Abstract
No prudent observer or analyst of contemporary history can escape the fact of the return of the sacred in general, and its pertinence to the world of Islam in particular. Islam is not only a religion, but also a civilisation of its own, albeit characterised by inner-cultural diversity. Aside from the panic of the ‘war on terror’1 it is clear that ‘September 11’ was an event also related both to the politicisation and militarisation of certain Islamic concepts under the conditions of exposure to modernity. The emergence of jihadism2 did not take place outside of the context of Islam’s predicament with modernity. I state this as a Muslim experiencing myself the impact of this problematique in my own life as a scholar, born, educated and raised in Damascus, but living over the last four decades in three different civilisational worlds: Islam, North America and West Europe. The fascination the West holds for Muslims is the real existence of human rights in Western societies, while denying them to others. This is not only the guilt of the West, but also of Islamic rulers. At their essence, these rights are the freedom of expression, which I, as a scholar who fled his country of birth because of the lack of this very freedom, now enjoy. In an effort to combat prejudice against non-Western cultures — labelled as a mindset of ‘Orientalism’ or racism — it made sense at one time to place some restraints on dealing with Islam and the Middle East.
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Notes
See Bruce Lincoln, Holy Terrors. Thinking about Religion after September 11, Chicago, 2003; and
Jean Bethke Elshtain, Just War against Terror, New York, 2003.
On jihadism see B. Tibi, ‘Islamism, National and International Security after September 11’, in Conflict and Cooperation: Festschrift for Kurt Spillmann, edited by G. Baechler and A. Wenger, Zurich, 2002, pp. 127–52.
Edward Said, Orientalism, New York, 1979. As early as 1984 I expressed sympathy, however combined with reservation towards this approach. I did this in many articles (e.g. in Neue politische Literatur, vol. 29 (1984), pp. 267–86) and also ten years later in the chapter on the Orientalism debate included in my book: Einladung in die islamische Geschichte, Darmstadt, 2004, pp. 136–190.
The author of this ill characterisation, Charles Kurzman, made it in a contribution to Quintan Wiktorowics (ed.), Islamic Activism (2004), on p. 292; he supports his characterisation by quoting my book, Islam and the Cultural Accommodation of Social Change, Boulder, CO, 1990. Had he carefully read this book, in particular chapter 4 on ‘culture and social change’, he would have refrained from making that ill-statement based on allegations. It is worth mentioning that in Kurzman’s edited book, Liberal Islam, New York, 1998, one finds leading Islamic fundamentalists like al-Qaradawi and R. Ghannouchi listed as representatives of liberal Islam. A comment is superfluous. According to a New York Times article Sheik Y. al-Qaradawi calls for jihad implying ‘all Americans in Iraq could be targeted’, while asking ‘are there civilians in Iraq?’, New York Times, December 10, 2004.
The literature on Bin Laden and al-Qaida is mushrooming. See in particular Yossef Bodansky, Bin Laden: The Man who Declared War on America, Rocklin, CA, 1999; and
Peter Berger, Holy War Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Bin Laden, New York, 2001.
On this phenomenon in general see the special issue of Millennium, vol. 29, 3 (Winter, 2000) on ‘Religion and International Relations’ (1001 pages), herein on the politicisation of Islam, B. Tibi, ‘The Challenge of Political Islam’, pp. 843–59; see also Jeff Haynes, Religion in Global Politics, London, 1998.
Edward Said (ed.), The Arabs Today: Alternatives for Tomorrow, Columbia, OH, 1973, herein, B. Tibi, ‘The Genesis of the Arab Left’, pp. 31–42.
On derailing the critique of Orientalism to an Orientalism in reverse see Sadik J. al-Azm, Dhihmiyyat al-Tahrim, London, 1992, pp. 17–86.
See Herbert Davidson, Alfarabi, Avicenna & Averroës on Intellect, New York, 1992.
Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, Cambridge, MA, 1996.
