We should talk on this. Maybe DavidT could forward you my email if you asked him.

The whole point I would argue is that in analyzing and contesting Islamism we (like the Islamists themselves) do not reach for an easy dualism but think always in theo-political terms.

To paraphrase Malise Ruthven Islam and Islamism must be continually distinguished as they seek to continually overlap each other.

Further we should not take Islamic historiography (hagiography) as history.

The Islamic state (and the notional source of the Islamist state) was founded not by Muhammed, who barely managed to keep Arabia together during his lifetime, but by his successors the ‘rightful’ Rashidun caliphate.

Abu Bakr succeeding Muhammed engaged in the ‘Ridda’ or apostasy wars as they are seen in Islamic history.

We should see them as theo-political wars establishing a core unified Arab Muslim state.

the islamic polity however was a great and detailed massive revolution by the brilliant political, administrative and judicial genius Umar who incorporated most of the Sassanid Imperial political and administrative structures along with the military and internal security service as state departments.

While Umar was a political pragmatist and ‘multi-culturalist’ for the conquered peoples of the Persian and Byzantine Empires he was an austere authoritarian ‘Calvin’ like religious ideologue who innovated and called it tradition.

He authorised the final and complete redaction of the Quran (its final rescension actually being under Uthman) and the compilation of the Hadith and the stipending of the Sahabi (companions of the prophet) and a state wage for the Qadis (judges) of his new administrative (as well as civil) courts.

Umar created the core of a ‘Calvinist’ or fundamentalist ‘original intent’ political Islam which has been the point of return for fundamentalist strains in Islam ever since.

There have been at least two ‘reformations’ in Islam, the first was the elimination of the Mutazalites and the establishment of a Sunni orthodoxy downplaying free will and stressing pre-destination (very calvinist) which is of prime socio-political importance in the closing of the gates of ijtihad (free enquiry) and thus ending the Golden age of islam in the 14th C.

An orthodox sunni Muslim education dictates a strong and violent opposition to this extirpated heresy that it operates as a theological, theo-political halter to a ‘progressive reform’ of Islam based upon reason and innovation in religion and theo-politics.

With the triumph of one sect of the second Muslim reformation we are now living through Wahabism and its fundamentalist and austere return to the relious and political form of the righteous Caliphate, we see, as it were by analogy, that calvin has defeated the Pope and occupied Rome.

We need to see that what passes for orthodoxy in the Muslim world today, the austere sect of the Kingdom of Saud, is able to project itself ideologically, theo-politically by the stage managment of Hadj and the illiberal use of oil money to dominate the Muslim world, its religious texts and the official interpretations allowed for those texts.

Other radical political Islams such as the jamaat i Islami (Dawdood) and the Muslim Brotherhood (Qutb) have had their Calvins too and we should not overstress the political innovations of absorbing anti-democratic totalitarian thought of fascism and communism without also understanding the fundamentalist theological (hence theo-political) ‘Calvinist/Lutheran’ anti-humanist innovations of islamist thinkers.

This is crucial because it is all well and good saying that Islamism is really dressed up Marxism and fascism, without making clear that it is dressed only in the language of Islam.

You will not identify an Islamist by their political vocabulary they do not speak in such western dualist terms, even if most of their concepts are alien to traditional Muslim thought and practice.

Perhaps those who have studied the history of western ideas, particularly political ideas, may be better able to identify totalitarian or revolutionary political ideas by the contours of the concepts as deployed, but clearly a lot of doctrinaire political liberals and leftists cannot.

Therefore a real reader on ‘What is Islamism’ would be a ‘Key words’ (a la Raymond Williams) annotated Islamic theo-political glossary, that specifically identifies and interrogates Islamic terms that are used in novel Islamically inflected ways.

Obviously Caliphate and Shariah now have specific modern (even heretical to islams traditions) Islamist meanings.

There are many more crucial terms to understand; jahiliyah, shirk, bid’ah, tawhid, fiqh.

These terms are deployed in specific ways by Islamists, as is their Muslim hagiography and historicity which emphasises foundational events for a true and pure reading of Islam.

Without such a reader I would argue that no amount of repetition that Islamism is a reactionary and illegitimate departure from Islam, is going to help anyone to be alert to and spot the next Islamist speaker or event that wants to book their premises or teach their children.

Adrian Morgan.

I would be interested in collaborating on such a project an ‘Islamist Glossary: Key terms and concepts’ if you are interested

A brilliant post that resonates with this ex-Muslim.

