Islamic militant movements
Hasan ibn al Sabah
The third Nordic conference on Middle Eastern Studies:
Ethnic encounter and culture change
Joensuu, Finland, 19-22 June 1995
Islamic militant movements
between tradition and modernity
Abdel-Qader Yassine
Gothenburg University
How can the militant protest movements fighting for an Islamic state in
which Shari'ah (Islamic Law) rules supreme best be understood: as part of a
world-wide reaction against modernist thought or as a broad and diverse
attempt to understand and tackle the problems of modernity through
reconnecting with an indigenous system of references for producing meaning?
This is the main question discussed in this paper.
The Arab world is in turmoil. In most parts of the transcontinental land
that extends from Casablanca to Baghdad, internal conflict has become the
norm and uneasy stability is the exception. The growing cult of Islamic
militancy in the Arab world owes much more to socio-political than to
religious factors. The major causes of Islam being articulated as answer to
the prevailing ills of the Arab polities are basically two:
1) The failure of the Arab political elites to evolve responsive political
systems to take the place of traditional ones which no longer exist; and
2) The humiliating defeat of the Arabs in the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War of
June 1967 causing reverberations not only in the Middle East but the wider
Muslim world.
Islamic theory
In traditional Islamic political theory the state rested on three pillars:
the Ummah (the community of Muslim believers), the Caliphate, and the
Shari'ah (Islamic Law). Except perhaps in the early decades of Islam, this
theory, however, did not always conform to what happened in real life.
The Ummah embodied an ideal which could not be realised in full even in the
early period of Islam. As long as Islam was confined to the Arabian
Peninsula, the Ummah was a homogeneous community held together by the bonds
of Islam. But once Islam spread into the non-Arab territories to the north,
the dichotomy between the Arab and non-Arab Muslims arose. The Arabs found
it difficult to accept the non-Arabs as full members of the Ummah and gave
them the unflattering title of mawla (client). The Persians accepted Islam
but refused to be reconciled to Arab supremacy and led the revolt against
the first Arab-Islamic dynasty headed by the Umayyads. The Abbasids, who
succeeded the Umayyads, were accommodative to non-Arab Muslims.
From the tenth century onward, regional pressures reinforced by ethnic
self-assertion splintered the Islamic empire and it was progressively
displaced by feuding kingdoms across the massive arc stretching from the
plains of central Asia to the Atlantic coast of Africa.
In the 16th century, the Ottomans did succeed in bringing large chunks of
the Arab world under the umbrella of the Turkish empire but remained at
loggerheads with the Shiite rulers of Iran, called the Safavids. Towards the
end of the 19th century, the Arabs were stirred by sentiments of modern
nationalism and took full advantage of the opportunities offered by the
First World War to break loose from the Ottoman hegemony.
The 20th century has witnessed Iran and Turkey emerge as independent states,
and a fragmented Arab world into 20 odd nation-states. The Ummah had thus
ceased to be a fact of political life long before the advent of the present
day nation-states.
The institution of Caliphate emerged out of a practical necessity in the
aftermath of Prophet Muhammad's death. His closest companion Abu Bakr
al-Siddiq was chosen to head the Ummah, and he assumed the modest title of
Khalifah ("caliph" being its Western corruption) or deputy. But within the
span of a few decades the caliphate degenerated into an absolute hereditary
monarchy.
Islamic political theorists supplied the necessary religious underpinnings
for the institution to suit its changing requirements. It was generally held
that the caliph must be from Quraish (the Prophet's clan); he was the
defender of the faith and the political leader of the Ummah. All Muslims
were obliged to proclaim allegiance to him.
The principle of hereditary succession also found general acceptance. In
later centuries, power slipped from the hands of the caliph but the
caliphate lingered on as a notional institution. Kings and sultans of the
Muslim world found it expedient to seek the caliph's formal recognition in
return for offerings of salutations and gifts. The Shi'ah, of course, did
not recognise the caliphs and looked to their own imams for political
leadership and spiritual guidance. The late Ottomans staked their claim to
caliphate, if only to beef up their bargaining power vis-à-vis the European
states. But when the empire disintegrated after the First World War, the new
Turkish leaders, aspiring to build a modern republican state, abolished the
caliphate in 1924.
