Abstract

Some theorists on the left believe that “Islamism is a creative space for political articulations of protest against present inequalities” and that “Islamism is not a religious discourse, but a political one. It is a debate about modernity.”1 Other left apologists for Islamism treat it solely as a contestation of capitalist globalization and therefore attribute a progressive character to it.2 To do so, however, they have to remain blithely oblivious to the fact that a religious fundamentalism,3 and not a progressive movement, is at work. Scholars of the left like Susan Buck-Morss could not be more wrong when they invoke…