Islamism is not a form of nationalism despite succeeding it.

Evidence

Both Arab nationalism (whether of the “liberal” or the “socialist” variety) and Islamism share a concern with the modernizing state that was put in place by Westernizing power—a state directed at the unceasing material and moral transformation of entire populations only recently organized as “societies.” In other words, Islamism takes for granted and seeks to work through the nation-state, which is so central to the predicament of all Muslims. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 965 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Islamism is, in this context, something to be welcomed, the return of the repressed, a rejection by Muslims of Western domination. Sayyid excoriates those in the Muslim world – be they liberal modernizers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, or the Kemalists of the twentieth – who have tried to learn from the West and so modernize their societies. He also denies the argument that Islamism contains another variant of radical Western discourse, seeing this as another form of hegemonic denial: those who have argued this – Aziz al-Azmeh, Sami Zubaida, myself – come in for spirited attack. Islamism is a discursive construct that rejects the West, a form of modernity that is non-Western. — Fred Halliday, ‘Islamophobia’ Reconsidered, 25 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Islamism and fascism differ on nationalism and the State, making the hybrid near-meaningless; Islamism cannot be fascism because it rejects nationalism and the state model — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1435; Islamism is a distinctly non-Western modernity that rejects rather than adapts Western discourse. — Fred Halliday, ‘Islamophobia’ Reconsidered, 25 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Islamism presupposes and works through the Western-imposed nation-state rather than rejecting it. #complicates (0.85) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 965
• Islamism is a distinctly non-Western modernity that rejects rather than adapts Western discourse. #complicates (0.75) — Fred Halliday, ‘Islamophobia’ Reconsidered, 25