With the continued grievances across the Muslim world, and the failure of previous alternatives, increasingly a variety of movements have emerged around the shared ideological focus that – al-Islam, huwa al-hall – “Islam is the solution.”52
Understanding how and why political Islam appeals to and shapes the opinions of large populations across the Muslim world is important to understanding the potential appeal of those particular militant Islamists who espouse terrorist tactics against both near and far enemies. Examining political Islam from a social movement theory perspective – analyzing the grievances and hopes, mobilizing networks, political opportunity structures, and framing processes – in turn better enables us to understand why hearts and minds strategies targeting these populations may succeed or fail.
Throughout this work, I define political Islam or Islamism synonymously in the same way as Graham Fuller, where “an Islamist is one who believes that Islam as a body of faith has something important to say about how politics and society should be ordered in the contemporary Muslim World and who seeks to implement this idea in some fashion.”53 In this manner, the terms political Islam or Islamist are neutral in character, and explicitly capture a diverse range of groups and ideologies active today that reject or endorse violence, seek to work within or outside of existing political structures, and take what might be characterized as liberal, conservative, modernizing, reformist, or fundamentalist approaches to the interpretation of Islamic ideals and traditions.54 Islamist convictions also cover “a broad spectrum” from “those who merely like to see Islam accorded proper recognition in national life and in terms of national
52 Esposito, "Political Islam.". Fuller, "The Future of Political Islam."
53 Fuller, The Future of Political Islam, XI-XII. It should be noted that many authors
use the term Islamist in a more narrow manner, often for more radical or fundamentalist Islamists whose goals of state control and reformation are more absolute and all
encompassing. Roy, Globalized Islam, 58. Mandaville, in his book titled Global Political Islam, argues that we should not use the term “political Islam” and instead should discuss “Muslim politics” as the first phrase discourages us from recognizing the diversity and pluralism of Islam and encourages dangers of abstraction and unwarranted generalization. However, Mandaville seeks an even wider understanding of
mobilization around “the symbols and language of Islam,” whereas this work focuses more on those groups who really do “have as their goal the establishment of an Islamic political order.” Mandaville, Global Political Islam, 20-1.
symbols” to “those who want to see the radical transformation of society and politics, by whatever means, into an absolute theocracy.”55 In many cases these variations are accentuated by discrete regional and national versions of or approaches to Islamic faith.56 This is to emphasize that Islamism itself is not a single ideology, “but a religious-cultural-political framework for engagement on issues that most concern politically engaged Muslims.”57
With the focus of this work, as many others, on the use of violent tactics by transnational militant Islamist groups it is important to reinforce that political Islam is not a monolithic movement and that the majority of Islamist groups are non-violent, locally focused, and motivated by improving the condition of Muslim populations.58 Islamist groups include locally focused and transnational dawa movements, such as the essentially non-political Tablighi Jamaat strongest is South Asia and the Nur movement in Turkey, who argue that the solution to many social and political problems in the Muslim world is in the return of individuals to an embrace of Islamic ideals, often promoted through study groups, education, spiritual development, and social good works.59 Islamists also include a wide range of political parties across the Muslim world, who variously oppose, have renounced, or support the limited use of violence, including the Turkish Justice and Development Party, Hizb al-Wasat in Egypt as well as similar Wasatiyya parties in other countries, many local branches of the Muslim
55 Barton, 2005, Jemaah Islamiyah: Radical Islamism in Indonesia, Ridge Books, 28.
cited in Ayoob, The Many Faces of Political Islam, 2.
56 Sadowski, "Political Islam," 218.
57 Fuller, The Future of Political Islam, 193.
58 Ayoob, The Many Faces of Political Islam. Fuller, The Future of Political Islam, 83.
Lustick, 2006, Trapped in the War on Terror, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 186. Roy, Globalized Islam, 60. Sadowski, "Political Islam.". Silverstein, 2006a, "Six Questions for Dr. Emile A. Nakhleh on the CIA and the Iraq War," Harper's Magazine, September 20, http://harpers.org/sb-six-questions-emile-nakhleh- 1158706094.html. Wiktorowicz, "Anatomy of the Salafi Movement.". Woodward, 2008, "Time to Stop Fooling Ourselves about Salafis," COMOPS Journal (July 21), http://comops.org/journal/2008/07/21/time-to-stop-fooling-ourselves-about-salafis/. Emphasizing the diversity of manners in which an Islamist movement may manifest McDonald discusses the practice of veiling rising amongst educated Muslim girls as a choice of identity expression in Western countries. McDonald, Global Movements, 184- 8.
