MESA is the abbreviation for the Middle East & South Asia at STRATFOR and it is my aor (area of responsibility). These are two separate regions but they are organically linked in many ways. It is the most hyper-active region in the world and understanding and explaining it is my life's work.
Much has been written about this concept lately, given the Arab unrest and the expectation that democratization will lead to moderation of Islamists. However, post-Islamism is something that has been addressed by some of us for many years. Here is an article in which I predicted this trend almost 6 years ago.
Amid continuing efforts to resolve its post-Sept. 11 security crisis,
the United States and European countries increasingly are dealing with
what once would have been an unlikely array of political partners in the
Muslim and Arab worlds: Islamist groups.
Because they advocate the imposition of Islamic law in national
politics, Islamists — or what Westerners formerly have referred to as
Islamic fundamentalists — might at first glance seem to have little, if
any, role in the Bush administration’s second-term push for
democratization throughout the world. But they are, in fact, among the
United States’ most potent potential partners as Washington and others
seek to conclude the jihadist war and lay a foundation for relations with the Muslim world.
These efforts, which mark a significant shift in Washington’s own
approach — particularly in the Middle East — will impact what has been a
long-running competition within political Islam: the struggle of
moderate Islamists of many varieties, who make up the bulk of the Muslim
world, to attain power without sacrificing their religious ideals or
credentials.
As a political ideology, Islamism achieved its first major victory
with the Iranian revolution in 1979. At that time, in the context of the
Cold War, it was not perceived as the next great challenge for the
United States or the West. That perception emerged only with the Sept.
11 attacks and ensuing war. For the past three and a half years, media
attention to the issue has created a perception — correctly or otherwise
— that Islamism is proliferating and poses a growing security threat.
Islamists make up a significant portion of the Muslim political
landscape — supported by believers who are concerned about the fate of
Islamic values and culture in the modern age, when Western and
particularly American ideals and culture seem to permeate the globe.
Nevertheless, Islamist groups have had little success in translating
their popularity into votes and actual political power.
But that is slowly beginning to change.
Mechanics of Moderation
Though logic dictates that some forms of radical and militant beliefs
will persist, Islamism on the whole increasingly is moving toward
moderation. This is evident in many areas — including Lebanon and the
Palestinian territories, where groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas are
bidding to play a part in mainstream politics.
This shift has little to do with any external factors. Instead, it is
part of a natural evolution for groups that thus far have been unable
to capture the imagination of the masses sufficiently to take political
power. Turkey is the only Muslim state in which an Islamist group of
sorts — the Justice and Development Party (AK) — controls the
government, but even the AK can be considered an “Islamist-lite” party,
since it is a more pragmatic and increasingly moderate version of its
predecessors, the Virtue, Welfare, National Salvation, and National
Order parties going as far back as 1970.
As democracies around the world have shown before, ideology is
important to voters, but not more important than the material interests
of the people. Politically, ideology is a medium that allows a people to
secure their interests; if it does not succeed in doing that, it will
remain a peripheral concern.
For example, in the Middle East, Fatah has become an acceptable
partner for the United States and Israel at the peace talks table, but
support among the Palestinians is splintered because the government has
not been able to build sufficient infrastructure. Conversely, Hamas
commands a great deal of local support because of the social services it
provides; but in order to achieve power within the mainstream, the
militant group ultimately will have to compromise its ideological stance
on the existence of a Jewish state.
Defining Islamist Movements
Though its intellectual roots stretch back to the social, economic
and political upheavals of the late 19th century, Islamism emerged as a
political movement in 1928, when the Ikhwan al Muslimeen (Muslim
Brotherhood) was founded in Egypt, and spread from there to British
India, where Jamiat-i-Islami (Islamic Group/Association) was launched in
1941. By the 1950s and 1960s, when most of the Muslim countries had
gained independence from their European colonial rulers, these
organizations and their counterparts in other states became serious
political entities.
Islamist groups distinguished themselves from others — which included
secular, nationalist and Marxist Muslim groups, to name a few — by
seeking to establish or re-establish what they argued was an Islamic
state in their home countries. In other words, they wanted the state to
implement Islamic law. Beyond that, however, there is no agreement even
today on exactly what an Islamic state is or should be.
Not only are the reasons for this disagreement too vast to be
explored here, they also are less important than the means by which the
various brands of Islamists seek to achieve their goals. Though it is
their attitudes toward their religion and modernity that makes Islamists
“moderate,” “radical” or “militant,” it is their approach toward
establishing their political goals that defines their relationships with
other Muslim and non-Muslim entities.
A vast majority of Islamists in almost all Muslim states are
moderates: They pursue the establishment of an Islamic polity through
democratic means. At the other end of the Islamist spectrum are the
militant groups who want to fight the incumbent regimes to attain power.
During the 1990s, the militants went transnational and began fighting
the United States — the main support behind the existing Muslim regimes —
as a tactic toward this end goal. Al Qaeda and its allies around the
world represent the transnational jihadists.
In the middle are several groups that can be viewed as nonviolent but
that espouse a radical agenda. For example, Hizb al-Tahrir — founded in
1952 by Palestinians living in Jordan and now present in many parts of
the world — rejects the use of armed struggle but seeks to overturn the
political nation-state structure in order to re-establish the caliphate.
