Religion in World Affairs

The Holy War Tradition in Islam

by Emmanuel Sivan

J
ihad is, or has come to be, a loaded term. Some in the West think it means
holy war, an inherently violent notion; others say it means holy struggle,
more a spiritual than a martial concept. This discussion dimly reflects the
fact that even among educated Muslims the term has not always meant the
same thing-this more so today than perhaps ever before.
One reason that it is hard to pin down the idea of jihad is that it has
an experiential base as well as a theological-juridical one, having been dragged
through more than fourteen hundred years of history over an area stretching
from Spain to Central Asia. Yet within this base of experience it retains a
coherence sufficient to explain how most Muslims have thought about their
own relations with non-Muslims and, increasingly, among themselves. This
essay begins by laying out a theological and a historical synopsis of jihad, and
then shows how the concept is being used today in various forms, and with
various implications for Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

The Legacy of the Past

Only one Islamic sect- and an extremist one at that-the Kharijites,

puts holy war (jibad) among the pillars (a&an), or pivotal precepts, of Islam.
(The accepted five pillars are the credo Lshahada, prayer b.Z~l, pilgrimage
lha$l, fasting lRumadan1, and the tithe k&l.) Yet most orthodox Islamic jurists
and theologians would place jihad very high on the scale of religious obligation,
at the rank immediately following the m-km. This is largely because holy war
looms very large in the Quran, this in clear contradistinction to both early
Christianity’s antiwar/ant&ate creed and to core Judaic texts, where divinely
sanctioned warfare figures as a decidedly secondary feature, and one limited
to a specific and rather small area. The ultimate aim of the Islamic faith, however,

Emmanuel Sivan is professor of history at the Hebrew University of Jemsalem. He is the author of, among
others, Radical&am (Yale University Press, 1%X>; MyrbesPditiqwsArab (Paris Fayard, 1995); and (with
J. Water) War and Remembrance in the 2Otb Century Cambridge University Press, forhoming).

Spring 1998 I 171

SWAN

is clearly hegemonic on a global scale, as expressed in several well-known

Quranic verses:

Fight them [the unbelievers1 until there is no dissension and the religion is entirely
Allah’S.’

He hath sent His messenger [Muhammad] with the guidance and the religion of truth,
in order that he may set in above all [other) religion, though averse are the polytheists.’

The second of these verses renders evident the context in which

Muhammad preached the legitimacy of war; namely, the fight for dominance
in Arabia against the pagans, first against the city of Mecca (622-28) and then
against the nomadic Arabian tribes (628-32). Islam thus accepted from the
beginning the legitimacy, even the centrality, of war as a regulatory mechanism
for intergroup relations in Arabia in the struggle over limited resources (above
all water and grazing ground), and transformed it and the warrior ethos it
produced into an integral part of its creed. This transformation accords well
with the essence of Muhammad’s effort to replace a kinship-based sociopolitical
structure with one predicated on transcendental sanction. But though pagans
are defined in the text as the particular enemies Muslims must strive to dominate,
the door is left open, as it was even in Muhammad’s time, for a continuation
of divinely sanctioned hostilities against other religions in Arabia, and those
outside Arabia as well.
It is still a hotly debated question among scholars as to whether
Muhammad himself envisioned a jihad for global Islamic dominance (or, more
practically, dominance over the Middle East), a campaign that in fact broke out
almost immediately after his death. The community of believers in Islam argues
that he did, and not without some basis. ‘Ihe Quran itself bears such an
interpretation without stretching its meaning too far, and the Islamic wars of
conquest, which by 711 had spread Islamic rule from Spain to Central Asia, are
both a logical extension and a sociological product of Muhammad’s success in
dominating, unifying, and pacifying Arabia. With intertribal warfare banned, for
example, a mechanism for assuring a balance between population size and
resources was lost, the result being that a growing population was beginning
to exercise pressure for which expansion served as a plausible safety valve.
This is not to reduce the motivation for conquest to a crudely materialist (e.g.,
Marxist) or Malthusian explanation for the early wars of Islam. The belief in
the innate moral and intellectual superiority of Islam-as the culmination of all
previous monotheistic revelation (a doctrine dubbed as “Muhammad-Seal of
the Prophet&‘&is the explicit mooring for the jihad notion present in the
Quran, and this doctrine was sincerely adhered to by the new converts. Yet it
certainly helped that the success of warfare in Arabia relieved demographic
and economic pressures operating in parallel with ideology: war as a principle
and normative mode of conducting international relations.

l Chap. 2, v. 193.
2 Chap. 9, v. 33.

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 Islam

Islamic law (shati’u), which began to evolve during the early wars of
conquest and took definitive form two centuries later at the zenith of the Muslim
conquest, codified and to some extent formalized this perception of international
relations. Indeed, Islamic law has elaborated it in considerable detail. This was
crucial for Islam which, much like Judaism (and unlike Christianity), sets its
highest priority on shaping human behavior rather than belief, and hence gives
precedence to jurisprudence over theology. The bedrock theological grounds
for the legitimacy and centrality of warfare remain rather barebone; they consist
mainly in the rehashing of the Quranic source itself. The jurisprudential rules,
on the contrary, are most elaborate and give evidence of a continuous and
vigorous intellectual effort geared and attuned to the realities of an ever-ex-
panding, and later ever-embattled, empire. This effort was driven by practical
concerns, but it nevertheless tried throughout to be faithful to what the
jurists-that most important group of Muslim men of religion-thought to be
the true intent of Muhammad’s message.
The brunt of this legal construct may be set forth under the following
five rubrics:
(1) Warfare is a major religious injunction, but it is a collective precept
(fard kzzya) and not an individual one (fbrd ‘up). In other words, while the
believer (provided he is male, past minority age, and able-bodied) is strongly
encouraged to take part in war for the faith, it is enough for the community
( ‘urnma) as a whole if some part thereof is engaged in combating the
nonbelievers?
(2) Since war is essentially offensive and hegemonic, justified in terms
of Islam’s intrinsic superiority and its obligation to spread its sway upon earth,
it follows that anyone killed in such a war is a martyr (shah@ eligible for
heavenly recompense (automatic entry to Paradise). But it is important to
understand that Islam’s sway on earth is defined as making Islamic law prevalent
in territories conquered, and clearly not in terms of forcing their inhabitants to
embrace Islam. It is enough that a legal system be imposed in which those
who embrace Islam receive privileged treatment; the rest (provided they are
not pagan) may maintain a modicum of individual and communal rights based
on the Quranic notion of “no compulsion in religion.“4
(3) As such, jihad “in the way of Allah” is a perennial obligation-“till
Judgment Day,” in Islamic parlance. This means that as long as “normal”
(nonmessianic) history continues, there can be, in principle, no abatement of
Islam’s efforts to dominate the globe.
(4) Since resistance to jihad is bound to remain a weighty factor, a good
part of the Islamic effort must, by necessity, be channeled into defensive jihad.
Defensive jihad consists of repelling aggression upon Muslim lives and property
(in which case the obligation bears on each individual--favd ‘up), preventing

