Introduction: What This Study Is Not and What It Aspires to Be

Abstract

AbstractThis study, financed by the Austrian “Dokumentationsstelle Politischer Islam”, attempts an analysis of what can be said about the phenomenon of “political Islam” in the Arab world and what can be said about religiously motivated political extremism (hereafter abbreviated RMPE) in an international comparison from the perspective of international, empirically oriented social sciences. We use open, internationally accessible data from the Arab Barometer and the World Values Survey to analyse these two phenomena. In this chapter, we describe the general outline of our study. We emphasise that we follow the example of Cammett et al. (2020), in attempting to present our own empirical data from recognised social science surveys on political Islam. In doing so, the focus is on a tradition influenced by the mathematical logic and analytical philosophy of the Vienna Circle through Rudolf Carnap (1988), of relying on the extension of a contested concept. In our case—of “political Islam”—the research of the Arab Barometer as well as Francois Burgat, but also Jocelyne Cesari, John Esposito, Gilles Kepel and Oliver Roy have in any case very clearly outlined which important value patterns the adherents of political Islam represent (five items from the Arab Barometer) and which political movements and governments of countries can be assigned to the extension of the phenomenon, such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Sudan and Jordan, Jamaat-i-Islami in South Asia, the Refah Party in Turkey, the Islamic Salvation Front in Algeria, al Nahda in Tunisia, Hizballah in Lebanon, Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Palestinian territories and Gamaa Islamiyya and Jihad in Egypt. It is certainly also legitimate, in the light of the above literature, to describe the current AKP government in Turkey and the Islamist regime in Iran as “political Islam in power”. Our measurement of “political Islam” thus adopts this perspective without “ifs” and “buts” and 1:1. After all, according to the “Arab Barometer” team, “political Islam” occurs whenever the following opinions are held in the region: It is better for religious leaders to hold public office Religious leaders should influence government decisions Religious leaders are less corrupt than civilian ones Religious leaders should influence elections Religious practice is not a private matter.