Dusting for Fingerprints: The Aarhus Approach to Islamism

This article reviews the Aarhus approach to the study of Islamism as presented in a series of articles by Mehdi Mozaffari and Tina Magaard. The core contribution of the Aarhus approach - the argument that Islamism constitutes yet another form of totalitarianism - is found to be forceful and thought-provoking. The academic utility of this approach is difficult to evaluate, however, since empirical evidence in the form of structured comparisons is not provided. This is partly due to the lack of a definition of totalitarianism to facilitate comparisons with Nazism, Fascism and Stalinism, and partly due to a lack of interest in comparisons along other relevant dimensions, including manifestations of radicalized/securitized religion drawing on the vocabulary of religious traditions other than Islam. It is argued that the definition of Islamism as totalitarianism is upheld by methodologically privileging texts over practice and definitional claims over empirical evidence. As such, the approach reflects an anthropological and sociological deficit excluding analyses of practices from textual reading and a hermeneutical deficit excluding various existing interpretations. Most importantly, these criteria for demarcating Islamism have important consequences for security political strategies for uncoupling the relations between Islamism and violence.