3 Chap. 8, v. 39.
4 chap. 2, v. 256.

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SIVAN

oppression and persecution of Muslims outside the domain of Islam (dar

al-Islam), or retaliation for the breaking of an enemy pledge.5
(5) The inhabited earth is consequently divided between the domain,
or abode of Islam (dar al-I.Lzm)-where sbari’a is the law of the land-and
the domain or abode of war (daral-barb), where it is not. Since the law is the
key to the organization of the Islamic community, this division implies that the
normal relationship that should exist between the two abodes is one of armed
hostility. Yet, realistic as Islamic jurisprudence ever is, the jihad doctrine admits
that the balance of power at any given time may not favor the Muslims.
Therefore, peaceful relations can be justified as an expedient as long as the
pacts upon which such relations are predicated are limited in duration. Islam
thus permits a truce or armistice with nonbelievers but not a definite peace-
although one can prolong truces if necessity requires it. Islamic jurisprudence
is also specific about the uppermost limit on the duration of a truce with
nonbelievers; it is defined on the Quranic model of Muhammad’s Hudaybiyya
treaty with pagan Mecca, which lasted for ten years, ten months, and ten days.
This limit was usually respected within Islamic experience, at least as a legal
formality, until the eighteenth century.6
The paradox is that as this operative doctrine of jihad was set down in
deftitive written form in Islam’s third century, at a time when the offensive
aim that looms so large in it was already overtaken by events. Islam had
encountered physical obstacles (the Pyrenees and Taurus Mountains, the Sahara,
the Syr Darya and Amu Darya Rivers), and, above all, it had encountered
politico-military counter-forces against which it could not achieve any meaningful
breakthrough. By the time of the codification of the jihad doctrine in Islamic
jurisprudence, the Abbasid Caliphate and the successor states it had split into
had entered a long period of borderland wars of attrition (roughly from the
ninth century to the eleventh). Thereafter, Islam was thrown back by the onset
of the Reconquista in Spain, the Norman onslaught in Sicily and, above all, the
Crusades and Mongol invasion, all of which enjoined on Muslims the need to
wage almost exclusively defensive wars (from the eleventh century to the
fourteenth). Worse perhaps, Islam itself was no longer unified under a single
caliphate. Nevertheless, the primacy of jihad as a hegemonic bellurn iustum
was by no means impaired in the Muslim mindset. This helps explain why the
Ottoman Turks could so easily revive the offensive ethos within Islam and
expand the frontiers of dar al-Idam in the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries.
Even the onset of Ottoman decline in the eighteenth century, and the
onslaught of European colonialism following Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign,
did not substantially dent the essentially offensive perception of jihad. It is
telling that modem Islamic thought, with its periodic infatuations with (or
apologetics toward) Western ideals such as peace and universal brotherhood,
did not introduce any change whatsoever in the essential meaning of jihad.
5 Saiptwal jutification can be found in chap. 2, v. 130, chap. 4, v. 75; and chap. 9, v. 12.
6 hIajid Khadhri, War and Peace in the Law of Islam (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1955).

174 I O&is
 Islam

There is only one mOdem Islamic sect, the Ahmadiyya (founded in India around
1870), that explicitly forswears recourse to force for offensive aims, and even
limits its defensive use to the protection of Muslim persons and property only.
Other modern Islamic thinkers gave explicit priority to the defensive dimension
of jihad-as has often befitted the de facto situation-but they never jettisoned
its offensive dimension altogether. The reasons are obvious: one theological,
one more sociological.
As to the theological, jihad reflects the “foundation myth” of Islamic
civilization itself. Rule over the present lands of Islam (at least in the huge
region stretching from Morocco to Afghanistan) harks back to the original
seventh- and eighth-century conquests, conquests that have always been cele-
brated, in ideology as well as in collective memory, as proof of Islamic moral
and intellectual superiority. AS to the sociological, the concept of hegemonic
holy war has been vital in endowing with ideological sanction a legal and social
structure that has conferred upon Muslims alone the status of full-fledged
subjects. Non-Muslim residents in Islamic lands were relegated to second-class
status. By virtue of public law they enjoyed security of life, limb, and property,
as well as a measure of legal autonomy and freedom of religious practice
(proselytism excepted)-all rights unheard of in medieval Christian Europe.
But because these “protected people” (ah2 aldhimma) did not embrace the
religion of the conquerors, they were barred from participating in jihad. They
were also subject to certain liabilities: they could not serve in the army (an
important vehicle of social mobility thus being closed to them); they could not
serve in the medium and upper echelons of administration; they had to pay a
special tax (iizya> as compensation for not partaking in jihad; their religious
practice had to be held mostly indoors in order not to challenge Islamic
dominance of public space; and they were subject to vestimentary and other
prescriptions.
Given the theological and social centrality of jihad within Islamic
civilization, it stands to reason that few outright challenges to it have ever
developed. To the extent that one can locate any such challenge, it arose in
and around the tenth century from the mystical movement of Sufism. Sufism
emphasized the predilection to turn inward, to purify one’s own soul through
contemplation and intense ritual practice. Sufism inclined to privilege those
precepts that related to interpersonal relations rather than to political or other
regimented forms of collective endeavor. The Sufis dubbed this notion the great
jihad (a&bad al-akbar), as distinct from the small jihad (al-jbad al-asghar),
that of warfare. It so happened that the Sufi movement spread at a time when
actual warfare between dur al-I&m and dur ul-barb was minimal, this on
account of the de facto military stalemate between the caliphate and the
Byzantine Empire. With the advent of the Crusades, however, intensive (and
defensive) warfare was imposed upon Islam, and Sufis joined the fight with as
much zeal as did other Muslims, and at times (under Saladin, for example) with
even greater enthusiasm. So whatever ideological dispute may have existed at
the theoretical level, it evaporated during centuries of warfare against Crusaders
and Mongols. SufBm propagated the ancillary doctrine that self-purification

spring 1998 I 175

SIVAN

should precede participation in literal jihad, but also that the latter in turn
enhanced the act of self-purification. Thus did the exigencies of the time force
the closing of a theoretical divide, a phenomenon that again illustrates the
general determination in Islam to reach a balance between the practical and
the theological.

A Living Tradition: Jihad as Myth

If the essential functions of jihad as a political doctrine operated as part

of Islam’s “foundation myth” that, among other things, bolstered self-centeredness,
it has also possessed a future-oriented facet, namely that of an eschatological
myth. The full idea of jihad in Islam is linked to the end of the “normal” time
perspective as we know it and the onset of the messianic era. While in the
early days of Islam this facet of jihad pertained to the <admittedly far-fetched)
eventuality of Islamic expansion-led by the wuzbdi(messiah&over the entire
world, from the eleventh century onward it came to serve as an explanatory
model for the opposite-decline and defeat. The advent of the Messiah, in
Islam as well as in Judaism, is supposed to be preceded by a period of setbacks,
even catastrophic defeats, that announce the advent of the messianic era and
the dawning of the “realm of justice”-the main characteristic of which is the
universal establishment of shari‘a.All the more reason, then, for Muslims to
take heart in time of defeat and redouble their effort, for defeat means that
heavenly succor is near. During the early setbacks against the Crusades, as well
as in the late nineteenth century against colonial forces in Algeria and the Sudan,
this eschatological notion of jihad, preached often by local Sufi saints (mat-ah
toun), was a powerful factor in motivating zeal and readiness for sacrifice.
It is indeed in the sphere of motivation that one can detect jihad’s major
contribution to the historic Islamic experience of warfare. That contribution was
not so much in the realm of tactics, where treatises and actual behavior were
molded by local conditions, Arab nomadic tradition, and the impact of the
former rulers of lands conquered by Islam. It was not in the realm of strategy,
where no treatises exist and one cannot draw even the bare outline of a
“typically Islamic” mode of strategy. Rather, it is in this domain of metastrategy
that the jihad culture had always been most influential. It has guaranteed for
fourteen centuries that wars waged by Muslims against external enemies will
almost always be perceived by meaningful segments of the polity as having a
transcendental dimension closely interwoven with the “foundation myths” of
the culture to which this society belongs.
‘Ihe motivational dimension of jihad has not only a cognitive function
but an affective one as well. It ensures a sense of solidarity with one’s own
and, almost ineluctably, generates zeal, steadfastness, and readiness for self-sac-
’ “Sekxrifice” does not, however, demand or even condone suicide; contrary to Western pop-cultural
images, Muslim culture frowns on suicidal action and sets most strict boundaries on it. Only a few extremist
sects such as the HusJ~isb:~n, or Assassins, dared transgress them. This generalizxion holds true today
even for the Iranian “Guadians of the Revolution,” the Palestinian Hamas, and the Lebanese Hi&&h.

