Gaarder, E. - Islam and Politics - FINAL Research Paper

Masters in International Development | PSIA Islam and Politics in a Changing Middle East

Name : Edwin Johan Santana Gaarder Student number : 100047222

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POLITICAL ISLAM AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE What role for linguistic theory in the struggle against violent extremism?

Arabo-‐Islamic discourse – the vocabulary, idioms and other modes of signification that are made available to arabophone Muslims through the religious, cultural and linguistic environment into which they are socialised – has always been the locus of intense contestation. Innumerable conflicts in North Africa and the Middle East are centred on the issue of whether, to what extent, and how Islam should structure the way societies are organised and governed, whether it be in Mesopotamia or the Maghreb, the Arabian Peninsula or the Levant. These dynamics are historically determined to a large degree: from the period of expansion (7th-‐9th centuries) until the period of European colonisation (late-‐19th / early-‐20th centuries) and thereafter, Islam has played a central role in the lives of the people that inhabit this region, forming the basis of their belief systems, their moral and legal codes, their cultures, their political systems, and much more. Although a singular noun is used, it is obvious that ‘Islam’ has never meant the same thing to all Muslims, even though the doctrine of tawhid1 – translated as ‘oneness’ and understood to mean the monotheistic belief in a unique and indivisible God – suggests that there is little room for deviation from a single, absolute and transcendental truth established by the Qur’an. In practice, the Islamic community (umma) has always had to strike a fine balance between its belief in the existence of revealed, unambiguous and incontrovertible Qur’anic principles, to which all Muslims must adhere, and its lack of agreement over what these principles actually are. This paper will seek to explain this aporia – which is at the heart of many of the political and religious conflicts in the region – by analysing it from a number of different angles, including the logocentric approach of mediaeval neo-‐platonic scholars, the salafi approach of the Hanbali scholar Ibn Taymiyya, and the structuralist and post-‐structuralist approaches developed by 20th-‐century philosophers of language like Ferdinand de Saussure and Jacques Derrida.

It will be argued, moreover, that the ongoing conflict over Arabo-‐Islamic heritage is a struggle over the ‘meaning’ of the Qur’an and the sunna, an attempt to establish a ‘transcendental signified’ that is the subject of consensus (ijma’) and can thus serve as the basis for a form of social organisation that is free from discord (fitna). Whereas mediaeval Sunni scholars were generally able to engage in such epistemological and hermeneutic debates from within an Islamic caliphate – confident that fundamental Islamic precepts would be protected from external aggression – post-‐colonial Muslim intellectuals have had to operate in a climate of existential crisis, due to the threat of interference by foreign actors in their countries’ internal political, economic and cultural affairs. Delegitimized and ridiculed during the colonial period, undermined by the economic 1 Derived from the Arabic root وو‐-حح‐-دد



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underdevelopment that is almost ubiquitous in the region, and suppressed or manipulated by autocratic governments with links to the former colonial powers, Islam and its quest for ‘meaning’ have therefore been forced to abandon the confines of academic speculation and have instead become the site of a desperate battle for relevance in a world dominated by Western soft and hard power. This paper will attempt to demonstrate that this state of affairs has been responsible for a shift in many Muslims’ relationship with Islam, reducing the appeal of theory and increasing the relative importance of praxis, which can to some extent explain the rise of activist Islamism in both its moderate and violent forms. It will be suggested, therefore, that one effective way of preempting violent extremism in Muslim societies would be to promote more widespread and rigorous instruction in all the exegetical traditions that have arisen from within Islam, as well as to introduce modern linguistic theory into schools, universities, mosques and kuttab (traditional Islamic schools). It is imagined that such an approach – if coupled with the establishment of inclusive and representative political regimes – could lead to a more empowered and self-‐critical Islamist movement, one that is able to tolerate divergent readings of the Qur’an and the sunna without sacrificing the unity of the umma or faith in the single, absolute and transcendental truth of revelation.