There are three reasons why it’s important. The first is simply that it is true, according to Muslim documentation about Mahommed, and people should tell the truth. Especially when the right to tell the truth about Mahommed comes under threat. That’s when a right becomes a duty.

The second is that venerating Mahommed is as morally offensive as claiming that Hitler or Stalin or Mao were saintly and perfect men. Revulsion at the veneration of Mahommed is a sign that one’s moral sense is still working. That would be true even if it were tactically wrong to express disgust when a mass-murderer, serial rapist. pedophile, war-lord etc.

Third, it’s not tactically wrong to challenge Islamic belief or Mahommed’s moral standing. Nobody is suggesting that the only thing that anyone is allowed to say about Islam is that its founder was an arsehole and its doctrines are a mixture of ludicrous nonsense (flaming horses, djinns, 77 virgins or raisins) and evil nonsense (all that murder, slavery, dhimmi stuff, etc).

Some people say those true things about Islam and its founder, and other people can say nicer things. There’s room for a range of approaches, but tactically, cops often find that the soft cop does better when there’s also a tough cop hovering around. Two approaches – or more – all working at once is what’s likely to work best.

Moreover, telling the truth about Mahommed will have a moderating effect because when knowledge of Mahommed’s actions gets more widely known – instead of Karen Armstrong bullshit – it will give Mullahs something useful to do instead of proclaiming Islam’s perfection and making up rules on when it’s okay to kill people.

Instead, they’ll have to start explaining that Mahommed wasn’t _really_ like that. That necessarily involves arguing that we shouldn’t read the Hadith and Quran too literally (maybe Aisha wasn’t really nine when Mahommed raped her, maybe he didn’t really murder all those people, etc). The other possible defence of Mahommed involves arguing that he was a good man for his time, but you can’t directly apply his examples or teachings today. Progress, right?

In short, telling the truth will force at least some of Islam’s propagators – that is, the ones most interested in living in the modern world – to become a little more modest in their claims for Mahommed. Modesty is a great source of moderation.

Finally, I have friends who live in some ex-patriate Muslim communities in Australia. I know that speaking disrespectfully about Mahommed can be a bloody great relief to people who have never, in all their lives, heard anything but pious bullshit and bhuh. Publically expressed disrespect for Mahommed tells people who are thinking of leaving Islam, or at least loosening up, that they are not alone: they are not deluded, insane or evil.

Even if they remain Muslims, hearing a bit of disrespect (well, contempt, actually) can be a gust of fresh air.

Some people seem to think that all “Muslims” will react to truth-telling about Mahommed with such deranged rage that they’ll never listen to a Western voice ever again. And We’ll Have Ruined Moderation Forever, oh noes!

But that just isn’t so. The people who get batshit crazy will be the ones who don’t like democracy, sexual equality, religious freedom etc anyway. Most will respond, “well, yes, there are things that make us uncomfortable but … there’s still good stuff in Islam, and that’s what I’m in Islam for and the kind of Muslim I am.” That’s good. And some will react, “finally! about time someone said that.”

In a really stifling atmosphere, it’s not all that helpful to refuse to tell the truth about Mahommed. Disrespect for a violent conman, in a community where you mostly don’t get to hear any, can be like a drink of water in a desert.

I remember when I was the only non-Christian I knew, and I saw a copy of “Why I am not a Christian”. The book’s a bit slap-dash, to tell the truth, but it did tell me I wasn’t alone, and that I didn’t have to go along with the polite acceptance of obvious malign bullshit. (Christianity, that is, though Islam is far worse.) I still remember the relief at hearing another voice from outside the religion I was brought up in. I wouldn’t want to deny that incredible feeling of relief to anyone.

A mass-murdering, serial rapist, pedophile, robber, war-lord, bandit and ludicrous conman is NOT a perfect human being.

Say it loud. Repeat as often as necessary.

As for the arguments about how the Prophet Mohammed stands up in the eyes of contemporary morality, it’s important to remember that he was a political and military leader in the seventh century AD. Of course he committed what we would now see as terrible crimes. No leader of any sort, and in fact few people in general, from that time would be considered to be “good” people by modern standards. What we consider to be acts of monstrous cruelty now would be considered legitimate tools of statecraft back then. Eventually, Muslims will begin to question the orthodox viewpoints on the life of Mohammed and the history of Islam, in exactly the same way that most Christians have now learnt to question and criticise the history of their own faith. If non-Muslims fall into the trap of denouncing Islam in its entirety as being somehow “intrinsically evil” for the actions of Islam in the past and the actions of some Muslim groups now, we will only succeed in creating a siege mentality within Muslim communities, which will force many of the growing number of moderate, progressive Muslims into returning to the old order and all of its regressionism, militarism and totalitarianism.

