Political Islam and the New World Disorder.

Bassam Tibi. The Challenge of Fundamentalism: Political Islam and the New World Disorder. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. 282 pp. Hardcover $29.95.

Liberal Muslim scholars in the 1990s face a dilemma. On the one hand, they reject the absolutism and tendency toward extremism of Islamic fundamentalism. Yet the ideological enmity and misguided policies of the West toward the Islamic World, the Middle East in particular, make many liberal Muslim intellectuals loathe to provide any grist for the "green peril" propaganda mill. In this context, Bassam Tibi's The Challenge of Fundamentalism is a provocative undertaking, for it not only offers a powerful theoretical critique of Islamic fundamentalism, but also argues that this phenomenon is a threat to the West and international stability.

The author's central thesis is that Islamic fundamentalism is a contemporary political ideology distinct from Islam as a religion, and that Islamic fundamentalism, but not Islam, poses a challenge to world order. Tibi, a prolific scholar of Islam and Arab politics, repeatedly warns against the abuse of his argument: "we must never lose sight of the distinction between Islam and Islamic fundamentalism; any promotion of hostility to Islam itself in the guise of a clash of civilizations would unwittingly play into the hands of the fundamentalists in their efforts to antagonize the West" (p. xii).

The foremost contribution of this book is its penetrating examination of the intolerance and misrepresentation of Islam inherent in Islamic fundamentalism. The violence against liberal Muslims and others who question the fundamentalists' orthodoxy is well known. Cases such as the murder of Egyptian writer Farag Fuda, the stabbing of Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz, and the infamous apostasy ruling against Egyptian professor Nasr Hamid Abu-Zaid attest to the terror tactics, perversely justified as religiously mandated, by some fundamentalists. In fact, as Tibi reports, "there is not one revelation in the Qur'an that sanctions the killing of murtad / apostates. The command to slay reasoning Muslims is un-Islamic, an invention of Islamic fundamentalists" (p. 155).

Condemnatory fat was only one manifestation of Islamists' selective understanding of Islam. Refuting the standard interpretation of the essential unity of religion and state (din wa dawla) in Islam, an interpretation promoted by fundamentalists and many Western scholars, Tibi makes a persuasive case for the historical and scriptural contestability of the Islamic state. Historically, only during the reigns of the Prophet and his immediate successors were religious and political functions authentically joined under the binding authority of Islamic law. Tibi, citing Islamic scholars Husain Fawzi al-Najjar and 'Ali 'Abd al-Raziq, argues that this political rule during the early period of Islam was formed out of necessity in a stateless society rather than based on religious doctrine. Otherwise, the meaningful subordination of governance and governors to shari 'a was never achieved in the caliphate. Caliphs were monarchs who never ruled legalistic political systems in the Weberian sense. Moreover, "the primary so urces of the religion of Islam do not include prescriptions for a political society" (p. 166). The absence of a divinely ordained political model in the Qur'an is particularly problematic for fundamentalists, who understand the Qur'an as "the comprehensive compendium of knowledge, on every issue" (p. 166).

These points lend credence to Tibi's argument that fundamentalism is a politicization of religion resulting from the failures of the contemporary nation-state and the crisis of identity associated with modernity. Although they claim to reject modernity (associated with the West) in favor of a return to an idealized golden age, Tibi skillfully demonstrates that Islamic fundamentalism is itself a product of modernity and that Islamists offer a worldview which is, in Tibi's term, "semimodern." In fact, Islamic fundamentalists refuse only the cultural dimensions of modernity, not its instrumental or institutional aspects, for "they use the language of modernity to contest the evils of modernity, and their plan is to adopt the instruments of modernity to beat it at its own game" (p. 68).

One institutional feature of modernity that has been the source of expansive debate both outside and within Islamist movements is democracy. Again, Tibi emphasizes the important distinction between Islam and Islamic fundamentalism. Islam as an ethical and spiritual guide is compatible with democracy because it is based on tolerance, compassion, and respect for human rights. Fundamentalism, Tibi argues, is a different story. Islamists declare that popular sovereignty is a heresy against God's rule, but the rejection of a human-centered approach to decision making does not constrain fundamentalists from elevating their human interpretation (fiqh) of Islamic law to divine, and thus unquestionable, status. That Islamists fail to offer specific details on their proposed Islamic state, instead referring obliquely to an "Islamic order" (nizam Islami) defined by the implementation of shari 'a, casts further doubt on their commitment to democracy.

The Challenge of Fundamentalism is most contentious when it addresses international relations. Although Tibi states that fundamentalism is a "grave challenge to world politics, security, and stability" (p. ix), he provides insufficient support for this assertion. The author is correct to posit that fundamentalism is a significant problem for the particular regimes in which such movements obtain, and that international relations theorists need to consider fundamentalism as an increasingly important variable in world politics. However, Tibi over-amplifies the threat to world order and the nation-state system, for at least two reasons. First, as Tibi acknowledges, fundamentalists are far too divided by ethnic and sectarian hostilities to constitute a replacement to Western-dominated world politics, the universalism of Islamic fundamentalism notwithstanding. Second, the international system would likely mitigate the forecasted disorder sown by fundamentalists rather than crumble before it. Sudan and Iran, despit e their fundamentalist ideologies, have not exhibited international behavior inconsistent with that of other states uncomfortable with American hegemony (ideology has also not prohibited these states from doing business with the "Great Satan," as the Iran-Contra dealings illustrate).

Tibi also minimizes the significance of Islamists' references to the Quranic injunction for consultation (shura) in decision making. And, although in many Middle Eastern states Islamists have been in the forefront of pressing authoritarian leaders for democratization, Tibi concludes that Islamists only see democracy as an expedient tool to gain power. Here the author's argument implies homogeneity among Islamists' political strategies and understanding of democracy. Although he rightfully exhorts his readers to remember that not all fundamentalists are extremists or terrorists, he nonetheless paints a rather, for example, with the Muslim Brotherhood movement in Jordan (See Glenn E. Robinson, "Can Islamists be Democrats?" Middle East Journal 51:3 Summer 1998). While antagonistic to many of King Hussein's policies, the Muslim Brotherhood has participated peacefully and constructively in the newly democratized system through its political party the Islamic Action Front.

None of these criticisms, however, diminish the importance of this work. In an impassioned and incisive manner, Tibi succeeds in exposing the dangers and the inconsistencies of Islamic fundamentalism while at the same time illuminating Islam's peaceful disposition. For students of Islam, Middle Eastern politics, and international relations, there is much to be mined from The Challenge of Fundamentalism. One also hopes that policy makers will contemplate Tibi's call for an international morality, based on democracy and human rights, to overcome the civilizational tensions between the West and the Islamic World.

Jeffrey A. VanDenBerg is in the Department of History and Political Science, Drury Collage, Springfield, Missouri.