Original scientific paper
ISLAMIC MOVEMENTS IN ARAB WORLD: CAUSES, THEMES AND POLITICAL SIGNIFICANCE
Davorka Matić
orcid.org/0000-0002-1586-1511
; Department of Sociology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb
Abstract
To better understand the reasons behind the recent success of Islamic movements to establish themselves as a main opposition force to authoritarian Arab regimes, the article off ers an analysis of the sociostructural and ideological causes of political Islam, as well as its key concepts and ideas. It begins with the premise that political Islam does not represent a return to the traditional forms of Islamic activism but, rather, that it is a modern religious and political movement generated by the deep structural crisis that engulfed Arab societies in the aftermath of the June 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Islamic movements are also not uniform in nature. In spite of diff erences in ideology, strategy and tactics, all Islamist organizations have one common goal – the islamization of society and establishment of the Islamic state in which God’s sovereignty is recognized through the imposition of Shar’ia as the only source of laws. This is the reason for some doubts about the capacity of the Islamist movements’ moderate wing to abide by the fundamental principles of democracy. Islamists’ thought and practices betray a number of ambiguities regarding certain important questions of democratic politics and only the resolution of these ambiguities will determine what would be the impact of the Islamist movement on the future political life in the Arab world.
Keywords
political Islam; Islamic movements; crisis of Arab societies; search for authenticity; absolute sovereignty of God; Shar’ia; jahiliyya; jihad; Islamic order; Islamic state
Hrčak ID:
67437
URI
Publication date:
15.4.2011.
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