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Islamic Identities As Positioned Power Relations

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Islamic Identities As Positioned Power Relations Islamic Identities as Positioned Power Relations: The Case of Turkey and Iran BY Navid Yousefian Jazi Submitted to Central European University Department of Political Science In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Political Science Supervisor: Professor Matteo Fumagalli CEU eTD Collection Budapest, Hungary 2014 To my parents for their unwavering love and support CEU eTD Collection Abstract Islamism and fundamentalism have been falsely taken to be the same, distorting our perception of Muslim identities. However, the new forms of being Muslim are highly adapted to the prerequisites of the modern life. Islamism takes different shapes and is highly embedded in the sociopolitical context and power relations within societies. This research’s main question is ‘what is it to be politically Muslim?’ Although it seeks to present a typology of Muslim identities ranging from Islamists to non-believer seculars, it finds the literature of identity politics reductionist in order to give a comprehensive picture of diverse narratives of being Muslim. The logic of identity politics asks us to disregard the multi-dimensional character of religious and political identities and instead assume that Muslims are only differentiated based on their belief in the broad and vague concept of the Islamic state. This research is a comparative study of political Muslims in Turkey and Iran, comprising fourteen in-depth interviews whose findings depict the impossibility of categorizing Muslims in existing identity groups. The ethnographical approach of this research, followed by a thematic analysis of the narratives, results in an interpretative understanding of the actual beliefs, values, and performances in the Muslim world. In line with Talal Asad’s conception of religion, the research claims that the construction of different Muslim identities dynamically occurs through the cultural hegemonies, dominating discourses, and power struggles within the society, rather than by theological discourses representing different interpretations of Islam. Therefore, Muslim identities are the points of reference for CEU eTD Collection positioned power relations, which get heterogeneous shapes based on different social and political contexts. i Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................................... i Chapter 1- Introduction ................................................................................................................ 1 1.1 Resisting Secularism ......................................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Research Question.............................................................................................................................. 4 Chapter 2 - Literature Review..................................................................................................... 9 2.1 The Mainstream Distorted Picture of the Political Islam ..................................................... 9 2.2 Defining Political Islam .................................................................................................................. 12 Chapter 3 - Theoretical Framework ....................................................................................... 14 3.1 The Dynamic and Reactionary Character of Religious Identities as Positioning ...... 14 3.1.1 Post-Islamism ............................................................................................................................................ 17 3.2 Power, History, and Political Islam ............................................................................................ 18 3.3 The Misleading Logic of Identity ................................................................................................. 21 3.3.1 Multiculturalism as the Hallmark of Liberal Identity Politics ............................................... 23 3.4 A Summary of the Theoretical Framework ............................................................................. 27 Chapter 4 – Methodology ............................................................................................................ 29 4.1 A Response to Possible Methodological Critiques ................................................................ 32 4.2 A Theoretical Assessment of Dramaturgical Interviews .................................................... 34 Chapter 5 - Findings and Analysis ........................................................................................... 38 5.1 The Interviewees .............................................................................................................................. 38 Table 1 – Interviewees’ Information ........................................................................................................... 38 5.2 Muslim Identity’s Dimensions ..................................................................................................... 40 5.2.1 The Non-Political Characteristics of Muslim Identity ............................................................... 40 5.2.2. The Recognition of Other Types of Being Muslim ..................................................................... 42 5.2.3 The Political Connotations of Muslim Identity ............................................................................ 43 5.2.4 Muslims’ Level of Political Toleration ............................................................................................. 46 5.2.5. The Will to Have an International Islamic Union ....................................................................... 48 5.3 A Discourse Analysis on Muslims’ Narrative of Politics...................................................... 50 Chapter 6 - Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 52 6.1 Islamic Identities as a Heterogeneous Set of Positionings ................................................ 52 6.2 Power Struggles Masked Behind Identities ............................................................................ 56 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................... 59 Appendix I – Data Extracts ......................................................................................................... 62 Table 2 - On what is it to be a Muslim ............................................................................................... 62 Table 3 - On whether different interpretations of Islam are true .......................................... 64 Table 4 - On the relation of Islam and politics .............................................................................. 66 Table 5 – Some concrete examples of what Muslims want ....................................................... 70 Table 6 – On Muslim and European Identities .............................................................................. 74 CEU eTD Collection Table 7 – On the relation between Islam and actual politics in Turkey and Iran............. 76 Appendix II – Topic Guide .......................................................................................................... 80 ii Chapter 1- Introduction 1.1 Resisting Secularism Although the incidents of September 11, 2001 and their aftermath are generally known to be the turning point in which political Islam got its current salience, there have been a lot of other events and cases that have shaped the academic and political interest in the questions regarding political Islam. The Arab Spring, political conflicts in Turkey and Iran, integration of Muslims in Europe, the threats of radical Muslims in the Western Africa, and several terrorist attacks in the name of Islam are only a few anecdotes of why political Islam is one of the main centers of attention for researchers today. The picture of a politicized and anti-Western doctrine of Islam has brought about a sense of fear for the Western mind that immediately connects Islamism with backwardness and violence. Islamism and fundamentalism have been falsely understood to be the same, which has been presented not only to the public, but also to the scholars by means of media and public culture. By a secular perspective, originated and developed only in the Christian tradition of social and political theory, it has been argued that the Western concern over the question of Islam “is not Islamic identity but Islamist identity.”1 Scholars have tried to differentiate between a version of Islam that is limited to the private sphere of life on one hand, and a politicized type that dictates how a believer should act in the sociopolitical domain on the other one. In this sense, the word Islamism is equal to political Islam and the term Islamic is used for both non-political and political aspects of Islam that a Muslim might believe in. The secular hegemonic discourse of the West has long been demanding the Muslims to limit the CEU eTD Collection Islamist character of their beliefs to their private life. For instance, on the question of Turkey’s membership in EU, Samuel Huntington stated that Turkey, in effect, could do a 1 Schwedler, Jillian. "Islamic identity: myth, menace, or mobilizer?." SAIS Review21, no. 2 (2001): 5. 1 South Africa: “abandoning secularism as alien to its being as South Africa abandoned apartheid and thereby
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