Islamic Politics between Dissent and Power: An Overview

For much of the last quarter of the twentieth century, Islamic politics appeared to lie beyond the pale of legitimate politics in many Muslim-majority states in the world. That unenviable condition could be glimpsed from several defining moments that encouraged portrayals of Islamic politics as fundamentalism, extremism, radicalism or fanaticism (Said 1997: xiv–xx, xlvii–xlviii, 31–5).1 First, the triumph of the clerics in the revolution in Iran led to authoritarian rule that left little space for non-Islamic pluralist political participation or opposition. Second, Anwar Sadat’s assassination by Islamist militants in Egypt exposed the predilection of some strands of political Islam for armed opposition to the state. Third, the cancellation of general elections in Algeria, which the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) was on course to win, precipitated a civil war that pitted the violent insurgency of the Islamic Army of Salvation (AIS) and the Armed Islamic Group (AIG) against the ruthless repression of the Algerian state. Fourth, the internecine struggle among domestic rivals in Afghanistan following the Soviet defeat and withdrawal ended with the seizure of power by the Taliban whose rule was marked by a very harsh religious conservatism. Fifth, a democratically elected Islamic government in Turkey was accused of subverting the secular character of the Turkish state and its prime minister was deposed in 1997.