Islamic Fundamentalism

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Lebanon

Hezbollah is the most powerful political and military organization of Shia Muslims in Lebanon. It was formed in response to Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and the subsequent 18-year Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. As a political party with a popular base, it holds seats in parliament and in the Lebanese cabinet. It also provides a wide range of social services. At the same time, it is a resistance movement that the United States has labeled as a terrorist organization. Hezbollah’s military wing, the Islamic Resistance, has highly trained and motivated fighters.

Hezbollah earned broad-based support among Lebanese after Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000, as Hezbollah’s attacks on the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) were widely perceived as responsible for the pullout. The Israeli withdrawal also vindicated, in the minds of Hezbollah’s supporters, the tactical use of violence and suicide bombing. Further vindication came during a 34-day war with Israel in 2006.

Israel launched a military offensive against Lebanon in July 2006 in retaliation for a Hezbollah raid on the IDF. Hezbollah responded to Israeli air strikes on Lebanon with rocket attacks targeting cities in northern Israel. After 34 days of intense warfare, the U.N. Security Council called for a cease-fire. Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, declared a strategic victory over Israel and emerged as the most popular figure in the Middle East.

Lebanon found itself under the threat of a civil war early in 2007. In January, Hezbollah and its allies in parliament, including several Christian factions, called a general strike against the government, demanding early elections and a greater share of power. Clashes between Sunnis and Shias on the streets of Beirut, Lebanon’s capital, led Hezbollah and its allies to call off the strike, fearing it might unleash an unstoppable sectarian war. Sunni-Shia tensions escalated sharply in the polarizing Lebanese political crisis.

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Turkey

A secular republic, Turkey has a strategic location as the bridge between Europe and Asia that makes the country a significant player in global politics. With a fast-growing economy and a rising population, Turkey has emerged as an important trade and investment partner in the global market. It also is significant militarily, with the second-largest army in NATO. Above all, Turkey stands out as an example of a predominantly Muslim country that is a thriving democracy and a secular republic—a model that political analysts say the West should encourage.

Turkey experimented with Islamic political parties during the 1970s and 1980s but eventually outlawed all of them. Necmettin Erbakan founded several Islamist parties that were banned but in 1996 and 1997 served as Turkey’s first Islamist prime minister. Erbakan’s policies alienated Turkey’s secular political elites and he was forced to step down by the military in 1997 after his coalition government fell apart. Reformists who were disenchanted by Erbakan’s anti-Western policies broke off from his latest Islamist party in 2001 and formed an independent party, the Justice and Development Party (AKP).

The landslide victory of the AKP in 2002 parliamentary elections reflected a drastic shift in Turkey’s political landscape. The AKP, a party with strong religious roots, albeit not an Islamist party, won a huge overall majority in parliament, replacing three parties and nearly all the former political heavyweights. The AKP won 363 seats, just four short of the plurality needed to rewrite the constitution drawn up by generals after an army coup in 1980. The election of an overwhelmingly pro-Islamic parliament and prime minister in the Muslim world’s only strongly secular state seemed astonishing.

Turkey’s new government pushed through some significant reforms, dramatically weakening the political power of the military, the proclaimed guardians of the country’s secular constitution, and granting limited amnesty to Kurdish militants. The parliament stripped the National Security Council of executive powers and put it under civilian control in 2004. By bolstering democratic government, that reform advanced Turkey’s chances of joining the European Union. The government walked a fine line in seeking to appease Turkey’s secular elites as well as its increasingly popular Islamic groups.

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Afghanistan

Although Afghanistan’s mujahideen succeeded in driving out Soviet occupation forces in 1988 and 1989, their victory did not bring peace to Afghanistan. The rebels ousted Afghanistan’s central government in 1992, but civil war then broke out among factions within the mujahideen. The shared Islamic identity that had served to inspire, mobilize, and unify the mujahideen in their jihad against the Soviet Union was eclipsed by Afghanistan’s age-old tribal, ethnic, and religious (Sunni-Shia) differences and rivalries.

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Rise of the Taliban

A new militia, Taliban, first appeared in late 1994 and subsequently swept across Afghanistan, uniting 90 percent of the country under its rule and declaring the Islamic State of Afghanistan in 1996. Taliban, which means “group of madrasa students,” included many veterans of the Soviet-Afghan War (1979-1989) who had returned to the madrasas after the departure of the Soviet troops. Although portrayed as seminary students with no military background, they were in fact a highly trained force.

