The Future of Political Islam

Author(s): Graham E. Fuller

Source: Foreign Affairs, Vol. 81, No. 2 (Mar. - Apr., 2002), pp. 48-60
Published by: Council on Foreign Relations
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The Future of Political Islam

Graham E. Fuller

IT S NOT OVER 'TIL IT S OVER

WERE THE ATTACKSof September11, 2001, the final gasp of Islamic

radicalism or the opening salvo of a more violent confrontation
between Muslim extremists and theWest? And what does the current
crisis imply for the future of the Islamic world itself?Will Muslims
recoilfromtheviolenceand sweepinganti-Westernismunleashedin
their name, or will they allow Osama bin Laden and his cohort to
shape the character of future relations between Muslims and theWest?
The answers to these questions lie partly in the hands of the Bush
administration. The war on terrorism has already dealt amajor blow
to the personnel, infrastructure, and operations of bin Laden's al
Qaeda network. Just as important, it has burst the bubble of eupho
ria and sense of invincibility among radical Islamists that arose from
the successful jihad against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
But it is not yet clear whether the war will ultimately alleviate or
merely exacerbate the current tensions in theMuslim world.
Depending on one's perspective, the attacks on theWorld Trade
Center and the Pentagon can be seen either as a success, evidence that a
few activists can deal a grievous blow to a superpower in the name oftheir
cause,or as a failure,since the attackersbrought on the demise oftheir state
sponsor andmost likelyof theirown organizationwhile galvanizing nearly
global opposition. To help the latter lesson triumph, theUnited States
will have tomove beyond thewar's firstphase,which has punished those
directly responsible for the attacks, and address the deeper sources of
political violence and terror in theMuslim world today.

GRAHAME. FULLERis formerVice-Chairman ofthe National Intelligence

Council at the CIAand is finishing a new book on Islamism.

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 The Future ofPoliticalIslam

THE MANY FACES OF ISLAMISM

BUSHhas repeatedlystressedthat thewar on terrorism

PRESIDENT
is not awar on Islam. But by seeking to separate Islam from politics,
theWest ignores the reality that the two are intricately intertwined
across a broad swath of the globe from northern Africa to Southeast
Asia. Transforming theMuslim environment is not merely amatter
of rewriting school textbooks or demanding a less anti-Western press.
The simple fact is that political Islam, or Islamism-defined broadly
as the belief that the Koran and the Hadith (Traditions of the
Prophet's life) have something important to say about theway society
and governance should be ordered-remains the most powerful
ideological force in that part of theworld.
The Islamist phenomenon is hardly uniform, however; multiple
forms of it are spreading, evolving, and diversifying. Today one
encounters Islamistswho may be either radical ormoderate, political
or apolitical,violentor quietist,traditional
ormodernist,democraticor
authoritarian.The oppressiveTaliban ofAfghanistan and themurderous
Algerian Armed Islamic Group (known by its French acronym, GIA)
lie at one fanatic point of a compass that also includes Pakistan's
peaceful and apolitical preaching-to-the-peoplemovement, the
Tablighi Jamaat;Egypt'smainstream conservativeparliamentary
party,theMuslim Brotherhood;andTurkey'sdemocraticandmodernist
Fazilet/Ak Party.
Turkey's apoliticalNur movement embraces all aspects of science as
with Islambecausesecularscientific
compatible knowledgereinforces
the
wonder of God's world. Indonesia's syncreticNahdatul Ulama eschews
any Islamic state at all in its quest to furtherappreciationof God's role in
human life. Islamist feminist movements are studying the Koran and
Islamic law (the shari "a)in order to interpret the teachings for themselves
and distinguish between what their religion clearly stipulates and those
traditions arbitrarilydevised and enforced by patriarchal leaders (such as
mandatory head-to-toe covering or the ban on female driving in Saudi
Arabia). These are but a few among the vast arrayof movements that
work in themedia, manageWeb sites, conductmassive welfare programs,
run schoolsand hospitals,representflourishing
Muslim nongovern
mental organizations, and exert amajor impact onMuslim life.