In his Introduction à la Pensée Islamique Classique, Mohammed Arkoun studies the implications of the aforementioned dilemma on mediaeval Sunni scholars, identifying the debate over the relative merits of faith and reason as the overriding question of the Age: “aucune intelligence ne pouvait échapper à […] une confrontation entre la Vérité éternelle et les réalités contraignantes de l’histoire et de la culture, […] entre la foi et la raison”.2 Arkoun’s historical account of epistemological developments within Islam cannot be reproduced here, but it will be useful to point out some common ideas that he identifies as having structured mainstream Sunni thought over the centuries, focussing in particular on his analysis of objective and subjective sources of knowledge in the Islamic tradition. These two sources of knowledge correspond to revelation, which was sent down (tanzil) by an Infallible Being and is therefore irrefutable, and the logical deductions that are the the result of human reflection and interpretation of the sacred texts. It is interesting to note that, in the early years of Islam, the second source of knowledge somehow constituted the more dynamic intellectual space, in which reason (‘aql) and the cultural inheritance of other cultures (especially Greek philosophy or falsafa) were used to enrich the Islamic tradition through the practice of kalam (speculative theology) and ijtihad (interpretation of scripture). The use of reason was particularly prominent in the work of the mu’tazilites and, to a lesser extent, of the ash’arites, who went so far as to claim that

2 Mohammed Arkoun, Essais sur la Pensée Islamique, Paris, France, G.-‐P. Maisonneuve et Larose, 1973, p. 18. “No single intelligence could escape from the conflict between eternal Truth and the constraining realities of history and culture, between faith and reason” [my translation]. The arabic terms translated as faith and reason are ‘aql and naql.



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“when the sense of the transmitted texts conflicts with the dictates of reason, reason should be given precedence, and the text subjected to metaphorical yet rational interpretation”.3

The problem, of course, and the reason why this second source of knowledge was eventually relegated to an inferior position in the hierarchy, is that the use of reason leads to divergent opinions, whereas the doctrine of tawhid suggests that there is only one absolute and indivisible truth. Ahmad ibn Hanbal (790-‐855 C.E.) was the first to respond to this paradox and reject the use of reason, prioritising what he would call the ‘obvious’ meaning (zahir) of revelation in an attempt to promote consensus and prevent schisms within the umma. The Hanbali approach is based on a logocentric conception of language, which attributes a signified (‘idea’, ‘meaning’, ‘sense’) to each signifier (‘word’, ‘phrase’, ‘idiom’, ‘ideogram’), and which finds its Western equivalent in Plato’s Theory of Ideas. The logocentric conception of language in Islam – which is not unique to the Hanbalis, but finds in them its most reductionist manifestation – posits that there is a meaning that exists outside or behind language and that can be accessed through a ‘correct’ reading and understanding of authoritative texts. Yet, the question remains: what is the ‘correct’ interpretative method that should be applied in order to understand a text that was produced in a different context than that of the reader, that is to say, in a different place, at a different time, for a different audience, through a different mode of communication (oral, not written), using a language that has since evolved semantically and gramatically, and so on? Hanbal based his arguments on the repeated claims that can be found in the Qur’an itself that a language (Arabic) was chosen in order to make the meaning clear and ease the understanding of the revelation (Qur’an 12:2; 41:44; 43:3) but – despite the fact that Qur’anic/standard Arabic has changed surprisingly little over the course of one and a half millenia – his arguments founder when confronted with continuing disagreements over the ‘meaning’ of revelation.