176 I Orbis
 Islam

rifice.7 The importance of this motivational/affective dimension of jihad is readily

illustrated by the fact that the most common type of Islamic literature on warfare
has always been, and is still, the group of treatises known collectively as “In
Praise of Holy War” (&&a’il aZ-JibudJ The treatises compose a potpourri of
Quranic injunctions on war against infidels, orally transmitted traditions (h&b)
elaborating upon the Quran and recounting the exploits of seventh- and
eighth-century Muslim warriors, theological vituperations against the particular
enemy, moralistic exhortations geared to the needs of the particular historical
Situation in which the treatise was written, and recommendations for methods
of propaganda to be employed. ‘Ihe popularity of this genre-which may also
include some tactical advice, usually of the humdrum sort-is itself telling. But
more important are the observations of the opponents of Islam throughout the
centuries-from the European chroniclers of the Crusades to the French generals
in mid-nineteenth-century Algeria-as to the profound motivational impact that
jihad had on the capacity of Muslim leaders to mobilize manpower and other
resources, and to demonstrate persistence, resilience, and combativity even
under objectively dire circumstances.
Perhaps the pivotal contribution of jihad can be discerned in the
dichotomy it creates: All outside groups, being infidels by definition, are evil;
no gradations are allowed (except for pagans, who are deemed more evil than
everybody else). “All infidelity,” says the Had&, “is but one band.” Long-term
coexistence is, therefore, out of the question. And if, as August Nitschke argues,
“groups can be understood most clearly when we ask: how do they look at
their enemies?“* then we do possess here a key to a core element of the Islamic
mindset. As suggested above, there has always been enough sense of realpolitik
in the Muslim world view to allow for de facto, short- to middle-term accom-
modation. But whenever the power equation changed in favor of Islam-as
was the case with the appearance of the Almohads in twelfthcentury North
Africa or the Ottomans in the fifteenth-century Middle East-even a worn and
rather redolent polity could be mobilized again into action on the basis of
existing “symbolic capital” vouchsafed in the concept of jihad.
A less well appreciated aspect of the same phenomenon is the impact
of the jihad experience, as distinct from the jihad doctrine, on collective memory
through the elaboration and transmission of collective myths. Myth is understood
here in its anthropological sense, namely, as a story that a human group tells
itself about itself and about relevant outsiders-mostly enemies. As a dramatic
story the myth has a beginning, a middle, and a (usually exhilarating) end. It
has heroes and villains, and it usually maintains a unity of time, place, and plot.
All myths deal with the past, but not necessarily or only a fictional one. A myth
can be based on actual historical events-and what serves better than a battle
or military campaign for dramatic material? But in myth any original factual
kernel is processed, expanded, and interpreted to give it an epic dimension.

8 A. Nitschke, DerFeind(Smugan, Ger.: n.p., 1%4), p. 17; cf. W. Shama, Al-wahid NaWu (B=hut: Dar
aljadid, 19931, 29 ff.

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 SIVAN

To function as a myth, reality must become a story in which the hero possesses
a broader freedom of action than that of run-of-the-mill human beings.
Myth has two central functions, one cognitive/interpretive, the other
operative/behavioral. The cognitive/interpretive function enables a certain group
to see itself within a historical continuum by defining its origins and essential
qualities. The interpretive framework created by this unification offers tools for
understanding the past and the present, and for projecting the future. The
operative/behavioral function motivates the members of the group to follow a
certain behavioral pattern and mobilizes them to that end. In a conservative
myth, the pattern will serve the defense of the status quo, while
in a radical myth it will operate toward its delegitimation and
The exploits
subversion. The myth fulfills both of these functions not through
of bygone a rational modus operandi but by appealing to the affective-ex-
holy wars are pressive dimension of the human personality. As an allegory it
ideal shapes perceptions that can produce identification or repulsion,
admiration or alienation. The myth, then, operates through an
myth-producing “act of faith” achieved by emotional inclusion, not by an incre-
materials. mental logical process. Myth is a device that offers the group
an effectively engaged interpretation of reality and a mode of
action predicated upon the latter, not an analytical breakdown of it.”
Clearly, the exploits of bygone holy wars are ideal myth-producing
materials. This goes without saying for the early wars of conquest, presented
in popular epics such as Sirut Antur and the Futuh, as the victory of the few
over the many, a campaign motivated by zeal to make “Allah’s word superior
upon earth,” and not, as inother wars in history, by mere selfish expansionism.
But because of the existing power equation, which during the last seven hundred
years was not favorable to Islam, another form of the jihad myth has tended
to eclipse even the wars of conquest. The latter are still used, ironically, in wars
between Muslims; thus Saddam Hussein had recourse to the battle of Qadisiyya
(637),which ushered in the Muslim conquest of Iraq, as a major rallying symbol
in Iraq’s war with Iran. But the overshadowing jihad myth operative in recent
centuries is that of the Crusades-or rather of the counter-Crusade jihad. Indeed,
the eight hundredth anniversary thereof-or, to be more precise, of Saladin’s
victory in the battle of the Horns of Hattin and the subsequent reconquest of
Jerusalem- was celebrated with great fanfare in summer 1987 all over the
Islamic world, especially in Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq.
This myth, which was in evidence already during the Crusades era, and
which was developed further thereafter as Islamic military fortunes deteriorated,
presents the Crusades as an emblematic phenomenon. It has been seen as a
matrix for interpreting the present, be that present fourteenth-century Syria
menaced by invasion from Christian Cyprus, sixteenth-century Morocco about
to be invaded by Portugal, nineteenth-century Algeria about to be conquered
by France, or twentieth-century Egypt facing the Suez War. Its relevance flows

9 H. Tudor, Political Mfl (London: Maanillan, 1972).

178 I Or&s
 Islam

from the perception that the period from the Crusades to the present is part
and parcel of the same historical process going back, according to some, to
Alexander the Great. It is, specifically, the struggle between the East (Asia and
Africa, the spearhead of which is Islam) and the West (Europe, usually including
Russia due to its modernity-permeated ethos; and later America). As a general
rule, the West is believed driven by the quest for natural resources, trade routes,
spoils, and strategic dominance, while the East is seen as the eternal peace-loving
victim, fighting in self-defense even when it counterattacks (with four centuries
of Ottoman domination, for instance). The East fights merely to create buffer
zones against future invasions from the West, and, of course, in order to take
back by force what had been snatched away by Western force.
This jihad myth, which features an essential analogy between past and
present, offers embattled contemporary Muslim societies not only a sense of
moral vindication, but also-as the Crusades ended in an Islamic victory-the
promise of a better future. It indulges a belief in a historical determinism that
guarantees ultimate victory if only Muslims would follow in the footsteps of
Saladin and other heroes of twelfth- to thirteenth-century jihad. Relatedly,
didacticism can lead to pragmatism in the form of searching through the uplifting
role model for specific lessons to be applied to contemporary problems. So,
for example, if Saladin’s strategy of first creating a broad power base by uniting
Syria, Egypt, Yemen, and parts of Iraq, and only then turning their combined
manpower and financial resources against the Crusaders, worked, then why
would it not work again now? Saladin’s skillful use of jihad propaganda as part
of a carefully nurtured alliance with men of religion (who served in the ranks
as morale-boosters) is yet another model ripe for replication. Specific battles
(Hattin in 1187, Mansura in 1250),amply described by Islamist interpreters in
the spirit of “history repeats itself,” have been and still are employed in public
rituals to produce the affective predisposition conducive to a latter-day jihad.
The Palestinian intijhdu in Gaza and the West Bank, led in part by the
fundamentalist Hamas movement, is but the latest in a long series of campaigns
permeated by this conservative, past-oriented mythology.
Obviously, as important as the jihad template has been, and still is, it
does not account for everything Muslim societies and polities do. Devotion to
jihad, just because it is a religious injunction, need not, for example, bring about
an other-worldly rigidity or fanaticism in execution. Because the jihad culture
was born in a place long familiar with warfare, efforts to implement strategic
goals were from the beginning tempered by an acute sense of military, political,
and psychological realities. Treatises on the art of war-such as Ali Ibn Bakr
al-Harawi’s classical Memorandud” -uystallize this experience in explicit
terms, often through use of Quranic verses. Such treatises allow, for instance,
for strategic retreat, expatriation of Muslim populations, truce (and even sur-
render) under duress, and even the employment of non-Muslims in the armed
forces (especially in areas where Muslims were weak, such as siege warfare,

