ABSTRACT
Political Islam in its pacifist and militant versions emerged at least partly in response to the perceived shortcomings of Islamic fundamentalism. Because of this, as well as the long-established link between fundamentalism and Islamic schools, Islamists developed an anti-clerical stance, with their lay movement usually existing outside the body of the ‘ulama’. There are a number of reasons for this: first, Islamists insist that the ‘ulama’s’ traditional education has left them ill-equipped to defend Islam against the new ideas that have swept in from the West and pushed aside the political ideal of the Islamic Khilafa (Caliphate).3 They also claim that fundamentalists have failed to interpret, portray and defend Islam in a way that would allow it to address the problems of modernity while still maintaining its authentic essence and message.4 This concern is not new and indeed has been voiced since the early twentieth century by Islamic ideologues all over the Islamicate world, including Syrian Salafis such as Sa’id al-Jabi and Sa’id Hawwa.5 In his explanation of the Islamists’ intellectual inclinations, Sadowski writes,
Islamists, with their cosmopolitan backgrounds, introduced various tools they had borrowed from the West into their organizational arsenal . . . they drew on anti-modernist philosophies that embodied Western dissatisfaction with the consequences of industrialization and positivism: Spengler, Althusser, and Feyerabend supplied some of their favourite texts.6
