Book review: Alastair Crooke’s “Resistance: The Essence of the Islamist Revolution”
Hicham Safieddine The Electronic Intifada 12 December 2009
The title of Alastair Crooke’s book Resistance: The Essence of the Islamist Revolution may easily invoke the late Palestinian thinker Edward Said’s critiques of trying to essentialize Islam. The reader may become more concerned when she realizes that Crooke is not merely referring to the Iranian Revolution (the book’s cover depicts a Muslim cleric in a Tehran street) but to the totality of Islamist movements and ideological trends that emerged in modern times across North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia.
Crooke, a former advisor to European Union High Representative Javier Solana in the Middle East, admits in the introduction that he is keenly aware of Said’s warnings against speaking of such categories as “Islamism” or the “West” when speaking about a vast array of social, political and ideological phenomena. Crooke agrees with Said that such generalizations are problematic. But then immediately afterwards — in what reads like a sigh of despair — declares that one has little alternative but to go down that road if one is to keep the message simple and focus on defining such an “essence!” The reader might forgive Crooke if this were a brief newspaper article or TV appearance where time constraints and public engagement don’t allow for a nuanced exposition of these ideas. However, this is a nearly 300-page book that itself engages in a multi-layered discussion about ideological trends and philosophies in Islamic and Western thought.
To be fair to Crooke, he does not paint all Islamist movements with the same ideological brush. But he does seem to suggest that they all have one common essence, that of resistance. A more appropriate common thread would have been that of politicization. Political Islam is the sine qua non of this religious revival, with a clear invitation to place Islamic values — both conservative and subversive — at the center of public life. Resistance, on the other hand, is a different matter. It is a feature of certain movements and certain times but not others. It is directed against certain forces, such as imperialism, but not necessarily others, like patriarchy.
The search for an essence undermines what otherwise might have been a worthwhile study of philosophy of resistance among Islamic movements as articulated by influential Islamist thinkers and revolutionaries of the last century. This is a much welcome discussion especially in a European and North American context in which political Islam continues to be highly associated with terrorism and the pre-modern and — as Crooke points out — denied rational agency. Crooke offers numerous engaging discussions about this ideological trend. He explores the common motivating questions that occupied Islamic revivalists like Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood ideologue Sayyid Qutb, the intellectual icon of the Iranian Revolution Ali Shariati, and the figurehead of Islamic thought in Iraq Mohammad Baqir al-Sadr. He also tackles the ideas and beliefs animating political movements like Hizballah and Hamas in their struggle against occupation.
Crooke argues that all of these Islamist ideologies are — in some way or another — a reaction to the Western-inspired and often imposed projects of nation-building, such as Kemal Ataturk’s founding of Turkey along anti-Islamist, secular lines. These nation-building projects, he maintains, tried to uproot local traditions of knowledge and import European understandings of rationality, individualism and morality. Islamist currents critiqued these projects, not because they shunned modernity or rationality, but because they shunned a particular understanding of modernity that suffered from moral decadence, an instrumental use of rationality in the service of power and dominance, and an individualistic depiction of community and social action. In short, Islamists were disillusioned with the perceived spiritual bankruptcy of European 20th century modernity, the latter largely blamed — by Crooke — on its earlier progenitor, the protestant reformation.
It is in the context of this disillusionment that Crooke presents what he terms the “Islamist Revolution,” an attempt to create a “dynamic and forward-looking religion that is in the process of evolving distinct ideas about the individual, about relationship within a society, about relationships between the community and its government.” The conflict then between Islam and the West as envisioned by Crooke is a religious one at its core. It is a clash of two value systems, of two ideological world-views. Sounds familiar? This is Samuel Huntington’s theory of “Clash of Civilizations,” only with inverted conclusions. Huntington clearly ranked the two value systems. He privileged the West as the cradle of modernity, democracy and rationality battling the primitive forces of fundamentalism summarized by Islamist ideology. For Crooke, it is almost the opposite, with Islamism offering a new vision of the essence of man that is more humble, more spiritual and more communal than that of the West.