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 Graham E. Fuller
Islamism has become, in fact, the primary vehicle and vocabulary
of most political discourse throughouttheMuslim world.When
Westerners talk about political ideals, they naturally hark back to the
Magna Carta, theAmericanRevolution,and theFrenchRevolution.
Muslims go back to theKoran and theHadith to derive general prin
obligationtoconsult
ciplesaboutgoodgovernance(includingtheruler's
the people) and conceptsof social and economic justice.Neither
Islamnor Islamismsaysmuch aboutconcretestate institutions,and
frankly nobody knows exactly what a modern Islamic state should
look like-since few have ever existed and none provides agood model.
But Islamists today use general Islamic ideals as a touchstone for
criticizing,attacking,or even tryingtooverthrow
what areperceived
as authoritarian,corrupt,incompetent,and illegitimateregimes.
No other ideology has remotely comparable sway in theMuslim
world. The region's nationalist parties areweak and discredited, and
nationalism itself has often been absorbed into Islamism; the left is
marginalized and in disarray; liberal democrats cannot even muster
enough supporters to stage a demonstration in anyMuslim capital.
Like it or not, therefore,various forms of Islamismwill be the dominant
intellectual current in the region for some time to come-and the
process is still in its infancy. In the end, modern liberal governance is
more likely to take root through organically evolving liberal Islamist
trendsat the grassrootslevel than from imported
Western modules
of "instant democracy."

A DYNAMIC PHENOMENON

MOST WESTERN OBSERVERStend to look at the phenomenon of

political Islam as if itwere a butterfly in a collection box, captured and
skewered for eternity, or as a set of texts unbendingly prescribing a
single path. This iswhy some scholarswho examine its corewritings
proclaim Islam to be incompatible with democracy-as if any religion
in its origins was about democracy at all.
Such observers have the question wrong. The real issue isnot what
Islam is, but what Muslims want. People of all sorts of faiths can
rapidly develop interpretations of their religion that justify practically
any political quest. This process, moreover, is alreadyunderway among

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 The Future ofPolitical Islam

Muslims. ContemporaryIslamisadynamicphenomenon.It includes

not only bin Laden and the Taliban, but also liberalswho are clearly
embarkingon their own Reformationwith potentially powerful
long-term consequences.Deeply entrenched traditionalistsfind
these latter stirrings a threat, but many more Muslims, including
many Islamists, see such efforts to understand eternal values in con
temporary terms as essential to a living faith.
Regrettably,until recentlyIslamhad been living (with striking
periodic exceptions) in a state of intellectual stagnation for many
Western colonizersfurthervitiatedandmarginalized
hundredsof years.
Islamicthoughtand institutions,andpost
independenceleadershiphasdone no better, The real issue is not
tending to draw on quasi-fascistWestern
control.Only now is what Islam is, but what
models of authoritarian
Islam emerging into a period of renewed cre Muslims want.
ativity,freedom,and independence.
Much of
thisnew activity, ironically,isoccurring in the freedomoftheWest, where
dozens of Islamic institutes are developing new ideas and employing
moderncommunications to spurdebateanddisseminateinformation.
The process of diversification and evolutionwithin modern
Islamism is drivenby multiple internalforces,but these develop
ments are always ultimately contingent on the tolerance of local
regimes, the nature of local politics, and the reigning pattern of global
power. Most regimes see almost any form of political Islam as a
threat, since it embodies amajor challenge to their unpopular, failing,
and illegitimatepresidents-for-lifeor isolatedmonarchs.How the
regime responds to the phenomenon often plays amajor role in deter
mining how the localIslamistmovement develops.
Does the regimepermit electionsand freepoliticaldiscussion?
How repressive is it, and how violent is the political culture inwhich
it operates? How do existing economic and social conditions affect
the political process? The answers to these questions go a long way
toward describing how Islamists-like all other political actors-will
behave in any particular country. That said, these days nearly all
Islamistspush hard for democracy,believing that theywill benefit
from it and flourishwithin it.They also have discovered the importance
of human rights-at least in the political field-precisely because

