Concepts and Approach

How far are contemporary forms of Islamist mobilization in the Middle East and Central Asia presenting differences that can be attributed to the role played by different colonial experiences? This is not an issue that is particularly well integrated in contemporary regional debates dominated by discourses about the securitization of Islamism. Even if there is no immediately obvious way of framing complex post-colonial legacies in an international security debate primarily concerned with violent forms of Islamist mobilization against the state, comparative reflections on such socio-historical transformations may nonetheless shed some new light on dilemmas in current affairs. The analysis that follows is not intended to provide a comprehensive account of the scholarship on the relations between political Islam and the state in the Middle East and Central Asia. Rather, it draws some parallels between discourses and practices of governance and opposition in the two regions, and proposes some tentative suggestions regarding a common rationale for the contemporary framing of post-colonial Islamism. Clearly, such a large comparative project is always open to charges of being too broad and of missing some distinctive traits and dynamics of the individual countries or regions concerned. The purpose and ambition of the analysis is to contribute to the discussion on the implications of inclusion-exclusion for the “radicalization- moderation” of Islamist groups. By positioning my narrative in relation to general political science debates and by highlighting the more structural insights provided by this cross-regional comparison, I recognize that there is a price to be paid in terms of details and nuances.