10 French translation by J. Sowdel-Thomine (Leiden, Neth.: BriU, 1965).

Spring 1998 I 179

SWAN

military engineering, naval warfare). That this combination of zeal and flexibility
could be maintained virtually throughout Islamic history is to be attributed not
only to Arabia’s bedouin background and to Quranic sanction, but also to the
way in which the primacy of jihad shaped Muslim military and social institutions.
Because of this primacy, jihad weighed heavily in molding Muslim social
stratification. In Islam’s earliest centuries, this stratification can be seen in the
relationship between the conquering Arab warrior caste and the populations
conquered, particularly in the muwali converts to Islam that had nominally to
join an Arabian tribe in order to fit into the social structure. Most notable,
however, was the creation of a class of Muslim slave-warriors that came to
have a major impact on Muslim history.
When the Arab warriors of early conquests tired of military life, many
sought to exploit their de facto monopoly on power by settling into the pampered
life of the urban centers. As they came to occupy top positions in civil service
and business, another means had to be devised to preserve Islam’s combat
readiness. After a tortuous process of trial and error, a novel institution emerged
in the ninth century-the Mamluks, or slaves on horseback. These slaves were
young Turkish males, captured (or bought during childhood) on the Euro-Asian
steppe. After rigorous martial training combined with Islamic instruction, these
slaves were set free to embrace Islam and become members of elite regiments
of heavily armored cavalry. Each regiment was commanded by the chief training
officer, who took these adolescents under his wing from the moment they
entered the abode of Islam, where jihad (as taught by local men of religion)
occupied pride of place. These Mamluks assured Islam that a substantial part
of the standing army, deployed mostly in the borderlands and in rriajor cities,
would be made of militarily vigorous and ideological brainwashed troops,
equipped as well as technological conditions permitted. The Mamluks were
recompensed not only by military standing and economic reward, but also in
that they soon became a separate aristocratic caste and, in some successor
states, the ruling class, whether indirectly as praetorians (as in Iraq), or directly
(as in Egypt).
The Mamluks composed a unique aristocracy in the sense that it was
not hereditary. In order to better serve the cause of jihad, the flow of young
Turks into the lands of Islam was maintained, assuring a very high turnover
rate. Sons of Mamluks who, it was feared, were already pampered and
“effeminated” by civilized life, were barred from pursuing an elite military career
and went instead into civilian occupations. They thus had to leave their aristocratic
stratum, but could join the upper middle class if they chose a business or civil
service career, or the middle class if they preferred to become men of religion.
Clearly, not only social stratification but the Muslim polity itself was shaped by
the phenomenon of the Mamluk. Power was wielded by foreigners, non-Arabic
speakers, military in formation and outlook, and of slave background; the gap
between them and the governed-indigenous, civilian, and free-could not
have been greater. A heavy price in terms of the alienation of civil society from
the state had, consequently, to be paid for this arrangement. But it bought a
near assurance of Muslim superiority, or at least parity, in land warfare virtually

180 I Orbis
 Islam

until the eighteenth century; indeed, apart from defeats in Spain and Sicily,
none of the early Islamic conquests was ever lost.
The combination of zeal and flexibility typical of the bedouins in early
Islam was likewise characteristic of the steppe frontier culture from which these
Turkish warriors came. The arduous training they received aimed at inculcating
these qualities even deeper into their personalities. Their actual performance,
as well as the treatises on tactics produced for their use (notably the genre of
Books of Chivaly or Kutub al-Furu.s@ya) bear out their commitment to these
twin qualities. And when some Marnluks seemed impervious to technological
change, such as those of Egypt in the fifteenth century who resisted the
introduction of firearms in the name of “knightly honor,” they were replaced
by another Turkic military elite more receptive to change-the Ottomans.

JihadTuming Inward

The generalizations presented above about the theology and experience

of jihad in Islamic civilization hold true for the bulk of Islamic history. Indeed,
they are still valid today particularly in those areas where Islam encounters
non-Muslim entities, and where the balance of forces endows Islam with a
reasonable expectation of success against them @hanistan, Lebanon, Gaza-
West Bank, Sudan, Burma, the Philippines). Yet Islam seems to be undergoing
a sea change in the postcolonial era, especially during the past quarter of a
century. Jihad culture-and above all jihad mythology-is being increasingly
turned inward toward fellow Muslims and, in the process, it is becoming a
vehicle for the radical delegitimization of the status quo. What has long been
a conservative myth, in terms of preserving the internal political order, is
becoming a revolutionary one.
This process is spearheaded by a plethora of radical Islamic movements
(erroneously dubbed in the West “fundamentakt”), but its impact on behavior
is much broader than its vanguard sourcing implies. Its influence reaches far
beyond a fringe of zealots for the simple reason that it evolves out of a changing
sociopolitical context that affects all social strata in Islamic societies. This new
context is the product of many factors. First and foremost among them is the
fading away over time of a cluster of attitudes brought to the fore during virtually
a century of anticolonialist struggle. These attitudes focused on foreign enemies
and tended to externalize guilt and responsibility for all the problems of
indigenous societies. A second factor is the rise of a mature and sometimes
brave local intelligentsia whose members, though of different ideological hues,
share a more candid perception of their own societies and show a readiness
to raise formerly taboo topics (such as native-bred tyranny). And last but not
least, the flagrant failure of the suprastate movements (above all Pan-Arabism)
to achieve rapid modernization, an end to politico-economic dependence on
the former colonizers, broad economic well-being, renewed military might, and
enhanced influence in world politics, has encouraged a search for alternatives.

Spring 1998 I 181

SIVAN

In a word, in the sober mood now reigning among many Muslim elites,
the evils plaguing their societies are now being perceived as coming from
within. Foreign powers still share part of the blame for Islamic inferiority and
underdevelopment, but they are definitely not believed anymore to be the
ultimate cause. Two major political-ideological forces reflect this state of mind,
one secular (and thus having little recourse to jihad mythologies) and the other
religious with a vengeance.
The secular force is that of the state apparatus, which is more determined
than ever to carve out distinct national identities and programs. This is particularly
noteworthy among the Arab states, most of which came into being on the ruins
of the Ottoman empire and which, until the late l%Os, were handicapped in
pursuing their own interests by the power and pretense of Pan-Arabism. The
Arab state elites have eagerly exploited religious sentiment against the constraints
of Pan-Arabism when the opportunity presented itself. Thanks to their control
of the ever-pliant religious establishment, the state apparatus could always
procure religious sanction, even in the name of jihad; in 1979, for example,
President Anwar Sadat easily procured a religious edict (fatwa> sanctioning his
peace treaty with Israel from the sheikhs of al-Azhar, the supreme religious
college, on the model of the Hudabiyya treaty. (The very same institution had
declared jihad-to-the-hilt against Israel in 1968 at the behest of President Gamal
Abdel Nasser.)
But such opportunistic uses of religion pale when compared to “the
real thing.” A groundswell of Islamic radicalism-another inward-looking force-
seems to be achieving cultural hegemony from Afghanistan all the way to
Morocco. The emergence of Islamic radicalism came as a response to the same
problems, but not only are its contents and modus operandi different, it differs
also-and perhaps above all-in its locus operandi. While state elites operate
at the level of the state itself, Islamic radicalism proceeds from the traditionalist
and the semi- or superficially secularized segments of modem society. It is, in
a way, a phenomenon of civil society striking back at the state and at its gospel
of modernity. At its very core is a transmogrified concept of jihad.
The radical Islamist phenomenon can be encapsulated under three
headings: diagnosis (what is wrong>, cure (what needs to be done about it>,
and treatment (how to do it>.
Diagnasis: Contemporary Islam is facing a mortal danger, worse than
anything it has known in the past. The danger comes this time from within,
from leaders and movements that are nominally Muslim and, in their own
manner, sincerely devoted to the welfare of their peoples. Yet they are
inadvertently bringing about a calamity of spiritual extinction upon these peoples
because they are, in the apt term coined in Iran, ‘Westoxicated”-intoxicated
by Western ideas such as nationalism, socialism, liberalism, women’s rights, and
democracy that are totally alien to Islam. By manipulating state-of-the-art
audio-visual media, these modernists-who are heavily represented in the
political elites that monopolize the media-inculcate these ideas into the
subconscious of the Muslim masses and thus promote addiction to modernity
and the “good life” it promises. The upshot is that the world of Islam is in a

