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The Politics of ‘Islam’ – A Second Look

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Fred Halliday
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Type
Review Article
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British Journal of Political Science , Volume 25 , Issue 3 , July 1995 , pp. 399 - 417
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

1 For comparative analyses see Marty, Martin and Appleby, Scott, eds, Fundamentalisms and the State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993).Google Scholar

2 As will become evident (fn. 5 below) there are some problems with applying the term ‘fundamentalist’ to Muslim movements. Nikki Keddie has argued that the term ‘Islamist’ is probably the most accurate, distinguishing belief (‘Islamic’) from ‘movements to increase Islam's role in society and politics, usually with the goal of an Islamic state’; see ‘The Islamist Movement in Tunisia’, Maghreb Review, 11 (1986), 26–39, p. 26.Google Scholar

3 For analyses that stress the similarities see Kepel, Giles, The Revenge of God: The Resurgence of Islam, Christianity and Judaism in the Modern World (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994)Google Scholar, and Lazarus-Yafeh, Hava, ‘Contemporary Fundamentalism – Judaism, Christianity, Islam’, Jerusalem Quarterly, no. 47 (Summer 1988), 27–39.Google Scholar

4 A good example of this approach is Lewis, Bernard, The Political Language of Islam (London: University of Chicago Press, 1988)Google Scholar. The debate between ‘orientalists’ and their critics has generated much hot air and has in the main avoided the question of how social scientists actually analyse these societies. By far the best critique of the ‘orientalists’ is Rodinson, Maxime, Europe and the Mystique of Islam (London: University of Washington Press, 1991)Google Scholar. For my own attempt to disentangle this debate see ‘“Orientalism” and its critics’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 20 (1993), 145–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 I would give as examples of this Zubaida, Sami, Islam, the People and the State (London: Routledge, 1989)Google Scholar; Keddie, Nikki, Iran: Roots of Revolution (London: Yale University Press, 1981)Google Scholar; Gilsenan, Michael, Recognizing Islam (London: I. B. Tauris, 1990)Google Scholar; Mortimer, Edward, Faith and Power (London: Faber, 1982)Google Scholar; Tibi, Bassam, The Crisis of Modern Islam (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Halliday, Fred and Alavi, Hamza, eds, State and Ideology in the Middle East and Pakistan (London: Macmillan, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; al-Azmeh, Aziz, Islams and Modernities (London: Verso, 1993)Google Scholar. In another perceptive and wide-ranging survey, Ayubi, Nazih, in Political Islam: Religion and Politics in the Arab World (London: Routledge, 1991)Google Scholar has, while writing within the ‘contingentist’ framework, sought to examine the specific cogency of cultural and doctrinal elements in Islamism.

6 For discussion of the ideology of the Iranian revolution see Abrahamian, Ervand, Khomeinism (London: I.B. Tauris, 1993)Google Scholar; and Vieille, Paul and Khosrokhavar, Farhad, Le Discours populaire de la revolution iranienne, two vols (Paris: Contemporanéité, 1990).Google Scholar My one disagreement with Abrahamian is that, while he argues that the terms ‘fundamentalist’ and ‘populist’ are incompatible, I would prefer to suggest that the Iranian case was precisely one in which these two elements overlapped, and that there are certain respects in which the Iranian movement conflicted with the Latin American populist model.

7 The alternatives are well represented by two of the most common terms of derogation in Khomeini, 's Iran, – taghutiGoogle Scholar, or worshipper of idols, a term resuscitated from the Koran, and kravati, or person who wears a tie from the modern French cravaie. For an interesting discussion of the promotion and codification of new political terms in the Iranian revolution, see Irfani, Suroosh, ‘Iran and the ECO: Towards a New Discourse’, Strategic Studies (The Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad, Pakistan), 15, no. 2 (Winter 1992), 80–94.Google Scholar

8 al-Azmeh, Aziz, Islams and Modernities, p. 31.Google Scholar

9 See Ayubi, chap. 10, on political and cultural reactions to the modern state.

10 Nielsen, Jorgen, Muslims in Western Europe (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1992).Google Scholar This judicious book is part of the excellent series, Islamic Surveys, put out by Edinburgh which also includes Halm, Heinz's Shiism (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991).Google Scholar For an earlier study of Muslims in France, see Keppel, Giles, Les Banlieuesde l'Islam (Paris: Seuil, 1987).Google Scholar For one British case see my Arabs in Exile: Yemeni Migrants in Urban Britain (London: I. B. Tauris, 1992).Google Scholar

11 Hippler, Jochen and Lueg, Andrea, eds, Feinbild Islam (Hamburg: Konkret Literatur Verlag, 1993).Google Scholar An English translation is being prepared for publication with Pluto Press in 1995.

