Islamist Groups

Islamism is a range of religious and political ideological movements that believe that Islam should influence political systems. Its proponents believe Islam is innately political, and that Islam as a political system is superior to communism, liberal democracy, capitalism, and other alternatives in achieving a just, successful society. The advocates of Islamism, also known as "al-Islamiyyun", are usually affiliated with Islamic institutions or social mobilization movements, emphasizing the implementation of ''sharia'', pan-Islamic political unity, and the creation of Islamic states.

In its original formulation, Islamism described an ideology seeking to revive Islam to its past assertiveness and glory, purifying it of foreign elements, reasserting its role into "social and political as well as personal life"; and in particular "reordering government and society in accordance with laws prescribed by Islam" (i.e. Sharia). According to at least one observer (author Robin Wright), Islamist movements have "arguably altered the Middle East more than any trend since the modern states gained independence", redefining "politics and even borders". Another sole author ( Graham E. Fuller) has argued for a broader notion of Islamism as a form of identity politics, involving "support for uslimidentity, authenticity, broader regionalism, revivalism, ndrevitalization of the community."Fuller, Graham E., ''The Future of Political Islam'', Palgrave MacMillan, (2003), p. 21

Central and prominent figures in 20th-century Islamism include Sayyid Rashid Riḍā, Hassan al-Banna (founder of the Muslim Brotherhood), Sayyid Qutb, Abul A'la Maududi,Fuller, Graham E., ''The Future of Political Islam'', Palgrave MacMillan, (2003), p. 120
Ruhollah Khomeini (founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran), Hassan Al-Turabi. Syrian Sunni cleric Muhammad Rashid Riḍā, a fervent opponent of Westernization, Zionism and nationalism, advocated Sunni internationalism through revolutionary restoration of a pan-Islamic Caliphate to politically unite the Muslim world. Riḍā was a strong exponent of Islamic vanguardism, the belief that Muslim community should be guided by clerical elites (''ulema'') who steered the efforts for religious education and Islamic revival. Riḍā's Salafi-Arabist synthesis and Islamist ideals greatly influenced his disciples like Hasan al-Banna, an Egyptian schoolteacher who founded the Muslim Brotherhood movement, and Hajji Amin al-Husayni, the anti-Zionist Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. Al-Banna and Maududi called for a "reformist" strategy to re-Islamizing society through grassroots social and political activism. Roy, ''Failure of Political Islam'', 1994: p. 24 Other Islamists (Al-Turabi) are proponents of a "revolutionary" strategy of Islamizing society through exercise of state power, or (Sayyid Qutb) for combining grassroots Islamization with armed revolution. The term has been applied to non-state reform movements, political parties, militias and revolutionary groups.

Islamists themselves prefer terms such as "Islamic movement", or "Islamic activism" to "Islamism", objecting to the insinuation that Islamism is anything other than Islam renewed and revived. In public and academic contexts, the term "Islamism" has been criticized as having been given connotations of violence, extremism, and violations of human rights, by the Western mass media, leading to Islamophobia and stereotyping.

Prominent Islamist groups and parties across the world include the Muslim Brotherhood, Turkey's Justice and Development Party, Hamas, the Algerian Movement of Society for Peace, the Malaysian National Trust Party, Jamaat-e-Islami in Bangladesh and Pakistan and Bosnia's Party of Democratic Action. Following the Arab Spring, many post-Islamist currents became heavily involved in democratic politics, while others spawned "the most aggressive and ambitious Islamist militia" to date, such as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). ISIL has been rejected as blasphemous by the majority of Islamists.

Terminology

Originally the term ''Islamism'' was simply used to mean the religion of Islam, not an ideology or movement. It first appeared in the English language as ''Islamismus'' in 1696, and as ''Islamism'' in 1712. The term appears in the U.S. Supreme Court decision in ''In Re Ross'' (1891). By the turn of the twentieth century the shorter and purely Arabic term "Islam" had begun to displace it, and by 1938, when Orientalist scholars completed ''The Encyclopaedia of Islam'', ''Islamism'' seems to have virtually disappeared from English usage. The term remained "practically absent from the vocabulary" of scholars, writers or journalists until the Iranian Islamic Revolution of 1978–79, which brought Ayatollah Khomeini's concept of "Islamic government" to Iran.

This new usage appeared without taking into consideration how the term ''Islamist'' (m. sing.: ''Islami'', pl. nom/acc: ''Islamiyyun'', gen. ''Islamiyyin;'' f. sing/pl: ''Islamiyyah'') was already being used in traditional Arabic scholarship in a theological sense as in relating to the religion of Islam, not a political ideology. In heresiographical, theological and historical works, such as al-Ash'ari's well-known encyclopaedia '' Maqālāt al-Islāmiyyīn'' (''The Opinions of The Islamists''), an Islamist refers to any person who attributes himself to Islam without affirming nor negating that attribution. If used consistently, it is for impartiality, but if used in reference to a certain person or group in particular without others, it implies that the author is either unsure whether to affirm or negate their attribution to Islam, or trying to insinuate his disapproval of the attribution without controversy. In contrast, referring to a person as a Muslim or a Kafir implies an explicit affirmation or a negation of that person's attribution to Islam. To evade the problem resulting from the confusion between the Western and Arabic usage of the term Islamist, Arab journalists invented the term ''Islamawi'' (''Islamian'') instead of ''Islami'' (''Islamist'') in reference to the political movement, though this term is sometimes criticized as grammatically incorrect.

