Political Islam
Revolution, Radicalism, or Reform?
For the exchange of ideas there is no single emerging “Islamic fundamentalist ideology,” and even political allies like Rashid al-Ghannouchi of Tunisia and Hasan al-Turabi in Sudan do not present the same programs. It is important to emphasize that there is no ideologically monolithic, global Islamist movement. However, an emerging Islamic perspective makes it possible to discuss politics, economics, and society in a way that does not depend on the assumptions of Western secularist academic social science discourse. This is an important dimension of the emergence of political Islam in the last years of the twentieth century.
In the development of this political Islam, there have been some individuals of international significance. One good example is Khurshid Ahmad, the Pakistani economist. He has a “home base” largest Islamist organization in South Asia, the Jamaat-e-Islami, and is politically influential on the national political scene in Pakistan. However, for many years, he has been on the international lecture circuit and has helped raise the Islamic consciousness of young Muslims in Malaysia, South Africa, Great Britain, the United States, and many other places. His visits to Muslim groups in South Africa helped define the nature and goals of the emerging Muslim Youth Movement, and in Malaysia, he was an important element in bringing together the leader of the activist Islamic student movement with leaders of the majority Malay political party. He was a major figure in the establishment of the Islamic Foundation in Great Britain, which has been at the forefront of publishing works that help define the role of Muslims as minorities and Islamist classics like Abu al-ala Mawdudi’s commentary on the Quran. These activities help create a cosmopolitan global set of linkages that are crucial in defining the worldview foundations for political Islam in many different areas. Khurshid Ahmad is only one of a relatively large number of internationally and globally active Muslim intellectuals who are important links in the cosmopolitan networks of the contemporary Islamic world.
A second and more formal type of institution in this discourse, creating a set of linkages, is the “international Islamic university” and the Islamic “think tank.” These institutions have become important contexts within which Muslim intellectuals from many different parts of the world interact and create a shared conceptual foundation for debates about political Islam. The faculty of the International Islamic University in Malaysia is composed of Muslim scholars from the United States, Sudan, Pakistan, and many other countries. In their classes and international conferences, they provide contexts within which cosmopolitan Islamist concepts can be further defined and developed.
