Asef Bayat Research Articles

The Politics of Islamism and Salafism Revisited: A Review Essay

This review essay critically assesses Esen Kirdiş’ The Rise of Islamic Political Movements and Parties, Frederic Wehrey and Anouar Boukhars’ Salafism in the Maghreb, and Mohamed-Ali Adraoui’s Salafism Goes Global: From the Gulf to the French Banlieues in light of the post-Islamism hypothesis. In Asef Bayat’s formulation, post-Islamism refers to a shift in discourse among Islamist movements de-emphasising a complete societal Islamisation and centring issues of civil liberties and democracy. These three works complicate this picture through introducing greater varieties of movements within local religio-political fields. Adopting a comparative approach, Kirdiş explores how Islamic movements respond to opportunities and threats to employ strategies of party formation or non-participation in formal politics. Wehrey and Boukhars demonstrate Salafism’s local embeddedness within the Maghreb, which conditions how Salafi actors react to local circumstances to justify different modes of action which transcend strict categorisations of moderation and radicalisation. Finally, Adraoui’s sociological approach to Salafism in France confronts whether French quietist Salafis represent a manifestation of post-Islamism through exhibiting a disillusionment with Islamist politics and the consequent formation of a Salafi counter-hegemonic sphere. Altogether, these studies amount to a more nuanced understanding of the political and apolitical beyond participation in formal politics.

AN EVALUATION ON THE CHANGING SUBALTERN POLITICS AND THE BECOMING POWER OF AK PARTY

“Madun” kavramı, toplumdaki göçmen, gecekonducu, işsiz, evsiz, işportacı gibi alt kesimleri içine almaktadır. Bu kesimlere yönelik birçok çalışmanın yapıldığı görülmektedir. Bunlar arasında, özellikle Asef Bayat’ın İran özelinde yaptığı çalışmalar ilgi çekmektedir. Bayat’ın görüşleri, Türkiye’de de kendisini göstermiş ve madun siyasetinin farklı görünümleri 1990’ların ortasına kadar sürmüştür. 
 Bayat’ın ifadesiyle, tek amaçları hayata tutunabilmek olan madunların, siyasetten doğrudan hiçbir beklentileri bulunmamaktadır. Ancak bu ruh hali, 1990’larda belediyelerde iktidar olmaya başlayan Refah Partisi’nin sosyal belediyecilik uygulamalarının etkisiyle değişmeye başlamıştır. Yeni süreç, Türkiye’de siyaseti derinden etkileyecek şekilde, madunları doğrudan siyasete yöneltmiş ve onları dikkate alanların seçim kazandığı bir dönem başlatmıştır. Sonuçta, siyasete damgasını vurmaya başlayan madun kesimler, kendilerine yönelik politikaları önceleyen AK Parti’yi iktidar yapmış ve bu iktidarın uzun yıllar devamını sağlamıştır. 
 Bu çalışmada, Türkiye’de değişen madun siyaseti ve madunların AK Parti’sin iktidar olma süreciyle ilişkisi ele alınacaktır. Bu çerçevede; öncelikle Türkiye’de madunlar ve madun siyaseti ortaya konulacaktır. Sonrasında, madunların değişen siyaseti ve bunu hazırlayan ortam aktarılacaktır. Nihayetinde ise, bu değişimin, madunlara yönelik politikaları öne çıkaran AK Parti’yi iktidar yapma ve iktidarda tutma süreci değerlendirilecektir.

‘Rejecting the Legacy, Restoring the Honor’: The Anti-Capitalist Muslims in Turkey

Post-Islamism as coined by Asef Bayat in 1996 laid the framework to analyze rapid and fundamental changes in social and political life of the Muslim world. However, this paper argues that the scholarship around post-Islamism disregards neoliberal structuration introduced and expanded by post-Islamist parties and movements (such as the Justice and Development Party of Turkey). This structuration, coupled with the legacies of anti-left sentiments in preceding Islamist movements, stifles the Muslim youth in the region whose frustrations and aspirations are left silenced. Based on my ethnographic study between 2013 and 2017, the paper introduces the group of the Anti-Capitalist Muslims in Turkey as an internal challenge to the legacies of Islamist ideologies and the neoliberal politics of post-Islamism.

