A New and More Dangerous Era Part I

 

By Anthony J. Dennis

1^st part of 3

In the 1990s, fundamentalist Islam began to emerge as the only coherent ideology to pose a credible threat to the West. Islamic fundamentalism is clearly a global phenomenon. Its adherents can be found in an almost unbroken line from the Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines to the Armed Islamic Group in North Africa. This article will discuss the resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism in the post-Cold War era and will explain why this ideology represents a threat to the safety and security of the West in particular, and all non-Muslims generally, as demonstrated by the words and deeds of the fundamentalists themselves. Recent attempts by President Khatami of Iran to establish a more moderate and less confrontational brand of Islamic rule will also be addressed. This article will conclude with several recommendations for Western governments faced with the challenge of dealing with the Muslim fundamentalists in the international political arena today.

To understand the extent of the threat posed by Islamic fundamentalism to the non-Muslim world, it is important to understand the impact the end of the Cold War has had on the political landscape, and to carefully consider the political agenda and salient characteristics of the transnational fundamentalist movement itself.

 

THE POST-COLD WAR: A MIXED LEGACY

The end of the Cold War left the world with a more mixed legacy than is generally admitted. While the defeat of communism and the peaceful annihilation of the Soviet Empire represented a tremendous moral as well as political victory for the West, the collapse of the Soviet Union and its satellite empire also meant the extinction of a tremendous restraining influence on scores of ethnic and religious rivalries. One of the stabilizing facts of the Cold War competition was that both East and West kept their client states in check. While some rivalries were fueled during the Cold War, others clearly were suppressed by it. With communism’s collapse, many nations forged in the crucible of communism died with it. The people of the former Soviet Union and of Yugoslavia, for example, have found that there is no longer anything that commonly defines and therefore unites them. As a result, nations have fragmented or have disappeared entirely with astonishing swiftness. Cut loose by the failed ideology of communism, many have fallen back on their long suppressed religious identity as a principle of political organization and as a means of understanding themselves and their world. We should not be overly surprised to see new countries and even new empires arise from the ashes of the old.¹

One can say that the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union have had at least three major effects. These watershed events created 1) an ideological vacuum, 2) a power vacuum, and 3) the largest weapons bazaar and black market in world history. Islamic fundamentalism as a political movement and as an ideology has benefited from each of these effects.

Ideological Vacuum

The collapse of the Soviet empire discredited communism as a viable ideology, especially in the eyes of developing nations. As a consequence, communism is no longer viewed as worthy of emulation. Yet, while communism was defeated, democratic ideals have not necessarily triumphed. Democracy, like communism before it, is essentially a non-indigenous ideology imported into Muslim territories only in the last one hundred years or so. By contrast, the notion of governance according to traditional Islamic principles is a familiar and appealing concept in these regions. Islam clearly has what one might call the “home-field advantage”.

The post-Cold War ideological vacuum has been filled by Islam as many leaders in the Muslim Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia have fallen back on their “Muslim roots” for models of governance and as a way to remain politically relevant in the eyes of their largely Muslim populace. By the early 1990s, the language of socialism, with all its references to the liberation of the masses, the exploitation of capitalists, and the misdeeds of various imperialist powers, had become outdated. The language of fundamentalist Islam, with its disturbingly violent references to jihad, its moral and religious endorsement of terrorism against civilians, and its glorification of martyrdom, had taken its place.

Power Vacuum

The political universe, like the natural one, abhors a vacuum. At its height, the Cold War generally worked to suppress other political ideologies and movements as both the Americans and the Soviets (and their respective allies) committed tremendous resources to either democratic or communist parties and leaders in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Anyone not aligned with one or the other political camp was, at best, unfunded and ignored and, at worst, ruthlessly suppressed. Now that the superpowers have largely withdrawn from many of these areas, Islamic fundamentalism has had a chance to “break out” and evolve from being a relatively marginal political movement to a mainstream movement.

The increased popularity of Islamic rule in the post-Cold War era was eloquently demonstrated in Turkey, an economically advanced and Westernized nation and a longtime member of NATO. In 1996, for the first time in modern Turkish history, the Islamic party’s candidate for prime minister won in a stunning electoral upset, beating out candidates from the two mainstream parties, True Path and Motherland. The elevation of Necmettin Erbakan to the office of prime minister that year demonstrates that parties calling for a rejection of the West (including termination of military and diplomatic alliances with Western nations) and a return to traditional Islamic rule have substantial electoral clout, even in relatively wealthy and developed nations like Turkey. These parties are serious contenders for political power and should not be dismissed out of hand. Nor should their popularity be ascribed solely to poor economic conditions. Those who assert that Islamic parties are popular solely or principally because of poor economic conditions are able to make such declarations only by studiously ignoring the facts.

Elsewhere in the world, the absence of Soviet authority in places like Central Asia has given native leaders and local religious heads in these areas a golden opportunity to politically organize. As predicted, we have seen parties calling for Islamic forms of government rise to some prominence throughout the former Soviet Central Asian Republics in the last ten years. The Islamic Renaissance Party, for example, was active in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of Soviet rule. In 1991, four of the former Soviet Asian Republics banned all activities of this party out of concern over its growing strength^.2 Where were the budding democratic parties at this time? They were, comparatively speaking, non-existent.

Black Market Weaponry

On the military front, the disintegration of the Soviet Empire and the concomitant loss of centralized control over its vast military arsenal have given the fundamentalist Muslims unprecedented access to weapons of mass destruction (WMD) capable of making relatively small terrorist groups or nations into world military powers literally overnight. In fact, there have been a number of detailed reports concerning the ease with which Soviet-made nuclear weaponry or other sophisticated military technology can be smuggled out of the country and purchased in the black market.³ This is the world into which Osama bin Laden and others have stepped, with ready cash in hand, and it is the reason why the fundamentalist movement represents such a grave threat to world peace in the present age.

