The War on Terror and the Transformation of Political Islam

Abstract

The war on terror intensified widespread misconceptions about the nature and complexity of Islamism. The paper analyses the trajectory towards the acceptance of democracy and human rights on the part of mainstream Islamist groups and argues that such development ran the risk of being derailed by an ill-conceived war on terror that in the short term benefited those sectors of Islamism that always had violence at the centre of their political project.

Trends in Political Islam: Transition towards Liberalization

“…The fall of authoritarian regimes and the growth of protests in support of democratic principles led to another discussion about the "decline of Islamism" and the onset of a new "post-Islamic dawn." Describing the new post-Islamic society, the Western European researcher F. Cavatorta uses the term new Islamists to describe the new religiosity associated with the Arab uprising and spontaneous collaboration with institutionalized political Islam (Cavatorta, 2012b).…”