Since then, there has been no serious proposal from any quarter to revive
this supra-national politico-religious institution. Even the Islamic
Conference Organisation (ICO), which pays lip-service to Islamic solidarity,
takes ground realities into consideration to exclude political unification
of the Muslim world from its proclaimed agenda.
In the field of Shari'ah, too, the Arab societies have traversed a long way
from the early beginnings when the divine law, derived mainly from the
Qur'an and the Sunnah (sayings of the Prophet), governed all aspects of
life. In classical argument, the institution of caliphate itself was
justified in terms of the need for a central authority to enforce the
Shari'ah. Ironically enough, it was under the late Ottoman caliphate that
the application of Shari'ah was progressively circumscribed.
Beginning in the mid-19th century, the Ottoman sultans launched legal
reforms, supplanting the Shari'ah from the penal and commercial fields,
under the grand project of "tanzimat", or "putting things in order." The
project also stipulated creation of "nizamiyah" (secular) courts to
adjudicate the man-made penal and commercial laws.
The 1917 Ottoman Law of Family Rights made inroads into the hitherto
forbidden territory of Muslim personal law by introducing administrative
regulations governing divorce and relief to deserted wives. Violation of
these regulations was punishable under the secular criminal law. Most of the
Arab countries, stretching from Iraq to Morocco, effected further reforms in
the Muslim personal law besides endorsing the general principle of
sovereignty of legislatures to enact laws for all aspects of life. It can
thus be said that in most of the Arab countries today the Shari'ah applies
only to limited segments of life involving marriage, divorce and
inheritance. There are, however, two sets of exceptions to this rule. At one
end of the spectrum stand Saudi Arabia and the smaller states of the Arabian
Peninsula which enforce, with varying intensity, the Islamic penal codes.
Iran, too, falls into this category.
At the other extreme is Turkey which, in the wake of the Kemalist revolution
of the early 1920s, adopted a militant secularist stance. It proclaimed
modern secular laws for all areas of life including marriage and divorce. It
is seldom realised that outside the "communist" fold Turkey is the only
Asian nation to opt for full-scale secularisation of social and political
life in a strictly modern sense of the term. And it has stayed that way
since the days of Mustapha Kemal Atatürk, notwithstanding recurrent clamour
by the Islamists for a return to the good old days of the Shari'ah.
It follows from the above that the concept of ummah and the institution of
caliphate had either become dysfunctional or changed beyond recognition long
before the advent of western influence in the region. It was only in the
field of Shari'ah that increasing contacts with Europe and modernisation of
social and economic life contributed to its shrinking influence.
Alternative order
While Arab modernising political elites can justly claim credit for managing
the transition to certain areas with reasonable efficacy, they cannot escape
blame for their failure to provide a credible alternative to the traditional
system of government. This does not mean that no effort was made in this
direction. On the intellectual level, a whole generation of thinkers from
Abdel-Rahman al-Kawakibi to Ahmad Lutfi as-Sayyid, Ali Abdel-Raziq and Taha
Hussein, joined the quest, in the late 19th and the early part of this
century, for an alternative order based on reason and rule of law.
The Syrian-born Abdel-Rahman al-Kawakibi argued that despotism had been the
bane of Muslim polities through the ages; that the just state, in which men
could find fulfilment, was one in which the individual was free and freely
served the community; and that the government should be controlled by the
people and act as a watchdog to ensure that freedom. Ahmad Lutfi as-Sayyid,
for his part, made the case that good government is one that springs from
the will of the people. All other forms end up in tyranny.
The case for an out and out secular order was, however, made by Sheikh Ali
Abdel-Raziq in his book al-Islam wa Usul al-Hukm (Islam and the Basis of
Political Authority, 1925). A product of al-Azhar and Oxford, Abdel-Raziq
used his theological scholarship and analytical skill to advance the thesis
that the entire theory of caliphate (the kingpin of Islamic political
thought) had no basis in the Qur'an and the Sunnah and that the practice of
the caliphate was often at variance with its theory.
Abdel-Raziq's book aroused a storm of protest. But the works of Dr Taha
Hussein (also an alumnus of al-Azhar) were greeted with much less hostility.
For Taha Hussein approached his subject from a pragmatic rather than
theological angle. In his Future of Culture in Egypt, he argued that the
dichotomy between religious dogma and everyday secular practice is an
inescapable part of life.
