Islamism, also known as Political Islam (إسلام سياسي islām siyāsī), is an Islamic revival movement often characterized by moral conservatism, literalism, and the attempt "to implement Islamic values in all spheres of life." Islamism favors the reordering of government and society in accordance with the Shari'a. The different Islamist movements have been described as "oscillating between two poles": at one end is a strategy of Islamization of society through state power seized by revolution or invasion; at the other "reformist" pole Islamists work to Islamize society gradually "from the bottoIslamism, also known as Political Islam (إسلام سياسي islām siyāsī), is an Islamic revival movement often characterized by moral conservatism, literalism, and the attempt "to implement Islamic values in all spheres of life." Islamism favors the reordering of government and society in accordance with the Shari'a. The different Islamist movements have been described as "oscillating between two poles": at one end is a strategy of Islamization of society through state power seized by revolution or invasion; at the other "reformist" pole Islamists work to Islamize society gradually "from the bottom up". The movements have "arguably altered the Middle East more than any trend since the modern states gained independence", redefining "politics and even borders" according to journalist Robin Wright.
Islamists may emphasize the implementation of Sharia (Islamic law); of pan-Islamic political unity, including an Islamic state; and of the selective removal of non-Muslim, particularly Western military, economic, political, social, or cultural influences in the Muslim world that they believe to be incompatible with Islam.
Some observers (such as Graham Fuller) suggest Islamism's tenets are less strict, and can be defined as a form of identity politics or "support for [Muslim] identity, authenticity, broader regionalism, revivalism, [and] revitalization of the community." Following the Arab Spring, political Islam became heavily involved with political democracy, but also spawned "the most aggressive and ambitious Islamist militia" to date, ISIS.
Islamists generally oppose the use of the term, claiming that their political beliefs and goals are simply an expression of Islamic religious belief. Similarly, some experts (Bernard Lewis) favor the term "activist Islam", and some (Robin Wright) have equated the term "militant Islam" with Islamism.
Central and prominent figures of modern Islamism include Hasan al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb, Abul Ala Maududi, and Ruhollah Khomeini. Some of these proponents emphasise peaceful political processes, whereas Sayyid Qutb in particular called for violence, and those followers are generally considered Islamic extremists. Qutb however denounced the killing of innocents unlike modern extremists....more
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Shrouded as he was for a decade in an apparent cloak of anonymity and obscurity, Osama bin Laden was by no means an invisible man. He was ubiquitous and palpable, both in a physical and a cyber-spectral form, to the extent that his death took on something of the feel of an exorcism. It is satisfying to know that, before the end came, he had begun at least to guess at the magnitude of his 9/11 mistake. It is essential to remember that his most fanatical and militant deputy, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Shrouded as he was for a decade in an apparent cloak of anonymity and obscurity, Osama bin Laden was by no means an invisible man. He was ubiquitous and palpable, both in a physical and a cyber-spectral form, to the extent that his death took on something of the feel of an exorcism. It is satisfying to know that, before the end came, he had begun at least to guess at the magnitude of his 9/11 mistake. It is essential to remember that his most fanatical and militant deputy, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, did not just leave his corpse in Iraq but was isolated and repudiated even by the minority Sunnis on whose presumed behalf he spilled so much blood and wrought such hectic destruction. It is even more gratifying that bin Laden himself was exposed as an excrescence on the putrid body of a bankrupt and brutish state machine, and that he found himself quite unable to make any coherent comment on the tide—one hopes that it is a tide, rather than a mere wave—of demand for an accountable and secular form of civil society. There could not have been a finer affirmation of the force of life, so warmly and authentically counterposed to the hysterical celebration of death, and of that death-in-life that is experienced in the stultifications of theocracy, where womanhood and music and literature are stifled and young men mutated into robotic slaughterers....more
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Christopher Hitchens,
The Enemy
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The real question is how much suffering we've caused our womenfolk by turning headscarves into symbols - and using women as pawns in a political game.The real question is how much suffering we've caused our womenfolk by turning headscarves into symbols - and using women as pawns in a political game....more
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Orhan Pamuk,
Snow
