The tragedy of Islamism in Britain: a fetishism for politics
This dissertation critically argues that the dominant representation of the dominated groups can mirror its way into the self-representation of those groups. Moreover, a fetishism for politics (i.e., a repression and denial of engagement in the political arena) deflects the interaction between the dominant and the dominated groups (in this case, the UK Government and Islamist parties in the UK) and ultimately disempowers them both. This research is an analysis of the discourses and practices of a large number of Islamist parties in the UK over a period of nearly 20 years (1989-2007); a period when they gained public attention during the debates over multiculturalism and the supposed threats to security from the rise of radical Islam. By ʻIslamist partiesʼ, I mean political groups who place their Muslim identity at the centre of their political practices and who see their political future in Islam. Such political groups are not just Muslims, but Islamists. In asserting this, I argue against the commonplace culturalist-orientalist approach that denies and rejects any ʻpoliticalʼ in relation to Islamists. As part of a dominant discourse, this culturalist-orientalist approach consists of a binary view whereby Islam is either a matter of private professed belief or a matter of a terrorist disruption into the Western democratic systems. In response to this stark dichotomy, I adopt a constructionist theoretical approach that sees ʻculturesʼ and ʻreligionsʼ as political acts within the terms of a power-relationship. Practically, I approach the issue based on two years of fieldwork amongst the British Islamists. I have interviewed a large number of Islamists from different parties. For practical and epistemological reasons, I divide them into two groups: the Participationists and the Rejectionists. Participationists are those who are willing to take part in British political life, for instance, by taking part in elections, while the Rejectionists are those who reject the British political system as illegitimate and plan to subvert it. The participationist parties act politically but show a strong reticence in adopting any political label themselves.The explanation for this lies in their fetishism for politics. Taking a collaborative and non-confrontational approach, they choose to remain in the category of the ʻfaith-groupsʼ. Ultimately, this delegitimizes their Islamist quest because it mirrors the dominant culturalist-orientalist discourse that depoliticizes and disempowers them. The rejectionist groups are those with a confrontational approach toward the dominant discourse; they promote an Islamic system as the alternative. They declare that their struggle is aimed at instituting a ʻKhilafahʼ so that the ʻPoliticalʼ is at the service of the ʻSpiritualʼ. My findings indicate that, paradoxically, the exact reverse is true. Their efforts promote a ʻsecularizationʼ of Islam; this is denied (repressed) by the Islamists themselves, and exorcized by the dominant discourse under the label of religious fundamentalism. The ʻfetishismʼ for politics from both the dominant and the dominated distorts their interaction, and is ultimately responsible, both for the political ʻfailureʼ of Islamist parties, and for the string of past and future terrorist attacks. The novelty of my approach has been to analyze the hiatus between the two parties -- the political stalemate and the security threat -- through the convex mirror of repression and exorcism; politics, as discoursed and practiced through the emotional, the visceral, and the de-sacralization of the secular and the religious at the same time. The novelty also lies in providing a new ethnography of a political actor -- the British Islamist -- whose politics has been underemphasized, and who has been much maligned and commented upon from a dominant culturalist-orientalist framework. The new ethnography acknowledges the agency of British Islamists as political actors and argues that they should be represented and recognized as such by the dominant discourse and by the Government. The Manichean representation of these political actors (British Islamists) as either faith groups or terrorists, debilitates the very democratic process and reproduces a recurrent security threat.
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