 

DEFINITION AND OVERVIEW OF POLITICAL AGENDA

Before proceeding any further, let me state here as I have stated previously in other contexts that my remarks are limited to one politically active and politically radical segment of the vast Muslim world, and that I do not mean to suggest or imply that all 850 million to 1 billion of the world’s Muslims are terrorists or necessarily supportive of terrorism of any kind. In fact I consistently use the modifier “fundamentalist” in connection with the term “Muslim” in order to make evident that I am referring specifically to this radical segment. If Islam is an issue in the current political debate, it is not because of anything I or others have written or said but because fundamentalist governments (e.g., Iran, Sudan), political parties (e.g., Islamic Salvation Front), terrorist groups (e.g., Hizbullah, al-Qa`idah, Vanguards of Conquest) and guerrilla organizations (e.g., Armed Islamic Group, Taliban) have themselves made Islam a central issue by pointing to that ancient monotheistic faith as the justification and inspiration for their violent words and deeds. Unfortunately, these groups have essentially hijacked and appropriated the language of Islam in explaining and justifying their actions and by purporting to act for expressly religious reasons.

The term “Islamic fundamentalist” is not a theological term but a politically descriptive one which describes persons or parties that have a very specific and defined domestic and foreign policy agenda. I tend to favor the foregoing term over the terms “Islamist” or “political Islam”. “Islamist” is a colorless term that does not convey the return to the early days of the Prophet’s rule and the fundamentals of the early faith to which the modern day fundamentalists aspire. The term “political Islam” strikes me as similarly unedifying and even redundant since Islam is, by definition, a faith that has been intimately and inextricably involved in politics from the very beginning.

Domestic Policy

The Muslim fundamentalists seek on the domestic front the establishment of an Islamic theocracy or religious dictatorship (including, if necessary, the violent overthrow of the existing government), the adoption and strict application of the shari`ah, Islam’s traditional legal code, and the eradication and expulsion of all non-Muslim influences on their society and way of life.

Foreign Policy

In terms of foreign policy, these groups adopt an implacably hostile and adversarial posture toward the West, with talk of military and terrorist strikes against it, the desirability of killing Western citizens, and the necessity (indeed the religious duty) of undertaking a jihad against America and other nations, including Israel. As incredible and unrealistic as it sounds, the ultimate foreign policy objective of these groups is the conversion or extermination of all non-Muslim peoples including those living in Europe and North America. Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, the Egyptian cleric who was later convicted of involvement in the World Trade Center bombing in New York City, was quoted on the front page of The Wall Street Journal one month before that bombing as saying that his goal was to “show all Americans that they’ll never be happy if they don’t follow Islam.”⁴ The Islamic Republic of Iran, in fact, has a clause in its constitution calling for spreading the Islamic revolution to other lands.⁵

Both Iran and Sudan have found that preaching jihad against America is a useful centerpiece around which to organize their foreign policy, and in Sudan’s case – even their military and local militia.⁶ Iranian government officials have been quite honest about their rhetorical and literal war against America. In 1991, Ali Akbar Mohtashemi openly admitted that “[i]t is necessary to target all US objectives throughout the world,” and stated that “Iranians are ready for sacrifice and Holy War.”⁷ Needless to say, normal diplomatic relations with such governments or groups in the face of these homicidal intentions are highly problematic at best.

Fundamentalist groups can be Shi`ites like the Islamic Republic of Iran or Sunnis like the regime in Sudan or the Taliban in Afghanistan. It should be noted that religious differences have not prevented Shi`a and Sunni groups or regimes, including Iran and Sudan, from working together against a common perceived enemy and do not present an insurmountable hurdle to transnational cooperation.⁸

Anthony J. Dennis

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

A New and More Dangerous Era Part II

 

By Anthony J. Dennis

2nd part of 3

PROGRAM OF CULTURAL DESTRUCTION

In addition to instituting strict Islamic rule inside their own countries, fundamentalists from several different areas of the Muslim world also have advocated a program of cultural destruction which ought to be roundly condemned by Muslim and non-Muslim alike. In Turkey, the Islamic party, known formerly as the Refah (Welfare) Party and more recently as the Islamic Virtue Party, advocated banning ballet as a degenerate art form and the closing of women’s shelters. The party has also advocated the destruction of those historical monuments and archeological sites within Turkey that do not glorify the nation’s Muslim past. At one point, the fundamentalist mayor of Istanbul even called for the destruction of the magnificent and historic Byzantine-era walls around the city. It was only after the threat of an international outcry and expected pressure from Turkey’s secular national government that this program of cultural destruction was at least temporarily abandoned. Nothing in the Qur`an would appear to authorize, let alone compel, this kind of cultural vandalism yet these disturbing initiatives appear to be part and parcel of the fundamentalists’ domestic program.

Farther east in Afghanistan, the Taliban engaged in the most infamous act of cultural vandalism in recent times when, in March, 2001, it ordered and swiftly carried out the destruction of thousands of irreplaceable, ancient Buddhist statues that resided in the Kabul Museum and the dynamiting of the two largest, stone-carved Buddhas in the world at Bamiyan. The Taliban claim they were compelled in the name of Islam to engage in this morally bankrupt action. Having destroyed an irreplaceable part of our world heritage, the Taliban has now proceeded to require Afghan citizens who happen to be Hindu to wear a special identifying yellow badge on the outside of their clothing reminiscent of the yellow Star of David which Jewish citizens were required to wear in Nazi Germany. With each passing year, it seems the political agenda of the Muslim fundamentalist movement becomes more morally and ethically disturbing.

 

SALIENT CHARACTERISTICS: HATRED OF THE WEST

Although I find the human rights abuses and the persecution of religious minorities (both of which lie outside the scope of this essay) extremely troubling from a moral as well as an international human rights law perspective, it is the fundamentalists’ implacably hostile foreign policy and highly emotional rhetoric demonizing America and other Western nations which is of most concern to me because of the implications for future acts of terrorism against the West and because of the national security implications generally. We all know and have heard the slogans uttered by the highest levels of successive Iranian governments over the last twenty-two years which characterize America as “the Great Satan”. This has been followed by chants of “Death to America!” in officially organized street demonstrations in Teheran. Sadly, this kind of rhetoric is common in fundamentalist circles and represents yet another barrier to productive communication between the Muslim and non-Muslim worlds.