Intra-Islamist Contention
While the moderate, radical and militant labels refer to political
attitudes, the behavior of various Islamist groups can be classified as
either “integrationist,” “isolationist” or “interactionist.”
Moderate Islamists are integrationists, in the sense that they
embrace the existing structure and function of the state — they are
willing to work within constitutional bounds to establish their Islamic
government. Moreover, they engage society by organizing themselves into
various civil society groups and reaching out to the public. The Muslim
Brotherhood, Jamiat-i-Islami and its counterparts in South Asia are key
examples.
Radical Islamists are interactionists — they interact with society to
foment popular revolution that would destroy the state power structure
they reject as illegitimate. They also seek out sympathetic elements
within existing state structures to support their efforts to oust those
regimes. But most radical groups reject both democratic and the existing
autocratic forms of government as un-Islamic, because they are secular
systems. They seek instead to restore the old caliphal/emiratic forms of
governance — though with some modifications to fit current realities.
However, they also reject the use of violence to further their political
interests.
Militant Islamists — most of whom are jihadists
— are isolationists. Not only do they want to fight the state, but
their operational needs for secrecy preclude them from engaging the
masses. Moreover, militant Islamists subscribe to a top-down approach:
The idea is to capture power and then Islamize the state and society,
Taliban-style.
Now, there are some exceptions to these rules. For example, both the
Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas and the Lebanese Shiite movement
Hezbollah maintain large militias and engage in violence, but they do
not direct their strikes at the Muslim state. Nor do they fit neatly
into the “jihadist” mold cast by al Qaeda, for various ideological,
religious and political reasons.
Their militant wings notwithstanding, neither Hamas nor Hezbollah
seek to establish an Islamic authority through armed struggle. They have
routinely acted as spoilers in the context of political developments
from which they were marginalized or excluded — and as is now evident in
the Middle East, they seek to advance their position through electoral
means.
Moderation Leading to Interface
Now, with the United States actively searching for political as well
as military solutions to its post-Sept.-11 security problems, the odds
of success for Islamists are greater than ever before. By adopting a
more democratic approach, it becomes possible for the Islamists not only
to begin working with other domestic groups, but to open up a channel
of communication with the United States as well. This already is
occurring in Turkey, Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan.
The Bush administration’s declarations that its war on terrorism does
not constitute a war against Islam or Muslims are much more than
rhetoric. Military action has been focused against transnational and
local or regional jihadists that have directly targeted the United
States or its interests. There is nothing in Bush doctrine per se that
precludes Washington from working with moderate Islamists — but there
are fears and uncertainty about how to deal with nonviolent radical
groups, which have evaded the spotlight amid the manhunts for militants
and political negotiations with others. The fact that these radicals
eschew violence but espouse revolutions that might run counter to U.S.
interests will complicate policymaking in this area for some time.
Meanwhile, it is the moderate Islamists who present Washington’s best option
for the future. As history has shown, non-Islamist moderates with whom
the United States initially thought to partner — for example, Pakistani
President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and the Saudi monarchy — do not
necessarily enjoy the support of the masses. Now, the strategy is to
engage certain types of Islamists in political dialogue, as Washington
looks to use the weight of the majority to counter the radical and
militant fringes.
Toward a Post-Islamist Era?
Islamists always represented a small fraction of the more than 1
billion Muslims worldwide, and militants are an even smaller subset.
This situation has been impacted, however, by the Sept. 11 attacks and
subsequent events.
Now, militant Islamists are on the run, and the search for viable
alternatives — as well as democracy movements — is lending itself to
dialogue between moderate Islamist actors and Washington.
At the intellectual and ideological level, integrationists,
interactionists and isolationists are all locked in a struggle for
supremacy. The integrationists have the upper hand, since the militants
are busy trying to save their skins and the radicals — though heavy on
diagnosis and dogma — offer no tangible solutions to existing political
problems.
However, the outcome of the struggle will depend, to a great extent,
on Washington, which is fast moving away from an emphasis on military
operations to one on calibrated negotiations. The U.S. contact with the
moderates does risk delegitimizing them, but concrete political results
and social improvements in the Arab/Muslim world would be the antidote.
The marginalization of the isolationists and the interactionists will
allow the integrationists to gain the upper hand within the Islamist
camp. But that does not necessarily mean that in the end the Islamist
agenda will win the day. Once they have made the transition from
opposition to dominance, these groups — as we are seeing in Iraq —
likely will not be able to push their religious agendas too far.
As a practical matter, Islamists now are undergoing an ideological
transformation. The heretofore heavy and rigid emphasis on doctrine is
giving way under concerns about how best to turn doctrine into action.
When the dust settles, the Islamists likely will come to terms with
the fact that the Quran and the Sunnah merely provide broad normative
principles, which are applicable only through broad-based discussions,
debates and negotiations — a process facilitated by a democratic
framework.
As belief in a specific and timeless Islamic polity crumbles, an age
of post-Islamism likely will emerge. In other words, the Muslim world is
on the verge of embracing a version of modernity that is in keeping
with its Islamic ethos. This would differ markedly from the periods of
secularism and Islamism that followed the death of the caliphal age.
In this post-Islamist age, Islamist and non-Islamist Muslim
powerbrokers will mingle. And in this environment, pragmatism will
temper ideology.
