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Islam och skapandet av statsmakt

Seyyed vali reza nasr

I 1979 General Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, Pakistans militära härskare, förklarade att Pakistan skulle bli en islamisk stat. Islamiska värderingar och normer skulle tjäna som grunden för den nationella identiteten, lag, ekonomi, och sociala relationer, och skulle inspirera allt beslutsfattande. I 1980 Mahathir Muhammad, Malaysias nya premiärminister, införde en liknande bred plan för att förankra statens politiska beslut i islamiska värderingar, och att bringa sitt lands lagar och ekonomiska praxis i linje med islams lära. Varför valde dessa härskare vägen till "islamisering" för sina länder? Och hur blev en gång sekulära postkoloniala stater islamiseringens agenter och förebudet om den "sanna" islamiska staten?
Malaysia och Pakistan har sedan slutet av 1970-talet – början av 1980-talet följt en unik väg till utveckling som avviker från erfarenheterna från andra tredje världens stater. I dessa två länder integrerades religiös identitet i statens ideologi för att informera målet och processen för utveckling med islamiska värderingar.
Detta åtagande har också presenterat en helt annan bild av relationen mellan islam och politik i muslimska samhällen. I Malaysia och Pakistan, det har varit statliga institutioner snarare än islamistiska aktivister (de som förespråkar en politisk läsning av islam; även kända som väckelseister eller fundamentalister) som har varit väktare av Islam och försvarare av dess intressen. Detta antyder en
väldigt annorlunda dynamik i islamens politiska utbredning och flöde - åtminstone pekar på statens betydelse för detta fenomen.
Vad man kan göra av sekulära stater som blir islamiska? Vad betyder en sådan omvandling för staten såväl som för islamisk politik?
Den här boken brottas med dessa frågor. Detta är inte en heltäckande redogörelse för Malaysias eller Pakistans politik, det täcker inte heller alla aspekter av islams roll i deras samhällen och politik, även om den analytiska berättelsen dröjer sig mycket åt dessa frågor. Denna bok är snarare en samhällsvetenskaplig undersökning av fenomenet att sekulära postkolonialstater blir agenter för islamisering, och mer allmänt hur kultur och religion tjänar behoven av statsmakt och utveckling. Analysen här bygger på teoretiska diskussioner
inom samhällsvetenskaperna om statens beteende och kulturens och religionens roll däri. Viktigare, den drar slutsatser från de fall som granskas för att dra bredare slutsatser av intresse för disciplinerna.

The Islamization of Pakistan

The Middle East Institute

Since 2007, pakistan, though not on the verge of becoming a failed state, nonetheless has been gripped by a series of interrelated crises. As the contributors to this volume demonstrate, Pakistan’s current travails have deep and tangled historical roots. They also demonstrate that Pakistan’s domestic situation historically has been influenced by, and has affected developments in neighboring countries as well as those farther afield.
The origins of many of Pakistan’s troubles today lie not just in the circumstances in which the state of Pakistan emerged, but in the manner in which various domestic political forces have defined and sought to advance their competing visions of the state since independence. Over the years, successive national political leaders, the military, and other actors have appropriated the symbols, institutions, tools of statecraft, and even the rhetoric of Pakistan’s founding father, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, in order to advance their own narrow agendas.
As the contributors emphasize, much of the present turmoil in Pakistan dates from the late 1970s, when the rise to power of General Zia ul Haq and his Islamization program intersected with the momentous events of 1979, most importantly, the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
The 18 essays comprising this volume examine the tight interplay between these domestic and regional factors, discuss the key domestic and foreign policies adopted during the Zia years, and disclose the heavy cost that Pakistan and its people have borne as a consequence. Taken together, the essays present a grim, tragic account of the past 30 years — of a country’s founding creed violated, much of its resources misspent, and its social fabric rent. And they suggest an uncertain future. At the same time, dock, they point hopefully, if not confidently, to what Pakistan’s fragile civilian government must seek to reclaim and can achieve — provided that its leaders prove to be moderate, resourceful, and determined, and that the West (especially the United States) implements policies which support rather than undermine them.
In his Eid-ul-Azha Message to the Nation on October 24, 1947, Muhammad Ali Jinnah declared: “My message to you all is of hope, courage and confidence. Let us mobilize all our resources in a systematic and organized way and tackle the grave issues that confront us with grim determination and discipline worthy of a great nation.” More than a half-century has elapsed since Jinnah made this statement, yet the issues facing Pakistan are no less grave. One hopes that the current and next generation of Jinnah’s successors, together with Pakistan’s friends will be able to summon the necessary will and bolster the state’s capacity to deal with these issues effectively.

The Muslim Brotherhood of Jordan and Jama’at-i-Islam of Pakistan

Neha Sahgal

The study of Islamist activism is new to social movement theory. Socialmovement scholarship has ignored Islamist movements because of their unique faithbasednature. More recently scholars have recognized that the processes of contentionconceptualized by social movement theory can be applied to Islamist activism to seektheoretical refinements in both areas of study.In this paper, I examine variations in the strategies followed by Islamistmovements in response to government policies. States have followed various policies inmanaging the tide of Islamist opposition to their power. Some states have chosen to userepressive means (egypten, Jordan before 1989), while others, at different times in theirhistory have used accommodative policies (Jordan after 1989, pakistan, malaysia). Iexamine the effects of government accommodation on Islamist movement strategies.I argue that accommodation can have varying effects on Islamist movementstrategies depending on the nature of accommodative policies followed. Governmentshave employed two different types of accommodative policies in their tenuousrelationship with Islamist opposition – Islamization and liberalization. Islamizationattempts to co-opt the movements through greater religiosity in state and society.Liberalization allows the movements to conduct their activities at both the state and thesocietal level without necessarily increasing the religiosity of the state1. Islamizationdisempowers Islamists while liberalization empowers them by providing a sphere ofinfluence.

Islamic Movements and the Use of Violence:

Esen Kirdis

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Despite recent academic and popular focus on violent transnational Islamic terrorist networks,there is a multiplicity of Islamic movements. This multiplicity presents scholars with two puzzles. The first puzzle is understanding why domestic-oriented Islamic movements that were formed as a reaction to the establishment of secular nation-states shifted their activities and targets onto a multi-layered transnational space. The second puzzle is understanding why groups with similar aims and targets adopt different strategies of using violence or nonviolence when they “go transnational.” The two main questions that this paper will address are: Why do Islamic movements go transnational? And, why do they take on different forms when they transnationalize? First, I argue that the transnational level presents a new political venue for Islamic movements which are limited in their claim making at the domestic level. Second, I argue that transnationalization creates uncertainty for groups about their identity and claims at the transnational level. The medium adopted, i.e. use of violence versus non-violence, is dependent on type of transnationalization, the actors encounter at the transnational level, and leadership’s interpretations on where the movement should go next. To answer my questions, I will look at four cases: (1) Turkish Islam, (2) the Muslim Brotherhood, (3) Jemaah Islamiyah, och (4) Tablighi Jamaat