An individual's primary group allegiance can shift in the event of a perceived threat against another group with which s/he identifies. This accounts to a great extent for the changing fortunes of Islamism and various kinds of nationalist and ethnic identifications throughout the dar-al-Islam (or, territory of Islam) since the middle of the nineteenth century. Religious factionalism, ethnic conflict, and secular nationalism have all been set aside in favor of Islamism at various times. Yet it is difficult to define this term, which refers to a variety of movements all of which are based in religious reformism but can have differing protest or emancipatory goals. As Voll (1991) defined it, Islamism is "a distinctive mode of response to major social and cultural change introduced either by exogenous or indigenous forces and perceived as threatening to dilute or dissolve the clear lines of Islamic identity, or to overwhelm that identity in a synthesis of many different elements" (quoted in Ali, 2000, p. 11). Islamism is a force that must be understood in order to comprehend the challenges that are mounted today to many Islamic regimes, and are supported by millions of people--partly in defiance of the West, and, to the confusion of the West, in defiance of the seeming 'logic' of the popular demand for democracy and economic liberalism that 'should' arise among any struggling people. In this essay a brief review of the history of Islamism will be followed by a discussion of the nature of current Islamist movements. The essay concludes with analysis of some Western perceptions of Islamism and a comment on the likely continuation of the movement's appeal.
While Voll's (1991) definition neatly encompasses a range of Islamist positions it tends to leave the question of Islamic identity open and to omit what might be called the "autonomy of the religious impulse" by overemphasizing the pragmatic and heterogeneous nature of Islamism ...