See Ernst Bloch, Die Aristotelische Linke, Frankfurt, 1963. On these sources see the respective chapters in
B. Tibi, Der wahre Imam, Munich, 1996. This is an intellectual history of Islam from the seventh century to the present.
See Mohammed Abed al-Jabiri, Arab-Islamic Philosophy, Austin, TX, 1999 and among his many books in Arabic, al-Turath wa al-hadatha, Beirut, 1991.
Niklas Luhman, Funktion der Religion, Frankfurt, 1977, p. 26.
See Scott Appleby (ed.), Speakers of the Despised, Chicago, 1977. Appleby was involved in the appointment of the Islamist Tariq Ramadan at Notre Dame University, who was denied entry to the USA by the Home Security Visa Department. I prefer the earlier work of Appleby critical of fundamentalism.
Craig S. Smith, ‘Dutch Try to Thwart Terror Without Being Overzealous’, in New York Times, November 25, 2004, p. A3.
These attitudes are related first to the European expansion (on this see Philip D. Curtin, The World and the West: The European Challenge, Cambridge, 2000) and second to the admiration of European accomplishments (on this see
Bernard Lewis, The Muslim Discovery of Europe, New York, 1982). Islamist anti-Americanism is embedded into this context.
Maxime Rodinson, La Fascination de l’Islam, Paris, 1980.
For more details see Richard Mitchell, The Society of the Muslim Brother, Oxford 1969, chapter IX.
Ali Abdel-Raziq, al-Islam wa Usul al-hukm (1925), new printing Beirut 1966 (on al-Raziq, see
B. Tibi, Arab Nationalism: Between Islam and the Nation-State, 3rd edition, New York, 1997, pp. 170–7).
On the Six-Days-War of 1967 and on its repercussions see Adeed Darwisha, Arab Nationalism, Princeton, NJ, 2003, chapter 10, and
B. Tibi, Conflict and War in the Middle East, new edition, New York, 1998, chapters 3 and 4.
See B. Tibi, ‘Democratization in Islam in an Age of Islamism’, in Alan Olson et al., Educating for Democracy, Lanham and New York, 2004, pp. 203–19.
B. Tibi, ‘Secularization and De-Secularization in Modern Islam’, in Religion, Staat, Gesellschaft, vol. 1 (2000), pp. 95–117.
Jürgen Habermas, ‘Glaube und Wissen’, in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, October 15, 2001, p. 9. There is also a booklet of this lecture published under the same title in Frankfurt, 2001, by Suhrkamp Verlag.
On the history of jihad see Paul Fregosi, Jihad in the West: Muslim Conquests from the 7th Century to the 21st Century, New York, 1998, and
Reuven Firestone, Jihad: The Origins of Holy War in Islam, New York, 1999, and also chapters II and XIII in my book on jihad, Kreuzzug und Djihad. Der Islam und die christliche Welt, München, 1999 (new paperback edition, 2001), the first one on jihad the latter on neo-jihad or jihadism, see also note 2 above.
See John Kelsay, Islam and War, Louisville, KY, 1993, chapter 5.
Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence, Berkeley, 2000; and
Edgar O’Balance, Islamic Fundamentalist Terrorism, 1979–1995: The Iranian Connection, New York, 1997.
Zalmay Khalilzadeh and Cheryle Benard, Government of God: Iran’s Islamic Republic, New York, 1984.
See the classic of the late Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798–1939, Oxford, 1962.
B. Tibi, ‘Islam and Secularization: Religion and the Functional Differentiation of the Social System’, in Archives for Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy, vol. LXVI (1980), pp. 207–22.
Hans Maier (ed.), Totalitarismus und politische Religionen, Paderborn, 1996. In a similar manner, secular ideologies, like Marxism, were addressed as ’political religion’ at the international conference held at the Hannah Arendt Institute in Dresden, September/October, 2004 (the proceedings are forthcoming ed. Gerhard Besier).
