Charisma and Community in the Aesthetics of Political Islam

Abstract

Abstract This article argues that the contemporary political moment, which contextualizes the study of Islam in Western universities and beyond, exacerbates long-held anxieties in social theory regarding the relationship between charisma and political community. Mature secular democracies, it is assumed, should be void of the passion and mass mobilization that often emerge from the charismatic, be it embodied by an individual or routinized in institutions. Thus the question: can Islamic political experiments be understood within the secular framework as anything other than pathology? In an attempt to answer this question, this article explores the potential uses and limits of the category of charisma in the study of “political Islam.” It does so by engaging the discourse of wilāyah, guardianship/sainthood, and its relationship to the Islamic aesthetic tradition. Positing the political in terms of beauty, I argue, reveals a number of otherwise overlooked dynamics of the Islamic revival.