Saturday, May 3, 2008

" Islamist" Revisited






Right and Below: Christianist Politicians









In my introductory post on this blog, I was fairly critical of the term "Islamist" - for those of you just joining us, the title of this blog is more of a comment on the word than on my membership or sympathy with any political group.

It is a rather unique term in politics, very unlike so many of the other -isms we hear. A communist believes in Communism. A zionist believes in Zionism. A Marxist agrees with Marx. A liberal with Liberalism. Although the word "fascist" now has largely polemical connotations, it was used self-descriptively by many, including Mussolini, who (you guessed it) believed in Fascism.

What does an "Islamist" believe in? Islam? We have a word for that - "Muslim."* How about "Islamism"? Well, that only begs the question, since it's hard to say what that means or how it differs from Islam.

There are, however, no "Islamist" political parties in the Muslim world, and relatively few that oppose "Islamism." The word is largely a Western invention - in the Muslim world the former word naturally only appears in the English or French press, the latter almost never.

To get a sense of the history of this term, I did a little experiment with the online journal database JSTOR, an archive of journals from a broad spectrum of topics dating back to the 1880's, whose strengths lie in the social sciences and humanities (although some historic gems in the natural sciences can also be found).

In the window from 2001-2007, there were 612 articles with the word "Islamist." Obviously, one would expect a surge in interest in the topic since 2001. Moving backwards, from 1994 to 2000, the number hits 1066. That's a bit surprising - one would have expected a surge of activity after 2001, not a drop-off. From 1986-1993, the number falls sharply to 311. From 1978-1985, the number falls further to a puny 50.

So, in 8-year windows from 1978-2007, the sequence is 50, 311, 1066, and 612. Such a lack of interest in the first window is surprising - 1979 was the year of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, an event that was, in the politics and history of the Middle East, an earthquake. Thanks to the hostage crisis at the US Embassy, every American knew about it. With the hugely successful Hezbollah attack on the US Marines in Lebanon, against the backdrop of the IDF occupation, such groups should have drawn a lot of scholarly interest in the West.

So why the paucity of interest in "Islamists" during late 70's and 80's? The first answer has to do with a flaw in the method of this little study - the consistency of the JSTOR database with respect to content and focus of the publications can change over time, as journals change management or are added or removed from the database.

Bernard Lewis: Also a Proud Islamist

A more significant answer emerges after reading some of those earlier articles - the Islamists being spoken about aren't Muslims in Iran or Pakistan or Algeria - they are American and European professors at major universities. In the 1970's and earlier, the term "Islamist" didn't refer to a political movement, but to a non-Muslim academic who studied Islam and the Muslim world - a subset of Orientalists.

In this sense, the meaning of the word is relatively clear, but what of its more common usage today? What does an Islamist believe in? The answer is that there is no answer. The word is an invention of pundits and academics, that bears only a tenuous relationship to any political movement or group. Yes there are a series of political movements in the Muslim world with a religious rooting, but to call them all "Islamists" is misleading, giving the impression of some sort of commonality of aims or methods. Jesse Jackson and George W. Bush are both Christian politicians, but this doesn't mean that their politics are similar in any way.

Some people do indeed derive political inspiration from Islam.

There are around a billion of them, and we don't need to invent a word to label them.

*Although in a strictly Qur'anic sense, this doesn't signify any institutionalized religion beyond a faith in and submission to God. Then again, the same could be said about Islam, but that's another kettle of fish.

Stumble Upon Toolbar

1 comment:

Kelly said...

Your blog has way more useful content than I could ever hope to host on my blog.