The idea that the Muslim world is a “role in search of an actor” can be seen in the wide range of social, economic, political, and cultural challenges and problems that have persisted despite the repeated efforts of a succession of governments and
ideologies. Albeit with some significant regional variation, large parts of quickly growing Muslim populations across North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia live in relative poverty or economic stagnation with usually limited or stalled prospects for advancement and development, under governments that are generally authoritarian, frequently repressive, and often corrupt.15 These conditions are exacerbated by
recognition of falling further behind other parts of the world, as well as the excesses often enjoyed by privileged minorities at home including oil wealth which
disproportionately benefits a few states with small populations, and by the perception of vulnerability to the forces of globalization driven by a historically antagonistic and currently dominant West threatening to entrench outside exploitation and control. Although these conditions are not unique to Muslim areas of the developing world, and on a number of measures Muslim states do better than others, the frustrations and
14 Kilcullen, The accidental guerilla, 244-61. Mackinlay and Al-Baddawy, "Rethinking
Counterinsurgency," 25-6. Roy, Globalized Islam, 302-4.
15 "Between Fitna, Fawda and the Deep Blue Sea," 2008, The Economist, January 10,
http://www.economist.com/world/mideast-
africa/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=10499063. "MENA Population: 1950, Now, 2050," 2008, Middle East Strategy at Harvard (March 14),
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/mesh/2008/03/mena_population/. Roudi-Fahimi and Kent, 2007, "Challenges and Opportunities – The Population of the Middle East and North Africa," Population Bulletin 62 (2), June, http://www.prb.org/pdf07/62.2MENA.pdf.
grievances experienced provide a strong motivational potential for contentious collective action.16
The Arab Human Development Report, first compiled in 2002 for the United Nations Development Program by a distinguished group of Arab intellectuals in order to increase credibility for its primary Arab target audiences, highlights a wide range of economic and social development challenges facing that core part of the Muslim world. The report notes that one in five people in the nations covered lived on less than $2/day. The GDP of all Arab countries combined ($531.2 billion in 1999) was less than that of a single middle-size European country (Spain at $595.5 billion), while real GDP growth over the period of 1975 to 1998 had been close to stagnant averaging 0.5% per year compared to the global average of 1.3% per year. Highlighting relative deprivation, purchasing power parity (PPP) in real GDP per capita fell in the Arab world from 21.3% to 13.9% of the average OECD citizen during the same time frame. Noting that illiteracy rates remain higher in Arab countries than the rest of the developing world, the study captured in one frequently cited anecdote many other observed problems and challenges by reporting that the Arab world translates about 330 books annually, one fifth of the number that Greece translates.17
Aggravating the development problems facing much of the Muslim world is a cultural memory of historical greatness. Martin Kramer, frequent antagonist of many scholars focusing on the Middle East, wrote at the end of 1999:
In the year 1000, the Middle East was the crucible of world civilization. One could not lay a claim to true learning if one did not know Arabic, the language of science and philosophy. One could not claim to have seen the world’s greatest cities if one had not set eyes upon Baghdad and Cordoba, Cairo and Bukhara. Global trade flourished in the fabulous marketplaces of the Middle East as nowhere else. The scientific scholarship cultivated in its academies was unrivalled. An Islamic empire, established by conquest four centuries earlier, had spawned an Islamic civilization, maintained by the free will of the world’s most creative and enterprising spirits… This supremely urbane civilization cultivated genius. Had there been Nobel Prizes in 1000, they would have gone almost exclusively to Moslems.18
16 Fuller, The Future of Political Islam, 12, 81. Wiktorowicz, "A New Approach to the
Study of Islamic Activism," 33.
17 "How the Arabs Compare: Arab Human Development Report 2002," 2002, The
Middle East Quarterly 9 (4), Fall, http://www.meforum.org/article/513.
18 Kramer, 1999, "Islam's Sober Millennium," Jerusalem post, December 31,
Graham Fuller describes the effect this memory has today:
The deepest underlying source of Muslim anguish and frustration today lies in the dramatic decline of the Muslim world, in over just a few centuries, from the leading civilization in the world for over one thousand years into a lagging, impotent, and marginalized region of the world. This stunning reversal of
fortune obsessively shapes the impulses underlying much contemporary Islamist rhetoric.19
A variety of factors make a good claim to partially explaining the shift in historical balances of power, including: the decline of the traditional land based silk route to seafaring trade better exploited by rising European nations and fuelled by their
colonization of the new world; Mongol conquests and the emergence of divides within the old Islamic territories; environmental changes affecting the fertile crescent and favouring industrialization elsewhere; and, ultimately the emergence of European economic and colonial control over much of the Muslim world.20
All of which saw the states of the Muslim world arrive late to industrialization and thus suffer the steep challenges frequently discussed for modern developing economies on the periphery of the world capitalist system, struggling to develop industry and find niches in the world market in the face of often overwhelming competition from those who got their first.21 Relative to when Western countries industrialized, the Muslim world must catch up with significantly larger and still quickly growing populations that often outstrip marginal gains. Disproportionately young populations, dislocated from traditional support networks having moved to urban areas seeking opportunities promised by the modern era, remain unemployed or
underemployed further breeding discontent.