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 Graham E. Fuller
they are usually the primary victims of the absence of rights, filling
regionaljails indisproportionatenumbers.
Some skepticism isdue, of course, about the ability oflslamists to run
effectiveandmoderategovernments,especially
when the threeIslamic
state models to date-Iran, Sudan, and the Taliban'sAfghanistan
have all failed dramatically in this area.Only Iran has lately shown
signs of exciting evolution within an Islamic framework. But it is
worth recalling that all of those regimes came to power by social
revolution,
militarycoup,or civilwar,virtuallyguaranteeing
continuing
despotism regardless of which party was in charge.
The true test of any Islamist party comes when it gains office by the
ballot box andmust then adherewhile inpower to the democratic norms
it touted in opposition.History unfortunatelygives few precedents
here.Turkey'sbriefexperienceunderan electedIslamist-ledcoalition
comes closest, but the government was removed by themilitary after
a year of mixed performance, leaving the experiment unfinished. Secular
Turks continue to elect Islamist mayors in major cities across the
country, however, including Istanbul andAnkara, because they deliver
what constituentswant.
Americans brought up to venerate the separation of church and
state may wonder whether amovement with an explicit religious
vision can ever create a democratic, tolerant, and pluralistic polity.
But ifChristian Democrats can do it, there is no reason in principle
why Islamists cannot. This iswhat the cleric President Mohammed
Khatami is trying to achieve in Iran, in fact, although his efforts are
being blocked by a hard-line clerical faction. Non-Muslims should
understand that democratic values are latent in Islamic thought if one
wants to look for them, and that itwould be more natural and organic
for theMuslim world to derive contemporary liberal practices from
its own sources than to import them wholesale from foreign cultures.
The key question iswhether itwill actually do so.

WHO S BESIEGING WHOM?

THE LIBERAL of politicalIslamfacessome formidable

EVOLUTION
obstacles. The first, as noted, comes from the local political scene,
where Islamists are routinely suppressed, jailed, tortured, and executed.

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 The Future ofPolitical Islam
Such circumstances
encouragetheemergenceof secret,conspiratorial,
and often armed groups rather than liberal ones.
The second obstacle comes from international politics, which
often pushes Islamistmovements and parties in an unfortunate direc
tion. A familiar phenomenon is the Muslim national liberation
movement. Inmore than a dozen countries, large, oppressedMuslim
minorities, who are also ethnically different from their rulers, have
sought autonomy or independence-witness the Palestinians,
Chechens,ChineseUighurs, FilipinoMoros, andKashmiris,among
others. In these cases, Islam serves to powerfully bolster national
liberation struggles by adding a "holy"religious element to an emerging
ethnic struggle. These causes have attracted a kind ofMuslim "foreign
legion" of radicalized, volunteer mujahideen, some of whom have
joined alQaeda.
A thirdobstacle comes from the Islamists'own long listof grievances
against the forces and policies perceived to be holding Muslims back
in the contemporary world, many of them associated with liberalism's
supposed avatar, theUnited States. The litany includes U.S. support
for authoritarianism in theMuslim world in the name of stability or
material interests such as ensuring the flow of oil, routineU.S. backing
of Israeli policies, andWashington's failure to press for democratic
political processes out of fear that theymight bring Islamist groups
to power.
Islamists,too,deservecriticismforplayingfrequently
opportunistic
political games-like so many other fledgling parties. Where they
exist legally, they often adopt radical postures on Islamic issues to
embarrass the government. The major Islamist PASmovement in
Malaysia, for example-which now governs two of the country's ten
states-has called for full implementation of the shari'aand application
Muslim punishments(includingamputationsand ston
of traditional
ing), in part to show up the poor Islamic credentials of the central
government. In Egypt and Kuwait, meanwhile, Islamist groups
regularlycall formore conservativesocialmeasures,partly to score
politicalpoints, andhaveoften inhibitedthe intellectualfreedomon
Islamicissueswhich thesesocietiesdesperatelyrequire.Suchposturing
tends to bid up the level of Islamic strictness within the country in
questionin a closedatmosphereof Islamicpoliticalcorrectness.Still,

