The third wave of political Islamism

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Mainstream Islamist political parties that win elections throughout the Middle East and Asia are often perceived in Western lands and Israel as a dire threat. Not all Arabs and Asians are happy with the victorious Islamists, either. It is important to interpret correctly why the Islamists are winning, and what they really represent.

I have had many opportunities in the past few years to participate in conferences, seminars, lectures and friendly dinner conversations with colleagues from throughout the Arab, Asian, European and North America countries. Analysts from outside this region quickly become hopelessly confused by the synthesis of several phenomena that manifest themselves simultaneously in Islamist politics, in a way that they do not do in Western cultures. These include: religion, national identity, legitimate good governance, and resistance to foreign occupation or subjugation.

So, many analysts in the West and Israel explain Islamist victories with ideas about hopes for a revived Islamic caliphate, suicide bombers enticed by virgins in heaven, Islamo-fascism, the need for reformation and modernisation in Islam, the urgency of embracing secularism in Arab-Islamic society, problems with madrasas (and education more broadly), the anti-American, anti-Israeli incitement tendencies of Arab media, and other ideas.

Such views suffer from two fundamental constraints: they reflect Western historical traditions and assume that Islamic societies must follow the same trajectory of democratic reform and modernity; and they hear only the religious vocabulary of the Islamists, without grasping the underlying political and national issues that drive them.

Jordan Times