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The Israeli decision to "deport" more than four hundred Palestinians to southern Lebanon in December 1992 has led to the formation of a unique Islamist society. The Israeli government assumed that the expellees would join the other two thousand leaders living in exile that it has deported since 1967. Yet in a move unanticipated by the Rabin government, most of the expellees chose not to enter Lebanon.
This collective decision paved the way for the formation of an Islamist society which continues to exist in Marj al-Zuhour. Their determination to return prompted the expellees to name their camp al-Awdah (the return). Since the decision to be forced into a no-man's-land was not their own, I will call the social structure that developed the "accidental society of al-Awdah camp." Members of this society include doctors, skilled professionals and educators. Their occupations complement the predicament imposed upon them by Israeli authorities
The Middle East Affairs Journal (MEAJ) posed a series of questions regarding the Islamic revival to a number of intellectuals. Each scholar studied the queries and provided his interpretation of the questions and how they should be answered. While the views expressed are not necessarily those of MEAJ, or its publisher, they are an important reflection of how the Islamic resurgence is perceived. Dr. I. William Zartman is Jacob Blaustein Professor of Conflict Resolution and International Organization at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. He is a consultant to the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Information Agency, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He received his Ph.D. in International Relations from Yale University. Dr. Louis J. Cantori was the Distinguished Visiting Olin Professor of National Security and Defense Studies at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado during the 1993 spring semester. He is professor of political science at the University of Maryland and adjunct professor at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, where he teaches graduate courses on development in the Arab world. He studied at al-Azhar under the tutelage of Sheikh Abd al-Halim Mahmud from 1965-66.
It is possible to discern certain trends and characteristics in the evolution of Islamic movements from which we can extrapolate a few inferences about future developments. First, though, some definitions are in order. I have taken "Islamic movements" here to mean those with a political agenda, those movements sometimes called "Islamist" or "political Islam" and, by their enemies, "fundamentalist." As a matter of convenient shorthand, I will be referring to those Islamic movements with a political agenda as "Islamist." This is not a particularly satisfactory term, but it is far better than "fundamentalist," a word borrowed from the Christian vocabulary.
* Greg Noakes is the news editor for the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. He was in Algeria during the winter of 1992.
Islam is, historically, one of the most powerful opposition political forces in Algeria, as well as the tie that binds the country's ethnically diverse population together. Islam's ability to mobilize the people stems from its importance in defining Algerians' sociocultural identity, its status as a coherent political, social and economic system, and the individual's spiritual devotion. The Algerian Islamist movement is one of the most vibrant in the Arab and Muslim worlds, exhibiting a degree of organization, sophistication and, indeed, success that is difficult to find elsewhere. Yet the movement also faces a number of grave internal and external threats and challenges. How has the Algerian Islamist movement evolved since independence, what are some of the difficulties it faces and how can these challenges be met?
Looking at the Islamic revival worldwide today - a revival aiming to rebuild the individual and society and recompose the nation's thought and politics based on Islam - we find it making progress. It is making victories that no other ideology is making in today's world. The progress is not limited to the idea, because the idea itself is improving. The Islamic movement has been able to discover new areas of Islam, and the discoveries continue along the path forged by men of the last century like Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and continued by men like Hasan al-Banna and Abu Al-A'la al-Maududi. The ideas of these men gave birth to modern Islamic movements which rediscovered the Islamic basis upon which to build life. Islam is not a group of individual beliefs, rituals, or mannerisms. It is a comprehensive way of life. Islam was around before the modern Islamic movement, but it had been thought of as a preparation for one to get to heaven, not a system to mold society.
The role of a constitution and a constitutional order in political development is generally not discussed in recent literature on the comparative politics of developing societies. It is more or less taken for granted that, in the division between developed and developing societies, the former are identified with mature institutions of legitimate order that provide political stability, continuity of political authority, and established rules for conflict settlement; the latter are characterized by the weakness or absence of such institutions. This is the analytical scheme in Huntington's now classic study, Political Order in Changing Societies.
and Challenges in the Middle East
The United States Institute for Peace (U.S.I.P), an institution established by Congress "to promote the peaceful resolution to international conflict," hosted a symposium on May 15, 1992 entitled "Islam and Democracy: Opportunities and Challenges in the Middle East."
