Understanding Political Islam

126 Pages·2020·77.951 MB·English

by  François Burgat

Understanding Political Islam
Fran~ois Burgat
Translated by Thomas Hill
Mnm:lu~$tcr University Pn·ss
Copyright e Editions LA D£COUVERTE. Pari~. France, 2016
The right of Fran~ms Burgat to be Identified as the author of this work has been
asscrh'<I by him in accordance with the Copyright, DC'sig115 and Patents Act 1988.
Contents
Published by Editions LA D£COUVERTE, Paris, Fr:inc<', 2016
First Cnglish-languagl' edition published in 2020 by Manchester University Pres_~
Altrincham Strc-ct. Manchest('r Ml 7/A
www.111anchestemn1wrs1typress.co.uk
Preface to the English Edition page"i
BritL~h Library Catalogulnit•in-Publication Data Acknowledgments IX
A catalogue record for thi~ book is availabk• from the llritish Library
Introduction: Writing the History of a Research Career
Part I Discovering the Muslim "Other"
17
ISBN 978 I 526143433 hardback l lntuiLive Accumulation
2 Algeria: Approaching the Other 33
First published 2020 49
3 Prelude in the Jamahiriyya
lhc publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for 4 Egypt, Arabic, and Grasping Difference 62
annoyt geuxaterrannatle oe rt hthaitr adn-yp acrotny tienntet ronne st uwcehb wsuecb•ss irteefse irsr,e odr t ow iilnl rtehmisa biono, akc, caunrda dteo oers 5 Yemen: Modernization without Colonization 74
appropriate. 6 •seneath Israel, Palestine" 93
7 Syria and Bilad al-Sham 108
8 The Other "at Home," or: Islam in France 132
Part II Political Islam: The Stakes of an Alternative
Interpretation
9 Being a Political Scientist of the Muslim World 145
10 Saving the Other's "Others": A French Obsession 160
11 The Political Cost of Dissent 169
12 Between Judges and Spooks 188
13 Wrestling with the Research of Others: Olivier Roy, Gilles
196
Kepel, and lslamism
14 The Charlie Hebdo Attacks: Failure of Islam, or: Failure of
212
Typeset by Politics?
Servis Ftlmscttmg Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire Conclusion: Where Do We Go Now? 227
Printed in Great Britain by 233
T) International Ltd, Padstow Index
•
PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION Vii
of the downtrodden. Burgat's research shows the shortcomings of both
approaches, and looks for answers in the conflicted relationship between
a conquering West, from Bugeaud to Bush and from Cromer to Cheney,
Preface to the English Edition and the Arab and Muslim fringe of the GlobaJ South, a region whose
specificity is less its religion and culture than its position right outside the
West's bloody borders.
Pascal Menoret
During the colonial period, Islam was used to mark those colonial sub
jects who in Western eyes needed to be saved from their own culture and
taught civilized ways. During the immediate post-colonial period, religion
was often pushed out of the public realm, as many post-independence
Arab regimes sought to modernize and develop along European lines. For
What you hold in your hand is the work of a trespasser. It sums up the over half a century, Islamic activists have turned religion from a mark of
breakthroughs of a French scholar who escaped a snug-and often smug shame into a badge of honor, a marker of civilization not barbarism, of
Western enclave to research one of the least understood political move freedom not servitude. They adopted an Islamic religious lexicon against
ments: Islamic activism. In the 1980s, Fran~ois Burgat was one of the first colonial oppression and post-colonial modernism. Islamic activists are
Western political scientists to actively conduct field research on Islamic not reactionary or medieval. They strive to create an indigenous lexicon
movements, and to meet those activists everybody feared, few met, and against the perpetuation of European and Western influence after Arab
fewer even understood. This book tells the story of a lengthy trespassing. independences.
French scholars are overwhelmingly white, generally male, and often Most observers think Islamic activism ("Islam.ism") is mostly an ideology
proud of their liberal heritage, which they dub republican, universalist, and that spreads like a disease through the contagious channels of the madra
secular. There is a simple reason for that homogeneity: French academia, sas or of the internet. Burgat shows that Islamic movements are not linked
while merit-based in theory, is extremely discriminatory in practice. It by a common ideology. It is impossible to predict what Islamic activists
tends to favor insiders, and newcomers to the game-in particular former will do by looking at what they think. Some collaborate with authoritar
or current colonial subjects-are few and far between. With his Catholic, ian governments while others oppose them. Some refuse elections while
bourgeois upbringing, Burgat is definitely a member of the old boys' club. others embrace them. Some throw themselves into the politicaJ game
Leaving for Algeria as a young professor, however, he started to trespass while others withdraw from the world. To understand Islamic activism,
against his primary belonging. one need not read the Quran or listen to taped sermons: one needs to meet
"It was only in Algeria that I became political," he writes. "This did not activists, observe them, talk to them-acknowledge their eminently polit
happen, as it did to many others, through putting myself at the service ical quality. One needs to be there and conduct ethnographic fieldwork.
of the political project of the leaders of the country, but by discovering Islamic activism is less the result of an ideology than the production of
there the scale of the distortion" between mainstream, elite, racist French new political identities from one's own ground.
