Islamist-Islamism

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Islamism (and the associated Islamist) are terms that are used very widely in contemporary discourse.


History of usage

The term Islamism historically referred to adherents of Islam. It was a term used widely in English from as early as 1800, peaking in books published in English around 1860 and declining to residual use by the turn of the century. Its occurrence only picked up, as the Google Ngram image shows, but this time in a mostly new sense, at the end of the 1980s.

What caused the reinvention and reinterpretation of the term Islamism (and around the same time, the coining of a new term to go with it - Islamist)?

Google Ngram of mentions of Islamism, Islamist, Jihadist, Jihadi and Islamic terrorism in English books from 1800 to 2010

Bernard Lewis

On of the earliest articles of note was by Bernard Lewis a 'renowned British-American historian of Islam and the Middle East. A former British intelligence officer, Foreign Office staffer, and Princeton University professor.'[1]

In January 1976 he published a piece in the Zionist/Neoconservative magazine Commentary, which at that stage was still published by the American Jewish Committee. Titled 'The return of Islam' it raised the spectre of 'new forms of pan-Islamic activity.'[2] It sets out to insist that the problem with Islam is that it is a religion. Thus he chides the West for not understanding that Muslims are not like us. 'We are prepared' he states 'to allow religiously defined conflicts to accredited eccentrics like the Northern Irish, but to admit that an entire civilization can have religion as its primary loyalty is too much.'[2]

The phrase 'pan-Islamism' was used nine times in the piece in an account that proposed that the problem with Muslims in politics is that they take their religion too seriously. Bernard Lewis 'was not a regular rogue. He was instrumental in causing enormous suffering and much bloodshed in this world. He was a notorious Islamophobe who spent a long life studying Islam in order to demonise Muslims and mobilise the mighty military of what he called "the West" against them.'[3]


Enter Francophone testimony

“The first recorded use of “Islamism” in the new sense occurred in 1979 in an article published in Le Nouvel Observateur (12 March) by Habib Boularès, a Tunisian nationalist who had been a member of the cabinet under Habib Bourguiba in 1970–71 and was to join the Tunisian government again under Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. His assessment of what he called “Islamism” was not apologetic, of course. The term then found its first use in the realm of French scholarly Orientalism under the pen of Jean-François Clément in 1980.
Clément was quite unsympathetic to the movements he described. Thus a further paradox is that the term “Islamism” itself, before it became the pet label of the “Orientalists in reverse”, was first applied to the new generation of Islamic fundamentalists by authors who despised them. These authors merely wanted to cover, with a single word, the whole spectrum of political currents raising the banner of Islam, from the most progressive to the most fundamentalist/intégriste (a term they did not refrain from using). By providing scholarly legitimation to the application of the label “Islamism” to various political movements referring to Islam, many of them violent and fanatical, they contributed to the confusion increasingly fostered by unscrupulous mass media between the religion of Islam and some peculiar and detestable uses made of it.<rer>Gilbert Achcar. “Marxism, Orientalism, Cosmopolitanism”. Apple Books. </ref>

The Jerusalem Conference - 1979

Martin Kramer - 1980

Cover of Martin Kramer's book Political Islam, published in 1980 in the 'Washington Papers' series under the auspices of the CSIS and the editorship of Walter Laqueur

Four years later Martin Kramer - both student and friend of Lewis - introduced the term 'Political Islam':

Terminology for the phenomena characterized as Political Islam varies among scholars. The first scholar to introduce the term Political Islam was Martin Kramer in 1980. Some scholars use the term Islamism for the same set of phenomena, or use the two terms interchangeably. Dekmejian 1980 was among the first to place the politicization of Islam in the context of the failures of secular governments, although he uses the terms Islamism and fundamentalism (rather than Political Islam) interchangeably. Dekmejian 1995, still using fundamentalism and Islamism, is an influential treatment of Political Islam as increasingly mainstream and moderate. Some scholars, using descriptive terms such as conservative, progressive, militant, radical, or jihadist, distinguish among ideological strains of Political Islam.[4]

Kramer's book was published by Sage but in a series called the 'Washington Papers'. This was edited by Walter Laqueur the historian, journalist, propagandist and 'terror expert' who was at the time attached to the Georgetown University think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The book only used the term 'Islamism' on four occasions, in each case with the prefix 'Pan' as in 'Pan-Islamism'. the idea that Muslims involved in politics might all be part of the same phenomenon seems to have been an intoxicating one.