A few more examples, out of many that could be recited, should suffice: In 1993 Sheikh al-Tamimi, then the leader of Islamic Jihad, was publicly quoted as saying, “I pray that Allah may tear apart America just as the Soviet Union was torn apart.”⁹ For his part, Sheikh Abdel-Rahman made many tapes for his followers in which he called the US a “den of evil and fornication”^.10 More recently Osama bin Laden called the US “the head of the snake”. Besides the bombings of the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya on August 7, 1998 which left 257 dead, Osama bin Laden is perhaps best known in the West for his February 23, 1998 fatwa or religious decree calling for Muslims worldwide to kill Americans and their allies – civilians and military – wherever and whenever they can find them. “This is an individual duty for every Muslim” and “is in accordance with the words of Almighty God,” stated bin Laden as part of his decree.

Even the Palestinian Authority has gotten into the act. On July 22, 1997 The Wall Street Journal carried an excerpt of a July 11^th sermon of Palestinian Authority Mufti Ikrama Sabri (an Arafat appointee, noted the Journal) at the al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. Sabri publicly prayed in part: “Oh Allah, destroy America, for she is ruled by Zionist Jews…Allah will paint the White House black!”¹¹ At the time Arafat’s appointee was publicly praying for the literal destruction of the United States and its historic symbol, the White House, American taxpayers were providing Arafat’s organization with millions of dollars in aid as part of the Clinton Administration’s efforts to buy peace in the Middle East.

 

REASONS FOR FUNDAMENTALIST FURY

There are several reasons for the Muslim fundamentalist world’s hatred of the West. First of all, as a puritanical movement aspiring to return Islamic society to the early days of the faith, Islamic fundamentalism by definition is hostile to any outside influence that makes the achievement of that objective harder to attain. The world has become smaller with the advent of the Internet and the World Wide Web, the globalization of trade and the ease with which non-Western populations are able to access Western music, movies, theater, literature, television shows and so forth. These developments are taken as a serious cultural threat by fundamentalist leaders who have called the Western cultural onslaught “Westoxification”. Hence, we see vigorous efforts in many traditional Islamic countries to confiscate and destroy satellite dishes and radios as a way to prevent ordinary Muslim citizens from being exposed to Western culture and the free expression of ideas.

Hatred of the West also springs from feelings of jealousy, resentment and insecurity, and an inclination at times to blame others for one’s own problems.¹² If the fundamentalists are living and governing according to God’s law as they believe, then why, might they ask, is their civilization less advanced, their military less powerful, their people less healthy and less wealthy than the infidels living in the West? This is a source of great consternation and embarrassment to the fundamentalists. The fundamentalists view themselves as the heirs of the ancient Arabic Empire founded by the Prophet, and they are acutely conscious of their failure to live up to that grand inheritance. They are also painfully aware of the fact that the material, scientific, political, military and technological achievements of Western civilization dwarf the achievements of their own Islamic civilization in the modern age. Instead of blaming themselves, at some level they blame America and the West for reminding them of their own failings. The unqualified triumph of the West in defeating the Soviet Union in a virtually bloodless fight only adds to the pressure the fundamentalists feel either to define an alternative Islamic world order or be forced to fall in line with Western values and political and economic ideals.

Fundamentalists, of course, take their hatreds and insecurities to extreme and unprecedented levels. They want to do more than simply expunge Western influences from their own societies and define their own alternative Islamic political order. These groups and governments have declared a rhetorical as well as a literal war on America and its allies. As L. Paul Bremer, former head of the United States State Department’s Office of Counterterrorism, has stated:

The agenda of these people [Muslim fundamentalists] is to attack us for what we are... They don’t like American culture, our movies, pornography, women, etc. It’s something very hard for Americans who live in a multi-cultured and secular society to understand.¹³

Unlike the IRA or the Basque separatists, the Muslim fundamentalists aren’t seeking merely the transfer of territory or the release of political prisoners. Nor is it America’s longstanding record of friendly relations with Israel which alone make it a prime fundamentalist target. The stark and simple fact is the fundamentalists hate Americans (and other Westerners) for who we are and therefore, there is nothing we can do, no cognizable demands we could ever satisfy, short of stepping into a cultural gas chamber that would ever satisfy the essential demands of the Muslim fundamentalists.

 

THE KHATAMI PHENOMENON

President Mohammad Khatami of Iran deserves mention for the novelty of his ideas and the courageousness with which he has expressed them. He is that rare and endangered creature – a moderate politician in a fundamentalist Muslim state. Khatami is important because if the “Khatami revolution” sweeps away the unreconstructed aspects of the Iranian revolution leaving Iran with a less confrontational, more moderate and participatory form of Islamic-based government, then such an event will have removed one of the biggest stars in the fundamentalist constellation.

In his writings and public pronouncements, Mohammad Khatami has attempted to replace conflict between Islamic civilization and the Judeo-Christian West with dialogue.¹⁴ Khatami uttered his now famous call for a “dialogue among civilizations” in an hour-long interview on the Cable News Network (CNN) which was broadcast worldwide on January 7, 1998. His statements stand in stark contrast both to the statements of the transnational fundamentalist movement and to the remarks of many of his colleagues in the Iranian government, including Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who continues to adhere to a harsh, anti-American and anti-Western line. The appearance of individuals like Mohammad Khatami is a hopeful development because it provides an individual with whom it is potentially possible to have a peaceful and productive dialogue and because it breaks the monopoly the fundamentalists have held on much of the political speech emanating from the Islamic world of late. If Khatami survives and succeeds in his political quest, his presence will give powerful encouragement to other moderate, democratic forces working from within the Muslim world to combat the fundamentalists.

Anthony J. Dennis

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

A New and More Dangerous Era Part III

 

By Anthony J. Dennis

3^rd part of 3

 

INSTITUTIONAL AND IDEOLOGICAL HURDLES TO REFORM

President Khatami faces both institutional and ideological hurdles to the realization of his vision of a more moderate, less confrontational Islam. He is like a man on a raft in the middle of a powerful and turbulent fundamentalist sea. On the political front, the power of the presidency in the Islamic Republic of Iran is overshadowed and circumscribed by the office of the Supreme Leader and the Council of Guardians. The President is not the most senior executive branch official in the Iranian government. As a result, President Khatami does not control Iran's foreign policy or its military and intelligence branches. He has also been powerless to prevent his own government's zealous prosecution and imprisonment of many of his allies and supporters. Scores of Khatami's allies from the press, the universities and from Iranian political circles have been sent off to prison for disagreeing publicly with the fundamentalist line. Khatami's lack of executive authority in Iran has proven to be a great source of frustration for the President himself and for his supporters.

