Do Islamists execute foreign policy “normally”? At first, this seemingly caustic question is nonetheless pertinent for anyone interested in how an ideological system that claims to make its mark on the fate of Muslim societies throughout the world gives effect to it. At a time when the Arab world, the historical heart of political Islam, is experiencing major upheavals with consequences not the least of which is significantly drawing closer Islamists to spheres of power, it is essential to take an interest in their worldview and the international system that they espouse as well as their foreign policy ethic. How do they view the global space, translate their attempts to subject a society's structures and history to the religious norm and, when in command of a country's destiny, translate their ideology in the diplomatic domain? Also, what do the political principles relating to international relations that are inherent in the Islamist offer lead to for other actors of the international system? If this ideology raises numerous questions about its potential radicalism, one of the principal worries concerns the “revisionist” potential of militant and political Islam for the international system. Starting from a rhetoric and programmatic aims targeting specific non-Muslim countries (most prominently those that comprise the West due to the colonial legacy and some countries’ primacy event, although they are not exclusively targeted) against which the majority of Muslim societies are supposed to defend their identity, their values, and their interests, the international problem, nourished by numerous hotbeds of unresolved tensions, in large part explains the image projected by Islamism for Western opinion and elites. It is problematic that certain representatives of political Islam have sharpened after earning, for the most part democratically, the right to put their ideals into practice.

An examination of the links between the theorists (those who offer to determine concepts), cadres (those who are in charge of the organization and its structures), and militants (those who subscribe to the idea of using all sorts of activity, sometimes violent, to achieve a political objective) that emerged internationally over several decades from this current, is of even greater interest than the domain of relations that an actor maintains with the rest of the world and it is important on at least two counts.