chapter 10

The New Islamism: Remembrance and Liberation

Sophia Rose Arjana

Islamism, Orientalism, and the Post-Islamist Milieu

Islamism, which can be broadly defined as a political vision that has Islam as
its foundational ethic, has largely failed on its promise to deliver Muslims from
oppression, poverty, and suffering. New Islamism offers a vision of reform that
relies on a conscious, engaged and activist Islam. It restores Islam’s intended
path of human transformation from the inside out through the remembrance
of Allah and meditation on the Islamic value of justice, which leads to personal
and social liberation. In contrast, much of Islamist discourse has called for a
transformation from the outside inward, and that is a significant reason for the
failure of Islamism. This article argues that liberation can only be won through
reclaiming an ethic that has been largely forgotten. As the Qurʾān reminds us,
‘Remember me, I shall remember you.’1
Throughout the twentieth century, Islamic thinkers have offered a complex
set of responses to the economic, political, and social realities that Muslims
who are living in colonial and postcolonial spaces must negotiate. Today, pov-
erty, war, colonialism, neocolonialism, occupation, and political oppression
mark the lives of millions of Muslims and most articulations of Islamism have
not eliminated these problems. Prophet Muhammad said it was a person’s
duty to solve these ills, instructing, ‘If one of you sees an abhorrent action, let
him correct it with his hand; if he cannot, let him do it in words; if he cannot,
let him do it in his heart – which is the weakest degree of faith.’2 Because all
moral action comes from the heart, these acts are intimately related.
Islamist articulations have been aligned with two main positions. The first
is represented by Islamist movements that look to the West as a model for sys-
tems and institutions. They typically rely on American or European models
and fail in an Islamic society due to their over-reliance on foreign ideologies
and values. One alternative to this approach comes from Tariq Ramadan, who
suggests that instead of using the West to reform Islam, Islam should be used

1 Qurʾān 2: 152.
2 Tariq Ramadan, Western Muslims and the Future of Islam (New York: Oxford University Press,
2004), 94.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi 10.1163/9789004353732_011

182 Arjana

to reform social conditions in Muslim and non-Muslim societies. As he writes,

‘what matters is to know that Muslims – reforming their understanding – can
contribute, without dogmatism and in collaboration with other traditions, to
the ethical reform of the contemporary world.’3
A second type of Islamism reflects religious concerns but fails to satisfy the
needs of Muslims living in modernity, often ignoring ethical dilemmas that af-
fect individuals and communities. These ideologies have at times resulted in a
misreading of Islam and therefore advocate violence and destruction, such as
we see today in the Taliban movement that has contributed to a seemingly un-
ending cycle of anxiety, horror, and misery for Afghans. As Kuovo and ­Mazoori
argue, ‘the suffering endured by Afghans over the course of the past three de-
cades knows no geographic, temporal or ethnic bounds.’4 The Taliban, while
not wholly responsible for this violence, certainly contributed to the overall
malaise experienced by men, women, and children living inside the country.5
While scholars continue to argue over whether the Taliban should be classified
as Islamist or Jihadi, it is certainly a political and Islamic entity.
This essay points to an Islamist vision that offers a third way – presenting an
antidote to the current state of moral despondency plaguing much of today’s
world. Curing the masses from moral affliction is the main focus of Islamism,
for if the systems in force were adequate there would not be a need for an
­Islamic social and political superstructure different from what currently exists.
New Islamism is, in this way, an indictment of two competing meta-systems –
Western liberalism and modern Islam. Islam is viewed as the antidote to the
problems of the world, or at least a way to deal with the challenges of greed,
oppression, pain, and suffering. Islamism builds upon the foundations of these
concerns as found in the Qurʾān and other foundational texts and expresses
them politically. At root, these concerns are central to the Islamic tradition, as
the American Shaykh Hamza Yusuf explains here,

According to commentators of the Qurʾān, the one who was dead refers
to having a dead heart, which God revived with the light of guidance that
one may walk straight and honorably among human beings. Also, the

3 Tariq Ramadan, Radical Reform: Islamic Ethics and Liberation (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2009), 148.
4 Sari Kuovo and Dallas Mazoori, “Reconciliation, Justice and Mobilization of War Victims in
Afghanistan,” The International Journal of Transitional Justice 5 (2011): 500.
5 See Kevin J. Ayotte and Mary E. Husain, “Securing Afghan Women: Neocolonialism, Epis-
temic Violence, and Rhetoric of the Veil,” nwsa Journal 17, no. 3, States of Insecurity and the
Gendered Politics of Fear (2005): 112–133.