Islamic Militancy in East Africa

This paper examines the relative political significance of domestic and transnational Islamic militancy in three East African countries: Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. It seeks to identify, describe and account for the sources and significance of such militancy, with a focus upon the significance of al-Qaeda and regional affiliates. The paper argues that, encouraged by the post-9/11 international fall out, regional Islamic networks work towards improving the perceived low political and economic status of Muslims in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. At present, however, the political significance of Islamic militancy in the three countries is low.     

Beyond ‘Terrorism’ and ‘State Hegemony’: assessing the Islamist mainstream in Egypt and Malaysia

International networks of Islamic ‘terrorism’ have served as the most popular explanation to describe the phenomenon of political Islam since the 11 September attacks. This paper argues that both the self-proclaimed doctrinal Islam of the militants and Western perceptions of a homogeneous Islamist threat need to be deconstructed in order to discover the often ambiguous manifestations of ‘official’ and ‘opposition’ Islam, of modernity and conservatism. As a comparison of two Islamic countries, Egypt and Malaysia, which both claim a leading role in their respective regions, shows, moderate Islamic groups have had a considerable impact on processes of democratisation and the emergence of civil society during the quarter century since the ‘Islamic resurgence’. Shared experiences like coalition building and active participation within the political system demonstrate the influence and importance of groups such as the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic Youth Movement of Malaysia (abim) or the Islamic Party of Malaysia (pas). These groups have shaped the political landscape to a much larger extent than the current pre-occupation with the ‘terrorist threat’ suggests. The gradual development of a ‘culture of dialogue’ has rather revealed new approaches towards political participation and democracy at the grassroots level.     

Maintaining disorder: the micropolitics of drugs policy in Iran

Abstract

This article analyses the ways in which the state ‘treats’ addiction among precarious drug (ab)users in Iran. While most Muslim-majority as well as some Western states have been reluctant to adopt harm reduction measures, the Islamic Republic of Iran has done so on a nationwide scale and through a sophisticated system of welfare intervention. Additionally, it has introduced devices of management of ‘addiction’ (the ‘camps’) that defy statist modes of punishment and private violence. What legal and ethical framework has this new situation engendered? And what does this new situation tell us about the governmentality of the state? Through a combination of historical analysis and ethnographic fieldwork, the article analyses the paradigm of government of the Iranian state with regard to disorder as embodied by the lives of poor drug (ab)users.     

The Identity of Turkey: Muslim and secular

Abstract

This article analyses the rise of political Islam in Turkey in the context of the akp's tenure in power with reference to complex social, economic, historical and ideational factors. It aims to answer one of the key questions, which has wider implications for the West and Islamic world: ‘having experienced the bad and good of the West in secularism and democracy’, as claimed by Samuel Huntington's ‘clash of civilisations’ thesis, is Turkey in transition from a secular to an Islamic state? The article first questions Turkey's ‘bridge’ or ‘torn-country’ status and then explains the akp's ambivalent policies towards religious and identity issues in relation to the increased public visibility of Islam and a ‘performative reflexivity’ of ‘Muslim-selves’. It concludes that the real issue at stake is not the assumed clash of secular and Muslim identities but the complex of interdependence between Islam, secularism and democratisation in Turkey.     

Identity,Ideology, and Information: The Sources of Iraqi Public Support for the Islamic State

ABSTRACT

This article explores the amount and sources of support for the Islamic State among Iraqis. We argue that, in addition to shared identity and ideology, a neglected factor in debates about support for Islamist militancy is the messaging and information that individuals receive about a given group. We test these arguments using regression analysis on public opinion data collected in Iraq in April 2015. The analyses largely support our contentions, showing that exposure to news coverage of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant substantially reduces support for the group, even among alienated Sunnis or ideological Islamists.     

