ISLAM AND CULTURAL POLITICS

Islam and Cultural Politics

Islam and Cultural Politics

Summary

The main features of the Muslim faith that make it fertile ground for democratization are tawhid, and khilafah. To put it considerably more succinctly than the authors, tawhid is the central notion that God is at the center of reality. In practical terms, this means that God is sovereign over all things including the political establishment. The people themselves possess no outright sovereignty. They do occupy an important role according to khilafah, the tenet that man is placed as regent over creation. In any case, Islamic extremism (not fundamentalism as others say it), including the way the Wahhabi doctrine is followed, is bred by new circumstances as regions of the world become increasingly interconnected (i.e., it is globalized) and where the hegemonic west shows its dominating character in the global economy and politics. Thus, extremism is a localized response that brings to life the glorious past of Islam as if time is frozen and conditions have remained stationary. But modern Islamists argue that Islam is for all time, and that jihad means reforming society that has gone bankrupt or corrupt.

These two principles seem to offer a great deal of ammunition to those who would use them to justify authoritarian control, but the authors claim that while this can sometimes be the case they can also be interpreted as positive forces for political participation. According to the authors, "the threat of authoritarianism comes less from religious doctrine than politics and power, history and political culture." In other words, Islam as a faith has several features that lend themselves particularly well to empowerment and political participation. The present return of history is reduced to nostalgia about Islamic expansion aimed at mapping the entire globe into Dar at-Islam, the Islamic version of globalisation that was undermined by the Crusaders and the Jews, then by colonialism and now by globalisation. The revival of the Islamic project is opposed to the so-called “Jewish-Christian conspiracy” in the service of Western globalisation.

The return of the history and the nostalgia revolve around the following question: which model of globalisation will be victorious and shape the future world order? Westernisation is viewed as ghazu/ conquest and is contested by the call for jihad aimed at an all-encompassing de-Westernisation of the world; the umma must mobilize against the West and defeat the conspiracy targeting Muslims worldwide. While accusing the West of Islamophobia Islamists in themselves develop an acute “Westphobia”. A Muslim writer qualifies this sentiment as cultural schizophrenia.

There are three levels in which polarisation appears to be making the “clash of civilisation” a self-fulfilling prophecy; at the global level with tensions between the world of Islam and the rest, primarily the West; within Islam, with the jihad of political Islam against secular Islamic elites suspected to be infected by the virus of westernisation; and in the Diaspora in Europe: Islamists agitate against integration in the name of preserving Islamic identity. Here, Islam has become ethicised and hence a source of ...