BOOK REVIEW
Not one but many Islams
The Future of Political Islam by Graham E Fuller
Reviewed by Dmitry Shlapentokh
Interest in this or that subject has usually followed this or that political trend. Western historiography is no exception. During World War II, there was a lot written about "mysterious" and "aggressive" Japanese and German souls. After the outset of the Cold War, the Russian soul was discovered. However, on the collapse of the USSR, it was found that the Russian soul was actually quite crass and materialistic and not mysterious at all. Interest in the Russian soul plummeted, to be replaced, at least for a while, by the Chinese soul, whose enigmatic qualities were seen as the root of China's economic success.
It is not surprising, therefore, that after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack and the subsequent "war on terror", America's interest in everything Muslim, Arabic, and just Middle Eastern rose with the speed of stocks on Wall Street before the bust in 2000. Even Hollywood did not escape the trend - and why should it? As a result, Americans could see Troy and Alexander the Great - in both cases, the well-trained and resolute Westerners decimated the Asiatics. America's publishing industry has followed suit; numerous books have been published on Middle Eastern and Islamic studies, to satisfy the needs of both specialists and the general public. The reviewed work is one of them.
One of the major good points of the book is its understanding of the plurality of Islam in its political manifestations. The author points out that while one can discern some basic ideological premises - such as the notion of ummah, the aggregate body of all Muslims, which transcends ethnic and national boundaries - the real Islam as a political doctrine has been compartmentalized. In its political manifestation, Islam has been merged, integrated, with various political doctrines that often have nothing in common with each other. One can see Islam integrated with pro-Western democratic regimes as in Turkey, basically pro-Western authoritarian regimes as in Egypt, and fiercely anti-Western regimes as in Iran. While able to be incorporated into the institutions of the various types of states, Islam can also be the framework of a purely revolutionary movement. It could, for example, be the ideological basis for an Iranian revolution, which the author sees as the truly popular revolution, and for the violent movement he sees as without an end - al-Qaeda, which regards terror as the major way of fighting the enemy.
Thus, as author Graham E Fuller rightly admits, one can see not one Islam but many Islams of many different groups, each with its own particular relationship with the West. Still, the question can arise as to what trend has actually dominated the relationship between Islam and the West.
At the beginning of the book, the author focuses on the many positive features of Islam, at least from the point of view of Western liberal intellectuals. He states that Islam has a strong sense of unity of all Muslims, regardless of ethnic and national boundaries. And he praises Islam for providing the intellectual framework to fight oppressive regimes. In short, he believes that the values of Islam are not much different from those of the West. Consequently, he also believes that the West and Islam can find a common ground, and he does not exclude positive cooperation between the Western powers and Islam. Still, his overall views of the future of Islam's relationship with the West are rather pessimistic. They mostly relate to the rise of radical Islam, as actually launched by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. This "brotherhood" regards the fight against the West as its major task and is related to the spread of globalization.
And here - the author rightly states - modern globalization is qualitatively different from what could be seen in earlier periods of global history, when "global empire" implied simply the transition from one order to another. At present, globalization and the advance of capitalism have destroyed the traditional frameworks of the pre-capitalist social/political and economic order, leaving a person in a Muslim country alone to face economic/social insecurity. It might be stated here that social/economic dislocation and the misery caused by it are in process not just in Muslim countries, but all over the Third World. And one can also see, as in the Muslim countries, a violent response in which religious doctrines are blended with radical political doctrines. This was, for example, the case with Latin America in the 1970s, when a radically revolutionary interpretation of Christianity was often the ideological backbone of the guerrilla movement. The revolutionary Christians, so to speak, metamorphosed here and there into violent radicals inspired by a unique blend of Christianity and Marxism. According to Fuller, one can find a similar phenomenon in Muslim countries, where those who became involved in radical Islam were communists in the past. While the connection between religious radicalism - to be precise, the revolutionary interpretation of the religious - can be seen with Christian-inspired radicals in Latin America, it becomes clear only in the case of Islam.
Indeed, only Islam provided such fertile ground for a violent radical movement, and the author could have explained this phenomenon. In our view, the merger of Islam with the radical and violent movements (eg, al-Qaeda) can be attributed to the fact that various forms of violent movements or movements related to Islam not only had emerged early but had been well publicized and financially supported, albeit by different forces. This was the case with Palestinians against Israel and the guerrillas against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan. The Iranian revolution could also be seen in this context. All these movements, regardless of their different political vectors, merged with (or at least were influenced by) radical Islam, fighting what were implicitly seen as anti-Islamic regimes. The culture of radical violence had been focusing on the Middle East for generations, but US policy in the Middle East and its anti-Islamic stand in general, the author claims, provided the additional stimuli for the creation of present-day violent, radical Islam. One might state here - to add to the author's arguments - that the departure of the USSR from the global scene naturally transformed the United States into the embodiment of evil, to which one could attribute all the problems of Muslim societies.
This book, in short, regardless of its rather blurred focus, can be seen as a useful introduction for those who venture to study Islam and its role in the modern world.
The Future of Political Islam by Graham E Fuller. New York/Houndmills: Palgrave MacMillan, 2004. ISBN: 1403965560; 256 pages. Price: US$29.95.
Dmitry Shlapentokh, PhD, is associate professor of history, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Indiana University South Bend.
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