Whilst HT and other groups are not pleasant

Not sure how that “not” got in there. Apologies for any confusion.

The problem I see is not so much of cultural relativism as cultural incommensurability, an inability to describe Islamist theo-political meanings and behaviours in terms that actually capture the real, crucial fundamental differences from the meanings we attach to our vocabulary.

This is a very interesting point. It is probably very valid when applied to attempts to fully understand what lies behind a Hamas militant, less so I feel when talking about British youth being radicalised. Even though we are often talking about groups with global reach, their UK franchises are British phenomena which know very well how to operate in this predominantly secular milieu.

Which is why I feel that the hopes which are so often pinned on Sufism are rather misguided as it is often tied to a regionally and culturally specific tariqa.

Shiv Malik’s article in Prospect makes a similar observation:

Gultasab told me that his brother had found that the traditional, community-run mosque on Hardy Street had nothing to offer him. The people who ran the mosque had no idea how to connect with the second generation, said Gultasab. They spoke and wrote in Urdu, and the only time they interacted with the younger Muslims was when they taught them to recite the Koran by rote—in Arabic.

The Wahhabis did things differently. They delivered sermons and printed publications in English. Sidique’s Urdu was poor, so the only things on Islam he could read were Wahhabi-approved publications. Gultasab said that Sidique’s progression to Wahhabism was reinforced by the fact that some of his friends, and future Mullah boys, were converting too.

Whilst HT and other groups are not pleasant – which is intrinsically a problem – their prevalence in the UK and their roles in British Muslim life is a symptom of the absence of a recognisable British Islam (not to suggest that there should be only one – but there should be at least one). The Sufi Muslim Council and others do not seem well placed to cope with this but they’re less bad than certain other groups.

Fortunately for everyone, the vast majority of Muslims in this country have created a personal British Muslim identity for themselves, but there are very few groups out there propagating this and there are many propagating other visions of Islam.

Which is all a very long winded way of saying that we should not underestimate the western nature of the British branches of any of these groups nor downplay out own ability to understand such people who are radicalised by them. Indeed, we may well be better placed to reach an understanding than some of the people who are deemed to be “within their community” but who, in reality, are unfamiliar with the non-religious mindset and therefore can not give meaningful answers as to why or how it can become radicalised.

it is interesting that you say the term islamism has become problematised by becoming to be seen as increasingly a negative term.

I was concerned here with the term pan-Islamism, which always used to be used in a similar manner to pan-Arabism has become a much less useful term as the term Islamism has become more widespread. That said, Islamism is – as you observe – a very useful term so this change is not to be mourned.

Perhaps, perhaps, one day in Turkey or even in Iran such a transformation to a democratic Islamic political theology will occur.

We may not have that long to wait with Turkey as the AKP and the secularists reach some kind of reconciliation (or quite the opposite – we’ll have to wait and see).

The problem I see is not so much of cultural relativism as cultural incommensurability, an inability to describe Islamist theo-political meanings and behaviours in terms that actually capture the real, crucial fundamental differences from the meanings we attach to our vocabulary.

This is a very interesting point. It is probably very valid when applied to attempts to fully understand what lies behind a Hamas militant, less so I feel when talking about British youth being radicalised. Even though we are often talking about groups with global reach, their UK franchises are British phenomena which know very well how to operate in this predominantly secular milieu.

Which is why I feel that the hopes which are so often pinned on Sufism are rather misguided as it is often tied to a regionally and culturally specific tariqa.

Shiv Malik’s article in Prospect makes a similar observation:

Gultasab told me that his brother had found that the traditional, community-run mosque on Hardy Street had nothing to offer him. The people who ran the mosque had no idea how to connect with the second generation, said Gultasab. They spoke and wrote in Urdu, and the only time they interacted with the younger Muslims was when they taught them to recite the Koran by rote—in Arabic.

The Wahhabis did things differently. They delivered sermons and printed publications in English. Sidique’s Urdu was poor, so the only things on Islam he could read were Wahhabi-approved publications. Gultasab said that Sidique’s progression to Wahhabism was reinforced by the fact that some of his friends, and future Mullah boys, were converting too.

