Islamism and Fundamentalism: Role of values in Islamic political movement
A report by Kirill Zhirkov at the regular LCSR seminar
On May 23, 2013 Kirill Zhirkov (research fellow at LCSR) delivered a report on the “Islamism and Fundamentalism: Role of values in Islamic political movement” at the regular seminar of LCSR.
Kirill aims to elaborate an instrument for distinction between various ideological movements in the Arab world. Using the Arab Barometer data, he also tries to understand whether there are any significant differences between the ideological groups in terms of values, and investigates how these differences are being affected by individual social and demographic characteristics.
The theory Kirill has used is the Fukuyama's idea that Islamism is the political ideology which is an alternative to liberal democracy. To define the respondent's ideological affiliation, Kirill has used three questions from the “Arab Barometer” questionnaire that reflect the individuals understanding of sovereignty and its source. For Islamists the government should derive the sovereignty from the divine will, and for liberals the government should derive it from people's expectations.
The presenter divided respondents into four categories: liberals (16%), centrists (40%), moderate Islamists (21%) and radical Islamists (23%). To understand the differences of respondent's ideological movements in terms of values Kirill has used individual attitudes towards four different key questions in the Islam world: the compatibility of Islam with democracy, appropriate treatment of apostasy, level of gender segregation in universities and hijab requirements for women.
Regression modeling has shown that different ideological movements are also different in their attitudes towards relevant questions (women rights in particular). At the same time there is a general consensus on the positive role of democracy in the society. Moreover, ideologies are spread more or less evenly among social and demographic groups.
After the seminar there was a long and fruitful discussion, and the researchers tried to rethink the main theoretical framework that Kirill has used in political and philosophical terms rather than in social.
by Pavel Kuzmichev