S. Sayyid - A Fundamental Fear (Critique Influence Change)

TITLES IN THE CRITIQUE INFLUENCE CHANGE SERIES

Reclaiming Development

An Alternative Policy Manual
by Ha-Joon Chang and Ilene Grabel

Realizing Hope

Life Beyond Capitalism
by Michael Albert

Global Governance and the New Wars

The Merging of Development and Security
by Mark Duffield

Capitalism in the Age of Globalization

The Management of Contemporary Society
by Samir Amin

Ecofeminism
by Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva

Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale

Women in the International Division of Labour
by Maria Mies

Grassroots Post-modernism

Remaking the Soil of Cultures
by Gustavo Esteva and Madhu Suri Prakash

Debating Cultural Hybridity

Multicultural Identities and the Politics of Anti-Racism
edited by Pnina Werbner and Tariq Modood

A Fundamental Fear

Eurocentrism and the Emergence of Islamism
by S. Sayyid

The Lords of Human Kind

European Attitudes to Other Cultures in the Imperial Age
by Victor Kiernan

Male Daughters, Female Husbands

Gender and Sex in an African Society
by Ifi Amadiume

Marxism and the Muslim World
by Maxime Rodinson

Planet Dialectics

Explorations in Environment and Development
by Wolfgang Sachs

Another World is Possible

Popular Alternatives to Globalization at the World Social Forum
Edited by William Fisher and Thomas Ponniah

CRITICAL PRAISE FOR A FUNDAMENTAL FEAR

If you are not only concerned with the future of our planet but also with social justice, you have to read this book.

Gilbert Rist, author of The History of Development

Wise words, crafted with loving care for people and the planet, even more relevant than when they were written a quarter century ago, unfortunately.

Richard Norgaard, University of California, Berkeley

Remains an essential read for anyone involved in the field of development. This book has never been more vital than today.

Jonathan Ensor, Stockholm Environment Institute

Sachs elegantly reminds us that in the search for justice to people and planet we need to begin civilization change by changing the rich, not the poor.

Julian Agyeman, Tufts University

Still remarkably fresh and insightful, Planet Dialectics gives us a much-needed critique of economics gone wrong.

Camilla Toulmin, director of the International Institute for Environment and Development

Amazingly innovative in its perspective, unflinching in its analysis, and radical in its solutions, this book is a historic hallmark.

Tilman Santarius, Germanwatch

A theoretically sophisticated attempt to read contemporary Muslim political identities as a symptom of Eurocentrisms decline

Global Society

A welcome change should be of great interest to those who wish to look at the phenomenon of political Islam and the divination of the clash between the West and the rest from a more sophisticated and theoretical angle a worthy contribution.

Impact International

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

S. Sayyid is a reader in rhetoric at the University of Leeds. He is the founding editor of ReOrient: The Journal of Critical Muslim Studies . His publications include Recalling the Caliphate and the volume (co-edited with AbdoolKarim Vakil) Thinking through Islamophobia .

A
FUNDAMENTAL
FEAR

EUROCENTRISM
AND THE
EMERGENCE OF
ISLAMISM

S. SAYYID

WITH A FOREWORD BY

HAMID DABASHI

A Fundamental Fear: Eurocentrism and the Emergence of Islamism was first published in 1997 by Zed Books Ltd, 7 Cynthia Street, London N1 9JF, UK

This edition was published in 2015

www.zedbooks.co.uk

Copyright S. Sayyid, 1997, 2003, 2015

The right of S. Sayyid to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988

Cover designed by Alice Marwick

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of Zed Books Ltd.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-78360-191-2 pb
ISBN 978-1-78360-192-9 pdf
ISBN 978-1-78360-193-6 epub
ISBN 978-1-78360-194-3 mobi

To my parents and the power of nine

Contents

Foreword
Hamid Dabashi

Though it was originally published before the iconic events of 9/11, now more than a decade ago, S. Sayyids A Fundamental Fear: Eurocentrism and the Emergence of Islamism (1997) has assumed even more timely significance since its first appearance. In this pioneering book, Sayyid provocatively suggests, and one can still see the logic of his proposition, that we must see political Islamism as a particular phase of decolonization of Muslim political cultures. Sayyid took the rise of Islamism as a challenge to Western political hegemony, and particularly its self-congratulatory declaration of the End of History. That proposition still demands attention.

When exactly was the moment of the rise of political Islamism? The Iranian revolution of 1979; or before it, back in the 1920s when Hassan al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood; or even before then, during the Tobacco Revolt in Iran in 1890, when a clerical fatwa triggered a major anti-colonial movement; or perhaps even earlier than that, when Jamal al-Din al-Afghani commenced a massive pan-Islamist movement in the 1860s; or perhaps in the 1850s, when the Babi movement shook the Qajar foundation to its roots? Or is it after all of these: in the 1980s, when the Taliban appeared in Afghanistan; or the 1990s, when Hezbollah and Hamas entered the political map of the Arab world in earnest; or was it after September 11, 2001 perhaps; or even later when the Muslim Brotherhood completely took over the Egyptian revolution of January 2011? All of these dates and events (and others) can be used to mark a particular phase of Islamism in one direction or another, some of them indeed as marking the decolonization of the Muslim mind, others in fact its opposite. Sayyid was spot on (as the British say) in noting that we had to see political Islamism as an integral part of decolonization. But there is a period of gestation right before that decolonization, which is actually the mark of a deeply colonized Muslim mind that defined its identity in terms decided by its colonizers. This much was known and understood from Albert Memmi to Ashis Nandy.