Whilst HT and other groups are not pleasant – which is intrinsically a problem – their prevalence in the UK and their roles in British Muslim life is a symptom of the absence of a recognisable British Islam (not to suggest that there should be only one – but there should be at least one). The Sufi Muslim Council and others do not seem well placed to cope with this but they’re less bad than certain other groups.

Fortunately for everyone, the vast majority of Muslims in this country have created a personal British Muslim identity for themselves, but there are very few groups out there propagating this and there are many propagating other visions of Islam.

Which is all a very long winded way of saying that we should not underestimate the western nature of the British branches of any of these groups nor downplay out own ability to understand such people who are radicalised by them. Indeed, we may well be better placed to reach an understanding than some of the people who are deemed to be “within their community” but who, in reality, are unfamiliar with the no

You or I could use such terms and perhaps they could gain a wider currency as long as we always described clearly what we were talking about.

Whether we alwatys know what we are talking about is another matter.

I do not wish to be deliberately obscure, please let me explain.

We have a problem of cultural relativism obviously but not of the obvious or usually understood kind.

When a Guardian journalist, let us use the most wretched example of the kind Madeleine Bunting, says for instance (implying Islamophobia and racist attitudes among those who disagree) that the veil, or rather the niqab, is an expression of intense piety, and an expression of social status among Gulf arabs, she may in a culturally specific but rather meaningless way be right.

The fact that she does not explore the domestic uk Islamist/jihadi political overtones in its adoption among third generation young British women of families of pakistani or bangladeshi origin, who put on the veil as a political act claiming a ‘born again’ ethnic authenticity as a ‘religious’ right, is typical of such a shallow hectoring style of demanding that we understand cultural difference whilst singularly failing to do so.

The problem I see is not so much of cultural relativism as cultural incommensurability, an inability to describe Islamist theo-political meanings and behaviours in terms that actually capture the real, crucial fundamental differences from the meanings we attach to our vocabulary.

The reason for this is basically centuries of secularisation, for centuries through the vehicle of the Holy Roman Church itself as it secularised through the middle ages (hence secular priest as opposed to a monk) way before the reformation or the enlightenment.

So even when Bunting tries to capture what she sees as the theological orthodoxy of intense piety she sees this through her catholic faith which is as far away in relevant meaning from the orthopraxy of veiling in many Muslim communities as it is possible to get.

We must understand the modernist political nature of Islamism as well as understanding the socially embedded religious mind.

I have had several extremely thoughtful discussions here with Yossi UK who as an orthodox jew is far better located t understand the nature of the religious mind lived through an experience of all enveloping religion.

it is interesting that you say the term islamism has become problematised by becoming to be seen as increasingly a negative term.

I do not see this as a problem, as I see that the negativity is inherent to its theopolitical totalitarianism.

When I first encountered the term during the Iranian revolution islamists used the word to describe their very clear and well articulated version of a revolutionary state Islam.

I have noticed that British islamists are getting more antsy about the term, which just a short while ago they were happy to use because they could pretend that it was a simple extension of their faith into the public arena, and as religious belief in English culture is protected from rude discussion or enquiry, this was a very cosy term.

Just a short time ago even using the term Islamist could get one labelled as an islamophobe as it seemed to question a faith in a culturally unacceptable way.

I have allways used the term (along with many qualifiers) and refused to accept the term Islamophobia as it defines itself as including both of anti-Muslim discrimination, and criticism of islam as a belief system and criticism of the theo-political beliefs of Islamists.

The fact that anti-Muslim bigots may wish to see islam as equivalent to Islamism should not blind us to the fact that islamist ideologues claim that islam is the religion and islamism is the practice (to borrow a formulation from radical lesbian feminism).

I think this is all rather good and it shows that some of us who have persisted with a degree of distinction and subtlety have got the Islamists on the run.

Now perhaps I differ from you here, because while I am prepared to discuss different forms of Islamism and the very different state forms they might seek or eventually produce I have not seen anything other than a theocracy as the objective of this political Islamic revivalist movement.

If I were to see anywhere in the world a good news islam of a 19thC Revivalist Tent kind or an English civic Methodism or even a Catholic Christian Democracy in the current streams of Islamist political theology then I would worry that islamism was harshly seen as entirely negative but I don’t.

