[by Albert Doja]

At the request of the author, we are reproducing the original article here. published on the website The Conversation

It is difficult to look away: in France as elsewhere, Islam and Muslims, their beliefs and their practices, have become central elements of debate, whether it is the wearing the veil for women or Jihadism and Islamic Terrorism.

It has even become a major topic within the "fascist sphere" on websites and social networks linked to the extreme right or defending their ideology.

Moreover, supporters of secularism in France, who also claim to "talk the truth" about Islam and Islamism, are sometimes accused of Islamophobia.

They respond by accusing their detractors of"Islamo-leftists", establishing a link between personalities classified as left or far left and Islamic or Islamist circles.

The Limits of Erudition

Philosophical reflections on the relationship between religion and politics, inspired by the notion of John Rawls' public reason, are part of the liberal tradition of religious restraint or moderation, according to which citizens and legislators must refrain from making political decisions solely on the basis of religious motives.

However, the case of Islam in France and in other European liberal democracies, secular and modern, shows the limits of both politics and erudition.

Indeed, European thinkers today seem to be caught in a tension between the importance of recognizing individual freedoms and the problem posed by essentialist identity and religious discourses that use the secular liberal space to advance certain Islamic ideological programs.

The question of Islam

It seems that a fundamental point has been largely overlooked in reporting and public debate, apparently due to a limited understanding of Islam or fear of upsetting Muslims. In particular, emphasis is placed on the effects of theAmalgamation of Muslim believers with radical Islamic terrorismThe threat of terrorism does not come from Islam, but from Islamism, which is the political ideology of radical groups that borrow concepts such as Sharia and the jihad to Islam and reinterpret them to acquire a legitimacy for their own political objectives.

The appeal of Islamist groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS is believed to stem from their insidious ability to selectively use Islamic teachings to reformat them as legitimate religious obligations. In particular, these groups would appropriate the concept of jihad to use violence and legitimize a holy war against non-Muslims.

The creation of a caliphate as a political entity based on Sharia law is the explicit agenda of radical Islamic terrorism, but for Muslim scholars, It is not a religious obligationThey reject Islamism as a postcolonial expression of political grievances rather than a manifestation of the teachings of Islam.

The decolonial Islamic turn

In contrast, Muslim scholars like Tariq Ramadan have turned away from the main objective to Islamize youth in Western European countries, to claim their loyalty to a certain decolonial intellectual thought.

This increasingly includes the defense and development of a Islamic theology of renewal which would be the manifestation of the renewed teachings of Islam, notably in the ideological context of postcolonial and anti-Western liberation.

This so-called "decolonial" Islam is manifested today in various institutions and organizations labeled "critical Islamic studies", “decolonial Islamic interventions”, “decolonial dialogue studies and investigations”, "studies on contemporary Islam", “research and documentation on Islamophobia”, etc. which organize seminars and summer schools attracting thinkers and believers of all types throughout the world.

Analyses of this type reveal the oppositional character of Islam, as Islamism or Islamic liberation theology, presented as an inseparably religious and political force, shaped both by the political, cultural, religious and epistemological domination of the West and by the struggle against colonization and neocolonialism.

However, the strategic interest of radical Islamic terrorism, best represented by organizations such as Al-Qaeda or Daesh, also lies in spreading the belief that Islam and the West are engaged in a war of civilizations.

As diverse and varied as it may be, this turn has resulted in a kind of synthesis, stretched by the critique of orientalism and third-world anticolonialism and supported by the politically correct principles inspired by postmodernist and post-secularist poststructuralism, as well as by so-called Islamic feminism. It seems that decolonial thought has found in Islam, if not the solution, at least one of its best revolutionary agents.

Muslims become like this likely to provide a social base to what is currently only an intellectual movement. Far from considering Islam as a religion of peace, several Shiite and Sunni theological interpretations translate above all a progressive Islam, as religious ferment of upheaval and revolutionary liberation.

Complex religious mechanisms: The example of Bektashism

What seems to elude both religious studies and Muslim scholars are the complex mechanisms which allow heterodox liberation theology and orthodox conservatism to be closely linked. Particularly in Muslim contexts, liberation theology often becomes a conservative political instrument through the preservation and transmission of spiritual knowledge.

Let us take the example of Bektashism. This Sufi-Shiite current played a determining role in national and social liberation policies, whether in Ottoman Anatolia or contemporary Turkey, or in Albania between the wars or in the post-communist period.

Bektashism was formed in the 13th-14th centuries.^e centuries in Anatolia by wandering dervishes from Iran. Initially a minority tribal movement, it was built around the founding myth of the martyrs of Shiism and other Islamic legends about the cult of miracle-working saints that emphasize the Sufi aspiration for mystical union with God. Esoteric knowledge, acquired by individual progression, arouses a semblance ofegalitarianism through participation in a spiritual community that reinforces the need to transcend reality or to oppose society, by temporarily elevating oneself to a supernatural experience outside of time.