There may be some — or a lot — of truth to Crooke’s depiction of the value system that many of these Islamist ideologies espouse. Moreover, ideology clearly plays a role in shaping conflicts. But putting too much emphasis on ideology as a source of conflict without linking it to political and economic factors is misleading. Such an emphasis ignores the enduring alliance between secular regimes in the West and the most fundamentalist Islamist ones like Saudi Arabia — a relationship that is based almost entirely on material interests not ideology. Moreover, it underplays the role of the Saudi regime in supporting Islamists across the Arab world and central Asia since the 1970s as a counterweight to secular nationalist and communist movements. This was not a benign interference. It led to significant trends of conservatism and anti-resistance or anti-revolutionary currents in some of these Islamic ideologies that the author does not address. The role of Saudi Arabia aside, the question of the dynamism and transformations of these ideologies over time is not addressed either. For example, Crooke does not explain how this “essential” notion of resistance can be squared with the transition of Islamist forces in Iran from opposition during the Shah’s time to government and at times oppressors of their own people later.
The idealistic and at time lopsided depiction of Islamism and its ethics of resistance, reinforces — ironically in this case perhaps — many of the assumptions that Crooke is trying to dispel. It deprives readers misinformed about political Islam the opportunity to replace their prejudiced and skewed understanding of it with a more nuanced and realistic one. At worst, it belongs to a well-entrenched discourse on both sides of the divide that wants to will away the material realities animating much of these conflicts. At best, it serves as a reminder to us, and hopefully to Crooke, that the road to intellectual misrepresentation can be paved with good intentions.
Hicham Safieddine is a Lebanese Canadian journalist.
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From other countries
Michael Gerlinger
5.0 out of 5 stars "What's going to happen to us without barbarians?"
Reviewed in Germany on 27 January 2025
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Page 279: "European citizens seem to be experiencing now, as a result of being the subject of the renewed neo-liberal experiment, something of what Muslims felt in the last century ..."
I had been listening to him long before I read him. I had come across Alastair Crooke as an exceptionally intelligent and learned commentator of the conflicts in West Asia. Only recently I found out about this book, he wrote in 2009. It's proof of his wisdom and prescience that it has not lost any of its interest more than 15 years later. We already encounter a discussion of the systematic abuse of language as a means of manipulation. In my own words: how the ever more encompassing control of controls leads to the implosion of power, because it loses its grip on reality — resulting in "the drive to foreclose any possibility of historical and rational explanation of resistance, and to close down the means of communication" (277).
This is an introductory book aiming at reconstituting not already this communication but its destroyed premises. It's not an academic work even though it is erudite. It's intellectual and readable at the same time. It is an insider's view on the conflict of the Western world with Western Asia. The author is not an academic but a diplomatic and political practitioner with intimate knowledge of the local actors and their mentality and culture. For the English he has taken part in peace negotiations in the region.
Here he introduces the main themes and actors. He delineates the religious historical background not only of Islamism but of Western Modernity and juxtaposes them (individualism versus collectivism etc.) The most important takeaway for me was to do away with the rest of my delusions concerning a post-colonial attitude of the West. clarifying how colonial the Western view of West Asia still is. What we call terrorist is simply the resistance against Western colonial attitudes and exploitation. The ANC in South Africa used to be labeled a terrorist organization, which gives you an idea of how different Hamas and Hesbollah or the Iranian Revolution look, when you actually know something about them and shed the attitude of George W. Bush, which is basically what liberal media have reduced themselves to.
While Islamic fundamentalism is basically the ruin of Islamic religion, Islamism is a regeneration of Islamic theology and thought in reaction to colonization. It is brought about by learned people with intimate knowledge not only of Islamic thought but of Western philosophy. For instance: Of Dr Ali Shariati, who importantly inspired the Iranian Revolution, "Jean-Paul Sartre once said, ‘I have no religion, but if I were to choose one, it would be that of Shariati.’" (p. 86). I had not known for instance how important the writings of Franz Fanon are for Islamists. Frankly like most of us I didn't really differentiate between Islamic fundamentalism with its terrorist organizations and movements like Hamas and Hesbollah. Page 276: "Resistance distinguishes between the emancipatory resistance of movements such as Hamas and Hesballah, the ‘burn-the-system-to-build-anew’ philosophy of al-Qae’da and the eschatological leanings of some Salafi groups. It argues that the failure of the West to make this distinction empowers the more extreme movements at the expense of the mainstream."