182 I orbi.s
 Islam

state of virtual apostasy, having forsaken faith for infidelity, a state of affairs all
the more dangerous for its being brought about unconsciously, absentmindedly.
In Islamic terms, say the radicals, most Muslims are in a state of ‘Ijahiliyyd’-a
barbarity worse than that which characterized Arabia before the appearance of
the Prophet.
Cuve: True believers in Islam should reenter the political arena and
subject modernity in Islamic lands to a rigorous and systematic critique in the
name of Islamic authenticity. Through such a critique they must enhance the
religious awareness of the masses and especially of “brainwashed youth.”
Secondary school and university educated youth must especially and urgently
be saved and disintoxicated, liberated from their dangerous infatuation with
modernity. Yet such a critique cannot bring structural change from within
because of the state’s monopoly on the means of coercion as well as on the
media. Since the state’s addiction to the hedonistic, secularist spirit is simulta-
neously the source of the malady and the prevention of its cure, it follows
inescapably that Islamic radicals should seek the delegitimation of the present
regimes.
Treatment: Delegitimation of such powerful regimes must inevitably
lead, after a preparatory stage, to jihad-an armed insurrection aimed at seizing
power and establishing shari‘u as state law. How to do this? Devout Muslims
must secede and organize themselves in voluntary associations (juma’ut) outside
the reach of the state. These autonomous enclaves should then conquer the
state from the bottom up, by spreading the realm of the enclave person by
person and family by family, by lobbying and pressuring the elites, by entering
parliament and investing in other elected bodies (professional and trade asso
ciations), by hoping to win an electoral majority, by terror aimed at destablization,
and, ultimately, by direct seizure of power. The precise dosage of means is to
be left to pragmatic considerations, but it should invariably be preceded by an
in-depth propaganda effort so as to delegitimate the powers-that-be. These
powers should be presented as lackeys of the West as well as of hedonistic,
secularized modernity; they are indeed the enemies of Islam because they reject
shari‘a and, hence, they qualify as infidels subject to the sword of jihad.
The Islamic ideology described here is upheld by those whom some
Western observers call “moderates” as well as by those they dub “extremists.”
Within the movements own definitions, however, these distinctions are senseless.
‘We are zealots (muta’ussitwn), not extremists (mutatawifunY says the popular
Egyptian preacher Sheikh Kishk. To raise the moderate/extremist distinction is
to disregard the fact that the choice of “cure” and “treatment” depends prag-
matically upon the circumstances, as applications of jihad always have. One
must study the possibilities of penetrating the political structure, the efficacy of
repression, the leeway for freedom of expression and association, the existence
of a socioeconomic crisis, and the availability of allies in the military and security
forces. Whatever the exact modus operandi, the aim-seizing political power
and establishing a regime governed by shari‘u-is the same.
Moreover, to raise such a distinction belies ignorance of the premodem
roots of the jihad ideology, i.e., the doctrine of “eradicating evil and imposing

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SIVAN

good.” It also suggests a lack of understanding of the social practice of vigilante

action derived from it and prevalent in the Islamic world from at least the
fourteenth century onward. This doctrine-cum-practice-which is an offshoot
of jihad law-was transformed into the twentieth-century radical variety because
the danger has become more acute. It is no longer a matter of rebuking negligent
rulers and fighting against believers who transgress specific precepts. Rather,
the state itself has become an active agent of alien (formerly colonial) ideas,
and the impact is therefore not limited to elites but affects the bulk of the
population. The regime does not act as a “night watchman state” but rather
attempts to actively shape all social attitudes and practices, even going so far
as to invade the private domain formerly off-limits to all external authority.
The doctrine of “eradicating evil” calls for combating the danger to the
faith “by hand or mouth” (force or persuasion), according to the circumstances.
This is why radical Islamic movements fluctuate between reform and revolution,
propaganda and violence, or, as they call it, between da’wu and jihud. The
two modes are closely related, and in many movements there is even a parallel
apparatus to deal with them. In the course of the 1980s some movements
turned from reformist to terrorist-revolutionary (Algeria and Gaza-West Bank),
while others moved in the opposite direction (Tunisia, Turkey). Still others
preserve both modes of action (Egypt, Morocco, and Jordan).
The notions of diagnosis, cure, and treatment sketched out above hold
true for all the so-called fundamentalist movements despite the variety of local
conditions from which they emerged and to which they react. This commonality
is important for practical reasons because fundamentalism has by now seeped
into every nook and cranny of most Muslim societies, especially in towns. But
what is truly significant about it is that it represents a virtual turning-on-its-head
of traditional interpretations and practices, and that it has become accepted
within both Sunni and Shi‘i traditi~ns.~’
The fight against apostates had always been an integral part of jihad,
yet it was a minor, if not marginal, element before because mainstream
Islam-like Judaism-endeavors to avoid throwing deviant and recalcitrant
believers outside the fold, hoping instead to save them. Only a few extreme
sects (Kharijites, Qarmats, Ismai’ilis), who hurled anathema and excommunication
at all Muslims who did not share their views, ever conducted a systematic jihad
against fellow believers. The new jihad doctrine, however, confers pride of
place upon holy war against apostates; it thereby gives precedence to low-in-
tensity forms of warfare-subversion, destabilization, guerrilla war, and insur-
rection against the state.
In the perception of the new radicalism, the muin enemy is all Muslims,
particularly the political and cultural elites, that have been won over by
modernity-the ‘Westoxicated.” They are in the process of corrupting the whole

I1 The Suti version is spelled out by Abd al-Salam Fataj, mentor of the assassins of Sadat, in The
Neglected
Dufy.See trans.by J. J. Jansen (Leiden, Neth.: Btill, 1986). The Shi‘i version is given by ham
Khomeini in his Comment of God See C. Bernard and 2. Khalilzad, 7be Gxzmmeru of God (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1984).

184 I Orbis
 Islam

of society due to the state powers they wield. To wrench these powers from
them will take massive and patient counterforce. An intricate legalistic argu-
ment-different among the Sunnis than among Shi‘a, but predicated on concepts
integral to the same age-old jihad doctrine-is employed to bolster that rare
novelty in Islamic political theory-delegitimation of the powers-that-be. In its
propagandistic version, the argument is somewhat simplified, but the essence
is what Lebanese Hizballah’s mentor, Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, called the
Moral Logic of F~rce..‘~Force is to be targeted against apostates unabashedly
but according to circumstances. Thanks to their monopoly of means of repression
(and of persuasion) in the newfangled all-pervasive state, this means more often
than not low-intensity warfare combined with political mass action. Jihad is to
be envisaged less as a tool of state (for there is today just three such Islamic
states-Iran, Afghanistan, and Sudan), than as a tool of Muslim civil society.
This is a situation that in the past had been characteristic only of the anticolonialist
jihad; it is now being widely generalized.
As noted, this new interpretation of jihad applies to both Sunni and
Shi‘i Islamists, but differs when it comes to specific mythic narratives. Past-ori-
ented myths and rituals are employed in both cases to communicate the affective
dimension of the new doctrine to the masses, steeped as the latter still are in
tradition. But two myths are in operation. For the Sunnis, the focus is the wars
of apostasy (r&G) fought against tribes who reneged on Islam immediately
after Muhammad’s death (632-34). For the Shi‘a, the focus is the battle of
Karbala (680), in which the valiant third imam, Hussein, challenged (in vain)
the “Forces of Evil,” i.e., the Umayyad caliph. The narratives differ, but the point
is the same, and the new radical interpretation of jihad has the potential to
overcome, at least to some extent, the major age-old sectarian division within
Islam.

The Radicals’ Impact

Radical Islam, it should be stressed, is by no means identical to classical

or orthodox Islam. Other forces of Islam obviously operate in Muslim lands:
conservative (Saudi Arabia), moderate modernizers (the Egyptian political elite),
and liberal (losing ground, but still present in intellectual circles). Yet radical
Islam is the most dynamic political social force on the Muslim scene today-it
sets the agenda for all the others, spearheads the opposition in most countries,
and holds power in three of them.
The success of radical Islam is due not merely to its intellectual and
myth-making attraction. It possesses undeniable communication skills, adroitly
manipulating a bedrock political language with deep historical and plebeian
resonances with the instruments of modem media-audio-video tape cassette,
the fax machine, satellite television, pirate radio, and the Internet. It thereby

I2 M.H. Fadlallah, Mantiq al-Quwwa (Beiit: n.p., 1979).