This type of liberating theology has caused the Bektashis to often embrace the social discontent and armed revolts against religious and political authorities, hence their often bloody persecution throughout history.

A change in policy did, however, occur in the 16th century.^e century by the will of the Ottoman Sultan who appointed a new religious leader responsible for reorganizing the Bektashi movement to the point where the spiritual guides were in charge of the Janissary corps, the military pillar of Ottoman power.

On the eve of the Ottoman Reforms of the 19th century^e, they fell into disgrace again and were severely persecuted, but they revived their heterodox inclinations of liberation and resistance until they came close to power in the renewed Ottoman Empire. Finally, the Bektashi order was definitively abolished in the 20th century.^e by Republican Turkey to continue in the form ofAlevism, their latest avatar imbued with the same heterodoxies of liberation and resistance.

In the meantime, the Bektashis found refuge and spread throughout the Balkans, more especially in AlbaniaTheir heterodox inclinations towards liberation and resistance naturally bring them closer to the Albanian national movement at the end of the 19th century.^e, which contributed to increasing their number among the Albanians, to the point of being considered part of the repertoire of political instruments of religious conversions in the Identity and political reconstruction of a multi-religious Albania.

In this context, theheterodoxy and the pantheism Bektashi were deliberately put forward to generate an inclusive attitude of Albanian identity, and not a particular affinity to Bektashism. Eventually, the Bektashis managed to participate in the highest level of the state in independent Albania. After the communist persecution, they would find in post-communist Albania a comparable recognition as a religion in its own right independent of Sunni Islam.

Contrary to what some specialists have led people to believe that the Bektashis are absolutely not a movement more "cool" Islam, nor more tender than any other religious movement. Heterodox mystics and heretics of all stripes are sometimes dangerous and sometimes credible depending on the political situations.

Beware of the “religious revival”

Religious revival, beyond the intensity and power of beliefs or the radical character of opposition to any established religion, always crystallizes a liberating theology of political, social, cultural and global discontent. However, each time a religious movement reorganizes itself in the established order, this goes hand in hand with theestablishment of a conservative orthodoxy in religious practices, which serves to legitimize the establishment of a political hierarchy in society.

This was the case several times in the troubled history of Bektashism in Ottoman Anatolia and Contemporary Turkey or  Independent and post-communist Albania.

It seems that Islamic radicalism in "Muslim revival" Tariq Ramadan's work is further proof of this, as are the jihadist, Salafist and Wahhabi movements that are trying to establish the perfect orthodoxy of the self-proclaimed "Islamic State."

Biased knowledge

A series of writings in Western languages ​​on Islam, published by Muslims or sympathisers of Islam, show that an approach is understandable and legitimate as long as it reproduces an apologetic discourse or aims to reveal the supposed essence of Islam. The works of Tariq Ramadan in Western Europe or Nathalie Clayer for South-Eastern Europe are examples.

Most often, specialized studies aim only to convey a general and reasonable impression that Muslims could accept, either by separating Islam from Islamism or by representing Islam as a progressive religion of democratic liberation. These analyses reproduce – unintentionally or not – ideological discourses on Islam without questioning them, expressing academically what Islamic factions claim religiously.

By declaring Muslims as victims par excellence, systematically oppressed by authoritarian political regimes, some reproduce the Muslim vulgate, successively making its protagonists the promoters of the nation, the allies of secularism, the partisans of gender equality or the spearheads of democracy.

Others even justify religious radicalization and fundamentalism, as does Robert Kaplan through the historical legacies of the South-Eastern European countries or even Olivier roy about Western European societies, including France.

These analyses seem to stem from a culturalist naturalization of historical legacies or social conditions, which conceals the properly political dimensions of Islam.

Reverse perspective

Perhaps we can reverse the perspective and get rid of this apologetic view of religious essence that many are so enthusiastic about, in order to explain why, at a given moment, a religious category becomes a relevant instrument for spiritual, cultural, social, or political mobilization.

Indeed, if, as political scientist Gilles Kepel wishes, we want "coming out of chaos", we must first stop flirting with religious scholars and start exposing Islamic leaders and Muslim apologists for what they do to fuel, fan and justify a particular Islamic policy.

What people hold as their religious identity should be treated as an ideological given constructed by their own discourses.

Rereading the anthropologist Fredrick Barth, the choice to identify with Islam or another religion depends on the social and political situations in which identification becomes relevant in terms of the social organization of cultural differences.

In order to construct a relatively autonomous analysis of Islamic discourses, it is necessary to study the context that produces such ritualized discourses and practices, to convert the actors' interpretations into data to be interpreted, and to integrate into the object of study their attempts and strategies to balance or reverse power relations.