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Anatomy of Egypt's Militant Islamic Groups: Methodological Note and Preliminary Findings

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Saad Eddin Ibrahim
Saad Eddin Ibrahim
Affiliation:
American University in Cairo
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Extract

Iran's Islamic Revolution seems to have taken the world by surprise. The Western mass media have subsequently been alarming their readers with warnings of Islamic “revival,” “resurgence,” “rumble,” and “anger.” Strategists and political practitioners have joined in – invariably using the same or more academic-sounding jargon, such as the “arc of trouble” or the “crescent of crisis.” The area referred to stretches from Morocco to Indonesia, where nearly 800 million Muslims live and in which some of the world's most strategic raw materials and real estate are located. The rising attention and the West' alarm are quite understandable and indeed quite justifiable. After all, most of that alleged anger is directed at the West and its local allies and surrogates - the Shah being a case in point. The seizure of the American embassy in Teheran along with some fifty hostages in November 1979 highlighted this deep-seated resentment. But in neighboring Afghanistan another chapter of the Islamic drama is unfolding - this, time in the form of a resistance to the Soviets and their local surrogates. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in late December of 1979 compounded an already complicated situation. It plunged the world closer to the brink.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 12 , Issue 4 , December 1980 , pp. 423 - 453
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1980

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References

NOTES

1 See for example Time magazine, 15 01 1979,Google Scholar “The Crescent of Crisis”; in other stories on Iran the same theme, the resurgence of Islam, was central (see Time, 1702, 26 02, 26 11, and 3 12 1979); The New York Times (2 06, 23 11, 9 12, 13 12 1978, 7 01 and 11 12 1979).Google ScholarThe Guardian (London) featured a special report on Islam (12 1979) and several articles on 26 01 and 23 07 1977,Google Scholar and an article by Martin, Woolacott, “New Politics of the Muslim World,” 22 11 1979.Google Scholar

2 Zbigniew Brzezinski is reputed to be fond of these terms. Recent scholarly treatment of resurgence of Islam includes Bernard Lewis, “The Return of Islam,” Commentary (01, 1976), 39–49;Google ScholarJohn, A. Williams, “A Return to the Veil in Egypt,” Middle East Review, 11, 3 (Spring, 1978), 40–55;Google ScholarHumphreys, R. S., “Islam and Political Violence in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Syria,” Middle East Journal, 33, (Winter, 1979), 1–19;Google ScholarIsrael, Altman, “Islamic Movements in Egypt,” The Jerusalem Quarterly, Winter, 1979, 87–108;Google ScholarHrair, Dekmejian, “The Anatomy of Islamic Revival and the Search for Islamic Alternatives,” Middle East Journal, 34 (Winter, 1980), 1–12.Google Scholar

3 See, for example, Manfred, Halpern, Politics of Social Change in the Middle East (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1963).Google Scholar A native Arab, Western-educated scholar Hisham Sharabi echoes the same thesis about the decline of Islam. In 1966 he wrote, “In the contemporary Arab world, Islam has simply been by-passed…. The decline of Islam in the twentieth century as an organized institutional force capable of exerting direct influence on society and the state cannot be explained or accounted for by a simple or unitary diagnosis.” Sharabi then lists the factors that contributed to the decline of Islam. See his article, “Islam and Modernization in the Arab World,” in Thompson, J. H. and Reischauer, R. D. (eds.), Modernization of The Arab World (New York: Van Nostrand, 1966), pp. 26–27.Google Scholar

4 For a critical discussion of the limitation of the Orientalist approach see Edward, Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1978).Google Scholar

5 Writing some thirteen years later and taking note of what is happening in Iran and elsewhere, Hisham Sharabi, for example, wrote in 1977 that “Islamic conservatism is at present the dominant ideological force in Arab society.” See his “Islam, Democracy and Socialism in the Arab World,” in Hudson, M. C. (ed.), The Arab Future: Critical Issues (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1979), pp. 95–104.Google Scholar

6 The reference here is to the countrywide urban uprising on 18 and 19 January 1977, following an announcement that the government in effect would end the state subsidies of a number of essential consumer items (rice, flour, cigarettes, sugar, etc.), thus raising their prices by 30 to 50 percent. The rioting and clashes with the police left an estimated 79 people dead and about 800 injured. The rioting subsided by 20 Janauary after the government retracted its economic measure and restored the subsidies, declared martial law, and called in the army to enforce a curfew. See AI-Ahram, 19, 20, 21 01 1977;Google Scholar also Arab Reports and Records (henceforth ARR), 16–31 01 1977, 35.Google Scholar