Post-‐Saussurean linguists now know that effective communication depends more on societal conventions regarding the different use of signs in different contexts, rather than on reference to absolute and unchanging ‘meanings’ that exist independently of the language itself, but logocentric Islamic scholars would continue their search for ‘meaning’ for centuries, resorting to a number of different techniques, including: etymologal analysis (ta’wil) or the search for original / historical meanings; analogy (qiyas) or the use of comparison for the purpose of explanation or clarification; traditionalism (taqlid) or systematic reference to authoritative precedents; literalism, or the search for obvious meanings (as explained above); mysticism, or the search for an emotional or spiritual understanding of God through ritual practices; and rational argumentation or personal 3 Yossef Rapoport and Shahab Ahmed (eds.), Ibn Taymiyya and his times, Karachi, Pakistan, Oxford University Press, 2010, p. 84.



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opinion (tafsīr bir-‐raʾy). Ironically, it is the repeated failures and periodic reappearance of all these efforts to arrive at a coherent and consensual ‘truth’ that led to the long-‐term development of Islam’s rich exegetical tradition. Constant dialogue and exchange – incentivised by the promise of ultimately knowing God, a single, conclusive and absolute Truth – led to a keen awareness among Islamic scholars of the contradictions inherent in Arabo-‐Islamic discourse and the need for caution and rigor in the justification of philosophical theories and political acts, implying a degree of openness and self-‐criticism that is less common in modern Islamist discourse.4 In the words of Walid A. Saleh: “Sunni medieval hermeneutics was premised on the impossibility of ever exhausting the meanings of the divine word, and contradictory interpretations were not a sign of religious heresy”.5

One question that arises from all of the above, of course, is whether it is even possible to access objective sources of knowledge, in Arkoun’s sense, without resorting to individual judgments on the meanings of Qur’anic language. The response that will be explored here was developed by Ibn Taymiyya in the 13th and 14th centuries C.E. and is noteable in part due to the influence it has had on Islamists and Islamic extremists in the 20th and 21st centuries. It has been analysed in depth by Walid A. Saleh in Ibn Taymiyya and the Rise of Radical Hermeneutics, in a chapter on the mediaeval author’s short treatise entitled An Introduction to the Foundations of Qur’anic Exegesis. Taymiyya’s argument is as follows:

Muhammad not only proclaimed the Qur’an to the Muslims but also its meaning […] the Prophet is presented as having commented on the Qur’an, in the manner of an exegete, to his Companions […] Ibn Taymiyya’s aim is thus to turn the commentary literature into prophetic knowledge, and as such interpretation itself, as issuing from an infallible individual, becomes a type of knowledge that is in agreement with his definition of what constitute knowledge. One needs only to verify that it is indeed from Muhammad for it to become authoritative.6

This argument is circular, of course, and does not resolve the hermeneutic problem that has been described above: if the prophet interpreted his own message, who has the authority to interpret his interpretation? If the pious ancestors (al-‐salaf al-‐salih) are considered to be the only ones who had access to the prophet’s interpretations, how can we ensure that our interpretations of their interpretations of his interpretations are correct? Musnad material – recorded ‘chains of transmission’ that are either reliable

4 Another irony, of course, is that post-‐modern / post-‐structuralist discourse – which is generally sceptical about the existence of ‘God’ or any ‘transcendental truth’ or ‘grand narrative’ – has completely eliminated this incentive towards positive knowledge. The challenge faced by monotheists, including modern Islamic scholars, is to counter this nihilistic trend by convincingly reinstating the notions of God and religious truth into modern life. 5 Rapoport and Ahmed (eds.), p. 139. 6 Ibid., p. 128.



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(sahih), unreliable (da’if) or uncertain – suffers from similar flaws when used to ascertain the ‘true meaning’ of the revelation: the nature of language is such that, in the manner of Chinese whispers, a message is transformed every time it is received and / or reproduced by an individual subject. In some senses, therefore, one could claim that Ibn Taymiyya’s exegetical approach is similar to the post-‐structuralist position on the endless deferral of the signified, which suggests that one can never arrive at ‘truth’ or meaning through the use of language. “In the final analysis”, writes Saleh, “hermeneutics to Ibn Taymiyya is not a repeatable process or approach; one cannot fathom the method used by the Companions and the Successors and use the same method to arrive at the truth again and independently”.7 Rather, Taymiyya held that “the best way to interpret the Qur’an is by Qur’an”, thus acting as a precursor to structuralists and post-‐structuralists like Roland Barthes, who claim that a given text can only be explained through the use of the text itself.8