Perhaps, perhaps, one day in Turkey or even in Iran such a transformation to a democratic Islamic political theology will occur.

Perhaps Sufism will enter a counterbalancing revivalism and become that Islamic methodism (it is entirely culturally commensurate with Sufi social orders), but it will be very visible when it does, until that time we are left with a militant theocratic rival to liberal plural democracies and we have to keep on calling it what it is.

You mischaracterisation of East timor is remarkable. Indonesia is 85% Muslim and east timor 95% Catholic, and those Catholics refused to comply with, or to conform to, the protection racket Indonesia was attempting to impose. East timor would not fold and become Indonesia’s bitch.

Mettaculture observed that this violence was not to do with Islamism but with “good old pancasila Indonesian (Suharto style) nationalism“.
Your response is to point out that Muslims are involved. Such perspicuity.

Thank you for your detailed and nuanced reply. I owe you an apology as I do appear to have mis-characterised your position.

Not a problem. Such confusions are inherent to debates on blogs. Thank you for your interesting comments and reminder about the Times article, it treats the topic of Hamas with a level of nuance I didn’t think was possible in the British press these days. I would be very interested to read more of his tracing Hamas back to the Mufti.

I am often concerned that the term pan-Islamism is just seen as a brotherhood of the Ummah than as a territorial state subject to theocratic rule. Without creating terms for the sake of it I feel that both you and I and others here are keen to develop a robust terminology for discussing these issues clearly.

Perhaps a useful distinction between Islamist nationalism and pan islamist nationalism and Caliphist nationalism can be made when appropriate.

Pan-Islamism is a very limited term. Not least because the increasing currency of Islamism with generally negative implications significantly changes the connotations of pan-Islamism. Also, as you rightly observe, it fails to distinguish between the ethereal concept of a global Umma uniting Muslims around the world in belief only and the very temporal and earthly concept of uniting Muslims in one state run along somebody or other’s vision of Islamic law.

We need to have terminology for each of these groups:
1) Those who want an Islamic state in their own country – where Islamic state means one with modern/western infrastructure but laws and a certain amount of practice derived from an interpretation of the sources of Islamic law. Roughly speaking JI would fit into this category I suspect.
2) Those who want an Islamic state along the same lines but comprised of all countries where the majority are Muslims/which had been ruled by Islamic rulers in the past. The obvious example being Hamas.
3) Those who want a Caliphate with the meaning of a single individual as Caliph ruling over all Muslim majority countries. HT.
4) Those who want a Caliphate with that meaning but ruling over the whole world. Obviously an extreme minority position – al-Muhajiroun types only really.

I would tentatively suggest:
1) Domestic Islamism or Nationalist Islamism
2) Pan-Islamic Islamism or Internationalist Islamism
3) Caliphism
4) Globalist Caliphism
Other terms could then be added for an accurate definition of any one group.

It really is a shame that discourse about Islam and phenomena related with Islam is generally at such a dire level that a comprehensive set of terms in not already in common usage.

Dressing up the vulgar in silk and lace terminology does not change anything.

Caliphist, pan-islamist, shiite modernist, pan-islamism…all of that is irrelevant. You are enabling islamist apologists to muddy the waters and to sow confusion by allowing them to introduce a language and vocabulary that denotes nothing, and which is, thus, virtually meaningless and worthless. The maintenance of an almost complete ambiguity regarding Islam’s true nature AND aims is one of the central strategies of islamist apologists. If you cannot clearly and concisely describe and define your enemy, then you cannot effectively combat it.

Keep it simple and clear.

Islam was, is, and probably always will be nothing more than just an elaborate protection racket. A racket that moves into a territory, claims it as its turf, and then demands payment, on threat of violence, from the inhabitants of that territory.

You are drowning in a sea of worthless vocabulary, while at the same time inadvertently gracing and legitimising a primitive, tribal, mafioso-ridden culture, which is long past its best-before, by assigning it the status and imperial airs of August Ancient Rome.

You mischaracterisation of East timor is remarkable. Indonesia is 85% Muslim and east timor 95% Catholic, and those Catholics refused to comply with, or to conform to, the protection racket Indonesia was attempting to impose. East timor would not fold and become Indonesia’s bitch.

