Congrès Mondial des Études sur le Moyen-Orient et l'Afrique du Nord

Barcelone du 19 au 24 Juillet 2010

· NOT_DEFINED institution: Dalhousie University (Canada ) and Philipps University Marburg (Germany)

· NOT_DEFINED organizer: Amal Ghazal and Rachid Ouaissa

· NOT_DEFINED language: English/Français

· NOT_DEFINED description: The relationship between Islamic thought and nationalism in the Arab world has been a controversial one. For long, Islamism and nationalism were considered as incompatible and as rivals in the field of political ideology. Later studies have shown that Islamists in the late nineteenth century, and Salafis in particular, contributed to the birth and development of Arabism but that Arab nationalism later on developed outside of a religious framework. Recently, Islamism and nationalism have been featured as two movements with common roots and with a common destiny. This panel, while acknowledging all the contributions made to highlight the interlink between nationalism and Islamism, seeks to analyze Islamism AS nationalism. Islamism, as a political movement deploying a religious discourse, is analyzed in this context neither as a precursor to nationalism nor as a parallel movement with similar features to nationalism. Rather, Islamism is presented here as one of the nationalist movements that emerged in twentieth-century Arab world and adopted the nation-state as an ideological framework in which religious discourse and politics intersected and to which Islamist thought was deeply tied. Case studies featuring Islamist movements from the Occupied Territories, Jordan, Syria, Egypt and Algeria are presented on this panel. They highlight the nationalist features and characteristics of Islamist movements and discuss both the transformations and the historical continuities in the nationalist identities of those movements. They provide a more complex picture of the relationship between Islamism and nationalist thought, taking into account the significance of idiomatic changes, symbols, concerns over governance issues and socio-economic developments as not only signifiers of nationalist tendencies but also as factors that have contributed to the fusion and merger between Islamism and nationalism.

Chair: André Bank (Philipps University Marburg)

Paper presenter: André Bank (Philipps University Marburg) and Morten Valbjørn (Department of Political Science, University of Aarhus). “Nationalist Encounters: Jordanian Islamists between Hashemite, Palestinian and Arab Nationalism(s)”
The prevalent views in the academic debate on the relationship between Islam(ism) and Nationalism have in recent years shifted from claims about an incompatibility between nationalism and Islamic political thought as such (e.g. Kedourie) to a growing attention to the affinities between them. The latter view is reflected in portrayals of these two intellectual currents as “sister ideologies” (e.g. Özdalga) or – as in this panel – of “Islamism as Nationalism”. While much of the debate has so far focused on the nature and variety of Islamist movements, in order to explore the relationship it is also necessary to examine the specific meanings of natio¬nalism, as these in an Arab Middle Eastern context in particular appear to be highly contested as reflected in the classic wataniyya/qawmiyya debate.
In this paper, which provides a case study of Jordanian Islamism, we therefore do not only ask whether the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) in Jordan can be perceived as an example of Isla¬mism as Nationalism, but also raise the question about the specific nature of this na¬tio¬na¬lism. Based on a reading of the modern history of Jordan and the associated dis¬cus¬sion of “what and where Jordan is,” the paper identifies a range of different nation¬alisms in Jordan and shows how the MB at different times has been associated with and drawing on Arab na¬tio¬na¬lism(s) in various forms, including Hashemite nationalism and a “New Societal Arabist” version, (Trans-)Jordanian nationalism as well as Palestinian nationalism. Disentangling Islamists’ nationalist encounters in Jordan in such a way and over time allows us to account for the congruence and contradictions in political thought at key historical junctures, the latter of which gave rise to periods of symbiosis and accommodation between the MB and the Hashemite elite (post-1946, 1957, 1970/71) on the one hand and periods of socio-political conflict between them (post-1989, post-2005) on the other.

