Simon Róbert

The Social Anatomy of Islam


Between the old and new paradigms: from the local towards the demand for an universal Islamic umma1

In parallel with the loss of political significance of the Muslim Brotherhood, in the seventies and eighties of the twentieth century there appeared in Egypt groups that were smaller but all the more radical; these rejected the Brotherhood's inclination to compromise and started to set up a variety of activist forms of political Islam.2 We have quite reliable and detailed knowledge of three of these in particular, based on their actions and on resulting investigative material. They are: al-Fanniyya al-caskariyya ("Military Academy"), at-Takfir wa'l hijra ("Excommunication and Exile") and al-Jihād ("Holy War”). As for numbers, let us refer to a relatively reliable datum: when the second group appeared on the scene in 1977 the surprising fact emerged from interrogations following raids, that the previously almost unknown group had between 3,000 and 5,000 exceptionally well-trained members.3

The Social Anatomy of Islam

Tartalomjegyzék


Kiadó: Akadémiai Kiadó – Felsőbbfokú Tanulmányok Intézete

Online megjelenés éve: 2024

ISBN: 978 615 574 253 8

This work analyses some essential features of the classical as well modern Islamic society. Islam cannot be regarded as a religion in the strict sense of the word, because civil change marginalized it and made it into societally insignificant movement in the private sphere. Some consider it a kind of a politically organized formation, but politically unified Islamic society disintegrated from the second half of the ninth century, independent units came into being reproducing the original model. Others are of the opinion that Islam is an ideology. This, however, would mean that during one and a half millennium the Muslims gave wrong answers to the different challenges. Some consider Islam as a culture, but this concept is a category of civil society subjected to permanent change. Therefore, we shall interpret Islam as society-integrating network which organized its own society, the umma on the principle of repristination or retraditionalisation.The main topics treated in the first part of our work are: the problem of genesis; the hermeneutics of the main concepts of Political Islam counterpointed by the categories of Ibn Khaldún’s power-state; integration and stratification of society; forms of changes (reform, revolt, revolution). The second part is dealing with the problems of modern Islam, taking into account revivalist movements from the Khárijites to the Islamic State.

Hivatkozás: https://mersz.hu/simon-the-social-anatomy-of-islam//

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