Chapter 1 Introduction The word exceptionalism was born of politics. In its earliest incarnation, the term was invariably prefaced by the qualifier American and used by leftist intellectuals to describe the apparently unique ability of the United States to avoid class warfare. Muslim exceptionalism , on the other hand, is a much younger term that first earned currency in political science in the 1990s (Pipes 1996). Yet it bears a conceptual pedigree that easily predates Karl Marx. The idea that something sets Muslim politics and society apart from the politics and society of everyone else is the hallmark of Orientalism, a one-way conversation started by European elites in the eighteenth century (Irwin 2006). However, following the publication of Edward Said''s withering magnum opus Orientalism (1978), much self-conscious scholarship may have eschewed the idea of Muslim exceptionalism for fear of committing academic heresy or even a "thought crime" (Kramer 2006). This is clearly no longer the case. Even before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the general belief that all Muslim societies are built on the bedrock of a shared, immutable, and alien faith influenced "dominant attitudes in academia and, with much more devastating effects, in the media" (Filali-Ansary 1999, 18).

These attitudes hardened in the 1990s, when some observers noted that Muslim countries missed the "Third Wave" of democratization in the 1980s (Huntington 1991, 281). Moreover, following "the end of history," that is, the collapse of the Soviet Union (Fukuyama 1992), and the ideological bankruptcy of communism, autocratic regimes were replaced with representative governments everywhere, it seemed, except in the cradle of Islam, the Middle East (Salame 1994). In the years since 9/11, well-meaning Western proponents of interfaith tolerance--including academics, journalists, and policy makers--have tried to promote a more nuanced understanding of Islam and (to a lesser extent) the diversity of the Muslim world. Yet there remains a persistent view--on both sides of the Atlantic (Nussbaum 2012)--that the politics of all Muslims can be explained by the influence of Islam. This is evident not only in some conservative media and foreign policy circles, but also in the world of security affairs, where Muslims are perennially viewed with suspicion and alarm (Croft 2012; Kaya 2012). In short, and despite the best efforts of many civil society actors, the view that Muslims are exceptionally problematic politically is at the heart of a contentious and continuing debate (Mandaville 2013; see also, e.g., Bayat 2013; Strindberg and Warn 2011; Elshtain 2009).

Like Orientalism, the term "Muslim exceptionalism" is applied and interpreted inconsistently. One way to parse what is or is not exceptional about Muslims is to explicitly examine specific political or social variables in contrast to non-Muslims. This approach, adopted by Steven Fish, delivered a number of conclusions. In a robust comparative study, he argues Muslim societies, when compared to non-Muslim societies, are more averse to homosexuality and, to a lesser degree, averse to abortion and divorce. In addition, in societies with proportionately larger Muslim populations, both murder rates and socioeconomic inequality are lower. The caveat to the latter is that gender-based inequality is higher. Yet the most significant political finding is that democracy is "rarer" in Muslim societies (Fish 2011, 255-56). One conventional explanation for this finding, that is, that Muslims are more likely to fuse religion with political legitimacy, is empirically rejected.

Instead, Fish argues there is no fundamental difference between autocrats in Muslim states and those in non-Muslim states. In other words, the same institutional impediments to democracy at work in other developing countries are essentially the same in Muslim-majority states. Nonetheless, the view that Muslim populations are less likely to endorse democracy remains conventional even following the events of the so-called Arab Awakening beginning in 2011. Cynics point to the fact that the first elections following regime change in Tunisia and Egypt returned Islamists as the victors. Considering the dynamic flow of events across the region, the question of whether or not democracy will ultimately consolidate, whether or not peaceful transfers of power to rival parties will occur routinely following future elections, is not yet known. Thus, a more substantive response to the question of whether or not Muslim societies are resistant to democracy would benefit from observations of the Arab world in years following the Arab Awakening. Yet despite the efforts of Fish and other scholars to determine whether Muslims are somehow exceptional, there is another critical question to which the answer remains empirically unanswered: are Muslims exceptionally resistant to ethnic nationalism? The questions are not mutually exclusive. As a doctrine of both popular sovereignty and territorial self-determination, nationalism is essential to nation-state legitimacy.