Another, related quandary that emerges from the life and works of Ibn Taymiyya and his disciples (both mediaeval and modern) concerns the relationship between theoretical knowledge – as established by the Quran and the sunna – and praxis, as discussed by Caterina Bori:

…association with the Shaykh seems to have implied not only loyalty to his teachings, but also a dynamic sharing of his commitment to public, direct action in the name of religion. Some well-‐known instances include Ibn Taymiyya and his jama’a attacking Damascus wine shops, breaking wine jars, pouring wine on the floor and censuring wine sellers.9

One wonders whether the direct public actions described above were based on a meticulously argued legal opinion (fatwa) following the application of the exegetical method described by Saleh, or whether Ibn Taymiyya was willing to disregard certain Qur’anic injunctions (on the right to private property, for example) in favour of others (the illegality of alcohol) and thus to act on the basis of his own preferences, without having recourse to explicit statements from the Quran or the sunna justifying the aforesaid preferences and actions (e.g. the destruction of wine shops).10 In fact, it would seem that Taymiyya was willing to employ some “intellectual creativity” in his interpretations of the Qur’an and the sunna – albeit from within the stringent literalist

7 Ibid., p. 143. 8 Vincent B. Leitch (ed.), The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, London, W.W. Norton and Company, 2001, p. 1457. 9 Rapoport and Ahmed (eds.), p. 30. 10 Although I have not read the Quran and the sunna in their entirety, a quick search suggests that statements on the illegal nature of alcohol in Islam are formulated as commands for individuals to abstain from consumption, rather than as calls for activism and “moral policing” of the sort practised by Ibn Taymiyya and his colleagues.



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standards that he had set himself – in order to advance his own political agenda.11 The most famous example of this is his ruling on the legality of armed resistance against the 13th-‐century Mongol invasions of the Levant, which has been discussed in depth in Ibn Taymiyya and His Times.12 Whereas Ibn Taymiyya was often criticised by contemporaries for the “excessive features of [his] personality: his choleric moods, his fondness of supremacy (riyasa), his contempt for his fellow ‘ulama and his rough manners”, his willingness to instrumentalise Islamic teaching in order to urge opposition to the Mongols ensured that “people – and all sorts of people – loved him and supported him until his death”.13 In other words, despite his literalist and seemingly unforgiving approach to Islamic precepts, it seems that the manner in which he chose to live his life and put his faith into practice guaranteed his position as a figure of public reverence, at a period in time when his compatriots were faced with the threat of external aggression.

Given all of the above (the elusiveness of objective knowledge, the slipperiness of ‘meaning’, the centrifugal tendencies of rational thought, the limitations of literalism) one cannot be blamed for asking: how is the individual Muslim supposed to derive a praxis and a political position from Islamic teachings, which are meant to encompass all realms of human life? This question is at the heart of a movement which emerged in Egypt in the first half of the 20th century and which has, since then, often seen fit to draw inspiration from Ibn Taymiyya. The originators, theorists and practitioners of this movement – known as Islamism or political Islam – operated in a context that was, of course, fundamentally different from that of Ibn Taymiyya, and they did not always have an equally firm grounding in Islamic scholarship as their mediaeval predecessors. Both Hassan al-‐Bann and Sayyid Qutb, for example, were educated at the Dar al’Ulum, “an institution founded in the late nineteenth century to establish something of a middle ground between al-‐Azhar University in Cairo and modern, secular education, although it gradually veered towards the latter”.14 Less familiar with the traditional Islamic disciplines (which were the realm of the ‘ulama), exposed to external cultural influences and intimidated by the technological and economic superiority of the Western powers, these Muslim intellectuals began to seek refuge in the “word of God […] without the mediation of present or past scholars, […] plain Islam as it was understood by its first adherent, Muhammad, and his sincere Companions”.15 Unlike Ibn Taymiyya, however, the Islamists’ recourse to literalism was not an attempt to engage with and challenge other

