Shadi Hamid
BROOKINGS | October 1, 2015
Political scientists, myself included, have tended to see religion,
ideology, and identity as “epiphenomenal”—products of a given set of
material factors. These factors are the things we can touch, grasp, and
measure. For example, when explaining why suicide bombers do what they
do, we assume that these young men are depressed about their own
accumulated failures, frustrated with a dire economic situation, or
humiliated by political repression and foreign occupation. While these
are all undoubtedly factors, they are not—and cannot be—the whole story.
But the role, and power, of religion in the modern Middle East is
more mundane than that (after all, the overwhelming majority of Muslims
do not think about becoming suicide bombers). “Islamism” has become a
bad word, because the Islamists we hear about most often are those of
ISIS and al-Qaeda. Most Islamists, however, are not jihadists or
extremists; they are members of mainstream Islamist movements like the
Muslim Brotherhood whose distinguishing feature is their gradualism
(historically eschewing revolution), acceptance of parliamentary
politics, and willingness to work within existing state structures, even
secular ones. Contrary to popular imagination, Islamists do not
necessarily harken back to seventh century Arabia.
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