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 Graham E. Fuller
most Islamistshavequite concretedomesticagendasrelatedto local
politics and social issues that are far removed from the transnational,
apocalyptic visions of a bin Laden.
Ironically, even asWesterners feel threatened by Islam,most in the
Muslim world feel themselves besieged by theWest, a reality only
dimly grasped in theUnited States. They see the international order
as dramatically skewed against them and their interests, in aworld
where force and the potential for force dominate the agenda. They
areoverwhelmedby feelingsof political impotence.
Muslim rulers
fearoffending theirprotectorsinWashington,Muslim publicshave
little or no influence over policy within their own states, bad leaders
cannot be changed, and public expression of dissent is punished,
often brutally. This is the "stability" in theMiddle East towhich the
United States seemswedded.
Under such conditions, it should not be surprising that these frus
trated populations perceive the current war against terrorism as
functionally awar against Islam.Muslim countries are the chief target,
they contend, Muslims everywhere are singled out for censure and
police attention, and U.S. power works itswill across the regionwith
little regard for deeper Muslim concerns. A vicious circle exists:
dissatisfaction leads to anti-regime action, which leads to repression,
which in turn leads to terrorism,U.S. military intervention, and finally
further dissatisfaction. Samuel Huntington's theory of a "clash of
civilizations" is seemingly vindicated before theMuslim world's eyes.

THEIR MUSLIM PROBLEM-AND OURS

SEVERAL REGIMES have decided to play the dangerous game of

trying to "out-Islam the Islamists," embracing harsh social and
intellectual interpretations of Islam themselves so as to bolster their
credentials against Islamist opposition. Thus inEgypt, thegovernment
controlledUniversity of al-Azhar, a prestigious voice in interpreting
Islam, issues its own brand of intolerant fundamentalist rulings;
Pakistan does something similar. The issue here is not the actual
Islamist agenda but whose Islamist writ will dominate. Islam is
simply the vehicle and coinage of the struggle between the state and
its challengers.

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 The Future ofPolitical Islam
In a comparable fashion, Islam and Islamist movements today
provide a key source of identity to peoples intent on strengthening
their social cohesion againstWestern cultural assault.Religious
observanceisvisiblygrowing acrossthe region,often accompanied
by the "Arabization"of customs in clothing, food,mosque architecture,
and ritual-even in areas such asAfrica and East Asia, where no such
customshadpreviouslyexistedandwhere claimsto culturalauthenticity
or tradition areweak to say the least. Association with the broader
Muslim community,is attractivebecause it
umma,the international
creates new bonds of solidarity that can be transformed into increased
internationalclout.
Islam and Islamist concepts, finally, are
often recruited into existing geopolitical
The harshconditions in
struggles. In the 198os, for example, the
rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which manyMuslims
often cloaked as a simple Sunni versus Shi' a
livehavecreateda thirst
competition, was asmuch political as itwas
religious.The Saudishoped thattheirpuri forheroeswho will defy
tanical and intolerant Wahhabi vision of theU. S.-ledworld order.
Islamwould prevail over the Iranian revolu
tionary vision. For better or worse it did, partly because the Saudis
could bankroll movements and schools faroutside Saudi borders, and
partly because many Sunnis considered Iran'sShi' ism anathema. The
radical Islamic groups one sees today in the Philippines, Central Asia,
the Caucasus, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, among other places, are
partly the fruits of this export of Wahhabism, nourished by local
conditions, ideological and material needs, and grievances.
Islam has thus become a vehicle and vocabulary for the expression
of many different agendas in theMuslim world. The West is not at
war with the religion itself,but it is indeed challenged by the radicalism
that some groups have embraced.Muslims may too readily blame the
West for their own problems, but their frustrations and current
grievancesarereal.Indeed,theobjectiveindicators
of livingconditions
in the Islamic world-whether political, economic, or social-are
generallyturningdown.Culturesandcommunities
undersiegenaturally
tend to opt for essentialism, seeking comfort and commonality in a
back-to-basics view of religion, a narrowing and harshening of cultural

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 Graham E. Fuller
andnationalistimpulses,and a returnto traditional
communityvalues.
Muslims under pressure today are doing just this, retreatingback to the
solidcertaintiesof essentialistIslamwhile theirsocietiesare in chaos.
When Groznywas flattenedbyRussiantroops,theChechensdeclared
Islamiclaw-clinging to anunquestionedtraditional moral framework
forcomfort,familiarity,and reassuringmoral discipline.
As a result, even as liberalization is occurring within some Islamist
movements,much of the Islamiccommunityisheading in theother
direction,growingmore austereand lesstolerantandmodernist.The
same harsh conditions produce a quest for heroes, strongmen, and
potential saviors.One of the saddest commentaries today, in fact, is
theMuslim thirst for heroes who will stand up and defy the dominant
U.S.-led order-a quest that has led them to cheer on the Saddam
Husseins and bin Ladens of theworld.
The Muslim world is therefore in a parlous condition. Some in the
West may think that Islam'sproblem isnot theirproblem, thatMuslims
just need to face reality and get on with it. But the September 11
attacks showed that in a globalized world, their problems can become
our problems. The U.S. tendency to disregard popularMuslim concerns
asWashington cooperateswith oppressive and insecure regimes fosters
an environment inwhich acts ofterrorism become thinkable and,worse,
even gratifying in the eyes of themajority. The vast bulk ofMuslims, of
course,will go no further than to cheer on thosewho lash out. But such
an environment is perhaps themost dangerous of all, because it legit
imizes and encourages not the tolerant and liberalizing Islamists and
peacemakers, but the negativistic hard-liners and rejectionists.

