byzantine monks at the
eve of the invasion of Constantinople, there are some European intellectuals
who engage in fruitless debates and ridicule the jihadist call for an Islamic
world order as practically irrelevant rhetorics and meaningless Islamist
politics. Against these premature and even wrong views, the politicization of
Islam in the context of the return of the sacred has been analyzed as a call
for an Islamic shari’a state supported by a mobilizatory ideology enjoying a
great appeal to the Muslim public. Jihadist leaders claim to speak in the name
of the despised.56 Their jihadist actions are contributing to the
destabilizing and undermining of the legitimacy of the existing order, locally
and globally. The political terrorist action directe of ‘‘jihad on the path of
God’’ aims at establishing a hakimiyyat Allah/rule of God. This is much more
than a romantic rhetoric of an envisioned order. The combination of terror and
war of ideas is generating real disorder in world politics. To argue for a
political failure and the end of Islamism as a passing phenomenon is not only a
short-sighted view,57 but proves simply wrong if confronted with the
facts.
Ahead of moving to the third step of the analysis, i.e. to
the politicalmilitary action of Sunni-jihadist internationalism conducted by
Islamist movements, it is pertinent to point to the civilizational worldview58
promoted by Islamists. This is a combination of civilizational politics
and universalist religion. The Islamist is a political man of action, but he is
also a ‘‘true believer.’’ Jansen rightly addresses this fact as ‘‘the dual
nature of Islamic fundamentalism.’’59 In acknowledgement of the need
for a civilizational approach to the study of religion in politics and society,
I revive the tradition of Ibn Khaldun in placing civilizations within the study
of history,60 and cleanse the insertion of this approach from the damage
done to it by Huntington. People with collective identity base this on an
awareness of their civilizations and of their distinct worldviews. These are
the grounds for constructing the new identity politics to underpin claims based
on the return of history.61 In this context, civilizations are
referred to as providing substance for a new notion of order, war and peace.
Civilizations are subdivided into local cultures. Along civilizational
patterns, one may argue that local cultures (e.g. Indonesia and Senegal) and
also states (e.g. the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC)) group to
form civilizational entities in world politics. Therefore approaches to the
study of religion and Islam in world civilizations and world politics can be
linked to one another, particularly in our age of the return of the sacred and
transnational religion in international affairs in general and in Western
Europe in particular, as home to more than 20 million Muslim immigrants.
Transnational religion, jihadism and security: political Islam and the
challenge of the new irregular war
The third step in
the present analysis consists of dealing with the war waged by Sunni jihadist
internationalism in a world time seemingly ending Clausewitzian inter-state war
in favor of an irregular war by non-state actors. In the course of post-bipolar
developments there has been a decline in interstate warfare. The study of war
and security is challenged to adjust to new perspectives. Earlier, Barry Buzan62
presented a step in this direction at the beginning of what is a long
road.
Even though the work done by Buzan
was inspiring for security studies in going beyond the conventional military
issues, the assaults of 11 September 2001 in the US and 11 March 2004 and 7
July 2005 in Europe pose a new challenge of great magnitude to traditional
security studies, which are still dealing with issues now practically phased
out. The jihadists as non-state actors are acting militarily, as cross-border
warriors who simultaneously engage in awarof ideas based on a new
interpretation of transnational religion as a political internationalism. In
the needed new perspective, established traditional boundaries and related
constraints must be overcome to allow thinking on military action beyond the
force of the state. The inability of the Israeli Defense Force to subdue the
4,000 jihadists of Hezbullah in the Lebanon war
of July/August 2006 has been a telling
story.63
Islamist internationalism is
militarily an irregular jihad war declared on Western civilization, and
understood not only as a military action but also as a stand against European
values. In fact, it is wrong to view this jihad as a guerilla war, for its
irregular war involving non-state actors is a different kind of violence
ignoring any prescribed rules. It is also a war of ideas. I reiterate the view
that although the jihadists may be a minority in the umma community of Islam,
this should not serve as an argument for belittling of the significance of the
phenomenon. The power of the jihadists lies in their ability to mobilize
politically in the style of Lenin’s avant-garde party. This implies their
potential to have a great impact, not to be downgraded by the reference to them
as a minority in the Islamic umma. The jihadists of political Islam are well
organized, with a global networking, and equipped to the extent that they
cannot be ignored or belittled. Their numbers matter little, since these groups
are very capable of destabilizing and creating disorder through their means of
irregular warfare. One may ask: Why is the new jihad an irregular war? And what
can we do to beware of confusing jihadism and Islam? And foremost: How can the
jihadist war of ideas poisoning the relations between Islam and the West be
stopped?
The reader is again reminded of the
fact established in Chapter 1 that jihadism in the new shape of terrorism is no
longer the classical jihad of Islam, subjected to clear rules of conduct and
with limited targets. In the course of the second step of the analysis
presented in the previous two section, light was shed on the politicization of
religion in Islam which results in an ‘‘Islamism’’ being the Islamic variety of
the global phenomenon of religious fundamentalism (see note 9). In contrast to
the minority of Muslim fundamentalists, the Islamic civilization comprises one
quarter of humanity and it manifests great cultural and religious diversity. As
an example of this difference is the between Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims.
Moreover, in Islam there exists a great variety of religious denominations and
numerous sects. In addition to these sectarian distinctions, Islam is
characterized by a great cultural diversity existing within the unity of the
Islamic civilization. For example, African Islam is culturally very different
from the Islam of Southeast Asia, or that of the Indian subcontinent. All of
these varieties differ from the original Arab pattern of Islam. However, an
Arabcentric concept of Islam determines the prevailing understanding of Islam.
Once this diversity has been stated, any essentialization of Islam is pointless
and has no foundations. It is not only Western Orientalists but most of all
Islamists who overlook the addressed religious and cultural diversity.
Returning the focus to global
jihad in its double meaning of an ideology and military practice of jihadist
irregular war, two things are pertinent. At first, global jihad is reflected in
multiple political Islamist movements that legitimize themselves through a
reference to a monolithic religion for toppling existing orders. Second,
despite their great diversity they can be addressed in general as a movement of
politicized transnational religion. The new military interpretation of jihad as
a war of irregulars, fighting without rules to accomplish an Islamic order
combined with another war of ideas, is practiced by Sunni jihadists who do not
represent a state. No state harbors them.
Among the fifty-seven
nation-states united under the umbrella of the OIC which claim to represent the
Islamic umma and its civilization, there are two Sunni states that – each in
its own way – provide, however unwillingly, a kind of hinterland for jihadism.
These are Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Unlike this Sunni front, Iran on the
Shi’ite side fully promotes its Shi’ite allies in Iraq and Lebanon. Unlike
Iran, the Sunni states mentioned are considered to be allies of the United
States and claim to participate in the war on terror; they therefore pay
lip-service against terror – of course, without relating it to global jihad.
There is nevertheless support for global jihad. In contrast to all three, Iraq
under Saddam – once pronounced bully of the West – was truly a rogue state, but
never a harbor for jihadist terrorism. Therefore, the justification of the Iraq
war in terms of security was utterly wrong, and it was based on a severe
strategic mistake that contributed to overlooking the real issue. The
de-Saddamization of Iraq did not weaken jihadism but in contrast unwittingly
strengthened it. The Iraqi Sunni jihadists fight what is mistakingly called
‘‘insurgency’’64 and the Shi’ite Islamists rule the country in the
name of democracy, while their death squads engage in terror, as does the
jihadist Mahdi Army of Muqtada Sadr that – despite being a terror militia – is
represented in the parliament by thirty deputies and by five cabinet positions
in the ‘‘democratic’’ government.65 Similarly, Hezbullah in Lebanon
has an irregular army and deputies in the parliament.
The jihadist war pursued by
Islamist internationalism targeting ‘‘Jews and the crusaders’’ is one prominent
source of ‘‘the new anti-Semitism.’’66 In this regard, there is no
distinction between Sunni and Shi’ite Islamism. The ‘‘war against the Jews’’ is
a core issue in the new jihad war believed to be based on civilizational
values. It is also a war of ideas in a competition between different concepts
of world order. The conflict is viewed as revolving around the normatively
different understanding of five issue areas: (1) the state; (2) law; (3)
religion; (4) war/peace; and (5) knowledge. Civilizations have different
standings on these issue areas. One may argue that value-related conflicts have
nothing to do with military capabilities, but – if politicized – could
nevertheless contribute to the emergence of real political conflicts that can
be militarized (see note 10).
In my writings I use the term
‘‘war of civilizations,’’ which could be looked at as a war of values and
worldviews that directly affects conflict on all three levels: the domestic,
the regional and the international. The thirtythree jihadist assaults that took
place as an irregular kind of war between 1993 and 2005 placed jihadism in
conflicts between civilizations. Against this, a security dialogue in the
understanding of an instrument of conflict resolution is needed.
Europe faces the new warfare of
jihadism, both as violence and as a mobilizatory idea, with a great
uncertainty. I contend that the civilizational self-awareness among Westerners
– particularly in Europe – is, in contrast to the image of the self among
Muslims, not so reassuring. In fact, one can call this a civilizational
weakness in Europe disproportionate to its politicalmilitary and economic
power. In the language of Ibn Khaldun, this is an ‘‘asabiyya’’ in a state of a
decaying civilization and this is the way in which Islamists view the West. The
quest for a civic culture creating a common asabiyya to be shared by both
Europeans and Muslim immigrants is an issue for Part III.
The challenge of new warfare of irregular jihad waged by the
Islamists resembles the action directe (Georges Sorel) and is terrorism. The
jihadists succeed in destabilizing and demoralizing, but do not win militarily.
The conflict and the major targets are political. The over-arching issue is the
order of the secular nation-state and, on a higher level, the international
order. The jihadist irregular war aims to prevail over the enemy through
demoralizing him and creating uncertainties about what lies ahead. In going
beyond the casualties and fatalities caused by each jihadist action directe,
the overall issue revolves around the claim of an alleged Islamic world order.
The contestation of the existing is articulated by the jihadist terrorism of
the Islamists. This irregular war, pursued to defeat the West and replace its
political order by an Islamic one, leads us to a question asked by John Kelsay
in his study Islam and War. As quoted in the introduction at length Kelsay
states, ‘‘in encounters between the West and Islam, the struggle is about who
will provide the primary definition of the world order.’’ And then on the same
page, he asks the seminal question: Who will lead the world in the future? In
this reasoning, Kelsay asks further questions not to be repeated here.67 In
referring to Kelsay while refraining from engaging in speculation, I admit that
the answer to these questions is not clear. In contrast, the jihadists believe
they can foresee the future. They quote the spiritual father of their ideology,
Sayyid Qutb. In his already mentioned booklet ‘‘Signs along the Road’’ (see
note 12) Qutb believes that the decay of the West is sure and that only Islam
is eligible to replace it and lead all humanity into a better future under its
rule. It is clear that these questions and the answers given indicate the
already stated competition between Western and Islamic concepts of world order
on the level of public choices. This is one dimension in the war of ideas. When
Islam – despite global jihad – is presented as a religion of peace, then at
issue is a normatively different understanding of the notions of war and peace.68
In concluding this section, it is
safe – despite all the limitations and differentiations undertaken – to engage
in some generalizable statements concerning three central issues in the study
of jihadism as an irregular war viewed in a broader meaning:
First: the problem
of political order. Islamic fundamentalism as a powerful variety of the
politicization of religion does not only bring existing cultural differences to
expression. In this regard the revived worldviews touch upon a concept of
order, with the implication of a conflict between existing civilizations. In
terms of security, jihadists mobilize on religious grounds for their global
jihad and are in this pursuit most appealing and subsequently successful. There
is no doubt that military security measures are needed in facing actions of
irregular war, but jihadists cannot be fought with armies alone, because they
themselves also fight a war of ideas. In countering their activities, one needs
a security approach that should be fixed neither on the state nor on the
predominance of conventional military thinking and related traditional wisdoms.
Second: holy terror and irregular war. Among
the Islamists there are those who fight for their goals peacefully within
institutions and with political means. But others, like the jihadists, resort
to violence within the framework of terrorism to enforce their concept of
order. Jihadism is a variety of ‘‘terror in the mind of God’’ (Mark
Juergensmeyer). This approach combines fundamentalism and the related
worldviews about order, including the politicization of a conflict of values
with terrorism (see note 1). In this understanding, ‘‘holy terror’’69 is
an irregular war of non-state actors.
Third: is
‘‘Islamism’’ different from ‘‘Islamic fundamentalism’’? In the present book,
the terms ‘‘political Islam,’’ ‘‘Islamism’’ and ‘‘Islamic fundamentalism’’ are
used interchangeably. This is not common, because some dispute the application
of the concept of fundamentalism to Islam, with the intention of combatting the
spreading prejudice. However, this is utterly misleading. It is true that the
term ‘‘fundamentalism’’ has been ill handled as a cliche´, but it is –
despite all odds – a scholarly and analytical concept for studying the
politicization of religion. Some use the term ‘‘Islamism’’ as an alternative to
the one referring to the global phenomenon of religious fundamentalism (see
note 9). The scholars who do this are unwittingly contributing to the
stereotyping of Islam by implicitly restricting the politicization of religion
to it. In contrast, the term ‘‘Islamism’’ is used in this book only to address
a specific depiction of a specific variety of the phenomenon of politicized
religion – that is, the Islamic version of religious fundamentalism – with the
implication that this phenomenon does not only occur in Islam. However, Sunni
jihadism as the military dimension of this phenomenon is specifically Islamic,
inasmuch as Islamist internationalism is based on the politicization of Islamic
universalism. When it comes to war, an inquiry into Islamism in the field of
security studies needs to engage in a reasoning addressed as ‘‘new frontiers of
security,’’70 and to go beyond the traditional concept of security
dominated by military thinking. A broadening of the scope and a deepening of
the insights are needed to understand jihadism in its combination of the war of
ideas and the violent war of the irregulars in their direct action towards
establishing a new world order.
A few scholars in the field of international security have
engaged in ground-breaking studies that unfortunately do not deal with Islam
but are, however, pertinent to the understanding of the irregular war of
Islamist jihadism. Leading among these scholars is Barry Buzan, followed by
Martin van Creveld and Kalevi Holsti. They have contributed significant studies
of security and war, going far beyond the fixation on institutionalized state
armies.71 Both the changed character of war, as one of the ‘‘new
kind,’’ and the non-military aspects of the conflict (ideas and worldviews) are
to be emphasized. These are new subjects for security studies. In this sense,
and only in this sense, I argue that religious fundamentalism in Islam and its
jihadism are to be dealt with in the new security approach. Jihadism is both a
propaganda fight (war of ideas) for a new order and also an irregular war
against the political order of the infidels. Its manifestations on 11 September
and the ensuing events in Madrid and Amsterdam in 2004 and in London in 2005
made the issue powerfully clear. Organized armies trained in conventional
warfare are helpless against the terrorist acts of violent jihadists, in
particular – but not only – against those of the suicide bombers. Iraq is a
case which shows how weak and limited military might can be against the terror
of suicide jihadists turning their bodies into bombs and into missiles. Prior
to these post-11 September developments, there were earlier similar events in
Algeria, Egypt, Israel and Afghanistan, as well as in Xinjiang, Kashmir, Kosovo
and Macedonia; all of them make this issue clear. It follows that the West will
not easily be able to come to terms with jihadism and the related challenges to
security. The conventional forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO) were able to overpower the Serbian army as a regular armed force in
1999. The same applied when US and British troops toppled Saddam’s regime in
the Iraq war in March/April 2003. But neither the religious-ethnic acts of
revenge by UC¸ K irregulars against the Christian Serbs, Macedonians or
others, nor the irregular war against the coalition troops in Iraq, could be
curtailed by the military power of regular troops. The most striking case is
the inability of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) to crack down on the jihadist
second intifada, which has been taking place since September 2000. The IDF was
victorious in all inter-state wars of the Middle East conflict between 1948 and
1982, but has been incapable of dealing with the war of irregulars ‘‘against
the infidels’’ in the al-Aqsa intifada. This irregular war of jihadism dealt
Israel another blow in the Lebanon war of July–August 2006. Despite a
conventional wellorchestrated military action by its air force and ground
troops, for thirtyfour days the IDF was not able to beat 4,000 jihadists of
Hezbullah fighting their irregular war worldwide in a networking of a
transnational religion.72
The analysis presented here of Sunni jihadism as a direction
within Islamist internationalism covering the world of Islam and the diaspora
of Islam in Europe cannot be concluded without asking the question: Why do the
jihadists establish their logistical bases in a transnational networking in the
West? This recurrent question will be addressed in more detail in Part III on
Islam in Europe, but it is also posed here in the specific context of security
and will therefore be addressed. Unlike the United States, Western Europe continues
to fail to come to terms with global migration and has not been successful in
integrating Muslims.73 The result is a ‘‘gated diaspora,’’74 i.e.
Islam in the West, but not of it. The denunciation of references to the
conflict between political Islam and Europe as an indication of Islamophobia
has been an effort pursued by Islamists themselves to obscure these issues.
Islamist internationalist jihadism as an issue area of the study of
global migration and international security
Muslim immigration to Europe is a mixed bag.
It enriches Europe through a cultural injection, but it also brings Islamist
jihadists to the old continent. Europe has failed to engage itself in an
integration of Muslims as European citizens. This failure is resulting in a new
Western security concern. After all, there is a kind of political correctness
that serves to camouflage jihadist fundamentalism in the name of tolerance.
This contributes neither to the protection of Muslims nor to democracy. In a
free spirit, the final section of this chapter addresses the abuse of the
Islamic diaspora in Europe by Sunni jihadists of al-Qaeda in camouflaging their
activities. I share Francis Fukuyama’s view that ‘‘Europe has become and will
continue to be a battlefront in the struggle between radical Islamism and
liberal democracy.’’75
There should be no zero-sum game
in the relationship between the protection of human rights and the countering
of jihadist internationalism. Leaders of the Islamic diaspora in Europe are
challenged to wholeheartedly join in countering jihadist terrorism to deny
these soldiers of political Islam the use of the diaspora for jihadist
networking on a transnational scale, as well as the Islamic legitimation.
However, the behavior of these leaders after the failed plot of August 2006 to
blow up ten US-bound planes was not reassuring. Instead of providing assistance
they engaged in blame-games and accusations of Islamophobia, to an extent that
led the British Home Secretary to turn the tables, confronting these leaders
with the argument that the Iraq war should not be used as an excuse, and that
they should look within their own communities to see what was wrong.
Instead of blame-games, Europe and its Muslim migrants need
a EuroIslam opposed to the gated diaspora ideology of Islamism that produces
jihadists like those of Madrid, Amsterdam, Paris and London in 2004–6. The
European diaspora of Muslim migrants should not become a home to al-Qaeda. In a
research project at the University of California, Berkeley, this issue was addressed
under the heading ‘‘Islam and the Changing Identity of Europe.’’ The project
was conducted by two major Berkeley centers and led to a publication under the
title Muslim Europe or Euro-Islam?76 If the alternative of a
European Islam proves to be unfeasible, then the dream of ‘‘Muslim Europe’’ as
envisioned by the Islamists will become a serious security threat. In another
project at Cornell University, dealing with transnational religion with a focus
on ‘‘Religion in an Expanding Europe,’’ I outlined the options: Europeanizing
Islam or the Islamization of Europe.77
In security terms, the German Islamic diaspora includes both
Sunni and Shi’ite Islamism. The supporting systems of the jihadism of 9/11 were
located in Western Europe, primarily in Germany.78 These Islamist
networks are powerful, not with regard to the number of jihadists (900
Hezbullah and 300 Hamas fighters in Germany) but in their capabilities. Germany
hosts approximately 100,000 jihadists among 4 million Muslim immigrants. The
real problem is that the Islamists in Europe are well organized, vocal and in
control of major mosques and associations. Their power in the culture and the
institution of mosques, and above all their richness in resources provided to
them by transnational so-called Islamic welfare institutions, are awesome.79
Why do they act in Western Europe? It is because most West European
states provide the jihadists with a safe haven in the name of human rights.80
Until the assaults of 11 March 2004 in Madrid and 7 July
2005 in London, the public execution of van Gogh in Amsterdam (2 November
2005), the intifada of the banlieues de l’Islam 2005, the
Copenhagen-turnedglobal conflict in early 2006 over the Mohammed cartoons, and
last but not least the foiled plot of August 2006, some Europeans cultivated
the misperception that they were not involved in 9/11 and that Osama bin Laden81
was not popular in the Islamic diaspora. However, the language of
political Islam has become popular in declaring the jihad-war on the West, even
in Europe itself. The torching of some 12,000 cars and dozens of schools in the
suburbs of Paris in October/November 2005 was an eye-opening event. Bin Laden’s
call for a war of iman/belief against al-kufr al-alami/international unbelief
resonated well in many faith schools and other institutions in the Islamic
diaspora, whether in Germany, the UK or Scandinavia. It is not the person of
bin Laden, but rather the symbolic incorporation of this global jihad and its
worldview, that renders this popularity its strength. Combine this with the
fact that youngsters of the second and third generation of the Islamic diaspora
are socially marginalized and susceptible to recruitment by Islamist movements
acting between the worlds of Islam and Europe. Security and civilizational
identity are the issues. This is an export of Sunni political Islam and its
anti-Semitism to Europe. Fukuyama is right in stating that, in Europe, radical
Islamism is ‘‘rather a manifestation of modern identity politics.’’82
Karl Popper’s The Open Society and
its Enemies is most pertinent for the pending issue in Europe. 83 It
is argued that jihadist Islamism is the new totalitarianism of the twenty-first
century. Tolerance in the name of cultural diversity is the wrong approach,
because it is not the religion of Islam and its cultural system that are at
issue, but rather the networking of Sunni jihadism in Europe itself. Karl
Popper taught that we should not tolerate intolerance in the name of tolerance.
This is a lesson not only for Europeans, but also for the leaders of the Islam
diaspora; as well as making the distinction between Islam and Islamism, they
need to learn to refrain from acts and pronouncements of false solidarity.
To date most European politicians
and opinion leaders – despite the warnings of their security apparatus – pay
little attention to the Islamists most active in Europe, even after the
jihadist foiled plot of August 2006. It is sad to see many Europeans viewing it
as improper and inappropriate, even politically incorrect, to relate Islamist
jihadism to the study of civilizations as well as to the abuse of civil rights
and of the Islamic diaspora by Islamists. This political silence has been an
outcome of a questionable culture of political correctness, based on fears and
self-censorship. In addressing the issue of Islamophobia, it is the right thing
to do to curb prejudices against non-Western cultures, foremost those centered
on Islam, and to combat all kinds of related racism, as well as xenophobia.
However, there exists a constructed Islamophobia, often cultivated on purpose
by Islamists to create taboos that prohibit free speech about them and their
activities. In this context I refer to the authority of the late Myron Weiner
and his book The Global Migration Crisis to justify looking at migration in
security terms. To undermine such a debate, Islamic fundamentalists have been
most successful in Europe’s civil society in establishing an equation of the
critique of jihadist Islamism with an ugly Islamophobia in the pursuit of censorship.
More acceptance, and even more impact than any liberal
Muslim is enjoyed by one of the leaders of the Islamic diaspora in Europe,
Tariq Ramadan, not only among Muslim youngsters of the banlieues de l’Islam but
also among naı¨ve Scandinavian multi-culturalists, who invite him to
speak about ‘‘the mission of Islam in Europe.’’ In contrast, well-informed
authors like Robert Spencer in his Onward Muslim Soldiers84 argue
that Ramadan, the grandson of Hasan al-Banna, is an Islamist; Ramadan presents
his grandfather in a disputed book85 as a Muslim revivalist
continuing the Islamic reform pursued by al-Afghani. This is, however, utterly
wrong. Reformist Euro-Islam, as I present it, is not what Ramadan claims to be
a European Islam. There are journalists, like Caroline Fourest, who have
endeavored in investigative disclosures to uncover the double face of Islamists
and expose this business.86 In Germany, investigative journalists
were taken to court by Islamists, accused in libel suits and then silenced.87
Conclusions
The best strategy
for countering Islamist internationalism in the European diaspora of Islam is
the integration of Muslim immigrants as true citizens of the heart.88 I
refrain from elaborating on this in this chapter, keeping this task for Chapter
6.
In drawing conclusions on a general level it can be stated
that Islamism is embedded in a triangle: the world of Islam, the West as a
civilization, and Muslims in Europe as a diaspora. In the area of the last
issue things are not going well. Pro-democracy Muslims need to realize that the
related challenge is also to them themselves. I believe in the potential of an
enlightened Islam in the addressed triangle for shaping the world of Islam
along of the wave of democratization. However, this hope can only materialize
if these options become a public choice freely chosen by Muslims themselves in
an Islamic approach against jihadist Islamism. The Islamic diaspora matters for
the debate on supporting systems of global jihad, and the world of Islam,
primarily its Arab core, matters most. The sad conditions in the Middle East
described in the UNDP report in terms of lack of economic and political
development underlain by a culture of repression allow no real democracy and no
freedoms of basic human rights. In addition to the worldview of Islamism, these
are the seeds of global jihad, given its roots in Islamic civilization, and a
democratization by Muslims themselves is the only promising way out.89
In looking at jihad as a deadly
idea and its related worldview, I do not overlook the structural roots of
terrorism which ought not to be ignored and neglected. However, the repeated
talk of poverty and Palestine as the alleged root causes is a distraction from
the real root causes of history, ideology, religion and culture. The
transmission of the global jihad-related worldview through madrasas is among
the educational root causes to be dealt with in a concrete security approach.
This does not mean preserving the
status quo, but defending freedom and democracy against the new
totalitarianism. How can we prevent the enemies of the ‘‘open society’’ from
abusing its freedom? Among the principles of civil society is securing it from
the impact of the state. Sunni Islamist internationalists have been successful
at this level by establishing themselves in Europe as part of civil society in
a communitarian sense, and also in the world of Islam itself.
With regard to Europe as the focus
of this book, one sees some basic differences between France, Germany and the
United Kingdom. Despite the problems related to the uprising in the banlieues
de l’Islam of Paris in October/November 2005, the French model has proved to be
more promising than any model of multi-culturalism in facing the intrusion of
jihadist Islamic fundamentalists into Europe. France has been successful in
getting Imams at French mosques who express their loyalty to the constitution,
to democracy and to the laı¨cite´. This is not the case in the
United Kingdom or in Germany. There were Muslim Britons and German citizens of
the diaspora who were fighting in Afghanistan against the West. The British
government seems to have needed the London assaults of 7 July 2005 to proceed
in an unprecedented manner in requiring loyalty from Muslim migrants. Some
Imams accused this measure not only of Islamophobia but also of using
‘‘right-wing policy’’ against Muslims. This is simply propaganda against an
open society that protects itself. In contrast, multi-cultural tolerance can no
longer be an ‘‘anything goes’’ after what happened in Europe in 2004–5. The
Muslim community in Europe is challenged to commit itself to loyalty to the
democratic polity. At this juncture, we should always remind ourselves of the
difference between belief and its politicization to a jihadism as a pattern of
irregular war which alienates Muslims from others.
Even though only one third of this
book, i.e. the two chapters of Part III, deals directly with Europe, all
chapters relate the pending issue to the Muslim diaspora community in Europe,
which is also exposed to Sunni Islamist internationalism, particularly its
jihadist terrorism. Those Muslims, foremost of the diaspora, who are committed
to democracy and who are honestly geared to European citizenship should
contribute, through a commitment to open society, to averting tensions between
the world of Islam and Europe on a multifaceted level in order to replace the
ideology of antiWesternism taught at mosques and faith schools. The challenge
posed by jihadist Islamist internationalism to Europe and to its international
security is also a challenge to Muslims themselves, in particular those of
Europe.
In my work during the past three
decades on the crisis addressed, I have come to the conclusion that political
Islam has grown from Islam’s unsolved predicament with modernity. The solution
for the world of Islam is not only democracy, and for Europe it is not only a
Europeanization of Islam. For undermining the new totalitarism, the world of
Islam itself needs to change and develop through reforms to facilitate a
liberal Islam that smoothes the way for Muslims to join the rest of the world
equally within the framework of democratic peace and of religious and cultural
pluralism. As shall be shown in Chapter 7 an embracing of democracy in Islam
combined with a cultural accommodation to modernity could help Muslims to come
to terms with the rest of the world. Subsequently, existing illusions of an
Islamization of the world through global jihad within an Islamist
internationalism for mapping the globe into dar al-Islam would lead Muslims
nowhere; such illusions need to be abandoned altogether. It is incumbent upon
Europeans and pro-democracy Muslims to overcome the related impasse in an
intercivilizational dialogue based on a commitment to free speech and to the
will to cooperate in resolving the issues to be identified in a free debate.
This is the driving force for writing this book.

4     The
Shi’ite option
Internationalism
for an export of the Islamic revolution of Iran. A failed effort!
The case of the Islamic Republic of Iran
revives the classical question of the national interest of the state. It also
relates to the issue of nuclear proliferation. With regard to the first
question it is asked: how does jihadist terrorism Shi’ite style, as combined
with Iran’s foreign policy, reflect a national interest? Is this variety of
state-sponsored jihadist internationalism, run by non-state actors acting as
irregular warriors, incorporated into the national interest of the Iranian
state? Well, the Shi’ite variety of Islamist internationalism is based on a
state policy.1 Since its ‘‘Islamic revolution’’ of 1979 Iran has
viewed itself – like Russia after the October Revolution of 1917 – as a
stronghold of a transnational revolutionary movement. On these grounds, it can
be safely argued, also in a comparative manner, that Khomeini was a kind of
Islamist revolutionary Lenin. Whether this tradition ended after his death, as
some contended, is to be seen in the present analysis of a post-Khomeinism. Did
this era of revolutionary Islamist internationalism end? I argue that this
assumption is wrong. On the surface there were three different Islamic
republics between 1979 and the end of the presidency of M. Khatami. In reality
all three have been rooted in the same political system of revolutionary
Mullahcracy and shared the same ideology of Islamist internationalism
Shi’ite-style. All three were equally committed to the bid of the revolution
for the export of its model. One of the most prominent experts on Iran, the
exile Shahram Chubin, states the issue succinctly in a way that deserves being
quoted at length:
Since 1984 Iran
has been labeled a state sponsor of terrorism, and in recent yeas it has been
promoted to being the most active state sponsor of terrorism ... Iran’s support
of terrorism is in fact a mixed record. Although it is no longer used routinely
as an instrument of state policy, Iran has by no means dispensed with terrorism
completely ... Iran still actively supports Hezbullah and ... the crossover to
Sunni Hamas and Islamic jihad ... Characteristically, the regime in Teheran
seeks to have it both ways: to show that terrorism is a thing of the past,
while keeping its options open.2
This statement
applies to all three republics of Iran: Khomeini, Rafsanjani and the
‘‘reformist’’ President Khatami. The latter engaged in a rhetoric of ‘‘dialogue
of civilizations’’ while Iran continued both its sponsorship of terrorism and
its nuclear proliferation. The novelty – as Chubin states – ‘‘since the arrival
of the Ahmadinejad presidency’’ is this: ‘‘the new team is more confrontational
by nature and more prone to brinkmanship.’’3 Therefore the novelty
is the end of the rhetoric of dialogue, and not the return of revolutionary
policies. These and the nuclear proliferation of Iran have never ceased. Both
are a challenge and threat to Israel and Europe, as well as to the neighboring
Sunni states. This is not news.
In an editorial published in the
weekend edition of the International Herald Tribune, 10–11 December 2005, one
reads: ‘‘Iran’s hard-line president Mohammed Ahmadinejad has been conducting an
ominous purge and a renewal of terrorist sponsorship abroad’’ (p. 6). The term
‘‘hard-line’’ employed in the report distorts the issue and is misleading. In
fact, it stands for the term ‘‘religious fundamentalist.’’ The other term,
‘‘terrorist sponsorship abroad,’’ stands for Islamist internationalism.
Journalists blur the issues in their sensational vocabulary and fail to see
roots, as well as the overall context.
In dozens of other editorials one
finds the false view that under the rule of the former so-called reformist Khatami
– set in contrast to his successor, the so-called hard-liner Ahmadinejad – Iran
had ceased to pursue its Islamist internationalism. Then it is inferred from
this wrong view that in 2005 a resumption of former strategies, not continuity
in policy, was at issue. In contrast, this chapter argues that the rhetoric of
a ‘‘dialogue of civilizations’’ caused a blurring or even deception concerning
the reality of a continuity existing in all ‘‘republics’’ of Iran based on
‘‘government of God,’’4 committed to the idea of an Islamic world
revolution in the pursuit of establishing an Islamic world order. There are
some ‘‘Iran experts’’ – like the German W. Buchta – who attack critics of the
totalitarian views of the revolution by pointing at alleged ‘‘pluralism’’ and
‘‘elections’’ as part of the new system. These self-acclaimed ‘‘experts’’
reject the qualification of the Islamic Republic of Iran as a ‘‘fundamentalist
state’’ with totalitarian rule. They seem to have been taken by surprise by the
anti-Semitic and antiWestern pronouncements of Ahmadinejad. It is contended
that a new era has begun. I dispute this and claim to see continuity.
Despite all the criticism of the
Islamic revolution, no expert can escape acknowledging that a radical
regime-change took place in Iran back in 1979. It was based on a revolution
which – unlike Arab politics in the Sunni core of the Middle East characterized
by numerous military coups d’e´tat often legitimized as revolutions – was
a real revolution, but it was not a world revolution. It is true that the
Islamic revolution of Iran was carried out by the Mullahs, but in its beginning
it was supported by the people giving it the shape of a revolutionary mass
movement. A revolution is supposed to bring about a social transformation in state
and society. The revolution in Iran failed to achieve such a goal. The Iranian
state continues to be authoritarian and there is no sign of creating an open
civil society. The new regime has failed to satisfy even some of the basic
needs of the people who supported it with such expectations. Therefore, its
model is at present neither promising nor appealing. Nevertheless, a real
regime-change was without any doubt in place; it resulted in a new order
claiming an overall Islamic internationalism, but in reality it has been
divisive and a rival to the Sunni order. In continuity, it maintained the
regional bid of Iran for hegemony, as pursued by the Shah, but in the shape of
the Shi’ite model of revolution.
Regardless of all the obstacles in its way, the Shi’ite
internationalism, rivaling the Sunni one – with a few modifications – has
continued to give shape to the foreign policy of Iran for the past decades.
With the rise of the Islamist al-Qaeda–Sunni internationalism, which presents a
different, more competitive and more appealing model for an Islamic world
revolution, the impact of the model of Iran has declined. Nevertheless it
continues to be influential through its constituency among the Shi’a in Lebanon,
Iraq and elsewhere. The revolution has been supportive for the Shi’a ‘‘reaching
for power’’ in the Arab world5 and thus intensifies, in particular
since the Iraq war, the Sunni–Shi’ite rift. In this context, Iran’s policy of
nuclear proliferation also creates a bigger threat to the existing Sunni
states. Add to this its cross-border terrorism. The Arab magazine al-Watan
al-Arabi disclosed in its October 2005 issue a new
offensive
strategy designed by Iran for intruding the Arab Gulf states within the framework
of an export of the [Islamic; B.T.] revolution ... This strategy goes far
beyond the horizon of Iraq ... This strategic plan pursued for the export of
the revolution via terror has been approved on the highest level of the state,
that is by the office of the spiritual leader Khamenei, and also blessed by the
council of
guardians.6
Is this a
‘‘renewal’’ of the threat, or does it rather stand in continuity with the
earlier politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran in past decades as the Shi’ite
variety of Islamist-revolutionary internationalism? Is this Islamic revolution
among the big world revolutions, as a Harvard scholar7 contends?
Given the high priority of Iran to
the economy and politics of the EU and in view of the existence of Shi’ite
minorities and mosques among the Islamic diaspora throughout Europe, the
internationalist approach of the Islamist policies of Iran matters greatly to
Europe. This chapter is justified as a comparison to Sunni internationalism as
well as with regard to the European Union and world politics.
By way of an introduction
In the early 1980s
the image the Islamic revolution of Iran had of itself was a general Islamic
one, not restricted to a Shi’ite event with a limited magnitude. In the
beginning this claim seemed to be accepted by the people throughout the region
of the Middle East, yearning for change and for alternatives to their current
misery. However, the revolution never succeeded in passing the Sunna–Shi’a
threshold, even though it gave hope for a light at the end of the very dark
tunnel of Middle Eastern politics. Not only in its character as a revolution of
the people, but also in its religion-based legitimation, the ‘‘Islamic
revolution’’ of Iran seemed to mark a substantial change. The appeal was not
restricted to the Middle East alone, in that it also applied to the world of
Islam at large. With a view to the focus of this book, one may also add the
diaspora of Islam in Europe.
The revolution was preceded by a legitimacy crisis of most
secular regimes, felt throughout the world of Islam. Ruling secular elites came
to power in the Middle East, though with no real structural secularization of
society underpinning ideological secularism. The legitimacy crisis emerging
from a superficial secularization amounted to a claim of de-secularization. The
opposition, dominated by political Islam, was driven by this claim. Given the
Islamic legitimation of this revolution, it must be noted that the
politicization of Islam to an Islamism has also contributed to the reinterpretation
of Islamic universalism in giving it a new political shape. Islamic
universalism, transformed into a modern ideology of internationalism as dealt
with in the preceding chapter, was in the beginning a Sunni phenomenon. Now,
the Islamic internationalism of the Iranian revolution committed to the idea of
a global jihad Shi’ite style is unique; however, it shares with its Sunni
version a combination of religious fundamentalism and social populism.8
Another similarity with the Sunni
version is the contestation not only of the political hegemony of the West, but
also of its cultural values in a process of reversing Orientalism and with a
mindset of a cultural schizophrenia9 This contestation touches on
the foundations of the Westphalian present world order. The Sunni and Shi’ite
Islamist narratives are equally embedded into the worldview of the Islamic
civilization despite the different legitimation underpinning each of them.
In the Shi’ite variety of Islamist
internationalism, Khomeinism revives Iran’s perception of itself as the
‘‘center of the universe’’10 which already existed under the Shah’s
regime. The novelty is, however, that the Islamic revolution brings an already
stated resemblance of Iran to Soviet Russia under Lenin. Unlike the Iranian
Shi’ite internationalism, based on a state as the Russian model was, the Sunni
internationalism is a movement of nonstate actors. The movement continues to be
alive and kicking in its reliance on global networking despite the false
prediction of Gilles Kepel of an end of Islamism. The irregular war and
ideology of jihadism are expected to trouble the world for the foreseeable
future. In Afghanistan – where, following 9/11, al-Qaeda’s basis was destroyed
– Sunni internationalism survives to date in its jihadist movement against
Bush’s ‘‘war on terror.’’ Under these conditions Iran joins in as a state
troubling the West, not only with its internationalism, but rather with its
effort to unfold its nuclear capabilities through proliferation. The Iraq war
strengthened the geopolitical position of Iran.
In fact, the Islamic revolution in
Iran, which claims to unite the imagined umma of Islam, has been divisive,
igniting more tensions between Sunna and Shi’a (e.g. Lebanon, Iraq) in the
entire region of the Middle East. Therefore, this internationalism is hampered
by the fact that it is legitimized as a rule in Shi’ite Islam that is utterly
unacceptable to Sunni Arabs.11 They were susceptible to an appeal,
but not to the claim of leadership. The politics of a regional power in Iran
under the Shah’s regime is continued in an Islamic garb by the ‘‘republic’’
which makes reference to a universal Islam highly questionable through its
commitment to a ‘‘national interest.’’
Viewed from the IR perspective, Iran is a state based on
power that pursues its national interest. Against this background, it can be
argued that there can be no such thing as a specific ‘‘Islamic foreign
policy.’’12 If, however, one concludes from this assumption that
there cannot be any Islamic legitimation of power politics in international
affairs, then this would be wrong. Any downgrading of the role of religion in
contemporary postbipolar world politics or in an expanding Europe13 would
be a refusal to acknowledge the combination of a religionization of politics
and a politicization of religion. This happens throughout the world, and in the
world of Islam as well. The use of religion in the ideology of Islamism is more
than a pursuit of power. Therefore, the meaning of the Islamist revolution in
Iran cannot be restricted to an expression of a bid for power. At issue is a
new design for the role of religion in politics that leads to confrontation,
both within the Islamic civilization and with regard to its neighborhood – that
is, Europe. This is no myth, as some suggest, but rather a new world-political
design!14
For a proper understanding of the involvement of religion as
a novelty in regional and world policies, and as a conceptual framework for
dealing with the Shi’ite revolution that toppled an authoritarian secular
regime in a geopolitical context, one needs a combined approach to grasp the
perception of Iran’s belief in itself as the ‘‘center of the universe’’ and the
place of national interest. The world political impact of its internationalism
is a necessary part of the story.15
The combination of a state-run
variety of Islamist internationalism and the national interest of Iran in
foreign policy needs also to be seen in the context of a country aiming to be a
regional power in the Middle East and maybe also in the world of Islam at
large. Despite all the cynicism of power, the reference to religion under issue
displays a combination of belief with concrete policies of the state. At issue
is a new cultural-religious factor in politics, with a global impact and
therefore the need for a new approach.
Even though revolutionary Iran has
failed in the competition to export its model16 into other Islamic
states it continues to be a challenge, in particular to still secular Turkey
and to Wahhabi Saudi Arabia. After the toppling of Saddam’s regime of pan-Arab
Ba’thist Iraq, the position of Iran and of its internationalism in exporting
its model to neighboring states has improved. It is ironic that the faulted US
policies and the repercussions of the Iraq war have unwittingly contributed to
giving Iran a boost, and even to pushing it to the center. The cultural
determinants at work were not considered by the policy-makers.
A major assumption of this book is
that religion is a cultural system which turns pertinent if politicized.17
Under these conditions, politicized religion gives its shape to conflict.
The outcome is ‘‘culturalized’’ and/or ‘‘religionized’’ politics. The fervor of
anti-Westernism and its drive toward de-Westernization is to be placed in this
overall context. In this environment of the arduous search for models
alternative to the Western one, even Shi’i Islam, which is a particularism,
dresses itself in a universal Islamic garb, giving it a powerful impact. This
assumption was proven in the 1980s throughout the Arab Middle East in its
severe crisis-ridden situation. The search for authentic, i.e. non-Western,
alternatives for state and society received a boost through the Islamic
revolution. Despite all disagreement with the unbalanced work of Francis
Burgat, I have to endorse his observation that in the Arab Maghreb ‘‘the
revolution of Khomeini breathed life into Islamist movements everywhere.’’18
However, it can be added that none of the regimes there was successfully
toppled, even though the destabilization worked well. Political Islam is the
best recipe for a new world disorder;19 it claims a new order, but
it is restricted to delivering disorder.
The susceptibility of the Sunni
Arab world to the appeal of the Islamic revolution is related to the overall
background of the Arab defeat in the 1967 war. The de-legitimation of the
secular regimes caused by the defeat was exploited by the Islamists. The
revolution in Iran built upon this and materialized what the Muslim Brother
sheykh and global mufti Yusuf al-Qaradawi prescribed with the term of the
‘‘Islamic solution/al-hall al-Islami’’ as a basic alternative to the existing
regimes. Yet, Sunni Islamists were not able to implement this in their own
countries. In contrast, the Shi’ite clergy of Iran proved able to promote its
Islamist model as a remedy for the crisis of Islamic societies. At the outset a
Sunni–Shi’ite reconciliation seemed to determine the agenda. After the
revolution in Iran, the powerful Egyptian Sunni Islamist Mohammed Salim al-Awwa
added to his book on the nizam Islami/Islamic system a chapter in which he
calls for closing the Sunna–Shi’a gap and for a reconciliation ending the
inherited tensions.20 In considering all these favorable factors,
one is inclined to ask why the efforts at exporting of the revolution did not
bear fruit.
Parallel to the Islamic revolution in Iran, the Soviet Union
invaded Afghanistan and unwittingly gave birth to new Sunni movements
competitive with both the Islamic Shi’ite revolution and the global jihad of
Shi’ite internationalism. Therefore the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan
parallel to the revolution created another watershed.21 Among the
repercussions in question was al-Qaeda. It became more successful in its
internationalism than Iran had ever been. Nevertheless, the ‘‘Islamic
revolution in Iran’’22 and its Shi’ite internationalism continue to
be pertinent. The rise in the price of oil combined with nuclear capabilities
are factors contributing to some restoration of the power of the Islamic
revolution. The historical roots of the Iranian Shi’ite jihadist
internationalism and of its core state continue to affect the debate over the
place of Islam in world politics at the level of the state.
The core state and the export of the revolution as a foreign policy
The Iranian
perception of the self being ‘‘the center of the universe,’’ mentioned earlier,
reflects from the very outset the universal worldview of the Iranian clergy
underpinning their thought of an Islamic world revolution based on their own
model. Therefore, the watershed event of toppling the Shah’s regime was never
restricted to a domestic process, in that it is considered to be a world
revolution based on an Islamic internationalism. This has been the result of
the politicization of Islamic universalism recurrent in modern shape – no less
than a claim of an ‘‘Islamic world order,’’ as Ramazani put it.23 Another
expert points in this revolutionary setting at a duality of internationalism
and national interest, arguing: ‘‘The Iranian Revolution was ... in a definite
sense international ... Despite the revolutionary universalism ... it was felt
to be a nationalist movement.’’24 The conclusion is that this does
not seem to stand in contradiction to the intriguing fact that ‘‘its
universalism was more pronounced than that of the French or Russian
revolution.’’25 It may be this deceiving rhetoric that led a Harvard
expert on European revolutions, although with a very poor knowledge on Islam,
to place the Islamic revolution of Iran among the world revolutions.
In the course of looking for a
persuasive explanation for the failure to export the Islamic revolution, the
pointing at the Shi’ite character of Iran is meant neither to suggest that it
was not generally appealing to non-Shi’ite Muslims nor to belittle its impact
on the world of Islam at large. The appeal has been acknowledged and related to
a real revolution with an international dimension – if not a world revolution –
that took place in an environment determined by military rule of Arab coup
d’e´tat regimes.26 Their populism – e.g. secular Nasserism –
proved to be a great disappointment. As already stated, in this understanding
the Islamic revolution in Iran has been in substance virtually the first
revolution in the region. In the Arab world, a flawed development related to a
structural crisis of the nation-state in the Middle East and combined with a
de-legitimation of most of the existing regimes led to a legitimacy crisis.27
These crises were visible particularly after the Arab defeat in the
Six-Day War of 1967, as already mentioned. At the outset, the pronouncement of
an alternative model for political change in the region by the Islamic
revolution seemed to have filled an existing vacuum, and therefore its claims
fell on fertile soil; however, this was only for a short period of time.
Why did the model fail? For an explanation of the failure,
one needs to touch upon many issue areas. One is the fact that the revolution
was constrained in its call for a jihad internationalism by its Shi’ite
character. Except for Iraq after the toppling of Saddam Hussein, no Arab
country would act along Iranian lines. The Iraqi Shi’a, mainly led by the
Supreme Council for the Islamic revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), wishes to see an
Islamic republic of Iraq,28 but others certainly do not share this.
Nevertheless, all religious groups of political Islam view the worldwide
network based on a transnational religion under the impact of the Islamic
revolution in Iran as a model and as evidence that Islamism could come to
power. In this understanding, Iran was and continues to be a threat to the
neighboring Arab states. This was openly articulated by Khomeini himself in his
first Iranian New Year’s speech, starting with the phrase: ‘‘(W)e should try
hard to export our revolution to the world ... we shall confront the world.’’29
The implication inherent in this phrasing relates not only a missionary
belief, but also a strategy for the export of a religio-political revolution to
the neighboring countries. It is underpinned by a worldview that legitimates an
Islamic world order. As R.K. Ramazani argues, the notion of the revolution’s
export is ‘‘not well understood in relation to Khomeini’s overarching concept
of Islamic world order. The universalistic claim of this concept ... makes the
export of the Islamic revolution a matter of international, rather than
regional concern.’’30
For Khomeini this effort was all
about global jihad understood as ‘‘selfdefense of Islam’’ against Western
intrusion. The pronouncement implies the right to defend Islamic principles,
claiming universality and believed to be powerful enough to become victorious
against the West. As Ramazani further argues: ‘‘Khomeini’s concept is
potentially even more troublesome; his concept of the Islamic world order
basically rejects the validity of the very notion of the territorial state
which is the principal subject of the modern law of nations’’ (ibid.).
Some Western critics of the
nation-state believe they see in this political Islam an ally in their
opposition to existing national boundaries. These critics, however, fail to
realize that a religious neo-absolutism is at work. The same applies to the
issue of anti-globalism. Western anti-globalists who unwittingly shoulder
Islamism in the belief they share the same view are utterly mistaken: They do
not know what they do and are not familiar with the Islamist claim for an
Islamic globalization to replace the Western one.
At this juncture it is safe to
state a commonality between the Sunni call by Sayyid Qutb for an Islamic world
revolution and the Shi’ite call of Khomeini for an Islamic world order. The
target is the same: to de-center the West for the benefit of Islam.
Nevertheless, there are some sectarian differences between the Sunni and the
Shi’ite visions. They diverge because they have deep roots in the history of
the Islamic civilization. Yet, this has created no hindrance for the Iranian
leadership in steering some Sunni Islamist movements which receive financial
support from Iran (e.g. Algeria), although without acting as Teheran would
dictate.
All in all and in view of the
facts, it would be wrong to view the call for an Islamic world order simply as
a fierce rhetoric and thus to play it down. It does pose a security threat. In
both the Sunni and the Shi’ite case, the rhetoric has been combined with
determined jihadist action throughout the world. For Europe, any commitment to
this concept of order is an obstacle to the integration of Muslim migrants in
making them European citizens. One cannot accept the political order of the
European Union and at the same time adhere to a divine Islamic order. This is
not a pluralism of order, but rather a severe contradiction and also a
conflict.
The Iranian leadership never restricted itself to mere
pronouncements. Iran sent its ‘‘revolutionary guards’’ to Arab countries like
Lebanon and later to Sudan and it transferred funds to Islamist movements, such
as the FIS in Algeria and Hezbullah in Lebanon. In addition, Iran has been
involved in a great variety of covert actions and assassinations worldwide,
including Europe. In all these cases terrorism has been legitimized as global
jihad. Fred Halliday describes these activities in the following manner: The
export of the revolution sudur-i-inqilab
included the conventional means of exporting
political radicalism – arms, financial support, training, international
congresses, propaganda, and radio programs. Islamic tradition also provided
specific elements that could be added to this process: ... in Islam there were
no frontiers.31
With regard to the
employed concept of communist internationalism applied to transnational
religion for conceptualizing the described activities, in particular terrorism,
the idea of global jihad is the Islamist articulation of this ideology. When
implemented, it stands in the service of establishing the envisioned Islamic
world order. This has been and continues to be the orientation of the Iranian
foreign policy since the toppling of the Pahlavi state, even under the rule of
the so-called reformer Mohammed Khatami and despite his rhetoric of a
‘‘dialogue between the civilizations.’’ The continued failures of Iran’s
foreign policy combined with the maldevelopment of Iran itself led to the
reverse, i.e. to the isolation of Iran. After the early positive response, the
world of Islam was no longer open to the idea of the export of this revolution.
Under the new hawk president Ahmadinejad, only Syria cooperates with Iran;
other Arab and Islamic states keep aloof.
It came as no surprise that the
already addressed overlapping of internationalist revolutionary claims of
Khomeini with the national interest of the state of Iran continued to prevail
in the post-Khomeini era. In his study After Khomeini, Ehteshami confirms that
‘‘the orientation of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s foreign policy remains
Islamist-based,’’32 but plays this down as mere ‘‘Islamic dressing’’
and believes he sees a change pursued by the Second Republic (1989–97) under
Rafsanjani: ‘‘Iran’s role in the region was based, not on Iran being primarily
the hub of an expanding Islamic revolution ... but rather on regaining its
position as a military power and
politically influential player in the
regional arena.’’33
As argued earlier along with Fred
Halliday – despite the dissent over his alleged ‘‘myth of confrontation’’ –
there is in fact no contradiction between the combined strategies of national
interest and the foreign policy orientation of internationalism; some
overlapping between both is even to be conceded. The export of the revolution
did serve as a legitimating device for the claim for regional leadership in the
pursuit of a role as a regional power. In fact, the jihadist internationalism
Iranian-style existed consistently with the national interest of Iran. In this
regard one can see only little difference between the rule of Rafsanjani and
the rule of Khatami. The means employed to export the revolution were in
continuity with the formative years. There were alliances with fundamentalist
states – such as Sudan (e.g. Rafsanjani’s state visit to Sudan and the related
material support) – and cooperation with the proxies (foremost Hezbullah34
in Lebanon). The related policies revolved around a double strategy: a
state politics pursued as undercover activities (e.g. the Mykonos murder case
in Berlin) combined with a novelty developed under the presidency of Khatami
labeled as ‘‘a dialogue between the civilizations.’’35 Even though
the latter was meaningless, it successfully served as a deceiving device for
non-dialogic policies. The Europeans bought the claim – I never did – and
overlooked the everexisting ‘‘Terror Central,’’36 as my columns and
editorials in German newspapers document.37 Along with this rhetoric
Iran pursued its politics of nuclear proliferation, also under Khatami
threatening the entire Middle East and Europe. In Iran, the Second Republic was
believed to be ‘‘wholly at variance with the doctrines of the First Republic.’’38
To be sure, in the Third Republic of Khatami the rhetoric was different,
but the state and its order were the very same. In the study of the subject
under issue the person of the president matters little, be it the pragmatist
Rafsanjani or the alleged reformist Khatami, not to speak of the neo-Khomeinist
Ahmadinejad, elected in 2005 with the support of the so-called hard-liners.
What matters is the religious fundamentalism and the state of a ‘‘government of
God’’ practicing it. The political system of Mullahcracy is in continuity with
the established political structures for power distribution in Iran from its
inception in 1979 to date. The earlier hopes for change pinned on the person of
Mohammed Khatami and on his reformist outlooks faded. The divine order and its
existing political institutions of a fundamentalist state survived what was
claimed to be a reform.
The allocation of power and the
Islamist legitimation of it are the real issue, not the persons who are in
office. I had the opportunity to meet with President Khatami when he was still
in office, at the invitation of the then German president Johannes Rau in
Weimar on 12 July 2000. At first sight, I found him on the surface most
impressive. However, I do not confuse this personal impression with the
structure of power existing in Iran, nor do I identify rhetorical
pronouncements with real policies. In Iran, the fundamentalist Mullahs have the
power at their disposal and only they determine the politics of the state. The
empty talk about elections, democracy and pluralism in Iran is laughable. The
Council of Guardians above the clerics has always been committed to the
politics of Islamist internationalism adjusted to the national interest of
Iran, no more and no less. The overall frame for this is the totalitarian
system of Mullahcracy as the hallmark of the fundamentalist state, which is
based on an Islamist ideology. The talk about reformers and hard-liners makes
no sense. In earlier Iranian parliaments the hard-liners were ready to concede
the reformers a forum but no participation in the real decision-making. The
reference in Iran to a so-called ‘‘Islamic democracy’’ to be accomplished by
the powerless ‘‘reformers’’ was meant by some as a deception; by others it was
based on illusions.
In returning to the Arab
neighborhood, it can be stated that the Mullahs continue to ignore the repeated
clear hints by Arab politicians and writers that they unequivocally reject
Iran’s claim to leadership. This rejection of a model of an Islamic state
Iranian-style for the Arab part of the Islamic civilization has been expressed
in a variety of ways at various events. Back in January 2004, I was in Abu
Dhabi as an invited speaker, together with many Gulf state ministers. They were
talking to the then deputy of President Khatami, who conspicuously ignored all
hints made. Instead of listening, he rhetorically put the line of ‘‘Islamic
identity’’ in terms of Islamic internationalism above national or ethnic
identity, to advocate Iranian leadership regardless of the Arab leaders. I
repeated this very experience in December 2006 at the Manama Dialogue of IISS
in Bahrain. The foreign minister of Iran and his associates talked in general
about Islam and were not willing to perceive the Iran related fears of the Arab
Gulf politicians attending.
There are ethnic and sectarian Shi’ite-related fault-lines
that have separated the Iranian revolution from other Muslims. Its legitimation
through a reinterpreted Shi’ite concept of ‘‘velayat-e-faqih/guardianship of
the jurisconsult’’39 is clearly not acceptable to Sunni Arabs. The
claim by Khomeini to embody ‘‘true Islam’’ in contrast to what he despised as
‘‘American-style Islam’’ is in fact viewed by Sunni Arab leaders as a
provocation. In March 1989 Ayatollah Khomeini voiced his aspiration in the
following universalist phrasing: ‘‘Our revolution is not tied to Iran. The
Iranian people’s revolution was the starting point for the great revolution of
the Islamic world.’’40 Clearly, Islamist Arab counter-elites41 are
receptive, however poised to establish an Islamic state, only in their own
Sunni terms. Their understanding of an ‘‘Islamic state’’ is quite different
from the Shi’ite one. The Iranian president of the Second Republic, Rafsanjani,
had argued in 1993 along Khomeini’s views that Iran and the alleged universal
Islamic identity are the same in placing the Shi’ite-style Islamist
internationalism above all: ‘‘Our people do not see national issues as being
separate from Islamic issues ... We have become the mother country of Islam.’’42
This phrase is reminiscent of Lenin’s and Stalin’s views that Russia is
the ‘‘motherland of socialism.’’ This mindset motivated Iran to engage
repeatedly in unwanted and unwelcome intervention into the affairs of the
neighboring Islamic countries. At the end of the day, this policy contributed
to a regional isolation of Iran rather than to establishing its leadership.
Rafsanjani put the quest to export the Islamic revolution in this manner:
They [the Westerners; B.T.] accuse the
Islamic Republic of terrorism and intending to export the revolution to the
rest of the world ... [This; B.T.] is a baseless and meaningless allegation. A
revolution is not a commodity which can be exported ... A revolution will
export itself if it is justified, if it is rational and if it appears
attractive to other nations. Yes, the revolution has been exported, but we did
not export it. It exported itself.43
In Islamic terms
it could be seen as a kind of heresy to translate the manmade political
Islamist Shi’ite internationalism into the will of Allah. To interpret the
phrase cited, it can be read as: Allah exported the revolution within the
framework of global jihad. Foreign policy instruments like terrorism are no
longer needed, because Allah’s will dominates the universe, of which Iran
builds up the center. Apart from this heretic thought, the conclusion is that
failure is the outcome.
It can then be safely stated that spill-over effects of the
revolution should not be confused with Iran’s foreign policy itself. No
well-informed scholar would seriously deny the impact of the Iranian revolution,
but this statement does not translate into an endorsement of the foreign policy
of the Islamic Republic of Iran as a ‘‘government of God’’ as being a
successful one in its effort to export the revolution via terror. The
politicization of religion does not unite Muslims, it separates them. Doctrines
of Shi’a Islam are alien to Sunni Muslims.44
A significant
distinction: spill-over effects are not yet an ‘‘export of the revolution’’!
The appeal and its limits
In reiterating the
fact that the contemporary phenomenon of jihadism and of its Islamist
internationalism is related to political developments in Sunni Islam and also
predates the Islamic revolution of Iran, one is reminded how wrong it is to
identify the idea of an Islamic state based on the shari’a with Khomeinism. As
shown earlier, the concept of hakimiyyat Allah/God’s rule is a Sunni concept
first outlined as a novelty in the writings of Sayyid Qutb.
Political Islam is not rooted in
Khomeinism, but rather in the political thought of the Muslim Brothers founded
in 1928 in Egypt. It is the source and provides the overall framework45 for
Islamist internationalism. Viewed from this angle, the Iranian revolution can
be characterized as a latecomer. It is just one – albeit important – variation
in the contemporary history of political Islam. Despite the Sunni origins of
Islamism it was Iran that succeeded in launching an Islamic revolution and in
triggering spill-over effects throughout the world of Islam. We must beware of
confusion between these spill-over effects and the model of the revolution
itself. This confusion is caused not only by scholars but also by
policy-makers, and above all on purpose by the Iranian leadership itself. The
pronouncements and the spillover effects of the ‘‘Islamic revolution’’ are
confused in the service of the export of the revolution as a model for the
world of Islam at large.
Khomeini’s distinction between ‘‘true Islam’’ and
‘‘American-style Islam’’ is a political and not a religious thought. This
distinction is aimed at delegitimizing all regimes of neighboring Islamic foes
as ‘‘un-Islamic,’’ so laying the grounds for toppling them. This
Shi’ite–Iranian variety of political Islam is described by some Sunni Salafists
as itself ‘‘un-Islamic.’’ In both cases, the reference to Islam is
ideologically used to disarm one’s own foes. The term is also used in domestic
Iranian politics to deny the so-called reformists an Islamic legitimation by
damning them as ‘‘un-Islamic.’’ Islamic intellectuals and those who
rhetorically claim to be reformers, such as Abdolkarim Soroush,46 were
targeted by Islamists in many ways. It is ridiculous to see some Western
authors employing the same procedure in downplaying jihadist Islamism as
‘‘un-Islamic.’’ In this study, I refrain from this thinking and accept any
reference to Islam by any Muslim as Islamic, even if I do not share the related
view. In contrast, the Iranian Mullahs see their own variety of Islam as the
only true Islam. At issue here is in fact religion, but it is imbued with
politics. Mallat points out,
that the horizon
of Iran is first and foremost Shi’ite, and that the Sunni world cannot
intrinsically be part of the projection of the Iranian state as such. The
physical basis for such a Sunni network simply does not exist. The absence of
network is compounded by the absence of a satisfactory ideological model that
Sunni political movements could
follow.47
Mallat is right in
referring to the limits of the appeal, but wrong in his statement about Sunni
Islam. One sees al-Qaeda providing exactly what Mallat believes is missing. For
a short historical period the Islamic revolution of Iran was appealing, but it
could not be made acceptable to non-Shi’ite Muslims. The magic of salvation
provided by the revolution did not last long. Today the impact is limited to
Shi’ite minorities.
The Shi’ite minorities in the Arab world48 compel
continued cooperation with the political revolution in Iran and its impact in
its environment, primarily in Iraq, Lebanon and Syria. As stated earlier, the
very Iraq war unwittingly revived the significance of the Iranian model that
most appeals to the empowered Shi’ite majority population of Iraq. The Iraqi
Shi’ite clerics, as well as formerly secular Shi’ites (e.g. Chalabi) have
successfully forged links with Iran. The irony is that while the Bush
administration legitimized the sending of its troops to Iraq to topple Saddam
with the introduction of democracy combined with ‘‘war on terror,’’ the outcome
has been the opposite. The implicit introduction of the shari’a into the Iraqi
constitution is not a sign of democracy. An editorial in the International
Herald Tribune asks:
Did the United States wage a costly war in
Iraq in order to introduce shari’a? Did the decision makers in Washington know
that in postSaddam Iraq there are divergent understandings of democracy and the
rule of law – the Western secular and the shari’a-based?49
The Iraqi constitution is highly
questionable.50
Even though the discourse of the
Islamist revolution in Iran is intrinsically Islamic, the language of its
pronouncements as an Islamist ideology bears resemblance to third-worldism in a
broader context stated by Graham
Fuller:
This ideology must remain basically
threatening ... Iran could seek to be the leader of the ‘‘South’’ against the
‘‘North’’ ... Iran will not necessarily have to export a revolution replete
with violence, subversion, or terrorism ... The ideology will elicit forces for
social change in the Islamic world. Iran would thus hope to be the guide, the
beacon of Islam in politics. Cultural programs ... training in Iran – all would
represent the stuff of Iran’s export of the revolution.51
To be sure, this
ideology of third-worldist Islamist internationalism revives the concept of the
‘‘third world’’52 phased out in post-bipolar politics. Nevertheless,
the mindset of revolutionary tiers mondisme (F. Fanon) is not exactly in line
with what is claimed by the ‘‘Iranian internationalism.’’ One can hardly view
the death squads of the late Musab alZarqawi53 or their Shi’ite foes
of the Mahdi Army within the framework of liberation ideology. At issue is a
Sunni–Shi’ite cleavage within Islam. The fact that the Iranian leadership
carries on its commitment to the ‘‘same universalist ambitions ... Iran still
sees itself in its role in a global sense,’’54 a new power of the
so-called ‘‘third world,’’ is not third-worldism, it is a bid for power.
In concluding this section on the
political record of Shi’ite internationalism, it can be argued that the issue
is the state model implied in the projection of the Iranian revolution into the
neighboring Sunni-Arab world. This model is placed in a power game that is
being religionized.
In drawing a balance of the
Iranian resort to terrorism and to subversion as instruments for the export of
the revolution in an ‘‘Iranian connection,’’ the Shi’ite minorities in the Arab
world have been fully abused. The Lebanese case in point shows how Hezbullah
acts on behalf of Iran. Iran has been successful in translating its position in
Lebanon into a leverage in Lebanese politics and from there into the Middle
East at large. The overall concern of Iran while using Hezbullah in Lebanon and
the Shi’a in Iraq is – as the former Iranian minister of foreign affairs, Ali
Welayati, once put it – to be entitled to participate in any shaping of Middle
Eastern politics. The Iranian embassy in Damascus continues to be a center of
the ‘‘Islamic revolution’’ of Iran. The pursuit of a new world order, despite
the focus on the Arab world and the use of its Shi’a constituency, continues to
be the global claim; as Ramazani aptly once put it: ‘‘Khomeini’s overarching
concept of Islamic world order ... makes the export of the Islamic revolution a
matter of international, rather than regional, concern.’’55 With
this claim the Islamic revolution entered world politics, competing with Sunni
internationalism, and continues to play this role during the presidency of
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Thus Khomeinism is still alive and kicking. Its mindset is
documented in a speech delivered by Khomeini while addressing young Iranians
going abroad, when he blatantly stated:
We should try hard to export our revolution
to the world ... Today we need to strengthen and export Islam everywhere. You
need to export Islam to other places, and the same version of Islam which is
currently in power in our country.56
This Khomeini vision of ‘‘true Islam,’’ set
in contrast to ‘‘American-style Islam,’’ was thought to be a message for the
entire Islamic umma. After the passing of Khomeini, this vision has never been
abandoned, even though it was not publicly endorsed by the Second Republic of
Rafsanjani nor by the Third of Khatami. Under the new president, Ahmadinejad,
who perceives himself publicly as a Khomeinist, this vision is revived anew. To
be sure, the change is in the pronouncements, not in the policies of Islamist
internationalism which have never been abandoned.
The Sunni Arab world and the Shi’ite Iranian revolution
It is no
contradiction to continue arguing that Khomeini’s Shi’ite teachings – as
revived by the new president of Iran, Ahmadinejad – had earlier succeeded in
generating significant demonstrative spill-over effects on the neighborhood,
while at the same time stating that the ideology of the Islamic revolution in
Iran never affected the Arab-Sunni ideology of Islamism. There are, however,
two exceptions concerning major issue areas of Shi’a Islam on Sunni Islamism.
The first is Shi’ite clandestine action in the underground paired with ‘‘taqiyya/religious
dissimulation.’’ This Shi’ite religious doctrine of taqiyya was developed in
early Islam to protect the Shi’a followers from a ‘‘brutally repressive
campaign,’’ as Moojan Momen informs us; he also adds that this deception ‘‘is
considered lawful in Shi’ism.’’57 Militant Sunni Islamic groups
adopted this doctrine and the related practice of cunning. They gave the
traditional Shi’ite practice of taqiyya the Sunni name ‘‘iham/deception of
unbelievers.’’ It is for this reason that honest Muslims avoid the industry of
Islamic–Christian dialogue in which Islamists talk about tolerance and
democracy while something else is on their minds. The second issue area of
Shi’ite impact is the ‘‘shahid/martyrdom’’ death for legitimating terrorist
actions of suicide bombing. These religious practices were hitherto alien to
Sunni Islam and their very existence today heralds the impact of the Shi’ite
revolution and of its mindset.
In looking at Egypt as a case in point for the described
impact of the Iranian revolution, one can refer to the Egyptian political
scientist Saad Eddin Ibrahim, who states in an authoritative article of 1980:
The most regional effect on the future
growth of Islamic militancy in Egypt and elsewhere is likely to come from the
Iranian Revolution. Its success in dealing with the host of global, societal
and individual issues ... would enhance Islamic militancy.58
Sixteen years
later, S.E. Ibrahim published this article in his collection of essays aimed at
drawing a balance based on earlier writings. Today, more than a quarter of a
century later, the rightly predicted growth of Islamic militancy in Egypt,59
spilling over to Algeria60 and to elsewhere in the world of
Islam following the Islamic revolution in Iran, proves to be only one aspect of
a cross-sectarian Islamist internationalism. The ideology of discontent that
bolsters the rise of political Islam also emerges from a development crisis and
related problems. The Islamist education in the madrasas translates these
concerns into an Islamist revolt against the existing order. These references
do not support the view that the rise of political Islam is only – interpreted
in a reductionist manner – a response to a pattern of social change related to
an uneven economic development. It is rather argued that the internationalism
of political Islam also reflects a civilizational project based on a worldview.
In this capacity, it has much deeperlying historical roots than a simple
political ideology focused on the present discontent.
The revival of the Islamic
civilizational project in an Islamist shape is coupled with the prevailing
negative attitudes vis-a`-vis the West and is embedded in a mix of the ills of
disruptive development and increasing mobility. The spread of modern education
and information systems is also among the factors that contribute to the
ferment in Islamic societies as well as to exacerbating the legitimacy crisis
of the existing secular political order. The rise of the West itself as a
civilization – viewed in the Islamist narrative as a process that took place at
the expense of the Islamic expansion – is also among the perceptual
constraints.61 Add to all of this the fact that the adoption of
modernity did not work well. Under these conditions there was a need for an
authentic promise, based on an Islamic dream of coping with the predicament. It
was the Islamic revolution of Iran that pronounced such a promise. It failed to
deliver, but the Islamic dream based on Islamist narrative continues to be
alive as a challenge to world politics and to the existing world order.
The Islamic dream, embraced by a
variety of Islamist movements but suppressed by the sophisticated security
apparatus of the hated un-Islamic state, promises to do away with the
disruptive effects of uneven development combined with the legitimacy crisis.
All of the existing regimes in the Arab Sunni Middle East were challenged by
the Islamic revolution in Iran. Ahead of it Michael Hudson published his work
on this subject and stated: ‘‘Government by threat and coercion can temporarily
hold people in check,’’ but, as he further argues, ‘‘in the long run it
probably exacerbates the basic grievances ... Arab political systems, whatever
their ideology, have been singularly unsuccessful in developing the kind of
institutionalized mass
participation that social mobilization
requires.’’62
This statement reflects Hudson’s conclusions resulting from
case studies of all Arab political systems and implicitly predicted an
explosion. The prediction seemed to materialize in the aftermath of the
Islamist revolution in Iran. The internationalism of Khomeini’s ‘‘true Islam’’
that promised light at the end of the tunnel, combined with the ability to
topple an authoritarian regime through an Islamic revolution, created under the
described conditions a political earthquake throughout the Arab world and
elsewhere in the Islamic civilization. Here again the reader is reminded of the
fact that political Islam is much older than the variety ‘‘made in Iran.’’
However, the Iranian revolution fueled the crisis situation in its articulation
of an ‘‘Islamic dream’’ for uniting Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims in an ‘‘Islamic
world revolution’’ based on an imagined Islamic umma. The Islamic diaspora in
Europe has been included in this dream. The universal claim of ‘‘true Islam’’
has been based on:
a shared
perception of one Islamic world revolution;
the belief in the
existence of the unity of a cohesive Islamic umma under siege to be united
against its Western oppressors through politicization and the direct action of
jihad, while overlooking all ethnic and sectarian divisions and frictions
within this imagined community;
a unique Islamic
system of government, for both the state and the envisioned new world order to
map the entire globe.
Clearly, this
‘‘true Islam’’ is conspicuously a political Islam, and is neither the Islamic
faith itself nor a reflection of sectarian Shi’a Islam. Corresponding identity
politics blurs the distinction between Islamism as political religion and the
faith. The cultural meaning of Islam is translated into identity politics. At
issue is basing the fault-lines of ‘‘us versus them.’’ The identification of
Iran with Islam in general as the ‘‘center of the universe’’ clashes
herethrough, not only with the other, i.e. the West, but also with similar Arab
claims to centrality in Islamic civilization. The application of the dichotomy
‘‘American-style Islam’’ versus ‘‘true Islam’’ proved to be most successful in
the identity politics embedded into competing civilizational models. This
happened long before Huntington invented his term for pointing at dreadful
fault-lines.
What is identity politics and how does this concept – as
used by the Islamist revolution of Iran – translate into the relations between
Islam and the West, be it in the understanding of ‘‘Islam and the rest’’ or of
‘‘the West and the rest’’?63 In the article on identity politics
added to the second edition of the Routledge Encyclopedia of Government and
Politics, one reads:
Makers of identity have always played a
role in politics and have often been used as a device to create opposition to
perceived oppression ... The term identity politics is more commonly understood
as a wave of political organization and contestations ... Identities would
serve ... as the basis for producing new political agendas and social
movements.64
Political Islam is the agenda of a
civilizational project in the outlined understanding. At issue is an
internationalism based on contemporary identity politics combined with
transnational religion. In the perceptual confrontation with the West – which
is also a political reality and not, as alleged by Halliday, a myth – Islamic
identity serves as a platform for political agendas, as shown in the case of
the revolution in Iran. In such a confrontation most Muslims take a stand
against the West. Within the Islamic civilization, however, characterized as it
is by great diversity, there are sectarian and ethnic divides that not only
create other patterns of identity politics but also undermine any claim of
being ‘‘the overall representative of one Islam.’’ The Iranians and the Arabs,
the Sunna and the Shi’a are paramount cases, not to speak of the great cultural
diversity existing within Islam. The fragmentation of Iraq after the disastrous
war is a case in point for a developing of sectarian tensions into hatred and
bloody conflict.65
The use of identity politics as
based on the allegation of an overall and, moreover, immutable Islamic
identity, as the vehicle for mobilizing the world of Islam in the service of
global jihad, is a double-edged sword. It serves the purpose of putting groups
of jihadists, ready for action, into a better position. The case of Khomeinism,
with its wishful thinking of mobilizing all Muslims under the leadership of Iran
united by ‘‘true Islam,’’ indicates the use of identity politics in a political
concept for remaking the world. But this concept is undermined by the reality
of ethnic and sectarian strife. The related distinctions are also coupled with
identity patterns which the Khomeinist approach does not account for. Cultural
patterns change with social transformation, and identity is no exception. The
Iranian revolution has succeeded in changing the politico-cultural climate in
the Middle East and even in the world of Islam at large, but it has failed to
construct new collective identity patterns for uniting Sunni and Shi’ite
Muslims, even though both share almost the same universalist worldview.
However, the Iranian claims of leadership were not acceptable to Sunni Arabs.
Having been accused of essentialism by some postmodern scholars known to be
non-readers, I hasten to add to this statement that the allegation of an
essential and immutable overall Islamic identity reflects an Islamist notion
and is not my own position. In contrast, my thinking consistently relates
religion and culture to change because both are always in flux. Those who read
my books will know of this awareness. The accusation of essentialism is
therefore baseless. A reference to my work at the ‘‘Culture Matters Project’’
of the Fletcher School is in place and the related research has resulted in the
two volumes Developing Cultures.66
In short, identity politics which
underpins commonalities in the service of the Shi’ite Iranian claim is based
not only on an imagined umma-community, but also on shared resentments against
the West. It is also articulated in a historical situation promoting
defensive-cultural attitudes. However, the sharing of these attitudes does not
imply the existence of a collective Islamic identity equally shared by Sunni
Arabs and Shi’ite Iranians. In so arguing, I am contesting neither the idea of
an Islamic civilizational identity nor that of a shared Islamic worldview.67
However, this worldview is undermined by ethnic and sectarian divides as
well as by the related local identities ever changing along with their
environment. It follows that not only ill-devised Iranian policies but also the
realities addressed have underpinned the failure of Iran to impose its views on
all Muslims.
There also exists a constructed Arab political identity
which stands in the way of the Iranian claims. Islam and nationalism, whether
pan-Arab or local, are a framework for determining Arab identity.68 Islam,
by virtue of its claim to be a universal religion, maintains the belief that it
is the absolute. In reality, there are different Islamic societies with a great
variety of cultures and identities. In this regard one may refer to Clifford
Geertz’s comparative analysis of Moroccan and Indonesian Islam69 to
reveal the unity and the diversity within the Islamic cultural system. In going
beyond Geertz’s appraisal by placing cultures in a broader context, I add to
the term ‘‘culture’’ the other of ‘‘civilization’’ and do not use these
interchangeably. The existence of an Islamic civilization is acknowledged, but
the statement is made more specific by reference to the thousands of local
cultures subdividing this civilization. In this regard I coined the term:
‘‘cultural diversity within civilizational unity.’’ This notion also applies to
other civilizations, such as the West. Identity politics in this understanding
can be both civilizational and cultural: I am a Damascene Arab and a Muslim at
the same time. Add to this the fact that people in the modern world are
individual citizens of nation-states. Here the question arises of how the
Islamic umma within the context of the Shi’ite Iranian call for an Islamist
internationalism, once claimed by Khomeini, is in conflict with citizenship of
the nation-state and with the cultural-political foundations of the Westphalian
order of the international system of sovereign states. Ramazani states this
conflict in the following context:
Khomeini rejected
... the very idea of the nation-state on the ground that it is the creation of
man’s ‘‘weak mind.’’ In other words, in Khomeini’s ideal Islamic world order
there would be no room for the modern secular post-Westphalia conception of the
international
system.70
In a traditional challenge to Iran’s
perception of itself as the ‘‘center of the universe,’’ contemporary Sunni Arab
Islamists like Mohammed Imara argue that Arabism and Islam are to be viewed as
a unity. In a major book this Islamist states: ‘‘The universality of Islam as a
religion does not deny local and domestic realities ... However, and despite
its universal claims Islam asks its believers to arabize [an yata’rrabu] and
this makes the specific Arab character of Islam.’’71
This Arab-centrism collides
head-on with Khomeini’s claim that Iran is the ‘‘center of the universe.’’ Add
to this inner-Islamic clash the realities of Islamic history. In contradiction
to the provision of the Prophet that Arabs and non-Arabs/ajam are equals in
Islam, historians are familiar with intentional or unintentional discrimination
of non-Arab Muslims often related to an Arab-centric interpretation of Islam.
The Shi’ite Iranians – earlier viewed as Mawali – were among the victims of
this Arab-centrism and that is why they invented taqiyya to save their own
lives. One also finds this Arab-centrism in the ideology of pan-Arab
nationalism, which reduces universalist Islam to an Arabism, as is well known.
Add to this the fact that neither universal Islam nor secular nationalism have
ever succeeded in
overcoming tribal identities and related
loyalties.72
In summing up this section, it can be stated that the
revival of Islamic universalism in the interpretation of an internationalism in
a Shi’ite shape claimed by Iran is questionable. Iran is not the heart of the
Islamic political revival and hence the justification for an ‘‘Iranian
internationalism’’73 lacks firm foundation. The related claim of an
overall Islamic identity politics clashes with the fact that Islam is in
reality shaped by local cultures: African in Senegal, South Asian in Indonesia
and Mediterranean in many Arab countries. Underlying this diversity is the fact
that the production of meaning in different cultures takes place under socially
different conditions and in socially different environments. There are
‘‘multiple identities in the Middle East.’’74 It follows that the
claim of Khomeinism to be accepted as an Islamic internationalism has no firm
grounds and is in conflict with Arab and other local-cultural Islamic
identities. It is also safe to conclude that in reality there is no unique,
invariable Islamic identity that could be found in all Muslim countries. This
allegation is an essentialism. Despite all diversity, there exists a common, if
changing, Islamic worldview with some local-cultural variations. Although Islam
is a religion based on precepts fixed in religious sources, the reality of the
social production of meaning under historically diverse conditions and in
geographically and culturally different regions prohibits any discussion of one
Islam. Islamic realities are not a reflection of the scripture. All in all, the
Iranian claim can be viewed as an ideological response to a specific historical
situation, a politics of identity, but not Islam itself. The articulated claim
may not be conducive to the realization of a united Islamic umma, but as a call
to global jihad it could nonetheless lead to destabilizing the existing
political regimes and threatening the status quo in the region, which in fact
it did in the past. In the foreseeable future the competing Sunni internationalism
presented in the preceding chapter is expected to capture the lead.
Nevertheless, it is sadly acknowledged and repeated that the war in Iraq
unwittingly brought Iran back to the fore after a seeming decline of Shi’ite
internationalism. To what extent? This remains to be seen. Also, the Hezbullah
war in Lebanon of July/August 2006, summarized by The Economist with the
formula ‘‘Nasrallah Wins the War,’’ contributed to boosting the legitimacy of
Iran. Hezbullah acted as a proxy of Iran in a context of transnational religion
and was even endorsed by the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt.75
Conclusions and future prospects
The major
conclusion can be stated in two steps, the first of which refers to the Islamic
revolution in Iran as a source of change in the political development in the
world of Islam at large and in particular in the Middle East. In its claim to
be a world revolution in Islamic terms, it symbolizes the emergence of a
state-run model of global jihad with Iran providing a hinterland. The Islamist
world revolution breathed life into Islamist movements throughout the world of
Islam and had also an impact on Europe.
The second step is related to
qualifying the success of the revolution compared to its claims. It was a
limited success because of the Shi’ite character of Iran. It constrained the
impact to the extent that it could not become an accepted overall model to
emulate. Therefore, the revolution as an Islamic upheaval against foreign
dominance was successful in toppling its local proxy, the despotic government
of the Shah. This was admired at the outset, but it was simultaneously rejected
by Sunni Islamists in its claims to be an overall valid Islamic model. Both
assessments are complementary to one another.
The conclusion of a limited impact
has to be modified through a reference to the Shi’ite minorities in the world
of Islam, be it in Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan or the Gulf states.
These communities have been more receptive to Iranian claims. In particular, in
Iraq the Shi’ite majority has been able, as a special case, to establish its
rule – even with US assistance – in the name of democracy. This fact increased
Sunni resentment against the Shi’a and the USA as well. What are the general
conclusions?
In the post-Khomeini era the
rhetoric of the revolution has subsided, even though revived by Ahmadinejad.
Under the rule of President Khatami the state divorced its outlook from
Khomeinism in its rhetoric but not in its deeds. The ideology of global jihad
as Shi’ite internationalism continues to be the major source of legitimacy for
the Islamic state in Iran in the twentyfirst century, in particular under the
new president Ahmadinejad. In short, Khomeinism never ceased to prevail. This
has been made abundantly clear with the so-called ‘‘election’’ of Ahmadinejad
in 2005, who is – unlike his predecessor, masked with ‘‘dialogue’’ – an
unmasked Khomeinist.
Iran is not only powerful in its
revolutionary ideology. Iranian politics is also based on the power of oil and
the unfolding of nuclear capabilities.
With hindsight, one is inclined to quote a statement made by
a well-informed observer of militant Islam, the foreign policy editor of the Financial
Times, Edward Mortimer, who later became an advisor of and speech-writer for
Kofi Annan. He concluded from his observation in several Arab and non-Arab
Islamic countries:
The Iranian revolution may perhaps succeed
in exporting itself, in the sense that it could help to inspire revolutionary
change in some other Muslim countries. But it is impossible to imagine other
Muslim countries adopting precisely the same laws and institutions as
revolutionary Iran, for these reflect a specifically Iranian Islam, which is a
product of Iranian history.76
This statement of
Mortimer leads to another conclusion. The Iranian model has failed to be a
revolution for export, although its spill-over effects have been taken and –
despite all changes – should continue to be taken into serious consideration.
Arab political counter-elites, committed to political Islam and consequently
accepting the Iranian spirit of Islamic internationalism, are not willing to
implement the Iranian model itself in the Sunni Arab world. Iranian jihadist
internationalism has always been restricted to a limited impact. The Iraq war
changed the situation to the benefit of Iran, to the extent that this country
has resumed its involvement in international terrorism.
In a general conclusion to this
Part II it can be stated that global jihad understood as a world revolution, be
it in its Sunni or Shi’ite variety, claims to politically mobilize the Muslim umma
in the pursuit of a new world order based on Islamic tenets. However, the fact
that by and large there exists neither a cohesive Islamic political umma community
nor an immutable and universal Islamic identity makes the limits of the claim
clear. In the case of the Islamic revolution of Iran, the regime brought to
power can no longer present itself as a model of upheaval against an oppressive
regime. The ruling Mullahcracy in power has itself become more repressive than
the political regime it overthrew, and its credibility has suffered
accordingly. Now, even naı¨ve observers are aware of the fact that no
radical change, let alone a reformist transformation, ever took place. Instead,
nuclear proliferation – parallel to the violation of human rights – has gone
side by side with the deception of a dialogue between the civilizations.
The transition from the presidency
of Mohammed Khatami, who had no real power, to that of Mahmud Ahmadinejad took
place within the rule of Mullahs. Members of the Western-educated Iranian elite
call for a reconciliation with the West. The Yale alumnus and former
revolutionary Shahriar Rouhani wrote in Time magazine: ‘‘Iran has been
evolving. Social, political and economic realities have caused the radicalism
and revolutionary romanticism to subside. A new era of rationalism has dawned
in our
country ... It is
now the time for peace and friendship.’’77
Certainly, the quoted call
expresses more honesty than Khatami’s dialogue of civilizations, but the
question remains: How politically powerful are these segments of the Iranian
elite? The issue is not the expression of goodwill, but rather the power of the
Mullahcracy and the structure of the state. There is no democracy in Iran,
period. Wishful thinking cannot be an adequate policy vis-a`-vis Iran’s
political system of a ‘‘government of God,’’ as this continues to prevail. The
dialogue between civilizations proclaimed by Khatami was no more than a
smokescreen ended by Ahmadinejad. Iran’s threat to world politics is based on
its development of nuclear capabilities. This nuclear proliferation in times of
a continued growth of Sunni jihadism exacerbates the complex situation, but in
one way also displays the isolation of Iran. The situation of a stand-off with
the combined West – the USA and the EU – and the articulated will ‘‘to
extinguish the state of Israel’’ (Ahmadinejad) expressed in a clear
anti-Semitic jargon may contribute to some popularity in the world of Islam,
but this popularity may make very little difference to the outcome described in
this chapter. Shi’ite internationalism is much less significant to world
politics than its Sunni competitor based on irregulars in a global connection
of transnational religion. The question remains: Will this religionized
challenge to the secular international system lead to a confrontation (this is
real, not a myth), or would a successful reform Islam lead to secularization78
that would end this confrontation? The conflict between the sacred and
the secular has already entered world politics79 and it affects both
world politics and Europe. The rest of the book is focused on the impact of
this process in Europe and on democracy, and the solution for the World of
Islam for itself and for its relations to others.

