Islamism, Political Islam and Extremism under Secular-Liberal Conditions. An analysis of European discourses on religious violence

European discourses are long overdue for an anti-racist critical analysis of Islamist extremism. To date, public debates on Islamist extremism are impeded by racist biases, significantly delaying the achievement of a critical understanding of the phenomenon. Moreover, state-funded attempts at researching and preventing religious extremism more often than not use the frame of security politics, prioritizing questions of administration and surveillance over knowledge-oriented research. The discourse on Islamist extremism is as much a discourse on the phenomenon as it is a discourse on the terminology used to describe it. Any attempt at a critical analysis of Islamism needs to account for the terminological implications and consider the conditions they emerged in. This includes a critical consideration of the category extremism as such. A deliberate incorporation of the process and strategic function of producing terms like extremism, Islamism and Political Islam is therefore essential for the objective of a social critique of religious violence. This thesis follows this objective by asking: How does liberal democracy produce the categories of extremism, Islamism and Political Islam? Which strategic function do they serve? How do liberal-secular conditions in particular impact knowledge production on Islam and Islamism