Yasin Aktay

There have been almost regular attempts to declare the “end of Islamism” or “the end of political Islam.” Since the late 1980s, many observers have been quick to pronounce the end of Islamism with every new political development concerning the Muslim world. In countries where authoritarian regimes repressed the Islamists with massive bloody operations, it was claimed that Islamism was ending. However, it was rather the Islamists’ defeat by oppressive means as opposed to an end. In a way, proponents of the “end” discourses welcomed the dictators’ supremacy over the Islamists. Thus the celebration of the “end of Islamism” represented an acknowledgement of authoritarian, anti-democratic regimes in the Islamic world.