The British Government’s policy of attempting to isolate ‘violent extremism’ in the same way it might deal with bird flu, fails to take into account the character of Islamism, and indeed of politics within Islam itself. In its approach, the Government assumes that there must be an Islam that is the opposite of the ‘distorted’ Islam it says leads to violence. In this account the Government appears to presume that there is a core Islam that is widely accepted and capable of being represented. In this presumption there is an uncanny echo of Qutb’s distinction between the real Islam that he is fighting for and the fake or Jahili version that the current authorities project. Furthermore, the Government’s analysis that certain views are ‘unrepresentative’ is quite untested. Indeed it can be argued that one of the great strengths of Islam is that the divine message in the Qur’an is addressed to the individual, which means that there is no established singular point of authority.^[41] Islamic history has been a series of challenges, rebellions and conflicts precisely over this issue since the death of the Prophet. Islamic law (shari’a) to which political Islam appeals as the basis of the future of the Islamic state is not reducible to a singular code. Indeed no such code exists. Rather Islamic law is a rich discourse that is not only divided into major schools, but also into differing trends of interpretations within those schools.^[42] The Government wisely refers to ‘Muslim communities’ rather than to the Muslim community. It does not, though, draw the conclusion that this is to some extent because Islam itself is not reducible to a singular essence.^[43] However, in the search for the Islam that rejects ‘violent extremism’ the existence of a single Islam is nonetheless assumed. The view that there is an essentialist Islam that operates according to strict identifiable principles derives from Orientalist discourse. For Said, Western constructions of Islam are to some extent the fear of the closeness of Europe to the Islamic world. As he says: ‘the whole history of the creation of the Orient involves a continuous diminishment, so that now … in the Western press, the things you read about Islam and the Arab world are really horrendously simplified and completely belie the two or three hundred years of close contact’.^[44] Close contact is equally rejected by the Islamists who fully utilise the space created by this distance to stake out their own ‘Islam’. While the Western stereotyped Islam may have little traction within Muslim communities, the Islamists buttress their appeal by narrating familiar Islamic concepts, but through the prism of Islamist politics.

Islamism just reverses the Orientalist construction of a singular Islam. Instead of embracing an Islam open to interpretation and application, an authoritarian closure is imposed. This strangely mirrors the way in which the British Government’s discourse, in its desire to construct a violence‑free Islam, offers a stable and unchanging Islamic core. This choice between two rigid visions is highly problematic. However, as we see the British discourse unfold, its Orientalist roots often mean it leaves core Islamic principles to the Islamists. It is this approach no doubt that led a former Home Secretary, Charles Clark to say:

Such statements assume both that there is a singular content to shari’a and that this content is inimical to ‘our civilization’: civilisation exemplified here by gender equality and freedom of speech. It should be said that if Clark is referring to ‘our civilization’ as the West, both gender equality and freedom of speech are of relatively recent acquisition. Such observations apart, on this view shari’a is necessarily opposed to both gender equality and freedom of speech. Both propositions ignore the lively debate within Islamic law and jurisprudence over both issues — debates which have a long lineage.^[46] Clark therefore delivers shari’a to the Islamists and in so doing implies that all Muslims who disown violent extremism must do the same. A similar fate has befallen the concept of Jihad. Once seized by Islamism, and in particular by its extremist fringes, the concept has become a byword for terrorism. Indeed it is now common for Islamist organisations that support terrorism to be described as ‘Jihadi’ organisations and for individual terrorists to be labeled Jihadis. This must delight Osama bin Laden and all other extremists in the Muslim world. Their definition of Islam has come to be accepted.^[47]

