Graduation Year
2024
Document Type
Thesis
Degree
M.A.
Degree Name
Master of Arts (M.A.)
Degree Granting Department
School of Interdisciplinary Global Studies
Major Professor
Manu Samnotra, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Zacharias Pieri, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Nicolas Thompson, Ph.D.
Keywords
Extremism, Identity, Islamic Political Theory, Ummah
Abstract
Contemporary political science literature has done well to cover the recent resurgence of the far-right within Western political discourse. However, one notable blind spot within this literature comes from an even more recent development: Far-Right Islamic Conservatism (FRIC). FRIC represents an ideology constructed through an attempted synthesis of far-right conservative political thought with a particular interpretation of the Western Muslim and Islamic identities. This paper seeks to help alleviate this gap in the literature by contextualizing the foundations of FRIC’s attempted theoretical synthesis and by exploring its engagements within Western political discourse. Following a formative assessment of FRIC’s ideological development, this paper then turns to an evaluation of how FRIC situates itself within the Islamic political theory canon. In doing so, this paper will articulate a critique of FRIC that can be developed through a concept found within Islamic political theory, the Ummah.Through an examination of FRIC’s positionality within Western political discourse, as well as within Islamic political theory, this paper utilizes a metaphor of tangled threads to illustrate the fragility of this rapidly developing ideology. In this metaphor, Western identarian advocacy is to be conceived of as a sort of rope, wherein the stronger the rope, the stronger the advocacy. FRIC seeks to fashion a rope for Western Muslim rights advocacy out of two distinct threads (far-right conservatism and the Western Muslim identity) by twisting the two into one unionized rope. However, this paper posits that discrepancies in the twisting of these threads has resulted in a tangling of the threads rather than the development of a rigid rope. Further, this paper advances that the concept of the Ummah represents a valuable resource for the disentanglement of the threads.
Scholar Commons Citation
Aydoner, Veli John Muhammed, "Tangled Threads: The Emerging Ideology of Far-Right Islamic Conservatism in the Muslim Diaspora" (2024). USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/10164