By determining the criteria for who is or is not a citizen, whether determined by where one is born or to whom, a national identity enables the state to identify who is or is not a member of the demos . This identity is typically composed of social markers including, but not limited to, some combination of shared ancestry, religion, culture, and language. This identity defines a people, who in turn define a nation, which in turn describes the extent--and justifies the existence--of a nation-state. Nationalism is, in this sense, "the major form in which democratic consciousness expresses itself in the modern world" (O''Leary 1998, 79; Nodia 1994). Hence, if a state supports a shared culture that links the identity of otherwise diverse citizens, then "many of the problems that will normally appear in the effort to democratize a multinational community are simply not on the agenda" (Stepan 1998, 223). This is equally applicable to individual freedoms as "it is necessary to solve the national question before liberal rule can be possible" (Hall 1998, 13). In the case of American exceptionalism, for example, Samuel Huntington argued that a threat to the liberal creed that defines American national identity is nothing less than a threat to American democracy (Huntington 2004). What then should be made of a Muslim national identity? Is there anything like a Muslim demos? Is there a single nation of Islam, or are there many Muslim nations? And what of the Arabs? Is (or rather was ) pan-Arab nationalism a doctrine shaped around religion, ethnic chauvinism, neither, or both? And what is the impact of the Arab Spring vis-à-vis nationalism: will it ultimately lead Arab states toward a stronger shared identity but separate states, or separate identities and separate nations? These questions draw attention to a split within the discussion(s) of Muslim exceptionalism: on one side are proponents of positions that mark Arabs as a special subset of Muslims; on the other side are observers who ascribe and/or describe characteristics that apply to any society that surrenders, as it were, to Islam.

In the case of the Arab world, the Muslim exceptionalism thesis does have some leverage due to the remarkable sociolinguistic phenomenon of diglossia, a situation whereby languages function in separate registers, one Low and one High, one illiterate and one literate, one ingrained and one acquired, one vulgar and one official. Arabic diglossia means that the Low vernaculars of Arab peoples are marginalized in the public sphere in favor of High Arabic, that is, Modern Standard Arabic, which is the sole official language of the state and its institutions, most critically those of public education. This yields a population in a state but not of a state, a population part of an amorphous "Arab world" but not part of an ethnolinguistic nation as is typical outside of the Arab world. I call this phenomenon Arab dinationalism (see Chapter 4). Outside of the Arab world, however, the perception that Muslims are exceptionally resistant to ethnic nationalism is challenged directly. To this end, six cases of Muslim-minority separatists--the Kurds of Iraq, the Uyghurs of China, the Sindhis of Pakistan, the Kashmiris of India, the Acehnese of Indonesia, and the Moros of the Philippines--were selected as examples of Muslim societies challenging the sovereignty of their state, though the nature of the challenge was not predetermined. To collect primary research material, the leadership of separatist parties and organizations were contacted personally and interviewed specifically regarding the raison d''être of their operation, whether Islamist, nationalist, both or neither. In regard to the relative strength of an ethnonational identity, a specific litmus test was the separatists'' view of education language policy (see Chapter 3).

This all required a great deal of fieldwork. Interviews with expatriate (or exiled) leaders required travel to Britain (Kurds), Sweden (Acehnese), and Germany (Uyghurs). However, most interviews were conducted on site, on the ground, in the separatist region itself. Hence, fieldwork was conducted in Iraq (Kurdistan), Pakistan (Sindh), India (Kashmir), Indonesia (Aceh), and the Philippines (Mindanao). After examining and comparing all six cases, the findings of this book are as follows: It is clear that non-Arab Muslims are in no way resistant to ethnic nationalism. There is, however, variation among the cases. Some Muslim separatists are exclusively secular and ethnonational: this is so in Xinjiang, Sindh, and Iraqi Kurdistan. Others are influenced by Islamist politics: this is so in Kashmir, Aceh, and Mindanao.

The variation between the cases is explained by the cr.