These institutional limitations constitute significant stumbling blocks on Iran's path to reform. They may also discourage other governments from initiating a dialogue or having relations with Iran out of concern that the cordial words of Khatami by no means reflect the actual attitudes and intentions of the Iranian government, which is controlled by hardliners under Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.

President Khatami's political vision, a vision which acknowledges and incorporates important aspects of Western political thought, also faces significant ideological hurdles within the Muslim world. These ideological hurdles represent additional friction points between the Islamic and Western worlds. Islamic and Western conceptions of the state, the individual and society, are often totally at odds. According to Western political thought, governmental power arises from the governed. In contrast, in a theocracy such as exists in Iran, governmental power is presumed to originate directly from God. An Islamic ruler represents Allah's agent on earth. In such a setting, liberal democratic institutions – including a robust multi-party system, free and fair elections and freedom of intellectual expression including political expression – simply cannot work since all political disagreements are ultimately religious disagreements, the penalties for which can be severe.

For a Shi`a cleric living in the theocracy that is Iran, Khatami has made some daring and highly unconventional statements:

The legitimacy of the government stems from the people's vote. And a powerful government, elected by the people, is representative, participatory, and accountable. The Islamic government is the servant of the people and not their master, and it is accountable to the nation under all circumstances.¹⁵

Khatami's views on government are plainly at odds with those of his political opponents.

The profound gulf between Islamic and Western conceptions of the state extends to the individual and society. To the fundamentalists, there is "no doctrine of human rights, the very notion of which might seem an impiety. Only God has rights – human beings have duties."¹⁶ The whole Lockean concept of natural rights – or the more modern concept of universal human rights – that predate and are superior to the rights of any government to take them away, finds no place in fundamentalist thought. In fact, the fundamentalists view the West's insistence on certain basic and universal human rights as an arrogant attempt to place the rights and privileges of human beings above God, and above God's agents on earth (i.e. the government run by the fundamentalists).

Islamic rule as practiced in fundamentalist countries completely dominates both the individual and society. Islam in its classic formulation recognizes no separation between the religious and secular spheres. It represents a complete way of life for its followers regulating virtually every aspect of individual and group behavior. This leaves very little room to maneuver for reformers like Khatami.

Khatami's attempts to institute civil society and a fully functional democracy in the Islamic Republic of Iran encounter other troubles as well. Democracy and the whole concept of "human rights" are viewed by many as Western imports and as another legacy of colonialist rule. If the Muslim world which Khatami inhabits has any hope of reconciling democracy with religion, free speech with the authority of the religious establishment, and human rights (including especially women's rights) with the Qur`an, then ideally he and his supporters must find indigenous sources for such ideals in order to legitimize them in the eyes of the public and religious authorities alike. Otherwise, his program may be attacked and contemptuously dismissed by his fundamentalist opponents as "Western imports" whose adoption by the nation would represent a capitulation to the West and a betrayal of the Islamic revolution. In summary, Khatami treads a difficult path both practically and intellectually. President Khatami and his supporters will have to work energetically to point out how aspects of their progressive political program in fact have their origins in the Qur`an and the Hadith (the Tradition).

We can wish Khatami well and do what we can, at arm's length and from across the waters, to encourage the growth and development of politically moderate voices within the Islamic world. Western governments cannot do much more than that since a close embrace of Khatami and his program may give his hardline opponents an opportunity to criticize him as a puppet of the West. In the meantime, we must still deal with the hostile intentions of the fundamentalist government of Iran and the deadly threats uttered by fundamentalist groups around the world against the US and other Western countries.

POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS

Very briefly, several policy recommendations flow from the above state of affairs.

·         Condemn Words and Deeds not Religious Status: We should condemn words and deeds, not religious status. No one should be condemned as a terrorist or supporter of terrorism merely because they happen to be followers of Islam. The West must avoid falling into the trap of condemning a particular religion. Rather, Western governments should condemn those individuals and groups who interpret Islam in such a way as to justify their violent actions.
 

·         Support Civil Society, Not Elections: Western governments should not rigidly support calls for immediate elections in certain Islamic countries today which would only serve to betray democratic principles tomorrow. The West must not be beguiled by the fundamentalists in places like Algeria into betraying its allies by blindly joining calls for immediate elections. We should instead support and rally around the concept of "civil society" which consists of those governmental and nongovernmental institutions that are the prerequisite of a mature and fully functional democracy. I am referring here to the ground rules of a democratic system such as recognizing the rights of opposition parties, allowing political opposition and dissent to exist without the threat of torture, imprisonment or death, allowing a free press, free speech, the right to demonstrate peacefully, the right of minority religions to co-exist with Islam without persecution or harassment, the establishment of an independent judiciary and so on. The institution of civil society ensures that a political culture will be in place that guarantees the orderly transition of power between elected governments and that future elections will in fact take place.
 

·         Deterrence is Dead: We must recognize that the military doctrine of deterrence is dead. The cornerstone of America's and NATO's Cold War defense strategy – the deterrence doctrine – is not going to be sufficient in dealing with the transnational fundamentalist movement. How does one deter a fundamentalist soldier, terrorist group or military detachment that believes the surest and swiftest way to heaven is to commit a terrorist act against a Western target and die in the course of that attack? You cannot "deter" that person or party in the conventional sense. You can only neutralize the threat.

Emphasis must be on thwarting such attacks, whether through the use of counter-terrorism measures or the deployment of missile defense systems to prevent a successful attack against America and its allies. The positive aspect of missile defense systems is that they are not offensive systems but defensive ones. They do not threaten particular adversaries or single out any one particular threat. They protect against all-comers, and there is very little danger that the Muslim fundamentalist countries or others will feel "threatened" or "discriminated against" as a result of the deployment of such defensive systems.
 

·         Money Does Not Always Talk: Money does not solve all political or foreign policy problems. It would be condescending and naïve to assume that the fundamentalists would give up their dearly held, core beliefs in return for more economic aid. Such a clumsy attempt to "buy them off" would likely be met with derision and contempt even as it was being cynically accepted and exploited. Fundamentalists have had many chances over the years to take the easier and more peaceful path. The luscious fruits of global trade and world economic prosperity sit like a table filled with bounties before them. Nonetheless, the fundamentalists have refused to holster their weapons, remove their gas masks and sit down at the feast. Quite the contrary. They view Western economic prosperity and the promise of easy living as the temptations of the Devil. Theirs is a different mental sensibility entirely.

