Precisely what is Islamism -- veiled nationalism or something darker? Image by Flickr user Chrome76 (CC-usage).

Editor’s note: H.B. Paksoy (D. Phil., Oxford University) explores the question of Islam’s future in Central Asia with hard stats and analysis.  This is the second post in a series based upon a lecture he gave to the Texas Tech University for its Special Collections Library Presentation Series on 21 February 2002.  Please contact the author if you would like to read the original version.

In my first post in this series, I explored some of the hard numbers and the general historical picture of religion and ideology in Central Asia.  I now turn directly to the topic of Islamism.  What is this thing exactly — is it veiled nationalism, or something darker? — is it monolithic, or complex? — and what does it mean for the region’s spirituality?

Since the fall of Communism, much has been written about the fortunes of “Islamism”, the use of Islam as a political movement, military power, and distinct civilization, as program to rejuvenate post-colonial Muslim societies.   Obviously, a great majority of those commentaries aim to view Islam as a monolith; it doesn’t help, either, that a great many Islamists themselves wish to portray Islam in such a way, too.  Moreover, these commentaries tend to see Islam/Islamism as something dark and brooding, a threat to the human species.

That vision is grossly simplistic.  In reality, polities always have more than one identity.  On one level, these are nominal — who are the political parties you subscribe to? which religious community? etc.  But on another level identity runs deeper, beyond choice: we cannot help where and to whom we are born.  There is definitely an aspect of otherness and powerlessness to identity.  The free and powerless parts of our identity interact, both engendering and satisfying different needs.

To the outside it seems a solid unchanging mass hence why Islam/Islamism are seen as monolithic, because they cannot sense the underlying currents and interactions.  In reality, identity is a composite and very fluid, yet with definite parameters.  Shifts in the composition are predictable, and Muslims have been placed under certain terrible conditions that have resulted, however tragically in many cases, in predictable results, just like any identity.

What we do not know is when this person or that group, suffering the same set of terrible conditions as their neighbors in identity, decide to take violent action.  For example, during the 1960s and 1970s, waves of international terrorism swept Europe. Prominent European politicians and businessmen were kidnapped and killed.  The perpetrators, when captured, defended themselves by arguing that they had an inalienable right to break the law.  In other words, they were attacking the very conditions of Cold War Europe, and in doing so, re-validate their identity.

Is there something wrong in the cultural aspect of identity that produces such individuals?  After all, culture by definition is the cultivation of the mind.  But this is specific to place and time and population.  Values may be transmitted collectively vie entire generations to the next.  On the one hand, somewhere in this cocktail we must identify the role of the individual, and I think we can do so with the family, which is the base unit of a culture and the channel by which the collective transmission of values takes place.  Schools are another locale.

On the other hand, the manner and style of this collective transmission also determines the general culture of  the polity in which these individuals mature.  The polity is given and seemingly immutable, yet it also very changeable.  For example, if a group has a culture of unchanging adherence to certain principles in personal life, for examples as the Amish in Pennsylvania live, then there will eventually be a collision between the given immutable principle and the society at large (Literally! In Pennsylvania there are regular accidents between horse drawn Amish carriages and cars).

Does that create a certain tension within the community? The consequences of intergenerational conflict in a large part of the world have been appearing ever since the first generation of humanity.  The shift of emphasis in a transmission then — what we normally call “change” –  is forced by changing conditions in the immediate vicinity of the family, if not the group as a whole.  However, the reception of the depth and range of the change differs from one polity to the next.

This is not because a polity cannot handle the change: priority is simply attached to the leavening of the given culture, the how and what of what is learned by the next generation.  For example, in Communist culture enlightenment is equated with empowerment, so that individuals can take their fate into their hands. The opposing camp, the Capitalists, also fervently believe the solution lies in education.  Even if the terminology is somewhat different, both end up with the same methods and means.

The real target of the competition between Communism and Capitalism was the Central Asian polity itself.  But then, after a while, Central Asia begin assessing these outside factors influencing and affecting everyday life.  These alien thoughts appeared to be contrary to Central Asians’ own desires and expectations, that is, as leavened by their culture.  As a result, they decided to take action, in order to remove the outside obstacles to their own lifestyle.  This initially came with independence; for some, it now continues as an internal struggle within the Central Asian republics themselves.

Yet, we come to a new question: how well do these aspirant agents of change understand the basic precepts of their own belief system? Or have they understood their belief system perfectly but are willing to deliberate distort its tenets for pecuniary interest?  This is the great unanswerable, for the answer is wrapped up in the particular weavings of the individual mind.

But I see within these “Islamists” something less individual and more ancient: the shamans of yesteryear, who resisted the incursions of Hellenism, of Buddhism, and then of Islam, each time taking on the trappings of the one conqueror to fight the next.  They now wear the guerrilla uniforms of Muslims, but they pray upon the prayer carpets of Marxism.