One of the main features of Islamist movements is the wholesale rejection of Islamic civilisation. This is a common feature of many different groups including the Muslim Brotherhood and the Wahabi movement in Saudi Arabia. In the latter’s case the religious authorities teach that the mere existence of buildings associated with the Prophet, even his house and grave, can lead to idolatry. Accordingly, many of these sites are being progressively destroyed. This is symbolic of the Islamist approach to Islamic history much of which is dismissed as human corruption of the true message of Islam. The early Islamic empires of the Umayyads and Abbasids are also characterised as essentially corrupt systems. This results in the rejection of the elaborate jurisprudence that was established during these periods.^[48] It was particularly in the early Abbasid period that the schools of law appeared and the Islamic world made its contribution to international law through the Siyar works.^[49] Islamic law was formed through different schools with competing interpretations and applications.^[50] This pluralism within legal discourse does not appeal to those movements that think Islam teaches only one path. The consequences of the rejection of the development of Islamic jurisprudence are highly significant. It means that when the Islamist exponents speak of shari’a they do not mean a sophisticated legal system based on highly complex jurisprudential arguments, but rather a newly invented rigid legal system that would justify authoritarian rule. At the same time, by removing the Siyar (Islamic international law) from their agenda, the Islamists very conveniently also remove the Islamic legal restraints on the use of force from their obligations. Amongst these restraints are that civilians are not legitimate targets. As Khadduri comments in his introduction to Shaybani’s Siyar, ‘unnecessary damage in the prosecution of war was disapproved and practices such as killing noncombatants, mutilation, and treacherous attacks were prohibited’.^[51] Al‑Qaradawi would thus find no legal justification for his position on Israeli civilians from these sources. Nor would Osama bin Laden and the Al Qa’ida groups he has inspired find legal sanction for the long lists of attacks on civilians since 9/11.^[52] Indeed such groups are not even permitted to use Jihad at all as it is a collective and not individual obligation and can only be authorised by Muslim authorities.^[53] In other words, the question of the use of force in Islam is neither decided by the individual Muslim nor by the individual scholar. Within Islamic history, Jihad can only be decreed by those with recognised authority within whatever political state structure exists. This necessity derives from both the legal position of the government and the requirement for an organised collective effort.^[54] Islamist ideology thus rests on a rejection not just of Western civilisation but of Islamic civilisation.

The ability of Islamist organisations to gain influence within the Muslim communities and in Mosque leaderships is due in part to the weakness of Islamic education. The portrayal of Islam in Orientalist terms as being backward during the colonial period, had a major impact on the approach to education as a whole in which a Western narrative of history and culture tended to predominate. Education within the colonies, such as India, was also seen as playing a major part in attaching the colonised peoples to the Imperial project. This had two long‑term effects. First, mainstream education in the schools and universities tended to replicate the syllabus of the metropolitan countries. Within this context Islam was seen as a break on modernisation and progress. As a result, several generations of the elite within the colonised countries became detached from their own societies — often sharing the same prejudices about Islam as their colonisers. Consequently, a second effect took root: the continuation of Islamic education at the periphery in a form that was largely unregulated and certainly ignored by both the colonialists and the local elites. The combination has been lethal. By the twenty‑first century most Islamic schools within a country like Pakistan are effectively controlled by Islamist groups, including the Taliban. While most of the elites remain ‘Western educated’ the masses have received an Islamic education at the hands of Islamists. While there are no doubt many examples of good Islamic schools with an enlightened syllabus, most have a rigid and highly ideological approach to Islam.

Meanwhile in the West, Islamic studies for the most part have remained highly esoteric and confined to a few institutions. While the hold of Orientalism has weakened greatly, its effects still remain. There are few experts in the field with the result that those who do exist can exert a powerful influence on policy‑making.^[55] There is virtually no broad Islamic education within the school system. Where there are attempts to introduce the topic to the syllabus, the construction of Islam tends to be highly reductive and narrowly rigid. In education, as in the media, the imperative seems to be the production of ‘an Islamic position’.^[56]

Islamic education in many parts of the Islamic world, as well as within the West, is thus in need of great intellectual and financial investment. Western intellectual arrogance all too often has sought to claim exclusive patrimony over science, politics and law. As we have noted the same has been true for democracy and human rights, which, far from being seen as recent universal gains, are rather viewed as essentially part of an exclusively Western heritage. This has also played a part in undermining a rigorous assessment of the development of ideas across all civilisations and their impact on one another. In the case of Islam this arrogance has assisted in producing its mirror image.