 

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

The Western democracies won the Cold War but they have not yet won the peace. While democracy and its economic corollary, capitalism, triumphed over communism in the twentieth century, these ideals have not yet won a definitive victory over Islamic fundamentalism which many around the globe have seized upon as a rival ideology. A sizeable portion of the world's populace – stretching from Indonesia and the southern Philippines in the Pacific through Central Asia to the Middle East and Africa – has shown a willingness to embrace Islamic fundamentalism as a governing ideology. Given the fundamentalist movement's openly jihadist foreign policy toward the West, the world has now embarked upon a new and more dangerous period in human history.

Anthony J. Dennis

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

Endnotes

1. Anthony J. Dennis, The Rise of the Islamic Empire and the Threat to the West, Wyndham

Hall Press, 1996.

 

2. Ibid., p. 68.

3. "Russian Aide Says Gangsters Try to Steal Atom Material", The New York Times, May 26, 1994, p. A5; "The Plutonium Racket", The Economist, August 26, 1994, p. 39; Seymour M. Hirsch, "The Wild East", The Atlantic Monthly, June 1994, p. 61.

4. "Egyptian Jihad Leader Preaches Holy War to Brooklyn Muslims", The Wall Street Journal, January 6, 1993, pp. A1, A5.

5. "Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran", Middle East Journal, 1980, p. 185

6. "Jihad", The Economist, 42-43, August 7-13, 1993.

7. Reuters, October 28, 1991.

8. Op. cit., Dennis, pp. 61, 76; James A. Phillips, "The Saddamization of Iran", Policy Review, Vol. 69, Summer 1994, p. 7.

9. Reuters, March 11, 1993.

10. "A World Terrorist Link?", The Hartford Courant, June 20, 1993, p. C1.

11. See "Notable and Quotable", The Wall Street Journal, July 22, 1997, p. A14.

12. Daniel Pipes, The Hidden Hand: Middle East Fears of Conspiracy, Palgrave, 1996.

13. Wright, "New Breed of Terrorist Worries US", Los Angeles Times, June 28, 1993, p. A7.

14. Mohammad Khatami, "Covenant with the Nation", First Presidential Inaugural Speech, in Islam, Liberty and Development, Institute of Global Studies, Binghamton University, 1998, p. 150. "The government must emphasize that in our world, dialogue among civilizations is an absolute imperative. We shall avoid any course of action that may foster tension. We shall have relations with any state which respects our independence."; Mohammad Khatami, "Religious Belief in Today's World", Islam, Liberty and Development, p. 96 "[W]e must shun the extremes of hating the West or being completely enchanted by it, so that on the one hand we can guard against the dangers posed by the West, and on the other hand utilize its human achievements." Khatami's most dearly held political beliefs mark him as someone outside the fundamentalist camp. He treads a very thin and dangerous line as the president of a staunchly fundamentalist government.

15. Op. cit., Khatami, "Covenant with the Nation", p. 150.

16. Bernard Lewis, "Islam and Liberal Democracy", The Atlantic Monthly, February 1993, p. 98.

 

Islamic Fundamentalism and the Arab Political Culture Part I

By David Bukay

1^st part of 3

The 20th century was one of the most turbulent in human history, marked by total wars and severe ideological struggles. Two ideologies competed against the Western liberal-democratic system and were defeated unconditionally. The first, Nazism, was vanquished in a total war that exacted one of the greatest human and economic costs in history. The second, Communism, was overcome after a political and ideological struggle that lasted three-quarters of a century. When it seemed that a “New World Order” had emerged and the period of total wars, and especially fanatic ideologies, had ended, the world became aware of the danger of fundamentalist Islam, whose borders, as Samuel Huntington has observed, are borders of blood.

Indeed, in several regards, this is a more extreme danger, certainly a graver and more massive threat. There are many Islamic states in the world, there is a total Islamic population of over a billion human beings, and the reality is one of an extroverted and aggressive, totalistic religion with an ideology of perpetual expansion. It should also be stated clearly, even in the age of the “politically correct”, that the problem is also one of Arabs, the “savage kinship” as scholars have called it, which is still immersed in many values of anarchic tribalism. We are not speaking of Islam as a religion, nor of the Arabs, per se. However, the combination of radical Arabs and fundamentalist Islam is deadly, and constitutes the greatest threat to the existence of modern society and culture. Their ideology is uncompromisingly murderous and nihilistic, and they are supported by millions of frustrated and destitute people who seek to convert the humiliating present back into the glorious past.

Islam constitutes a universal world-view, an all-inclusive civilization that lays down positive and negative commandments for the believer. It is a comprehensive system of religion (din) and state (dawlah) which does not distinguish between the kingdom of Allah and the kingdom of the ruler, and signifies total and exclusive submissiveness and devotion to the will of Allah. The Islamic ideal was the establishment of a political community (ummah), and the goal was defined as achieving an Islamic order and political stability while maintaining the unity of the community. Any rule is preferable to lack of rule, and any ruler can be accepted, because he is preferable to anarchy. Arab history, from the days of the prophet Muhammad to the present, is one of patrimonial leadership in military or monarchic authoritarian regimes. Yet, from the historical standpoint, political activity in the Arab world tended to encourage rebelliousness and political violence.¹