The securitisation of life: Eastern Kurdistan under the rule of a Perso-Shi'i state

Abstract

Since the 1979 Revolution, the Iranian state has adopted a sophisticated set of policies to assimilate the Eastern Kurds. The Kurds are often the main target of the Iranian state’s military operations, its assimilatory strategies, and its regime of surveillance. After the ‘conquest’ (fath) of Eastern Kurdistan (Rojhelat) in 1979, the state tried to retain control over the region through systemic militarisation, the establishment of ‘revolutionary institutions’, and new religious and cultural centres, to transform the demographic, religious and cultural profile of Kurdistan. This paper is an attempt to illuminate the state’s religious nationalism and various forms of assimilatory strategies that the Islamic Republic of Iran has employed to transform Kurdish regions.     

Crescent and Sword: The Hamas enigma

This article analyses the popular support for Hamas, the most important of the Palestinian Islamist movements today and charts the movement's historical ascendancy from a fringe Gaza-based group to a mainstream Islamist movement and mouthpiece for dispossessed Palestinians. Since 2001 Hamas's leadership has come under increasing attack from Israel, which has killed a number of the movement's leaders and senior members, most prominently Sheikh Yasin, the movement's founder and spiritual leader, and his successor as Hamas leader, Abd al-Aziz Rantissi. Nonetheless, Hamas's duality as ‘worshippers’ and ‘warmongers’ has made the organisation extraordinarily popular among dispossessed Palestinians and has created a mounting political challenge to the secular nationalism of the plo. At present two-thirds of the Palestinians live below the ‘poverty line’ and it is likely that it is in this disenfranchised segment of the population that Hamas finds its core support. About one in every six Palestinians in the Occupied Territories benefits from support from Islamic charities. Hamas, for its part, allocates almost all its revenues to its social services, but there is no evidence that Hamas or the other Islamic charities provide assistance conditional upon political support.     

Islamic political parties and the nature of politics in Pakistan

The ‘war on terror’ has not only increased the operation and significance of Islamic parties but also intensified suspicion against them. The lack of comprehensive theoretical research about Islamic parties has further contributed to misunderstanding of their nature and politics. This article theorizes and classifies Islamic parties, especially of Pakistan, and explores their origin, development and nature. The conventional theories of party origin and traditional classifications of political parties are shown to have limited validity in the case of Islamic parties. Rather, the origin and development of Islamic parties is explored through the theoretical construct of historical crisis situation theory, consisting of four crisis situations. Moreover, a new typology of Islamic parties is developed and the Islamic parties are classified on the basis of six variables into three parties: clerical, conservative and Islamist. The exploration of the role of Islamic parties in Pakistan shows that party variables are not only essential to understand their proper nature but also critical to comprehend their politics. Though unanimously categorized as ‘Islamic’, their politics significantly differ and Pakistan provides a typical case to show the heterogeneous Islamic politics of Islamic parties.     

Women’s Rights, Shari‘a Law, and the Secularization of Islam in Iran

Rather than a simple imposition of the shari‘a law, the Islamization of postrevolutionary Iran transpired at the intersection of political necessities, social realities, religious considerations, and legislative initiatives. As much as the Islamization project transformed society, this social transformation also reconfigured the meaning of the shari‘a and expanded the boundaries of communities with interpretive authority over its legal injunctions. The Iranian postrevolutionary experience highlights the fallacies of bifurcated conceptions of religion and politics and more specifically that of church and state. Through the examination of two important legislations on abortion rights and women’s inheritance, I show the contingencies in which the shari‘a is understood and contested in public. The success or failure of the Islamic Republic depends not on the separation of church and state but on how pluralistic and open the communities that lay claim on religious interpretive authority will become.     

Culturalism and the rise of the Islamic State: faith,sectarianism and violence

This paper looks at the ways in which culturalist discourses have influenced our understanding and representation of the rise of the so-called Islamic State. It argues that, in keeping with older narratives on the motives of ‘bad’ Muslims, its political and economic objectives have been overlooked and/or downplayed. Instead, I propose, there has been a strategically efficacious focus on its appeal to Islam, on its sectarian rhetoric and on its use of violence. By continuing to emphasise the ethical over the political in these ways, the culturalism that underpins the dominant representation of the Islamic State’s emergence has, I conclude, served three key purposes – the mobilisation of the ‘good’ Muslim, the exculpation of Western foreign policy and the legitimisation of force.     