Part III
Europe as a
battlefield for the competing options
Islamization
versus Europeanization resulting in Muslim Europe or Euro-Islam?
Introductory remarks
A never-ending
series of challenges related to post 9/11 events taking place in Europe since
2004 seems to have convinced some politically interested Europeans, if not all,
that their continent too has its own jihadist dilemma (see note 6 to Chapter
6). The intrusion of political Islam into Europe is contributing to turning it
into a battlefield between the secular and the divine in the course of the
return of the sacred. It is perplexing to watch the contradictory reality of
Europeans abandoning their faith while the global religionization of politics
and conflict enters Europe under conditions of Islamic immigration. At issue in
the first place are values, worldviews and the understanding of political
order. The integration of Muslim immigrants in European societies becomes a top
priority. The alert has been the chain of events that stretch from the Madrid
bombings on 11 March 2004, including the public execution of Theo van Gogh
condemned as an unbeliever by the globally linked Islamist Mohammed Bouyeri in
Amsterdam on 2 November 2004, and continuing the following year with the London
assaults in July 2005. Some may not agree with including the uprising in the banlieues
de l’Islam in Paris 2005 in this chain of events, nor with seeing the violent
2006 contestation of the Jyllands-Posten cartoons as a part of this conflict.
Nevertheless, this is the case, and the facts on the ground compel us to
acknowledge it as such. I am also convinced that the global outrage over Pope
Benedict’s call to dissociate religion in Islam from violent jihad is a part of
this story. Intelligent Europeans have begun to grasp the issue: Islam matters
to Europe in a situation of conflict. Multi-culturalists, however, continue not
only to reject any reasoning on this issue, but also to prohibit others from
engaging in such reasoning to any extent.
The relations between Europe and
the Islamic civilization are determined by structural interconnectedness and in
addition are deeply rooted in history.
The references
made to the topicality of the issue dealt with in this part of the book, which
was completed between 2003 and 2006, merely serve to underpin the argument that
Europe is becoming the battlefield for a competition over the validity of
European and Islamic or Islamist values within the EU itself. This is the new
situation. On the grounds of my commitment against any Islamophobia and the
rhetoric of a clash of civilizations, I take pains – as a Muslim reformist who
with the former German president of Germany co-authored Preventing the Clash of
Civilizations – to find a peaceful resolution of the conflict. A Muslim by
faith and socialization, I have lived as an immigrant by status and a European
by citizenship for the past four decades in Europe. This conditio humana compelled
me to cope with the pending conflict, in bridging between the conflicting
parties. It must be openly stated, in case the issues underpinning the conflict
between Islam and the open society in Europe are overlooked, that no solution
can be in sight. In this context, Fukuyama’s Lipset Lecture is worth referring
to, in view of the fact that Islamism has found a safe haven in the European
democracies, contesting their values while simultaneously making full use of
civil rights that the Islamist model of ‘‘God’s rule’’ clearly despises. This
ideology of Islamism, addressed in the context of Islamic immigration to
Europe, indicates cultural differences that cannot be accommodated within the
traditional wisdoms of multi-culturalism. In a conflict between European
cultural relativism and Islamist neo-absolutism, it becomes clear that the
Islamists are the winners of the ongoing war of ideas. It is legitimate to
defend an open society against the enemy within, and to engage in this is not
Islamophobia. I am both dismayed and amazed when Western atheists accuse me, a
faithful Muslim, of this filth when I engage in critical thoughts about the
issue and my own religion.
To make the issue clear: one is
reminded of the fact that, after brutally killing the Dutch film-maker Theo van
Gogh, the Islamist Mohammed Bouyeri used a knife to pin a letter to the body.
Included in the letter was not only a threat to van Gogh’s companion, Hirsi
Ali, but also the warning phrase: ‘‘Europe! It is now your turn!’’
Interestingly, this warning was
not cited in the European press coverage on this issue, in line with the
practiced rules of political correctness. This is clearly self-censorship. The
source of this information is a public speech by the prime minister of the
Netherlands, Jan Peter Balkenende, at a meeting of the project ‘‘Europe. A
Beautiful Idea?’’ held in Rotterdam on 4 December 2004. I was there as a Muslim
among the speakers. During his trial in 2005 Bouyeri showed no remorse and
repeated his desire to kill ‘‘unbeliever Europeans’’ if he were to be released
from prison. Clearly, this mindset precludes any rational communication and no
multi-culturalism could ever accommodate such Islamists. Despite these facts,
most European newspapers never stopped playing down the execution as an action
committed by a loner, allegedly as a result of social marginalization. It is,
however, a proven fact, evidenced both by the police and at court, that Bouyeri
acted as a member of an Islamist connection in a network of transnational
religion. This reference to the van-Gogh–Bouyeri story is made as an
introductory note to ascertaining the real challenge. The following two
chapters will endeavor to study both roots and constraints in an attempt to
find a solution acceptable to Europeans and Muslim immigrants alike, as grounds
for living in peace with one another.
This endeavor requires rational
universal knowledge. In engaging in this analysis as a social scientist also
trained in the sociology of religion and in history, I look at religion in the
Durkheimian sense as a fait social embedded in a historical context.
With a view to history,
authoritative historians suggest that Europe was founded by Charlemagne in the
eighth century in the course of dealing with Islam. In the twenty-first century
a similar challenge is on the agenda, and Europeans are asked to look at the
historical roots of this conflict that go back to the early medieval Islamic
expansion. Therefore, I refer to the classic by the Belgian historian Henri
Pirenne, in which the phrase ‘‘sans Mohammed, pas de Charlemagne’’ was coined.
Translated into a historical interpretation, this is to state that Europe was
constituted in response to a challenge posed by the then expanding Islamic
civilization. Since the authoritative Sayyid Qutb and his work, contemporary
Islamists claim in their writings a return of history in terms of reviving
collective memories for underpinning their related aspirations. Thus this book
starts on the first page of its introduction with a questioning of the
contention of an ‘‘end of history.’’ The opposite, rather, is taking place.
Unlike the jihad fighters of the earlier Islamic medieval futuhat expansion the
bulk of today’s Muslims are pouring into Europe peacefully within a massive
Islamic hijra/migration, not as jihad warriors. Europe’s jihadist cells are at
present rather the exception, not the rule. In the course of a changing
composition of the population, European values are being contested by the
newcomers. The challenge to the identity of the continent is the pivotal issue
that should not be silenced by political correctness, but it should equally not
serve as grounds for fault-lines, as Huntington suggests it. Muslims and
Europeans need common solutions and must engage in a dialogue of conflict
resolution.
The increasing and intensifying Islamic migration to Europe
is transforming this continent into a space heralding a new pattern of a
Muslim– Western encounter. The Economist, in its report ‘‘Awkward Partners,’’
describes the issue in this manner:
Islam’s fast
rising profile in a continent ... [is creating] nervousness about Islam
watering down Europe’s Christian heritage ... Existential angst is nothing new
for Europe’s Christians ... Tensions are between a religion that in Europe is
small but growing and one that is big but declining.
(12 February 2005)
In the same report
the late prominent cardinal Jean-Marie Lustinger, a former bishop of Paris and
an ex-Jew who converted to Christianity after surviving the Holocaust, is cited
as stating: ‘‘There is a risk of Islam becoming a state-religion by the backdoor.’’
I met Lustinger in Berlin in 2005 at Castle Hardenberg, debated with him,
listened carefully to his concern about the Islamist new anti-Semitism
spreading in France and shared his misgivings. Assaults on synagogues provide
the evidence and should not be played down, but no general accusation is to be
allowed. We need to remain rational and be balanced.
A part of the needed rationality
is a research project linked to a workshop held in 1998 at the University of
California Berkeley under the title ‘‘Islam and the Changing Identity in
Europe.’’ Back then, the pending issue was addressed and I was given the
opportunity to present my concept of Euro-Islam designed to bridge Islam and
Europe. In fact, the concept of Euro-Islam goes back to Paris, where it was
first presented in 1992. It was taken up in Berkeley by the then directors of
the Centers for Middle Eastern and European Studies Nezar AlSayyad and Manuel
Castells, who published their edited volume Muslim Europe or Euro-Islam? (Lexington
Books, 2002) reflecting the findings of the project mentioned. I claim the
concept of Euro-Islam, first presented in Paris and published in French and
German in 1992–5 before it was presented and published in the Berkeley context
mentioned. Others use the notion ‘‘Euro-Islam’’ without a reference to its
origin and often in a different, clearly distorted meaning. I prefer not to
mention names, but nevertheless it is imperative to dissociate my reasoning on
EuroIslam from that of Tariq Ramadan, whom I consider a rival within Islam in
Europe.
In contrast to any deceptive
presentation, I state the issue plainly: Either Europe succeeds in the politics
of integrating Muslim migrants as European ‘‘citizens of the heart,’’ or the
Islamist and Salafist leaders of this diaspora will manage to incrementally
Islamize Europe while abusing the Islamic diaspora community, creating an
‘‘enclave’’ (John Kelsay) in Europe as a hinterland. This is taking place in a
context of demographic change in Europe, combined with Islamic proselytization.
The reasoning in Paris and Berkeley on this issue was continued at Cornell in a
project chaired by Peter Katzenstein and Timothy Byrnes on ‘‘Religion in an
Expanding Europe’’ (see the publication of the same title, Cambridge University
Press, 2006). My contribution states the two competing options in its title:
‘‘Europeanization of Islam or the Islamization of Europe?’’ I continue this
argument in this part of the book, clearly not in a rehash but in new line of
thought. I contend that a challenge for a century’s reasoning is at issue; it
is not a matter for a single book or a lone scholar to engage with.
Unlike many of my fellow Muslims
in the diaspora, I avoid the discourse of self-victimization combined with
accusations aimed at others, whether of Islamophobia, Orientalism or racism. In
fact, we Muslims do not constitute a so-called ‘‘race’’ but rather a
transnational religious community. The application of a disputed concept of
race, based in biology, to a religious community is not only misleading but
also highly flawed. One cannot change one’s assigned/attributed ‘‘race,’’ but
an African or a European or an Asian could indiscriminately share Islam and
join its community by conversion. The Muslim community, comprising more than
one and half a billion, and stretching from Asia to Africa and reaching out to
Europe, does not constitute a ‘‘race.’’ Members of the worldwide Islamic umma,
as a transnational religious community, share values and worldview, but not
biology. The self-victimizing discourse of some Muslims and the political
correctness of some Europeans lead nowhere. Instead, we need common reasoning
in the search for common solutions.
In this book I propose that my
fellow Muslim immigrants and Europeans accept the religion-, ethnicity- and
race-blind civilizational idea of Europe combined with a reform Islam as the
grounds for bridging between one another. I embrace a multiple identity
addressed in terms of a Euro-Islam. The substance of the notion of Euro-Islam
is aimed at the incorporation of the European values of democracy,
laı¨cite´, civil society, pluralism, secular tolerance and
individual human rights into Islamic thought. In doing this, identifying with
the precedent of the Hellenization of Islam between the ninth and the twelfth
centuries, which gave birth to medieval Islamic rationalism, is pertinent. The
Muslims of today need to revive this tradition in their heritage to open their
minds, thus insuring a better future against the claims of totalitarian
political Islam.
Not only Muslims but also
Europeans are challenged to do their homework. Cultural diversity is precious,
but it also needs to have limits. In the Economist report on the Islamic
jihadist assault in Amsterdam, one finds such ridiculing phrases as this: Those
waging ‘‘an uncertain struggle to defend Western civilization ... to counter
Islamist extremism [do this] by putting more emphasis on the rule of law and
less on accommodating differences’’ (‘‘Islam, Tolerance and the Dutch,’’ The
Economist, 2–8 April 2005, pp. 22–4). My chapter in the cited Cornell project
carries the title ‘‘Democracy Against Difference.’’ I acknowledge the
acceptance of diversity wholeheartedly, but only on the foundation of accepting
the basic rules of religious and cultural pluralism related to sharing civic
core values. This is not a cultural relativism. Pluralism combines diversity
with shared basic values.
In Europe, one needs a consensus
between immigrants and Europeans over basic values. I maintain that Muslims
living in Europe need to accept that an open society is a law-governed polity
and that the related values are not negotiable for the sake of diversity. This
is not a matter for ridiculing. The right to ‘‘individual choice, dissent or
apostasy’’ needs to be defended. To use the phrasing of The Economist, this
idea ‘‘might sound intolerant,’’ but I do not share this sentiment. Some
Europeans and The Economist seem to put a ‘‘respect for cultural diversity’’
and an indiscriminate ‘‘accommodating different values and faiths’’ above the
idea of individual human rights, civil society and religious pluralism. In the
Cornell project on ‘‘Religion in an Expanding Europe’’ I question this view and
even reject it, as I continue to do here and throughout this book in a new line
of reasoning.
Coming as a Muslim from Damascus
to study in the Frankfurt School, I learned from my teacher Max Horkheimer, a
Jewish Holocaust survivor, that the identity of Europe must be defended against
any totalitarianism. Politicized shari’a and a jihadized Islam cannot be accommodated
in a democratic Europe. The indifference of multi-culturalism distorts the
issue. In addition to Horkheimer, I follow Sir Karl Popper’s insight that
intolerance cannot be admitted in the name of tolerance. From this point of
view I contest reports like the one cited above, in which those who subscribe
to the ‘‘idea that values are important’’ are being classified as ‘‘ideologues
of the new right.’’ To be sure, I’m not one of those. With my background in the
Frankfurt School I was a ‘‘leftist’’ who grew as a Muslim under the
intellectual influence of Jewish and Holocaust-survivor teachers. They
established the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory from which I learned to
appreciate Europe as ‘‘an island of freedom located in an ocean of despotic
rule’’ (see note 15 to Chapter 6). Freedom needs to be defended against all
totalitarianisms (Stalinism and Nazism). The cited Horkheimian phrasing is his
legacy. It is not ‘‘new right’’ thinking to advocate defending Europe against
undemocratic ‘‘foreigners.’’ In my study of Islamism (to be distinguished from
Islam) I come to the conclusion that it incorporates ‘‘the new
totalitarianism’’ and therefore oppose it. In short, the problem is not only
related to the Islamists in Europe, but also to those Europeans themselves
plagued by their indifference.
Another authority for my reasoning
is Ibn Khaldun, the great fourteenthcentury Muslim philosopher. I refer to his Muqaddina
[Prolegomena] for supporting my arguments. Ibn Khaldun founded the ilm al-umran/
science of civilization and it is a pity that Huntington is not familiar with
his work. For Ibn Khaldun an asabiyya/esprit de corps is the heart of any
civilizational consciousness, therefore the strength or weakness of a
civilization depends upon the commitment of its members to civilizational core
values. In other words, asabiyya is the barometer for measuring and forecasting
the condition of a civilizational identity. In short: it is not an indication
of racism or nationalism if members of a civilization stand by their asabiyya as
an awareness of self. In this regard, Europe should be no exception and it is
entitled to a European asabiyya. It is incidental that the year 2006 (the 600th
anniversary of Ibn Khaldun’s death: 1406–2006) was commemorated on two pivotal
occasions: in Granada, in the context of the ‘‘Alliance of Civilizations’’
(June) and in Tunis at the fourth Humanity Convention on ‘‘New Directions in
the Humanities.’’ I take the liberty – and ask for the tolerance of some
readers – to mention that on both occasions I was given the honor of being a
keynote speaker, and in both Granada and Tunis presented the ideas developed in
this book, as based on Ibn Khaldun’s thoughts. This is not ‘‘right-wing’’ but
Enlightenment reasoning. I engage in a search for a Euro-Islamic asabiyya as a
means of accommodation.
To be sure, neither in Islam nor
in Europe is there a monolithic identity. In both civilizations there are
always multiple identities that emerge from cultural diversity. These cultural
and civilizational identities are historically related to different ages, as
well as to local cultures. In the ensuing chapter I shall argue for the need to
distinguish, with regard to Europe, between Christendom, stretching from
Charlemagne to the Renaissance, and Western secular Europe, from the
Renaissance onwards to the present day. Present-day Europe is characterized by
uncertainty, oscillating between vanishing Christianity and crumbing
secularity. From a dialogic EuroIslamic perspective it is a healthy sign if a
common European asabiyya can be shared. In contrast, a multi-culturalism that
questions the identity of Europe and denies its values is doomed to decay. I
believe that a cultural pluralism of binding core values combined with
diversity is a better option than multi-culturalism. Europeans need to
recognize that demanding Muslim immigrants embrace the idea of Europe requires
its enhancement to what I term the ‘‘Euro-Islamic asabiyya.’’ This is the right
thing to do and creates the substance of the chapters of this Part III. It is
highly important to note that the rejection of shari’a in Europe is not a
‘‘cultural racism.’’ I take the liberty of mentioning that I descend from a
centuries-old Muslim Damascene family of shari’a scholars and know that
traditional shari’a is not the totalizing shari’a order envisioned by the
Islamists against all historical facts.
In summing up these introductory
remarks it can be stated with certainty that the Islamic and Islamist challenge
to Europe create this century’s core question. I am familiar with the
objections and refer the objectors to the basic right of free speech and
academic freedom. In my view, the recognition of ethical values of religion can
be combined with laı¨cite´, though in the limited understanding
of a separation of politics from religion. Laı¨cite´ is a
European idea, to be defended against Islamization jointly by pro-democracy
Muslims and Europeans. In defense of the open society and of its principles, it
needs to be spoken out candidly: Europe is not dar al-Islam (or, in the cover
language of some, dar al-shahada), i.e. it is not an Islamic space but a
civilization of its own, albeit an inclusive one that is open to others,
including Muslims. These are, however, expected to become Europeans if they
want to be part of Europe as their new home. It is acknowledged that Islamists
and Salafists constitute a minority, but one that dominates the organized parts
of the Islamic diaspora and thus is powerful. Islamists reject the idea of
Europe and agitate in the ongoing war of ideas against the very democracy that
is sheltering them and protecting them from prosecution in their Islamic
countries of origin. It is sad to see these Islamists come to Europe but refuse
to embrace its values of open society. The outcome is a conflict that reflects
a possible scenario for the future of Europe in the late twenty-first century.
I do not essentialize this conflict, but instead seek a peaceful solution to
it. In concluding these introductory remarks, let it be said in passing and
reiterated: freedom of speech is a basic individual human right to be taken at
face value. Those academics, who undermine this right are challenged to
reconsider! The story of the publication of this book is the background to the
expression of this concern and for its repetition. I am sorry for this!

