Localism and radicalization in North Africa: local factors and the development of political Islam in Morocco, Tunisia and Libya

Over the past three decades North Africa has experienced a wave of Islamic activism. From the emergence of groups such as Shabiba Islamiya in Morocco in the 1970s to the recent appearance of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the region has been home to a plethora of different Islamist movements, each with its own national characteristics. As such the region has displayed a general propensity to Islamist activism. However, certain areas within each North African state have proven particularly receptive to the ideology of political Islam. Although this trend is by no means universal, given the strong appeal of the Islamist ideology that has been able to transcend geographical boundaries, these areas have nonetheless been a key source of recruitment not only for the more moderate strands of the Islamist opposition, but also to the militant movements and networks that espouse violence. As such there would appear to be a correlation between localism and Islamist activism in North Africa. Focusing on Morocco, Tunisia and Libya, this article will examine some of these local issues and will argue that in order to understand better the causes of radicalization in the region, the rise of Islamism in North Africa should be considered within the broader historical context of political and cultural resistance by certain peripheral regional elements to a dele-gitimized and stagnated central authority.     

Security,secularism and gender: the Turkish military’s security discourse in relation to political Islam

This article examines the sexual and corporeal constructions of risk within the security discourses of the Turkish military in response to the rise of political Islam and Islamist identities in Turkey. I look at the Turkish military as the self-proclaimed guardian of the secular Republic, which, until recently, has actively configured political Islam as a risk to national security and ingrained such risk onto the body of the headscarved woman. My analysis covers a time frame from 1980s to late 2000s when the military issued memorandums and public statements against the rise of political Islam and pursued a belligerent campaign to erase ‘Islamist’ identities both from civilian politics and its own structure. The military implemented security regulations and dress codes to detect the ‘Islamist’ military personnel who are most conspicuously identified with the dress style of the women in their families. I explore these security regulations through women’s everyday and personal experiences in relation to their dress, headscarf style and comportment in military spaces and try to understand how ‘Islamism’ is constructed as a security threat in sexually and corporeally specific ways. I demonstrate how secularism is constructed, and needs to be protected, on the basis of a particular regime of gender and sexuality at the merger of traditional gender norms and secular Western modernity.     

Islamism and Iran’s Islamic Period Museum

The Islamic Period Museum of Iran was established, almost 16 years after the Islamic Revolution, as an addition to the previous National Museum building – the Iran Bastan, or Ancient Iran Museum – in 1996. By examining the components of state Islamism, the space of the museum and key exhibits, this paper reveals the analogous relationship between the museum and state ideology. That relationship suggests that the museum embodies fundamental ambiguities and inconsistencies inherent in Iranian state Islamism. Those ambiguities and inconsistencies are only concealed, in the museum as in the ideology, by employing traditionalist rhetoric with regard to religion and identity.     

Islamism revisited

While contemporary Islamism is a response to the domestic political situation in many Muslim countries, as well as to US and western policies in the Muslim world, it is also about religious assertion and the forging of an alternative ideology, not only as a means of empowerment but also as a means of establishing a particular social order. The debate is as much an internal one as it is a global one and in many ways mirrors the struggles of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries for political and cultural independence.     

Transnational Muslim solidarities and everyday life

ABSTRACT. Discussions of globalisation and identity have focused on the renewed relevance of various post‐national frameworks of belonging, including the Muslim umma. This article argues against the idea that the umma has come to constitute a primary referent in contemporary Muslim debates about identity or a form of globalised political consciousness. Furthermore, the advent of ‘post‐Islamism’ means that Islamic political mobilisation rarely seeks to establish alternative political orders within the container of the nation‐state. However, this does not mean that we are seeing a reaffirmation of the nation in Muslim contexts today. Rather, transnational Muslim solidarities represent an intermediate space of affiliation and socio‐political mobilisation that exists alongside and in an ambivalent relationship with the nation‐state. I point to two different socio‐religious movements that, without positing the primacy or exclusivity of the umma/Islamic identity, express discrepant visions of the relationship between Islam and the nation: (1) the Fethullah Gülen movement, which serves simultaneously as the vehicle for a particular vision of neo‐Ottoman Turkish nationalism and a critique of the Kemalist national order; and (2) the neo‐Salafist movement, read here as an effort to embed conceptions of public morality and accountability within the discursive tradition of orthodox Islam rather than the institutional framework of modern polity.     