The Ascendance of Political Islam: Hamas and consolidation in the Gaza Strip

This article outlines the means by which the Palestinian Islamic movement Hamas has developed and implemented a consolidation of power strategy that is inexorably driving it to a state of increasingly authoritarian control in the Gaza Strip. It discusses the factors that have driven Hamas in terms of power seeking as primordial to all radical Islamist movements or as a result of or response to other factors outside its control. The article highlights the concurrent demise of the Fatah organisation in the Gaza Strip as the largest and most visible symbol of secularism. It then reflects on the role of external, including international, actors in accelerating consolidation tactics following the Hamas ‘takeover’ of power from the Fatah-dominated institutions of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in June 2007. The article aims to demonstrate that Hamas' control in Gaza is an important signpost in terms of developing Islamism in the Middle East region.     

The Fallacy of the ‘Failed State’

This article examines the origins and evolution of the concepts of ‘failed’ and ‘failing’ states, arguing that the terms have come to be used in such widely divergent and problematic ways that they have lost any utility. The article details six serious problems with the term ‘state failure’ and related terms like ‘fragile’ or ‘troubled’ states, concluding that analysts should abandon these terms. It concludes with a modest attempt to develop alternative concepts and principles for thinking about diverse states that pose varied challenges for academic analysis and policy makers.     

Entrepreneurs,investors and the state: the public and the private in sub-Saharan African irrigation development

This article draws on ethnographic research in Tanzania to interrogate the discourse of ‘public’ and ‘private’ in sub-Saharan irrigation development. It contrasts the complexity of social and political relations with narratives suggesting that ‘private’ is necessarily opposed and superior to ‘public’. We argue that support for models of private-sector development obscures access to and control over resources and can result in the dispossession of those least able to resist this. Different interests of ‘entrepreneurial’ individuals and corporate investors and the ways in which these relate to the state are also glossed over. Conversely, the failure of the ‘public’ cannot simply be read from the chequered histories of irrigation schemes within which public and private interests intersect in complex ways.     

The legacy of subalternity and Gramsci’s national–popular: populist discourse in the case of the Islamic Republic of Iran

Drawing on Laclau’s concept of populist discourse and Gramsci’s ‘national–popular collective will’, and using the case of Iran, this article puts forward the idea of the legacy of subalternity in the context of post-revolution governments. The concept of ‘national–popular collective will’ facilitates an understanding of how the popular subject is constructed and the meanings embedded in that process. It is argued that Islamic Republic elites articulate a populist discourse that constructs the ‘self’ (the Islamic Republic) as synonymous with ‘the people’. Embedded in this discursive construction is a legacy of subalternity that goes back to the 1979 Revolution’s populist discourse.     

Revisiting the Concept of the Failed State: bringing the state back in

The policy and donor communities have placed great importance on fixing ‘failed states’. World leaders have cited failed states as one of the greatest threats to the global community. Nevertheless the concept of the failed state is currently subject to a backlash from the academic community. Scholars have criticised the failed states literature on theoretical, normative, empirical and practical grounds. We provide a brief overview of these main concerns and offer a more systematic method for measuring ‘state failure’. Coming up with better ways of assessing how states underperform will enhance our understanding of how institutional decay affects stability and development and, most importantly, will provide an improved system of early warning for practitioners.     

Every Kingdom Divided Against Itself Will Be Ruined: A Reflection,a Deflection,and a Qualified Reinterpretation of the Global Jihad

Much analytical commentary implies that a generic West is the principal target of jihadist activism. This study contends that this is a misconception fostered by jihadist groups like Al Qaeda in order to accentuate their stature in the Islamic world and to obscure their true aims, which are first and foremost to secure the dominance of the Salafist interpretation of Islam. The analysis situates Al Qaeda in the tradition of Islamic reform movements and shows that a violent Sufi/Salafist conflict pervades nearly all current examples of strife within the Muslim world. In these conflicts, the role of the “West” is instrumental, not central to the struggle. Consequently, this study offers a qualification to notions of a “global jihad” and suggests this has important considerations for policymakers in determining the nature of the threat posed by Islamist militancy.     

