A Fundamental Fear: Eurocentrism and the Emergence of Islamism

by S. Sayyid

This is a brilliant and provocative re-evaluation of political Islam. Theoretically innovative, the book shows how Islamism can only be understood in the context of its relation with Eurocentrism. Using a neopragmatist approach inspired by Richard Rorty, and drawing on political and cultural theorists such as Stuart Hall, Agnes Heller and J.F. Lyotard, the book disrupts the conventional accounts of modernity and postmodernity and presents a radical new reading of Islamism as a response to the de-centring of the West. Breaking with the Arab-centrism of Islamic studies, Bobby Sayyid provides a critical analysis of Kemalism as dominant postcolonial ideology in the Muslim world, an ideology based on a Weberian understanding of the relationship between modernization and the West. Using the metaphor of Kemalism to narrate the political order in the postcolonial world, the author examines the rise of Islamism in the context of the postmodern critique of modernity. The book provides a much-needed conceptual narrative for an understanding of ?political? Islam and its relationship to decolonization and the passing of the Age of Europe. It is also an accessible introductory guide to the resurgence of Islamism, and poststructuralist political theory.

Genres: Islam, Nonfiction, Middle East, Politics

192 pages, Paperback

First published December 15, 1997

Reviews

[Abdul Vajid · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the best sociological engagement with emergence of Islamist politics in the realm of euro-centrism. Sayyid starts with deconstructing mainstream academic tools to analyze Islamism by engaging with the orientalist and anti-orientalist trope. He analyze the emergence of muslim political identities as a symptom decline of euro-centrism. Drawing from postmodern readings of "de-centering the west", Sayyid argues that the prevalence of political projects articulated in the language of Islamism is indicative of a waning western hegemony-and in sense the book can be seen as direct retort to those seeking to celebrate the "end of history". A very sophisticated theoretical engagement but difficult to keep up with the language, always have advanced dictionary and marker to read along.

[Sanah Mehnaz · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this book, Salman Sayyid examines the rise and various phases of Islamism in the form of a challenge to Western political hegemony and eurocentrism. He examines Kemalism and the emergence of Kohemini to represent shifts in the idea of Western superiority and the significance of Islam as a master signifier. Sayyid, avoiding an essentialist orientalist approach and an anti-orientalist approach, theorises Islam as a master signifier for Muslims. There are not multiple Islam’s rather multiple interpretations of a single Islam. ‘Islam has emerged as the means of articulating a multiplicity of positions without losing its specificity…What is extraordinary about Islam is that, although it can be used to articulate so many divergent positions, it maintains its specificity - it remains ‘Islam’.’

Sayyid examines Kemalism (Muslim political movements that came to power with the retreat of European empires) and the politicisation of Islam. He presents how the caliphate, throughout Muslim history, was beyond political and military power. Its significance was due to its ideological position and its linking of Islam to the state. ‘The caliphate was the link to the lawgiver and the law, as well as being the nodal point around which a global Muslim identity was structured - a mark of Muslim cultural unity.’ However for Mustafa Kemal the caliphate was a political institution that could not be reformed or restructured and thus had to be rejected. Sayyid analyses the end of the caliphate resulting in the Islamic presence within Muslim communities being relegated to the private sphere. Islam was not seen as compatible with modernity, a modernity the rulers of Muslim states chose. As such Islam was no longer linked to the state. Sayyid goes on to explore how Kemalism attempted to re-articulate Islam through four strategies: 1. secularisation, 2. nationalism, 3. modernisation, 4. westernisation. The end of the Ottoman empire through both European powers and the ideology of Kemal lead to a fragmentation of the Muslim world into Nation States and the exclusion of Islam from the pubic domain. 

It is from this we see the rise of Islamism as an attempt to challenge the hegemonic order. He examines the significance of Khomeini and his opposition to the prevailing order within the Muslim world. ‘If Kemal Ataturk can be presented as an icon marking the culmination of various projects of westernisation, then the figure of Khomeini marks the end of Kemalism.’ Sayyid presents how Islamism is an attempt to de-centre the West. ‘It is the deconstruction of the relation between modernity and the West that produced a space into which Islamism could locate itself; and it is this positioning that can account for its emergence as a politically significant discourse’. The emergence of Islamism represented the weakening of eurocentrism. 

This book examines a variety of aspects relating to Islamism, Western political hegemony, decolonisation, de-centring the west, Islamic fundamentalism, orientalism, Kemalism, the concept of hegemony, the ideological formation of Europe, modernity and Western identity, etc. 

An intriguing and compelling read. 

[Gehad Hasanin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a must-read for any social sciences student studying Islam and the Middle East. It is a critical reading of both Islamism and scholarship on Islamism. It develops a rough definition of Islamism as the opening of new terrain where a new Muslim subjectivity is negotiated, indifferent to the West. Sayyid places decolonization at the heart of this process: as drive and as outcome.

It is surprising and disappointing how little his insights were taken into consideration by mainstream scholarship on Islam almost 30 years after the book came out. While literature on Islam exponentially increased in those years, and we saw the birth of studies on Islamic terrorism, extremism, (countering) radicalization, etc..., the literature still suffers from the same blindspots that Sayyid mentions in this book. Even that literature that recognizes the strong role processes of decolonization played in the formation of Islamism shifts focus away from decolonization when studying present-day Islamists.

We're still at the same point that Sayyid was lamenting at the beginning of the book: that all scholarship undertakes ontic analyses of the phenomenon of Islamism, but never is an ontological investigation undertaken. Luckily, the way he does that ontological investigation is very insightful, more so because he carefully deconstructs and addresses the usual "clap-back" criticisms to such an approach. And even though the book relies heavily on theoretical and discourse-analytic terms and concepts, the language is pretty easy to follow if you've read some political theory before.

[H · Rating 4 out of 5]

نُشر للمرة الأولى عام 1997، ساعياً إلى تعليل التأكيد المعاصر للهوية الإسلامية بطرح السؤال: لماذا استخدم اسم الإسلام شعاراً للاحتجاج والتعبئة السياسيين؟
عمل نقديّ ممتاز جداً في وقته.

[Mostafa Soueid · Rating 5 out of 5]

Must read for anyone interested in the topic of Islamism

[Faisal Ali · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really interesting socio-political account of the rise of Islamist politics, which re-reads the contemporary history of Muslim politics in light of the decentralisation of Islam politically, the imposition of a postmodern incredulity towards meta-narratives, and the reactivation of Islam as a master signifier and site of contestation of what Sayyid calls the Kemalist regimes. The rise of Islamism since the 1970s for Sayyid should be read as an attempt to dislodge the normative and hegemonic understanding that the West is a universal template, a trajectory for all mankind is which is morally and perhaps scientifically binding if we are to be rational, modern, tolerant and so on. He investigates many of these assumptions in an enlightening and insightful way intelligently weaving history, social and political theory as well as philosophy to broaden and deepen our understandings of a phenomena which is likely to remain relevant for the foreseeable future. A great read!

[Mohammad · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent piece of critical theory examining the purpose and state of Islamism. Sayyid challenges prevalent notions regarding the relationship between modernity and westernization.