Definitions

Islamism has been defined as:
* "the belief that Islam should guide social and political as well as personal life" (Sheri Berman);
* the belief that Islam should influence political systems (Cambridge English Dictionary);
* "the slamicideology that guides society as a whole and that eacheslaw must be in conformity with the Islamic sharia", (W. E. Shepard);Shepard, W. E. ''Sayyid Qutb and Islamic Activism: A Translation and Critical Analysis of Social Justice in Islam''. Leiden, New York: E.J. Brill. (1996). p. 40
* a combination of two pre-existing trends
** movements to revive the faith, weakened by "foreign influence, political opportunism, moral laxity, and the forgetting of sacred texts"; Roy, ''Failure of Political Islam'', 1994: p. 4
** the more recent movement against imperialism/colonialism, morphed into a more simple anti-Westernism; formerly embraced by leftists and nationalists but whose supporters have turned to Islam.
* a form of "religionized politics" and an instance of religious fundamentalism that imagines an Islamic community claiming global hegemony for its values (Bassam Tibi);
* "political movement that favors reordering government and society in accordance with laws prescribed by Islam" (Associated Press stylebook);
* a political ideology which seeks to enforce Islamic precepts and norms as generally applicable rules for people's conduct; and whose adherents seek a state based on Islamic values and laws (sharia) and rejecting Western guiding principles, such as freedom of opinion, freedom of the press, artistic freedom and freedom of religion (Thomas Volk);
* a broad set of political ideologies that use and draw inspiration from Islamic symbols and traditions in pursuit of a sociopolitical objective—also called "political Islam" ( Britannica);
* " .. as become shorthand for'Muslims we don't like.'" (Council on American–Islamic Relations—in complaint about AP's earlier definition of Islamist);
** In "Western popular discourse generally uses 'Islamism' when discussing the negative or 'that-which-is-bad' in Muslim communities. The signifier, 'Islam,' on the other hand, is reserved for the positive or neutral." (David Belt).
* a movement so broad and flexible it reaches out to "everything to everyone" in Islam, making it "unsustainable" (Tarek Osman);
** an alternative social provider to the poor masses;
** an angry platform for the disillusioned young;
** a loud trumpet-call announcing "a return to the pure religion" to those seeking an identity;
** a "progressive, moderate religious platform" for the affluent and liberal;
** " ..and at the extremes, a violent vehicle for rejectionists and radicals.Osman, Tarek, ''Egypt on the brink'', 2010, p. 111
* an Islamic "movement that seeks cultural differentiation from the West and reconnection with the pre-colonial symbolic universe", ( François Burgat);Burgat, François, "The Islamic Movement in North Africa", U of Texas Press, 1997, pp. 39–41, 67–71, 309
* "the active assertion and promotion of beliefs, prescriptions, laws or policies that are held to be Islamic in character," (International Crisis Group);
* a movement of "Muslims who draw upon the belief, symbols, and language of Islam to inspire, shape, and animate political activity;" which may contain moderate, tolerant, peaceful activists or those who "preach intolerance and espouse violence", ( Robert H. Pelletreau);
* "All who seek to Islamize their environment, whether in relation to their lives in society, their family circumstances, or the workplace ...", ( Olivier Roy).

Relationship between Islam and Islamism

Islamists simply believe that their movement is either a corrected version or a revival of Islam, but others believe that Islamism is a modern deviation from Islam which should either be denounced or dismissed.

A writer for the International Crisis Group maintains that "the conception of 'political Islam'" is a creation of Americans to explain the Iranian Islamic Revolution, ignoring the fact that (according to the writer) Islam is by definition political. In fact it is quietist/non-political Islam, not Islamism, that requires explanation, which the author gives—calling it an historical fluke of the "short-lived era of the heyday of secular Arab nationalism between 1945 and 1970".

Hayri Abaza argues that the failure to distinguish Islam from Islamism leads many in the West to equate the two; they think that by supporting illiberal Islamic (Islamist) regimes, they are being respectful of Islam, to the detriment of those who seek to separate religion from politics.

Another source distinguishes Islamist from Islam by emphasizing the fact that Islam "refers to a religion and culture in existence over a millennium", whereas Islamism "is a political/religious phenomenon linked to the great events of the 20th century". Islamists have, at least at times, defined themselves as "Islamiyyoun/Islamists" to differentiate themselves from "Muslimun/Muslims". Daniel Pipes describes Islamism as a modern ideology that owes more to European utopian political ideologies and "isms" than to the traditional Islamic religion.

According to Salman Sayyid, "Islamism is not a replacement of Islam akin to the way it could be argued that communism and fascism are secularized substitutes for Christianity." Rather, it is "a constellation of political projects that seek to position Islam in the centre of any social order".

Ideology

Islamic revival

The modern revival of Islamic devotion and the attraction to things Islamic can be traced to several events.

