Islam and Islamism

ABSTRACT In his 2012 book Islamism and Islam, Bassam Tibi argues that Islamism, a political ideology, is quite distinct from Islam, which he defines as a religion focused on faith and spirituality. This article analyzes and evaluates the six arguments that Tibi advances for this thesis and finds all of them unconvincing. The main problem with Tibi’s case is that it ignores the figure of Muḥammad, whom Islamic sources uniformly portray as someone who fused politics and religion and sought to overthrow a non-Islamic socio-religious order and to replace it with an Islamic one. For mainstream Muslims, Muḥammad is the perfect role model who possessed divinely granted infallibility against sin and error. Due to Muḥammad’s example, as enshrined in classical Islamic sources, Islamists have a strong claim to be following orthodox Islamic principles when they embrace an ideology in which religion and politics are tightly intertwined. The article concludes with some tentative suggestions as to how a Muslim reformer like Tibi might develop more promising arguments for a progressive form of Islam.