In the colonial view the colonized (like ordinary people at home, the unwashed) lack not only sovereignty but reason, and their only purpose is to become like us. (Which describes a large part of the intellectual migrants living in the West.) As long as they aren't westernized, there is absolutely nothing to understand and their point of view doesn't count. (Like with today's Russians. No use listening to them anyway because they lie all the time which is exactly are we characterized Islam post 9/11. )Crooke gives us their point of view and it turns out that they have a realistic understanding of the western pathology. So basically, looking at "Resistance" we are looking into a mirror.
Islam as it is explained here is basically a social movement centered on social justice. Contrary to protestantism it cultivates not the individual relation to God but the collective practice as manifestation of belief. And the more the western culture deteriorates into war and exploitation, the islamist movement turns out to be part of the wave of resistance that global capitalism tries to control and annihilate.
So the book offers lots of insights and basic information. For instance I had no idea how important the secularization of Turkey has been for the Islamic world. The way this westernization was combined with the Armenian genocide, gave away the pattern of what was to come. Page 274 f summarizes:
"The enforced westernisation and secularisation of Turkey, and the brutality of its nation-state building have come to symbolise the worst aspects of secular modernism. This is the first argument of Resistance.
There are 10 of them. But I will end with the fifth and the ninth:
"Islamists, who had been constrained by western instrumentalist ‘scientific’ thinking along with most people in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, suddenly broke free. This was the crucial importance of the Iranian Revolution: it freed Islamists from self-imposed constraints resulting from an hegemony of instrumentalist thought."
"The ninth argument is that the demonisation of Islamism is not the result of a poor understanding of Islamism, or a ‘legitimate’, but ultimately flawed, exercise of judgement. It represents a deliberate ideological operation, one of whose objectives has been to weaken liberalism everywhere, to strengthen America’s scope to take ‘decisive action’; and another of which has been to justify greater American intervention in the Middle East in pursuit of the neo-liberal agenda. Islamists were, in a sense, pawns to these strategic conservative objectives focused on securing an irreversible defeat of liberalism and entrenching American global hegemony."
In the neocon thinking reaching back to Leo Strauss and Carl Schmitt (discussed here) the (atomized) society needs an external enemy being constantly produced in order to keep the West in shape. Choose your own examples. But this is why Crooke ends this book with the poem of a Greek poet C. P. Cavafy (1863–1933) cited in this review's title.
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IntoTheDialectic
5.0 out of 5 stars I recommend this book to anyone who wishes to gain deeper insight.
Reviewed in the United States on 25 April 2010
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Have you considered why it is that Western culture postures as believing in fairness, equality, respect and freedom -- then savages and brutalises any cultures and nations that do not agree with its ideas? Have you wondered why the West's concepts of justice and equality only seem important when dealing with some countries and not others? Have you wondered why , the West, after centuries of seeking knowledge and wisdom, now seem so lost and directionless and ultimately appear shallow and ungrounded? Have you ever wondered why all of the West's philosophies and concepts are overwhelmingly, held in thrall ultimately to the power of the market and values of materialism?
Have you wondered why relentless ego centric self seeking and the pleasure principle seem to underpin all of the West's aims and objectives and cultural expression at every level? Why is everything in the West ultimately measured by , and reduced to exchange value, monetary profit and sale reward, at the cost of everything else? Why are values of decency, community, dignity and spirituality repeatedly trampelled on in pursuit of those aims; and why are those aims considered the highest value, indeed,so desirable that they signify the end of all other values, the end of all alternative seeking -- the end of history no less?
If these concepts interest, then Alastair Crooke's book will prove valuable.
Firstly, Crooke makes it clear to the reader that he is not a political scientist nor a doctor of history -- his expertise has, rather, been gathered over many years in his governmental advisory and think tank roles in the Middle East.
