Chasing a Mirage – Political Islam Versus Secularism – A new book sparks a heated debate between Muslims of different schools
A REVIEW
by Nader Hashemi
Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State
Tarek Fatah
Wiley and Sons
410 pages, hardcover
ISBN 9780470841167
“Those who thought that religion could be separate from politics understand neither religion nor politics. ”
—Mahatma Gandhi
Two Muslim-majority countries that have registered significant gains for liberal democracy in recent years are Turkey and Indonesia. This is reflected in the rankings of Freedom House, which publishes an annual survey measuring civil liberties and political rights worldwide. While their democracies are nascent and fragile, both countries have consistently obtained some of the highest scores for liberal-democratic development that clearly set them apart from other countries in the Muslim world. What is intriguing about these gains for democracy is the seminal role played by religious-based parties and Muslim intellectuals — many of them with roots in political Islam. Left-wing parties and secularist intellectuals cannot claim credit here.
These new developments from the Muslim world suggest several things. First, they require us to rethink long-standing assumptions about democratization, particularly the role that religion can play in this process. A concomitant that flows from this is that the “Islamists-equals-bad guys versus secularists-equals-good guys” approach to Muslim politics is simplistic and distorting. Second, democratic gains in Indonesia and Turkey confirm the observations of political scientist Vali Nasr, in a famous essay on “The Rise of ‘Muslim Democracy’,” that conservative-based Muslim parties and politicians will likely lead the way toward a democratic transition in the Muslim world. Third, recent trends in Turkey and Indonesia suggest why Tarek Fatah’s new book, Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State, is a fundamentally flawed study of the Muslim world.
Tarek Fatah is a Toronto-based broadcaster, polemicist and self-described secular Muslim activist. He has been a prominent and controversial voice in debates that pertain to Canadian Muslims and Islam. Recently, he has devoted himself to exposing an alleged Islamist agenda in Canada that he claims has infected not only the Muslim community but also the CBC, the Canadian banking system and the Ontario Human Rights Commission.2 “There are within the staff [of the … commission], and among the commissioners, hardline Islamic supporters of Islamic extremism,” he was recently quoted as saying.3
“Fatah’s book seeks to demonstrate “that throughout Islamic history, all attempts to use Islam to justify or validate political power … have invariably ended in bloodshed and war.”
His argument in Chasing a Mirage revolves around the tension between what he calls the “state of Islam” versus “an Islamic State.” He praises the former and excoriates the latter. The “state of Islam” is the privatized form of faith that is spiritual, ethical, apolitical and based on the individual. Past contributions by Muslims to human civilization can be credited to this form of Islam. In contrast, an “Islamic State” refers to all politicized forms of Islam that have emerged throughout human history, from the 7th century to the 21st. This variant of Islam, Fatah asserts, is uniformly puritanical and supremacist and seeks political power and mastery over not only the Muslim world, but over Europe and North America as well. His book seeks to demonstrate “that throughout Islamic history, all attempts to use Islam to justify or validate political power … have invariably ended in bloodshed and war” and that “the cause of violence that has engulfed the Muslim world is centred on the premise of an Islamic state or caliphate.” In short, there is a Manichean struggle taking place within the Muslim world between these two forms of Islam. The problem is politicized Islam in all its manifestations; the solution is a rigid form of Turkish secularism. Liberals and leftists in Canada are also criticized for not taking the threat of Islamic fascism seriously, which, we are told, threatens Muslim societies, as well as the West itself, if left unchecked.
“There is much to criticize here: from the alarmist rhetoric that echoes the writings of Daniel Pipes, Bernard Lewis and Mark Steyn to Fatah’s monolithic and monochromatic portrayal of all forms of political Islam throughout history.”
There is much to criticize here: from the alarmist rhetoric that echoes the writings of Daniel Pipes, Bernard Lewis and Mark Steyn to Fatah’s monolithic and monochromatic portrayal of all forms of political Islam throughout history, without any nuance, context, qualification or variation, to the polemical ferocity of his writing style that scars this book and detracts from the important topic he is attempting to explicate. As the focus of Fatah’s inquiry is fundamentally about religion-state relations in the Islamic world, I want to focus my remarks on this aspect of his narrative.
