Why The West Seeks To Vilify Political Islam
By Alain Gabon
By Alain Gabon
👆🏻 📸 Members of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood stand trial in Cairo in 2015
Islamism is a powerful , transnational political movement that challenges western imperialist hegemony - & that's why it's often portrayed as a threat .
In his preface to the English edition of Francois Burgat’s Understanding Political Islam , author Pascal Menoret tells us the book is :
“ The work of a trespasser . It sums up the breakthroughs of a French scholar who escaped the snug & often smug - Western enclave to research one of the least understood political movements : Islamic activism .”
Understanding Political Islam , initially published in 2016 , is also the work of a passeur - one whose unique , lifelong experiences of travelling , living ,
working & conducting research across the Middle East & North Africa region enables westerners to understand the world through the subjectivity of the “ Islamic Other ” (whom Burgat reminds us is not as different from us as we often fantasise Arabs & other Muslims to be) .
One of the many benefits of the book is to offer us an analysis of political Islam that is not tainted or distorted by western prejudices , ideologies , abstractions & Orientalist fantasies that structure the analyses of other Islamologists .
The depth of Burgat’s familiarity with these countries , cultures & peoples stands in sharp contrast to the often abstract or theoretical takes by other Islamologists .
Burgat’s Islamic/Islamist “ Other ” is situated , historicised & humanised , as opposed to the vilified caricatures we have been served for decades by virtually all western media & politicians as the new enemy -
the “ Green Threat ” that replaced the Communist Red Scare after the fall of the Soviet Union .
Written in elegant prose that is as rich , dense & intelligent as it is clear & accessible , Understanding Political Islam is part autobiography , part travel memoir & part scholarship ,
where Burgat both synthesises & revisits his prior works on the subject , but also updates them , especially with respect to the Arab Spring & it's aftermath .
A true page-turner where the warm , charismatic , personable & generous author is present with us on every page , each chapter takes us on a geographical & analytical journey to one of the various countries where Burgat has worked or studied .
The book is a synthesis of a lifetime of thinking , researching & writing on Islamist activism around the world .
" The Spectrum Of Political Islam "
Without generalising , Burgat effortlessly explains both the diversity & the specificity of the various Islamist movements around the world , France included , as well as their shared commonalities .
We are reminded that “ Islamism ” is by no means the scary , violent , Anti-Democratic & dangerous monolith it has for years become in western media & political discourse ,
where it is now systematically - & wrongly - associated with “ Fundamentalism ” & religious “ Extremism ” at best & more often terroristic “ Jihadism ”.
In reality , these groups , movements & parties are often radically different from one another . The spectrum of political Islam comprises both ultra-violent terrorist groups , such as Al-Qaeda & the Islamic State (IS) ,
but also Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood under the country’s 1st democratically elected President , Mohamed Morsi & other pacifist parties , such as Tunisia’s Ennahda , which has exerted a profoundly democratising & pacifying influence on the political life of that country .
None of those movements are static or immune to change . Far from it : they usually evolve over time , often radically & sometimes in surprising ways .
" The Kepel-Roy-Burgat Debate "
In the somewhat simplistic typology of mainstream French media , Francois Burgat has been cast as “ The 3rd Man ” , usually after the much better-known political scientists Gilles Kepel & Olivier Roy .
While much has been written on the theoretical rivalry between Kepel’s thesis on the “ Radicalisation Of Islam ” versus Roy’s reverse theory on the “ Islamisation Of Radicalism ” -
with other analysts claiming the 2 are not incompatible , but complementary - Burgat , the 3rd major figure of French scholarship on Islam (3rd in terms of the level of media attention he receives , but 2nd to none in terms of analytical power) has rejected both .
Instead , Burgat champions a qualitatively different explanation of Islamism & jihadism . It's starting point is western imperialism , the legacy of colonialism & neocolonialism & the continuing racism & discrimination of European societies .
👇🏻 📸 A man walks by a wall protesting against Islamophobia in Kolkata , India , on 14th February 2020
In France , the media attention given to Islamologists is primarily determined by whether they fit within the group-think & dominant narrative about “ Islamism ” - in other words , whether they contribute to that “ Green Scare ”. Kepel does , while Burgat does not .
If Kepel & his many disciples highlight the religious , scriptural-theological & ideological dimensions of “ Religious Extremism ” (including the non-violent type) & if Roy & others emphasise it's psychological & even psychiatric aspects ,
Burgat re-contextualises , re-historicises & above all re-politicises Islamism & jihadism , without assuming that the former leads naturally to the latter in “ Conveyor Belt Theory ” fashion .
" Searching For The Root Causes "
For Burgat , both Kepel , who “ Ascribes a decisive role to the influence of religious doctrine on society ” , & Roy , who tries to explain Islamism & jihadism through paradigms such as nihilism ,
the “ Death Drive ” or jihadis as “ Small-Time Crooks ” , confuse the symptoms for the causes .
Their theories are like “ Trees that hide the political forest ” & misleadingly replace the fundamentally political root causes with religious , ideological , psychological or psychosocial ones .
By excluding the colonial & neocolonial political & historical backgrounds of these phenomena , including Western domination of the Muslim “ Other ” through violence far greater than jihadism itself &
by refusing to take into account the enormous responsibilities of Non-Muslim actors , such as Western governments & their usually despotic Arab allies in the making of jihadist violence : such disingenuous explanations are also ,
for Burgat , complicit with French or US nationalist & imperialist neoconservatism .
Analytically & politically , they obfuscate the real drivers , along with the fundamentally political , reactive & oppositional nature of Islamism & jihadism .
For Burgat , Islamism & jihadism do not signal a “ Return Of Religion ” or a “ Revenge Of God ” , but a return to centre stage of the (still-dominated) Global South in the international geopolitical arena , but also at the domestic level .