The Second Conference on International Terrorism - 1984

The Second Conference on International Terrorism was held in Washington DC and the topic of the association of Islam with terrorism was explicitly on the agenda.

Gilles Kepel and Olivier Roy

'Islamism', 'political Islam' and Islamic fundamentalism in the Anglophone press 1970-2020

Gilles Kepel and Olivier Roy, both French academics helped to give the term Islamist currency in early adoptions of the term. Kepel wrote a piece in a French journal in 1984 focused on Egypt.[5] Meanwhile Roy wrote three early pieces in 1983/4, all focused on the Afghan conflict.[6] Kepel and Roy eventually fell out over their differing views.[7]

Central Asian Survey

When Roy published his first piece in Central Asian Survey, the fledgling journal was in its second year. According to Kuzio, 'Enders Wimbush and Marie Broxup founded and directed the Oxford-based Society for Central Asian Studies that published the journal Central Asian Survey and Russian language books on Islamic problems, many of which were smuggled into the USSR.'[8] This appears to have been a propaganda operation funded by the US government.

According to Kuzio:

the Rand Corporation think tank received U.S. government funding to publish studies on nationality problems in the Soviet armed forces. Some of the scholars who authored these articles went on to publish books predicting growing nationality problems in the USSR, particularly due to the Soviet demographic dynamic turning in favor of the Islamic peoples of Central Asia and Azerbaijan.[8]

Immediately before setting up the Society in Oxford UK, Wimbush had been 'a Senior Analyst for the Rand Corporation and led its pioneering studies on nationality problems in the Soviet armed forces.'[8] Indeed after his role in Oxford he went on to work from 1987–1993 as Director of Radio Liberty in Munich, Germany.[9]

Among those in recipt of the funding Kuzio[8] identifies Hélène Carrère d'Encausse, Wimbush, Broxup and her father Alexandre Bennigsen with whom she wrote one of the products of the largesse.[10]

Bennigsen was a key figure in US covert ops against the USSR.

Resources

Notes

  1. ↑ Militarist Monitor, Bernard Lewis, last updated: September 17, 2018.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Lewis, Bernard, “The Return of Islam.” Commentary 61, no. 1 (1976): 39–49.
  3. ↑ Hamid Dabashi Alas, poor Bernard Lewis, a fellow of infinite jest, Al Jazeera, 28 May 2018.
  4. ↑ John O. Voll, Tamara Sonn Political Islam Oxford Bibliographies, LAST REVIEWED: 29 SEPTEMBER 2014, LAST MODIFIED: 14 DECEMBER 2009 DOI: 10.1093/OBO/9780195390155-0063.
  5. ↑ KEPEL, G. (1984, January). CONTEMPORARY EGYPT-THE ISLAMIST MOVEMENT AND THE LEARNED TRADITION. In ANNALES-ECONOMIES SOCIETES CIVILISATIONS (Vol. 39, No. 4, pp. 667-680). 54 BD RASPAIL, 75006 PARIS, FRANCE: LIBRAIRIE ARMAND COLIN.
  6. ↑ Roy, O. (1983). Sufism in the Afghan resistance. Central Asian Survey, 2(4), 61-79.; Roy, O. (1984). The origins of the Islamist movement in Afghanistan. Central Asian Survey, 3(2), 117-127.; Roy, O. (1984). Islam in the afghan resistance. Religion in Communist Lands, 12(1), 55-68.
  7. ↑ Adam Nossiter ‘That Ignoramus’: 2 French Scholars of Radical Islam Turn Bitter Rivals New York Times 12 July 2016.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 Kuzio, T. (2012). US support for Ukraine’s liberation during the Cold War: A study of Prolog Research and Publishing Corporation. Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 45(1-2), 51-64.
  9. ↑ Jamestown Foundation S Enders Wimbush. Accessed 18 February 2020.
  10. ↑ Bennigsen, A., Broxup, M., 1983. The Islamic Threat to the Soviet State. Croom Helm, London.
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