Lounsbury: Failure of Political Islam

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October 08, 2004

Failure of Political Islam

Responding, in an over late manner to a question.

My thoughts on the thesis of Kepel.

First, it has been a while since I have read his work (and I often confuse it with Roy's similar thesis I think) but my understanding of the argument was on two levels.

The first, the author's argument focuses on the ability of largely Sunni political Islamic movements to generate a movement or movements that can produce not just oppositional movements - nihilistic and destructive movements - but rather a truly viable alternative and sustainable at that. It is something of a French argument, very French but it has merit at a certain level.

I believe in the back of his mind he is thinking of a comparison with Communism - I may be wrong or this may be my prejudice, but as I recall the closing chapter of the argument contains mention of the idea that even should the Islamic movements take power, their internal ideology and incoherences renders their revolutions failures, perhaps slow motion failures but failures.

I think there is some real truth in this, but that does not mean that an Islamist revolution could not produce several generations of hell before collapsing. My fear, however, is that like Communism, a series of bloody failures may be required to wean the majority off of the drug. And of course as we can readily see even to this date we can see a goodly number of apologists who can continue to dupe themselves into thinking it was a good idea.

Of course, one has to admit its seductiveness. Either one.

Failure in this context, in terms of sustainability, is then perhaps subjective, but there it is.

If we mean, of course, failure in current recruiting, our dear Ibn Bush has rather upended such calculations.

That, of course, is a pasing judgement.

The basic reality, however, remains that while I agree with our dear French analyst that Political Islam in its Sunni form has and will not be able to generate a long lasting "counter paradigm" (ah such an early 1980s word, is it not?), it is fully capable of a destructive integrum. My preferred scenario is that of Western European Communism - cantonment. Yes, dumb, even offensively dumb laws will be passed, but so long as a non Iranian framework is created,one would hope that it will serve as its own antidote.

October 08, 2004

Failure of Political Islam

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