7 Interior Ministor Sayed Husain Fahmi announced on 20 January 1977 that the authorities had “uncovered a plot to burn Cairo,” as reported by Middle East News Agency (henceforth MENA) and quoted in ARR, 16–31 01 1977, 35.Google Scholar Public Prosecutor Ibrahim al-Qalioubi announced on 26 January that 200 suspects have been arrested and are being questioned by the security forces for being linked with subversive groups – namely the Egyptian Communist Labor Party, the ‘Revolutionary Current’ and ‘8 January’ organizations,” ARR, 16–31 01 1977, 35.Google Scholar Then on 30 January Prime Minister Mamdouh Salem repeated the same accusations in the People's Assembly, adding that the National Progressive Unionist Party, one of Egypt's legitimate parties but one that is leftist and Nasserite, “had involved itself shamefully in this abominable national crime,” AlAhram, 31 01 1977.Google Scholar

8 The Egyptian cabinet on 26 January 1977 issued an order banning all demonstrations and strikes, Le Monde, 27 01 1977.Google Scholar

9 The group calls itself Jama'at al-muslimin (the Muslim Group), but the security forces and the mass media call it Jama'at al-takfir w'al Hijra, (the group of Repentance and Holy Flight [RHF]). After initial resentment of this imposed name, members of the group began gradually to adopt it as their own.

10 The estimated number of those killed in shootouts was six, and those injured in shootouts and explosions numbered fifty-seven, ARR, 1–15 07 1977. Eventually all top leaders of RHF as well as some 620 members of the group were arrested, of which 465 were to stand trial before military courts, Al-Ahram, 21 07 1977.Google Scholar

11 See especially Sadat's statements in interviews published in the Cairo weekly October, 18 and 25 12 1977.Google Scholar

12 The original Wafd party was established in 1919 as a result of a popular uprising in that year. The founder and leader of the party until 1928 was the Egyptian nationalist Sa'ad Zaghloul. The party continued under the leadership of his successor, Mustafa al-Nahhas, as a grass-roots majority party until it was banned along with all other parties in 1953 by the new revolutionary regime. During 1977 some of the survivors of the old Wafd began attempts to resurrect the party. The initial rallying of many young and prominent intellectuals took Sadat's regime by surprise. In 1978 the regime was to resort to legal, constitutional, and plebiscite maneuvers to ban several of the leaders of the new Wafd from political life. In mid-1978 the party decided to dissolve itself rather than function without its prominent figures, namely Fouad Serag al-Din and Ibrahim Farag.

13 See Sadat's, speech at Alexandria University, Al-Ahram, 27 07 1977.Google Scholar

14 Al-Ahram, 20 04 1974, reported that eleven people were killed and twenty-seven wounded when the group, henceforth MA, attacked the Technical Military Academy on 18 04 1974.Google Scholar

15 See for example Humphreys, “Islam and Political Values”; Dekmejian, “The Anatomy of Islamic Revival”; Nazih Ayubi, “The Political Revival of Islam: The Case of Egypt,” mem. (04, 1980); Ali Dessouki, “The Resurgence of Islamic Movements in Egypt,” mem. (1979).Google Scholar

16 Al-Da'wa, unlike most Egyptian opposition publications, never veiled its outright disapproval. The reader can easily see the escalation of its criticism of the whole Sadat “peace strategy,” starting with its issue of December 1977 and continuing through 1979.

17 An example of the use of one incident as a pretext for an all-out crackdown on Islamic groups was the government's arrest of members of two other religious groups in the aftermath of the confrontation with RHF. Thus according to October magazine, 28 08 1977,Google Scholar security authorities had arrested 104 members of an extremist religious group calling itself Jund Allah (Soldiers of God). Two days later Al-Ahram reported, 30 08 1977, that “security police had arrested 80 of the leaders of a group called Al-Jihad (Holy Struggle) in Alexandria.” No violent showdowns were reported, but the media alleged that the two groups were preparing and plotting an attack on the state and citizens.Google Scholar