A Matter of Framing: Explaining the Failure of Post‐Islamist Social Movements in the Arab Spring

Shortly after the Arab Spring began in 2010, multiple scholars noted that the dominant discursive trend present within these protests was that of post‐Islamism. Post‐Islamism is broadly defined as an ideology seeking to establish a democratic state within a distinctly Islamic society. Despite the presence of post‐Islamist opportunity structures, social movements embodying post‐Islamist principles have had little success consolidating power. The theoretical argument presented here is that the failure of these movements is the result of inherent flaws within post‐Islamist frames. Specifically, this study posits that unlike traditional Islamist frames (i.e., frames emphasizing the creation of a state governed by Shari‘a) post‐Islamist frames limit the ability of movements’ to monopolize religion as a cultural asset. As such, when post‐Islamist movements face political challenges during contentious periods they cannot rely on nontemporal legitimacy to retain power. Additionally, the challenging task of integrating Islamic and democratic frames in contentious moments renders post‐Islamist movements susceptible to counterframing. The preceding claims will be tested through a comparative analysis of the Iranian Hierocracy (1977–1979), and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (2011–2014). Comparing the experiences of a post‐Islamist movement (Brotherhood) with that of an Islamist movement (Hierocracy) will explicate the flaws within post‐Islamist frames.     

Images of Muslims in Western Scholarship and Media after 9/11

This article endeavors to trace changes in the images of the Muslim of the Orient, a product of Orientalism, to contemporary images of the Muslim post 9/11, marking a transition from classical Orientalism to a new Orientalism or Islamism. The study demonstrates how most Western scholarship and media, through the construction of so‐called Islamophobia, have portrayed Muslims in terms of global terrorism, Islamic jihadism, fanatic Islamism, fundamentalism, fascism, and Islamic authoritarianism. Much of the scholarship and media dealing with Islam and Muslims require critical assessment and revision. The article also addresses ways through which Muslims in academia and the media have opposed negative images of Muslims. For instance, in response to the irrational acts of extremists that have fostered negative stereotypes of Islam, public lectures, sermons, conferences, and media programs have recently and abundantly been made by Muslim scholars and media activists to present Muslims positively at both the national and global levels.     

Erdoğan’s pragmatism and the ascension of AKP in Turkey: Islam and neo‐Ottomanism

This article aimed to analyze the ascension of Justice and Development Party—Adalet ve Kalk?nma Partisi (AKP)—in Turkey and its political measures regarding both Islam and the country's Ottoman past, in order to comprehend the party's role in a potential shift of Turkish national identity and in Turkey's relationship with the Middle East. The article does this through a content analysis of decrees, laws, and other measures taken by the AKP that emphasizes its cultural and religious policies, as well as revisiting literature produced about the subject. Analyzing Recep Tayyip Erdo?an's government during his time as Prime Minister (2003–2014), two noteworthy features come to light: its Islamic influence and its so‐called neo‐Ottomanist outlook. However, this article argues that besides an identity‐ and ideology‐based motivation, the AKP had pragmatic intentions in adopting such approaches, aiming to gather support both domestically and regionally.     

Shirking and Ideology: Defense in the Senate

A repeated finding in political science is the influence of a representative's so-called ideology on roll call voting in the U.S. House and Senate. Many of these studies attempt explicitly to separate the impact on roll call voting of "personal" ideology from that of constituency ideological preferences. In these studies, personal ideology is viewed as a form of shirking in which members pursue their own policy preferences rather than those of their constituents. This paper shows, at least for the case of defense in the Senate in the 1980s, that the evidence is sufficient to reject the claim that shirking represents the consumption of personal ideological policy preferences. Instead, the apparent impact of shirking on defense voting was an instrumental, reelection-oriented response to President Reagan's ability to muster popular support for his defense build up, and thus cannot be regarded as shirking at all.     