Crooke brings together a broad sweep of knowledge and contrasting disciplines, to scrutinize the position of the West and Islam at the start of the 21st century -- and for those readers who believed in the innate superiority of free market, Laissez fair capitalism and the 'moral monopoly' of American fundamentalist and Puritan based Christianity, it will be a sobering and challenging read. For those readers who believe in the superiority of the West's philosophical traditions, from the German thinkers of the 18Th century to the neo con Machiavellians of the 21st century, it will also challenge.
The author brings his considerable knowledge of post war philosophers such as Horkheimer and Adorno of the Frankfurt School to the table, emphasising their critique of materialism .Crooke shows how in some regards, those thinkers' theses parallel and resemble Islamic criticisms of a lost and degenerating Anglo American culture; a way of life and thought mired in endless craving for immediate satisfaction.
The text also analyses how the West has not developed further from the significant insights revealed by the Post Modernists ( such as Lyotard ). Anglo American culture appears to have failed to build on or develop worthy values, as their own understanding of historical narratives rapidly unravels.
I recommend this book to anyone who wishes to gain deeper insight into the valid struggles of Islamic people; a people who long for a world not governed by shallow materialism ,and long for a justice system that is not controlled by hypocritical and selective "one rule for us, another for them" thinking.
Crooke suggests that the insights of the Post Modernists have shaken the confidence in the earlier wisdom of the West -- yet those cracked foundations have not been replaced by anything of value by Westerners; rather Europe and America have continued to perpetuate and export by force, more of the same relentless materialistic values, even though many of us can see that those values have failed, again and again.
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C
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 March 2017
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Excellent and very topical book. There is so much we can learn by being open to other ideas
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Emilio Ciarlo
4.0 out of 5 stars A must-read to understand islamic political tought
Reviewed in Italy on 24 January 2016
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Anche se un po' troppo accondiscendente, è Indispensabile per capire l'essenza filosofica e antropologica del pensiero politico islamico e islamista e per pensare in modo critico i limiti di quello occidentale
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the Green William
5.0 out of 5 stars Thought Provoking Analysis of Islamic Thinking in Relation to Western Thought
Reviewed in Canada on 22 June 2014
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Alastair Crooke masterfully analyzes the breadth of mainstream Islamist thinking and reveals that we in the West have a lot to learn from Islamists, who are often dismissed in the Western press as backwards or extremists. Crooke doesn't deny that extremism in groups like Al-Qaeda exists, but says that this is the exception rather than the rule and distinguishes groups bent on destruction (like Al-Qaeda) from groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Iran, that seek to resist Western cultural, economic, and social hegemony. Crooke stresses that Islamism subordinates politics to higher ethics/values, while the West uses ethics/values in the service of political objectives--this distinction is at the heart of Crooke's writing and is essential to understanding why the Islamic world continues to reject the so called 'enlightened' systems of the West, and has rather attempted to recreate societal institutions on the basis of principles of justice, equity, and collective solidarity. Crooke provocatively argues that we in the West have developed and are continuing to develop characteristics of a closed minded society that impulsively rejects non-Western thinking as inherently inferior and meaningless; considering Islamism may allow Western thinking to remember some of the old truths once known such as the importance of principles and the collective which have been lost in the era of 'scientific thinking' which dismisses anything that can't be empirically measured as an illusion.
One of the most important points in Crooke's analysis that most in the West do not realize is our tendency to think 'instrumentally', which means that we identify a goal and begin thinking about HOW to reach it rather than reflect upon WHY that goal is desirably or good. Although Crooke spends some time on this point, I think that this area is one of the weaknesses of the book, only because he doesn't define 'instrumentalist thinking' as clearly as he could have.
At any rate, "Resistance", is an excellent book that offers unique insights to its readers.
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Jacob A. Libby
5.0 out of 5 stars Understanding the Enemy
Reviewed in the United States on 14 December 2009
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What makes Iran and Hezbollah negotiable partners and al-Qaeda an enemy to defeat? This book holds the answer.
Like George Clooney's character in Syriana or the infamous x-NSA man turned peace activist, John Perkins, Alaistar Crooke's intellectual reflections on the history of Western colonialism and Islamic resistance exemplify the profound and rare experience of a bonafide "man in the middle."