12 Bishara, in Hippler, and Lueg, , Feinbild, pp. 104–10.Google ScholarAyubi, (Political Islam, p. 3)Google Scholar suggests al-hakimiyya originates with the early Islamic breakaway Kharijite sect.

13 Bishara, in Hippler, and Lueg, , Feinbild, p. 114.Google Scholar As Bishara points out, this is in marked contrast to the Judaic, HalakhaGoogle Scholar, which does contain a very detailed set of legal prescriptions. On shari'a, see also Roy, Olivier, L'echec de l'Islam politique (Paris: Seuil, 1992), p. 240Google Scholar; and al-Azmeh, , Islams and Modernities, pp. 10–14, 24–5, 93–4.Google Scholar An English translation of Roy's book has been published by Tauris, I. B. as The Failure of Political Islam.Google Scholar

14 Esposito, John L., The Islamic Threat, Myth or Reality? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).Google Scholar

15 Piscatori, James, ed., Islamic Fundamentalism and the Gulf Crisis (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1991).Google Scholar See also my ‘The Fractured Umma: Islamist Movements, Social Upheaval and the Gulf War’, Oxford International Review, 2, no. 3 (summer 1991), 28–32.Google Scholar

16 Shlaim, Avi, War and Peace in the Middle East: A Critique of American Policy (New York: Viking, 1994).Google Scholar

17 Tibi, Bassam, Conflict and War in the Middle East, 1967–91 (London: Macmillan, 1993).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 Rajaee, Farhang, The Iran-Iraq War: The Politics of Aggression (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1993).Google Scholar

19 Amongst the multitude of books on the crisis, the following are amongst the most informative and judicious: Freedman, Lawrence and Karsh, Efraim, The Gulf Conflict 1990–1991: Diplomacy and War in the New World Order (London: Faber and Faber, 1993)Google Scholar; Matthews, Ken, The Gulf Conflict and International Relations (London: Routledge, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bulloch, John and Morris, Harvey, The Origins of the Kuwait Conflict and the International Response (London: Faber and Faber, 1991).Google Scholar There is also nothing specifically ‘Islamic’ in the accounts of the conflict by Muslim writers, for example, Alghosaibi, Ghazi, The Gulf Crisis: An Attempt to Understand (London: Kegan Paul International, 1993).Google Scholar My own reflections are ‘The Gulf War of 1991 – Implications for International Relations’, Review of International Studies, 20 (1994), 109–30.Google Scholar

20 I have discussed this at greater length in ‘The Politics of Islamic Fundamentalism: Iran, Tunisia and the Challenge to the Secular State’ in Ahmad, Akbar and Donnan, Hastings, eds, Islam in the Age of Post-Modernity (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 91–113.Google Scholar See also Reissner, Johannes, ‘Der Imam und die Verfassung’, Orient, 29 (1988), 213–36.Google Scholar

21 On the combination of nationalism and internationalism, see Halliday, Fred, ‘Iranian Foreign Policy Since 1979: Internationalism and Nationalism in the Islamic Revolution’, in Keddie, Nikki and Cole, Ian, eds, Shi'ism and Social Protest (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1987), pp. 88–107.Google Scholar

22 Bakhash, Shaul, The Reign of the Ayatollahs (London: I. B. Tauris, 1985).Google Scholar

23 Ehteshami, Anoushiravan, After Khomeini: The Iranian Second Republic (London: Routledge, 1995).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Some have queried the validity of the term ‘second republic’ on the grounds that it overstates the discontinuity between the Khomeini and post-Khomeini periods; but the case for using the term is certainly defensible, given the important constitutional changes that followed Khomeini's death, with the formation of a presidential system.

