Moustapha Bassiouni Master Politique comparée / Group 2 My course point focuses on the political mobilization based on religious reference, the so-called “Islamism”. The subject of political Islam was the core of a lecture delivered by François Burgat, which addressed the analysis of this phenomenon in the Arab and Muslim world. The lecture tried to answer some questions: Who is “the Islamist”? Is there an identical profile of an Islamist militant ? Do Egyptian, Pakistani, Yemenite, Moroccan, Saudi Islamists all have the same profile through their referring to Muslim culture ? Do they all have the same trajectory? In fact, when I chose this subject, I was especially inspired by the Islamist successes in elections in the Arab region, and more recently the electoral breakthrough of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in the legislative election in November 2005. It was as important an upsurge, shaking up the domestic political landscape, as any Egypt has seen since 1954. The Muslim Brotherhood deputies will then constitute the real opposition force in the future 2006 parliament. Moreover, I mention the example of Saudi Arabia with the victory of Islamist candidates in the municipal elections in April 2005, and the spectacular rise of the Palestinian movement Hamas in the January 2005 local elections in Gaza and West Bank. For the first time Hamas will even participate in the next legilative elections in January 2006. Burgat underlined that we must not explain troubles and violence in many parts of the world through the term of Islamism, and according to him, “The Koran is no explanation for Ben Laden”. He doesn’t agree with Olivier Roy’s thesis about the concept of “Post-Islamism”. Burgat asserted that, from the beginning, the Islamists have always had a tendency to participate legally in the political game, they have always been social-democratized. Islamism aims to contest the local political order created by Independence, but by the regional and international orders as well. At the present time, the Islamists are mobilizing more to restore the hegemony of Muslim culture, than in order to apply the Islamic charia. Besides the Taliban, who strictly applied the Islamic legal codes, we find other figures of Islamism embodied by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, the Moroccan Islamist leader Abdel Salam Yassine and the the Islamic Labour party of Adel Hussein in Egypt, who have all carried out steps towards modernity within the respect of Muslim values. Many actors have integrated the political institutions through their representation in the parliaments in Arab countries such as Jordan ( The Front of Islamic action led by Leith Chbeilat), Lebanon (Hizbullah), Yemen. The regime accepted them as long as they didn’t provoke a really threatening oppostion. When the regime realized that the Islamists had become a real threat, it resorted to authoritarian measures such as repression against them ( c.f : the case of Algeria in 1991 with the Islamic Front for Salvation led by Belhaj and Madani). Burgat considers that the definition of Islamism is wide because it must concern many profiles of Islamist movements, among whom those who are active in the political landscape and represented in Parliaments, with a majority in some cases (Turkey and Iran). But other movements have been radicalized by relying on violence. He defines Political Islam as the resort to the vocabulary of Islam in the political field in order to apply a global project. Affirming the important reference to Muslim culture doesn’t determine the nature of the project or the modes of action adopted by Islamist actors. Their actions might be either violent, peaceful, democratic, authoritarian, conservative, or modernizing and this difference is due to the social and political context, on the local and external levels. The explanation of the Islamism phenomenon must take into account its rise over the last 100 years. We should analyse it through the important concept of identity, which is the main reason which makes political actors resort to an Islamic vocabulary based on Muslim culture. The development of Islamism is characterized by the central factor of identity. The Islamists affirm the universality of Muslim culture which is the best way to face Western culture. Furthermore, we must understand the different usages of this vocabulary on both the local and the international levels. The use of the Islamic reference by these actors has had certainly a lot of repercussion on their behavior on these two levels. But in spite of the centrality of religious reference affirmed by some groups, supposedly to unify the latter, we find that it hasn’t prevented the emergence of social, political and ethnic diversity among these groups. The example of Pakistan shows us this reality: created in 1947, the new State had the mission of preserving Muslim culture facing the Hindu majority. Pakistan was considered as a political construction founded on Islam, the cement of the nation and to which the population belongs. But the secession of Bangladesh in 1971, and the different divergences which have occurred (Sufism, Salafism, reformism, Sunnis, Shias) have reflected the limits of this unitary Muslim reference. Being an Islamist evokes many remarks: The Islamic mobilization aims to reaffirm the legitimacy of religious discourse and the position of its supporters facing the Western imperial power in the world: the USA and its allies. We have to note that the use of Islamic vocabulary by political actors does not provide an interpretation for their radicalization. The extremist behavior of Al- Qaeda’s militants is one of the forms observable in the spectrum of the phenomenon of Islamism. There is a whole spectrum of Islamist attitudes to be understood by refering to the social and political contexts. There is no a particular social and economic profile of an Islamist. Islamic mobilization is transocial. This reality is confirmed by the social diversity of the environments within which Islamist militants evolve. The religious commitment cannot be explained only by referring to social and economic factors. Islamists belong to different categories of Muslim societies and not only to underprivileged environments. For example, they are active in many professionnel unions in Egypt. They often originate from the middle-class. The various forms of usage of the Muslim vocabulary shows that Islamists have diverse and different programmes to be introduced into politics. In the light of their educative, social and political environments where they evolve and also the strategies implemented by the local regimes and international actors towards the Muslim world, Islamists may be democratic or autoritarian, legalist or revolutionary, radical or liberal. We may thus observe the spectrum of the whole religious tendencies, ideologies and behaviours of political actors (Taliban, Al-Qaeda militants, Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, in Yemen, Mullahs’ regime in Iran, Justice and Development party in Turkey, Hamas and Islamic Djihad, Islamic Salvation Front in Algeria, Islamist movements in Europe, Chechnya rebels ). They could be both on the side of the opposition, facing the regime seen as illegal and pro-Western (such as Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia), or on the side of power, through “Islamic” regimes such as those in Iran and Sudan. Then we should distinguish between Islamists who have opted for co-existence with political power, others who have chosen legal parliamentary action and finally Islamist miltants who have been radicalized and whose mobilization is based on terrorism. Each group has its own mode of action. We should in each case understand the historical aspect to know how they became Islamists ( some examples set out by Burgat such as the Egyptian Tarek Al-Bishri and the Tunisian Rashid Ghanoushi, show us that many of them were nationalists, communists, Nasserists before they opted for Islamism as an ideology and a means of mobilization). |