5     Political Islam and
Europe in the twenty-first century
The return of
history as the return of civilizations into world affairs
Often, even though
wrongly, the rise of radical political Islam is viewed as an outcome of
unbalanced US policies by some not so well-informed Europeans who are aiming at
washing their hands of the matter in taking this attitude. Since the emergence
of political Islam, however, Europe has been the traditional foe. The prophet
of the ideology of third-worldism, Frantz Fanon, did not deal with this issue,
but he wrote in his classic The Wretched of the Earth that Europe and the third
world had long known each other equally as enemies and as friends. This very
dichotomy of Europe and the third world is used at present by Islamists in their
approach of historically rooted self-victimization; they translate this tiers
mondisme into the new relationship between Europe and Islam and only then
extend it to the West at large to include the USA. In fact, the USA is a
latecomer on the fringes of this conflict. The Muslim outrage over the
insensitive and offensive Mohammed cartoons published by the Danish newspaper Jyllands
Posten extended to the entire European community and brought the conflict back
to Europe. An editorialist of the German Tagesspiegel (Berlin), Bernd Ulrich,
wrote in his column of 4 February 2006 that ‘‘the conflict comes back home, to
Europe.’’ Another editorialist of International Herald Tribune, John Vinocur,
engaged in pondering how one is ‘‘Trying to Put Islam on Europe’s Agenda’’ (21
September 2004, p. 2.)
Is Islamism a variety of third-worldism? I do not think so.
It is a variety of religious fundamentalism inspired by the idea of a revival
of a real Islamic-European history, even though enhanced and reshaped by an invention
of tradition. It is something other than the ‘‘third world’’ bid for
liberation. The relevance of the conflict over the Mohammed cartoons is the
return of Europe in Islamic collective memory to the perception of a
traditional ‘‘enemy of Islam,’’ embedded in a war of ideas in an effort at a
remaking of the world within the framework of the divine order of Hakimiyyat
Allah, as Sayyid Qutb and his heirs envision the future.
The framework: preliminary notes and thoughts
Historically, the
Mediterranean1 was the boundary between the competing civilizations
of Islam and of Europe. This is a fact presented by classical historians, who
argue that the birth of Europe took place in the age of the Carolingians in a
world-historical interaction with the still young but expanding Islamic
civilization. The foundation of a European identity, which was by then
basically Christian, as in the German term ‘‘christliches Abendland,’’ best
describes the major characteristic of this epoch. This Western Christendom was,
however, reshaped at the eve of the Renaissance. By then, Europe had changed
under the impact of Hellenism, transferred to it via the Islamic civilization.
In this context, Europe became secular and developed a new civilizational
identity. Aside from the centuries-long episodes of Islamic presence in Europe,
be it in al-Andalus or the Ottoman Balkans, the world of Islam was located
beyond the southern and eastern Mediterranean boundaries. Contemporary Islamic
migration to Europe has changed this feature: no Mediterranean boundary exists
any more, because Islam is now within Europe itself. The weeklong Islamic
uprising of October/November 2005 in the suburbs of Paris, much earlier
described by Gilles Kepel as ‘‘banlieues de l’Islam,’’2 was an
exemplary challenge to French society and reminded the Europeans of the fact
that their boundary to Islam is no longer the Mediterranean border. The
boundary is now within Europe in segregated cities. It is between the
mainstream society and the Islamic enclaves of socially marginalized Muslim
welfare-payment recipients.
One cannot deal properly with the
Islamic parallel societies now existing throughout Europe and representing an
ever-increasing community of a diasporic Islam. They comprised 20 million
Muslims in the year 2006, living within most countries of the EU. The reminder
of Paris was repeated through the global outrage over the Mohammed cartoons and
the call for censorship of the press in Europe and, months later, of the Pope
himself. A decade earlier, in my 1997 Global Village Lecture given at the
traditional Ridder Husset of Stockholm under the title ‘‘Islam and Europe,
Islam in Europe,’’3 I outlined the transition from an Islam at the
southern and eastern Mediterranean boundaries to an Islam of diaspora existing
within Europe itself. This is the subject-matter of the following analysis and
deliberations.
The call by the diaspora leaders
for a free space of Islam within Europe has been identified as a challenge to
the validity of the identity of Europe within its own boundaries. This is a
correct perception. Islam and Europe are two civilizations characterized by a
historical relationship that has been described both positively, by a
combination of intercultural borrowing and a cross-cultural fertilization, and
negatively, by conflict and war. The latter assumed the historical shape of
Islamic jihad, from the seventh century onwards, and in response to it the
Christian crusades, characterized by historians as counter-jihad. The
combination of jihad and crusade (see note 18) was a violent indication of a
civilizational conflict translating ideas and worldviews into war in a medieval
history of competition between two models of expansion. How can we alter this
tradition in transforming the mindset of expansion into one of convergence?
In modern history the European
expansion stretching from colonial conquests to the contemporary economic
globalization has been accompanied by a vision of cultural Westernization. It
first subdued the Islamic globalization model of futuhat4 and then
succeeded in mapping the world of Islam itself into the modern world
intrinsically shaped by the design of Western civilization.5 This
has been a humiliation for Muslims, earlier subdued, but at present their
rebellion goes beyond the call for more justice. At issue is a pursuit of a
reversal of history. What does that mean? I contend most Europeans do not
understand the nature of Islamic nostalgia and the related claims. A free
debate on this issue is also suppressed.
In the introductory remarks to this
Part III, the notion of collective memories has been introduced. At issue is
the revival of the civilizational claim of Islam to return to dominance in the
world. This ‘‘revolt against the West’’6 was articulated by Sayyid
Qutb. The IR Oxford scholar Hedley Bull conceptualized it without knowing
Qutb’s work. At issue is not simply a revival of Islamic religious tenets or an
expression of contestation of the hegemony of the West. The real issue is
rather a competition over the order of the world in the twenty-first century.
This is a fact, like it or not. Our present world time is determined by a new
age of politicization of religion, of religionization of politics and of the
culturalization of conflict.7 This is the overall context in which
secular Europe is challenged by the revival of Islam and becoming a battlefield8
of an international conflict ignited by Islamism. Of course, a minority
is acting for the mobilization of socially marginalized groups, but the issue
is not restricted to this in that a combination of culture and religion is
involved as mobilizatory ideology. At issue is a competition between two
different understandings of the world at large envisioned for the twenty-first
century.
While dissociating myself from
Huntington’s clash of civilizations, I do not deny the conflict and argue that
one needs to grasp the return of history in the shape of a revival of
historical collective memories. These are imbued by an invention of tradition
and are also related to fantastic claims. To be sure, the history commemorated
is not always the history that really happened. In this regard, two issues need
to be clarified at the very outset and stated for the record. First, I
reiterate that my relating of Islam and Europe to the revived debate on civilization
is utterly free from the Huntingtonization of a ‘‘clash of civilizations’’ and
equally from the bias of Orientalism. This dissociation has been made
abundantly clear in the introductory remarks, but my critics compel me to
reiterate endlessly. Second, the present analysis does not share the view of a
sweeping globalization extended to shaping culture globally. Existing cultural
diversity belies the contention of a global culture. Culture is meaning and
global consumption is a different issue.
In going beyond the extremes of
looking at culture either as a generator or as being generated, I view culture
as a local production of meaning based on a worldview without denying an
opening to cross-cultural civilizational values and norms. There is no
essential culture: it is always changing in an interplay between structural and
normative constraints.9 Local cultures undermine the effects of
globalization even though culture is always in a state of flux, but it does not
mechanically reflect economic realities, as some reductionists believe. In
fact, what is named ‘‘McCulture,’’ allegedly presented as evidence for a
cultural globalization, is nothing more than a spread of the American popular
culture of consumption and the use of modern communications technology. To be
sure, neither the eating of a hamburger nor the use of the internet by a Muslim
or an Islamist affects his/her culture or worldview. The latter is related to
values, norms, symbols and traditions which underpin a worldview of an imagined
or real distinct umma community of Islam. Islamists drink Coca-Cola, wear jeans
and make full use of computers/internet for their jihad. At the same time they
hate the West and wage global jihad – with the assistance of Western technology
– against the validity of its values. For them, this is no contradiction. To be
sure, the anti-Western culture of the Islamic diaspora in Europe should not be
equated with the native culture of the country of origin. The Turks of Berlin
and the Maghrebian Arabs of the suburbs of Paris are culturally quite different
from the native Turks of Turkey and the Algerians of Algeria. Nevertheless,
their ethnicity serves as a basis for them to resist becoming Europeans, and
culturally speaking they are not Europeans in their views. Culture is changeable,
so how can this be changed? This is the concern of the argument in the final
part of this book.
At the same time as these topical issues are addressed, the
historical constraints related to the return of civilizations will be borne in
mind. In inquiring into the return of history in collective memories, the
following analysis takes as its source of inspiration not Huntington but Ibn
Khaldun, who is the real authority in the study of civilizations, as
acknowledged by the great twentieth-century historian Arnold Toynbee. In his Muqaddima
[Prolegomena] Ibn Khaldun laid the foundations for what he labeled ‘‘ilm
al-umram/science of civilization.’’10 Following in his footsteps,
Toynbee reconstructed the history of humankind in his six-volume Study of History
as a history of civilizations. In addition to these two great authorities I
also refer to Raymond Aron’s book Paix et guerre entre les nations, published
at the height of the Cold War. Aron argued that bipolarity is nothing but a
‘‘veil’’ that conceals the real divide within humanity, for which he coined the
term ‘‘the heterogeneity of civilizations.’’11 Despite his fame,
Huntington is a newcomer to the study both of Islam and of civilizations, and
therefore his work is not only biased, but also replete with scholarly flaws.
For these reasons alone, any serious student of these issue needs to dissociate
the argument concerning the return of civilizations from any Huntingtonization
and related bias. Having stated these reservations, I hasten to add that I
beware of any demonization of Huntington. I acknowledge his contribution in
introducing the study of civilizations to IR, but we need to overcome his bias
and go beyond him, as well as beyond the other extreme as expressed in the work
of Albert Houranis and his peers in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies. All of
these moralists condemn the critics of Islam, accusing them of regarding ‘‘the
enemy other’’ as imaginary and claiming that they have the truth of the matter
while they in fact overlook the real issues. Europe and world disorder are
issues that have nothing to do with any Orientalism or related moralistic bias.
The Islamic presence in Europe is related to conflicts that have to be
addressed if they are to be resolved by both parties in peace and mutual
understanding.12
In our present world there is a
‘‘war of ideas’’ taking place in Europe. This has nothing to do with the idea
of a clash of civilizations. It is true that the competing ideas and Weltanschauungen
(worldviews related to ideologies) are based in concrete rival civilizations.
That said, it must be added that civilizational entities are never monolithic
in character. Throughout this third part of the book, which deals with Europe
as a battlefield of intercivilizational conflict between rival normative
orientations, a vision of a Euro-Islam (see notes 46 and 47) is presented with
the aim of bridging the divide between the competing and conflicting
civilizational entities: for they can change in order to come to terms with one
another. In this context one can state the conflict and beware of
essentializing it.
To the dislike of most of the leaders of the organized part
of the Islamic diaspora (they represent foremost no more than 10 per cent of
it) I maintain that it is most important to acknowledge the existence of many
Islams. Despite the ideological assertions to the contrary, there is not one
essential Islam, in Europe or anywhere else. Therefore, in Europe there can be
a specifically European variety of Islam, a Euro-Islam for which for decades I
have been at pains to lay the needed foundations. I continue to be faithful to
my profession of social science and thus refrain from indulging in any wishful
thinking or any undue culturalist harmonization. As a scholar standing in the
Durkheimian tradition of the study of religion, I look at Islam as a fait
social. In so doing, I see a conflict at work, and not what Goody of today and
Hourani of yesterday have claimed to see: cultural harmony, disturbed only by
power, prejudice and some so-called misunderstandings. Political Islam is a
reality and Euro-Islam is no more than a vision for a better future.
The point of departure and the core issue
Since the demise
of the Cold War and its East–West conflict, one can no longer state with
certainty the major traits of the present post-bipolar and post-9/11
crisis-ridden world order. It would seem to be foolish to share the views
related to the opposite extremes of a militarily designed concept of ‘‘war on
terrorism’’ US-style (George W. Bush), on the one hand, and the deception of a
‘‘dialogue between the civilizations’’ Iranian-style (Mohammed Khatami) on the
other. An Islamic–Western dialogue that overlooks the challenges on both sides
is deprived of honesty and leads nowhere in our time of disarray, turmoil and
disorder. Of course, there are better examples for a promising dialogue.13
The core issue, as outlined in the
introduction to this book, is political Islam’s questioning of the secular
foundations of the existing Westphalian world order. The point of departure for
grasping the issue in an era of the cultural turn is dealing with the context
of the related return of civilizations as just that – a return, not an ‘‘end of
history.’’ The revival of collective historical memories underpinning the warof
ideas is accompanied by a religionization of these issues. From this emerges
the Islamist challenge to the secular world order in abid for an Islamic order.
This is a general claim, but it touches on the European Union giving a home to
20 million Muslims, because it undermines the integration of Muslim immigrants
as European ‘‘citizens of the heart.’’ Islamists and Salafists teach even
European-born Muslims that they are members of an imagined umma,14 not
a European citizenry.
Since the assaults of 11 March 2004
in Madrid, 2 November 2004 in Amsterdam and 7 July 2005 in London, the Paris
uprising in October/ November 2005 and the cartoons conflict in 2006, Europe’s
opinion leaders and decision-makers have started to acknowledge the core issue,
namely the Muslim contestation of the European secular order. Some seem to make
a real effort to understand. However, there is a lack of the knowledge required
for a better grasp of Islam and of its relationship to Europe within the
history of civilizations in an age of Islamisms.
Some appreciate the alert and
acknowledge the European ignorance of it: as one of the Danish cartoonists
stated: ‘‘We Danes are naı¨ve, we know nothing about Islam and its
people.’’ One is compelled to ask: ‘‘So why then this provocation with the
cartoons?’’ This ignorance is as rigid as the belief by Salafist Muslims in an
essential Islam. Fleming Rose, the editor of Jyllands Posten, the paper
responsible for the publication of the Mohammed cartoons, acknowledges in an
essay that Europe has opened its doors to an influx of Muslim immigrants,
although without abandoning the concept of the ethnic European; the implication
is that Muslims remain aliens in a predominantly ethnic Europe. He also
acknowledges that Europe supplies these immigrants with generous welfare-state
payments, this without giving them any incentive to work for their living. This
is correct, as is the conclusion that ‘‘[i]t is no longer the Middle East, but
at present rather Europe becoming the major source of Islamist terrorism.’’15
However, Fleming Rose fails to grasp the overall issue even though he
rightly recommends that Europeans should de-ethnicize their conception of what
is European and change the welfare state. One cannot at one and the same time
endorse European values against the multi-culturalist approach of cultural
relativism and ask Muslims – as Rose does – to accept the stupid defense of the
Mohammed cartoons with the irrational argument that ‘‘The publication was an
act of inclusion, not of exclusion.’’ This pseudo-argument is, rather, evidence
that those Europeans do not yet understand Islam and Muslims. They will
therefore continue to be unable to deal with its challenge.
The European diaspora of Islam is
embedded in the networking of a transnational religion that shapes the
worldview and the action of the people. If this is not well understood as a
major lesson of the cartoon conflict, then the civilizational challenge to the
values of Europe will not be understood either. The outrage over these dreadful
cartoons goes far beyond the contestation of distasteful European behavior.
However, the cartoons themselves reveal the cultural conflict between Europe
and its Islamic diaspora as an extension of dar al-Islam within the West
itself. It is simply incredible how an act of cultural provocation becomes, in
the European mind of Fleming Rose, an act of inclusion. This reveals not only
an ignorance of Islam but also a decay of ‘‘human wisdom.’’ Unlike Muslims, who
in an invented tradition are at pains to rediscover their civilization as an
imagined umma community, the people of Western Europe and Japan seem to
disregard ‘‘revitalizing culture and intelligence.’’16 People who
lack this sentiment of the cultural self fail to realize that, for its
survival, any civilization needs that sense of self-awareness for which Ibn
Khaldun coined the term asabiyya, a kind of esprit de corps, a concept which is
to be explained shortly. It follows that there is a growing gap in cultural
attitudes between Muslims pouring into Europe as migrants/muhajirun (in the
Islamic sense) and the ethnic Europeans, declining because of an extremely low
birth rate. While Muslims, in a strong self-assertive sentiment, believe they
know well who they are, most Europeans painfully engage in a self-distorting questioning
of themselves, and some even deny the existence of an overall European
civilizational identity altogether. For Ibn Khaldun (see note 10) each vivid
civilization is based on a spirit of asabiyya, best translated with
Montesquieu’s term ‘‘esprit de corps,’’ as already mentioned. The rise and
decline of civilizations is related by Ibn Khaldun to the state of asabiyya: if
this is strong, then a civilization thrives; when it weakens, then the decay
begins. As a Muslim immigrant living in Europe, I believe I can see a very weak
European asabiyya facing the strong self-assertive sentiments of Muslim
newcomers. It is intriguing to see those Europeans supporting the immigrants’
strong cultural identity in the name of justice, while simultaneously
dismissing the same notion with regard to Europe as a ‘‘racist’’ attitude and a
‘‘right-wing’’ orientation. These Europeans overlook the potential of an
Islamization of Europe in the name of identity politics. Both multi-culturists
and Islamists and equally Euro-centric Europeans fail to understand that the
Europeanization of Islam is the best way to combat any exclusion of Muslims. In
our age, described as a ‘‘cultural turn,’’ one needs to avoid fault-lines and
to enhance an asabiyya of Europe into a Euro-Islamic asabiyya. If no
distinction between Islam and Islamism is made, alongside efforts to make
Muslims in Europe European ‘‘citizens of the heart,’’17 then a
European accommodation of both the core and the overall issue as a way out of
the crisis will continue to be lacking, and the long-term implication will be
the piecemeal Islamization of Europe.
The contemporary civilizational challenge to Europe has a
precedent in history. In fact, the foundation of Europe as Western Christendom
in the age of Charlemagne was related to a response to the rise of Islam, as
one can learn from the already quoted work of the historian Henri Pirenne. In
my 1999 book Kreuzzug und Djihad (see note 18), I revive the classical
interpretation presented by Pirenne, not only for a better reading of the
history of civilizations, but also for relating this precedent to the present
day. Let me first outline my understanding of the terms employed. Civilizations
are viewed as historical that is changable entities, being a grouping of local
cultures related to one another through sharing similarities in norms, values
and worldviews. In this understanding there is an umma civilization rooted in
the history of Islam. One should be aware of the distinction between this fact
of diversity and the contemporary ‘‘reimagining the umma.’’ The Islamic
civilization is not a construction, but rather a real cross-cultural entity. It
is wrong to equate culture and civilizations, or to use the terms
interchangeably, as is done by Huntington and many others. As stated, there
exists an Islamic civilization – and of course a Western European one – which
is united by a cross-cultural identity and by a shared worldview. Any
civilizational entity is subdivided into a great variety of local cultures.
Therefore in Islam, the notion and reality of cultural diversity do not stand
in contradiction to this civilizational unity, be it in the past or at present.
This is also reflected in the Islamic diaspora of Europe. Muslim immigrants
claim to stand as one block of Islam vis-a`-vis Europe, but this very same
diaspora is subdivided along cultural, ethnic and even sectarian lines which at
times develop into fault-lines and cause great tensions within the Islamic
community itself. In their interaction with Europeans, Turkish Muslims claim an
Islamic identity, without, however, abandoning ethnicity. A Turk would rarely
go to a non-Turkish mosque in Berlin or Frankfurt. Existing mosques in Europe
are divided along ethnic and sectarian lines. Nevertheless, the presentation of
the European Islamic diaspora as one civilizational entity of dar al-Islam in
Europe continues to be salient.
The assumption: political Islam and its contemporary challenge to the
European civilization
In this chapter
and throughout my work I subscribe to the view of the Belgian historian Henri
Pirenne relating the birth of the civilization known as Christian Europe. This
emerged in the Carolingian age in the late eighth century as a response to the
challenge of expanding Islam. Charlemagne, ‘‘the founder of Europe,’’ based
this process on the worldview of Western Christianity. In the view of Pirenne, this
formation of Europe took place in response to the challenge of rising Islam,
which had succeeded in dominating the Mediterranean, weakening and even
undermining the Roman Empire. These processes were launched with the
transformation of the Mediterranean from the Roman mare nostrum into an Islamic
sea, culminating in the jihad intrusion into Europe after the Muslim conquest
of Spain in 711. In this context Henri Pirenne coined the term ‘‘sans Mahomet,
pas de Charlemagne.’’ Most historians agree – with some nuances and
modifications – with the view that Charlemagne was the ‘‘founder of Europe,’’
but some – like the German Horst Fuhrmann (see note 18) – completely overlook
the role of Islam in a disturbingly Germanic and Eurocentric manner. Fuhrmann
declines to even mention Islam. In passing, I should mention as a Muslim
scholar working in Germany that there is no single chair of Islamic history in
any department of history throughout that country. My Goettingen chair in
International Relations (with a focus on Islamology) will be transferred to
pedagogy upon my retirement. Some Europeans – in particular the Germans – close
their eyes and think they do not need the study of Islam’s impact on Europe.
In reviving the work of Henri Pirenne and in considering the
shift to secular Europe in the Renaissance, we can divide the history of
occidental Europe into two different entities: ‘‘Christendom’’ and the secular
West.18 I follow Pirenne in arguing that the first wave of jihad
expansion led to a weakening of the Roman Empire and subsequently contributed
to the end of its dominance over the Mediterranean. This historical context
facilitated the rise of Charlemagne as founder of Europe. The challenge of
jihad as an expression of Islamic expansion continues to be essential to the
understanding of the history of Western Europe.19 Europe’s reply to
the Islamic conquests was the crusades, as one German historian of the crusades
argues. However, the history of Islam and Europe is not restricted to the
rivalry of jihad and crusade. There has been a mutual impact based on
cross-civilizational fertilization. Medieval Islam was Hellenized, and Europe
was fertilized by an interaction with the Islamic civilization, in the course
of which Europeans adopted an Islamic version of Hellenism. This led to the
Renaissance, as Leslie Lipson contends. Analogously to the European Renaissance20
one can speak of the rise of the West – in distinction to European
Christendom – as a new civilization with a secular worldview, inspired by
Athens and no longer by Jerusalem. While I refer to Pirenne for understanding
Carolingian Christendom, I draw on the theorist of civilizations, Leslie
Lipson, for grasping the nature of the Renaissance. In his work he addresses
the issue in this manner:
The chief reason why there was such a
difference in the West before and after the Renaissance ... can be summarized
in one sentence: the main source of Europe’s inspiration shifted from
Christianity back to Greece, from Jerusalem to Athens.21
and one page later
he significantly notes: ‘‘Aristotle crept back into Europe by the side door.
His return was due to the Arabs who had become acquainted with Greek thinkers’’
(ibid.).
It is deplorable that these
positive facts and the related arguments of mutual cultural borrowing are not
present at all in the collective memories of Muslims today, nor are they
considered in Huntington’s essentialist ‘‘clash’’ approach. On the basis of
these facts it follows that the emergence of the new civilization of the West
in Europe is also indebted to Islam, specifically to its tradition of
Islamo-Aristotelian rationalism. The Islamic civilizational contribution is the
passing of the great Greek legacy to the Europeans22 in an
Islamically designed new version. In both cases, i.e. that of Christian Europe
and that of the secular West, the role of Islamic civilization was pivotal in
determining the formation of Europe and of its identity. This applies to both
the negative (threat) and positive (fertilization) aspects in
inter-civilizational history. Islamic medieval jihad smoothed the way for
Charlemagne, and the passing of Hellenism to Europe contributed to bolstering
the Renaissance as a component in the rise of the West. What can we learn from
this history in the context of the contemporary double challenge posed by Islam
and Islamism to Europe?
Unlike in the past, contemporary
Muslims do not come to Europe as jihad fighters, but peacefully, within the
context of massive Islamic migration. Given the fact that they are not jihad
warriors, why the talk of a challenge? At first, a distinction between Islam
and Islamism is needed. Both generate challenges that are related but different
from one another. Islam is a universal religion that includes a model of
proselytization/da’wa revolving around one civilizational worldview. This is a
challenge. The challenge of Islamism or political Islam is different. In
reviving collective historical memories it refers to the early project jihad as
the first effort of this kind in world history. Islamism claims the return of
this history. The revival of collective memories propagates that model. It is
true that Islamic jihad expansion failed to achieve the envisioned Islamic
mapping of the world in comparison to global Westernization,23 which
did succeed in reaching this goal. Islamic jihad expansion led to establishing
a world empire stretching from China to the Atlantic24 but it failed
to give birth to a global system covering the entire world. The rise of the
West was not only indebted to what the Japanese professor Nemoto (see note 16)
called ‘‘intelligence and culture’’ – as based on Hellenism – but also to
inventions resulting in the new technology of war growing within the framework
described by historian Geoffrey Parker as a ‘‘military revolution.’’ Parker concludes:
‘‘If the dynamics of European overseas expansion are to be fully comprehended,
a study of the changing military balance between the West and the rest is
essential.’’25 With the power of the new means of military
technology employed for the expansion of Europe, the West was in a position
first to halt Islamic jihad expansion, then to roll Muslims back, and finally
to replace the civilizational primacy of Islam with its own. These are the
roots of the present resentment of the West, which is not simply a backlash
against flawed US policies but primarily a revolt against the Western
globalization model as rooted in Europe. It is neither Palestine nor the Iraq
war, but rather this world-historical context that determines the contemporary
relationship between Islam and Europe.
Indeed, the contemporary ‘‘revolt
against the West’’ envisions a de- Westernization of the world. The Islamists
seek to re-establish Islamic rule and a competitive model of globalization. In
short, the contemporary Salafist Islamic and Islamist challenges to Europe are
not simply directed against Western hegemony: they herald a claim implying much
more than that. This historical observation is stated by a Muslim educated in
the scholarly, not apologetic, study of history. At issue is understanding what
the return of the civilizations is all about – not defending or excusing it,
but rather explaining world politics with a focus on Europe.
Under the presently prevailing conditions of
self-censorship, with political correctness curtailing freedom of speech and of
research, only a few Western scholars dare to address the real issue in
question, even though it is most meaningful and even essential for the future
of the European Union. Among the few scholars who do dare, one finds John Kelsay,
who rejects the downplaying of the contemporary revival of Islamic collective
memories in the contemporary ongoing war of ideas. The revived memories are
both selective and based on an invention. They include the claim for an Islamic
primacy. In the introduction to this book (see pp. 30–2) quoted
the contemporary call for revival among
Muslims is not a simple nostalgia at length for explaining that. As Kelsay
continues, the mood of Islamist ideologies is not nostalgia, but outrage over
the state of the world ... The call for renewal, then, relates to Islam and to
its mission.26
In putting the
blame for the downfall of Islam on Europe – and this, in the Muslim perception
of history, is exactly what went wrong – Muslims are called upon in a
mobilizatory manner to resume the da’wa/proselytization parallel to the pursuit
of a de-Westernization. At this conjuncture the worldviews of Salafists and
Islamists converge and their challenges resemble one another. This drive
reaches Europe itself through migration and is articulated in some aspects of
the political culture of the mosques in major European cities. At these mosques
and also in faith schools, imported Imams teach the worldview summarized in
Kelsay’s statement as grounds for an educational socialization of young Muslims
born in Europe in an Islamist mindset of incitement. Instead of a European
competitive effort to win the hearts and minds of Muslims born in Europe (see
note 17), multiculturists speak of tolerance, by which they mean their
indifference and ‘‘anything goes’’ attitude. This, in Ibn Khaldun’s terms, is
an indication of a weak European asabiyya. The acceptance of diversity – if
related to pluralism – is bound to rules.
The aspiration to de-center the
West is directed by the will to re-establish the supremacy of Islam. The
writers involved in this pattern of contemporary revivalism, like those to whom
Kelsay refers, are mostly contemporaries of political Islam who share with
Salafism the idea of siyadet/primacy of Islam. It is valid not only for the
world of Islam itself, but globally. To understand this sentiment properly we
need to grasp the role of civilizations in history, old and new. Why is the
West civilizationally in crisis? It is economically and military still
dominant, but in its asabiyya/ civilizational awareness it is very weak. To
explain this, a recourse to Ibn Khaldun, the great Islamic philosopher of the
fourteenth century, seems to be most helpful.
As already stated, Ibn Khaldun
measures the strength of a civilization by viewing the state of its morality,
for which he coined the term asabiyya, i.e. its esprit de corps. In fact, asabiyya
is a value system that underpins culture and the intelligence of its people.
With this notion, Ibn Khaldun addresses the rise and fall of civilizations in
terms of asabiyya.27 As a Muslim living in Europe I observe how the
European asabiyya, i.e. its value system, is rapidly declining. The decay is
self-perceived as a progressive cultural relativism. Ernest Gellner calls for a
revival of enlightenment against it.28 The reasoning pursued in this
chapter revolves around the challenge to the idea of Europe and to its cultural
values undergoing a crisis. I am concerned about including Muslims living in
Europe into the existing polity for overcoming an ‘‘other-ing’’ of Islam and of
its believers. I am of the view that only a culturally healthy Europe, i.e. one
with a stable identity, can accomplish this task. America is in a position to
make Americans of Muslims living there, because of its inclusive strong
identity. Europe fails in this venture. My life in Germany of more than four
decades is an individual’s evidence for this statement. The ethnic concept of
‘‘a German’’ precludes even Muslims born in Germany, as ethnic ‘‘non-Germans.’’
Under these conditions Europe is not in a position to respond to the
civilizational challenge to the West as a whole and to its European core. In
this context, the idea of a return of history, as already mentioned, is most
appealing to excluded Muslims in Europe, with their mosque indoctrination based
on identity politics and a war of collective memories. This is the other side
of the coin.
Europe and the hub of the world of
Islam, located geographically around the Mediterranean,29 are linked
to one another in terms of both hostility and cross-cultural fertilization. A
positioning of the Mediterranean as the center of the history of civilizations
is required. In this context it is asked whether the Mediterranean has been and
continues to be a ‘‘Grenze oder Bruecke/borderline or bridge’’ between Europe
and the world of Islam (see note 1). As repeatedly stated, the
inter-civilizational boundaries between Europe and Islam are blurry. It is
clear that viewing the Mediterranean in the historical perspective of
conflicting civilizations, i.e. of being ‘‘borderline or bridge,’’ is not
enough for understanding the present, when migration from the Islamic south of
the Mediterranean to the European north of it is creating the major issue. At
this point I reiterate my reference to the Berkeley and Cornell research done
on Islamic migration and on the changing identity of Europe. In short, Islam
exists not only in the south of the Mediterranean, but now within Europe
itself.30 It follows that migration and its cultural-demographic
effects are at the center of the contemporary challenge incorporated into
inter-civilizational history. A range of authors, in dealing with this issue,
restrict their view to political Islam spreading to a focus on a specific
ideological expression. They mostly overlook the fact that Islamism is directed
against Western civilization and its concept of world order. Of course, there
is a security concern, but the issue is broader.31 In order to avoid
the misconception of relating the conflictual civilizational issues to security
in world politics, in 1999 I joined the then president of Germany Roman Herzog
in his call to avert any potential for a clash. This effort does not deny
existing threats – in stating that there is a need to prevent something that we
do not like, we already concede that it exists. It is recognized that an
inter-civilizational conflict exists and that mediation may contribute to what
is needed for ‘‘preventing the clash of civilizations.’’32 My
contribution to this endeavor focuses on ‘‘cross-cultural bridging’’33 for
mediating between Europe and Islam, as the parties of the inter-civilizational
conflict. The policy recommendation is a problem-focused inter-civilizational
dialogue as a means for conflict resolution. The first requirement for this
endeavor is to acknowledge the conflict, and this has to be accompanied by a
normative standing that it can be averted. In this spirit the orientation of
this study on Europe and Islam is based on a normative position and is combined
with a realism aimed at going beyond the two extremes of power, as contrasted
with wishful thinking.
In determining the pending challenges and the conflicts
ignited, in this context one can speak according to the revival of collective
memories, simultaneity, globalization and fragmentation. This notion will be
spelled out in the next section. The history-based inter-civilizational
conflict between Islamic and European civilizations over power and values
escalates in its present form as the dichotomy between structural globalization
and cultural fragmentation creates more tensions. The intensifying conflict is
embedded in transnational religion.
Transnational
religion, universalization, globalization and fragmentation: scenarios for
Islam and Europe?
With regard to
Western Europe we need to ask the following questions: Do Islam and Europe as
civilizations undergo a convergence under the impact of a globalization, which
incorporates them into one global civilization? Is there such a thing as a
techno-scientific civilization? Does the world, as a global village, unite
Islam and Europe within the framework of migration? These are tough questions.
Some established views and assumptions are challenged by hard facts pointing to
a conflict. This is something different from the benign talk about an alleged
misunderstanding between civilizations.
In a search for appropriate answers the best way to start is
to clarify what the global village idea is all about. In citing Brzezinski, the
late IR scholar Hedley Bull refers to the idea of ‘‘shrinking of the globe’’ as
a result of the mutual awareness and interaction among culturally different
societies. The question addressed by Bull is the premature conclusion that this
‘‘shrinking’’ has contributed to overcoming cultural differences. Bull is of
the view that this shrinking ‘‘does not in itself create a unity of outlook and
has not in fact done so ... the paradox of our time is that humanity is
becoming more unified and more fragmented.’’34
In my work I combine the reference
to Geertz’s delineation of culture as ‘‘local production of meaning’’ with the
quoted criticism forwarded by Bull. On this combination I rest my assumption,
first, that the ‘‘globalization of culture’’ is wrong – there are no supporting
realities – and second, that any effort at pursuing this goal of a cultural
standardization of the world will fail. The notion of a cultural global village
is nothing less than a constructed illusion. On these grounds I distinguish
between the concept of globalization and that of universalization. Each refers
to different issue areas. On these grounds I present my empirical observations
of a cultural fragmentation rather than engaging in wrongly assumed
standardization as the ideology of globalism.
In the following I shall outline
the distinction between globalization and universalization, already reflected
in the language itself. The term ‘‘globe’’ refers to the tangible, and
globalization can therefore only be related to material structures. In
contrast, value systems are intangible: they can only be universalized,
definitely not globalized. Empirically one can ascertain a globalization of the
structures that have originated and unfolded in Europe in the course of
European expansion, be it in economy (world economy), politics (international
system of states), transport or communication. However, there is no evidence
for supporting the contention of a successful process of universalization of
Western values parallel to globalization. It is a fact that the aspired-to
universalization does not match with the globalization that has been
accomplished. In particular, in today’s cultural turn, the currently prevailing
identity politics does not seem promising. There is no progress in the
direction of more universalization. In Europe the Islamic diaspora presents its
particularism with a claim for a universalism. And what about the USA?
A world historical novelty is the
shift of centrality on almost all levels from Europe to the USA since 1945. And
in the twenty-first century the center of Western civilization will continue –
to the dislike of Europeans – to shift from Western Europe to North America. To
be sure, American values – such as democracy, secularity and human rights –
derive from Western European values, but they are not yet accepted worldwide.
The failed democratization of Iraq, along with the unsuccessful introduction of
Western values, is a prominent case in point. To be sure, Western values are a
different concept from what is perceived to be the ‘‘American way of life’’
based on a perception of a popular US-American culture of consumerism. I
believe the concept of McWorld is a construction, not a reality,35 and
it contributes to a diversion from the values debate to the extent of derailing
it, distracting from the substance. I refrain here from addressing the US–
European value divide in order to keep the focus on Islam. I therefore restrict
the reference to the contemporary pattern of consumption American-style,
combined with what Max Horkheimer criticized as ‘‘instrumental reason,’’36
to argue that this is not an expression of culture, nor an expression of
a cultural modernity. Technical communication is not tantamount to a cultural
discourse, and technical rationality is not a culture-based reason. It is
simply instrumental. The spread of instrumental reason is not yet a cultural
globalization, but its globality leads to a loss of meaning and therefore to
the crisis of meaning, be it in the West or in Islam. There are Muslims – even
those who have studied in the West – who embrace science and technology, but
vehemently reject the European cultural values underpinning them.
The described simultaneity of universalization,
globalization and fragmentation – also related to the return of the sacred
within the confines of transnational religion – is exacerbated and intercepted
by global immigration of Muslims to Europe. This phenomenon has to be placed in
the context of the ‘‘Global Migration Crisis.’’37 A closer look at
the issue shows that the shrinking of the world does bring people closer to one
another physically, but not culturally. The generated physical closeness leads
to cultural conflicts. The world of Islam exists in Europe in enclaves. This is
no civilizational reconciliation. I allow myself a quote from the text of my
published Bosch Lecture of 1994, which includes these phrases:
The civilizational conflict between Islam
and Europe takes place parallel to the drive toward de-Westernization of the
world under circumstances of a simultaneity of structural globalization and
cultural fragmentation ... In our age of global migration ... this conflict between
the civilizations does not only occur on the external level, but within the
West itself.38
The facts referred
to in this statement underpin the position presented in this chapter, namely
that Europe is becoming the battlefield for the competition between the concept
of order of political Islam and the idea of Europe. Only an integration of
incoming Muslim immigrants to a position of ‘‘citizens of the heart’’ seems to
provide a way out of this impasse. The general phenomenon of cultural
fragmentation growing from globalization is reflected in Europe itself through
the mushrooming of Islamic parallel societies (Parallelgesellschaften). These
can be described in the plain language of American scholar John Kelsay: ‘‘the
increased presence of Muslims in Europe ... [is] a presence that makes for a
more intense interaction ... than ever before.’’39
And then he adds that this
presence is intensified by a ‘‘rapidity of Muslim immigration ... [which]
suggests that we may soon be forced to speak not simply of Islam and, but Islam
in the West ... Islamic communities form a sort of sectarian enclave ... in the
West, but not of it.’’40 Are we talking about the beginning of the
mapping of Europe into dar al-Islam?
The existing
alienation between Europeans and Muslims in Europe in the shadow of the
conflict over the Mohammed cartoons of 2006, and earlier in the warlike
fighting in the banlieues de l’Islam in Paris in October/November 2005 between
Muslim teenage gangs and the police, illustrates a cultural fragmentation
indicating the existence of two worlds within Europe. In an impartial report it
was shown that outrage is not the only problem. At issue is this: ‘‘The rioters
aim to turn neighborhoods into no-go zones for the French state so that
underground ... can thrive.’’41 This is the meaning of ‘‘parallel
societies’’ as extraterritorial enclaves. If they are religionized then one may
talk about an extension of dar al-Islam existing in Europe.
The historical mutual conquests in
the shape of jihad and crusades are now taking place as wars of collective
memories on European soil. The historical lines between the past and the
present of a growing ‘‘Islamic enclave’’ are blurred in the dreams of the
Salafists and Islamists of an Islamized Europe. To deter related fears, I
coined the term ‘‘Europeanization of Islam’’ as a contrast strategy aimed at
encouraging Muslim immigrants to embrace the idea of Europe. To be sure, the
reference to the perceived threat of Islamization is no polemic. The
statistical figures demonstrate the issue: the pattern of aging Europeans and
young Muslims reflects a diminishing and a growing of two culturally distinct
populations. Some speak of the ‘‘demographic suicide of Europe.’’ After the end
of the Second World War around 800,000 Muslims were living in Europe, mainly in
France and Great Britain. By the end of the twentieth century the number had
climbed to 15 million Muslims. By the completion of this book in 2006, the
figure had increased to 20 million.
The majority of Muslim immigrants
living in Europe are ordinary Muslims, not Islamists, but they are culturally
not integrated and do not belong to the European polity.42 Why so?
In September 2002 I participated in a meeting of the cultural centers of the
leading European Union member states in Brussels. The conference took place
under the theme ‘‘Penser l’Europe’’ while being given the title ‘‘Islam en
Europe.’’ There, I was disturbed to hear Tariq Ramadan43 speaking of
Europe as dar al-Shahada, i.e. house of Islamic belief. The attending audience
was alarmed, but did not get the message of the perception of Europe in an
Islamist mindset as a part of house of Islam. If Europe is no longer perceived
as dar al-Harb/house of war, but viewed as part of the peaceful house of Islam,
then this is not a sign of moderation, as some wrongly assume: it is the
mindset of an Islamization of Europe. Is this ‘‘changing the identity of
Europe’’ (see the Berkeley formula, as referenced in note 46)? This issue refers
to a taboo zone guarded by Islamists and multi-culturalists, both hating
Europe. Those who dare to discuss the issue, and who ask whether the question
is not simply one of numbers but relates to the very identity of Europe itself,44
risk being accused of racism and Islamophobia. In German these words can
be identified as Kampfbegriffe (notions of a war of ideas). Being myself both a
Muslim and an immigrant, I prefer to remove myself from this war as I am
engaged in mediation and reconciliation, an effort represented by my concept of
Euro-Islam,45 first developed in Paris. It was introduced in the USA
back in 1998 in the Berkeley project ‘‘Islam and the Changing Identity of
Europe’’46 and expressed a core concern related to the impact of
Islamic migration on Europe. The formula suggests a challenge under which
European identity is changing. In this context it is important to know that
unreformed Islam is a religion strongly characterized by the obligation to the da’wa,
i.e. to proselytize people of other faiths to Islam. This is not consonant with
religious pluralism. In addition, the religious doctrine of relating hijra/migration
to the obligation to spread the Islamic faith complicates the issue. If these
facts are treated as taboos in Europe, no solution can be found. If da’wa and hijra
combined continue to be at work, the envisioned ‘‘Islamization of Europe’’ will
be the result in the long run. In a balanced manner these issues were addressed
in a Cornell project without Islamophobia and instead with an alternative to
the threat, namely in the
Europeanization of
Islam:47 the result would be Euro-Islam, which could bridge between
Europe and Muslim migrants, who need to abandon the determination to
proselytize and instead embrace religious pluralism. The looming conflict can
be averted if Muslims acknowledge the civilizational identity of Europe, which
is not Islamic, and if the Europeans de-ethnicize Europe for a real and honest
inclusion of Muslim immigrants. At present, both parties are failing.
Under these conditions and based
on the facts, one may outline three scenarios, one of which is clearly stated
by some enlightened Europeans and Muslims (Europeanization), while the second
is not clearly and honestly declared by most political leaders of the Islamic
diaspora in Europe (Islamization). The third is based on the neglect of the
European civilizational identity and of the issue itself. In the following I
reverse the order and start with the third scenario, i.e. multi-culturism, then
continue with Islamization and conclude with the positive scenario of
Europeanization.
The first option is
multi-culturism.48 This worldview is based on cultural relativism
which allows the existence of Islamic entities within Europe in the framework
of multi-cultural communitarism. Multi-culturalists do not bother about the
result, be it ‘‘enclaves’’ or ‘‘parallel societies.’’ The cultures of migrants
coming from the world of Islam are put within Europe itself on an equal footing
with European cultures. Multi-culturalists promote the collective rights of the
migrants and deny European identity bashed as a hegemonial culture. In fact,
the idea of Europe is based on the principium individuationis – i.e. the value
system Habermas calls das Subjektivitaetsprinzip, the substance of cultural
modernity.49 According to this European worldview, men and women are
seen as free individuals entitled to rights with an individual identity, as
well as being European. Rights, in the sense of entitlements vis-a`-vis state
and society, are also individual, not collective, rights. This is the cultural
underpinning of the human rights tradition adopted in the UNDHR as a distinctly
individual rights understanding50 in which there are no hegemonial
implications. In contrast, the concept of collective rights – e.g. Islamic
rights – supports ethnicity and the unfolding of ethnicized religious
communities as a diaspora culture, and even the claim to Islamic superiority.
If these religious grounds are accepted, then the consequence would be a
conflict flaring between Europe and Islam within Europe. European
cultural-relativists fail to grasp that ethno-nationalism and religious
fundamentalism are an indication of a neo-absolutism promoted in the name of
cultural relativism.
With a view to Muslim immigrants in Europe, the outlined
multi-cultural option qualifies their diaspora community to collective rights
as legal entitlements. On these grounds the Islamic enclave could develop into
a communitarian setup of its own within the Western European civilization. Then
we would no longer be in a position of talking about a free polity consisting
of individuals entitled to individual human rights that override any collective
cultural rights. At issue would be a fragmented and Balkanized society. It is
sad to see critics of this option being defamed as ‘‘right-wing.’’ The concern
over the civilizational identity of Europe, of which individual human rights
are part and parcel, is clearly not an expression of racism. Nevertheless, one
sees those who are concerned about civil society and an individual human
rights-focused identity often being attacked and, with no justification
whatever, accused of ‘‘cultural racism.’’ The underlying ideological concept is
highly controversial and is a most dangerous and irresponsible approach in the
ongoing war of ideas. The late Ernest Gellner deplored the fact that these
cultural relativists direct
their attacks only at ... non-relativists
within their own enlightened tradition, but play down the disagreement which
logically separates them from religious fundamentalism. Their attitude is,
roughly, that absolutism is to be tolerated, if only it is sufficiently alien
culturally. It is only at home that they do not put up with it.51
In returning the focus to the causes of the
lack of integration of Muslim immigrants, the area of identity politics will be
singled out as a major concern. On the one hand, one encounters a weak European
identity facing a very assertive Islamic identity. This leads to a war of
constructed identities in which there are losers and winners. On the other hand
one cannot escape the contradiction concerning European identity: it is based
on universal values, but Europeans have an exclusive ethnic image of the self
and they consistently act along these lines. I have lived in Europe for
forty-four years, long enough to be familiar with this. This very ethnic
element in European identity, not so explicit, unwittingly promotes identity
politics on the Muslim side, and on these grounds there can be no light at the
end of the tunnel. Multi-culturalists do not understand this and are supportive
of a diasporic identity while not knowing what it is all about, as well as
ignoring the implications and consequences. In Chapter 4 on Iran identity
politics was discussed at length regarding the construction of an overall
Islamic identity. There is no need to resume the debate, despite the
differences in the context of Iran and that of the diaspora. It suffices in
this case to state that identity politics undermines the integration of Muslim
immigrants to citizens of the respective European states. It has to be added
that on the left one finds a double standard with regard to identity politics.
The claim to universality of the values of European civilization is attacked,
while the quest for an identity that is mostly based on a neo-absolutism of
non-Western civilizations is admitted. There is the exception of one writer of
the left, the French philosopher Alain Finkielkraut, who identifies this double
standard as a defait de la pense´e.52
The second option or scenario is
an incremental process of an ‘‘Islamization of Europe,’’ which is already in
process. This option, pursued by Salafists and Islamists acting in the hijra
diaspora, is based on the Islamic worldview that the enhancing of dar al-Islam/abode
of Islam to a global structure is the ultimate religious duty of all Muslims,
including those living in Europe. It is worth mentioning that orthodox Salafi
Muslims and Islamists express this view almost exclusively within their
community; they mostly refrain from pronouncing it in public. Publicly they pay
lip-service to a ‘‘wishy-washy’’ unspecific inter-cultural dialogue implicitly
based on deception. For them, dialogue is a cover for acting in the mind of
proselytization. Most Europeans fail to understand this ambiguity and often
take this lip-service at face value. The needed open dialogue is replaced by
the one of dishonesty and deception. Orthodox Muslims and Islamists are not
scrupulous and seem to have no problems with their double tongue, because – as
they believe – they are not pursuing dialogue in the understanding of an
intellectual exchange, but rather in their Islamic understanding of
proselytization.
In fact, in Islam da’wa is
considered to be a dialogue directed by an effort at proselytization. The
Islamic term ‘‘da’wa’’ covers both meanings: dialogue and proselytization.
Islamists talk to Europeans in the language of dialogue, but in fact practice
proselytization. In short, in this case we have an example of the existing
consequential difference in the cultural understanding of concepts. Another
example is the rule of law. In Europe it is positive law, in Islam it is
shari’a. These are conflicting concepts. These cultural differences constitute
an obstacle to coming to terms with one another, because communication over
substance does not take place. Dialogue is understood by one party (the
Europeans) as an intellectual inter-cultural communication, while the other
party (the Muslims) views dialogue as a means for proselytization. Is this the
desired cultural diversity? In view of these facts, I put democracy above
cultural difference and defend the open society against its enemies. I go for a
liberal Islam of pluralism against Islamism and Salafism.
Conceptually the cultural differences
in question indicate an existing simultaneity of structural globalization and
cultural fragmentation, as addressed earlier. The assumption of cultural
standardization is belied by the facts on the ground. There is no cultural
globalization, but rather fragmentation. Without a proper understanding of
these facts no effort at conflict resolution can bear fruit and avert the
scenario of an Islamization of Europe. In addition, the established rules of
political correctness impede any enlightenment about the conflict and are
self-defeating.
In contrast to the supporters of
the ideological multi-culturalism and the supporters of the vision of an
Islamization of Europe – strange bedfellows indeed – the third scenario of a
Europeanization of Islam could serve to bridge the Islamic diaspora and Europe.
This scenario is based on the feasibility of transforming the vision or concept
of a Euro-Islam into a European reality. It has become inflationary to speak of
a European Islam, but in West European realities there is no such a thing, with
the exception of a few enlightened individual Muslims who have been successful
in putting their religious faith in harmony with an adopted European identity.
In fact, multiple identity is feasible. The background to the concept of
Euro-Islam, as first outlined by me in Paris back in 1992 (see note 45), was my
first encounter with one non-Arab cultural variety of Islam in Senegal back in
1982. Islam practiced in Africa was strange to me as a Sunni Arab, but it was a
home in a non-Arab environment. Africans had succeeded in Africanizing Islam by
adapting it to their pre-Islamic local cultures. In contrast, Islam continues
to be alien to Europe. While Europeans barely make efforts to make Muslims feel
at home in Europe and therefore fail to integrate them, Muslim immigrants are
in general not willing to integrate to European citizens of the heart (see note
17). The problem is not psychological and restricted to attitudes, it is – to
put it plainly – a religious one. Without religious reforms in Islam, without a
clear abandoning of concepts such as da’wa, hijra and shari’a, as well as jihad
there can be no Europeanization of Islam. That is why the concept is not
popular within the European diaspora of Islam.
These three scenarios for forecasting the future of the
relationship of Islam and Europe in the twenty-first century under conditions
of fragmentation and globalization of structures could serve as grounds for
designing feasible policies. It is time to abandon the illusion that the
dominant, tacitly Western-style globalization is in a position to give shape to
one civilization all over the world. The study of culture and civilization53
in relation to the history of humankind reveals enduring cultural and
civilizational diversity. Religion is a cultural system determined by a social
production of meaning54 constrained by time and space. Therefore
culture is always a local entity, and is ever changing. However, local cultures
that are interrelated and resemble one another group along a worldview to a
civilization. Local cultures in Europe and in the world of Islam are in each
case very diverse; nevertheless, there exists one European and one Islamic
civilization. In short, the facts allow us to speak of a great local-cultural
diversity and simultaneously of a civilizational unity. Islam, as a religion,
is a cultural system and in this capacity has a dual dimension: local and
universal. When it comes to the religious civilization of Islam and the secular
civilization of the West, one finds that both claim universality and are
therefore in conflict with one another. Through migration Europe itself has
become a battlefield of this conflict. Political Islam emerges in this context
as a challenger to the civilizational identity of Europe and to the validity of
its secular values, not only in the world at large but within the European
territoriality as well. Islamists are at pains to mobilize the Islam diaspora
for the vision of remaking the world. Can they succeed?
Political Islam and the drive toward de-Westernization: between the
values of enlightenment and the instrumental reason of semimodernity
Political Islam is
neither the faith nor the culture of Islam: it is related to the challenges
articulated in the famous booklet Ma’alim fi al-tariq [Signposts along the
Road], the major source of contemporary fundamentalist thought written by
Sayyid Qutb.55 Among these signposts is instruction into the
neo-Islamic system of Hakimiyyat Allah/God’s rule.56 Islamists
believe that their Pax Islamica does not only apply to dar al-Islam, but also
to Europe. Here, to protect myself against the invectives of Orientalism and
Islamophobia, I reiterate not only the fact that I am a Muslim, but also that I
descend from the Islamic Damascus-based nobility of Banu al-Tibi. My family
enjoys a background going back to the thirteenth century57 and
provided the city of Damascus with its major shari’a-qadis (judges) and muftis.
Nevertheless, I share the view that people of different religious communities,
whether in Europe or in the rest of the world at large, could share basic
secular values and one human reason and its wisdom based on logic. Together
with my philosophy teacher Max Horkheimer, I beware of the ‘‘instrumental
reason’’ of the West, but there must be other alternatives to challenging this
‘‘instrumental reason’’ than the one presented by political Islam and its
fundamentalist varieties. Instrumental reason and computer literacy do not
provide any proper answer to the value-based challenge of Islamic
fundamentalism. Europe is exposed to this challenge and needs to determine its
civilizational future together with Islam.
The need for inter-cultural
communication and an accepted crosscultural value-morality is underlined, while
honoring cultural difference under conditions of globalization requires a
standard of civilization not shared by Islamism. Islamists are favorable to
Western modern science and technology58 in their adoption of
instrumental reason, but combine this with a rejection of the values of
cultural modernity. Europe can no longer consider its cultural values as
universal. European Westernization is being superseded by a de-Westernization.
Does this also apply to Europe itself, given the demographic change taking
place in the continent? In the view of Ibn Khaldun, civilizations rise and
decline. Is the contemporary European civilization declining? Can a
civilization survive if it does not defend and maintain its values? As argued
earlier, Ibn Khaldun relates the state of a civilization to the state of its
values, i.e. to its asabiyya. My Europeanization argument is not a universal
one and is restricted to Islam within the boundaries of Europe. Only Europeans
and Muslims living in Europe will achieve the outcome.
At present almost all
civilizations, including those of Europe and the world of Islam, seem to share
the new breed of human lost in the virtual space of computer literacy. This is
an indication of a prevailing instrumental reason. In this atmosphere,
semi-modern Islamists are committed to values and want to de-Westernize the
globe, imposing their values not only against the instrumental reason of the
West but also against its humanism. The Islamists firmly believe in their own
particular religious values and reject the humanist man-centered view of the
world. They argue that it is possible to combine their religious view of the
world with modern technology in the pursuit of remaking the world along an
Islamist order. In Western Europe this worldview, including the idea of jihad
and its spirit of conquest, is becoming established but is not well understood
by Europeans. In the Islamist worldview there is a splitting of modernity in
cultural values (Western values) and instruments (modern science and
technology); Islamists reject the European values, but adopt the instruments of
modernity. For this ‘‘halving’’ of modernity I have coined the term ‘‘the
Islamic dream of semi-modernity.’’59 This dream envisions a
deWesternization of the world related to its Islamization. Europe is top
priority on the agenda.
In comparing Islamic
semi-modernists with the ‘‘new breed of humans’’ in Japan and Western Europe,
we find that both are in full mastery of computer literacy, but with one
significant difference. Unlike the Japanese and West Europeans, who today lack
a commitment to binding values, or asabiyya, the fundamentalist Muslim semi-modernists
are not lost ‘‘in the ever-growing virtual space’’ (see note 16). On the
contrary, they are highly committed to the reinvented Islamist value system.
This ‘‘invented tradition,’’ i.e. developing tradition to new totalitarianism,
provides the absolute terms in a claim for their value-orientation to universal
validity. These Islamists despise cultural relativism and believe they can
defeat the West with its own weapons: the instruments and the values of
relativism. DeWesternizing the globe is the vision of an Islamic globalization
which seeks to replace the realities of Western (and Japanese) globalization.
Semi-modern Islamists are aware of the loss of values in
Europe and the related cultural crisis of meaning addressed in this chapter.
For this reason Sayyid Qutb (1906–66) – the founder of political Islam – states
on the very first page in his ‘‘Signposts along the Road’’ that ‘‘Humanity is
on the brink ... the reason for this is the bankruptcy in the realm of values ...
This is very clear in the West; it is no longer in a position to offer values
for humanity.’’60
Two pages later he offers an
alternative to Europe which is now unfortunately most popular throughout the
world of Islam:
The ‘‘Western leadership’’ of humanity is
about to subside ... The Western system no longer disposes of values that
legitimate its leadership ... Now it is the turn of Islam and the Umma
[community of Islam; B.T.] to take over ... This Umma will be reactivated to
make Islam fulfill its expected role in again leading humanity.61
This is a program
for a de-Westernization of the world, a reflection of the contemporarily
prevailing Islamic worldview. The mind of Sayyid Qutb, the rector spiritus of
Islamism, is also spread in the diaspora of Europe. Islamists acknowledge the
still existing economic and political supremacy of the West, but they are aware
of the moral crisis of Western civilization resulting from a loss of asabiyya as
a value orientation. In contrast, a strong value commitment can be found among
Muslims, morally superior to the West.
The politicization and the religionization of politics
divide humanity, and Europe, into rival religious communities. This is the
reality of multi-cultural diversity in which a religionization of politics is a
salient feature. In fact, a fragmentation is at work that can only be countered
by a cross-cultural morality shared by Europeans and Muslims, in particular on
European soil. A de-Westernization of Europe in the name of tolerance and
multiculturalism would mean the end of it as a civilization. The message is
unequivocal, but it falls upon deaf ears in Europe.
Conclusions:
What future for Islam and Europe? What about Islam in Europe? Are there
prospects of a cultural pluralism?
In the first
decade of the twenty-first century, Europe finds itself undergoing a
civilizational crisis while facing a great challenge related to Islam, both in
its geopolitical neighborhood and within its own borders. How could Europe
manage to maintain its civilizational identity while positively acknowledging
the presence of Islam as a basic factor in European life? Can Europe and the
people of Islam engage in a common process of changing of the self, holding an
honest dialogue to find common solutions? In my view, Euro-Islam as European
Islam and the idea of pluralism could provide possible options for peaceful
coexistence. The indigenization of Islam in Europe is the alternative to the
return of Islamic history and of the related claims amounting to a call for the
Islamization of Europe.
To be sure, it is not only Europe
that is undergoing a crisis of culture and identity. Despite all the
self-congratulation and most assertive high self-esteem of Muslim
intellectuals, they and their people are also in a severe crisis, amounting –
as the Iranian Shayogan phrases it – to a ‘‘cultural schizophrenia.’’62 Every
expert on the Islamic Middle East is familiar with the related misery both of
the self and of social life. It is not simply economic in its nature and merely
restricted to poverty. As revealed by a study of the UNDP completed in 2002 by
Arab scholars and experts working for the UN, unfilled basic needs and the
extensive deterioration in the conditions of life are also combined with and
underpinned by cultural constraints. This misery emerges from an overall
development crisis. Long before this UN study was published, a well-known
Moroccan philosopher, Mohammed Abed al-Jabri, was at pains to revive Islamic
rationalism against the Islamic orthodoxy. In an effort at bringing new
intellectual life to the medieval Islamic rationalist Averroe¨s, the
philosopher al-Jabri coined the phrase: ‘‘The future can only be
Averroe¨ist.’’63 Averroe¨ism is the term for Islamic
rationalism. Twenty-first-century Islam is burdened with a home-made
predicament with modernity. Unless the leaders of Muslim opinion, both
religious and secular, come to terms with cultural modernity, the
aggressive–defensive culture of self-assertion, heightened to a rhetoric of
offensive claims comprising politics across the world and in Europe, will
continue unabated, to the detriment of not only Islam but also all people who
are obliged to live with Islam in the world at large. Not only is Europe no
exception, it is precisely at the hub of the issue.
The malady addressed is growing
from a crisis of Islam into one touching on Europe, which itself is in a crisis
of its own. To come to terms with the real Islam existing in Europe, beyond
mere wishful thinking a strategy is needed, but there is none in place. At
issue is Islam, first that of the diaspora and second that in the world of
Islam itself.
Islam is a transnational religion promoting great links and
networks. In the world of Islam, politics is constrained. In the Islam diaspora
in the European Union, Muslims enjoy all civil rights and all links are clearly
reflected. It is not only for analytical reasons but also for policy concerns
that different concepts for dealing with Islam are needed, and these on two
different levels: first, Islam in Europe (diaspora) and second, Islam and Europe,
that is the neighborhood of Europe – basically in the Mediterranean. For
designing the future the following aspects seem to be most relevant:
1
In the present state of affairs European and Islamic states
interact and coexist within the international system of nation-states.
Contemporary Islamists want to topple existing regimes at home, but have to
date failed to accomplish this. Prosecuted, they flee as asylum-seekers to
Europe and try to hijack the diaspora.
2
In the long run, a Muslim promoting the Islamic dream of
Islamizing Europe is demographically supported in transforming this dream into
reality by the low birth rate of the Europeans combined with increased Muslim
migration. A de-Westernization of Europe could result from this migration, if
the failed integration of Muslim immigrants goes on. Identity politics,
ethnicity on both sides and the exclusion enforce one another in an alarming
context.
3     The
implementation of the Kantian option of a democratic peace requires a
democratization of the world of Islam not simply restricted to the introduction
of voting procedures. The victories of Hamas in Palestine in 2006 and of the
Islamist parties in the election of Iraq in December 2005 have not been signs
of democratization. What is required is an Islamic acceptance of a
cross-cultural morality that entails the culture of democracy, based on
religious and cultural pluralism (see note 45). This culture of democracy
cannot prevail if democratization is merely restricted to a voting procedure. A
ballot does not make a democracy!
The twenty-first
century is a crisis-ridden time in an increasingly destabilized world with all
its disorders (see note 12). The still prevailing order of nation-states is no
longer accepted in the world of Islam and it suffers a legitimacy crisis.
Muslims also have a different understanding of peace which is not consonant
with the Western idea of world peace based on the secular Kantian concept of ewiger
Friede/perpetual peace.64 According to the Kantian concept, peace is
understood as the contrast to war, and republican orders can accomplish a
democratic world order. These rival and competing views of world order lead to
a war of ideas. In contrast, Kant foresees that democratic states are therefore
expected to be a precondition for a lasting, i.e. ‘‘democratic’’ peace. The
questions relating to the world of Islam are whether it would be democratized
and become a safe neighborhood for Europe, and whether its Imams would accept
the Kantian idea of democratic peace. These questions were asked in Part I of
this volume and answers are given there. Our concern here is the pertinence of
these issues to Europe.
Among the findings is the fact
that political Islam is against the nationstate, not only in the world of Islam
but also in Europe as well. As Huntington tells us in his book The Third Wave,
the institution of the secular nation-state stands in a co-relation to
democracy. ‘‘Modern democracy ... is democracy of the nation-state and its
emergence is associated with the development of the nation-state.’’65 In
recalling the argument presented in Part I, an enlightenment and a reform-Islam
are required for bringing democracy into Islam,66 be it in the
Islamic world or in Europe. In contrast, the ideology of Islamism precludes any
harmonization between Islam and democracy. Of course, not all Islamists agree
with the pronouncement that ‘‘democracy is kufr/heresy.’’ There are other
Islamists who endorse democracy, but they do this – as is the case of AKP in
Turkey67 – simply for the sake of convenience and for instrumental
reasons. The Shi’ite alliance in Iraq, Hamas in Palestine, the Hezbullah in
Lebanon and the Muslim Brothers in Egypt, among others, play the game of
democracy but definitely do not accept its political culture: above all, they
do not renounce the idea of a shari’a-based Islamic state. The appearement of
Islamism is a dangerous European illusion. What are the conclusions of this
Islamic challenge, in particular for Europe in an age of cultural turn and of
Islamism?
Europe faces the challenge of an
enhancing of dar al-Islam to map the entire globe, including Europe itself. To
avert the development of migration into an Islamization, one needs first to be
knowledgeable about the issue. It is ridiculous to read some so-called experts
of traditional wisdom playing down the Islamization, stating that there is no
united Islamic civilization with its own Islamic armed forces for conquering
Europe. No one is stupid enough to consider such a scenario. At issue is a
return of history in terms of revival and construction of collective memory, be
it of the year 711, when Muslim Arabs invaded Spain, or of 1453 when Turkish
Muslims invaded Constantinople.68 Some scholars address this Islamic
expansion as ‘‘Islamic imperialism’’ in history and relate it to political
Islam at present.69 I leave this to one side, without overlooking
the fact that organized Islamists envision accomplishing their mission
peacefully through the massive Muslim immigration to Europe accompanied by a
war of ideas against European values. This would be based on the Islamic
understanding of hijra in the Islamic traditional meaning of an Islamization.70
In this context, rejected European values are used by Islamists to
undermine Europe itself. Revel describes this as ‘‘democracy against itself.’’71
In the already mentioned Berkeley and Cornell projects on this subject,
the options were stated as ‘‘Islamic Europe or Euro-Islam’’ or
‘‘Europeanization of Islam versus the Islamization of Europe.’’ These phrases
reflect my standing as a freedomloving liberal Muslim immigrant living in
Europe. I say yes to a European Islam in Europe and reject all Islamization.
It can be observed that Europe is
neither politically nor morally well equipped for coping with the challenge
described in this chapter. As stated, Europe itself is undergoing a crisis of
meaning, and lacks the clear moral orientation and a firm commitment to its own
values, i.e. it lacks an asabiyya. A similar crisis in the world of Islam has
led to the rise of religious fundamentalism with the reverse outcome: a strong asabiyya.
Islamism is spilling over to
Europe. Newsweek asked in a special issue of 5 November 2001: ‘‘Why do Islamic
terrorists like Europe?’’ The answer was given in an article with the title
‘‘Tolerating the Intolerable.’’72 The missing distinction between
tolerance and value-indifference is an indication of the cultural crisis of
Europe that makes it incapable of unfolding a proper response to the pending
challenges. In his column in the International Herald Tribune under the heading
‘‘Europe Needs to Decide How to Live with Islam’’ (International Herald Tribune,
26 July 2006) John Vinocur stated that Europe does not know how to deal with
Islam. If this does not change, some Muslim opinion leaders in Europe – such as
Tariq Ramadan, the grandson of Hasan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim
Brotherhood and of jihadism – will receive a boost in their transmission of
‘‘the Muslim mission in Europe.’’73 This grandson of Hasan al-Banna
constructs a line of an ‘‘Islamic renewal’’74 that started in the
nineteenth century with alAfghani and was continued by his own grandfather. As
a liberal Muslim and as a student of Islam over four decades, I cannot support
this reading of history and continue to view al-Banna as the founder of
jihadist political Islam.75 At issue is a challenge to Europe. In
this conflict situation I proposed, in my Paris paper ‘‘Les Conditions d’un
Euro-Islam’’ (see note 45), a Europeanization of Islam as a strategy for
bridging. Today, others are using the term ‘‘Euro-Islam’’ while ignoring the
original proposition. I restrict myself to stating that my Euro-Islam is not
the Euro-Islam of Tariq Ramadan and emphasize my firm belief in Islam as a most
flexible faith and cultural system. There is no essential Islam, and Islam is
always what people make of it. It could be interpreted as jihadism,76 as
is done by Hasan alBanna, or it could become European in the way I see it, if
reformed by
overcoming its
predicament with democratic pluralism.77

