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4 - What is Islamism?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2025

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Summary

Islamism is a highly militant mobilizing ideology selectively developed out of Islam's scriptures, texts, legends, historical precedents, organizational experiences and present-day grievances, all as a defensive reaction against the long-term erosion of Islam's primacy over the public, institutional, economic, social and cultural life of Muslim societies in the 20th century.

This ideology is put in practice by resurrecting the early concept of Islamic Jihad (Holy War) in its most violent and aggressive forms against an environing world of paganism, polytheism, idolatry, godlessness, infidelity, atheism, apostasy and unbelief known to that ideology as the Jahiliyyah of the 20th century.

The ultimate goal for Islamism is to save the contemporary world from this Jahili condition – imposed on it by the modern West – pretty much the way the rise and rapid spread of Islam 13 centuries ago saved the world from the very similar Jahili condition that dominated it at that time.

The proceedings of this grand salvivic project are already manifestly evident:

  • (1) In the re-Islamization processes presently underway in currently “nominally” Muslim countries and societies,

  • (2) in the internal armed Jihad against the apostate regimes dominating at present all so-called Muslim states and ruling all so-called Muslim countries and

  • (3) in the external grand Jihad against the global unholy alliance of Western Crusaderism with world Jewism, Zionism and Israelism.

Islamism as ideology and practice is:

  • (a) Fundamentalist, because it presents itself as the authentic movement of return to and retrieval of the now forgotten “fundamentals” (usul) and “basics” (usus) of Islam, with special emphasis on the lapsed imperative and duty of Jihad itself.

  • (b) Revivalist, because it presents itself as the primary agent of the double process of reviving those fundamentals, as active beliefs and efficacious practices, in the lives of Muslims and of reviving the currently hibernating masses of the Muslim World by injecting into their lives, hearts, minds and institutions those neglected fundamentals.

  • (c) Integralist, because its immediate goal is to re-integrate all autonomous aspects, areas and spheres of modern society and life – such as the social, the economic, the political, the cultural, the scientific, the aesthetic, the domestic, the personal, the religious, the spiritual etc. – under Allah's religion and rule as manifested in his Shari’a Law.

  • (d) Theocratic, because its manifest program is to restore Allah's Hakimiyyah, sovereignty or dominion over his rebellious human creatures during the modern period in general and the 20th century in particular via the establishment of truly Muslim states and state apparatuses.

Information

Type
Chapter
Information
Occidentalism, Conspiracy and Taboo
Collected Essays on Islam and Politics
, pp. 17 - 18
Publisher: Gerlach Books
Print publication year: 2019

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  • What is Islamism?
  • Sadik J. Al-Azm
  • Book: Occidentalism, Conspiracy and Taboo
  • Online publication: 05 September 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9783959940474.005
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  • What is Islamism?
  • Sadik J. Al-Azm
  • Book: Occidentalism, Conspiracy and Taboo
  • Online publication: 05 September 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9783959940474.005
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • What is Islamism?
  • Sadik J. Al-Azm
  • Book: Occidentalism, Conspiracy and Taboo
  • Online publication: 05 September 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9783959940474.005
Available formats
×