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Nader Hashemi is a professor of Middle East and Islamic politics at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. He is the author of Islam, Secularism and Liberal Democracy: Toward a Democratic Theory for Muslim Societies (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
Tags: Book Review, Mirage, Nader Hashemi, Tarek Fatah
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Tariq Fateh: Why is it ok to impose secularism and not ok to impose ’state of islam’?
i have had the privilege of working with and befriending a number of muslims and found them a joy to know.
it is impossible to reconcile this with the horrific acts we see committed by extremists all too often against innocent muslims.
how can i not empathise with those victims as i feel for the tens of millions of victims in the soviet union?
how can i not feel my freedoms threatened by these types of movements that have such a history?
i have read enough of the hadiths to know that no matter how we whitewash the acts of the prophet (which are described very plainly)we are left with a legacy of domination and violence, suggesting it was lucifer as mohammad suspected , not gabriel speaking from the cave.who does the quran say that the prophet consulted with in determining whether it was of god, not the devil? -his wife- who wasn’t even present in that cave! it would make sense then that the quran would go on to say that christ never died on the cross for man’s freedom, and we are mere subjects of god’s whim, not his children and that most women will occupy hell.
i can only think that the reason why there are so many good and loving muslims is because they are in fact god’s children and by his nature do not follow every directive in the hadiths.
the new testament does not authorize the invasions, colonizations, beheadings, taking of slaves, forcing female captives into sex(rape), stoning adulturers, slaying of critics, etc, like the quran or hadiths say to muslims very clearly.
as a christian who owes a lot to our reformation against the catholic church (remember their 3 century crusade versus the 9 centuries of jihad?) , –not that christ’s teachings about forgiveness required reformation (nor the total absence of him “spreading religion by the sword”)-i do hope it is somehow possible to salvage whatever good you can from your religion in some type of reformation , before it is totally controlled by those who literally interpret your books and act to impose it on us both.
. i would rather see the earth destroyed than the whole human race enslaved . the extremists have shown no regard for rules of war and no respect for my civilization .they will find out how dire we can make their tribal existence should we decide to completely “take off the gloves” and start acting totally unchristlike.
i pray for your success in this struggle, so i don’t have to abandon my faith in defending the one thing worth fighting for-my freedom.
i left islam many years ago. i was born and raised as a sunny muslem i remember vividly the cruelty enforced in madrassa if one did not remember something. islam survived through the ages and continue to survive thru sheer cruelty and barbaric savagery, its a criminal offence for any muslem to renounce islam punishable by death !!!.islam is the only so called religion which demonises other peoples as KAFIER/MURTAD/INFIDELS/NON BELIEVERS,WHO DO NOT BELIEVE IN ISLAM.dr ali sina has challenged any muslem to openly debate islam, and mohamad and the quran but not one muslem has taken up the challenge instaed all muslems do is threaten him with evil, which ironically underscores the evil inherent in islam. why wont any muslem debate dr ali sina from faithfredom.org?
It’s painfully obvious that “joe” is lying through his teeth to promote the zionist hate site “faithfreedom.” Not only are you a liar but a bad one at that “joe.” You were never a “sunny muslem” just like you never went to an actual Muslim school. Islam does not call for death for apostasy, had you actually gone to an Islamic school you would never have said that. The death penalty applies to those “apostates” who ENTER the religion to betray and sabotage it like the pagans of Medina were attempting to do. The ruling actually DISCOURAGES conversion to Islam if your intent is malicious. You’re what I call a fake “ex-Muslim” like many of charlatans promoting anti-Islamic propaganda to make a living in the West these days. As for your precious “Ali Sina,” the coward has ran from every debate he’s ever been challenged to over the years.
You, like him are a failure and a fraud.
Barry, you contrast the supposed love and tolerance of Christianity with the violence of Islam. Fine, let us accept that is true for argument’s sake. How then would explain the fact the Old Testament prophets, who, in Christian eyes, were genuine and authentic mouth-pieces of God, also resorted to lifting the sword against their enemies in ways that were no less violent than Islam’s prophet. The Israelites were commanded by God in the OT to slaughter the people of Canaan: men, women, children and even animals. There is nothing even comparable to such violence in Islam’s early history. If you can accept the Old Testament prophets as individuals doing God’s will, your arguments against Islam ring hollow.