Islamism and the West

This is an excellent study of a critical theme in the writings of secondgeneration, mainstream Arab Islamist intellectuals on society and politics; namely, how they envisage the relations, past, present and future between Muslim and Western societies. Five Muslim thinkers are the main but not exclusive focus: Muhammad al-Ghazali (b.1917), Yusuf al-Qaradawi (b.1926), Muhammad Qutb (b.1919), [Abdullah [Azzam (b.1941) and Rashid al-Ghannushi (b.1941). This is unapologetically an intellectual history which illuminates the ideological dimension of Islamism, as well as offering a useful definition of both the ‘ism’ and the activist:

Islamism is an ideology that regards Islam as the exclusive source of political authority, and political activism as the instrument to instate Islam as such. An Islamist is a person who ties this ideology with a specific political and social program and seeks to implement that program using political means. (p. 3)