The DPI just published it's first study this December, Der Politische Islam als Gegenstand wissenschaftlicher Auseinandersetzungen und am Beispiel der Muslimbruderschaft (Political Islam as the subject of academic debates using the example of the Muslim Brotherhood), with Mouhanad Khorchide of the DPI and Lorenzo Vidino as attributed authors. Vidino is the Director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University. (Dokumentationsstelle legte Studie zu Muslimbruderschaft vor Standard 23.12.2020)
Terrorism directed or inspired by the Islamic State (IS) is a problem in EU countries, including France and Austria, where there were highly publicized attacks in 2020. Far-right parties and groups have developed a series of anti-Muslim polemics that they associate closely with anti-immigrant propaganda. So we see authoritarian rightists like the Freedom Party (FPÖ) in Austria who claim to be opposed to Muslims on the grounds, for instance, that Muslims oppress "their" women. So you have anti-feminist, anti-women's-rights "conservatives" claiming they are supporting women's right because they hate Muslims.
There is no party represented in the Austrian Parliament that advocates an Islamist political program. There are around 700 thousand Muslims in Austria (total population circa 9 million). Islam has been recognized as a religion in what is now Austria since 1912. The largest ethnic/national group among Austrian Muslims is people of Turkish descent. The government of Turkey does have some role in funding mosques in Austria. And there are rightwing Turkish groups that are influenced politically by Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his the Justice and Development Party (AKP) Party.
Austrian politicians like to grumble about Turkish influence in mosques that may promote radicalism. Austria does monitor various kinds of groups that may promote criminal violence, including ones that may somehow be linked to mosques. But most official actions taken against mosques in recent years have been mostly light political theater. But one major piece of Basti's anti-immigrant/anti-Muslim political identity involves posing as the Savior who is keeping undesirable (Muslim) foreigners out of Austria. But a key part of that is the agreement that Angela Merkel negotiated with Turkey in early 2016 that ended the unusual surge of refugees into the EU in 2015-16. Under that agreement, Turkey is currently holding 3.5-4.0 million mostly Syrian refugees, many of which have not been permanently integrated into Turkish society. Erdoğan cynically holds those refugees as a threat against the EU, that if they irritate him too much, he will send a lot of refugees into the EU.
Turkey made use of this device in early 2020, as Umut Uras reports in Turkey, EU and the imperilled refugee deal Aljazeera 03/03/2020. There was a new funding agreement between the EU and Turkey this week. (EU to spend hundreds of millions more on refugees in Turkey AP/ABC News 12/23/2020) I suspect the timing so close to the Christmas holiday in Europe was not entirely coincidental as people are scrambling for the holiday celebrations.
I'm including that as an introduction to the concept of "political Islam" as it is used in the DCI report. While there are movements, groups, and parties that can meaningfully be described as practicing "political Islam", the term is also used in politics as a polemical concept that may not bear much resemblance to any kind of scholarly or technical use of the term. As Alain Gabon writes, in France and other Western countries "it is now systematically - and wrongly - associated with 'fundamentalism' and religious 'extremism' at best, and more often terroristic 'jihadism'." (Why the West seeks to vilify political Islam Middle East Eye 08/22/2020. Gabon's article also gives a sketch of three major scholarly approaches to political Islam.)
Robert Dreyfuss in his book Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (2005) provided an informative look at how the US consciously promoted Islamist political movements during the Cold War to offset secular nationalist and revolutionary movement like those in Algeria and Gamal Abdel Nasser's "Arab socialism" that might be inclined to friendly relations with the Soviet Union. It's safe to say that the practical long-term results of that undertaking have been mixed.
Abdullah Al-Arian in a Christmas Day article discusses how political Islam, in particular the Muslim Brotherhood - the bogeyman of the DCI report - continue to evolve:
"The irony, it would appear, is that the more politically successful Islamists become, the more likely they are to shed any vestiges of their core ideology" https://t.co/29MuPVDggO
— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) December 26, 2020
(Continued in Part 2 tomorrow.)
No comments:
Post a Comment