By the end of World War I, most Muslim states were seen to be dominated by the Christian-leaning Western states. Explanations offered were: that the claims of Islam were false and the Christian or post-Christian West had finally come up with another system that was superior; or Islam had failed through not being true to itself. The second explanation being preferred by Muslims, a redoubling of faith and devotion by the faithful was called for to reverse this tide.

The connection between the lack of an Islamic spirit and the lack of victory was underscored by the disastrous defeat of Arab nationalist-led armies fighting Israel under the slogan "Land, Sea and Air" in the 1967 Six-Day War, compared to the (perceived) near-victory of the Yom Kippur War six years later. In that war the military's slogan was "God is Great".

Along with the Yom Kippur War came the Arab oil embargo where the (Muslim) Persian Gulf oil-producing states' dramatic decision to cut back on production and quadruple the price of oil, made the terms oil, Arabs and Islam synonymous with power throughout the world, and especially in the Muslim world's public imagination. Many Muslims believe as Saudi Prince Saud al Faisal did that the hundreds of billions of dollars in wealth obtained from the Persian Gulf's huge oil deposits were nothing less than a gift from God to the Islamic faithful.

As the Islamic revival gained momentum, governments such as Egypt's, which had previously repressed (and was still continuing to repress) Islamists, joined the bandwagon. They banned alcohol and flooded the airwaves with religious programming,Murphy, ''Passion for Islam'', (2002), p. 36 giving the movement even more exposure.

Restoration of the Caliphate

The abolition of the Ottoman Sultanate by the Grand National Assembly of Turkey on 1 November 1922 ended the Ottoman Empire, which had lasted since 1299. On 11 November 1922, at the Conference of Lausanne, the sovereignty of the Grand National Assembly exercised by the Government in Angora (now Ankara) over Turkey was recognized. The last sultan, Mehmed VI, departed the Ottoman capital, Constantinople (now Istanbul), on 17 November 1922. The legal position was solidified with the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne on 24 July 1923. In March 1924, the Caliphate was abolished legally by the Turkish National Assembly, marking the end of Ottoman influence. This shocked the Sunni clerical world, and many felt the need to present Islam not as a traditional religion but as an innovative socio-political ideology of a modern nation-state.

The reaction to new realities of the modern world gave birth to Islamist ideologues like Rashid Rida and Abul A'la Maududi and organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Majlis-e-Ahrar-ul-Islam in India. Rashid Rida, a prominent Syrian-born Salafi theologian based in Egypt, was known as a revivalist of Hadith studies in Sunni seminaries and a pioneering theoretician of Islamism in the modern age. During 1922–1923, Rida published a series of articles in seminal ''Al-Manar'' magazine titled "'' The Caliphate or the Supreme Imamate''". In this highly influential treatise, Rida advocates for the restoration of Caliphate guided by Islamic jurists and proposes gradualist measures of education, reformation and purification through the efforts of ''Salafiyya'' reform movements across the globe.

Sayyid Rashid Rida had visited India in 1912 and was impressed by the Deoband and Nadwatul Ulama seminaries. These seminaries carried the legacy of Sayyid Ahmad Shahid and his pre-modern Islamic emirate. In British India, the Khilafat movement (1919–24) following World War I led by Shaukat Ali, Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar, Hakim Ajmal Khan and Maulana Azad came to exemplify South Asian Muslims' aspirations for Caliphate.

Anti-Westernization

Muslim alienation from Western ways, including its political ways.
* The memory in Muslim societies of the many centuries of "cultural and institutional success" of Islamic civilization that have created an "intense resistance to an alternative 'civilizational order'", such as Western civilization.
* The proximity of the core of the Muslim world to Europe and Christendom where it first conquered and then was conquered. Iberia in the eighth century, the Crusades which began in the eleventh century, then for centuries the Ottoman Empire, were all fields of war between Europe and Islam.

:In the words of Bernard Lewis:
:

For almost a thousand years, from the first Moorish landing in Spain to the second Turkish siege of Vienna, Europe was under constant threat from Islam. In the early centuries it was a double threat—not only of invasion and conquest, but also of conversion and assimilation. All but the easternmost provinces of the Islamic realm had been taken from Christian rulers, and the vast majority of the first Muslims west of Iran and Arabia were converts from Christianity ... Their loss was sorely felt and it heightened the fear that a similar fate was in store for Europe.

For Islamists, the primary threat of the West is cultural rather than political or economic. Cultural dependency robs one of faith and identity and thus destroys Islam and the Islamic community (''ummah'') far more effectively than political rule.Haddad/Esposito p. xvi

Strength of identity politics

Islamism is described by Graham E. Fuller as part of identity politics, specifically the religiously oriented nationalism that emerged in the Third World in the 1970s: " resurgent Hinduism in India, Religious Zionism in Israel, militant Buddhism in Sri Lanka, resurgent Sikh nationalism in the Punjab, ' Liberation Theology' of Catholicism in Latin America, and Islamism in the Muslim world."

