Is there such a thing as “Islamism” as distinct from Islam?
A correspondent from Turkey argues that there is. He writes:
I’m writing this from Istanbul, as a secular and an atheist Turkish citizen.
I believe your perspective on the issue of “Islamism” is problematic due to a number of socio-historical reasons which are conspicuously absent from the discussion of Islamic cultures.
To my knowledge, this concept was *not* invented by Westerners in recent times as you assume, but a few decades ago in Turkia. To understand the concrete reasons for it, you’d have to be familiar with the realities of the Ottoman empire and the modern-day Turkish republic.
The Ottoman empire, being an empire, was no state defined along the Westphalia notion of a “nation-state”. To the contrary, it was largely multi-ethnic. Just to name a few of the ethnicities that comprised its “subjects”: Turks (i.e. Turkic Turks of Central Asian descent, as found these days in counties like Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, etc.), Persians, Anatolian groups like Kurds, Armenians, Greeks; Balkan groups like Bosniacs, Pomacs, Greeks, Hungarians; Arabic groups like Syrians, Iraqis, Yemenis, etc.; Caucasian (in the literal sense) groups like Azerbaijani, Georgian. And the list goes.
Now as those familiar with history books will know, the Ottomans had a so-called “millet” system. “Millet” in Arabic actually means “nation”, but the Ottoman nation was defined de facto along religious lines: that is, there was the Judaic nation (Jews), the Christian nation (Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians), and the Musulman nation (all the rest).
This is almost like the status of Catholicism in Europe in until the rise of Protestantism, Europeans could be considered a Catholic nation. But our modern-day definition of “nation” has gained currency after Protestantism. Along with “independence from Rome” came “localism”, and with it the idea of ethnically homogenous groups, with common descent and a common language and culture.
In the late 19th and early 20th century, in the late stages of the “sick man of Europe”, elites and politically active groups like members of the Union and Progress party—who were called the Young Turks—adopted the European notion of nationhood. They also became the architects of the Turkish republican revolution. They rejected the “imperial” and therefore “multi-ethnicist” and “multiculturalist” norms of the Ottomans, and instituted a nation-state which defined itself on the basis of “citizenship”.
A number of rural groups, who always defined their identity on the basis of the old Ottoman concept of nationhood (the “millet” or “religious-nation” system), have always rejected the secular republican ideals. It is we, the secular “citizenist” Turks who decided to call these “Islamists” since they rejected nation-state nationalism. The word was intended as “pan-Islamist”.
In fact, we also have another political minority group who reject citizenism in favor of a “race-based” nationhood, reject the concept of “assimilation” (and therefore consider our, say, our Jewish or Kurdish citizens as suspect), and we call them “Turkist”, because their perspective can only be called “pan-Turkist”.
The great difficulty here with the more recent, global use of the word “Islamist” has to do with the fact that (as you, too, can recognize if you take a closer look at the “nationality” of all the people you quote here) is that most Islamists interpret that word as being “pro-Islam” and therefore as “religious fundamentalism” due to the simple fact that the vast majority of them are Arab, and Islam is in one sense the most fundamental basis of Arab nationalism.
I’m inclined to think that present day fundamentalist Catholics also have a tendency—at least in their conservative literature—look at the past of Europe as that: that is, Christianity as being the European (White?) nation.
And this is where the crux of this matter is: nationalism and secularism. A large number of the members of my extended family will never consider themselves as anything other than Musulman, but they’re also fierce nationalists (in the citizenist sense) and they fully support our secular republic, and reject any “common cause or fate” with other Islamic nations. And that is where this divide is really. All Islamists are in one sense “Arab imperialists” since they consider the fundamental Arab culture underlying Islam as the only valid culture. We, the secular nationalist, “citizenist” Turks reject that since we believe in our national culture.
So, although from a purely linguistic and hermeneutic angle, you may find the distinction phoney, due to this socio-historical reality of at least the Turkish republic, the distinction is valid. Although no official protestantism has taken place within Islam, this is our de facto protestantism.
Please feel free to let me know what you think.
Best regards,
LA replies:
Dear Mr. _____ :
If I understand you correctly, the Muslim Turks who rejected Turkish nationalism and adhered to the old millet system, in which religious identity was paramount, called themselves Islamists, which conveyed the idea that they were loyal to the whole Islamic umma more than to Turkey. So “Islamist,” at least in the Turkish context, does convey a consistent, objective meaning.