18 Al-Khawrij, or Kharajites, was a group of early Muslim dissidents who sought strict adherence to Islamic egalitarian and pious principles as they saw them. They disapproved of the behavior and action of the fourth Guided Caliph Ali, as well as that of his challenger Mu'awiya. The Kharajites fought both at one time and never consented to the central authority of the Umayyads in Damascus or the Abbasid in Baghdad. The mainstream Sunni establishment consider the Kharajites heretics. The term has now come to be used in describing any group that the established political and religious authority perceives as threatening the “unity” of society by rebelling. For a concise account of the evolution of Kharajites in history see Fazhur, Rahaman, Islam (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1966), pp. 167–80.Google Scholar

19 The Muslim Brotherhood was founded by Hassan al-Banna in 1928. One of its avowed principles was the creation of an Islamic society through the application of the Shari'a. It gradually grew until it became one of the largest mass movements in Egypt during the 1940s. For a detailed account of the rise and fall of the Muslim Brotherhood see Ishaq, Musa Husayni, The Moslem Brethren, the Greatest of Modern Islamic Movements, trans. from Arabic, (Beirut: Kayat College Book Cooperative, 1956);Google ScholarRichard, Mitchell, The Society of the Moslem Brothers (London: Oxford University Press, 1969).Google Scholar

20 These were later revealed to us by members of the two groups themselves. The honesty tests were designed to see if we were consistent and reliable. Different militants would ask us at various times the same questions about ourselves or other matters and then compare our answers.

21 The “security checks,” as the militants later told us, put members of the research team under surveillance for several weeks. When they told us the kind of things they knew about us (including some very personal information), we were quite impressed but also somewhat frightened by their intelligence network.

22 The veiling that the militants demanded of the female members of the team varied widely. Some militants insisted on complete covering of the body, including the face. Others were satisfied with long, maxi-type dresses with full sleeves and with a covering for the hair.

23 President Sadat's most violent attack on the Iranian Revolution and the Ayatollah Khomeini came in a long television interview on 25 December 1979 (his birthday), which was reported fully in Al-Ahram the following day. Among other things, he described Khomeini as a “lunatic madman … who has turned Islam into a mockery.” In the same interview Sadat renewed his invitation to the exiled Shah to reside in Egypt, an invitation the Shah accepted in March 1980.

24 See articles already cited: Mitchell, Husayni, Humphreys, Altman, and Dekmejian.

25 See Sadat's speech in Egypt's People's Assembly Al-Ahram, 16 05 1980, in which he proposed a constitutional amendment to appease the Muslim groups but in which he insisted on separation of religion and state.Google Scholar

26 Husain al-Dhahaby, who was kidnapped and assassinated by the RHF group, was a typical example of the establishmentarian ulama of Al-Azhar. While a Minister of Religious Endowments and Religious Affairs he mounted blistering attacks on militant groups, calling them misguided. In that he echoed the line of the ruling elite toward these groups.

27 Sheikh 'Ali 'Abd al-Razik especially was condemned by the militants for his famous book, al-Islam w'usul al-Hukm (Islam and Foundations of Governance), in which he advocated a secular theory of state.

28 See Al-Ahram, 7 07 1977.Google Scholar For more details about those arrested and their backgrounds see Al-Ahram, 7–20 07 1977.Google Scholar

29 This kind of proposition is to be found, for example, in Eric, Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (New York: Harper, 1951);Google ScholarThe Ordeal of Change (New York: Harper & Row, 1963);Google ScholarReflections on the Human Condition (New York: Harper & Row, 1973).Google Scholar An exponent of similar arguments is Hadley, Cantril, The Psychology of Social Movements (New York: Wiley, 1941);Google ScholarThe Politics of Despair (New York: Basic Books, 1958).Google Scholar

30 Most of the RHF enterprises were small in scale and in an embryonic stage at the time of the group's showdown with the government. These enterprises included bakeries, bookshops, candy. making, and vegetable gardening.

31 It was such attempts to penalize former members that first drew government attention to the potential strength and danger of RHF. See Al-Ahram, 7 07 1977.Google Scholar

32 The saying of the Prophet is addressed to all Muslims: “Whom of you sees a repugnance [munkarun], he must remove it with his hands; if unable, then by his tongue; and if unable, then by his heart, and that is the least the pious can do.”

