What will Islamism look like in 100 years? What will the idea of Political Islam achieve over the next century? Because we seem to find ourselves in a state of perpetual crisis, we tend not to look that far ahead, or even ahead at all. We are concerned with the urgency of the conflicts and struggles we face today; assuming, it would seem, that the business of the next generation will be to cope with whatever new crises and struggles may arise after us. But we are their parents, their grandparents, their great grandparents, and we have a responsibility towards our unborn successors on this earth. We have to consider their futures even while we grapple with our present.
Obviously, any attempt to anticipate what may occur over the next 100 years is hopelessly fraught with ambiguities, and we are dealing with the “ghayb”. The future is pregnant with events we cannot know, cannot predict, and it would be folly to pretend otherwise. However, what we can do is look at trends and the arcs of history; and we can analyze likelihoods, extrapolating from what we know to roughly focus our expectations around the possible and the plausible.
The purpose of this exercise, of course, is to help us determine our course. Therefore, any predictions will be based on the assumption that these predictions will not be heeded. We have to anticipate what might happen if we continue on as we are, since, ideally, if these predictions are heeded and used to inform our strategies, it will change the course of history for Islamism.
Any forecast for the future of the Islamic movement necessarily will have to incorporate a forecast for the future of Western power and the policies of the Western governments towards the Muslim world. We will also have to calculate the trajectory of the global economic system, and how this is likely to impact the Ummah, region by region. We are aided in this endeavor because the West, being generally in the privileged position of security and dominance, and thus, not kept occupied with continuous crisis management and survival, regularly makes its own forecasts about the future; their expectations, their plans, and long-term agendas.
We can analyze the basic data about our regions; their demographic characteristics, their resources, their geostrategic positions, and how this information is trending, and what these trends may mean in the future in the overall context of domestic and international relations
And, of course, we can look, and must, at the various Islamist trends that prevail today; from movements like the Muslim Brotherhood to Da’esh and al-Qaeda; from so-called moderates and modernists to Salafis and Jihadis; from Muslim democrats to Khilafah-ists; and potentially resurgent elements like the Sufis, and so on. We have to consider existing and potential separatist movements within the Ummah, such as the Kurds, the Uighurs, the Moros in the Philippines, the Rohingyas in Burma, and the Muslim minority in southern Thailand.
We must also look at the future of Iran and the likely trajectory of the influence of the Shi’ah in the Muslim world, particularly the Middle East.
I confess that I have no special qualifications to undertake this sort of effort, but it is my intention to do so in the form of a book, offered, for what it is worth, to my fellow ancestors of the next three generations of this Ummah. I don’t know how long it will take me to write, but I ask Allah to help me complete it over the next several months, and to accept it from me. Insha’Allah, I will periodically post excerpts of this book as I progress.
I welcome your input and advice.
Jazakum Allahu Khayran wa Barak Allahu Lakum.