In contrast to this approach the volume edited by Georg Pfleiderer and Ekkehard Stegemann, Politische Religion: Geschichte und Gegenwart eines Problemfeldes, Zürich, 2004 (my chapter on political Islam, pp. 223–54) addresses the real issue.
Martin Marty and Scott Appleby (eds), Fundamentalism Observed, Chicago, 1991.
B. Tibi, ‘The Fundamentalist Challenge to Secular Order in the Middle East’, in The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, vol. 23, 1 (Winter/ Spring 1999) pp. 191–210.
See the essay ‘Religion as a Cultural System’, by Clifford Geertz in his book The Interpretation of Cultures, New York, 1973, pp. 87–125. For an implementation of this approach on Islam, see Chapter 1 above.
Wilfred Cantwell Smith, The Meaning and the End of Religion, New York, 1978.
B. Tibi, Der neue Totalitarismus. Heiliger Krieg und westliche Sicherheit, Darmstadt, 2004.
See B. Tibi, ‘The Worldview of Sunni-Arab Fundamentalists’, in Martin Marty and Scott Appleby (eds), Fundamentalisms and Society, Chicago, 1993, pp. 73–102. This is volume II of Marty and Appleby (eds), 5 vols., The Fundamentalism Project, published by Chicago University Press 1991–95. My most recent thinking on this issue is reflected in my essay ‘Fundamentalism’ included in the 2nd edition of Routledge Encyclopedia of Government and Politics, edited by Mary Hawkesworth and Maurice Kogan, two volumes, London 2004, here vol. I, chapter 13, pp. 184–200.
See Mark Juergensmeyer, A New Cold War: Religious Nationalism Confronts Secular State, Berkeley, 1993.
The seminal contribution by Wilfred Cantwell Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion (note 39) and by Arvind Sharma (ed.), Our Religions, San Francisco, 1993. I enjoyed impressive encounters with Smith during my tenure at Harvard in the 1980s and with Sharma in New Dehli.
Among the sprawling books on Iran see Said A. Arjamand, The Turban for the Crown: The Islamic Revolution in Iran, New York, 1988.
On Khomeini and the world political dimension of his claims see R.K. Ramazani, Revolutionary Iran: Challenge and Response in the Middle East, Baltimore, 1986, in particular pp. 19–21 on ‘Khomeini’s Islamic world order’.
Maxime Rodinson, Mohammed, Paris, 1961, reprinted 1975, on the notion of Islam as an idéologie mobilisatrice. For an example of the present see
Carrie Rosefsky Wickham, Mobilizing Islam, New York, 2002.
Ernst Bloch, Thomas Münzer als Theologe der Revolution, reprint Frankfurt, 1972.
Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics, New York, 1977.
S.E. Finer, The History of Government, 3 volumes, Oxford, 1999, here vol. 3, pp. 1478ff.
See Fazlur Rahman, Islam and Modernity: Transformation of an Intellectual Tradition, Chicago, 1984 (see in contrast my contribution in note 41).
See my contribution in Roman Herzog et al., Preventing the Clash of Civilizations, New York, 1999, ‘International Morality and Cross-Cultural Bridging’, pp. 107–26. This book provides the counter-vision to the one given by Huntington.
Theodore Von Laue, The World Revolution of Westernization: The Twentieth Century in Global Perspective, New York, 1987.
On this duality see Rob Wilson and Wilmal Dissanayake (eds), Global/Local: Cultural Production and the Transnational Imaginary, Durham, 1996.
See Praemium Erasmianum Foundation (ed.), The Limits of Pluralism: Neo-Absolutisms and Relativism, Amsterdam, 1994, with contributions by E. Gellner, C. Geertz on cultural relativism and also B. Tibi on political Islam as a variety of neo-absolutism.
On this see B. Tibi, ‘Culture and Knowledge: The Politics of Islamization of Knowledge as a Post-Modern Project? The Fundamentalist Claim to De-Westernization’, in Theory, Culture, Society, vol. 12 (1995), pp. 1–24.
