Islamist politics are not, however, reducible to the Muslim Brotherhood, but are varied and heterogeneous. In South Asia, movements inspired by the late Sayyid Abdul Ala Mawdudi,^[33] who founded the Jamaat‑e‑Islami in colonial India in 1941, have had great influence. Mawdudi advocated an Islamic state based on Islamic law. His views are very similar to Qutb’s and the two are often thought of as the founders of modern political Islam. The Jamaat is a powerful political force in Pakistan and has branches in India, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. Organisations that support these views are also active in Britain and have a dominant presence in many Mosques. The Jamaat has gained its influence through working through a variety of organisations in Britain, including the United Kingdom Islamic Missions, Dawatul Islam, the Young Muslims Organisation and the Islamic Forum Europe. Saudi Arabia’s Wahabi movement has also created an international network of organisations that espouse the salafi (or purist) form of Islam — a current that also has a strong political element. Among organisations working in Britain in support of the Wahabi movement are the Muslim World League and the World Assembly of Muslim Youth. The success of the Islamic revolution in Iran has been a springboard for the development of political Islam amongst shi’a. The most prominent organisation that supports a version of the politics associated with Khomeini is the Islamic Human Rights Commission. In addition there are many other smaller organisations such as Hizb‑ut‑Tahrir (Party of Liberation), which is organised on an international basis and projects a united Islam under a restored Caliphate.^[34] Hizb‑ut‑Tahrir’s organisation has much in common with far‑left methods of party building; it is highly disciplined, revolves around frenetic levels of activity and holds out the prospect of an imminent breakthrough in one Muslim country or another.^[35] It is very active amongst students and offers not only a political vision but also a way of life, as members spend most of their time with each other. The organisation is careful to make public statements against violence in Britain, but it has been suggested that its radical ideology can provide a conveyor belt to violent activities, which is the reason that the British Government was considering banning the organisation.^[36]

The Islamist insistence that Islamic religious values can only be safeguarded within an Islamic state of some sort is accompanied with an attack on democracy. This view is based on two levels of critique. The first is that democracy represents the rule by human beings and this is counter‑posed to God’s rule. The second attempts to appeal to contemporary political discourses and concentrates on flaws in democracy, particularly with democracy as practised by Western states, including their human rights records. The main critique of democracy and human rights is linked to an analysis of colonialism and current Western international relations.^[37] In this account, democracy and human rights are sham products of the West as evidenced by centuries of colonialism and all its attendant evils.^[38] It is certainly the case that the excessive claims within the West to the patrimony of democracy and human rights with deep roots in the West’s history, is highly problematic.^[39] It is also the case that much of the Muslim world did experience European colonialism. However, this was not true of Iran or of most of the Ottoman Empire.^[40] Nevertheless, under this account, the history of subordination to Western interests in the colonial period becomes entangled with current Western policy in the Muslim world. The tendency is to construct Muslims as continuing victims of Western intrigue. The West’s responsibilities are not limited to direct interventions such as in Afghanistan and Iraq, but also for the bolstering of authoritarian regimes in Egypt and Pakistan. The international failure to solve long‑running conflicts, such as in Kashmir and the Israeli‑Palestinian conflict, are offered as evidence of the Western complicity in Muslim suffering. Western interventions on the side of Muslims such as in Bosnia or Kosovo are either edited out of this account or seen as even more suspicious. Equally, states within the Muslim world that are occupiers, such as Turkey in Cyprus or Morocco in Western Sahara, are passed over. The humanitarian tragedy in Darfur at the hands of an Islamist regime is a situation usually too inconvenient to mention.

The construction of the Muslims into a community of victims by Islamism has the purpose of instilling a high degree of Muslim solidarity. It also creates an all‑powerful single enemy, the West, which stands behind all the disasters of the Muslim world. The radically different causes of the conflicts, which the Islamists list on their roll call of victims, are ignored. Palestinians are reconstructed from a people struggling for self‑determination into Muslims under attack by the Western supported Israel. In the same way, Egypt is not seen as a society torn between supporters of authoritarian rule and a movement for democracy, but as Muslims bearing the weight of Western‑backed oppression.