33 For details on this early period of Islam, consult any of the standard references on history of Islam, the Arabs, or the Middle East. See for example, Fazlur, Rahman, Islam (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1966);Google ScholarCoon, S. C., Caravan: The Story of the Middle East (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1958);Google ScholarBernard, Lewis, The Arabs in History (London: Hutchinson Univ. Library, 1950). The flight from Mecca to Medina marks the first day of the first year of the Islamic calendar.Google Scholar

34 This strategy by the Prophet Muhammad is explicitly discussed by Fazlur, Rahman in Islam, pp. 18–29.Google Scholar

35 As those RHF members reported it to the research team, “The group debated several places to start its new community of believers.” The sites included Yemen, Libya, the Sudan, and several spots in Egypt. Two sites were actually used by RHF. One was in Minya Governorate in Upper Egypt. The second and more important was in the desert strip between Maadi, Ma'asarah, and Helwan, south of Cairo. The group however, never moved entirely to either site.

36 Three MA leaders (Salih Siriyya, Karem al-Anadoli, and Tallal al-Ansari) and five RHF leaders (Shukry Mustafa, Maher A. Bakri Zanati, Ahmed Tariq Abdel-Alim, Anwar Maamoun Saqr, and Mustafa A. Ghazi) were sentenced to death. All but one (Tallal al-Ansari, whose sentence was reduced to life imprisonment) were actually executed on 9 November 1976 and 19 March 1978. Of the other 92 MA members tried by the state security court, 29 were found guilty and sentenced to varying penalties (eight years to life imprisonment, seven to fifteen years, eight to ten years, and six to four years). Of the 204 RHF members who were tried, 36 were found guilty (12 received life sentences, 6 got ten years with hard labor, and the remainder received sentences varying from five to ten years), Al-Ahram, 1 12 1977.Google Scholar

37 MA members who held this contention claimed that one member of the group who was part of the plan betrayed them by informing the state security forces of the intended plot to overthrow the regime. Curiously enough the informant was not taken seriously for several hours, and that enabled the MA to implement the first part of its plan successfully – that is, the occupation of the Technical Military Academy. By the time they were to move on to the Arab Socialist Union building to carry out the second part of the plan, the authorities had already acted on the information and had started a siege and a counterattack on the academy, Al-Goumhouriyya, 21 04 1974.Google Scholar

38 A typical example of this was reported in Al-A hram, 1 04 1980, quoting the minister of the interior's account to the People's Assembly of a student conference that began in a mosque in Asyut, then was converted into a march across the city protesting Sadat's invitation to the Shah to reside in Egypt and also protesting the peace treaty with Israel. Islamic groups in other universities staged similar demonstrations.Google Scholar

39 For an account of these movements see Fazlur, Rahman, Islam, pp. 193–254;Google Scholar and Zeinab, alBakry, Mahdiyya Movement in the Sudan with a Comparison of Wahhabis and Sanusiyya. The American University in Cairo, 1977, unpublished M.A. thesis in sociology.Google Scholar

40 For the meaning of “puritanical,” “fundamental,” and “neotraditionalist” see John, A. Williams, “A Return to the Veil in Egypt,” Middle East Review, 11, 3 (Spring, 1978), 51–55Google ScholarStephen, Humphreys, “Islam and Political Values in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Syria,” Middle East Journal, 12, 1 (Winter, 1979), 1–19; Ali Dessouki, “The Resurgence of Islamic Movements in Egypt,” mem.; Nazih Ayubi, “The Political Revival of Islam,” mem. In oral remarks to the author Professor Nikki Keddie suggested that the term “ neo-traditionalists” describes most of the militant Islamic movements of recent times (e.g., Wahhabis and the Iranian Revolution).Google Scholar

41 Muhammad ‘Abduh (1854–1905), an Egyptian religious thinker, was a disciple of Jamal al-Din Afghani, but he was significantly less militant in the latter part of his life. He is credited with serious attempts to modernize Islamic thought by showing that Islam is consistent with reason, science, and adoption of modern technology. Among his famous writings is Rasael al-Ghufran [Messages of Atonement]. For more on Muhammad’Abduh see Malcolm, Kerr, Islamic Reform; the Political and Legal Theories of Muhammad 'Abduh and Rashid Rida (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966).Google Scholar

42 Al-Shubban al-Muslimin, literally Muslim Youth, was established in 1927 in emulation of the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA). The founders, headed by a retired army general, Salih Harb, meant it to be a nonpolitical, social and athletic organization.