24 Abir, Mordechai, Saudi Arabia: Government, Society and the Gulf Crisis (London: Routledge, 1993).Google Scholar Those interested in the particular timbre of Saudi life could do worse than read Mantel, Hilary's novel, Eight Months on Gazza Street (London: Penguin, 1993).Google Scholar

25 Khan, Asghar, The Pakistan Experience (London: Zed Press, 1985), p. 4.Google Scholar

26 Adelkhah, Fariba, Bayart, Jean-François and Roy, Olivier, Thermidor en Iran (Paris: Espace International, 1993).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27 Shayegan, Darius, Cultural Schizophrenia: Islamic Societies Confronting the West, translated by Howe, John (London: Al Saqi, 1992).Google Scholar

28 Shayegan, , Cultural Schizophrenia, p. 99.Google Scholar

29 Roy, , L'echec de l'Islam politique.Google Scholar

30 On the North African cases, see Burgat, François, L'Islamisme au Maghreb (Tunisie, Algerie, Libya, Maroc) (Paris: Editions Karthala, 1988)Google Scholar; and al-Ahnaf, M., Botiveau, Bernard, Frégosi, Franck, L'Algerie par les islamistes (Paris: Editions Karthala, 1991).Google Scholar The latter gives a graphic illustration of the terrifying intellectual vacuity of the Algerian Islamist outlook.

31 Gellner, Ernest, Muslim Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).Google Scholar His main themes are repeated in Postmodernism, Reason and Religion (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 6–22.Google Scholar Gellner might also have difficulty with the link he establishes between the ‘low’ tradition and mysticism, since Khomeini was an exponent of irfan, Shi'ite mysticism.

32 Gellner, , Postmodernism, Reason and Religion, p. 21.Google Scholar

33 Sharabi, Hisham, Neopatriarchy: A Theory of Distorted Change in Arab Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).Google Scholar

34 An example of how difficult it is to write in this vein is to be found in the reception, in the Arab world and much of the academic world of the West, of the writings of the Iraqi author Kanan Makiy a: his first book, The Republic of Fear (London: Hutchinson/Radius, 1988Google Scholar; published under the pseudonym ‘Samir al-Khalil’) and his later Cruelty and Silence (London: Century/Hutchinson, 1993)Google Scholar developed cogent critiques of the Ba'athist regime in Iraq and of those Arab intellectuals who colluded with it. A torrent of abuse and accusations of treachery have followed.

35 Barakat, Halim, The Arab World: Society, Culture and State (London: University of California Press, 1993).Google Scholar

36 Barakat, , The Arab World, pp. 146–7.Google Scholar

37 Owen, Roger, State, Power and Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East (London: Routledge, 1992).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 In particular, The Middle East in the World Economy 1800–1914, rev'd paperback edn (London: I.B. Tauris, 1993).Google Scholar

39 Owen, , State, Power and Politics, p. xiii.Google Scholar

40 Bromley, Simon, Rethinking Middle East Politics, State Formation and Development, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994).Google Scholar

41 For two other perceptive discussions see Salamé, Ghassan, ed., Democracy without Democrats? The Renewal of Politics in the Muslim World (London: I.B. Tauris, 1994)Google Scholar, and Deegan, Helen, The Middle East and Problems of Democracy (Milton Keynes, Bucks: Open University Press, 1993).Google Scholar

42 For one recent exploration of the earlier history of state and economy in Iran, see Vali, Abbas, Pre-capitalist Iran: A Theoretical History (London: I.B. Tauris, 1993).Google Scholar Critical of theories of both the Asiatic mode of production and feudalism, Vali, through specification of a particular concept of ‘Iranian feudalism’, seeks to develop a new understanding of Iran between the Sassanian empire and the land reform of 1962.

43 Bromley, , Rethinking Middle East Politics, State Formation and Development, p. 169.Google Scholar

44 Ahmad, Akbar, Islam and Post-Modernism (London: Routledge, 1991)Google Scholar is one such attempt to reconcile the theoretical claims of postmodernism with the actual diversity and fluidity of culture and identity in the Muslim world. See, also, Ahmed, Akbar and Donnan, Hastings, eds, Islam, Globalization and Postmodemity (London: Routledge, 1994).Google Scholar My own ‘modernist’ contribution to this volume discusses Iran and Tunisia.

45 Neopatriarchy, p. x.Google Scholar