culture and w~at his North African experience revealed to him. Reading How has religion become so central to political scenes where, from the
Malek Ben~ab1 and, later on in Tunisia and Egypt, interviewing Rached Atlantic to the Gulf and from Syria to Algeria, leftist movements were
Ghannouchi and Tarek al-Bishri, he realized the limits of universalism and once thriving? In the post-colonial context, characterized by the one-party
seculari_s'.". Back in France, he dedicated his career to understanding the system (as in Nasser's Egypt) or the no-party system (as in Saudi Arabia),
one pohti,cal mov_eme~t that most visibly questioned Western hegemony. religious activities have allowed activists to organize under the radar of
Burgat s book is unique because it sums up an approach that has been the state. Mosque activities, informal religious networks, and person-to
1
argely missing from mainstream expertise. Most analysts of Islamic person relationships are hard to crack down upon. Fast urban growth has
movements tend to se th h
. e em as t e latest expression of a medieval allowed religious networks to expand and thrive in times of political crack
Muslim theology represented as naturally violent sexist and d" . .
down, as the state was after workers not clerics, officers not mosquegoers.
tory. Those who are not satisfied with th. ' . , iscnmma
socio-econornic marginalizatio . I 1 . is ~x~lanat1on tend to focus on Repression inevitably hit Islamic movements, as in Egypt from the 1950s
n. s am1c activism, for them, is the revolt on or in Saudi Arabia twenty years later. Arab states reformed religious
PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION
viii
·ze it· these reforms often
. I 'ming to mod erru •
education, sometimes c 31 d edigested Friday sermons, closed
reeked of repression. Stat~_imp_os~ ·1P\bi·ected them to treatment that
down mosques. thr~ w . actiVIStsd m cr Juael l,. Us sing force, post-coI o m'a l e 1'·. tes m.
was ever more sophisticated an A b t tes often vindicated terronsm at Acknowledgments
. •fied h ge of force: ra s a . .,
turn iusti t e usa fi h . ·t "For the coloruzed man, Frantz
. h they were g ting I • • "
the very time w en . nl f the colonizer's putrefying corpse.
Fanon wrote, "life can spring? Y rom. nly from the destruction of
10 01·a 1 man 1t can spring 0
For the post-co . ' . lent-Western military cooperation,
what made p~st-c?lomall_states v10 torture chambers. Jean-Paul Sartre,
. • t · of interior po ice terror,
mm1s nes ' . . th b utal French occupation,
commenting on the Algerian resistance to e r . . "
f 1 . d •one must either remain terrified or become temfymg. If this attempt at understanding political Islam now has an opportunity
~~wi:;,~:
a~:';5 ~s not only a plea for a better understa~ding of bo~ to be read in the English-speaking world, I owe it first and foremost to
gul d h'dden violence but also a candid exploration of what it Pascal Menoret It was Pascal who was able to convey his confidence-as
spectac ar an I e very political movements t h at, n01·s 1· ty or demonstrated by his warm Preface here-to Rob Byron and Manchester
means to cond uct researc h On th .
· ·1 h tak thei·r distances from the West and Western-centric University Press, who elected to publish it, and thanks to whom you hold
m s1 ence, ave en .
regimes. Burgat shows how political trespassing is ~n art that mvol~es this book in your hands.
years of decentering and disorientation. It ~lso entails deca~es of polit Secondly, the successful result owes everything to Thomas Hill, and
ical struggle against terribly dangerous ma1nstream perceptions-those to his precise and demanding linguist's instincts in navigating the rapids
which fueled the criminal and useless War on Terror from 2001 on. When of translating my French style-which my usage may occasionally make
leaving his office to go lecture, Burgat often says, "Allez, I'm gonna harp more complex yet!
on again." This endless improvisation on the necessity of shedding one's And lastly comes the list of those I wish to thank for helping, first, to
civilizational bearings is a salubrious enterprise. develop my thinking and, second, to express it. So: the list of my human
I have been the consenting victim of this harping-on since a stormy debts of all kinds. This is lengthy and diverse-and each and every one
day of July 2000, when Burgat, then head of a social science research played a vital part in their own way.
center in Yemen, took us students hiking to the deserted Jewish village of As with my previous books, this one owes much to those who were by
Bayt Baws, where a torrential hailstorm sent us running down the slope my side when my difficulty in writing both fast and well made me even
and into the safety of a patio where the political scientist offered us dry more nervous than usual. Marie and Camille are among those. Moreover,
clothes and Marseillais Pastis. Following Burgat like a shadow through the for Camille's part, her "father's beardies" often kept me far from her (but
meanders of Sana'a's rich prewar social life, from poetry sessions around never far from my thoughts)-and not only during my long years in Yemen.
Abdulaziz al-Maqaleh to late-night verbal jousts in faraway compounds, My most direct debt is towards those colleagues who encouraged me
was the best introduction to political anthropology, this strange discipline to take on this labor of memory and precision-and who helped me bring
where t~e researcher is to herself her own lab, and where empathy-not it to conclusion. I am therefore most grateful, first, to Rita Bassil, who
necessarily sympathy-is the rule of the game. convinced me to throw myself, in her company, into a book project that
Reader, beware: the pleasures of trespassing are contagious. was initially structured as a series of interviews. Many others then agreed
to critique the various stages of the manuscript, to elicit further inquiry,
Pascal Menoret and-for the more foolhardy among them-to refute some of my hypoth
Boston, Massachusetts, June 2019 eses. They also doled out writing advice and vital encouragement
I can mention only a few of these here.Valerie Amiraux, Pascal Menoret,
Karima Direche, and Sylvie Denoix regularly reinspired in me the self-con
fidence I lacked. Laurent Bonnefoy was far more than merely my sec
ond-in-command in directing the W AFA W European Research Council
5-
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UNDERSTANDING POLITICAL !SLAM INTRODUCTION 3
2
, us here is a single subject: "Islamism," to which J independence, now directed against nationalist elites who were perceived
shrieavsv1eee ahb rda ocveohevk owsIat. 'eot· ddIr k rot, eh umteu t yrcmn o, oyrt ecoc oothfre em steyh eahsceearsed ecimno ni.ac c e wwranoyirn ktgh. aIstl a1. sm d1.o smub lm.y ntehwre. eF s.i ursctc, ebsy- Inatsi a ahll aspovr,ie nhsgeo nwbceeeev nwe rwa,s ot hunne onavr geforu uatonbd lty he etfh fceeoc mltoivoneis ztre ebrpr'sur etsasylem ncbatarotrliiivecer us o nafim tvheoirssn eag.c sDcouimrlteuecr toa ctfoi tolhone .
