The Modern Middle East (48 page)

There was also the perception, accurate or not, that these political parties were elitist in their social composition and their ideological disposition. High-level parliamentary politics did little to alleviate the economic difficulties saddling the middle classes or the pervasive poverty plaguing the cities and their slums. This perception was reinforced by two characteristics found in most Middle Eastern parties. Very few political parties in the region developed—or were given the opportunity to develop—viable means of organizational networking with an intended constituency. At best, “party organization” often meant little more than an office in the capital city, sometimes in the provincial capitals as well, and a periodic “congress” attended by party loyalists and sympathizers. At worst, the party resembled a social club in which like-minded elites gathered and discussed politics. Some viable political parties succeeded in such essential functions as interest articulation and electoral mobilization. The former Refah Party in Turkey, discussed above, had some initial success because it developed an elaborate organizational structure for the mobilization of potential voters extending all the way down to city districts and neighborhoods. Similarly, the initial successes of the Islamic Action Front in Jordan were largely a product of its extensive ties with the country’s Engineers’ Association, thereby presenting the party with an existing organizational apparatus.

In addition to the lack of organizational means for meaningful contacts with voters, many political parties in the Middle East prior to the 2011 uprisings suffered from leadership squabbles and a lack of internal
cohesion. Given the restrictive political environment in which they operated, and an absence of a tradition of organizational evolution and maturity, many political parties suffered from personalism and lack of institutional depth. This made them vulnerable to splintering and frequent disagreements among the leadership. In the mid-1990s, the rapid descent into oblivion of the Jordanian al-Waʾad was largely due to bickering among its leaders. In the late 1980s in Morocco, the Mouvement Populaire (MP) ousted its founder, Mahjoub Aherdane, who then formed the Mouvement National Populaire (MNP). In 1996, a number of MNP members broke away and formed another party, called the Mouvement Democratique et Social (MDS). This pattern of switching offices and acronyms, without meaningfully altering ideological disposition or mobilizational efforts, could be seen in several other countries in the Middle East and North Africa as well. Naturally, this eroded the potential for voter mobilization and interest articulation.

There were two important consequences of the general disappearance of officially recognized, nonstate political parties in the Middle East. First, given that traditional political institutions such as parliaments and political parties turned out to be highly circumscribed in their scope of activities and their efficacy, alternative, nonstate institutions in which urban professionals were involved instead became quite significant. Institutions such as chambers of commerce, trade unions, professional associations, think tanks, and even nongovernmental journals and magazines assumed many of the functions usually performed by political parties. Through articulating their views and exerting indirect, subtle pressure on the state, such organizations were able to influence the nature and tenor of ongoing debates, put forward ideas on economic and social policies, and influence the state’s larger agendas in relation to society.
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Labor unions, for example, became influential players in domestic politics in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Turkey, and Bahrain. Professional and/or business associations became especially important in Jordan and Tunisia. Nongovernmental journals and newspapers emerged as powerful voices of dissent in Iran’s Third Republic, frequently banned and then relicensed under a different name.

A second important consequence of the decline in the significance of officially recognized political parties was the radicalization of political opposition in the Middle East and the growth in the number and activism of clandestine organizations. Over the past two decades or so, this trend corresponded with the steady emergence of political Islam as a powerful medium for political expression. The increasing radicalization of political opposition and the concurrent Islamization of political discourse led to the
growth of “radical Islam,” or what is commonly called “Islamic fundamentalism.” This broad label is somewhat misleading and overly simplistic, for it obscures vast differences among the trends that have appeared under the larger rubric of political Islam. It is important that before analyzing each of these trends one get a better understanding of the underlying reasons for the spread of Islam as a powerful forum for political expression.

Growth in the popularity of political Islam over the past few decades is part of a broader historical trend in which other competing, secular ideologies have experienced an inverse decline in fortune after having first seen their own growth and popularity. As we have already seen, up until the 1960s and early 1970s, one of the most compelling ideologies among both state actors and the popular classes was secular nationalism, which contained few or no religious ingredients. Baʿthism, Bourguibaism, Nasserism, Arab Socialism, Qaddafi’s Third Way—all of these were essentially secular ideologies in which the dominant ingredients were the state and its articulation of the national interest. If religion had any role to play, it was ancillary in relation to the expression of the national identity. Buttressed by the charismatic leadership of real or would-be liberators, these ideologies enjoyed a genuine popularity among the urban classes.

By the early 1970s, however, there was widespread realization throughout the Middle East that the state’s articulation of secular nationalism was not all it was cracked up to be. Most significantly, as the fateful events of June 1967 demonstrated, the states were woefully incapable of defending the national interest, let alone liberating the Palestinians. Far beyond the borders of the defeated states, the Arab public was shocked and in disbelief at the secular states’ near-complete impotence. And, psychologically comforting as it might have been, the states’ search for scapegoats and blaming of incompetent military commanders only partially reversed their loss of ideological legitimacy.

Compounding matters was an increase in state repression, which had actually been a part of the state’s modus operandi from the very beginning, and the steadily more blatant corruption of its officials at all levels of power. To hold on to the reins of power, virtually all the states of the Middle East and North Africa resorted to higher levels of repression as a substitute for declining ideological popularity. Repression was complemented by expansive networks of clientelism and patronage, thus widening the chasm between the haves and the have-nots. By the early to mid-1970s, few, if any, of the promises of the revolutionary, “progressive” era of the preceding decade had been fulfilled. The events of 1967 exposed regimes such as the ones in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Jordan as inherently weak and corrupt,
headed by incompetent officers or officer-kings with little understanding of their own limitations or what it meant to run a modern state. Rhetoric made secular nationalism popular; reality made it crash and burn.