The magnitude of the development problems across the Muslim world is complicated and obscured by significant oil and resource wealth in several states, with Muslim majority nations accounting for seven of the top ten countries with the largest proven oil reserves and all but three members of OPEC.22 While domestic production and some transfers to other Muslim nations have helped raise living standards, what
19 Fuller, The Future of Political Islam, 1. 20 Ibid., 4-12.
21 Hinnebusch, 2002, Syria: Revolution From Above, London, Routledge, 2, Owen,
1998 #269.
22 Radler, 2006, "Oil Production, Reserves Increase Slightly in 2006," Oil & Gas
many call the resource or oil curse has contributed to stunted development and further aggravated grievances.23 Economists argue that many oil rich states tend to suffer from “Dutch disease” where other productive sectors of the domestic economy are put at a significant disadvantage by increasing the real exchange rate and comparative wage markets, disproportionately attracting talent and investment into oil production, while making other tradable sectors such as agriculture and manufacturing even less
competitive in global markets. Through the rentier state effect, the easy stream of oil wealth decreases the incentives that exist in states dependent upon taxation for governments to be more efficient and responsive, enabling regimes to at least
temporarily buy off calls for reform.24 This has led a number of observers to note that international oil prices and progress towards civil and political freedom in these countries often appear to move in opposite directions.25 In nations without strongly established accountability structures, the frequent result is elite corruption stealing much of the nation’s resource wealth, which likewise undermines incentives that exist
elsewhere to invest in broader human development. Dependency on resource wealth also exposes such countries to revenue volatility, driving domestic boom and bust cycles that increase perception and experience of relative deprivation.26 The timing of the discovery and economic profitability of oil was particularly unfortunate for many Muslim countries, undermining the early stages of other development paths and coming only after Western colonialism and economic penetration had established social,
economic, and political structures more susceptible to the negative effects of the
23 Other Muslim states are affected by similar resource rents, including phosphate for
Jordan and Morocco, super-power aid for many key countries especially during the Cold War, or indirect oil rents in the form of regional donor aid. Hinnebusch, Syria, 7, 65. Richards and Waterbury, 1998, A Political Economy of the Middle East, Westview Press, 195-7, 229.
24 Ayubi, 1995, Over-stating the Arab State: Politics and Society in the Middle East,
London, I. B. Tauris Publishers, 224-30.
25 Friedman, 2006, "The First Law of Petropolitics," Foreign Policy, May/June,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3426.
26 The boom of high oil prices in the 1970’s for example increased expectations but also
saw an increase in inflation, corruption, and graft. The following oil price collapse of the 1980’s then necessitated painful cuts which regional political elites tended to disproportionately shift to the larger populations. Sadowski, 2006, "Political Islam: Asking the Wrong Questions?," Annual Review of Political Science 9, June: 222.
resource curse along with state borders that concentrated much of that wealth away from large Muslim populations.27
On top of the economic problems and development challenges facing Muslim populations, the potential for contentious conflict is further cultivated by domestic politics frequently characterized by authoritarian, corrupt, repressive, and incompetent governments. The leaders who took over during the mid-20th century looked back on at least 100 years of Western domination and in many cases recent direct rule.28 Colonial powers had shaped the area for their own benefit, often excessively oppressing local populations, and to a large extent had failed to “establish responsible local government institutions because they were too busy competing with each other.”29 From the start the newly independent states inherited the same problems as their colonial predecessors including a lack of legitimacy often exacerbated by artificial and arbitrarily drawn borders, poverty, illiteracy, cultural divisions, and scarce money to fund development.30 Unfortunately for even the best-intentioned leaders who came to power under these conditions, history has shown no quick or painless paths to universal prosperity. Governments often increasingly shifted resources to maintain power in the face of
27 Auty, 1993, Sustaining Development in Mineral Economies: The Resource Curse
Thesis, London, Routledge. Ayubi, Over-stating the Arab State, 311. Bromley, 1994,
Rethinking Middle East Politics: State Formation and Development, Polity Press, 135. Friedman, "The First Law of Petropolitics.". Henry and Springborg, 2001, Globalization and the Politics of Development in the Middle East, Cambridge University Press, 11. O'Neill, 2007, "Nigerian Oil, Curse of the Black Gold," National Geographic
Magazine, February. Owen and Pamuk, 1998, A History of Middle East Economies in the Twentieth Century, London, I.B. Tauris, 203, 7. Richards and Waterbury, A Political Economy of the Middle East, 187, 92, 97. Robinson, Torvik and Verdier, 2006,
"Political Foundations of the Resource Curse," Journal of Development Economics 79 (2), April. Sachs and Warner, 1999, "The Big Rush, Natural Resource Booms and Growth," Journal of Development Economics 59 (1), June.
