Skip to main content
Log in

Global exception and Islamic exceptionalism

  • Original Article
  • Published:
International Politics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Islamic exceptionalism (IE), or the discourse of Islam's inassimilable difference, legitimizes post-9/11 encounters with Islam and strategies of political and cultural domestication of the Islamic cultural zones (ICZs). It may also furnish new grounds for exclusions, enclosures and securitization. The aim of this paper is to explore the principal vectors of the field of vision generated by IE; to draw out any possible connections between IE and a presumed global exception (GE); and more broadly, to delineate how IE speaks to the perils of International Relations (IR)'s occlusion of the political in ICZs. In exploring the nexus between IE and GE, both the recursive character of GE and its constraints are noted, with an appreciation of cultural mappings nourishing GE. The key implication drawn is the need to avoid the temptation of an abstract notion of GE without ample recognition of its particularized instantiations, notably in reference to Islam.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. For a brilliant critique of such attempts in IR theory, see Walker (1993, 2002, 2006b).

  2. For an excellent contrasting analysis of the post-9/11 global environment, see R.W. Cox (2004).

  3. For some scholars, the ‘Islamic Other’ has been central to the formation of Western identity. See Marr (2006) and Shakman Hurd (2003).

  4. For an earlier formulation of this position, see Lewis (1988) and Vatikiotis (1987).

  5. For the ideal typical Orientalist, the problem lies above all within the civilizational boundaries of a decadent, but modernity-resisting Islamic religion and the values and institutions associated with it.

  6. To be certain, IE is not identical with Orientalism, though it is heavily indebted to the latter. The core feature of IE is the notion of the exceptional character of Islam, which may or may not be either exoticized or demonized. Orientalism cannot do without either. Hence, it is not necessary to be an Orientalist to portray the ICZs as exceptional in terms of assumed democratic deficit, technological retardation or general economic backwardness. Orientalism invariably rests on culturalist logic; IE can invoke political economy, sociological explanation or political analysis without relying on culture as the master variable to account for Islamic woes.

  7. Hegemonic in a Gramscian sense. See Gramsci (1971 [1891–1937]).

  8. There are subtle distinctions that cannot be easily swept away. However, the language of GE is invoked here quite broadly to encompass an entire series of practices that produce zones of indistinction; the suspension of normalized rules of governance including international law; new border controls; profiling of populations; surveillance and the arbitrary abrogation of rights under the umbrella of state security. Bigo (2006) offers an excellent analysis of these practices, while questioning the ubiquity of the exception.

  9. On the distinction between problem-solving and critical theory, see the path-breaking article by R.W. Cox (1981).

  10. ‘Indeed, the state of exception has today reached its maximum worldwide deployment’ (Agamben, 2005, p. 87). Also see, Bhuta (2003).

  11. In this context, the image of a presumed clash between universalism and particularism is also easily deployable. See also Barber (1996).

  12. For a balanced set of analyses of 9/11, see Calhoun et al (2002). For an analysis concerning 9/11 and Islam, see Dalacoura (2002). An original counterpoint to mainstream analysis is provided by Edkins (2002). For an analysis of how the mainstream media in the United States resorted to Huntington's thesis to account for the crisis, see Abrahamian (2003).

  13. Ferguson (2003) writes: ‘To imagine the world without the Empire would be to expunge from the map the elegant boulevards of Williamsburg and old Philadelphia; to sweep into the sea the squat battlements of Port Royal, Jamaica; to return to the bush the glorious skyline of Sydney; to level the steamy seaside slum that is Freetown, Sierra Leone; to fill in the Big Hole at Kimberley; to demolish the mission at Kuruman; to send the town of Livingston hurtling over the Victoria Falls – which would of course revert to their original name of Mosioatunya. Without the British Empire, there would be no Calcutta; no Bombay; no Madras. Indians may rename them as many times as they like, but they remain cities founded and built by the British’ (Also cited in Gregory, 2004, pp. 4–5).