taomurhrheensofevutid warn olca lag -lomctuQI eiut tnodhcainogr eoetein ednntc ahrasc or-teto,ynrrh enu bchedvvyeci yose pt2netmnl0toudaut0reitm aio0iaacolsnis icna,taum yspailr nl rpoisoyyn era,fp ge tor t a Ianoht prthefebutrfise irsc c.bvim uonoyalgn tfateu dthr uhp iepitp e niea•o srA gtnmocoarsec iya pindtb ahtsabl ita Stoos ettpcon hpirk teeihro nn oIeflgscde "ltetsuah5hss cme,oeo esbsfnidees u2s ms t0tt oh h1 ateife1hln ssm,ta o ehtfte hoe ~isInl er .lpt g oheSoSuwaghwemdreacea dodertf fnnioobnudrtwysg l,, daspwae"pu aoxnmoJiftlpddosflioltnet nei-diSnrgcgcceeai a oaerttdulllnhcn ydovlien iiinzoW pdocaiAcsea otaleenilrlebo ,saote suintbtnlscehil"i iataraa efenlwrr l sy eor-b.eieo s mrtwTrhchera iaahaa et"splbcehon Wehiidigtrld.seei ie It Wcdnassptai hlttrlehae"ioleodmmriyc lnn veeaiioi nsi sczodtotsshca fel,ccetee raihrsinn o ipnsasbcin elz yetelw.oiome "dnpo n h tgbIlifgihemt"oc sebes hleprl ie o,esslce ift af nrta auw nToigctani uu icnltidtisurvhhgsik seoeirtseen er ifdydsrt c tth eo, thh etl Jumhyypeersaeee iu cfnnsrmcronc,,aao lie Attmvnooihiveontffeergre nicwiiszhdrob aeoaa nulapdnnr.fts k,rideuA i s ptdvs othftiara tofneetent aoyoge r,
comforting historical continuity.
A Shared "Muslim Speech": Diverse Modes of Muslim Action First of all, I have argued the case for considering the mobilizing virtues
tIwn os ukmeym pinrogc uepss mesy aarpep troooa cohf tteon t hcoe nrfisues eodf Iwsliathm iesamch, iot athpepre. aTrso t om makee t hmayt doifm theinss iroend itshcaonv ienre idts Menudsolgiemn oluesx icchoanr aacst ebr.e Ii nhga vreo odtoecdu mleessn tiend iat sh y51p1oCtrhed
approach intelligible, I offer up two distinct levels of explanation. The first esis: that, among those who have adopted it, the key appeal of the Muslim
seeks to explain the origins of the "turn towards speaking Muslimn in the lexicon inheres in a key fact. Namely: that they perceive it as more closely
Arab world. The second examines the extreme diversity of modes ofa ction tied to their inherited culture than were the other political vocabularies
that this vocabulary has enabled. It thereby underscores that approaches in particular, Marxism or nationalism. For a time at least, the latter had
that reduce the motivations of the various players of political Islam to their confiscated part of the centrality of the Muslim lexicon-only to be per
reference to religion alone are inane. ceived, in the wake of the crushing colonial defeat, as being imported, or
. The first exi:lanat~ry variable :ests on an indisputable fact: beginning even imposed. I have proposed thinking through the dynamic by which the
in the 1960s, speaking Muslim made a comeback in the societies of Islamist lexicon has been reintroduced, not as a break with, but actually as
Europe's Muslim periphery. It seeks to account for the tendency of broad the extension of the dynamic that successfully fought for independence.
