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The Incongruous Nature of Islamist Anti-Imperialism

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The Incongruous Nature of Islamist Anti-Imperialism ISLAMISM AND EMPIRE: THE INCONGRUOUS NATURE OF ISLAMIST ANTI-IMPERIALISM ASEF BAYAT n animated debate is under way within the Left, the Right, and among AIslamists themselves about the status of current Islamist movements vis- à-vis neoliberal imperialism. Rightist circles are clear that Islamism is a re- gressive, anti-modern and violent movement that poses the greatest threat to the ‘free world’. Islamism represents, in their view, a ‘totalitarian ideology’, a ‘cousin of fascism and communism’, which stands opposed to modernity and to the enlightenment values enshrined in the capitalist free world.1 In a sense, the idea of a ‘clash of civilizations’ captures the ‘objective contradic- tions’ of Islam and Islamism with Western modernity and its universalizing mission. Leftist groups, however, seem to be divided. While some groups see Is- lamist movements as ‘analogues to fascism’, so that the best socialists can hope for is to break individuals away from the Islamist ranks and lure them into progressive camps,2 others consider Islamism as an anti-imperialist force with which the Left can find some common ground. For the British Socialist Workers’ Party, for instance, in the current conditions of mounting Islamo- phobia in the West, an ‘internationalist duty to stand with Muslims against racism and imperialism’ requires secular socialists to forge alliances with such admittedly conservative organizations as the Muslim Association of Britain,3 whose misogynous stand on gender issues in Muslim communities is often overlooked on the grounds of cultural ‘relativism’.4 Others suggest that ‘Islam has the advantage of being simultaneously an ethno-nationalist identity as well as a resistance movement to subordina- tion to the dictates of capitalist world economy’.5 Thus, by mobilizing civil society against structural adjustment, by offering alternative welfare systems to the shrinking role of the states in fulfilling its responsibilities, Islamists currently present the most important challenge to global neoliberalism. In- ISLAMISM AND EMPIRE 39 deed for some observers, the seemingly proletarian profile of Islamists and their populist rhetoric render them the movement of the dispossessed. In this sense, their anti-imperialist stand, combined with religious language, makes the Islamist movement analogous to the Latin American liberation theology of the 1960s and 1970s, which took the liberation of the poor as its central moral objective.6 Mike Davis’s influential survey, Planet of Slums, for instance, portrays militant Islamism (along with Pentecostalism) as a ‘song of the dispossessed’ who survive in the misery of slums, as in Palestine’s Gaza Strip, or Baghdad, defying the empire’s Orwellian technologies of repression by resorting to the ‘gods of chaos’, daily explosions and suicide bombings.7 Does this imply that Islamism represents the indigenous Middle Eastern ver- sion of global dissent against neoliberal imperialism? The notion of ‘anti-imperialism’ has traditionally held a normative signifi- cance, referring to a just struggle waged by often secular progressive forces to liberate subjugated peoples from the diktat of global capitalism and imperial (economic, political and cultural) domination, and to establish self-rule, so- cial justice, and support for the working classes and ‘the subaltern’ – women, minorities, and marginalized groups. Such anti-imperialism has been em- braced, for instance, by the current anti-globalization movement to chal- lenge the dictates of the ‘new empire’. This notion of empire is distinct from the liberal concept, where ‘leaders of one society rule directly or indirectly over at least one other society, using instruments different from (though not necessarily more authoritarian than) those used to rule at home’.8 In the lib- eral conception, empire is not all that bad; the British empire spread the in- stitutions of parliamentary democracy across the globe, and the US empire, as the Harvard historian Niall Ferguson stresses, not only seeks to ensure US national security and acquire raw materials, but also provides crucial ‘public goods’ such as peace, global order and ‘Americanization’ for the rest of the world through the export of commodities and ideas.9 In contrast, the left- critical concept of the ‘new empire’ is one which consists, in the words of David Harvey, of a mix of ‘neo-liberal restructurings world-wide and the neoconservative attempt to establish and maintain a coherent moral order in both the global and various national situations’;10 it results from the need of capital to dispose of its surplus, which involves geographical expansion. Put simply, capital needs the state to clear the way for a secure and less-troubled