How Legislative (In)Activity,Ideological Divergence,and Divided Government Impact Executive Unilateralism: A Test of Three Theories

During the past two decades scholars from a variety of different fields (law, history, journalism, political science) have written extensively about the development and implementation of the Unilateral Presidency. Because several explanations for unilateral action have been posited, we provide a thorough test of three theories of executive unilateral action. Applying a newly-developed methodology to the most comprehensive dataset of unilateral presidential directives to date, results of the Bayesian Poisson Vector Autoregressive model suggest that although executive orders, memoranda, and proclamations are all strategic tools that presidents utilize to unilaterally alter policy, fundamental differences exist between them, as well as the inter-dependence among them. More important, our results show that whereas the percentage of bills passed is related to presidential proclamations, legislative activity actually depends on the number of executive orders issued. However, CQ success scores are related to both executive orders and presidential proclamations. We also find that presidential ideology and congressional ideology are related to executive action, whereas the impact of divided government is at best only weakly related.     

“Let no man write my epitaph”: the contributions of Percy Shelley,Thomas Moore and Robert Southey to the memorialisation of Robert Emmet

For centuries elegy has been instrumental to Irish culture and its self-expression. This essay considers the elegies both by and about Robert Emmet written by Thomas Moore, Robert Southey and Percy Bysshe Shelley as well those written by anonymous balladeers. Central to this essay is the examination of the topoi of Irish elegiac verse and song shared by these poems and the way in which they contribute to the evolution of this genre and the radical nationalism associated with it. Their shared discourse is born out of Ireland's colonial experience and contributes to the establishment of Irish national identity, whilst their differing authors and audiences signal the complexities inherent within a colonial textual framework. In particular this essay draws attention to Shelley's neglected Irish poems which reflect the discomfort of a poet and idealist attempting to find his own voice whilst striving to escape the dominant ideology of his own culture.     

Modernity and its Discontents: On the Durability of Nationalism in the Arab Middle East

Abstract. Because many area experts studying the Arab Middle East commonly credit assumptions about nationalism that have, for the most part, been abandoned by their colleagues working in other parts of the globe, they assert that nationalist sentiment in the region has declined, either as a result of a series of political shocks or as the result of competition from other ideologies (such as Islamism). However, popular forms of nationalism not only have strong roots in the region, they have been continually reinforced over time. As a result, the current popular support for Islamism cannot be taken as a sign that nationalist sentiments are on the decline, particularly in light of the fact that Islamic movements share with nationalism a number of significant attributes.     

Aqa Najafi,Haj Aqa Nurullah,and the Emergence of Islamism in Isfahan 1889–1908

Alongside the burgeoning secular ideas on people and state during the Constitutional Revolution, a movement seeking a modern Islamic state, governed according to the shari'a, also emerged. This article studies the evolution of that movement in Isfahan, first by contrasting the experience of two brothers of very different ages, Aqa Najafi Isfahani and Haj Aqa Nurullah Isfahani, and examining the way the younger became receptive to the Pan-Islamic ideas then current in the Middle East. Second, the article considers in particular the political theory of Aqa Nurullah, which was influenced by his practical experience of institutional innovation in Isfahan. He argued that constitutionalism was implicit to Islam and saw it as generating wealth for Muslims. He also advocated many of the features of later Islamism, including the desire for a strong army.     

Islam: Issues of Political Authority and Pluralism

Abstract

Islam and the Muslim world are very much part of the current discussions on religion and global politics. This article looks at some of the more general debates about the gradual rise of Islam in the public and political consciousness. It is not a systematic analysis of Islamic political systems or political thought nor a discussion about key thinkers of the last century. It does, however, provide a glimpse into diverse views about leadership and governance in early and more recent Islamic history. The article concentrates more on Sunni Islam though the author is well aware that this is not the normative tradition in some parts of the Muslim world. Within the context of this diversity, it looks at issues of religious diversity and how they fit into current debates about inter-religious dialogue and pluralism.     

Egypt,Islamists, and the Internet: The Case of the Muslim Brotherhood and Its Rhetoric of Dialectics in Ikhwanweb

This essay offers an ideological analysis of the rhetoric of the Islamist Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (MB) in its official English‐language Web site, Ikhwanweb, between 2005 and 2010 — years preceding the Egyptian uprising of January 2011. The purpose was to examine the ideology manifest in the rhetoric and uncover the instrumental function the rhetoric served. Analysis brought forth a post‐Islamist ideology manifest through a rhetoric of dialectics. The instrumental function of the Egyptian MB's rhetoric in Ikhwanweb was to alter Western societies' monolithic understanding of Islamism — radical, undemocratic, inflexible. The cyber‐rhetoric was also used as a means to disapprove certain Western agents' support for authoritarian regimes. During Mubarak's rule, Ikhwanweb was used as a communicative medium to demonstrate to the West the Egyptian MB's need to be valued — respected regardless of ideological differences, understood rather than essentialized, stereotyped, and prejudged, and supported as a pragmatic, political entity within Egypt.     