Spring 1998 I 185

SWAN

circumvents the state’s monopoly on television and gives civil society, hitherto
mute or muzzled, a new voice. Indeed, it is in the reinvigoration of civil
society-which had suffered attrition and later destruction at the hands of the
regimes of the past century-that radical Islam has drawn much of its staying
power. In a way it is civil society, such as it is in the Muslim world. It has
created free spaces (private mosques, professional organizations, trade unions,
clinics, savings and loan associations, Islamic banks, schools) that provide
fundamentalism with an ever-flowing reservoir of new recruits and opportunities
for expansion. its success in the sphere of voluntary organizations is not
something to be sneezed at. Such organizations tend to be rare in the world
of Islam today (one per fifty thousand inhabitants, compared to one per thousand
in Europe and one per three thousand in East Asia).
Although the success of these organizations is due in great part to the
inventiveness and initiative of the radicals, the crisis of the present Muslim state
is also an important factor. Particularly the Arab states of the Middle East and
North Africa are more often than not combinations of rentier state and welfare
state. As rentiers they draw most of their resources from their monopolies on
certain precious minerals (oil, natural gas, phosphates) and major waterways
(the Suez Canal); from subsidies from foreign powers (the United States, Saudi
Arabia, the Gulf emirates, and formerly the Soviet Union); as well as from
remittances from their emigrant workers. As such, they do not rely heavily upon
taxation and have no reason to attend to the wishes of civil society. With these
societies the regimes have a tacit covenant; they provide their subjects with
free (or subsidized) staples, education, housing, medical services, and welfare
transfers, and, in return, the subjects acquiesce to a certain curtailment of human
and civil rights.
But this tacit covenant has begun to break down with the decline of
oil prices in the international market (in the late 1970s and mid-198Os), the
eviction of migrant workers alter the Gulf War, and the breakup of the USSR.
As outside sources of income have dwindled, the state-whose economic policy
consisted of “imported development without growth”-has increasingly faced
bankruptcy. ‘Ihis is a situation that has become all the more acute as fertility
rates remain high while mortality declines thanks to investments in better medical
services and nutrition. ‘Ihe state is increasingly unable to uphold its end of the
bargain; its welfare functions have become increasingly deficient, thus creating
a social climate conducive to mass protests. This climate has been manipulated
by radical Muslim activists who have married a religious discourse to demands
for social justice. Yet the militants have done more than just preach. They have
moved into the vacuum created by the bankruptcy of the state. Their existing
network of associations (jama’ut) has focused on the propagation of the faith
(&‘~a), using well the free mosques, schools, and clinics they have developed
over the years. They have expanded the nebula of voluntary associations and
created a solid social base through them, especially among those most heavily
hit by the crisis and most frustrated by the modernization rhetoric preached by
the state (urban lower-middle class, proletariat, and unemployed university and
high school graduates).

186 I Orbis
 Islam

Within their associations, the radicals have developed an egalitarian

structure-“enclave’‘-style-loose yet supple, that provides urban dwellers and
recent rural migrants suffering from anomie with a sense of solidarity and
empowerment otherwise lacking in their lives. Decision making in these groups
is not stifled by this structure, for most are led by charismatic individuals revered
for their learning and moral probity.
All this is not to say that radical Islam’s success is due essentially to
communication, economics, and organization, Vision is crucial, too. The state,
no longer in possession of an uplifting ideal such as Pan-Arabism, has made
too many compromises with the uses of Islamic lingo and laws to be credible.
Moreover, it is perceived as being too elitist and remote. The radicals, on the
other hand, have a message that is clear, simple, and grounded in a popular
Islamic discourse about identity and social justice that has informed these
societies for centuries, and that has never really been eradicated by this century’s
modernizers. ‘Ihat message is that modernist moral depravity is the source of
all social ills, and the radicals skillfully play on a combination of private frustrations
(unemployment, poor housing, steep dowries which impede marriage) and
public ones (crime, higher rates of celibacy, sexual harassment in the congested
public transportation) to make their point. The sole solution, they say, is the
application of shari’a.

The Challenge of the New Jihad

Where does the challenge of radical Islam actually lie? A close scrutiny
of the record of the radicals in power (Iran, Afghanistan, and Sudan), their
intramovement methods, and indoctrination of their troops in opposition suggest
three main dimensions of challenge within Islamic societies. Aside from these,
there are in addition the foreign policy implications of radical Islam for non-Muslim
powers. We take these in turn.
First, these movements deny the validity of universal human rights,
especially with regard to the social groups in the lands of Islam that are
traditionally discriminated against: women and non-Muslim minorities. For
example, after 1979 the Iranian government reduced the age of marriage to
thirteen, rendered licit “provisional” marriage (i.e., short-term concubinage),
abolished wife-initiated divorce, and curtailed a divorced woman’s alimony.
The platform of the “moderate” Muslim Brethren in the Egyptian parliament
contains similar measures. At the same time, Islamic militants in Egypt, Algeria,
Yemen, Morocco, and elsewhere have put pressure, often violently, on women
to cover themselves up with the tentlike Islamic garb (a chador or nijab) or,
at the very least, the veil (hijab); they forcibly stop them from attending
“sex-mixed” halls (lecture rooms, cinemas, ballrooms, and so forth), and offer
female students segregated shuttle buses. These militants implacably fight
state-sponsored campaigns for family planning and preach to young women
the gospel of nurturing as woman’s first, God-instituted role even if she is
educated; work within the family, not a career outside of it, is what they say

Spring 1998 I 187

 SIVAN

she should contemplate. She must resign herself to being of a different mold,
never equal to a man, the family’s provider. They support sbari’u laws that
allow a woman only half of a man’s share in inheritance and that decree that
the testimony of two women equals that of one man. These laws are already
in force in Iran, Sudan, and Afghanistan, and are likely to be instituted elsewhere
if and when Islamist radicals take power.
Nor do the radicals believe in the freedom of religious expression. The
Baha’i faith is persecuted in Iran; Christians and animists in
Radical Islam southern Sudan are the victims of a vicious war perpetrated by
the Islamist regime; Palestinian Christians are harassed by Hamas;
does not and Copts in Egypt are murdered by the dozens. Censorship of
believe in books,plays, and films has become harsher as governments try
democracy. to curry favor with the intolerant radicals and as the latter receive
the support of establishment institutions, such as al-Azhar uni-
versity, on these issues. Where they lack such support, they wield pressure by
throwing fire bombs at nightclubs, assassinating or intimidating popular singers.
The cultural policies of the Iranian regime are best illustrated by the Salman
Rushdiefutwa and it remains to be seen whether the new president, Mohammed
Khatami, will modify them. No such expectations are entertained with regard
to the highly illiberal regimes in Sudan and Afghanistan.
Secondly, radical Islam, even when it plays the parliamentary game in
opposition, does not believe in democracy but rather in “one man, one vote,
one time”-this despite what Islam&t leaders sometimes say to foreign inter-
locutors. We have seen this in operation in Iran and Sudan, where single-party,
repressive regimes were established, and then proceeded to abolish democratic
procedure. And one hears the same note in intramovement tapes of oppositionary
radicals: “enemies of Islam” (i.e., secularists and liberals) should be outlawed
and refused access to the media; parliament has to install the God-given shuri‘a,
which, of course, cannot then be abrogated, and the consultation (shuru)
doctrine they refer to means consultation of Islamic elites, namely men of
religion. This is what shuru meant historically, and this is what it means in
present-day Iran. Shuru does not equal democracy.13 Moreover, the Islamist
movements themselves are strictly authoritarian, even dictatorial, in their internal
governance. Dissent is prohibited; ideological deviants are persecuted and
sometimes killed.
The impact of such views, wherever the radicals are in opposition, is
not just restricted to shaping the climate of opinion, nor to the potentialities of
an Islamic regime. While powerful liberal currents do exist in the Islamic world,
inspired in part by examples of recent democratization in Eastern Europe, South
Korea, and Taiwan, they are hampered indirectly by the Islamic alternative to
the present regimes. As their counterparts in Latin America did before the decline

13 cf. R. Ghmushi, al-Hutiyptal- XmmafiJi-I&am (Ekiit: Ma’had Dirasat al-Wahda akabiyya, 19‘3);
Mujmu’ufmi’na-f-Ohma’(Nablus: n.p., 1%); and D. al-Bu.ri, “I&mist Views of Democracy,” Ab'ad (Beit),
Dec. 3, 1995, pp. 300-11.