Early Arabs, he reasoned, had no inhibitions about borrowing extensively
from Greek and Persian civilisations and they gained a great deal in the
bargain. Hence, contemporary Arabs need not be averse to borrowing from the
Western civilisation.
On a practical footing, the quest for alternative basis of polity found
expression in eclectic approach. It favoured liberal borrowings from Western
constitutional forms and adapting them to local needs and circumstances. In
quick succession, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt adopted constitutions
patterned after the British, French or Belgian models. This stupendous
experiment in constitutionalism, however, did not carry much credibility as
it was generally devoid of democratic content.
In the 1950s, most of these edifices collapsed like houses of cards. A
succession of coups d'etat and civil disorders made the whole region
reverberate with the sound of crashing thrones. Egypt and Iraq turned into
republics and the soaring spirit of republicanism rattled the remaining
monarchies in the region.
Then came the era of charismatic leaders espousing heady ideologies of
pan-Arabism, socialism and redressal of the unequal relationship with the
West. Even the Shah of Iran donned the mantle of a modernising monarch
heralding his "white revolution".
In most cases, where some form of constitutional structures existed, the
single party system of political mobilisation was introduced. But this was
mostly used as a facade behind which dictatorial rule thrived. The press and
other media were firmly controlled.
The system allowed no possibility of free debate on public priorities or
policies. Even the Shah of Iran felt tempted to emulate the undemocratic
devices designed by the radical republics in the region which he otherwise
abhorred.
As for the paternalistic kingdoms and emirates of the Arabian Peninsula, the
rate of their social and economic transformation in the wake of the oil boom
of the 1970s has been mind-boggling. Literacy advanced in rapid strides and
the benefits of housing, health and general economic welfare were extended
to all sections of these sparsely populated oil-exporting countries. But
there was no corresponding change in the political arena. Political power
still vests in kings and sheikhs amidst growing popular clamour for
accountability and rule of law.
Divisions and disjunctions
If the absence of credible political systems responsive to popular
expectations has driven the people to protest under the banner of Islam, the
failure of the ruling elites to hold their own against an expansionist
Israel or to contain super-power pressures on the region gave a militant
edge to the call of Jihad against the internal and external foes of Islam.
The Islamic militants, commonly called "fundamentalists" because of their
strident call for a return to the fundamental tenets of Islam, view the
defeat of Arab armies at the hands of the Zionist state in a series of wars,
beginning in 1947, and the loss of entire Palestine to Israel in the
process, as a catastrophe for the Arab and Islamic peoples. The
fundamentalists no doubt blame the Zionist and their Western backers, in
particular the United States, for this calamity; but they blame their own
rulers even more.
They ascribe the Arab-Islamic defeat to the alienation of the ruling classes
from Islam, their worship of the false idols of nationalism (local as well
as pan-Arab) and their addiction to foreign ideologies such as socialism,
communism or capitalism. The same malaise, they argue, accounts for the
apathy and inaction of the present rulers in face of the ongoing tragedy in
Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Exacerbating the grievous injury to the Arab sense of dignity and honour
caused by defeat is the relentless pressures on and manipulations of the
region by the industrialised West which not only accounts for close to
two-thirds of the world's proven oil reserves but also serves as a lucrative
market, thanks to the oil boom of the 1970s, for their consumer products and
weapons. The Islamists see in this a replay of the medieval crusades.
It is, however, necessary to point out that the fundamentalists in the Arab
world are not a monolithic entity nor is their upsurge irreversible. The
fundamentalist camp, although clamouring for Islamic solidarity, suffers
from inner divisions and disjunctions. Saudi Arabia, for example, has long
been the home of what might be called controlled fundamentalism.
The Saudi royalty took shelter behind Islam to deny its own people a
constitution. And to gain respectability for their archaic domestic set-up,
the Saudi rulers created the Rabitat al-Alam al-Islami (World Islamic
League) to mobilise goodwill of Muslim `ulama' from all over the world
through an elaborate system of patronage.
With a substantial spurt in oil royalties in the 1970s, Saudi Arabia
sponsored the Islamic Conference Organisation as a handy platform to
demonstrate its Islamic credentials. It is hardly surprising that the United
States found Saudi Arabia's championship of Islam as a convenient weapon to
beat the Arab radicals with, and look benignly on it.