sw~ths of these societies to rehabilitate a long-occulted vocabulary in the The process of distanciation from the colonizer that first operated in the
.1sIvfncte :raseo9ha~eoinlbrlzr2aAeflv :dubieoe8m pleoseiifdr'n d1t osrgis"yoaiced :rao e n e:a tmdeJlcn:ooIlo n n ;dyiuonetg nnd mo olur fit.g ata b orm "suohs ~osfl pr abeouemio"etrn dirlnhlho lktoea wimdoeoctzl tnaoii ea eemMidsokbsrras fiu nliaeesrlczrinu e ,cio mnoeop sngsshtmdeynlsoghf aip .mef am "tdrew·iashpse n MebIc rt:eet etrBhort~"rs iiYd n h lreci. :teimn oh~veu uct~ ioti a y mtrisavha/tJh spes t~en et m.uhe io wdo d lro p e thip a h ~f:aono otr~ e pscoo;ofis o::t1wd erd.eg nelt smu~ddi hi~a1t.csvei a.:se ep cfs tt e ttnir n_ epamoihoretvraleesrm na mettaicaaaeth t JobJrok hudt1ie .omhsf e~n t ad 'ly Tme r:ibiM pec vao hoof" e ieeIrsan euvgf taeor ti m esWsnx htmtts 1.riehm1yi· ..taoi c Ieme bmtrGtnongshg hus .n, btsra i ectteanp"To oehte r doael( rshneJn·io ul eu S cem.w ie acraczt p ssl uuiefhevleeientrdynlo drexdtec ,,iccEeurp e vo"idaem,rgrrtei ;biee.inen ycrdv avu·f ssdop oaet elselihtarudescig ri nv lo tbeioayndogety fs)fs l vpicRstbiSpndhnuaoyroouaiedols nlemsFtuntiitch szthsiaetpeiiine ciiseCccdsrtarnr a yose,wailWe rl lm.rcnoie y deesRtea,afei r pd sanlwI al"es h,s m rat t"hce aaheeetWooa xsenarert vfmep,rpndhee e, "rpr tar psse grtehsorstlhoesaauoreeeusae zcogrdpoxgep etnugo rn idhp rb.vigev,a".e ar yesh ewntlotTt ahri derpttaowtheehhdir sni bjohei esente"any e hc axv"tiosl isatItpotmhoifi setocaoa inl tniptaahr nnn"htftbm e agewa ewwuosldr i imedli zifaz att imya sshaahntrt onhytj oinviot-waoe oorhcoarm nenhiaelfrt"tu hs li i iyc cslccen oeeo luohssodotdfm lo fofetw t it hWr upttpofheih ar ieIlchedlaeeestn, a llssxoladsab aeeta fr meeygr xnb eraenr riei detnslci(cslhace soo teasvteu enfny,timas rtilo tmloetietihunoudinn nobeeservr sasneohrnnewh.ell lit m iaoiipsiMhnplcftt faiei irs tcaeo onitn hlclhhdrrsndteaetel ,sessida ntno vh ,bhhr e avetniaoettcopslehihvstoy. srs heaeee) t,.
intellectuals throughout the coloni: uP :~::a. kTeh~.is bpyr opcoelsitsi ccaol natcintiuveisdts a aftnedr firsTt hsips aprrkosc eosfs r, einfoitrimatiesdt breya tchteio cnosl,o pnliaayl oedn solauut gahctr,o asnsd s ethvaerta ble ggeanne wraitthio tnhse,
UNDERSTANDING POLITICAL !SLAM
4 INTRODUCTION 5
an d m. sev. eral suc, cessi•v e hf i"sI rtoanriicaanl ocroingfinig u(1ra8t3io8n-s9.7 )F, rtoom t hJ ea mIraal qai.l -ADbiun Iraq, or North Africa) followed distinct paths to those who, in Sudan,
cahia.Bd inla za-esdAikn n rbftg m.iga.e t lhyctt-heoaB-rmbimasna g ,aes l ht eat1dpdh.t0 e e aensard te aI 1 r.c nl ,ve h1ne,epeo lr.aomasr dl1mi Io•ye · 6t ner i·Ic p ron a ouf lof sw t hchthhoienaen Igt ts p elftaoxhhmlteelsonsi wceoe Snsmp,dt leaIaunt yersoeie (nnrt" sg I ooS tud,fo " te I "usetI lhsp Saer mI eSttr1e".ha s) nes ,m t asaI,1n, sg ow dI ea r shmam mi.t1 ca.o1c ht. id• hol 1s.e 1 .snXt s ,In.tI o ocotconhwa.n-e l cntImdhsoaeloaltapointmoa notnrihiptsazeeomlediilrrz.i "fzantr ethoaiDdoamt ietnot s,htnh phoeaaient lde o me brlbtogiahetatteeghrnsiiu i xricznd oao detntfoiihv totliroehnnorge suui oigcegtfayr ht el,th ahaeittnneh Spd deupr sesofoepyicl emibe"tnisrnbcdoseoa etoollhn i-feccIf sir sefeehl rlaloodafm)nno- ditddssti sots.s t t (I"haw"n net aahc Nlkoipln oe ragdo rtt oce fhtermrh dosAeaseme nfrtrs sidit m cehoiadnee,f
dinatnrAignte strih ceoa flol yWu tpseaesrtt,te rofnafci izetasd t siowtrniu,t hcI tsuwlrahema.7t i spt amrt oovfe tmheesnets s occoi.ne stii.e sste pde orcfe ir. veaesds earst itnhge gethxraepd lpiuceairtl.ls yiIs nbte etnchcaoems eoe fpd loeafncfoeicsui anwlc haeendrd ea ssp ttuahbteel i"sc p kauersptaytg soep foe Fafr kaFinnrcegen .Fc"h re nmcahd, es etchuisla src ehliistems
~hotw(teiitiont1hafxosh 8de intWoost 4 rh hr tebp9eehgheeleon- iaaas ggp1ltdBntdiiuio9et aoi rinlzra0~clpuin e lt5atrsriqi i nl)cees thu ,dhahac reeA ldieeo hmgsady flltnieiregie seeemodb edtlnsodon er osii,ef:rshaR in i nott itahayamhh hnnons pea,eq hwc d uo tMuiieo nrtd fji ce tut buLaseoEtysRshon e ut lnt uebi Jihrsdwmaa raopearcmtnepe u r e BeWeesarsm(sia,al r1 se ldeoooaat8l asy otllfb6th--tn ,roiADe1 teilchs igr-rTefziin1eihngn enu 9to hc pe oan3oaoAeunl i5nu d-cssdltA)iri bhoh .ola ae fhloeg fogi(rUaw ode1thncd rn 8nnaoiHo zo8lnhl puiaioou1ieked,ttnu)sg er ie tM iocr eaohacaenmntlleuonio.h dv loaihcgeFt ednuahiE( rdcyv1mraoiga e?ne9ltmyllm, nth1 e Tper tie5neetl1hun l -gds(9ecrde9o1ee cl2 aA3q8uu ton8tuu)8drbh gf ce2aiosd aeanesl)onusnrt .sg , cozoratobvheranufyefipe t sdn tMTIiri toot sssehhKilai,nfsoae edr sauw nm oecitlwvich-lhhfsiiBoeais i ntrr cl1t iaaepld tah9gad)gso n9. pehi wr locd6Irsiodcaatafe. au ils u cTd(eo p ognuatsihfso'frim ns i Iilo si dnseatceu nlhmteisaa pet terolimparescia napga.roUti lg erhesvEitSledts aheim w,Stta mer beoRmeae t.yosduus r ie vg ,artdtm nhen itobent me alsufgtii r hntSnet kah feen hrnreesU etoadd,s tah mrSu ltbmbe )gor e yafnooA pgoa r v,aratrlf o o-e egonorSfrigh,fefgn hr av ttttnmeehonhho sie ieelekpsmsu n hotIt1tiayrtr lin9asnaia omc n9q,ntny (h0tisiait innhsnter-th.d yetha "eJe,y Itan toritnw rtor osra oaondpiwrntrpmaaufhsian lptnsn aisht,etz a l h teaiseaYthez riuntS oaeeieimaoytnnmd bwinratm oilee oelaenoniribnnd "t f,
