You draw a parallel between the jihad propagated by Sayyid Qutb and the call of the monk Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) to “die for Christ”, referring to the “same common heritage, Christian and Muslim, with which we are all burdened”, which some would call bold. What do you mean by that?
Some experts have pointed out that Bernard of Clairvaux, who actively supported the Templars, was directly inspired in his sermon by verses from the Koran that mentioned jihad to support the Second Crusade. So my concern is to remind people that there is a warlike Christianity and that it could be supported by people who, like Bernard of Clairvaux, are considered very spiritual and peaceful.
I therefore see convergences with Qutb’s Jihad insofar as it is about experiences that are both mystical and physical. Hence the affinity with the title of the first two issues of my Qutb reading, Mysticism and Politics: this mysticism is both central and oblique in any religion, Christian or Muslim. So there is no civilisation that can claim to embody peace or tolerance.
What is this “promising post-Islamism” that you refer to at the end of your “Koran of the Islamists”?
I am a follower of Olivier Roy, who observed an emerging post-Islamism in some Muslim countries as early as the 1990s [after his book L’Echec de l’islam politique (1992), in which he diagnosed the dead end of Islamist parties, Olivier Roy used the term “post-Islamism” to define the emergence of a political Islam in the last three decades, reduced to a reference to identity, and fitting into a state functioning according to secular principles].
Like him, I thought that this new trend could shape a certain democracy by making it possible to live together between antagonistic ideologies. In contrast to the fundamentalist vision – as prevalent in Saudi Arabia or Iran – this post-Islamism desacralises certain aspects of life, especially collective life, and makes possible a revival of the distinction between politics and religion. This Muslim democracy can be seen in Morocco today or in its beginnings in Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdogan [the current Turkish president was prime minister from 2003 to 2014], before his regime slipped into authoritarianism.
So it is not a question of being in favour of or opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood, but of taking note of the fact that moderate Islamism is popular in many of these countries and needs to be dealt with. The physical elimination as currently practiced in Egypt only repeats what happened with Sayyid Qutb: to make martyrs of these activists.Le Monde