Islamic Fundamentalism

C

Beliefs of the Radical Minority

While the majority of Islamic activists seek to work within the system and bring about change from within society, a relatively small but significant radical extremist minority believe they have a mandate from God to carry out God’s will. This extremist minority further believes that because the rulers in the Muslim world are authoritarian and anti-Islamic, violent change is necessary. They seek to topple governments, seize power, and impose their vision or interpretation of Islam upon society.

Radical Islamic movements often operate on the assumption that Islam and the West are locked in an ongoing battle that reaches back to the early days of Islam, a battle that has been heavily influenced by the legacy of the Crusades and European colonialism, and that today is the product of a Judeo-Christian conspiracy. This conspiracy, they believe, is the result of superpower neocolonialism and the power of Zionism (support for a Jewish nation, now the state of Israel). These radical movements blame the West (Britain, France, and especially the United States) for its support of un-Islamic or unjust regimes and biased support for Israel in the face of the displacement of the Palestinian people (see Palestine). Thus, violence against such governments and their representatives as well as Western multinationals is regarded as legitimate self-defense.

Islamic radicals also believe that Islam is not simply an ideological alternative for Muslim societies but a theological and political imperative. Because it is God’s command, implementation must be immediate, not gradual, and the obligation to implement is incumbent on all true Muslims. Therefore, those who hesitate, remain apolitical, or resist—individuals and governments—are no longer to be regarded as Muslims. They are atheists or unbelievers, enemies of God, against whom all true Muslims must wage holy war in the form of jihad.

III

The Faces of Political Islam Today

In the early 21st century, Islam remains a major presence and political force throughout the Muslim world. The question is not whether Islam has a place and role in society, but how best for it to assume that role. While some Muslims wish to pursue a more secular path, others call for a more visible role of Islam in public life. The majority of Islamic activists and movements function and participate within society. A distinct minority are radical extremists who attempt to destabilize or overthrow governments and commit acts of violence and terrorism within their countries.

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During the late 1980s and the 1990s Islamic political organizations began to participate in elections, when allowed, and to provide much-needed educational and social services in a number of countries. Headed by educated laity rather than the clergy, these Islamic organizations attracted a broad spectrum of members, from professionals and technocrats to the uneducated and poor. Candidates with an Islamic orientation were elected to high office in several countries. In Turkey, the leader of the Islamist Welfare Party held the office of prime minister from 1996 to 1997. In Malaysia, Anwar Ibrahim, a founder of the Malaysian Islamic Youth Movement (ABIM), served as deputy prime minister from 1993 until his dismissal in a power struggle in 1998. In the first democratic elections in Indonesia, Abdurrahman Wahid, leader of perhaps the largest Islamic movement, the Nahdlatul Ulama, was elected president in 1999. But popular support for him eroded as Indonesia’s economic problems worsened. Wahid was removed from office in 2001 after the national legislature unanimously voted to impeach him and replace him with the vice president, Megawati Sukarnoputri.

Although the primary catalysts and concerns of most Islamic movements have been domestic or national, international issues also have shaped Muslim politics. Among the more influential issues have been Palestinian-Israeli conflict and Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem; the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan during the 1980s (see Soviet-Afghan War); the devastating impact of United Nations (UN) sanctions against Iraq on hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, especially children, following the Persian Gulf War (1991); forceful efforts to suppress Muslims in Bosnia, Chechnya, and Kashmīr; and the U.S.-British invasion and occupation of Iraq, beginning in 2003 (see U.S.-Iraq War). In addition, countries such as Iran, Libya, and Saudi Arabia have sought to extend their influence internationally by supporting government Islamization programs as well as Islamist movements elsewhere.

A review of the current situation in key areas of North Africa, the Middle East, and Southwestern Asia indicates the directions and diverse forms that Muslim politics has taken during recent decades.

A

Tunisia

Until the late 1980s analysts believed that North Africa, like Turkey, was beyond the reach of any serious challenge from Islamic activism. Tunisia had had one-man rule after gaining independence from France in 1957; Habib Bourguiba served as the country’s president from 1957 to 1987. In 1987 Tunisia’s prime minister Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali seized power from Bourguiba, who had been declared senile. Ben Ali, like Bourguiba, insisted on taking a tough stance against Islamists.

