http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2009/949/focus.htm
28 May - 3 June 2009
Issue No. 949
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875
Jihadist revisions
What can be learned from the state's confrontation with violent Islamist
movements in the 1980s and 90s? Hossam Tamam* sketches an essential checklist
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Revisionism has gained momentum among Islamist groups that once espoused
violence. The Egyptian group Jamaa Islamiya paved the way with the announcement
in 1997 of its initiative to halt violence. Since then it has produced more
than 20 books refuting the theological justifications for rebelling against the
state and waging war against the regime. The model was soon emulated and its
arguments adopted in the battle against jihadist thought as attempts were made
to transfer the Egyptian revisionist experience to Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Libya
and Morocco.
Click to view caption
'The radical Islamist movement in Egypt, in all its organised
manifestations, built its legitimacy upon its opposition not only to the regime
but to the modern state itself. It presented its legitimacy as a rival to that
of the state, and it sustained this even at its weakest moments'
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To benefit from the Egyptian experience is a meritorious goal. The process,
though, must be preceded by a close examination of the context in which the
revisions occurred. Only then will it be possible to determine those aspects
exclusive to an Egyptian context, and those that can be applied elsewhere in
the Arab nation, particularly Morocco, where there has been much talk of
repeating the Egyptian experience in dealing with jihadist fundamentalism.
The first question that needs to be addressed in any examination of Egyptian
jihadist revisionism and its possible application to Morocco is the nature of
the relationship between the religion and the state.
In Egypt, Islam is the official religion of the state and Islamic law a primary
source of legislation. The government, however, is modern and quasi-secular.
Its legitimacy is not founded on a religious basis. While Islam is the religion
of the state it is not reflected in a concrete way within the political system.
If the government uses religion to advance its political interests or to
confront its adversaries, it does so while retaining a degree of religious
neutrality, espousing neither a particular theological outlook nor a sectarian
point of view. It may have co- opted religious institutions such as Al-Azhar,
the office of the mufti and the Ministry of Religious Endowments, and attached
them to the establishment but it has never been able to impose its full
authority over the religious sphere, large areas of which remain outside its
control and, often, under the control of its adversaries.
Morocco seems almost antithetical to Egypt in terms of the relation between
religion and the state. The legitimacy of the Moroccan regime is founded on
religion, in the form of the "Leader of the Faithful" and the rites pledging
allegiance to the king and Islamic law, embodied in the constitution and the
political system. The Moroccan state offers a clear and comprehensive vision
for structuring the religious domain based on four pillars: the Ashaari School
in creed, the Maliki School in jurisprudence, Sufism in comportment, and the
Leader of the Faithful as the foundation of the political order.
Whereas the Egyptian regime remains neutral towards religious discourse as long
as it does not present a direct threat to the political order the Moroccan
regime is sensitive to any departures from its own religious perception. These
are carefully monitored by powerful and effective religious institutions, most
notably the Ministry of Religious Endowments which, like the foreign, interior
and information ministries, is presided over by the king but which, unlike
them, is the only ministry to have its head office in the grounds of the royal
palace.
The Moroccan government's sensitivity to any alternative religious discourse is
not connected to a threat to the political system. The government is
perpetually vigilant to pre-empt such a scenario, assiduously containing any
alternate discourse and, if necessary, uprooting it in order to safeguard what
it defines as religious harmony. Recently the government went on the offensive
against academic Salafism (fundamentalism). Last year it closed down institutes
advocating Salafism, even though the movement had more often than not been used
in favour of the regime and against its opponents. The government
simultaneously moved against Shia discourse, institutions and leaders, before
they could coalesce into a political entity.
The difference in the nature of the relationship between religion and the state
in the two countries is reflected in differences in the relationship between
the state and Islamist movements -- ie those religious actors generally
independent of the state -- especially as pertains to concepts of legitimacy.
The powerful Egyptian state has been successful in co-opting religious
institutions and authorities and, to some extent, in asserting its control over
the religious sphere. The process began with Mohamed Ali Pasha, founder of
modern Egypt, who took control over the institutions of Al-Azhar and the
religious endowments, and continued through Gamal Abdel-Nasser, who took such
decisive measures as introducing laws reforming Al-Azhar, abolishing
independent religious endowments and banning religious courts. In spite of such
inroads, the state never managed to completely dominate the religious sphere,
which it ultimately had to share with community groups and associations, and
with Islamist movements and organisations. If the state sometimes succeeded in
weakening or dismantling such movements it has nevertheless failed to bring
them completely to heel. They have continued to contest the political
legitimacy of the state, at times attempting to extend their own legitimacy
over the social domain when they failed politically. The radical Islamist
movement in Egypt, in all its organised manifestations, built its legitimacy
upon its opposition not only to the regime but to the modern state itself. It
presented its legitimacy as a rival to that of the state, and it sustained this
even at its weakest moments.
Perhaps the Moroccan Islamist movement attempted something of this sort at the
outset. However, it quickly realised the futility of such an endeavour under
conditions in which the state so dominates the religious realm as to leave no
openings to anyone but those willing to work through and in the service of the
state's religious apparatus. This is why Islamist movements in Morocco moved to
build their legitimacy not on the basis of a reconciliation with the state, but
on the basis that the state, itself, is the source of their legitimacy. Rather
than portraying their legitimacy as independent of the state they look to the
state as a source of that legitimacy. As diverse as Morocco's Islamist groups
are there are only minor differences between them in this regard. The
differences are purely quantitative, a result of the strength and
deeprootedness of the religious legitimacy of the Moroccan monarchy and its
ability to regenerate itself.