In the wake of the Suez War, which spelled disaster for Britain as a
custodian of Western interests in the Middle East, US president Dwight
Eisenhower seriously toyed with the idea of promoting king Saud as the
"pope" of Islam. But the project failed to take off.
For some time now, Saudi Arabia is having second thoughts about the efficacy
of its own brand of Islam as an instrument of its foreign policy. It all
started with the Iranian clergy mounting a rebellion against the Shah and
eventually seizing political power. In 1979, the Pahlavi monarchy of Iran
was replaced by an Islamic republic with Ayatollah Khomeini as its "Supreme
Guide".
The cause of Saudi Arabia's discomfiture lay in the fact that whereas Riyadh
had always invoked Islam to uphold political status quo, Iran's new rulers
presented Islam in a revolutionary attire seeking to topple despotic kings,
ushering in an egalitarian social and economic order, and fighting foreign
dominance in the region.
The Saudis were indeed scared when, in 1979, a bunch of home-grown
fundamentalists occupied the Holy Mosque of Mecca in an undisguised attempt
to overthrow the monarchy, ironically, in the name of Islam.
In Iran, too, in the past 16 years since Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran
from his long exile, public zeal for the Islamic revolution has steadily
diminished. Khomeini strongly believed in the unquestioned power and
efficacy of Islam to establish and sustain a just social and political
order. He encouraged export of the Iranian revolution to other parts of the
Islamic world and envisaged eventual triumph of Islam the world over. He
came to be identified with what may be called messianic fundamentalism.
Khomeini, however, glossed over one basic fact about the Islamic revolution:
it was made possible by the active support and sacrifices of a good section
of the educated youth and the merchant class who would loathe to see Iran
converted into an obscurantist theocracy. As it happened, the clergy
squeezed their non-clerical partners out of the newly created governing
institutions and eventually suppressed them.
The eight-year-long Iran-Iraq war, which was patently senseless for both
sides, scotched all hopes of a just and humane order taking shape in Iran.
In the end, Khomeini was compelled by his closest advisers to swallow his
pride and call for a cease-fire. The post-Khomeini Iran is surely, though
haltingly, moving towards a rational and pragmatic approach to the moulding
of Iran's domestic and foreign policies. Dr Qassem Ihsanzadeh, an outspoken
member of the Iranian parliament recently observed: "We must decide whether
we want a parliamentary system or an Islamic government - the two are
incompatible." Predictably, he was shouted down by the Islamists but not
before he made it quite clear that there were many more who shared his views
but would not utter them publicly.
President Ali Hashimi Rafsanjani, for his part, knows that he cannot bring
the fruits of revolution to the restive people of Iran without the inputs of
science and technology and modern managerial skills. He is, therefore, keen
to loosen the stranglehold of clergy on the system so that Iranian
technocrats who fled the country in the wake of the revolution can return
and a new generation of technocrats could be trained at home.
Rafsanjani admittedly sees no contradiction between modernity and Islam and
he speaks of the need for close co-operation between Iran, India and China
so that they can have a say in post- cold war world politics. All this is a
far cry from the heady days of February 1979 when Ayatollah Khomeini had
unfurled the flag of Islamic revolution.
Hence the real breeding grounds of militant Islam and Islamic fundamentalism
today are not in Iran or Saudi Arabia or the mini-states of the Gulf. On the
contrary, these states are either apprehensive of Islamic militancy or, as
in the case of Iran, having second thoughts about its efficacy as an
instrument of public policy. Islamic militancy is, however, rampant in the
more populous Arab countries of Egypt, Algeria and the Sudan. All three have
certain features in common: population explosion, soaring unemployment and
varying degrees of repression of political dissent. And this has given rise
to Islamic protest movements which can be generally designated as
retributive fundamentalism.
The political stalemate in Egypt during the 1940s, resulting from the
triangular conflict between the British, the king and the mass-based Wafd
Party, and public disenchantment with the politicians in the wake of
Egyptian defeat in the first Arab-Israeli War of 1947-48, swelled the ranks
of al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun (Muslim Brothers), founded by Hassan al-Banna in
1929. The Ikhwan preached that the redemption of Egypt (and of the Islamic
world) lay neither in reform nor in reinterpretation of the Islamic doctrine
but in its full-scale resurrection.
