The Shaping of the Modern Middle East (22 page)

A period of intense underground activity followed, during which the new Supreme Guide, Hasan al-I-ludaybi, took office. In 1951 the Brotherhood was allowed to recover some of its possessions and resume overt activities. It played a role of some importance in the struggle against the British in the canal zone and in the cataclysmic events that led to the revolution of 1952. After a period of uneasy collaboration between the Brotherhood and the military regime, relations deteriorated rapidly. An unsuccessful attempt on the life of Colonel Nasser on 26 October 1954 was followed by the outlawing of the organization and the trial and conviction of its leaders, seven of whom were sentenced to death. The sentence on the Supreme Guide was commuted on the grounds of age; the other six sentences were promptly carried out. In a statement issued on 17 November 1954, the University of Al-Azhar accused the Brotherhood of having "crossed the limits fixed by God in revelation between good and evil.""

The public image of the Brotherhood-partly, though not wholly, of its own making-is one of explosive violence and blind, embittered fanaticism. There is also a positive side, deriving its inspiration from the teachings of the Salafiyya, which was described by W. Cantwell Smith in these terms:

To regard the Ikhwan as purely reactionary would, in our judgment, be false. For there is at work in it also a praiseworthy constructive endeavour to build a modern society on a basis of justice and humanity, as an extrapolation from the best values that have been enshrined in the tradition of the past. It represents in part a determination to sweep aside the degeneration into which Arab society has fallen, the essentially unprincipled social opportunism interlaced with individual corruption; to get back to a basis for society of accepted moral standards and integrated vision, and to go forward to a programme of active implementation of popular goals by an effectively organized corps of disciplined and devoted idealists. It represents in part a determination to sweep aside the inactive reverence for an irrelevant, static, purely transcendental ideal; and to transform Islam from the sentimental enthusiasm of purely inert admirers or the antiquated preserve of professional traditionalists tied in thought and practice to a bygone age, into an operative force actively at work on modern problems.12

Unfortunately, these aspirations, like so many others, have been frustrated by an inability to confront the realities of the modern world, to examine its problems on the level of modern thought, and to devise solutions within the range of possible accomplishment. As all too often, ignorance and anger have found an outlet in pointless and destructive violence-the expression of a state of mind rather than of a purpose.

The same combination of idealism and violence, of piety and terror, could be seen in the Iranian organization known as the Fida'iyan-i Islam (Devotees of Islam), which, significantly, borrowed a term used by the medieval emissaries of the Old Man of the Mountain. Although Shiites, they held pan-Islamic opinions similar to those of the Egyptian Brotherhood, with which they had contacts. On 7 March 1951, one of their members shot and killed the Iranian prime minister, General Razmara. It was a visit of the Fida'i leader Nawab Safavi to Egypt in January 1954 that touched off the first serious and open clash between the Brotherhood and the Egyptian regime. Subsequently in eclipse, the Fida'is remained an uncertain and disturbing factor in Iranian politics.

Even in Turkey-in the Westernized, secularized, and sophisticated society of the Kemalist republic-militant religious opposition to the Kemalist revolution has not been lacking. Its leadership has usually come from the dervish brotherhoods rather than from the official ulema. During Kemal's lifetime, the spearhead of the religious reaction was the Naqshbandi order, members of which led several armed revolts, notably those in the southeastern provinces in 1925 and in Menemen in 1930. Later, the Tijani and Nurju movements preached and campaigned against the Kemalist revolution, though stopping short of armed revolt.

During the 1960s and 1970s, these militant religious organizations appeared to have lost ground, and in many countries they were outlawed or restricted. But they continued to work in secret, and they responded to the mood and desires of a great many people among the submerged classes in Islamic society. Even the governments, however modern and secular, often found it useful or ex pedient to take account of Islamic sentiments and loyalties. The pandering to the Turkish reaction by the prime minister Adnan Menderes, and the use of the Islamic Congress by the government of the United Arab Republic are two different examples. The Lebanese troubles of 1961 began to bear a disquieting resemblance to the communal conflicts of other times and places, sufficient to alarm many Christians and to join Orthodox and Maronite in an uneasy and unaccustomed alliance. Non-Muslims generally have found it wiser to accept a much reduced role in political and economic life. Some have expressed alarm, though rarely in public, at the rising note of fanaticism that is now so often heard.

