Are Islamists Still Islamists?

This book offers an ontological study of Islamism and its transformation with a specific focus on Türkiye, Bangladesh and Senegal.

The dominant reading of the transformation of Islamism from a discernibly Islamist, then anti-systemic discourse to a more systemic one has been through the arguments of post-Islamism, which claim the failure and end of Islamism. However, this assumes that Islamists are still Islamists in the original sense of the term. This book suggests that the scholarship fails to recognise the political, ontological nature of Islamism. It argues that under-theorisation of the political, accompanied by Eurocentrism and positivism, hinders a proper understanding of Islamism by engendering state-centrism and obstructing Islamists as political actors by denying them political agency to undertake transformation. This shows the need for an ontological analysis of the Islamist experience to surmount state-centrism, including methodological nationalism, and comprehend Islamists as political actors. The book, as an exercise in political theory, offers an ontological reading, articulated through the tools provided by post-foundationalist political theory, particularly the works of Martin Heidegger, Antonio Gramsci, Hannah Arendt, and Salman Sayyid, who mobilises Carl Schmitt and post-Marxist discourse theory to read Islamism.

This book will appeal to scholars and students of Politics, International Relations, Area Studies, and Sociology, especially those specialising in Islam and Islamism.