28 Habeck, 2006, Knowing the Enemy: Jihadist Ideology and the War on Terror, New
Haven, Yale University Press, 26. Hinnebusch, 1988, Egyptian Politics Under Sadat The Post-Populist Development of an Authoritarian-Modernizing State, Updated ed, London, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 11.
29 Henry and Springborg, Globalization and the Politics of Development in the Middle
East, 9.
30 Bromley, Rethinking Middle East Politics, 135. Fuller, The Future of Political Islam,
8-9. Henry and Springborg, Globalization and the Politics of Development in the Middle East, 11. Hinnebusch, Syria, 19. Owen, 2000, State, Power and Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East, Second ed, Routledge, 21.
disappointed populations.31 Many of the resulting governments in power today have learned to carefully guard their positions of authority by stage-managing the appearance of democratization when needed,32 as well as routinely suppressing, jailing, torturing, and executing those who would challenge them – which in turn often gives rise to opposition groups who are more secretive, conspiratorial, and willing to use or endorse violence.33
External power politics over the past century has not been kinder to the Muslim world, with political and social dynamics often shaped by hot and cold wars, as well as the martial socio-political structures resulting from and preceding such conflicts.34
World War One saw the final act of the old Islamic caliphate with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, which had sided with Germany, and the end of the war leaving large parts of the Middle East under European control.35 World War Two, principally fought by European protagonists, again played out in part with fighting across North and East Africa as well as in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. The end of the Second World War, and along with it an accelerating end to the era of colonialism, saw the conception of two particularly lasting conflicts in the Muslim world with the partition of India creating a divided Muslim Pakistan and the clash over Kashmir, and the implementation of the
31 Ayubi, Over-stating the Arab State, 200-1, 56, 66-9. Beinin, 2001, Workers and
Peasants in the Modern Middle East, Cambridge University Press, 139-40. Fuller, The Future of Political Islam, 8-9. Hinnebusch, Syria, 6-7, 41, 7, 55, 88. Owen, State, Power and Politics, 31. Richards and Waterbury, A Political Economy of the Middle East, 188.
32 Mandaville, Global Political Islam, 103.
33 Ayoob, 2007, The Many Faces of Political Islam: Religion and Politics in the Muslim
World, University of Michigan Press. Fuller, 2002, "The Future of Political Islam,"
Foreign Affairs 81 (2), March/April. Hafez, 2004, "From Marginalization to Massacres: A Political Process Explanation of GIA Violence in Algeria," In Islamic Activism: A Social Movement Theory Approach, ed. Wiktorowicz, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Hafez and Wiktorowicz, "Violence as Contention in the Egyptian Islamic
Movement.". Hegghammer, 2006, "Terrorist Recruitment and Radicalization in Saudi Arabia," Middle East Policy 13 (4), December.
34 Ayubi, Over-stating the Arab State, 256, 66-9. Fuller, The Future of Political Islam,
8-9. Hinnebusch, Syria, 7. Hinnebusch, 2003, The International Politics of the Middle East, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 154. Richards and Waterbury, A
Political Economy of the Middle East, 242. Singerman, 2004, "The Networked World of Islamist Social Movements," In Islamic Activism: A Social Movement Theory Approach, ed. Wiktorowicz, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 146-8.
35 Woodward, 2006, Hell in the Holy Land: World War I in the Middle East, University
Balfour Agreement creating the modern state of Israel and with it the continuing Palestinian crisis. The Cold War saw Muslim nations caught between and as minor actors in super-power confrontations, with neither the U.S. nor the Soviet Union truly concerned about domestic conditions over the priorities of international balancing when deciding where to give or withhold aid and favours. During this time the Muslim world saw more than its share of hot wars, including: various Arab-Israeli conflicts; wars for independence such as in Algeria; civil wars and similar levels of violence over
secession such as in Somalia, Bosnia, Lebanon, and East Timor; and, wars between regional powers such as Iran and Iraq, or Eritrea and Ethiopia. The region has
repeatedly seen outside large-scale military intervention, such as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the two gulf wars led by the United States against Iraq, as well as numerous smaller military actions by outside forces.36
Finally, international economic forces after the age of colonialism often
associated with or described as globalization have created as much economic disruption and discontent in the Muslim world as in other developing regions.37 Given ancient and
recent perceptions of antagonism with Western powers seen as the dominant forces of economic and cultural globalization the perception of threat and feeling of resentment within many Muslim populations is especially strong, and as likely to be aimed at Western powers as at often wealthy and corrupt domestic elites. This perception is fed by regional elites who rightly or wrongly blame a wide range of domestic problems on traditional Western adversaries.38 For many in the Muslim world the impact of this is magnified by a cultural memory that the great Islamic empire has given way to a period of Western domination.39 As Graham Fuller notes, the irony is “even as Westerners feel threatened by Islam, most in the Muslim world feel themselves besieged by the West.”40
36 Hinnebusch, The International Politics of the Middle East, 154. 37 Fuller, The Future of Political Islam, 68-9.
38 Kraidy, "Arab Media and US Policy." 39 Fuller, The Future of Political Islam, 2. 40 Fuller, "The Future of Political Islam."