Islamism

The word “Islamism” has many meanings, and is often used pejoratively rather than descriptively. Some Islamists are violent and intolerant extremists, but most are ordinary people who are trying to put their religious beliefs into practice — including the traditional Muslim injunction to live in peace, but also the injunction to promote justice and human well-being. I highly recommend Leila Ahmed’s most recent book for anyone who wants to understand where Islamism came from and how it has changed since it emerged in the 1920s.

Leila Ahmed, A Quiet Revolution: The Veil’s Resurgence from the Middle East to America (2011). This valuable book is far broader than its title suggests. Ahmed grew up in Egypt and now teaches at the Harvard Divinity School, and she started with the question of why more women are wearing hijab now than a generation ago, in the United States and around the world. Answering this question led her not only to exploring the multiple reasons individual women offer for wearing and not wearing different forms of veils, but also to writing an extremely helpful history of Islamism in Egypt, where the Islamic Brotherhood was founded in the 1920s, and the United States, where Islamism-influenced women are now at the forefront of challenging gender hierarchies. Islamism puts the pursuit of social justice and service to others near the core of Muslim practice. Traditional forms of Islam, in contrast, tend to have a more personal, spiritual, and ethical focus. Because Islamism urges its members towards organization and activism, and because of financial support from Saudi Arabia, Islamism has grown rapidly and is increasingly able to define itself as the “true” Islam. Islamism has changed the symbolic meaning of hijab, and for many Islamist women, wearing hijab now signifies their commitment to social justice. In the 1970s the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood repudiated violence as a means for achieving their goals, but not all Islamists agreed with them and some broke away to create militant groups, which are a small minority but more likely to make the news than the peaceful Islamist mainstream. Most American Muslim institutions have Islamist roots, but most American Muslims are not Islamist. 9/11 has had a huge effect on American Muslim organizations, making them more open to diverse opinions and challenges to hierarchical leadership. In the US, the Islamic call to justice has extended to gender justice among many, but probably not a majority, of American Islamists. Such a brief summary does not do justice to the depth of Ahmed’s work, but suggests the breadth and importance of her story.