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a CANADIAN SECURITY INTELLIGENCE SERVICE publication
April 1993
Unclassified
Editors Note:
In this issue, Dr. William Millward concludes his two-part series on Islamic Fundamentalism by examining the nature of the fear engendered, and threat posed, by this complex phenomenon.
Central to his discussion are three principal trends in the Islamist movement: political successes of mainstream elements; radicalization as a result of repression; and an "Iranian network".
In the concluding section, the author looks to the future of Islamism in the Middle East and North Africa, where it will face serious competition from other forces, not the least of which is a growing demand for democratization.
Dr. Millward is a Strategic Analyst in the Analysis and Production Branch of CSIS.
Disclaimer: Publication of an article in the COMMENTARY series does not imply CSIS authentication of the information nor CSIS endorsement of the author's views.
There is growing evidence of widespread fear of Islamic "fundamentalism" in the Western world at various levels, including the media, government and security organizations. According to some accounts, Islam in its fundamentalist guise has become the new bogeyman of the West, "the great green dragon" from the arc of crisis ready to breathe fire and destruction on all in its path. The Islamic fundamentalist phenomenon, especially in the Middle East, has been described by some normally serious Western observers as the greatest threat to world peace and security, and to Western interests generally, since the disappearance of the spectre of communism and the Soviet menace.
This fear on the whole is exaggerated and unjustified. It rises primarily from several fundamental misconceptions about the nature of the phenomenon called Islamic Fundamentalism, the sources of its strength, the degree of its unity and cohesion, and the objectives it espouses. While this movement represents a significant social and political force in world affairs today, it needs to be understood in its own contexts as well as on the international level, if the threat it poses is to be correctly evaluated and addressed.
At one level the Western fear of Islamic fundamentalism is the fear of the unknown. Images of the violent protests and demonstrations of radical Muslims against Americans—the representatives of Western domination—during the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1978-79 still exert a powerful influence on the minds and perceptions of many Westerners who watched the TV coverage of the hostage crisis. Absent first-hand experience of the religion called Islam or direct acquaintance with Muslims, there was an unfortunate tendency to assume that there must be something in the nature of the faith, or in its fundamentalist construction, which is inherently hostile to foreigners.
By the middle of the 20th century the Western world had come to know its enemies all too well, and Islam and the Muslims were not among them. Opposition, confrontation, aggression did not come from the organized forces of religion, or clothed in religious symbols. The real threats to the West and its expanding commercial interests, including access to energy supplies, and the formation of a world system based on what were essentially Western rules of the game, were perceived to lie on the far right and left of the political spectrum. Extreme xenophobic nationalism or the ideological forces of the left in varieties of socialism and communism were the clearly identified enemies.
When the dam broke in the Middle East and the full flood of anger at the failure of imported economic systems and cultural encroachment was expressed in religious language, it was unexpected and unnerving. In retrospect it need not have been so. Islam began, and has remained throughout its long history, as both a theology and ideology, a belief and behavioural system.
The Islamic movement in the Middle East today is not a threat because it is Islamic or fundamentalist, but because some of its members are militant and prone to the use of violent tactics to achieve its goals. These goals are the establishment of new Islamically oriented governments in most states of the region, states which will apply Islamic law [the Shari'a] and administrative practice, and ultimately, the formation of a bloc of states so constituted that will be able to change the rules of international relations and trade and thus alter the current balance of economic and political power world-wide.
By pushing the concept of Islam as a total way of life, both a system of moral and spiritual values and a method of public administration, the Islamists are redeeming the ideological potential of their faith and holding it out as an alternative to imported and failed ideologies of East and West. "As much as anything else, it is the fundamentalists' determination to eliminate the present ruling élites of the Muslim world that makes it a threat to Western interests—and not its literal ?fundamentalism' or orthodoxy in matters of faith". [Shireen Hunter, SAIS Review, 6:1 (1986), p. 191]. The reasons why the Islamists believe that the current rulers of most countries in the region must be deposed are one or all of the following: 1) they do not apply the Shari'a, or not strictly enough; 2) they are personally venal and corrupt, and prone to a degree of luxurious self-indulgence which contravenes the Islamic sense of social justice; 3) they are perceived as clients of the Western powers, particularly the hegemonic superpower.