Post-Islamism Redefined: Towards a politics of post-Islamism

Problematizing Asef Bayat’s notion of “post-Islamism,” this article proposes an alternative definition for the concept, having in mind the case of Iran. The current conception of the term “post-Islamism” may be challenged via a survey of post-revolutionary Islamist movements that resisted the state and as well as Ayatollah’s Khomeini’s concession to the concept maslahat (expediency), through which state expressed preference for modern reason over sharia law. The case of Islamists contesting state power questions the monolithic image of Islamism drawn by Bayat as movements longing to create a state based on the doctrine of velāyat-e faqih. Also Khomeini’s concession to maslahat indicates that the Islamic state must be seen as one of the participants in “post”-Islamist secularizing trends in Iran. Hence, Bayat’s post-Islamism was more of an inevitable political phenomenon adopted by the state itself than a conscious project adopted by Muslim secularist intellectual figures seeking to put an end to Islamism. Unlike Bayat’s post-Islamism, which celebrates the end or a “break” from an Islamist paradigm, this article then invites readers to expose Islamism to post-modern critique, the result of which would not be a negation but rather a revival of Islamism that takes into account the contingencies of the post-modern condition. Similar to post-Marxism and post-anarchism, post-Islamism maintains the ethos of the traditional canon, Islamism in this case, while rejecting its authoritarian and universalist tendencies. A post-Islamist politics has yet to emerge, yet its introductory philosophical foundations have been already developed in the 1990s by figures such as Abdolkarism Soroush and Morteza Avini. Soroush’s post-Islamism, however, ultimately landed in a modernist liberal episteme, hence remained Islamist, while Avini, despite his support for the state, offered a much more radical critique of Islamism while remaining faithful to its ethos.

Not quite quiet, not quite encroachment: Interrogating the political nature of urban subaltern community engagement in Medellín, Colombia

In Medellín, Colombia, hundreds of youth and community groups participate in activities aimed at transforming their lives and the interconnected lives of their neighbors. These activities are not necessarily conceived of as activism but they are also not politically passive; they are distinct from both survival strategies and “everyday resistance” but their relationships to the state and/or the rich and powerful are unstable. In this sense, these activities relate to but do not fit neatly within Asef Bayat’s framework of “quiet encroachment,” describing the “silent, protracted but pervasive advancement of the ordinary people on the propertied and powerful in order to survive and improve their lives”. Rather, they suggest a malleable kind of “quiet” action, one that moves both against and with state prerogatives. Building on the notion of quiet encroachment, and even more nuanced depictions coming out of Bayat’s later work, we describe the politics of recent activities accomplished by youth and community groups as a kind of “nonmovement” work, accomplished through spatial, affective, and organizational gains, that sits upon the more active political networking of previous eras.

The Aesthetic Resistance of Iranian Architects and Artists During the Late Pahlavi Era

In Iran, the urban transformation was mostly related to politically motivated uprisings. Not only analyzing the reasons that lead to an uprising but also having a closer look at places where demonstrations occur is prominent. In the case of Iran, as Asef Bayat noted, demonstrations have been mainly urban movements. Massive uprisings of people have been mostly held in downtown Tehran. Although spatial and social transformation had been mostly controlled by the top-down modernization of the Pahlavi regime, local modernists’ confrontation with the past, made the ordered transformation archaic. Their architectural opposition took shape by modernizing Persian archetypes like a courtyard and the Persian garden. Through applying semi-public character of these voids to their commissions, architects offered the city an opportunity for social and political expressions. Their projects represent the modern urban theatre of contention par excellence. These architects believed that the ethical responsibility of architecture does not conflict with its aesthetic value, and politics was aesthetically negotiated in their commissions. They also challenged postmodern architecture to a new vision of Critical Regionalism. This article will look at the aesthetic value of projects that linked the everyday life of citizens to the decentralized political spaces.