rightly pointed out in a foundational remark, it was at this point-and not
when the Muslim Brotherhood was founded-that the essential histori
cal fracture opened up, after which in the Middle East, political thought The Omnipresent Diversity of Contemporary Islamism
would never be the same again.s
'·rtste ~ ~,o mnh o~ eon ignedre pd~irnedcetlnyc ea geraain tsot tchoel oenarialyl 1p9o9w0esr,, Isblaurtn aisgmai nthset nth dee pnlaotyivede eAs isse. cBoyn dn oewxp, ltahnisa thoarys bmeeetnh oladr gperloyv vidinesd imcaet ewdi.t hIt mhiyg ohltihgehrt sm tahjeo rf ahcytp tohtaht ,
e I es t at succeeded colonialism Dee h throughout these successive stages, the suppleness of the Islamic lexicon
generation after the Mu s 11. m Br ot he. rhoodP hu pd be avals, notwithstanding, a has enabled its adherents to enlist it in the service of extremely diverse
and international enVJ·ron men t h ad retai.n eda et en· 1ounded, the national social practices and modes of political action. In other words, "speaking
While several states had achi d . d cer am structural constants. Muslim" is a vocabulary, not a grammar: it is a means of naming things
vtFn0iafbhn aLasfoe s ot DtNt1 mt cih hoA9c)ueam un5 o~ru lc uiW6agndnnlh~e lsiitgl( vrze)iib_b ildastta 'y dyhet1ptn i u.ri9brot t seaohh6yNn dlsme2 e tea i .ohnc cUotefiorctdo neetonrn haididmtasete beil sdpo ySt.oL lna uetKf ghite oAe.meb~z f · re gMBccIa rs dho b eao :vrrna:d~m .e:eaa e neI,ltm r i~s,soFm; r •Bhn r onab ar asr noaoney tlouitt ~c si ttgeohemhh'e Fhnn e( r'oa srd hwfot, bne r hoane donte onlt omcl d dIie bdsc s ,wsrtreo uhautp sb h eLet·ems aIa i)tc·lrIbt t n dre sm..reiip s nebwbrp aaped roert reetitrneoispoe.sstpn e eessto nhis oeNon deoxpnsea npIre ntsoa e silctogvdhaoenaoria tniawkktinihloeessaeendntts' lopatutmeohcnosxa aetlsCEiity ticino rtlv otiogdbfeions eooa.nu.e sgl nIip soTant tto ibnhetgudhns,resne eeu tminathrdsshtnv ie ieatatadc holsm'ta slimei ol osa.a Rw " o nrhHsMacd soyyec hepummfrh s tofsee bahool,tdi nohrefmw yle aaIGie s sc cwss ilh tpsgaiuaian emolynonigenmsiinflcv se ooohapte f fc"unslr"a sacec iInoesu ohst dmsnlrihtaas achnewmlcdeai iaitppraitcypes strag tuea etlsoo shalss.yeo"lneiains nnctzi c nestibw e n adew oogdtyihshuv etoteeylhqrndr,o"ua ds A cfsrai eritettrzyoleh aeyt m oebhtd oo fi Ssn tnatethplhrrgxyieroeicps nou tlT-Ilgannasyaisdl nn l"tain hd mbhttoe hhaaoirieencs rf
thought Nas ~ national. In order to "retu ., ou e highly diverse, Mediterranean, from North to South, for his "Islamism." Today he leads a
• sensts, Baathists, and C . rn to the world of religious party, Ennahda, which forms part of a government close to the regime that
ommun1sts (whether in Egypt, Syria, was overthrown by the revolutionary wave of 2011. 9 Decades of propaganda
- -
UNDERSTANDING POLITICAL ISLAM
6 INTRODUCTION 7
. ed th Id that were Ennahda one day to win a majority at
h ad convtnc . e wIodr ply t'h e sinister principle o f"O ne M an, One Vote JectuaJ histories of this type of radicalization, from Sayyid Qutb to Osama
the ballot _box,,:tlwou da~nce it had made a decisive contribution to the Bin Laden, has convinced me that these were most often of a reactive
One Time. nstea , . . . nature-that is to say, that their founding motivation was an initial act of
··· . f h sidered the first truly democratJc const1tut1on in
adoption o w at was con . d io violence.11 My approach thus insists on the need to expand the scope of
·t ·elded without argument to bemg outvote . In May
the Ara b wor Id , 1 Y1 . • b observation beyond the actions of Isla mist actors alone, and to include in
• 10th Congress enshrined a strict separation etween its
2016, En na hda s . it their non-Islamist interlocutors too, be they local, regional, or interna
·u· agenda and its religious agenda, the latter bemg demoted to the
sptoa ltIu sc ao 1f a reference value. These particuI a r "Is I anu.s ts" mad e especi.a lly tioTnhaisl- absri wngesll mase, mtoo rpeu bt rfooardwlya rsdti lal,n t haeniarl ynsoins -Mthauts luimnd oenrceus.t s the domi
inclusive use of their "Muslim speech." Conversely, from the throne of his
nant reading of the mechanisms of sectarian radicalization. The doxa of
•caliphate," Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi enlisted _the _same voca_bulary f~om the common sense, which is especially endorsed in the thesis defended by
other extreme of the Jslamist spectrum, usmg 1t to especially radical and Gilles Kepel, holds that sectarian radicalization is the prerequisite of polit
openly exclusivist ends, and preaching an open schism with the categories ical radicalization, or its cause.12 I offer a strictly opposite interpretation.
