After Islamism

The demographic change that propelled the rise of Islamist politics is petering out. A new generation raised in the city demands something more.

What is the role of Islam in the 21st century? Islamism purported to have an answer. A spectrum of ideologies dominated by political agendas, Islamism was a rising force in the Muslim world and came to represent the main oppositional force to postcolonial states and the secular monoculture that we all live in. In some cases, Islamist movements even achieved power.

Their rise was not out of a sudden ideological awakening among the Muslim masses. Over the past century, the global Muslim population increased tenfold to a billion-and-a-half people and led to a massive population transfer as millions of people emptied out of their towns and villages and headed into the cities in pursuit of sustenance. This colossal demographic change accelerated some time after the 1970s and drove the rise of Islamist politics in the Muslim world. While population growth is now slowing, this massively increased population is mostly concentrated in cities. After half a century of chaos, the Muslim world is catching its breath and beginning to assess the situation. In this moment, the fortunes of Islamism are shifting, and with it comes a demand for a new response to the problems of the 21st century.

These enquiries must begin in the city, where Muslims find themselves in an uncomfortable situation, their fortunes bound to the city and yet culturally alienated from it, unable to reconcile themselves to this alien cultural environment. A new generation raised in these increasingly globalised cities have newfound anxieties and aspirations and demand reconciliation. The failure to provide this is driving their apathy or outright opposition to the perceived failures and excesses of Islamist politics.

This sentiment does not arise out of religious apathy, per se; where many try to interpret this as a sign of rising deism or even atheism among the younger generation, there is a steady attachment to Islam even as they become disillusioned with the politics associated with the religion. What drives the apathy of the youth towards Islamism is found in the context in which it grew and explains why this spectrum of ideologies and its ideologues see a decline in appeal.

Even though the great migrations of the 20th century were able to bring a new religious impulse into the city, it was embedded in the rustic context of village life and had no connection to the once proud Islamic high cultures that could act as a blueprint for modern city life. The failure of Islamist politics to remain relevant to an urban youth is related directly to its failure to transform a “low culture” of mindsets, values, and social networks, into an urban high culture in which Islam is comfortable and confident in the city.

But where are the storied high cultures and urban glories of Islamic civilisation? Why have Muslims today been unable to draw on this storied past to build equal or greater cities in the modern era? Ibn Khaldun developed a robust theory of social change with remarkable explanatory power for the fortunes of a people. At the heart of all states and societies are an elite class tasked with the stewardship of their cultures and civilisations. Their vitality is bound by their level of asabiya, and the fluctuation of this social force determines the rise and decline of a people and their culture. Some of the most sophisticated and beautiful cities in the world were built in our civilisation, and they were not created ex nihilo. They required the patronage and stewardship of the Muslim elites who sought to create enduring legacies and demonstrate the might of Islam through the built environment. Civilisation always trends towards entropy, and it is only through heroic efforts by enigmatic and agentic founders that prevent inevitable decay — even if only for a time.

At some point in the early modern age, entropy prevailed and this cycle was broken. The colonial period saw Muslim elites expropriated, exiled, killed, or capitulate to the new order and assimilated into the rising secular elite classes. With the loss of Muslim elites, so too were the Islamic urban traditions lost, and we remember little of what our high cultures once were. The traditional character of the Islamic city was deemed backward in the face of new styles and ‘sciences’ of urban planning come out of Europe. Modern planners mutilated their urban environments, and European tastes in lifestyle were favoured among the elite and middle classes. Much of what is left of our urban legacies exist only in the few physical monuments that remain.

The postcolonial cities of Islam became bastions of new, secular elites; satrapy classes whose raison d’etre was the westernisation of state and urban society, content to suppress or ignore the ‘backward’ rural cultures in which religion still played a role in the worldview and daily life of its peoples. The secular elites destroyed the physical, psychological, and spiritual influence of Islam in these cities, turning them into testing grounds for all manner of hackneyed westernisation projects — for a time. The rural to urban migrations of the 20th century shattered their peace, with these formerly distant peoples forced together into a giant metropolis to compete for the same resources and positions.

Politics at its core is a battle of tribes that identify in-groups and out-groups based on ethnic, social, and religious markers (among others). In addition to overburdening urban infrastructure, resource competition and issues of identity and belonging created the cultural rifts that helped power Islamism. Of these rifts, religion became the most prominent battleground. The politics of the Muslim world became a politics of tribes composed of an established secular elite versus a growing Muslim underclass. Islamism was not just a call for greater religious influence: it was a demand for a greater Muslim share of the state and economy.

After fifty or so years, Islamist parties have been successful to varying degrees in achieving this. Some of them may have been too successful.

After twenty years in power in Turkey, the AKP and the higher ranks of their supporters have achieved significant wealth and power after governing Turkiye for nigh on two decades. Muslim Turks have significant representation in politics, are CEOs of large corporations, and are able to partake in the ‘lifestyle consumption’ that was largely restricted to a small group of wealthy secular elites. This new cadre of wealthy Muslims have formed something like a proto-elite. This would likely not have been possible without the indomitable drive of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, whose ascent to the presidency began with his mayorship of the city of Istanbul.