6     The European diaspora
of Muslim migrants and the idea of Europe
Could they
become Europeans by choice?
Euro-Islam, legal citizenship and ‘‘citizens of the heart’’
In a historical long-term perspective Europe
faces two competing options in the future. The first is the Europeanization of
Islam in its European diaspora. This also requires that Europeans and Muslims
living in Europe share a European identity as a sense of belonging to the same
polity. The other option is the Islamization of Europe,1 i.e.
viewing it as a part of dar al-Islam, as some Muslims already do. This
statement is neither a polemic nor is it a panic – let alone an expression of
Islamophobia, as some contend. This is a realistic perspective based on the
demographic growth of the Muslim diaspora community combined with
self-assertive expansionist attitudes of leaders of the Islamic mosques,
occurring simultaneously with a shrinking of European population – due to the
low birth rate – and the spread of postmodern and self-denying fashions among
European intellectuals. Those Europeans and Muslims engaged in identity
politics in favor of immigrants are asked: Are you dealing with a Europe with
no identity?2 Migration is making Europe a battlefront3 between
these competing options. My stand is against ‘‘clash’’ and I claim to be a
mediator.
Introduction
The frame of reference employed here relates
to the fourteenth-century Muslim philosopher Ibn Khaldun, who – as repeatedly
stated – places the selfconsciousness, i.e. the asabiyya/esprit de corps, of a
civilization as a criterion for its flourishing or decline.4 Europe’s
image of itself seems, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, not to be
a promising one. After having lived as a Muslim immigrant for four and a half
decades in Europe, I claim to see a very weak European asabiyya replacing the
earlier ugly Euro-centrism. This is a shift from one extreme to the other. I
translate asabiyya as civilizational self-awareness. As a Muslim who is
committed to freedom and rationality, and who fled the despotism and
authoritarianism that is currently not only prevailing but spreading in the
world of Islam, I do not like to see the political culture of Islamism
establishing itself in the Islamic diaspora in Europe. This is happening
through the espousal of the indiscriminate mindset of multi-culturalism. I see an
Islamist neo-absolutism embracing a cultural relativism in order to put it to
use. For the Islamic diaspora in Europe, I present Euro-Islam as an alternative
to the vision of Islamization. This is based on the assumption that a
Europeanization of Islam is a feasible project. To be sure, it can only be
accomplished if change and religious reforms are admitted by Muslims.5
In Europe, anti-Americanism reinforces the popular
perception that the Muslim contestation of the West, as articulated by violent
actions inspired by the new Islamist jihadism,6 is a revolt against
US unilateralism and the Pax Americana. The facts of thriving
self-ethnicization and the unfolding of an Islamic enclave within Europe are
overlooked, as are the realities on the ground of Europe as a battlefront (see
note 3). To put it succinctly and plainly: Europe faces equal challenges, both
Islamic and Islamist. One is related to Islamic universalism and its
proselytization, the other to political Islam and its jihadism, which is
already established within the Islamic diaspora of Europe.7 In this
context, I argue against polarization and suggest a Euro-Islam as a strategy
for peace within Europe, to replace the exclusion which is inflicted by
Europeans on Muslims and which contributes to their defensive response of
self-ethnicization. The issue is wrongly presented in terms of a conflict
between ‘‘communitarian multi-culturalism’’ and its critics, viewed as enemies.
It is no such thing: it is a fight over the shape of Europe in the decades to
come – Europeanization or Islamization.8
The rioting in the French suburbs,
labeled banlieues de l’Islam,9 in October/ November 2005 was a
warning which was not well taken either by the European Union, as a reminder of
existing problems, or by the Islamic community, which was itself challenged. At
issue was not only a revolt against exclusion, but also rebellion with a
religionized character. It was a French intifada. After the rioting died down,
for the French state and society it was business as usual, as if nothing had
happened. Other Europeans remarked, in a self-congratulatory manner, that it
was a French affair. However, well-informed experts were of the view that the
Islam-based uprising of Paris, spilling over to other cities, showed
challenging realities which cannot be managed within a security approach, as
the then French minister Nicolas Sarkozy, then later elected into the office of
president, repeatedly suggested. A policy based on the consequences of what is
taking place on European soil needs to be much more than that.
If we take the idea of Europe at
face value, i.e. as being based on a religionand ethnicity-blind secular
civilizational identity, then a Europeanization of Islam should by no means be
an adjustment to Christian values, as some German politicians repeatedly argue,
with consequent damage to the integration of Muslims. Euro-Islam,
institutionalized through educational channels and incorporated into a policy
for integration endorsed by both civil society and the European Islamic diaspora,
is in no way a copy of distorted Christianity in a Europe that fails to
distinguish between secularization and profaneness – and this is not to speak
of Europeans as ‘‘religious illiterates,’’ as a prominent German Jew, Michael
Wolffsohn, has rightly suggested.
To understand those Muslim
youngsters of the banlieues who torched some 12,000 cars while calling ‘‘Allahu
Akbar,’’ thus clearly thinking of themselves as warriors waging jihad,
Europeans need more knowledge of real existing Islam. The related allegation
that the uprising was socially determined and has nothing to do with Islam is
useless for any strategy attempting to deal with the religionization of
politics. Of course, in a shortterm perspective concrete measures are needed.
But in order to make clear that jihad and shari’a are no alternatives to
European law, a policy seems to be more promising than a policing – yet there
is none in place. A surveillance of 20 million Muslim migrants living in Europe
is neither possible nor recommendable. In the long term the message has to be
both conciliatory and determined to maintain the identity of Europe. My concept
of EuroIslam as a value orientation for the Muslim diaspora claims to provide
the strategic guidelines for integration.
The concept was first presented in Paris, where I coined the
term ‘‘EuroIslam.’’ I propose to specify its content and dissociate my
understanding of Euro-Islam from the one propagated by Tariq Ramadan, the proud
grandson of Hasan al-Banna. My own understanding has been well covered in the
following quote from Time magazine of 24 December 2001. On page 49 of that
issue one reads:
Bassam Tibi ... who coined the term
Euro-Islam, insists that the integration of Europe’s Muslims depends on the
adoption of a form of Islam that embraces Western political values ... ‘‘The
options for Muslims are unequivocal,’’ says Tibi. ‘‘There is no middle way
between Euro-Islam and a ghettoization of Muslim minorities.’’
The concept goes back to 1992, when the
French were about to abandon the illusion that the assimilation of immigrants
could be achieved by drawing on a concept of integration restricted to an
acceptance of the civic values of the republic. In this context I presented my
paper ‘‘Les Conditions d’un Euro-Islam’’10 at the Institut du Monde
Arabe; it was also published in Paris to provide a framework for integration.
In terms of documentation, this is the origin of the concept, which has been
elaborated upon in my writings ever since in both German and English.
The idea of Europe, Euro-Islam, legal citizenship and ‘‘citizens of the
heart’’
The starting point
is the changing composition of the European population; the demographic growth
of Muslim immigrants is skyrocketing throughout Europe in comparison to
migrations from other parts of the world. This is also related to the fact that
these immigrants are mostly an ethnic underclass. The rioting of the banlieues
de Paris in 2005 compels Europeans to see that they are under pressure to deal
with this new Islamic element in their societies, as well as with the related
social problems. One adds to this the Islamic claims that affect the identity
of Europe itself. At issue is the question of whether the idea of Europe can be
made compatible with Islam in a cultural synthesis here called Euro-Islam.
In the present situation one
encounters two extremes: the populist, unacceptable Islamophobic view on the
one hand, and indiscriminate multiculturalism, based on the cultural-relativist
understanding of ‘‘anything goes,’’ on the other. In big European cities the
realities reflect the emergence of parallel societies creating an Islamic
enclave within the old continent. The assaults in a series of events stretching
from Madrid to Amsterdam in 2004 and from London to Paris in 2005 clearly
illustrate the relevance of Islam for the future of Europe. In line with this
is also the conflict over the Mohammed cartoons in early 2006, followed by
another dispute the same year over a lecture by the Pope calling for a
dissociation of religion from violence. The lecture was viewed as offensive.
Throughout this chapter it is
argued that a politics of integration that differs from both multi-culturalism
and assimilation is the most pertinent strategy. In this pursuit, there is a
need to combine civics with economics in order to make integration happen. By
this I mean accomplishing a sharing of basic values by Europeans and Muslim
immigrants, combined with integration in the workplace. The ongoing migration
into the welfare system is not only deadly for Europe, it also precludes Muslim
immigrants becoming true European ‘‘citizens of the heart,’’ i.e. sharing the
civilizational identity of Europe.
It is most dismaying to see those
Islamists and Salafist leaders of the Muslim community claiming ‘‘a place for
Islam in Western society’’ (this is an aspect that European multi-culturalists
fail to understand) while at the same time rejecting the call to embrace the
‘‘idea of Europe.’’ The mushrooming Islamic enclaves within Europe are
challenged by the bid to make Muslims living in Europe true European ‘‘citizens
of the heart.’’ Citizenship is much more than a passport: it is membership of a
polity based on a culture of democracy and individual human rights.
It has to be candidly stated that
the integration needed for Muslim immigrants to become European citizens cannot
take place alongside claims that run counter to secular civil and open society.
The related absolutist vision of Islamizing Europe, which for tactical reasons
is not spelled out by Salafists and Islamists, is a strange bedfellow for a
multi-culturalism based on the cultural relativism of ‘‘anything goes.’’ In
contrast to this communitarianism, as well as to assimilation, an integration
limited to civic values, shared identity and the workplace can be made
compatible with a reformist interpretation of Islam through embracing the core
principles of cultural modernity.11
The background to the concept of
Euro-Islam comes from my observations of customary – i.e. lived – Islam in
Western Africa. There, Islam – though an Arab culture by origin – is basically
African, just as in Indonesia it is Indonesian, accommodated to adat/traditions
of local cultures. In nonArab traditions of Islam, one encounters varieties of
cultural accommodation. There one may ask: Why cannot Islam be European in
Europe, along similar lines? If Muslim immigrants are willing to leave their
culturally gated enclaves in order to become European ‘‘citizens of the
heart,’’ then they must be challenged to open themselves instead of being
aliens and muhajirun – frankly speaking, migrants in the Islamic meaning of a
proselytizing diaspora in the process of extending dar al-Islam.
To be sure, Europeans themselves
are the other obstacle to the project in question. If they were honestly
politically and socially inclusive – of course, beyond hubris and rhetoric: in
other words, in practice – then integration could be accomplished. I lived as a
Muslim in Europe for four decades, and this lived experience denies Europeans
that honesty. The idea of Europe based on values of secular democracy,
individual human rights, pluralism, civil society and the enlightenment culture
of tolerance could be accommodated in a Euro-Islam consonant with cultural
modernity. In the present situation, there can be no half-solutions for the
competing options: either a ‘‘citizenship of the heart’’ or citizens by
passport; not real members of civil society, but rather nominal Europeans
living in enclaves, ‘‘in the West, but not of it,’’12 not only
because of the lack of a will to integrate, but also because they are denied
equality and membership in the polity – even if they cross the threshold related
to Islam.
The existing obstacles related to
Europeans by Muslims contribute to a thriving of an Islam diaspora existing in
Europe, but not of it. The Islamic rioting in France back in fall 2005 could
become the model for sidelined Muslim youth throughout Europe. On the occasion
of the first anniversary of the assassination of Theo van Gogh by a jihadist
Islamist, this threat was addressed by the political Dutch elite in dialogue
with some enlightened Muslims under the heading ‘‘One Year On: Radicalization
and Society’s Response.’’ There, as a keynote speaker, I again presented my
concept of Euro-Islam, in which the starting point has been both normative and
factual. The murderer of Theo van Gogh, the well-connected Islamist Mohammed
Bouyeri, regarded his crime as the fulfilling of a religious duty against kufr/unbelief.
After the execution of this jihadist duty, Bouyeri reiterated and reconfirmed
this view throughout the trial, assuring the court that he had no remorse and
would do the same again if he were to leave prison. To be sure, this is also
the mindset of those who were torching cars in France in October/November 2005.
The letter Bouyeri pinned to van Gogh’s body included the phrase: ‘‘Europe! It
is now your turn.’’
A deeper problem is related to
tensions related to identity politics and based in a religionization of the
conflict.13 Both Islam and Europe need to acknowledge the challenge,
to accommodate and to change. It is wrong to put the blame either on Muslim
immigrants or on Europeans; both are responsible for the existing state of
affairs. There are Muslims who are willing to participate in the defense of
civil society, but there is a price Europeans must pay for this if they really
want Muslim allies. For paving the way for Euro-Islam from a vision to reality,
Europeans need to be inclusive, while Muslims in return need to be willing to
become Europeans. If integration fails, then the radicalization taking place in
the world of Islam will spill over to Europe. In fact, this process is already
in place. Regrettably, time is running out for Europe and Europeans to continue
to be blind and to turn deaf ears to burning issues. Europe needs a
double-track strategy for dealing with Islam and Islamism: in general, on the
one hand a dialogue with pro-democracy Muslims who are willing to abandon the
jihadization and shari’atization of Islam in order to promote a Euro-Islam; and
on the other hand, a security approach for dealing with Islamism and its
jihadist branch.
For many reasons Europe attracts
people from the world of Islam/dar al-Islam, who are currently pouring in. They
come as legal and illegal alike, be it as asylum-seekers, refugees or simply
guest workers. Among the attractions is prosperity, promising a better life.
Others seek refuge for themselves on the continent, a home where they can be
assured of human rights and the benefits of democracy, both lacking to varying
degrees throughout the world of Islam. The question asked here is: Could these
Muslims also be attracted by the idea of Europe and consequently become true
Europeans? That is, can they become true ‘‘citizens of the heart’’ (Charles
Maier of Harvard, see note 17 to Chapter 5) and not merely holders of European
passports or people living at the fringe of society in their enclaves?
Throughout this chapter I
criticize Europe but also defend its ideals, as I learned them from one of the
major sources of inspiration, my late teacher Max Horkheimer. This great Jewish
philosopher and social scientist established the Frankfurt School of thought,
but was forced in 1933 to flee Germany in order to save his own life.14 He
found refuge in the USA but in 1950 returned to Europe, remaining grateful to
America until his dying day. For Horkheimer both Europe and the US constitute
the pillars of Western civilization. The Jewish Horkheimer’s plight in Nazi
Germany and his legacy are highly pertinent to pro-democracy Muslims, who share
with such Jews the suffering of exclusion and a love of the idea of Europe.
Shortly before his death in 1973,
Horkheimer wrote, in the preface to his collected essays, what would remain an
intellectual legacy of the Frankfurt School: ‘‘in terms of time and space
Europe remains an island of freedom surrounded by an ocean of despotic rule/Gewaltherrschaft.’’15
He continued that it is ‘‘an obligation on those who subscribe to
critical theory’’ to be committed to Europe as the West, and to defend it
against all varieties of totalitarianism (ibid.). Indeed, this legacy should
become a civilizational creed for all Europeans, if they wish their
civilization well andwant the idea of Europe to survive the present great
challenges posed by Islam and Islamism; however, they need to make sure that
those Muslims who accept democracy share it too. In my view, as a pro-democracy
Muslim and a European by choice, the contemporary jihadist Islamism, and its
call for a world revolution to remake the world in a ‘‘revolt against the
West,’’ incorporates the most recent variety of totalitarianism16 to
be countered by all who are committed to the open society. Here, there can be
no tolerance in the name of cultural diversity and multi-culturalism.
The vision of a Europeanization of
Islam presented in this chapter has been introduced with this reference to Horkheimer,
my university teacher, to express my commitment to this Verma¨chtnis/legacy
of a European Jew who suffered the exclusion of Nazi Germany; in the same way,
we Muslims living in Europe suffer exclusion from a democratic Europe, but are
not quite open to the idea of Europe. In the present civilizational crisis
there are Muslims and postmodern challenges to cultural modernity to be taken
seriously. To be sure, I stand against civilizational fault-lines17 as
much as I do against a postmodern, indifferent Europe. Self-congratulatory
attitudes are not promising while dealing with Muslims and the related
challenges.
The starting point for the following reasoning is the
reality that the combination in Europe of low birth rates, leading to
demographic decline, and high migration rates, of people from non-European
cultures, is clearly affecting European identity.18 But who can –
and who will – change whom? Will Europe prove able to shape the incoming
migration through the strength of its own identity – in Ibn Khaldunian terms,
its asabiyya, albeit enhanced by inclusiveness – or will it be the migrants who
shape Europe by imposing their own identity upon it? To reiterate the option
expressed earlier: will we see their Europeanization or an Islamization of
Europe?
Between Islamization and Europeanization
Is Islam changing
the identity of Europe? A project at Berkeley, University of California, was
suggested by the title ‘‘Islam and the Changing Identity of Europe.’’ Is this
appropriate for dealing with the issue? Statistically one can state that more
than 50 per cent of the non-Europeans currently heading to Europe come from the
world of Islam. Between 1950 and 2000, the number of Muslims in Western Europe
rose from 800,000 to 15 million. It is now 20 million. German figures
acknowledge that 20 per cent of the German population are people with Migrationshintergrund
– they are not ethnic Germans. Can harmony be established between the
immigrants and the Europeans, or will tensions be the outcome, with a
religionized fight over the future shape of Europe? This will depend on the
potential for an unfolding of a European Islam, or Euro-Islam. Of course,
Muslims have the right to freedom of religion, but they have no right to an
Islamization of Europe, for Europe – even though it has become home to 20
million Muslims – has its own European identity and is not a subject for
remapping in a global dar al-Islam. Europeanization of Islam is the antithesis
to the Islamization of Europe. Muslims living in Europe and Europeans themselves
are exposed to these options.
Lawrence Harrison, who spent decades studying poverty in
Latin America, coined the phrase ‘‘underdevelopment is a state of mind’’ to
refer to a cultural attitude, and concluded that ‘‘culture matters.’’19 In
a similar vein I argue that belonging to a particular civilization is also a
state of mind. Some civilizations have been able to develop a modernity, like
Europe, and therefore Europe is ‘‘a beautiful idea’’20 even though
corresponding realities in European societies are not fully in line with this
civilizational project. Others, like the Islamic civilization, continue to have
difficulties with modernity. The politicization of Islam is an expression of
this predicament.21
The term ‘‘a beautiful idea’’ as
used to refer to Europe was coined during the Dutch presidency of the European
Union in 2004. A related project turned the slogan into a question: ‘‘Europe –
A Beautiful Idea?’’ In a meeting that took place in Rotterdam, none of the
participating Europeans was publicly ready to profess willingness to sacrifice
for Europe. This is the prevailing European mindset. So, how could one expect
Muslims living in Europe to agree to Europeanization as consent to the
civilizational identity of Europe?
On these grounds one sees a Moroccan Islamist killing an
‘‘infidel’’ in the name of Islamic law/shari’a as an act of jihad and issuing a
warning for Europe, while Europeans either talk about a ‘‘clash of
civilizations’’ or belittle the issue in a mindset of appeasement. In going beyond
this impasse it is possible to contribute to ‘‘preventing the clash of
civilizations’’ by establishing a cross-cultural international morality
inspired by the pluralist idea of Europe. However, it would be foolish to
overlook the existing conflict. It is possible to address the conflict, and not
to be silent about it in the name of a political correctness of
cultural-relativist multi-culturalism, while equally subscribing to ‘‘the sound
of Europe.’’ This is the Mozart theme coined at a subsequent EU presidency,
that of Austria in 2006. I was sad to see, at the celebration in Salzburg, that
only a few politicians were honestly willing to acknowledge the place of Islam
in their project. Is the conclusion that there is no hope for Europe? No hope
for the Europeanization of Islam on European soil – that is, its integration
within an inter-civilizational dialogue? And of course, an honest dialogue, not
like Khatami’s camouflaging of global jihad into European civilization. In the
present conflict, Europeans are challenged to engage in defending Western
civilization by taking a stand.22
The contemporary predicament of
Islam to come to terms with modernity stands in contrast to the rationalism of
Islamic heritage. An unfolding of guidelines for a combination of Europe and
Islam within a Euro-Islamic identity is a model of Europeanization that could
contribute to making the increasing Muslim population of Europe accept the
‘‘idea of Europe’’ in an age of global migration combined with a ‘‘cultural
turn.’’ Collective identity politics is leading to entrenching communities as
separate from one another, not only globally but also within Europe.
Europeanization does not contradict cultural diversity, which is precious, but
it needs to be addressed – as in a famous Amsterdam debate a decade ago –
within the framework of ‘‘the limits of pluralism.’’ In the framework of the
controversy that developed between relativism and neo-absolutism,23 Islam,
in its radical forms of Salafist orthodoxy and totalitarian Islamism, was addressed
as an antipluralist ideology. If those spokesmen for the Islamic diaspora in
Europe who control most of the mosques and are either Salafists or radical
Islamists embrace this anti-pluralist ideology in the name of cultural
diversity, as they
do, then one must
have the right to say ‘‘No!’’
The envisioned mapping of Europe
into the dar al-Islam is, in other words, the Islamization of Europe. This is
not only done through proselytization, but also through the spreading of a
worldview among the Muslim diaspora that is in contrast to the idea of Europe.
There is clearly a conflict between this worldview of neo-absolutism and the
pluralist idea of Europe, often phrased in politically correct language as a
cultural misunderstanding. It is most disturbing to see this orthodox Salafist
and Islamist challenge facing up to a European worldview of cultural relativism
which denies Europe the very civilizational identity it needs to try and stay
alive. To argue in a relativist manner that European culture is – on European
soil – merely one among others is self-defeating. Yes, the migrants have their
own culture, but in this case it is not a valid one for Europe. Collective
identity politics becomes an instrument against the civilizational identity of
Europe itself. In this context, relativism, when exposed to neo-absolutism, is
certain to be the worldview of the loser, because it does not defend itself
against challenges and threats. The French scholar Raymond Aron was among the
very few who foresaw that the era of ‘‘bipolarity’’ in world affairs concealed
the reality of a world consisting of a ‘‘heterogeneity of civilizations.’’24
He rightly predicted that bipolarity would end and that this true vision
would be revealed. Aron did not live long enough to see the materialization of
his prediction, which we are currently witnessing.
It is clear that, today, peace
means a peace among civilizations, not only in the world at large but also
within Europe, with its emerging cultural diversity. How can such a peace be
achieved while the idea of Europe is still maintained, and what is the
necessary framework? In earlier times, there were obvious civilizational
boundaries, e.g. between Europe and Islam, and in those days the Mediterranean25
marked such a boundary. However, global migration is blurring these
territorial boundaries.26 As John Kelsay put it, one is ‘‘forced to
speak not simply of Islam and the West, but of Islam in the West.’’27 It
matters, therefore, that we make it clear which Islam we are talking about. Is
it a European Islam, an indigenous version of Islam such as those that have
evolved in Senegal or the many varieties existing in Indonesia, like the one in
Java? No. Kelsay tells us that at issue here – as already quoted – are
sectarian ‘‘enclaves in Western culture, but not of it’’28 – in
other words, parallel societies.29 To conceptualize the change, in
the Global Village Lecture held in Stockholm 1997, I coined the slogan: ‘‘Islam
and Europe – Islam in Europe.’’ This is not playing with words, but rather a
way of maintaining that these are two different issues. The interaction between
these civilizations is in our case no longer restricted to an activity spanning
the Mediterranean; rather, it exists under conditions of Islamic migration
within Europe itself. What are the implications for Europe? What policies are
needed? Should we conduct a dialogue in the name of multicultural tolerance at
the expense of European identity? If we talk about cross-civilizational
bridges, what should they look like?
To be sure, any dialogue can only
be successful if the needed requirements are fulfilled and it has its limits
and constraints. It seems clear that one cannot carry out a dialogue with
individuals like Mohammed Bouyeri and similarly minded Islamists, who – as well
as their movements – only understand the language of jihad. Their understanding
of the politics of the ‘‘sacred’’ is neoabsolutist in nature. They envision the
Islamization of Europe.
In contrast, a moderate Islam open
to change and also open to Europe could help achieve the dual goal of being
inclusive while preserving Europe’s identity. Here, we have to set clear terms
and they need to spell out what is European. At stake is a stark choice: either
the Europeanization of Islam or the Islamization of Europe (see note 1). The
middle road of multi-culturalism, a vision of two different worlds expected to
live peacefully side by side in Europe, is a deception. For Islamists and their
allies, multi-cultural communitarianism is only one transitory step on the road
to Islamization. This is not my view, but rather the way neo-absolutists
themselves view the issue. It is a state of mind that relativists fail to
understand.
Let us refer to the Netherlands as a case in point. In his
‘‘Dutch Diary,’’ published as a series in Die Welt, the Dutch writer Leon de
Winter first cites Recep Tayyip Erdogan: ‘‘Europe has no other option, than
either opening itself freely to Islam, i.e. through accession of Turkey under
AKP-rule to EU, or involuntarily through exposure to extremist jihadist
violence.’’30 Leon de Winter then goes on to state that we need to
have the courage
to educate our
Muslim fellow citizens in tolerance, individualism and the rights and duties of
modern citizenry. But instead of fulfilling this task, we succumb to illusions
of multi-culturalism, which paralyzes Europe ... In the Netherlands, as well as
throughout Europe, the pressure of intolerance on our tolerance is increasing ...
we must ask ourselves what we want to be and what we are willing to sacrifice
for this end.
(ibid.)
In fact, Leon de
Winter speaks – of course unwittingly – in the language of the great Muslim
fourteenth-century philosopher Ibn Khaldun, the first theorist in the history
of humankind to write on civilization/umran.31 In his science of
civilization/ilm al-umran Ibn Khaldun argues that the civilizational awareness
of the self is expressed in asabiyya. This Arabic term can be translated as ‘‘esprit
de corps,’’ summarized in a system of values and norms and the related
worldview: asabiyya is thus the identity of each civilization. Ibn Khaldun
argues that civilizations are strong when they are based on a strong asabiyya and
weaken in general alongside the weakening of their asabiyya. In reviving this
Ibn Khaldunian understanding, I view the idea of Europe as the asabiyya of the
European civilization. Can it be extended to and shared by Muslim migrants, or
is it so weak that it will succumb to Islamization? On an individual level I
can say that many Muslims have succeeded in becoming Europeans by choice. I
believe myself to be one of these, while experiencing the fact that European
societies do not appreciate this move and continue to lack the ability to be
inclusive. In fact, this is in contrast to the idea of Europe and cannot be the
basis for a Euro-Islamic asabiyya.32 It is not only Muslims but also
Europeans who need to change if the conflict is to be solved peacefully to make
a shared polity possible.
I conclude this section with a reference to the great
philosopher Ernst Bloch’s book on Islamic rationalism based on an enlightenment
in Hellenized Islam, Avicenna und die Aristotelische Linke. In doing so, I
argue that the ‘‘idea of Europe’’ can be incorporated into the concept of
Euro-Islam in an effort to bridge two civilizationally different worlds. The
identity of Europe – which, despite ugly European attitudes, I see as also my
own identity, as a citizen of Europe by choice and a ‘‘citizen of the heart’’ –
is based on freedom and democracy and individual human rights. Therefore, the
idea of citizenship/citoyennete´ is not restricted to a legal status, and
as such it must include the demand for commitment. One cannot be Arab or Turk
by choice, because this is an ethnic identity. But a Muslim, Turk or Arab
could, by embracing the idea of Europe, become a true European citizen. This is
an assumption which I state without any sense of naı¨vite´: I
know that the idea of Europe is not in line with everyday life in European
societies. If Europeans do not change, they risk the Islamization of Europe.
The pending issues
To state it plainly: the basic issue is the
fact that Islamic migration is changing the identity of Europe, and not only in
a positive way. I contrast two options, a vision of Euro-Islam and a
communitarian ghettoization expanding in parallel societies. The assumption
that Islamic migration is changing the identity of Europe is based on Islamic
claims that are not consonant with the idea of Europe. Islamists and Salafists
have another vision for Europe. As a Muslim migrant myself, though a European
citizen by value-orientation, I seek a compromise between the competing
assertions of a European identity and of an Islamic identity. The idea of a
multiple identity determines the concept of Euro-Islam, inspired both by the
idea of Europe and by the historical experience of the Hellenization of Islam
in the better days of Islamic civilization. This normative orientation takes as
a starting point the reality that Islamic migrants are caught between those
Islamists who abuse them in an effort to confront the secular state and those
Islamophobic Europeans who do not give Islam a chance to become European. This
conflict is also reflected in the French debate following the release of the
report on church–state relations with a focus on the Islamic head-scarf issue
in France. This report makes clear that accepting laı¨cite´ is
the bottom line for the integration of Muslim migrants in France. At issue,
therefore, is the idea of a Europe in which laı¨cite´ is part
and parcel, and not simply a way of clothing oneself. The controversy
highlights – as Elaine Sciolino phrases the issue in the New York Times – ‘‘the
challenges that secular France – like much of Europe – faces in coming to grips
with Islam ... organized groups are testing the secular French state.’’33
This test is also a test of the
idea of Europe and of the strength of the European asabiyya. Clearly, a
civilization conflict is at issue. As Nilu¨fer Go¨le puts it, ‘‘the
contemporary veiling of Muslim women underscores the insurmountability of boundaries
between Islamic and Western civilization ... as a contemporary emblem for the
Islamicization ... the conflictual encounter between civilizations.’’34 But
I reiterate my own standpoint that I do not subscribe to a Huntingtonian point
of view, and refer to my contribution to Preventing the Clash of Civilizations.35
In this chapter I therefore renew my proposition of Euro-Islam presented
in Paris a decade and half ago, but do so by incorporating it into the venture
of ‘‘Europe: A Beautiful Idea?’’ without overlooking the ugly part of it.
In their dealings with Islam and
Europe in the age of mass migration, Europeans resent having to acknowledge the
basic issue with both civilizations, namely the values-related conflicts, while
Muslims stress their basing of ‘‘values’’ in Islamic culture, often viewed as
an essentialized civilizational monolithic identity. Again, in my discourse I
emphasize the need for opening an inter-civilizational dialogue beyond
essentialization as means of conflict resolution. The rhetoric of a clash
between Islam and Europe is not helpful for Europeans or for Muslims in dealing
with this issue. Islam’s difficulty with cultural modernity, of which pluralism36
is part and parcel, is a basic issue. There is a lack of willingness on the
Islamic side to be involved in such a discourse, going beyond the cult of
self-victimization. On the European side there is in fact very little beyond
the rhetoric of dialogue endorsed as a substitute for the alternative rhetoric
of ‘‘clash.’’ Neither sentiment is helpful in the pursuit of a cross-cultural
consensus over values of the political culture of democracy. I respect
‘‘difference,’’ but – unlike Seyla Ben-Habib37 – I unequivocally put
political democracy above it in my concept of pluralism (see note 36). It is,
however, unacceptable to stop short at acknowledging that there are entrenched
differences. Clearly, cultural relativists who essentialize ‘‘difference’’ fail
to provide any prescriptions for dealing with the conflict. In this case the conflict
arising from this difference is between laı¨cite´ and shari’a
and it can be resolved in a concept of Euro-Islam.38 However, if
this cannot be accomplished, the two parties cannot exist side by side in
Europe if European identity is to be maintained and Muslims insist on shari’a.
In this regard I share the view of
Ernest Gellner in his criticism on cultural relativism, which I will return to
later. It suffices to note here that cultural relativists conspicuously accept
cultural differences without any limitations, and in so doing even admit
neo-absolutisms (see note 23). Yet they apply their cultural relativism only to
Western values and stop short of proceeding in a similar manner with
non-Western cultures. The winners in the game are the absolutists aiming at
shari’a. Moreover, any critique of these mostly pre-modern cultures39 is
often misconceived and qualified as a ‘‘cultural racism.’’ Such an accusation
is of course belied by the fact that Muslims are not a race but an umma/religious
community, multi-racial and, characterized by tremendous diversity.
Interestingly, the rampant drive
to employ relativist concepts does not halt even in those cases in which such a
critique comes from people belonging to these very cultures – e.g. Islamic
reformers and secularists. As a Muslim scholar who – according to the
authoritative history of Damascus – descends from a centuries-old
Muslim–Damascene notable family (Banu alTibi) but who lives as a migrant in
Europe, I maintain that the present attitudes of self-victimization and
accusation on the Islamic side and selfaccusation and self-denial on the
European side are inappropriate ways for dealing with ‘‘difference’’ as related
to Islamic migration to Europe. One must ask, then, whether Europe and Islam
could come to terms with one another while maintaining a European-inclusive asabiyya
that can be shared by Muslim migrants. The context of the Muslim– European
encounter is the time and space set by Europe itself. It follows that Europe
itself is exposed to the effects of globalization, i.e. to the process Europe
itself has set in motion through European expansion.40 In our age,
migration to Europe has unwittingly become a component of this very
globalization.
In facing the challenges related
to ‘‘difference,’’ the idea of ‘‘remaking the club’’ has emerged. The phrase
refers to needed changes in the identity of the hitherto exclusive ‘‘Club of
Europe.’’ Even though I agree with this demand, I strongly feel the need to add
that the ‘‘remaking’’ encompasses the need for all members of the club, old and
new, i.e. including the migrants, to change their identity. I find this insight
missing in some of the pleas for attitudinal change.41 The call for
a de-ethnicization of European identity must equally apply to the identity of
the migrants, lest we find ourselves dealing with both a ‘‘one-way change’’ and
a ‘‘one-way tolerance.’’ I share the view expressed in a French report of
December 2003 that France has ‘‘no other choice’’ than prevention when facing
‘‘groups seeking to test and undermine core values’’ (International Herald
Tribune, 12 December 2003). Likewise, the idea of Europe should be the bottom
line in finding a solution for the future of Europe itself. Europe is changing
in the light of migration, so why shouldn’t Muslims also accommodate to the
civilization giving them home?
In embracing the typology of
Manuel Castells concerning identity-building, I would like to single out his
ideal type of ‘‘project identity,’’ by which he means that identity is not
primordial but determinable. This pattern explores the idea that social actors
need to ‘‘build a new identity that redefines their position in society ... No
identity can be an essence.’’42 Among the basic issues is the call
upon Europeans to de-ethnicize and de-essentialize their identity to allow the
newcomers to become Europeans too. To the same extent, Muslim migrants are
requested to redefine their identity in the diaspora by adding a European
component to it, in approaching a multiple identity. There is no such thing as
an essential identity, be it European or Islamic.
One cannot escape the observation
that Islamists and Salafists claim to live in Europe but with the firm belief
that they do not want and do not have to change. This attitude is not
reconcilable with the idea of Europe if European civilization is to survive in
an age of global migration. Moreover, the cited Muslim belief demonizes and
deprives Europe of its own identity. To be sure, despite its Muslim population,
Europe is not dar al-Islam.
In the age of migration, Europe
needs to overcome its Euro-arrogance, while Muslim migrants must engage
themselves in the unfolding patterns of a Euro-Islamic identity by abandoning
their universalist absolutism. In so doing, they could establish a commonality
between themselves and European civilization while recognizing the idea of
Europe, in order to become citizens of the heart. As a starting point, I view
the de-ethnicization of Europe on the European side and religious-cultural
reforms on the Muslim side as basic requirements for the feasibility of the
Euro-Islam project. The idea of Europe provides an opening for this venture.
Are Muslims willing to adjust their cultural identity in a more flexible manner
along these lines?
In short, the requirement of
change and the challenge to both to redefine identity are the pending issues.
As much as one should overcome stereotypes about Islam, one must recognize that
it is equally wrong to essentialize Europe as ‘‘racist,’’ ‘‘genocidal,’’ etc.
To essentialize Islam in an Islamophobic manner is as wrong as doing the same
to the West. Europe and the world of Islam are two established civilizations
with centuries-old records that equally encompass enmity and cordiality.43
In this regard the dichotomies built up on this legacy – such as those of
East versus West – are based on ‘‘artificial categories,’’ as Nezar Al-Sayyad
rightly argues. He adds that ‘‘societies are constructed in relation to one
another and are ... perceived through the ideologies and narratives of situated
discourse.’’44 When it comes to the construction of identities – as
based on the production of meaning – academics need to free themselves from
their ‘‘preoccupation with globalization’’ in acknowledging that ‘‘each
individual belongs to many cultures and people have multiple cultural
identities ... Identity is always under construction and in constant
evolution.’’45 My vision of a Euro-Islamic multiple identity as a
new asabiyya for Muslim migrants in Europe is developed along lines that
question constructed dichotomies – however, without overlooking existing value
conflicts related to the entrenched differences and, of course, subsequent
limits. It cannot be reiterated enough that if Muslims are really willing to
become Europeans by embracing the idea of Europe, they need to disconnect their
understanding of Islam from jihad and shari’a and also abandon the da’wa/proselytization.
Moreover, this disconnecting should not only be stated unequivocally but also practiced,
as these concepts are unacceptable in Europe.
Living across cultures produces
cross-cultural meanings and affects identity patterns. In the context of
Islamic migration to Europe, I envisage an identity affected by the concept of
Euro-Islam. This concept was first introduced at the Institut du Monde Arabe in
Paris and I have since developed it on various occasions at several European
and international institutions from Stockholm to Sydney to Berkeley. Euro-Islam
also applies to Euro-Turkish relations, and in this regard the integration of
Turkish migrants to Europe46 is a case in point. To be sure, I
strongly differentiate between integration and assimilation, and thus these
concepts constitute the prescriptive part of my analysis of the Islamic
presence in Europe as creating a basic challenge to the idea of Europe.
The term ‘‘New Islamic Presence’’47
has been coined to describe the increasing contemporary migration from
Muslim countries to Western Europe. By the end of the Second World War there
were fewer than one million Muslim people living in Western Europe, with the
majority in France and the United Kingdom. By 2000 the figure had risen to 15
million, in 2006 to 20 million, and it is expected to reach 40 million by 2035.
Muslim migrants now live in virtually all European societies, from Scandinavia
in the north to Italy in the south, and with their increasing numbers and
presence they are beginning to make demands that touch on European core values.
People like Bernard Lewis predict that Europe will become a part of the
Arab-Muslim Maghreb by the end of this century. I contradicted this view,48
arguing that the problem is not whether a majority of immigrants pouring
to Europe believe in Islam as a religion. Rather, what is important is the
question of what kind of Islam they adhere to. If European Islam were to be
accepted by Muslims living in Europe, then their presence in Europe would not
pose a problem, because a Euro-Islam would be in line with the idea of Europe.
In discussing these issues one
should also not forget that there are native European Muslims49 who
live predominantly in southeast Europe and number around 10 to 12 million. In
view of the focus of the present analysis on Western Europe, I shall set aside
this native Muslim-European community and concentrate on Muslim immigrants to
EU countries from the Middle East, Asia and Africa. It may sound strange to
Americans to see Muslims born in France, the United Kingdom or in Germany
addressed in this analysis as immigrants rather than natives. The reason for
doing this is the fact that second and even third generations of Muslim
migrants to Europe are still not accepted as belonging to the existing polity.
In stating this unfortunate reality, I acknowledge and reiterate that Europeans
are also responsible for this lack of integration.50 The issue is
not simply related to Muslim problems with the idea of Europe.
Now we need first to deconstruct
the phrase ‘‘Muslims in Europe’’ by looking at the migrant community in a
dis-aggregative manner – that is, as a community that is both ethnically
multifaceted and also divided along sectarian lines. Only on the surface can
one speak of one Muslim diaspora in Europe. Muslims living in France were and
still are predominantly migrants from the Maghreb,51 whereas those
living in the United Kingdom remain largely from South Asia (Pakistan, India
and Bangladesh). Until the early 1960s, the Muslim presence in these European
states was almost exclusively related to French colonial rule in North Africa
and to British colonial rule on the Indian subcontinent. In addition, the
sectarian divide among these Muslims is decisive: The Muslim Sunni community in
the German state of Hessen, for instance, in its application for recognition as
an institution refuses to view Shi’ites, Alevis, Ahmadis and others as Muslims,
i.e. members of their community of faith. This attitude discloses a rejection
of diversity and pluralism even within Islam. So how can one expect such people
to recognize other faiths within a broader concept of religious pluralism?
In 1950 fewer than one million
Muslims lived in Europe. Since the 1960s, Islamic migration has been growing
ever more significantly, due to labor migration linked to the once booming
European economies. West European countries are today home to about 20 million
Muslims. Due to the low birth rates and the related demographic growth, West
European countries other than France and the United Kingdom (e.g. Germany)
started to encourage people from the Mediterranean region to come to Western
Europe to earn their living. This process received a further boost from the
loosening of border controls after the end of the Cold War. Despite its
magnitude, this new migration did not change traditional European attitudes. In
Germany, for example, the majority of workers – not only the Turks, but also
South and South-East Europeans working in German factories – were perceived as Gastarbeiter/guest
workers, i.e. people coming for a limited stay that would end when the need for
their work no longer existed. Germany has been a country of reluctant
immigration,52 even after the legislation of a new law admitting
migration. It has become common for critically minded Germans to state, with
equal parts prudence and repentance: ‘‘We have imported labor and have
overlooked the fact that we were importing human beings.’’ But by then,
sarcastic and cynical jokes were already being tossed around, and accusing
fingers pointed at the Germans as stingy people who would invite people as Ga¨ste/guests
but would make them Gastarbeiter/guest workers, thereby neglecting accepted
manners of hospitality according to which hosts do not require their guests to
work, let alone carry out unskilled, physical ‘‘Drecksarbeit/dirty work.’’ To
be sure, there were and still are academic Gastarbeiter, like me. My life in
German academia reflects this unpleasant experience of discrimination.53 Indeed,
were Germany the sole criterion for the idea of Europe, I would never embrace
it. Sadly, this background promotes the growth of political Islam in the German
Muslim community of about 4 million (2.5 million of whom are Turks and Kurds).
Among its powerful representatives we find largely Islamists and other
extremists,54 although they play a double game of pretending to be
moderate, at least in their rhetoric.
The earlier
social-democratic/green German coalition government expressed its
open-mindedness in legislating the new citizenship law in 2000. However, in
their politics almost all German parties intrinsically continue to confuse the
complex understanding of integration with the simple granting of a German
passport. Theo van Gogh’s slaying by a Moroccan Islamist with a Dutch passport
has served as a wake-up call in the Netherlands, but not in Germany.
Citizenship/citoyennete´ means more than receiving a passport: it must
resemble membership of a special club, one with rules. These rules should be
based on the idea of Europe and inclusiveness. Accordingly, becoming a European
requires above all the willingness to be a ‘‘citizen of the heart’’ and, in
return, to be accepted as such by fellow Europeans.
Among the pending issues to be seriously taken into account
is the one of the imposed Imams. These either come from within Islamist groups
or are appointed by Muslim governments like those of Turkey and Morocco. Even
Saudi Arabia is having considerable impact through providing petrodollar funds
for appointing Imams in Germany in Saudi-funded mosques, despite the fact that
there are no Saudi migrants in the country. In this regard, Germany is the most
extreme case. For instance, the Saudi-funded Fahd Academy in Bonn has over the
years educated some 500 young Muslims in Wahhabi Islam and thus serves to
directly undermine any efforts at integration. Despite powerful press coverage
about calls for jihad against the West stemming from this ‘‘academy’’ (Der
Spiegel, 13 October 2003) there was not enough concern to get this madrasa on
European soil closed down. It is clear, though, that if the Imams preaching in
European mosques continue to be powerful, the vision of a European Islam will
never flourish. An abandonment of the ‘‘anything goes’’ mentality of multi-
culturalism is needed as much as an end of Saudi Wahhabi poison in Europe.
Does Europe
respond to the Islamist challenge beyond security? Does it engage in embracing
Euro-Islam?
Among the migrants
coming as asylum-seekers to Europe we find those militant Muslims who relate
migration to the religious obligation of hijra, to be discussed below. This is
in contrast to most of the first-generation Muslims, who, like the Europeans
themselves, did not view the ‘‘presence of Muslims in Europe’’ as a lasting
phenomenon related to migration. Ultimately, however, their continuing long
stay and the fact that a second and, by now, third generation of Muslims have
been born, are changing not only attitudes but also perceptions. What is the
identity of these Muslims, born in Europe but not committed to the idea of
Europe? Should it be admissible to acquire European citizenship without
accepting the identity that comes along with it? I have observed that Turks
born in Germany are disliked in Turkey as allemanci (meaning something
negative, like ‘‘Germanized’’), but are at the same time not considered to be
Germans in the country where they were born and where they live permanently. Thus
they are torn between Turkey and Germany. This notion applies also to others.
The complexities of this type of inner conflict were addressed at an
international conference on migration held in Sydney, Australia, in July/August
1998 under the heading, ‘‘Adventures of Identity.’’55 Given the fact
that the interrelation of identity and migration has been dealt with elsewhere,
the focus of this chapter will be on the competing options for future
strategies concerning the risks and the opportunities related to Muslim
migration to Western Europe as it increasingly poses a challenge to the idea of
Europe.
In honoring the fact that Muslims
living in Europe56 are there to stay and thus are not temporary
residents, my first question concerns the status of the current 20 million
Muslim immigrants living in Europe. At the outset it is important to know that
there are basically three major and comparable groups among them. The first of
these are the Muslim Turks and Kurds, who number around four million, with 2.5
million living in Germany alone. The second group are the Maghrebians, with
more than ten million in Europe, about eight million of whom are in France. A
study on this second group carries the appropriate title ‘‘Algeria in France.’’
The final group is made up of the South Asians, who are found predominantly in
the United Kingdom, where their number is around two million, but a total of a
few million can be found in all other European countries. It is most
interesting and profitable to engage in comparative studies on this subject.57
The figures show that Muslim immigrants to Europe come from all over the
world of Islam. In the city of Frankfurt, 30 per cent of the city dwellers are
foreigners who carry the passports of 165 different states. Among them,
representatives from virtually every Muslim country worldwide can be found.
The Muslim diaspora in Europe is
characterized by two traits. On the one hand there is an ethnicized Islam
vis-a`-vis European societies, claiming unity; on the other hand, however,
ethnic and sectarian divides among Muslim migrants are most clearly reflected
in the structures of the mosques. In Germany religious associations (Moscheevereine)
are not purely Islamic, but rather Sunni or Shi’ite, Turkish, Bosnian, Arab or
Pakistani, or perhaps divided between Ahmadi and Sunni, but almost always
divided along ethnic and sectarian lines. Apart from the rhetoric of an overall
Islam ethnicized in confrontation with Europe, one very rarely finds
comprehensive Islamic mosques or associations. Most worrying is the
politicization of this divide and the inter-Islamic violence involved. What is
the European response? In the Netherlands, after van Gogh’s death the Dutch
people and a few others have started to look at the Innenleben der Moscheen58
and have begun to see them as representing something not just in contrast
to the idea of Europe but vehemently opposed to it. However, in Scandinavia and
in Germany people continue to carry on as usual. Among the few exceptions is
the German journalist Udo Ulfkotte, who published a book on the German Islamic
diaspora entitled Der Krieg in unseren Staedten – ‘‘The War in Our Cities’’59
– in which he describes Islamist activities. He paid a high price for his
disclosures. He was taken to court by supposed Islamists (who were mostly
living on welfare payments; the German welfare state paid most of the legal
expenses) and as a result his life was ruined. Those he exposed in his
investigations remain active and thriving. What are the prospects for a
Euro-Islam under these unfavorable conditions? Sadly, not promising!
Though I am respectful of Islam’s
capacity to adjust to a variety of divergent cultures and I remain hopeful, I
acknowledge that the identity of culturally different people of Islam who
nevertheless share the very same religious faith creates some obstacles. We may
talk therefore about the simultaneity of unity and diversity in Islam. However,
in considering the fact of existing Afro-Islam for African Muslims and
Indo-Islam for Indian Muslims, I ask why we can’t talk about the feasibility of
a Euro-Islam in the context of the migration of Muslims to Western Europe.
What exactly would such a concept
comprise? In Euro-Islam I address the effort of devising a liberal variety of
Islam acceptable both to Muslim migrants and to European societies, thus an
Islam that can accommodate the ideas of Europe, ideas including secularism and
individual citizenship along the lines of a modern secular democracy. Yet I
reiterate that Euro-Islam is the very same religion of Islam as exists
anywhere. In the case of Europe, however, it is culturally adjusted to the
civic culture of modernity.60 In European civil societies an ‘‘open
Islam’’ could be as much at home as – for instance – Islam in Africa
(Afro-Islam), which is adjusted to coexist with domestic African cultures. The
major features of the concept of Euro-Islam would include laı¨cite´,
cultural modernity, and an understanding of tolerance that goes beyond the
Islamic tolerance restricted to Abrahamitic believers (ahl al-kitab). In
addition, EuroIslam acknowledges cultural and religious pluralism and thus
gives up on the claim of Islamic dominance, which is, in any case, out of touch
with reality. In sum, Euro-Islam is compatible with liberal democracy,
individual human rights and the requirements of a civil society. Therefore,
Euro-Islam departs from citoyennite´ and thus represents a contrast to
communitarian politics that result in ghettoization. It is important to note
that the politics of unfolding patterns of Euro-Islam should in no way be
equated with assimilation. The integration is limited to the adoption of the
civic culture of civil society, resulting in a variety of Islam addressed here
as Euro-Islam. Thus I am speaking out in favor of an enlightened and
open-minded Islamic identity that would be compatible with European civic
culture. In line with this thinking, it is pleasing to see that the French are
now using the term ‘‘integration’’ and no longer ‘‘assimilation’’; in other
words, they are limiting the understanding of Europeanization to meaning the
acceptance of civic rights for becoming European ‘‘citizens of the heart.’’
As a student of Europe and the
potential of Europeanization by choice, I am aware of the fact that the
‘‘beautiful idea’’ of Europe is much more than a civic culture. Art too is a
part of das Schoene/the beautiful. Acceptance of the European civic culture
that determines a person as an individual is the bottom line. This civic
culture is not negotiable and not compatible with the Islamic law of shari’a.61
Here lies the ‘‘challenge,’’ both to Muslims and to Europeans. Mohammed
Bouyeri killed Theo van Gogh because he was a kafir/unbeliever. Years ago,
Salman Rushdie was denied basic human rights in the name of the shari’a and
some Europeans asked for tolerance. EuroIslam is simply a proposition for a
response driven by a commitment to individual human rights, to be demanded of
Muslims living in Europe as a kind of a Euro-Islamic asabiyya shared by
Europeans and Islamic immigrants.
In light of the demographically increasing Muslim community
in Europe, the option of Euro-Islamic political integration as a response to
this challenge should be taken seriously. The proposition here is that Muslims
become members of the European body politic they live in, without giving up
their Islamic identity or rejecting the identity of Europe. To be sure, the
Islamic identity of Muslim migrants needs first to be compatible with a
European identity related to the idea of Europe. The reader is reminded of the
earlier debate and of the fact that both identities, European and Muslim, are
changable and not to be essentialized. Citizenship issues ought to be placed
within this framework. Enlightened Islamic education is a means of maintaining
an Islamic identity, but not if it serves segregationist ends. Neither imported
Salafist and Islamist Imams nor the cultural relativists of multi-culturalism
are friends to the idea of Europe. I repeat the reference to Ernest Gellner who
puts it this way:
Logically, the religious fundamentalists
are of course also in conflict with the relativists ... In practice this
confrontation is not so very much in evidence ... The relativists direct their
attacks only at those within their own enlightened tradition, but play down ...
religious fundamentalism.62
It follows that not only the totalitarian
Islamists, but also those European cultural-relativist multi-culturalists are
no friends of the open society or the idea of Europe related to it.
Back to Islam and the idea of Europe: commonalities and disagreements
in a historical perspective
Euro-Mediterranean
relations reveal a centuries-long history of all kinds of civilizational
interaction. Migration is now changing this pattern in a way that has led a
prominent American student of Islam, John Kelsay, to raise the following
question: ‘‘The rapidity of Muslim immigration ... suggests that we may soon be
forced to speak not simply of Islam and, but of Islam in the West. What
difference will this make?’’63 It is sad to see that the differences
between Muslims and Europeans based on cultural divergences are becoming an
inter-European issue of conflict, while earlier commonalities are sidelined.
Basically, migration as a basic concern is bringing these differences in
worldviews to the fore within the framework of gated communities in Europe. In
public speech, these conflicts are often obscured and even denied, often
presented as a misunderstanding. It is important that, in going beyond the
censorship of dictatorial political correctness to address impending and real
issues, we lean towards reconciliation, aiming not to antagonize divergent
views but to talk about them clearly and without concealing them. Only in this
manner can we put ourselves in a position where we realize how foolish it is to
deny the existing cultural differences and the conflicts they engender.
In Europe, Islam’s importance for the West lies in its being
a close neighbor. In this regard, there is a shift through migration from Islam
to the West and also to Europe. In this new situation there is a need to deal
with persistent commonalities between both civilizations in a new manner. As
John Kelsay puts it:
Perhaps such commonalties serve, in the
main, to indicate the nature of disagreement between the West and Islam ... But
there should be no doubt that in certain contexts, the common discourse about
ethics ... has the potential for creative and cooperative endeavor. Given the
increased presence of Muslims in Europe and North America – a presence that
makes for a more than intense interaction between the two traditions than ever
before – it is important to see this.64
Even though
conflict is the core issue in this book, I argue for a common discourse about
inter-cultural ethics and link this to the migration debate. The outcome could
be a civic culture based on the idea of Europe to be shared by all. With this
concern in mind, dealing with Islam in Europe leads us to ask what our choices
are. To do this rationally we need a common discourse and there is a precedent
for this in the history of Islamic and European civilizations, to which I shall
return in more detail.
At this point, I shall focus on
two European extremes at work: Euroarrogant exclusiveness on the one hand, and,
on the other, European attitudes of self-denial being presented in a distorted
manner as a self-opening to other cultures. These two attitudes are mutually
exclusive and both have an impulse to dominate, i.e. not to tolerate or even
consider other positions. The French response to migration to date has been ‘‘inte´gration
ou insertion communautaire.’’ In reviewing the French response I would argue
that ‘‘integrated Muslims,’’ i.e. those who accept the beautiful idea of
Europe, are a part of the polity, whereas ‘‘communitarian ghettos’’ are a
threat both to the civilizational idea of Europe and to the security of
European societies, because civic values are not accepted in these ghettos. In
this regard, the Ibn Khaldunian notion of asabiyya – a kind of esprit de corps,
or civilization-awareness – is highly pertinent in the process of opening
oneself to others without self-denial. Some see in this issue signs of a
phenomenon of decline in the West, concealed as open-mindedness. It is a
misperception of Europeans that they can earn respect through self-denial. It
is exactly the other way around. It is very important that Europeans grasp the
idea that a low degree of asabiyya is not the alternative to their
Euro-arrogance and racism. Similarly, as much as philo-Semitism does not
represent an overcoming of anti-Semitism, cultural relativist self-denial is
only the other side of the coin of Euro-centric exclusiveness.
For a cooperation between the two
strange bedfellows in the context of ‘‘Islam in Europe’’ for the sake of a
better European and Muslim future, the two parties involved need to cultivate
an ability to dialogue with one another in order to develop common responses to
the pending challenges, and thereby solve the conflict on the grounds of a
consensus on the idea of Europe. I repeat my contention that there is no such
thing as an essentialist Islam – much as there is no such thing as an
essentialist Europe – in order to argue against a constant pattern of exclusive
Islamic or European identity. Islam will always be an ever-changing cultural
system designed by Muslims themselves, and similarly, Europe can be an open
society in which there is a place for the ‘‘other,’’ like Muslims, as equal
citizens. In short, both need to change.
My reference to the European extremes discussed focused on
dominant inclinations among Europeans, i.e. the exclusivist and the
self-denying attitudes, and is meant as a reference to great obstacles to an
inter-cultural dialogue based on reason. A real inter-civilizational dialogue
aimed at establishing multiple identities, a cross-cultural consensus – for
instance over individual human rights65 – is required.
It would be dishonest to limit the talk about obstacles to
European exclusiveness undermining the integration of Muslim immigrants. I am
equally concerned about the maintenance of certain orthodox Islamic views among
parts of the European Muslim community. It is especially worrying to see those
views in the Islamic hijra doctrine according to which migration is related to
the da’wa, i.e. the call to Islam as a proselytization, spreading in the Islam
diaspora. It is alarming to see the neo-absolutists pursuing their uncompromising
proselytization in the name of religious freedom. Salafist Muslims in Europe
refer to the meaning of hijra and view themselves as an outpost for the spread
of Islam in Europe.66 This belief – and, of course, the voicing of
its rhetoric – can only contribute to the growth of anti-Islamic attitudes
among Europeans and to the bolstering of existing prejudices. Among the exile
groups of Islamists in London was the one led by Sheikh Omar Bakri before he
returned to the Middle East. That group, named the Movement of the Muhajirun,
supported the terrorist attacks on the US embassies in Africa and celebrated
the 9/11 assaults as ‘‘heroic acts of Islam.’’ Bakri clearly links the status
of migrants Muhajitum to the doctrine of hijra in the pursuit of the da’wa/call
to Islam. Like his predecessor, the late fundamentalist Kalim Siddiqi, who
established the Islamic Counter-Parliament in London, the Syrian preacher Bakri
has become most prominent through the British media. In a BBC interview held
after the blasts at the US embassies in Africa and the retaliation by the
United States on Sudan and Afghanistan, Bakri described Muslims in Europe by
saying ‘‘We are all Osama Ibn Laden.’’ Slogans like this are of the greatest
disservice not only to Islam but also to all Muslims living in Europe. More
peaceful Imams, like Zaki Badawi of London or the Swiss-born Tariq Ramadan,
present themselves as moderates, but the fact that they label Europe as a part
of dar al-Islam/abode of Islam is an offense to the idea of Europe.
Cultural-relativist multi-culturalism accepts these offenses as examples of
cultural communitarianism and fails to see the religious imperialism that is
included within this neo-absolutist universalism. In this context one is
inclined not only to recall the judgment made by the late Ernest Gellner, cited
above, but also to seriously consider the attempt at an ‘‘Islamization of
Europe’’67 a recent variety of ‘‘Islamic imperialism.’’68
In the search for alternatives and
commonalities I propose to draw lessons from history. These are culturally
enriching European–Muslim encounters which were reason-based. The reference is
basically to the traditions of medieval Islamic rationalism and its impact on
the Renaissance leading to European Enlightenment.
The current cross-cultural search
for an acceptance of a political culture of democracy and human rights may
benefit from history. One can draw much from the words of the Prince of Jordan,
Hassan Ibn Talal, who attended the crucial Nexus project during the Dutch
presidency of the EU in 2004 and an earlier speech held in 1996 argued that
‘‘Muslims and Europeans have been at their worst when they sought to dominate
each other and at
their best when they looked to learn from
each other.’’69
My own research on Muslim–Western relations supports this
very profound insight. In my view, the opening of the Islamic mind to Hellenism
and the ensuing Hellenization of Islam in the medieval period led to the
heights of Islamic civilization. In return, European adoptions from Islamic
rationalism on the eve of the European Renaissance contributed to processes of
rationalization in European civilization. As Berkeley scholar Leslie Lipson
wrote in his work on civilizations,
Aristotle crept
back into Europe by the side door. His return was due to the Arabs, who had
become acquainted with Greek thinkers ... Both Avicenna and Averroe¨s were
influenced by him ... Aristotle was introduced from Cordoba. Aristotle was
significant not only for what he taught but more for his method and spirit.70
Muslim thinkers in medieval Islam had
combined this method and spirit with their Islamic minds and identities. In
learning from Aristotle they were in a position to give the Greek philosopher the
status of ‘‘mu’alim al-awwal/ the first teacher.’’ That was the height of
Islamic tolerance. The great Islamic philosopher al-Farabi was only second to
Aristotle in the ranking by the Islamic medieval rationalists.71
This reference to historical
records must admit that history cannot repeat itself in our age of migration,
but in the shadow of looming Christian–Muslim encounters, perceptions and
misperceptions are still at work. Therefore, the reference to positive
traditions remains both topical and relevant for Euro-Mediterranean dialogue.
As Arab Muslims and Europeans in the past engaged in positive encounters with
one another on the grounds of a spirit based on aql/reason, it must be equally
possible to revive this tradition and its spirit as a framework for the needed
dialogue in our own age, rather than engaging in new varieties of jihad and
crusades.
In the pursuit of a revival of the
heritage of Islamic rationalism, the Harvard Iraqi-born Muslim philosopher
Muhsin Mahdi believes that al-Farabi was the greatest thinker in Islamic
political philosophy. In fact, al-Farabi was by origin a Turk, but his cultural
language was Arabic and his commitment was to the Islamic civilization, not to
his ethnicity. The Farabian Islamic aql-based philosophy is a lasting
indication of a EuroIslamic encounter at its very best. In my view this