11 Rapoport and Ahmed., p. 356. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid., p. 37 and p. 41. 14 Roxanne L. Euben and Muhammad Qasim Zaman, Princeton Readings in Islamist Thought: Texts and Contexts from al-‐Banna to Bin Laden, Oxford, United Kingdom, Princeton University Press, 2009, p. 10. 15 Sayyid Qutb, cited in Euben and Zaman, p. 15.



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interpretative practices, but was rather a way to “sidestep the exegetical tradition” altogether, to “write outside, and often in conspicuous opposition to, any such framework”.16 For Qutb in particular, the exegetical tradition is an unwelcome distraction from the existential struggle (jihad) that should be prioritised by all Muslims, a struggle to protect the revealed truth of Islam from the myriad threats posed by the modern world (jahiliyya). By using the word jihad – which simultaneously invokes the psychological struggle of individual believers and the Holy War that must be waged against anti-‐Islamic forces – Qutb makes it clear that the ultimate calling is to revive Islam through praxis and not through theory, through action and not through language, using the sword and not the pen. Although his work is “complex, polyvalent and susceptible to multiple readings”, it is this radical emphasis on the practice of Islam that has inspired a number of violent acts, and has prompted one journalist to label him “The Philosopher of Islamic Terror”.17

Qutb’s position is not uncontested within the realm of political Islam, though, and it is instructive to note the significant differences between Qutb and other members of the Muslim Brotherhood such as Yusuf al-‐Qaradawi, a salafi ‘literalist’ and a sheikh of al-‐Azhar who has vigorously opposed the “outright dismissal” of “Islamic history and civilization” “at the hands of Islamists like Qutb”.18 Al-‐Qaradawi’s positions are indicative of what can be achieved through religious teaching in a strong institution that, despite numerous politically motivated encroachments over the years, has maintained some independence from the Egyptian government. These positions are summarised by Mona Hassan in Modern Interpretations and Misinterpretations of a Medieval Scholar:

In the realm of politics and broader social interaction, al-‐Qaradawi locates the origin of the contemporary malaise of Islam in the mentalities of some Muslim groups, ranging from the constantly beseiged, the literalist, the harsh and narrow-‐minded, to the excessively traditionalistic. Al-‐Qaradawi advocates instead that Muslims should develop a depth of understanding that is attuned to the ways of the world, reflects the overall aims of the Shari’a and recognizes the importance of prioritization and balance. Critically, al-‐Qaradawi urges Islamists to break out of an isolationist mode (where they only speak and write to one another) and emphasizes the importance of engaging in sincere and productive dialogue with other groups, such as secular nationalists […] local regimes [and] Western governments and intellectuals.19

By recommending that Muslims “develop an understanding that is attuned to the ways of the world”, al-‐Qaradawi seems to be working on the assumption that it is impossible to

16 Euben and Zaman, p. 16. 17 Berman, cited in Euben and Zaman, p. 129. 18 Euben and Zaman, p. 17. 19 Rapoport and Ahmed., p. 353.



