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Thus, the question of the transmission of Islamic knowledge versus secular and Westernized education became crucial. Many Islamic thinkers viewed the two systems of education as compatible, arguing that they should be integrated and could complement each other. The Indonesian Nahdatul Ulama, for instance, favoured a system of Islamic schooling along modernized lines that would integrate religious and secular knowledge.

What is the Muslim world?

Later in the 20th century, colonized Muslim societies except Palestine gradually achieved political independence and built new states. Two states, though established in societies that had not been colonized, exemplified contrasting paradigms. This brand of secularist government also controlled the public expression of Islam and did not separate state and religion.

In Egypt , which became a constitutional monarchy after though it was under colonial control until , the question of the relation between state and Islam generated fierce political controversies between secularists and those who interpreted Islam as a system of government. Among the latter, the Muslim Brotherhood grew from a grassroots organization into a mass movement that provided key popular support for the Revolution of the Free Officers, a military coup led by Col.

Gamal Abdel Nasser that ousted the monarchy. Similar movements in Palestine, Syria , Jordan , and North Africa , the politicized heirs of earlier reformist intellectual trends, later emerged as significant actors in their respective political scenes. Egypt, which had been under the influence of the Soviet Union since the mids, withdrew from military and other treaties with the Soviets in the s under Pres.

A new alliance between Egypt and Saudi Arabia, fostered by economic assistance to Egypt from Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing Persian Gulf states, altered the geopolitical map of Islam and led to new religious dynamics. In the Saudi regime established the Muslim World League in Mecca with the participation of Muslim scholars and intellectuals from all over the world.

The league, whose mission was to unify Muslims and promote the spread of Islam, opened offices in the Islamic world in the s and in the West in subsequent decades. With financial assistance as well as religious guidance from the league, new Islamic organizations were created by revivalist movements in the Islamic world and by immigrant Muslim communities in Europe and America.

These movements were diverse from the start and did not reach public prominence until , when an Islamic state was founded in Iran through revolution. The Iranian Revolution gave hope to many Islamist movements with similar programs by demonstrating the potential of Islam as a foundation for political mobilization and resistance. It further provided them with a blueprint for political action against governments that they believed had betrayed authentic Islam and grown corrupt and authoritarian.

The Islamic republic of Iran also competed with Saudi Arabia at the international level for influence in the Middle East.

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Even before the Iranian Revolution, however, offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood were radicalizing political Islam in other parts of the Islamic world. The Islamic Assembly was reconfigured after the partition of Pakistan and India in in order to support the establishment of an Islamic state in Pakistan. This trend was also present in North Africa and South Asia. In many cases these activists were violently repressed.

In some instances conflicts with government authorities led to bloody civil wars, as in Algeria between and , or to protracted armed struggles between military forces and Islamist groups, as in Egypt from the s to the mids. This repression resulted in the exile of many Islamist activists to Europe and the Americas and led many others to join such military fronts as the Afghan Jihad. From the late s, Islamist groups were the object of sustained worldwide media attention.

Yet nonviolent groups received significantly less attention than the few groups that advocated the use of violence. Nonviolent Islamists often expressed their willingness to participate in legal electoral politics. This became possible in the s, when authoritarian regimes—faced with serious socioeconomic crises and seeking to legitimize themselves in the eyes of the public—implemented policies of limited political liberalization.

The Muslim Brotherhood first engaged in electoral politics in Egypt in the s and in Jordan as early as In Morocco the Party of Justice and Development elected its first parliamentary representatives in In Indonesia the Prosperous Justice Party took part in legislative elections in Turkey allowed Islamists not only to participate in elections but also to govern at the national level.

In all these cases, mainstream opposition Islamist movements demonstrated their power to mobilize voters, a consequence of their social and charitable activism, their programs of good governance, and their fight against government corruption. Despite their tendencies to speak about the universality of the Muslim community, mainstream Islamists remained nationalistic.

Holding a conservative view of politics, they abandoned the revolutionary and utopian aspects of radical activism and instead struggled to moralize public and political life—e. Laws inspired by the Islamic legal tradition were implemented, however, in various forms in Iran after the revolution and in northern Sudan after In countries that did not practice electoral politics, movements of opposition devised other means of protest and participation.

Contemporary Islamist movements are polarized between two main trends. On the one hand, most movements are mainstream and pragmatic, seeking eventually to govern through participation in the political system and public debate. On the other hand, more-radical opposition groups reject electoral politics and seek revolutionary change, sometimes violently. Beginning in the last decade of the 20th century, some groups disconnected themselves from national politics in order to join transnational movements.

Various scholars have argued that Islamist movements emerged in reaction to the failure of state-led modernization projects and to general socioeconomic problems such as youth unemployment and poverty. Yet Islamist movements are not limited to poor countries or to disadvantaged, marginalized groups. In fact, members of these movements are generally highly educated, predominantly in secular fields, as a result of state-led modernization projects.

In particular, mainstream Islamist parties are typically led by young men and women who are successful professionals with college or university degrees. As their Arab or national self-identifications break down, according to this view, people living in those countries turn to Islamism as a replacement. This is a misconception for two reasons.

First, earlier forms of nationalism in Islamic countries were not devoid of religious ideas. Second, state institutions in those countries regulated and influenced the legal and public manifestations of Islam, in particular through their systems of public education. In addition to becoming politicized in the hands of opposition movements and governments in the second half of the 20th century, Islam also followed a dynamic of revival that was deeply linked to sweeping educational, demographic , and social transformations.