Anti-communist stances

By the late 1960s, non-Soviet Muslim-majority countries had won their independence and they tended to fall into one of the two cold-war blocs – with "Nasser's Egypt, Baathist Syria and Iraq, Muammar el-Qaddafi's Libya, Algeria under Ahmed Ben Bella and Houari Boumedienne, Southern Yemen, and Sukarno's Indonesia" aligned with Moscow. Aware of the close attachment of the population with Islam, "school books of the 1960s in these countries "went out of their way to impress upon children that socialism was simply Islam properly understood."
Olivier Roy writes that the "failure of the 'Arab socialist' model ... left room for new protest ideologies to emerge in deconstructed societies ..." Roy, ''Failure of Political Islam'', 1994: p. 52 Gilles Kepel notes that when a collapse in oil prices led to widespread violent and destructive rioting by the urban poor in Algeria in 1988, what might have appeared to be a natural opening for the left, was instead the beginning of major victories for the Islamist Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) party. The reason being the corruption and economic malfunction of the policies of the Third World socialist ruling party (FNL) had "largely discredited" the "vocabulary of socialism".
In the post-colonial era, many Muslim-majority states such as Indonesia, Egypt, Syria, and Iraq, were ruled by authoritarian regimes which were often continuously dominated by the same individuals or their cadres for decades. Simultaneously, the military played a significant part in the government decisions in many of these states ( the outsized role played by the military could be seen also in democratic Turkey).''The History of the Modern Middle East'' by William L. Cleveland and Martin Bunton, 2008, p. 371.

The authoritarian regimes, backed by military support, took extra measures to silence leftist opposition forces, often with the help of foreign powers. Silencing of leftist opposition deprived the masses a channel to express their economic grievances and frustration toward the lack of democratic processes. As a result, in the post-Cold War era, civil society-based Islamist movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood were the only organizations capable to provide avenues of protest.

The dynamic was repeated after the states had gone through a democratic transition. In Indonesia, some secular political parties have contributed to the enactment of religious bylaws to counter the popularity of Islamist oppositions. In Egypt, during the short period of the democratic experiment, Muslim Brotherhood seized the momentum by being the most cohesive political movement among the opposition.

Influence

Few observers contest the immense influence of Islamism within the Muslim world.Murphy, Caryle, ''Passion for Islam'', (c. 2002), p. 160Cook, Michael, ''The Koran: A Very Short Introduction'', Oxford University Press, (2000)Murphy, Caryle, ''Passion for Islam: Shaping the Modern Middle East: the Egyptian Experience'', Scribner, (c. 2002), p. 161 Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, political movements based on the liberal ideology of free expression and democratic rule have led the opposition in other parts of the world such as Latin America, Eastern Europe and many parts of Asia; however "the simple fact is that political Islam currently reigns irca 2002-3as the most powerful ideological force across the Muslim world today".

The strength of Islamism also draws from the strength of religiosity in general in the Muslim world. Compared to other societies around the globe, " at is striking about the Islamic world is that ... it seems to have been the least penetrated by irreligion". Where other peoples may look to the physical or social sciences for answers in areas which their ancestors regarded as best left to scripture, in the Muslim world, religion has become more encompassing, not less, as "in the last few decades, it has been the fundamentalists who have increasingly represented the cutting edge" of Muslim culture.Cook, Michael, ''The Koran: A Very Short Introduction'', Oxford University Press, (2000), p.42-3

Writing in 2009, German journalist Sonja Zekri described Islamists in Egypt and other Muslim countries as "extremely influential. ... They determine how one dresses, what one eats. In these areas, they are incredibly successful. ... Even if the Islamists never come to power, they have transformed their countries." Political Islamists were described as "competing in the democratic public square in places like Turkey, Tunisia, Malaysia and Indonesia".

Types

Islamism is not a united movement and takes different forms and spans a wide range of strategies and tactics towards the powers in place—"destruction, opposition, collaboration, indifference"—not because (or not just because) of differences of opinions, but because it varies as circumstances change. Roy, ''Failure of Political Islam'', 1994: p. 109^p. 54

Moderate and reformist Islamists who accept and work within the democratic process include parties like the Tunisian Ennahda Movement. Some Islamists can be religious populists or far-right.
Jamaat-e-Islami of Pakistan is basically a socio-political and "vanguard party" working with in Pakistan's Democratic political process, but has also gained political influence through military coup d'états in the past. Other Islamist groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine claim to participate in the democratic and political process as well as armed attacks by their powerful paramilitary wings. Jihadist organizations like al-Qaeda and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and groups such as the Taliban, entirely reject democracy, seeing it as a form of ''kufr'' (disbelief) calling for offensive jihad on a religious basis.

Another major division within Islamism is between what Graham E. Fuller has described as the ''conservative'' "guardians of the tradition" ( Salafis, such as those in the Wahhabi movement) and the ''revolutionary'' "vanguard of change and Islamic reform" centered around the Muslim Brotherhood.Fuller, ''The Future of Political Islam'', (2003), pp. 194–95 Olivier Roy argues that "Sunni pan-Islamism underwent a remarkable shift in the second half of the 20th century" when the Muslim Brotherhood movement and its focus on Islamisation of pan-Arabism was eclipsed by the Salafi movement with its emphasis on "sharia rather than the building of Islamic institutions". Following the Arab Spring (starting in 2011), Roy has described Islamism as "increasingly interdependent" with democracy in much of the Arab Muslim world, such that "neither can now survive without the other." While Islamist political culture itself may not be democratic, Islamists need democratic elections to maintain their legitimacy. At the same time, their popularity is such that no government can call itself democratic that excludes mainstream Islamist groups.