The Islamic fundamentalist outlook is driven by the perception that the present world order, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the second Gulf war, is inherently biased in favour of the United States and other Western powers. The domestic problems which the Muslim states of the Middle East and those of the Third World face can be explained, according to this viewpoint, as the result of economic pressure and exploitation, and political and cultural domination, from these Western powers directly or through international bodies like the United Nations and its agencies, which they tend to monopolize and use to their own ends. The mindset is vividly represented by the prominent Islamist spokesman, Kalim Siddiqui: "The fact is that the `progress' achieved in Europe and North America is due largely, though not only, to one single factor almost never mentioned by anyone—plunder." [Crescent International, December 16-31, 1992. p. 7].
The developments surrounding the recent Gulf war provided the leadership of the Islamic movement throughout the Muslim world with a dilemma: how to reconcile the obvious anti-Western and pro-Saddam feelings of the majority of their members and the fact that many of the organizations they represented were receiving funds from the Gulf states, especially Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
In the early hours after the Iraqi invasion, Saddam received enthusiastic support from Arab nationalists and Palestinians in Jordan and the Occupied Territories who saw him as the revolutionary leader that could finally redress their grievances and restore their lands. When he later issued his appeal for support in Islamic terms, by calling for a jihad against the forces gathering to meet him in Saudi Arabia, many Muslim militants and sympathizers responded positively, despite the Iraqi leader's total lack of legitimate Islamic credentials and his brutal record of repression toward Iraq's Shi'a community.
There were at least three good reasons for the surge of support for Saddam in the Muslim "street", despite the fact that many Arab and Muslim governments were sending troops to join the coalition against him. One was the combination of dismal social and economic conditions in several countries, coupled with either political repression or restraints on full participation. Algerian, Jordanian, and the Muslims of the Occupied Territories were especially prone to view Saddam as the liberator who could bring release from their trials and tribulations. A second factor that weighed heavily with many Muslims was the anti-Islamic behaviour of the Gulf Arab régimes associated with their ostentatious display of wealth from petro-dollars. And thirdly, the general suspicion of Western intentions in the region based on a vivid folk memory of the imperialist era, apparent Western resistance to and resentment of Arab national aspirations, the emergence of the state of Israel and continued support for it, and antipathy toward the Islamic revolution of Iran.
But the reaction to the Gulf crisis by the various Islamist groups and leaders was more equivocal. A member of the Egyptian Muslim Brothers was part of a 13-man delegation representing Islamic movements across the Islamic world, which travelled to Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran to seek Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait. Their efforts were no more successful than those of Arab League and other international mediators. On the whole the Islamist groups preferred not to endanger their sources of financial help in the Gulf, and thus avoided outright declarations of support for Saddam and his aggression in Kuwait. An exception may have been the FIS in Algeria, whose supporters called for the "victory of Islam and the Muslims" (i.e., the Iraqis) in the war, in a demonstration held in Algiers on January 31. On the other hand, the Islamist leaders could not afford to ignore the sentiments of their members, nor the realities of political competition at home and abroad, and thus gradually found the means of asserting their opposition to the war against Iraq.
Overall the legacy of the Gulf crisis for the Islamic movement was probably a setback. It showed the leadership of the various fundamentalist groups to be much more hesitant and divided than their rhetoric claimed, and much more pre-occupied with their local political milieu and their position vis-à-vis the forces they confront on the domestic stage. But the experience was not entirely negative. "In mediating among three forces—the state, which they hope to capture; popular Muslim sentiment, which they do not always control; and Muslim patrons, on whom they are often dependent—Islamic fundamentalists must make compromises with each." [James Piscatori, Islamic Fundamentalisms and the Gulf Crisis, Chicago: The American Academy of Arts and Sciences 1991, p.18]. This suggests that the Islamist pre-occupation in most countries for the near term will be with the local setting rather than the promotion of an international organization.
The Islamist leadership, both mainstream and extremist, in most countries, has tried to take advantage of the general political disarray of the Arab world in the aftermath of the Gulf war and the collapse of the Soviet Union by stepping up its activities on all fronts. Mainstream elements have scored significant successes in elections to unions and professional syndicates, as well as municipal councils, and national parliaments. In Algeria in 1991 the FIS, aided to some extent by voter apathy, moved forward from earlier successes in municipal politics to the point of certain victory in national elections which would have given them control of the national parliament. By being denied the fruits of its victory despite its willingness to play by the rules of electoral politics, the FIS has been transformed from a "moderate" fundamentalist faction into an `extremist' group, which has been legally disbanded by decree, and fragmented by increasingly harsh régime countermeasures. The more radical elements of the FIS are now engaged in an underground war of attrition against the Algerian authorities whom it regards, not without some cause, as illegal and unconstitutional.
