Islamism and Islam

Bassam Tibi

Hardback

9780300159981

Drawing on research in twenty Islamic countries over three decades, Tibi describes Islamism as a political ideology based on a reinvented version of Islamic law. In separate chapters devoted to the major features of Islamism, he discusses the Islamist vision of state order, the centrality of antisemitism in Islamist ideology, Islamism's incompatibility with democracy, the reinvention of jihadism as terrorism, the invented tradition of shari'a law as constitutional order, and the Islamists' confusion of the concepts of authenticity and cultural purity. Tibi's concluding chapter applies elements of Hannah Arendt's theory to identify Islamism as a totalitarian ideology.

Contents

1. Why Islamism Is Not Islam

2. Islamism and the Political Order

3. Islamism and Antisemitism

4. Islamism and Democracy

5. Islamic and Violence: The New World Disorder

6. Islamism and Law: Shari’atization as an Invention of Tradition

7. Islamism, Purity, and Authenticity

8. Islamism and Totalitarianism

9. Civil Islam as an Alternative to Islamism