How can we explain this paradoxical phenomenon? The answer is fascinating: there is no need for legitimacy stemming from the people and its sovereign political will, since sovereignty comes from Allah, and the moment one rule is replaced by another, it becomes accepted and consented to. Everything is done according to the will of Allah, and the test is always the result. Whether an act has succeeded or failed, that is the will of Allah. This is the ideological-religious basis for violence in Islam. Today, this model endures even in the secular conception of rule, with sovereignty consisting of the leader’s personality and the forcefulness of his rule. The Islamic state is theocratic: Allah is the only source of faith, and the religious cult is the symbol of collective identity. Any criticism, any opposition, constitutes heresy. This orientation is linked to the legitimacy of the government. Islam completely rejects the Western view that the state is the product of a “social contract”. The state reflects and embodies the will of Allah. Sovereignty (hakmi-yah) stems from Allah alone and does not pertain to the will of the ruled. The Western doctrine of a right to oppose a bad government, and a duty to replace it, does not exist in Islam. (Saddam Hussein’s maintenance of power in Iraq, and Arafat’s continuing to lead the Palestinians, are real-life examples.) The question of the citizenship and of civil sovereignty is irrelevant. In this regard, it is clear what the army’s role will be, and that the leadership will remain in power. From the standpoint of Islam, any attempt to alter the structure of legitimacy and sovereignty constitutes heresy and rebellion. The Arabic word for “state” is dawlah, which means dynasty, but connotes becoming or replacing (Sura 3, 134-140). Most of the population is estranged from the government, and is not regarded as a factor to consider in conducting politics. The political culture is native (submissive) in the center and parochial in the periphery. There is no tradition of a civil society that constitutes the sovereign, and citizenship, as a critical phenomenon, is practically nonexistent. Political participation is on the level of supportiveness only, and mobility is low. Intellectual thought in Islam, like legitimacy and sovereignty, is also different from the Western concept, and this has important implications for basic principles and political behavior. The concept is atomistic rather than integrative, meaning that the principle of causality does not exist, since everything stems from the will of Allah. The result is the crystallization of a synthetic culture that manifests mental collectivism, with an overarching goal of preserving stability, and a fear of questioning the political order lest disintegration, anarchy, and disorientation result. The values of Islam were profoundly influenced by the basic values of the Arabs in the jahali era. Allah is from the jahali period. He was regarded as a supreme god, and he had three daughter-gods: al-Lat, al-Manat, and al-`uzza. The cult of the stones was central in jahali Arab society, particularly the “black stone” in Ka`bah in Mecca. Another key example is the custom of the hajj, which was entirely incorporated into Islam. Apart from the customs that were replicated from the jahali era, it seems that only two of the five pillars of Islam (arkan al-Islam) – prayer (salat) and testimony (shahadah) – are originally Muslim.

The determinative affiliation is inward, involving the blood relations within the family or clan. This is manifested in the proverb, “I and my brothers against my cousin. I and my cousin against the neighbor, I and the neighbor against the foreigner.” The duty to uphold the affiliative and clan-family framework against others exists without any connection to the question of right or wrong.

The hostility and suspicion toward other tribes is deep and intense, and is well reflected in the relations between Arab states. There have never been relations of peace and fraternity between these countries, but rather a cold and alien détente. The summit conferences are a powerful filter for synchronizing the severe disagreements that exist. These summits are held when sharp disputes arise on the political agenda. To avert conflicts as well as the shame of failing to arrive at agreement, the Arab leaders decide to formulate a joint document in a festive conference that aims at covering up the shame and creating an atmosphere of solidarity. Even this goal is achieved only with great difficulty. To prevent failure, and the intensification of the collective Arab shame, the Arab foreign ministers meet before holding the summit to formulate a summary document. That document is then transmitted to the heads of state for approval. The leaders’ level of participation manifests their agreement or opposition to the positions that have been reached. No less important, the defense and security agreements that are signed between Arab states are not worth the paper they are written on, and they are not regarded as applicable even by the signatories themselves.

From the state of affairs just presented, we may draw conclusions about the likelihood of reaching political arrangements with Arab states, let alone in the case of Arab land considered to be inhabited by infidels, such as the Crusaders and Israel. The attitude toward the foreigner shows fascinating paradoxes: on the one hand, courtesy, sympathy, and hospitality, yet on the other, an aloof suspicion. This indicates the social basis of the Arab-Islamic hatred, which is mingled both with fanaticism and feelings of inferiority toward the West. Peace is hardly a familiar phenomenon between the Arabs, and it is illusory to think they can reach peace with foreigners.

Muhammad succeeded in laying the political and intellectual foundation for the Islamic social system, but he failed to eradicate the tribal-clan structure. The tribes became part of Islam on the basis of the existing commonality of customs, and swore personal loyalty (mubaya`ah) to it because it was perceived as triumphant. This is a salient phenomenon among the Arabs, rooted in the spread of Islam, and it has major implications for the issue of Islamic fundamentalism: the victor is righteous, and the righteous always triumphs.

The test for righteousness is the same as the test for success. These are facts dispensed by Allah; hence, Islam triumphs and succeeds because it is righteous. In the tribal society, secular ideas held a central place and were expressed in the concept of “manhood” (muruwwah). This refers to the traits of the perfect Bedouin man. The most important framework was that of maintaining the rules of tribal solidarity (`asabiyah).

The tribe was the primary social unit, the basis of personal and collective existence; hence the centrality of the collectivist rather than individualist approach. The crucial phenomenon in the society is that of honor. This is the supreme value, more important than life itself. Sharaf is a man’s honor of the man. It is dynamic and can rise or fall in line with the man’s activity and how he is perceived. `ird is the honor of the woman (and also refers to her pelvis, which is related to her modesty). `ird, unlike sharaf, is permanent and static. The woman was born and grew up with her honor, and her duty is to guard it closely. The moment `ird is lost, it cannot be restored, and the honor of the man is severely compromised.² Muslim tradition ascribes supreme importance to the man’s honor and the woman’s modesty. This is the basis for the status of woman in Islamic society, and one of the primary concepts in Islam that fosters male-female inequality.³

David Bukay

 

