How Violence is Islamized
| Published date | 01 January 2018 |
| Date | 01 January 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020881718761768 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
How Violence is Islamized:
An Analysis of the
Western Rhetoric on Salafi
Movement and Terrorism
Sanjeev Kumar H. M.1
Abstract
Interpretation of the history, foundational scriptures of Islam and the cultural
practices of Muslims has been a fundamental influence upon the modes of Western
explanation of the reasons for the rise of violent extremism involving Muslims.
In this regard, one source that factors deeply in the process of making the
Western portrait of Islam and the Muslim world is the emphasis of the Salafi
reform movement on adherence to a puritanical form of Islam and the appropriation
and subsequent perversion of this discourse by transnational jihadi groups. Such
an arrogation of epistemological space of Islam by extremist organizations in a bid
to glorify their violent atrocities and terror methodologies has spawned distorted
negative images of the religion of Islam. This has subsequently led to a widespread
propaganda of the phenomenon of Islamophobia, and it is this very notion of Islamic
evil demonology that undergirds the Western imagery of Islam and the Muslims.
The present article aims at demystifying such clichéd imagery of Islam in general
and Salafism in particular that has been engendered by Western critiques.
Keywords
Islam, the West, clash of civilizations, hermeneutics, Salafism, Samuel Huntington,
Bernard Lewis
Introduction
Any examination of violence and its Islamic and Islamist dimensions should be
about the dynamic interface between the religious realm and its associated
symbols and values, interpreted norms and the current global reality. This modern
Article
International Studies
55(1) 22–40
2018 Jawaharlal Nehru University
SAGE Publications
sagepub.in/home.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0020881718761768
http://journals.sagepub.com/home/isq
1 Professor, Department of Political Science, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India.
Corresponding author:
Sanjeev Kumar H. M., Professor, Department of Political Science, Faculty of Social Sciences, University
of Delhi, New Delhi, India.
E-mail: sanjeevp2009@gmail.com
Kumar 23
global reality is the one that has been forged, in a number of dimensions, by
conflict and war. Thus, it needs to be understood as to why Islam and violence
have come to dominate the major part of the contemporary discourse on violence
(Milton-Edwards, 2006, pp. 9–10). If we look at the discourse on violence itself,
it may be noted that there seems to be a veneer of optimism spread around it. In
the words of Steven Pinker, the quantum of barbaric violence and brutality that
was part of centuries of human experience has considerably declined owing to our
constant civilizational progress (Pinker, 2011). However, negating such optimistic
affirmations, contemporary history has been a witness to a turbulent transition
that is marked by an unprecedented spate of violence engendered by radical
assertions of public religion by fringe groups.
This has happened as the post-enlightenment human society has reverted from
having a secular public sphere generated by the modern process of secularization,
to a de-secularized public space which is characterized by the amplified role of
religion beyond the private domain of individuals. If we look at the perspective of
secularization theory, the process of modernization is negatively correlated with
the vitality of religion (Pollack & Pickel, 2007, p. 604). At the individual level,
according to the modernist theory of secularization, a decline was expected in the
extent to which people engage in religious practices, display beliefs of a religious
kind and conduct other aspects of their lives in a manner informed by such beliefs
(Bruce, 2002, p. 3). Overall, the secularization theory predicted a decline in the
importance of religious practices and beliefs as a consequence of modernization
(Nicolet & Tresch, 2009, p. 79). Modernization is supposed to have resulted in the
growing rationalization of different sections of society, which develop increas-
ingly according to their own logic and are more and more distinct from each other
(Stolz, 2007, p. 10). In this regard, globalization is considered to be the signifier
of the advanced stage of modernization whose influence has been complex and
deeply penetrating. In this period of modernization, according to the theory of
secularization, religion must gradually lose the salient role it had played in tradi-
tional societies (Halman & Draulans, 2006, p. 265).
However, as we experience the heightened role of the religious discourse in
politics in the recent times, religion appear to display immaculate potential to
change and adapt to assert its claims of providing an alternative to modern
discourses (Barkey, 2005, p. 6). The return of religion in this fashion has had
complex ramifications for modern political life. Unlike the pre-enlightenment
predominance of religion that was a result of premodern ignorance, the accentuated
significance of religion in the contemporary epoch has very much been the product
of modern processes. The renewed importance of religion has meant that its
modern incarnation has engendered divisive consequences which manifests in the
erosion of the values of tolerance, eclecticism and coexistence of multiple
religious beliefs. These have now been replaced by a politicized discourse of
‘clash of civilizations’ owing to which the debate on the role of religion in
fomenting present-day conflicts has become vociferous.
Dominating the anthropographic space of such a politicized discourse has been
the transnational Islamic jihadis, who claim to be religiously inspired while
engaging themselves in acts of killing and sabotage, and the West which is
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