276 Islam and Modernity
both modernists/reformists and Islamists on different registers that they were
leading Muslims to chaos. But, in doing so, they also destroyed the complexity of
this history. Fixated on the fear of the individual’s propensity to slide into moral
chaos, they closed the door to fi nding opportunities for the present that the past
could offer.
Constructed Islamic identities in late modernity
These styles of action offer a rich source for modern Islamic identities. In the
second half of the twentieth century, they presented the possibilities and pat-
terns for the employment of Muslim identities in different terrains and contexts.
In the remaining part of this chapter, I wish to illustrate at least some of these
varying fi elds in which Islamic identities after 1967 have been constructed. The
fi rst example will be on the level of the modern state; the second on individual
dress; and the third on the level of radical Islam in the globalised world after
the end of the cold war. Each of these demonstrates the possibilities of identities
that present themselves to different actors. The different styles are not narrowly
restricted to consistent application. The three styles of action intersect in their
employment in the state, dress code or radical protest. As Muslims draw on the
authenticity of Islam to put forward these senses of self, they invariably draw on
variations of these styles of action.
The role of Islam in politics is often associated with Islamist movements.
Thus, the rise of Islamist movements is often dependent on the failure of secular
Muslim states to deliver on their promises given at independence. Esposito and
Burgat have led a scholarly analysis that focused on this clash between Islamic
and secular conceptions of the modern Muslim state. The Islamist opposition
movements promised the electorate a return to the foundational principles of
Islamic politics. On the basis of Islamic law, ethics, economics and social devel-
opment, all the problems of the modern states would be solved. On the other
hand, the existing states are characterised in this analysis by their allegiance,
intellectually and politically, to the essentially secular nature of the modern
state. They are intellectually indebted to their foreign supporters, and they are
politically tied to the fortunes of these foreign international games (Esposito
2000; Burgat 2003).
Religious identity politics, however, is not the preserve of Islamist opposition.
More specifi cally, it does not only take the form of an Islamist style of action.
‘Secular’ Muslim states have also turned to Muslim identity in different terrains.
At independence, it was natural that some of these states like Algeria, Egypt
and Indonesia, to name the most obvious, would claim the foundation of the
new states on the basis of indigenous cultures. And Islam was considered an
important, if not always the dominant part, of the indigenous culture. On the
international front, for example, even before the emergence of mass Islamist