2.Is "Political Islam" a national or a global phenomenon? Why?
The rise of Islamism is, paradoxically, both a product and a rejection of modernity.Islamism,
evidently, is itself an important point of contention; indeed, much the same can be said of
“modernity”
Political Islam is a form of instrumentalization of Islam by individuals,groups and
organizations that pursue political objectives.It provides political responses to today's societal
challenges by imagining a future,the foundations for which rest on reappropriated,reinvented
concepts borrowed from the Islamic Tradition. The reappropriation of the past,the invention
of tradition inter sofa romanticized notion of a largely mythical golden age, lies at the heart of
this instrumentalization of Islam.
Clearly, then, political Islam comes in various shapes and sizes; it may, in fact, be more
accurate to refer to this phenomenon in the plural, as ‘political Islams’. So why many outside
observers perceive political Islam to be a monolithic phenomenon. The answer lies in part in
the use of a common vocabulary by a diverse set of Islamists and in part in their similar
attitude towards the international power structure. The similarity in vocabulary can be
explained primarily with reference to the domestic political systems within which most
Islamist groups operate and which they wish to change. The similarity in their attitude
towards the international distribution of power can be explained principally by the impact of
the international power structure on Muslim societies and on causes that are perceived as
‘Muslim’ by the large majority of Muslims around the world.
Constructivists view Islamism no tas a reified set of social and cultural norms, but as a
discourse – a network of language, symbols, assumptions and actions that both constitute and
are constituted by social reality.
First,Islamism, as far as its exponents and adherents are concerned,is above all a political
ideology and not a theological construct.Its main attraction for its followers lies not in the fact
that it offers them spiritual solace,but in it supposed capacity to provide answers to their
contemporary political and social predicaments.It is a product of modernity as much as a
response to it.
Second, despite its ahistorical and acontextual construction of a romanticized golden age,
Islamism in practice is a prisoner of context, especially that provided by the existence of
multiple sovereign states. There are almost as many varieties of political Islam as there are