  14. According to Alain de Benoist (2007, p. 85): ‘In a state of exception, a state finds itself abruptly confronted with an extreme peril, a mortal menace that it cannot face without having recourse to methods which, following its own norms, would be unjustifiable in normal times. The situation of urgency or the state of exception can be defined in other terms as the brutal occurrence of rare events or unpredictable situations, which, because of their menacing character, require immediate response with exceptional measures, such as restriction of liberties, martial law, state of siege, etc., considered as the only suitable responses to the situation’.

  15. As de Benoist (2007, p. 86) puts it, ‘The state of exception is also important because it reveals the original non-normative character of the law. Moreover, it is not the law/right (Recht) which is suspended in the state of exception, but only the normative element of the law (Gesetz)’.

  16. The principal debate on this issue concerns Benjamin and Schmitt. ‘While Schmitt attempts every time to reinscribe violence within a juridical context, Benjamin responds to this gesture by seeking every time to assure it – as pure violence – an existence outside the law’ (Agamben, 2005, p. 59). For a commentary on the political ontology of Schmitt, see Prozorov (2006), Dean (2006). Prozorov (2005) offers his own variant of the Exception.

  17. Recall Benjamin's classic statement: ‘[t]he tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the “state of exception” in which we live is the rule. We must attain to a concept of history that accords with this fact. Then we can clearly see that it is our task to bring about the real state of exception, and this will improve our position in the struggle against fascism’ (Benjamin, quoted in Agamben, 2005, p. 57).

  18. For a superb collection of original contributions on the contemporary relevance of Schmitt, see Odysseos and Petito (2007).

  19. Commenting on this Schmittian theme, de Benoist (2007, p. 86) writes: [For Schmitt] ‘in suspending legal norms, the exception helps us to understand and appreciate the nature of the political, in the sense that it reveals to us the domain of the sovereign, meaning in this case the concrete capacity to make a decision in the face of an urgent or exceptional situation. The state of exception reveals both who is sovereign and also where sovereignty lies, in the very moment that it makes the decision appear (Entscheidung) in its ‘absolute purity’. In such conditions, one can see that the politically sovereign instance does not coincide automatically with the state …. the suspension of legal norms in the case of the exception constitutes the ultimate manifestation of political sovereignty’.

  20. According to van Munster (2004, p. 141): ‘the state of exception is the non-localisable foundation of a political order: the US as the sovereign of the global order … [it allows] the US to exempt itself from the (international) framework of law, demanding compliance by others ... this production of American sovereignty is paralleled by reducing the life of (some) individuals to the bare life of homo sacer (life that can be killed without punishment). In the war on terrorism, the production of bare life is mainly brought about by bureaucratic techniques of risk management and surveillance, which reduces human life to biographic risk profiles’.

  21. ‘At the same time’, Bigo (2006, p. 5) suggests, ‘it (globalisation) makes obsolete the conventional distinction between the constellation of war, defence, international order and strategy, and another constellation of crime, internal security, public order and police investigations’. According to Bigo (ibid., p. 6), ‘it is this convergence of defence and internal security into interconnected networks, or into a “field” of professionals of management of unease that lies at the heart of the transformations concerning global policing’. Bigo challenges the notion of ‘the advent of a securitized globalized world’ or the arrival of an Empire. ‘Even if we witness illiberal practices, and even if the temptation to use the argument of an exceptional moment correlated with the advent of transnational political violence of clandestine organisations, in order to justify violation of basic human rights and the extension of surveillance is very strong, we are still in liberal regimes’. (ibid.)

  22. A key implication of recent trends in securitization is the shift in the concept of security, ‘reduced to technologies of surveillance, extraction of information, coercion acting against societal and state vulnerabilities’. In this frame, ‘security is disconnected from human, legal and social guarantees and protection of individuals’ (Bigo, 2006, p. 8).