That’s fine. The problem is, this is not the sense in which Westerners use “Islamist.” They use to describe all jihadists and terrorists and supporters of jihadism and terrorism. Now I admit there is some overlap between, on one hand, people whose loyalty is to the Islamic umma over any particular nation, and, on the other, jihadists/terrorists. But the terms are not identical.
More importantly the specific individuals and groups whom Westerners call “Islamists” DO NOT CALL THEMSELVES THAT. I’m not aware of Sayyid Qutb, or bin Laden, or Muhammad Atta, or Zarakaria Moussaoui, or the leaders of the terror insurgency in Iraq, or the Muslim student at the University of North Carolina who attempted mass murder on his fellow students with an SUV, calling themselves “Islamists,” or at least not in more than a passing way. They do not call their own belief system Islamism. They call it Islam.
And beyond that there is a larger point. The lines between the people you call “Islamists” and others are permeable, because as long as one is a Muslim, the divinely authoritative and ancestral pull of pure Islam is always potentially there. Thus the killers in the London bombings were born in Britain, and not particularly religious But growing up in a society that was non-Islamic, they began to search for their true identity, and found it in Islam.
Further, even the supposed vast population of “non-Islamist” Muslims utterly fail to take an effective stand against “Islamism,” because, after all, the “Islamists” remain their fellow Muslims. Thus, as far as non-Muslims are concerned, in practical effect there is not “Islamism” and “Islam.” There is just “Islam.” Wherever Muslims are, there will be Islamists. Since Islamism cannot be separated from Islam, non-Muslims who are the target of jihad have no choice but to regard all Islam as a threat. Do you think that the Carolingians in 732 or the Austrians and Poles in 1683 would have been effective in defending themselves against Muslim invasions, if they had told themselves, “It’s not Muslims that are the problem, it’s Islamists“?
For these and other reasons, it is not only false but extremely dangerous for Westerners to keep using such terms as “Islamist” and “Islamo-fascist,” because it plants in their minds the belief that Islam itself is a non-jihadist, non-terrorist religion of love and tolerance, and thus destroys their ability to defend themselves from it.
Europe is in mortal peril today because of the millions of Muslims it has admitted as immigrants. Had the Europeans over the past 50 years been like their ancestors and continued to (1) believe in Europe and Christianity, and (2) understand the true nature and beliefs of Islam, they would never have admitted those immigrants, and Europe would not presently be in the peril in which it finds itself.
Let me close by asking you a question. Given the historic record of Islam and the divinely mandated doctrines of Islam concerning treatment of non-Muslims, would you have advised Europeans to allow a mass immigration of Muslims into Europe in the first place? Do you favor the continuation of such immigration now? Do you support the inclusion of Turkey in the EU? If you support these things, then, whether you realize it or not, you support the Islamic takeover of Europe, and your promotion of the belief in a non-Islamist version of Islam, whether you realize it or not, serves the purposes of that campaign of conquest.
Sincerely,
The Turkish correspondent replies:
Thanks for your response.
My position vis-a-vis the vast numbers of Muslims in Europe, as someone who believes in national cultures and a believer in European civilization, should be obvious to you: No, I don’t support any massive/large scale immigration to Europe—either from Islamic lands or even from nominally Christian or non-Muslim (such as Buddhist, Shinto, Hindu) cultures. Nations are the wealth of the world, and they should not be subjected to such massive social engineering “experiments” the results of which simply cannot be seen, or, if history is any indication, have always been disastrous. I want each nation, race, civilization to preserve its character.
(BTW I loathe the European Soviet named EU with every fiber of my being. So, I can only support Turkey’s accession for a deliciously evil purpose: if there’s anything that is likely to wreck that wretched civilization-wrecking bureaucracy, that enemy of European nations, that’ll be it. Perhaps we should all support it. ;-])
There’s also a more pragmatic way of arriving at this conclusion: if life in any given geography is in a healthy and sustainable state, there’s no need to emigrate from that place. As societal existence is our primary mode of existence, and as civilization is not a mysterious quality like “ether” and thus does not rain on people, that means a miserable societal state is in the end the result of the failure of that specific society to create a viable civilization for themselves. As such, it is absurd to think that the same people can be successful at internalizing or supporting civilization by simply being transported to other people’s lands.