59 Clark, 2004, "Islamist Women in Yemen: Informal Nodes of Activism," In Islamic
Activism: A Social Movement Theory Approach, ed. Wiktorowicz, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Fuller, The Future of Political Islam, 126-30.
Brotherhood, and Jamaat-I Islami.60 For many Muslims the appeal of Islamist groups often centres on their calls for reform, justice, and social change including the good works they do, the social welfare services they provide, and their stands against corruption as well as actual lack of corruption in practice.61 While anti-state Islamist groups across the Muslim world have frequently adopted violent repertoires, including tactics of terrorism, it is also important to emphasize that this is equally true of non- Islamic groups in the same contexts, and that there are significant debates and differences over the use of violence with many Islamists rejecting or renouncing its use.62 Finally, even within the sub-category of militant Islamist groups using tactics of
terrorism “the primary goal of the modern jihadist movement is and always has been the destruction of the secular political and social order in the activists’ home countries and its replacement with authentic Islamic states.”63
Most of the violent Islamist groups associated with tactics of terrorism today are best described in this manner as Islamic fundamentalists, in that they “follow a literal and narrow reading of the Qur’an and the traditions of the Prophet” and “believe that they have a monopoly on the sole correct understanding of Islam and demonstrate
60 Baker, 2003, Islam Without Fear: Egypt and the New Islamists, Cambridge and
London, Harvard University Press. Fuller, The Future of Political Islam, 53. Habeck,
Knowing the Enemy, 4. Mandaville, Global Political Islam, 101-7. Yavuz, 2004, "Opportunity Spaces, Identity, and Islamic Meaning in Turkey," In Islamic Activism: A Social Movement Theory Approach, ed. Wiktorowicz, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
61 Fuller, The Future of Political Islam, 25-33,43. Mandaville, Global Political Islam,
201-22. Wickham, 2004, "Interests, Ideas, and Islamist Outreach in Egypt," In Islamic Activism: A Social Movement Theory Approach, ed. Wiktorowicz, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
62 Ashour, 2008, "De-Radicalization of Jihad? The Impact of Egyptian Islamist
Revisionists on Al-Qaeda," Perspectives on Terrorism 2 (5), March,
http://www.terrorismanalysts.com/pt/index.php?option=com_rokzine&view=article&id =39&Itemid=54. Ayoob, The Many Faces of Political Islam. Fuller, The Future of Political Islam, 83. Jackson, "An Argument for Terrorism.". Lustick, Trapped in the War on Terror, 130. Tilly, "Terror, Terrorism, Terrorists.". Wiktorowicz, "Anatomy of the Salafi Movement," 213. Wright, 2008, "The Rebellion Within: An Al Qaeda Mastermind Questions Terrorism," The New Yorker, June 2,
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/06/02/080602fa_fact_wright?printable=true.
63 Emphasis added, Gerges, 2006a, "A Nuisance, Not a Strategic Threat: Responses to
'Is There Still a Terrorist Threat?' Round 1," Foreign Affairs, September 7,
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/special/9-11_roundtable/9-11_roundtable_gerges. See also: Martinage, "The Global War on Terrorism: An Assessment," 27.