Arguing distinctions between "radical/moderate" or "violent/peaceful" Islamism were "simplistic", circa 2017, scholar Morten Valbjørn put forth these "much more sophisticated typologies" of Islamism:

Moderate and reformist Islamism

Throughout the 1980s and '90s, major moderate Islamist movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood and the Ennahda were excluded from democratic political participation. At least in part for that reason, Islamists attempted to overthrow the government in the Algerian Civil War (1991–2002) and waged a terror campaign in Egypt in the '90s. These attempts were crushed and in the 21st century, Islamists turned increasingly to non-violent methods, and "moderate Islamists" now make up the majority of the contemporary Islamist movements.Moussalli, Ahmad S. ''Islamic democracy and pluralism''. from Safi, Omid. ''Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender, and Pluralism''. Oneworld Publications, 1 April 2003.

Among some Islamists, Democracy has been harmonized with Islam by means of ''Shura'' (consultation). The tradition of consultation by the ruler being considered Sunnah of the prophet Muhammad, (''Majlis-ash-Shura'' being a common name for legislative bodies in Islamic countries).

Among the varying goals, strategies, and outcomes of "moderate Islamist movements" are a formal abandonment of their original vision of implementing ''sharia'' (also termed Post-Islamism) – done by the Ennahda Movement of Tunisia, and Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) of Indonesia.Al-Hamdi, Ridho. (2017). ''Moving towards a Normalised Path: Political Islam in Contemporary Indonesia''. JURNAL STUDI PEMERINTAHAN (JOURNAL OF GOVERNMENT & POLITICS). Vol. 8 No. 1, February 2017. p. 53, 56–57, 62. Others, such as the National Congress of Sudan, have implemented the sharia with support from wealthy, conservative states (primarily Saudi Arabia).Fuller, Graham E., ''The Future of Political Islam'', Palgrave MacMillan, (2003), p. 108

According to one theory – "inclusion-moderation"—the interdependence of political outcome with strategy means that the more moderate the Islamists become, the more likely they are to be politically included (or unsuppressed); and the more accommodating the government is, the less "extreme" Islamists become. A prototype of harmonizing Islamist principles within the modern state framework was the "Turkish model", based on the apparent success of the rule of the Turkish Justice and Development Party (AKP) led by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Turkish model, however, came "unstuck" after a purge and violations of democratic principles by the Erdoğan regime. Critics of the concept – which include both Islamists who reject democracy and anti-Islamists – hold that Islamist aspirations are fundamentally incompatible with the democratic principles.

Salafi movement

The contemporary Salafi movement is sometimes described as a variety of Islamism and sometimes as a different school of Islam, Roy, ''Failure of Political Islam'', 1994: p. 35 such as a "phase between fundamentalism and Islamism". Roy, ''Failure of Political Islam'', 1994: p. 31
Originally a reformist movement of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Muhammad Abdul, and Rashid Rida, that rejected maraboutism (Sufism), the established schools of fiqh, and demanded individual interpretation (''ijtihad'') of the Quran and Sunnah; Roy, ''Failure of Political Islam'', 1994: p. 32-33 it evolved into a movement embracing the conservative doctrines of the medieval Hanbali theologian Ibn Taymiyyah. While all salafi believe Islam covers every aspect of life, that sharia law must be implemented completely and that the Caliphate must be recreated to rule the Muslim world, they differ in strategies and priorities, which generally fall into three groups:
* The " quietist" school advocates Islamization through preaching, educating the masses on sharia and "purification" of religious practices and ignoring government.
* Activist (or ''haraki'') Salafi activism encourages political participation—opposing government loans with interest or normalization of relations with Israel, etc. As of 2013, this school makes up the majority of Salafism.George Joffé, ''Islamist Radicalisation in Europe and the Middle East: Reassessing the Causes of Terrorism'', p. 317. London: I.B. Tauris, 2013. Salafist political parties in the Muslim world include the Al-Nour Party of Egypt, the Al-Islah Party of Yemen, and the Al-Asalah Society of Bahrain.
* Salafi jihadism, (see below) is inspired by the ideology of Sayyid Qutb (Qutbism, see below), and sees secular institutions as an enemy of Islam, advocating revolution to pave the way for the establishment of a new Caliphate.Mohie-Eldin, Fatima. ''The Evolution of Salafism A History of Salafi Doctrine''. Al-Noor, Fall 2015. pp. 44–47.

Militant Islamism/Jihadism

Qutbism

Qutbism refers to the Jihadist ideology formulated by Sayyid Qutb, (an influential figure of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt during the '50s and '60s). Qutbism argued that not only was sharia essential for Islam, but that since it was not in force, Islam did not really exist in the Muslim world, which was in ''Jahiliyya'' (the state of pre-Islamic ignorance). To remedy this situation he urged a two-pronged attack of 1) preaching to convert, and 2) jihad to forcibly eliminate the "structures" of ''Jahiliyya''. Defensive jihad against ''Jahiliyya'' Muslim governments would not be enough. "Truth and falsehood cannot coexist on this earth", so offensive Jihad was needed to eliminate ''Jahiliyya'' not only from the Islamic homeland but from the face of the Earth. In addition, vigilance against Western and Jewish conspiracies against Islam would-be needed.