43 This typology is an adaptation of that proposed by David, F. Alberle in The Peyote Religion among the Navaho (Chicago: Aldine, 1966). Alberle's typology entails only four types (two by two) along the two axes of locus and amount of change.Google Scholar

44 The Kharajites (al-Khawarij) were the first dissident group in Islam; see note 18. One fundamental tenet of the Kharajites is insistence on the unity of faith and deeds. Thus a tyrant ruler is not to be obeyed, nor can there be obedience to a sinful command. This goes against the mainstream Sunni doctrine, which would tolerate a tyrant for the sake of preserving the unity of the Umma. See Fazlur, Rahman, Islam, pp. 168–70.Google Scholar

45 Other militant Islamic movements in premodern times include the Shi'a, on and off from the end of the first Islamic century to the present. One of the Shi'a subsects, the Isma'ilis, staged a revolt and a socioreligious campaign under the leadership of Hamdan Qarmat, after whom they came to be called Qarmatias (al-Qaramitah). He established a post near Kufa (890 AD.) in Iraq and levied taxes on his followers. This process of taxation was soon replaced by a communist-type society (common ownership of all objects of general utility in the name of the Imam). See Faziur, Rahman, Islam, p. 176.Google Scholar Bernard Lewis surveys many modern militant Islamic movements and argues that some 200 such cases were primarily resistance movements against foreign intrusion, The Return of Islam, pp. 17–20.Google Scholar

46 The Wahhabi movement began in the latter decades of the eighteenth century. Its founder, Muhammad Ibn Abdul Wahhab, a puritanical fundamentalist, allied himself politically with the house of Al-Saud of Najd in central Arabia. Together they began to drive to unite Arabia and to institute fundamentalist Islamic institutions. Despite the ups and downs of this alliance, via-à-vis the outside world, it persisted and finally triumphed politically in the early decades of the twentieth century. Saudi Arabia today is a culmination of this effort. For more details on the Wahhabis, see John, S. Habib, The Ikhwan Movement in the Najd: Its Rise, Development and Decline (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1970);Google ScholarHarry, S. Philiby, Saudi Arabia (Beirut: Librairie du Liban, 1968).Google Scholar

47 The data on the Muslim Brotherhood are derived from R. Mitchell, The Society of the Muslim Brotherhood; Husayni, I. M., The Moslem Brethren; and Christina Harris, Nationalism and Revolution in Egypt: The Role of the Muslim Brotherhood (The Hague: Mouton, 1964).Google Scholar

48 Our data on the Mujahidin in Iran are derived from Ervand, Abrahamian, “The Guerrilla Movements in Iran 1963–1977,” in MERIP Reports, 86 (03–04, 1980), 3–15. The social profile of the Mujahidin could be inferred from the characteristics of those who died during the struggle against the Shah's regime. Of some 80 known cases: 30 were college students, 5 teachers, 14 engineers, to professionals and office workers, 10 women (including housewives), 2 shopkeepers, 2 workers, 1 clergyman, and 6 of unknown occupational background.Google Scholar

49 The concept of the new middle class has come to refer to modern-educated university graduates, professionals, or salaried employees. For a full discussion of this social formation see Halpern, , Politics of Social Change, 51–78.Google Scholar

50 For substantiation and elaboration of this point (i.e., the appeal of the Brotherhood to the lower middle class in Egypt) see Mitchell, Brotherhood and Ayubi, “Political Revival.”

51 The social profiles of those who joined militant leftist movements in both Iran and Egypt were similar to those of their Islamic counterparts in several respects. For a substantiation of this contention in Iran see Abrahamian, “The Guerrilla Movements,” especially Table I and Table II, p. 5. For information about militant Egyptian leftists we relied on published lists in Al-A hram and ARR of over 200 alleged members of communist organizations (e.g., Egyptian Communist Party, Communist Labor Party) who have been charged, tried, or sentenced during the period from 01 1977 to 04 1980. Of 198, whose occupations were identified, 68 were students, 61 were professionals, 28 were workers, 25 were middle and lower level civil servants, 8 were peasants, and 8 were small shopkeepers.Google Scholar

52 On this point see R. S. Humphreys, “Islam and Political Values.”

53 See Janet, Abu-Lughod, “Migrant Adjustment to City Life: The Egyptian Case,” American Journal of Sociology, 67:1 (07, 1961), 22–32.Google Scholar