Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 20 - 26 September 2007 Issue No. 863 http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2007/863/sc1.htm
Millions have found a home in religion in the context of the West's
confrontation with the Arab and Islamic worlds. The crisis, or assimilation, of
secular Arab nationalism has contributed to the rise of political Islam. Does
this signal an end to the Arab project of building civil-oriented states, or
can politics be melded with moral and ethical concerns without becoming a pawn
of religious fervour?
Islamist inertia
In shutting the door to change, difference and reason, contemporary Islamist
movements bind themselves to a mummified past, writes Salah Eissa*
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illustration: Fathi
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Since 1979, when the Iranian revolution succeeded in toppling the peacock
throne and founding an Islamic republic, "The Islamists are coming!" has been a
cry that voiced the hopes of some and the fears of others.
For Islamist groups across the Arab- Islamic map, the Iranian revolution
rekindled dreams of a victory of their own, even though these groups still
suffered the after effects of successive waves of assault waged against them by
Arab nationalist regimes from the early 1950s to the mid- 1970s. Not only did
these campaigns throw Islamist groups into organisational disarray, and most of
their leaders into prison, they also succeeded in turning the majority of the
Arab public against them while luring it to the Arab nationalist model which
seemed poised to realise their social and national aspirations.
Nevertheless, in the aftermath of the Arab defeat in the 1967 war, the
credibility of the Arab nationalist project waned and its popularity dwindled.
By the time of the Iranian revolution, Islamist groups had just begun to emerge
from their cocoons and present themselves as the alternative to all preceding
national revival projects, as the untried path untainted by disaster and defeat.
Since then, all signs indicated that the Muslim fundamentalist movement was
marching relentlessly forward. A military coup paved the way for their seizure
of power in Sudan. They were steadily gaining ground in the parliaments in
Kuwait, Egypt, Morocco, Jordan and Algeria and, indeed, they won sizeable
majorities in legislative elections in Palestine and Turkey. Their mounting
popularity across the Arab world was also reflected in their growing, if not
controlling, presence in many civil society organisations, notably in the
occupational syndicates.
One factor that facilitated this progress was that some governments allied
themselves with moderate Islamists in the hope of obstructing the danger of
radical fundamentalists that espoused the use of violence. Some political
parties and movements also pursued the same tactic, if for different ends, such
as to combine forces against a common external enemy (the US and Israel) or
against a domestic adversary (dictatorial regimes) or merely to hitch up with
the Islamist trend in order to win more votes in the polls.
The West, spearheaded by the US, was alarmed at this development, in spite of
the fact that it was instrumental in fostering it. The West had worked
assiduously to destroy Arab nationalist governments that were once a bulwark
against the fundamentalist tide. It also enlisted Muslim fundamentalists in its
fight against communism. This alliance reached its zenith in the war to
liberate Afghanistan from Soviet occupation and came to a reverberating close
with the events of 11 September 2001.
But is the march of Muslim fundamentalists towards power in the Arab world,
whether they succeed by coup or through democratic processes, irreversible? Has
the civil state ended as a phase in political evolution and must we ready
ourselves for a theocratic state?
The answer to these questions is affirmative if we judge solely by the balance
of power between Muslim fundamentalists and other political forces. But it
quickly moves to the negative once we take a closer look at the contradictions
within the greater Islamist movement itself and unearth a number of weak points
that could hamper its progress and perhaps thwart its goals entirely.
The problem with the Muslim fundamentalist project is that it is founded upon
the utopian dream of reviving the Islamic state as it existed in its golden
era. What is conspicuously lacking in the discourse of proponents of this
project is a clear conception of the material means needed to resuscitate that
past so many centuries after its death and to revive all the attendant
circumstances that had enabled that state to flourish.
True, the ability of abstractions to tickle the deep religious grain of the
Muslim people is a major reason for the widespread popularity of the
fundamentalist project. However, when forced to come down to earth and deal
with the difficulties that obstruct its path, or with the brass tacks of rule
as dictated by balances of power and the various demands of reality, the
project runs out of steam.
The fact is that the fundamentalist project has an Achilles heel. It posits a
dream of reviving the glory of the Islamic empire but ignores the fact that
what enabled that empire to flourish was its openness to other cultures and
civilisations. This applies to Muslim jurists and theologians, as long as the
doors to dialogue and the exercise of reason in light of the changes and
challenges of contemporary reality remained open, furnishing a constant source
of inspiration and renovation. Conversely, the decline of Islamic civilisation
began when the door leading to the application of reason and independent
thought was slammed shut. If their aim is to revive our ancient glory,
proponents of the fundamentalist project should first strive to breach the gap
between the 4th century in the Islamic calendar, when the door to ijtihad was
closed, and the present, so as to be able to formulate a philosophy that suits
the times in which we live.
But this seems unlikely. Islamist fundamentalist groups, which have
concentrated virtually all their efforts on recruitment and consolidating
forces, fear the open door from which the winds of independent thought might
shake their unity of rank. Thus, their members have been left to create the
contours of the fundamentalist dream on the basis of ancient works of
jurisprudence. As a result, they have become even more rigid than their leaders
and have come to form a powerful pressure group within the movement that not
only hampers their leaderships' ability to proclaim fresh ideas but also
restricts their leaderships' manoeuvrability, which is one of the essential
prerequisites for any drive to attain a dream. What remains, then, is the vast
ability to cause problems, bring down disaster on others and generally obstruct
progress and development.
The danger, therefore, is not so much that "The Islamists are coming," but that
they still have the power to obstruct progress towards democracy in Muslim
countries.
* The writer is editor-in-chief of Al-Qahira weekly newspaper
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