intolerance toward those who differ.” While they may not agree on details of strategies and tactics, the fundamentalists largely seek “to re-create a future based on their conceptions of the golden age of early Islam, they share the yearning to ‘go back to the future’ by reimagining the past based on their readings of the fundamental scripts.”64 Fundamentalism is not the same as traditionalism, and as Fuller emphasizes while “all fundamentalists are Islamists” not all “Islamists are fundamentalists.”65
Most of the grievances and hopes that make political Islam appealing to many across the Muslim world, are rooted in the same conditions or are even precisely the same as those that energized previous waves of mobilization under secular ideologies. Many of these grievances and hopes are not unique to the Muslim world at all, but are shared across the developing world and in large parts of the developed world as
responses to feelings of hopelessness, oppression, and injustice as well as aspirations for a better future.66 Fuller observes that “political Islam is not an exotic and distant
phenomenon, but one intimately linked to contemporary political, social, economic and moral issues of near universal concern.”67 What is often unique, is that Islamists frame
these grievances and aspirations in a religious historical and cultural narrative,
suggesting that the origins of many problems result from leaving the true path of Islam, and that the solution can be found through the application of practices and policies specifically informed and shaped by Islamic ideals. The depth of these religious social and ideological roots is one of the reasons that the framing of “Islam is the solution” resonates more strongly than alternatives.68
Current political structures across much of the Muslim world favour the
emergence of political Islam as a mobilizing force given the closure of other venues of political expression, the support of key elites whether out of genuine belief or
instrumental convenience, and the capacity of many states for repression which is often relatively tempered in application to religion. In order to protect their power, many governments across Africa, the Middle East, and Muslim Asia either greatly constrained or outright banned alternative political expression and activity that they saw as
64 Ayoob, The Many Faces of Political Islam, 2. 65 Fuller, The Future of Political Islam, XI-XII. 66 Gerges, Journey of the Jihadist, 40.
67 Fuller, The Future of Political Islam, xii, 33, 81. Robinson, "Hamas as Social
Movement," 126-7.
threatening. Many observers have noted that this favoured the rise of political Islam, as the Mosque remained one of the few venues where people could gather, exchange ideas, and ultimately organize.69 As Fuller notes, “The state can close the nationalist or
socialist party headquarters, but it cannot really close the mosques, which serve as operations centers for Islamist movements.”70 In many places the resulting mobilization first built up around providing social services, which may have seemed non-threatening to political elites and was in part driven by the failure of the state or “retreat of the state” from fulfilling these needs.71 This established strong and credible movement
structures before often evolving or expanding into more explicitly political directions. Ruling elites often encouraged such Islamic organization as a balance or alternative outlet to existing politically directed groups those elites perceived as threatening.72 At the same time, endorsement of Islamic causes (a “wrap in the flag” effect) as well as exploitation of distant Muslim suffering (arguably as a distraction) gave many leaders a new source for re-establishing or affirming their legitimacy despite previous failures and frustrations.73 Such elite alignment with and use of Islam further encouraged the
development of Islamic movements. In a number of cases, once ruling elites began to perceive groups associated with political Islam as a threat to their power they chose to “out-Islam the Islamists.”74 For example, the Saudis reacted to the 1979 siege of the Great Mosque in Mecca by increasing support to Wahhabist elements domestically and Islamic causes internationally, including funding Sunni missionary work and
encouraging jihadists to travel to Afghanistan.75 Where states have brought their full repressive capability to bear on Islamist movements, as in Egypt’s suppression of the
69 Esposito, "Political Islam.". Lynch, Voices of the New Arab Public, 34-5.
Wiktorowicz, "A New Approach to the Study of Islamic Activism," 33.
70 Fuller, The Future of Political Islam, 33. 71 Mandaville, Global Political Islam, 109.
72 For example, consider Sadat’s use of the Muslim Brotherhood to offset the Nasserites
or Israel’s early support of Hamas to undermine the PLO.
73 Fuller, The Future of Political Islam, 18-9. Schwedler, 2004, "The Islah Party in
Yemen: Political Opportunities and Coalition Building in a Transitional Polity," In
Islamic Activism: A Social Movement Theory Approach, ed. Wiktorowicz, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
