The making (and unmaking) of political Islam

Abstract

Cluster words or definitions which impose themselves upon wide fields of discourse do not arise and consolidate by chance. Some of these acquire a pivotal position in discourses produced within one or several formations, or are even able to engender new types of discourse on the basis of previously separate traditions of intellectual endeavour. Political Islam is a prominent example of this type of phenomenon; for the present work, it represents the main catchcategory, a sort of 'umbrella' definition for a family of other terms and definitions which have become popular since the late seventies, and which all aim to point not to Islam 'as such', but to an Islam perceived as 'in movement' and at the same time 'made unpredictable', according to the assumption that the politicization of Islam occurs by virtue "of an eccess of zeal rather than with clearly defined goals" (Piscatori 1983). The central purpose of this work is to reconstruct the path through which the catchcategory of "political Islam" (hereafter referred as PI) arises and develops from the original reification of Koranic din in the form of islam (or Islam) to the emergence of the tendence to predicate Islam in terms of its alleged firstly societal, then political dimension up to the formation, during the seventies, of what we will call the 'hermeneutic field' of PI, as defined by the constraints on any attempt to frame the relationship between Islam and the political domain, dictated by the emerging image of an 'Islam in movement'. Furthermore, we will analyse some important attempts by Arab authors to transcend the discursive constraints promanating from this hermeneutic field. Such attempts became evident, and were to a large extent consciously manipulated, from around the early eighties, when the hermeneutic field of PI consolidated its conditioning strength.