The relative silence of most Western governments vis-à-vis the arbitrary actions of the military and the High Council of State in cancelling the Algerian election and denying the results of a democratic expression of popular will is regarded by the FIS and its leaders—now mostly in jail—as evidence of Western bad faith, moral inconsistency and unreasonable animosity toward Muslims.
While the fate of FIS in Algeria was a setback for other Sunni Islamist groups in North Africa, in Lebanon in the summer of 1992, the hitherto highly radical Hizballah took part in the first national election in two decades and won four seats. With its members having been sworn into the Lebanese parliament, the Iranian backed and influenced Hizballah is now a body legally recognized by the government.
Hizballah is normally an active and militant Muslim group engaged in guerrilla campaigns against the Israelis and their Lebanese militia (the South Lebanese Army) allies in the so-called "security zone" in south Lebanon. It remains to be seen what impact participation in the Lebanese Parliament will have on this paramilitary force and the interests in represents. While it may not lead Hizballah to abandon its militant opposition to Israeli occupation in Lebanon, it may help to reinforce or confirm the position that some Shi'i/Hizballah leaders have taken against the objective of an Islamic state in Lebanon due to its highly sectarian and pluralistic social and religious make-up.
The Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan has for several years been active in the electoral process, and present in parliament. Unlike its Syrian counterpart, the Jordanian branch of the Brothers has eschewed violence, preferring to use established and peaceful methods to expand its role. This role seems likely to increase incrementally as time passes. This peaceful route is also the preferred course of the Egyptian Brotherhood with the important difference that the authorities in Egypt will not allow them to participate in political life in their own name. Rumours are rampant that plans are being prepared to declare the organization illegal and eradicate it.
In the 1980s, the medical and engineering syndicates in Egypt became largely dominated by the Islamist trend. In September 1992, candidates backed by the Muslim Brotherhood won a majority of seats on the board of the Bar Association. Professional syndicates are the most modernized and advanced sectors of Egyptian public life, with high status, virtual autonomy, and a degree of popular respect exceeding that of public servants, and politicians. The lawyers' syndicate has been especially active in promoting human rights and the rule of law. If further legal impediments are put in place by the Egyptian authorities for the participation of professional Islamists in public life in their own right, the confrontation between the régime and the Islamists will intensify and win more recruits for the extremists.
The radical Islamist groups in general believe that the initiative has already passed to them. By the use of shock tactics and violence, the "extremists" have increased their media exposure in the West and raised the level of apprehension. Iranian clerical leaders are regularly quoted as saying there is widespread fear of Islam in the West and that the West is right in being anxious about the rising power of Islam. The secular leaders of various Middle Eastern states provide their own special boost to this apprehension by declaring "all out war" on the fundamentalists, yet appear more and more helpless to deal with the challenge and the threat which they pose as an indigenous alternative to their often corrupt and inefficient rule. Even President Hafez al-Asad of Syria, whose iron grip on the country resulted in an estimated 20,000 deaths when his security forces attacked the Muslim Brotherhood stronghold in Hama in 1982, is providing more religious broadcasting time on Syrian television, building new mosques to boost his legitimacy and brooding over the decline of Arab nationalism and the rising tide of the Islamic renaissance which is changing the Middle East [Robert Fisk, The Independent, October, 1992. p.10].
In Algeria, Egypt and in the Occupied Territories of the West Bank and Gaza, the activists are raising the stakes in their confrontation with the authorities. Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad are in competition with each other, and with the PLO, in targeting the Israeli military and even the security intelligence service in their efforts to win wider Palestinian support in their campaign against the Israeli authorities. In the long drawn-out struggle with the Haute Comité D'Etat (HCE), the Islamic militants in Algeria have killed more than 230 police and military personnel since FIS was deprived of the right to govern last January. Since October of 1992, the militant cells of the Islamic organizations have targeted foreign tourists for the first time, hoping to undermine the Egyptian government further by harming the $3 billion (US) a year tourism industry.
