What is Islamism?

Résumé du document

People of the western societies usually get confused when it comes to Islam and its political transcriptions. This makes people feel some kind of “Islamic threat”. Analyzing the relations between Islam and politic is difficult because there is no one Islam timeless and unique. On the contrary there are a lot of diverse practices and opinions among Muslims intellectuals about Islam and more precisely about what should be the ideal political transcription of the religious principles contained in the Koran and the Sunnah. Islamism is one of them.

According to the definition of Olivier Roy, it is a contemporary movement which considers Islam as a political ideology. It emerged recently, within the twentieth century. It is felt in western societies as an absurd return to the path, to the archaism of the middle ages but it is a product of the modernity.

What is really Islamism? First we are going to go back to the meaning of
words– Islam, Islamism, and fundamentalism - in order to avoid confusion. Second we will try to show both the similarities and the divergences between the different Islamists movements. Then we are going to study the limits of the Islamist ideology with the view of explaining the thesis of Olivier Roy: political Islam had failed.

Extraits

[...] What is Islamism? People of the western societies usually get confused when it comes to Islam and its political transcriptions. This makes people feel some kind of “Islamic threat”. Analyzing the relations between Islam and politic is difficult because there is no one Islam timeless and unique. On the contrary there are a lot of diverse practices and opinions among Muslims intellectuals about Islam and more precisely about what should be the ideal political transcription of the religious principles contained in the Koran and the Sunnah. [...]

[...] This is the reason why it is so important to go back to the true meaning of these words in order to understand what we are really talking about. In consequence we are going to show first that Islamism isn't Islam, and then that there are differences between traditional fundamentalism and Islamists movements. Above all it is essential to remind that Islamism isn't Islam. Indeed, Islam is a monotheist religion which came into existence in the seventh century of the occidental calendar. Mohammed is the Prophet who spread God's revelations to the future Muslims. [...]

[...] The oumma is the community of all the Muslims believers around the world. The ideal power should involve all the Muslims, so the frontiers and the nations-states as they exist nowadays are not essential because e they influence only a part of the oumma. The frontiers can evolve but the oumma stays. The word açabiyya means the monopolizing of the state by a part of the oumma which is illegitimate. Current states can be considered that way because their frontiers don't stick to the frontiers of the Muslims community. [...]

[...] We have to understand that there is no political or geographical unity of Islamism. For example we cannot talk about an international Islamism but about many diverse movements. However we can distinguish some similarities and to certain extend a common origin among the latter. All the contemporary Islamists movements emerged within the framework of two movements: The Muslims Brotherhood and Jamat'at-I Islami. The Muslims Brother hood was created by Hassan al-Banna (1906-1949) in Egypt and the Jamt'at-I Islami party was created by Abul Ala Maududi (1903- 1978) in the Indian continent. [...]

[...] There are some limits in the Islamic concepts. First, we can see that the Islamic culture tends to reduce the value of the state. So Islamist ideology doesn't really ask itself the question of the state and its institutions. Besides, the concept of virtue is preeminent in the Islamist reflection but doesn't lead to a concrete political success. Firstly, the Islamic culture doesn't present a special attention to the political institutions and states as we can see in the western countries. [...]