74 Fuller, "The Future of Political Islam."
Muslim Brotherhood, the result was in part to encourage a more violent and clandestine radicalized movement.76
Mobilizing networks have similarly aided the emergence of transnational Islamists politics. While the mosque – and similar religious study groups, university organizations, and social welfare providers – served as a domestic network for
mobilization, the reaction to and use of political Islam by many governments has served to strengthen interstate movement ties. By playing up international Islamic identity through the focus on the plight of coreligionists in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, and Palestine many governments in the Muslim world have facilitated a sense of
transnational Islamist identity. These connections have been strengthened as Islamists were sent into exile or encouraged to go on jihad by states simply happy to have potential troublemakers out of the country. Members of the Muslim Brotherhood, for example, when pushed out of Egypt during the late 50s, 60s, and 70s established
connections to, and ideologically cross-pollinated with, emerging Islamist groups across the Middle East.77 Likewise, while the Afghan jihad of the 1980s may have temporarily
released domestic pressures for change, it established strong international connections amongst radicalized, militarily experienced Islamists emboldened by their success against a superpower.78 Kamal el-Said Habib, who was a leading figure during the first generation of Egyptian Islamist radicalization, critically explained that the Afghan jihad “internationalized and militarized the jihadist movement further” putting “religion at the service of war rather than the other way around” with violence replacing “politics as a means of interaction.”79 This network of jihadists – who often trained together, shared a common ideological evolution, and fought in places such as Afghanistan, Kashmir, Bosnia, Southeast Asia, and North Africa – plays a powerful role in biasing the development of many Islamic movements across the Muslim world towards a more radical and violent extreme. Success for these militants is associated with taking full
76 Gerges, Journey of the Jihadist, 57. Hafez, 2003, Why Muslims Rebel, Lynne Rienner
Publishers. Zambelis, 2008, "Is There a Nexus between Torture and Radicalization?,"
Terrorism Monitor 6 (13), June 26,
http://jamestown.org/terrorism/news/article.php?articleid=2374266. Zuhur, 2007,
Egypt: Security, Political, and Islamist Challenges, Strategic Studies Institute.
77 Habeck, Knowing the Enemy, 33-4. Robinson, "Hamas as Social Movement," 120. 78 Gerges, Journey of the Jihadist, 111.
control of state power and many have a personal memory of their ability to defeat even a superpower.80 In other cases, differences emerged between various Islamist
movements because of religious divides (as with Sunni versus Shia, or Deobandi versus Barelvi),81 more strongly nationalist local conflicts with competition for local popular support against previous secular nationalist groups (as with Hamas and Hizballah), or the result of being an ethnic minority population fighting for autonomy and
independence in several countries on the edge of the historical Muslim world. 82
While secular movements have previously mobilized around the same or similar grievances and aspirations across the Muslim world, the dynamics of the current context are significantly driven by the unique potency of the long historical, cultural, and
intellectual traditions of Islam.83 The strength of political Islam is that it deeply
resonates with Muslim populations providing an explanation for past achievements and the durability of Islamic civilization as well as current problems in the failure to remain true to their faith.84 Militant Islamists for example draw on a long intellectual history of Muslim thinkers including such frequently cited scholars as Ibn Taymiyyah,
Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab, Jamal al-din Afghani, Hassan al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb, Sayyid Abul-A’la Mawdudi, Abdallah Azzam, and the Ayatollah Khomeini. In large parts of the Muslim world, Islamism has become the primary vehicle and vocabulary for political discourse, in the same way that Westerners talk about the Magna Carta, the American and French Revolutions, or Hobbes and Locke.85 Whereas a previous generation of movement leaders struggled to adapt the ideas of Marx and Engels, the current movement discourse draws from the Quran, the hadith, and larger common Islamic cultural and historic traditions.
80 Roy, Globalized Islam, 297-300.
81 Although the Iranian revolution and its charismatic leader Ayatollah Khomeini served
as an inspiration for many Islamist, the Sunni versus Shia divide is particularly important within militant Islamist movements. Al-Qaida and other militant Islamist groups actually associated with it all follow a salafist interpretation of Sunni Islam and generally see Shia Muslims as apostates. Similarly many Shia militant groups have been motivated by a fear of threats or oppression from Sunni Muslims who in most countries of the Muslim world are a large majority. See the footnote discussion in the Chapter Five section “Aggregating Distinct Groups as a Singular Enemy” for more on this split.
82 Fuller, "The Future of Political Islam."
83 Wiktorowicz, "A New Approach to the Study of Islamic Activism," 33. 84 Fuller, The Future of Political Islam, 2.
One of the uniquely powerful aspects of the Islamic nature of the current mobilization is that it creates under the authority of religious mandate a shared identity transcending state and ethnic boundaries, encouraging Muslims across the world to perceive the experiences of Muslims in other places as also their own. This framing plays an important role in shaping the mobilization of Muslims living in non-Muslim majority countries, such as second and third generation immigrant communities in Western nations.
Finally the narrative framing of the current mobilization in a religious tradition links the political prescriptions and arguments, as well as justifications for mandates to act, with the normative power inherent in the divine.86 Many theorists and analysts have suggested that religious sanctification, especially combined with other politically mobilizing forces such as nationalism, poses both an especially powerful narrative as well as an escalated danger for more violent repertoires.87 It is no longer that Marx
86 Fuller, The Future of Political Islam, XIII.