The French connection: political Islam from the Algerian War to the Iranian Revolution

Abstract

The revolutionary 1960s are often seen as the heyday of socialist theories and leftist movements. In the Middle East the period until the Arab-Israeli war of 1967 is regularly perceived as the pinnacle of secular, socialist Arab nationalism in the region, whereas the rise of various forms of political Islam is often presented as a phenomenon pertaining to a different era beginning in 1979. This article proposes a perspective which situates important Islamic thinkers in the intellectual environment of the revolutionary 1960s. Starting with the Algerian war in 1954 and lasting until the Iranian revolution of 1979, I argue that the ‘long’ 1960s were dominated not only by Marxist thinkers like Frantz Fanon and Jean-Paul Sartre. Muslim revolutionary intellectuals, such as Malek Bennabi, Amar Ouzegane, or ʿAli Shariʿati, also took part during the Algerian war in the shaping of a new discourse in France.