The universal response by the existing authorities to the rising challenge of militant Muslims has been a declared determination to crush their movements by all of the formidable means at the disposal of most governments. Expressions of intent to apply forceful measures against the religious terrorists have been issued by all governments facing this challenge. In Egypt, spokespersons threatened a "crackdown"; in Algeria it was "all out war"; in Israel the Prime Minister promised to deal "mercilessly" with the Hamas and PIJ militants. While publicly declaring a tough and uncompromising determination to stamp out terrorism in the name of religion, most leaders—Arab or Jewish—realize that this is not the best way to deal with the complex problems such groups represent. But as long as social and economic conditions resist improvement, they have little choice but to talk tough. In most cases, however, there is an implicit assumption that too severe repression would only serve to radicalize further the less committed.
The issue of religious extremism was discussed at the Arab League's Interior Ministers' Council in January 1993. A communiqué issued at the session's conclusion stressed the importance of inter-Arab co-ordination to confront "foreign infiltration" and "terrorism, violence and sabotage". Military and security officials from Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia are already co-operating to combat what they view as a common threat to their régimes. The governments of Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia blame Iran for fomenting Islamist unrest in their countries. While most of these countries had their own indigenous Islamist opposition movements long before the Islamic government in Iran came to power, it is convenient, and perhaps partly justifiable, to blame Iran for encouraging and exacerbating domestic problems.
For the first decade of its existence (1979-1989) the Islamic Republic of Iran considered itself to be the only truly Islamic state in the world, the only polity which could be said to reflect the revolutionary goals of radical Islamic fundamentalists. It always aspired to establish an alternative network of Islamic states which could truly represent and defend Islam in its confrontations with non-Muslims. By the end of 1992, it is widely agreed that Sudan now also supports the Islamist cause. Nominally a military dictatorship, the government of General Umar Hasan al-Bashir has since 1989 come dramatically under the influence of its radical Islamist eminence grise, Hasan al-Turabi.
Co-ordination and co-operation between Iran and Sudan is growing on a range of issues, including official exchanges and visits, military and paramilitary training exercises in Sudanese camps, and trade. President Rafsanjani paid an official visit to Sudan in December 1991. Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, head of the Islamic Republic's judicial branch, visited Khartoum in late 1992 and is thought to have left behind a substantial cash donation to the National Islamic Front. For the Islamists in Tehran, Sudan provides an advantageous foothold in Africa for the expansion of Iranian influence in black Africa and the Mahgreb. Sudanese mediation has been used to enlarge Iranian contacts with the Tunisian Islamist movement al-Nahda. There are now signs of expanding joint Iranian/Sudanese contacts with Islamic militants in Somalia.
Iran's relationship with Sudan is a central plank in the strategic expansion plans of the Islamist alternative network promoted from Tehran. The two parties in this relationship represent different sectarian versions of the Islamic mission, Sunni and Shi'i, but this will not prevent their collaboration on a range of common interests, in the same way that co-operation between Iran and other Sunni Muslim groups—Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank, and the Islamic Unification Movement in Lebanon—has not been precluded when their anti-imperialist and anti-zionist interests converge. In the case of Sudan, and the Sunni groups in the Occupied Territories, Tehran is dealing from a position of relative strength. It can provide the funding, equipment, and training personnel that are badly needed.
The militant alternative Muslim network of the Islamists is promoted by the Iranian authorities through two other vehicles of influence: its diplomatic missions abroad, and the expatriate Shi'i Muslim communities in Europe and the Americas and their Sunni Muslim sympathizers. Through its diplomatic posts abroad the government of Iran endeavours to monitor Islamic groups overseas and spread its influence by offering subventions for travel to Islamist gatherings amongst sympathetic Muslims. Iran's wealth allows it to subsidize Islamic movements in other countries. Chapters of groups like Hizballah have been established in many countries in the western world, including Canada. These groups are engaged primarily in fundraising, sponsoring lectures and devotional gatherings, and monitoring the overseas Muslim communities and student groups.
Despite these indications of growing organization and structure to the Islamist movement, the current network of tactical and/or strategic alliances forged by the Iranian authorities with like-minded Muslim groups and communities, Sunni or Shi'i, is nothing on the order of a "Fundamentalist International". Alarmist claims to the contrary run the risk of reifying the hopes and ambitions of planners and policy makers—especially the hardliners—in Tehran. The network exists in rudimentary form and no doubt will be strengthened and extended as opportunities arise. At present the number of Muslims actively involved in pursuit of Islamist goals is very small, but there is a larger reservoir of potential sympathy in several Middle Eastern states for their cause. The more that cause and the interests of Muslims generally are perceived to be threatened, the larger that reservoir will grow.
