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Do the Moderns Believe in Their Mythologies?: The Conspiracy, the Unity, the Savior and the Golden Age in the Thought of Islamic Brotherhood and The Legion of the Archangel Michael
Abstract by Dr. Dragos Stoica On Session 114  (Islam and Modernity I)

On Monday, November 23 at 8:30 am

2009 Annual Meeting

Abstract
In the veritable academic quest for a more capacious hermeneutical view on fundamentalisms, the comparative method appears to be one of the most employed theoretical instruments. A particular refinement of the comparative approach to fundamentalism places together religious fundamentalisms and totalitarian ideologies of the twentieth century in what might be called the comparativism across the secular-religious divide. In this context, the Italian Fascism and German National-Socialism are compared-almost exclusively and clearly not coincidentally- with the Islamic Fundamentalism in order to demonstrate that a more than accidental resemblance is at play. In some cases, this particular reading of totalitarianism and fundamentalism as two faces of the same coin, gradually abandons the ideal of a more nuanced methodological reflection based on scientific neutrality, and takes the form of hybrid concepts such as Islamofascism. My paper attempts to deconstruct the concept of Islamofascism by comparing two discursive orders produced by Islamic Fundamentalism and by the interwar European Extreme Right, via the concept of political mythology. Narrowing the perspective, I intend to compare the fundamental texts of the Egyptian Islamic Brotherhood and of Romanian Legion of the Archangel Michael by employing as explanatory framework the four political mythologies coined by the French historian Raoul Girardet: Unity, Conspiracy, The Golden Age and The Savior. My hypothesis cam be summarized as follows: as imaginative acts of world creation, political mythologies are structures of meaning which allow a comparative approach that keeps open the tension between similarity and difference and broad ranging cross boundary comparisons gain systematic value without falling into the trap of rigid taxonomies. Since political mythologies and ideological constructions are intrinsically connected, I will argue that the concept of myth could provide an important point of access to the challenging radical forma mentis of both Fundamentalisms and radicalisms. I seek to demonstrate that despite an apparent structure of similarities, fundamentalism of the Islamic Brotherhood the radicalism of the Romanian Extreme Right appear in the light of political mythologies as bearing features that differ markedly in more than one aspect. The mythological constellation formed by Unity, Conspiracy, The Golden Age and The Savior is cast in different types of rhetorical strategy, and definitional structures. I will argue that this difference will radically question the applicability of Islamofascism as analytical category within a universalizing and archetypal type of comparativism.
Discipline
Philosophy
Geographic Area
Egypt
Sub Area
19th-21st Centuries