of the Western political inheritance. In no sense is sectarian radicalization-that is, adopting demeaning or
Taking this extreme suppleness of the Islamist lexicon into account even criminalizing categories to define the Other's sense of belonging-the
quickly led me to practice a strict analytical separation. On the one hand trigger of political violence. Rather, it is merely an auxiliary or incidental
lie the fundamentally identity-based causes that explain its exponential factor, far more a product than it is a cause. This is old news that few,
spread. On the other lie distinct causalities that clarify the diversity of the however, wish to face up to. It can be summed up as follows: the assump
uses made oft he former. The explanation I propose-the widespread resort tion that what is required to calm tensions is to reform radical religious
to "speaking Muslim"-accounts for the relatively commonplace desire of thought leads down the wrong path. The region will not be pacified by
the peoples of the West's imperial periphery to restore a (religious) culture reforming religious thought. It is by pacifying the region that religious
that had long been perceived as having withstood its Western competitor's discourse can be reformed.
attempts to replace it. To resort to "speaking Muslim" thereby enabled My student backpacking days sowed the seeds of what I later felt to be
putting an end to the era of European symbolic hegemony. The expla a phase of intuitive accumulation. It gave me the opportunity to encoun
nation for the ways in which this lexicon was appropriated, and for their ter cultural and religious Otherness in every shape, form, and historical
diversity, must, however, be sought in fundamentally lay causalities. As configuration, from the Arab Mediterranean to Nepal and Japan. It made
against the claims of the culturalist approach, these causalities in no shape me more or less consciously internalize the conviction that cultural and
or form derive from any specificity inherent to Muslim religion or culture. religious differences were in no sense incompatible with my inherited,
Measuring these hypotheses against the development of radicalizing universalist humanism. In other words, I internalized the proverb that says
fractions among the political players of the Muslim world has more than "Never judge a book by its cover": a self-evident fact that is seldom easily
ev~r led me to defend one argument. This is the idea that understanding acknowledged as such.
this phenomenon requires focusing. not on the "Islamic" character of An extended period of teaching and PhD research in Algeria ( 1973-80)
the vocabulary of those rising up, but rather on the social causalities of then enabled me to embark on a more theoretical and historicized analysis
th~ir a_ctions-and, even more so, on their political causalities. By radi of Otherness. The French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS),
calization, I unde~sta~d here ~he fact of adopting a rejectionist language to which I was admitted in 1983, gave me the opportunity to spend several
an~ strate~ that imphes a split and, ultimately, a confrontation, with the lengthy and successive periods of immersion in the field: both the field
(Sh1a) Mushm or non-Muslim environment-and with th w t · of my research and the field of Otherness. It was in Egypt (1989-93) that
ronme t · • e es ern enVI-
self di; m p~~1cu 1a r. These paths thus differ from the approach of simple I began this process of frequently lifting anchor that nurtur~d the com
the -.di;,renti~ti~n ...M ost often, through the rhetoric of "Islamization," parative dimension upon which my approach came to be built. Lat_er, m
e~en_t1ation approach opens up onto the process of "cultural Yemen (1997-2003), Syria, and finally in Lebanon (2008- 13), I contmued
reappropr1ation . " Thi s can b e sa1' d to characterize the bulk of th I I . t on this path, making frequent shorter research trips (from Sudan t~ Ira()
movement. e s am1s
from each of these postings to most of the surroun~ng countnes. ~
Over the sweep of the past half century, studying the founding intel- between these extended postings, Islam in France-the Other at home.