188 I Orbis
 Islam

of Marxist-Leninistmovements, middle-class Arab democrats and liberal members

of the elites must take into account the looming presence of a powerful
antidemocratic alternative to secular authoritarianism. Any plan for a gradual
transition to democracy must consider the possibility that elections will lead to
a victory of Islamic radicals and the installation of a regime similar to those
found in Iran, Sudan, and Afghanistan. Islamist victories in Algeria’s 1990
municipal and 1991 parliamentary elections were taken as a warning signal of
such a possibility, and rightly so. The ensuing outbreak of civil war in that
country sent another, even more ominous message: democratization equals
chaos, violence, and even civil war. There are a few recent seemingly coun-
terexamples-Jordan, Morocco, and Yemen-but these are hesitant and inter-
mittent and do not overturn the general impression.
Islamic radicalism, while invigorating civil society by its network of
associations, also frightens nascent secondary elites (entrepreneurs, members
of the liberal professions), leading them to fear any rapid transition to democracy.
These elites find themselves accepting, with many reservations and much soul
searching, the state’s use of the iron hand against Islamist militants (even those,
such as the Muslim Brethren, who are not involved in violence). Indeed, the
new elites seem everywhere resigned to the prospect of economic liberalization
without political democratization.
Finally in this regard, some liberals who find themselves in the position
of secondary elites have pondered the prospect for a transition to democracy
based on guarantees to the army and security services-a sort of Latin
American-style gurantismo. But leaving aside the possibility of grave internal
splits, it is doubtful whether any incumbent Muslim regime would accept such
a proposition. In ethnically or confessionally heterogeneous states such as Syria
and Iraq, the secondary elites find their hesitancy reinforced by fear that political
opening will bring ethnic tensions to the surface and tear apart the state. And,
in virtually all Muslim societies, given the wide disparities of wealth within
them, many worry that democratization will unleash socioeconomic demands
and class conflicts that could lead to disaster.
The third dimension of radical Islam’s challenge concerns the radical
nebula of groups, sects, and movements that have-even in opposition-an
undeniable if indirect impact upon policy making. In domestic politics they
curtail to some extent the state’s room for maneuver in a time of financial
stringency. Any plan to slash subsidies-at the behest of the International
Monetary Fund, say- must take into account the menace of mass demonstrations,
for mass public demonstrations protesting austerity measures have occurred in
virtually every non-oil-rich Arab country, and many other Muslim countries
besides. Family planning policies falter or advance in a haphazard manner
everywhere (with the exception of Tunisia and Egypt), due to the vituperations
of Friday sermons in “free” (i.e., nongovernmental) mosques. Violent attacks
on foreign tourists bring about a decline in revenues from this lucrative trade.
Moreover, national security and regional power standing are often handicapped
by the need to allocate resources for counterterrorism and for the maintenance
of public order, not to speak of the costs, direct and indirect, of the violence

Spring 1998 I 189

SIVAN

itself. (In Algeria the loss to the economy over more than five years of civil
war is estimated at $7 billion, and that does not include military expenditures.)
As far as the foreign policy impact of radical Islam is concerned, one
has frost to distinguish between countries where Islam&s are in power and
those where they are in opposition. The most important case among the former,
by virtue of both geostrategic location and sheer size, is obviously Iran, Perhaps
the revolution’s worst failure (apart from the huge waste of human life in the
Iran-Iraq war) was one which preceded Khomeini’s death: the failure to export
the Iranian revolution to the rest of the Islamic world.
Khomeini had always viewed his revolution as all-Islamic, transcending
Sunni-Shi‘i historical divergences, directed against the common enemy-namely,
the twin forces of modernity and secularization and their nominally Muslim
admirers, the ‘Westoxicated” (gharbzada in Persian; mustaghtibun in Arabic).
Hopes for such a Pan-Islamic revolution were high in Tehran at the beginning
of the 1980s. This led to mounting fears among Arab rulers, which took on
obsessive proportions after the attack on the Great Mosque in Mecca in 1979,
the surge of terrorist acts in the Gulf in 198042, and the activities of Hizballah
in Lebanon (from 1982-83). All these were, however, countries with sizeable
Shi‘a minorities (only in Iraq do the Shi‘a constitute a majority). And even in
these countries the attempt to inspire revolution ended dismally because of
state repression: the massacre of the cadres of the Da’wa movement in Iraq
by Saddam Hussein during the spring and summer of 1980; the dismantling of
Shi‘a networks in the Gulf when harsh sentences were meted out (in the summer
of 1989, for instance, sixteen Kuwaiti Shi‘a were executed in Saudi Arabia for
Khomeinist subversion). Only in Lebanon, where the state had, for all practical
purposes, ceased to exist, did Hizballah flourish, and that is explained in large
part by the fact that it had roots in Lebanese society, enjoying a broad base of
support as well as substantial autonomy.
Yet Khomeini’s more glaring failure was his inability to penetrate Sunni
countries, in many of which radical Muslim movements were a powerful
opposition force but none of which was suffused with Khomeinist ideas. All
these movements applauded the Iranian revolution in 1979, but even then
virtually none were tempted to follow in the footsteps of what was deemed
the particular Iranian (or Shi‘i) march toward an Islamic revolution. Moreover,
these movements soon found many faults in the Iranian regime (notably, the
practice of torture) and most did not back it in its war against Iraq.
Whence came this divorce between Sunni and Shi‘i radicalism, despite
general agreement on the new inward definition of jihad? The root cause is
located in the fact that fundamentalism was a movement attempting to defend
a beleaguered tradition by stressing certain “hmdaments” of that tradition, but
thereby also transcending that very tradition. The revolutionary energy it sought
to draw upon had to come from the bedrock of traditionalism that still survived
despite the attrition of modernity. Sunni traditionalism and Shi‘i traditionalism
have been shaped by fourteen hundred years of diverging history. The two
trends have often clashed violently. There were thus deep chasms between
them, in the idiom as well as in the contents of their religiosity, organization,

190 I Orbi.
 Islam

and modes of action. And, as the revolutionary message was concocted for a
target audience.of its own sect, each attempted to reach this audience through
claims that would play upon sensitive chords in the popular religious mentality.
At this very level of collective mentality there are major divergences
between the Shi‘i and Sunni traditions. The Shi‘a have a different historical
perception. As a minority (10 percent of world Muslims), and a persecuted one
at that, the Shi‘a stress the historical injustice done to its founder, ‘AL-the
Prophet Muhammad’s nephew and cousin-when his and his successors’ claim
to the caliphate was usurped by the Sunni dynasty, the Umayyad (ca. 660).
Moreover, the political theories of Sunni and Shi‘i traditions are substantially
divergent. For the Shi‘a it is rather easy to justify the right to revolt, for a state
that is not ruled by the descendants of ‘Ali is ipso facto illegitimate. It was, for
example, much easier for Khomeini to rule out even de facto accommodation
with the state (which had often been the case in the past) given the fact that
the Shah relinquished, according to Khomeini, part of Iran’s sovereignty to
foreigners, barred the influence of Islam on public life, and even inculcated
pagan symbols (e.g., the 1972 celebrations of the twenty-five hundredth anni-
versary of the establishment of Persepolis).
The task of Sunni radicals in this regard has been immeasurably harder
and they have had to carry it out in a different manner. Sunni tradition views
a Muslim ruler as legitimate as long as he does not publicly reject the Islamic
credo which has always been, of course, highly unlikely. As far as traditional
theorists are concerned, even a bad ruler who tramples upon major legal
principles is preferable to chaos. A hugely creative endeavor was required in
the 1960s in order to build up, virtually ex nihilo, a Sunni justification for the
believers’ right to rebel, an effort carried out by thinkers such as the Egyptian
Sayyid Qutb, who had to delve into obscure fourteenth-century Sunni sources
to do so. The language and reasoning are different from those of the Shi‘i
tradition.
Relatedly, according to modem Shi‘a revolutionaries, in the absence of
the imam CAli’s descendant, supposedly in hiding), governing powers after the
revolution must lie in the hands of men of religion (mullahs) who are the
inheritors of the in-ram’slegal-though not spiritual-authority. Hence Khome-
ini’s (and later Khamanei’s) position as virtuous jur& consult, upon whom the
1979 constitution confers the role of Guide of the Revolution, overseeing the
president. A hierarchy of mullahs had also bestowed upon it privileged positions
in the three branches of government. All this is alien to the Sunni view. Their
men of religion ( ‘ulawza~have never enjoyed any spiritual status except that
which their legal erudition confers upon them. It was thus required of them,
at most, to provide moral guidance for the community. Moreover, the Sunni
sages had generally been instilled with a feeling of subservience towards the
state. This resulted from an ideology that has posited the prevention of anarchy
as an important goal. It is no wonder, then, that radicalism did not spring from
their midst and that Sunni radicals tend to loathe the whole ‘ulamu stratum.
This being so, there was no ideological or practical reason to let the ‘ulamu
lead the revolutionary movement or to set aside a respectable role for them in