  23. According to Johns (2005, p. 619), the exception is: ‘[T]hat domain within jurisprudence in which decision-making “cannot be subsumed” … by existing norms. It is that space in which such norms are held open to suspension or transformation, and where programs of norm-implementation and norm-compliance cease to govern action and decision-making. Accordingly, the exception is synonymous with the attempt to exercise momentarily decisive agency or, as Schmitt puts it, “principally unlimited authority”’.

  24. As Žižek (2006) notes: ‘9 November 1989, announced the “Happy Nineties” – the dream of fine de l’histoire foretold by Francis Fukuyama. September 11 is the great symbol of the end of utopia – a return to real history. The Happy Nineties of Clinton have long gone. We are in a new era with new walls being built – between Israel and Palestine, around the European Union, on the Mexican/US border, and between Spain and Morocco. The Berlin Wall is being substituted with new ones. We are in an era of new forms of Apartheid and “legal” torture’ On this note, see also, Pateman (2006).

  25. As de Benoist (2007, p. 88) proposes: ‘The measures taken by the American government following the attacks of 9/11 are [therefore] without not without precedent. However, they also have particular characteristics, which distance them radically from the Schmittian “model”. In declaring a war, seemingly without end, in order to confront a danger – global terrorism – the American authorities seem to be leaning towards an institutionalization of these exceptional measures. The state of exception ceases therefore to be an exception, and henceforth becomes permanent’.

  26. ‘Politics of exception focuses on the state of threat to the life of a nation, the legitimacy of exceptional policies justified by the threat and the ensuing trade-off between security and liberty that it produces.’ By contrast, ‘politics of unease addresses insecurities in a less pronounced way. It does not focus on existential threats to the territorial and functional integrity of the state but connects a wide variety of different policy areas such as welfare provisions counter-terrorism and illegal immigration through the discussion of policing technologies’ (Huysmans and Buonfino, 2008, p. 767).

  27. In his otherwise brilliant exegesis of the state of exception, Agamben (2005) avoids any discussion of the state of emergency in the European colonies.

  28. For a provocative engagement with this idea, see Bourricaud (1985).

  29. This sentiment is not restricted to Western commentators on Islam (Tibi (2002). For a variant of this thinking, see Hoodbhoy (1991).

  30. According to Pipes (2003), ‘the surge in militant Islam’ does not result from economic stress, but arises ‘from frustration and a deeply bruised sense of identity’. For an alternate, if equally Orientalist, account see, Devji (2005).

  31. For an elegant rebuttal to these standard tropes, see Euben (2002).

  32. See the special forum on democracy in the Middle East, especially contributions by Ghalioun (2004), Lakoff (2004), Stepan and Robertson (2004). For a background on persisting obstacles, see Kedourie (1992).

  33. A classic statement in this regard is Voll (1982). Voll's notion of ‘styles of action’ all relate to Islam's relation to Western modernity.

  34. For a sustained investigation of the problem of the ontological status of Otherness in IR theory, see Inayatullah and Blaney (2004).

  35. The concept of ‘scopic regimes’ is drawn from the ground-breaking article by Jay (1988).

References

  • Abrahamian, E. (2003) The US media, Huntington and September 11. Third World Quarterly 24 (3): 529–544.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Agamben, G. (1998) Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Agamben, G. (2005) State of Exception. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • al-Azmeh, A. (2001) Civilization, culture and the new barbarians. International Sociology 16 (1): 75–93.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • al-Azmeh, A. (1996) Islams and Modernities. London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Asad, T. (2003) Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Balibar, E. (2002) Politics and the Other Scene. London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barber, B. (1996) Jihad versus McWorld. New York: Ballantine Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Beck, U. (2006) The Cosmopolitan Vision. Cambridge: Polity.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bhabha, H.K. (1994) The Location of Culture. London/New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bhuta, N. (2003) A global state of exception? The United States and world order. Constellations 10 (3): 371–391.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bigo, D. (2006) Globalized (In) security: The field and the ban-opticon. In: D. Bigo and A. Tsoukala (eds.) Illiberal Practices of Liberal Regimes: The (In) Security Games. Paris: L’Harmattan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bourricaud, F. (1985) Modernity, ‘universal reference’ and the process of modernization. In: S.N. Eisenstadt, (ed.) Patterns of Modernity: Volume I: The West. London: Frances Pinter.