Finally, the difficulty with the case of radical Islam is, like all radicalisms, it covers up divisions above which it hovers. The fact that for Westerners there is in effect no distinction between the radicals and rest is both true and problematic. It’s true to a certain degree because Islamic radicals are also sons, brothers, cousins, fathers, husbands, etc. of some people. This is a social mechanism that applies to Mafiosi, the Roma in the Balkans, the KLA in Albania, etc. It is not specific to Islam. I’m not saying this makes it easier to deal with, but diagnosing it as Islam-specific would be misleading. In the end, it is very unwise to import large numbers of people from alien cultures exactly because of this.
But this also has another facet. For example, people from my social environment would have little trouble distancing themselves from Islamic radicals everywhere for the simple reason that if you look carefully you’ll see that the vast majority of those radicals are not, for example, Pomacs or Bosniacs (which my family are). In other words, we are not related in any ethnic sense, and our social ways are different (have always been different, will always be different), and we have no desire to pretend to be one with them. This is an ethnic, national dimension that is downplayed due to the stifling PC atmosphere about “race” and related matters.
But there’s also an across-the-board dynamic why Islamic radicals are not countered by the rest—or at least the so-called “moderates”—as eagerly as one expects. I know this feeling too well: whenever I intend to post a few innocent remarks about this or that in a Web forum, I’m treated as a composite and aggregate “Musulman” containing all the attributes of every biped from the Muslim geography in 24 hour zones. Just to avoid this stultifying “identity-toxication,” I invent nonsensical nicks and make efforts to avoid exposing my “nominal” identity. The mechanism of association applies in the case of radicals as well: even when you denounce them, you become sort of one of them, when in fact you have practically nothing in common with them. So you avoid touching them with an 11-foot pole.
Note also that I, too, appreciate your efforts to preserve Western culture and defend what is rightfully Its.
Best regards
Carl Simpson writes:
Once again, VFR presents the most interesting and well-thought out posts in the blogosphere. I found the remarks by the reader from Istanbul most fascinating. I have read before about the aspect of Arab supremacism that is often present within Islam, which leads certain ethnic groups, like Kurds or Turks, to water down some of Islam’s more toxic aspects with the antidote of nationalism. This may explain the success of Kemalism in Turkey, to whatever extent it has been successful. Another example might be the only group that has remained our loyal ally in Iraq—the Kurds—despite frequent betrayals by the US government over the past two decades. The Kurds are almost entirely Sunni Muslim, yet the majority apparently place a higher value on their own identity as the Kurdish nation than they do in the Umma. No doubt Mr. Hechtman and your reader can explain this phenomenon in far greater breadth and detail than I can. It does exist in the Muslim world, though.
If nothing else, this is something the West should be exploring as part of the battle to contain the spread of Islam. The Kurds have been faithful allies, why shouldn’t we help them to live in an independent Kurdistan as most of them wish to?
LA replies:
I agree the Turkish correspondent’s comments about the two allegiances within Islam are very interesting, and, of course, I appreciate very much his justification and support of Western particularity. This is the kind of Muslim, or rather person of Muslim background (since he himself is a non-believer), that we can talk to.
But the same old problem remains: that the various “counter-movements” that appear within Islam from time to time, including nationalism of the Turkish type, remain always in a secondary or reactive posture in relation to the primary thrust of Islam, and can never overcome it.
Maureen writes:
The much vaunted Ataturk secularism of Turkey is limited to a thin and fragile layer of the well-educated minority in only Istanbul and Ankara. The rest of the country (and there are no other big cities) is uneducated and Islamic, not Ataturkic.
For the past 80 years the Military—the class loyal to Ataturk—has been the real force behind keeping Turkey secular and keeping the Sharia-promoters at bay. Ethnically speaking, the Turks look down on the Arabs and Kurds, etc. which often makes them willing to form coalitions with Westerners—unfortunately making Westerners think that the Turks are pro-Western when they are merely anti-Arab. In the end, the weight of history and the Ottoman empire has heft—Islam is still Islam, and Turkey is still Islamic. Restoring the lost glories of the Calipate is always at the back of the mind of even secular Turks.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 25, 2006 01:57 AM | Send