The death of Major General Ahmed Raafat -- the central figure in the drive to persuade Jihadist leaders to renounce violence and the only official in the security establishment willing to shoulder its full political brunt -- has revived controversy over the durability of Jihadist renunciations of violence. However valid the concerns over the ideological stability of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad's recantations it would be simplistic to think the government's stance on the disavowal of violence might change following Raafat's death. It is inconceivable that the position of the political and security establishment on such a critical issue could hinge on a single official, even one of Raafat's stature and influence. Yes, he was an effective trailblazer and the recantations may have been directly connected with, and even contingent upon, him. But that was before the government embraced the extremists' renunciation and pushed for its success. That said, no assessment of the renunciation of violence can be complete if it is restricted to the government's position. It must also entail a serious attempt not only to appreciate Islamic Jihad's position towards it but to develop a fuller understanding of the nature and rationale of this movement. I am certain that a more thorough awareness of these matters will lead us to the conclusion that it will be difficult, if not impossible, for the Islamic Jihad to retract its renunciation of violence. The recantation drive was one of the most important developments in the domain of political Islam in the past decade. Although it was primarily associated with jihadist groups, which espoused and practised violence as a means to achieve political change and which engaged in fierce confrontations with the state, it extended to other radical Islamist movements, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, which also shifted towards a commitment to peaceful political action. The ideological shift received its initial thrust with Egyptian Gamaa Islamiya's 1997 renunciation of violence, although it took years for that commitment to be established within the group. Eventually it spread to similar militant groups, including factions of the Islamic Militia in Algeria and the Libya Islamic Fighting Group, and to groups that espoused the use of violence without actually exercising it -- jihadist Salafi trends in Morocco and in Saudi Arabia -- and even some small organisations linked with Al-Qaeda. The renunciation of violence gained such currency in Islamist quarters that groups that never explicitly espoused violence have come under uncomfortable scrutiny. The Muslim Brotherhood, for example, has been asked why it has not engaged in a process of introspection with regard to its historical record, which features occasional recourse to violence, and to its political ideas, which have swung between almost antithetical extremes on some issues. So how did the retractions occur? To what extent can they be relied upon to understand how Islamist groups behave and to predict how they will behave in the future? There are certain basic keys to understanding the renunciation of violence among the militant Islamist trends. The first is that practice always precedes theory, if indeed theory enters the equation at all. Most Islamist groups are heavy on hierarchy and organisational structures and relatively lightweight in terms of these structures' intellectual and ideological equivalents. What happens in most cases is that a group eventually discovers that it is not accomplishing what it set out to do. It meets some political or even military obstacle, at which point it shifts into transformation mode. The change will not, as a consequence, be limited to the perimeters of any theoretical framework or ideological shift. The task of theorising may, or may not, follow at some later juncture, depending on the nature and level of the pressures and upon the political risks the group might encounter. The Muslim Brotherhood's experience with takfir -- declaring others disbelievers, which can justify the use of violence against them -- is a case in point. The phenomenon drove a rift through the organisation in the Nasserist era in the late 1960s, when large numbers of its members were in prison and some declared the state and regime heretical. The leadership needed to act firmly and resolutely because the notion of takfir jeopardised the Muslim Brotherhood's ideological foundations and its existence -- the book, Proselytisers not Judges, attributed to the second supreme guide Hassan El-Hodeibi, epitomises this effort. But at the time the reaction did not stimulate an overall assessment of the recourse to violence. The Muslim Brotherhood leadership continued to skirt around the issue for decades. In fact, it was not until the early 1990s that the leadership declared an official policy on the matter. In an ideological pamphlet on political action it publicly renounced violence as a means for political change while also addressing the issue of shura (consultation) and the status of women. Before this the subject had been left up in the air, with some Muslim Brotherhood officials coming out against the use of violence and others maintaining either an enigmatic silence or issuing statements that could be interpreted as supporting its use. A militant approach to change was in step with the general political mood at the time. The assassination of Anwar El-Sadat was met by apologists from virtually all shades of the opposition spectrum, including some of the most progressive factions. The Muslim Brotherhood was under no pressure to come to ideological terms with the idea of recourse to violence. They preferred instead to keep violence as a kind of deferred or suspended course of action. If they did not bring it into play, it was not out of principle but either because the costs outweighed the benefits or the timing was not right. When Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya assassinated Sadat a broad segment of Muslim Brotherhood members criticised the operation, not on moral grounds but on the grounds that it was childish and impetuous, and betrayed a lack of experience and political foresight. As militant Islamist groups began to retreat and Egyptian