Beyond the ‘online’: Iranian women’s non-movement of resistance

In many undemocratic countries where conservative law and patriarchal ideas are in place, women are considered second-class citizens particularly in domains of public life. After Iran’s Islamic revolution, Iranian women were confronted with a theocratic regime, which imposed laws and norms, which limited women’s activities and violated earned liberties. The activities of women under non-democratic states and patriarchal systems are thwarted by the repressive measures of authoritarian states as well as patriarchal society and hostile attitudes of ordinary men and women. New normative frameworks and practices imposed gender segregation in various aspects. During these years, women attempt to resist these policies, not by deliberate, organized campaigns but through daily practices in public life. Asef Bayat calls these kinds of resistance and activities ‘social non-movement’. This article focuses on a rather under-researched form of social activism and attempts to describe the way in which social media might be supportive tools for women aiming to build active networks and communicative spaces to deliberate on challenges to their lives. At the same time, these spaces function as the civic training ground where representations of political demands for social change are put forth. This article discusses ways in which social media have been used as platforms where women’s demands, among others, hold identity dimensions as well as violation of their basic and human rights.

‘Boots on the ground’: walking in occupied Palestinian territory

ABSTRACTMasar Ibrahim al-Khalil is a trail 330kms long in the Palestinian West Bank. The object of this research is the social ‘nonmovement’, to borrow a term from Asef Bayat, of walkers from the US and Europe and their Palestinian hosts. Based on her own experience of walking and on interviews with other international visitors, the author concludes that this social nonmovement connects places along the trail (and beyond), walkers to each other and the people they encounter, and plural narratives of affective solidarity. These findings unsettle the idea of securitized territorial solutions and invite the possibility of continuous, open geographies.

‘Loud’ and ‘quiet’ politics: Questioning the role of ‘the artist’ in street art projects after the 2011 Egyptian Revolution

This article examines the grassroots artistic initiative al-Fann Midan (Art is a City Square) in Cairo and a contrasting approach to street art organizing in Alexandria to demonstrate how each enacted a different relationship to ‘the political’ in a revolutionary moment. Extending sociologist Asef Bayat’s concept ‘quiet encroachment’, it analyzes these contrasting approaches through the sonic metaphor of ‘loud’ and ‘quiet’ politics. As a spectrum, this framework highlights how the everyday, the gestural, and the affective on the one hand can exist simultaneously, and at times in tension with, larger, more representational political expressions on the other. It thus avoids fetishizing creative ‘resistance’ or ‘dissent’, while nonetheless analyzing art in a revolutionary moment, by grounding creative expression more historically and with analytical attention to how it reanimates long-standing debates among Arab intellectuals regarding the role of the ‘artist’.

The ‘street politics’ of migrant il/legality: Navigating Malaysia's urban borderscape

Immigration control constitutes a particular technique for regulating urban space and for controlling and disciplining migrant subjects within it. Unlike other manifestations of state power in exemplary urban settings, the architecture of urban immigration control is not recognisable through grand buildings or walls, but rather through its momentary presence and continuously shifting location: ad hoc identity controls in public spaces, roadblocks in neighbourhood streets or raids against workplaces. Building on fieldwork conducted in the Malaysian city of George Town, this article takes an interest in how migrants navigate this urban borderscape in order to avoid exploitation and encounters with the police. Read through Asef Bayat's notion of ‘street politics’, the article shows how migrants use the means (made) available to them in order to extend their room to manoeuvre. While such tactics are often driven by the force of necessity, they do nonetheless cumulatively encroach on the state's ability to produce migrants as (un)wanted or even (il)legal subjects in the city. Through this, migrants also challenge the very notion of what an exemplary urban space is as well as who is considered a legitimate part of it.