Paper presenter: Erik Mohns (Centre for Contemporary Middle East Studies- University of Southern Denmark). “The Use of National Symbols and Practices among Islamists in a Palestinian Refugee Camp in Damascus”
This paper examines how the Islamist-nationalist faction Hamas engages in an interpretative conflict over Palestinian nationalism and how the organization makes selective use of nationalist symbols and practices in the Syrian diaspora. In particular, it seeks to expose which mobilization structures the ‘Islamic Resistance Movement’ employs in order to create new forms of political solidarity.
With the outbreak of the first Intifada uprising in 1987 in the occupied territories, objectives of the Palestinian Islamist current (al-tayyar al-islami) were reframed from transnational to nationalist ones, replacing the struggle for the resurgence of the Islamic umma and the transformation of state and society with the liberation of al-watan (‘the national homeland’) from occupation. Representing this ‘Palestinianization’ of the movement and its reinterpretation of core principles, strategy and tactics was the creation of the organization Hamas, which emerged as the main contender of Fatah, the organization which had dominated the Palestinian nationalist movement and its forms of expressions and interpretations of national identification since the end of the 1960s.
These ideological reorientations resulted in shifts of the Palestinian collective identity within and without the territories, making Islamism within the nationalist spectrum a tolerated alternative to prior dominant forms of ‘secular’ nationalism. This ‘renegotiation’ of Palestinian collective identity took and continues to take place in a dialectical process within the nationalist spectrum. Besides this ideological shift, it evolves on a practical level as a conflict over political authority and form and character of a future sovereign Palestinian state between the two dominant factions Hamas and Fatah inside the territories, leading to the recent hardening of its territorial fracture.
In the Palestinian refugee communities in the Arab diaspora, it takes the shape of a struggle for representation of the Palestinian people as a whole, embedded in different contexts of the host countries. This paper therefore seeks to examine how the Islamist-nationalist faction Hamas engages in this interpretative conflict of nationalism and how the organization makes use of nationalist symbols and practices in the refugee camp Yarmouk, situated at the outskirts of Damascus. It investigates how the Islamist organization challenges the “traditional” nationalist narratives of the secularist Palestinian factions by making selective use of national symbols out of repertoires of former periods. The paper aims to demonstrate within the locally restricted context of this socially and politically heterogeneous camp, how Hamas engages in transforming Palestinian collective political identity in exile within the nationalist spectrum.

Paper presenter: Beverley Milton-Edwards (Queens University of Belfast). “HAMAS – Nation or Islam”
The Palestinian Islamic group – the ‘Islamic Resistance Movement’ more popularly known by its acronym HAMAS has emerged over the last two decades as a potent force in Palestinian national politics and the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Claiming to be rooted in the Muslim Brotherhood (al-Ikhwan al-Muslimeen) Hamas, however, has developed its own unique discourse and strategy of engagement in national politics in the Palestinian territories as a Muslim organisation. This national Muslim claim shaped by Hamas is largely devoid of pan-Islamist or global Islamist markers or resonances and is inward looking in both methodology and ideology. This has led an ever-increasing number of radical or jihad-salafi Islamists to accuse Hamas of abandoning the Islamist project in Palestine.
The proposed paper will examine the ideological and strategic dilemmas faced by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas during its transition from popular movement in opposition to secular governing factions of the nationalist PLO to controlling governance through both popular mandate in elections held in January 2006 and a seizure of power from official PA forces in Gaza in June 2007.
These dilemmas will be examined both in terms of the challenges to the movement in terms of its identity dynamic as both a traditional Islamist and nationalist movement as well as practical governance issues in Gaza 2007-2009.
The proposal here is to examine the extent to which political demands to alter the founding tenets of the movement (including the Mithaq ) as an admission price to the formal political arena as shaped by nationalist discourse in Palestine is advisable if the movement is to retain its Islamist identity and appeal to a popular constituency. I will also question whether – alternatively Hamas should continue to re-shape Palestinian nationalism through its governance agenda aligned with its strategy to transform the PLO (as per the terms of the 2005 Cairo Agreement).
The paper will end with an analysis of the prospect of a successful fusion of Islam and nationalism in the Palestinian Territories and consequences for Palestinian national unity as well as conflict resolution with Israel.

Paper presenter: Andrea Mura (Loughborough University) “National and Islamist Resonances: A Genealogical Inquiry”
By assuming a discourse theory perspective, this paper argues that while Islamism was initially caught between a pan-Islamic vocation and modern ways of articulating political discourse, such as nationalism and Arab nationalism, a major Islamist trend gradually de-emphasised the role played by pan-Islamic narratives. In contrast, an increasing counter-hegemonic integration and valorisation of modern national ‘signifiers’ characterised the main route most Islamist articulations pursued throughout the twentieth century up to the present time.
In the attempt to examine the discursive complexity informing the Islamist galaxy, I will initially introduce those Islamist trends that have kept a pan-Islamic traditional framework rejecting the discourse of the ‘nation’. This tendency will be exemplified by the case of Sayyid Qutb, which I will briefly discuss. Against such a backdrop, I will then address those Islamist discourses that re-elaborate and deploy the national vocabulary for counter-hegemonic purposes. By putting special emphasis on Hasan al-Banna’s political theory (and associated movements’ such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas), I will show that national signifiers such as nation-state, the people, and territory have been creatively re-articulated and amalgamated with their traditional counterparts, i.e. dawlah, ummah, and dar al-Islam by mainstream Islamist trends, turning Islamism into a form of religious or irredentist nationalism. This enacted the Islamist counter-hegemonic attempt to dislocate the western monopoly over modern political paradigms, expressing the potential for a sort of political ‘normalisation’ of Islamist discourses in institutional arenas.