The most widespread, and for a while the most successful, instrument of Islamic militancy, the Muslim Brotherhood, has been suppressed in some countries and its activities severely curtailed in others. But it was not only official repression that reduced the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood: Far more important was the rise of new movements-more militant, more radical, and more extreme. In a time of increasing economic distress, social dislocation, and political humiliation, the new radicalism held greater appeal and appeared to offer greater promise than did the more conservative teachings and relatively cautious tactics of the Brotherhood.

It has become customary, first in the Western world and later even in the Muslim countries themselves, to denote these movements by the word "fundamentalist" a term derived from the history of American Protestantism. The term is ill chosen, and the analogy that it suggests is misleading, since the doctrines and purposes of these movements and, more particularly, the issues on which they part company from mainstream Islam are very different from those that divide American Christian fundamentalists from the mainstream churches.

The protest of the so-called Muslim fundamentalists is not against liberal theology or scriptural criticism, neither of which has been an issue of any significance in the Muslim world. Their protest is at once more comprehensive and, one might say, more fundamental. It is directed against the entire process of change that has transformed a large part of the Muslim world during the last century or more, creating new structures and proclaiming new values. The reformers and their sympathizers have seen these changes as a process of modernization, necessary for survival in a world dominated by richer and stronger powers. For the fundamentalists, these changes are evil and destructive: Their values undermine Muslim morality, and their structures subvert Muslim law. Those who promote and enforce such changes are infidels or the tools of infidels. If they are Muslims by name and origin, then they are something far worse; they are apostates. The way to save Islam from the infidel is by holy war, and the penalty for apostasy is death.

It was teachings like these that inspired a number of parallel and perhaps interconnected Islamic revolutionary movements in Middle Eastern countries and elsewhere. Their two greatest successes so far were the murder of the Egyptian president, Anwar elSadat, and the overthrow of the shah in Iran. Both were seen as acts of jihad against the most dangerous enemy-the enemy at home, who seeks to destroy Islam from within. In the eyes of the radicals, the crime of Sadat, the shah, and others like them was the abrogation of the holy law of Islam, and the paganization of Islamic society by the introduction and imposition of laws and usages imported from the outside world. This, in their view, is the ultimate crime against God and Islam, for which the penalty is death. Rulers and regimes that have abandoned the sharia, though remaining nominally Muslim, have forfeited their legitimacy. They have become the enemies of God and therefore of all true Muslims. The duty of jihad, incumbent on all Muslims, has as its first task, before tackling any external enemies, to destroy the tyrant at home and thus make possible the restoration of a truly Islamic society governed by Islamic law. After that, with God's help, the removal of the external enemy, whose penetration had been made possible by Muslim sinfulness and weakness, would be a relatively simple matter.

For Sadat's murderers-and in general for the extremist circles to which they belong-Sadat's crime, for which he was sentenced by them to death, was the betrayal of Islam and the reversion to paganism. His alliance with America and his peace with Israel were, in their eyes, only particular manifestations of this larger and deeper evil. The case against the shah was much the same. The Egyptian radicals succeeded in destroying only their ruler; the regime survived and maintained its policies. The Iranian radicals were more successful: They destroyed the regime and launched their country on a far-reaching revolution, the resonance of which was heard all over the world of Islam.

The revolution had deep roots in Iran. The public career of its most famous leader seems to date back to October 1962, when the shah's government, as a step toward the extension of representative institutions, promulgated a law providing for the election of representative local councils throughout the country. The Islamic reli gious leaders opposed the law, to which they raised three main objections. First, it extended the franchise, and even eligibility, to women, for the first time in Iran; second, it did the same for nonMuslims; and third, to show that this was no mere formality, it provided a formula of oath by which elected councilors would swear not on the Qur'an, but on "the holy book," a form of words clearly intended to accommodate elected councilors of other faiths.

