The Turmoil Within

James Piscatori is University Lecturer in Islamic Politics and Fellow at Wadham College, Oxford University, and author of Muslim Politics.

Long before the shattering events of September 11, two academic views -- represented by Bernard Lewis and Gilles Kepel -- had crystallized on the future of politicized Islam, or "Islamism." Lewis, a historian, argued that the movement's deep roots in Islamic history and thought guaranteed its potency and staying power; Kepel, a political sociologist, concluded that the Islamist moment had largely passed. Now two new books by these scholars, although mainly written before September, make it clear that recent events have not changed their contrary views.

In What Went Wrong?, Lewis' well-established argument that something has gone seriously awry with Islam has acquired new urgency. This prolific author draws on his profound knowledge of Middle Eastern and Islamic history to ask how a civilization that was once so materially successful and communally tolerant could have declined to the point where its economies are in free fall and political authoritarianism and violence have grown endemic. Where once great scientists, philosophers, and artists held sway, now thrive closed-minded didacts and "consecrated assassins." Lewis' history reveals an uneasy Muslim coexistence with unconquered infidels and an unwillingness to come to terms with the long-term dangers of fusing religion and politics.

Lewis' argument is nothing if not controversial. But he also defies some of his critics. He is more generous toward Islam than his detractors would acknowledge, for instance, seeing a greater indulgence in the medieval treatment of Muslim dissidents than was accorded supposed Christian heretics during the Spanish Inquisition. Moreover, contrary to the often-heard charge that he freezes Islamic history and fails to appreciate the extent of radical change in the twentieth century, Lewis is all too aware of powerful revisionist forces in Islam. These led, on the one hand, to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's "secularizing" reforms in Turkey and, on the other, to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's Islamizing revolution in Iran.

The picture may be even more complex, however. As Kepel persuasively shows, the Turkey of today, with entrenched grassroots Islamic sentiment and an organized Islamist movement that can be repressed but not ignored, is scarcely what AtatŸrk envisioned. By the same token, the twists and turns of the Iranian Revolution have led, if not to the emergence of a fully operative civil society, then at least to portentous challenges to the monopoly of clerical rule in Iran. The Muslim world has not been isolated from the troublesome processes of modernization, class and ethnic differentiation, and the advent of mass education that, among other factors, have influenced the development of modern political societies throughout the world. New inequalities, identities, and opportunities have resulted.

More importantly, however, these social and political changes have also contributed to a fragmentation of religious authority whereby, to put it crudely, the meaning of scripture no longer needs to be interpreted by a religious establishment but, rather, lies in the eye of the beholder. Many Muslims would vehemently insist that the centuries-long development of Islamic jurisprudence and Koranic exegesis provides definitive guidance to the faithful. But this tradition now confronts the proliferation of modern-educated individuals, who have direct access to the basic religious texts and question why they should automatically defer to the religious class. It has thus become difficult to say with reassuring finality what is Islamic and what is not. This shifting of goal posts and the ease with which individuals can presume to invoke and defend Muslim tradition have allowed Osama bin Laden to claim to speak on behalf of Islam. Radicalization, therefore, appears to have emerged as much from distinctly modern conditions as from the prior experience of inauspicious Muslim-Western encounters.

RUMBLES IN THE REALM

Lewis cannot be accused of taking his subjects lightly. On the contrary, by urging Muslims to ask themselves what they have done wrong, he seeks to rouse them from passive and self-defeating victimhood -- "the West has done this to us" -- to an active and honest re-examination of their predicament that would locate the problem closer to home. First incurious of the distant West, then pointing an accusatory finger at the imperialist West, Muslims, through their insularity, have done themselves a singular disservice. They have fallen prey to "predatory authority" in their own societies: governments that, in the name of modernization or Islam (or both), intimidate their people in order to maintain their narrow rule.

If Muslims are being asked to take destiny into their own hands, however, the consequences will not be entirely what was anticipated. Many Muslims, in fact, have already been asking just the question Lewis poses to them. Terrorists and radicals have not answered it in the way he would like, of course, nor have they evinced the faltering cultural self-confidence that he suggests is a hallmark of the Muslim modern age. On the contrary, Islamist extremists unflinchingly seek to return to what the Koran calls the "straight path" of Islam through overthrow of their rulers, whom they consider impious, as well as confrontation with outsiders, whom they regard as infidels. From bin Laden's perspective, states such as Saudi Arabia or Pakistan may proclaim themselves to be Islamic but are actually "allies of Satan."