encounter continues to be of great importance and relevance, and could even
provide the framework for Western–Muslim common ground in the age of migration.
But instead of referring to al-Farabi, many Turkish mosques in Europe are named
after Sultan Fatih, who conquered European soil. This is not an indication of
cultural pluralism but an abuse of multi-culturalism! To be sure, cultural
pluralism is not the relativism of multi-culturalism. The commitment to a
European civic culture that is shared by all stands in opposition to a cultural
relativism that negates common values. Multiculturalism is based on cultural
relativism; European multi-culturalists look at other cultures with a sense of
romantic-eccentric mystification, following in the Euro-centric tradition of
viewing aliens as bons sauvages. There are multi-culturalists who look at
Cordoba as an example of multiculturalism, while in fact lacking profound
knowledge about the subject. I want to refer to this mystification to
underscore my urgent and important distinction between cultural pluralism and
multi-culturalism. In this pursuit I need to come back to the question
regarding the choices: Do Muslims living in Europe want to belong to a
peripheral minority with respective minority rights, or do they want to be full
members of the European polity itself, with the respective rights and duties
that this entails? I see no contradiction between being a European and being a
Muslim. But in contrast to this position, there are Islamist groups in Europe
which are not interested in the role of Muslim migrants as a bridge between the
civilizations. They are, rather, interested in using the Muslim diaspora for a
political confrontation.
The repeated references in this
chapter to the Hellenization of Islam in the past serve to present an Islamic
model for European–Islamic commonalities in the present day, in order to
underpin an acceptance of Europeanization by Muslim migrants in Europe. If this
enlightened Muslim position should now fail in favor of a multi-cultural
communitarianism that admits different laws and different treatment for people
from different cultural communities, then Islamization will doubtless be the
future of Europe. There are blind Europeans who fail to see that such an
Islamization would result from their idea of ‘‘multi-cultural discourse,’’ a
romantic ideology directed against cultural pluralism that combines cultural
diversity with a consensus over core values. The link of ‘‘Islamization’’ to
‘‘communitarianism,’’ as in the vision of some leaders of the Islamic community
with the aim that their minority will become the majority in Europe in the
future, is the opposite strategy.
Aside from this vision of an
Islamic Europe, one should look to Muslim minorities in non-European countries
for comparison. In looking to the experiences of others, India,72 with
its considerable Islamic minority, is a significant case in point. In a study
completed for the project of the University of Leiden on the Islamic presence
in Western Europe, I have for comparative purposes dealt with the status of
Muslims in India. Despite the fact that the constitution of India prescribes
one secular personal law for all religious communities, the early Congress
government, for political expediency in luring Muslim votes, allowed the
practice of a ‘‘Muslim Personal Law.’’ One result has been the rise of Hindu
fundamentalism, of which the elections of 1996 and 1998 were just an alarming
sign. This rise is related to resentment over privileges being given to
minorities. Pointing to these privileges, Hindu fundamentalists call for the
de-secularization of India and infringe on even the physical existence of
Indian Muslims. Based on my study of the Indian case73 my conclusion
for the case of Muslim migrants in Europe is that, given the already existing
evidence of a growing hatred toward foreigners and the dreadful right-wing
radicalism, we should be very cautious in discussions on collective minority
rights and also need to discern the Muslim hatred ignited in some mosques
against ‘‘Jews and crusaders.’’ I have misgivings that any granting of minority
privileges and special collective rights to cultural and religious groups would
be counter-productive, leading to similar results as in the case of India. Most
worryingly, such measures would not only contribute, I fear, to impeding the
political integration of these groups, but moreover would encourage the growth
of right-wing radicalism on both sides. Some Muslim speakers view themselves in
a propagandist manner as the ‘‘new Jews’’ of European anti-Semitism.74 The
hypocrisy comes to the light when, at the same time, they are completely silent
about Islamist anti-Semitism,75 if not openly in favor of it.
Conclusions:
what lies ahead?
There is an
Islamic and Islamist challenge to Europe. One response to both is
multi-culturalism, the other is cultural pluralism. We must keep in mind that
political integration does not have to mean assimilation. Muslim migrants can
become Europeans, accepting both the individual citizenship rights and duties
that would smooth the way for their membership of the club, without ceasing to
be Muslims. However, it is appropriate to demand from them loyalty to the
democratic polity in which they live, i.e. to the ‘‘idea of Europe,’’ a formula
which covers the core values of European civil society such as those related to
secular European laws and above all the secular constitutions separating
religion from politics. This loyalty and the acceptance of corresponding values
is in conflict to the loyalty to an imagined umma as well as to the Islamic
concept of the legitimacy of the Imam. Cultural reforms would enable a Muslim
migrant to live under the governance of a non-Muslim imam/ruler. On the part of
the Europeans, religious reforms are no longer needed, although a change in
their cultural attitudes is imperative if society is to become really
inclusive, as the idea of Europe suggests. Only such cultural changes could
lead to the acceptance of Muslims as citizens. In Europe, the rules of the club
and of the game have to be European, inspired by the true idea of Europe. In
short, success depends on the willingness of both sides to change and to
deliver.
The vision of a Euro-Muslim is
based on the assumption that multiple identities are feasible within the
framework of cultural pluralism and political integration. In my own life I
have lived migration in a context of adventures of identity. In considering
this adventure and conceptualizing this multiple identity, it seems appropriate
to draw on the idea of ‘‘project identity’’ that has been cited for combining
different civilizational patterns.
Again, it will not be possible to promote and defend the
idea of Europe within the framework of multi-cultural communitarianism as
pursued equally by Muslim segregationists and European cultural relativists. I
continue referring to Gellner, who has described these groups as strange
bedfellows that, however, end up becoming allies. My criticism of multiculturalism
departs not only from my commitment to sharing a civic culture, but also from
my opposition to rampant universalisms. As a Muslim committed to European
Enlightenment I oppose all varieties of hegemonic universalisms, be they
Western or Islamic. I also believe I find in multi-culturalism just another
universalist variety. This is shown by David Gress in his overall study of
Western civilization as he states:
Although
multi-culturalism might seem to contradict universalism, the two were
compatible; indeed, multi-culturalism was simply universalism applied to
cultural politics ... Universalism ... never solved its fundamental dilemma of
being both a Western idea ... and an anti-Western idea.76
This is a rigorous criticism pointing to the
fact that cultural relativism is in fact a rampant universalism. The ethical
integrity and the relationship of cultural relativists is also questioned by
the late Ernest Gellner in the following argument, which I share:
Three principal options are available in
our intellectual climate: religious fundamentalism, relativism, and
Enlightenment rationalism ... Logically, the religious fundamentalists are of
course also in conflict with the relativists ... In practice, this
confrontation is not very much in evidence.77
The reason for
this is that both share an enmity to Western civilization; even though this is
for different reasons and motivations, the result is the same.
The commitment to Enlightenment
rationalism is based not only on its substance, but also on the fact that it
succeeded in building bridges between Islam and Europe over the course of two
fundamental encounters. The rationalism of medieval Islamic philosophy
constituted the seeds of an Islamic Enlightenment that was ultimately prevented
from unfolding by the Islamic fiqh-orthodoxy. This rationalism resulted from
the Hellenization of Islam, and was the result of the first positive
Euro-Islamic encounter. The impact of Islamic rationalism on the European
Renaissance was the second. According to Habermas the Renaissance is one of the
sources of cultural modernity. In a reversal of that second positive encounter,
the Islamic fundamentalism78 of our age could succeed in fulfilling
the wrongful prophecy, creating a ‘‘clash of civilizations’’ rather than
building bridges to prevent this clash. Therefore, the expansion in the
European diaspora of Islamism is detrimental, both for Muslim migrants and for
the European societies that shelter them. Political Islam hinders these
migrants from an embracing of the idea of Europe, and the result is that they
are isolated in a dreadful ghetto.
Ethnic identities are exclusive in
character. If cultivated in the diaspora they lead to a kind of neo-absolutism
and subsequent related social but ethnicized conflicts. An all-inclusive civil
identity based on cultural pluralism is the alternative. In contrast,
fundamentalism is a modern variety of neo-absolutism. Pluralism in turn refers
to the European concept of people representing different views while at the
same time being strongly committed to shared cross-cultural rules and values,
above all to mutual tolerance and mutual respect. Tolerance can never mean that
only one party has the right to maintain its views at the expense of the other.
This would be the opposite of pluralism. For this reason I look at the fairly
exclusivist bias of multi-cultural communitarianism as standing in contrast to
a polity of citizens based on cultural pluralism and tolerance. One-way
tolerance is the tolerance of the loser. Truly, Muslim migrants cannot deny
others what they require for themselves. When in the majority they oppress
others; however, when a minority they make victims of themselves if their will
is questioned.
The granting of multi-cultural minority privileges to Muslim
migrants in Europe could prove to be a double-edged sword with far-reaching
harmful consequences. On the one hand it could facilitate the unwanted
interference of Islamic-Mediterranean, mostly undemocratic governments in the
affairs of Muslim migrants in Europe, which happens already. On the other, it
could also lead to the minorities in Europe being used as the ghetto, hijacked
by the self-proclaimed representatives of political Islam acting in exile and
operating as a transnational movement. These Islamists are by no means
democrats.79 In their hearts they consider democracy as kufr/unbelief,80
while in public they pay lip-service to it and abuse it in their actions.
In contrast, a Euro-Islamic interpretation of Islam is in a position to smooth
the way for an Islamic Enlightenment that would contribute to an embracing of
the idea of Europe as grounds for Muslim immigrants to become European citizens
of heart. The necessary rethinking of Islam would lay the groundwork for
introducing ‘‘de´mocratie et democratisation’’ into Islam.81
In sum, the Euro-Islamic view that
Muslim immigrants could act as a bridge between Islam and Europe leads to
opposing the politics of making Europe a refuge for Islamic fundamentalists.
These new totalitarianists are not interested in the integration of Muslim
migrants because they flatly reject the idea of Europe, so why should the open
society shelter those who want to undermine it? The concept of civic culture for
all, on grounds of cultural pluralism, stands in contrast to the
multi-culturalists and to their cultural relativism. I argue that the bottom
line for a pluri-cultural – not a multi-cultural – platform is the unequivocal
and binding acceptance of the core European values of secular democracy,
individual human rights of men and women, secular tolerance and civil society.
In my understanding this is the basis for Euro-Islam, and contrasting options
of ghetto-Islam or fundamentalist Islam are anti-European. At the beginning of
the century, Muslim migrants in Europe face the challenge of having to choose a
destiny for themselves and for their children; will they continue to be alien
or will they join a changing club on the grounds of embracing the idea of Europe?
Let it be said without ambiguity:
It is not an exaggeration to state that the future of Europe will be determined
by the ability of both Europeans and Muslim immigrants to establish peace
between themselves. They need to forge a pattern of Euro-Islamic identity based
on the core values of Europe, described as the idea of Europe endorsed by a
liberal and reformed Islam. A polity for people of different religions can only
be a secular one, and the idea of Europe is secular, not Christian.82 The
value-conflict between Islamism and the idea of Europe is not a conflict
between Islam
and Christianity,
nor is it a clash of civilization.83

7 Political Islam and
democracy’s decline to a voting procedure
The political
culture of democracy is the solution for Islamic civilization
The fact that books are written by humans,
who incorporate their selves and their work into their writings, also applies
with academic books such as this. It is a fallacy to think otherwise. Some
readers who lack philosophical education may not be familiar with the
distinction between subjectivism and subjectivity. According to Ju¨rgen
Habermas ‘‘the principle of subjectivity’’ – that is, the awareness of the
human self as a thinking individual – is the hallmark of cultural modernity.1
Being a Muslim who grew up in a premodern culture2 in Damascus
and then received his academic education in the thoughts of the Frankfurt
School,3 I am familiar with the two divergent worlds and with the
related conflicts between both entities on all levels. An indication of these
conflicts should never be confused with the rhetoric of a clash of
civilizations. As one of the co-founders of the Arab Organization of Human
Rights and as a writer of the early Arab left, I have always believed not only
that democracy is the solution for the Arab-Muslim world, but also that
democratization and cross- cultural morality are the bridges that could help
solve the value-related conflicts between both civilizations. This is my creed
that directs my scholarly work and it lies at the core of my reasoning.
Introduction
Essentialism has
never been my thing. Despite this accusation by some foes of essentialism,
those who read my work know very well that the opposite is true and are
familiar with my commitment to the opposite, i.e. to cultural change. The
recognition of an ‘‘interplay between social and cultural change’’4 lies
at the center of my work. I was a member of the ‘‘Culture Matters Research
Project’’ (CMRP) at the Fletcher School and co-authored its two volumes on Developing
Cultures.5 That project was dedicated to the promotion of cultural
change, thus belying any cultural essentialism. The views developed in the CMRP
research were related to the need for reform, for instance in Gulf societies to
ensure the capability of survival beyond the age of oil. This can only be
managed through change,6 and this commitment to change through
reforms applies foremost to societies of Islamic civilization. At the top of
this agenda is a Muslim embracing of democracy. In an earlier book, Islam and
the Cultural Accommodation of Social Change (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1990), I
argued for a cultural change to match the ongoing social change and criticized
those of my fellow Muslims who essentialize Islam; for them, Muslims may change
but not Islam itself, as it is believed to be divine and perfect, existing
beyond change and therefore allegedly immutable. For me as a social scientist,
religion is to be viewed in line with the sociology of Emile Durkheim as a fait
social, that is, as a social fact, always subject to change. It is pertinent to
note that the book mentioned was praised by some as a postOrientalist
contribution while others defamed it as having falling into Orientalism. The
discrepancy between the two qualifications is related not to my work but to the
way some ‘‘non-executive readers’’ among scholars deal with books, judging
without looking at the arguments presented and instead insisting on their own
bias and preconceptions. This sad state of affairs shapes ongoing debates as an
outcome of the politicization of scholarship. This is not the subject-matter of
this chapter; nevertheless, my deliberations in this concluding chapter start
with these comments, which are not a digression. The underlying reason for this
reference is the fact that there are some readers who disagree – and they have
the right to do so, and to engage in criticism, but they confuse defamation and
critique. Dealing civilly with disagreement is an essential part of
scholarship. Defamation indicates a lack of civility. I always state, with
reference to the principle of ijma’ – the consensus of Islamic shari’a – that
there can be no ijma’ in scholarly debates based on critical reasoning. The
outcome is disagreement, and therefore the need to deal with it democratically,
with civility and above all with rationality. I claim this democratic culture
of debate for this book.
That being said, it is now
possible to move on to the core argument of this concluding chapter, namely
that democracy is not only needed but also possible in the world of Islam in
its present crisis. However, democracy is much more than just a voting
procedure. Without the political culture that is related to it, there can be no
democracy. There are prerequisites for this democratization that can only be
fulfilled by Muslims themselves. In operating on this assumption – proven by
the sad experience of unsuccessful democratization in Iraq, Lebanon and
Palestine – the restriction of democracy to a voting procedure is rejected. The
political culture of democracy is not in line with the agenda of political
Islam. Therefore, Islamism is not eligible for the task of democratization. One
of the underlying reasons is that religious reforms in Islam, a basic
requirement for moving towards embracing the related values of the culture of
democracy, are not on the agenda of political Islam which is based on an
essentialism that rejects cultural change. I know the text of the Qur’an very
well, and I am familiar with the two very short verses (virtually two phrases)
on shura-consultation, but fail to see a culture of democracy in these few
words. Religious reforms and scripturalism are two different issues. Now, Islam
is always what Muslims make of it; it is changeable, and it could embrace the
culture of democracy, but this is conditional on accomplishing the religious
reforms required.7 In this understanding, Islam is a ‘‘developing
culture’’ (see note 5) inasmuch as most Islamic countries are developing
societies. In fact, one explanation for the rise of political Islam is a
reference to the unsolved developmental problems that underpin the legitimacy
crisis. What applies to social and political structures also applies to
cultures: all can change.
Current research shows that
Islamic fundamentalism is a semi-modern response to modernity.8 In
response to the need to change Islamists’ claim that the only exit strategy is
to be articulated in the formula al-Islam huwa al-hall (i.e. Islam – read
Islamism – is the only solution), I firmly distinguish between Islam as a
cultural system and Islamism as a political ideology. During my Bosch
Fellowship 1998–2000 at Harvard, I wrote Islam between Culture and Politics in
this spirit. On the basis of this research I do not buy into Esposito and
Voll’s contention that political Islam is compatible with democracy: it is not.
On the basis of the distinction presented, I argue in contrast that the culture
of Islam could embrace democracy, but that this is conditional on religious
reforms being successfully accomplished by Muslims. The fact that the Islamist-jihadist
ideology is totalitarian in its character precludes such an accomplishment.
After having presented my core argument and ahead of moving
to the central analysis, it needs to be stated that some of my foes – again
they are not critics, as part of scholarship – propound their disagreement in a
defamatory manner, contending that I dig trenches between Islam and democracy
in order to establish an argument of incompatibility. This is utterly wrong, as
an honest and careful reading of Part I of this book reveals. There, I present
two competing options, democratization and the jihadization of Islam, and
support the first. In this context I present culture as a developing entity in
order to view it as a power for innovation in a process of interplay with society,
politics and economics (see notes 4 to 6). I do not go for any essentialism or
for any culturalism. I also oppose all varieties of Orientalism, of course,
including the ‘‘Orientalism in reverse’’ criticized by Sadik Jalal al-Azm.9
Even though I share this criticism I have never been a foe of Edward
Said. I pride myself in having made my very first English presentation under
his chairmanship during my very first visit to the USA; he edited my lecture
and published it in one of his books.10 Another personal note is
justified: being a Damascene by ethnicity and a Muslim by belief and
socialization, I grew up in the cultural environment of an Arab Islam which
shaped my personality. How can I be trapped in Orientalism? In my adult
scholarly years I went beyond the narrow confines of the Arab world and Europe,
and I was fascinated by non-Arab varieties of Islam, be they in West Africa
(e.g. Senegal) or in Southeast Asia (e.g. Indonesia), as really developing
cultures open to change. In African Islam and in the civil Islam of Indonesia,
it is most impressive to see not only the capability to change, but also a
cultural flexibility in a combination of pre-Islamic cultural patterns espoused
with the religious creed of an Arab Islam. In their Arab-centric views of
Islam, many Arab scriptural Salafist-Muslims dislike what they see in Western
Africa or in Southeast Asia. In contrast, I find this not only fascinating but
equally a model for cultural change in the Arab world itself, to facilitate
bridging between Islam and democracy. It is sad that the impetus does not come
from Indonesia, but from the Arab world. I have watched Wahhabis decrying
Southeast Asians as not being true Muslims, but I have never met an Indonesian
preaching civil Islam to Arabs.11
In returning to the more general level, it can be stated
that this book’s analysis of political Islam in world politics and in Europe
suggests that Muslims are confronted with competing choices and are squeezed by
Islamists into conflicts not favorable to their well-being. Therefore the need
to change for the better through making the right choice compels pro-democracy
Muslims to come to terms with the self in a crisis-ridden situation, to face
political Islam and to stop their ‘‘other-ing’’12 of non-Muslims. It
is neither the religion nor the culture of Islam that create these obstacles
for Muslims, but rather the way Islamists use both in an essentialized manner
to undermine a cultural accommodation to be achieved by Muslims themselves. In
this environment, Islamists of political Islam spread the Islamic narrative of
‘‘Islam under siege’’13 and religionize conflicts. The tensions
created by the Islamists on the grounds of politicizing Islam to a religious
fundamentalism are the grounds of what can be labeled as ‘‘conflict, culture,
globalization.’’ This is the title of an international research project.14
From the standpoint outlined in this introduction, in the
remainder of this concluding chapter I shall discuss avenues for introducing
the values of the culture of democracy into an Islamic environment open to
change. I do not overlook how daunting and difficult this undertaking is and
will continue to be under conditions of a prevailing Islamism with its
competing agenda. An alliance between Islamists and Salafists should be
countered by an alliance with Muslim democrats. In Europe this is a part of
making Muslim immigrants European citizens. I pride myself on standing
alongside enlightened Muslim thinkers such as Hamid Abu Zaid and Abdullahi
AnNa’im, who are among those promoting the Muslim Democrats of Denmark – a
group poised to be the counterweight to those Copenhagen Imams who ignited the
conflict over the distasteful cartoons, using them as a pretext to mobilize
worldwide against Europe. It is to be hoped that the left-liberal Europeans
catch up with this Danish model and stop supporting Islamists, who are in fact
the new totalitarianists,15 not the alleged antiglobalization
movement.
Democratization is the solution
The 2003 war in
Iraq took place with the promise of democratization in a so-called ‘‘wind of
change.’’ However, democracy was limited to a voting procedure devoid of the
related culture of open civil society and pluralism. The outcome has been that
Saddam’s ‘‘republic of fear’’ was replaced by a republic of horror. Past-Saddam
Iraq is ruled by Shi’ite-Islamists ranging from ‘‘the Supreme Council of the
Islamic Revolution of Iraq SCIR’’ with its militias of the Badr Brigade to the
terrorist Mahdi Army, purging Iraq of its Sunni population. What a democratization
without a culture of democracy!
The reference to the sad Iraqi
experience, combined with those of fundamentalist Hamas in Palestine and
Hezbolla in Lebanon, supports the idea of the unfeasibility of a genuine
democratization under political Islam. To establish a culture of democracy one
needs new education in values and cross-cultural morality in an age of
civilizational self-awareness and against the odds of Islamism. One cannot talk
about introducing democracy and about installing an agenda for the entire
Middle East without studying the culture that underpins patriarchical patterns.
Kanan Makiya who – under the pseudonym Samir al-Khalil – published the classic The
Republic of Fear16 promised President George W. Bush an easy
undertaking prior to the entry of US troops to Bagdad on 9 April 2003; he
forgot about the culture that underpins the ‘‘republic of fear.’’ By the end of
March 2003 Bush was addressing the people of Iraq from Philadelphia as ‘‘Iraqi
citizens,’’ promising them freedom, just like Napoleon Bonaparte in 1798 when
he claimed he was ‘‘liberating’’ Cairo from the despotic rule of the Mamlukes.
Napoleon too addressed Egyptians as citoyens, promising them liberte´ of
the French Revolution.17 Plunder aside, both Napoleon and George W.
Bush had to face the disappointment that the spell of democracy did not
enthrall the Muslim people, as they had expected. Why not? The answer is quite
simple: Democracy cannot be introduced from outside, least of all by force.
There is a need to educate the people in democracy. The UNDP report Arab Human
Development Report 200218 links lack of development in the Arab
world with the lack of democracy and human rights. Why did democracy fail to
‘‘conquer’’ the hearts of Arab Muslims? The lessons to be learned from the
historical records of the world of Islam are also highly pertinent for the
education of Europe’s Muslim diaspora in democracy.
In arguing that democracy is the
solution while stating the absence of a culture of democracy, we need to relate
the lack of education in democracy to a historical perspective. In talking
about change in the world of Islam in general, and in the Arab world in
particular, it has to be acknowledged that education has been the key to
cultural change. In the past, Islamic orthodoxy has succeeded in preventing the
spread and establishment of the worldview of Islamic rationalism through
keeping it out of the madrasa.19 At present, the revival of orthodox
Islam is based on the spread of the madrasa pattern of education. On the
example of Turkey20 we can see that the conflict over the primacy of
religious or secular education taking place between Kemalists and the AKP
Islamists has been revolving around the Imam Hatip schools educating young
Turks. These schools have contributed to the disseminating of orthodox i.e.
non-reformed Salafi Islamic ways of learning and related values among the more
than one million students who attend. In this context, new Islamist
counter-elites are emerging, contesting the secular elites. Elsewhere in
countries of the Islamic civilization the traditional madrasa or high school
has been revived with Saudi funding to sow the seeds of jihadi Islamism. These
educational institutions are currently being screened in light of 11 September
and the ensuing assaults in Europe. The key to what is called ‘‘Wahhabi
International’’21 are Saudi funds to promote Salafist education.
This observation applies to Europe as much as it does to Western Africa and
Southeast Asia.
The view that democratization is
the solution for the world of Islam in its present crisis for coping with
pending challenges and for overcoming its misery is combined with highlighting
the obstacles to this end. Among them is the flourishing of political Islam as
a variety of religious fundamentalisms emerging from the crisis of Islamic
societies. It follows that there are competing solutions: democratization vs
Islamization. Indeed, both have different answers to the existing crisis and
pursue different agendas. To promote the needed change, a new education is
required to be put in the service of democracy. In most Islamic countries the
issue is not like that in Turkey, i.e. a radical choice between religious or
secular education. It is rather the way ‘‘religion’’ is being thought of in
schools and what Islamic students are taught. In the Salafi-orthodox madrasas
in the world of Islam, and in many faith schools in Europe, one encounters the
teaching of interpretations of Islam that are not consonant with basic democratic
values. In fundamentalist institutions of learning the case is even worse: In
their drive to remake the world, Islamists put education in the service of
their political goals.22 The educational indoctrination in the
values of Islamism along with the shari’atization of Islam23 are the
political instruments employed for Islamist ends. I fail to share the concept
of ‘‘Islamism without fear’’ put forward by some pundits.
For countering the Islamist indoctrination in a war of ideas
I contend that there is a need for a new education based on enlightened, i.e.
reformed, Islam to promote the global aspiration of liberal democracy. The
envisioned ‘‘wind of change’’ in Iraq has not been a success story, but rather
a case for arguing that external interference combined with a lack of education
in democracy would result in a failure in promoting democratic political
culture. On general grounds one needs to relate cultural change in Islam to
cultural modernity through religious reforms. It is not a sin to readdress the
accusation of ‘‘Orientalism’’ and imposing ‘‘Western-style democracy’’ when
democratization of non-Western societies is at issue. There is truth in the
fact that democracy can be traced back to classical Greek roots, but it is also
intrinsically part of a universal cultural modernity (see note 1). Yet, the
norms and values of this very cultural modernity are intrinsically secular, as
is the democratic and rational worldview related to them. It is also true that
modern democracy is a product of Western civilization. The Saidist critics of
Orientalism and the Islamists share an engagement in polemics aimed at
disqualifying such cultural adoptions from Western culture. Islamists go a step
further and associate such adoptions with kufr/heresy. They relate democracy to
Christianity and disqualify it by labeling it a ‘‘hall mustawrad/ imported
solution’’ to be replaced by a hall al-Islami, as the global mufti Yusuf
al-Qaradawi prescribes.24
The propaganda of al-hall al-Islami/Islamic solution pursued
by the Islamists as da’wa in a political shape at times embraces democracy for
instrumental reasons, but only as a voting procedure. In the anti-European
propaganda war Western Christendom25 and the West26 are
put on equal footing. It is true that the Western civilization has Christian
roots, but it is secular. When it comes to democracy the Greek roots would
suggest a close relationship between the Western and Islamic rational heritage
rather than the opposite, propagated by the Islamists. Leslie Lipson is right in
arguing that the rise of the Western civilization can be summarized in one
sentence that, though oversimplified, stresses the essential: ‘‘The main source
of Europe’s inspiration shifted from Christianity back to Greece, from
Jerusalem to Athens. Socrates, not Jesus, has been the mentor of the
civilization that in modern times has influenced or dominated the planet.’’27
One page further on, Lipson refers to the historical fact of the
Hellenization of medieval Islam as the background for the passing of the
Islamic Hellenized heritage to Europe. Due to its great significance I
reiterate the quotation:
Aristotle crept back into Europe by the
side door. His return was due to the Arabs, who had become acquainted with
Greek thinkers ... Both Avicenna and Averroe¨s were influenced by him. When
the university of Paris was organized, Aristotle was introduced there from
Cordoba.28
The reference to these historical facts and
to the related interpretation can serve as grounds for establishing a
cross-cultural underpinning for the introduction of democracy into the Islamic
civilization. In referring to the classical Greek sources of the democratic
tradition in the West and in drawing on the worldview of classical Islamic
rationalism, one can repudiate the Islamist rejection of the introduction of
modern democracy, and this legitimates itself with the argument of
authenticity. The Hellenization29 process in the Islamic
civilization helped it to prosper and to develop an Islamic rationalism with
authentic roots. The cultural change in Hellenized Islam is a model for
contemporary Islamic societies in their mechanisms for overcoming their present
backwardness. I base my arguments on the findings of the already quoted UNDP’s Arab
Human Development Report of 2002 (note 18) which attributes this backwardness
to the lack of democracy and of proper education. I unfold my reasoning on the
grounds of the following three arguments:
First: Democracy is not simply a procedure
of voting, but basically a political culture.30 This culture can be
transmitted and practiced in institutions. Education is basic among them.
Religion could provide the needed ethical grounds, but the political culture of
democracy is utterly secular. In other words: Religion can both promote and
hinder democracy. Democracy cannot thrive without an established religious
pluralism, putting all religions on an equal footing, and thus is by definition
secular. A part of any religious faith is what each religion claims to be,
namely the absolute. In contrast, pluralism without discrimination or othet
‘ing denies all religions the claim of superiority over others.
Second: We are living in an age of a
‘‘cultural turn’’ in which those local cultures and regional civilizations
defined in terms of religion indulge themselves in cultivating a civilizational
self-awareness. This is expressed in defensive-cultural self-assertions. In
this context, religion comes to the fore and culture to prevalence. At issue is
a revolt against efforts of cultural globalization; it assumes the shape of a
‘‘revolt against the West.’’31 In the Islamic civilization the
outcome is the rise of Islamism, being the result of a politicization of Islam.32
Third: I contest the notion of Islamic shura-democracy
and see in it a disguise for the effort of political Islam to create obstacles
in the way of introducing a real culture of democracy.33
These three arguments are based on
realism positioned to avoid wishful thinking. An argument for democracy as the
solution must also be attached to a proper understanding of religion in
relation to democracy in contemporary Islamic societies. A conflict can be
observed in the realm of education. In coping with this conflict there are
different dimensions we need to understand.
The first dimension refers to the
gap between globalization and universalization. In his already quoted work,
Lipson refers to the Greek and Arab-Muslim reason-based (i.e. secular) sources
of the inspiration of Europe as the core of the modern civilization that ‘‘has
influenced or dominated the planet.’’ On these grounds it can be asked whether
these cross-cultural sources can be revived to create a promising scenario for
a better future. A contemporary Moroccan philosopher, Mohammed Abed al-Jabri,34
emphasizes that a better perspective for Arabs can only be based on the
revival of their rationalist heritage based on the tradition of Hellenization.
The conclusion is that secular rationalism is not alien to Islam,35 and
nor is it imported, as Islamists contend. The values of cultural modernity
based on rationalism can be universalized and can also be shared by Muslims
just as their ancestors shared the legacy of Hellenism.
In asking whether worldwide
democratization is feasible or the global aspiration of liberal democracy an illusion,
we need to enquire about possible matchings of structural globalization with
universalization of values. I claim to see a gap existing between both
processes. Values do not emerge out of global structures. They are transmitted
through education. Can values claiming universality be transmitted through
education in an age of the ‘‘return of the sacred’’36 characterized
by the values of political religion?
The second dimension of the issue
which needs to be cleared up is culture and its place in development. Culture
is never marginal and therefore it is a fact that cultural patterns can promote
or impede change: If we follow Clifford Geertz’s interpretation of culture, we
may adopt the idea that cultures are always local, in that they are based on
‘‘social production of meaning’’37 always taking place in a local
situation. In further developing this concept, I argue that the cultures
related to one another (e.g. by Islamic meaning and the related worldview)
group into regional civilizations, as is the case with Islam. In this
understanding I have coined the term ‘‘Islamic civilizational unity in a
cultural diversity.’’ Relating these insights to the subject-matter under issue
raises the questions: Can education in Islamic values be employed to promote the
culture of democracy? Could universal secular values be established by a
civilization which is defined by religion?
These questions relate to the return of the sacred in the
guise of political religion and civilizational self-awareness coupled with
exclusive self-assertion. At issue is the rise of a civilizational conflict
over values and worldviews.38 Political Islam is a variety of
neo-absolutism that belies the premise of cultural relativism. In contrast,
pluralism could accommodate diversity in a better way. There is yet another
problem with this form of relativism over values, to which Gellner refers:
The relativists ... direct their attack
only at those they castigate ... within their own Enlightened tradition, but
play down the disagreement which logically separates them from religious
fundamentalism. Their attitude is roughly that absolutism is to be tolerated,
if only it is sufficiently alien culturally. It is only at home that they do
not put up with it.39
The conflict
between absolutism and relativism touches on another civilizational conflict,
i.e. the conflict over values that underpin democracy. Is there a universal
claim of culturally based democracy also valid for the people of Islamic
civilization? It is true that Islamists pledge to subscribe exclusively to
Islamic values, but nevertheless they do not reject modernity fully. They split
modernity in two segments: first, instruments of science and technology and, second,
the values of cultural modernity. They consent to adopting the instruments,
which are believed to be ‘‘neutral,’’ while rejecting the Western values as
‘‘opposed to Islam.’’ They envision a de-Westernization of knowledge40 on
the way to a Pax Islamica, an order based on Islamic values. With regard to
education Islamists accept an instrumental education in science and technology,
but vehemently reject education that is in line with liberal democratic values.
As quoted earlier, Islamists despise liberal democracy as a ‘‘hall mustawrad/imported
solution’’.41 Does this notion mean Huntington is right? I believe
not, for democracy is not uniquely Western.
Unlike Huntington I distinguish
between Islam as a religion in the sense of faith, and Islamism as the Islamic
form of religious fundamentalism, i.e. political religion (see note 15). In my
contribution to the book Preventing the Clash of Civilizations, edited by the
former German president Roman Herzog, I outlined my concept of ‘‘cross-cultural
morality’’42 for bridging the gap between civilizations. If we
succeeded in educating Muslims in cross-cultural morality, we would manage to
establish a cultural underpinning for liberal democracy in the Islamic
civilization and thus open their minds and hearts to the spell of democracy. In
short: there are cultural grounds for underpinning the quest for democracy
presented as the solution for the people of Islamic civilization, and they
could claim authenticity.
In terms of moral philosophy and education as well as in
terms of politics, there exists a conflict between the call for a new
pro-democracy education in values and cross-cultural morality and the
civilizational selfawareness of Islamism that runs counter to ‘‘liberal
democracy’’ being despised as kufr/heresy. I believe that there can be no world
peace without cross-cultural bridging contributing to the global aspiration for
liberal democracy. After the end of the East–West conflict and its bipolar
split of the globe into dichotomic political blocks, Islamism should be denied
a reviving of this split on religious-political grounds. The conclusion is:
‘‘democratic peace’’43 is the solution.
Education in democracy in the age of the ‘‘revolt against the West’’
and the Islamic call for a return of history
The reader is reminded of the debate
concerning the end or return of history described in the introduction of this
book. This debate can be incorporated into Hedley Bull’s contribution, who as
early as 1984 described the new ‘‘revolt against the West’’ as one based on
values. Unlike the anti-hegemonic earlier anti-colonial revolt, the new
rebellion ‘‘has been conducted ... in the name of ... values, that are
themselves Western,’’ as Hedley Bull states. He continues,
[this] re-assertion by ... non-Western peoples
of their traditional and indigenous cultures, as exemplified in Islamic
fundamentalism ... is ... a revolt against Western values as such ... It has
become clear that in matters of values the distance between non-Western peoples
and Western societies is greater than in the early years of ... decolonization.44
Political Islam as analyzed in this book is
an expression of this Islamic fundamentalism as the Islamist version of a
general and global phenomenon (see note 8). The agenda of re-Islamization is an
effort at the de-Westernization of all realms of life including education in
liberal democratic values. Thus it contributes to a further deterioration in a
situation of cultural polarization. In this context a commitment to universal
values has suffered a blow yet continues to be a feasible option. Muslim
children are now being educated in the spirit of cultural self-assertion which
serves the dichotomy between ‘‘them’’ and ‘‘us’’ and ends up in a mentality of
‘‘other-ing non-Muslims’’ (see note 12). This results in an ethnic-religious
identity incorporated in identity politics of exclusion and conflict.45 In
Egypt, Turkey and North Africa I came across such conflicts between elites and
counter-elites, that is, between ruling elites and Islamist opposition in the
Islamic civilization, over the values to be recognized.46
Islamists revive madrasa education to unfold re-assertive
sentiments and pursue defensive-cultural attitudes. They also use the veil for
women, which is one of the symbols employed for establishing civilizational
divides.47 Education in Islamic history serves the revival of
constructed collective memories in underpinning the call for a return to the
history of Islamic glory. This is not the ‘‘restoration of the caliphate’’ as
some would-be pundits like to maintain. Clearly, the agenda of a return of
imperial Islamic history48 is not in line with universal values of
liberal democracy. There would be nothing wrong with opposing global
Westernization in Islamic civilization if this was reduced to a rejection of
the use of Western values to establish dominance over Muslim people. However,
the anti-Westernism employed by some Saudi professors in the shape of
anti-Americanism uses Westernization as a cover for essentializing existing
differences in values and world views.49
In contrast to the strategy of
‘‘other-ing’’ practiced by the Islamists and in the pursuit of living with one
another peacefully, an enlightenment-oriented education is the proper means for
transmitting this intercultural consensus presented as cross-cultural morality
(see note 42). Education in cross-cultural, universally valid values is the
very basis of democratic peace. This goal stands in conflict with political
Islam, which promotes civilizational selfawareness to uphold the call for a
return of history while contesting international morality. In fact, this is a
call for a ‘‘clash of civilizations’’ that uses the assertion of a cultural
identity vis-a`-vis the others to undermine democratization and reject
pluralism. The pitfalls of cultural self-assertion leading to ‘‘other-ing the
others’’50 in the world of Islam and to establishing ‘‘gated
communities’’ in the Islamic diaspora of Islam in Europe51 are
horrible to contemplate for the future of humanity. Instead, the commitment to
universal values is a contribution to democratic peace. This understanding is
in conflict not only with the neo-absolutism of the Islamists, but also with
the
cultural relativism of some trends by
contemporary left-liberals.52
Throughout this book I argue that
overlooking the fact of existing different civilizations would prove to be
counter-productive. The acknowledging of the differences has to be linked to
bridging through a crosscultural underpinning of values to be shared and
transmitted via education. In again referring to the gap between structural
globalization and universalization of values, I point at a simultaneity: It is
the one of structural globalization and cultural fragmentation existing side by
side. Is this an impasse? My answer is no: a search for a moral philosophy, and
an education in cross-cultural values for underpinning the aspiration for
liberal democracy under the conditions of value-change, is a feasible strategy.
It is impeded by an increasing civilizational self-awareness standing in the
way of cross-cultural bridging. In this context one needs an alternative way of
looking at the interrelation between culture/civilization, development and
globalization. This is the appropriate framework within which we can develop a
new moral philosophy for dealing with civilizational conflict in the new
century.
Earlier Western approaches of
modernization were preoccupied with the dichotomy of tradition/modernity and
the related evolutionist view on unilinear progress. In a Eurocentric manner,
they saw in the European expansion an effort at shaping a new world along the
lines of Western civilization and its standards. Nowadays, the backlash of the
penetration of the modernization– acculturation–Westernization project assumes
the shape of a reversal: a retraditionalization, a counter-acculturation and a
de-Westernization. This backlash also affects the quest for democracy in our
time. In a real or perceived confrontation of the ‘‘West and the rest’’53 in
the context of globalization, democracy is censured as a hall-mustawrad/imported
solution (see note 24) by the Islamists.
Under these conditions, how could one contribute to an
establishing of the values of the culture of democracy? Is it possible to
accommodate this quest with the need of Muslims for authenticity/asalah? Is
orthodox Islamic learning, based on studying the Qur’an and the tradition of
the Prophet, the hadith, an expression of this asalah?54 It is well
known that Mohammed as the Muslim messenger of God asked his community to
‘‘seek for knowledge, even as far as China/utlubu al-ilm wa law fi al-sen,’’
yet Islamic scribes, the ulema, instituted a contrary tradition of
closed-minded education, exclusive and restricted to learning the scripture.
The latter established the authority of the text that replaces the authority of
the reason.55 In classical Islam there was a tradition of learning
from others promoted by the tradition of Muslim travelers.56 New
reason-based disciplines of knowledge were introduced, but they could not reach
the madrasa institution of learning.57 Thus, no institutionalization
of rational sciences could take place in Islam. In cultural studies the insight
has been established that the institutionalization of new knowledge is
conditional to its impact on cultural change.58
The exposure of Islamic countries to cultural modernity in
the course of the expansion of Europe59 led to the introduction of
modern education from outside, and this created a crisis in Muslim education. A
Muslim-Bangladeshi scholar, arguing in Saudi-Wahhabi manner, describes the
crisis thus:
Modern Western
education places an exaggerated emphasis upon reason and rationality and
underestimates the value of the spirit. It encourages scientific enquiry at the
expense of faith; it promotes individualism; it breeds scepticism; it refuses
to accept that which is not demonstrable; it is anthropocentric rather than
theocentric ... The Muslim World too has been invaded by this Western form of
civilization.
This feeling of rootlessness has already
entered Muslim society because our intellectuals are now being educated in the
West, being brainwashed and returning to their own countries after reading
text-books which are all filled with ideas in conflict with their traditional
assumptions. Even in Muslim countries the traditional Islamic education system
has been superseded by a modern one which has been borrowed from the West.60
In promoting the
reintroduction of the madrasa Saudi Wahhabism aims at reversing this trend of
rationalization and democratization. It is a fact that Saudi oil money has
succeeded in such a reversal through funding the reintroduction of thoughtless
learning by rote, using the authority of the text as the basis for a cultural
promotion of Wahhabi Islam.61 This revival of madrasa education
under conditions of prevailing orthodox and political Islam is dismissed here,
though without falling into the trap of a Euro-centric bias of Westernization62
or that of ignoring the tensions between the global and the local.63
In concluding this section it can be stated that respect for
the values of discrete cultures cannot and should not be equated with the
identity politics of self-exclusion that leads to a conflict in the context of
the politicization of civilizational worldviews. Ideologies of religious
fundamentalism, such as political Islam, undermine cross-cultural bridging. A
quest for a convergence of values is the alternative to conflict. In arguing
for an education in democracy, I state the conflict and outline a solution for
it. Clearly, if the traditional Islamic education were to prevail in the
service of an Islamist revolt against the West in the meaning outlined, then
there could be no scenario for cross-cultural bridging. The ‘‘revolt against
the West’’ debate, and the collective memories revived with such a claim are in
contrast to universal value systems and are not beneficial for the promotion of
democracy, human rights and civil society. My fellow reform Muslim Abdullahi
An-Na’im and I have engaged in projects establishing cross- cultural
foundations for universal values and in reasoning about shari’a reforms.64
At issue is democratic value-change to overcome exclusive self-assertion
through establishing cross-cultural, universally minded standards of cultural
change. At issue also is dealing with the gap between the globalization of
structures and the universalization of values, creating a simultaneity of the
unsimultaneous that determines our age.65
Cultural change and democratization in Islam
The world of
Islamic civilization is exposed to the processes of structural globalization
and to the universalization of values of cultural modernity, even though these
do not match up with one another. In dealing with the related challenges, the
altered historical context compels us to reconsider the inherited concepts,
overcome their limited frameworks and bid farewell to traditional wisdoms.
Issues of cultures and civilizations are becoming more pivotal. In this
context, cultural change as a change of values is needed for overcoming
self-assertive attitudes creating obstacles in the way of global democracy.
Self-assertive education is detrimental to the spread of values needed to
underpin liberal democracy in a process of cultural change.
The dichotomy of tradition and
modernity and the assumption of a transition from traditional to modern
societies once dominated reasoning in moral philosophy, but are now considered
to have been phased out. Thus, values earlier considered either traditional or
modern have to be defined anew and related to civilizations. Of course, there
have been earlier challenges to the evolutionist paradigm of modernization, for
instance that posed by the critical theory of the Frankfurt School. However,
the challengers were no less Eurocentric in their views than those who were
supposed to be challenged. The social philosopher Raymond Aron was among the
very few scholars who went beyond such confines in challenging traditional
wisdoms and acknowledging the social fact of ‘‘heterogeneity of civilizations’’66
resisting the standardization effects in a globalizing world. Another
scholar of the same mode, Hedley Bull, criticized the view that globalization
would lead to a ‘‘shrinking of the globe’’ to the extent of becoming a ‘‘global
village’’ with only one set of values.67 Are democratic peace and
democratization possible in Islamic civilization68 under these
circumstances, within the context of a cultural change of values?
Given that democracy is based on
political culture, we need to acknowledge that there is no global culture in
sight paralleling structural globalization. In our new century we are
witnessing the return of history to center-stage in the return of
civilizations, yet in different varieties and, of course, under radically
different conditions. As already stated, cultures and civilizations are
different settings and therefore diverge from one another. I contend that each
civilization has its own sets of worldviews that determine the values of the
people belonging to it. Thus, the issue is to be able to address pivotal issues
of moral philosophy with the assistance of general concepts and theories,
addressing questions of cultural change that facilitate cultural divergence. It
is imperative, however, to honor the fact that in each case cultural and
civilizational sets of values are involved. To reiterate: It is wrong to reduce
values to a formula according to which they are either ‘‘modern’’ or
‘‘traditional’’ in a mechanistic manner. There is also an interplay between
cultural, socio-economic and political change. Men and women are embedded in
these intricate processes while they have their culturally determined
perceptions based on differing values. These perceptions are not always mechanistic
reflections of an objective reality, inasmuch as humans themselves can shape
existing realities and are simultaneously affected by them. For this reason the
moral-philosophical study of values in the process of change in developing
cultures needs to be disentangled from approaches that do not acknowledge these
realities, as well as from those which ignore the potential of humanity to give
shape to social conditions. Change and values lie at the core of a cultural
change that will create the grounds needed to underpin the establishment of
liberal democracy.
The study of change and values
from the point of view of moral philosophy and its educational links also needs
to consider the fact that our century could be described as an ‘‘age of
extremes,’’ to borrow the term coined by Eric Hobsbawm and used as the title of
one of his significant books. This view is pertinent to the present analysis,
in that the European expansion has not only been an expansion of modern
economic structures, but also entails the claim to Westernize the world in the
name of a sweeping modernization. From this situation extremes have emerged. In
the nonWestern parts of the world, developing cultures are muddling through a
process that might be described as ‘‘a transition from tradition to
modernity.’’ In this context they are becoming highly self-assertive. The
reverse is taking place in a Europe which has fallen into a series of
postmodern doubts about its civilizational self.
No doubt, from a
moral-philosophical perspective all people belong to one humanity, yet given
their divergent values they are at the same time parts of varying cultures and
civilizations. The processes of modernization inherent in the ongoing
globalization cannot undo the existence of cultural and civilizational
diversity. In fact, the shrinking of the world to a ‘‘global village’’ has led
to an unprecedented mutual awareness and interaction among people of different
cultures and civilizations, but it could not ‘‘in itself create a unity of
outlook and has not in fact done so,’’ as Hedley Bull put it (see note 67).
Mutual awareness on global grounds has not led to more standardization, but
rather to the opposite: an awareness of being distinctly different; and thus an
assertive civilizational self-awareness has been growing. The revival of the
asserted values of one’s own civilization as directed against the West is among
the outcomes of this development. In my study of the civilizational conflict, I
focus, unlike Huntington, on worldviews and related values. In view of the fact
of a ‘‘war of ideas’’ and of conflicting worldviews, some competing concepts
claim universality for themselves. In the case of Islam and the West we are
dealing with competing universalisms which contest the claim of others to the
same. On the grounds of these worldviews, the tensions escalating to a conflict
could contribute to a perceptual war of civilizations.69 To avert
this, one needs a globally valid consensus over values that could facilitate a
peaceful conflict resolution. The concept of an international – i.e.
cross-cultural – morality would be a contribution to establishing an
inter-civilizational consensus based on core values of the culture of
democracy. The needed democratization in the world of Islam could lead in this
direction. In pursuit of this end, one needs to establish new values and
transmit them through education in a process of cultural change. The Islamic
madrasa is not the right place for this task. Therefore, its current spread is
an impediment to education in the culture of democracy and runs counter to the
needed cultural change.
The vision of establishing universally accepted core values
of a culture of democracy may prove to be wishful thinking if we fail to
accommodate this goal to the revival of local cultures and the civilizations
around which they revolve. In this regard I would like to put forward two basic
views:
First, the awakening of pre-modern cultures,
believed to be parochial (see note 2), and of the religion-based civilizations
such as those of Islam, Hinduism or Confucianism is embedded in the same
context. It is a context of ‘‘world-time’’ and of ‘‘global village.’’ In other
words, the revival is articulated as a call for tradition, but the context is
intrinsically a modern one. It is the simultaneity of the old and the new, the
local and the global, which results in conflicting values. In short: at issue
is an invention of tradition. Second, the structures developed by Western
civilization are globalizing within the framework of the centuries-old European
expansion, but at the same time the underlying values of the very same
civilization have not yet been universalized. On the contrary, they are more
widely rejected than ever.
The outcome is the earlier
mentioned simultaneity of structural globalization and cultural fragmentation,
i.e. the co-existence of global structures and dissent over related values.
This gap between universalization of values and globalization is among the
major findings of my work in the past decades. It creates obstacles in the way
of educating in a culture of democracy in the world of Islam, which impede
cultural change as a process that touches on the social production of meaning
affecting values and attitudes.
The debate over cultural change,
as smoothing the way for the acceptance of the values of democracy, could be
dismissed altogether with a reference to cultural diversity in general as well
as within an Islamic civilization subdivided into a great number of local
cultures. In my study of Islam I have addressed this problem in terms of
arguing for a civilizational unity while acknowledging cultural diversity.
Islamic values in Indonesia, for instance, are not the same as Islamic values
among Muslim Palestinians. With regard to the prevailing worldview, however,
the different peoples of Islamic civilization share the very same patterns
vis-a`-vis the West, even though they are quite different in terms of local
cultures. Nevertheless, their values, even though they may differ, are closer
to one another than to the values of the West and other civilizations. When it
comes to the problem of the acceptance of democracy in the world of Islam, we
encounter almost the very same issues, be it in Indonesia or elsewhere in the
Islamic part of Asia. The ongoing globalization generates processes of change
in which values are embedded but not universalized. In this context I identify
three different levels of analysis: the local-cultural, the
regional-civilizational and the global. A mediation between these three levels,
aiming to link them to one another in the analysis of cultural change and
democracy in the pursuit of a democratic peace, is a political and analytical
necessity. The change in values is also a theme of cultural dialogue in the
search for value commonalities,
i.e. for a shared international morality.
Lessons from Iraq show that one civilization imposing universalism on another
is no less harmful to the acceptance of democracy than any Islamist
particularist identity could ever be. This insight leads to the core argument of
this concluding chapter.
Political Islam, institutional Islamism, voting procedures and the
culture of democracy
Among the findings of this book is the
understanding of political Islam (Islamism) as a totalitarian ideology based in
a movement incorporated in global networks of transnational religion. The
result is a religionized conflict over a remaking of the world. Islamists
envision accomplishing this remaking in two steps: first, establishing an
Islamic state for the world of Islam, and then establishing a world order to
replace what is termed as the ‘‘Westphalian Synthesis,’’ as the basis of the
present international system. Those who perceive Islamism as an expression of
extremism, fanaticism or radicalism fail to understand the rationale and
strategy of political Islam. And those who look at it as a passing phenomenon
that has reached its end, or who see it as simply an act of desperation – even
if globalized – as some French scholars do, are no less mistaken.70
The new movement is the paramount
example of the entry of religion into post-bipolar world politics.71 Islamism
is a political internationalism, with two varieties analyzed in this book. The
first is state-backed (Iran), while the second is carried out by non-state
actors fighting as irregular warriors. However, it is made clear in the first
part of this book, where jihadism and democracy are contrasted – as well as in
the introduction – that it would be wrong to equate Islamism with Islamic
civilization even though it grows from it. Therefore, the idea of a clash of
civilizations is dismissed. It is also a mistake to equate political Islam with
jihadism. Islamism is subdivided into institutional (peaceful) and jihadist
branches; both pursue the same goal but disagree on the strategy for achieving
it. While jihadism is committed to the idea of ‘‘Islamic world revolution’’
(Qutb) institutional Islamism (e.g. AKP of Turkey) embraces democracy, although
only as a procedure. Going to the ballot instead of shooting bullets does not
make a democracy. In short, these Islamists agree to democracy as a voting
procedure and abandon jihad. Until recent years this distinction was valid, but
contemporary developments have blurred it. The Sunni jihadists of Hamas72 participate
in elections and were able to come to power peacefully, but they maintain their
jihadist warfare. In a similar vein Hezbolla built up an electorate, it sends
its combatants to parliament and has ministers in the elected government. At
the same time Hezbolla disposes an irregular army that was able to win a war
against Israel in 2006, for the first time in the Middle East conflict. And in
Iraq the Mahdi Army of al-Sadr and SCIRI (plus its Badr Brigade) are both not
only in parliament but also have militias on the street. Is this the pursuit of
democratization we have yearned for as the solution?
Repeated authoritative reports in
the press on Hamas, Hezbollah and the Shi’ite militias in Iraq are not
reassuring with regard to their commitment to democracy. All three of them are
now engaging in a double strategy. On the one hand they act as institutional
Islamists in democratic institutions. On the other, they practice jihadism in
dealing with political groups and parties that disagree with them. This is
evidence for a lack of acceptance of the political culture of democracy. Added
to this anomaly is the fact that, on a local level, tensions between the
cultures and civilizations continue to be promoted by all of these Islamists,
who aim to upgrade them to a ‘‘clash of civilizations’’ dismissed in this
study.
The imperative of honoring the
subdivision of humanity into local cultures and regional civilizations is the
insight needed for the acceptance of diversity in moral philosophy. One ought
to view women and men as equals, without overlooking their civilizational
context and setting within related communities. To accept diversity is,
however, not to overlook the tensions between Western and Islamic values
underpinning conflicts. The solution is the establishment of an inter-cultural
and inter-civilizational agreement on core values, i.e. international morality
based on cross-cultural and mutual, unimposed universalist grounds. The formula
for this combination of diversity and consensus over core values is religious
and cultural pluralism. Such pluralism is not consonant with the values and the
attitude of Islamists, i.e. representatives of political Islam. The vision of
democratic peace is not for them. Therefore, the challenge of fundamentalism is
a challenge to the values of the culture of democracy and human rights.73 The
ideology of political Islam is an obstacle to educating in the values of
democracy, which is a civic culture and not just a voting procedure. It would
be a distortion to downgrade democracy to a ballot.
Years ahead of the revival of the
Kantian idea of democratic peace, a group of scholars at the Woodrow Wilson
Center in Washington, DC, and at the Norwegian Institute for Human Rights in
Oslo engaged in promoting the idea of establishing a cross-cultural, instead of
a universalistic, underpinning of democratic values. Among these scholars there
were reform Muslims committed to the concept of international morality (see
note 64). At issue was not only a reasoning on the potential of a cultural
underpinning for the introduction of democracy to the world of Islam, but also
efforts at cross-cultural bridging between the civilizations based on an
agreement on common core values. Fears of ‘‘Westernization’’ in the guise of
universalism can be defused. Among the instruments of such a strategy is a
cross-cultural education in values of democracy and human rights. This is a
most promising vehicle for promoting our moral-philosophical concerns of
reconciliation. Beyond this new education there can be no democratization and
democratic peace if self-assertive attitudes prevail. This insight applies – if
in different ways – both to the world of Islam and to its diaspora in Europe.
In Europe itself the strategy needs to be a different and adjusted one. In an
Islamic–Western dialogue, Muslims need in general to learn how to deal with
differences and, beyond acknowledging the differences, to agree to a
Europeanizing of Islam in Europe, as the concept of Euro-Islam suggests.
The final conclusion relates to
the knowledge transmitted in this book about different worldviews and values.
If these are politicized – as has been done in Islamism, as a case in point –
they result in a political religion that hampers democratic peace. A war of
ideas involving rival and conflicting worldviews can even be militarized, as
has already been done by the jihadist branch of political Islam. The
alternative scenario is that differences can be addressed within the framework
of an inter-cultural bridging as a first step to enable differences to be
resolved peacefully. Global democracy is the only real framework for
materializing such a scenario, and it can only materialize if its culture can
be shared on the grounds of mutual cross-cultural values.
In summing up, I maintain that the
great challenge of the twenty-first century is a challenge to rethink old
wisdoms, to develop new insights and then to do what can be done to achieve a
global democratization, which cannot be imposed. We need a moral cross-cultural
philosophy to underpin cultural change and the acceptance of universal values.
Values are related to ever-changing cultures and civilizations. I distinguish
between universality as a state of affairs and universalism as an ideology
under conditions of structural globalization, which is a more intrinsic and
complicated issue than is suggested by the belief some have in a ‘‘McWorld.’’
The idea of a ‘‘jihad vs McWorld’’ is a misconception.74 The
‘‘heterogeneity of civilizations’’ (Raymond Aron) underpins the heterogeneity
of values and could lead to a civilizational conflict. To state this is not to
agree to a self-fulfilling prophecy of a ‘‘clash of civilizations.’’ A
democracy based on a cross-cultural international morality, as presented in
this concluding chapter, could help to avert such a development.
In relating this general reasoning
to Islam and Europe, I argue for a new education based on democratization and
its related values in the European diaspora of Islam. If Muslims living in
Europe want to join this endeavor, they need to rethink Islam,75 accommodate
it to changed conditions and dissociate themselves from the political ideology
of Islamism, as well as from the movement it represents. In short, Islam is
compatible with democracy, human rights and civil society if Muslims want this.
Islam is always what Muslims make of it. The heritage of Islamic medieval
rationalism provides us with precedents and is a model for embracing the values
of cultural modernity in a revival of the tradition of Averroe¨ist Islamic
rationalism. In contrast, Islamism is the worst option for the acceptance of
democracy. Those Muslims who argue that Islam and civil society are not
compatible76 are mistaken. Those Muslims who engage in questionable
identity politics, and not in democratization in the world of Islam and its
diaspora in Europe, do harm both to Islam and to Muslims.77

