Islamism

Rafia Zakaria

At its core, the term Islamism refers to the use of Islamic doctrine as a basis of political ideology and mobilization. Broadly speaking, Islamists believe that the Islamic faith has an important role to play in the political realm. This being so, Islamism challenges the rationalist assumptions that place politics squarely in the realm of the secular and treat religious doctrine with its attendant transcendent aspects as beyond the political realm. Straddling as it does this religious versus secular divide, Islamism presents a challenge to these existing assumptions that form the analytic frame of social scientific inquiry into the subject. With its ability to question the pertinence of applied categories, political theory has an important role to play in re-envisioning social science's engagement with Islamism as a substantive dialogue that goes beyond the replication of existing frames. This entry summarizes some of the challenges inherent in this project as The ...

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