The Taliban were initially hailed as liberators who secured towns, made the streets safe for ordinary citizens, and cleaned up corruption and graft. But they also imposed puritanical doctrines. The Taliban barred women from school and the workplace, required that men wear beards and women the full-length all-enveloping chador, banned music and television, and imposed strict physical punishments on those who deviated from these policies.

The Pashtun, Afghanistan’s dominant ethnic group, dominated the Taliban. Using religion for legitimacy, the Pashtun Taliban fought “holy” wars to subdue other ethnic and Muslim groups in Afghanistan. The Taliban’s intolerance led to the slaughter of many of Afghanistan’s Shia minority, whom the Taliban disdained as heretics. Many Muslim religious leaders denounced the Taliban’s policies as too extreme and a deviation from Islam. Muslim governments as diverse as Iran’s and Egypt’s condemned the Taliban’s violations of human rights, as did Western governments and international human rights organizations.

The Taliban brand of Islam produced a “jihad culture” of Islamic radicalism and revolution. The classical Islamic belief that jihad is a defense of Islam and the Muslim community against aggression was transformed into a militant worldview that targeted Muslims and non-Muslims alike. This worldview fed off political fragmentation and economic failures, as well as religious and ethnic differences and conflicts. Many groups that embraced the jihad culture received support from Saudi Arabia. With the funding came the influence of Saudi Arabia’s ultraconservative Wahhabi reform movement, which promotes a narrow, militant worldview.

Afghanistan under the Taliban provided a sanctuary and training ground for young Islamic rebels in Southeast and Central Asia. The effects were felt from Chechnya, an autonomous republic in Russia, to Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in China. Afghanistan also provided a haven for Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born veteran of the Soviet-Afghan War, and his export of global terrorism.

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Osama bin Laden and Global Terrorism

Attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, on September 11, 2001, provided a grim reminder of Osama bin Laden’s reputation as the godfather of global terrorism. The Afghanistan-based millionaire and his umbrella organization of international terrorist groups, al-Qaeda, were soon identified as the prime suspects in the attacks. Intelligence analysts have linked bin Laden and al-Qaeda to a series of attacks, many of them in his self-declared jihad against the United States.

American intelligence experts regard Osama bin Laden as a major funder of terrorist groups involved in the following attacks: firefight in Somalia in 1993 that left 18 Americans dead; bombing of a military training center run by the United States in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in 1995; bombing of the Khobar Towers, an apartment complex that housed U.S. servicemen in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, in 1996; the killing of 58 tourists at Luxor, Egypt, in 1997; bombings of U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998; and an attack against the USS Cole while it refueled in Yemen in 2000. He has admitted his complicity in the attacks in Somalia; expressed his admiration for the “heroes” responsible for the Riyadh and Dhahran bombings, while denying his involvement; threatened attacks against Americans who remain on Saudi soil; and promised retaliation internationally for cruise missile attacks. In 1998 he announced the creation of a transnational coalition of extremist groups known as The Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders.

After the September 11 attacks, the United States declared a war on terrorism to capture bin Laden, destroy al-Qaeda training bases in Afghanistan, and replace the Taliban with a government less friendly to terrorists. Aerial bombing attacks destroyed al-Qaeda bases and helped a coalition of anti-Taliban forces called the Northern Alliance gain control of Afghanistan. The whereabouts of bin Laden, however, remained unknown.

Osama bin Laden’s message resonates with the feelings of many in the Arab and Muslim world. A sharp critic of U.S. policy toward the Muslim world, bin Laden has denounced U.S. support for Israel, which he blames for the failure of the Middle East peace process. He has condemned U.S. refusal to censure Israel’s 1996 shelling of civilians in Qana, Lebanon, and U.S. insistence on continued economic sanctions against Iraq, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths, especially among children. He has been equally critical of what he dismisses as “new crusades” in the Persian Gulf, in particular the substantial U.S. military and economic presence and involvement in Saudi Arabia. He has embraced populist causes such as the “liberation” of Muslims in Bosnia, Chechnya, Kashmir, Kosovo, and other areas.

Bin Laden and other Islamic extremists justify their use of violence with the claim that most Muslim and Western governments are corrupt oppressors that resort to violence and terrorism. These extremists use Islam to motivate their followers and rationalize their actions. However, they misinterpret and misapply Islamic beliefs. Claiming that Islam and the Muslim world are under siege, they call for a jihad. Although jihad refers to the right and duty of Muslims to defend themselves, their community, and their religion from unjust attack, extremists use the concept to legitimate acts of violence and terrorism.