11.2 Islamism in Contemporary Contexts

All three camps tend to prescribe a set of social and political arrangements, but public support for these arrangements varies widely. Islamist propositions do not always align well with public opinion. More importantly, Islamism is not the only game in town in Muslim-majority societies. Albeit influential, Islamism is far from being without rivals in the marketplace of ideas. In fact, none of these three camps necessarily constitute a majority even in overwhelmingly-Muslim societies. After all, not all Muslims in Muslim-majority societies are Islamists, and not all Islamists are equally close to the political center of their respective societies.

Islam and Violence: Key Differentiations:

Ignoring the above differentiations and similar others may easily lead to the mistake of perceiving Islamists in fewer typologies than actually exist. Different Islamist groups exist on the violent and peaceful ends of the political violence spectrum, and in all shades of grey in between.

Almost a quarter of the world population is of Muslim background, so Muslims come from all walks of life, and it is not rare for them to politically identify as nationalists, secularists, environmentalists, liberals, or socialists, among other things. Most contemporary Muslims connect with their religion in a variety of social, cultural and institutional settings, but they do not necessarily make Islam a substantial part of their politics. Furthermore, Muslims of the twenty-first century are increasingly secular, and many are cultural or nominal Muslims only. In fact, recent surveys indicate that, even in a seemingly-conservative country like Iran, about half of the population is now religiously unaffiliated, and only 37% believe in an afterlife (Maleki & Arab, 2020). In other words, the aforementioned traditionalist, fundamentalist, and modernist camps exist merely in the Islamist sphere, which is a subset of the larger Muslim sphere that includes non-practicing and non-religious Muslims, among others. Moreover, even the larger Muslim sphere is a subset of the society as a whole, which usually includes the adherents of a variety of minority religions, as well as the religiously unaffiliated. As a result, depending on the political context, Islamists develop different strategies to increase their influence. They look for ways to respond to local realities better, and appeal to larger groups of people. That said, establishing some type of an Islamic state remains the objective of most, due to Qutb’s long shadow. Still, there is rarely if ever a consensus over what an Islamic state should and should not involve. It is the rule rather than the exception for members of even the same Islamist groups to have only a vague idea about the intricate details of Islamic governance. Yet, the dream lives on…

Nevertheless, some unexpected developments in the late 1900s have created a number of unprecedented offhoots from Qutbian jihadism. After the Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan, Islamists from a variety of countries traveled there to join the resistance. Upon victory, however, many felt they should remain in Afghanistan to establish an Islamic state, even though that was not a part of the plan in the beginning.

The experience of international fighters joining forces in a Muslim-majority country to create an Islamic state led to a new, global approach to jihad. It was a paradigm shift, of which Al-Qaeda was a result. Qutbian jihadism thus extended to the global level. This is perhaps best illustrated by the way Al-Qaeda differentiates between the near enemy and the far enemy. Al-Qaeda’s near enemy is the secular regimes in the Muslim world, which Qutb primarily focused on. Al-Qaeda’s far enemy is the United States, followed by other Western powers with a military presence in the Muslim world.

Al-Qaeda propagates a leaderless form of organization that guides lone wolves, or small packs of wolves, around the world to wage war on anti-Islamic targets. This method was laid out in a 1,600-page e-book entitled The Global Islamic Resistance Call (Al-Suri, 2004), which earned its author the title of “the architect of global jihad” (Lia, 2008). Along with other documents such as Al-Qaeda leader Ayman Zawahiri’s General Guidelines for Jihad, a whole new perspective on Islamic revival emerged.

This method is prone to creating offshoot groups, some of which end up even more radical than their precedents. ISIS is perhaps the most extreme example to date. Gilles Kepel (2002) characterizes this new variant of jihad as Salafi jihadism, which refers to the concept of jihad, as interpreted by Salafi fundamentalists of the twentieth century. Most people know Islamism largely by this most violent subgroup of the fundamentalist camp.

To sum up, Islamism is more a spectrum than a well-defined political ideology. It is not an ambiguous idea, but it is not necessarily coherent across political contexts either. About six decades after Qutb’s Milestones, Islamism is still largely composed of a set of social and political propositions that are for the most part shaped in response to local realities, Muslim-majority or otherwise. The globalization of jihad has been the only exception to this rule, albeit a salient one that merits attention.