The ‘Arab Spring’: the view from Tehran

2011 saw an unprecedented wave of popular protests shake the foundations of many Arab regimes across the Middle East and North Africa. While many observers welcomed the uprisings as movements for greater freedoms and democracy, Iran celebrated the unrests as an ‘Islamic awakening’ – the first steps in a process that would eventually result in the realignment of the Greater Middle East. This article will examine the official narrative of the Iranian regime and will contextualise the apparent contradiction in the Islamic Republic's support for the Arab uprisings despite its brutal suppression of its own people and the incitement of the same practise in Syria. The article will then assess Iran's actual role in the Arab unrests and whether the Islamic Republic has, and will retain, the ability to exploit the ‘Arab Spring’ as part of its broader revisionist struggle to weaken the forces of status quo in the region.     

Contested National Identity and Political Crisis in Bangladesh: Historical Analysis of the Dynamics of Bangladeshi Society and Politics

This paper develops the theme that the ongoing political polarization and political crisis in Bangladesh since its independence from Pakistan in 1971 reflect the fundamental weaknesses of the pillars of Bangladeshi society and national identity. The paper adopts an historical approach to explain why and how Muslim nationalism, which was the basis for the establishment of Pakistan, has re-emerged in contemporary Bangladeshi society and politics and is competing against Bengali ethnicity, language, culture and secularism (‘Bengali nationalism’) within an emerging ‘two-party’ political system. However, instead of establishing a stable political system following the Hotelling–Downs principle of democracy, the Bangladeshi society/polity has been polarized and divided almost vertically on the question of national identity and political philosophy and created sustained political instability and uncertainty. This has stifled the formation and consolidation of a national identity based on ethnicity/language/culture or religion/territory/political history or that have elements of both. Neither ethnicity/language/culture/secularism-based nationalism (Bengali nationalism) nor predominantly Muslim-territorial nationalism (‘Bangladeshi nationalism’) alone can dominate and flourish in Bangladeshi society and polity; instead, the objective conditions in the country dictate that a competitive democratic system of politics which accommodates aspects of secularism, language, Muslim identity and Islamic ethical–moral codes remains the feasible political discourse for forming and consolidating the country's multi-racial, multi-religious national identity over the long run and its survival as a sovereign state.     

Muslim leaders in Russia's Volga-Urals: Self-Perceptions and Relationship with regional authorities

Islamic politics in Russia's Volga-Urals has been affected by the self-images of some of the regional communities, such as Tatarstan as ‘the cradle of Russian Islam’, Astrakhan as ‘Russia's southern outpost’, and Perm and Buguruslan as remote peripheries of the Islamic world. Moreover, some regional authorities, such as Astrakhan and Orenburg, have tried to use Muslims to stabilise the ethnoconfessional situation of the regions and also make them a bridgehead for economic ventures on the Caspian rims and western Kazakhstan. In contrast, the authorities in highly industrialised and politically stable Saratov and Perm have not been interested in intervening in regional Muslim communities. Thus, Islamic politics in Russia may have much wider and varied political connotations than is usually conceived under the term ethnoconfessional politics.     

Islamism,secularism and post-Islamism: the Muslim world and the case of Bangladesh

This paper provides a historical overview of the emerging post-Islamist phenomenon in the Muslim world and discusses the scope for sustainable democratic politics in Bangladesh. In the process, a model is proposed that purports to exhibit a level of compatibility with the perceived political landscape in Bangladesh. The model adopts a version of the Hotelling–Downs principle of democracy and sets it within the ‘post-Islamist’ paradigm in such a way that, if it can be implemented, even if only partially, may lead to the sustained political stability of Bangladesh. The paper highlights illiberal and undemocratic practices of the two dominant Bangladeshi political parties as a major feature of the present status quo. These practices dominate Bangladeshi politics through the continuous attempts of their exponents to impose monopolistic views on the various symbols of national identity, despite the multi-racial, multi-religious nature of Bangladesh society. The paper concludes that a democratic system of politics, which accommodates aspects of secularism, language, Muslim identity and post-Islamist ‘Islamic ethical–moral–legal codes’, remains the feasible political discourse for forming and consolidating the country’s multi-racial, multi-religious national identity over the long run and its survival as a sovereign state.