Notes
Introduction
1
On Westphalia and
the birth of the modern international system of states see Adam Watson, The
Evolution of the International Society (London: Routledge, 1992), chapter 17;
on the pre-Westphalian Islamic system, see chapter 11.
2
On the
Mediterranean as a civilizational unity see the seminal work of Fernand
Braudel, The Mediterranean, 2 vols (Berkeley, CA: University of California
Press, 1995). The Pirenne thesis on the creation of the Mediterranean under the
impact of the emergence of Islamic Civilization will be discussed in Part III.
For a reference see note 13.
3
See Maxime
Rodinson, Mahomet (Paris: E´ditions du Seuil, 1975). In this book
Rodinson also coins the term ‘‘ide´ologie mobilisatrice/mobilizatory
ideology,’’ employed in the present book for understanding the impact of
‘‘political Islam.’’
4
See Fred Donner, The
Early Islamic Conquests (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981).
5
The interpretation
of the Islamic futuhat-expansion (from the seventh to the seventeenth
centuries) as the first model for an (albeit) incomplete globalization is
unfolded in the comprehensive structural history of Islam by B. Tibi, Kreuzzug
und Djihad. Der Islam und die christliche Welt (Munich: Bertelsmann, 1999).
6
Hasan Hanafi made
this statement in a public panel during the European summit on ‘‘Safe
Democracy, Terrorism and Security,’’ held in Madrid in March 2005 in
commemoration of 11 March 2004. On Hanafi see also note 16. On Islamic Spain as
alAndalus, see Roger Collins, The Arab Conquest of Spain 710–797 (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1989, reprinted 1994). This Islamic rule is viewed as
‘‘colonization’’ by Efraim Karsh, Islamic Imperialism. A History (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 2006), pp. 56–68.
7
On this classical hijra
see Fred Donner, The Early Islamic Conquests (referenced in note 4) and the
book by Khalid Yahya Blankinship, The End of the Jihad State. The Reign of
Hisham Ibn Abd al-Malik and the Collapse of the Umayyads (Albany, NY: State
University of New York Press, 1994). On Islamic migration to Europe viewed by
Islamists as a modern hijra pursued by quasi settlers, see B. Tibi, Islamische
Zuwanderung. Die gescheiterte Integration (Munich: DVA, 2002), chapter 6.
8
Francis Fukuyama, The
End of History and the Last Man (New York: Avon Books,
1992).
9
See Fernand
Braudel, History of Civilizations (New York: Penguin Books, 1994).
10
Samuel P.
Huntington, Clash of Civilizations (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996); and in
contrast the book by the former president of Germany, Roman Herzog et al., Preventing
the Clash of Civilizations. A Peace Strategy for the Twenty-First Century (New
York: St Martin’s Press, 1999), co-authored among others (chapter 10) by B.
Tibi.
11
Ibn Khaldun, al-Muqaddima
(Prolegomena), Arabic reprints (Cairo: al-Maktaba alTijariyya, with no date),
English translation by Franz Rosenthal, The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to
History, 3 vols (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1958). For a survey
and on the scholarly debates, see chapter 8 in the comprehensive intellectual
history of Islam by B. Tibi, Der wahre Imam. Der Islam von Mohammed bis zur
Gegenwart (Munich: Piper, 1996), pp. 179–209.
12
Arnold J. Toynbee, A
Study of History, vols 1–12 (London: Oxford University Press, 1951–61).
13
Henri Pirenne, Mahomet
et Charlemagne (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1937, reprint 1992),
English translation: Mohammed and Charlemagne (London: Dover, 1939, reprint 2001).
14
Raymond Aron, Paix
et guerre entre les nations (Paris: Calmann-Le´vy, 1962).
15
See Mohammed Imara,
al-sahwa al-Islamiyya [The Islamic Awakening] (Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 1991).
16
Hasan Hanafi (see
note 6) engaged during the East–West conflict in an analogy to the historical
situation of the birth of Islam, by then facing two decaying empires, making
the following claim: today, ‘‘the two superpowers are degenerating, Islam is
the power of the future, inheriting the two superpowers of the present,’’
quoted by Martin Kramer, Arab Awakening and Islamic Revival (New Brunswick, NY:
Transaction, 1996), p. 156.
17
See B. Tibi,
‘‘Europeanizing Islam or the Islamization of Europe,’’ in Peter Katzenstein and
Timothy Byrnes (eds) Religion in an Expanding Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2006), chapter 8.
18
Mark Juergensmeyer,
Terror in the Mind of God. The Global Rise of Religious Violence (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 2000); chapter 4, pp. 60–83, is on the Islamic
variety of this phenomenon.
19
See the
introduction by Hobsbawm in Terence Ranger and Eric Hobsbawm (eds) The
Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, reprint),
pp. 1– 14; and my article ‘‘The Roots of Jihadism in Political Islam,’’ International
Herald Tribune, 30 August 2005, p. 6.
20
The variety of a
‘‘civil Islam’’ compatible with democracy and civil society is described by
Robert Hefner in his excellent study Civil Islam. Muslims and Democratization
in Indonesia (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000). In contrast,
John Esposito and John Voll confuse Islam with Islamism in their questionable
book Islam and Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). See my
critical review in Journal of Religion, vol. 74, 4 (1998), pp. 667–9; on the
needed distinction see Peter Demant, Islam vs Islamism. The Dilemma of the
Muslim World (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006).
21
Hedley Bull, ‘‘The
Revolt against the West,’’ in Hedley Bull and Adam Watson (eds) The Expansion
of International Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), pp. 217–28. Unlike
early decolonization as a political revolt, the new contestation is
civilizational. On the place of civilizations in world history see notes 9 to
12 above.
22
Hasan al-Banna’s Risalat
al-jihad [Essay on jihad] is included in Majmu’at rasa’il alimam al-shahid [Collected
Writings] (Cairo: Dar al-Da’wa, legal edition, 1990), pp. 271–90.
23
Sayyid Qutb, al-salam
al-alami wa al-Islam [World Peace and Islam] (Cairo: Dar alShuruq, 1992, legal
edition, new printing), pp. 169–77 on jihad as a ‘‘Islamic world revolution.’’
24
See the sections on
‘‘Remaking Politics’’ and ‘‘Remaking the World’’ in Martin E. Marty and R.
Scott Appleby (eds) The Fundamentalism Project, Vol. Three: Fundamentalisms and
the State. Remaking Polities, Economies and Militance (Chicago, IL: University
of Chicago Press, 1993), here Part 1 and Part 3; on the idea of the West
challenged in the present day, see David Gress, From Plato to NATO. The Idea of
the West and its Opponents (New York: The Free Press, 1998).
25
See Richard P. Mitchell,
The Society of the Muslim Brothers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969).
26
On Arab post-1967
thinking, see Fouad Ajami, The Arab Predicament. Arab Political Thought and
Practice since 1967 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); and on the 1967
war itself, as well as on its impact, see B. Tibi, Conflict and War in the
Middle East. From Interstate War to New Security (New York: St Martin’s Press,
1998, second enlarged edition), chapter 3, and on its repercussions, chapter 4.
27
See Nazih Ayubi, Political
Islam (London: Routledge, 1991); and B. Tibi, The Challenge of Fundamentalism.
Political Islam and the New World Disorder (Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press, 1998, updated edition 2002), in particular chapters 1 and 5.
28
On this contemporary
crisis see B. Tibi, The Crisis of Modern Islam (Salt Lake City, UT: Utah
University Press, 1988). This book was also published in Bahasa Indonesia,
the national language of the Republic of Indonesia.
After 9/11, Bernard Lewis used the same title for a book on this subject (New
York: Norton, 2003), unfortunately without acknowledging the earlier use of
this formula in the book cited.
29
See the papers of the
EU think-tank Center for European Policy Studies (CEPS), edited by Michael
Emerson, Democratization in the European Neighborhood (Brussels: CEPS, 2005),
wherein my chapter ‘‘Islam, Freedom and Democracy in the Arab World,’’ pp.
93–116. In contrast, Sayyid Qutb, al-Salam (referenced in note 23), p. 169,
calls for an ‘‘Islamic world revolution’’ leading to the totalitarian order of Hakimiyyat
Allah/God’s rule.
30
For an
authoritative civilizational history of the Islamicate see Marshall Hodgson, The
Venture of Islam. Conscience and History in a World Civilization, 3 vols
(Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1974; paperback 1977).
31
See Geoffrey
Parker, The Military Revolution. Military Innovation and the Rise of the West,
1500–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
32
See Philip D.
Curtin, The World and the West. The European Challenge (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2000).
33
See the selected
writings of Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani, translated and edited by Nikki Keddie, An
Islamic Response to Imperialism. Political and Religious Writings of alAfghani (Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press, 1968); see also Rudolph Peters, Islam and
Colonialism. The Doctrine of Jihad (The Hague: Mouton, 1979). It is utterly
wrong to set al-Banna in a historical line with al-Afghani, as the grandson of
alBanna, the Swiss-born Tariq Ramadan, suggests in his highly disputed book Aux
Sources du Renouveau Musulman. D’al Afghani a` Hassan al-Banna. Un Sie`cle de
Re´formisme Islamique (Paris: Bayard, 1998).
34
See Tariq Ramadan, Aux
Sources du Renouveau Musulman (see note 33) and the disclosure of his agenda by
Robert Spencer, Onward Muslim Soldiers. How Jihad Still Threatens America and
the West (Washington, DC: Regenery, 2003), pp. 64–9. See also Caroline Fourest,
Fre`re Tariq (Paris: Grasset, 2004).
35
The Dutch Nexus
Institute conducted the project ‘‘Europe. A Beautiful Idea?’’ during the Dutch
EU presidency in 2004. Based on this project, the journal of the Nexus
Institute published a special issue: see B. Tibi, ‘‘Euro-Islam, juridisch
burgerschap en burgers van het hart,’’ Nexus, no. 41 (2005), pp. 173–203.
36
See Anthony Arnold,
The Fateful Pebble. Afghanistan’s Role in the Fall of the Soviet Empire (Novato,
CA: Presido, 1993), p. ix. For the role of bin Laden see Yossef Bodansky, Bin
Laden. The Man Who Declared War on America (Rocklin, CA: Forum,
1999).
37
For more details on
this argument see the publication of the ‘‘Culture Matters Research Project’’
(CMRP), directed by Lawrence Harrison at the Fletcher School of Tufts University,
in two volumes: Lawrence E. Harrison and Jerome Kagan (eds) Volume One.
Developing Cultures: Essays on Cultural Change and Volume Two. Case Studies (London:
Routledge 2006). I was a member of this CMP and co-authored both volumes.
38
On this debate see
the contributions in Erasmus Foundation (ed.) The Limits of Pluralism.
Relativism and Neo-Absolutisms (Amsterdam: Praemium Erasmianum Foundation,
1994) with contributions by Ernest Gellner and Clifford Geertz, wherein my
chapter ‘‘Political Islam as an Expression of Fundamentalism,’’ pp. 29–35.
39
B. Tibi, ‘‘The
Pertinence of Islam’s Predicament with Democratic Pluralism,’’ Religion-Staat-Gesellschaft:
Journal for the Study of Beliefs and Worldviews, vol. 7, 1 (2006), pp. 83–117.
See also Bat Ye’or, Islam and Dhimmitude. Where Civilizations Collide (Cranbury,
NJ: Associated University Presses, 2002). In her subsequent book Eurabia. The
Euro-Arab Axis (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 2005), Bat Ye’or
engages in overstretched polemics.
40
See: J. Millard
Burr and Robert Collins, Alms for Jihad. Charity and Terrorism in the Islamic
World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), in particular chapter 10 on
the ‘‘Islamization of Europe.’’
41
The early essay by
Stanley Hoffmann, ‘‘An American Social Science: International Relations,’’
reprinted in his collection of essays Janus and Minerva. Essays in the Theory
and Practice of International Politics (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987)
continues to be worth reading. Hoffmann himself proves in a later book that he
is not free from this sentiment. See Stanley Hoffmann, World Disorders (Lanham,
MD:
Rowman & Littlefield, 1998). Other US scholars have
started to acknowledge the place of religion in world politics. See Eric O.
Hanson, Religion and Politics in the International System Today (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2006).
42
Daniel Philpott,
‘‘The Challenge of September 11 to Secularism in International Relations,’’ World
Politics, vol. 55, 1 (2002), pp. 66–95, here p. 67. Philpott addresses the
Islamist threat to the secular Westphalian foundations of world order. On this
debate see the new Part V completed after 9/11 for the second edition of B.
Tibi, Islam between Culture and Politics (New York: Palgrave, 2005) in which
the new chapter 11, pp. 234–72, deals with the ‘‘return of the sacred’’ to
world politics.
43
Hedley Bull, The
Anarchical Society. A Study of Order in World Politics (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1977); regarding the difference between system and society in
international politics, see pp. 13–14. On Bull see the essay by Stanley Hoffman
in his collection of articles World Disorders (referenced in note 41), pp.
13–34.
44
John Kelsay, Islam
and War. A Study in Comparative Ethics (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1993),
p. 117.
45
Ju¨rgen
Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. Twelve Lectures (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 1987), here pp. 1–22.
46
See B. Tibi,
‘‘Culture and Knowledge: The Politics of the Islamization of Knowledge. The
Fundamentalist Claim to De-Westernization,’’ Theory, Culture & Society,
vol. 12, 1 (1995), pp. 1–24; and also Roxanne L. Euben, Enemy in the Mirror.
Islamic Fundamentalism and the Limits of Modern Rationalism. A Work of
Comparative Political Theory (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999),
pp. 164–7.
47
On this see Ernest
Gellner, Postmodernism, Reason and Religion (London: Routledge, 1992); see also
the reference in note 38 which includes Gellner’s contribution to the debate on
this issue.
48
See the most
influential expression of this theory in the work of David E. Apter, The
Politics of Modernization (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1965).
49
Samuel P.
Huntington, The Third Wave. Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman,
OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991); and Francis Fukuyama, The End of
History (referenced in note 8).
50
This is the
contention of S¸erif Mardin in his chapter on civil society included in
John Hall (ed.) Civil Society (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995), p. 279; in
contrast to this see Mary Kaldor, Global Civil Society (Cambridge: Polity
Press, 2003). See also B. Tibi, ‘‘The Cultural Underpinning of Civil Society in
Islamic Civilization,’’ in Elisabeth Ozdalga and Sune Person (eds) Civil
Society, Democracy and the Muslim World (Istanbul: Swedish Research Institute,
1997), pp. 23–32.
51
See B. Tibi, Der
Neue Totalitarismus. Heiliger Krieg und westliche Sicherheit (Darmstadt:
Primus, 2004). In a lecture given in November 2004 at Princeton University, the
then German Minister of Foreign Affairs, Joschka Fischer, adopted my argument
that Islamism is the ‘‘new totalitarianism,’’ however with no reference. See
the report ‘‘Fischer bezeichnet den islamischen Terror als neuen
Totalitarismus’’ in Financial Times Deutschland, 20 November 2003, p. 16. In my
commentary on the same subject and in the same newspaper, 22 December 2004, p.
26, I referred to this unreferenced adoption.
52
See Fred Halliday, Nation
and Religion in the Middle East (London: Saqi Books, 2000); and B. Tibi, ‘‘From
Islamist Jihadism to Democratic Peace? Islam at the Crossroads in Post-Bipolar
International Politics,’’ Ankara Paper 16 (London: Taylor and Francis 2005),
pp. 1–41.
53
For more details
see B. Tibi, ‘‘War and Peace in Islam,’’ in Terry Nardin (ed.) The Ethics of
War and Peace (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996 and
1998).
54
On the tensions
between secular and religious order see Mark Juergensmeyer, The New Cold War?
Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State (Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press, 1993). This tension is overlooked in the flawed book by James
Piscatori, Islam in the World of Nation-States (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1986) criticized by B. Tibi, Arab Nationalism. Between Islam and the
Nation-State (New York: Macmillan, third edition 1997), pp. 222–3.
55
Sayyid Qutb, al-salam
(referenced in note 23), p. 169.
56
Ibid., p. 171.
57
See Roman Herzog et
al., Preventing the Clash of Civilizations (referenced in note 10). 58 See
Ju¨rgen Habermas, Glauben und Wissen (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag,
2001). For a critique see B. Tibi, ‘‘Habermas and the Return of the Sacred. Is
it a Religious Renaissance, a Pronouncement of a ‘Post-Secular Society,’ or the
Emergence of Political Religion as a New Totalitarianism?’’ Religion-Staat-Gesellschaft,
vol. 3, 2 (2002), pp. 265–96; see also note 42.
59
Abdullahi An-Na’im,
Toward an Islamic Reformation. Civil Liberties, Human Rights and International
Law (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1990).
60
The concept is
outlined by the rector spiritus of political Islam, Sayyid Qutb, Ma’alim fi
al-tariq [Signposts along the Road] (Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, thirteenth legal
edition 1989). See also Qutb in note 23.
61
See B. Tibi,
‘‘Secularization and De-Secularization in Islam,’’ Religion-Staat-Gesellschaft,
vol. 1, 1 (2000), pp. 95–117.
62
The views of the
French scholars Olivier Roy, The Failure of Political Islam (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1994) and Gilles Kepel, Jihad, expansion et
de´clin de l’Islamisme (Paris: Gallimard, 2000) proved to be utterly
wrong. More authentic and academic is the study on this overall phenomenon by
Mohammed Dharif, al-Islam al-siyasi fi al-watan al-Arabi [Political Islam in the
Arab World] (Casablanca: al-Ma’arif, 1992). In order to grasp this issue, one
needs to consult Arabic sources and not the Western press coverage, unlike some
of the US experts on these movements.
63
See the proceedings
published by the Jakarta Center for Languages and Cultures/UIN (ed.) Islam and
the West. Obstacles and Solutions in Search for a New World Civilization (Jakarta:
UIN and Adenauer Foundation, 2003). My contributions to this volume are:
‘‘Islamism, Democracy and the Clash of Civilizations,’’ pp. 3–13 and
‘‘Obstacles and Solutions,’’ pp. 196–200. This dialogue was continued a year
later, see Karlina Helmanita et al. (eds) Dialogue in the World Disorder. A
Response to Threat of Unilateralism and World Terrorism (Jakarta: UIN
Hidayatullah University, 2004). For my contribution on the quest of pluralism,
see pp. 159–203.
64
More on this in
Stephen Schwarz, The Two Faces of Islam. The House of Sa’ud from Tradition to
Terror (New York: Doubleday, 2002).
65
On Euro-Islam see
the references in note 17 and the debate in Part III in the present book.
66
On this in Egypt
see Raymond Baker, Islam without Fear (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
2003); Carrie Rosefsky Wickham, Mobilizing Islam. Religion, Activism and
Political Change in Egypt (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002); on
Turkey see Marvine Howe, Turkey Today. A Nation Divided over Islam’s Revival (Boulder,
CO: Westview Press, 2000) and B. Tibi, Mit dem Kopftuch nach Europa? Die
Tu¨rkei auf dem Weg zur Europa¨ischen Union (Darmstadt: Primus, 2005).
67
On cultural
fragmentation on global grounds see B. Tibi, Islam between Culture and Politics
(referenced in note 42), chapter 4. I acknowledge that Aron, Paix et Guerre
entre les Nations (referenced in note 14) coined the term ‘‘heterogeneity of
civilizations’’ meaning cultural fragmentation.
68
This is the flaw in
the book by Jack Goody, Islam in Europe (Cambridge: Polity,
2004).
69
See Peter Neumann,
‘‘Europe’s Jihadist Dilemma,’’ Survival, vol. 48, 2 (2006), pp. 71– 84, and B.
Tibi, ‘‘Gibt es eine islamische bzw. islamistische Herausforderung an die
Identita¨t Europas? Ein Pla¨doyer fu¨r eine euro-islamische
Asabiyya,’’ Religion-StaatGesellschaft, vol. 6, 1 (2005), pp. 19–62.
70
For more than two
decades books on this subject have been mushrooming, but only a few among them
meet professional expectations. Worth mentioning is Rouhollah K. Ramazani, Revolutionary
Iran. Challenge and Response in the Middle East (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1987).
71
On this see B.
Tibi, ‘‘The Iranian Revolution and the Arabs,’’ Arab Studies Quarterly, vol. 8,
1 (1986), pp. 29–44 (first presented at MESA, Chicago 1983); see also Graham E.
Fuller, The Center of the Universe. The Geopolitics of Iran (Boulder, CO:
Westview Press, 1991).
72
See Udo Ulfkotte, Der
Krieg in unseren Sta¨dten. Wie Islamisten Deutschland unterwandern (Frankfurt
am Main: Eschborn, 2003). This author was silenced by law-suits.
73
On this see Maxime
Rodinson, La Fascination de l’Islam (Paris: Maspero, 1980); see also Franz
Rosenthal, The Classical Heritage of Islam (London: Routledge, 1975).
74
On Turkey and
Europe see B. Tibi, Mit dem Kopftuch nach Europa (referenced in note 66) and on
the new meaning of the Islamic veil as civilizational fault-line see
Nilu¨fer Go¨le, The Forbidden Modern. Civilization and Veiling (Ann
Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1996), in particular p. 3.
75
John Kelsay, Islam
and War (referenced in note 44), p. 25.
76
See Myron Weiner, The
Global Migration Crisis. Challenge to States and to Human Rights (New York:
HarperCollins, 1995), chapter 6; see also my book on this subject referenced in
note 7 above in which I elaborate further on Weiner’s approach.
77
On Islamic
rationalism see Herbert A. Davidson, Alfarabi, Avicenna and Averroes on
Intellect. Their Cosmologies, Theories of the Active Mind, and Theories of
Human Intellect (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); and B. Tibi, Der
wahre Imam. Der Islam von Mohammed bis zur Gegenwart (Munich: Piper, 1996),
Part Two.
78
Leslie Lipson, The
Ethical Crises of Civilizations. Moral Meltdown or Advance?
(London: Sage, 1993), on Islam’s impact on Europe, pp.
60–1.
79
Franz Rosenthal, The
Classical Heritage of Islam (referenced in note 73).
80
Mohammed Abed
al-Jabri, Arab Islamic Philosophy (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press,
1999), pp. 120–30.
81
For more on this
argument of institutionalization see Robert Wuthnow, Meaning and Moral Order.
Explorations in Cultural Analysis (Berkeley, CA: University of California
Press, 1987), in particular chapter 8.
82
For more details B.
Tibi, Islam between Culture and Politics (note 42), here chapter 8.
83
John Kelsay, Islam
and War (referenced in note 44), p. 117, see also pp. 26–7. See also the new
book by Kelsay, Arguing for just War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
2007).
84
For more on this
issue see Niyazi Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey (New York:
Routledge, 1998, new edition).
85
Hasan al-Sharqawi, al-Muslimun,
ulama wa hukama [Muslims as Ulema and Wise Men] (Cairo: Mu’ssasat Mukhtar,
1987), p. 12.
86
On this Islamic
semi-modernity see B. Tibi, ‘‘The Attitudes of Sunni-Arabic Fundamentalism:
Attitudes Towards Modern Science and Technology,’’ in Martin Marty and R. Scott
Appleby (eds) Fundamentalisms and Society (Chicago, IL: Chicago University
Press, 1993), pp. 73–102.
87
John Kelsay, Islam
and War (referenced in note 44), p. 25.
88
See Fred Dallmayr, Dialogue
among Civilizations (New York: Palgrave, 2002), on my views, pp. 50–63; and Naika
Foroutan, Kulturdialoge zwischen dem Westen und der islamischen Welt (Wiesbaden:
DUV, 2004).
89
On this see Franz
Rosenthal, The Classical Heritage of Islam (referenced in note 73).
90
Al-Farabi, al-madina
al-fadila, English translation by M. Walzer, The Perfect State (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1985) including the Arabic text.
91
Darfur in 2004–5
displays how bloodshed between Muslims and non-Muslims is a recurrent issue in
the Sudan. See the contributions in M.W. Daly and Ahmad A. Sikainga (eds) Civil
War in the Sudan (London: British Academic Press, 1993).
92
On Sudan see Dan
Petterson, Inside Sudan. Political Islam. Conflict and Catastrophe (Boulder,
CO: Westview, 2003).
93
See the chapter on
Yusuf al-Qaradawi ‘‘The Global Mufti,’’ in Birgit Schaebler and Leif Stenberg
(eds) Globalization and the Muslim World (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University
Press, 2004), pp. 153–65.
94
See the
contributions in Robert Hefner, Remaking Muslim Politics. Pluralism,
Contestation, Democratization (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005).
95
See United Nations,
Arab Human Development Report 2002. Creating Opportunities for Future
Generations (New York: United Nations, 2002).
96
Mohammed Abed
al-Jabri, Takwin al-aql al-Arabi [The Creation of the Arab Mind] (Beirut:
al-Talia, 1984); see also Abdulhadi Abdulrahman, Sultat al-nas [The Authority
of the Text] (Beirut: al-Markas al-Thaqafi, 1993).
97
See Mohammed
Shahrur, al-dawla wa al-mujtama [State and Society] (Damascus: alAhali, 1994),
p. 16.
98
See B. Tibi,
‘‘Between Islam and Islamism: A Dialogue with Islam and a Security Approach
vis-a`-vis Islamism,’’ in Tami A. Jacoby and Brent E. Sasley (eds) Redefining
Security in the Middle East (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002),
pp. 62– 82.
99
See B. Tibi, ‘‘A
Migration Story. From Muslim Immigrants to European Citizens of the Heart,’’
in: The Fletcher Forum for World Affairs, vol. 31, 1 (Winter 2007) pp. 147–168.
1 From classical jihad to global jihadism in an
invention of tradition for mapping the world into Dar al-Islam
1
Among the popular
writings on jihad is Paul Fregosi, Jihad in the West (Amherst, NY: Prometheus
Books, 1998). Books on this subject have been mushrooming in the aftermath of
11 September 2001. For a more serious introduction see Reuven Firestone, Jihad.
The Origins of Holy War in Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
2
See my article on
jihad in Roger Powers and William Vogle (eds) Protest, Power and Change. An
Encyclopedia of Non-Violent Action (New York: Garland, 1997), pp. 277– 81.
3
For more details
see B. Tibi, ‘‘From Islamist Jihadism to Democratic Peace? Islam at the
Crossroads in Post-Bipolar International Politics,’’ Ankara Paper 16 (London:
Taylor and Francis 2005), pp. 1–41. For scholarly Western publications on jihad
see first the reader edited by Rudolph Peters, Jihad in Classical and Modern
Islam (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener, 1996) and for a comparative perspective
the books by Peter Partner, God of Battles. Holy Wars in Christianity and Islam
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997) and James Turner Johnson, The
Holy War Idea in Western and Islamic Traditions (University Park, PA:
Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001). The book edited by Terry Nardin, The
Ethics of War and Peace (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998)
includes a chapter by B. Tibi on jihad on pp. 128–45.
4
On the first
Islamic century of jihad-wars see Khalid Yahya Blankinship, The End of the
Jihad State. The Reign of Hisham Ibn Abd al-Malik and the Collapse of the
Umayyads (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1994). These
formative jihad-wars were essential to the history of the first Islamic empire
of the Umayyads. This classical jihad was continued by the Ottomans until the
seventeenth century; it was only halted through the rise of the West in the
course of its ‘‘military revolution’’ (see note 12).
5
In my historical
study Kreuzzug und Djihad. Der Islam und die christliche Welt (Munich:
Bertelsmann, 1999; paperback edition: Goldmann Press, 2001) I argue that the
jihadexpansion of the Islamic order from the seventh through the seventeenth
century (chapter I on Arab jihad and chapter IV on Ottoman jihad) was the first
globalization project in world history. In the referenced book I suggest that
at present Islamists are trying to revive this project within the framework of
their neo-jihad (chapter VIII). Their anti-globalism is not directed against
globalization in general, but rather against the one of the West, intended to
be replaced by the envisioned Islamist globalization of the twenty-first
century.
6
For more details on
the Islamic universalist worldview see B. Tibi, Islam between Culture and
Politics (New York: Palgrave 2001, new expanded edition 2005 with a new Part
V), chapter 2.
7
See the book by one
of the late sheykhs of al-Azhar, Abdulhalim Mahmud, al-jihad wa al-nasr [Jihad
to Victory] (Cairo: Dar al-Kitab al-Arabi, 1968). This work is an authoritative
one; for other Islamic sources published in Arabic on jihad, see notes 10, 42,
46 below.
8
Maxime Rodinson, Mohammed,
second edition (London: Allen Lane, 1971).
9
See Abdullahi Ahmed
An-Na’im, Towards an Islamic Reformation. Civil Liberties, Human Rights and
International Law (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1990). As An-Na’im
rightly argues, the shari’a views on non-Muslims are incompatible with the idea
of human rights. See also Ann E. Mayer, Islam and Human Rights. Tradition and
Politics (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991) and B. Tibi, ‘‘Universality of
Human Rights and Authenticity of non-Western Cultures. Islam and the Western
Concept of Human Rights’’ (review article on Mayer), Harvard Human Rights
Journal, vol. 5 (1992), pp. 221–6.
10
This is the
argument of Mohammed Shadid, al-jihad fi al-Islam [Jihad in Islam], seventh
edition (Cairo: Dar al-tawzi al-Islamiyya, 1989) which is the most widely known
and authoritative study in Arabic on this topic. The early publication by Majid
Khadduri, War and Peace in the Law of Islam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1955) also suggests, though from different points of view,
that a consistent concept of jihad can be found in the Qur’an. In contrast, I
believe such a consistent concept is only constructed through interpretation,
as outlined in this chapter.
11
Throughout this
book, Qur’anic references are related to the Arabic text in the undated Tunis
edition published by Mu’assasat Abdulkarim bin Abdullah. I have checked my own
translations against the authoritative German translation by Rudi Paret
(Stuttgart: Kohlhammer Verlag, 1979), and the following one by Adel Th. Khoury
(Guetersloh: Gerd Mohn Verlag, 1987). In addition, I looked at the sometimes
inadequate English translation by N.J. Dawood, fourth edition (London and New
York: Penguin, 1974). On the Qur’an, see Bell’s Introduction to the Qur’an,
completely revised and enlarged by W. Montgomery Watt (Edinburgh: University
Press, 1994).
12
See Geoffrey
Parker, The Military Revolution. Military Innovation and the Rise of the West,
1500–1800, second edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
13
See Hedley Bull and
Adam Watson (eds) The Expansion of International Society (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1984); and also Phillip D. Curtin, The World and the West. The European
Challenge (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
14
See Adam Watson, The
Evolution of International Society. A Comparative Historical Analysis (London:
Routledge, 1992), chapter 11 on the Islamic system and chapter 17 on
Westphalia.
15
Bernard Lewis,
‘‘Politics and War,’’ in Joseph Schacht and Clifford E. Bosworth, (eds) The
Legacy of Islam, second edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), p. 173 and p.
176; see also Marshall G.S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam. Conscience and
History in a World Civilization, 3 vols (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press, 1974).
16
See Najib
al-Armanazi, al-Sharii’ al-duwali fi al-Islam [International Law in Islam],
reprint of the 1930 Damascus edition (London: Riad El-Rayyes Books, 1990),
originally in French as a PhD dissertation. See also the historical documents
and texts included in the edited volumes by Bernard Lewis, Islam, 2 vols (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1987), Volume One: Politics and War.
17
See Bernard Lewis, What
Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2002).
18
See David B.
Ralston, Importing the European Army. The Introduction of European Army
Techniques into the Extra-European World 1600–1914 (Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press, 1990), especially chapters 3 and 4.
19
See Sabir Tu’aymah,
al-shari’a fi asr al-ilm [Islamic Shari’a in the Age of Science], (Beirut: Dar
al-Jil, 1979), p. 217, pp. 223ff.
20
Michael Walzer, Just
and Unjust Wars. A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations, third edition
(New York: Basic Books, 2003); with regard to Islam see John Kelsay, Arguing
for Just War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007).
21
Majid Khadduri, War
and Peace (referenced in note 10), pp. 63–4.
22
Ibid., p. 295.
23
Sayyid Qutb, al-salam
al-alami wa al-Islam [World Peace and Islam] reprint (Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq,
tenth reprint 1992), legal edition.
24
In those times
Islamic jihad had been interpreted in Western terms as a war of liberation
grounded in the right of self-determination against colonial rule. On this
topic, see Rudolph Peters, Islam and Colonialism. The Doctrine of Jihad and
Modern History (The Hague: Mouton, 1979); B. Tibi, ‘‘Politische Ideen in der
‘Dritten Welt’ waehrend der Dekolonisation,’’ in Iring Fetscher and Herfried
Muenkler (eds) Pipers Handbuch der politischen Ideen (Munich: Piper Verlag,
1987), pp. 363–402; and JeanPaul Charney, L’Islam et la guerre. De la guerre
juste a` la re´volution sainte (Paris: Fayard, 1986).
25
An Islamic Response
to Imperialism is the title of the book with the selected writings of
al-Afghani, edited by Nikki Keddie (Berkeley, CA: University of California
Press, new edition 1968).
26
In this context I
refer to Georges Sorel’s formula ‘‘action directe’’ for describing the
totalitarian resort to violence as terror by the jihadists. See the new
printing of Georges Sorel, Re´flexions sur la violence (Paris: Edition du
Trident, 1987); English translation, Jeremy Jennings (ed.) Reflections on
Violence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
27
On the case of
Egypt, see Nabil Abdulfattah, al-mashaf wa al saif [The Holy Book of the Sword]
(Cairo: Madbuli, 1984) and Nu’mat-Allah Janinah, tanzim al-jihad [The
Organization of Jihad] (Cairo: Dar al-Huriyya, 1988); on Lebanon, see Martin
Kramer, ‘‘Hizbullah: The Calculus of Jihad,’’ in Martin Marty and Scott Appleby
(eds) The Fundamentalism Project, Vol. Three: Fundamentalisms and the State.
Remaking Polities, Economies, and Militance (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press, 1993); and on Sudan, Edgar O’Ballance, Sudan, Civil War and Terrorism
(1956–1999) (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2000).
28
Mark Juergensmeyer,
Terror in the Mind of God (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000);
and Bruce Lincoln, Holy Terrors. Thinking about Religion after September 11 (Chicago,
IL: University of Chicago Press, 2003).
29
On the
industrialization of warfare see Anthony Giddens, Nation State and Violence (Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press, 1987), chapter 9, pp. 222–54.
30
The work of
al-Nasiri was republished in nine volumes: Ahmed bin Khalid al-Nasiri, al-istiqsa
fi akhbar al-Maghreb al-aqsa [Inquiry into the History of Maghreb] (Casablanca:
Dar al-Kitab, 1955). I rely on the comprehensive study by Abdullatif Husni, al-Islam
wa al-alaqat al-duwaliyya. Namudhaj Ahmed bin Khalid al-Nasiri [Islam and
International Relations] (Casablanca: Afriqya al-Sharq, 1991).
31
Quoted in the book
by Husni (referenced in note 30), here p. 141, examines al-Nasiri’s work in its
entirety. On al-Nasiri see also Kenneth Brown, ‘‘Profile of a NineteenthCentury
Moroccan Scholar,’’ in Nikki Keddie (ed.) Scholars, Saints and Sufis. Muslim
Religious Institutions in the Middle East since 1500 (Berkeley and Los Angeles,
CA: University of California Press, 1972), pp. 127–48.
32
Quoted by
Abdullatif Husni (referenced in note 30), p. 149 and p. 150.
33
See Philip Khoury
and Josef Kostiner (eds) The Formation of States in the Middle East (Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press, 1990). This book includes my chapter on the
simultaneity of tribes and nation-states.
34
Mahmud Shaltut, al-Islam
aqidah wa shari’a [Islam as Religious Belief and Law], tenth printing. (Cairo:
Dar al-Shuruq, 1980).
35
Ibid., p. 404. 36
Ibid., p. 409.
37
Jadul-haq Ali
Jadulhaq (ed.) al-Azhar, Bayan ila al-nas [Declaration to Humanity], 2 vols
(Cairo: al-Azhar, 1984–8). The page references to this work will be referenced
in the text.
38
See Richard P.
Mitchell, The Society of Muslim Brothers (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1969).
39
For more on Qutb
see the introduction to this book and the references given there for further
reading.
40
The essay by Hasan
Al-Banna, risalat al-jihad [Essay on Jihad], is included in his collected works,
Majmu’at Rasa’il al-Imam al-Shahid Hasan al-Banna [Collected Writings], new
legal edition (Cairo: Dar al-Da’wa, 1990), pp. 271–92. References in the text
are to this source.
41
For the contrast
between this understanding of ‘‘others’’ as dhimmi and the requirement of
religious pluralism see Bat Ye’or, Islam and Dhimmitude (Cranbury: Associated
University Press, 2002).
42
See Sayyid Qutb, Ma’alim
fi al-tariq [Signposts along the Road], thirteenth legal edition (Cairo: Dar
al-Shuruq, 1989), p.10; and also Qutb, al-jihad fi sabil Allah [Jihad on the
Path of Allah] (Cairo: Dar al-Isma, reprint 1992).
43
Sayyid Qutb, Ma’alim
(referenced in note 42), p. 201.
44
Sayyid Qutb, al-Islam
wa mushiklat al-hadarah [Islam and the Problems of Civilizations] ninth legal
edition (Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 1988); and Sayyid Qutb, almustaqbal li hadha
al-din [The Future Belongs to this Religion] (Cairo: Dar al- Shuruq, 1981).
45
Sayyid Qutb, Ma’alim
(referenced in note 42), p. 72.
46
Muhammad Na’im
Yasin, al-jihad. Mayadinahu wa asalibahu [The Fields and Methods of Jihad]
(Algiers: Dar al-Irschad, 1990), p. 76.
47
Ibid., p. 77 and p.
81.
48
Colonel
(al-Muqaddam) Ahmad al-Mu’mini, al-ta’bi’a al-jihadiyya fi al-Islam [The
Jihadist Mobilization for Islam] (Constantine, Algeria: Mu’asasat al-Isra,
1991).
49
For an
interpretation of shari’a see B. Tibi, Islam between Culture and Politics (New
York: Palgrave, 2001), chapter 7, and Ann E. Mayer, ‘‘The Shari’a: A
Methodology or a Body of Substantive Rules?’’ in Nicholas Heer (ed.) Islamic
Law and Jurisprudence (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1990), pp.
177–98.
50
Mohammed Said
al-Ashmawi, Usul al-shari’a [The Origins of Shari’a] (Cairo: Madbuli, 1983).
51
Among these authors
is James Piscatori, Islam in the World of Nation States (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1986). The constructed concept of an ‘‘Islamic state/dawla
islamiyya’’ is a recent Islamist addition to Islamic thought; it does not exist
in the classical sources of Islam; the recent call for it is an indication of
the ideology of Islamic fundamentalism. See, among others, Muhammad Hamidullah,
The Muslim Conduct of State (Lahore: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, 1977); Abdulrahman A.
Kurdi, The Islamic State (London: Mansell, 1984); and for a critical evaluation
B. Tibi, The Challenge of Fundamentalism. Political Islam and the New World
Disorder (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press 1998, updated edition
2002), chapters 7 and 8.
52
Najib al-Armanazi
(referenced in note 16); the page references in the following are given in the
text.
53
See B. Tibi, Islam
and the Cultural Accommodation of Social Change (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1990).
54
Ann E. Mayer, War
and Peace in the Islamic Tradition: International Law, mimeograph, ref. no. 141
(Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School, Department of
Legal Studies, no date), p. 45.
55
See B. Tibi, Conflict
and War in the Middle East. From Interstate War to New Security, second edition
(New York: St Martin’s Press, 1998); and also the third edition of my book, Arab
Nationalism. Between Islam and the Nation State (London: Macmillan, 1997).
56
Abdullatif Husni, al-Islam
(referenced in note 30), p. 59.
57
Charles Tilly, The
Formation of National States in Western Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1985), p. 45.
58
On pre-modern
societies see Patricia Crone, Pre-Industrial Societies. Anatomy of the
Pre-Modern World (Oxford: Oneworld, new printing, 2003).
59
See Fazlur Rahman, Islam
and Modernity. Transformation of an Intellectual Tradition (Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press, 1982); W. Montgomery Watt, Islamic Fundamentalism
and Modernity (London: Routledge, 1988); and B. Tibi, The Crisis of Modern
Islam. A Preindustrial Culture in the Scientific-Technological Age (Salt Lake
City, UT: University of Utah Press, 1988).
2 Polity and rule: the Islamic quest for civil society
and for democracy against Hakimiyyat Allah as the Islamist system of
totalitarian government
1
On this issue see
the contributions to the volume edited by Larry Diamond et al., Islam and
Democracy in the Middle East (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press,
2003) and also Noah Feldman, After Jihad. America and the Struggle for Islamic
Democracy (New York: Farrar and Straus, 2004).
2
S¸erif
Mardin, ‘‘Civil Society in Islam,’’ in John Hall (ed.) Civil Society. Theory,
History, Comparison (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995), pp. 278–9.
3
The fallacy of an
‘‘Islamization of democracy’’ parallel to the missing distinction between Islam
and Islamism is among the flaws in the highly contestable book by John Esposito
and John Voll, Islam and Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996);
see my critique in Journal of Religion, vol. 78, 4 (1998), pp. 667–9.
4
See Mohammed
Arkoun, Rethinking Islam (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1994).
5
The allegation of
the Christian roots of the idea of Europe is made by the Oxford scholar Larry
Siedentop, Democracy in Europe (London: Penguin Books, 2000), in particular
chapter 10. This view is contested in Part III of the present book.
6
The Muslim reformer
Abdullahi An-Na’im argues in a similar manner with regard to human rights and
their introduction into Islam: He dismisses the notion of their Christian roots
in highlighting their secular character; see his book, Toward an Islamic
Reformation (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1990) and his other
volume, edited together with Francis Deng, Human Rights in Africa.
Cross-Cultural Perspectives (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1990), wherein also my
contribution ‘‘The European Tradition of Human Rights and the Culture of
Islam,’’ pp. 104–32.
7
See Samuel P.
Huntington, Clash of Civilizations (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996); and in
contrast, B. Tibi, ‘‘International Morality and Cross-Cultural Bridging,’’ in
Roman Herzog et al., Preventing the Clash of Civilizations. A Peace Strategy
for the Twenty-First Century (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1999), pp. 107–26.
8
See Hisham Sharabi,
Neopatriarchy. A Theory of Distorted Change in Arab Society (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1992).
9
Sayyid Qutb, al-jihad
fi sabil Allah [Jihad on the Path of God] (Cairo: Dar al-Isma, 1992, reprint)
and also the reprint of Qutb, al-salam al-alami wa al-Islam [World Peace and
Islam] (Cairo: al-Shuruq, 1992).
10
For more details
see B. Tibi, The Challenge of Fundamentalism. Political Islam and the New World
Disorder (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998, enlarged and
updated edition 2002).
11
Daniel Philpott,
‘‘The Challenge of September 11 to Secularism in International Relations,’’ World
Politics, vol. 55, 1 (October 2002), pp. 66–95.
12
The literature on
this subject is mushrooming. Worth mentioning are the books by Shireen
Tahmasseb Hunter, The Future of Islam and the West. Clash of Civilizations or
Peaceful Coexistence? (London: Praeger, 1998); Fawaz Gerges, America and
Political Islam. Clash of Cultures or Clash of Interests? (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1999); Graham E. Fuller and Ian Lesser, A Sense of Siege. The
Geopolitics of Islam and the West (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995). For an
intercivilizational dialogue perspective see chapter 10 in the Harvard book by
B. Tibi, Islam between Culture and Politics (New York: Palgrave, 2001, enlarged
edition, 2005), pp. 210–30.
13
B. Tibi,
‘‘Democracy and Democratization in Islam,’’ in Miche`le Schmiegelow (ed.) Democracy
in Asia (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1997), pp. 127–46; and chapter 9 in B.
Tibi, The Challenge of Fundamentalism (referenced in note 10).
14
Robert Hefner, Civil
Islam. Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2000). While writing this book in Jakarta, Indonesia, I found
that location made it possible to engage in this reasoning; see my
contributions to Chaider Bamualin (ed.) Islam and the West (Jakarta: UIN Hidayatullah
University, 2003); and to Karlina Helmanita et al. (eds) Dialogue in the World
Disorder. A Response to Threat of Unilateralism and World Terrorism (Jakarta:
UIN Hidayatullah University, 2004).
15
Robert Hefner, Civil
Islam (referenced in note 14), p. 20.
16
Masykuri Abdillah, Responses
of Indonesian Muslim Intellectuals to the Concept of Democracy (Hamburg: Abera
Verlag, 1997).
17
On popular
sovereignty see David Held, Democracy and the Global Order. From the Modern
State to Cosmopolitan Governance (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,
1995), pp. 31–47; and F.H. Hinsley, Sovereignty (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, second edition 1986).
18
Masykuri Abdillah, Responses
(referenced in note 16), p. 250.
19
Bruce Russett, Grasping
the Democratic Peace. Principles for a Post-Cold War World (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 11.
20
Ibid., p. 135.
21
See Chapter 1 of
this book and also B. Tibi, ‘‘War and Peace in Islam,’’ in Terry Nardin (ed.) The
Ethics of War and Peace (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996, also
1998), pp. 128–45; and on the status of minorities of non-Muslims in Islam see
Bat Ye’or, Islam and Dhimmitude (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Press,
2002).
22
Martin Marty and
Scott Appleby (eds) The Fundamentalism Project, 5 vols, (Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press, 1991–5), wherein see B. Tibi, ‘‘The Worldview of
Sunni Arab Fundamentalists,’’ vol. 2, Fundamentalisms and Society (1993), and
also parts I and III in vol. 3, Fundamentalisms and the State on remaking polities.
23
Mark Juergensmeyer,
The New Cold War? Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State (Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press, 1993); and the subsequent volume by the
same author: Terror in the Mind of God (Berkeley, CA: University of California
Press, 2000).
24
On this argument
see Ernest Gellner, ‘‘Expiation through Subjectivism,’’ in Erasmus Foundation
(ed.) The Limits of Pluralism. Relativism and Neo-Absolutisms (Amsterdam:
Praemium Erasmianum Foundation, 1994), pp. 163–5.
25
See Mary Kaldor, Global
Civil Society (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003).
26
Abu al-A’la
al-Mawdudi, al-Islam wa al-madaniyya al-haditha [Islam and Modern Civilization]
(Cairo: reprint, no date). On these views of Mawdudi see also Muhammad Dharif, al-Islam
al-siyasi fi al-watan al-arabi [Political Islam in the Arab World] (Casablanca:
Maktabat al-Umma and al-Ma’arif, 1992), pp. 98–9; and Youssef M.
Choueiri, Islamic Fundamentalism (Boston, MA: Twayne,
1990), pp. 93ff.
27
Jean
Franc¸ois Revel, Democracy Against Itself (New York: Free Press, 1993),
p. 200. 28 Ibid., p. 211. 29 Ibid., p. 217.
30
See B. Tibi, Islamische
Zuwanderung. Die gescheiterte Integration (Munich: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt,
2002), on parallel societies as Islamic enclaves, chapters 3 and 4.
31
John Ehrenburg, The
Idea of Civil Society. The Critical History of an Idea (New York: New York
University Press, 1999).
32
Michael Walzer (ed.
and transl.) Al-Farabi on the Perfect State (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1985).
33
See chapter 2 in B.
Tibi, Islam between Culture and Politics (referenced in note 12), pp. 53–68.
34
For views of
liberal Islam see Mohammed Said al-Ashmawi, Jauhar al-Islam [The Core of Islam]
(Cairo: Sinah, 1992); Mohammed al-Jabri, al-turath wa al-hadatha [Heritage and
Modernity] (Beirut: al-Markaz al-Thaqafi, 1991) and Mohammed Arkoun, Rethinking
Islam (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1994). It is most disturbing and ill-informing to
see texts by fundamentalists (e.g. al-Qaradawi et al.) being listed in the
disinforming and misleading reader edited by Charles Kurzman, Liberal Islam (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
35
See Hasan Hanafi, al-din
wa al-thaura [Religion and Revolution], 8 vols (Cairo: Madbuli, 1977–88);
Mohammed Shahrur, al-kitab wa al-Qur’an, qira’a mu’asira [The Book of the
Qur’an. A Modern Reasoning] (Beirut: Sharikat al-Matbu’at, sixth edition 2000).
36
See B. Tibi, Der
wahre Imam. Der Islam von Mohammed bis zur Gegenwart (Munich: Piper, 1996,
several editions). This is a comprehensive intellectual history of Islam.
37
On the first and
second wave of Hellenization in classical Islam see W.M. Watt, Islamic
Philosophy and Theology (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1962, reprinted
last 1979), pp. 37ff, 91ff. The magnitude of intellectual indebtedness of
Islamic political philosophy to Hellenism is shown in the contributions
published in Charles Butterworth (ed.) The Political Aspects of Islamic
Philosophy. Essays in Honor of
Muhsin S. Mahdi, Harvard Middle Eastern Monographs
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992). Mahdi was the source of intellectual
inspiration for me while I was writing my history of ideas of Islam, Der wahre
Imam (referenced in note 36), wherein part II on Islamic rationalism and
Hellenization (and on the impact of Mahdi on my thinking see the
acknowledgement in that book on p. 13).
38
See note 32 above,
and further on al-Farabi, T.J. de Boer, Geschichte der Philosophie im Islam (Stuttgart:
Fromann, 1901), pp. 98–116; on al-Farabi as second master see p. 100.
39
Abu al-A’la
al-Mawdudi, al-Islam wa al-madaniyya al-haditha (referenced in note 26).
40
Huntington, The
Third Wave. Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman, OK:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1991).
41
The authoritative
history of Islamic civilization is Marshall Hodgson, The Venture of Islam,
Conscience and History in a World Civilization, 3 vols (Chicago, IL: University
of Chicago Press, 1974).
42
See John Esposito
and John Voll, Islam and Democracy (referenced in note 3).
43
See the
authoritative criticism of political Islam by a leading enlightened Muslim,
Mohammed Said al-Ashmawi, al-Islam al-siyasi [Political Islam] (Cairo: Sinah,
1987), French translation: L’Islamisme contre L’Islam (Paris: La Decouverte,
1989), pp. 667–9.
44
See John Kelsay, Islam
and War. A Study in Comparative Ethics (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1993),
p. 117.
45
See Bassam Tibi,
‘‘Islamic Law/Shari’a, Human Rights, Universal Morality and
International Relations,’’ Human Rights Quarterly, vol. 16, 2 (May 1994),
pp. 277–99.
46
See the proceedings
of the Erasmus Ascension Symposium (referenced in note 24).
47
On this see Ernest
Gellner, Postmodernism, Reason and Religion (London: Routledge, 1992), in
particular pp. 84f. (see also note 24).
48
B. Tibi, Der neue
Totalitarismus. Heiliger Krieg und westliche Sicherheit (Darmstadt: Primus,
2004).
49
Robert Kaplan, The
Coming Anarchy. Shuttering the Dreams of Post Cold War (New York: Random House,
2000).
50
For a historical
background see M.C. Ricklefs, A History of Modern Indonesia, second edition
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993), here part VI, pp. 237ff. See
also Robert Hefner, Civil Islam (referenced in note 14).
51
Fred von der
Mehden, Two Worlds of Islam. Interaction between Southeast Asia and the Middle
East (Miami-Jacksonville, FL: University of Florida Press, 1993), p. 97.
52
Hamid Enayat, Modern
Islamic Political Thought (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1982), pp.
125–38.
53
On these encounters
in the nineteenth century see William M. Watt, Muslim–Christian Encounters (London:
Routledge, 1991).
54
Rifa’a Rafi
al-Tahtawi, Takhlis al-ibriz ila talkis Paris [Paris Diary] (Beirut: Ibn
Zaidun, reprint, no date). See the German translation of Tahtawi’s Paris diary,
completed and ed. by Karl Stowasser, Ein Muslim entdeckt Europa (Munich: C.H.
Beck Verlag, 1989), p. 223.
55
See Leonard Binder,
Islamic Liberalism. A Critique of Development Ideologies (Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press, 1988). Despite deep respect for Binder’s
scholarship I have, however, had a hard time swallowing the chapter in his book
on the intellectual father of Islamic fundamentalism Sayyid Qutb (labeled as a
‘‘religious aesthetic’’) being incorporated as a part of deliberations on
Islamic liberalism (sic!). An even worse case is the anthology of Charles
Kurzman (ed.) Liberal Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), in which
leading fundamentalists are presented as ‘‘liberals.’’
56
Abbas Mahmud
al-Aqqad, al-demoqratiyya fi al-Islam [Democracy in Islam] (Cairo: 1952, many
reprints).
57
See W.M. Watt, Islamic
Philosophy and Theology (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1962).
58
Leslie Lipson, The
Ethical Crises of Civilization: Moral Meltdown or Advance? (London: Sage,
1993), p. 63. For a detailed record of the cultural influence of Islamic
civilization upon the European Renaissance see also Bassam Tibi, Kreuzzug und
Djihad. Der Islam und die christliche Welt (Munich: Bertelsmann, 1999), chapter
V.
59
This formula is
coined in accordance with Ernst Bloch, Avicenna und die aristotelische Linke (Frankfurt
am Main: Suhrkamp, 1963).
60
At the top of them
we find Mohammed Abed al-Jabri, Arab Islamic Philosophy (Austin, TX: University
of Texas, 1999).
61
See George Makdisi,
The Rise of Colleges. Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 1981), pp. 77–80.
62
For an elaboration
of the two rival traditions in Islamic intellectual history, i.e. fiqh versus falsafa,
see B. Tibi, ‘‘Politisches Denken im klassischen und mittelalterlichen Islam
zwischen Fiqh und Falsafa,’’ in Iring Fetscher and Herfried Muenkler (eds) Pipers
Handbuch der politischen Ideen: Das Mittelalter, vol. II (Munich: Piper Verlag,
1993) pp. 87–140. See also part II in B. Tibi, Der wahre Imam (referenced in
note 36).
63
On this issue see
Robert Wuthnow, Meaning and Moral Order (Berkeley, CA: University of California
Press, 1987), chapter 8.
64
For more details
see Anke von Kuegelgen, Averroe¨s und die arabische Moderne. Ansaetze zu
einer Neugruendung des Rationalismus im Islam (Leiden: Brill Press, 1994).
65
See Albert Hourani,
Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798–1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1962).
66
Hamid Enayat, Modern
Islamic Political Thought (referenced in note 52), pp. 138f.
67
See the overview of
Adeed Dawisha, Arab Nationalism. From Triumph to Despair (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2003) and also B. Tibi, Arab Nationalism. Between
Islam and the Nation-State (New York and London: Macmillan and St
Martin’s Press, third enlarged edition 1997).
68
On this war see the
two chapters of part II in B. Tibi, Conflict and War in the Middle East, From
Interstate War to New Security (New York: St Martin’s Press, second edition
1998) and Adeed Dawisha, Arab Nationalism (referenced in note 67), chapter 10
on ‘‘1967 and after.’’
69
In Raymond W.
Baker, Islam without Fear. Egypt and the New Islamists (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2003) political Islam is presented in a very distorted
manner.
70
Therefore, I
strongly disagree with John Esposito and John Voll, Islam and Democracy (referenced
in note 3). Similarly I see great shortcomings in Esposito’s The Islamic
Threat. Myth or Reality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). Certainly
Islam is no threat; however, it is highly misleading to confuse Islam and
Islamism.
71
Ellis Goldberg et
al. (eds) Rules and Rights in the Middle East: Democracy, Law, and Society (Seattle,
WA: University of Washington Press, 1993), p. 8.
72
See the article
‘‘Fundamentalism’’ by B. Tibi, in S.M. Lipset (ed.) The Encyclopedia of
Democracy, 4 vols (Washington, DC: The Congressional Quarterly, 1995), vol. 2,
pp. 507–10; and also my recent chapter on ‘‘Islamic Fundamentalism,’’ in Mary
Hawkesworth and Maurice Kogan (eds) Encyclopedia of Government, 2 vols, second
edition (London: Routledge, 2004), vol. 1, chapter 13, pp. 184–204.
73
Sayyid Qutb, Ma’alim
fi al-tariq [Signposts along the Road], thirteenth legal printing (Cairo:
al-Shuruq, 1989). For an interesting Qutb interpretation see Roxanne Euben, Enemy
in the Mirror (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), chapter 3.
74
Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Hatmiyyat
al-hall al-Islami wa al-hulul al-mustawradah [The Islamic Solution and the
Imported Solutions], new printing (Cairo: Mu’assat al-Risalah, 1980), p. 50f.
Qaradawi is the leading Islamist – not a liberal, as Charles Kurzman (see note
34) contends.
75
On this
misconception of al-Qaradawi in US publications see note 34 above.
76
Hamid Enayat, Modern
Islamic Political Thought (referenced in note 52), p. 131.
77
On Islamic law see
chapter 7 in B. Tibi, Islam between Culture and Politics (referenced in note
12), pp. 148–66. See also the book by Mohammed Said al-Ashmawi, Usul alshari’a [The
Origins of the Shari’a] (Cairo: Madbuli, 1983).
78
Joseph Schacht, An
Introduction to Islamic Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964), p. 54.
79
Hamid Enayat, Modern
Islamic Political Thought (referenced in note 52), p. 131.
80
Ibid., p. 126.
81
Mohammed Arkoun, Rethinking
Islam (referenced in note 4).
82
B. Tibi, Islam and
the Cultural Accommodation of Social Change (Boulder, CO: Westview Press,
second printing 1991).
83
Hamid Enayat, Modern
Islamic Political Thought (referenced in note 52), p. 135. In his book on
Egypt, Nadav Safran presents examples of these evasions which resulted in the
failure of Islamic liberalism: Nadav Safran, Egypt in the Search for Political
Community (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961), p. 85 and pp. 96f.,
120f. 84 Hamid Enayat, Modern Islamic Political Thought (referenced in note
52), p. 135.
85
Therefore it is not
by accident but by conviction that I am among the authors of the book Islamic
Political Ethics, ed. by Sahail Hashmi (Princeton, NY: Princeton University
Press, 2002).
86
Robert Hefner, Civil
Islam (referenced in note 14), p. 215.
87
Institute for Arab
Unity Studies (ed.) Azmat al-demoqratiyya fi al-watan al-Arabi [Crisis of
Democracy in the Arab World] (Beirut: Institute for Arab Unity Studies, 1984).
88
B. Tibi, ‘‘al-bina’
al-iqtisadi-al-ijtima’i lil-demoqratiyya’’ [The political and social
underpinning of democracy] in Azmat al-demoqratiyya (referenced in note 87),
pp. 73–87.
89
See for instance
United Nations, Arab Human Development Report 2002. Creating Opportunities for
Future Generations (New York: United Nations, 2002).
90
The persistence of
such tribal and clan or religious loyalties/identities is one of the major
obstacles to democratization in the Middle East. See B. Tibi, ‘‘The
Simultaneity of the Unsimultaneous. Old Tribes and Imposed Nation-States in the
Middle East,’’ in Philip Khoury and Joseph Kostiner (eds) Tribes and State
Formation in the Middle East (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press,
1990), pp. 127–52.
91
The reference here
is to the concept of a low degree of institutionalization, in Samuel
P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1968). This approach is adopted as a framework for the
analysis of the contemporary Arab state. For more details see B. Tibi, Das
arabische Staatensystem (Mannheim: Bibliographisches Institut, 1996), chapter
1.
92
See the UNDP report
of 2002, accused by the followers of Edward Said of ‘‘Orientalism.’’
93
See Bassam Tibi,
‘‘Zwischen islamischem Erbe und kultureller Erneuerung: Die Chancen der
Demokratisierung im Nahen Osten nach dem Golfkrieg,’’ in Herfried Muenkler
(ed.) Die Chancen der Freiheit. Grundprobleme der Demokratie, Festschrift fuer
Professor Iring Fetscher (Munich: Piper Verlag, 1992), pp. 199–223. The English
version of the quoted chapter was presented at the Harvard/MIT joint seminar on
development in a paper (not published) in March 1991.
94
Among these Arab
debates is the one pursued in November 1983 and published in a book (referenced
in note 88).
95
For more details
see Amatzia Baram, Culture, History and Ideology in the Formation of Ba’thist
Iraq 1968–1989 (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1991); on Iraqi history see Phebe
Marr, The Modern History of Iraq (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985, reprinted
after the war in Iraq).
96
See the important
chapter on ethno-politics by Gabriel Ben-Dor in Milton Esman and Itamar
Rabinovich (eds) Ethnicity, Pluralism and the State in the Middle East (Ithaca,
NYand London: Cornell University Press, 1988), pp. 71–92.
97
Among the numerous
publications of the Ibn Khaldun Center on minorities, it is worth mentioning
Saad Eddin Ibrahim (ed.) Humum al-aqaliyyat fi al-watan al-Arabi [The Concerns
of Minorities in the Arab World] (Cairo: Ibn Khaldun Center, second printing,
1994) and the annual yearbook of the Center.
3 The world-political Sunni fallacy: jihadist internationalism
as a cosmic war of irregulars for remaking the world
1
See Daniel
Philpott, ‘‘The Challenge of September 11 to Secularism in International
Relations,’’ World Politics, vol. 55, 1 (October 2002), pp. 66–95; and also B.
Tibi, ‘‘From Islamist Jihadism to Democratic Peace?’’ Ankara Paper 16 (London:
Taylor and Francis, 2005), pp. 1–41.
2
The related three
books are: Martin van Creveld, The Transformation of War (New York: The Free
Press, 1991), Kalevi J. Holsti, The State, War and the State of War (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996), and B. Tibi, Conflict and War in the Middle
East. From Interstate War to New Security, second enlarged edition (New York:
St Martin’s Press, 1998), chapter 12.
3
Myron Weiner, The
Global Migration Crisis (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), chapter 6 on security;
and B. Tibi, Islamische Zuwanderung. Die gescheiterte Integration (Munich: DVA,
2002), implementing Weiner’s approach.
4
See an earlier
contribution to the study of terrorism: Grant Wordlaw, Political Terrorism (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1982, second edition 1989), where one finds no
reference to jihadist Islamism. In contrast, political Islam and its jihad are
abundantly present in recent books like the one by Bruce Hoffman, Inside
Terrorism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998). Ever since 9/11 there
has been a mushrooming literature on jihad. See the reader by David J.
Whittacker (ed.) The Terrorism Reader (London: Routledge, 2001). Among useful
contributions are the monograph by Jean B. Elshtain, Just War against Terror (New
York: Basic Books, 2003), the book by Mark Sageman, Understanding Terror
Networks (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004) and the
contributions included in Martin van Creveld, Countering Modern Terrorism,
referenced in note 16 below.
5
Hedley Bull
forcefully places the study of order at the center of reasoning on
International Relations. See his classic, The Anarchical Society. A Study of
Order in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), in
particular Part One. For an appreciation of Bull and his work see the essay
‘‘Bull and the Contribution to International Relations,’’ by Stanley Hoffmann
in his book World Disorders. Troubled Peace in the Post-Cold War Era (New York:
Rowman & Littlefield, 1998), pp. 13–34.
6
However, books in
these studies such as the one by Jack Goody, Islam in Europe (Cambridge:
Polity, 2004) are neither helpful nor promising, because the major issue, i.e.
the conflict, is evaded. For a contrast in European studies see B. Tibi, Europe
and the Challenge of Jihadist Islamism, published by The Hellenic Center for
European Studies as EKEM-Paper 9, Athens 2007.
7
Raymond Aron, Paix
et guerre entre les nations (Paris: Calmann-Le´vy, 1962).
8
See Robert H.
Jackson, Quasi-States: Sovereignty, International Relations, and the Third
World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). On the concept of ‘‘the
nominal nation-state’’ see B. Tibi, ‘‘Old Tribes and Imposed Nation-States,’’
in Philip Khoury and Josef Kostiner (eds) Tribes and State Formation in the
Middle East (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990), pp. 127–52;
see also the new Part V to the new third edition of B. Tibi, Arab Nationalism.
Between Islam and the Nation-State (New York: St Martin’s Press, third edition
1997), pp. 199–233.
9
The publications
that grew from these three projects are: (1) The Fundamentalism Project/American
Academy of Arts and Sciences, published in five volumes (Chicago, IL: Chicago
University Press, 1991–5) edited by Martin Marty and Scott Appleby. Volume 2 of
this research project (Fundamentalisms and Society, 1993) includes B. Tibi,
‘‘The Worldview of Sunni-Arab Fundamentalists: Attitudes towards Modern Science
and Technology,’’ pp. 73–102; (2) the findings of the ‘‘Culture Matters
Project’’ were published in two volumes by Lawrence E. Harrison (ed.) Developing
Cultures (New York: Routledge, 2006), Vol. One: Essays on Cultural Change (Tibi
on Islam, chapter 14); Vol. Two, Case Studies (Tibi on Egypt chapter 9); (3)
the findings of the Cornell project on transnational religion are published in
Timothy Byrnes and Peter Katzenstein (eds) Religion in an Expanding Europe (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2006). It includes the chapter by B. Tibi on
‘‘Europeanizing Islam,’’ pp. 204–24, see also next note.
10
All three issues
were studied in a UCLA project; the contributions are included in a volume edited
by Helmut Anheier and Raj Isar, Culture, Conflict, Globalization (London: Sage,
2007); the volume includes my chapter on Islam and identity politics.
11
See the respective
chapters in the section ‘‘Remaking the World through Militancy,’’ in Marty and
Appleby (eds) The Fundamentalism Project, Vol. Three: Fundamentalisms and the
State (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1993), see also note 9 above on
this project.
12
The origin of the
concept of ‘‘hakimiyyat Allah/God’s rule’’ is Sayyid Qutb, Ma’alim fi al-tariq [Signposts
along the Road], published in millions of copies in Arabic as well as in
diverse translations into other Islamic languages. It enjoys a tremendous
circulation, not only throughout the world of Islam but also in the diaspora of
Europe. Here I use the thirteenth legal edition (Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 1989).
13
B. Tibi, ‘‘The
Pertinence of Islam’s Predicament with Democratic Pluralism,’’ Religion-Staat-Gesellschaft,
vol. 7, 1 (2006), pp. 83–117; and on the difference between Islam and Islamism
from a systematic perspective of security studies see B. Tibi, ‘‘Between Islam
and Islamism: A Dialogue with Islam and a Security Approach vis-a`vis
Islamism,’’ in Tamy A. Jacoby and Brent Sasley (eds) Redefining Security in the
Middle East (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), pp. 62–82. See
also Peter Demant, Islam vs Islamism (Westport, CO: Praeger, 2006).
14
Eric Hobsbawm and
Terence Ranger (eds) The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, reprint 1996), introduction, pp. 1–14. For an example of this
invention see the article ‘‘Jihad’’ by B. Tibi, in Roger Powers and William B.
Vogele (eds) Protest, Power and Change. An Encyclopedia of Nonviolent Action (New
York: Garland, 1997), pp. 277–81.
15
Eric Hoffer, The
True Believer. Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (New York: Perennial
Library, 2002, reprint of the original of 1951).
16
See the
contributions in Martin van Creveld and Katherina von Knop (eds) Countering
Modern Terrorism. History, Current Issues and Future Threats (Bielefeld:
Bertelsmann, 2005), including the chapter by B. Tibi on ‘‘Countering Terrorism
as War of Ideas and Worldviews,’’ pp. 131–72, and also the references in note 4
above.
17
Hedley Bull, ‘‘The
Revolt against the West,’’ in Hedley Bull and Adam Watson (eds) The Expansion
of International Society (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984), pp. 217–28; on Bull see
also note 5.
18
Hedley Bull, The
Anarchical Society (referenced in note 5), p. 273. For more details on the
concept of the simultaneity of globalization and fragmentation see B. Tibi, The
Challenge of Fundamentalism. Political Islam and the New World Disorder (Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press, 1998, updated edition 2002), chapters 1 and
5. On political Islam see further Nazih Ayubi, Political Islam, Religion and
Politics in the Arab World (London: Routledge, 1991).
19
On the European
expansion see Philip Curtin, The World and the West. The European Challenge (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2000); see also Roger Scruton, The West and the
Rest. Globalization and the Terrorist Threat (Wilmington, DE: ISIbooks, 2002).
On the unfolding, the claims and on the failure as well as on the future of the
universalism of Western civilization see David Gress, From Plato to NATO. The
Idea of the West and its Opponents (New York: The Free Press, 1998), chapter
12. On Westernization see Theodore H. von Laue, The World Revolution of
Westernization (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).
20
See     B.            Tibi,         ‘‘Culture  and          Knowledge.             The          Fundamentalist        Claim       of            de-
Westernization,’’ Theory, Culture and Society, vol. 12,
1 (1995), pp. 1–24.
21
B. Tibi,
‘‘Secularization and De-secularization in Islam,’’ Religion-Staat-Gesellschaft,
vol. 1, 1 (2000), pp. 95–117; on education in the context of the spread of
desecularizing political Islam see chapter 8 in B. Tibi, Islam Between Culture
and Politics (New York: Palgrave, 2001, new expanded edition, 2005), pp. 167–87
and by the same author ‘‘Education and Democratization in an Age of Islamism,’’
in Alan Olson et al. (eds) Educating for Democracy (Lanham, MA: Rowman &
Littlefield, 2005), pp. 203– 19. For more details on this issue see the
concluding Chapter 7 below.
22
See Peter
Mandaville, Transnational Muslim Politics, Reimagining the Umma (New York:
Routledge, 2004).
23
See Richard
Mitchell, The Society of the Muslim Brothers (London: Oxford University Press,
1969).
24
See Hasan al-Banna,
‘‘Risalat al-jihad’’ [Essay on jihad], in the collected writings of al-Banna, Majmu’at
rasail al-Banna (Cairo: Dar al-Da’wa, 1990), pp. 271–92.
25
See the reference
in note 1, and Mark Juergensmeyer, The New Cold War? Religious Nationalism
Confronts the Secular State (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press,
1993).
26
See the article –
influential at the time of its publication – by Michael Duran, ‘‘Somebody Else’s
Civil War,’’ Foreign Affairs, vol. 82, 1 (2002), pp. 22–42. In 2005, Duran
joined the Bush administration.
27
Sayyid Qutb, al-salam
al-alami wa al-Islam [World Peace and Islam] (Cairo: alShuruq, 1992), p. 172.
28
For this reason the
weekly Newsweek asked on the cover of its issue of 5 November 2001 ‘‘Why Do
Islamists Like Europe?’’ The answer was given in the article on Germany in its
headline: ‘‘Tolerating the Intolerable.’’ One reads in that article: ‘‘Bassam
Tibi ... has warned for years ... no one wanted to hear that’’ (p. 46).
European politicians, and scholars as well, are reluctant to acknowledge the
link between migration and security, and I was silenced in a society that
claims to allow free debate.
29
Graham E. Fuller
and Ian Lesser, A Sense of Siege. The Geopolitics of Islam and the West (Boulder,
CO: Westview Press, 1995).
30
Jean-Franc¸ois
Revel, Democracy against Itself (New York: Free Press, 1993), chapter 12; and
Michael Teitelbaum and Jay Winter, A Question of Numbers. High Migration, Low
Fertility and the Politics of National Identity (New York: Hill and Wang,
1998), pp. 221–39.
31
Sayyid Qutb, al-Islam
wa-Mushkilat al-Hadarah [Islam and the Problem of Civilization] (Cairo:
al-Shuruq, reprint 1988).
32
See Mark
Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God. The Global Rise of Religious Violence
(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000); and also Bruce Lincoln, Holy
Terrors. Thinking about Religion after September 11 (Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press, 2003), wherein on jihad chapter 3; and B. Tibi, ‘‘Islamism,
National and International Security after September 11,’’ in Guenther Baechler
and Andreas Wenger (eds) Conflict and Cooperation (Zurich: Neue Zuercher
Zeitung, 2002), pp. 127–52.
33
Ahead of his book, Clash
of Civilizations and the Framing of World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster,
1996), Samuel P. Huntington published a related article in Foreign Affairs (1993).
In my book on this subject-matter, Krieg der Zivilisationen (Hamburg: Hoffmann
and Campe, 1995), I make a reference to Huntington’s Foreign Affairs article,
but despite sharing the idea of civilizational conflict, I not only clearly
reject his policy implications and his ‘‘clash’’-rhetoric, but also avoid his
flaws. Later on, in 1998 I added a new chapter 7 to the second edition of the
referenced book, to identify the differences and to dissociate myself from a
‘‘Huntingtonization’’ of the conflict under issue. Despite our communications
at Harvard on these issues, Huntington has remained completely silent about all
of my work.
34
Ibn Khaldun’s Prolegomena/al-Maqaddima
exists in many editions and languages. On this classical work see chapter VI in
B. Tibi, Der wahre Imam. Der Islam von Mohammed bis zur Gegenwart (Munich:
Piper, 1996, new 2001), pp. 179–209; and the seminal work on Ibn Khaldun by
Muhsen Mahdi, Ibn Khaldun’s Philosophy of History. A Study in the Philosophic
Foundations of the Science of Culture (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1957).
35
Roman Herzog et al.,
Preventing the Clash of Civilizations (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1999). This
book includes B. Tibi, ‘‘International Morality and Cross-Cultural Bridging,’’
pp. 107–26, contradicting Huntington.
36
See the
introduction of this book, and Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart, Sacred and
Secular. Religion and Politics Worldwide (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2004) as well as Eric O. Hanson, Religion and Politics in the International
System Today (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
37
On the debate on
the return of the sacred see the many references to the earlier debate (Daniel
Bell) in conjunction with the post 9/11 developments in the new Part V added to
the updated and expanded new 2005 edition of my book, Islam between Culture and
Politics (referenced in note 21), published in association with Harvard’s
WCFIA; see pp. 231–72.
38
Among those
high-ranking Western intellectuals who fail to understand this, one finds
Ju¨rgen Habermas, Glauben und Wissen (Frankfurt aim Main: Suhrkamp, 2001).
For a critique see B. Tibi, ‘‘Habermas and the Return of the Sacred. Is it a
Religious Renaissance? Political Religion as a New Totalitaranism,’’ Religion–
Staat–Gesellschaft, vol. 3, 2 (2002), pp. 265–96. On Islamism as a new
totalitarianism see B. Tibi, Der neue Totalitarismus. ‘‘Heiliger Krieg’’ und
westliche Sicherheit (Darmstadt: Primus-Verlag, 2004), reviving Hannah Arendt’s
concept and applying it to the ideological totalitarian views of political
Islam.
39
On this link see
the contributions to the special issue of Millennium, Journal of International
Affairs, vol. 29, 3 (2000), published under the title Religion and
International Relations. The issue includes B. Tibi, ‘‘Post-Bipolar Order in
Crisis: The Challenge of Politicized Islam,’’ pp. 843–59. See also Jeff Haynes,
Religion in Global Politics (London: Longman, 1998), in particular chapter 7 on
the Middle East.
40
See the proceedings
of the Dutch Erasmus Foundation, The Limits of Pluralism. NeoAbsolutisms and
Relativism (Amsterdam: Praemium Erasmianum, 1994).
41
On this see B.
Tibi, Europa ohne Identitaet? (Munich: Bertelsmann, 1998), many subsequent
editions.
42
Robert Pape, Dying
to Win. The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (New York: Random House,
2005). This is a flawed study that fails to understand jihadism.
43
For more details
see Amal Jamal, The Palestinian National Movement. Politics and Contention 1967–2005
(Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2005), chapter 5; and earlier
Beverley Milton-Edwards, Islamic Politics in Palestine (London: Tauris, 1996).
On Hamas see Matthew Levitt, Hamas. Politics, Charity and Terrorism in the
Service of Jihad (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006).
44
See Edward Said, Covering
Islam (New York: Pantheon, 1981) reprinted many times.
45
The Arab-Islamist
allegation of ‘‘une vaste conspiration judeo-chre´tienne’’ can be found
among others in Mohammed Y. Kassab, L’Islam face au nouvel ordre mondial (Algiers:
Editions Salama, 1991), pp. 75–93, and it reflects a view widespread in the
Arab world.
46
See Sayyid Qutb, al-salam
al-alami wa al-Islam (referenced in note 27), pp. 167–99.
47
See John Esposito, The
Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality? (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), who
confuses Islam and Islamism.
48
Mary Habeck, Knowing
the Enemy. Jihadist Ideology and the War on Terror (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 2006).
49
Roxanne E. Euben, Enemy
in the Mirror. Islamic Fundamentalism and the Limits of Modern Nationalism (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), on Qutb chapter 3.
50
See the reference
to Daniel Philpott in note 1; and Lynn H. Miller, Global Order. Values and
Power in International Politics (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1990), chapter 2 on the
Westphalian system.
51
Hedley Bull, ‘‘The
Revolt against the West’’ (referenced in note 17), p. 223.
52
See the
contributions in the volume Beyond Westphalia, ed. by Gene M. Lyons and Michael
Mastanduno (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995).
53
On this Islamist
vision for the world of Islam see Mohammed Salim al-Awwa, Fi alnizam al-siyasi
li al-dawla al-Islamiyya [On the Political System of the Islamic State] (Cairo:
al-Maktab al-Masri, 1975, sixth reprinting 1983).
54
On the
discrimination of non-Muslims as dhimmi (protected minorities subjected to
Islamic rule) in the shari’a misinterpreted as tolerance, see the work of the
Muslim reformist Abdullahi A. An-Na’im, Toward an Islamic Reformation (Syracuse,
NY: Syracuse University Press, 1990), chapter 7. See also the outcry of the
Egyptian-Jewish writer publishing under the pseudonym Bat Ye’or, Islam and
Dhimmitude (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 2002). In short:
Islamic shari’a contradicts individual human rights on all counts, as argued by
B. Tibi, ‘‘Islamic Law/ Shari’a, Human Rights, Universal Morality and
International Relations,’’ Human Rights Quarterly, vol. 16, 2 (1994), pp.
277–99.
55
See my Singapore
(NUS/ARI) research paper on pluralism in Islam, referenced in note 13.
56
On this see Scott
Appleby (ed.) Spokesmen for the Despised (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press, 1997).
57
Therefore, I
question the controversial French studies by Olivier Roy, The Failure of
Political Islam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994); and by Gilles
Kepel, Jihad, expansion et le de´clin de l’Islamisme (Paris: Gallimard,
2000); for a contrast to Kepel see my introduction to the updated 2002 edition
of The Challenge of Fundamentalism (referenced in note 18).
58
B. Tibi, ‘‘The
Worldview of Sunni-Arab Fundamentalists’’ (referenced in note 9).
59
Johannes Jansen, The
Dual Nature of Islamic Fundamentalism (Ithaca and New York: Cornell University
Press, 1997).
60
The reference to
the return of the history of civilizations compels a reference to leading
historians such as Arnold Toynbee, The Study of History (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1947) and Will Durant, The Story of Civilization, 11 volumes