-
r
::'lloi, .,,.,.. .. _,.,- - UNDERSTANDING pOLJTICAL ISLAM
9
INTRODUCTION
8
as I perceived i.t at the ti.m e, along with hm ost of my compatriots-began 10 of the crisis. In the establishment's narrative, the lslamists threatened
hapter of my researc . "democracy" and the "freedoms" that it suddenly pretended to embody,
conIns tiptaurtael lae ln, epwr ec se;t.i ni th?' threes etwarecnht ye-ntwabol eAdr ambe ctoou nintrtieersa,c at sw witehl l thaes wevaesn f werhvielne ttlhye rseel avyaelude bs yh aad s bmeaelnl sqeucittieo anl ioenf tthoe i tFs rpeanscth p-rsapcetaick~m. Tgh AisJ gveisn~aonn
"Wac,'a tihtdh eodmuoitzc es pnweso nro dlf dm' sog t hoa ener sae,x c tfero no mde dA upsetrriaoldia o tfo e xCphaitlrei' athtthi'o ronu tghhe reS,o fui nthah I l A y., f rtiwcao. intTelhlieg penatrstiya .t Ihna tE huarodp we,o int wthase ienlteecrtniaoJnisz ewda ws hpoulreeslayl ea. nd simply banned.
other theaters too k up a more structural place w1 . m mfy" r eseaIr c • inter- There followed extrajudiciaJ executions, forced disappearances, and the
ests. These were, in chronological order, the experience ~ . revdohutionary" generalization of torture, in tandem with !he systemati~ ~anipulation
'b h I led my first research project when I 6rst Jome t e CNRS, of the violence of "armed Islamist groups. Much of this Violence was
aLn1 dy tah, ew s eecroen d, longer-term arena was, m. eV1. ta bl y, the Is r~e1 1·- Pale s~1. n.ia n later shown to have consisted of "false flags" organized by the army. The
conflict That conflict gradually came to appear to me as bemg a persistent Paris attacks of 1995 and the assassination of the monks of Tibhirine in
echo of the old colonial disposition at the heart of the Arab world. 1996 were archetypes of the kinds of violence that the regime practiced
with complete impunity, even while blaming it on its opponents. They
exemplify the practices of a long civil war that would cost over 100,000
Between the Hammer of the Algerian Eradicators and the Anvil of
lives, including thousands of disappeared.13
French Islamophobia
Come 2019, despite a plethora of investigations and thoroughJy docu
In the second part of this book, I come to the circumstances in which my mented confessions, the vast majority of French public opinion still refuses
research choices led me to interact-often tensely-with my media and to accept the overwhelming responsibility of the junta in power. Imagine,
political environments, and with my key academic interlocutors. From then, at the onset of the 1990s, the level of resistance encountered by
my very earliest work, I grasped first the intellectual then the political a researcher who contradicted the official narrative, and who dared to
price there would be to pay for my approach to Islamism. Those who did convey the narrative of the "victims," whom he had met in their various
not share this approach considered it to be too complacently analytical. homes in exile. He could only become the target of violent protests, both
This cost soared from the early 1990s onwards, in successive contexts that within the academy and in the media and political arenas. Such, indeed,
warrant a brief recapitulation. was my case. Far from ebbing, this tension only increased over the next
In :4"1geria, the repression that struck the Islamic Salvation Front (Front two decades.
Islarruque du Salut, FIS) in the wake of its parliamentary election victory On the initially "Algerian" battlefield of the 1990s, the camp of those
of 1991 marked the_onset of a lengthy civil war. This founding page of who proposed an over-ideologized reading of Islamism received very
contemporary Al~enan and regional history thoroughly confirmed that powerful backup from the Levant In response to the Palestinian Islamist
most Fren~ media embraced a simplistic and one-sided understanding party Hamas asserting itself, the powerful mobilization of the pro-Israeli
htoi of nth Oe f I1sl9am?91• sIt nt rhem'n dd s tihgahtt , rethmea pinreodte dsto mwainvae ntth saitn tchee t hAe l g1er arima.na nF IrSe vtohI eu n cthaem epn dtirraem Iastliacmailslyt geennhearnactieodn ,t hae c iomnbdaelmanncaet ioofn p tohwate wr. aCso enxdcelumsinvaetliyo nid eo f
re~~.a:a!~:~ :~f ollow~ by mercil~ss count~r-revolutionary ologically based and stripped of any nuance, became the very core of an
ished then faded tw e harbmger of the Arab Springs" that tlour- Israel-centered discourse. That generation was represented as made up
1, 1962, that was h:i~1ny:a:: late~. Apart from the referendum of July of "fundamentalist enemies of peace." An authentic partnership was then
non-rigged elections in Al . ry h~erent context, these were the only forged between the Arab, Israeli, and W estem players of the anti-Islamist
opposition to the gates ofpgoenan istory. Quite legally, they brought the struggle. The Sharm al-Sheikh anti-terrorist summit of 1996 made this
Th wer. partnership explicit and, to a degree, institutionalized it
e prospect of a legalistic transfe f
only very briefly. With the unfaili r o power was, however, entertained In this play to criminalize the Islamist camp, Israel then joined forces
th~ .European Union leading the :1t&port of~e West, with France and with those authoritarian regimes that I have termed the • Arab Pinochets.•
shifted a fight that it knew it had l6ost in~ Alg~~an military establishment At the time, they sought out Western blessing. or even support., to contain
arena. To this end, it managed to i e political arena into the security their respective opposition movements. The anti-IsJamist paradigm would
mpose an utterly falsified representation henceforth become an essential cog in the self-justifying narrative of the
-
NG POLITICAL ISLAM INTRODUCTION J l
UNDERSTAND!
