The Dark Side Of Islam

With terror, Muslim radicals declare war on Arab states that stray from the religious path

Name of Publication/November 2, 2001
By Bruce W. Nelan

Oct. 4, 1993 -- The world has felt the power of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman's words before. In 1980 youthful members of a militant fundamentalist group in Egypt called Jihad (Holy War) were secretly forming a new cell and sought out their spiritual leader for guidance. What, they asked the sheik, would be the fate of a ruler who ignored the law of God? Abdel Rahman's reply: "Death."

On Oct. 6, 1981, as Egyptian President Anwar Sadat stood reviewing his troops, a military truck halted in front of him and four uniformed men leaped out, firing automatic rifles at the reviewing stand. One of the men ran straight toward Sadat, pumping bullet after bullet into his body. "I am Khalid al-Islambouli!" the attacker shouted. "I have killed Pharaoh."

Army Lieut. al-Islambouli, a member of Jihad, was executed along with four others for the assassination. Abdel Rahman was indicted, accused of issuing a fatwa, or religious decree, ordering Sadat's murder, but was acquitted. The assassination of the first Arab leader to make peace with Israel settled nothing. The clash between Islamic religious and political authority is more widespread and in some places more threatening now than it was then. Today every secular Muslim government from North Africa to the Persian Gulf faces a challenge from radical fundamentalists. Their accusation is not just that political leaders have strayed from the holy law of the Koran but that they have done so without solving the chronic unemployment, corruption and hopelessness that plague the Arab world.

This is the dark side of Islam, which shows its face in violence and ) terrorism intended to overthrow modernizing, more secular regimes and harm the Western nations that support them. Its influence far outweighs its numbers. The Islamic revival that has swept the Middle East is primarily a peaceful movement for a return to religious purity. But where desperation is greatest, a small number of radicals have resorted to military action to impose the Islamic ideology they espouse. For the most part, they are not members of some grand conspiracy sponsored by a state apparatus, but loosely organized, grass- roots militants who use similar terrorist methods and get money and weapons from the same like-minded sources. Unlike the Palestinian and Shi'ite revolutionaries of the 1970s and '80s, these disparate cells of angry young men seem to boil up from the broad opposition growing in the largely undemocratic countries of the region, in a self-proclaimed war to force pure, undiluted Islamic law on the societies that have failed them. When that violence spills over into the U.S., it is usually aimed at punishing Washington's support for Israel and the secular Arab states.

In some countries the ideological conflict has developed into a bloody struggle for political dominance. Violence inspired by radicals determined to topple President Hosni Mubarak has killed 200 people in Egypt over the past two years; in Algeria, the government most immediately threatened by fundamentalists, the toll is at least 1,200. Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, which is the biggest danger to the infant peace process in the occupied Gaza Strip and West Bank, is a special case. Its first aim is the destruction of Israel; after achieving that, Hamas would establish a Muslim state on the wreckage as a precursor to a greater pan-Islamic union.

Yet one of the great ironies of the peacemaking between Israel and the Palestinians is that it probably would not be happening if the power of Islamic fundamentalists had not become so ominous. The increasing strength of Hamas convinced Israel that it was time to strike a deal with the Palestine Liberation Organization, a lesser evil, while there was still a P.L.O. At the same time, Yasser Arafat and the P.L.O. could see that the fundamentalists were gaining on them and that the best way to stay in power was to show some result from their three decades of leadership in the Palestinian cause.

Islam recognizes no distinction between mosque and state, theology and politics. Of course, not all Muslims are what Americans call fundamentalists. The term is not used in Islam, which calls the zealots "Islamists" or "activists." Says Mary Jane Deeb, an expert on Islam at the American University in Washington: "The majority of Muslims are secular in the sense that they see that politics and their beliefs can be separate." Nor do all so-called fundamentalists condone the use of violence and terrorism to achieve their goals.

But those few who do take up the gun say it is their duty to destroy leaders and governments that fail to rule strictly by Shari'a, the Islamic legal code. Violent Islamists usually pursue both a political and a social agenda in the name of the faith. While no state in the world is governed purely by Shari'a -- even Iran, Sudan and Saudi Arabia, which come closest to the ideal, compromise in some ways with the modern world -- Islamists focus their ferocity on the Muslim states such as Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia, which have tried to modernize and mix in elements of nationalism and Western-style democracy.

The random urban terrorism and calculated antigovernment attacks by such radical organizations as Jihad and the Islamic Group in Egypt, the Islamic Salvation Front in Algeria and An-Nahda (Renaissance) in Tunisia are predominantly home grown. But the target governments, which have responded with repression, tend to charge that the violent onslaughts against them are inspired by Islamic centers abroad, engaged in a conspiracy of subversion. They most often cite Afghanistan, Iran and Sudan as the instigators and paymasters, and claim that the cadres in their local terrorist organizations can all be traced back to Afghanistan, where the 14-year war against Soviet invaders spawned an army of fanatics.

Aware that homegrown corruption and poverty provide recruits to the extremist ranks, Arab governments find it convenient to exaggerate the threat from outside. It also suits the Islamist rebels to evoke the fearsome image of a mighty army of trained and dedicated fanatics in their quest for local political power. The truth is that the Arab governments of the Middle East would be under siege without any centrally directed threat or terrorists returning home from the Afghan wars. Revivalists like Sudan's Hassan al-Turabi can exploit Arab discontent, but they have not been able to coordinate or direct the small, secretive cells that plot violent subversion against local governments.

The emotional wellsprings of Islamic extremism lie in the social displacement and alienation of the modern Arab world. Discontent runs deep in Muslim countries where poverty is endemic, unemployment keeps growing, prices soar. Migration to urban areas has created vast slums without the most basic services, as well as a profound sense of rootlessness. Poorly educated, poverty-stricken peasants are obvious recruits to fundamentalism. But so increasingly are the younger members of the middle class who find themselves jobless and poor, with no promise of a better future.

Most of the embittered do not resort to violence even if they embrace Islam as the solution. But nearly all of them are alienated from a political process they find remote and unresponsive. "These are societies in which all forms of opposition are repressed and no hope of bettering one's own life exists," says Bruno Etienne, an expert on Islam at the University of Aix-en-Provence. "The mosque is left as the only venue of debate, while radical Islamic ideologies are soon identified as the only viable means of instigating change."

The force of fundamentalism's appeal is its claim to answer the region's malaise and fulfill a common desire to affirm the prestige of the Arab people, who feel humiliated by colonialism and by Israel's powerful presence in their midst. In the fundamentalist view, says Zalmay Khalilzad, a former National Security Council official now at the Rand Corp., things have gone wrong in Muslim societies "because they have strayed from the righteous path, and the West was brutal and immoral and encouraged the Muslims to go astray. Only by returning to the righteous path can you achieve greatness again, and that would involve throwing out the West."

Ultimately, if the Israeli-Palestinian deal bears fruit, most experts believe fundamentalists, particularly the violent ones, will lose ground in the occupied territories. The regional economic cooperation and outside investment that will accompany the peace settlement should provide new jobs, new industries and opportunities for trade. When the economic initiatives are set in motion, the recruits for extremism are likely to decrease.

Fundamentalism, of course, is still capable of destructive, murderous troublemaking throughout the Middle East. But it has not had the power to overthrow any governments except Iran. Even in relatively traditional Muslim societies, the majorities want peace and prosperity. They put a higher value on economic growth, and increasingly on social justice and political participation, than on abstract religious definitions of purity. If that makes them secular Muslims, so be it.