It is a 20th century construct and its first prominent expression is believed to be Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, formed in 1927
The rightist side produced tendencies such as ‘Islamic Fundamentalism,’ ‘Islamism’ and ‘Neo-Fundamentalism,’ while the leftist sides came up with ‘Islamic Socialism,’ ‘Ba’ath Socialism’ and ‘Arab Nationalism’/‘Arab Socialism’. Balanced at the centre was Muslim Nationalism.
Bankrolling of the anti-Soviet ‘Jihad’ in Afghanistan by the US, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan in the 1980s, also became a catalyst that triggered the shifting of political and social influence in many Muslim countries from left-leaning Political Islam to its rightist expressions.
The ‘political roots’ of this tendency, however, lie in the 12th century, when after three hundred years of open debate in the Islamic world between traditionalists and rationalists (Mu’tazilites), influential Muslim thinkers such as Imam Ghazali insisted that a perfect synthesis (between the two) had been reached and that Islam’s social and spiritual philosophy had achieved completion.
Incensed by the gradual crumbling of the Mughal and Ottoman empires, a series of reformist movements emerged, advocating ‘a return to true Islam’ which was said to be free of innovation and corruption.
Pioneering Islamism scholars such as Egypt’s Hasan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb, and South Asia’s Abul Ala Maududi, began interpreting the Quran and other Islamic texts through the prism of modern political concepts and lingo. Qutb suggested that a jihad was required in Muslim countries to grab state power and rid the Muslims from the ‘modern forces of jahiliyya’ (that to him were secularism, Marxism, nationalism and ‘Western materialism’).
Forces attached to Islamism tried to rebound after the Cold War through the democratic process but they have struggled to initiate effective political and economic reforms mainly due to the fact that they end up creating polarisation and administrational chaos by trying to address solutions to non-religious issues with certain ill-defined religion-orientated alternatives and manoeuvres. They were (on the one end) accused of being apologists of violent Neo-Fundamentalists and of being lukewarm towards 'islamising' the society on the other.
Unlike Islamic Fundamentalism, Neo-Fundamentalism (Islamism’s less intellectually inclined (and more brutal) cousin) looks to impose laws, morality and piety by force and through armed struggle (and through the creation of an ‘Islamic Emirate’). Apart from the Taleban, Roy also describes outfits such as Al Qaeda and various modern militant and sectarian groups that emerged in its wake as Neo-Fundamentalist (including the recent emergence of the Islamic State (ISIS). It is also devoid of the rich intellectual tradition associated with Islamism, settling instead for radical polemical literature that advocates violent action and an extremely narrow and polemical worldview.
Islamic Socialism – an ideology that attempted to equate Quranic concepts of equality and charity with modern Socialist economics and (consequently) trigger a cultural, intellectual and political renaissance in the Muslim world – was adopted as ‘Arab Socialism’ and Ba’ath Socialism in Iraq, Syria and Egypt; where nationalist Muslim leaders fused Islamic notions of parity and justice with socialism and Arab nationalism.
Though known for its usage of Islamic symbolism, Islamic Socialism was anti-clerical, socially liberal and mostly sympathetic towards communist powers – Soviet Union and China. Iranian thinker and activist Ali Shariati expressed revolutionary Islam through Marxist symbolism. He was assassinated in 1975 by the agents of the Shah of Iran.\
Islamic Socialism was vehemently attacked and criticised by conservative Muslim monarchies, as well as by those forces associated with Islamism. They accused Islamic Socialism of being a concoction constructed by ‘atheist powers’ (Soviet Union and China), and (according to Maududi) was the ‘Trojan horse used by anti-Islam forces and ideas to enter Muslim societies and politics.’
Many democratic political parties of the left and of the right and also authoritarian regimes in the Muslim world can be termed as having liberal views about Islam’s political role. These parties and regimes are highly suspicious of the clergy and repulsed by the political ambitions of Islamism and Neo-Fundamentalism. They encourage ijtihad in matters such as the understanding of the Quran and Shariah, and emphasise that Islam is best served through religious institutions instead of through the state and the government. They also believe faith to be a strictly private matter that should not be soiled by the amorality of politics.
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