Super-national Islamic fundamentalism?

The face of super-national Islamic fundamentalism?

Islamic revivalism is not a new phenomenon. It dates back, at least, to Imam Muhammad Ghazali (1058-1111). The term "Islamist" in a broad sense can encompass three quite different categories of people. Included in the first category are apolitical groups or individuals, including clerics and jurists, or their lay followers, whose activities are limited to seminary schools, mosques, and other religious institutions. This group's main concerns are religious. Apart from innumerable Sunni clerics, the majority of Shi'i clerics in Iran and Iraq historically fall into this category. They are normally referred to as "quietists." Grand Ayatollah Muhamad Kazim Shariatmadari, a member of this group, declared that clerics were beyond politics and they should not involve themselves in the running of the state.

The second category of Islamists is Islamic liberal reformers. These individuals try to reform their societies according to precepts of Islam and at the same time to adjust Islam to needs of modern times. In contemporary Iran, Ayatollah Taleghani and Mehdi Bazargan's Freedom Movement present good examples of Islamist reformers.

Finally, the third category of Islamists covers the fundamentalists. These are all new movements, with almost no precedent in the Islamic world, with the exception of the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia. Included in this category are the Muslim Brothers in Egypt and in other Muslim countries; Jama'at Islami in India and Pakistan; Velayet-e-Faqih and Khomeinism in Iran; the Hezbollah and Hamas movements in Lebanon and the Palestine; the National Islamic Front in Sudan; the Islamic Mujahedin and the Taliban in Afghanistan; and the Islamic Salvation Front in Algeria. Participants in these movements felt threatened by the erosion in their countries of traditional beliefs and practices and the growing cultural influence of the West, and attempted to mobilise the Muslim masses around these issues.

The notion of a pan-Islamic movement, which aims to recreate the ummah, can be said to be consistent with traditional Muslim theology. The ultra-traditional Sunnis' emphasis on the implementation of the shariat as the only criterion for the Islamic state is another example. In this mind-set, national boarder means little. On the whole, today's Islamists have a clear political agenda, one which by necessity involves state power. But despite their claim to being super-national, most of the Islamist movements have been shaped by national particularities; sooner or later they tend to express either the interests of the national ruling class or the masses' desire for national self-determination. They want a share of political power. Indeed, where they have become more significant players in domestic opposition, governments in the region, secular and Muslim, have tended to implement a policy of "official Islamisation" in order to undercut the Islamist opposition. In Pakistan, various shariat bills were passed by parliament in the late 1970 and 1980s; the 1984 Family Law in Algeria reintroduced some shariat elements; in Turkey, religious teachings were again made compulsory in schools in 1983. All these states attempted to co-opt the ulamas and assert an official (state-controlled) Islamisation via, for instance, the appointment of an official mufti or a state council of religious affairs.

On the other hand, relatively stateless international networks like al-Qaeda, despite their attention-grabbing attacks, are actually marginal in world politics. Domestically, they have little impact inside the main Middle Eastern countries. Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network does not have social base. Unlike Hizbollah in Lebanon or Hamas in Palestine, it does not challenge for leadership of the masses' aspiration for national liberation.

Terrorism is the preferred method of al-Qaeda, not of the poor and exploited masses, whose interests lie in overthrowing the status quo, but of disgruntled sections of the elite, whether they be members of the bourgeoisie, like Osama bin Laden or the clerical elites, who want a bigger slice of the existing pie, terrorist methodology is simply the flip side of their basic support for the status quo.

Any fundamentalist group holds three common characteristics. These are, anti-modernity, anti-democracy, and anti-feminism. The fundamentalist are against the ideas and ideals of modernity but they are not against the products of modernisation. So, there is a clear dilemma among fundamentalists. Fundamentalists are anti-democracy by virtue of their exclusionary stance. But some fundamentalist parties participate in democratic process, for example Jama'at Islami in India and Pakistan, others do not. There are different views about democracy among fundamentalist groups. So, common Muslims are easily confused about their ideologies.

Fundamentalists share a common sense of threat from changes in gender relations, triggered by the spread of modernism and feminism. Muslim women are now progressing in the modernisation process and many Muslim clergies help to do so. The perfect examples are Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Turkey, Egypt, and Islamic countries in Europe. Since fundamentalists cannot firmly establish their basic three elements -- anti-modernity, anti-democracy, anti-feminism -- they may not be able to create a super-national or Pan-Islamic movement.

Terrorist actions can exact a painful price from western oppressors and help the terrorist organisations gain popularity for a time. But this just conceals the fact that these groups do not have a political program for fundamental change. The actions may temporarily raise the morale of the oppressed, but the masses soon succumb again to the reality of poverty and oppression and have to suffer the reprisals.

AHM Kishowar Hossain is Assistant Professor, Department of Population Sciences, University of Dhaka.