The Totalitarianism of Jihadist Islamism and its Challenge to Europe and to Islam

This article highlights aspects of Islamism ignored in much conventional political science by applying to it a composite conceptual framework made up of Hannah Arendt’s concept of totalitarianism as an ideology, movement and system of rule; political religion conceptualised both as a cultural system and as an ideology; the growing ‘culturation’ and ‘religionisation’ of politics; and the politicisation of Islam. When applied to Islamism this approach highlights the fact that its use of terrorism is one aspect of a much broader reaction to the threat of Islam society’s radical secularisation under the impact of the universalisation of western values. At its core lies an imagined umma community – postulated as an alternative model of civilisation to one offered by ‘the West’ – that claims global hegemony for its values. The analysis stresses that Islamism is not to be equated with Islam, or treated as a monolith, but rather as a religiously and culturally diversified phenomenon whose common denominator is adherence to din‐wa‐daula, i.e. the unity of Islamic religious principles as the legitimation of a totalitarian government. As a transnational force waging an irregular war fuelled by a fundamentalist interpretation of religion, it is resistant to attack by conventional military or security measures.