Written hastily but with sharp intelligence and deep-searching reflection, this book dissects for Western ears the rational framework of thought that founds the Islamicist movements of Hammas, Hezbollah, and the Iranian Revolution.
In doing so it expounds upon the following point:
Al-Qaeda is an organization whose explicit goal is to use "shock and outrage" tactics to destabilize the economies and political systems of European and American capitalism globally. To this end, all means are on the table.
But Al-Qaeda does not define Islam or Islamic resistance to Western neo-colonial influence in the Middle East and beyond.
Islamic resistance groups -- in particular Hammas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the various strains of Iranian clerical thought -- stand in sharp contrast to al-Qaeda's violent and self-destructive program.
These Islamic groups draw upon their rich tradition of rational scholarship to pursue a threefold path: 1) they propose a constructive critique of Western Capitalism and its deleterious effects on the community and the individual; 2) they attempt to put into action and law an explicitly positive Islamic alternative; and 3) they employ a host of strategies from limited military engagement, to social administration, to judicial research, to self-empowerment leadership models to advance their goals. In other words, these groups draw upon a rational understanding of realpolitical circumstance and human psychology to build a model for a new society guided by Islamic spiritual ideals.
For anyone who wishes to more deeply understand the truth beyond the hype of "why they hate us" this book stands as a critical challenge. Jean-Paul Sartre's exhortation to "have the courage to read this book" in his introduction to Frantz Fanon's "Wretched of the Earth" -- which follows the psychological stages of self-empowerment engendered by the revolutionary process of African nationalist movements -- could easily be applied here:
To understand, courage will be necessary.
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Reader #1
5.0 out of 5 stars Islamists are not the idiots you think they are
Reviewed in the United States on 18 October 2016
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You think Islamists are a bunch of simple-minded idiots living in the Dark Ages? Read this book. You find their thought to be richer, more complex, and even more moral than anything you have ever dreamed of? They question the very foundations of western capitalism and empiricism (without rejecting the usefulness of science.) They envisioning a just and compassionate society free from the hegemony of the colonialism that has been imposed on them by Britain, France, and the United States. Ironically they claim they have more freedom than we do. The Islamists think communitarianism is more valuable than rugged individualism. They see us as materialistic, selfish, and arrogant. They challenge our belief in manifest destiny. They claim they value metaphysics and the rich mythic-poetic traditions of ancient Greece, while we dump them in favor of a soul-destroying blind empiricism.
In summary, you will learn in great detail the answer to the biggest question of our time: "Why do they hate us."
5 people found this helpful
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JediAcolyte
4.0 out of 5 stars This book provides a good amount of information this history and politics that have ...
Reviewed in the United States on 30 September 2016
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This book provides a good amount of information this history and politics that have come together to be the religion of Islam the world has come to know.
One person found this helpful
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Mr. Bill
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent and challenging to read
Reviewed in the United States on 14 February 2010
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I have been working through this book for several months and I must admit that it has been a very challenging read for me. I was not familiar with the many factions that exist within Islam and I have made some notes as I read the book to keep track of Shiite societies vs. Sunni societies.
Alastair Crooke contrasts the philosophy, reasons for existence, and shortcomings of the Western nation-states with Islamic societies. He is definitely biased towards Islamic societies in the book but this should not be a deterent to reading it.
It takes some mental muscle to comprehend the ideas presented. I would strongly reccomend that people who want to better understand the conflicts that exist between Western and Islamic beliefs read the book.
I would really like to hear the comments of someone who has an Islamic background on this book.
12 people found this helpful
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Brian Drake
2.0 out of 5 stars Not an easy read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 1 March 2015
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Stillreading, not sure I understand most of it..
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Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on 27 September 2014
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item as described I would purchase from this seller again.
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Dhoolly
1.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely useless
Reviewed in the United States on 7 March 2011
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Based on the revew and the inciting title, I thought this book would provide me with a critical innovative insight on the topic, however, it has proven to be a complete waste of time and money. The author lacks everything from method to criticism, and the elements he brings up merely could be entertaining as a bar conversation. Extremely disappointed.
3 people found this helpful
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