In the Egyptian case Islamist movements have managed to assert their control
over public space and subject it, as well as the government, to their logic. In
general, the public now subscribes to Islamist principles with no need for
prompting by Islamic movements. Egypt has become Islamist without Islamists
being in control of the state. This is far from the case in Morocco, where
Islamists do not control the public space and are unlikely to do so in the
foreseeable future. The Moroccan state is powerful and fully in control. There
are strong, and historically influential, left-wing trends, and there are
influential Western, and particularly francophone, lobbies capable of promoting
their perceptions in the public and social space. The influence of the
Islamists is relatively weak.
The government in Morocco completely dominates the public space. It remains
powerful enough to control the religious space, including its Islamist and
Salafi components. The state can impose its logic on the Islamist scene,
including the activist element, on the grounds of the need to defend "Moroccan
Islam", a magic formula that pulls the rug from beneath Islamist and other
opposition forces, leaving the state as the foremost authority on the form
Islam adopted in the country.
The Salafi movement has not been immune to the gravitational pull of the
legitimacy of the state and its concept of Islam. Ongoing discussions on the
relationship between the Salafism and the Ashaari School, in which many
Moroccan Salafists maintain that their dispute is not with Abul-Hassan
Al-Ashaari, the founder of this school, but with subsequent generations,
reflect a desire, never openly stated, on the part of Salafist leaders to come
to terms with the official creed of the state. If this is the case, the state
could use it as a springboard for absorbing the Salafi movement instead of
regarding it as a potential threat to the official religious outlook.
With regard to the desire to transfer the Egyptian experience in jihadist
revisionism to Morocco, there are certain important differences that may make
the Moroccan situation easier and may even obviate the need to emulate the
Egyptian experience from the outset.
In Egypt, as in Algeria, there was a large, ideologically and organisationally
structured, jihadist movement that not only defied the authority of the state
but its very raison d'être. Such was the surge in this movement in Egypt that
it bred paramilitary organisations like wildfire and succeeded in recruiting
tens of thousands of young people. There are no accurate statistics on the
number of members of jihadist groups in Egypt though it has been estimated that
more than 30,000 were in detention in the 1980s and 1990s and that the Jamaa
Islamiya, alone, acknowledged that 12,000 of those detained were members.
Alongside this large militant Islamist organisation there were dozens of others
such as the Jihad, the Fatah Vanguard (Tala'e Al-Fatah), the Shawqiyin (named
after its founder Shawqi El-Sheikh), the Redeemed from Hell (Al-Najoun min
Al-Nar), and Hizbullah. These organisations had a huge social base, networks
operating through mosques, religious societies and community associations, and
an overwhelming presence in the universities and popular districts. So powerful
were they that in some poorer areas whole quarters came under their
administration. Tales told of the "Republic of Imbaba" may contain quite a bit
of hyperbole but they are still indicative of the ability of Jamaa Islamiya to
gain control over extensive neighbourhoods and run them as though they were a
state within a state.
The jihadist groups in Egypt also generated a body of literature upon which to
base their insurrectionist ideology. In building their theological and
jurisprudential ideological arsenal they looked beyond the intellectual
legacies of Abul-Ela Al-Mawdudi and Sayed Qotb to more recent contributions by
Saleh Sariya, Mohamed Abdel-Salam Farag and Sayed Imam El-Sharif, not to
mention collectively authored works such as the Charter of Islamic Action.
The Egyptian state thus faced a major revolutionary movement. Its project did
not stop at protest or opposition, which might have led to negotiation. Its aim
was to overthrow the state itself. It succeeded in assassinating president
Anwar El-Sadat in 1981 and engaged in numerous bouts of violent confrontation
against the state, inflicting considerable economic losses by means of its
attacks against tourist targets.
There is no substantial comparison to be made between the jihadist wave in
Egypt and the so-called Salafi jihadist movement in Morocco. The latter does
not have a significant popular base, lacks financial and religious support
networks and has no distinct ideological or organisational structure. Many
question whether the term "Salafi jihadism" actually applies, not only because
its leaders reject the application of the term, but also because their
literature, which consists of a handful of sermons, is closer to intellectual
Salafism and, perhaps, to conventional fundamentalism. It appears very remote
from the jihadist outlook.
The furthest the jihadist trend has gone in Morocco is the May 2003 bombings
and the Casablanca bombings of 2007. As appalling as these were, they proved
the work of small, isolated cells, which may continue to exist but which
nevertheless are not indicative of a situation or movement that could threaten
the state.
What merits closer consideration in the Egyptian jihadist revisionist
experience and which could perhaps be applied elsewhere is the legacy of the
state in managing the jihadist revisionist process.
The Egyptian state seized on the idea of jihadist revisions and worked to
promote them at a time when political elites and the intelligentsia dismissed
the idea in favour of sustaining the ideological struggle against militant
Islamism. The state, which had refused to talk to Islamist groups during the
period of violent confrontation lest its prestige be undermined by being seen
to make concessions, intercepted the signal delivered by the Jamaa Islamiya's
revisions after the group was militarily broken and responded positively in
order to halt further attrition and armed confrontation. This is the legacy of
the state: it deafened its ears to the cries of the elites that wanted to step
up the confrontation in order to eliminate the Islamist movement entirely, and
not just the jihadist trend. The state also persisted in fostering a
revisionist experience against the tide of international opinion so hawkish
towards jihadist ideas and trends that it obviated any possibility of managing
revisions which require an accurate and subtle reading of intricate ideological
maps.
Other Arab countries face the same challenge, though without the legacy of the
state or its institutions. Indeed, following the 11 September attacks against
the World Trade Center, it is sometimes difficult to tell where the state ends
in its relationship with the jihadist movement.
* The writer is an expert in Islamist movements.
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