The Shifting Politics of Identity 279of these groups. However, if we focus on the employment of symbols in their
politics, and thus on the implications for identity, it seems better to pay close
attention to their liberal employment of Islamic styles of action. Jihadi Salafi sm
represents the amalgamation of both Islamist and traditionalist styles of action.
It is very clear that the targets they have chosen are closely associated with the
most powerful symbol of Western modernity. They have used the world as a
terrain in which to strike at the power of the United States of America. In this
regard, they are like the reformists and Islamists who are directly engaged with
modernity. In their case, they obviously reject this modernity with a vehemence
and rage that hardly anyone can ignore. But there is no doubt that they are
fully aware of the mode of modern politics, its symbols and its values. Their
awareness suggests an Islamist style, but their vehement rejection recalls the
traditionalist style of action rather the Islamist one. Unlike the former, moreo-
ver, they are not interested in building an Islamic state, a state with a modern
form that applies traditional values. When they have supported a modern state,
as in Afghanistan, it was a state that jettisoned all its modern trappings. Their
world view recalled the world that the traditionalists appeal to in their juridical
opinions. Bin Laden’s statements map contemporary confl icts onto the epic
wars between Islam, the Sassanians and the Byzantines. He often turns to the
Crusades as another fundamental confl ict, which he asserts continues to this day.
Even though he does not misread the hegemonic power of the United States, he
refers to it as the manifestation of earlier epic confl icts. His is a political map of
Mufti Shafi s juridical framework. In yet another construction, radical Muslims
take the dissimulation of the self to its ultimate form. Theirs is the traditionalist
awareness, not of the weakness of the self that cannot depend on its own judge-
ment, but of the intensely committed and subjectivised self that must grasp the
totality of good and evil and know that it is an irrefutable view of a natural order,
and accordingly they must be prepared to empty themselves in its cause. Their
subjectivity is based on an Islamist reading. Jihadi Salafi sm draws, then, on a
modern Islamic project to restore the political order, on an Islamist identity that
is committed to self-sacrifi ce and on the traditionalist vision of primordial foes
and confl icts.
Conclusion
The defeat of 1967 marked an inexorable turn to identities. Muslim identi-
ties, with particular reference to their religious dimensions, are based on styles
of action that have characterised Muslim attitudes and responses since the
beginning of Islam. In the modern context, moreover, these styles of actions
are imprinted by their critical responses to modern colonial and post-colonial
states from the second half of the nineteenth century. Broadly speaking, there
are three styles of actions of relevance to modern Muslim identities. These