They declared that the real issue was not Islam's inadequacy to meet the
challenges of modern times but that Islam was never given a chance to prove
its efficacy, and that the Qur'an and the Sunnah provide essentials of a
just political order and a universal brotherhood of men. Above all, the
Ikhwan claimed that the fault lay not in Islam but in its internal and
external enemies: the West strangled it politically and economically from
the outside and the westernised Muslims undermined it from within.
On the eve of the revolution of July 1952, which toppled the monarchy and
put General Muhammad Naguib and Colonel Jamal Abdel-Nasser into power, the
Ikhwan claimed a million followers in Egypt alone. Two years later the
Ikhwan faced a showdown with the military regime and lost. For a while,
Nasser's Egypt offered a future of hope to its teeming millions. Pursuit of
the ideals of socialism, unification of the Arab world into a single polity,
and an independent role in world affairs enthused the whole Arab world. But
the defeat of Egypt in the June 1967 war turned that dream into a nightmare.
Nasser's image as saviour of the Arabs was shattered and he died soon after.
That was the time when the Islamists regrouped and mounted a frontal assault
taking advantage of Egypt's mounting economic problems, the occupation of
Sinai by Israel and the vacillations and waywardness of Anwar al-Sadat who
succeeded Nasser. Al-Sadat's compromise agreement with Israel over Sinai was
seen by the Islamists as a betrayal of Egypt and Islam and as a
justification to take up arms against the regime.
The turmoil gave birth to several militant groups, collectively know as
al-Jama'at al-Islamiyyah (Islamic Groups). Currently the intensity of their
violence and the virulence of their propaganda make the old Ikhwan look like
a moderate outfit. One such group, called al-Jihad al-Islami, plotted the
assassination of president Anwar al-Sadat in October 1981. Amongst their
principal targets are top members of the Coptic Christians, who make up over
15 per cent of Egypt's population, and foreign tourists.
The most visible protagonist of the movement is a 55-year-old sightless Dr
Omar Abdel-Rahman, now under detention in the United States for his alleged
involvement in the car-bomb attack on the World Trade Centre at New York, in
February 1993, that killed six people and injured many more.
In Algeria, the monopoly on power enjoyed by the National Liberation Front
(FLN) and its failure to find credible solutions to the nation's economic
problems, notwithstanding its substantial oil and gas reserves, have thrown
up an Islamic backlash. Opponents of the FLN rallied under the banner of
Islam not because Islam had ready-made answers to Algeria's political and
economic woes but because the ruling group permitted no secular platform to
exist outside its own regimented ranks.
In the early 1980s, the Algerian government launched an austerity programme
to grapple with rising unemployment. But the crisis aggravated and in
October 1988 widespread anti-government riots occurred. The government then
belatedly revised the constitution to permit a multi-party system.
Restrictions on the press were relaxed. Among the various political parties
that emerged, the most articulate was the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS),
headed by Abbas Madani. It benefited greatly from Madani's previous record
of opposing the FLN and gained further popularity through impressive relief
operations organised in the wake of the 1989 earthquake.
Not surprisingly, therefore, the Islamic Salvation Front won 67 per cent of
the provinces and 55 per cent of the municipalities in the regional and
local elections held in June 1990. And in the postponed parliamentary
elections, eventually held in December 1991, when the FIS won 188 of the 231
seats in the first round of elections, president al-Shazli Ben-Jedid stepped
down to make way for Muhammad Bou-Diaf. The new president cancelled the
elections. In March 1992, the FIS was outlawed. Bou-Diaf was assassinated on
June 29th, 1992. Algeria's cautious advance towards democracy came to a
grinding halt.
In the Sudan General Ga'afar Muhammad al-Numeiri seized power in a bloodless
coup d'état in 1969, and followed in the footsteps of Egypt's Nasser,
adopting a set of socialist policies and mobilising mass support under the
banner of the Sudanese Socialist Union, within the framework of a
single-party system.
