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BOOK
REVIEW
Not one but many
Islams
The Future of
Political Islam by Graham E Fuller
Reviewed by Dmitry Shlapentokh
Interest in this or that
subject has usually followed this or that
political trend. Western historiography is no
exception. During World War II, there was a lot
written about "mysterious" and "aggressive"
Japanese and German souls. After the outset of the
Cold War, the
Russian soul was discovered. However, on the
collapse of the USSR, it was found that the
Russian soul was actually quite crass and
materialistic and not mysterious at all. Interest
in the Russian soul plummeted, to be replaced, at
least for a while, by the Chinese soul, whose
enigmatic qualities were seen as the root of
China's economic success.
It is not
surprising, therefore, that after the September
11, 2001, terrorist attack and the subsequent "war
on terror", America's interest in everything
Muslim, Arabic, and just Middle Eastern rose with
the speed of stocks on Wall Street before the bust
in 2000. Even Hollywood did not escape the trend -
and why should it? As a result, Americans could
see Troy and Alexander the Great -
in both cases, the well-trained and resolute
Westerners decimated the Asiatics. America's
publishing industry has followed suit; numerous
books have been published on Middle Eastern and
Islamic studies, to satisfy the needs of both
specialists and the general public. The reviewed
work is one of them.
One of the major good
points of the book is its understanding of the
plurality of Islam in its political
manifestations. The author points out that while
one can discern some basic ideological premises -
such as the notion of ummah, the aggregate
body of all Muslims, which transcends ethnic and
national boundaries - the real Islam as a
political doctrine has been compartmentalized. In
its political manifestation, Islam has been
merged, integrated, with various political
doctrines that often have nothing in common with
each other. One can see Islam integrated with
pro-Western democratic regimes as in Turkey,
basically pro-Western authoritarian regimes as in
Egypt, and fiercely anti-Western regimes as in
Iran. While able to be incorporated into the
institutions of the various types of states, Islam
can also be the framework of a purely
revolutionary movement. It could, for example, be
the ideological basis for an Iranian revolution,
which the author sees as the truly popular
revolution, and for the violent movement he sees
as without an end - al-Qaeda, which regards terror
as the major way of fighting the enemy.
Thus, as author Graham E Fuller rightly
admits, one can see not one Islam but many Islams
of many different groups, each with its own
particular relationship with the West. Still, the
question can arise as to what trend has actually
dominated the relationship between Islam and the
West.
At the beginning of the book, the
author focuses on the many positive features of
Islam, at least from the point of view of Western
liberal intellectuals. He states that Islam has a
strong sense of unity of all Muslims, regardless
of ethnic and national boundaries. And he praises
Islam for providing the intellectual framework to
fight oppressive regimes. In short, he believes
that the values of Islam are not much different
from those of the West. Consequently, he also
believes that the West and Islam can find a common
ground, and he does not exclude positive
cooperation between the Western powers and Islam.
Still, his overall views of the future of Islam's
relationship with the West are rather pessimistic.
They mostly relate to the rise of radical Islam,
as actually launched by the Muslim Brotherhood in
Egypt. This "brotherhood" regards the fight
against the West as its major task and is related
to the spread of globalization.
And here -
the author rightly states - modern globalization
is qualitatively different from what could be seen
in earlier periods of global history, when "global
empire" implied simply the transition from one
order to another. At present, globalization and
the advance of capitalism have destroyed the
traditional frameworks of the pre-capitalist
social/political and economic order, leaving a
person in a Muslim country alone to face
economic/social insecurity. It might be stated
here that social/economic dislocation and the
misery caused by it are in process not just in
Muslim countries, but all over the Third World.
And one can also see, as in the Muslim countries,
a violent response in which religious doctrines
are blended with radical political doctrines. This
was, for example, the case with Latin America in
the 1970s, when a radically revolutionary
interpretation of Christianity was often the
ideological backbone of the guerrilla movement.
The revolutionary Christians, so to speak,
metamorphosed here and there into violent radicals
inspired by a unique blend of Christianity and
Marxism. According to Fuller, one can find a
similar phenomenon in Muslim countries, where
those who became involved in radical Islam were
communists in the past. While the connection
between religious radicalism - to be precise, the
revolutionary interpretation of the religious -
can be seen with Christian-inspired radicals in
Latin America, it becomes clear only in the case
of Islam.
Indeed, only Islam provided such
fertile ground for a violent radical movement, and
the author could have explained this phenomenon.
In our view, the merger of Islam with the radical
and violent movements (eg, al-Qaeda) can be
attributed to the fact that various forms of
violent movements or movements related to Islam
not only had emerged early but had been well
publicized and financially supported, albeit by
different forces. This was the case with
Palestinians against Israel and the guerrillas
against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan. The
Iranian revolution could also be seen in this
context. All these movements, regardless of their
different political vectors, merged with (or at
least were influenced by) radical Islam, fighting
what were implicitly seen as anti-Islamic regimes.
The culture of radical violence had been focusing
on the Middle East for generations, but US policy
in the Middle East and its anti-Islamic stand in
general, the author claims, provided the
additional stimuli for the creation of present-day
violent, radical Islam. One might state here - to
add to the author's arguments - that the departure
of the USSR from the global scene naturally
transformed the United States into the embodiment
of evil, to which one could attribute all the
problems of Muslim societies.
This book,
in short, regardless of its rather blurred focus,
can be seen as a useful introduction for those who
venture to study Islam and its role in the modern
world.
The Future of Political Islam
by Graham E Fuller. New York/Houndmills:
Palgrave MacMillan, 2004. ISBN: 1403965560; 256
pages. Price: US$29.95.
Dmitry
Shlapentokh, PhD, is associate professor of
history, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences,
Indiana University South Bend.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact us for information
on sales, syndication and republishing.) |
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