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retrieve the “plain” meaning of “the word of God”, “as it was understood by its first adherent, Muhammad, and his sincere companions”. Instead, one’s understanding needs to be tuned – rather like a radio – so that it is on the same wavelength as the rest of the modern world. His emphasis on the “overall aims” of the shari’a shows a willingness to engage in a debate over differing interpretations of what those aims actually are, and in doing so he declares his exegetical strategy to be one of “prioritization and balance”, implying that one must use reason (‘aql) to evaluate the diverse and sometimes conflicting principles in the Qur’an. Lastly, al-‐Qaradawi acknowledges that there is a need to change the “harsh and narrow-‐minded […] mentalities” of those who inhabit the “isolationist mode”, where opinions and interpretations are reinforced through endless reiteration by conformist members “who only speak and write to one another”, leaving beliefs unchallenged and conclusions unquestioned. As such, he inserts himself into a long tradition of Islamic scholars who considered the hard (and often thankless) quest for meaning to be a recurrent duty, one that can only be enriched by “engaging in sincere and productive dialogue” with groups that hold different opinions and beliefs. In al-‐Qaradawi’s work, the ‘other’ thus becomes a mirror of the self, a test of faith, a tool for self-‐reflection and self-‐criticism that can lead the individual to a more sophisticated understanding and a more refined practice of Islam.

This approach, however, presupposes that the ‘other’ is willing to play his part in a “sincere and productive” dialogue, which is not always the case. On the contrary, “Western governments and intellectuals” have historically been either hostile or condescending towards Islamic culture, often coopting “local governments” in their imperialist exploits, as Edward Said demonstrated to such effect in his post-‐colonial masterpiece: Orientalism (1978).20 It is important to recognise, here, that the experience of European colonisation in the regions that used to be part of Ottoman Empire (or other Islamic empires) was not merely a matter of economic and political subjugation to Western powers, it also entailed a profound process of cultural delegitimisation. Frantz Fanon, an expatriate activist of the FLN in Algeria, described this process as follows:

Colonial domination, because it is total and tends to oversimplify, very soon manages to disrupt in spectacular fashion the cultural life of a conquered people […] Every effort is made to bring the colonized person to admit the inferiority of his culture […As a result, the native] intellectual throws himself in frenzied fashion into the frantic acquisition of the culture of the occupying power and takes every opportunity of unfavorably criticizing his own national culture.21

20 Vincent B. Leitch (ed.), pp. 1986-‐2012. 21 Ibid., p. 1587.



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In other words, once a society has been forced to incorporate foreign elements that – through economic and military might – are made to seem superior, it becomes increasingly difficult to seek solace in local cultures, which have been violently disparaged and discredited by the the local intelligentsia as well as by the colonial powers. In the case of Islam, the challenge is to retrieve a discourse from a distant past and reinstate it as the main source of self-‐identification in lands that are no longer entirely and essentially Muslim, or (to use Islamic terminology) where the integrity of the umma has been violated. Although is true that Islam has been able, throughout history, to accommodate minorities and remain open to outside influences (e.g. Greek philosophy, Persian political theory) the difference is clear: in the social structure of the former Islamic empires, Sunni Islam occupied a hegemonic position and syncretic tendencies were rigorously managed by the religious establishment; in a post-‐colonial world, by contrast, it is a common belief that Islam must regain a position of control before it can begin to engage with Western culture, otherwise it will risk being undermined by jahiliyya. Under these circumstances, the appeal of Qutb’s uncompromising calls for an “Islamic State” (dawla islamiyya) become easier to understand: Muslims will only be free to choose the right path when they are able to proclaim “the universal freedom of every person and community from servitude to any other individual or society, the end of man’s arrogance and selfishness, the establishment of the sovereignty of Allah and His Lordship throughout the world, and the rule of the divine shari’a in human affairs”.22

Qutb’s radical approach gains traction from the sense, not uncommon in the Muslim world, that Islam is under threat. Although there is some disagreement about the nature of this threat, different jihadi movements have capitalised on this general zeitgeist in order to attack the specific ‘enemies of Islam’ that each of them considers to be most pernicious. In the case of al-‐Jihad and al-‐Jamaʻa al-‐Islamiya, for example, the military regime in Egypt of the 60s and 70s was identified as the principal target, and remained as such even when their members joined the war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s.23 In the case of Abdullah Yusuf Azzam, by contrast, the war in Afghanistan was the beginning of a pan-‐Islamic effort to expel what he perceived to be the illegitimate occupiers of Islam lands, which included, of course, the Israelis in Palestine. For Usama bin Laden – who learnt the ropes of jihad from Azzam and al-‐Zawahiri in Afghanistan – the decision to found al-‐Qa’ida and attack the United States of America was based on what he perceived to be the invasion of Saudi Arabia by American forces during the First Gulf War in 1990.24 Many efforts have been made to identify the underlying drivers of