Starting in the mid-1970s, throughout the Middle East and North Africa, the popular appeal of secular, nationalist ideologies declined precipitously among the urban classes. These urban classes were going through other experiences as well. The oil boom of the 1970s was fostering unprecedented economic and industrial growth and consequently dizzying social change. Rural-urban migration, uncontrolled urbanization, new industries and modes of employment, increasing diffusion and contact with other cultures—all of these developments had consequences for Middle Eastern societies’ perceptions of themselves and their state leaders. In the face of hostile and incompetent states, and a pervasive sense of social and cultural alienation among segments of the urban population, shelter was sought in the familiar and the comfortable, in Islam. Once Islam had proved itself to be a viable and powerful force for political mobilization in Iran in 1978–79, its popularity among politically minded Middle Easterners grew rapidly throughout the region. For state actors everywhere, this was a serious threat. Islam had been used as a vehicle for political expression for centuries, and in the twentieth century its politicization went as far back as 1928, when a schoolteacher named Hassan al-Banna established the Muslim Brotherhood group in Egypt. But now, beginning in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Islam was establishing itself as a political force to be reckoned with. Fouad Ajami captures it best: “In the simplified interpretation we have of that civilization, the young had taken to theocratic politics; they had broken with the secular politics of their elders.”
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Throughout the Middle East, Islamist opposition to the state is likely to come from four groups, although the boundaries between them are not clearly defined: the conservative clerical class (
ulama
), lay intellectuals, populist organizations, and fundamentalist groups and organizations. These groups are far from monolithic, and all of them feature significant intragroup diversity. They also often have a symbiotic and reinforcing relationship with one another: a conservative cleric issues a
fatwa
(religious opinion) sanctioning a specific act, which is in turn carried out by a group of fundamentalists, or a secular intellectual becomes one of the main ideological inspirations of a populist organization. Despite these overlapping relationships, it is possible to place many individuals or organizations in a specific category.

As a social group, the
ulama
have been an integral feature of Middle Eastern societies ever since the spread of Islam beyond Mecca and Medina,
even though Islam does not formally recognize a distinct class of religious specialists. Over time, many of these interpreters of religion became powerful possessors of religious knowledge, educators, guardians of the
hadith
(the Prophet’s tradition), trustees of religious endowments (
owqaf
), and arbiters of social conflict. The inevitable clash between the
ulama
’s desire to maintain their vast privileges and responsibilities and the modern state’s attempts to mold society on the basis of its own agendas was, to varying degrees, settled in favor of the state. Some state leaders (e.g., Atatürk) tried to destroy the
ulama
as a social force, while others (Reza Shah, Mohammed V, Nasser, King Hassan) sought a partial accommodation with them. Still others, such as the Saudi royal family, tried to neutralize the clergy by incorporating them into the state apparatus and making them a part of the power equation. Nevertheless, in one form or another, by the late twentieth century most Middle Eastern states were able to force their political and institutional hegemony on the
ulama
and to ensure the clerical establishment’s political marginalization, if not total subordination.

The period from the 1950s through the 1970s did not go well for the
ulama.
Modern state institutions were created and took over many of the functions that had long been the preserve of the clergy. State-run schools and universities supplanted the many seminaries that had monopolized education for the bulk of the masses. “Family protection” laws were introduced, and women in most places were given the right to sue for divorce.
Waqf
land was taken over by the state, and in every country a Ministry of Religious Affairs or something similar to it was established to “supervise” the clergy. In 1961, the Al-Azhar, Egypt’s cradle of Islamic learning and one of the oldest universities in the world, was nationalized, and its
ulama
became employees of the Nasserist state. This same pattern was repeated in practically every other country of the Middle East. The
ulamas’
position as judges and arbitrators was steadily eroded, their economic power was weakened, they lost students, and their political and institutional autonomy was curtailed.

It was no accident that most clergy around this time became politically “quietist.” Faced with increased repression and other acts of manipulation by the state, many retreated to their seminaries and mosques, immersing themselves in their religious studies and teachings. Some cooperated with the state and became mouthpieces of the “official Islam” (
al-Islam al-rasmi
) to which even the most secular leaders paid lip service. But by and large the mainstream
ulama
resented (and still resent) the state and most of what it stands for. They quietly decry the state’s moral corruption, its political mismanagement, its seemingly total submission to the Western powers, and its ceaseless efforts to “Westernize” society.

By themselves, the
ulama
have not been a powerful social force for spearheading political opposition or change. Even in Iran, as we saw in chapter 5, they succeeded only when they entered into strategic alliances with secular parties and intellectuals. They have, nevertheless, been highly influential sources of inspiration and general religious guides for various secular intellectuals who see in religion remedies for many social and political maladies of their societies. A generation earlier intellectuals had been rabidly secularist. They had included the Lebanese poet and educator Khalil Hawi (1920–82), the Iraqi-born poet Buland Heidari (1926–96), the Iranian writer Sadeq Hedayat (1903–51), the Syrian poet and literary critic Adonis, the pen name for Ali Ahmad Said (b. 1930), and the legendary Egyptian writer and novelist Naguib Mahfouz (1911–2006), to name only a few.
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But the new crop of Middle Eastern intellectuals, almost all younger, invariably saw the political world through the lenses of Islam. Whether “progressive” or “reactionary” in the conventional sense, they identified themselves as Muslim thinkers who happened also to be Middle Easterners, not Middle Eastern thinkers who happened to be Muslim.