10 . es The effectiveness o f rai·s i· ng th e gauntlet
thoritarian Arab regim · pable. The later landmarks of this from Al-Qaeda to ISIS: lslamist "Revolution"-or the
mo"sIt t 'sa um e or the devi· (!· " became utnt stkosp of September 11. The y are well Exacerbation of Western failures?
o f ed by the a ac .
trend were accelerat eli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon proclaimed: This book has one last ambition. The breakthrough of ISIS in 2013, its
k n own. The very .n ext dna yB, _ilns raL a d en. Our Bin Laden is UY as. serd A rafat." It regional expansion in August 20~4, and its later recourse t~ international
"Everyone has his ow k that the European mon enounced terrorism provide the opportunity to reassess the analytical leads that
was within this analytical frame~o~ ns of 2006-on the grounds that the I had sketched out in Jslamism in the Shadow of al-Qaeda and other
O
the Palestinian parliamenta'! e ec hile its own observers had certified writing since 2011, against what may seem to be a ushift" in the historical
them This even w
lslamists had won . en free and fair. 14 trajectory of Islamism.
that these elections ha~ be France had fallen prey to its recurrent The spectacular breakthrough of ISIS from May 2014 has likely not
19 89
In the mea.ntcim ·e e, ss "in tchee n to th, e controversy surrounding the cartoons revolutionized the Islamist landscape as much as has been suggested. 16
"(Muslim) Vet 1 ns ' ad in _T hese foretold the reactions to the first Rather, it remains inscribed within the orbit of transnational radicalization,
2006
of the Prophet Muhamr_n . h ke of the Arab Spring of 2011. It then launched in the late 1980s by the founders of AJ-Qaeda. The emergence of
. I · ·c tones an I e wa · '
lslam1st e ectdio n VdJ the tern'b l e ser·i es of murderous attacks perpetrated by ISIS can be correlated with the same failures of political representation that
of course, en ureh f Isla,n " from Mehdi Nemmouche (May first produced Al-Qaeda. Even the strategy of anchoring their fight within
h · ts "in t e name o •
Frenc terrons Abd lh mid Abbaoud (presumed to be the master- a given territory, represented as an absolute ISIS innovation, is not all that
2014 in Brussels')b lt o p · ea ttaa cks of November 13, 2015), and M o h amed new. It bears recarnng that Ben Laden himself, despite his reluctance to
.mL aihnodu oaif.e tJ.h Be o0tue1 h5rin e a1 s( esJ uals aYsin 2ns0a 1te6d i nth Ne icjoeu) 'r tnharloisutgs ho fth Ceh Karolui·e a cHh eI' b bd roo .t hTe hr1's s wsuh e o-, ainc kTnaoliwblaend-greu ltehde A nfagthioann-issttaante.,1 7s Tohueg hmt atjoo rb nuoilvde hltiym osfe IlSf IaS fiosr ttwifioefdo lrde.d Foiursbtt,
cane sJsai·no una oryf a2t ta c ,k s Ie d whole swaths of pu bl ic opm· 1· on and the po.1 I· ti· c aJ given the Iraqi context, is the weight that it gives to its anti-Shia sectarian
classes of France and Europe, first, to tense up-and then to lurch mto a variable. Second is that the choice of the radicalist option-followed by
initial and growing success-is no longer at the periphery of the societies
process of lslamophobic radicalization. .
Very early on, the French left, with a few exceptions (a~ong th~m in question. It is deep within them, too.
the Green Party and the New Anticapitalist Party) gave the 1mpress1on This process of political radicalization is first and foremost defined by
that, in the race to retreat into the shell of identity politics, it meant to rejecting the inclusive stance towards the reappropriation of democratic
play the hare catching-up with the tortoise of the right that had set off thought that had been initiated by the Muslim Brotherhood. It replaces
earlier. It launched itself into the competition to reconquer the voters it this with an exclusionary condemnation of political thought as the merest
had lost to the National Front As Pascal Menoret and Baptiste Lanaspeze impiety. Its logical corollary is the turn away from the ballot box-that
wrote in 2006, "From Matignon [the office of France's prime minister] to is to say, away from the option embraced by the Muslim Brotherhood,
the French Academy, via Sciences-Po," a single idea became hegemonic: at the other end of the lslamist spectrum, and which the Arab counter
"Muslims contain jihadists like chrysalids contain butterflies." More than revolutions in some sense confirmed was unrealistic- in favor of an armed
ever before, "to seek to defend Islam from the accusations leveled at a struggle represented as unavoidable. This is the dynamic expressed by
billion and a half Muslims" comes with a steep price-tag attached: "To be those who remind us that their respective strategic choices enabled the
exposed [. .. ) to the accusation of 'Islamo-leftism,' of having Islamist, i.e. jihadists of ISIS to occupy half of Iraq. Meantime, it enabled the Muslim
jihadist, sympathies-in short: of treason. "15 For my part, I remain ready Brothers to occupy ... almost every prison cell in their country.
to pay_that pric_e. .E ven if'. to my mind, what is at stake is not "defending The novelty of ISIS lies less in its ideological or political hardening than
Islam. Rather, 1t 1s explaming how and why the Islamic vocabulary came in the abrupt increase in the mobilizing capacity of the radical Islamist
to~~ the mode of expression of present-day rebellions that are far more fraction. For a long time, uislamist radicals" in some sense respected the
porhlt ical than they are reli' g·i ous, crowni.n g hi.s tori.c al processes that are territorial limits determined by their local conditions. Their hold was
pe ectly amenable to being deconstructed. limited to the periphery of the societies that had seen them arise. The
entrance of ISIS into Mosul in August 2014 was cheered by at least some
of its residents. It underscored a deep-rooted illness that consumes many
■ clSh