political life stabilised, the Muslim Brotherhood realised that it would have to make up its mind. Even then it did not declare its decisions publicly. Rather, by virtue of political posturing, influenced perhaps by its engagement in legitimate political processes, it positioned itself outside the realm of militancy. In like manner, Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya's initiative to cease violence was not inspired by a process of ideological reassessment. The declaration of the initiative came in the wake of a decisive military defeat which brought Al-Gamaa to the conclusion that it was futile to continue a campaign of armed confrontation. The initiative was the spark that set into motion a train of ideological recantations, not the culmination of such a process. Al-Gamaa's leadership could not, however, afford an extended process of theoretical revision. At the time of its initial recantations the group was in the midst of a crisis and had to act quickly. In addition to the political and military pressures they faced, more than 15,000 of its rank and file were in prison, some 2,000 had died and 100 faced execution. The revision process was not a luxury, as it was for the Muslim Brotherhood, it was literally a matter of life and death. The second key to understanding the ideological revisions is that the groups in question are sociopolitical movements rather than political parties or organisations. The revision process, therefore, tended to be subjugated to social dynamics rather than being a purely intellectual endeavour. It is a gradual process, the advantage of which resides in the fact that it opens groups to new intellectual horizons. Like all social transformations the change takes time to take root. Violence might begin with a decision, but it takes more than that for it to come to a complete stop, whether practically or ideologically. Attempts to halt militant violence failed several times, the most notable being the mediating efforts on the part of Sheikh Mohamed El-Ghazali and Sheikh Metwalli El-Shaarawi with interior minister Abdel-Halim Moussa in 1994. Yet as the transformation process unfolded and acquired the impetus of a social movement political violence abated and was finally crowned by ideological declarations. The revisions of radical Islamist groups are, therefore, contingent upon the social space in which they move and which supports them and not on a decision reached in their upper echelons. The Muslim Brotherhood's shift from the rejection of party politics to active participation in parliamentary life can be understood in this light. The transformation was not so much the result of an ideological reassessment as it was the product of interaction with an environment -- the political liberalisation in Egypt from the 1980s through the mid-1990s -- conducive to the transformation and encouraging deeper involvement. The same applies to the ideological revisions of Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya. They could not have proceeded solely from the organisation itself. In part -- perhaps the largest part -- they proceeded from interaction with a government that seized upon the initiative of a number of the group's leaders, fostered it in the face of other factions within the organisation and other radical Islamist groups and even some extremist secularist forces that opposed the new orientation, and took practical measures to support and promote the trend on the ground. This brings us to the third key to understanding the nature of the ideological recantations, for if they do constitute a social transformation than we cannot chalk them up to tactics. Even if they began as a tactical move, expedience would fade over time, and the longer the renunciations of violence remained in effect the more remote the chances of a reversal in policy became. It is most unlikely that individuals who wrote ideological essays justifying the renunciation of violence would turn around and present treatises in favour of the opposing view. In addition, a movement that had undergone a sociological transformation such as the one described above would not reverse that transformation except under very unusual circumstances, complete social upheaval conducive to such a radical reversal and the effects of which would extend well beyond the sphere of political Islam in both its jihadist and pacifist aspects. There appears to be little ground for the contention that Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya could revert to violence. This is not so much because of its growing legacy of ideological recantations, which now number over 20 books, as it is the fruit of a transformation in its attitudes towards the state and society. These, in turn, have been sustained and encouraged by realities on the ground: the release of thousands of detainees, the resolution of cases of those that were still wanted by police, the return of leaders from exile, the improvement of prison conditions for those still serving sentences, the beginning of the rehabilitation process for the released, and changes in the Egyptian political climate which no longer tolerates Islamist violence. The same applies to the Muslim Brotherhood. It is unlikely to abandon political participation and turn to violence. Its relationship with the state and society has completely changed and its political outlook and imagination have also changed, if more gradually. Only a radical reversal in the political environment could galvanise the Muslim Brotherhood into renouncing political participation. Ideological revisions, though they are in essence a reaction, may be able to help us understand where the movement came from and where it stands at present, but it will take many more major ideological shifts to change the political outlook of Islamist movements whose political projects hark back to the era before the emergence of the modern nation state. Even the Muslim Brotherhood, in spite of the progress it has made, remains caught between visions of the revival of the Caliphate, the rule of Islamic law and the modern state whose rules they have begun to play by without yet developing a full understanding of their underlying concepts and principles. Hossam Tammam * The writer is an expert in Islamist movements.