If the key Muslim countries of Algeria and Egypt eventually install Islamic governments, it would be inconvenient but not disastrous for the interests of the Western world. Religiously inspired government in the region is the wave of the era. Fundamentalism it not a fad, but the preferred option of a whole generation which fears it is in danger of losing out. Muslims who see how successful a few million Jews have been in establishing a state based on their religion cannot imagine why more than 150 million Arabs should not have the right, at this stage in their development, to install governments with the sanction of Islam.
Whatever the future of Islamism in the Middle East and North Africa in the coming decade, it will face serious competition from other forces. Across the region, the public is clamouring for more democratic systems. The surge of demand for more democratic structures and participation has prompted several governments and leaders to begin a tentative process of democratization. But the process is precarious and fragile. It can be turned on and off at will. Some governments appear to take forward steps at one time, only to retreat subsequently and raise the question in the public mind whether they are at all serious. Their security and intelligence apparatuses are omnipresent and effectively stifle dissent.
Islam can not be blamed for the absence of democracy in the region. While the practice of Islamic government in Iran excludes many groups from the political stage, and appears to enforce Islamic law, which does not accord equal status to non-Muslims, it is closer to democracy than many other Middle Eastern regimes. Many Islamists wonder how consistent Western governments are when they can put so much emphasis on human rights and yet support Middle East régimes, like that of Saudi Arabia, which have no vestiges of Western democratic institutions.
There are many theoretical varieties of Islamic government, ranging from theocracy to the symbolic invocation of Islam as a rationale for the state, as in Pakistan in 1947. The authorities in the Iranian Islamic Republic claim that their system is theocratic, but the apparatus of the state and the institution of the clergy are not congruent or coterminous in Iran. The viability of theocracy, or religiously inspired government, is still not settled in the heartlands of Islam. It is still in the experimental stage. The final verdict is not yet in, not with the general public, nor even with the ulama themselves. For the Muslim masses of the Middle Eastern states, Arab and non-Arab, the question of the moment is whether Islamic government can deliver greater economic and social justice for all. The record to date is slight, but many have just cause for doubt.
The threat which political Islam poses to the security and stability of the region, and Western interests there, or world-wide, has been exaggerated. Officials of the Iranian Islamic Republic regularly excoriate the United States as the embodiment of world arrogance, but trade between the two states continues. One could expect a similar pattern of developments from any newly constituted Islamist leaderships in other Muslim-majority states. The Iranian leadership regularly criticizes the international system, but nonetheless participates in most of its agencies and activities, albeit with limited enthusiasm and sometimes under protest. The Islamic countries can be expected to use whatever leverage they can summon—either by themselves or in alliance with other Third World and non-aligned countries—to bring about advantageous changes in the international system. Their resources for effective concerted action are meagre and mainly limited to strategic alliances. Unless they can show greater capacity for common interest under an Islamic frame of reference, and an ability to combine forces in effective action to achieve it, the chances of them having significant international influence are slight.
The phenomenon of Islamic revival is part of a world-wide process of social and cultural change. It embraces the whole spectrum of traditional society structured on religion. To focus attention narrowly on extremists who occupy the fringe of the Islamic community is to distort the importance of the much larger enterprise. The revival and reconstruction of religious thought and practice in the Islamic world and its adaptation to modern circumstances is a massive project which is dynamic and cautiously progressive.
This revival is in effect an attempt to adapt to local needs the social and technological advances made in Europe and elsewhere over a long period of organic evolution from the Renaissance, the Reformation, the industrial revolution, the Enlightenment, and the scientific explosion of the 20th century, and to do so in a little more than one century. The radicals represent a minority viewpoint in the frame of reference of overall Islamic revival.
Muslims of the world—not only in the Middle East—will make their own adjustment to the project of modernity. Many have already managed the transition without serious individual or group dislocation. But the process takes time and is not always smooth. There are frequent conflicts of interest and direct clashes of standards. The most serious example of the potential for confrontation over individual versus group rights is the much publicized and still unresolved Salman Rushdie/Satanic Verses episode. The use of force to take over the existing structures of government and social control in the early stages of this process, before some of the basic value adjustments are made, is an irritant and a distortion which will likely retard the accommodation of the Islamic sub-system into a new international order.
Commentary is a regular publication of the Analysis and Production Branch of CSIS. Inquires regarding submissions may be made to the Chairman of the Editorial Board at the following address:
The views expressed herein are those of the author, who may be contacted by writing to :
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