Islamism in the Shadow of Al-Qaeda: Introduction

Introduction de la traduction en langue anglaise (par Patrick Hutchinson) de L'Islamisme à l'heure d'Al-Qaïda: réislamisation, modernisation, radicalisations Editions La Découverte, 2005In this book, I first and foremost wish to recall the necessary distinction between an essential phenomenon of identity, a resurgence of the popularity of something we will here call “Muslim-speak”, and the manifold ways in which its supporters have put this “rehabilitated” lexicon to use in political and social life (chapter 1). In order to reconfigure Islamist mobilization within contexts which, in the space of one century, have vastly evolved, I next propose to clearly distinguish the three main sequences during which (before and after the waves of Independence) the latter became widespread (chapter 2). We will then explore the tensions between national specificities and the phenomenon of trans-nationalisation, tensions whose examination will hopefully procure us a better understanding both of the great diversity of the Islamist field and of the forces which have come to shape its dynamics (chapter 3 to 5). Chapter 6 duly operates a more precise deconstruction of the mechanics of radicalisation at the start of the emergence of Al-Qaeda within this field, whose “sectarian” and “political” dimensions urgently need to be distinguished. Chapter 7 scrutinises the trajectories of four individuals who are among the most emblematic of this radical configuration, from the ideologue Sayyid Qutb to Mohamed Atta, the pilot who carried out the 9/11 attacks. In order to reach an understanding of why emotion often tends to deprive the analysis of its much-vaunted rationality, chapter 8 recalls that the obstacles which the interpretation of the Islamist phenomenon must overcome are not only linked to fears and misunderstandings inherited from the western colonial past: they are also deliberately “exploited” today by all those who have a vested interest in discrediting the forms of resistance encapsulated in the Islamist lexicon. Finally, in chapter 9, are reviewed the contradictions of the unilateralism of the western “response” following 9/11, as well as the counter-productive effects of the security culture which is currently developing to the detriment of what should be a truly effective political response to the still pending threats which “radical Islamism”– along with many other actors on the international scene - holds in store for world peace