THE SILENT MUSLIM MAJORITY

FEWMUSLIMS around theworld want to inflict endless punishment

on the United States or go towar with it.Most of them recognize
what happened on September 1i as amonstrous crime. But they still
hope that the attacks will serve as a "lesson" to theUnited States to
wake up and change its policies toward theMiddle East. Most would
emphatically reject, however, a key contention of President George W.
Bush, that those who sympathize with the attacks are people who
"hate freedom."Nearly allMuslims worldwide admire and aspire to

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 The Future ofPoliticalIslam

the same political freedoms that Americans take for granted. A

central complaint of theirs, in fact, is thatU.S. policies have helped
block the freedoms necessary to develop their personal and national
capacitiesin comparable
ways.
Muslim societiesmay havemultiple problems, but hating American
political values is not among them. U.S. policymakers would be wise
to drop this simplistic, inaccurate, and self-serving description of the
problem. They should instead consider what steps theUnited States
can take to spread those political values to areaswhere they have been
noticeablechieflyby theirabsence.
For Muslims who live in theWest, the attacks of September 1i
posed a moment of self-definition. However acutely attuned they
might have been to the grievances of the broaderMuslim world, the
vastmajority recognized that itwasWestern values and practiceswith
which they identifedmost. This reaction suggests theremaybe a large
silentmajority in the Islamicworld, caught between the powerful forces
of harsh and entrenched regimes on the one hand and the inexorable
will of an angry superpower on the other. Right now they have few
channels of expression between acceptance of amiserable status quo
visionof apocalyptic
andsidingwith theworld-wreckers' confrontation.
How can the United States help mobilize this camp?What can
make the members of this silent majority think they are anything
but ringside spectators at a patently false clash of civilizations unfolding
beforetheireyes?
Today most moderate Islamists, aswell as the fewMuslim liberals
around, maintain a discouragingly low profile. Although they have
condemned the September ii attacks, they have been reluctant to
scrutinizetheconditionsof theirown societiesthatcontributeto these
problems. This myopia stems partly from an anxiety about signing
on to the sweeping, unpredictable, and open-ended U.S. agenda for
itswar on terrorism.That said, however, it also stems from a failure
of will to preach hard truthswhen society is under siege.
Given the authoritarian realitiesof life in the region,what acceptable
outlets of expression are available? Islamists and other social leaders
should find some way of setting forth a critique of Muslim society
thatwill galvanize a call for change. Even if presidents-for-life cannot
be removed, other demands can be made-for better services, more

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 GrahamE. Fuller
rights,freereconomies.It is inexcusablethat aMuslim civilization
that led the entire world for a thousand years in the arts and sciences
todayranksnearthebottomofworld literacyrates.
Although conditions
forwomen vary widely in theMuslim world, overall their levels of
education and social engagement are depressingly low-not just a
human scandal but also a prime indicator of underdevelopment.
When highly traditional or fanatic groups attempt to define Islam in
terms of a social order from a distant past, voices should be raised to
deny them thatmonopoly.
The United States, meanwhile, should contribute to this effort by
beginning to engage overseas Muslims vigorously, including those
Islamic clerics who enjoy great respect and authority as men of
uncompromised integrity.Both sideswill
benefit from a dialogue that initiallywill reveal
It is time for the silent,
deep fissures in thought and approach,but that
nonradical
Muslim over time may begin to bridge numerous
majorityto speakup. gaps. Many of these clerics represent un
deniablymoderate forceswithin political
Islam, but their own understanding of theWest, though far from
uniformly hostile, is flawed and often initially unsympathetic.
They could learn from visits to the United States and dialogue
with Americans-if ever they were granted visas.
It isworth noting, however, that this process will be fought hard
by elements on both sides. The first group of opponents will be the
Muslim tyrantsthemselves,thoseregimesthatstiflecritiques
friendly
from respectedindependentclerics and restricttheirmovements.
The second group of opponents will come from theUnited States and
will try to discredit theMuslim travelers by pointing to rash state
ments about Israel they may have made at one point or another.
Given the passions aroused in theMiddle East by the Arab-Israeli
conflict, very few if any prominent Muslim figureswill have the kind
of liberal record of interfaith dialogue and tolerance thatAmericans
find natural and appropriate. That should not disqualify them as
potential interlocutors,however.Given the importanceof the issues
involved and the realities of the situation, the initial litmus test for
being included in the conversation should be limited to a prohibition
on incitement to terrorism and advocacy of war.

