Secular Muslim rulers adopted Islamic identity rhetorically to compete with Islamists

Evidence

The strength of the Resurgence and the appeal of Islamist movements induced governments to promote Islamic institutions and practices and to incorporate Islamic symbols and practices into their regime. At the broadest level this meant affirming or reaffirming the Islamic character of their state and society. In the 1970s and 1980s political leaders rushed to identify their regimes and themselves with Islam. King Hussein of Jordan, convinced that secular governments had little future in the Arab world, spoke of the need to create “Islamic democracy” and a “modernizing Islam.” King Hassan of Morocco emphasized his descent from the Prophet and his role as “Commander of the Faithful.” The sultan of Brunei, not previously noted for Islamic practices, became “increasingly devout” and defined his regime as a “Malay Muslim monarchy.” Ben Ali in Tunisia began regularly to invoke Allah in his speeches and “wrapped himself in the mantle of Islam” to check the growing appeal of Islamic groups. In the early 1990s Suharto explicitly adopted a policy of becoming “more Muslim.” In Bangladesh the principle of “secularism” was dropped from the constitution in the mid 1970s, and by the early 1990s the secular, Kemalist identity of Turkey was, for the first time, coming under serious challenge. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 315 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Undergirding Fatma’s and Hajja Nur’s critique is a conception of religiosity that discriminates between a religious practice that is part of the larger project of realizing Islamic virtues in the entirety of one’s life, and a practice that is Islamic in form and style but does not necessarily serve as a means to the training and realization of a pious self. Fatma and Hajja Nur are critical of the process by which practices that are supposed to be part of a larger program for shaping ethical capacities lose this function and become little more than markers of identity: such as when people fast because they have learned that this is simply what Muslims do. — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 370 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Secular Muslim rulers co-opted Islamic symbols to counter Islamist challengers. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 315; Islamic challenge forged the collective identity of ‘the West’; Christian courtiers adopted bodily markers of Muslim identity to gain favor — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 546 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Secular Muslim rulers co-opted Islamic symbols to counter Islamist challengers. #corroborates (0.98) — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 315
• Pious Muslims distinguish virtue-forming practice from mere identity signaling #complicates (0.72) — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 370