" Retaliatory Terrorism "
Far from the psychosocial or religious & doctrinal “ Spasms ” described by Kepel , Roy or Abdelwahab Meddeb in his equally ubiquitous Malady of Islam , Islamism & jihadism are foremost mass protests by self-conscious political , often revolutionary actors .
They have everything to do with “ Post-colonial suffering, youth identification with the Palestinian cause , rejection of Western intervention in the Middle East ,
or exclusion from a racist & Islamophobic France , relations of domination endured by the Muslim component of the population ... & the policies of our governments ”.
Jihadism thus constitutes a “ Counter-Violence ” - a logical outcome of the fact that all “ The most ordinary political conditions for extreme violence have been brought together ” , mostly by Western states & Arab regimes .
There is therefore no need to invoke as root causes a “ Contamination Of Islam ” , an alleged malady of Salafism , or other religious , theological , psychosocial or even sexual pathologies .
With or without those , the toxic political & geostrategic terrain upon which groups such as Al-Qaeda & IS have emerged remains bound to generate reactions of a similar , sometimes violent nature .
To take an obvious example , Iraq under US military occupation did not need to get “ Islamised ” for armed resistance to inevitably occur .
Yet , the ideological function of abstract theories , such as those of Kepel & Roy , is to deny or “ Conjure away the various effects of the persistence of North/South domination ,
to discredit the protests of the dominated ” & to maintain the illusion that “ Their bombs have nothing to do with ours ” .
" Politically Incorrect Truths "
In sharp contrast , Burgat has tirelessly repeated politically incorrect truths that no one wants to hear , including : “ That the precondition of the long-awaited democratic transitions is not excluding Islamists from the political sphere .
Much less is it hoping that they disappear . The solution is integrating them in the political sphere .”
He notes that the “ Islamic reference point ” of these movements is in no way “ A dogmatic , intangible dead-end divorced from history or impervious to change ”
& that there will be no end to terrorism until Western states & societies recognise & address their own fundamental responsibilities in the creation of such Frankenstein monsters as Al-Qaeda & IS .
They must start by ending their “ Unwavering support for Dictatorships like that of [Egyptian Dictator General SiSi] in Egypt : for Anti-Religious elites marginalised in their own societies : or even for our Israeli ally ”.
Such indefensible policies , he notes , serve only to “ Exacerbate the radical , reactive threat these policies are precisely supposed to preserve us from ”.
👇🏻 📸 US President Donald Trump shakes hands with Egyptian Dictator General SiSi in New York in 2019
Alas , so far , such healthy recommendations have fallen on deaf ears .
Burgat insists that far more than theoretical disagreements are at stake in the proper understanding of political Islam .
The question is which representation of the “ Muslim Other ” will dominate the public sphere , which affects how we relate to other countries & domestic Muslim populations .
That is why it is crucial that we stop misunderstanding the phenomenon of the rise & spread of Islamism - so that one day , hopefully , the West can finally develop more rational , mutually beneficial relations with Islam & it's more than 1.5 billion believers .
" Challenging Western Imperialism "
So far , it has been unable to do so . Instead , it has opted for hostility towards & even eradication of , anything labelled “ Islamist ” -
a toxic & counterproductive policy that is not so much due to the alleged “ Threat to peace & freedom ” but to the fact that Islamism is a powerful ,
transnational political movement that for decades has openly challenged western imperialist & neo-imperialist hegemony & the sacred cow of “ Secularism ”.
So , what exactly is “ Islamism ” ? In Burgat’s analysis & again contrary to group-think , it “ Is less the result of an ideology than the production of new political identities from one’s own ground ”.
Similarly , the Global South is “ A region whose specificity is less it's religion or culture than it's position right outside the West’s bloody borders ”.
Islamism is the adoption of an “ Islamic religious lexicon against colonial oppression & post-colonial modernism ” by which newly independent countries sought to modernise along European lines .
It signals a fundamentally political (as opposed to ideological or religious) & anti-colonialist “ Turn towards speaking Muslim ” - an effort to forge an “ Indigenous ” & “ Authentic ”
social & political vocabulary that would be imposed neither from the outside by former colonial powers , nor from the inside by post-independence Westernised regimes , nor from above by elites & puppet regimes serving the West .
Islamism seeks to organise the resistance to both the ongoing western push for hegemony & to corrupt , co-opted native & national elites .
A fundamentally reactive & oppositional political movement - & furthermore a major one that Burgat correctly predicted would not disappear , but rather remain an essential & major part of the political cultures of these countries -
Islamism is essentially a continuation of the long historical fight for independence from Western domination . It is “ The extension of the dynamic that successfully fought for independence ”.
" The New Voice Of The South "
Islamism , in all its variants , is indeed “ The new voice of the South ” - one that is not so much produced by “ Islam ” as by the history suffered by Muslims at the hands of both foreign colonial states & authoritarian Arab states .
In Burgat’s reading , it historically represents the 3rd stage of decolonisation , pursuing the anti-imperialist struggle for independence of now-discredited & ossified nationalist movements, such as Algeria’s National Liberation Front .
In addition to pursuing political & economic independence , or at least distancing from the West , Islamism is now also “ Starting to reconquer , often successfully , the ideological territory once lost to the North ”.
At its core & regardless of the various forms it takes - whether admirably democratic like Ennahda , or violently terroristic like Al-Qaeda - Islamism is the continuation of the South’s long process of self-emancipation from the North .
As such , it threatens Western imperialist domination , influence & control over these countries , peoples & cultures .
It is therefore not surprising that the West vilifies & seeks to eradicate even the most perfectly democratic & peaceful expressions of Islamism , given that they , too , announce the end of the era of unchallenged European & American hegemony .
