ABSTRACT
The dominant mode of understanding has it that Islamism or the Islamist movement1 is traditionalist, and a revolt against modernity. Sivan describes Islamism as ‘a reaction against modernity’ (1985: 11). Likewise, Bernard Lewis (1988, 1993, 2002, 2003) and Moghissi (1999) contend that Islamism is hostile to modernity. A different version of this argument pleads that Islamism is an ‘authentic’ discourse untouched by modernity (Kelidar 1981; Davutoglu 1994; Sayyid 1997). In yet another version of this argument, Tibi avers that Islamism symbolizes the dream of ‘semi-modernity’ because, while it embraces the technological dimensions of modernity, it shuns the rationality of modernity (1995: 82). Based on the similar premise, Lawrence contends that Islamic fundamentalism is not only ‘anti-intellectual’ but also ‘anti-modernist’ (1987: 31, see also Ayubi 1991: 250). In Defenders of God: The Fundamentalist Revolt against the Modern Age, he makes a distinction between ‘modern’ and ‘modernist’. In his view, fundamentalists are ‘modern’ because they welcome ‘the instrumentalities of modern media, transport, or warfare’ and ‘relate fully to the infrastructures that have produced the unprecedented options for communication and mobility that today’s world offers’ (1995: 1). They are, however, not ‘modernist’ for they reject ‘modernism as a holistic ideological framework’ (ibid.: 17). Central to modernism, Lawrence writes, are the ‘values of Enlightenment’, ‘banner of secularism’ and ‘individual autonomy’ (ibid.: 6, 27). Though there are significant differences in the ways Tibi and Lawrence, as well as Lewis,
Sayyid, Sivan and others, characterize Islamism, they tend to broadly converge in their view that it is opposed to ‘real’ modernity or it is only partially modern as it disregards Enlightenment values and rationality.
