„VI ISLAMISTER.. Distinktion og drama i islamisk aktivisme

Abstract

Connie Carøe Christiansen: “We,
 Islamists”. Distinetion and Drama in
 Islamic Activism
 In the town of Fes the Islamic activists have
 now accepted Islamist as a term of selfdesignation.
 In the continuous drama of a
 rivalry between comrades and Islamists at
 the university campus, the Islamists are
 recreating themselves as Islamists. This
 struggle, as well as other activities of the
 Islamists, is reinforcing an objectifying
 approach to the world. The social space of
 the university is a polarized space where
 both political groups are trying to obtain
 visibility by various activities on the
 campus, which in a sense can be regarded as
 a stage. Their offer of a political standpoint,
 however, is often rejected and the vast
 majority of the Moroccan youth present
 themselves as uninterested in politics. They
 are in reality exeluded from formal political
 participation. The ability to objectify may
 act as support for the ascendent middle class
 in Morocco where politics has been tumed
 into an activity for elite families which are
 allied with the powerful king, Hassan II. At
 the university, however, political organizing
 is something that is quite easily accomplished,
 but at the same time it is monitored
 and controlled by the police. The political
 activities of the university students,
 therefore, have little real effeet, which only
 adds to the impression of them as
 exaggerated, as if having a melodramatic
 character. The Islamist, female students are
 not involved in the physical confrontations
 between comrades and brothers. Rather,
 necessitated by stereotype ideas on the
 Muslim woman as dumb and duil, they are
 engaged in a struggle of distinction. In this
 struggle they are implicitly distancing
 themselves from their “ordinary Muslim”
 sisters, the uneducated Muslim woman and
 the female students who let the religion play
 a minor part in their lives. This also involves
 objectifying processes. The Islamist women
 place impetus on the hijab but have also
 realized that this device does not suffice as a
 signal of commitment to the Islamist cause,
 because anybody can wear a hijab, calling
 for evemew devices of distinction. At doser
 look, the Islamists may have more in
 common with their secularist rivals than
 might be expected if one judges from the
 dramatic rivalry at the university. The
 women at least seem to be more concemed
 with distancing themselves from the
 ordinary Muslim woman, in order to make it
 possible to be recognized as being, at one
 and the same time, a woman, a Muslim, and
 an intellectual.