Islam in the Middle East:
The curse of religiosity
Some regard the fanatical and raging tide currently sweeping through Arab societies as variations of a "latent Daesh-isation". Indeed, argues Khaled Hroub, despite falling short of the use of violence or arms, in its most extreme form, its ideological principles and convictions share common ground with the heinous beliefs of Islamic State
Daesh did not emerge in a vacuum; rather, it is the product of a culture of social, religious and political control that has governed the public arena for the last fifty years or so. It developed amid a climate of swift decline brought about by the failure of the state in the Arab region, combined with non-stop wars and military interventions from outside.
The main contributing factor has been a conservative religious and social culture which hijacked mosques, schools and the media, establishing a strict religious regime for determining right and wrong in the process. This regime thus decides how an individual is regarded by society; indeed, the status and respect which he, or indeed, she commands is dictated by religious and devotional hierarchies and priorities. Focusing on this is not intended to detract from the considerable influence of other factors, specifically the failure of the state and the interference of foreign powers, but the constraints of this piece do not allow for a discussion of every aspect.
The collective religious culture has acquiesced to the manufacture of an undeniably "latent Daesh-isation" in society, which has gradually taken hold of much of public life. The first roots of this phenomenon can be traced back to the collapse of the progressive reform movements led by Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Muhammad Abduh and Abd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi at the hands of the Salafist rhetoric and narrow-mindedness of Hassan al-Banna and, subsequently, Sayyid Qutb and the wider Salafi movement. Yet this "Daesh-isation" was consolidated far away from the official political establishment.
The religious transformation of public life
The short of it is that political regimes and Islamist opposition movements have competed against each other to bring about the religious transformation of public life in most countries, albeit in varying degrees. The most obvious example of this struggle in terms of impact and destruction is the battle for political legitimacy and the religious transformation of the media and educational curricula. This has led to religious rhetoric dominating the discourse. As a result, it is religion that has become the prime organiser of collective thought, leaving an indelible mark on the many laws introduced to frame public practices, morals and conventions.
The predominance of religious discourse has had a distinctly practical impact. These days, a person living in an Arab country has two nominal and frequently contradictory identities: the first, a religious one, defined by the degree of religiosity and devotion and the second, a legal one, defining the individual as a citizen in accordance with the constitution. The first identity prevails over the second to a remarkable degree, so much so that the "religious" persona has become the standard model and is tacitly considered "better" than the one which is "not religious".
Were the difference restricted to an individual′s actual beliefs, there would be no cause for concern. Yet, in elevating "religiosity" – taking it out of the realm of individual practice and making it a social and legal norm – the gap has widened to such an extent that it has squeezed the individual′s legal status. Two diametrically opposed viewpoints emerge.
https://en.qantara.de/content/islam-in- ... eligiosity