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 The Future ofPolitical Islam

TURKISH DELIGHT?

AMERICANS NEED to be mindful of the extent towhich Islam is

entwinedwith politicsthroughouttheMuslimworld.This connection
may pose problems, but it is a reality that cannot be changed bymere
appeals for secularism. The United States should avoid the
Manichean formulation adopted by Bush that nations are either "with
us orwith the terrorists"; that is not what is going on, anymore than
Islamism iswhat bin Laden calls "astrugglebetween Islam and unbelief"
The real story is the potential rise of forces in theMuslim world that
will change not Islam itself, but rather the human understanding of
Islam, laying the groundwork for aMuslim Reformation and the
eventual emergence of a politics at once authentically Islamist yet also
authentically liberal and democratic. The encouragement of such
trends should be an important objective of U.S. policy.
One successful model thatmerits emulation isTurkey. This is not
because Turkey is "secular";in fact,Turkish "secularism"is actuallybased
on total state control and even repressionof religion.Turkey isbecoming
amodel precisely because Turkish democracy is beating back rigid
state ideology and slowly and reluctantly permitting the emergence of
Islamistmovements and parties that reflect tradition, a large segment
of public opinion, and the country'sdevelopingdemocraticspirit.
Political Islam inTurkey has evolved rapidly out of an initially narrow
and nondemocratic understanding of Islam into a relatively responsible
force,whether it overlaps entirelywith American ideals or not.
Other promising cases to explore includeKuwait, Bahrain,Morocco,
Jordan,Yemen, Malaysia, and Indonesia-all of which are at differing
stages of political and social liberalization and evolution. All are
working to avoid the social explosion that comes with repression of
Islamic politics as a vehicle of change. Opening the political process
enables people to sort out the effective moderates from the rhetorical
radicalsand reactionaries.
Significantly,citizensof these stateshave
not been prominent among the major terrorist groups of theworld,
unlike citizens of theU.S. allies Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
Most greatreligionshaveelementsof both toleranceandintolerance
built into them: intolerance because they believe they carry the truth,
perhaps the sole truth, and tolerance because they also speak of

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 Graham E. Fuller
humanity, the common origins of mankind, concepts of divine
justice, and a humane order for all.Violence does not flow from religion
alone-even bigoted religion. After all, the greatest horrors and
killing machines in history stemmed from theWestern, secular
ideologies of fascism and communism. Religion is not about to vanish
from the faceof the earth, even in themost advancedWestern nations,
and certainly not in the Islamic world. The West will have to deal
with this reality and help open up these embittered societies. In the
process, themultiple varieties of Islam-the key political realities of
today-will eitherevolve inpositivedirectionswith popularsupport,
or else be discredited when they deliver little but venom. Muslim
publics will quickly know the difference when offered a choice.
Terrorists must be punished. But will Washington limit itself to a
merely punitive agenda to treat only the symptoms of crisis in the
Muslim world? A just settlement for the Palestinians and support of
regional democratization remain among the key weapons that can
fight the growth of terrorism. It will be a disaster for the United
States, and another cruel chapter in the history of theMuslim world,
if thewar on terrorism fails to liberalize these battered societies and,
instead, exacerbates those very conditions that contribute to the virulent
anti-Americanism of today. If a society and its politics are violent and
unhappy, itsmode of religious expression is likely to be just the same.@

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