    Google Scholar 

  • Burckhardt, J. (1955 [1889]) Letter to friedrich von preen. In: A. Dru, (ed.) The Letters of Jacob Burckhardt. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

    Google Scholar 

  • Calhoun, C., Price, P. and Timmer, A. (eds.) (2002) Understanding September 11. New York: New Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Connolly, W.E. (1998) The new cult of civilizational superiority. Theory and Event 2 (4): 1–7.

    Google Scholar 

  • Coward, M. (2005) The globalisation of enclosure: Interrogating the geopolitics of empire. Third World Quarterly 26 (6): 855–871.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cox, R.W. (1981) Social forces, states and world orders: Beyond international relations theory. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 10 (2): 126–155.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cox, R.W. (2004) Beyond empire and terror: Critical reflections on the political economy of world order. New Political Economy 9 (3): 307–323.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dalacoura, K. (2002) Violence, september 11 and the interpretations of Islam. International Relations 16 (2): 269–273.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Daniel, N. (1960) Islam and the West: The Making of an Image. Edinburgh, UK: The University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • de Benoist, A. (2007) Global terrorism and the state of permanent exception: The significance of carl schmitt's thought today. In: L. Odysseos and F. Petito (eds.) The International Political Thought of Carl Schmitt: Terror, Liberal War and the Crisis of Global Order. New York-Milton Park: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dean, M. (2006) A political mythology of world order: Carl schmitt's Nomos. Theory, Culture & Society 23 (5): 1–22.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Devji, F. (2005) Landscapes of the Jihad. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Edkins, J. (2002) Forget trauma: Responses to September 11. International Relations 16 (2): 243–256.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Euben, R.L. (2002) Killing (for) politics: Jihad, martyrdom and political action. Political Theory 30 (1): 4–35.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fabian, J. (1983) Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ferguson, N. (2003) Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World. London: Allen Lane.

    Google Scholar 

  • Friedman, T.L. (2002) Moderate muslim voices must be heard. The New York Times, 4 June.

  • Friedman, T.L. (2005) The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Globalized World in the Twenty-First Century. London: Allen Lane.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fukuyama, F. (1992) The End of History and the Last Man. London: Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fukuyama, F. (2001) The west has won. The Guardian, October 11, electronic version.

  • Gellner, E. (1981) Muslim Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gellner, E. (1992) Postmodernism, Reason and Religion. London/New York: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Gellner, E. (1994) Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and Its Rivals. London: Hamish Hamilton.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ghalioun, B. (2004) The persistence of Arab authoritarianism. Journal of Democracy 15 (4): 126–132.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gramsci, A. (1971) Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Edited and translated by Q. Hoare and G. N. Smith. London: Lawrence & Wishart.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gregory, D. (2004) The Colonial Present: Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq. Malden-Oxford, UK: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hall, J.A. (1985) Powers and Liberties: The Causes and Consequences of the Rise of the West. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hardt, M. and Negri, A. (2000) Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hoodbhoy, P. (1991) Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality. London-Atlantic Highlands: Zed Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Huntington, S.P. (1996) The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York: Simon & Schuster.

    Google Scholar 

  • Huysmans, J. (2008) The jargon of exception – On schmitt, agamben and the absence of political society. International Political Sociology 2 (2): 165–183.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Huysmans, J. and Buonfino, A. (2008) Politics of exception and unease: Immigration, asylum and terrorism in parliamentary debates in the UK. Political Studies 56 (4): 766–788.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ibn Khaldun. (1967 [1332–1406]) The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History (Translated from the Arabic by Franz Rosenthal), 2nd edn. London: Routledge and K Paul.

