Islamist politics: Antisystemic or post‐modern movements?

Abstract

Islamist Politics have been cast as a geopolitical threat to ‘the West’, as antisystemic movements, and as part of the cacophony of post‐modern identity politics. This article takes a critical approach to the geopolitics of Islamism and the representational practices that have defined religio‐politics in relation to these various analytical categories. I argue that Islamist movements cannot be fruitfully analysed as primarily oppositional mobilisations. Such movements are not antisystemic as this term is usually understood, although they do pose a challenge to secularist categories. Furthermore, the scripting of social and new social movements works to close down spaces for religious politics, despite the apparent openings created by the post‐modern turn. Finally, I argue that the ways in which knowledge about Islamist politics has been constructed reflects the historical institutionalisation of secularist power in the post‐Enlightenment era. Through this discussion, my aim is to point towards an approach to Islamist politics that draws on the insights of critical geopolitics.