In the southern Sudan, assertively Christian and African in contrast to the
more populous Arab-Islamic north, Numeiri followed a policy of accommodation
by conceding autonomy and allocating resources for development. Numeiri's
16-year-long stint in power, however, left the economy tottering under the
weight of rampant corruption at home and the influx of refugees from
Ethiopia, Uganda and Chad; the south suspicious and resentful of Khartoum's
manipulations; and the disgruntled conservative groups in the north
breathing down the regime's neck.
A few years before his fall in April 1985 Numeiri enlisted the support of
the Ikhwan and Dr Hassan al-Turabi's National Islamic Front by promising to
turn Sudan into a full-blooded Islamic state. This desperate act alienated
the Christian south to the point of insurrection. Numeiri's exit has not
made much difference to Sudan's political and economic woes.
It is noteworthy that a few months before his ouster, Numeiri's crusade for
Islamisation of Sudan had resulted in the hanging of Muhammad Mahmoud Taha,
the 76-year-old protagonist of a secular approach to politics.
Taha's "crime" was that he and his associates belonging to the Republican
Brothers had distributed a leaflet saying that the Islamic laws promulgated
by Numeiri ran counter to Sudan's constitution and were indeed detrimental
to integration of the Muslim north and the Christian south into one nation
on the basis of equal rights for all citizens.
Taha thus became the first martyr to the cause of secularism in the Arab
world. The intrepid secularist refused to defend himself in the court
declaring that his persecution was unconstitutional and the judges were
unqualified and technically incompetent.
Secularism has been further discredited by the semi-fascist Ba'athist regime
of Saddam Hussein. The Gulf War accelerated the trend in favour of
fundamentalist Islamic movements and sharpened divisions among them.
Dose of democracy
Let me conclude by emphasising a few important points about the Islamic
protest movements in the Arab world. Arguably, what we are witnessing is the
intersecting of two phenomena:
The struggle of the South for political and economic liberation from the
power of the West is being continued by powerful movements for cultural
liberation, challenging the West's monopoly of having discovered universally
valid truths about how the world and society best should be understood and
organised.
This attempt at cultural liberation is focused on the right to seek a basis
in one's own culture and history. Nevertheless, in striving to liberate
themselves from Western models, Islamists cannot avoid calling into question
what is arguably the core of cultural hegemony which the expanding,
modernising Europe spread over the world: the ideas of the Enlightenment.
And this questioning comes at a time when these ideas, as represented by the
miscellaneous heirs to the Enlightenment, are in deep crisis in their
homelands.
As already noted, the challenge posed by Ayatollah Khomeini's Iran has
dampened the enthusiasm of Saudi and other Gulf rulers for politicisation of
Islam. In Iran itself, time and internal pressure for political openness and
economic progress do not favour the clergy and their grandiose notions of
Islamic resurgence.
As for the predicament of Algeria, Egypt and the Sudan, a major cause of the
people turning to Islam and the Islamists for resolving their economic and
political problems is the denial of opportunities to bring about political
change through the democratic process. Arguably, a victory of the Islamic
Salvation Front in the Algerian elections of 1991-92, which at any rate
appeared certain, might well have defused rather than aggravated the
political crisis in Algeria. In Egypt and the Sudan, too, a liberal dose of
democracy could bring a semblance of purpose and poise to the institutions
of governance.
The answer to the crisis of Arab polities lies in genuine power-sharing and
accountability in government. The Declaration of Principles signed in Oslo
in September 1993 between the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and
Israel on the framework of a political settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict, if carried to its logical conclusion, can blunt the edge of
Islamic militancy in the Middle East in a significant way. For, after all,
the hurt and humiliation caused to the Arab psyche by the loss of Palestine,
has been a vital contributing factor to Islamic extremism.
Modernism is not the monopoly of the corrupt ruling elite of the American
club of friends in the Arab world. If social peace and harmony is to
accompany the path of modernisation and progress in the Middle East, the
Islamists should not be driven into a corner. The Western mind and policy
makers have to accept the right of other peoples to cultural autonomy,
especially those who have behind them a long history and a great
civilisation. Diversity and variety in our world, within a framework of
mutual recognition and co-operation, is in a sense a guarantee for the
future. After all, man's heritage of rationality evolved on all sides of the
Mediterranean, not only on the northern side.
Abdel-Qader Yassine
© The author and Nordic Society for Middle Eastern Studies. Archived 10.8.95
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