The term ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ has invariably been used in recent times to define the political radicalisation of fringe groups in Muslim states, groups that have haunted the political status quo both in the East and the West. The economic globalisation of post colonialism has tended to generate an international political milieu where it becomes hard to define any political event across the globe in the strict geographical sense.
The relationship of core and periphery in terms of globalisation is an important aspect to understand the rise of what is called Islamic fundamentalism. The core of the capitalist system benefit the most from globalisation whereas the peripheral economies of the developing world are adversely affected by it.
Islamism has risen in societies tarnished by the globalisation of capitalism on the one hand, and rise of postcolonial dependent political leadership in their societies on the other. The political and economic dependence these postcolonial societies inherited has perpetuated with the same intensity, framed in the models followed by the ruling elite of Muslim societies; these models could serve the interests of core economies only. The political reforms of Mustafa Kemal in the aftermath of the First World War were an attempt to modernise the traditional political and economic structure of Turkey based on themes borrowed from the West without taking into account contextual variations. The new emerging capitalist classes in the Muslim world followed the doctrine of ‘Kemalism’ to set out the long journey of modernisation and industrialisation in their respective countries.
By the time the process of modernisation was initiated, the nascent Muslim states were integrated into the global capitalist system where it was not possible to develop their own industry against the global competition. This resulted in the worsening of living conditions in Muslim states, where due to land reforms by the ruling elite the traditional land-owning class lost its power without being integrated into the fragile industrial sector in the face of global free market enterprise.
The process of rapid urbanisation and lack of employment opportunities in the metropolitan centres provided fertile ground for the political radicalisation of those newly urbanised classes that had nothing to lose. Thus, Islamism represented an attempt to come to terms with these contradictions by people brought up to respect traditional Islamic ideas. This process of Islamisation has gained significant currency in recent years, in particular after 9/11. But it does not find equal support in all sections of Muslim societies. According to Chris Harman, “Islamic revival gets sustenance from four different social groupings – each of which interprets Islam in its own way”.
First, there are those members of the traditional privileged classes who fear losing out in the capitalist modernisation of society – particularly landowners (including clergy dependent on incomes from land belonging to religious foundations), traditional merchant capitalists, the owners of small shops and workshops. Such groups have often been the traditional sources of finance for the mosque and see Islam as a way of defending their established way of life and of making those who oversee change listen to their voices. Thus, in Iran and Algeria it was this group that provided the resources to the clergy to oppose the state’s land reform programme in the 1960s and 1970s.
Second, often emerging from among this first group, are those capitalists who have enjoyed success despite hostility from those groups linked to the state. In Egypt, for instance, the present-day Muslim Brotherhood wormed their way into the economic fabric of Saadat’s Egypt at a time when a whole section of it had been turned over to unregulated capitalism. In Turkey, the Welfare Party, led by members of the main conservative party, enjoyed the support of traders in the 1990s.
The third group are the rural poor who have suffered under the advance of capitalist farming and who have been forced into the cities as they desperately look for work.
But in the cities, the lowest group are the unemployed made up of displaced former peasants who have flooded the cities in search of work and social opportunities; detached from rural society without being truly integrated into urban society. They have lost the certainties associated with an old way of life – certainties which they identify with traditional Muslim culture – without gaining a secure material existence or a stable way of life. The process of modernisation that cannot satisfy the psychological, spiritual and material needs of young people must be a cause of reversion to political religion in search of better lives.
The fourth is a section of the new middle class that has arisen as a result of capitalist modernisation right across the Third World. In Pakistan, the PTI and the Jamaat-e-Islami are examples of religious revivalist parties that attract the attention of the middle class. They have shown political strength through imminent electoral gains in the urban centres during the last general elections in Pakistan. They have political influence in the public education institutions among graduates who come from the middle class.
Though in the aftermath of 9/11, which led to the fall of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein in Afghanistan and Iraq respectively, the general political outlook associated with these religio-political forces has altered, but the nature of the political appeal they cater to is the same. These forces want, at one level, the purification of their societies through the reinterpretation (their own version) of Islam and, at another level, they are critical of US hegemony.
Elsewhere, the manifestation of political radicalism can be seen in the form of parochial nationalism – for instance, the rise of Hindu nationalism in India under the communal ideology of the political alliance known as the Sangh Parivar (United Family). The cessation of East Timor from Indonesia was made possible only by using the religious slogans of Christianity.
Here, a question arises as to whether it would be fair enough to name this political radicalism in the Muslim states of the developing world ‘Islamic fundamentalism’. I would say no because the situation is far more complex than the mere complicity of taking the whole issue under the one definition of Islamic fundamentalism.
Like any other political movement in human history, Islamism is a movement with its own dynamics. It is rather misleading to call Islamic fundamentalism a homogenous movement of fanatics only, given its diverse nature and the multiplicity of factors which constitute Islamic movements across the Muslim world. It is equally wrong to define the rise of Islamism within the geographical confines of the East for, among other things, it is the global capitalist system which tends to generate marginalised groups, vulnerable to extremist ideologies like Islamism.
The writer is a freelance columnist based in Islamabad.
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