„VI ISLAMISTER.. Distinktion og drama i islamisk aktivisme

Resumé

Connie Carøe Christiansen: “We,

Islamists”. Distinetion and Drama in

Islamic Activism

In the town of Fes the Islamic activists have

now accepted Islamist as a term of selfdesignation.

In the continuous drama of a

rivalry between comrades and Islamists at

the university campus, the Islamists are

recreating themselves as Islamists. This

struggle, as well as other activities of the

Islamists, is reinforcing an objectifying

approach to the world. The social space of

the university is a polarized space where

both political groups are trying to obtain

visibility by various activities on the

campus, which in a sense can be regarded as

a stage. Their offer of a political standpoint,

however, is often rejected and the vast

majority of the Moroccan youth present

themselves as uninterested in politics. They

are in reality exeluded from formal political

participation. The ability to objectify may

act as support for the ascendent middle class

in Morocco where politics has been tumed

into an activity for elite families which are

allied with the powerful king, Hassan II. At

the university, however, political organizing

is something that is quite easily accomplished,

but at the same time it is monitored

and controlled by the police. The political

activities of the university students,

therefore, have little real effeet, which only

adds to the impression of them as

exaggerated, as if having a melodramatic

character. The Islamist, female students are

not involved in the physical confrontations

between comrades and brothers. Rather,

necessitated by stereotype ideas on the

Muslim woman as dumb and duil, they are

engaged in a struggle of distinction. In this

struggle they are implicitly distancing

themselves from their “ordinary Muslim”

sisters, the uneducated Muslim woman and

the female students who let the religion play

a minor part in their lives. This also involves

objectifying processes. The Islamist women

place impetus on the hijab but have also

realized that this device does not suffice as a

signal of commitment to the Islamist cause,

because anybody can wear a hijab, calling

for evemew devices of distinction. At doser

look, the Islamists may have more in

common with their secularist rivals than

might be expected if one judges from the

dramatic rivalry at the university. The

women at least seem to be more concemed

with distancing themselves from the

ordinary Muslim woman, in order to make it

possible to be recognized as being, at one

and the same time, a woman, a Muslim, and

an intellectual.