Islamic Fundamentalism and the Arab Political Culture Part II

By David Bukay

2^nd part of 3

The opposite pole of honor is shame. Researchers are not certain what is more important, the notion of honor or the fear of the shame that will be caused if honor is compromised. It is not honor, but shame that is the key issue. Public exposure is what harms a man's honor and humiliates him. The Arab is constantly engaged in avoiding whatever causes shame, in word and deed, while striving vigorously to promote his honor. Beyond shame and preventing its occurrence, there is vengeance, which is also to be displayed to all.⁴ Arab culture reflects a collective ethos, and esteems tradition and honor. It is circumspect in regard to avoiding insult or causing shame; hence, it is better to lie so as to prevent conflict and not offend someone. Whereas the Jewish approach turns one cheek, on the basis of "We have sinned, we have transgressed, we have done wickedly," and the Christian approach turns the other cheek and discards responsibility, the Arab-Islamic approach is essentially aggressive: "I have a problem? Then you are to blame." This constitutes open and emphatic defiance of everything that is perceived as wrong, unjust, and an inability to accomplish one's goals. There is no effort at compromise, certainly no tolerance and consent to the rights and rightness of the other. Nor is there any comprehension that relative concepts are involved. The phenomenon has been starkly evident in the Arab approach to the issue of Palestine. The concept is absolutely total. Justice and truth belong only to the Palestinians, in a manner absolute and without appeal, and the political discourse manifests this clearly. Language is a cultural phenomenon of supreme importance. Prominent among the Arabs is the use of expressions, proverbs, metaphors, linguistic allegories, as well as exaggeration (mubalaghah) and glorification (mufakharah). As a result, spoken Arabic is replete with exaggeration, verbal pathos, and the frequent use of high-flown phrases. This approach contrasts completely with the language of understatement in Western culture. This linguistic contrast contributes to a major problem of communication between members of the two different cultural spheres. What happens in an encounter between Arab culture's language of overstatement and Western culture's language of understatement? This is one of the major causes of Israel's difficult position in world public opinion which believes the Arab culture of exaggeration reflects an actual reality. The impact of the rich and beautiful Arabic language on Arab conduct is remarkable. There would not be such ardent feelings of veneration, such conscious and intensive use of the language, if these were not so powerfully propelled by the written or spoken word. The Arabic language is a mirror through which the Arabs examine the world. Even the language of the uneducated is very rich, and fosters exaggerations and excessive emphases. The Arabs are proud of their language and convinced that it is the greatest and most beautiful of the world's tongues. The Arab personality abounds in contradictions. This is a deeply rooted duality: only a small part of the people is happy and content, yet they give strangers a warm and enthusiastic welcome. They are also intensely emotional, and easily prompted to extremes of hostility and resentment with no self-control. Under the influence of distress and fanaticism, they are capable of any act of cruel violence in an appalling magnitude. The shift can be dramatic and extreme. This is characteristic of tribalism: an admirable fatalism and passivity of self-control along with an astonishing impulsivity and capacity for draconian, uncontrolled violence. All the mechanisms of hospitality, blessings, and affability are aimed at creating a defensive buffer, at mitigating the threatening interpersonal encounter. Life in a hostile environment in the desert, with scarce resources, in social and political alienation, forged a society that acquiesces to the harsh reality out of political conformism, and accepts the rules of behavior that defined society's objectives in religious terms. These are ingrained symptoms of behavioral polarity between: a) unity and separateness, b) honor and shame, c) violent aggression and passive submission to rule, d) fantasy that ascends to the heavens and the earthliness of the burning desert, e) hatred of the imperialist West and admiration for its attributes, f ) the desire for anarchic desert freedom that reflects the turbulent and emotional personality, and g) patience and endurance in the face of the harsh reality. The tribal origins of the Arab Middle East were assimilated into a rural society. The urban society developed only in the 20th century, but retained the patterns of thought and activity of the rural-tribal frameworks. Indeed, in many respects, Arab society manifests the desert anarchy, whether they wear fine tailored suits or gold jalabas. All this is reflected as well in the polar duality of Islam. The phenomenon of the "return of Islam" has many names, according to the eye of the beholder: awakening, rebirth, return, reassertion, resurgence, resurrection, fundamentalism, messianism, political Islam, Islamism, radical Islam, Islamic extremism, Islamic movement, Islamic fanatics. The Muslims refer to the phenomenon in positive terms: rootedness (usuliyah), origins (asliyun), Islamists (Islamiyun), believers (mu`minun), and God-fearers (mutadayinun). However, the notion of fundamentalism, which initially referred to the late 19th century Protestant movement in the United States, is the most useful, both because it is related to "rootedness" in Arabic (usuliyah) and because it is more understood and meaningful in the Western political discourse. Only on September 11, 2001, after the terrorist strikes on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, was the Islamic threat internalized in the West. It then began to penetrate the Western political consciousness that the Arab-Islamic political culture is aggressive and violent, can arouse popular forces that are enormous in scope, and embraces worldwide aspirations. The Muslim weakness, compared to Western supremacy, left profound feelings of frustration and inferiority among the Muslims, a sense that their just, victorious religion had been humiliated by the infidel West. This reality is not only unfamiliar, but unacceptable, since it contradicts all the laws of Muslim logic. The reactions to the weaknesses of Islam were perceived and defined as religious. The problems were formulated in religious terms, and so were the solutions that were proposed for them: a return to the original Islamic tenets, with the goal of restoring in the present the achievements of the past, and applying the principles of the past to successful activity in the present. The violent Islamic aggression does not stem only from frustration, the most prominent factor in social science theories of aggression. Islam is characterized by violent and aggressive principles and a radical ideology, whose source is in the Arab political culture. The combination between sweetness and amiability as preached by the Qur`an on the one hand, and the fanaticism of wild, destructive violence on the other, is amazing. The phenomenon of the suicide bombers, for example, is Islamic in nature: from Chechnya to Iran, Hizbullah, and the Palestinians. The society sanctifies the phenomenon of turning abject cowards who attack innocent, defenseless civilians, into heroes whose murderous deeds are approved by their families, not to mention the monetary rewards and adulation they receive. In the West, this phenomenon is neither perceived nor understood. It must be emphasized that it is not a matter of a few extremists. Yet the West has a hard time understanding why Islam does not work to eradicate the phenomenon. The first fundamentalist movements in Islam developed on the periphery of the Arab world, amid the waning of the Ottoman Empire. Its devotees had an internal orientation, focusing on reforms or a revolution in Islamic society. The Wahabiyah movement in the Arabian Peninsula founded by Muhammad ibn `Abd al-Wahab (1703-1792), was influenced by the radical, puritanical hanbali movement and the interpretations of Ibn-Taymiyah. The Sanusiyah movement founded by Muhammad bin `Ali al-Sanusi (1787-1859) in Cyrnaika (Libya) was a mystical and reformist movement, suited to the cultural values of North Africa. And the Madhiyah movement founded by Muhammad Ahmad bin `Abdallah al-Mahdi (1843-1885) flowered in Sudan as a puritanical movement similar to Wahabiyah. But the movement that led fundamentalist Islam into the 20th century was the reformist al-Salafiyah movement headed by Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1838-1897), who preached pan-Islamic solidarity and resistance to Western penetration. The success of this movement was via its disciples, Muhammad `Abduh (1849-1905) and Rashid Muhammad Rida (1865-1935), who were active in Egypt. The triumphant stream was the radical activism of the Muslim Brotherhood lead by Hasan al-Bana (1906-1949). This movement gained enormous success, and established influential branches in almost all the Arab states. Geertz defines religion as a system of symbols that confers meaning on reality, formulates views and outlooks, supplies answers to all the issues, and creates an ethos for action.⁵

