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illustration of non-Islamism by Linas Garsys. The Islamist movement, which seeks to apply medieval Islamic laws and build a worldwide caliphate, has expanded massively in the past half-century. But it now faces a significant and growing counter-movement, especially in Muslim-majority countries. Growing numbers of Muslims, spurred by shocks like the fall of Kabul, fear and reject this radical version of Islam. Awareness of the anti-Islamist surge has been largely limited to those directly involved but it deserves to be much better known.
Anti-Islamism comprises four complementary trends. Going from quietest to most radical, they are: moderate Islam, irreligiosity, apostasy, and conversion to other religions. All have an international presence but, for illustrative purposes, I shall focus in each case on a key Middle Eastern country: moderate Islam in Egypt, irreligiosity in Turkey, atheism in Saudi Arabia, and conversion in Iran.
Moderation : Husni Mubarak’s 30-year police state so consistently accommodated Islamists that Egyptians dared not oppose them. His fall from power in 2011 finally permitted an open expression of views, which the one-year Islamist rule of Mohamed Morsi further galvanized. The results have been hyperbolically anti-Islamist, as seen by street attacks on Muslim Brotherhood-appearing men, by women discarding the hijab, and the immense popularity of scathingly anti-Islamist figures such as Islam al-Behairy, Ibrahim Issa, Mukhtar Jom’ah, Khaled Montaser, and Abdallah Nasr. Even President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, a former Islamist sympathizer , has accommodated these moderate sentiments. Egyptian intellectual Ibrahim Issa. Irreligiosity : Turkey’s Islamist president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has dominated the country’s politics since 2002 with the goal of raising a ” pious generation .” But younger Turks are adopting non-Islamic ways. Survey research by Volkan Ertit found the sacred having less influence regarding such matters as belief in supernatural beings, clothing that reveals body shape, premarital flirtation, non-marital sex, and homosexuality. A government report documented the appeal of deism among religious school students. A 2012 WIN/Gallup survey found that “Not religious” persons make up 73 percent of Turkey’s population (the highest of 57 countries surveyed).
Apostasy : In Saudi Arabia, flat-out rejection of Islam “is spreading like wildfire” says […]
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