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Being Muslim: Islam, Islamism and Identity Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Salwa Ismail
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Abstract

The paper explores the construction of both Muslim and Islamist identities and the ways in which they interact, converge and diverge. This exploration is set against the background of debates on the nature of Islamism and its positioning vis-à-vis modernity and post-modernity. The paper argues that processes of modernity and post-modernity may be at work in the production of Muslim identities, but highlights the need to examine how different dimensions of identity formation such as socio-economic position, gender, age and lifestyle enter into the formation of Muslim selves. This is made necessary if we accept the premise of the sociality and historicity of religion.

Type
Politics of Identity – VI
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 39 , Issue 4 , 2004 , pp. 614 - 631
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 2004

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References

1 ‘The Politics of Identity’ is an ongoing series edited by Richard Bellamy.

2 For a discussion of conservative Islamism see Ismail, Salwa, ‘Confronting the Other: Identity, Culture, Politics and Conservative Islamism in Egypt’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 30 (1998), pp. 199–225.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Reprinted in Salwa Ismail, Rethinking Islamist Politics: Culture, the State and Islamism, London, I. B. Tauris, 2003.

3 See, for example, Hrair Dekmejian, ‘Islamic Revival, Catalysts, Categories and Consequences’, in Shireen Hunter (ed.), The Politics of Islamic Revivalism, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1988, pp. 3–22; John Obert Voll, Islam, Continuity and Change in the Modern World, 2nd edn, Syracuse, Syracuse University Press, 1994.

4 The following discussion of the adultery and abortion cases draws on Ismail, Rethinking Islamist Politics, op. cit., pp. 18–19.

5 Nabil Abd al-Fatah and Diya Rashwan, Taqrir al-Hala al-Dinniya fi Misr (Report on the Condition of Religion in Egypt), Cairo, Markaz al-Ahram lil-Buhuth al-Istratijiya, 1996.

6 This case is discussed in Nadia Abu Zahra, The Pure and the Powerful: Comparative Studies in Contemporary Muslim Societies, Reading, Ithaca Press, 1997.

7 This case is discussed in Ferrié, Jean-Noël, ‘Prier pour disposer de soi: Le sens et la fonction de la prière de demande dans l’Islam marocain actuel’, Annuaire de l’Afrique du Nord, 33 (1994), pp. 113–27.Google Scholar

8 Some Islamist women's groups in Morocco provide support to unmarried women seeking abortions. Their rationale for extending this kind of support may be different from the case discussed here. It is likely that their intervention is part of a vision of reform and provision for repentance and self-improvement. See Connie Carøe Christiansen, ‘Women's Islamic Activism: Between Self-Practices and Social Reform Efforts’, in John L. Esposito and François Burgat (eds), Modernizing Islam: Religion in the Public Sphere in Europe and the Middle East, New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press, 2003, pp. 145–65.

9 Ferrié, ‘Prier pour disposer du soi’, op. cit., p. 125.

10 Ferrié, Jean Noël, ‘Vers une anthropologie deconstructiviste des sociétés musulmanes du Maghreb’, Peuples méditerranéens, 54–5 (JanuaryJune 1991), pp. 229–45.Google Scholar

11 Ibid.

12 For an elaboration on the idea of the historicity of Islamic reason see Muhammad Arkoun, Tarikhiyat al-Fikr al-Arabi al-Islami (The Historicity of Arab-Islamic Thought), Beirut, Markaz al-Inma’ al-Qawmi, 1987.

13 My reading of Ferrié, ‘Vers une anthropologie deconstructiviste’, op. cit., p. 238.

14 Talal Asad, ‘The Construction of Religion as an Anthropological Category’, in Michael Lambeck (ed.), A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion, Oxford, Blackwell, 2002, p. 116.