It is commonly claimed that Islam is the political movement of the popular strata, and provides a solution to the social-economic-cultural difficulties of the Muslims. By contrast, we maintain that the Islamic awakening (al-sahwah al-Islamiyah) does not involve the return of Islam as a religion, since in fact it was always there, and never underwent a secularization process. What has occurred is that Islamic religion has become a significant factor in political discourse. Furthermore, there are many different Islamic movements that employ a variety of modes of attaining political ends and of gaining power via political and social mobilization of the masses. These are aggressive and violent movements that use modern technological tools to subvert Arab and Islamic states that are defined as secular. The Islamic movements are not part of the regime, but their functional orientation is strongly political. Islam is, indeed, the most political of all the religions. In contrast to the Christian ideal of the kingdom of heaven, and the Jewish ideal of the messianic age, Islam sees the ideal as immediately applicable via the state as long as it functions according to the shari`a. In practice, this means that Muslims strive for a blend of Arab nationalism and Islam in its fundamentalist formulation. The mixture of the two is tantamount to embark upon a revolution whose ultimate objective is the reinstatement of the Islamic caliphate embodied in the Ottoman Empire until the beginning of the 20th century. The dominant notion in the West is that Muslims today are expressing disappointment and frustration over the failure of modernization. They are displaying a cultural rearguard battle against a modernity that dissolves their traditional value system. Our view differs. We contend that the current Muslim uprising is a political reaction that seeks to promote political objectives as an alternative to the existing regimes, and, no less significant, it seeks to counteract capitalist and communist ideology for which it regards itself as an alternative. The Islamic awakening is not a negation of modernity, but a reaction to its Western model. Western modernity is perceived as a direct threat to Islamic civilization, which is the most important collective framework of identity. Thus, the only possible resistance to the West's cultural onslaught is Islam in its fundamentalist form presented as a comprehensive system that provides all solutions (al-Islam huwa al-Hall) to the problems of society. The Islamic solution is authentic and its roots run deep in the existing culture. Western penetration induced a severe reaction precisely among those who came into direct contact with the West, those in the middle class who experienced modernity and higher education. Modernity is perceived as the source of all sin, and permissiveness and materialism as a catastrophe. But the greatest sin of the West is to place the individual and the rule of reason at the center, as opposed to total submission and devotion to Allah. The Islamic victory in Afghanistan and overthrow of the Communist regime there in 1988 raised the issue anew, and served as proof that Islam could vanquish the infidels through the power of enthusiasm and religious faith. Indeed, Allah is with Islam, and Islam triumphs because he is just.

Fundamentalist Islam has begun its march through Arab-Islamic society. Analysis of the causes of its rise focuses on a number of factors: a reaction to Western penetration, and a fierce animosity toward its presence and influence in the Arab political system. This mindset is prevalent among city dwellers, those who have had more direct contact with the West, and the educated middle class, who have experienced modernity and technology: first there was an economic conquest, then a military-territorial one. And when the Arab states succeeded in liberating themselves from Western colonialism, the Western cultural invasion began. The challenges of Western technology and the global village threatened the foundations of Islamic society. Second is the failure of the secular political alternative. The authoritarian regimes and patrimonial leadership repress and alienate the masses who experience no political participation and exert no influence over how the government functions. The third factor is the collapse of the secular Arab ideologies, not only socialism and communism but also nationalism, Nasserism, and Arab unity, together with the Arab inability to solve the "question of Palestine". As a result of these processes, a severe dissonance developed between the world-view of the Muslim Arab and the reality of his social-political environment. The cultural conflict of values acted as a strong catalyst for a return to the familiar world of Islamic values, which offered a lifeline in a stormy sea. Alongside the ideas developed thus far, it remains important to focus on still another dimension of the current Muslim predicament, namely the crises of identity and legitimacy,⁶ and personal and collective. In Arab-Islamic society, no practical ideology developed that could provide a platform for nation building, a basis for socio-economic development, enabling the formation of a civil society. The Islamic societies have mostly remained rural and traditional, hence suffused with a religious mentality. Most of the Arab states are in a pre-industrial stage, and some of them are in the feudal era, with religion exerting wide influence over the population.

The processes of vast and uncontrolled demographic growth had a destructive impact. The results are the subversion of the social and traditional frameworks, the widening of the socio-economic disparities, and the frustration and anomie of an alienated society, in states that comprise non-political and non-civil societies. The combination of a frustrated intellectual and religious minority, the force that exhorts and leads, and the indigent masses, the flock with its numerical magnitude, forms the basis for the rise and endurance of the Islamic movements, a raft in the storm that gave the population feelings of affiliation and self-worth.

In such circumstances, the conclusion of the Islamic movements was clear and unyielding: one must return to the sources, to a pure and just Islam that offers solutions for all distress and need, especially for the cultural contradictions and identity crises of Arab society. Arab unity cannot be achieved, and a solution to the Palestine problem requires the overthrow of the secular Arab regimes. In place of the secular Arab state, what is offered is the pan-Islamic framework under the laws of the shari`a. Secularism is regarded as the gravest threat to traditional society. That is why secularism and Islam cannot join forces, a fact that only a few authors about Islam still fail to comprehend. Islam is a permanent opponent of secularism, and the Islamic awakening contradicts modernity.⁷

In the view of Lewis and Pipes, Islamic anti-Westernism stems from deep feelings of humiliation among those viewing themselves as the inheritors of the dominant civilization of the past, which was subjugated by those regarded as inferior. The more appealing Western civilization became, the greater the fundamentalist hostility and will to struggle against it.⁸ It is worth, however, considering a different aspect of this attitude. The resentment and abhorrence are at Western culture, not necessarily at the West. It is not Western politics but rather the cultural ubiquity of the West, and the threat to Islamic society that shape the Islamic outlook and behavior. Under such circumstances, the Arabs put their ears to the ground to listen for ancient drumbeats calling them back to the Golden Age.

David Bukay