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1953–67). Among books which revive this
classical subject ahead of Huntington one finds Leslie Lipson, The Ethical
Crisis of Civilizations (London: Sage, 1993). The work of Samuel P. Huntington
has negatively charged the study of civilizations; it is characterized by lack
of sensibility towards other cultures and thus has done disservice to the field.
For a professional study of the civilization of Islam see the work of Sir
Hamilton A.R. Gibb, Studies on the Civilization of Islam (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1962, reprint 1982); and Marshall G. Hodgson, The
Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization, 3 volumes
(Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1974).
61
B. Tibi, Einladung
in die islamische Geschichte (Darmstadt: Primus, 2001).
62
See Barry Buzan, People,
States and Fear. An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold
War Era (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1991).
63
See the cover story
of The Economist: ‘‘Nasrallah Wins the War,’’ 19–25 August 2006. Next to the
Shi’a terror is Saudi Arabia’s tacit promotion of the jihad terror culture
discussed by Stephen Schwarz in The Two Faces of Islam. The House of Sa’ud from
Tradition to Terror (New York: Doubleday, 2002), chapters 7 and 8; on the
Pakistani case see Husain Haqqani, Pakistan between Mosque and Military (Washington,
DC: Carnegie Endowment, 2005).
64
See Jean Charles
Brisard, Zarqawi. The New Face of al-Qaida (New York: Other
Press, 2005).
65
See Frank Rich,
‘‘The Disappearance of the War in Iraq,’’ International Herald Tribune, 31 July
2006, p. 7.
66
Phyllis Chesler, The
New Antisemitism (San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass, 2003). See also B. Tibi,
‘‘Die Maer des Islamismus von der juedischen und kreuzzueglerischen
Weltverschwoerung gegen den Islam,’’ in Julius Schoeps et al. (eds) Alter-neuer
Judenhass. Antisemitismus, arabisch-israelischer Konflikt und europaeische
Politik (Berlin: Verlag Berlin-Brandenburg, 2006), pp. 179–202.
67
See the quote in
full length on pp. 30–1 in the introduction to this book and John Kelsay, Islam
and War (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1993), p. 117.
68
On this see B.
Tibi, ‘‘War and Peace in Islam,’’ in Terry Nardin (ed.) The Ethics of War and
Peace (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996 and 1998), pp. 128– 45.
These concepts were never revised by Muslims; see Najib Armanazi, ald-Shar’
alduwali, fi al-Islam [International Law in Islam] (London: El-Rayyes, reprint
1990, first published in Damascus 1930).
69
See Bruce Lincoln, Holy
Terrors (referenced in note 32).
70
See Leonore Martin
(ed.) New Frontiers in Middle Eastern Security (New York: St Martin’s Press,
1999), introduction.
71
See Barry Buzan, People,
States and Fear (referenced in note 62). On the ‘‘state of war’’ in
post-bipolarity see the references in note 2 above.
72
The analysis of
Hezbollah in the book by Magnus Ranstorp, Hizb’Allah in Lebanon (London:
Macmillan, 1997) is still topical and worth reading.
73
See my book on
Islamic migration to Europe, referenced in note 3, and my article ‘‘A Migration
Story’’ referenced in note 99 to the Introduction.
74
The term ‘‘gated
diaspora’’ is borrowed from Nikos Papastergiadis, The Turbulence of Migration (Cambridge:
Polity Press, 2000) and is developed to a security-related concept in my book
on Islamic migration to Europe, referenced in note 3.
75
Francis Fukuyama,
‘‘Identity, Immigration and Liberal Democracy,’’ Journal of Democracy, vol. 17,
2 (2006), pp. 5–20, here p. 6.
76
B. Tibi, ‘‘Muslim
Migrants in Europe: Between Euro-Islam and Ghettoization,’’ in Nezar AlSayyad
and Manuel Castells (eds) Muslim Europe or Euro-Islam: Politics, Culture, and
Citizenship in the Age of Globalization (Lanham, MD and Berkeley, CA:
Lexington Books with UC Berkeley, 2002), pp. 31–52.
77
See the Cornell
project, published by Katzenstein (referenced in note 9).
78
See the documentary
on 11 September: Stefan Aust and Cord Schnibben, 11 September. Geschichte eines
Terrorangriffs (Munich: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 2002), chapter 4 on the
Hamburg cell.
79
On the abuse of
welfare institutions see J. Millard Burr and Robert Collins, Alms for Jihad.
Charity and Terrorism in the Islamic World (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2006), chapter 2 on the role of Saudi Arabia, chapter 3 on the banks and
chapter 10 on ‘‘the Islamization of Europe.’’
80
See chapter VI,
‘‘The Fundamentalist Abuse of the Islam-Diaspora: Western Europe as a Safe
Haven,’’ in the new edition of my book, Die fundamentalistische Herausforderung
(Munich: C.H. Beck, fourth edition 2003), pp. 184–214.
81
See Yossef
Bodansky, Bin Laden. The Man Who Declared War on America (Rocklin, CA:
Forum/Prima, 1999).
82
Fukuyama (see note
75), p. 6. See also the reference in note 10.
83
See my article,
‘‘The Open Society and its Enemies within,’’ Wall Street Journal, 17 March
2004, p. A10, referring to Karl Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies, 2
vols (London: Routledge and Paul Kegan, 1945).
84
Robert Spencer, Onward
Muslim Soldiers. How Jihad still Threatens America and the West (Washington,
DC: Regenery Publishers, 2003), on Europe and Ramadan, pp. 63–70; see also the
book by Fourest in note 86.
85
Tariq Ramadan draws
a false line between the Islamic anti-colonial revivalist alAfghani and his
grandfather Hasan al-Banna in his most controversial book: Aux Sources du
Renouveau Musulman. D’al-Afghani a` al-Banna (Paris: Bayard, 1998). In fact,
al-Banna was the founder of Islamist jihadism (for more details see B. Tibi, Der
neue Totalitarismus (referenced in note 38), there chapter 3. To be sure,
al-Banna never provided any cultural innovation to Islam; he was a man of
political action.
86
Caroline Fourest, Fre`re
Tariq. Discours, strate´gie et me´thode de Tariq Ramadan (Paris:
Grasset, 2004) and also Ralph Ghadban, Tariq Ramadan und die Islamisierung
Europas (Berlin: Schiler Verlag, 2006). Against Ramadan I claim the concept of
EuroIslam confirmed by Time magazine in its issue of 24 December 2001: ‘‘Bassam
Tibi ... who coined the term Euro-Islam insists on the integration of Europe’s
Muslims,’’ p. 49. For me, Euro-Islam is a secular concept orientated towards
European values of cultural modernity and thus quite different from what Tariq
Ramadan preaches.
87
The most prominent
case is the former F.A.Z. journalist Udo Ulfkotte, Der Krieg in unseren
Staedten (Frankfurt aim Main: Eichborn, 2003). He was sued, then he lost his
job and his life was ruined by the Islamists with the assistance of the German
legal system. This case served as a warning by Islamists to other journalists
to think twice before acting, and as such it was most successful.
88
See B. Tibi on the
concept of integration to ‘‘Citizens of Heart’’ in the Fletcher– Forum article
referenced in note 99 to the Introduction of the present book.
89
B. Tibi, ‘‘Islam,
Freedom and Democracy in the Arab World,’’ in Michael Emerson (ed.) Democratization
in the European Neighborhood (Brussels: CEPS, 2005), pp. 93– 116; see also the
reference in note 21 on secular democracy and Islamism.
4 The Shi’ite option: internationalism for an export of
the Islamic revolution of Iran. A failed effort!
1
Edgar O’Ballance, Islamic
Fundamentalist Terrorism. 1979–95. The Iranian Connection (New York: New York
University Press, 1997).
2
Shahram Chubin, Iran’s
Nuclear Ambition (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for Peace, 2006), p. 51.
3
Ibid., p. 135.
4
See the informative
book by Cheryl Bernard and Zalmay Khalilzad, The Government of God. Iran’s
Islamic Republic (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984). The Muslim
scholar Khalilzad later turned senior US diplomat in Afghanistan and was
promoted to US Ambassador to Iraq and later to the US-Ambassador to the
UNSecurity council. See also the other significant contribution by the Iranian
– American R.K. Ramazani, Revolutionary Iran. Challenge and Response in the
Middle East (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988).
5
See Yizhak Nakash, Reaching
for Power. The Shi’a in the Modern Arab World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2006) and the contributions in the earlier volume edited by
Graham E. Fuller and Rend Rahim Francke, The Arab Shi’a. The Forgotten Muslims (New
York: St Martin’s Press, 1999).
6
Said al-Qaisi, ‘‘An
Iranian Plan for the Export of Terror into the Gulf’’ (in Arabic), al-Watan
al-Arabi, no. 1494 (21 October 2005), p. 21.
7
A Harvard expert on
the comparative study of revolutions, the sociologist Theda Skocpol, bases her
authority on her book, States and Social Revolutions (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, reprint 1987). However, she published many questionable
articles based on poor knowledge of Islam and equally of the Iranian ‘‘Islamic
revolution,’’ as a result ranking it among the major world events in this
category. For an analysis based on better knowledge see Said Amir Arjomand, The
Turban for the Crown. The Islamic Revolution in Iran (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1989).
8
See Ervand
Abrahamian, Khomeinism. Essays on the Islamic Republic (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1993), pp. 13–38; and on the practice of this ideology see
R.K. Ramazani, referenced in note 4.
9
See the work by the
Iranian scholars Daryush Shayegan, Cultural Schizophrenia. Islamic Societies
Confronting the West (London: Saqi Books, 1992) and Mehrzad Boroujerdi, Iranian
Intellectuals and the West. The Tormented Triumph of Nativism (Syracuse, NY:
Syracuse University Press, 1996), in particular pp. 10–14 on the reversal of
Orientalism by people who claim to overcome it.
10
Graham E. Fuller, The
Center of the Universe. The Geopolitics of Iran (Boulder, CO: Westview Press,
1991).
11
As early as 1983,
in a paper presented to MESA’s Chicago meeting on ‘‘The Iranian Revolution and
the Arabs. The Search for Islamic Identity and the Search for an Islamic
Government,’’ I expressed my doubts about Arab Sunni receptivity to the
basically Shi’ite Iranian claims. The paper was published under the same title
in Arab Studies Quarterly, vol. 8, 1 (1986), pp. 29–44. A more mature and
comprehensive analysis of the Iranian setup is included in the chapter on Iran
in B. Tibi, Islam and the Cultural Accommodation of Social Change (Boulder, CO:
Westview Press, 1990), pp. 147–59; see also note 16.
12
See the
contributions in Adeed I. Dawisha (ed.) Islam in Foreign Policy (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1983).
13
Eric O. Hanson, Religion
and Politics in the International System Today (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2006); Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart, Sacred and Secular. Religion
and Politics Worldwide (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004); and on
Europe, Peter Katzenstein and Timothy Byrnes (eds) Religion in an Expanding
Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
14
It is a
contradiction in the otherwise well-informed analysis of Fred Halliday that he
uses this fashionable but misleading formula in the title of his book Islam and
the Myth of Confrontation. Religion and Politics in the Middle East (London:
Tauris, 1995), while stating facts of confrontation that run counter to it.
Left-wing authors dismiss the fact of religionized politics and the way it
leads to conflict and confrontation. For another view, see Shahrough Akhavi, Religion
and Politics in Contemporary Iran (Albany, NY: State University of New York
Press, 1980).
15
For more details
see Shireen Hunter, Iran and the World. Continuity in a Revolutionary Decade (Bloomington,
IN: Indiana University Press, 1990) and John Esposito (ed.) The Iranian
Revolution. Its Global Impact (Miami, FL: Florida International University
Press, 1990).
16
An evaluation of
twenty years of attempting to export the ‘‘Islamic revolution’’ into the Arab
world is provided by B. Tibi: ‘‘The Failed Export of the Islamic Revolution,’’
in Fre´de´ric Grare (ed.) Islamism and Security (Geneva: Programme
for Strategic and International Security Studies, 1999), pp. 63–102. See also
the reference in note 11.
17
On this assumption,
see the reasoning in chapters 1 and 2 of B. Tibi, Islam between Culture and
Politics (New York: Palgrave, 2001, second expanded edition 2005).
18
Franc¸ois
Burgat in cooperation with William Dowell, The Islamic Movement in North Africa
(Austin, TX: Center for Middle Eastern Studies, University of Texas at Austin,
1993), p. 185.
19
B. Tibi, The
Challenge of Fundamentalism. Political Islam and the New World Disorder (Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press, 1998, updated 2002).
20
Mohammed Salim
al-Awwa, Fi al-nizam al-siyasi lil-dawla al-Islamiyya [On the Political System
of the Islamic State] (Cairo: al-Maktab al-Masri, sixth edition 1983); on Iran,
see pp. 253–99.
21
For more details
see Barnett Rubin, The Fragmentation of Afghanistan (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1995) and Ahmed Rashid, Taliban. Militant Islam (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 2000).
22
On this see Nikki
Keddie, Roots of Revolution. An Interpretative History of Modern Iran (New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981), as well as her book edited together
with Eric Hooglund, The Iranian Revolution and the Islamic Republic (Syracuse,
NY: Syracuse University Press, 1986).
23
On Khomeini’s
worldview and his understanding of world order see Ramazani, Revolutionary Iran
(referenced in note 4), chapter 2.
24
Halliday, Islam and
the Myth of Confrontation (referenced in note 14), p. 64.
25
Ibid., p. 44.
26
On this issue see
Eliezer Be’eri, Army Officers in Arab Politics and Society (New York: Praeger,
1970); and also B. Tibi, Militaer und Sozialismus in der Dritten Welt (Frankfurt
am Main: Suhrkamp, 1973). At that time army officers were believed to act as
modernizers: that is, as a kind of substitute for modernizing civil elites.
27
See Michael C.
Hudson, Arab Politics. The Search for Legitimacy (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1977); and on the repercussions of the Six-Day War as a
source of the legitimacy crisis see B. Tibi, Conflict and War in the Middle
East. From Interstate War to New Security (New York: St Martin’s Press, second
edition 1998), chapters 3 and 4.
28
On the Iraqi Shi’a
and its bid for power, see note 5. On SAIRI, also addressed as SCIRI, see Faleh
Jabar, The Shi’ite Movement in Iraq (London: Saqi, 2003), in particular chapter
14 on its Badr Army (Failaq Badr). More impartial is the study by Yitzhak
Nakash, The Shi’is of Iraq (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994).
Similar to SCIRI is the militia of the Mahdi Army led by
Muqtada al-Sadr, based in Iraq’s Shi’a but hostile to its Badr Brigade. The
backbone of the security apparatus of post-Saddam Iraq, the so-called
‘‘democratic Iraq,’’ is under the influence of Iran: it is composed of these
Shi’ite militias trained in Iran fighting not only against US occupation but
also against the irregular Sunni-jihadists. The Iraq war of 2003 replaced
Saddam’s ‘‘republic of fear’’ with a new republic of jihadist horror.
29
Quoted by
Anoushiravan Ehteshami, After Khomeini. The Iranian Second Republic (London:
Routledge, 1995), p. 131.
30
Ramazani, Revolutionary
Iran (referenced in note 4), pp. 24 and 25.
31
Fred Halliday, Islam
and the Myth of Confrontation (referenced in note 14), p. 44. 32 Ehteshami, After
Khomeini (referenced in note 29), p. 165.
33
Ibid.
34
On Hezbullah,
established in 1982 in Iran’s embassy in Damascus, see Hala Jaber, Hezbollah.
Born with a Vengeance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997); and also the
more important book by Magnus Ranstorp, Hizb’Allah in Lebanon. The Politics of
the Western Hostage Crisis (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1997). On Hezbullah’s
links to Iran see Edgar O’Ballance (referenced in note 1), chapter 4.
35
Mohammed Khatami’s
call for dialogue was taken at face value by Fred Dallmayr, Dialogue among
Civilizations (New York: Palgrave, 2002), preface.
36
The cover story
‘‘Terror Central. How Iran’s Mullahs Run their Secret Assassination Network,’’
in Time magazine, 11 November 1996, pp. 82–9, suggests that Iran never ceased
using the promotion of terrorism as an instrument of its foreign policy. This
is also confirmed by Chubin (note 2).
37
See my German Financial
Times commentary against Khatami: ‘‘Keine Demokratie in Iran, kein Dialog mit
dem Westen. Echte Reformen gibt es mit Praesident Khatami nicht,’’ Financial
Times Deutschland, 15 May 2000, ‘‘Agenda’’ section.
38
Ehteshami, After
Khomeini (referenced in note 29), p. 165.
39
On Khomeini’s
reinterpretation of velayat-e-faqih for the legitimation of seizing power see
the chapter by Hamid Enayat, ‘‘Iran. Khumayni’s Concept of the ‘Guardianship of
the Jurisconsult’’’ in James P. Piscatori (ed.) Islam in the Political Process (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 160–80.
40
This is Khomeini’s
message to war refugees as quoted by Fuller, The Center of the Universe (referenced
in note 10), p. 271.
41
On the concept of
counter-elites see chapter 5, and B. Tibi, ‘‘The Fundamentalist Challenge to
Secular Order in the Middle East,’’ Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, vol. 23, 1
(1999), pp. 191–210.
42
Rafsanjani quoted
by Chibli Mallat, The Middle East into the 21st Century (Reading:
Ithaca Press, 1996), pp. 161–2.
43
Ibid., p. 162.
44
On the religious
dogma of Shi’a Islam see Moojan Momen, An Introduction to Shi’i Islam: The
History and Doctrines of Twelver Shi’ism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1983), here pp. 39 and 183, see also p. 193.
45
On this subject see
the authoritative work by Richard Mitchell, The Society of the Muslim Brothers (London:
Oxford University Press, 1969), in particular pp. 234ff., 245ff.
46
The highly
acclaimed so-called Abdolkarim Soroush, Reason, Freedom and Democracy in Islam (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2000), lost his legitimacy through political
maneuvering.
47
Chibli Mallat, The
Middle East into the 21st Century (referenced in note 42), p. 154.
48
See the references
in notes 5 and 28 on the Shi’a in Iraq: on the Shi’a in Lebanon see note 34 and
Fouad Ajami, The Vanished Imam Musa Sadr and the Shia of Lebanon (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1986).
49
B. Tibi, ‘‘The
Clash of Shariah and Democracy,’’ International Herald Tribune, 17–18 September
2005, p. 6.
50
See the editorial
‘‘The Iraq Constitution Goes off Course,’’ International Herald Tribune, 22
July 2005. See also the report: ‘‘The Islamists Who Police Basra Streets,’’ International
Herald Tribune, 1 August 2005. The US journalist who made the disclosures in
this report was later assassinated by Shi’ite militia, setting a further
precedent.
51
Graham E. Fuller, The
Center of the Universe (referenced in note 10), p. 271.
52
See Peter Worsley, The
Third World (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, second edition, 1967); and
regarding Islam, see W.M. Watt, ‘‘Muslims and the Third World,’’ in Third World
Affairs 1986, Yearbook (London: Third World Foundation, 1986), pp. 207–14.
53
See Jean-Charles
Brisard, Zarqawi. The New Face of al-Qaeda (New York: Other
Press, 2005).
54
Fuller, The Center
of the Universe (referenced in note 10), p. 246.
55
Ramazani, Revolutionary
Iran (referenced in note 4), p. 24. See also Shireen Hunter, Iran and the World
(see note 15), chapter 12, pp. 174–83.
56
Khomeini cited in
R.K. Ramazani, ‘‘Khumayni’s Islam in Iran’s Foreign Policy,’’ in Dawisha (ed.) Islam
in Foreign Policy (referenced in note 12), p. 19.
57
M. Momen
(referenced in note 44), p. 39, see also pp. 183–93.
58
Saad Eddin Ibrahim,
‘‘Anatomy of Egypt’s Militant Islamic Groups,’’ International Journal of Middle
East Studies, vol. 12 (1980), p. 449. This article is reprinted in Ibrahim’s
collection of essays: Egypt, Islam and Democracy (Cairo: AUC Press, 1996), pp.
1–33.
59
See Mohammed
Mahfuz, al-lathin zulimu. al-tanzimat al-Islamiyya fi misr [The Oppressed.
Islamist Organizations in Egypt] (London: el-Rayyes Books, 1988); Barry Rubin, Islamic
Fundamentalism in Egyptian Politics (London: Macmillan, 1990); and more
recently Carrie Rosefsky Wickham, Mobilizing Islam. Religion, Activism and
Political Change in Egypt (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002).
60
On the impact of
Iran on Algerian events see Michael Willis, The Islamist Challenge in Algeria.
A Political History (New York: New York University Press, 1997), in particular
pp. 89–92, 202–3.
61
For some it may not
be popular, but it is in line with scholarly rules to also quote Bernard Lewis’
defamed book on this issue, which asks in its title What Went Wrong? The Clash
between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2002). However, giving the reference is not tantamount to agreement.
62
Michael C. Hudson, Arab
Politics. The Search for Legitimacy (referenced in note 27), p. 162, see also
pp. 126ff.
63
See Roger Scruton, The
West and the Rest. Globalization and the Terrorist Threat (Wilmington, DE:
Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2002), in particular chapters 2 (on loyalty)
and 3 (on jihad).
64
See the detailed
entry ‘‘Identity Politics’’ by Gary Lehring in M. Hawkesworth and M. Kagan
(eds) Routledge Encyclopedia of Government and Politics, 2 volumes (London:
Routledge, 2004), vol. 1, pp. 576–86; and my chapter on identity politics in
Islam in Helmut Anheier and Raj Isar (eds) Culture, Conflict, Globalization (London:
Sage, 2007).
65
On the increasing
fragmentation of Iraq after the 2003 war see Liam Anderson and Gareth
Stansfield, The Future of Iraq (New York: Palgrave, 2004).
66
See Lawrence E.
Harrison et al. (eds) Developing Cultures (New York: Routledge, 2006); in vol.
1, Essays, see chapter 14, my chapter on Islam; and in vol. 2, Case Studies,
see chapter 9, pp. 163–80, my chapter on Egypt, and on the impact of Iran see
pp. 171–4. On this Culture Matters Research Project see the acknowledgements in
this volume.
67
On this issue see
B. Tibi, ‘‘The Worldview of Sunni Arab Fundamentalists,’’ in Martin Marty and
Scott Appleby (eds) Fundamentalisms and Society (Chicago, IL: Chicago
University Press, 1993), pp. 73–102; and the chapter on the Islamic
‘‘worldview’’ in B. Tibi, Islam between Culture and Politics (referenced in
note 14), pp. 53–68.
68
On this see B.
Tibi, Arab Nationalism. Between Islam and the Nation-State (New York:
Macmillan, third edition 1997).
69
See Clifford
Geertz, Islam Observed. Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia (Chicago,
IL: University of Chicago Press, 1989).
70
Ramazani, Revolutionary
Iran (referenced in note 4), p. 20.
71
Mohammed Imara, al-Islam
wa al-uruba [Islam and Arabism] (Cairo: Dar al-Wihda, 1981), p. 9.
72
See B. Tibi, ‘‘The
Simultaneity of the Unsimultaneous: Old Tribes and Imposed Nation-States in the
Modern Middle East,’’ in Philip Khoury and Joseph Kostiner (eds) Tribes and
State Formation in the Middle East (Berkeley, CA: University of California
Press, 1990), pp. 127–52.
73
See Mallat on
Shi’ite internationalism in his book The Middle East into the 21st Century
(referenced in note 42), pp. 147–9.
74
See Bernard Lewis, Multiple
Identities in the Middle East (New York: Shocken Books, 1998).
75
On the Lebanon war
of 2006 see The Economist’s cover story, ‘‘Nasrallah Wins the War’’ (issue of
19–25 August 2006) and on its regional impact see the report: ‘‘In Mideast a
Wave of Political Islam,’’ International Herald Tribune, 19–20 August 2006,
front page, continued p. 6.
76
Edward Mortimer, Faith
and Power. The Politics of Islam (New York: Vintage, 1982), p. 405.
77
Shahriar Rouhani,
‘‘When Will We Meet Again?’’ Time magazine, 17 August 1998, p. 15. A decade
later, following Iran’s role in the Lebanon war of 2006 and the detaining of
leading Iranian intellectuals, this question seems to be out of place.
78
The following two
articles, written more than twenty years apart, document the continued
reasoning on this highly sensitive issue in Islam: B. Tibi, ‘‘Secularization
and the Functional Differentiation of the Social System,’’ Archives for the
Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy, vol. LXVI (1982), pp. 207–22; and two
decades later, B. Tibi, ‘‘Secularization and De-Secularization in Islam,’’ Religion-StaatGesellschaft,
vol. 1, 1 (2000), pp. 95–117.
79
On the new place of
religion in world politics see the references in note 13 above; an earlier view
is Mark Juergensmeyer, New Cold War? Religious Nationalism Confronts the
Secular State (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993).
5 Political Islam and Europe in the twenty-first
century: the return of history as the return of civilizations into world
affairs
1
The arguments
presented are based on the seminal work by Henri Pirenne, Mahomet et
Charlemagne (Paris, 1937), German translation, Die Geburt des Abendlandes (Leipzig,
1937), and on Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in
the Age of Philip II (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995). For
a contemporary perspective on the Mediterranean see my Bosch Memorial Lecture published
as Das Mittelmeer als Grenze oder als Bruecke Europas zur Welt des Islam? (Stuttgart:
Bosch Foundation, 1994), p. 30. The recent book edited by Emmanuel Adler and
Beverly Crawford, The Convergence of Civilizations. Constructing a
Mediterranean Region (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006) is flawed,
however, by overlooking the conflictual historical background outlined by the
work of Pirenne and Braudel, among others in the past and recently by Alan G.
Jamieson, Faith and Sword. A Short History of Christian–Muslim Conflict (London:
Reaktion Books,
2006).
2
Gilles Kepel, Les
Banlieus de l’Islam. Naissance d’une re´ligion en France (Paris: Seuil,
1987).
3
This Stockholm Global
Village Lecture is incorporated in my book Europa ohne Identitaet? (Munich:
Bertelsmann, 1998), as chapter 3, pp. 109–33.
4
Fred M. Donner, The
Early Islamic Conquests (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981).
5
On the European
expansion that undermined the Islamic globalization of dar al-Islam see Philip
D. Curtin, The World and the West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2000), see also the reference in note 25.
6
See the chapter by
Hedley Bull on ‘‘The Revolt against the West,’’ included in Hedley Bull and
Adam Watson (eds) The Expansion of International Society (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1984), pp. 217–28.
7
B. Tibi, Islam
Between Culture and Politics (New York: Palgrave 2001, second expanded edition,
2005). The new edition includes the new Part V on the overall context of post
9/11 developments. This is also the framework employed in the volume that grew
from a UCLA research project on Culture, Conflict and Globalization, edited by
Helmut Anheier and Raj Isar (New York: Sage, 2007) that
includes my chapter: ‘‘Islam: Between Religious Cultural Practice and Identity
Politics.’’
8
See Francis
Fukuyama, ‘‘Identity, Immigration and Democracy,’’ Journal of Democracy, vol.
17, 2 (2006), pp. 5–20.
9
Lawrence E.
Harrison (ed.) Developing Cultures, 2 vols (New York: Routledge, 2006), Vol. 1,
Essays (includes Chapter 14 by B. Tibi on Islam), Vol. 2, Case Studies (includes
Chapter 9 by B. Tibi on Egypt).
10
See the excellent
and authoritative monograph by Muhsen Mahdi, Ibn Khaldun’s Philosophy of
History (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1957). See also the comprehensive
chapter on Ibn Khaldun in my book on the intellectual history of Islam
referenced in note 27 below, there chapter 6, pp. 179–209.
11
Raymond Aron, Paix
et guerre entre les nations (Paris: Colmann-Levy, 1962).
12
The related
conflicts are fully overlooked in the highly flawed work of Jytte Klausen, The
Islamic Challenge in Politics and Religion in Western Europe (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2005) as well as in the book by Jack Goody, Islam in Europe (Cambridge:
Polity, 2004). The same applies to scholars of the earlier school of thought,
like Albert Hourani, Europe and the Middle East (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1980). They present only nice stories and evade any addressing of the
burning issues. The realities of the world-political framework are in contrast
outlined by Zbigniew Brzezinski, Out of Control. Global Turmoil on the Eve of
the 21st Century (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993) and by
Stanley Hoffmann, World Disorders. Troubled, Peace in the Post-Cold War Era (Lanham,
MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998). See also B. Tibi, The Challenge of
Fundamentalism. Political Islam and the New World Disorder (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 1998, updated and enlarged edition 2002).
13
For a good
illuminating exception in the mushrooming dialogue industry see the proceedings
of the Jakarta dialogue of 2003, Karlina Helmanita et al. (eds) Dialogue in the
World Disorder. A Response to Threat of Unilateralism and World Terrorism (Jakarta:
UIN, the Hadayatullah University, 2004). This volume includes B. Tibi,
‘‘Islamic Civilization and the Quest for Democratic Pluralism,’’ pp. 159–201.
14
Peter Mandaville, Transnational
Muslim Politics. Re-Imagining the Umma (London: Routledge, 2004).
15
Fleming Rose, ‘‘Die
Stunde der Wahrheit,’’ Der Spiegel, issue 22 (29 May 2006), pp. 136–7. Rose was
the editor of the Danish daily Jyllands Posten that published the distasteful
Mohammed cartoons.
16
This is the
phrasing of Prof. Chabei Nemoto, to whom I am indebted for an invitation by the
EU–Japan Committee to address in Tokyo the tenth Anniversary of the EU– Japan
Dialogue 2003 on culture and globalization. Some ideas of this chapter were
presented then in Tokyo in my paper, published in the volume of the proceedings
(Tokyo, 2003, in Japanese).
17
B. Tibi, ‘‘A
Migration Story. From Muslim Immigrants to European Citizens of the Heart,’’
in: The Fletcher Forum for World Affairs, vol. 31, 1 (Winter 2007) pp. 147–168.
18
For more details B.
Tibi, Kreuzzug und Djihad. Der Islam und die christliche Welt (Munich:
Bertelsmann, 1999, new edition 2002), especially chapter II on Charlemagne,
Christendom and Islam, and chapters V and VI on the West and Islam. On
Charlemagne as founder of Europe see Horst Fuhrmann, Einladung ins Mittelalter (Munich:
C.H. Beck, 1987). See also Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1996).
19
Paul Fregosi, Jihad
in the West: Muslim Conquests from the 7th to the 21st Centuries
(New York: Prometheus Books, 1998) and in a similar mindset also Efraim Karsh, Islamic
Imperialism. A History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006).
20
Will Durant, The
Renaissance: A History of Civilization in Italy from 1304–1576 AD (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1953, reprint 1981). This
volume is a part of Durant’s story of civilizations, referenced in note 29
below. On the impact of Islam on the Renaissance see Chapter V in B. Tibi, Kreuzzug
und Djihad (note 18).
21
These symbols of
‘‘Jerusalem’’ and ‘‘Athens’’ stand for Christendom and the secular West
respectively: they were established in this meaning by Leslie Lipson, The
Ethical Crises of Civilization (London: Sage, 1993), p. 63. The next quote in the
text is taken from page 62.
22
For references on
the cross-cultural fertilization that took place in the Renaissance context,
see note 20 and in general Toby E. Huff, The Rise of Early Modern Science.
Islam, China and the West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995),
chapters 2 and 3.
23
Theodore H. von
Laue, The World Revolution of Westernization: The Twentieth Century in Global
Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), chapters I (concept) and
VII (the present).
24
See Marshall G.S.
Hodgson, Rethinking World History: Essays on Europe, Islam and World History (Cambridge,
IL: Cambridge University Press, 1993), Part II on Islam; see also his
masterpiece The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World
Civilization (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1974), three volumes.
25
Geoffrey Parker, The
Military Revolution and The Rise of the West, 1500–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1988), p. 115.
26
John Kelsay, Islam
and War: A Study in Comparative Ethics (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox
Press, 1993), pp. 25–6.
27
See the study by
Mahdi referenced in note 10 on the historical masterpiece of Ibn Khaldun, al-Maqaddima
[Prolegomena], which exists in many editions and languages. These editions and
the secondary literature on this subject are fully referenced in B. Tibi, Der
wahre Imam. Der Islam von Mohammed bis zur Gegenwart, (Munich: Piper, 1996, new
2001), Chapter 6.
28
Ernest Gellner, Postmodernism,
Reason and Religion (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 85. See also
David Gress, From NATO to Plato. The Idea of the West and its Opponents (New
York: The Free Press, 1998).
29
B. Tibi, Einladung
in die islamische Geschichte (Darmstadt: Primus, 2001). See also the
eleven-volume work Story of Civilization (published from 1953) by Will Durant,
also co-authored from volume 7 together with his wife Ariel Durant, reprinted
by Simon and Schuster (New York, from 1963) and the volume by Fernand Braudel, A
History of Civilizations (London: Penguin, 1994); see also note 1 above.
30
On the Islam
diaspora in Europe see B. Tibi, Islamische Zuwanderung. Die gescheiterte
Integration (Munich: DVA, 2002) and on the prospects of Europeanizing Islam see
the reference in note 47 to the Cornell project. See also notes 45 and 46.
31
See B. Tibi,
‘‘Islamism, National and International Security after September 11,’’ in
Andreas Wenger and Guenther Baechler (eds) Conflict and Cooperation. The
Individual between Ideal and Reality, Festschrift in Honor of Prof. Kurt
Spillmann (Zurich: Neue Zuercher Zeitung, 2002), pp. 127–52.
32
Roman Herzog et al.
(ed.) Preventing the Clash of Civilizations: A Strategy for Peace for the
Twenty-First Century (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1999); my chapter to this
volume is referenced in the ensuing note.
33
See B. Tibi,
‘‘International Morality and Cross-Cultural Bridging,’’ in Herzog (note 32),
pp. 107–26.
34
Hedley Bull, The
Anarchical Society. A Study of Order in World Politics (London: Macmillan,
1977), p. 273.
35
Benjamin Barber, Jihad
vs McWorld (New York: Random House, 1995).
36
Max Horkheimer, Kritik
der instrumentellen Vernunft (Frankfurt: Athenaeum Press, 1974).
37
Myron Weiner, The
Global Migration Crisis: Challenge to States and to Human Rights (New York:
HarperCollins, 1995). Weiner’s approach is applied to Islamic migration to
Europe in my book referenced in note 30 above.
38
This quote from my Bosch
Memorial Lecture (1994) is referenced in note 1 above.
39
John Kelsay, Islam
and War (note 26), p. 5.
40
Ibid., p. 118.
41
Jamey Keaton from
Associated Press, ‘‘Rioting Spread to 20 Towns in Paris Region,’’ US Today, 4
November 2005, p. 8a. It was continued on the 2006 anniversary. See Keaton’s
report ‘‘Violence in France,’’ The Ithaca Journal, 23 October 2006, p. 8a.
42
For evidence and
more details see B. Tibi, Islamische Zuwanderung (referenced in note
30).
43
Some authors
believe they have seen the true face of Tariq Ramadan, such as Robert Spencer, Onward
Muslim Soldiers. How Jihad still Threatens America and the West (Washington,
DC: Regenery Publishers, 2003), pp. 64–9, Caroline Fourest, Fre`re Tariq (Paris:
Grasset, 2004) and Ralph Ghadban, Tariq Ramadan und die Islamisierung Europas (Berlin:
Schiler, 2006). I had an encounter with this person in Brussels. See also my
report about a debate with Ramadan that took place there along with the
enlightened Paris Imam Dalil Boubakeur, published in: Neue Zuercher
Sonntagszeitung of 20 October 2002, p. 23.
44
Michael S.
Teitelbaum and Jay Winter, A Question of Numbers: High Migration, Low
Fertility, and the Politics of National Identity (New York: Hill and Wang:
1998). See chapter 12 on Islamic fundamentalism and the West, pp. 221–40.
45
The first source of
the concept of Euro-Islam is B. Tibi, ‘‘Les conditions d’un EuroIslam,’’ in
Robert Bistolfi and Franc¸ois Zabbal (eds) Islams d’Europe:
inte´gration ou insertion communautaire? (Paris: E´ditions de
l’Aube, 1995), pp. 230–4 in Paris 1992. On Euro-Islam one reads in Time magazine:
‘‘Bassam Tibi ... who coined the term Euro-Islam, insist[s] that the
integration of Europe’s Muslims depends on the adoption of a form of Islam that
embraces Western political values ... ‘The options for Muslims are
unequivocal,’ says Tibi. ‘There is no middle way between Euro-Islam and a ghettoization
of Muslim minorities’’’; Time magazine, 25 December 2001, p. 49. This seems not
to be the understanding of Tariq Ramadan on a European Islam (see note 43).
46
This project
resulted in the volume: Nezar AlSayyad and Manuel Castells (eds) Muslim Europe
or Euro-Islam: Politics Culture and Citizenship in the Age of Globalization (Lanham
and Berkeley, CA: Lexington Books, 2002), wherein the chapter by B. Tibi,
‘‘Muslim Migrants in Europe: Between Euro-Islam and Ghettoization,’’ pp. 31–
52. For a continuation of this reasoning see next note.
47
In a Cornell
research project on ‘‘transnational religion’’ the competition between
Islamization and Europeanization has been addressed in a research paper
published under the title ‘‘Europeanizing Islam or the Islamization of Europe:
Political Democracy versus Cultural Difference,’’ in Peter Katzenstein and
Timothy A. Byrnes, Religion in an Expanding Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2006), chapter 8, pp. 204–24
48
On
multi-culturalism see the contributions in Christian Joppke and Steven Lukes
(eds) Multi-cultural Questions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
49
Ju¨rgen
Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (Cambridge, MA:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1987).
50
See Jack Donelly, Universal
Human Rights in Theory and Practice (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1989) and Micheline R. Ishay (ed.) The Human Rights Reader: Major Political
Writings, Essays, Speeches and Documents from the Bible to the Present (New
York: Routledge, 1997).
51
Gellner, Postmodernism
(note 28), p. 85.
52
Alain Finkielkraut,
La De´faite de la pense´e (Paris: Gallimard, 1989).
53
On the study of
culture see Adam Kuper, Culture. The Anthropologists’ Account (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1999); and on the study of civilization see the
reader edited by John Rundell and Stephen Mennell, Classical Readings in
Culture and Civilization (London: Routledge, 1998).
54
See Clifford
Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (London: Fontana Press,
1973), in particular pp. 3–30. I employ this Geertzian approach in my book
referenced in note 7, in particular in chapter 1.
55
Sayyid Qutb, Ma’alim
fi al-tariq [Signposts along the Road] (Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, thirteenth legal
printing, 1989); on the political thought of Qutb see Roxanne L. Euben, Enemy
in the Mirror: Islamic Fundamentalism and the Limits of Modern Rationalism (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), pp. 49–92. On the difference between
Islam and Islamism already addressed in the preface of the present book see B.
Tibi, ‘‘Gibt es eine islamische bzw. islamistische Herausforderung an Europa?
Ein Plaedoyer fuer eine euro-islamische Asabiyya im Konflikt der
Zivilisationen,’’ Religion-Staat-Gesellschaft, vol. 6, 1 (2005), pp. 19–62, and
by the same author: ‘‘Euro-Islam, juridisch burgerschap en burgers van het
hart,’’ Nexus, No. 41 (2005), pp. 173–203. This contribution was completed for
the summit at the end of the Dutch presidency of the European Union (2004) that
took place in Rotterdam, December 2004.
56
On this Islamist
notion of Hakimiyyat-rule see B. Tibi, The Challenge of Fundamentalism (note 12
above), chapters 7 and 8.
57
It is embarrassing,
but nevertheless necessary, to refer to the authoritative history of Damascus
by Mohammed A. Al-Taqiuladdin al-Husni, Kitab Muntakhabat alTawarikh li Dimashq
(Damascus 1928), to prove, against the damaging gossip of the Islamists in
Europe’s diaspora, that I descend from the Islamic notability (Ashraf) of
Damascus; see p. 877 on Banu al-Tibi.
58
B. Tibi, ‘‘The
Attitudes of Sunni Arab Islamic Fundamentalism toward Modern Science and
Technology,’’ in Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby, The Fundamentalism
Project, five volumes, here vol. 2, Fundamentalisms and Society, in the section
‘‘Reclaiming the Sciences, the Family, and Education’’ (Chicago: Chicago
University Press, 1993), pp. 73–102.
59
B. Tibi, ‘‘Islamic
Dream of Semi-Modernity,’’ India International Centre Quarterly (New Delhi),
vol. 22, 1 (Spring 1995), pp. 79–87. For references on e-jihad see Gary R.
Bunt, Islam in the Digital Age. E-Jihad, Online Fetwas and Cyber Islamic
Environments (London: Pluto Press, 2003).
60
Qutb, Ma’alim (note
55), p. 5.
61
Ibid., pp. 6–7.
62
Daryush Shayegan, Cultural
Schizophrenia (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1993).
63
Mohammed Abed
al-Jabri, Arab-Islamic Philosophy: A Contemporary Critique (Austin, TX:
University of Texas Press, 1999), pp. 120–30.
64
Immanuel Kant,
‘‘Entwurf zum Ewigen Frieden,’’ in Richard Saage and Zwi Batscha (eds) Friedensutopien
(Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1975) and on the inclusion of this concept in the
contemporary debate Bruce Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles
for a Post-Cold War World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993).
65
Samuel P. Huntington,
The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1991).
66
See Chapter 7 of
the present book and B. Tibi, ‘‘Democracy and Democratization in Islam,’’ in
Miche`le Schmiegelow (ed.) Democracy in Asia (New York: St Martin’s Press,
1997), pp. 127–46 and more recently B. Tibi, ‘‘Democracy in an Age of
Islamism,’’ in Alan Olson et al. (eds) Educating for Democracy (Lanham, MD:
Rowman and Littlefield, 2004), pp. 203–19. See also Chapter 2 of the present
book.
67
B. Tibi, Mit dem
Kopftuch nach Europa. Die Tuerkei auf dem Weg in die EU (Darmstadt: Primus,
2005, expanded and updated edition 2007).
68
See Roger Collins, The
Arab Conquest of Spain (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994) and Sir Steven Runciman, The
Fall of Constantinople (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1990).
69
See the references
in note 19 and furthermore Alan Jamieson, Faith and Sword. A Short History of
Christian–Muslim Conflict (London: Reaktion Books, 2006).
70
See the chapter on hijra
in Islam by B. Tibi, Islamische Zuwanderung (note 30), pp. 258–90.
71
Jean
Franc¸ois Revel, Democracy Against Itself: The Future of the Democratic
Impulse (New York: Free Press, 1993), chapter 12.
72
Stephan Theil,
‘‘Tolerating the Intolerable,’’ Newsweek, 5 November 2001, p. 46–8.
73
This is the title
of Ramadan’s presentation in Stockholm, 16 June 2006.
74
Tariq Ramadan, Aux
sources du renouveau musulman. D’al-Afghani a` al-Banna (Paris: E´ditions
Bayard, 1998), see also note 43 and 45. The alleged continuity between Afghani
and al-Banna is not in line with historical facts and is therefore wrong; it is
based on a false interpretation.
75
For full evidence
see chapter 3 on jihadism rooted in the Muslim Brotherhood in B. Tibi, Der neue
Totalitarismus (Darmstadt: Primus, 2004), pp. 106–37.
76
Hasan al-Banna,
‘‘Risalat al-jihad,’’ included in his collection of essays, published as Majmu’at
Rasa’il al-Imam al-Shahid Hasan al-Banna (Cairo: Dar al-Da’wa, 1990, legal
edition), pp. 271–92.
77
The Muslim scholar
Sachedina conceals this issue instead of revealing it and dealing with it
analytically: Abdulaziz Sachedina, The Islamic Roots of Democratic Pluralism (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2001). For a contrast see B. Tibi, ‘‘The Pertinence of
Islam’s Predicament with Democratic Pluralism,’’ Religion-Staat-Gesellschaft,
vol. 7, 1 (2006), pp. 83–117.
6 The European diaspora of Muslim migrants and the idea
of Europe: could they become Europeans by choice? Euro-Islam, legal citizenship
and ‘‘citizens of the heart’’
1
See B. Tibi,
‘‘Europeanizing Islam or the Islamization of Europe: Political Democracy versus
Cultural Difference,’’ in Peter Katzenstein and Timothy Byrnes (eds) Religion
in an Expanding Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp.
204–24; and earlier by the same author, in Nezar AlSayyad and Manuel Castells
(eds) Muslim Europe or Euro-Islam: Politics, Culture, and Citizenship in the
Age of Globalization (Berkeley and New York: Lexington Books, 2002) on
Euro-Islam, chapter 2, pp. 31–52.
2
See B. Tibi, Europa
ohne Identitaet? (Munich 1998, and many new editions between 2000 and 2002);
Dutch translation, Europa Zonder Identiteit? De Crisis van de Multiculuturele
Samenleving (Aarselaar, Belgium: Deltas, 2000).
3
Francis Fukuyama,
‘‘Identity, Immigration and Democracy,’’ Journal of Democracy, vol. 17, 2
(2006), pp. 5–20.
4
On this notion see
Muhsen Mahdi, Ibn Khaldun’s Philosophy of History. A Study in the Philosophic
Foundations of the Science of Culture (London: Allen and Unwin, 1957); the work
of Ibn Khaldun is referenced in note 31.
5
This assumption is
based on the findings of the ‘‘Culture Matters Research Project’’ (CMRP) in
which my thinking on Islam has been incorporated. See the acknowledgement and
the reference in note 9 to Chapter 5 of this volume.
6
Peter Neumann,
‘‘Europe’s Jihadist Dilemma,’’ Survival, vol. 48, 2 (2006), pp. 71–84.
7
See chapter 10
‘‘The Islamization of Europe’’ in J. Millard Burr and Robert Collins, Alms for
Jihad, Charity and Terrorism in the Islamic World (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2006).
8
See note 1 and B.
Tibi, ‘‘Gibt es eine islamische bzw. Islamistische Herausforderung an die
Identitaet Europas?’’ Religion-Staat-Gesellschaft, vol. 6, 1 (2005), pp. 19–62.
9
Gilles Kepel, Les
Banlieues de l’Islam. Naissance d’une re´ligion en France (Paris:
Editions du Seuil, 1987).
10
‘‘Les conditions
d’un Euro-Islam’’ (see note 45 to Chapter 5).
11
The term and
concept of cultural modernity are employed here in line with Ju¨rgen
Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
1987).
12
John Kelsay, Islam
and War. A Study in Comparative Ethics (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1993),
p. 118.
13
B. Tibi, ‘‘Islam:
Between Religious-Cultural Practice and Identity Politics,’’ in Y. Raj Isar and
Helmut Anheier (eds) Cultures and Globalization (London: Sage, 2007).
14
On the Frankfurt
School of Horkheimer and Adorno see Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination. A
History of the Frankfurt School (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1973).
15
Max Horkheimer, Kritische
Theorie, two volumes (Frankfurt aim Main: Fischer, 1968); here, preface, vol.
I, p. xiii.
16
B. Tibi, Der neue
Totalitarismus. Heiliger Krieg und westliche Sicherheit (Darmstadt: Primus,
2004). See also B. Tibi, ‘‘The Totalitaranism of Jihadist Islamism and its
Challenge to Europe and to Islam,’’ in: Totalitarianism Movements and Political
Religion (2007) vol. 8, 1 pp. 35–54.
17
I am among the
authors who contributed to the anti-Huntington volume by the former president
of Germany, Roman Herzog et al., Preventing the Clash of Civilizations. A Peace
Strategy for the Twenty-First Century (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1999), see
note 35 below.
18
Michael Teitelbaum
and Jay Winter, A Question of Numbers. High Migration, Low Fertility and the
Politics of National Identity (New York: Hill and Wang, 1998), in particular
pp. 221–39 on Islamic fundamentalism.
19
See Lawrence E.
Harrison, Underdevelopment is a State of Mind: The Latin American Case (Cambridge,
MA: Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, 1985) and the
reference to the Culture Matters Research Project (CMRP); see note 5 above.
20
Gerard Delanty, Inventing
Europe: Idea, Identity, Reality (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1995).
21
B. Tibi, Islam
between Culture and Politics (New York: Palgrave, second expanded edition,
2005).
22
On this see the
volume edited by Joseph Mitchell and Helen Buss Mitchell, Taking Sides.
Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in Western Civilization (Guilford, CT:
McGraw Hill, 2000). As a Muslim I also see bridges based on the heritage of
rationalism in Islam, specifically the Hellenization process; see Franz
Rosenthal, The Classical Heritage of Islam (London: Routledge, 1975, reprinted
1994) and William Montgomery Watt, Islamic Philosophy and Theology (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 1962; reprinted 1979).
23
The controversy took
place in Amsterdam and is published in Praemium Erasmianum Foundation (ed.) The
Limits of Pluralism. Neo-Absolutisms and Relativism (Amsterdam: Erasmus, 1994).
Among the contributors are C. Geertz, E. Gellner, Shlomo Avineri and B. Tibi.
24
Raymond Aron, Paix
et guerre entre les nations (Paris: Calman-Le´vy, 1962). 25 See the
references in note 1 to Chapter 5.
26
See the chapter on
migration in Malcolm Anderson, Frontiers. Territory and State Formation in the
Modern World (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996), pp. 127–50.
27
See John Kelsay, Islam
and War (referenced in note 12).
28
Ibid.
29
See B. Tibi, Islamische
Zuwanderung. Die gescheiterte Integration (Munich: DVA, 2002), chapter 3 and 4
on ‘‘parallel societies’’ as Islamic enclaves in Europe.
30
Leon de Winter,
‘‘Wir muessen fuer eine Weile die Tore schließen,’’ Die Welt, 15 December
2004, front page.
31
See the reference
in note 4 above and the reprint Ibn Khaldun, al-Muqaddima (Cairo: al-Maktabah
al-Tijariyya, new printing, no date).
32
On the concept and
potential of a Euro-Islamic asabiyya see my 2005 article referenced in note 55
to Chapter 5.
33
Elaine Sciolino,
‘‘School Scarf Ban in France. Official Report Calls for a Law,’’ New York Times,
also published in International Herald Tribune (IHT), 12 December 2003, front
page and p. 6. See also the report on the following day ‘‘Threat on Head
Scarves Angers French Muslims,’’ IHT, 13 December 2003, p. 3.
34
Niluefer Goele, The
Forbidden Modern. Civilization and Veiling (Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan University
Press, 1996), p. 1. See also chapter 10 on the head-scarf in my book Aufbruch
am Bosporus. Die Tuerkei zwischen Europa und dem Islamismus (Munich: Diana
Press, 1998). This volume was also translated into Turkish and published in
Istanbul in 2000.
35
See my chapter
‘‘International Morality and Cross-Cultural Bridging’’ in Roman Herzog et al., Preventing
the Clash of Civilizations (note 17), pp. 107–26.
36
See B. Tibi, ‘‘The
Pertinence of Islam’s Predicament with Democratic Pluralism,’’ Religion-Staat-Gesellschaft,
vol. 7, 1 (2006), pp. 83–117.
37
See my Cornell work
referenced in note 1, and in contrast Seyla Ben-Habib (ed.) Democracy and
Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996).
38
On the origin of
Euro-Islam see the references in note 10 and also the ensuing papers referenced
in note 1 above.
39
See also Patricia
Crone, Pre-Industrial Societies. Anatomy of the Pre-Modern World (Oxford:
Oneworld, new printing, 2003) and Bassam Tibi, The Crisis of Modern Islam. A
Preindustrial Culture in the Scientific-Technological Age (Salt Lake City, UT:
University of Utah Press, 1988).
40
See Philip D.
Curtin, The World and the West. The European Challenge and the Overseas
Response in the Age of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2000).
41
See for instance
Tariq Modood (ed.) The Politics of Multi-culturalism in the New Europe (New
York: St Martin’s Press, 1997). According to Modood Europe has become ‘‘now a
supranational community of cultures, sub-cultures and transcultures.’’ The
implication of this allegation and way of determining Europe is to deny Europe
a civilizational identity of its own. The result is an anti-European sentiment.
See my contrasting position in my book referenced in note 2 above, for which I
use a question mark in the title Europa ohne Identitaet? ‘‘Europe without
Identity?’’ See also Moodod’s contribution (Chapter 6) to the volume of
AlSayyad and Castells referenced in note 1 above.
42
Manuel Castells, The
Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Vol. Two: The Power of Identity (Cambridge:
MA: Blackwell, 1997), p. 8.
43
See William
Montgomery Watt, Muslim–Christian Encounters. Perceptions and Misperceptions (London:
Routledge, 1991) and Norman Daniel, Islam and the West: The Making of an Image (Oxford:
Oneworld, new edition 1993).
44
Nezar AlSayyad,
‘‘Culture, Identity, and Urbanism in a Changing World,’’ in Michael Cohen (ed.)
Preparing for the Urban Future (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1996), pp. 108–22, here p. 109.
45
Ibid., pp. 120f.
46
B. Tibi,
‘‘Euro-Islam. The Quest of Islamic Migrants and of Turkey to become European,’’
Turkish Policy Quarterly, vol. 3, 1 (2004), pp. 13–28, see also note 38.
47
This is the term
used by Tomas Gerholm and Yngve G. Lithman (eds) The New Islamic Presence in
Western Europe (London: Mansell, 1988, paperback, 1990). This presence was the
subject-matter of a research project run at the University of Leiden,
Netherlands, from which the following two volumes grew: W.A.R. Shadid et al. (eds)
Muslims in the Margin. Political Responses to the Presence of Islam in Western
Europe (Kampen, Netherlands: Kok Pharos, 1996) and W.A.R. Shadid et al. (eds) Political
Participation and Identities of Muslims in Non-Muslim States (Kampen,
Netherlands: Kok Pharos, 1997). I was a member of the project and contributed
the chapter ‘‘Islam, Hinduism and the Limited Secularity in India: A Model for
Muslim-European Relations?’’ vol. 1, pp. 130–45.
48
Bernard Lewis,
‘‘Europa wird am Ende des Jahrhunderts islamisch sein,’’ Die Welt, 28 July
2004, p. 6, and in contrast B. Tibi, ‘‘Grenzen der Toleranz. Missbrauch des
Rechtsstaates durch Djihadisten,’’ Welt am Sonntag, 5 September 2004, p. 14.
The controversy was covered by Christopher Caldwell, ‘‘Islamic Europe?’’ Weekly
Standard (Washington), vol. 10, 4 (4 October 2004), pp. 15–16.
49
William G.
Lockwood, European Moslems (New York: Academic Press, 1975) and Tone Bringa, Being
Muslim the Bosnian Way: Identity and Community in a Central Bosnian Village (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995).
50
For more details
see B. Tibi, Islamische Zuwanderung (referenced in note 29), chapter 8.
51
Alec G. Hargreaves,
Immigration, ‘‘Race’’ and Ethnicity in Contemporary France (London: Routledge,
1995). See also Gilles Kepel, Les Banlieues de l’Islam. Naissance d’une
religion en France (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1987) and more recently Paul
Silverstein, Algeria in France (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press
2004).
52
Philip Martin,
‘‘Germany: Reluctant Land of Immigration,’’ in Wayne A. Cornelius et al. (eds) Controlling
Immigration. A Global Perspective (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,
1994), pp. 189–225.
53
B. Tibi, ‘‘Die
Schwierigkeit, an der deutschen Universitaet heimisch zu sein,’’ in Namo Aziz
(ed.) Fremd in einem kalten Land. Ausla¨nder in Deutschland (Freiburg:
Herder, 1992), pp. 121–36.
54
Ursula
Spuler-Stegemann, Muslime in Deutschland (Freiburg: Herder, new edition 2002),
in particular pp. 46–91.
55
The papers of this
conference were published in a volume edited by John Docker and Gerhard
Fischer, Adventures of Identity. European Multi-cultural Experiences and
Perspectives (Tu¨bingen: Stauffenberg Press, 2001). The volume includes B.
Tibi, ‘‘Communitarianism and Euro-Islam,’’ chapter 4, pp. 45–60.
56
On Muslim migrants
in France and the United Kingdom see Gilles Kepel, A l’ouest d’Allah (Paris:
Edition du Seuil, 1994); in France, Hargreaves and Silverstein (referenced in
note 51); and in Germany Spuler-Stegemann (referenced in note 54). See also, on
Britain, Philip Lewis, Islamic Britain (London: I.B. Tauris, new edition 2002).
57
There are two early
comparisons of Turkish and North African Muslim migrants in Germany and France:
Roger Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1992) and Klaus Manfrass, Tuerken in der
Bundesrepublik – Nordafrikaner in Frankreich (Bonn: Bovier, 1991).
58
See the report,
‘‘Harte Hand gegen Hassprediger,’’ Der Spiegel, no. 48 (2004), pp. 36–40.
59
Udo Ulfkotte, Der
Krieg in unseren Staedten. Wie radikale Islamisten Deutschland unterwandern (Frankfurt
am Main: Eichborn, 2003).
60
See the references
in notes 11 and 14. Habermas is among the progressive Germans who support the
integration of migrants; see his book: Die Einbeziehung des Anderen (Frankfurt/M.:
Suhrkamp, 1996). It is, however, sad that Habermas fails to see the
politicization of Islam in the diaspora community and thus overlooks the
implications related to it. On this issue see Bassam Tibi, ‘‘Habermas and the
Return of the Sacred. Is it a Religious Renaissance, a Pronouncement of a
‘Post-Secular Society,’ or the Emergence of Political Religion as a New
Totalitarianism?’’ Religion-Staat-Gesellschaft, vol. 3, 2 (2002), pp. 265–97.
61
See Josef Schacht, An
Introduction to Islamic Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964).
62
Ernest Gellner, Postmodernism,
Reason and Religion (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 85. 63 Kelsay, Islam and War (referenced
in note 12), p. 118.
64
Ibid., p. 5.
65
See the result of
an inter-cultural effort for establishing a consensus shared by different
cultures in the volume of An-Na’im and the contributors at the Wilson Center:
Abdullahi An-Na’im and Francis Deng (eds) Human Rights in Africa.
Cross-Cultural Perspectives (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1990). The
volume includes. B. Tibi, ‘‘The European Tradition of Human Rights and the
Culture of Islam,’’ pp. 104– 32.
66
In his book on
early Islam, Hichem Djait, al-Fitna (Beirut: Dar al-Talia, 1992), p. 49 points
at the importance of hijra/migration for the spread of Islam in combination
with jihad.
67
See chapter 10 on
‘‘The Islamization of Europe’’ in J. Millard Burr and Robert Collins, Alms for
Jihad. Charity and Terrorism in the Islamic World (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2006), pp. 237–62. It is the mindset of the religious
doctrine of hijra that is revived at present; see Muhammad Khalid Masud, ‘‘The
Obligation to Migrate: The Doctrine of Hijra in Islamic Law,’’ in James
Piscatori and Dale Eickelman (eds) Muslim Travellers (Berkeley, CA: University
of California Press, 1990), pp. 29–49; and chapter 6 in my book on Islamische
Zuwanderung, referenced in note 29.
68
Efraim Karsh, Islamic
Imperialism. A History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006), in
particular chapters 12 and 13 on the present day.
69
Speech delivered by
the Hashemite Prince Hassan Ibn Talal at the Euro-Islamic Forum of the European
Academy of Arts and Sciences in November 1996 in Salzburg, manuscript. By then
I was director of that forum.
70
Leslie Lipson, The
Ethical Crises of Civilization (London and Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1993), p.
62.
71
On Islamic
rationalism see Herbert A. Davidson, Alfarabi, Avicenna and Averroe¨s on
Intellect (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).
72
See Mushrul Hasan, Legacy
of a Divided Nation. India’s Muslims since Independence (Boulder, CO: Westview
Press, 1997) and the chapter on the pertinence of this Indian experience to
Europe in my book Europa ohne Identitaet? (see note 2), pp. 223–40. See also
the reference in the next note.
73
See Bassam Tibi,
‘‘Islam, Hinduism and Limited Secularity in India. A Model of Muslim-European
Relations in the Age of Migration?’’ referenced in note 47 above.
74
See Bassam Tibi,
‘‘Foreigners – Today’s Jews?’’ in Ulrich Wank (ed.) The Resurgence of Right
Wing Radicalism in Germany (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1996),
pp. 85–102. I refuse to make this parallel, because the Jews were native
Europeans, not migrants, but I do refer to it.
75
On Islamist
anti-Semitism, see B. Tibi, ‘‘Die Maer des Islamismus von der juedischen und
kreuzzueglerischen Weltverschwoerung gegen den Islam,’’ in Julius Schoeps et
al. (eds) Alter-neuer Judenhass. Antisemitismus, arabisch-israelischer Konflikt
und europaeische Politik (Berlin: Verlag fuer Berlin-Brandenburg, 2006), pp.
179–202.
76
David Gress, From
Plato to NATO. The Idea of the West and its Opponents (New York: The Free
Press, 1998), pp. 503f.
77
Ernest Gellner, Postmodernism
(referenced in note 62), pp. 84f.
78
B. Tibi, The
Challenge of Fundamentalism. Political Islam and the New World Disorder (Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press, 1998, updated edition 2002).
79
On the grounds of
my study of political Islam I strongly disagree with the highly flawed book by
John Esposito and John Voll, Islam and Democracy (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1996). These authors do not distinguish between Islam and Islamism (see
my review in Journal of Religion (1998), October issue, pp. 667–9).
80
The Algerian
Islamist Ali Ben Haj and most others truly believe ‘‘al-demoqratiyya kufr/democracy
is heresy.’’ For a reference on this see Ahmidah Aiyashi, al-Islamiyun
al-jazairiyaun bain al-sulta wa al-rasas [Algerian Islamists between Rule and
Bullets] (Algiers: Dar al-Hikmah, 1992), pp. 57–60.
81
On the Islamist
instrumental use of democracy as restricted to a procedure of voting and
overlooking the nature of democracy as a political culture, see B. Tibi,
‘‘De´mocracie et De´mocratisation en Islam. La Queˆte d’un
Islam e´claire´ et les contre-forces de l’autoritarisme et du
fondamentalisme religieux,’’ Revue Internationale de Politique Compare´e,
vol. 2, 2 (1995), pp. 285–99, and the debate in Chapter 7 of this volume.
82
In the book by the
Oxford scholar Larry Siedentop, Democracy in Europe (London: Penguin Books,
2000), see the chapter ‘‘Europe, Christianity and Islam,’’ pp. 189–214, where
one finds highly pertinent and equally intelligent reasoning on this issue, but
an over-emphasis on the ‘‘Christian component.’’ If Siedentop were right, then
the Islamic diaspora in Europe, including myself, would never be able become
European.
83
See Alan Jamieson, Faith
and Sword. A Short History of Christian–Muslim Conflict (London: Reaktion
Books, 2006); he argues that the new conflict ‘‘between the postChristian West
and Islam is more a clash between secular materialism and a revived religion,’’
p. 208. I prefer to speak of a civilizational values-based conflict.
7 Political Islam and democracy’s decline to a voting
procedure: the political culture of democracy is the solution for Islamic
civilization
1
Ju¨rgen
Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
1987), pp. 1–22.
2
To be sure, the
notion ‘‘pre-modern’’ is not used here in an evolutionist understanding. For
more details see Patricia Crone, Pre-Industrial Societies. Anatomy of the
Pre-Modern World (Oxford: Oneworld, new edition 2003) and B. Tibi, The Crisis
of Modern Islam. A Preindustrial Culture in the Scientific-Technological Age (Salt
Lake City, UT: Utah University Press, 1988).
3
On the Frankfurt
School, established by Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, see note 14 to
Chapter 6. As a Muslim from Damascus I received my academic education in this
school of thought with these great philosophers, who were my academic teachers
in Frankfurt and had tremendous impact on the unfolding of my thinking.
4
B. Tibi, ‘‘The
Interplay between Social and Cultural Change,’’ in George Atiyeh and Ibrahim
Oweis (eds) Arab Civilization. Studies in Honor of Constantine Zurayk (Albany:
SUNY, 1988), pp. 166–82.
5
See the ‘‘Culture
Matters Research Project’’ (CMRP), chaired by L. Harrison, in note 5 to Chapter
6 and note 9 to Chapter 5.
6
On this issue see
the project-based publication by the Emirates Center for Political and
Strategic Studies and Research (ECSSR) (ed.) The Gulf. Challenges of the Future
(Abu Dhabi: ECSSR, 2005) which includes B. Tibi, ‘‘Political Reform in the
Gulf: Society and State in a Changing World,’’ chapter 17, pp. 313–30.
7
This reformatory
mindset is reflected in the thoughts of the Muslim human rights activist
Abdullahi An-Na’im, Islamic Reformation (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University
Press, 1990) and also in the contributions to Tore Lindholm and Kari Vogt (eds)
Islamic Law Reform and Human Rights (Copenhagen: Nordic Human Rights
Publications, 1993) by Abdullahi An-Na’im and also by Mohammed Arkoun and B.
Tibi.
8
This is the
assumption already verified in the research completed within the Fundamentalism
Project at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The findings were
published under the same title in five volumes, edited by Martin Marty and
Scott Appleby (1991–5). The findings include B. Tibi, ‘‘The Worldview of
Sunni–Arab Fundamentalists,’’ in vol. 2 of this project, Fundamentalisms and
Society (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1993), pp. 73–102.
9
The chapter ‘‘al-istishraq
ma’kusan’’ [Orientalism in reverse] in Sadik Jalal al-Azm, Dhihniyyat al-Tahrim
(London: Riad El-Rayyes, 1992), pp. 17–86. On this debate see also the
additional Part V in the new edition of my book, Islam between Culture and
Politics (New York: Palgrave, 2005, updated and expanded), chapter 11.
10
B. Tibi, ‘‘Genesis
of the Arab Left. A Critical Viewpoint,’’ in Edward Said (ed.) The Arabs of
Today. Alternatives for Tomorrow (Columbus, OH: Forum Associates, 1973), pp.
31–42.
11
Robert Hefner, Civil
Islam. Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2000). In his book Two Worlds of Islam. Interaction Between
Southeast Asia and the Middle East (Miami: University Press of Florida, 1993),
Fred von der Mehden rightly states: ‘‘religious education in the Middle East ...
remains a major source of Muslim thought in Southeast Asia, especially in
Indonesia’’ (p. 97). This has not changed over recent years. Political Islam is
imported into Southeast Asia from the Middle East, but Indonesian civil Islam
is not perceived in the Arab world.
12
On this
‘‘other-ing’’ of non-Muslims, in particular on the other-ing of the West in a
Muslim worldview dominated by a mindset of self-victimization, see the
illuminating study on Iranian Muslim intellectuals by the enlightened Iranian
scholar Mehrzad Boroujerdi, Iranian Intellectuals and the West: The Tormented
Triumph of Nativism (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1996), chapters
1, 2 and 3. This analysis applies to Arab intellectuals as well. See also the
next note.
13
Graham E. Fuller, A
Sense of Siege. The Geopolitics of Islam and the West (Boulder, CO: Westview
Press, 1995).
14
This is the core
topic of a comparative research project conducted by UCLA and the American
University of Paris on ‘‘World Cultures.’’ The findings were published in Raj
Isar and Helmut Anheier (eds) Culture, Conflict, Globalization (London: Sage,
2007). The volume includes B. Tibi, ‘‘Islam: Between Religious-Cultural
Practice and
Identity Politics.’’
15
On this issue see
B. Tibi, ‘‘The Totalitarianism of Jihadist Islamism and its Challenge to Europe
and to Islam,’’ Totalitarian Movements and Political Religion, vol. 8, 1
(2007), pp. 35–54; and on the spread of Islamism in the European diaspora, B.
Tibi, ‘‘A Migration Story. From Muslim Immigrants to European ‘Citizens of the
Heart’?’’ Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, vol. 31, 1 (2007), pp. 147–68.
16
Samir al-Khalil, The
Republic of Fear. The Politics of Modern Iraq (Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press, 1989). This is a pseudonym for Kanan Makiya.
17
On this issue see
my article, ‘‘Missionarisches Bewusstsein. Als Napoleon Bonaparte 1798 Kairo
eroberte, hoffte er vergebens als Befreier gefeiert zu werden. Dem
USPraesidenten George W. Bush wird es in Bagdad aehnlich ergehen,’’ Financial
Times Deutschland, 10 April 2003, p. 8. On Napoleon in Egypt see B. Tibi, Arab
Nationalism. Between Islam and the Nation-State (New York: St Martin’s Press,
third edition 1997), pp. 79–84.
18
United Nations
Development Program, Arab Human Development Report, Creating Opportunities for
Future Generations (New York: United Nations, 2002).
19
George Makdisi, The
Rise of Colleges. Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 1981), pp. 77–80.
20
B. Tibi, Aufbruch
am Bosporus. Die Tuerkei zwischen Europa und dem Islamismus (Munich: Diana
Press, 1998), chapter 9 (Turkish translation, Istanbul 2000).
21
Stephan Schwartz, The
Two Faces of Islam. The House of Sa’ud from Tradition to Terror (New York:
Doubleday, 2002), chapter 7. Schwartz also discusses indirect Saudi funding of
terrorism.
22
See the publication
by the Fundamentalism Project, 5 vols (referenced in note 8), in particular
part 3 on education in vols 2 and 3, Fundamentalisms and the State (Chicago,
IL: University of Chicago Press, 1993) on ‘‘remaking politics.’’
23
On education see
chapter 8 in B. Tibi, Islam between Culture and Politics (referenced in note
9).
24
On the rejection of
democracy as an imported solution see Yusuf al-Qaradawi, al-Hall al-Islami wa
al-hulul al-Mustawradah [The Islamic and the Imported Solution] (Beirut:
al-Risalah, reprint 1980) and on democracy as kufr/heresy see Ahmida Ayashi, alIslamiyun
al jaza’riyun bain al-sulta wa al-rasas [Algerian Islamists between State
Authority and Bullets], Algiers 1991, pp. 33 and 58.
25
See Peter Brown, The
Rise of Western Christendom (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996).
26
See William
MacNeill, The Rise of the West. A History of the Human Community (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1963), in particular part III; and David Gress, From
Plato to NATO. The Idea of the West and its Opponents (New York: Free Press,
1998). 27 Leslie Lipson, The Ethical Crisis of Civilization. Moral Meltdown or
Advance? (London: Sage, 1993), p. 63.
28
Ibid., p. 62.
29
On this
Hellenization see William Montgomery Watt, Islamic Philosophy and Theology (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 1962), parts 2 and 3.
30
On democracy see
Anthony Birch, The Concepts and Theories of Modern Democracy (London:
Routledge, 1993); on the global context, see David Held, Democracy and the Global
Order. From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 1995).
31
Hedley Bull, ‘‘The
Revolt against the West,’’ in Hedley Bull and Adam Watson (eds) The Expansion
of International Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 217–28.
32
See B. Tibi,
‘‘Post-Bipolar Order in Crisis. The Challenge of Politicized Islam,’’ published
in the special issue of the LSE journal Millennium on ‘‘Religion and
International Relations,’’ vol. 29, 3 (2000), pp. 843–59.
33
Therefore, I
strongly reject the work of John Esposito and John Voll, Islam and Democracy (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1996). See my critical review in Journal of
Religion, vol. 78, 4 (1998), pp. 667–9.
34
The Moroccan
philosopher Mohammed Abed al-Jabri rightly argues in his book Arab Islamic
Philosophy (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1999): ‘‘The future can only
be Averroe¨ist’’ (p. 120). The work of Averroe¨s heralds the height of
Islamic rationalism in Hellenized medieval Islam.
35
On Islamic rationalism
see Herbert A. Davidson, Alfarabi, Avicenna and Averroe¨s on Intellect (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1992); and in general Franz Rosenthal, The
Classical Heritage of Islam (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press,
1975), parts III, IV and V. On the transmission of this tradition to Europe see
David Lindberg, The Beginning of Western Science (Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press, 1992); and Toby E. Huff, The Rise of Early Modern Science.
Islam, China and the West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
36
See Daniel Bell,
‘‘The Return of the Sacred,’’ in his collected essays, The Winding Passage 1960–1980
(New York: Basic Books, 1980). On this resumed debate see B. Tibi, Islam
between Culture and Politics (New York: Palgrave, 2001), chapter 11 to the
updated edition of 2005.
37
Clifford Geertz, The
Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), chapter 4.
38
See my contribution
to Helmut Anheier and Raj Isar (eds) Culture, Conflict, Globalization (referenced
in note 14).
39
Ernest Gellner, Postmodernism,
Reason and Religion (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 85.
40
See B. Tibi,
‘‘Culture and Knowledge: The Politics of Islamization of Knowledge. The
Fundamentalist Claim to De-Westernization,’’ Theory, Culture and Society, vol.
12, 1 (1995), pp. 1–24. On the splitting of modernity into, first, instruments
and, second, values pursued in political Islam, see B. Tibi, ‘‘The Worldview of
Sunni-Arab Fundamentalists: Attitudes Towards Modern Science and Technology,’’
in Martin Marty and Scott Appleby, Fundamentalism and Society (vol. 2 of The
Fundamentalism Project, see reference in note 8 above), pp. 73–102.
41
On this Islamist
thought see the leading Islamist Yusuf al-Qaradawi, al-Hulul alMustawradah (referenced
in note 24), pp. 49–110.
42
B. Tibi, ‘‘International
Morality and Cross-Cultural Bridging,’’ in Roman Herzog et al., Preventing the
Clash of Civilizations. A Peace Strategy for the Twenty-First Century (New
York: St Martin’s Press, 1999), pp. 107–26.
43
See Bruce Russett, Grasping
the Democratic Peace. Principles for a Post-Cold War World (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1993); and B. Tibi, ‘‘From Islamist Jihadism to
Democratic Peace? Islam at the Crossroads in Post-Bipolar International
Politics,’’ Ankara Paper 16 (London and Ankara: Frank Cass, 2005).
44
Hedley Bull, ‘‘The
Revolt against the West’’ (referenced in note 31), p. 223.
45
Daniel Patrick
Moyniham, Pandaemonium. Ethnicity in International Politics (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1993); see also the reference in note 14.
46
B. Tibi, ‘‘The
Attitudes of Middle Eastern Elites and Counter-Elites Towards Political Order:
The Islamic-Fundamentalist Challenge to the Secular Domestic and International
Order,’’ in Samuel Huntington (ed.) Project on Conflict or Convergence: Global
Perspectives on War, Peace and International Order, Harvard Academy for
International and Area Studies, mimeographed Cambridge, MA, 1997; published
version: ‘‘The Fundamentalist Challenge to the Secular Order in the Middle
East,’’ Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, vol. 23, 1 (1999), pp. 191–210.
47
Niluefer Goele, The
Forbidden Modern. Civilization and Veiling (Ann Arbor: Michigan Press, 1996).
48
Efraim Karsh, Islamic
Imperialism. A History (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 2006).
49
In their Asalib al-ghazu
al-fikri li al-’alam al-Islami [Methods of the Intellectual Invasion of the
Islamic World] (Cairo: Dar al-I’tisam, second edition 1978) the SaudiWahhabi
professors ‘Ali M. Jarisha and Muhammad Sh. Zaibaq reject learning from Europe,
as does the Islamist Anwar al-Jundi, Ahdaf al-taghrib fi al-’alam al-Islami [The
Goals of Westernization in the Islamic World] (Cairo: al-Azhar Press, 1987).
For a justification of this attitude see also the reference in note 54.
50
See the book by
Mehrzad Boroujerdi (referenced in note 12).
51
See my article on
the story of Islamic migration to Europe (referenced in note 15).
52
In his editorial
‘‘Manifests from the Left too Sensible to Ignore,’’ International Herald
Tribune, 30–31 December 2007, p. 2, Roger Cohen distinguishes between two
varieties of the contemporary left. Among the supporters of the first trend are
‘‘hyperventilating left-liberals ... rational argument goes out of the
window.’’ These people also engage in ‘‘disgraceful alliances with illiberal
theocrats. These ‘European pacifists’ back the beheading brigade, the
child-bombers and other fundamentalists.’’ In contrast, the left of ‘‘the
Easton Manifesto is united by strong support for freedom of speech and ideas,
democracy and pluralism, as well as by unqualified opposition to all forms of
terrorism and totalitarianism.’’ I place the critique of political Islam in
this book in this tradition of the left, which I encountered and adopted at the
Frankfurt School of the Holocaust survivors Max Horkheimer and Theodor W.
Adorno, Jews who were – to me, as a Muslim in Frankfurt – my academic teachers.
53
Roger Scruton, The
West and the Rest. Globalization and Terrorist Threat (Wilmington, DE: ISI
Books, 2002), chapter 4.
54
On asalah/authenticity
see Anwar al-Jundi, al-Mu’asarah fi itar al-aslah [Modernity in the Context of
Authenticity] (Cairo: Dar al-Sahwa, 197). The author states ‘‘we need a return
to the sources, not an enlightenment’’ and ‘‘we are the teachers of the West,
not its disciples.’’
55
See Abdulhadi
Abdulrahman, Sultat al-nas [The Authority of the Text] (Beirut: alMarkas
al-Thaqafi, 1993), pp. 45ff.
56
Roxanne Euben, Journeys
to the Other Shores. Muslim and Western Travelers in the Search of Knowledge (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006).
57
More on this in the
important contribution of Makdisi, The Rise of the College (note 19 above); see
also the chapter on education in B. Tibi, Islam between Culture and Politics (referenced
in note 9), pp. 167–85.
58
On the institutionalization
of knowledge in the course of cultural change see Robert Wuthnow, Meaning and
Moral Order (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1987), chapter 8.
59
See Philip D.
Curtin, The World and the West. The European Challenge and the Overseas
Response in the Age of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
60
Syed Sajjad Hussain
and Syed Ali Ashraf, Crisis in Muslim Education (London: Hodder and Stoughton,
1979), pp. 2–3.
61
See Stephan
Schwartz, The Two Faces (referenced note 21), chapter 7; and Daniel Pipes, In
the Path of God. Islam and Political Power (New York: Basic Books, 1984),
chapter 10: ‘‘The Great Oil Boom.’’
62
On the debate on
Eurocentrism see Roy Preiswerk and Dominique Perrot, Ethnocentrism in History (New
York: NOK Publishers International, 1978); and, more recently, James M. Blaut, The
Colonizer’s Model of the World. Geographical Diffusionism and Eurocentric
History (New York: Guilford Press, 1993). On Westernization see Theodore H. von
Laue, The World Revolution of Westernization (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1987).
63
More on this in Rob
Wilson and Wimal Dissanayake (eds) Global–Local: Cultural Production and the
Transnational Imaginary (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996).
64
See the reference
to the work jointly done with the reform Muslim An-Na’im in note 7. See also
Abdullahi A. An-Na’im and Francis Deng (eds) Human Rights in Africa:
Cross-Cultural Perspectives (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1990),
especially my chapter ‘‘The European Tradition of Human Rights and the Culture
of Islam,’’ pp. 104–32.
65
On this
simultaneity see chapters 1, 4, 5 in B. Tibi: The Challenge of Fundamentalism.
Political Islam and the New World Disorder (Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press, 1998).
66
Raymond Aron, Paix
et guerre entre les nations (Paris: Calmann Le´vy, 1962).
67
Hedley Bull, The
Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1977), p. 273. See my chapter ‘‘Democracy and Democratization
in Islam,’’ in Miche`le Schmiegelow (ed.) Democracy in Asia (New York: St
Martin’s Press, 1997), pp. 127–46.
68
See ‘‘Democracy and
Democratization in Islam’’ (referenced in note 67).
69
B. Tibi, ‘‘The
Totalitarianism of Jihadist Islamism’’ (referenced in note 15). See also Zeyno
Baran, ‘‘Fighting the war of Ideas,’’ in: Foreign Affairs (November/December
2005), pp. 68–78. See also Walid Phares, The War of Ideas. Jihadism against
Democracy (New York: Palgrave, 2007).
70
These flaws are
reflected in the work of the French scholars Olivier Roy and Gilles Kepel.
71
On religion and
world politics see the references to the introduction to this book, as well as
Eric O. Hanson, Religion and Politics in the International Society Today (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2006).
72
On Hamas see
Matthew Levitt, Hamas. Politics, Charity and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad (New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006).
73
See chapters 9 and
10 in B. Tibi, The Challenge of Fundamentalism (referenced in note
65).
74
Benjamin R. Barber,
Jihad vs McWorld (New York: Random House, 1995).
75
See Mohammed
Arkoun, Rethinking Islam (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994); and B. Tibi, Islam
and the Cultural Accommodation of Social Change (Boulder, CO: Westview Press,
1990).
76
See the negative
contention of the Turkish scholar S¸erif Mardin on ‘‘Civil Society and
Islam’’ and in contrast my positive views, both referenced in note 50 to the
introduction.
77
See the reference
on identity politics and conflict in note 14.