The religious leaders were able to mobilize powerful support against the proposed law, which was opposed by preachers and teachers in mosques and seminaries, in petitions bearing thousands of signatures, and in meetings of both protest and prayer. The prime minister at the time sought to placate the opposition, first by trying the explain away the clauses they disliked and offering to postpone the elections and, after that, by sending telegrams and letters to the religious leaders, informing them that the law had been suspended. Some of the religious leaders were content with this. Others, led by the Ayatollah Khomeini, insisted that a private communication of the cabinet decision was insufficient, and that a public announcement was required. This was made on 1 December 1962.

Khomeini's success in this skirmish portended his later triumph; his arguments on this occasion foreshadowed his later manifestos. Granting the vote to women, he claimed, was a violation of Islamic principles and "an attempt to corrupt our chaste women." The proposal to allow non-Muslims to vote or to be elected was part of a larger and deeper plot aimed at Islam and therefore ultimately at the independence of the country. The law, he said, "was perhaps drawn up by the spies of the Jews and the Zionists ... the Qur'an and Islam are in danger. The independence of the state and the economy are threatened by a takeover."

The incident was revealing in several respects. It revealed the nature of Khomeini's concerns and perceptions; it demonstrated his skill as both a charismatic leader and a political tactician; and it illustrated the willingness of important parts of the Iranian population to respond to religious leadership in opposing the shah's government. The significance of these events was well understood by Khomeini; it was underestimated by both the shah's government and the liberal opposition; and it was entirely ignored in the West.

Encouraged by this victory, Khomeini launched a new attack in the following year when the shah's government promulgated a landreform law. Khomeini was not impressed by this reform, which he denounced as a fraud. In general, he had little use for the shah's forced modernization, in which he saw the hidden hand of foreign enemies: "In the interests of the Jews, America, and Israel, we must be jailed and killed, we must be sacrificed to the evil intentions of foreigners." This marked the beginning of a series of speeches, sermons, and declarations in which he attacked the shah in language of increasing violence.

In June 1963, Khomeini was arrested and detained at a military barracks. News of his arrest led to demonstrations and riots, which were suppressed only with considerable bloodshed. At first, the shah seems to have hoped that he could deal with Khomeini by appeasement. Royal emissaries called on him in his place of detention and tried to persuade him not to interfere in politics. Khomeini later related that one of his visitors, no less a person than the chief of the Savak, the shah's secret police, told him: "Politics is lies, deception, shame, and meanness. Leave politics to us." To which, according to his own statement, Khomeini replied: "All of Islam is politics."

Ten months after his arrest, Khomeini was released and allowed to return to his home in Qom. The authorities claimed that he had agreed to keep out of politics; he himself denied that he had ever given any such undertaking. In either case, he did not observe it. Ten days after his return to Qom, Khomeini gave a major address, followed by several others. Although somewhat more conciliatory in tone than his earlier pronouncements, the note of opposition was unmistakable, and his denunciation of the shah and of his presumed foreign masters became ever more vehement. When the Iranian parliament in October 1964 passed a law granting extraterritorial status to Americans in Iran, Khomeini denounced this as "a document for the enslavement of Iran." By this vote, he said, parliament had "acknowledged that Iran is a colony; it has given America a document attesting that the nation of Muslims is barbarous. ,13

Through this complaint, Khomeini added an important new element to his supporters. In condemning the extension of political rights to women and non-Muslims, he expressed the sentiments of great numbers among the conservative merchant and artisan classes and the devout poor. In denouncing the granting of extraterritorial privileges to Americans, he was expressing feelings and opinions shared by liberals and nationalists and more generally prevalent among the educated and modernizing classes. In November 1964, Khomeini was arrested again, and this time sent into exile-at first in Iraq and later in Paris-from which he did not return for fourteen years.