"The subject of Islamism is certainly controversial from a scholarly point of view, but it is also and above all regularly caught up in the media maelstrom. This makes it difficult to see things clearly. I defend one central hypothesis : Islamism, which I define as a form of intensified politicisation of Islam, from its Egyptian epicentre onwards, has never had the practical means to realise its original claims, i.e. to systematically realise the Great Narrative ( al-riwāya al-kubrā ), i.e. [to build the Muslim individual, the Muslim home, the Muslim society, the Muslim state, the Islamic caliphate, up to the point of assuming the leadership of humanity ( ustāḏiyyat al-ʿālam )]. However, it is not so much the history of its failures, especially political ones, as the successive setbacks it has had to deal with that fundamentally characterises the legalist tendency in which we are particularly interested. This tendency has more or less explicitly renounced the caliphal utopia and is confronted, like any other political organisation, with the principle of reality."