Les politiques du soufisme en France : le cas de la Qādiriyya Būdshīshiyya

In this article I analyse the politics of the Qādiriyya Būdshīshiyya Sufi order in France. I will consider the cultural activities based in Paris and the activities of public figures such as the rapper Abd Al Malik and Senator Bariza Khiari. These activities can be described as a form of post-Islamist engagement following Asef Bayat. In this political frame, democratic values, understood as acceptance of religious, ethnic and cultural, as well as community participation in the regulation of living together, are not only accepted but are mostly viewed as intrinsically Islamic. Furthermore, I challenge the stereotype of Sufism considered as privatized and without any impact on the public sphere.

En-Force: Pascal Hachem’s Art

This article discusses how violence, force, and law and order are problematized in the selected artworks of the Lebanese contemporary artist Pascal Hachem. The notions Hachem tackles are grounded in his personal experience of daily life in Lebanon. And the subjects of his artworks are related to current issues in Lebanon and the region. Describing and analyzing a selection of artworks, I emphasize the staged workings of violence in law and order. My interpretation of the artworks relies on the theoretical frameworks provided by Jacques Derrida in “Force of Law” and Asef Bayat in Life as politics. They help underline the connection between the concepts of ‘force of law’ and ‘ ordinary life’—exposed in Hachem’s work. The artworks, I argue, deal with both ‘ordinary’ and political issues, and highlight and disclose the similar workings of force in law and order, proposing a critical evaluation of violence. The analysis leads to a rethinking of the question of change in a region that ‘cries for it’.

Book Review: Revolution without Revolutionaries: Making Sense of the Arab Spring, by Asef Bayat

Book Review: <i>Revolution without Revolutionaries: Making Sense of the Arab Spring</i>, by Asef Bayat

Political Islam in Islamism and Post Islamism: A Study on Islamic Renaissance Front (IRF)

Asef Bayat suggests a new approach for Islamists, called Post-Islamism which is broadly welcomed researchers towards current political Islam. Otherwise, Islamic Renaissance Front (IRF) is engaging Post-Islamism approach as a resistance to Islamism and suggested application of secularism and liberalism in Malaysian political arena. The objectives of this paper are to analyze and address clear perceptions that had found in Islamism and post-Islamism discussion. The main methodology for this paper is content analysis for interpreted IRF’s printed publications and electronic articles. This study also analyzed based on latest findings on Islamic tenets. The research covers inductive method that explains IRF works. Deductive method is also used for generalization in order to observe essential content of Islamism and post-Islamism. The study also refers to experts on the field of Islamic thought. Three members of Department of Islamic Development Malaysia (JAKIM) were chosen and interviewed so as to be more accurate in Islamic affairs explanation. The results showed that secular and liberal thought is found in the post-Islamism which is the same essence in Islamism critics. Additionally, this article resolves confusion in discourse of political Islam especially within secularism, liberalism and democracy issues. Post-Islamism also used Turkey’s Political Model as a collateral argument. However, researchers such as Sengupta have found that Turkey’s Political Model carries secularism and liberalism as well. Therefore, Turkey’s Political Model is actually secular political concepts. Besides, there are clear IRF calls for Islamist to transform Islamism to post-Islamism approach and to be secular or liberal.

