256 CHAPTER 12
Modern Islamism emerged in the context of the collapse and carve-up of the once- powerful Ottoman empire in the aftermath of World War I. As the Middle East fell into stagnation, new ways of thinking about both Islam and politics spread. The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928 in Ismailia, Egypt, by Hassan al Banna (1906–49). The world’s most enduringly influential Islamist movement, the Brotherhood pioneered a model of political, and sometimes militant, activism combined with Islamic charitable works that has subsequently been embraced across the Muslimworld. However, Islamism only emerged as a powerful political force during the post-World War II period, and especially from the 1980s onwards. The war in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union, during 1979–89, led to the growth of the Mujahideen, a loose collection of religiously inspired resistance groups, out of whichdeveloped a collectionof new jihadi organizations, the most important of which was al-Qaeda, founded in 1988. The 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq fomented bitter sectarian rivalry between Sunni and Shia (or Shi’ite) Muslims, which both spread across the region and contributed to the emergence of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS (also called Islamic State, or IS), whose influence expanded due to the protracted Syrian civil war. Islamism is perhaps characterized most of all by a strident rejection of the West. This applies because Islamism developed not through isolation from the West but through encounters with the West, and these encounters invariably had a bruising character. The revolt against the West was expressed by figures such as Sayyib Qutb. Qutb, who was
radicalized during a two-year study visit to the USA, 1948–50, expressed a profound distaste for the materialism, immorality and sexual licentiousness he claimed to have encountered there. Qutb’s world-view highlighted the barbarism and corruption that Westernization had inflicted on the world, with a return to strict Islamic practice in all aspects of life offering the only possibility of salvation. He argued that Islam was confronted with two possible relations with the rest of the world: ‘peace with a contractual agreement, or war’. This Islamist conception of a global civilizational struggle between Islam and the non-Islamic world (not just the West) was later taken up by groups such as al-Qaeda and ISIS, especially once, during the 1990s, the object of Islamist hostility shifted from the ‘near enemy’ (‘un- Islamic’ or apostate leaders or regimes) and came to encompass the ‘far enemy’ (the USA and the West in general). Islamism is centrally concerned with the issue of political order and the construction of an ‘Islamic state’. Although the Islamic state is often
Jihad : ( Arabic ) An Islamic term literally meaning ‘struggle’; includes the struggle against one’s own soul and external, physical effort or even ‘holy war’. Apostasy: The abandonment of one’s religious faith, sometimes applied to cause, a set of principles or a political faction. Caliphate: A system of government by which, under the original custom of Islam, the faithful were ruled by a caliph who stood in the Prophet’s stead.
KEY FIGURE
SAYYID QUTB (1906–66) An Egyptian writer and religious leader, Qutb is sometimes seen as the ‘father’ of modern political Islam. A leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood, Qutb recoiled from what he saw as the moral and sexual corruption of the West, but, influenced by Maududi, highlighted the condition of jihiliyyah (‘ignorance of divine guidance’) into which the Muslim world had fallen. In the face of this, Qutb advocated Islam as a comprehensive political and social system that would both ensure social justice and sweep away corruption, oppression and luxury.
Historic Collection/Alamy Stock Photo
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