15 Ibid., p. 128.

16 Ernest Gellner, Muslim Society, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1982.

17 See Gellner, Ernest, ‘Civil Society in Historical Context’, International Social Science Journal, 43: 3 (August 1991), pp. 496–510.Google Scholar

18 See Bryan S. Turner, Orientalism, Postmodernism and Globalism, London, Routledge, 1994; and Akbar Ahmed, Post-Modernism and Islam, London, Routledge, 1992.

19 Benjamin Barber, Jihad Versus McWorld, New York, Balantine Books, 1995.

20 Turner, Orientalism, Postmodernism and Globalism, op. cit., pp. 17, 78, 90, 92.

21 Olivier Roy, ‘Le Post-islamisme’, in Olivier Roy and Patrick Haenni (eds), Revue du Monde Musulman et de la Méditerranée, 85–6 (1999), pp. 11–30.

22 For a critical discussion of the psycho-social approach to Islamist movements, see Ismail, Salwa, ‘The Popular Movement Dimensions of Contemporary Militant Islamism: Socio-Spatial Determinants in the Cairo Urban Setting’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 42: 2 (2000), pp. 363–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Reprinted in Ismail, Rethinking Islamist Politics, op. cit.

23 Dale Eickelman and James Piscatori, Muslim Politics, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1996.

24 Ulrich Beck, Risk Society, London, Sage, 1992; Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 1991.

25 Fariba Adelkhah, Being Modern in Iran, London, Hurst, 1999. The comparison with the unfolding of projects of modernity in Malaysia is instructive. There, the shari‘a courts are engaged in the production of an individualized Malaysian Muslim identity while also contributing to the rationalization, if not the dissolution, of the bonds of kinship and tribe. These efforts are inscribed in the broader state objective of instituting disciplinary mechanisms that are at the service of its project of modernity. See Michael G. Peletz, Islamic Modern: Religious Courts and Cultural Politics in Malaysia, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2002, in particular pp. 204–22.

26 Adelkhah, Being Modern in Iran, op. cit., p. 110.

27 Patrick Haenni and Olivier Roy, ‘Au-delà du repli identitaire, dans les espaces de convergence entre islamisation et globalisation’, mimeo, September 2002.

28 Yael Navaro-Yashin, ‘The Market for Identities: Secularism, Islamism, Commodities’, in Deniz Kandiyoti and Ayse Saktanber (eds), Fragments of Culture: The Everyday of Modern Turkey, New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press, 2002, pp. 221–53.

29 Jenny White, ‘The Islamist Paradox’, in Kandiyoti and Saktanber, Fragments of Culture, op. cit., p. 208. The inscription of veiling in spatial and symbolic representations shaped by gender, the Islamist–secularist divide and class in Istanbul is examined in Secor, Anna J., ‘The Veil and Urban Space in Istanbul: Women's Dress, Mobility and Islamic Knowledge’, Gender, Place and Culture, 9: 1 (2002), pp. 5–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 See Linda Herrera, ‘Islamization and Education in Egypt: Between Politics, Culture and the Market’, in John L. Esposito and François Burgat (eds), Modernizing Islam: Religion in the Public Sphere in Europe and the Middle East, New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press, 2003, pp. 167–89.

31 These interviews were part of field research I conducted on everyday politics in Cairo's new urban quarters (conventionally referred to as the informal housing communities) in 2000 and 2001. This research was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council of Great Britain.

32 Ayse Saktanbar, ‘ “We Pray Like You Have Fun”: New Islamic Youth in Turkey between Intellectualism and Popular Culture’, in Kandiyoti and Saktanber, Fragments of Culture, op. cit., p. 265.

33 A parallel experience among youths in Algeria is documented in Vergès, Miriem, ‘Les jeunes, le stade, le FIS: Vers une analyse de l’action portestaire’, Maghreb-Machrek, 154 (OctoberDecember 1996), pp. 48–54.Google Scholar

34 Zadie Smith, White Teeth, London, Hamish Hamilton, 2000, p. 295.