Although Qutb was executed before he could fully spell out his ideology,Kepel, ''Jihad'', 2002, p. 31 his ideas were disseminated and expanded on by the later generations, among them Abdullah Yusuf Azzam and Ayman Al-Zawahiri, who was a student of Qutb's brother Muhammad Qutb and later became a mentor of Osama bin Laden. Al-Zawahiri helped to pass on stories of "the purity of Qutb's character" and persecution he suffered, and played an extensive role in the normalization of offensive Jihad among followers of Qutb.

Salafi Jihadism

Salafi Jihadism or revolutionary Salafism emerged prominent during the 1980s when Osama bin Laden and thousands of other militant Muslims came from around the Muslim world to unite against the Soviet Union after it invaded Afghanistan.Deneoux, Guilain (June 2002). "The Forgotten Swamp: Navigating Political Islam". ''Middle East Policy''. pp. 69–71." Local Afghan Muslims (mujahideen) had declared jihad against the Soviets and were aided with financial, logistical and military support by Saudi Arabia and the United States, but after Soviet forces left Afghanistan, this funding and interest by America and Saudi ceased. The international volunteers, (originally organized by Abdullah Azzam), were triumphant in victory, away from the moderating influence of home and family, among the
radicalized influence of other militants. Wanting to capitalize on financial, logistical and military network that had been developed they sought to continue waging jihad elsewhere. Their new targets, however, included the United States—funder of the mujahideen but "perceived as the greatest enemy of the faith"; and governments of majority-Muslims countries—perceived of as apostates from Islam.Kepel, ''Jihad'', 2002, p.220"Jihadist-Salafism" is introduced by Gilles Kepel, ''Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam'' (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2002) pp. 219–222

Salafist-jihadist ideology combined the literal and traditional interpretations of scripture of Salafists, with the promotion and fighting of jihad against military and civilian targets in the pursuit of the establishment of an Islamic state and eventually a new Caliphate.

Other characteristics of the movement include the formal process of taking ''bay'ah'' (oath of allegiance) to the leader (''amir''), which is inspired by Hadiths and early Muslim practice and included in Wahhabi teaching; and the concepts of "near enemy" (governments of majority-Muslims countries) and "far enemy" (United States and other Western countries). (The term "near enemy" was coined by Mohammed Abdul-Salam Farag who led the assassination of Anwar al-Sadat with Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) in 1981.) The "far enemy" was introduced and formally declared under attack by al-Qaeda in 1996.

The ideology saw its rise during the '90s when the Muslim world experienced numerous geopolitical crisis, notably the Algerian Civil War (1991–2002), Bosnian War (1992–1995), and the First Chechen War (1994–1996). Within these conflicts, political Islam often acted as a mobilizing factor for the local belligerents, who demanded financial, logistical and military support from al-Qaeda, in the exchange for active proliferation of the ideology. After the 1998 bombings of US embassies, September 11 attacks (2001), the US-led invasion of Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003), Salafi Jihadism lost its momentum, being devastated by the US counterterrorism operations, culminating in bin Laden's death in 2011. After the Arab Spring (2011) and subsequent Syrian civil war (2011–present), the remnants of al-Qaeda franchise in Iraq restored their capacity, rapidly developing into the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, spreading its influence throughout the conflict zones of MENA region and the globe. Salafi Jihadism makes up a minority of the contemporary Islamist movements.

Shi'i Islamism

Although most of the research and reporting about Islamism or political Islam has been focused on Sunni Islamist movements,
Islamism exists in Twelver Shia Islam (the second largest branch of Islam that makes up approximately 10% of all Muslims.). Islamist Shi'ism, also known as Shi'i Islamism, is primarily but not exclusively
associated with the thought of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, with the Islamist Revolution he led, Islamic Republic of Iran that he founded, and the religious-political activities and resources of the republic.

Compared to the "Types" of Islamism mentioned above, Khomeinism differs from Wahhabism (which does not consider Shi'ism truly Islamic), Salafism (both orthodox or Jihadi—Shi'a do not consider some of the most prominent salaf worthy of emulation), reformist Islamism (the Islamic Republic executed more than 3,400 political dissidents between June 1981 and March 1982 in the process of consolidating power).

Khomeini and his followers helped translate the works of Maududi and Qutb into Persian and were influenced by them, but their views differed from them and other Sunni Islamists in being "more leftist and more clerical":
*more leftist in the propaganda campaign leading up to the revolution, emphasizing exploitation of the poor by the rich and of Muslims by imperialism; Abrahamian, ''Khomeinism'', 1993: p.30
*more clerical in the new post-revolutionary state, where clerics were in control of the levers of power (the Supreme Leader, Guardian Council, etc., under the concept of Velayat-e Faqih.).