I repeat:I’m talking about a swath of territory, 12,000 miles long, containing a myriad of different cultures and languages all of which have, as their only point in common, Islam’s core texts.

All along that swath of territory there is bloodshed and violence as islam (and pretty much every strain of it) attempts to impose its protection-racket and as free people resist that imposition.

Well John P you are wrong generally I am nothing like Annie Lennox (though I once bleached my hair in the 80’s) and am far from duped.

You are wrong in the specifics East Timor was nothing to do with Jihad but good old pancasila Indonesian (Suharto style) nationalism.

Indonesian islamism is all about Aceh seperatism not a pan-Islamist reconstituted Indonesia (though there is a future danger towards that direction Bali being the ‘people not of the book’ principle target)

JLM. Apologies for failing to notice your comment before.

While the phrasing may have been poor I don’t think the author meant that Islam is the problem.

Maybe you are right. But all we really have to go on is the juxtaposition of Hamas, Islam (NB, not Islamism/any of the other possible descriptions for extremist groups but Islam the monolith) and blood:

We make out Hamas is some kind of heroic resistance but close our eyes and ears to its horrors.
Islam has bloody borders but it has bloody innards too.

It seems pretty clear to me, but unless the author feels like clarifying for us this discussion will probably not get very far. That said, later on in that same thread he/she is accused of being an agent provocateur from HP so perhaps a clarification would be easy to obtain.

Thank you for your detailed and nuanced reply. I owe you an apology as I do appear to have mis-characterised your position.

I do remember the thread about marriage and Sharia law which became as so many a tangled thread.

However the formal equality of women as theological beings before Allah’s grace and through him the possibility of eternal trascendance in paradise is quite distinct from a woman’s socio-legal position in all extant schools of islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) and in practice before Sharia courts.

I accept that these distinctions are often difficult to parse in limited comments boxes and it is over time that I shall enjoy reading your comments and getting to know your views.

On the specific geo-political and theo-political claims of Hamas that may translate into action over actual territory, I would draw your attention to the ‘Hamas Hydra’ thread below.

Specifically I urge you to read the full article by Amir Taheri via the link or

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article5477420.ece

He describes the non-Palestinian territorial/religious ambitions of Hamas thus;

‘Although officially created in 1987, Hamas’s roots go back to the 1930s when Haj Amin al-Hussaini, the Grand Mufti of Palestine under the British Mandate, allied himself with Hitler and dreamt of reviving the Islamic Caliphate with himself as Caliph.
That Hamas cares little about Palestine as a would-be nation state is clear from its name and charter. Hamas is the Arab acronym for “Islamic Resistance Movement”, making it clear that the movement regards Palestine not as a nation in its own right but as a small part of the ummah, the community of believers. Hamas is the only significant party in Palestine whose name does not include the words Palestine or Palestinian.
To Hamas ideologues, such as the late Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, love of Palestine as a nation is a form of sherk, that is to say false worship or idolatry. Hamas sees Palestinian nationalists such as Abu Mazen as traitors to Islam.’

(BTW Amir Taheri’s book The Persian Night: Iran Under the Khomeinist Revolution: Encounter Books seems like a must read)

Now I am sure it is arguable that Hamas’ ambitions today are theo-politically pan-Islamist rather than specifically Caliphist particularly as it falls more heavily under the influence of Shiite modernist pan-Islamism.

However I am often concerned that the term pan-Islamism is just seen as a brotherhood of the Ummah than as a territorial state subject to theocratic rule. Without creating terms for the sake of it I feel that both you and I and others here are keen to develop a robust terminology for discussing these issues clearly.

Perhaps a useful distinction between Islamist nationalism and pan islamist nationalism and Caliphist nationalism can be made when appropriate.

After all it is not that Islamist nationallism does not have real world territorial ambitions, rather it is that these ambitions can not be met by any state or supra-national agency, based on the concept of state sovereignty, that actually comprises the political reality of todays world.

A large number of territorial conflicts in todays world are the product of islamist nationalisms that seek seperatist, or unifcationist re-creations of the current global political Atlas of the world based solely on a perceived Islamic right to sovereignty over those lands.

After decades of decolonisation we are witnessing a pan-Islamist recolonisation movement that has to bee seen clearly for what it is to be confronted.