Are Islamists Still Islamists?

An Ontological-Relational Analysis

Sümeyye Sakarya

$398.95 $319.42

Hardback

Forthcoming
Pre-Order now

QTY:

English

Routledge
18 September 2025

Religion & politics; Islam; Religious & theocratic ideologies; International relations

Series: Routledge Studies in Global and Transnational Politics

This book offers an ontological study of Islamism and its transformation with a specific focus on Türkiye, Bangladesh, and Senegal.

The dominant reading of the transformation of Islamism from a discernibly Islamist, then anti-systemic discourse to a more systemic one has been through the arguments of post-Islamism, which claim the failure and end of Islamism. However, this assumes that Islamists are still Islamists, which is an oxymoron. This book suggests that this scholarship fails to recognise the political, ontological nature of Islamism. It argues that under-theorisation of the political, accompanied by Eurocentrism and positivism, hinders a proper understanding of Islamism by engendering methodological nationalism and state-centrism and obstructing Islamists as political actors by denying them political agency to undertake transformation. This shows the need for an ontological analysis to surmount the mentioned problems and comprehend Islamists as political actors by disarticulating any necessary relationship between the political and any fixed entity, such as the state, a specific rhetoric or form. The book, as an exercise in political theory, offers such an analysis, articulated through the tools provided by post-foundationalist political theory, particularly the works of Martin Heidegger, Antonio Gramsci, Hannah Arendt, and Salman Sayyid, who mobilises Carl Schmitt and post-Marxist discourse theory to read Islamism.

This book will appeal to scholars and students of Politics, International Relations, Area Studies, and Sociology, especially those specialising in Islam and Islamism.

By: Sümeyye Sakarya
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9781032912493
ISBN 10: 1032912499
Series: Routledge Studies in Global and Transnational Politics
Pages: 184
Publication Date: 18 September 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Primary , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Introduction Chapter 1- An Odyssey of Oblivion: Ontology, Islamism and the Political Chapter 2 – Politics: Post-Islamism Chapter 3 – Almost Political: Weak Orientalism Chapter 4 – The Political Chapter 5 – Relationality as a Way Out from Methodological Nationalism Chapter 6 – Transnational Kemalism: A Ghost Haunting the Muslim World Chapter 7 – Islamisation as Passive Revolution Chapter 8 – Kemalism Strikes Back Conclusion

Sümeyye Sakarya is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration in the Faculty of Political Sciences at Ankara University, Türkiye.