In the age of Rifa’a al-Tahtawi (1801–73), Mohammed Abduh, and

other early Islamic reformers of the late nineteenth century, the think-
ing of leading Muslims revolved around dealing with challenges of
how to accommodate modernity into Islamic beliefs. Ultimately, their
reform failed, because they shied away from dealing with the substance
issue, i.e. to rethink Islam. Nevertheless, their reform accomplished the
implicit de-politicisation of faith as argued for throughout this book.
However, in the twenty-first century the picture looks quite different:
instead of a de-politicisation of Islam we encounter the return of the
sacred in the new guise of ‘Political Islam’. The process in fact began in
the last century, as early as 1928, when the ‘Movement of Muslim
Brothers’, the first fundamentalist organisation in the world of Islam,
was established by Hasan al-Banna.20 In placing September 11 in an
overall Islamic context, I believe it is important to consider the follow-
ing phases in a historical process underlying first the de-politicisation
of Islam and subsequently the rise of political Islam:

First, 1924/25: The abolition of the Caliphate in 1924, and in 1925 the
release of the seminal publication by Ali Abdel al-Raziq, al-Islam wa usul-
al-hukm,21 interpreting Islam as a faith, and no longer as a concept for the
legitimation of a political order.

Second, 1928: In response to the formation of Turkey and Egypt as

secular nation-states, Hasan al-Banna established the Movement of
Muslim Brothers. At the outset, the conflict was ‘Between Islam and the
Nation-State’ (see note 21). At this point jihad, though understood by al-
Banna as a kind of irregular war, was in a way limited to a pursuit within
the confines of Islamic civilisation itself. Jihad was directed against the
local infidels, and was thus a kind of ‘national jihad’ against the deviation
of Muslims from the ‘true path’.

Third, since the 1950s: One encounters the call for global jihad within the
framework of an ‘Islamic world revolution’ as formulated by Sayyid Qutb. In
this pursuit, the Muslim Brotherhood becomes the first effort for
‘International Political Islam’. The impact, however, was quite limited,
given the prevalence of secular pan-Arabism and its expression in the
then still dominant mobilising ideology of Nasserism.

Fourth, 1967: The overall defeat in the Six-Day-War of 1967 changed the
course for political Islam. This crushing military defeat 22 had great
political and cultural repercussions, the most important of which was the
rise of al-Hall al-Islami, presented by political Islam as an option for the
future. So while militarily the victor in the war of 1967 was Israel,
culturally it was political Islam. Islamists succeeded in putting the blame
for the defeat on the secular Arab regimes and their worldview, and then
presenting themselves as the alternative.

Fifth, 1979: It was the Islamic revolution in Iran that first gave true
prominence to Islamic Internationalism, shifting the issue from simply
the content of underground groups’ pamphlets, to full-fledged state
policy. Iran is a Shi’i country, but for political Islam in the late 1970s and
early 1980s, it took on a role comparable to Russia’s post-1917 role for
world communism. Until being surpassed by the Sunni-based al-Qaida
group, the Iranian Revolution was the primary example revealing how
political Islam could be successful in seizing power.

Sixth, September 11, 2001: The internationalisation and the militarisa-

tion of political Islam in line with the jihadism of al-Qaida brings to
light the fact that, on the one hand, Islamic migration to the West was
used by militant political Islam in order to reach the USA and Europe,
and, on the other, that the Bin-Ladenists had reclaimed political Islam
from their Shi’i rivals for forwarding their Sunni form of jihadism.

This six-phase scheme covers almost one century of development, at the

beginning of which we see an ascendant political Islam articulating the
major characteristic of our age at the cultural turn: the return of the
sacred in political and even military guise. It is not only a call for an
Islamic order in the name of Islam, but also an expression of an ‘irregu -
lar war’ waged as global terrorism. The new interpretation of jihad as a
jihadism is a call for global irregular war, in other words, terrorism, in
the pursuit of an ‘Islamic World Revolution’ (Qutb) in order to remake the
world along Islamic lines under the proclaimed rule of Islam. Truly, this
is not a quest for promoting the religion of Islam, nor its culture, but
rather in favour of a political ideology of a new totalitarianism; it is
presented in Islamic garb and legitimated accordingly. To suppress this
finding is to censor legitimate scholarship and is thus an act against free
speech in the academe. To incriminate it with reference to ‘Orientalism’
is a polemic beyond scholarship.
 Moreover, one needs to recognise, as is done in this new chapter and throughout this
book, that the core issue continues to be Islam’s predicament with modernity as expressed
in the oscillation between culture and politics. September 11 adds a military and a security
related dimension to this process. In contrast to the panic of the ‘war on terror’ I not only
go beyond sensations in placing the issue in its overall context, but also maintain that the
jihadist terror is only a side issue of the larger problematique. Therefore, political theory is
chal- lenged to present a plausible interpretation of the return of the sacred within the
framework of the cultural turn. The major question remains whether Muslims will be able to
adopt the rationality of the philosoph- ical discourse of modernity for establishing the cultural
underpinning needed for a real transformation of their societies. Defensive cultural
attitudes and the politicisation of religion fail to meet this require- ment. Given that secular
democracy is an essential part of the project of modernity, one may ask whether, under the
present conditions, the political culture of democratic rule can find a home in the abode
of Islam. As a reform Muslim, I am keen to answer these questions favourably, but I am also
a realist and see how difficult democratisation in the world of Islam is in the age of Islamism.
Nonetheless, I feel it is possible.23 This positive option can only materialise, however, on con-
dition of a de-politicisation of Islam and of its interpretation as ‘open Islam’, along the lines
of Popper’s ‘open society’. Only on these grounds will Muslims be receptive to cultural
innovations. Now, what would happen if the opposite scenario of further politicisation of
Islam should come to shape the reality? After the events of September 11, this question
reached my academic teacher of the Frankfurt school, Jürgen Habermas, and has compelled
him since then to include Islam in his reasoning. His response has been a revision of
secularity. It occurs to me that this is not the way to overcome the impasse in Islam, because
there can be no democracy in a divine order. Democratic rule is intrinsically secular, and,
one might argue, secularity laicité is a European phenomenon. Does it apply to Islam?