Islamism's new face

The war on terror will change political Islam; political Islam in turn might well change the region. Diaa Rashwan writes
As the United States and its Western allies wage war in Afghanistan, media campaigns across the world announce a war on terrorism. "Terrorism," though, is a shadowy foe. Its definition is slippery, plans for its extermination uncertain, success impossible to guarantee. What is certain, though, is that the 11 September attacks on New York and Washington, and the violent US response, will wreak profound change; and most of those changes will affect our region. The ideas and behaviour of Islamist movements in the Arab world, in particular, will change dramatically, as new ideas, and new ways of behaving, move them far from their traditional customs.
But although the war on terror will speed the evolution of Islamist groups, the seeds of change had already begun to germinate a few years ago, before 11 September.
The major change began in the 1980s, when Islamist militant groups switched their agenda from religion to society and politics. In their infancy, most Islamist militant groups in the Islamic world were religious zealots, only evaluating people, societies and states according to the soundness of their belief in fundamentalist Islam. They hurried to judge, accusing citizens of infidelity, and governments of ignorance and sin. Longing for a return to the days of traditional Islam, they took it on themselves to right perceived wrongs -- violently, and without discrimination.
Eventually that stern ideology gave way, and the Islamist groups grew more conciliatory. Governments were no longer infidel; they were Muslim -- albeit Muslims with failings. As a result, warring against governments was outlawed and Islamists now adopted a political agenda anchored in Shari'a (Islamic law) -- the result of centuries of effort by Islamic scholars and jurists to apply the Qur'an and the sayings of the prophet (hadith) to human society. Most abandoned force and became involved in the political systems of their respective countries.
The factors behind these changes were several: stern security measures were one, public horror at bloodshed another. But the most important impetus came from events abroad. The Islamists were witness to the beleaguered position of the Palestinians during the rule of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu which began in May 1996. A suicide attack on Israeli targets by Hamas (the Islamic Palestinian Resistance Movement) dramatised to the Islamists a new ideological approach. The incident taught them that another "jihad," close to that espoused in traditional Islam, was at hand, and which could replace that of religious struggle against their rulers. This was jihad with a socio-political face.
But though the deeds of Hamas ended the Islamist obsession with the piety of their governments, the changes in outlook did not straightaway lead to changes in action. There were two main reasons: First, the new ideas needed time to sink into the minds of Islamists who had spent 20 years locked into the concept of purging their own societies by violence. Second, the Islamists feared that using force at home against foreign enemies -- namely the United States and Israel -- would drag them into violent international confrontations.
That hesitancy may now disappear. The war in Afghanistan has angered so many that Islamist groups whose main fixation is Palestine may turn rhetoric into action and target the United States and Israel, wherever they can.
The war in Afghanistan may bring other changes. Two rapprochements are likely to take place in the short and medium terms. Arab nationalism and political Islam may increasingly find common ground. The Islamists' prioritisation of their conflict with the West and involvement in the Palestinian question has created a basis for convergence. Over the past 20 years, we had been witnessing a tendency to Islamise pan-Arab nationlism. Now, we may also witness a movement in the opposite direction, with the Islamism moving towards Arab nationalist positions.
In the medium term, both these movements may come to new terms with most regimes in the region. The US expects the war on terror to be long and varied; it will thus increasingly forfeit the support of Arab regimes whose peoples condemn the US and its war on terror, perceiving it as a war against Arabs and Muslims. This would nudge the regimes towards the politics already promoted by the Islamist and Arab nationalist movements. The chances of rapprochement would be cemented if the movements repudiate their earlier "revolutionary and radical" attitudes towards their governments, and focus their attention abroad rather than at home. The likelihood that the politicians and diplomats will fail to find a just and durable peace in Palestine will hasten this process and put any rapprochement within the context of public pressure to reach a solution to the Palestinian problem.
On another level, the events of 11 September are expected to lead to a general sense of renewal in the Islamic world, which will give further impetus to political Islam and Arab nationalism and the groups that advocate them. The tripartite aggression against Egypt in 1956 was the womb in which the Arab nationalist movement was born. The attack against the United States, and the long war declared against the Taliban, is similar. It is the first occasion in modern times that the concept of a unified Islamic nation has had such force. Despite the distances between Muslim countries, they are rallied by the sense of a common foe -- threatening them all.
The world changed radically after 11 September. New relations and institutions are already taking shape. We are now surely witnessing the end of the old world. It will be some decades, though, before we can see clearly the form of the new, and no one yet knows what form it will take. The changes that will come to Islamist movements are becoming clear, though; certainly clearer than the eventual effect the changed Islamic movements will have on the world at large. But we can already say with certainty that the effects those movements do eventually have will be profound.
The writer is an expert on political Islamism at the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.
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