Informal Security Groups as Social Non-Movement in Indonesia: Case of Buru Jejak in Central Lombok

This essay discusses vigilante groups in relation to access for rights to security, particularly in Central Lombok District, West Nusa Tenggara Province. Vigilante groups are defined as 'informal security groups' to distinguish them from formal security entities owned by the state such as the police and military. I propose an alternative interpretation toward the existence of informal security groups that is different from mainstream explanation. Most of the literatures have a strong tendency to categorize informal security groups merely as antagonist actors and a predatory element in the process of democratization in Indonesia. By referencing Asef Bayat’s notion of social non-movement, I argue that informal security group, in Lombok particularly, is one way ordinary people seek to improve their quality of life when security and access to justice are not available, resulting in a blurred line between legal and illegal activity. However, these groups are susceptible to be used by the local elites to achieve particular political interests. This research used qualitative methods, including interviews and archival research.

Understating the Logic of Regime Survival? Conceptualizing State–Society Relations and Parliamentary Liberation in Post-2011 Jordan

Both reform and revolutionary movements in the Arab world have called on institutions of state to follow through on the cries for dignity, bread and social justice emanating from the street. These movements are not necessarily mutually exclusive, and may demonstrate overlapping commonalities of practice. Asef Bayat has designated this phenomenon an example of ‘refo-lution’, the amalgamation of a revolutionary agenda with a reform process. This paper will argue that 2011/2012 demonstrations in Jordan fall into this category, and that they elucidate that the relationship between the Hashemite monarchy and Jordanian society needs to be reframed for political stability. The theoretical frame of this article, grounded in the selectorate theory of Bruce Bueno de Mesquita in conjunction with insights from Nazih Ayubi, suggests that this stability requires a more defined separation of powers and functions of the monarchy and the parliament, making the latter an autonomous legislative body.

From quiet to bold encroachment: contesting dispossession in Accra’s informal sector

ABSTRACTThis article draws on Asef Bayat’s theory of “quiet encroachment” to analyse the political agency of street hawkers and squatters in Accra, Ghana. It demonstrates how squatters and street hawkers in Ghana’s capital city are engaged in everyday practices of quiet encroachment, whereby they occupy urban space as a means to reproduce themselves. It then explores how encroachers take collective action to defend their access to urban space from state-led dispossession. In a context of competitive partisan politics where the management of urban space has become highly politicized, hawkers and squatters organizations have been empowered to seek active engagement and dialogue with the authorities. Whereas Bayat argues that the informal proletariat in authoritarian contexts desire autonomy and invisibility from the institutions of the state, therefore, the particular characteristics of Ghana’s multiparty system have created the possibility for bold acts of encroachment on urban space.

Pasca-Islamisme dalam PAS: Analisis terhadap Kesan Tahalluf Siyasi

This study discusses the impact of post-Islamism in the Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS), specifically on tahalluf siyasi (political alliance) with Pakatan Rakyat (People Coalition). Post Islamism is a contemporary Islamist school of thought with regard to politics. The characteristics of post-Islamism such as toleration, participation and inclusivism has greatly influenced the modus operandi of the Islamic movement including PAS. Inclusiveness in post-Islamism had motivated PAS in having political coalition with more liberal parties such as Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) and Democratic Action Party (DAP). Post-Islamism as popularised by Asef Bayat was established on Western knowledge narratives, therefore such study as this should be done in order to recognise its negative impacts. To achieve this objective, the researchers used qualitative method through the process of collecting by scrutinising and analysing related data on the discourse of post-Islamism. The result of the study shows that PAS has been affected by the post-Islamism. The impact of post-Islamism in PAS however shows that PAS did not play dominant role in the Coalition throughout the political alliance. Besides, PAS also compromised a lot with its principles including its Islamic principles. Post-Islamism had also affected PAS in reducing the Muslims vote to PAS because of their support for DAP. This study therefore exposed the negative sides of post-Islamism to Islamic movement. With current development in PAS, it is hoped that this exposure will consult the Islamic movements in critically weighing their support to any kind of ideas particularly from the West.

Politics of the Urban Poor: Aesthetics, Ethics, Volatility, Precarity

Politics of the Urban Poor: Aesthetics, Ethics, Volatility, Precarity

Review: Asef Bayat, Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East

Review: Asef Bayat, <i>Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East</i>