Struggle for Islam

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In what ways have the West and Western attitudes contributed to the development of Islamic fundamentalism in the world? Most people have no idea that such a contribution has even been made, much less what it might be. Even worse, they are unaware of how those contributions have shaped Muslim attitudes towards the West.

Mark Huband, an award-winning journalist who has reported from Africa and the Middle East for the past 13 years, attempts to answer such questions in a recent book. As he describes it, from the Crusades through the colonial era and down to today, the West has had a tremendous impact upon the development and direction of Islam.

This is even more true when considering "Islamism" - the political ideology centered on making the religion of Islam the basis of a modern geo-political state. Islamism, as Huband demonstrates, is not a monolithic movement.

It is true that Islam, as a religious faith, lies at the center of Islamism; yet we cannot forget that it is also a political movement, and as such, each country has its own peculiarities, interests, and so on. Because Islam develops in a different social context in each country where it appears, this also means that no particular form of Islamism is a historical inevitability. There is no reason to assume that any one version of Islamism has a greater or more fundamental connection to Islam as a religion.

Who are the Islamists? Naturally each person is an individual, but nevertheless there are a number of important characteristics which they all share - not only within one country's movement, but also across different countries:

For the most part they live in countries that have failed to satisfy their economic, social, political, educational, and individual needs. Their disappointments have been accompanied by an awareness of the cultural richness of the religion into which they have, as a matter of course, been raised. The tension between these two feelings is dramatic. But among these millions of people there are a million interpretations of what it means to believe. Faith lies at the heart of Islamism. But it is society that has nurtured the particular Islamist movements, creating varying and often greatly opposed views within an Islamist phenomenon that has emerged throughout the Islamic world but that it is nevertheless a mistake to view as united, homogeneous, and intent upon returning the Islamic world to the practices of the past.

Huband explores the ways in which the different Islamists have developed their political movements in a variety of countries, including Somalia, Algeria, Egypt, the Sudan and more. But of particular interest today may be how it has developed in Afghanistan.

So what is the social context for Islamism in Afghanistan? We must remember that before the Soviet invasion, the country was plagued by ethnic strife, crippling poverty and political stagnation. But with the invasion, young, unemployed people seeking a cause and an identity suddenly had it handed to them: war against not simply an aggressive foreign invader, but also against the atheistic, materialistic West.

And this was not only true about the young people in Afghanistan, but also young people all over the Middle East. This was a real war, allowing the venting of pent-up frustrations with both the West and their own governments, too often seen as toadying to the West. They had a purpose, which was to defend Islam against the West.

They also had a pan-Islamic identity which had no national boundaries: the mujahadeen, the soldiers in the holy war. The importance of this cannot be underestimated. Islam has long suffered from the fact that for centuries, there has been no centralized stability. Muslims believe that they are all part of a coherent community of believers, called the ummah. To a devout Muslim, this isn't just a theoretical community, but an actual one.

However, the existence and persistence of strong political divisions in the Islamic world causes people grief because, with a true ummah, no such divisions should exist. Thus, anything which reduces divisions and creates a pan-Islamic identity is of great religious value, helping to create the true ummah which exists more in theory than in practice. In the end, the mujahadeen were victorious, defeating the atheistic, materialistic West. Through this, democratic Islam was effectively and decisively rejected. The Muslims demonstrated that they could achieve their goals by force of arms, even against the mighty Soviet war machine. What use did they have for free elections?

...democracy was rejected by the Islamists who gathered in Afghanistan and formed the Islamist army that has made such a strong impression on the Islamic world in the 1990s. Why was it rejected? Essentially because its intrinsic value was not apparent. But also because democracy is associated with the West, and the West has become an opponent of Islamism.

The significance of this for the Muslims cannot be underestimated, because it has caused Afghanistan to become almost a holy place. Osama bin Laden expressed this very clearly in an interview with CNN:

The influence of the Afghan jihad on the Islamic world was so great and it necessitates that people should rise above many of their differences and unite their efforts against their enemy.

It has been a long time since Muslim forces have defeated the West in war - and the fact that they probably would not have won such a victory without the active help of some of the West is generally ignored. Indeed, it is often denied, as bin Laden did in the same interview:

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in which the US has no mentionable role, but rather the credit goes to God, Praise and Glory be to Him, and the Mujahidin in Afghanistan...

Afghanistan also produced a tremendous number of "alumni" of an active military campaign against the West. Although not all saw actual combat, about 5,000 Saudis, 3,000 Yemenis, 2,800 Algerians, 2,000 Egyptians, 400 Tunisians, 350 Iraqis, 200 Libyans and dozens of Jordanians served with the Afghani mujahideen during the war.

Between 1,000 and 1,500 returned to Algeria and formed the basis of the radical movement fighting against the government in a civil war that has claimed at least 100,000 lives. Those who returned to Egypt became valued members of the Gamaa Islamiya (Islamic Group) and the Islamic Jihad group (also known as Vanguards of Conquest).

Unfortunately, many of the mujahadeen were not entirely welcome in their home countries when they tried to return. For the most part, they had been radicalized, having adopted a more extremist form of Islam which sought to maintain a pan-Islamic identity, not something which is compatible with the nationalistic dictatorships through the Middle East.

Forced to leave their homelands, they settled in major cities in the West, which were ironically some of the few places which would accept them. Their time there had both advantages and disadvantages for them. The disadvantage was that they were enveloped by the West they hated so much, especially after having "defeated" it and "proving" that it was inferior. The advantage was that they could freely peddle their fundamentalist ideology, finding new recruits among disaffected Muslim youth in the West.

And what happened back in Afghanistan? Chaos took over, because the once-united resistance groups were no longer quite so united. Before, they were joined together against a common enemy, but now old theological, political and most importantly ethnic rivalries dominated. Ultimately the people decided that fanaticism was less dangerous than anarchy, and so when the Taliban started to impose its fanatical brand of order, people welcomed it.

And why not? Women could walk the streets safely without fear of being raped, even if it meant that they had to be escorted by a man and be totally covered. Crime plummeted, even if basic liberties disappeared as well. It is a lesson to the West that true order and safety came at such a terrible cost.

It is also a lesson to the rest of the Muslim world. Similarly fanatical versions of Islamism could potentially take over, if the current rulers prove unable to maintain order and security. The ethnic tension within Afghanistan is also representative of tensions throughout the Muslim world, where the lack of an obvious and immanent threat from the outside fails to bring them all together.

Provided, of course, that the West doesn't do anything foolish and provide the extremists with exactly the enemy they need in order to create that unity. Hopefully, books like Huband's will help the public better understand the situation in some Muslim countries and that this will go a ways towards preventing our government from making too many errors.