For both approaches see Raymond Aron, Paix et guerre entre les nations, Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1962.
Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, New York, 1996. On the connection between civilisation and religion see
F. Braudel, History of Civilizations, New York, 1994.
See note 5 above, and for a general analysis Graham Fuller and Ian Lesser, A Sense of Siege: The Geopolitics of Islam and the West, Boulder, CO, 1995; and also
Adeed Dawisha (ed.), Islam in Foreign Policy, Cambridge, 1983.
Daniel Philpott, ‘The Challenge of September 11 to Secularism in International Relations’, in World Politics, vol. 55, 1 (October, 2002), pp. 66–95.
Mohammed Y. Kassab, L’Islam face au nouvel ordre mondial, Algiers, 1991. Islamic views on order are in conflict with the Westphalian order. On the latter see
Watson, The Evolution of International Society, London, 1992, chapter 17 and on after-Westphalia see
Gene Lyons and Michael Mastanduno (eds), Beyond Westphalia?, Baltimore, 1995. These contributions focus on sovereignty and do not address the revival of religion against the principles of Westphalia. This awareness did not exist before September 11, 2001.
Sayyid Qutb, al-Salam al-alami wa al-Islam (World Peace and Islam), legal reprint Cairo 1992, p. 171, also pp. 172–3. See also
Sayyid Qutb, Ma’alim fi al-tariq (Signposts), reprint Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 1989, in particular pp. 201–2.
On Qutb and his thoughts, see the illuminating study by Roxanne L. Euben, Enemy in the Mirror: Islamic Fundamentalism and the limits of Modern Rationalism, Princeton, NJ, 1999, pp. 49–92.
Hedley Bull, ‘The Revolt against the West’, in H. Bull and A. Watson (eds), The Expansion of International Society, reprint Oxford, 1988, pp. 217–28, here p. 223.
For a positive presentation of political Islam see Raymond Baker, Islam Without Fears, Egypt and the New Islamists, Cambridge, MA, 2004. In contrast, I argue the ‘Islamic State’ is a totalitarian order. The argument is included in my book, Der neue Totalitarismus, Darmstadt, 2004.
This is the phrase used by Nikki Keddie in her review in International Journal of Middle East Studies, 32, 1 (2000), pp. 180–3, making exceptions of the books by Hunter (see note 75) and Tibi, The Challenge of Fundamentalism, Berkeley, 1998, as ‘welcomed two very good books’.
See Mark Juergensmeyer, The New Cold War (note 42). The alternative to it is presented by Bruce Russett, Grasping Democratic Peace, Princeton, NJ, 1993. See also
B. Tibi, Krieg der Zivilisationen, new revised and enlarged edition (first published Hamburg, 1995) Munich, 1998 (reprint 2001).
Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the late Twentieth Century, London, 1991, p. 13.
Muhammad Salim al-Awwa, Fi al-nizam al-siyasi li al-dawla al-Islamiyya (On the Political System of the Islamic State), 6th printing, Cairo, 1983.
Sir Thomas W. Arnold, The Caliphate, Oxford, 1924. For an Islamic viewpoint see
Mustafa Hilmi, Nizam al-khilafah bain ahl al-Sunna wa al-Shi’a (The System of the Caliphate between the People of Sunna and Shi’a), Alexandria, 1988.
Nazih Ayyubi, Political Islam, London, 1991 and
Olivier Roy, The Failure of Political Islam, Cambridge, MA, 1994. See also
Gilles Kepel, Le prophète et pharaon: Les mouvements Islamists dans l’Egypte contemporaire, Paris, 1984; more recent Rosefsky Wickham, Mobilizing Islam (note 48), for an Islamist contribution see
Mohammed Mahfuz, al-Lathin zulimu. Al-Tanzimat al-Islamiyya fi Misr (The Oppressed. Islamist Movements in Egypt), London, 1988.