The intimate politics of secularism and the headscarf: the mall,the neighborhood,and the public square in Istanbul

The headscarf continues to be a highly charged political issue in Turkey where it is often understood through the prism of the opposition between so-called Islamists versus secularists. My work brings together feminist scholarship on the politics of everyday space and recent rethinking of the categories of secularism and religion. I begin by situating this politicized debate in the everyday material contexts of the public square, the street, and the mall. By introducing popular culture (notably the film Bü?ra) and my own fieldwork on the veil, I argue that the headscarf represents the intersection of politics of place and individual agency in a way that renders ideological debates contingent on everyday practices. Reducing the headscarf to a sign of Islamism fails to take into account the ever-shifting meanings of this object across time and space. The differences within and between the everyday urban sites I examine reveal much more complex, often contradictory, and discontinuous geographies of secularism and Islam. This analysis reveals a multiplicity that belies attempts to delineate clearly bounded spaces, subjects, and ideologies, one that is intimate and political.     

Is Green Islam going to support environmentalism in Indonesia?

Various newspaper and scholarly articles have appeared in the past few years which enthusiastically claim that a Green Islam is emerging in Indonesia. This movement is supposedly going to have a major positive impact on pro-environmental behaviour. In contrast to this optimism, on the basis of our observations of daily life in Indonesia, we question the belief that such a powerful Green Islam is emerging. We argue that, in the cases we have studied, contrary to the scholars and journalists writing about Green Islam, Muslim religious frameworks do not lead to an activist environmentalism. There is no reason to assume that Islam is a major force for pro-environmental behaviour, and we are therefore doubtful about the potential of Green Islam. Many people, however, interpret their diverse interactions with the environment in religious terms, and Islam does certainly support and legitimize behaviour which is good for the environment, albeit more in the form of unforeseen side-effects.     

From Islamism to nationalism in Aceh,Indonesia

ABSTRACT. This article analyses a dramatic political transformation in Indonesia's Aceh province. In the 1950s, an Islamic rebellion (Darul Islam) aimed not to separate Aceh from Indonesia, but rather to make Indonesia an Islamic state. A successor movement from the 1970s was GAM, the Free Aceh Movement. GAM, however, was essentially secular‐nationalist in orientation, sought Aceh's complete independence and did not espouse formal Islamic goals. The transformation is explained by various factors, but the key argument concerns the relationship between Islam and nationalism. The defeat of Darul Islam had caused Aceh's Islamic leaders to focus on what they could achieve in Aceh alone, ultimately giving rise to Acehnese nationalism and the secessionist goal. However, Islam remained a point of commonality with, rather than difference from, majority‐Muslim Indonesia. The logic of nationalist identity construction and differentiation thus caused Aceh's separatist leaders, despite being personally devout, to increasingly downplay Islamic symbols and ideology.     

《清真释颖》的成书过程－－《清真释颖·书叙》解读

由清人金天柱撰的《清真释颖》一书真实地记录了乾社会伊斯兰教的发展状况,书成七年仍未刊行,又做一篇《书叙》。论述了伊斯兰教作为正教与儒家学说的同异之处,社会对伊斯兰教的误解以及造成误解的原因,叙述了来到四译馆担任教习一职的经过,四译馆的社会职能及其内部管理工作中的种种弊端,还叙述了自己撰写《清真释颖》的心理状态和社会人士对该书的积极评价。     

《礼记·礼运》篇的作者问题

本文通过对传世文献中关于子游的各种记载,总结了子游氏之儒的思想学术特色,并通过对《礼记 · 礼运》篇的内容进行细致分析,认为《礼运》篇为子游氏之儒所作。其内容反映了战国时期孔门后学中向外发展探求、关注社会人生的弘道派的观点。