Revivalist Islamic movements blame internal moral decline, not outsiders

Evidence

How does one revive the true Islam? The answer was self-evident, and it didn’t involve Western-style democracy or political parties. It didn’t blame outsiders like the United States or Europe or anyone else for the problems of the Muslim world, nor did it subscribe to the violence of radicals. Rather, the solution they sought lay in teaching Muslims the true Islam, in bringing back the true Islamic morality to the umma. Their evidence was the Qur’an itself, which states that “God does not change the condition of a people until they change what’s in themselves.” — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 880

Categorization

• SEED: Article angle: the internal-project, non-anti-Western logic of revivalist Islam challenges lazy media framing that equates religious enthusiasm with anti-Americanism.
• XREF: Connects to the group’s internal-reform logic versus exterior-blame narratives found in postcolonial theory and in analyses of Sunni revivalism.