A young generation came of age in the s, a time of rural exodus and urbanization, without having experienced colonial times. General access to education and the availability of printed Islamic literature also gave these young people an opportunity to build their own interpretations of Islam. Technological innovations allowed some Islamic preachers to be heard or read, and even to develop followings, across the world. In the s both the Ayatollah Khomeini and the Egyptian preacher Sheikh Kishk disseminated their speeches and sermons on audiocassettes.

In the s such new media as satellite television and the Internet began to offer faster means of access to ideas about Islam. Through his Web site he disseminated advice on understanding and living Islam as a general ethics and on specific disciplines for achieving success and happiness in this world and in the afterlife.


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Social change in the Islamic world also encouraged Muslims to reevaluate gender relations. As Muslim women gained significant access to higher education and the job market, they became integral to public life in Muslim countries.

Caliphate - Wikipedia

In many instances, they sought to express their piety in the public sphere by drawing from and adapting Islamic tradition. One of the most widespread and since the late 20th century controversial expressions of piety among Muslim women was hijab , or the wearing of the veil see also purdah. Veiling was never a uniform practice: In some Muslim countries—notably Iran and Saudi Arabia—veiling was required by law.

Yet in many other countries and in the Muslim minority communities of Europe, Australia, and the United States , veiling was a massive voluntary phenomenon beginning in the s.

Islamic history from 1683 to the present: reform, dependency, and recovery

The veil remains a subject of political and religious controversy in Western countries with large Muslim minorities and throughout the Islamic world. While Islam was becoming politicized in the Islamic world, Western Muslims pondered how they could live and practice their religion in a non-Muslim context and whether full participation in Western culture and political life was possible, let alone desirable.

These groups attempted to provide guidance to Muslims who wished to preserve their Islamic identity while contributing to the political and social life of their adoptive countries. In the first decade of the 21st century, Western Muslims were still not fully integrated into their societies, and many suffered various forms of discrimination. Many also retained important links with their countries of origin through frequent travel and modern means of communication e.

Second- and third-generation immigrants often had the opportunity to redefine Islamic practices and beliefs in opposition to their parents and grandparents, whose interpretations they considered too parochial , too strongly influenced by the culture of origin, or not close enough to a more abstract and universal type of Islam. While thus articulating a more personal religious identity, young Western Muslims like young Muslims in other parts of the world came to rely on self-proclaimed religious authorities who were not associated with traditional institutions of Islamic learning.

For this young generation, the fatwas formal opinions on questions of Islamic doctrine issued by such authorities became a crucially important source of answers to political and ethical questions. These fatwas, moreover, tended to represent Islam as a moral rather than a political community. It was in this context of the Western institutionalization of Islam, and more generally of the transformation of Islam from a blueprint for a political and legal system into an ethics of conduct, that the September 11 attacks against the United States occurred.

The attacks were staged by al-Qaeda, a radical transnational Islamist organization founded in the late s by Osama bin Laden , a Saudi national. Huntington had a tremendously real power to mobilize public perceptions. The notion was reinforced both in the West and in the Islamic world by the September 11 attacks and the U. Intellectuals such as Nurcholis Majid in Indonesia and Amina Wadud in the United States attempted to reclaim Islamic traditions by showing how Islam could accommodate liberal-democratic societies and ideas.

Their visions of Islam also recognized full gender equality and individual freedom of expression. Meanwhile, such controversies as the banning of the veil in public schools in France and the publication in Denmark of cartoons caricaturing the Islamic faith and particularly the Prophet Muhammad became instantly global, transforming intellectual and political debates between Islam and other faiths and within Islam itself and challenging the modes of regulation of Islam in Muslim and non-Muslim countries alike.

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What is jihadism?

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Many authors have contributed to the current version, which was promoted through books, articles, and especially in the blogosphere. This is how Fjordman summarises the Eurabia scenario for the future of Europe:. The EU continues its transformation into a continent-wide organization with clear totalitarian leanings, and a very pro-Islamic stance. Europe will cease to be a Western, democratic continent, and will become an appendix to the Arab world.

Eurabia will become a global center for Jihad activities, as the dhimmi taxpayers and infidel Western technology give a boost to the Ummah. Muslims will be heavily concentrated in the major cities, and the dhimmi native population will retreat into the countryside. There will be no major war in Western Europe, as its civilization is already dead and very few will bother fighting for it.

The scenario is that European elites decided in the 's to Islamize Europe, and for that purpose started a program of mass immigration of Muslims. The immigrants are not coming for economic reasons, but to colonize Europe , Islamize it, and destroy its Christian heritage and values. The Muslim immigrants are taking over the cities of Europe, district by district. They establish no-go areas, and introduce Sharia law. The authorities conceal the true number of Muslims, but they will soon be a majority in most cities.

The Muslims continuously impose their own culture, and the political elites appease them.

Precolonial reform and experimentation from 1683 to 1818

Muslim families are all very large, so their share of the total population is growing. Ultimately they will form a majority, and they will reduce non-Muslims to the status of dhimmi serf. Europe will then be a Muslim continent, perhaps part of a global caliphate , where all Sunnis and Shiites would get along! Unsurprisingly, proponents of the Eurabia hysteria rarely provide evidence. Claims about the demographic transformation of Europe rest on assumptions of extremely high birthrates among Muslim immigrants, which are supposed to continue indefinitely.

However, general tendency is for immigrant populations to reduce their birth rates over time to approximate the birth rates of their new home countries. The document has a mythical status among Eurabia proponents, but its text does not substantiate any conspiracy theory. The theory gives no plausible reason European elites and an — ostensibly notoriously secular — EU would want to Islamize the entire continent.

A few Eurabia proponents suggest that they are cultural Marxists , whose real goal is to destroy Western civilization, and that Islam is simply their instrument even though this would mean them too.