Plotting Islamism's success

Islamism is really quite an obscure noun. It means different things to different people, so a definition must be had. Essentially, it refers to a set of political ideologies derived from an intensely selective reading of Islam. Daniel Pipes (a man Muslims find fashionable to hate) describes it as a movement that:

...turns the bits and pieces within Islam that deal with politics, economics, and military affairs into a sustained and systematic program. As the leader of the Muslim Brethren put it some years ago, "the Muslims are not socialist nor capitalist; they are Muslims." I find it very telling that he compares Muslims to socialists and capitalists and not to Christians or Jews. He is saying, we are not this "-ism," we are that "-ism." Islamism offers a way of approaching and controlling state power. It openly relies on state power for coercive purposes.

Like Zionism, Islamism is unabashed nationalism, but with a religious twist. Both are modern projects, shaped in response to what is seen as the debilitating encroachment of European ideals.

Ironically, however, these religious -isms share many features with the ideologies they purport to resist. Zionism's conceptualization of a divine right to the land of Israel, rooted in Biblical stories that the Jews are the "Chosen People", is virtually indistinguishable from the Aryan myth that Nazis used to justify their ethnic-cleansing of Jews.

Both ideologies are articulated at the expense of a minority people. In Zionism's case, it is the Arabs who have lived in Palestine for generations. 

The main victims of Islamism's vociferous development are aspects of what was once considered to be holy tradition. The Islamist agenda claims strong links to scripture, but rejects traditional interpretations of it, some of which they refute as being outmoded and even superstitious.

Peter Berger rightly argues that heresy becomes the common condition once the plausibility structure of traditional beliefs like Mawlid (celebrating the Prophet Muhammad's birthday) and Tassawuf (Islamic spiritualism) are called into question and individual choice replaces the unqualified acceptance of communal authority.

On a practical level, such a reversal of priorities has an important fallout. Power over the hearts and minds of Muslims shifts from the ulema (religious scholars) to the Islamist's own turf; there to be massaged into whatever political message is needed.

In the book, Fundamentalism- The Search for Meaning, Malise Ruthven ably explores the strategies that Islamists employ to achieve a society based on what they perceive as divine law. He identifies three of them.

Dawa
The emphasis on dawa (evangelicalism) and social organization- or what Malise Ruthven calls 'Islamization from below'- demands deep pockets and an elaborate infrastructure. Bernard Lewis offers this mischievous analogy:

"Imagine that the Ku Klux Klan gets total control of the state of Texas. And the Ku Klux Klan has at its disposal all the oil rigs in Texas. And they use this money to set up a well-endowed network of colleges and schools throughout Christendom, peddling their peculiar brand of Christianity. You would then have an approximate equivalent of what has happened in the modern Muslim world."

The dawa of certain groups infiltrates key Islamic institutions worldwide, even in countries that host minority Muslim populations. Great care is taken to recruit madrasas, orphanages and mosques to the Islamist cause. The overall ideology is contextualized against any grievances that the local Muslim populace holds, thus making its more extravagant demands, like forcing women into full chador, more palatable.

The evangelizer's aims are to foster distinctiveness and create an identity that would be indispensable in future propaganda. That is why such groups, after taking root in a country, always claim to speak for the benefit of all the Muslims who live in the region; even though that is seldom the case.

Saudi Arabia's support for mosque-building projects all over the world, for example, does not come without an ideological price being paid. Mostly, the surest sign of Islamist evangelism is the appearance of non-traditional books on Islam in mosques and especially Islamic propagation centers, who specialize in nurturing new or potential converts to Islam.

The last is important because it represents a growing industry in the Islamist's world. John Lindh Walker, who had been converted by the Tablighi Jemmaat group, is an American who had been indoctrinated enough to take up arms on the side of the extremist Taliban.

Another revealing example may be seen in the backgrounds of a number of Turks arrested on suspicion of complicity in terrorist activities.

Every single one of them was born and educated in Germany, not one in Turkey. The Germans do not supervise the religious education of minority groups, while the Turks keeps a watchful eye on these matters. The situation clearly favors those with the fewest scruples, the strongest convictions and the most money.