Khomeini was a "radical" Islamist, Roy, ''Failure of Political Islam'', 1994: p.36 like Qutb and unlike Maudidi. He believed that foreigners, Jews and their agents were conspiring "to keep us backward, to keep us in our present miserable state". Khomeini, ''Islamic Government'', 1981: p.34 Those who call themselves Muslims but were secular and Westernizing, were not just corrupt or misguided, but "agents" of the Western governments, helping to "plunder" Muslim lands as part of a long-term conspiracy against Islam.Khomeini (1981), p. 54 Only the rule of an Islamic jurist, administering Sharia law, stood between this abomination and justice, and could not wait for peaceful, gradual transition. It is the duty of Muslims to "destroy" "all traces" of any other sort of government other than true Islamic governance because these are "systems of unbelief". Khomeini, ''Islamic Government'', 1981: p.48 "Troublesome" groups that cause "corruption in Muslim society," and damage "Islam and the Islamic state" are to be eliminated just as the Prophet Muhammad eliminated the Jews of Bani Qurayza. Khomeini, ''Islamic Government'', 1981: p.89 Islamic revolution to install "the form of government willed by Islam" will not end with one Islamic state in Iran. Once this government comes "into being, none of the governments now existing in the world" will "be able to resist it;" they will "all capitulate". Khomeini, ''Islamic Government'', 1981: p. 122

Ruling Islamic Jurist

Khomeini's form of Islamism was particularly unique in the world because it completely swept the old regime away, created a new regime with a new constitution, new institutions and a new concept of governance (the ''Velayat-e Faqih''). A historical event, it changed militant Islam from a topic of limited impact and interest to a topic that few either inside or outside the Muslim world were unaware of.Kepel, ''Jihad'', 2002, p. 106 As he originally described it in lectures to his students, the system of "Islamic Government" was one where the leading Islamic jurist would enforce sharia law—law which "has absolute authority over all individuals and the Islamic government". The jurist would not be elected, and no legislature would be needed since divine law called for rule by jurist and "there is not a single topic in human life for which Islam has not provided instruction and established a norm". Without this system, injustice, corruption, waste, exploitation and sin would reign, and Islam would decay. This plan was disclosed to his students and the religious community but not widely publicized. The constitution of the Islamic Republic written after the revolution did include a legislature and president, but supervising the entire government was a "Supreme Leader"/guardian jurist.

Islamist Shi'ism has been crucial to the development of worldwide Islamism, because the Iranian regime attempted to export its revolution. Although, the Islamist ideology was originally imported from Muslim Brotherhood, Iranian relations between the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Republic of Iran deteriorated due to its involvement in the Syrian civil war. However, the majority Usuli Shi'ism rejects the idea of an Islamist State in the period of Occultation of the Hidden Imam.

Shi'ism and Iran

Twelver Shia Muslim live mainly in a half dozen or so countries scattered around the Middle East and South Asia.
The Islamic Republic of Iran has become "the de facto leader" of the Shi'i world by virtue of being the largest Shia-majority state, having a long history of national cohesion and Shia-rule, being the site of the first and "only true" Roy, ''Failure of Political Islam'', 1994: p. 168 Islamist revolution (see History section below), and having the financial resources of a major petroleum exporter. Iran's influence has spread into a cultural-geographic area of "Irano-Arab Shiism", establishing Iranian regional power, supporting "Shia militias and parties beyond its borders", intertwining assistance to fellow Shi'a with "Iranization" of them.

Shi'i Islamism in Iran has been influenced by the Sunni Islamists and their organizations, particularly Sayyid Rashid Rida, Hassan al-Banna (founder of the Muslim Brotherhood organization), Sayyid Qutb, Abul A'la Maududi,
but has also been described as "distinct" from Sunni Muslim Brotherhood Islamism, "more leftist and more clerical", with its own historical influencers:

Historical figures

* Sheikh Fazlullah Nouri, a cleric of the Qajar dynasty court and the leader of the anti-constitutionalists during the Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1905–1911, who declared the new constitution contrary to sharia law.
* Navvab Safavi, a religious student who founded the '' Fada'iyan-e Islam'', seeking to purify Islam in Iran by killing off 'corrupting individuals', i.e. certain leading intellectual and political figures (including both a former and current prime minister).Taheri, ''The Spirit of Allah'', (1985), p. 98 After the group was crushed by the government, surviving members reportedly chose Ayatollah Khomeini as a new spiritual leader.Moin, ''Khomeini'' (2000), p. 224Taheri, Amir, ''Spirit of Allah : Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution '', Adler and Adler c1985, p. 187
* Ali Shariati, a non-cleric "socialist Shi'i" who absorbed Marxist ideas in France and had considerable influence on young Iranians through his preaching that Imam Hussein was not just a holy figure but the original oppressed one (''muzloun''), and his killer, the Sunni Umayyad Caliphate, the "analog" of the modern Iranian people's "oppression by the shah".
* Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, a Shi'i Islamic scholar in Iraq who critiqued Marxism, socialism and capitalism and helped lead Shi'i opposition to Saddam Hussein's Baath regime before being executed by them.
* Mahmoud Taleghani, an ayatollah and contemporary of Khomeini, was more leftist, more tolerant and more sympathetic to democracy, but less influential, though he still had a substantial following. Was deposed from revolutionary leadership after warning of a "return to despotism" by the revolutionary leadership.