22 Sayyid Qutb, cited in Euben and Zaman, p. 42. 23 Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-‐Qaeda’s Road to 9/11, London, Penguin, Kindle Edition, 2011. 24 Cf. Usama bin Laden, Declaration of War Against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places, in Euben and Zaman, p. 436.



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violence in these men and their associates, but the explanatory power of these theories is limited at best: rational choice theories, for example, are inconsistent with the observation that violent acts are often counter-‐productive and fail to bring about stated goals; socio-‐economic theories struggle to account for the fact that mujahideen often stem from middle-‐class backgrounds and are quite well educated; psychopathological analysis finds that “most terrorists do not meet diagnostic criteria for a major mental illness or for sociopathy”; and so on and so forth.25 This paper has chosen to set aside scientific theories in order to analyse the Arabo-‐Islamic discourse that has been hijacked by these men, a discourse that was developed hundreds of years ago by the first Muslims and their successors, by mediaeval Islamic scholars and philosophers like Ibn Taymiyya who lived through the “Golden Age” of Islam and contributed to the rich cultural heritage that is still treasured by Muslims today. This discourse, I would argue, has been used to generate an aura of heroism and authenticity around the jihadi movement that strikes a deep chord among some Muslims, playing on their fears that the Islamic way of life is becoming increasingly marginalized, particularly among secular elites. This fear is reinforced by the equally reductionist discourse that is employed by noteable figures in the West, including Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, Marine Le Pen in France, Anders Breivik in Norway, the PEGIDA movement in Germany and, of course, George Bush, the founding father of the War on Terror. By using phrases like “axis of evil”, “you’re either with us or against us”, “islamicization of the West”, “fascist book” and so on, these ideologues accelerate the process of polarisation and mutual essentialisation.26 In the words of Catherine Belsey:

Society blames the demons it has created for its own inevitable tensions, and allows itself to believe that their elimination will make it whole. There is every danger that in the 21st century the West will construct as its antagonist in this sense the Islamic fundamentalist, who can then be held accountable for global disunity.27

The gathering storm of Islamophobia in the West, however, is a different topic altogether, and this paper will now conclude by returning to the notion of Arabo-‐Islamic discourse and suggesting some remedies that might serve to counter the radical interpretation of Islamic texts that have been adopted by violent extremists. To begin with, it is essential to

25 Jeff Victoroff, The Mind of the Terrorist: A Review and Critique of Psychological Approaches, The Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 49, No. 1, February 2005, pp. 3-‐42. 26 BBC, Dutch anti-‐Islam MP Geert Wilders goes on trial, 4 October 2010, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-‐europe-‐11464025, (accessed 27 April 2015); Henry Samuel, National Front's Marine Le Pen to prove formidable rival to Nicolas Sarkozy, The Telegraph, 26 December 2010, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/8225697/National-‐Fronts-‐Marine-‐Le-‐Pen-‐to-‐prove-‐formidable-‐rival-‐to-‐Nicolas-‐Sarkozy.html, (accessed 27 April 2015).

27 Catherine Belsey, Post-‐Structuralism: A Short Introduction, Oxford, United Kingdom, Oxford University Press, Kindle Edition, 2002, p. 94.