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SIVAN

the state of the future. With the exception of Ahrnad Yasin (of Gaza), Sa’id
Hawwa (of Hama, Syria), and Sa’id Sha’ban (of Tripoli, Lebanon), the few
‘z&ma appearing in leadership roles in the Sunni revolutionary organizations
were usually rubber stamps, lending religious approval to decisions of the
revolutionary vanguard.
Small wonder, then, that the Iranian strategy of “exporting the revolution”
failed dismally. Despite the “ecumenic” lingo sometimes used by Tehran, the
only Sunni radical ally it succeeded in wooing was the tiny Palestinian movement,
Islamic Jihad. All other allies are Shi‘a groups, but their usefulness for destabilizing
the regimes (in the Gulf) is minimal. While in Lebanon Hizballah enjoys
substantial autonomy from its Iranian benefactors, it also has to take into
consideration the constraints imposed by de facto Syrian rule in their country.
The notion of a Tehran-based Islamic cornintern is, consequently, a chimera.
With the decline of the export of the revolution, Iranian foreign policy
in the 1990s has become even more focused upon pursuing traditional Iranian
power interests, notably in their own backyard, the Gulf, where Iran aspires to
regional hegemony. Ideological constraints fade out, though at times they erupt
for a while, as in the Salman Rushdie affair. Meanwhile, Islamist movements in
opposition (mostly Sunni) tend to concentrate each upon its own state context,
whose regime is the “nearest enemy” in Muslim legal lingo. “Further away
enemies,” such as the state of Israel or the United States, are to be tackled later,
after the seizure of power. It is thus the domestic political agenda that they try
to shape-by mass demonstrations, parliamentary action, or violence-rather
than foreign policy. Even in those countries (such as Jordan) where they made
the struggle against peace with Israel a major battle cry, they failed to mobilize
Palestinian residents or to significantly hamper budding business or tourist ties,
In Egypt, the assassins of Sadat justified their action, among others, by the
“sacrilegious” peace treaty with Israel, yet pride of place in the list of his sins
that they drew up was given to Sadat’s 1979 divorce law and his legal, media,
and administrative campaign against the female veil and in favor of birth control.
There were, it is true, a number of terror attacks upon Israeli tourists and
diplomats but they were few and far between. Sympathy for the Palestinian
Hamas is rife in Egyptian (and other) Islamist ranks, yet remains essentially
verbal.

Visions of World Order

In short, the main challenges that flow from the new inward definition
of jihad among Muslim radicals are to be found within Muslim societies, not
between them, and certainly not between some would-be Muslim colossus and
the world of the unbeliever. It would be wrong, however, to dismiss entirely
the Islam& factor in foreign policy. Their destabilizing potential, in opposition,
against regimes located in a sensitive geopolitical area makes their domestic
action -in propaganda as well as in subversion-important in itself. The supple
networking between the nebula of movements, even in the case of Sunni ones

192 I Orbis
 Islam

which do not have state sponsorship (a role Iran plays for the Shi‘a), endows
their action with a regional multiplier. Am-is, propaganda material, and refugee
training are provided, usually on an ad hoc basis, by one movement to another.
Refugees and expatriates in Western Europe compose a rear guard and provide
a measure of coordination. This sometimes has implications for terrorism outside
the region, as in the case of Algerian terror acts in France and, needless to say,
when Iranian operatives enter the fray (using mostly Shi‘a groups).
Perhaps the most important long-term implication of the survival of
radical Islam, even as an opposition movement in all but a few cases, resides
in its view of regional and world order. As the particularist state triumphed in
the 1970s over Pan-Arabism, it developed its own civil religion, centered upon
the territory it controls and its distinct history. Yet the state has no vision of a
regional system other than as an arena where the egoism of each state reigns
supreme, subject, of course, to realpolitik constraints. But what exactly are the
rules of engagement? What constitutes a reasonable, common-sense constraint?
All this is left in the void. In the age of Pan-Arabism there was a regional vision;
rules were more or less agreed to, at least among Pan-Arabist regimes, though
not always honored. What might develop now on the ruins of Arabiim is a
Hobbesean Middle East.
Most of the power elites in the Middle East and North Africa barely
tackle this issue, focused as they are on day-today management. Besides, they
are pragmatic, economics-oriented, and essentially secular in outlook, and such
people are simply not wont to have grandiose visions of society. They have
not even thought through the implications of the end of the cold war and of
the Arab-Israeli peace process, let alone tried to create some schema for their
own collective future.
Some efforts to go beyond the narrow-minded realism that characterizes
secular elite thinking in the Muslim world have recently been promoted by the
proponents of what has been called Middle Easter&m (Sharq Awsczti~u).
Comprised of a group of academics, politicians, diplomats, and businessmen,
especially &n Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco-and promoted by the influential
Arabic-language daily, al-Huyut(based in London but read by elites all over
the Middle East and North Africa&Middle Eastern&s argue that the region
constitutes a geopolitical unit whose main actors, the states, are characterized
by a strong interdependence.14
These components encompass the Arab-speaking states as well as
Turkey, Iran, and Israel. The cornerstones of regional stability are to be the
principles of peaceful resolution of interstate conflicts, the search for consensus,
and the nonexclusion of any state from the framework of this consensus. They
argue that one must apply to the Middle East the rules of the emerging New
World Order, putting an end to the region’s exceptionalism, to its tradition of
exclusivity, and to conflict. Joining the New World Order, they think, would

l4 L. al-Khuli, Al-Ambfi Muftamq al-Tunq (Cairo: n.p., 1995); H. Saghiya, oifa’an’ani-l-Sakzm (Beiit:
Dar al-Nahar, 1997); S.A. Sdamah, ed., Ak%arqAwsatiyya (Cairo: ahhxxm Center of Strategic Shdies, 1995).

Spring 1998 I 193

SIVAN

enable the region to join the new global market and hence create solid
export-oriented economic growth. They seek regional, interest-based cooperation
to benefit all concerned, and advocate that the instruments for establishing such
a consensus seeking should be regional organizations devoted to specific topics
that could elaborate agreements, understandings, and information-exchange
procedures and, ultimately, develop organs for monitoring the implementation
of these understandings and the sorting out of disagreements about their
interpretation. They envision economic cooperation modeled on the European
example, and some explicitly aim to build up a Common Middle Eastern Market
modeled on the European Union.
While Middle Easter&m attracts much attention and enjoys broadening
support, its Achilles’ heel is the vague character of its thinking on organs of
cooperation, a weakness that Pan-Arab&s and Islam&s hasten to point out:
What kind of treaties/agreements/understandings are to be envisaged on water,
arms control, and so forth? Are economic arrangements to be bilateral or
multilateral? Should one speak of free trade zones or customs unions? Should
one aspire to an association with the states on the northern shores of the
Mediterranean? Are the Middle Eastern& fuzzy thinkers, or are they groping
for real answers in an important search for a bold new regional order? The jury
is still out.
While some segments of the Arabic-speaking public appreciate the
obvious indebtedness of the Middle Easterners’ views to the concept of the
New World Order, for others it constitutes proof of their dependence on, and
obsequiousness to, the hegemonic West. The Islam&t critique of the New World
Order appeals to such fears. It rejects the assumption that the world of the
1990s is so interdependent (in economics, the environment, immigration, and
the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction) that conflicts have grown
more dangerous and must be avoided through consensus and peaceful resolution.
Islamic radicalism rejects this emerging world order as a Western ploy to preserve
its dominance and believes that peaceful resolution of conllicts is an illusion
because international relations are inherently conflictual. Jihad theory rightly
describes international relations as they are, namely as a sort of,,Hobbesean
jungle. Conflict is and wilI be the norm, at least until the arrival of the mabdi
in the End of Times.
It is in this new form, then, as a struggle between Middle Eastern&m
and Islamism, that the fight for the hearts and souls of the local elites (not just
primary ones, but also secondary and tertiary) rages on. One finds evidence
for it even in policy-making circles and among major opinion shapers where-
perhaps not unexpectedly- former adepts of messianic beliefs such as Pan-
Arabism and Marxism quite often mouth Islam& critiques of the New World
Order and Middle Eastemism, albeit in attenuated form. It is perceived as a
sort of new version of Third Worldism, couched in terms that might
appeal to the masses, It is this fight that could mold the region into
the twenty-ftrst century.

194 I Orbis