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Islamism is a range of religious and political ideological movements that believe that Islam should influence political systems.[1] Its proponents believe Islam is innately political, and that Islam as a political system is superior to communism, liberal democracy, capitalism, and other alternatives in achieving a just, successful society.[2] Islamism is considered anti-colonialist, anti-Zionist, anti-capitalist, and anti-communist; Islamists support family values, sharia, the abolition of interest-based finance, and the Quranic command of 'Enjoining good and forbidding wrong.'[3][4]
The advocates of Islamism, also known as "al-Islamiyyun", are usually affiliated with Islamic institutions or social mobilization movements,[5] emphasizing the implementation of sharia,[6] pan-Islamic political unity,[6] and the creation of Islamic states.[7]
In its original formulation, Islamism described an ideology seeking to revive Islam to its past assertiveness and glory,[8] purifying it of foreign elements, reasserting its role into "social and political as well as personal life";[9] and in particular "reordering government and society in accordance with laws prescribed by Islam" (i.e. Sharia).[10][11][12][13] According to at least one observer (author Robin Wright), Islamist movements have "arguably altered the Middle East more than any trend since the modern states gained independence", redefining "politics and even borders".[14] Another sole author (Graham E. Fuller) has argued for a broader notion of Islamism as a form of identity politics, involving "support for [Muslim] identity, authenticity, broader regionalism, revivalism, [and] revitalization of the community."[15]
Central and prominent figures in 20th-century Islamism include Sayyid Rashid Riḍā,[16] Hassan al-Banna (founder of the Muslim Brotherhood), Sayyid Qutb, Abul A'la Maududi,[17] Ruhollah Khomeini (founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran), Hassan Al-Turabi.[18] Syrian Sunni cleric Muhammad Rashid Riḍā, a fervent opponent of Westernization, Zionism and nationalism, advocated Sunni internationalism through revolutionary restoration of a pan-Islamic Caliphate to politically unite the Muslim world.[19][20] Riḍā was a strong exponent of Islamic vanguardism, the belief that Muslim community should be guided by clerical elites (ulema) who steered the efforts for religious education and Islamic revival.[21] Riḍā's Salafi-Arabist synthesis and Islamist ideals greatly influenced his disciples like Hasan al-Banna,[22][23] an Egyptian schoolteacher who founded the Muslim Brotherhood movement, and Hajji Amin al-Husayni, the anti-Zionist Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.[24] Al-Banna and Maududi called for a "reformist" strategy to re-Islamizing society through grassroots social and political activism.[25][26] Other Islamists (Al-Turabi) are proponents of a "revolutionary" strategy of Islamizing society through exercise of state power,[25] or (Sayyid Qutb) for combining grassroots Islamization with armed revolution. The term has been applied to non-state reform movements, political parties, militias and revolutionary groups.[27]
Islamists themselves prefer terms such as "Islamic movement",[28] or "Islamic activism" to "Islamism", objecting to the insinuation that Islamism is anything other than Islam renewed and revived.[29] In public and academic contexts,[30] the term "Islamism" has been criticized as having been given connotations of violence, extremism, and violations of human rights, by the Western mass media, leading to Islamophobia and stereotyping.[31]
Prominent Islamist groups and parties across the world include the Muslim Brotherhood, Turkey's Justice and Development Party, Hamas, Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham, the Algerian Movement of Society for Peace, the Malaysian National Trust Party, Jamaat-e-Islami in Bangladesh and Pakistan and Bosnia's Party of Democratic Action.[32] Following the Arab Spring, many post-Islamist currents became heavily involved in democratic politics,[14][33] while others spawned "the most aggressive and ambitious Islamist militia" to date, such as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).[14] ISIL has been rejected as blasphemous by the majority of Islamists.[34]
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Islamism is one of many sociopolitical concepts continuously contested in scholarly literature. It is a neologism debated in both Muslim and non-Muslim public and academic contexts. The term "Islamism" at the very least represents a form of social and political activism, grounded in an idea that public and political life should be guided by a set of Islamic principles. In other words, Islamists are those who believe that Islam has an important role to play in organizing a Muslim-majority society and who seek to implement this belief.
The term "Islamism/Islamist" has come into increasing use in recent years to denote the views of those Muslims who claim that Islam, or more specifically, the Islamic sharīʿah, provides guidance for all areas of human life, individual and social, and who therefore call for an "Islamic State" or an "Islamic Order." [...] Today it is one of the recognized alternatives to "fundamentalist", along with "political Islam" in particular. [...] Current terminology usually distinguishes between "Islam," [...] and "Islamism", referring to the ideology of those who tend to signal openly, in politics, their Muslim religion. [...] the term has often acquired a quasi-criminal connotation close to that of political extremism, religious sectarianism, or bigotry. In Western mainstream media, "Islamists" are those who want to establish, preferably through violent means, an "Islamic state" or impose sharīʿah (Islamic religious law)—goals that are often perceived merely as a series of violations of human rights or the rights of women. In the Muslim world, insiders use the term as a positive reference. In the academic sphere, although it is still debated, the term designates a more complex phenomenon.