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improve the quality of religious education in Muslim countries so that young, educated Muslims are made aware of the wealth and diversity of the Islamic tradition.28 It is particularly important to promote the teaching of mediaeval Islamic hermeneutics and the politics of religious dissent, of which Ibn Taymiyya’s unconventional Hanbalism is only one example. In the long term, the teaching of structuralist and post-‐structuralist linguistics could serve to further encourage interpretative practice and tolerance for polysemy within Islam. Secondly, it is crucial that the Islamist movement be provided with a safe and free political space within which it can express itself. In Egypt, mosques have sometimes found themselves playing this role, but even these sacred spaces have been subject to interference by successive military governments over the last fifty years, succumbing to the megalomanic growth of the Egyptian state apparatus. Ayman al-‐Zawahiri is the quintessential example of how such trends towards totalitarian control can lead to violent outcomes: persecuted, imprisoned and tortured, al-‐Zawahiri became more and more radical over the course of his life and is now the nominal leader of al-‐Qa’ida.29 Although it has not been possible to explore the Arab Spring in this paper, for lack of space and time, it is suggested that further research could be carried out in Tunisia, where an Islamist government conceded defeat in the 2014 election and peacefully handed power over to its secular opponents. To what extent has this peaceful process been determined by a reciprocal recognition, by Islamists and secularists, of the legitimate discourse mobilised by their political counterparts? How is Arabo-‐Islamic discourse employed now that the Islamists are in opposition, and how has it changed? Lastly, it is absolutely paramount that Western governments revise their policies towards the region, in order to address the siege mentality that currently prevails in the minds of many Muslims. The almost compulsive interventions that have been carried out over the last hundred years – the economic sanctions against Iran, the mismanaged wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the constant support for autocratic regimes and the bungled response to the Israel crisis – all need to be scaled back and the rhetoric scaled down by several notches. Only when when the religion is felt to be free from physical threats, it is argued, will Islamic discourse shift its emphasis back again, from praxis to theory, from the practice of war (jihad) to the philosophy of peace (salaam) which is at the root (grammatical and philosophical) of Islam itself.

28 Towards the end of a class on Islam and Politics taught by Stéphane Lacrois at Sciences-‐Po, for example, the author of this paper heard North African and Middle Eastern fellow students claim – more than once! – that they had learnt more about Islam in Paris than they had in their home countries. 29 Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-‐Qaeda’s Road to 9/11, London, Penguin, Kindle Edition.



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WORKS CITED Arkoun, M., Essais sur la Pensée Islamique, Paris, France, G.-‐P. Maisonneuve et Larose, 1973.

BBC, Dutch anti-‐Islam MP Geert Wilders goes on trial, 4 October 2010, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-‐europe-‐11464025, (accessed 27 April 2015).

Belsey C., Post-‐Structuralism: A Short Introduction, Oxford, United Kingdom, Oxford University Press, Kindle Edition, 2002.

Euben R.L. and Zaman M.Q., Princeton Readings in Islamist Thought: Texts and Contexts from al-‐Banna to Bin Laden, Oxford, United Kingdom, Princeton University Press, 2009.

Leitch V.B. (ed.), The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, London, W.W. Norton and Company, 2001.

Rapoport Y. and Ahmed S. (eds.), Ibn Taymiyya and his times, Karachi, Pakistan, Oxford University Press, 2010.

Samuel H., National Front's Marine Le Pen to prove formidable rival to Nicolas Sarkozy, The Telegraph, 26 December 2010, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/8225697/National-‐Fronts-‐Marine-‐Le-‐Pen-‐to-‐prove-‐formidable-‐rival-‐to-‐Nicolas-‐Sarkozy.html, (accessed 27 April 2015).

Victoroff J., The Mind of the Terrorist: A Review and Critique of Psychological Approaches, The Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 49, No. 1, February 2005, pp. 3-‐42.

Wright L., The Looming Tower: Al-‐Qaeda’s Road to 9/11, London, Penguin, Kindle Edition, 2011.

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Gaarder, E. - Islam and Politics - FINAL Research Paper