Academic Year 2008-2009

Islamism in the Shadow of al-Qaeda
November 19, 2008, 5:30PM
Cabot Intercultural Center, 7th Floor
Speaker: François Burgat, Director, Institut Français du Proche-Orient (IFPO)

Summary

The Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies hosted a lecture by renowned political scientist Dr. François Burgat, who currently heads the IFPO (Institut Français du Proche-Orient). Burgat began by talking about his background as a researcher and current position as head of a Research Center funded by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Burgat introduced the main findings of his most recent book, Islamism in the shadow of al-Qaeda (University of Texas Press 2008), the third in a series of works addressing the topic of political Islam in the Arab world. In this book, François Burgat first and foremost wished to recall the necessary distinction between an essential phenomenon of identity, a resurgence of the popularity of something he calls "Muslim-speak" and the manifold ways in which its supporters have put this "rehabilitated" lexicon to use in political and social life. In order to reconfigure Islamist mobilization within contexts that, in the space of one century, have considerably evolved, he next proposed to clearly distinguish the three main sequences during which (before and after the waves of Independence) the latter became widespread. Burgat explored the tensions between national specificities and the phenomenon of trans-nationalization, tensions whose examination hopefully procure us a better understanding both of the great diversity of the Islamist field and of the forces which have come to shape its dynamics. He concluded by proposing a deconstruction of the mechanics of radicalization at the start of the emergence of al-Qaeda within this field, whose "sectarian" and "political" dimensions urgently need to be distinguished.

Back to Lecture Series >