Explanations for the growth and popularity of Islamism

Sociological, economic and political

Some Western political scientists see the unchanging socio-economic condition in the Muslim world as a major factor. Olivier Roy believes "the socioeconomic realities that sustained the Islamist wave are still here and are not going to change: poverty, uprootedness, crises in values and identities, the decay of the educational systems, the North-South opposition, and the problem of immigrant integration into the host societies". Roy, ''Failure of Political Islam'', 1994: p. 27

Charitable work

Islamist movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood, "are well known for providing shelters, educational assistance, free or low cost medical clinics, housing assistance to students from out of town, student advisory groups, facilitation of inexpensive mass marriage ceremonies to avoid prohibitively costly dowry demands, legal assistance, sports facilities, and women's groups." All this compares very favourably against incompetent, inefficient, or neglectful governments whose commitment to social justice is limited to rhetoric.Fuller, Graham E., ''The Future of Political Islam'', Palgrave MacMillan, (2003), p. 28

Economic stagnation

The Arab world—the original heart of the Muslim world—has been afflicted with economic stagnation. For example, it has been estimated that in the mid-1990s the exports of Finland, a country of five million, exceeded those of the entire Arab world of 260 million, excluding oil revenue.

Sociology of rural migration

Demographic transition (caused by the gap in time between the lowering of death rates from medical advances and the lowering of fertility rates), leads to population growth beyond the ability of housing, employment, public transit, sewer and water to provide. Combined with economic stagnation, urban agglomerations have been created in Cairo, Istanbul, Tehran, Karachi, Dhaka, and Jakarta, each with well over 12 million citizens, millions of them young and unemployed or underemployed.Fuller, Graham E., ''The Future of Political Islam'', Palgrave MacMillan, (2003), p. 68 Such a demographic, alienated from the westernized ways of the urban elite, but uprooted from the comforts and more passive traditions of the villages they came from, is understandably favourably disposed to an Islamic system promising a better world—an ideology providing an "emotionally familiar basis for group identity, solidarity, and exclusion; an acceptable basis for legitimacy and authority; an immediately intelligible formulation of principles for both a critique of the present and a program for the future." One American anthropologist in Iran in the early 1970s (before the revolution), when comparing a "stable village with a new urban slum", discovered that where "the villagers took religion with a grain of salt and even ridiculed visiting preachers", the slum dwellers—all recently dispossessed peasants – "used religion as a substitute for their lost communities, oriented social life around the mosque, and accepted with zeal the teachings of the local mullah".

Gilles Kepel also notes that Islamist uprisings in Iran and Algeria, though a decade apart, coincided with the large numbers of youth who were "the first generation taught en masse to read and write and had been separated from their own rural, illiterate progenitors by a cultural gulf that radical Islamist ideology could exploit". Their "rural, illiterate" parents were too settled in tradition to be interested in Islamism and their children "more likely to call into question the utopian dreams of the 1970s generation", but they embraced revolutionary political Islam.Kepel, ''Jihad'', p.365 Olivier Roy also asserts "it is not by chance that the Iranian Revolution took place the very year the proportion of city-dweller in Iran passed the 50% mark". Roy, ''Failure of Political Islam'', 1994: p. 53 and offers statistics in support for other countries (in 1990 Algeria, housing was so crowded that there was an average of eight inhabitants to a room, and 80% of youth aged 16 to 29 still lived with their parents). "The old clan or ethnic solidarities, the clout of the elders, and family control are fading little by little in the face of changes in the social structure ..." Roy, ''Failure of Political Islam'', 1994: p.54-5
This theory implies that a decline in illiteracy and rural emigration will mean a decline in Islamism.

Geopolitics

State-sponsorship

Saudi Arabia

Starting in the mid-1970s the Islamic resurgence was funded by an abundance of money from Saudi Arabian oil exports. The tens of billions of dollars in "petro-Islam" largesse obtained from the recently heightened price of oil funded an estimated "90% of the expenses of the entire faith."

Throughout the Muslim world, religious institutions for people both young and old, from children's madrassas to high-level scholarships received Saudi funding,
"books, scholarships, fellowships, and mosques" (for example, "more than 1500 mosques were built and paid for with money obtained from public Saudi funds over the last 50 years"), along with training in the Kingdom for the preachers and teachers who went on to teach and work at these universities, schools, mosques, etc.

The funding was also used to reward journalists and academics who followed the Saudis' strict interpretation of Islam; and satellite campuses were built around Egypt for Al-Azhar University, the world's oldest and most influential Islamic university.

The interpretation of Islam promoted by this funding was the strict, conservative Saudi-based Wahhabism or Salafism. In its harshest form it preached that Muslims should not only "always oppose" infidels "in every way," but "hate them for their religion ... for Allah's sake," that democracy "is responsible for all the horrible wars of the 20th century," that Shia and other non-Wahhabi Muslims were infidels, etc. While this effort has by no means converted all, or even most Muslims to the Wahhabist interpretation of Islam, it has done much to overwhelm more moderate local interpretations, and has set the Saudi-interpretation of Islam as the "gold standard" of religion in minds of some or many Muslims.

Qatar

Though the much smaller Qatar could not provide the same level of funding as Saudi Arabia, it was also a petroleum exporter and also sponsored Islamist groups. Qatar backed the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt even after the 2013 overthrow of the MB regime of Mohamed Morsi, with Qatar ruler Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani denouncing the coup. In June 2016, Mohamed Morsi

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