The fatal conceit of the nouveau riche is always that they do not understand that wealth and power do not equal sophistication. This proto-elite have been unable to cultivate a distinct aesthetic sensibility guided by their own values, for several reasons: the social and demographic context in which Islamism grew has mentally straitjacketed this proto-elite into being an ‘otherised’ victim of their erstwhile oppressors; they cannot conceive of themselves as elites possessing a distinct aesthetic sensibility guided by their own values; and their energy in politics has ignored the civilisational imperative of crafting an urban high culture.

“Both sides competitively demonstrate their wealth as a form of credentialism. Increasingly, one of the few differences between the lifestyles of the secular and conservative elite factions is the lack of alcohol consumption and a more modest fashion sense of the women in the latter. Yet both revel in the purchase of imported German cars, upscale shopping malls, and westernized education. Erdogan’s desire to create a “pious generation” has run into the age-old roadblock of material consumption and its moral consequences.”
– A Fading Future in Istanbul (me)

Faced with such a task, the proto-elite have instead dithered, choosing to dwell in the abyss of neither here nor there; belonging neither to the village or the modern city, the problem of cultural alienation has only intensified among the newer generations. A ‘peasant’ outlook on what is modern and desirable has turned Istanbul into an urban monstrosity, with many of Istanbul’s districts look like a miscegenation between a Los Angeles-style build-up of skyscrapers and highways, and a rustic Anatolian town of shoddy, cookie-clutter apartment blocks. The disordered nature of the city reflects the disordered state of the soul.

On the other hand, the secular elite have a robust urban culture and institutional ecosystem to support it, as their raison d’etre is the importation of western high culture. This makes their task easier: just copy what the French or Americans are doing. Muslims have a more difficult task, as they have not only lost the tradition of urban culture but must now create a culture and set of urban institutions from scratch while facing against the overwhelming odds of globalised Americana. 

As generational turnover compounds alienation, the prospects for Islamist politics are becoming more dim. They lack a finger on the pulse of the youth and their failure to do so will have ramifications in the years to come. Firstly, with the loss of political power as constituencies are transformed by the cultural processes of the city and new parties are formed to harness their votes.

Witnessing this generational transformation for the ideologically inclined can be jarring. But in hindsight, it was inevitable. The political energy unleashed after the 1970s is petering out, and having failed to transform their low cultures into high cultures that can compete with foreign influence means that the next generation of urban youth will turn to the secular default that prevails all around them.

Across the Muslim world, the majority of souls now reside in cities. The great rural migrations of the 20th century are starting to subside as cities settle into a new equilibrium. This new stability contains the beginnings of a new type of politics in which Islamists are entirely unprepared to deal with. Even after achieving wealth and power, the Muslim proto-elites who made it because of Islamist politics still have a poor sense of what it means to be a sophisticated, urban elite presiding over an urban high culture. The political energy of Islamism is starting to become exhausted through generational turnover, and having failed to secure their legacy, their impact in the long run may well be negligible. The jarringly fast generational turnover that can be seen on Istanbul’s streets today will be felt at the election polls by the end of the decade, and few possess the foresight to see this and change course.

Istanbul is a microcosm of trends accelerating across the Muslim world. The urban-raised Muslim generation look at the world around them and at their own legacy and feel small. They have gained little from the tribal politics of their parents in which Islamism played a defining role. They feel alienated from their urban environments. The cities becomes more dense and expensive; more grey and less green. They feel inferior to the prevailing secular status quo. Their secular counterparts at least benefit from shamelessly imitating western culture as their claim to sophistication. Muslims have nothing to imitate or claim as their own. Their apathy to Islamist politics is driven by their failure to produce a cultural framework for urban life in which religion plays a role.

In short, they exist in a state of total war with the environment in which they were raised and live in, and desire that this war within and around them comes to an end in the form of a new unity between their religious values and life in the city.

Instead of acknowledging the anxieties of the youth, the older generation relies on religious admonition against the ceaseless material pursuit of the city. Yet it is a mistake to assume that these anxieties are merely a product of the modern world and not embedded in the eternal edifice of human nature. Having lost our sophisticated tradition of urban culture, we have come to see the demands of the city at cross-purpose with faith. The real tension here is between the anxieties and desires of an older generation coming from a different context and that of the youth who only have an urban context. The whispers of the city will never cease, but they can be restrained and shaped to produce a positive influence on its people.

What is not needed is an ideological reinvigoration of Islamism, nor is politics sufficient any longer as a form of identity or as a solution to the problems of urban life. Politics will continue to matter, but to the extent that it lies downstream of culture, cannot be the sole form of identity and belonging for the next generation.

What is needed is a new consciousness among the Muslim proto-elites to cultivate a distinct aesthetic sensibility and become the patrons and progenitures of new urban cultures. A new range of institutions that underpin the flourishing of this culture must be built, both as coordinating mechanisms for elite activity and engines of cultural production. This process must be hyper-local. Cities are where we live, work, raise our children, and participate in real communities. They are the most important layer of social and cultural production. Avoiding the ‘Ummatic’ abstractions that have debilitated various Muslim movements across the world is paramount, and focus should be on building in the local vernacular, and creating enduring relationships in this vicinity. In time, the local may become cosmopolitan and a rich international exchange becomes possible — but only after the fundamentals have been secured.

Our civilisation, what is left, depends on it.

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