Sorry for the long post. I’ve only just realised how long it’s actually turned out.

Hmmm. good job you didn’t mention Calvin then instead of Luther because by any standards he was far more fanatical about religion than the Popes. Was cathollicism really challenged because it became fanatical or because it became decadent and lazy (particularly about its interpretations of scripture?) There is a way of looking at Luther’s revolution as one that made the church even more fundamental and led to the most fundamental christianity of them all in puritanism.

The massacres of the freethinking people of Albi and Carcassonne, the Waldenses of Lyons and the Vaudois show that the Catholic Church at that time was totalitarian, violent and supremacist.

What it does not show however is that all catholic believers were (or are) totalitarian, violent and supremacist. So when I say that there is as much point in arguing about islam in a discussion about Islamists as there is in arguing with a catholic about the Albigensian crusade, given it is an impossibility: even with the super powers invested in me by HP, for me to be arguing with someone from the 13th century, I must surely mean a modern catholic (a large proportion of whom would probably not even have heard of cathars let alone be prepared to accept the blame for their massacre.)

Religion should be personal, like one’s sex life. Which is why I want Rowan Williams to fuck off and take his 26 Bishops out of the House of Lords.

well you will get no disagreement from me on that one.

By the way I’m not even sure what you think I think you are stating! As I said, you were first to attribute a different meaning to what I said so it is a bit rich to start whining that it is being done to you, even if that is all in your imagination.

It was your comment about the Albigensians and the Catholics that I chose to see in another light from the one you intended, and I admitted that you were stating something (as I saw it) that you had not intended – that by choosing the Albigensians – they were not in a fair fight. Simon de Montfort and his eponymous dad wiped them out quite effectively on behalf of the Catholic church. The massacres of the freethinking people of Albi and Carcassonne, the Waldenses of Lyons and the Vaudois show that the Catholic Church at that time was totalitarian, violent and supremacist.

You stated:

There is no more point in arguing the toss about Islam itself on this thread than there is arguing with a Catholic about the Albigensian crusade.

It could be argued – and I know you did not intend this – that your analogy was saying that Islam as a religion is inherently violent.

Your comment somehow appeared to equate Islam with the rampages of 12th/13th century Catholic supremacism.

You qualified your point with:

There will always be religious people. There do not always need to be fanatics.

When religious systems become fanatical they eventually have to change. Hence my mention of Luther – though there were countless others before him and afterwards – for breaking the stranglehold of Catholicism as a political force in one – region.

Catholicism was a political religion which exerted power like a Caliphate.

I actually agree with this point:
There will always be religious people. There do not always need to be fanatics.

But when religions get involved in power politics they are bad news. And I wish we would kick the fucking Anglican Church out of our constitutional affairs.

Islam, for most of its followers in the West, is peaceful. But that is due to individuals not getting too deep into their founder’s commands for them to murder or enslave those of a different faith, or demanding a Caliphate/Islamic state where sharia rules.

But they are choosing to interpret Islam as they see fit.

For Islamists, who want to affect our politics – and I include QUilliam’s writer here as such – are Islamists by definition.

They may peddle soft Islamism, but it is Islamism nonetheless. Which somehow makes a pig’s scrotum of the author’s comments that Mohammed was political but the religion that followed him was not – is a bit barmy.

Mohammed and his “companions” demanded that it be political. Sufism and basic pragmatism have since had their influences and fortunately most Muslims in the West do not want political Islam or sharia laws etc.

But where Islam (or any other damned religion) starts to demand its place in politics, it should be opposed. Religion should be personal, like one’s sex life. Which is why I want Rowan Williams to fuck off and take his 26 Bishops out of the House of Lords.

the term ‘political religion’ (as used by Emilio Gentile and others) has a precise meaning which you could not attach to islamism without being extremely cynical about islamists and basically overturning your own argument about Islam in the process. As wikipedia has it:

The term political religion is a sociological one, drawing on the sociological aspects of religion which can be often be found in certain secular ideologies.

Therefore Stalinism and fascism can be described at times in their development as “political religions” but to describe Islamism as one is to attribute to Islamists a secularist desire to take over a religion for their own use.

If you are arriving at what those of us who see political islam as being a seperate thing to the religion have been saying by this long detour then all well and good.

Interesting why that would be.