Islamism : Introduction To The Region

Islamic political activism, or Islamism, has been a rising force in the Arab world throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Religious revivalism (also known as fundamentalism, for its emphasis on returning to fundamentals of the Islamic life) has been a repeated issue in Islamic history, with this latest surge an outgrowth of age-old concerns about purity of faith mingled with modern problems, including poverty and high unemployment in much of the Arab world, tensions over the existence of Israel, and repressive regional governments. Islamism provides a political voice for many otherwise disenfranchised citizens of authoritarian regimes. Hamas, a violent and virulently anti-peace-with-Israel party with many supporters in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, has repeatedly rejected negotiations with Israel and thrown up obstacles to the peace talks via terror tactics against Israelis and Palestinian “informers” alike. The Iranian-backed Hizballah (Party of God) has long been a thorn in Israel’s side with attacks against Israel from its stronghold in Lebanon.

Egypt has been extremely hard-hit by Islamist violence. While long-extant groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, continue to operate within the realm of acceptability, underground organizations such as the Islamic Group (followers of Sheikh Omar Abd ar-Rahman, whose professed aim is to overthrow the Egyptian government and who has been linked with the February 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York) and Al-Jihad (the same organization that assassinated Sadat in 1981) have claimed responsibility for rising terrorism within Egypt. 180 people, including a handful of foreign tourists, died in attacks between January 1 and August 30 1993.

The turmoil and concomitant dropoff in tourism, Egypt’s lifeblood, have left Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak in a dilemma which has troubled nearly all Arab governments since the 1970s: accommodate the Islamists and risk a gain in their resources and influence, or crack down, provoking further terrorism and the other social and political problems created by huge, repressive security machines. Jordan’s King Hussein has also been walking this tightrope, permitting Islamist parties to compete in recent parliamentary elections, but sacking two Islamist ministers soon afterward for conspiracy to overthrow the government. Such political waltz-ing-with-porcupines continues in both nations, not to mention in the rest of the Arab world, from Morocco to Iraq. Fears of an “Islamic Bloc” stretching across North Africa and the Middle East, have caused some Western strategists to view fundamentalism as the next source of global conflict, as secularism battles Islamism.