Hijra
This order of Islamists opt for a strategy of separation, or hijra, with the aim of building an alternative Islamic society before 'reconquering' the state, thereby emulating Prophet Muhammad, who built the the first Islamic community in Medina before returning in triumph to his native city of Mecca.

Southeast Asian Islamists provide an interesting case study of how the idea of hijra has been forced to change with the times. While the first emigration of Muslims from Mecca had been fraught with hardship and uncertainty, and the medium of transportation had been the humble camel; today's 'emigrants' use commercial jets, speedboats and trains to shuttle to and from Indonesia, South Philippines, South Thailand and Malaysia.

They are nomads plying their volatile brand of religion by taking advantage of sophisticated modes of transportation and relatively open borders.

It is important to understand the Islamist's motivation in the context of the traditional meaning of hijra. During medieval times, emigration usually entailed crossing an imaginary boundary between dar-al-harb (abode of war) and dar-al-salaam (abode of peace). Dar-al-harb was the region where Muslim rights were constantly violated; while dar-al-salaam was the region where Muslims, and more specifically, the Sharia (Islamic law), ruled.

The division of the world into seemingly intractable halves fits nicely into a favorite Islamist complaint- that no single nation on earth, Muslim or non-Muslim, is dar-al-salaam.

Therefore, governments that tolerate any political system that erodes religious authority, such as secularism, are considered to be apostates; eminently slated for overthrow so that it can be replaced by a true abode of peace.

Jihad
This is the strategy that most often makes it to the headlines. Jihadists believe that the government will never relinquish its grip on power voluntarily, and opt for the approach of 'Islamization from above' by means of armed and violent insurgency.

According to Malise Ruthven, the inspiration behind all such movements may seem religiously romantic, utopia, or historical. But the execution tends to rely on an undeclared modernist premise: whereas in pre-modern or pre-colonial times the writ of government in Muslim countries was relatively weak, with the Islamic law administered by the ulema under the authority of the ruler who was himself, in theory, subject to its provisions, the modern Islamists hold the state responsible for the deviation of the Muslim community when it is not Islamic, and consider it the instrument of its salvation when it is.

John Gray, author of the Al-Qaeda and What It Means to be Modern, argues that in the Middle East and the Balkans, Kashmir and Afghanistan and other zones of conflict, it is not only states and their agents who wage war. Central amongst the protagonists are political organizations, irregular militias and Islamist networks that are not controlled by any state.

Muslims are oppressed in a number of areas around the world and so have, whether it is commonly acknowledged or not, a number of legitimate causes and grievances. Professor Vincenzo Oliveti points out in his book, Terror's Source, that Islamists frequently try to hijack these causes even after they have already been settled, thereby gaining broad Islamic popular support, raising their profile and improving their image.

Dangerously, the tactic harms the very people they claim to be helping (to say nothing of the image of these in the West). Thus the Chechen people, after having essentially won the First Chechen War (1991-1995) under Dzhokhar Musayevich Dudayev, were dragged into another war by Islamist elements (Ibn al-Khattab), whose first act was to liquidate Sufi opposition to them.

Unconventional warfare which targets government personnel and civilian populations has been practiced in Vietnam, Angola, Northern Ireland, Algeria and most especially, Israel. What is new about this kind of warfare is that it has developed in the context of corroded or failed states. In Africa, Bosnia, parts of Pakistan, Haiti, Chechnya, many hundreds of millions of people continue to eke out an existence in conditions of semi-anarchy. A sort of vigilante justice, uncluttered by due process of law, prevails.

The wholesale slaughter that is practiced by al-Qaeda does not find sanction from the Sharia and instead has its breeding ground in the zones of anarchy that emanate from failed states. As capital has gone global, so has crime. John Gray alleges that the irregular armies and political organizations that carry out the new forms of warfare are linked with the global criminal economy. Many terrorist organizations rely for some of their funding on crime, particularly the trade in illegal drugs.

With globalization, they are able to move the funds they acquire from these sources freely around the world. Islamists take full advantage of this freedom to propel the world toward what Professor Samuel Huntington predicts will be an apocalyptic 'clash of civilizations'.