On the theory of civilisation see the reader edited by John Rundell and Stephen Mennel, Classical Readings in Culture and Civilization, London, 1998. For the application of this approach to International Relations with a focus on Islam see B. Tibi, Krieg der Zivilisationen (referred to in note 69 above). The following two books discuss related issues:
Fawaz A. Gerges, America and Political Islam: Clash of Cultures or Clash of Interests?, Cambridge, 1999;
Shireen Hunter, The Future of Islam and the West: Clash of Civilizations or Peaceful Coexistence?, Westport, 1998.
B. Tibi, ‘War and Peace in Islam’, in Terry Nardin (ed.), The Ethics of War and Peace: Religious and Secular Perspectives, Princeton, NJ, 1996 and 1998, pp. 128–45.
On this issue see Leslie Lipson, The Ethical Crises of Civilization, London, 1993 and
Fernand Braudel, A History of Civilizations, London, 1994, here pp. 63–6, and on the West as a civilisation see
David Gress, From Plato to NATO: The Idea of the West and its Opponents, New York, 1998.
On Ibn Khaldun, al-Muqaddima, its many editions and translations as well as academic sources, see the comprehensive Ibn Khaldun chapter 6 in B. Tibi, Der wahre Imam, Munich, 1996, pp. 179–209.
For the dual track in a broader context see B. Tibi, ‘Between Islam and Islamism: A Dialogue with Islam and a Security Approach vis-à-vis Islamism’, in Tami Amanda Jacoby and Brent Sasley (eds), Redefining Security in the Middle East, New York, 2002, pp. 62–82.
Representative of this approach is the book by John Esposito, Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality?, New York, 1992 among others. See my criticism of the book by these authors, Islam and Democracy, in Journal of Religion, vol. 78, 4 (1998), pp. 667–9 and note 84 below.
Graham Fuller, The Future of Political Islam, New York, 2004, and R. Baker, Islam without Fears (note 67).
On Egypt, Barry Rubin, Islamic Fundamentalism in Egyptian Politics, New York, 1990; and
Saad Eddin Ibrahim, Egypt, Islam and Democracy, Cairo, 1996. On Algeria,
Robert Malley, The Call from Algeria: Third Worldism, Revolution and the Turn to Islam, Berkeley, 1996; and
Michael Willis, The Islamist Challenge in Algeria, New York, 1997. On Afghanistan,
Barnett Rubin, The Fragmentation of Afghanistan, New Haven, 1995.
Bat Ye’or, Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide, Cranbury, NJ, 2002. This book includes a stringent critique of Esposito, see note 80 above.
See John Keks, The Morality of Pluralism, Princeton, NJ, 1993.
Robert Hefner, Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia, Princeton, NJ, 2000.
M. Horsman and A. Marshall, After the Nation-State: Citizens, Tribalism and the New World Disorder, London, 1994 (see also note 92).
On Westphalia see Adam Watson, The Evolution of International Society, London, 1992, chapter 17. These historical facts are overlooked by
James Piscatori, Islam in a World of Nation-States, Cambridge, 1986. For a different view see
B. Tibi, Arab Nationalism: Between Islam and the Nation-State, 3rd edition, New York, 1997, chapter 12 to the new edition.
Charles Tilly (ed.), The Formation of National States in Western Europe, Princeton, NJ, 1975, p. 45.
Anthony Giddens, The Nation-State and Violence, Berkeley, 1987, pp. 255–6.
B. Tibi, ‘The Simultaneity of the Unsimultaneous: Old Tribes and Imposed Nation-States in the Modern Middle East’, in Philip Khoury and Joseph Kostiner (eds), Tribes and State Formation in the Middle East, Berkeley, 1990, pp. 127–52.
Munir M. Najib, al-Harakat al-qawmiyya al-haditha fi mizan al-Islam (Movements of Modern Nationalism on the Scale of Islam), al-Zarqa/ Jordan, 1983.