Ben Ali promised democratization and held parliamentary elections in 1989. Islamic candidates won 14.5 percent of the vote nationwide and a stunning 30 percent in several cities. The Tunisian government responded by suppressing the most effective Islamic opposition movement, Ennahda, through widespread arrests and trials held before specially created military courts. International human rights organizations strongly criticized these repressive actions. The government’s brief flirtation with democratization came to an end as President Ben Ali in 1994 and 1999 won reelection by 99 percent of the vote.

Tunisia’s constitution was amended in 2002 to enable Ben Ali to seek a fourth term in 2004 and a fifth term in 2009. Ben Ali was reelected in 2004 with more than 90 percent of the vote, after the opposition withdrew from the elections so as not to legitimize “a one-party state with a facade of democracy.”

B

Algeria

Whereas the Tunisian government decapitated the Islamic movement, driving its leaders into exile or underground, in Algeria the military set in motion an escalating spiral of indiscriminate violence and counterviolence. Under its constitution Algeria had single-party rule by the National Liberation Front (Front de Libération Nationale, FLN), the group that won Algeria’s independence from France in 1962. A revised constitution in 1989 permitted other political parties to challenge the FLN. That year the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) became North Africa’s first legal Islamic political party.

Led by a university professor, Shaykh Ali Abbasi al-Madani, the FIS flourished as the FLN-led government failed to resolve Algeria’s social and economic problems. Through mosques and an effective social welfare network, the FIS built a national organization and emerged as the strongest opposition party. Substantial support for FIS came from the unemployed, at a time when Algeria’s unemployment rate had surpassed 30 percent, and from socially marginalized youths. But FIS supporters also included small-business owners and prosperous merchants, civil servants, university professors, physicians, lawyers, and other professionals

In 1990 Algeria held local elections, its first multiparty election since independence. The FIS captured 55 percent of the vote, and it scored an even more surprising victory in 1992 in the first round of parliamentary elections, winning 188 seats, and appeared to be on its way to winning an absolute majority in the second round. As Islamists celebrated the first round of elections, the Algerian military intervened, canceled elections, and forced the resignation of Algeria’s president. The military arrested more FIS leaders, outlawed the FIS, seized FIS assets, and imprisoned more than 10,000 Algerians in desert camps. These actions led to a protracted civil war in which the majority of Algerians found themselves caught between extremist factions. On one side were hardline military and security forces whose only strategy was the eradication of Islamism; on the other, the equally uncompromising radical Armed Islamic Group.

Brutality and bloodshed, which claimed the lives of some 150,000 Algerians, continued into the late 1990s and early 2000s. The FIS was excluded from the 1997 elections for the National Assembly (lower house of the Algerian legislature), but two other Islamically oriented parties together won 107 of the 380 seats. Presidential elections in 1999 were flawed by the last-minute withdrawal of all six opposition candidates, who charged that the military had rigged the elections.

Abdelaziz Bouteflika, elected president in 1999 and reelected in 2004, brought relative stability to Algeria by releasing imprisoned opposition leaders and granting amnesty to Islamist rebels. In 2005 Algerians approved by referendum the president’s Charter on Peace and National Reconciliation, which closed the chapter on a decade of violence. It pardoned Islamist militants on the run or in prison as long as they renounce violence, but it also protected Algeria’s army and security forces from bearing responsibility for the thousands of people who “disappeared” after being arrested. A series of terrorist bombings in late 2006 and early 2007 dispelled Algerians’ hopes that the violence had finally ended. A new group claiming to represent al-Qaeda in northern Africa took responsibility for the bombings and hinted that it would attack again.

C

Morocco

A constitutional monarchy, Morocco has been ruled by the same family since its independence in 1956. Mohammed VI succeeded his father, Hassan II, as king in 1999. Mohammed VI was hailed as a reformer and pushed through reforms in family law, economic liberalization, and politics. Morocco’s parliamentary elections in 2002 were billed as Morocco’s first freely contested elections since the country’s independence. The Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD) tripled its representation in parliament from 14 seats to 42 seats after securing 13 percent of the vote.

In 2003 a series of suicide bomb attacks in Casablanca killed 41 people and left more than 100 others injured. The PJD kept a low profile afterward, fearing the government would use the attacks as a pretext to crack down on the party. Although the PJD claimed not to be a religious party, it was the only legal Islamic party in Morocco. The Islamist movement in Morocco also comprises unauthorized Islamic associations and numerous underground groups, including the Salafia Jihadia, which was blamed for the Casablanca bombings.

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