Reflecting on the 1991 Gulf War in which the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was reversed and the Iraqi regional power curtailed, S.R. Gill observed:
It partly reflects not simply the struggle between states, . . . but also the struggles over the organizing principles of society-struggles which began at least as early as the Middle Ages and the era of the Crusades-between Western capitalist secular materialism and the metaphysics and social doctrine of Islam as well as more secular pan-Arabist forces in the shape of the Iraqi regime.
Recent discourse on Islam in Western academic and media circles has raised serious doubts about the compatibility of Islam and democracy.1 In this regard, Islamic revivalist movements have been found especially lacking in their commitment to the ideals of democratic pluralism. Our purpose in this essay is to examine the relationship between Islam and democracy more closely by focusing our discussion on three pertinent questions: How do Islamists view democracy? What has been their actual conduct in relation to democratic institutions and processes? Finally, under what circumstances would Islamists find democratic political process acceptable, and under what conditions would they deem it uncongenial for their Islamic goals?
This paper examines the nature of the current media campaign aiming at the distortion of the image of Islam, identifies several tactics used by the detractors of Islam and its symbols, and proposes an appropriate response for dealing with the challenge posed by the global media. I contend that the media campaign against Islam is politically motivated, lead by powerful quarters in western society who see in Islam a potential global power and civilizational alternative, capable of challenging western hegemony. Examining several examples from the global media, I argue that the campaign to distort the image of Islam endeavors to equate Islam with imposition and aggression, while justifying imposition and aggression against Muslims. I conclude by proposing a few measures for dealing with the challenge of the global media.
Almost every month the threat from the Warsaw Pact diminishes but every year, for the rest of this decade and beyond, the threat from the fundamentalist Islam will grow. It is different in kind and degree from the cold-war threat. But the West will have to learn how to contain it, just as it once had to learn to contain Soviet Communism.
*Sunday Times, 10 June 1990
I have read with great interest and admiration the analyses of political Islam which scholars like Dr. John L. Esposito have written. These studies, while different in emphasis and scope, deserve great credit for inveighing against presentations and policy recommendations which take a monolithic view of "Islamicism" or radical Islam or whatever expression one might prefer.
Islamicism is not uniform, not a "world conspiracy" directed by some sort of international, Islamic leadership, not a kind of "Islamoform" of "Islamintern." Nor is "Islamism" a new phenomenon suddenly thrust upon the world. It has developed since the 1920s as a debate on how to organize the Umma, the Islamic World, following disputes over the consequences of the dissolution of the Caliphate.
An Interview with Mr. Abdurahman Alamoudi
Mr. Chairman, honorable congressmen, I have been involved in Islamic work since I was a student, and later on I went to England and to France where being exposed to the other [cultures and religions], perhaps I became even more conscious of my religious identity. And ever since I have been in the mainstream of Islamic work in the Sudan. And it's in this capacity that I organized, with my fellow Muslim workers, a number of political parties and fronts advocating a return to indigenous values, an Islamic constitution, the implementation of the higher law of Islam, Shari'a. And it's because of this activism that I was detained under President Nimeiri for about seven-years. Later on he came to see the popularity of Islam and to try to invoke it in his policy.
And in this context I became minister of justice, but I was not allowed to implement my program of gradual and rational Islamization of public institutions and of laws. An Interview With Dr. Robert D. Crane
Robert D. Crane has been a personal advisor to American presidents, cabinet officers, and congressional leaders during the past four decades. From the time of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 until the beginning of Nixon's victorious campaign for the presidency in 1967 Dr. Crane was his principal foreign policy advisor, responsible for preparing a "readers digest" of professional articles for him on the key foreign policy issues. During the campaign Dr. Crane collected his position papers into a book, Inescapable Rendevous: New Directions for American Foreign Policy, with a foreword by Congressman Gerald Ford, who succeeded Nixon as President. On January 20, 1969, Dr. Crane moved into the White House as Deputy Director (for Planning) of the National Security Council. The next day, the Director, Henry Kissinger, fired him, because they differed fundamentally on every single key foreign policy issue. Kissinger was determined to orchestrate power in order to preserve the status quo. Crane was equally determined to promote justice as the only source of dynamic and long-range stability.
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