Yusuf al-Qaradawi, al-Hall al-Islami wa al-hulul al-mustawradah, (The Islamic vs the Imported Solution), vol. 1 of 3 vols., Beirut and Cairo, 1970–88. See also note 4 above.
For examples of this misconception of al-Qaradawi see Charles Kurzman (ed.), Liberal Islam, New York, 1998, pp. 196ff., and
Joyce M. Davis, Between Jihad and Salam: Profiles in Islam, New York, 1997, pp. 219ff. On Kurzman and Orientalism see notes 4 and 62 above.
Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, 2 vols., London, 1945. For a revival of the approach with a reference to Islamism see
B. Tibi, ‘The Open Society and Its Enemies Within’, in Wall Street Journal Europe, March 17, 2004, p. A10.
Usamah Khalid, al-Mustaqbal al-Arabi fi al-asr al-Ameriki (The Arab Future in the American Age), Cairo, 1992. For an explanation of the incorporation of political Islam in the Palestinian case see
Beverley Milton Edwards, Islamic Politics in Palestine, London, 1996.
B. Tibi, ‘Habermas and the Return of the Sacred’, in Religion—Staat— Gesellschaft, vol. 3, 2(2002), pp. 267–96.
My contribution to Roman Herzog, Preventing the Clash of Civilizations (see note 53) is an effort in this direction as are also my contributions presented in Indonesia and published in the following two volumes. Chaider Bamualim (ed.), Islam and the West: Dialogue of Civilizations in Search of a Peaceful World Order, Jakarta, 2003, pp. 15–26,
Karlina Helmanita (ed.), Dialogue in the World Disorder, Jakarta, 2004, pp. 159–202. See also the excellent new book on this subject by
Naika Foroutan, Kulturdialoge zwischen dem Westen und der islamischen Welt, Wiesbaden, 2004.
Max Weber, Soziologie, Weltgeschichtliche Analysen, Politik, selected writings, Stuttgart, 1964, p. 117 (Essay: Vom Inneren Beruf zur Wissenschaft).
Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization, 3 vols., Chicago, 1974.
See the contributions in Part I ‘Remaking Polities’ in Martin Marty and Scott Appleby (eds), Fundamentalisms and the State, Chicago, 1993, vol. 3 of The Fundamentalism Project (see note 37), pp. 13–288.
Franz Rosenthal, The Classical Heritage in Islam, London, 1994. On Islamic Rationalism see Herbert Davidson, Alfarabi, Avicenna and Averroes on Intellect (note 9).
Fred Halliday, Islam and the Myth of Confrontation, London, 1995, p. 69.
Husain Fawzi al-Najjar, al-Islam wa al-siyasa. Bahth fi usul al-nazariyya al-siyasiyya wa nizam al-hukm fi al-Islam (Islam and Politics: An Enquiry into the Origins of Political Theory and the Political System of Islam), Cairo, 1977, pp. 64.
See also Hamid Enayat, Islamic Political Thought, Austin, 1982,
Abdullahi An-Na’im, Toward an Islamic Reformation, Syracuse, 1990.
On this subject of ethics see Mervyn Frost, Ethics in International Relations, Cambridge, 1997.
Fred Dallmayr, Dialogue Among Civilizations, New York, 2002, see also note 100.
M. Horkheimer, Kritische Theorie, 2 vols, Frankfurt, 1968, vol. I, preface.
See the volume, Nezar AlSayyad and Manuel Castels (eds), Muslim Europe or Euro-Islam, Berkeley and New York, 2002, herein my contribution: ‘Muslim Migrants in Europe between Euro-Islam and Ghettoization’, pp. 31–52. The title of the book addresses the real issue and this is not an expression of Orientalism.
B. Tibi, Islam and the Cultural Accommodation of Social Change, Boulder, CO, 1990.
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Tibi, B. (2005). September 11, the Global Cultural Turn and the Return of the Sacred in Islamic Civilisation: between Religious Revival and the New Totalitarianism of Political Islam. In: Islam between Culture and Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230204157_12
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