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Index
Abdillah, Masykuri (Indonesian scholar), Responses of
Indonesian Intellectuals to the Concept of Democracy 70–71, 245n16 Abduh,
Mohammed (Egyptian) 81
absolutism and relativism, conflict over
values that underpin democracy 224
Abu Zaid, Hamid
219 Adorno, Theodor 38 al-Afghani, called for jihad against the
West to deter European expansion 8,
37, 49, 53, 60, 186, 242n24; Tariq Ramadan and 127,
254n85
Afghanistan, invasion by Soviet Union which gavebirth to
newSunni movements 136, 256n21; new understanding of jihad 50, 107; Qutb’s
writings taught in al Qaeda camps in 62; Soviet Empire received tremendous blow
9; speech by Osamabin Laden 59; suicide bombs 124; Sunni internationalism
survives against
Bush’s ‘‘waronterror’’ 134;war(2001)92
Africa 39; North
and futuhat-wars 50; succeeded in Africanizing Islam by adapting it to their
pre-Islamic local cultures 180, 218–19 Afro-Islam, African Muslims 206 age of
‘‘Arab liberal thought’’, secularism
appealed to Western-educated Muslim elites 22
Ahmadinejad,
President Mahmoud (Iran), anti-Semitic and anti-Western pronouncements of 131;
revived revolutionary Shi’ite Khomeinism (2005) 96, 144; under only Syria
cooperates with Iran, other Arab states keep aloof 139
Algeria,
electoral democratization 83; financial support from Iran 138; Islamic
militancy 145, 258n60; jihadists primarily killing fellow Muslims 51, 102;
suicide bombers 124; violation of rights of Berbers 91
Algiers, democratization process (1991– 92) 84
al-Hall al-Islami/Islamic solution,
embraces democracy for instrumental reasons only 222
al-iman, non-negotiable and would never accommodate al-kufr/unbelief
99
American Academy of Arts and Sciences,
‘‘Fundamentalism Project’’ 106, 114,
250n9
‘‘American-style Islam’’ versus ‘‘true
Islam’’, successful in
identity politics 147 al-Aqqad, Mahmud 81, 247n56 Arab defeat in 1967 war,
appeal of
Islamic revolution related to 135, 137
‘‘Arab Islam’’, being exported to Europe,
Asia and Africawith Wahhabi support 35
Arab-Muslims, invaded Europe from Spain and later from
Balkans 1–2
Arab Muslims, liberalism of waned and
Nasserism of the military tookover 81, 83
Arab Organization of Human Rights 216
Arab Sunni Middle East, regimes in challenged by Islamic
revolution in
Iran 146 al-Armanazi, Najib
46, 242n16
Aristotle, named ‘‘al-mu’allim
al-awwall/ first master’’ 77, 82, 169, 210–11, 222 Arkoun, Mohammed, call for a
‘‘rethinking of Islam’’ 34,
86, 248n81 al-Armanazi, Najib, peace only matters
when in line with maslaha (interest) of
Muslims 63 armistice/hudna between
Muslims and
non-Muslims, valid for period of ten years 58
Arnett, Peter, talking to Osama bin Laden 9
Arnolds, Anthony 9
Aron, Raymond, Paix et guerre entre les
nations 3, 164, 264n24; ‘‘the heterogeneity of civilizations’’ 105, 109,
164, 196, 229, 234, 250n7,
259n11 art, part of das Schoene/the beautiful 207 asabiyya, civilizational
self-awareness 188,
194
Asia 39, 50–51, 86, 88
Asia Research Institute (National
University of Singapore) 79, 88
Averroe¨ism, term for Islamic rationalism
184, 210, 234 al-Awwa,
Mohammed Salim, nizam
Islami/ Islamic system 135,
256n20 al-Azhar – ulema, failure to subject
scripture to reason in changed conditions 58
al-Azhar University of Cairo, authority
on Sunni and Shi’ite Islam 43, 56–57; textbook 57–58, 60
al-Azm, Sadik Jalal 34, 65; an
‘‘Orientalism’’ in reverse 95, 218
Badawi, Abdullah Ahmad (Malayan prime Minister) 54, 94
Badawi, Zaki (London), presents as moderate, labels
Europe as dar al-
Islam/abode of Islam 210
Bakri, Sheikh Omar (Movement of the
Muhajirun), supported attacks on US embassies in Africa and celebrated 9/11
assaults as ‘‘heroic acts of Islam’’ 209–10
Balkenende, Jan Peter, project ‘‘Europe. A
Beautiful
Idea?’’ 154 banlieues de l’Islam, could become model for sidelined Muslim youth
throughout Europe 192; Tariq Ramadan and 127; uprising (October/November 2005)
5, 18, 23, 36, 95, 101, 125–26, 153, 162, 176; French-Muslim contribution to
end the riots 67; warning not well taken by European Union 189
al-Banna, Hasan 5, 8, 48, 53, 59–60, 100,
263n75; death poetry does not reflect Sufi Muslims nor
Islamic rationalism
60–61; founded
Muslim Brother (1928) 110, 251n23; Georges Sorel of Islam with glorification of
violence 47; opinions should be discredited 75; Risalat al-jihad/essay on jihad
(1930) 6, 49, 59, 98; waged jihad for Islamic peace 61, 187
Bashir, Abu Bakr, Indonesian Islamist with Wahhabi views
and al-Qaeda links 81
Beirut project, ‘‘azmat al-demoqratiyya/crisis of
democracy’’ in Arab world 89, 248n87
Benedict, Pope,
call to dissociate religion in Islam from violent jihad 153; outrage over 95,
162
Ben-Habib, Seyla 199
Berkeley
(University of California), project Muslim Europe or Euro-Islam 125, 186,
254n76; workshop 1998
‘‘Islam and the Changing Identity of
Europe’’ 156, 172, 194, 202
bin-Ladenism, in Europe among young
Muslims gives
Muslim Brotherhood’s ideas practical shape 100; idea that cosmic battle between
al-iman/belief and al-kufr al-alami/international unbelief is legitimacy of an
Islamic world revolution 99
bin Laden, Osama (Sunni-Wahhabi Muslim) 9, 26, 46; call
for war of iman/ belief against al-kufr/international
unbelief 126; jihad and 41, 59; phrases from Qutb 61
bipolar age,
shaped by United States and Soviet Union, ‘‘heterogeneity of civilizations’’ 7
bipolarity, could not be lasting divide
3; end of and ‘‘return of the sacred’’ has led to uncertainty in world order
23; Islamic migration and civilizational identity crisis in Europe 2, 12; since
end of Arab world continues to be center of despotic rule 89
Bloch, Ernst, Avicenna und die
Aristotelische Linke 198
Bouyeri, Mohammed, executioner of van Gogh 153–55, 192,
197, 207
Brzezinski, Zbigniew 173
Buchta, W. 131
Bull, Hedley 15, 20–21, 30, 236n21;
Anarchical Society, The 29, 250n18;
‘‘shrinking of the globe’’ 173–74, 229,
261n34, 271n67; ‘‘the revolt against the
West’’ 45, 98, 117, 163, 225, 269n31;
‘‘thinking is research’’ 38, 40, 94
Burgat, Francis 135, 256n18
Bush, President George W. 10; comparison with Napoleon
220; flawed policies of especially Iraq war 107; ‘‘war on terror’’ response to
9/11 94, 165
Buzan, Barry 119, 124, 253n62 Byrnes,
Timothy 156
Cairo, contemporary jihadist movement 58; Muslim
intellectuals meeting to discuss the Qur’an 34; religious education major
source of Muslim thought in Southeast Asiaand Indonesia 80, 247n51
Castells, Manuel, ‘‘project identity’’ 201,
213, 265n42
Centers for Middle Eastern and
European Studies, Nezar AlSayyad and
Manuel Castells 156
Challenge of Fundamentalism 10
Chatami, Mohammed (president of Iran), dialogue of
civilizations 12
Chatham study (7 July 2005) 111
Chechenya 51
China 23
Chubin, Shahram, on Iran and terrorism
130–31, 255n2 citizens of
the heart, becoming European requires willingness to be 204, 207, 215;
integration as 127, 156, 166–67, 175; Muslims need educating as 21, 30; some
immigrants unwilling to leave gated enclaves and integrate 180, 192–
93; Tibi and 198
citizenship, of democratic polity is more than loyalty to clan or sectarian
group 89, 248n90; membership of a polity based on culture of democracy and
human rights 191
citizenship/citoyennete´, must include demand for
commitment 198, 204
civic culture, based on idea of Europe to be shared by
all 208, 213, 215; Muslim migrants and 9; not negotiable and not compatible
with Islamic lawof shari’a 207
civil Islam,
compatible with democracy but Islamism is not 4, 25; most advanced
understanding of to be found in periphery of Indonesia 70, 245n14
civilizational competition in world
politics, envisioned Nizam Islami/
Islamic order and democratic
peace 11 civilizational self-denial, trend in Western
Europe and crisis of
identity 115, 252n41 civilizational worldview, new idea of an
Islamic world order 3, 105,
236n16 civil society in Europe, joint task with
Islam 67 clash of
civilizations, Europeans and
Muslims need to
change to avert 1–2, 22, 24, 69, 94, 216; Europeans talk about it or belittle
mindset of appeasement 195; Islamists promote tensions that create 233; is
preventing it feasible? 21, 235n10, 238n57; Qutb and 61; self-fulfilling
prophecy 234; uses assertion of cultural identity to undermine democratization
and reject pluralism 226
classical Islam, concept of jihad based on
ethical foundations 43; tradition of learning from
others promoted by
Muslim travelers 227, 271n56
classical Islamicate, Islamists in Islam and
Europe and 6
classical jihad,
distinction between and modern jihadism 41; regular war subjected to clear
rules and limited targets 42; within framework of ‘‘invention of tradition’’
101, 250n14
Clausewitz, Carl von 42, 108
‘‘Club of Europe’’, need for all members to change their
identity 200
Cohen, Roger, ‘‘deadly idea’’ 112
Cold War 2; during IR scholars blind to religion and
culture 18; loosening of border controls after and migration 203
collective identity politics, entrenching communities
separate from one another 195–96; instrument against the civilizational
identity of Europe 196
collective rights, Islamic rights which support
ethnicity 178
commonalities, between Muslims and
Europeans sidelined
because of interEuropean conflict 208; concept of order in pursuit of new world
order shaped by Islam 11, 105; Qur’anic idea of shura should determine ethical
level in search for 85; separation of religion and politics as bridge between
people of different religions 23; Sunni call by
Qutb and Shi’ite call of
Khomeini 138 commonalities and conflict, between
Islam and the West 19
communism, with breakdown of West lost enemy it needed to maintain unity 21
community of believers/umma, focus of
Islamic doctrine 64
competition, between civil society and
culture of democracy and hakimiyyat
Allah/God’s rule 67
conflicting values, simultaneity of old and new, local and global which results
in 231 conformist shari’a-relate maslaha, Western
IR-realist idea
of ‘‘national interest’’ 55 conformist thinking 53–54 Cornell University,
‘‘Democracy Against Difference’’ 157, 186; project on transnational religion,
‘‘Religion in an Expanding Europe’’ 126, 156, 172, 177;
‘‘Transnational Religion Projects’’ 106
Creveld, Martin
van 103, 124, 249n2 ‘‘cross-cultural bridging’’ 173, 261n33 cross-cultural
morality, if we educated Muslims in we would establish liberal democracy 225–26
cultural arguments, can be foremost enemy of civil
society 88
cultural change, needed for overcoming
self-assertive
attitudes against global democracy 229; opposed to essentialism 216
cultural
diversity, implied in the ‘‘heterogeneity of civilizations’’ 117; limits to it
11; multiple identities in Islam and Europe that emerge from
159; within civilizational
unity 148 cultural factor and cultural turn,
recognition of cultural diversity 11
cultural fragmentation (divergence over norms and
values) 19
cultural modernity, bridge between rival civilizations
29; exposure of Islamic countries to led to modern education from outside 227;
integration limited to civic values, shared identity and the workplace
embracing 191, 264n11; Islam’s predicament with 65, 195; non-Western
civilizations in colonial context 5; norms and values secular and democratic
and rational worldview of them 221; secularization essential part 16;
universalized but structures are to be globalized 19; values of can be
universalized and shared by Muslims 223
cultural pluralism, not the relativism of
multi-culturalism
211 ‘‘cultural racism’’ 200 cultural relativism, multi-culturalists and
215; rampant
universalism 214 cultural relativism and essentialization, traps of 11–12, 100
cultural relativists, accept cultural
differences without limitations, admit neo-absolutisms
200
cultural relativist self-denial, onlyother side of coin
of Euro-centric exclusiveness 209
cultural and religious pluralism, essential part of
democratic peace 37
cultural self-assertion, leads to ‘‘other-ing
the others’’ in the world of Islam in
Europe 226
‘‘cultural turn’’, generated by inter-cultural mutual
recognition 72–73, 106, 115
culture, always in flux 11, 148, 163–64, 259n9;local
entity always changing 180; patterns of can promote or impede change 224
culture change, needed in Islamic
civilization 92
culture and civilization, study of reveals
enduring cultural and civilizational diversity 180
culture matters 11, 19, 34, 35, 92, 237n37;
according to Lawrence Harrison 195,
264n19; for dealing with cultural worldviews 106; institutions as safeguard matter
too 88
Danish cartoon
crisis (2006) 36, 95, 101, 126, 153, 161–62, 167; protest movement orchestrated
not spontaneous 107, 176
Darfur crisis,
attempts to subdue nonMuslims to Islamic order under shari’s rules 33
da’wa, Islamic term which covers dialogue and
proselytization 179; offer to join in not an imposition according to
Jadulhaq 57 da’wa
and hijra if continued, envisioned ‘‘Islamization of Europe’’ will be the
result 177, 209
da’wa/proselytization, justified as declaration of war
on unbelievers 50
decolonization
movements, embraced European ideas in fight against colonialism 5
democracy, classical Greek roots but also part of
universal cultural modernity 221, 268n1; could be established on ethical
Islamic grounds in world of Islam 21; distortion to downgrade it to a ballot
233; modern is product of Western civilization 221; not just a process of
voting 31, 75, 185, 217, 222; not only needed but possible in world of Islam in
its present crisis 217; political culture, no global culture paralleling
structural globalization 229; political culture as solution to be shared by the
conflicting parties 13
democracy, civil society and democratic
peace, rest on European Christian origins 72, 244n5
democracy and democratization, can only
be accomplished by Muslims themselves 92
democracy as notion of cultural
modernity, never existed in any religious tradition 68
democratic
peace, none in twenty-first century without Muslim participation 67; solution
to East-West conflict 225,
270n43
democratic pluralism, solution for Islam’s relations to non-Islamic
civilizations 66
‘‘de´mocratie
et democratisation’’, rethinking of Islam would lay groundwork for 215, 267n81
democratization,
gave jihadism a boost 90; needs to be combined with ethnopolitics 91, 248n96
democratization of Islam, better formula than
Islamization of democracy 87
‘‘demographic suicide of Europe’’ 176
Denmark, Muslim
Democrats of 219 Der Spiegel (October 2003) 204 de-Saddamization of Iraq,
strengthened jihadism 121
developing cultures, muddling through process from
tradition to modernity 230
de-Westernization, remaking the world along a return of
history 7
de-Westernization of Europe, could result
from Muslim migration if integration fails 184
de-Westernizing the globe, vision of an
Islamic globalization 182 dhimmitude
12; applies to Christians and
Jews i.e. monotheists 47, 54
dichotomy of believers/Muslims, versus
unbelievers determines Islamic worldview 10–11
din-wa-dawla/unity of religion and state,
essential for
the nizam Islami 116 ‘‘disenchantment of the world/die Entzauberung der Welt’’
16–17 diversity and consensus, formula for is religious and cultural pluralism
233
Duran, Michael, ‘‘Somebody Else’s Civil War?’’ 111,
251n26
Durkheim, Emile, faith a fait social 51,
68, 155, 165, 217
Economist, The, report ‘‘Awkward Partners’’ 155–56
Economist, The (April
2005), assault in Amsterdam and ‘‘Islam, Tolerance and the Dutch’’ 157
education, in
cross-cultural valid values is basis of democratic peace 226–27; Islamic
madrasa is impediment to in culture of democracy and needed cultural change
230; need for new reformed Islam to promote global aspiration of liberal
democracy 220–21; self-assertive detrimental to spread of values needed for
liberal democracy
229; values are transmitted
through 223 education in madrasas, among root
causes of terrorism to be dealt with by security
approach 128, 145
Egypt 25, 84, 124, 145, 258n59; conflicts between elites
and counter-elites 226; denied existence of global jihad at meeting in Madrid
(2005) 94; Islamist al-Sharqawi’s rejection of Kemalism 31; Muslims accused of
deviation in 102; new understanding of jihad 50, 243n27; violation of rights of
Kopts 91
Ehrenburg, John 74, 246n31
Ehteshami, Anoushiravan, After
Khomeini 139,
257n32 elections, create ony one aspect of democracy 76
Enayat, Hamid, democracy a cultural addition to
traditional Islam 81, 83, 85, 247n52, 248n76; Islam and conflict with democracy
is because of character as a religion 86–87, 248n80; shari’a never implemented
as integral system 86
‘‘end of history’’ 8 end of history,
return of history 1, 166;
return of history of civilizations to Europe and world
politics 2–3
Enlightenment rationalism, succeeded in building bridges
between Islam and
Europe 214
Esposito, John 77–78, 218
Euro-Islam 156; alternative to ‘‘clash
of civilizations’’ and Islamization of Europe 19, 23, 112, 189; bridge between
Europe and Muslim migrants who embrace religious pluralism 177; concept comes
from Islam in Western Africa 192; could solve difference between laı¨cite´
and shari’a 199; deethnicization of Europe and religiouscultural reforms on
Muslim sides needed 201; as Euro-Islamic asabiyya 26, 29; European values of
democracy, laı¨cite´, civil society, pluralism, secular
tolerance and individual human rights into Islamic thought 157; idea of Europe
and experience of Hellenization of Islam 198–99; and ideal of pluralism could
provide for peaceful coexistence 183; liberal variety of Islam acceptable to
Muslim migrants and European societies 206; opposed to gated diaspora ideology,
needed by Europe and Muslim migrants 125; presented in Paris (1992) 156, 180,
261n45; value orientation for Muslim diaspora provides guidelines for
integration 190; vision for a better future 165, 189
Euro-Islamic asabiyya, can teach Muslims to become
European ‘‘citizens of the heart’’ 30, 156, 167, 175, 198; shared by Europeans
and Islamic immigrants 207
Euro-Islamic interpretation of Islam, could smooth the
way for an Islamic
Enlightenment 215
Euro-Mediterranean relations, centurieslong history of
civilizational interaction
207
Euro-Muslim,
assumption that multiple identities feasible within cultural pluralism 213
Europe: A Beautiful Idea? 21, 154, 195, 199, 207
Europe, 20 millions Muslims in (2007) 67, 119, 176,
202–3; ‘‘a beautiful idea’’ 195; battlefield for rapprochement of political
conflict with cultural undertones 13, 19, 23, 30, 35, 101, 111, 125, 163, 189;
becoming major source of Islamist terrorism not the Middle East 166; call to
global jihad heard in some major mosques 104, 171; can be open society in which
there is a place for the ‘‘other’’ 209; challenge of and enhancing of dar
al-Islam to map the entire globe 186; combination of selfawareness (asabiyya)
and tolerance to deal with Islamic civilization 95–96; de-Westernization of
would mean the end of it as a civilization 183; emergence of new civilization
indebted to Islam, Islamo-Aristotelian rationalism 170,
210; entitled to
European asabiyya 158, 186; as ‘‘Eurabia’’ 36; Euro-Islam culturally adjusted
to civil culture of modernity 206, 264n11 Euro-Islam for integration of Muslim
immigrants recommended 6; Europeanization of Islam solution to global jihad 68;
Europeans have right to participate in determining future of Islam on their
continent 92; expansion contributed to structural mapping of world along lines
of the West 109, 251n19; faces Islamic and Islamist challenges 189, 213; faces
warfare of jihadism as violence and mobilizatory idea with uncertainty 122;
failed to engage in integration of Muslims as European citizens 125; faith
schools, teaching of Islam not consonant with basic democratic values 221;
fallen into series of postmodern doubts about its civilizational self 230;
founded by Charlemagne in eight century in the course of dealing with Islam
155, 167–70; futuhat-wars in, acts of violence with prescribed rules 51; future
of determined by ability of Europeans and Muslim immigrants to establish peace
215; heat of the conflict between secularity and politicized religion 15–16;
identity of must be defended against any totalitarianism 158; impact of
Hellenism, transferred to it via the Islamic civilization 162, 170; integrating
Muslim migrants has not been successful 5; intrusion of political Islam turning
it into battlefield between secular and sacred 153; Islamic diaspora presents
its particularism with claim for a universalism 174; Islamic migration and
‘‘jihadist dilemma’’ 25–26, 239n69; Islamic presence related to conflicts that
have to be addressed and resolved 165, 260n12; jihadist Islamism challenge to
‘‘safe democracy’’ 108; jihad matters for world politics but is not a
state-centered matter 28; low birth rates and high migration from non-European
cultures is affecting European identity 194, 264n18; majority of Muslim
immigrants not Islamists but not culturally integrated 176, 261n42; military
revolution paved way for emerging West to become global world structure 7;
mosques in divided along ethnic and sectarian lines 168; Muslim community challenged
to commit to loyalty and democratic polity 128; Muslim Europe or EuroIslam 31,
236n17; Muslim immigrants are a minority, creates challenge to inherited
Islamic thinking 47; Muslims living as ‘‘enclave’’ in parallel societies 74,
156, 189, 196, 246n30; Muslims need Europeanization of Islam 11; needs to
differentiate between ordinary Muslims and Islamists 13; no such thing as
essentialist 209; not dar alIslam 201; positive law but in Islam it is shari’a
179; present-day characterized by uncertainty, between Christianity and
secularity 159; recipient of political Islam 16; rejection of shari’a is not
‘‘cultural racism’’ 159; relationship between Islam and Europe 12; religious
conflict focused on Muslim immigrants 23; Salafist and Islamaist Imams nor multi-culturism
are friends to idea of 207; terrorist assaults between (2004 and 2006) 101;
tolerating Wahhabi Islam and not promoting Euro-Islam 30; will it be able to
absorb Muslim immigrants as citizens? 1
European boundary, within Europe between mainstream
society and
Islamic enclaves 162
European diaspora of Muslim migrants, should not become
a home of al-Qaeda
125
European identity, weak facing assertive Islamic
identity 178
Europeanization, does not contradict cultural diversity
196
‘‘Europeanization of Islam’’, could bridge Islamic
diaspora and Europe 180; encouraging Muslims to embrace idea of Europe 176–77,
262n47
‘‘Europeanization of Islam or the
Islamization of Europe?’’ 156, 189, 197,
263n1
‘‘Europeanizing Islam’’, as alternative to
‘‘Islamization of Europe’’ 4, 9, 31, 236n17
Europeanizing Islam, Islamization of Europe 126, 250n9,
254n77
European Leitkultur (culture of guiding values) as
alternative to jihad 8
European Muslims, 10 to 12 million in southeast Europe
202, 266n49
Europeans, adopted Islamic version of
Hellenism 169;
challenged to defend Western civilization 195, 264n22; do not understand nature
of Islamic nostalgia and the related claims 163; education is foremost weapon
against political Islam 30; have no policy for dealing with challenge from
Islam 27; need more knowledge of real existing Islam 190; overlook potential of
Islamization of Europe in name of identity politics 167; who fail to see that
Islamization would result from
‘‘multi-cultural discourse’’ 212
European Union 1, 6; 20 million Muslims within 93, 162,
166; Austrian presidency (2006), subscribing to ‘‘the sound of
Europe’’ 195; Dutch presidency (2004),
‘‘Europe – A Beautiful Idea?’’ 195;
Islamic policies
of Iran matter greatly to Europe 132; Muslims enjoy civil rights in Islam
diaspora there 184; needs policy for civilizational challenge of Islam 30,
239n69; one cannot accept political order of and adhere to divine Islamic order
138; Turkey seeking accession to 74
Europe and Islam, linked in hostility and cross-cultural
fertilization 172, 201
Europe and
Islamic civilization, determined by structural interconnectedness and history
153 Europe Wahhabi Islam countered by Euro-Islam 25, 236n17, 239n65
Euro-Turkist relations, Euro-Islam applies to 202
Fahd Academy
(Saudi-funded) in Bonn, has educated some 500 young Muslims in Wahhabi Islam
204
Fanon, F. 143; Wretched of the Earth, The
161 al-Farabi
28; al-Madina al-fadila (The Perfect State) 19, 33, 75, 246n32; ranked as al-mu’allim
al-thani, only second to Aristotle 77, 211, 246n38
‘‘fault-lines’’, between Islam and the West 30
Fetscher, Iring 38 fetwa, not a death
sentence 41
Finkielkraut, Alain, defait de la pense´e, double
standard of 179
fiqh orthodoxy, comparable with work of
the Wahhabi orthodoxy 29, 82
Fletcher School (Tufts University),
‘‘Culture Matters Project’’ (CMP) 106,
148, 216; Developing Cultures 216, 268n5
Fourest, Caroline 127, 254n86
France, banlieues de l’Islam uprising
(October/November 2005) 5,
18, 23, 36; laı¨cite´ is bottomforintegrationof Muslim migrants
199; Muslims in predominantly from the Maghreb 203, 266n51; new anti-Semitism,
assaults on synagogues 156; ‘‘no other choice’’ than prevention when groups
seek to test and undermine values of 200; response to migration ‘‘inte´gration
ou insertion communautaire’’ 208–9; successful in getting Imams who express
loyalty to constitution to democracy and laı¨cite´ 128; using
term integration and no longer assimilation 206 France, Germany and the United
Kingdom, basic difference 128 Frankfurt School, critical theory of 229 freedom
of speech, basic individual human
right to be taken at face value 160
French and British-born Muslims, participating in jihad
in Iraq 10
Fuhrmann, Horst 169, 260n18 Fukuyama, Francis 2, 8; End
of History
18; Europe a battlefield between
Islamism and
liberal democracy 125, 254n75; Islamism a manifestation of modern identity
politics 126, 254n82;
‘‘Lipset lecture’’ 111, 154
fundamentalism, challenge to values of culture of democracy and human rights
233, 272n73; modern variety of neoabsolutism 214
Fundamentalism Project of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences
72 fundamentalist Muslim semi-modernists,
not lost in the ever-growing virtual space 182, 260n16
fundamentalist notion, hakimiyyat Allah,
not authentic Islamic concept 85
futuhat or ‘‘opening’’ of Islamic
civilization, between seventh and seventeenth centuries
7
futuhat-wars, acts of violence 51
‘‘gated diaspora’’, Islam in the West but not of it 125,
175, 192, 254n73, 264n12
Geertz,
Clifford, analysis of Moroccan and Indonesian Islam 148, 258n68; culture as
‘‘local production of meaning’’ 174, 224, 270n37
Gellner, Ernest
17, 72, 172, 178, 238n47, 246n24, 261n28; criticism on cultural relativism 200,
207, 210, 213–14, 224
German Islamic diaspora, Sunni and Shi’ite Islamism 126
German state of Hessen, refuses to view
Shi’ites, Alevis, Ahmadis and others as Muslims 203
German Tagesspiegel (2006), ‘‘the conflict comes back
home to Europe’’ 161
Germany, 20 per
cent of population are people with Migrationshintergrund 194; country of
reluctant immigration 203; people carry on as before 206; religious
associations (Moscheevereine) divided along ethnic and sectarian lines 205
Ghada, deceptive fighting, unlawful in teaching of
Qur’an 52
Giddens, Anthony, ‘‘industrialization of war’’ 39, 53
global civil society, violence cannot be admitted in 11,
73, 245n23
globalization, convergence of structures
19; definition
7–8; do Islam and Europe undergo convergence under impact of? 173; not a Pax
Americana 8; in our age migration to Europe has become a component of 200;
processes of change, values embedded but not universalized 231
globalization model of Islamicate, replaced by one of
European expansion 46 globalization and universalization,
distinction between 174
globalizing dar al-Islam, mapping out of entire world
42, 241n5
global jihad, alternatives to are universal,
not purely
Western 75; belief that Islam would replace the West in leadership of the world
84; jihadist terror, new order and directed against Western hegemony 5, 41;
joint IslamicWestern response needed to challenge of 68; multiple political
Islamist movements that legitimize through monolithic religion 120–21;
neoabsolutism opposed to ‘‘democratic peace’’ underpinned by cultural pluralism
5; undermined by ethnicsectarian fragmentation 91; visions and values of
indicate a return to history of civilization conflict 8
global jihadism, as Islamist
internationalism, jihadists are non-state actors 96, 232
global jihadist strikes, 31 extending from USA to Asia
and Africa 101
‘‘Global Migration Crisis’’ 175, 261n37
‘‘global
village’’, awareness and interaction of people of different cultures and civilizations
230
Go¨le, Nilu¨fer, on veiling of Muslim women 199,
265n34
Goody, Jack 165
Gress, David 213, study of Western civilization 213
Gulf States 100, 151, 216, 268n6
Gulf War (1991),
West blamed for not compelling Middle East to introduce democratization 90,
249n93
Habermas,
Ju¨rgen 38; cultural modernity 29; identifies modernity with secularization
17; ‘‘post-secular
society’’ 115;
‘‘principle of subjectivity’’ 216, 268n1; Renaissance one of the sources of
cultural modernity 214; suggested considering a ‘‘post-secular society’’ in
Europe 18, 22, 239n58; value system das Subjektivitaetsprinzip, cultural
modernity 177, 262n49
Hakimiyyat Allah,
mentioned neither in Qur’an nor the hadith 33, 85; would people of other
religions accept as a divine rule 118
Hakimiyyat Allah/rule of God 2, 4, 6, 23,
31, 118, 142
Halliday, Fred, on Iran’s covert actions
138–39, 147, 256n14, 257n31
Hall, John 73, 244n2
Hanafi, Hasan (Egyptian Islamist) 2, 4, 9,
27
Haqqani, Husain (Pakistani diplomat), study by presents
concern about madrasas spreading shari’a 62, 244n49 Harrison, Lawrence,
‘‘developing cultures’’ 99, 258n66; ‘‘underdevelopment is a state of mind’’,
‘‘culture matters’’ 195 Hassan I, Sultan of Morocco 54–55 head-scarf, viewed
asa fault-line 27, 240n74
Hefner, Robert 70, 73, 88, 247n15; democracy, public
culture and 88, 248n86 Hellenization, heritage of Islam 19, 24, 29–30, 74, 77,
82, 157, 169, 222; shared legacy between Islam and the West 82,
212, 214, 222–23
Hellenized Islamic foundations 28–29, 76–77, 240n77,
246n37
Herzog, Roman (former President of Germany), Preventing
the Clash of
Civilizations 113–14, 173,
225 heterogeneity of civilizations 7, 105, 109, 117
Hidayatullah
Islamic State University (Jakarta), dialogue between Islam and the West 24–25
Hinduism, concept of order, restricted to territoriality
of imagined Hindu nation
116–17 historical jihad,
Islamic proselytization
carried out within framework of jihadwars 42, 241n4
Hobsbawm, Eric 230
Hoffman, Stanley 105
Holsti, Kalevi 103, 124, 249n2
Horkheimer, Max 38, 158, 175, 181, 193, 264n15
Houranis, Albert 164–65
Hudson, Michael C. 146, 256n27, 258n62
Huntington, Samuel P. 19, 30, 119, 230;
‘‘civilization matters’’ 117; Clash of
Civilizations 3, 28, 84, 105, 109, 113– 14, 147, 163;
equates culture and civilizations, uses terms interchangeably
168–69; Ibn Khaldun and 158; Is he right about Clash of
Civilizations? 224;
newcomer to
study of Islam and civilizations 164;‘‘third wave of democratization’’ 18, 185
Husni,
Abdullatif (Moroccan scholar), study of Islam and international relations 65,
243n30
Ibn Khaldun 28, 30; asabiyya in decaying civilization
122, 167, 171–72, 198, 209; civilizations rise and decline 181– 82;
civilization within the study of history 119, 251n60; commemorations of his
death in Granada and Tunis (2006) 109, 158–59; ‘‘ilm al-umran’’/ science of
civilization 113, 164, 252n34, 259n10; Muqaddina (Prolegomena)
158, 164, 197; self-consciousness asabiyya/esprit de
corps 26, 95, 158,
167, 172, 188, 198, 264n4
Ibn Khaldun
Center (Cairo), research on violated rights of minorities in Arab world 91,
249n97
Ibn Rushd (Averroe¨s) 28, 222
Ibn Sina (Avicenna) 28, 222
Ibn Talal,
Hassan (Prince of Jordan), attended Nexus project during Dutch presidency of EU
210
Ibrahim, Saad Eddin (Egyptian) 145,
258n58 identity, always
under construction and in constant evolution 201–2; Muslims born in Europe but
not committed to
idea of Europe 205
identity politics, can be both civilizational and
cultural 148–49; Islamic identity, vehicle for service of global jihad 147;
major concern for Muslims in Europe 178 IDF, inability to subdue jihadists of
Hezbullah in
Lebanon (2006) 120, 124, 253n63, 254n72; incapable of dealing with war of
irregulars ‘‘against the infidels’’ 124
Imara, Mohammed 149, 258n71
India 23, 80, 91, 212, 247n49
Indo-Islam, Indian Muslims 206
Indonesia 23, 25, 70, 83, 84, 88, 91, 119; Bali bombing
(2002) 28, 80–81; Islam accommodated to adat/traditions of local cultures 192,
196, 231; Islam in South Asia shaped by culture of 149, 218; pesantrens (Islamic
boarding schools) teach aqida-Islam 80; religious pluralism (pancasila) 80,
247n50; Saudi Wahhabi education (madrasas), students go to Egypt and Saudi
Arabia
80; some political
opposition possible 111 in the path of God 117–18
institutional Islamism, embraces
democracy, AKP of Turkey only as a procedure 232
institutional Islamists, peaceful and willing to
participate in democratic format 10; willing to share game of power and refrain
from jihad-violence 99
institution-building, needed in Arab societies 90
inter-civilizational
dialogue, aimed at establishing multiple identities over individual human
rights needed 209; beyond essentialization as means of conflict resolution 199;
does not mean talking of l’art pour l’art 32
International Herald Tribune 2; (19 July
2005), Chatham study 111; (20 July
2005), Roger Cohen 112; (2004),
‘‘Trying to Put Islam on Europe’s
Agenda’’ 161;
(December 2003) 200; (December 2005) 131; (July 2006), ‘‘Europe Needs to Decide
How to Live with Islam’’ 186; report (December 2004), Shahrur and 34–35;
(September
2005) 143, 257n50
international jihadism, variety of
politicized transnational religion at stake not Islam
116
international law, compliance with without
submitting to the ‘‘esprit de loi’’ 54, 75
International Relations see IR
International Studies Association
(Chicago March 2001), panel on
‘‘religion and IR’’ 115, 252n39
IR 5, 13; designed as ‘‘American discipline’’ 105;
Huntington’s contribution to 164; needs to overcome inherited boundaries 116;
post-bipolar approach to acknowledging that culture matters 11, 237n37; problem
of scholars of 71
Iran, challenge to still secular Turkey and Wahhabi
Saudi Arabia 135; ‘‘dialogue of civilizations, caused deception based on
‘‘government of God’’ 131, 152, 255n4; in early 1980s image of Islamic
revolution of Iran was general Islamic one 133, 142; fundamentalist Mullahs
have power and determine politics of the state 140; identity politics regarding
construction of overall Islamic identity 178–79; Islamic revolution (1979) 26,
136, 239n70, 256n22; nuclear proliferation and violation of human rights 152;
perception of itself as the ‘‘center of the universe’’ 134, 136, 143; policy of
nuclear proliferation creates bigger threat to existing Sunni states 132; power
based on oil and unfolding nuclear capabilities 151; presents its Islamic
revolution as model for export 96; ‘‘revolutionary guards’’ to Lebanon and
Sudan and funds to Algeria and Hezbullah in Lebanon 138; revolution failed to
bring about social transformation in state and society 132; revolution in has
ignited more tensions between Sunna and Shi’a 134; ruling Mullahcracy has
become more repressive than the political regime it overthrew 152; Shi’ite
internationalism 12, 100; Shi’it state 121; since ‘‘Islamic Revolution (1979)
is stronghold of a transnational revolutionary movement 130; state-backed
Islamism 232; undercover activities to export revolution,
Mykonos murder in Berlin 139
Iran-EU
dialogue, helped Mullahcracy of Iran to win time for ‘‘Islamic revolution’’ 27
Iranian embassy in Damascus, center of
‘‘Islamic revolution’’ of Iran 144
‘‘Iranian internationalism’’, lacks firm foundation 149,
258n73
Iranian
revolution, impact of limited to Shi’ite minorities 143, 151; symbolizes
emergence of state-run model of global jihad 150; variation in history of
political Islam 142
Iraq 407; actions of Zarqawi group violations of
classical jihad-doctrine 52; democracy as voting procedure 35, 185; effect of
revolution in Iran 134; failed democratization of after toppling of Saddam
Hussein 69, 76, 83, 137, 174, 217, 221; fragmentation of is case for sectarian
tensions and conflict 147, 258n65; jihad and 50–51, 107; lessons from on
imposing universalization 232; Mahdi Army of al-Sadr and SCIRI in parliament
121, 232, 253n65; postSaddam ruled by Shi’ite-Islamists, purging Sunni population
90, 121, 132, 143, 151, 220; problems of democracy in 90–91; Shi’a majority
play the game of democracy 185, 233; Shi’ite minority 250; violation of
minority rights 91; weakness of military against suicide bombers 124
Iraqi Shi’ite clerics, forged links with Iran 143
Iraqi Shi’s led by SCIRI, wishes to see an Islamic
republic of Iraq 137, 256n28
Iraq war (2003),
brought Iran back to the fore after decline of Shi’ite internationalism 150;
democratization of Middle East served as legitimization for 90, 219; did not
lead to reordering Middle East but to strengthening global jihad 10;
justification of in terms of security was wrong 121; Saddam’s ‘‘republic of
fear’’ replaced by republic of horror 219–20; strengthened geopolitical
position of Iran 134
IR scholars, strive to preserve their ‘‘theoretical’’
heritage 14
Isamophobia, useful instrument in respective war of
ideas 16
Islam, asks
believers to arabize (an yata’rrabu) 149, 258n71; belief war against
unbelievers is generally morally justified 48; can be democracy in world of as
in any other civilization 40; can be put in harmony with pluralism 12, 238n39;
changeable, could embrace democracy if accomplished religious reforms 217–18,
268n7; compatible with democracy, human rights and civil rights if Muslims want
it 234; concept of jihad, house of peace/dar al-salam 44–45, 242n11; confused
with Islamism when dealing with democracy 77, 256n42; continues to be alien to
Europe 180; cultural meaning of is translated into identity politics 147;
difficulty with cultural modernity of which pluralism is part is basic issue
199; division of world into house/abode or Islam/dar al-Islam and unbelievers/ dar
al-kuffar 20; great variety of religious denominations and numerous sects 120;
living with requires abandoning global jihad and Western Orientalism 11;
medieval had tradition of Enlightenment 19; mindset of conquest is that of
jihad 4; nationstates are kind of ‘‘quasi state’’, only nominal states 105,
250n8; never ceased to have impact on politics 17; nonArab varieties 180,
218–19; not one esssential Islam 165, 187, 209; now exists within Europe itself
172, 261n30; ruled parts of world after Islamic conquests 38–39; succeeded
through inter-fertilization and decayed through civilizational fault-lines 82;
superiority of ceased when ‘‘military revolution’’ of West took place (1500 and
1800) 46, 242n12; transnational religion promoting great links and networks
184; unreformed is characterized by obligation to proselytize people to
Islam 177
Islam and the West, Islam in the West 27,
240n75
Islam and
democracy, question of compatibility of pluralism and civil society in 76
Islamicate, globalization but not fully global 7
Islamic authoritarianism, took over, old patterns in new
garb 81–82
Islamic civilization, claims universality 7; comprises one
quarter of humanity and has great cultural and religious diversity 120; decline
due to inner weakness and technologically superior West 39; introduction of
democracy that supplants existing patriarchal rule 69, 245n8; needs to emulate
medieval Islam 29; not a construction, but real cross-cultural entity 168;
predicament of – between revived spirit of jihad and quest for democracy 93;
should move forward to democratic peace in twentyfirst century 42; structural
globalization and universalization of values of cultural modernity 228
Islamic civilization and West, stand at centre of
post-bipolar world politics 12–13 Islamic concept of neo-Islamic order,
(Hakimiyyat Allah/Allah’s rule) 23
Islamic
conformism, failure, Muslims need ‘‘cultural accommodation’’ 64, 244n53; no
effort to place Islam in pluralistic secular international society
55–57; non-Muslims enemies but
Muslims can negotiate a truce/hudna 55
Islamic decline, began in Vienna (1683) 53
Islamic diaspora, Islamic youth of in
Europe susceptible to Islamism 112
Islamic dream,
continues to be alive as challenge to world politics and existing world order
146
Islamic empire based on Islamic futuhatexpansion,
mapping globe into dar-al-
Islam 1, 32
Islamic enclaves
in Europe, challenged to make Muslims European ‘‘citizens of the heart’’ 191–92
Islamic Enlightenment, prevented from unfolding by
Islamic fiqh-orthodoxy 214
Islamic faith, distinction between and
ideology of poitical Islam and its jihadism 94
Islamic fiqh-orthodoxy,
took over, supressing Islamic rationalism of the falsafa 82–83, 247n62
‘‘Islamic foreign policy’’, no such thing as specific
134
Islamic
fundamentalism, could succeed in creating a ‘‘clash of civilizations’’ 214;
incorporated into democratic peace is based on ignorance 72; semi-modern
response to modernity 218, 268n8; touches upon a concept of order 123
Islamic fundamentalists, jihad to underpin fight
‘‘against crusaders and
Jews’’ as just war 49
Islamic ghalab/superiority, never been abandoned 54
Islamic globalization, first of its kind in world
history 1
Islamic history,
many approaches to understanding Islam 77; migration of the Prophet and
supporters to Medina
(622) 44
Islamic and
Islamist challenge to Europe, responses multi-culturalism and cultural
pluralism 213
Islamic jihad expansion, failed to achieve mapping of
world in comparison to
Westernization 170
Islamic jurists,
do not deal with notion of the state/dawla 64; relations with nonMuslims as
‘‘the house of war’’ except under limited truce 6, 45, 242n16
Islamic law, Hanafi, Shafi’i, Hanbali or Maliki
religious Sunni communities
86
Islamic law/shari’a, ‘‘necessity overrides the
forbidden/al-darura tubih a-mahzurat’’ 51
Islamic medieval
philosophers, shifted outlooks and worldviews from Mecca to Athens 82, 247n59
Islamic migration, changing identity of Europe 198
Islamic Moroccan
conformists, umma’s inability to pursue jihad for Islamicate expansion 54
Islamic parallel societies, enclaves emerging throughout
Europe 2
‘‘Islamic
peace’’, through global jihad would establish divine order of hakimiyyat Allah 72
Islamic political community (umma) 44
Islamic revolution, rise in price of oil and nuclear
capabilities have restored 136
Islamic shura, referred to as ethics of democracy 88
Islamic shura-democracy,
disguise for political Islam to create obstacles for democracy 223, 269n33
Islamic state, wrong to identify it based on the shari’a
with Khomeinism 142
Islamic State University (Jakarta) 88
Islamic supremacy, vision and claim for remains 9
Islamic tradition, minorities viewed as dhimmi 71,
245n21
Islamic tradition of Averroe¨ism, placed
Islam in
harmony with Hellenism 24
Islamic ulema,
democratic peace remains alien to because of Islamic dominance/ taghallub 46
Islamic and Western civilizations, claim universality
for their worldviews 78,
246n44
Islamic-Western dialogue, Muslims need to learn how to
deal with differences
233–34
Islamic world
revolution, declaration of war on present world order not message of peace 21;
taught today in madrasas/Islamic schools, never been abandoned 6
Islam and
Islamism, distinguish between, both generate challenges related but different
170
Islamism,
directed against Western civilization and its concept of world order 173;
distinguished from Islam, incorporates ‘‘the new totalitarianism’’ 158;
education is battlefield of using madrasas for disseminating jihadist mindset
110; global phenomenon of religious fundamentalism 120, 250n9; and its
jihadism, ‘‘invention of tradition’’ 107, 250n14; major goal is an establishing
of hakimiyyat Allah/ God’s rule 106, 250n12; not eligible for democratization
217; political internationalism 232; replacing communism in world politics 12;
rise of result of politicization of Islam 223, 269n33; subdivided into
institutionalism (peaceful) and jihadist, have different strategies 232;
totalitarian political ideology in networks of transnational politicized
religion 104; undermines ‘‘free civil Islam’’ 76; used as alternative referring
to global phenomenon of religious fundamentalism 123, 250n9; use of religion in
is more than pursuit of power 134; worst option for acceptance of democracy 234
Islamist, claim for Islamic globalization to replace
Western one 137
Islamist
internationalism, based on politicization of Islamic universalism 123;
irregular jihad war declared on Western civilization 120; jihadist cosmic fight
for siyadat al-Islam/ supremacy of Islam 106–7; politicization of transnational
religion bringing sacred to world 12, 116; targeting ‘‘Jews and crusaders’’,
‘‘the new anti-Semitism’’ 121, 253n66
Islamist jihadist vision, resemblance to Leninist
thought 104, 120
Islamist revolt, global revolt against present world
order 5
Islamists, accept education in science and technology
but reject liberal democratic values 224; associate Western culture with kufr/heresy
221–22; believe Pax Islamica applies also to Europe 181; believe their own
religious values and reject man-centered view of the world 182; cannot act
freely in their undemocratic home countries so pour
into Europe 111; contend that ‘‘une
vaste conspiration jude´o-chre´tienne’’
being used against Islam 116, 252n45; democracy as voting procedure but reject
its political culture of dissent and
pluralism 35;
deny their Islamic critics membership of the Islamic umma 98; envision a
de-Westernization of knowledge on way to Pax Islamica 224, 232; favorable to
Western science and technology but reject values of cultural modernity 181,
262n58; goal to replace Peace of Westphalia with Hakimiyyat Allah/God’s rule 4;
groups in Europe not interested in Muslim migrants as bridge between
civilizations 211; majority adhere to Nizam Islami/ Islamic system 16; new
anti-Western ideology engendering a ‘‘new Cold War’’ 22; new totalitarianists
219, 269n15; political men of action and also ‘‘true believer’’ 119; put
education in the service of their political goals 221, 268n8; read scripture
selectively in a new mindset 59; revive madrasa education to pursue
defensive-cultural attitudes 226; sahwa Islamiyya/Islamic awakening 39; slogan
‘‘al-Islam huwa al-hall’’/Islam is the solution 14, 20; some who are not
jihadists 25, 41; spread narrative of ‘‘Islam under siege’’ and religionize
conflicts 219, 268n13; tiny minority within European diaspora of Islam 13,
238n40; view shari’a as criterion for a dawla Islamiyya/Islamic state or its
constitution 85; view themselves as ‘‘the true believers’’ 107–8, 250n15; want
to topple regimes at home, prosecuted they come as asylumseekers to Europe 184
Islamists and Salafists, claiming ‘‘place for Islam in
Western society’’ 191, 198; claim to live in Europe but do not want and do not
have to change 201; minority that dominates parts of Islamic diaspora and has
power 159; teach Europeanborn Muslims they are members of
imagined umma 166, 260n14
Islamization,
linked to communitarianism, aim that minority will become majority in Europe
212; parts of Asia, Africa and Europe between seventh and seventeenth centuries
39
Islamization of democracy, fallacy 68, 244n3
‘‘Islamization of Europe’’, already in process 179–80,
188, 263n1
Islam migration,
religious duty linked to da’wal/proselytization and amsar as hijra settlements
2
Islam and nationalism, framework for determining Arab
identity 148, 258n68
Islamophobia,
modernity and 33; moves to Islamophilia without limits of pluralism 79; need to
combat it but Islamists exploiting it to hide their own activities 107
Islam as a religion, distinguished from religious
fundamentalism 224–25, 269n15
Islam and the
West, competition between value systems related to identity politics 69;
‘‘fault-lines’’ between 30
Israel, suicide
attacks in 124; unjust behavior of just a distraction from real issue 89
Israeli Defense Force see IDF
al-Jabri, Mohammed Abed, democratic
Islam 78; ‘‘promising future can only be Averroe¨ist’’ 29, 32–34, 65, 184,
223, 240n80; ‘‘takwin al-aql al-Arabi/the creation of the Arab mind’’ 34,
241n96
Jadulhaq, Sheykh Jadul-haq Ali 57–58,
243n37 jahiliyya,
Islamic term for pre-Islamic age of ignorance 61
Jakarta, security dialogue in countering terrorism 100
Jansen, Johannes, ‘‘the dual nature of
Islamic
fundamentalism’’ 119, 253n59
Japan, computer literacy 182; why it succeeded and
countries of Islam failed 82
al-Jazeera TV 34 jihad, back as
jihadism and proved
successful
threat of irregular war against the West 48, 107; basic beliefs underlying
Islamic worldview as a Weltanschauung 43, 78, 241n6; becomes expression of
violence when combined with qital/jihadism 4, 41; concept identified as ‘‘armed
fighting/quital’’, irregular war of terror 50, 120; development of is invented
tradition 29; doctrine of just war and 48–51; interpreted as jihadism/jihadiyya
45; leaders of claim to speak in name of the despised 118, 253n56; need for
decoupling Islamic thinking from jihad and shari’a 63; nineteenth-century was
anti-colonial and culturally defensive 8; on normative grounds concept is
scriptural 42; not terrorism 41; Qur’anic concept 44, 241n10; restrictions on
weapons, methods and targets 51–52; service of da’wa/proselytization and is in
conflict with pluralism and democracy 42; to spread Islam for mapping the world
into dar al-Islam 4
‘‘jihadi’’, means terrorist not a selfexerting pious
Muslim 68
jihadism, at first was Sunni phenomenon established by
Muslim Brotherhood (1928) 100, 107; bid for remaking of the world 40; committed
to ‘‘Islamic world revolution’’ 232; leaders of claim to speak in name of the
despised 118, 253n56; moving to center-stage in IR of post-bipolar age 105; no
longer the classical jihad of Islam subjected to clear rules of conduct 120;
shift from Clausewitzian inter-state war to war waged by irregular warriors
103; spreads among marginalized youngsters in Islamic diaspora in Europe 103;
target is not only US but also Europe 4; war without rules, weapon of weak
against technologically superior foes 53, 124 jihadism and irregular war,
expected to
troubleworld for foreseeable
future 133–34 jihadist internationalism, not mere protest against unjust
globalization 98; rooted
in political Islam and its politics matter to the world
96
jihadist
Islamism, challenge to secular nation-state 39; to counter it as source of
modern terrorism need to engage in war of ideas 108, 250n16
jihadists, acting militarily as cross-border warriors
119; destabilize and demoralize but do not win militarily 122; ignite ‘‘clash
of civilizations’’ as a ‘‘jihad in the path of God’’ 117, 252n48; not scriptural
scholars but men acting in belief of ‘‘terror in the mind of God’’ 53; perceive
their action ‘‘jihadiyya/ jihadism’’, new interpretation of Qur’anic jihad 108;
resort to violence to enforce their concept of order 123
jihadists and institutional Islamists, goal of
de-Westernization 25
jihad and jihadism, different meanings of
41–43 jihad as physical
fighting/qital waged
against hostile tribes surrounding
Medina 44 jihad of religious
activism, viewed as
social fact, image of jihadists as ‘‘true believers’’ 97
Jordan, electoral democratization 83;
Hizb al-Tahrir established (1950s) 16
Journal of Democracy (2006) 111
Juergensmeyer,
Mark, conflict between religious and secular concepts 20, 23, 96–97, 113;
‘‘terror in the mind of God’’ 4, 50, 123, 236n18, 243n28; watches emergence of
a ‘‘divine order’’ leading to ‘‘new cold war’’ 72; ‘‘Why is religion involved
with terrorism?’’ 98
‘‘just Iman/Imam adil’’, ‘‘unjust Imam/
Imam ja’ir’’ 75 just and
unjust war, Western view alien to Islam 51
Jyllands Posten, Mohammed cartoons 166
Kantian, concept
of democratic peace 69, 233; concept of democratic peace requires
democratization of world of
Islam 185
Kant, Immanuel 31, 185
Kashmir 124
Katzenstein, Peter 156
Kelsay, John 2, 27, 156, 196, 240n75; increased presence
of Muslims in Europe, more intense interaction 175,
261n38; Islam
and War 30–32, 122, 171, 254n67, 261n26, 264n12; Islam in the West,
commonalities and 208 Kemalism and other secularisms, equating progress/tarakki
with Westernization failed 31, 240n84
Kepel, Gilles,
‘‘banlieues de l’Islam’’ challenge to French society 162, 259n2; prediction of
an end of Islamism 133
Khadduri, Majid, terms just/unjust 48– 49, 241n10;
242n21–22
Khatami,
Mohammed, camouflaging of global jihad into European civilization 195;
‘‘dialoguebetween civilizations’’ 138– 39, 144, 165, 257n35; divorced outlook
from Khomeinism in rhetoric but not in deeds 151; hopes of reform under faded
139–40; impression that Iran had abandoned self-perception as ‘‘center of the
universe’’ 100, 131; Rafsanjani and 139; transition to Ahmadinejad took place
within rule of Mullahs 152
al-Khalil, Samir, The Republic of Fear 220, 269n16
Khomeine, Ayatollah (Shi’ite Muslim) 26,
144, 149; distinction between ‘‘true
Islam’’ and ‘‘American-style’’ Islam is political not religious 142; fetwa and
41; Iranian New Year’s speech 137, 256n29; Iranian revolution great revolution
of Islamic world 140, 146, 257n40; Iran is the ‘‘center of the universe’’ 149;
kind of Islamist revolutionary Lenin 130; ‘‘true Islam’’, for remaking the
world 146–48
Khomeinism, no
grounds for acceptance and is in conflict with other identities 149–50; revived
Iran’s perception of itself as ‘‘center of the universe’’ 133,
144, 255n10 Kosovo 124
laı¨cite´,
European idea to be defended against Islamization by Muslims and Europeans 159;
no more than a separation of religion and politics, not abandonment of religion
88
Lebanon,
democracy used as voting procedure 35, 217; effect of revolution in Iran 134;
has irregular army and deputies in parliament 121; Hezbullah
play game of
democracy but do not accept its political culture 185, 220, 232–33; Hezbullah
war (July/August 2006) contributed to boosting legitimacy of Iran 150; new
understanding of jihad 50, 100, 107, 243n27; Rafsanjani’s cooperation with
Hezbullah in 139; Shi’ite internationalism and 132, 143; shi’ite minority 150;
Shi’ite state 121
Lewis, Bernard
45–46; Europe will become ‘‘an Islamic space’’ 35, 202 Lipson, Leslie, Islamic
rationalism source of European Renaissance 82, 169, 210, 222–23,
247n58,260n21,267n70, 269n27
London, (7 July 2005) terror attack 4, 6,
10, 13–14, 92,
95, 103, 107, 111, 114, 119, 124–26, 153; foiled plan to blow up ten US-bound
planes (August 2006)
101, 103, 114, 125, 127
London School of Economics, team of experts studying
religion and IR 115
Lustinger, Jean-Marie, on Islam 156
‘‘McCulture’’,
spread of American popular culture of consumption and communications technology
164
Macedonia 124
McWorld, a construction, not a reality
174, 234, 261n35
Madrid 11 March (2004), terror attack 4,
6, 13–14, 27, 92–93, 98, 103, 111, 124–
26, 153
Madrid, meeting (March 2005) 2, 4, 93–94;
‘‘safe democracy and security’’ 4, 44,
61, 94–95
Mahdi, Muhsin,
believes al-Farabi greatest thinker in Islamic political philosophy 211
Maier, Charles. ‘‘citizens of the heart’’ 21,
193, 260n17
Makiya, Kanan see al-Khalil, Samir
Malaysia 23, 91
Mallat, Chibli, points out that Iran is Shi’ite 142,
257n47
Mardin, Serif, ‘‘civil society does not translate into
Islamic terms’’ 67, 73,
88–89, 244n2 al-Mawdudi, Abu
al-A’la 73, 75–76, 84,
246n26; Islam and Modern Civilization
77, 246n39
Mayer,
Elizabeth, Islamic and international legal traditions, areas of common concern
64, 244n54
Meccan period, term jihad to describe efforts to convert
unbelievers peacefully
50
Medinan times, jihad assumes shape of qital/fighting 51
Mediterranean,
civilizational centrality that predates rise of Islam and Islamism 1;
historically the boundary between the civilizations of Islam and Europe 161–62,
196; positioning as center of history of civilizations is required 172, 259n1
Mediterranean Islam, shaped by many Arab countries 149
Middle East, core of Islam’s predicament with modernity
81; delegitimation of nation-state throughout world of Islam 64, 244n55;
experts on Islamic familiar with misery of self and social life 183– 84;
multiple identities in 149, 258n74; power-sharing essential to ethnopolitics of
democratization 91; search for asalah/authenticity more pertinent to than to
Indonesia 81; underachiever in democratization 83
Middle East and Islam, accuse each other of sin of
‘‘Orientalism’’ 14
migration,
Islamic is changing the identity of Europe 198; making Europe a battlefront
between competing options 188, 264n3
mihna/crisis of
Islamic civilization 40 minhi, also means a test 38 modernity, earlier Islamic
responses to
basically
defensive-cultural 79; Islamophobia and 33; nothing more than new form of jahiliyya
61, 243n42; predicament with when focusing on incorporating democracy into
Islamic thought 76, 85; worldview related to secular values and democracy 31
modernity matters 35 modernization, cannot undo cultural
and
civilizational diversity 230
Mohammed,
Prophet (610–32), after death of search for Imam salih/just Imam 90; asked
community to ‘‘seek for knowledge’’ even as far as China/ utlubu al-ilm was fi
al-sen 227; changed
Mediterranean 1
Momen, Moojan 145, 257n44–57
Morocco,
electoral democratization 83– 84; tradition of statehood, Turks failed to
subdue 53–54
Mortimer, Edward (editor of Financial
Times), speech writer for Kofi Annan
151, 259n76
al-Mu’mini, Colonel Ahmad, book used by jihadists 62
multi-culturalism
177–78, 180, 262n48; abandonment of ‘‘anything goes’’ mentality much needed
204; based on cultural relativism 211; helping Islamism establish in Islamic
diaspora
188–89; is a deception 197
multiculturalists, speak of tolerence 171
multi-cultural
privileges, granting to Muslims could prove double-edged sword 215
Muslim Arab Middle East, core of
Islamic civilization 89
Muslim-Bangladeshi scholar, arguing in
Saudi-Wahhabi manner on education
227–28, 271n60
Muslim Britons
and German citizens of diaspora, fighting in Afghanistan against the West 128
Muslim Brotherhood (1928), founded in
Egypt 6, 8, 12,
16, 53, 59, 243n38; Hezbullah was endorsed by in Lebanon war (2006) 150,
258n75; play the game of democracy but do not accept its political culture 185;
political Islam rooted in 142, 257n45
Muslim children,
educated in cultural self-assertion which ends in ‘‘other-ing non-Muslims’’
225–26, 268n12
Muslim Europe or Euro-Islam 156
Muslim rulers, violent global conquests after death of
the Prophet 50–51,
241n4–5
Muslims, can
become Europeans without ceasing to be Muslims 213; committed to change and
‘‘preventing clash of civilization’’ 100; contemporary come peacefully within
context of massive Islamic migration 170; emulate Europe and repel it 13; have
right to freedom of religion but no right to Islamization of Europe 194;
immigrants not willing to integrate to European citizens of the heart 180,
260n17; integration of immigrants into Europe has become a top priority 153;
Islam’s predicament with pluralism will continue to trouble 106, 250n13; jihad
as instrument of da’wa/proselytization for world of dar al-Islam 51; khair
ummal/best community God created on earth 37; in majority they oppress others,
in minority they make victims of themselves 214–15; migrants living in
‘‘enclaves in the West but not of it’’ 15, 175, 238n44; migrants most clearly
reflected in structures of the mosques 205; migrants need to redefine their
identity by adding a European component to it 201; most pouring into Europe
peacefully within Islamic hijra/ migration not as jihad warriors 155; need to
be incorporated into pluralistic world on international community 13; need to
be integrated in Europe as true citizens of the heart 127, 156, 166, 167,
255n88; need to question claims of shari’a to universalism and honor
cross-cultural pluralism 78–79; need to
stop their
‘‘other-ing’’ of non-Muslims 219, 268n12; not a race but an umma/ religious
community, multi-racial and very diverse 200; religiously obliged to
disseminate Islamic faith through jihad 46–47, 49, 59–60; since 1980s have been
victims of violence exerted by jihadist groups 102–3; some argue that ‘‘civil
society does not translate into Islam’’ 18, 238n50; some speakers view
themselves as the ‘‘new Jews’’ of European anti-Semitism 212, 267n74; stop
short of rethinking doctrine of jihad 63; suffer exclusion from democratic
Europe 194; transnational religious community rather than a socalled ‘‘race’’
156–57; tried to establish armies along European model 46, 242n18; war a basic
rule and peace with infidels only temporary armistice 63; who embrace science
and technology but reject European values underpinning them 175; who engage in
questionable identity politics, do harm to Islam and Muslims 234, 272n77;
worldview ‘‘al-Islam ya’lu wa la yu’la’’/ Islam is superior and no one can
stand above it 38; yearning for an Imam adil in footsteps of the Prophet 75,
246n36
Muslim self-image, explained by a minha/ crisis that we
are undergoing 38
Muslims and Europeans, need common solutions for
conflict resolution 155
Muslim world, crisis both normative and structural 20
An-Na’im, Abdullahi 34, 43, 219, 228, 241n9, 271n64; on
human rights 23,
239n59 al-Nasiri, Ahmed bin
Khalid (Moroccan scholar) 53, 60; ‘‘abode of Islam/dar alIslam’’ 54;
expeditiential argument for peace between Morocco and Europe 55
Nasserism, proved a great disappointment 136
NATO forces,
able to overpower Serbian army as regular armed force (1999) 124 Nemoto,
Professor 170, 260n16 neo-jihad or jihadism, irregular war, war with no rules
40, 65, 120
Netherlands, after van Gogh’s death people started to
look at the Innenleben der Moscheen 205–6; Amsterdam (2 November 2004) slaying
of Theo van
Gogh 4, 13, 95, 101, 107, 119, 124–26,
153, 204;
Amsterdam (2 November 2005), ‘‘One Year On: Radicalization and Society’s
Response’’ 192; Amsterdam debate within the framework of ‘‘the limits of
pluralism’’
196, 264n23
Neue Zuercher Zeitung (Swiss newspaper)
114
Neumann, Peter. ‘‘Europe’s Jihadist Dilemma’’ 105
‘‘new Cold War’’ 21–22, 24, 27, 111,
238n54, 251n25; related to
Weltanschauungen (war of ideas) 23
‘‘new frontiers of security’’, reasoning and security
studies and 123, 254n70
new identity politics 106 ‘‘New Islamic
Presence’’ 202, 265n47
‘‘new Islamists
without fear’’, not needed avenue for political culture for democracy 84,
248n69
Newsweek (November 2001) 186, 263n72
‘‘New
Totalitarianism’’, not recognized by political theorists 114, 252n38 ‘‘new
world disorder’’ 113 new world order, ‘‘hakimiyyat Allah’’/ God’s rule, not
just anti-globalization is at issue 98, 105
New York, World Trade Center first assault 1993 101
New York Times 199
New York and
Washington, often viewed as revolt against Pax Americana 93; perpetrators of
9/11 came from Europe not from world of Islam 28; terror attack September 11 6,
10, 14, 26, 52,
59, 92, 101, 107, 114, 119, 124
‘‘nizam Islami/Islamic system’’, does not occur in the
Qur’an nor the hadith 78
non-Muslims, either Dhimmi (Christians
and Jews) or kafarun/infidels
38; Islamic system/nizam Islam is unacceptable totalitarian political system
118, 252n38, 256n53; not willing to live as dhimmi 22, 61
non-state actors in international affairs,
need new security approach
104, 249n2 North Africa 226
North Atlantic Treaty Organization See
NATO
Norwegian Institute for Human Rights (Oslo) 233
OIC, 57 Islamic
states 69, 121; based on religion 110; group to form civilizational entities in
world politics 119; makes Muslims present in the international system 104;
refused to condemn Hamas jihad 54
Organization of the Islamic Conference see OIC
Orientalism, biasof163;Orientalistsand 10 orthodox
Islam, revival of based on spread of madrasa pattern of education 220
orthodox Muslims and Islamists, have no
problem with
their double tongue 179
Pakistan 80, 91, 102, 121, 151
Palestine 35, 100, 107, 116; Hamas, use of democracy as
voting procedure 78, 116, 185, 220, 232–33, 252n43, 272n72; Islamic values
among Muslims 231; jihad and 50; poverty as alleged cause of terrorism,
distracts from the real causes 128; unsuccessful democratization 217
pan-Arab nationalism, decline of secular
related to crisis of nation-state in Arab
world 106
Pape, Robert 115
Parker, Geoffrey, ‘‘military revolution’’
39, 170, 260n25
Pax Americana and
hegemonic US unilateralism, obstacles in way of global pluralism 37–38
Pax Islamica, competition with Pax
Americana 110; heralding ‘‘the new
Cold War’’ 27;
modern vision of an Islamic world order 32, 106; new world order replacing one
based on a
Westphalian
synthesis 103, 116 peace, means peace among civilizations, also within Europe
196
peoples of non-monotheist religions, considered to be kafirun/infidels
47, 64
perpetual peace, concept of contradicts
worldview of the dar al-Islam/abode of Islam 71–72
Philippines 23
Philpott,
Daniel, on al-Qaeda attacks 14– 15, 238n42; Islamic political order targeting
structure of ‘‘Westphalian synthesis’’ 39, 95, 115, 249n1
Pirenne, Henri, ‘‘Sans Mahomet, pas de Charlemagne’’ 3,
155, 168–69
Piscatori, James, thinks no problem exists between Islam
and nation-state 20, 45
Plato, vision of shared in medieval Islam by Islamic
rationalists 74–76
pluralism,
combines diversity with shared basic values 157; could accommodate diversity in
better way 224; cultural 5, 211; cultural of binding core values is better
option than multi-culturalism 159; cultural and religious 37; democratic 66;
Islam in harmony with 12, 76; Islam’s predicament with 106; jihad in conflict
with 42; not consonant with values and attitude of Islamists 233; obstacles to
37–38; people representing different views while committed to cross-cultural
rules and values 214; religious 158, 177; religious in Indonesia 80
political Islam, among prominent
expressions of
neo-absolutism as a universalism 115; based on essentialism that rejects
cultural change 217; best recipe for new world disorder 135,
256n19;
challenger to civilizational identity of Europe and its secular values 181;
closes the mind of contemporary Muslims 1, 19; culture of based on
proselytization for Islam and Islamic order 68; deWesternization not to be
equated with 7; expression of Islamic fundamentalism 225, 268n8; grown from
Islam’s unsolved predicament with modernity 129; hinders migrants from
embracing idea of Europe and isolates them in a ghetto 214; internationalism of
reflects civilizationalprojectbasedonaworldview 145; jihadists of well
organized with a global networking 120; message to Europe, ‘‘revolt against the
West’’ 4, 236n21; not identical with jihadist terrorism 6; not rooted in
Khomeinism but in thought of Muslim Brothers 142; older than the variety ‘‘made
in Iran’’ 146; peaceful pursuit of does not make a democracy 102; pertinent to
European studies and IR 105, 249n6; reinventing religious concepts as jihad,
shari’a da’wa and 108; rejection of desecularization by should not amount to
dismissing of religion 24, 239n61; related to crisis of the nation-state 64;
related to phenomenon of ‘‘return of the sacred’’ 22; since emergence of Europe
has been the traditional foe 161; totalitarian ideology 19, 232; two
directions, jihadism and institutional Islamism 10; undermines cross-cultural
bridging 228; variety of neo-absolutism that belies premise of cultural
relativism 224; variety of religious fundamentalism emerging from crisis of
Islamic societies 221
‘‘political
Islam’’, ‘‘Islamism’’ and ‘‘Islamic fundamentalism’’, used interchangeably 123
politicization of religion 107, 163 politicization and
religionization of politics, divide humanityand Europe 183
politicized religion, contributes to
‘‘culture of violence’’ pursued in
‘‘cosmic war’’ 96, 99
Popper, Karl, defense of ‘‘open society’’ against its
enemies 24, 36, 126–27, 254n82; intolerance cannot be admitted in name of
tolerance 158
post 9/11 events, challenges in Europe since
(2004) and
jihadist dilemma 153, 165 post-bipolar ‘‘revolt against the West’’, directed
against Western values 5
post-bipolar
world politics, civilizations competing for new world order 27; global
democracy and democratic peace in twenty-first century 91
post-Khomeini era, rhetoric of revolution
subsided though revived by
Ahmadinejad 151 post-Saddam
Iraq, secular democracy 19– 20; women’s groups vocal in opposing the shari’a 23
praetorian
one-party authoritarian regimes, marked end of futile democratization 83,
247n67
present international crisis, also crisis of Islam
itself 66, 244n59
Preventing the Clash of Civilizations 154;
cross-cultural international morality inspired by pluralist idea of Europe 195,
225, 270n42; Tibi’s contribution to
199, 225
pro-democracy Muslims, the challenge is also to them 127–28
pro-Western Islamic rulers, viewed as ‘‘proxy’’ of the
West 112
Qadhafi (Libya), not an Islamist but names son saif
al-Islam/the sword of
Islam 47–48 al-Qaeda 9, 26,
28, 46, 59, 111; global
network based in
European diaspora of Islam 104; jihadist actions of worldwide are violations of
classical jihad-doctrine 52; members believe they are fi sabil Allah/in the
path of God to establish Pax Islamica 117, providing what Mallat believes is
missing 142, see also bin Laden
al-Qaradawi, Yusuf 34, 77, 84, 240n93;
‘‘al-hall al-Islami/the Islamic solution’’
84–85, 135, 222, 248n75
al-Qurtubi, commentary of the Qur’an 58
Qur’an, ‘‘Allah
does not change people until they change themselves’’ 92; asks believers to
honor their promises and agreements 52; distinction between ‘‘fighting/quital’’
and ‘‘aggression/ idwan’’ 49; refer selectively to for one’s own standpoint 49;
‘‘you have your religion and I have mine’’, democracy is universal 88
Qur’an and hadith, no glorification of death and terror,
Islam honors life 60
Qur’anic idea of freedom, lack of institutions for
bolstering 75, 246n35
Qur’anic precepts, Meccan verses focus on spiritual
issues 43, 50
Qur’an provisions, ‘‘You shall not kill except for a
just cause’’ 51
Qutb, Sayyid (1906–66), authority for jihadist political
Islam 5, 9, 20, 42, 48, 70, 84, 111–12, 236n23; call for global jihad viewed by
predates end of the Cold War 5–6, 182–83; contemporary Islamists claim a return
of history from his writings 155; Hakimiyyat Allah/ God’s rule 6, 21, 23, 31,
117, 142, 161, 181, 236n23; invented ‘‘clash of civilizations’’ ahead of
Huntington 61, 84, 112; Islamic world order and 102–3,
232; jihad
‘‘Islamic world revolution’’
for re-establishing rule of Islam 68, 95– 96, 98,
100–101; Mushkilat al-Hadarah/
The problem of
Civilization 112, 251n31; Muslims need ‘‘ma’alim fi altariq/signposts along the
road’’ 40, 122, 181, 182–83, 248n73, 250n12, 262n55; opinions should be
discredited 75; rector spiritus of Islamism 183; Sunni political Islam based on
visions of 117; world divided dar al-Islam and unbelievers/dar al-harb 61; World
Peace and Islam 17, 20, 33, 49, 72, 117, 242n23, 245n9; writings of taught in
Islamist madrasas 62
radical-dogmatic or state secularism, can be areligious
88, 248n85
Rafsanjani, Ali Akbar Hashemi (president of Iran
1989–97) 139, 144; Iran the mother country of Islam 141, 257n42
Ramadan, Tariq (grandson of al-Banna) 8, 60, 127, 156;
on Euro-Islam 190; presents himself as moderate but labels Europe as part of dar
al-Islam/abode of Islam 210; Renouveaux musulman 5; speaking of Europe as dar
al-Shahada/ house of Islamic belief 176, 261n43; ‘‘the Muslim mission in
Europe’’ 186–
87, 263n74
Ramazani, Rouhollah Karegar, conflict of identity
politics 149, 258n70; ‘‘Islamic world order’’ 136–37, 144, 255n4,
256n23, 257n55
rationality, meaning of modernity 29 recognition of cultural diversity,
cultural
factor and cultural turn 11
reductionism,
precaution against in analysis of religious context of globalization and
terrorism 101
re-Islamization,
effort at deWesternization of all realms of life including education 225
religion, an
entity in its own terms even though embedded in realities 97; ‘‘cultural
system’’ 14, 237n37; cultural system which turns pertinent if politicized 135,
256n17; Durheimian sense of fait social, not to religion as a faith 97;
embedded in society, economics and politics, but also based on tradition 96–97;
new movement is example of entry of into post-bipolar world politics 232;
politicization of separates Muslims 141; politicization of contributes to
establishing civilizational fault-lines 24; politicization of, from which
jihadism grows 113; role in politics that leads to confrontation within Islamic
civilization and Europe 134
religion of Islam, does not endorse terrorism 6
religious and cultural pluralism, only
future prospect for Islam and Europe and Muslims 18
religious
fundamentalism, at odds with democratic rule 84, 248n72; politicization of
religion and ‘‘return of the sacred’’ 102, 250n9; threat and political Islam
not invention of
Western media 69 religious
fundamentalist movements,
based on cultural purisms and reject hybridity 5
religious pluralism, needs to be based on
separation of religion and politics 22
‘‘Remaking Politics’’ 72
‘‘Remaking the World through Militancy’’
72, 245n22
‘‘restoration of the caliphate’’ 16 return of history
2–3, 5, 7, 11, 25, 30, 119, 163; in terms of revival and construction of
collective memory 186, 263n69; witnessing it in our century 229
return of the
sacred 14–17, 22–23, 102, 106, 109–10, 113, 119; enhances its claim to world
politics 116; impact on politics 114–15, 252n36 major challenge in ongoing
post-bipolar
developments 104; ‘‘new Cold War’’
and 23; political religion
and civilizational self-awareness coupled with self-assertion 224; related to
reversing secularization into a de-secularization 109; values claiming universality
and 223, 270n36 Revel, Jean Franc¸ois 73–74, 246n27–29;
‘‘democracy against itself’’ 186, 263n70
‘‘revolt against the West’’ 4, 15, 20–22, 24,
45, 118, 236n21;
articulated by Sayyid Qutb 163; civilizational different from decolonization
109; cultural globalization and 223, 269n31; envisions a de-Westernization of
the world 171; explaining as anti-globalism is pointless 108; incorporates the
most recent variety of totalitarianism 194, 264n16; not beneficial for
democracy, human rights and civil society 228 Ridder Husset (Stockholm), Global
Village Lecture, ‘‘Islam and Europe,
Islam in Europe’’ 162, 259n3
‘‘rights of man’’ 35
‘‘right to security’’ 35
Rodinson, Maxime 43, 241n8; Islamist
ideology functions as ide´ologie mobilizatory/mobilizatory ideology 99
Roman Empire, viewed Mediterranean as mare nostrum/ our
sea 1, 168
Rose, Fleming (editor of Jyllands Posten)
166–67
Rouhani, Shahriar, writing in Time magazine 152, 259n77
Routledge Encyclopedia of Government and Politics 147,
258n64
rule of law, positive law in Europe but
shari’a in Islam 179
Rushdie, Salman 207
Russett, Bruce,
democratic peace rests on vision of Kant 71, 245n19 reveals almost no knowledge
of religious fundamentalism 72, 75 Russia 23
sacral terms, for justifying ‘‘cosmic war’’
on non-Muslims convicted of kufr/ unbelief 97
‘‘sacred’’, returning in formof political Islam rather
that religious renaissance 14
sacred and
secular, conflict between already in world politics and affects politics and
Europe 152, 259n79
sacrifice/al-tadhiya, viewed by believers as permanent
act 99
Saddam 46; after toppling of position of Iran has
improved 135
Said, Edward 35, 69, 218, 268n10; accused UNDP report of
‘‘Orientalism’’ 90; book on ‘‘covering Islam’’, coverage of Islam by Western
media 116,
252n44; ‘‘Orientalism’’ 47, 95
Salafi Muslims
and Islamists, express view of dar al-Islam within their community 179
Salafist or
Islamist concept of peace, contradicts cultural and religious pluralism 72
Salafist Muslim and biased Western commentators, false
contentions 11
Salafist Muslims
in Europe, refer to meaning of hijra and view themselves as outpost of Islam
209
Salafist orthodoxy, look at political order of, finds
‘‘uncivil state’’ 73
Salafists and Islamists, blurred dreams of in an
Islamized Europe 176
Salafist-Wahhabi
Islam, mobilized to confront structure of ‘‘Westphalian synthesis’’ 69, 245n11
Salafi-Wahhabi and political Islam, notion of
transnational religion in both 16
Sarkozy, Nicolas (French President), on banlieues de
l’Islam 189
Saudi Arabia,
exports its ideology of Wahhabism and is more dangerous than Iran 96, 113;
funding for traditional madrasa to sow seeds of jihadi Islamism 221; oil money
funding thoughtless learning by rote, using text to promote Wahhabi Islam 228;
petrodollars for appointing Imams in Germany 204; Shi’ite minority in 151;
Sunni state 121
Saudi
professors, anti-Westernization as cover for essentializing differences in
values 226, 270n49
Saudis, at anti-terrorism meeting denied existence of
global jihad 94; funding of mosques and madrasas being promoted in Europe 16;
for their Sunni part promote Wahhabism for convenience not conviction 96
Saudi Wahhabism, madrasaaims to reverse rationalization
and democratization 228
Al-Sayyad, Nezar, ‘‘artificial categories’’ of East
versus West 201
Scandinavia,
multi-culturalists and Tariq Ramadan 127; Muslims migrants from to Italy in the
South 202; people carry on as before 206
Schacht, Joseph 86, 248n78
Schwarz, Stephen 50
Sciolino, Elaine, on Islamic head-scarf issue in France
199
‘‘secularity’’, laı¨cite´
and 24 secular modernity, decoupling of religion from politics 24
secular rationalism, not alien to Islam 223 security
dialogue, to cope with threat jihadists pose 32
Senegal 119,
149, 196, 218; Tibi’s encounter with non-Arab cultural variety of Islam (1992)
180
al-Sharqawi, accepts modernity as technoscientific
instrumentality 32, 240n86
Shahrur,
Mohammed (Syrian), demands radical cultural change 34, 65, 240n97; democratic
Islam 78
Shaltut, Sheykh Mahmud, Islam a religion for all
humankind 56–57,
243n34 shari’a,
legal norms have never been codified as a legal system 86; not framework for
global civil society 78, 246n45; occurs only once in Qur’an 63,
244n50 shari’a
law, traditionally civil law but in Islamist ideology has advanced to state law
85
Shayegan, Daryush (Iranian), ‘‘cultural schizophrenia’’
183, 183, 263n62
Shi’ism, deception considered lawful in 145
Shi’ite character of Iran, means Iranian revolution had
limited success 150
Shi’ite concept
of ‘‘velayat-e-faqih/ guardianship of the jurisconsult’’ not acceptable to
Sunni Arabs 140, 142–43,
148
Shi’ite impact,
‘‘shahid/martyrdom’’ death, legitimating terrorist actions of suicide bombing
145
Shi’ite internationalism, given shape
to Iran’s foreign policy for decades 132; state-sponsored phenomenon and
incorporated in Iran foreign policy 100
Shi’ite internationalism of Iran, unacceptabletoSunni
Arabs134,255n11
Shi’ite Islamist internationalism, based on a state
policy 130
Shi’ite
religious doctrine of taqiyya/ religious dissimulation, to protect Shi’a from
‘‘brutally repressive campaign’’
145, 149
Siddiqi, Kalim, established Islamic
Counter-Parliament in London 210
Six-Day War, contributed to rise of political Islam as
alternative (al-hall al-
Islami) 83, 248n68
Sorel, Georges, ‘‘action dire´cte’’ 47, 49,
122, 242n26; Re´flexions sur la violence
59–60, 102, 242n26
Soroush, Abdolkarim 142, 257n46
Southeast Asia,
hostile attitude towards the West 79–80; openness to learning from other
civilizations 82
Spain, Muslim conquest of (711) 168
Spencer, Robert, Onward Muslim Soldiers
127, 254n84 spill-over
effects, of Iraq war 10, 151;
Khomeini’s Shi’ite teachings and 144– 45; of revolution
should not be confused with Iran’s foreign policy 141–42, 151
Stockholm 202
Sudan, new
understanding of jihad 50, 243n27; non-Muslims under Islamic rule 33, 240n91;
visit by Rafsanjani of
Iran 139
Sunna, roots of Islamist internationalism found in, not
in Shi’a 107
Sunna and Shi’a, rift between currently revived 100
Sunni, understanding of ‘‘Islamic state’’ different from
Shi’ite one 141
Sunni internationalism,
carried out by irregulars of underground groups (non-state actors) 100;
movement of non-state actors 133, 232
Sunni Islam,
differences between Shi’ite Islam and 43; shift from state to nonstate actors
as source of ‘‘troubled peace’’ 113, 232
Sunni Islamic
conformism, development from colonial rule to sovereign states needed new 56
Sunni Islamic schools, four, each of which has own
tradition of law-making
86
Sunni jihadist
internationalism, Clausewitzian inter-state war in favor of irregular war 119
Sunni Jihadists, do not represent a state 121 Sunni and
Shi’ite visions, some sectarian differences 138
Supreme Council for the Islamic revolution in Iraq see SCIRI
Survival (IISS journal) 105
Sydney
(Australia) 202; conference on migration (Ju1y/August 1998), ‘‘Adventures of
Identity’’ 205, 266n55
Syria 143
al-Tahtawi, Rifa’a Rafi (Egyptian), visit to Europe 81,
247n54
Taliban, dismissing democracy by global jihad 78
temporary peace, defined in terms dar alsulh/reconciliation
or dar al-ahd 47
‘‘terror in the
mind of God’’, Islamic variety 113; new strategies needed to safeguard
democracy 103; those practicing view their action as ‘‘sacred terror’’ 102
terror and war of ideas, generating real disorder in
world politics 119
third-worldist Islamist internationalism,
revives concept of the ‘‘third-world’’
143, 257n52 thirty-three
jihadist assaults (1993–2005),
placed jihadism in conflicts between civilizations 121
Tibi, B.,
against fundamentalism 214, 267n78; argues for new education based on
democratization in European diaspora of Islam 234; basis for EuroIslam 215;
Bosch Fellowship (1998–
2000), Islam between Culture and
Politics 218, 268n9; Bosch Lecture
(1994) 175,
261n38; concept of EuroIslam, developed in Paris 177, 190, 202, 261n45;
conference (2002) ‘‘Penser l’Europe’’ 176; criticizes Europe but also defends
its ideals 193; Europeans responsible for lack of integration 203, 266n50;
family of 181, 200, 218,
262n57; Frankfurt School 158, 193,
216; Germany and 172, 203–4; Global
Village lecture (Stockholm 1997)
‘‘Islam and Europe – Islam in Europe’’
197; goes for pluralism against
Islamism and Salafism 179; Hakimiyyat Allah/God’s rule
181, 267n56;
Horkheimer, to express commitment to
Verma¨chtnis/legacy
of European Jew 194; ‘‘Islamic civilizational unity in a cultural diversity’’
224; Islam’s predicament with modernity 195; lived migration in context of
adventures of identity 213; mediator against ‘‘clash’’ 188; Muslim migrant,
European citizen by value-orientation 176–77, 198, 216; opposes all varieties
of hegemonic universalisms 213; opposes Orientalism including ‘‘orientalism in
reverse’’ 218; political democracy and concept of pluralism 199, 265n36;
rejects all Islamization 186; on religionization of the conflict 192, 264n13;
research on Muslim-Western relations 210; studies of 38; ‘‘the Islamic dream of
semimodernity’’ 182, 262n59; Crisis of Modern Islam, The 38; Developing
Cultures 148, 258n66; Encyclopedia of
Democracy 84; Encyclopedia of Government 84; Islam and
the Cultural
Accommodation of Social Change 217; Kreuzzug und Djihad 168,
260n18; Paris paper ‘‘les Conditions d’un EuroIslam’’ 187, 190, 261n45, 264n10
Tilly, Charles 39, 65, 244n57 Time magazine
(December 2001) 190 tolerance, can never mean only one party has right to
maintain its views 214
Toynbee, Arnold, acknowledges centrality of Ibn Khaldun
3; Study of History 164 traditional Islamic scribes/ulems, peace only possible
under rule of Islam 63–64
transnational
religion, cultural factor 19; discipline of IR and study of war 108; Islam and
Christianity 27; ‘‘Islamic world revolution’’ and 101; a reality 21
‘‘true Islam’’, based on shared perception of one
Islamic world revolution 146–47
Turkey, AKP
presents itself as secular and ‘‘conservative-Islamic’’, no longer ‘‘Islamist’’
84, 99; conflicts between elites and counter-elites 226; Justice and
Development Party (AKP) worldview not European 25, 185, 232, 263n65; mosques
named after Sultan
Fatih who conquered European soil
211; religious or secular education,
Kemalists and
AKP Islamists and Imam Hatip schools 220; seeking accession to European Union
74; some political opposition 11
Turk-Muslims, conquered Constantinople
(1453) 1
Turks, born in Germany disliked in
Turkey as allemanci 205 twenty-first-century, ‘‘age of
extremes’’ 230; characterized by Muslim revolt 39; crisis-ridden time in
destabilized world 185, 260n12; great challenge is challenge to rethink old
wisdoms 234; Islam burdened with home-made predicament with modernity 184
ulema, argue on scriptural and
expediential grounds 55
Ulfkotte, Udo, Der Krieg in unserenStaeden
(The War in Our Cities) 206, 266n59 umma, unity of
hallmark of Islamic
thought and no ‘‘territoral pluralism’’ acknowledged 45
UNDHR, human rights tradition in, individual rights
understanding 177
UNDP, Middle
East described in reports needs democracy as promising way out 128, 255n89;
misery emerges in Arab countries from overall development crisis 184; political
development required for promoting democratization 90; report Arab Human
Development (2002) 220, 222, 269n18; reports on Arab Middle East, grievances
basically homegrown 34, 62,
89, 128, 240n95, 248n89
United Kingdom, Muslims in from South
Asia (Pakistan, India and Bangladesh) 203
United States, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan allies of and
claim to support war on terror 121; shift of centrality on almost all levels
from Europe to since (1945) 174 universality, in religious Islam and secular
civilization of the West 180–81
universalization
of values and globalization, gaps create obstacles in educating for democracy
231
US and British troops, toppled Saddam’s regime in Iraq
war (2003) 124
US politics of
‘‘war on terror’’, distorts the conflict and distracts from basic realities 13
values, change in is theme of cultural
dialogue in search for value commonalities 231–32
veil for women, symbol for establishing
civilizational divide 226, 270n47
Vinocur, John 186
Voll, John 77–78, 218
Wahhabi education of the madrasas, promotes mindset of
global jihad 29,
34–35, 82, 240n94
‘‘Wahhabi International’’, religious imperialism 50;
Saudi funds to promote Salafist education 221, 269n21 Wahhabi internationalism,
not related to
Wahhabi call for world revolution 96
Wahhabi Islam, spreading from Saudi Arabia 25, 239n64
Walzer, Michael 48, 242n20
‘‘war against the Jews’’, core issue in new jihad war
121
war of civilizations, which effects, the
domestic, the regional and international 121
war of ideas,
context of the return of history 5, 230; ‘‘democracy against itself’’ 112,
251n30
al-Watan al-Arabi (Arab magazine October 2005) 132,
255n6
Weber, Max 16;
disenchantment of the world/Entzauberung der Welt did not materialize 108–10
Weiner, Myron 28, 104, 240n76, 249n3; The Global
Migration Crisis 127
Welayati, Ali 144
West, citizenship has replaced pre-modern parochial
identities 105; ‘‘instrumental reason’’ of 181; Iran’s standoff with and will
to extinguish Israel 152; Islamic presence as diaspora more visible in Europe
93; in its asabiyya/ civilizational awareness it is very weak 171–72, 183; not
favorable to process of democratization in world of Islam 83; rejection of by
Islamists, drives toward de-Westernization 79; rise of as a civilization, among
perceptual constraints to Islam 146, 258n61
Western authors, overlook fact there is no consistent
territorial state in Islam 63,
244n51
Western Christianity, reshaped at the eve of the
Renaissance 162
Western civilization, Christian roots but it is secular
222; globalizing in framework of European expansion 231
Westerners, address issue of democracy without
considering debates people of region have been having 90, 249n94; think that
democracy does not apply to
Islam 77
Western Europe,
failed with global migration and not been successful in integrating Muslims
125, 249n3; ‘‘new breed of humans’’ computer literate
182
Western Europe
and Japan, people disregard ‘‘revitalizing culture and intelligence’’ 167,
260n16
Westernization, fears of can be defused by
cross-cultural education in values of democracy 233
Western model of globalization, roots of Islamic outrage
8
Westphalian system, ‘‘authority of a secular synthesis’’
95; challenged by Islamist ‘‘revolt against the West’’ is European order 110,
118, 166, 232; global dominance of 7, 46, 92; Muslims and 18, 39, 63, 69;
target of bin Laden and his al-Qaeda jihad-fighters 17; targets of new revolt
are secular values of 109; world politics prior to 1
‘‘West and the
rest’’, democracy censured as a hall-mustawrad/imported solution 227, 269n24;
reversed by Islamists into
‘‘Islam and the rest’’ 28
West, the, concept of consists of Europe and North
America 4
Winter, Leon de, ‘‘Dutch Diary’’ published in Die Welt 197,
265n30
Wolffsohn, Michael 190
Woodrow Wilson Center (Washington
DC) 233
world civilizations, related to concept of religion with
exception of Western 115
World peace, needs to combine European inner peace in
age of cultural diversity 22
world politics,
adherence to democratic peace required from Muslims living in other
civilizations 11; study of religion a recent addition 14; Twenty-first
century about
politics of civilizations
(return of history) 30
worldwide Islamic umma, members share
values and
worldview but not biology
157
Xinjiang, incident in 124
Yasin, Muhammed Na’im, book on jihad
(1990) 62 young Muslims,
mostly ‘‘no-future kids’’
with
increasing admiration for bin Laden 98, 126 al-Zarqawi, Musab 143, 257n53

file_name: Tibi B. Political Islam, world politics and Europe 2008.pdf

alt: This book makes a profound contribution

alt: Political Islam, World Politics and

alt: Routledge 2 Park Square Milton

alt: Acknowledgements This is a Cornell

alt: Masykuri Abdillah; at Scripps

alt: Acknowledgements memorable; at

alt: Preface On my way to Ithaca,

alt: Preface and reform Islam in

alt: When it comes to my second authority,

alt: Europe, as home to 20 million

alt: Avicenna und die Aristotelische

alt: Peace of Westphalia with Hakimiyyat

alt: The Islamist vision of the state and of a new world order compels us to look at the systemic structure of international relations in a…

alt: Islamism. In contrast, Islam can be put in harmony with pluralism on the grounds of religious reforms for overcoming the view of others as subjected…

alt: Islam. In addition, the Muslim

alt: With this mindset, the breakdown of the

alt: Western ideology engendering a ‘‘new

alt: We can see this in India, Russia,

alt: Enlightenment, for an ‘‘open civil

alt: Party (AKP) and in Egypt 66 and take their approval of democracy at face value, but

история

group: Дисциплины