  • Ignatieff, M. (2005) The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Inayatullah, N. and Blaney, D.L. (2004) International Relations and the Problem of Difference. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jay, M. (1988) Scopic regimes of modernity. In: H. Foster, (ed.) Vision and Visuality. Seattle, WA: Dia Art Foundation.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johns, F. (2005) Guantanamo bay and the annihilation of the exception. The European Journal of International Law 16 (4): 613–635.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kedourie, E. (1992) Politics in the Middle East. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lakoff, S. (2004) The reality of muslim exceptionalism. Journal of Democracy 15 (4): 133–139.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lal, D. (2004) In Praise of Empires: Globalization and Order. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lewis, B. (1988) The Political Language of Islam. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lewis, B. (2002) What Went Wrong? The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mamdani, M. (2004) Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror. New York: Pantheon Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Marr, T. (2006) The Cultural Roots of American Islamicism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • McNeill, W.H. (1963) The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nye, J.S. (2004) Soft Power: The Means of Success in World Politics. New York: Public Affairs.

    Google Scholar 

  • Odysseos, L. and Petito, F. (eds.) (2007) The International Political Thought of Carl Schmitt: Terror, Liberal War and the Crisis of Global Order. New York-Milton Park: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pateman, R.G. (2006) Globalisation, the new US exceptionalism and the war on terror. Third World Quarterly 27 (6): 963–986.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pipes, D. (2003) Militant Islam Reaches America. New York: W.W. Norton.

    Google Scholar 

  • Prozorov, S. (2005) X/Xs: Toward a general theory of the exception. Alternatives: Global Local Political 30: 81–112.

    Google Scholar 

  • Prozorov, S. (2006) Liberal enmity: The figure of the foe in the political ontology of liberalism. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 35 (1): 75–99.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Said, E.W. (1978) Orientalism. New York: Vintage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sayyid Qutb. (1990 [1964]) Milestones. Indianapolis, IN: American Trust Publications.

  • Schmitt, C. (1985 [1923]) The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schmitt, C. (2003 [1950]) The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum. New York: Telos Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schmitt, C. (2005[1922]) Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty (translated by George Schwab). Chicago, IL; London: University of Chicago Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Shakman Hurd, E. (2003) Appropriating Islam: The Islamic other in the consolidation of western modernity. Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies 12 (1): 25–41.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, S. (2002) The end of the unipolar moment? September 11 and the future of world order. International Relations 16 (2): 171–183.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stepan, A.A. and Robertson, G.B. (2004) Arab, not muslim, exceptionalism. Journal of Democracy 15 (4): 140–146.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tibi, B. (2002) The Challenge of Fundamentalism: Political Islam and the New World Disorder. Berkeley, CA/London: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Turner, B. (1974) Weber and Islam: A Critical Study. London/Boston, MA: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

    Google Scholar 

  • van Munster, R. (2004) The war on terrorism: When the exception becomes the rule. International Journal for the Semiotics of War 17: 141–153.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vatikiotis, P.J. (1987) Islam and the State. London/New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Voll, J.O. (1982) Islam: Continuity and Change in the Modern World. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Walker, R.B.J. (1993) Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Walker, R.B.J. (2002) After the future: Enclosures, connections, politics. In: R. Falk, L. Edwin, J. Ruiz and R.B.J. Walker (eds.) Reframing the International: Law, Culture, Politics. New York and London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Walker, R.B.J. (2006a) Lines of insecurity: International, imperial, exceptional. Security Dialogue 37 (1): 65–82.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Walker, R.B.J. (2006b) Polis, cosmopolis, politics. Alternatives: Local Global Political 28 (2): 267–286.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Williams, R. (2003) A state of permanent exception. Interventions 5 (3): 322–344.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Žižek, S. (2006) A permanent state of exception, Cuba.now.net.

Download references

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to Ritu Vij and the anonymous reviewers for comments on the draft of the paper. The errors are entirely my own.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Pasha, M. Global exception and Islamic exceptionalism. Int Polit 46, 527–549 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1057/ip.2009.13

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/ip.2009.13

Keywords

Navigation