context for overseas investment. What is the relationship of the current Islamist movements to neoliberal imperialism? Do they pose a genuine challenge, or are they no more than reactions which offer unfortunate justifications for neoliberal hegemony? I suggest that the fundamental question is not whether Islamists pose resistance 40 SOCIALIST REGISTER 2008 to empire, nor whether they are anti-imperialist or fascist. The relevant question rather is what does Islamist anti-imperialism entail vis-à-vis the mass of Muslim humanity. WHAT IS ISLAMISM? Some of the problems involved in exploring the anti-imperialist position of Islamism lie in its multiple facets and meanings. Some observers focus on the political economy of certain Islamist trends, concluding that it stands against neoliberal orthodoxy; some highlight Islamist movements’ welfare operations, focusing on Islamism’s proletarian character; while still others concentrate on Islamism’s ideologies, moral codes and religio-political vi- sions, finding them conservative, regressive, or even fascist. Not only does Islamism possess different facets; it also refers to different types of organizations, different visions of an Islamic order, and different ways in which to achieve such an order. While gradualist and reformist Is- lamists, such as the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots in Algeria, Syria, Sudan, Kuwait, Palestine and Jordan pursue non-violent methods of mobi- lizing civil society – through work in professional associations, NGOs, local mosques and charities – the militant trends, such as the Jama’a al-Islamiya in Egypt or the Algerian FIS, resort to violence and terrorism against state agencies, Western targets and civilians, hoping to cause a Leninist-type in- surrection. And such militant Islamists also differ from current jihadi trends, such as the groups associated with al-Qaeda. Whereas militant Islamism rep- resents political movements operating within the given nation-states and targeting primarily the secular national state, the jihadis are transnational in their ideas and operations, and represent fundamentally apocalyptic ‘ethical movements’ involved in ‘civilizational’ struggles, with the aim of combating a highly abstract ‘West’, and all societies of ‘non-believers’. They invariably resort to extreme violence both against the self (suicide bombing) and their targets.11 Many Islamic-oriented groups are not even Islamist, strictly speaking. A growing trend that I call ‘post-Islamist’ wants to transcend Islamism as an ex- clusivist and totalizing ideology, espousing instead inclusion, pluralism and ambiguity. In Iran, it took the form of the ‘reform movement’ which partly evolved into the ‘reform government’ of 1997-2004. In addition, a growing number of Islamic groups, such as the current Lebanese Hezbollah, the al- Wasat Party in Egypt, the Turkish Virtue Party and the Justice and Develop- ment Party, and the Indian Jama’at Islami, are in the throes of transforma- tion, increasingly exhibiting some aspects of ‘post-Islamism’. Post-Islamist movements aspire for a secular state, but wish to promote religious ethics ISLAMISM AND EMPIRE 41 in their societies, while their economic positions range from promoting the free-market to some kind of social democracy.12 Global events since the late 1990s (the Balkan ethnic wars, the Russian domination of Chechnya, the Israeli re-occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, not to mention post-9/11 anti-Islamic sentiments in the West) have created among Muslims an acute sense of insecurity and a feeling of siege. This in turn has heightened their sense of religious identity and communal bonds, generating a new trend of ‘active piety’, a sort of missionary tendency quite distinct from the highly-organized and powerful ‘a-political Islam’ of the Tablighi movement (a missionary movement of spiritual awakening ac- tive among Muslims) in being quite individualized, diffused, and inclined toward Salafism. Its adherents aim not to establish an Islamic state, but to reclaim and enhance the self, while striving to implant the same mission in others.13 In this essay I take Islamism to refer to the ideologies and movements which, notwithstanding their variations, aim in general at establishing an ‘Is- lamic order’– a religious state, Islamic laws, and moral codes. Concerns such as establishing social justice, are only supposed to follow from this strategic objective. Historically speaking, Islamism has been the political language not just of the marginalized but particularly of high-achieving middle classes who saw their dream of social equity and justice betrayed by the failure of both capitalist modernity and socialist utopia. They aspired to an alternative social and political order rooted in ‘indigenous’, Islamic history, values and thought. Segments of the poor may support
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