| Review of: | Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam by Gilles Kepel |
|---|---|
| Reviewed By: | Robert S. Snyder |
| Reviewed in: | The Journal of Politics |
| Date accepted online: | 27/07/2004 |
| Published in print: | Volume 66, Issue 1, Pages 282-321 |
Book Reviews
This book examines the rise and decline of political Islam (Islamism) throughout the Islamic world from the 1970s until September 11, 2001. Sidestepping any theological discussion of jihad, Kepel focuses on Islamist movements within many of the major countries of the Islamic world. He has chapters on Islamism's big successes (Iran, the Sudan, Afghanistan), on its big disappointments (Algeria, Egypt, and Bosnia), on its expansion into Western Europe, and on Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda movement. Divided into two parts (the rise and decline), Kepel believes that 1989 represented the high point of Islamism given the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, the rise of Hamas, the electoral victory of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) in Algeria, and Khomeini's fatwa against Salmon Rushdie. The decline began with Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, which fragmented the Islamist movement.
Unsurpassed in its breadth, depth, and analysis, this is the best comprehensive book on militant political Islam. Offering no grand theory about the rise of Islamism, Kepel stresses the ideological, coalitional, and transnational under-pinnings of the various movements. The ideological fathers of Islamism were Mawlana Mawdudi, Sayyid Qutb, and Ayatollah Khomeini. Three structural factors facilitated the rise of Islamism in the 1970s: the decline of secular nationalism, the surge in the numbers of young, better-educated people in the cities, and the exclusionary nature of the regimes. Kepel says the key to Khomeini's successful revolution was that he was able to form a multiclass coalition; on the other hand, Islamists in Algeria lost their chance to succeed when the devout bourgeoisie and the urban masses went their separate ways. Promoting "petro-Islam," the Saudis used their wealth to spread Wahhabism throughout the Islamic world, in large part to counter the influence of revolutionary Shiism coming from Iran. Many Islamist movements in the 1990s turned to terrorism-in bin Laden's case apocalyptic terrorism-in order to compensate for their failure to build grassroot coalitions.
While Kepel's analysis of the many cases is compelling, his claim that Islamism began its decline after Saddam's invasion of Kuwait is unconvincing. Although Iraq's invasion weakened Saudi Arabia and led to dissidents like bin Laden, it did not have the impact on other movements throughout the Islamic world that Kepel asserts. Ironically, he gives too little attention (one paragraph) to the climax of the Saudi dissident movement within the Kingdom at Burayda in September 1994 (an event bin Laden referenced in his declarations). A more critical year in militant Islamism's decline was 1997: Khatami's election in Iran; the decline of terrorism in Egypt after the Luxor massacres; the failure of Islamists to take power in Algeria. Although a crucial reason why Islamists have not been able to replicate the Iranian Revolution has been their failure to build multiclass coalitions, another big factor has been that nearly all of the regimes in the region have had deeper roots than the Shah's personalistic rule.
Kepel should switch the order of his last two chapters (before the conclusion), putting the chapter on bin Laden after the one on the secularization of Turkey's Islamists. That said, Kepel offers the best, though not original, interpretation of September 11: "The terrorism of September 11 was above all a provocation ... Its purpose was to provoke a similarly gigantic repression of the Afghan civilian population and to build universal solidarity among Muslims in reaction to the victimization and suffering of their Afghan brothers" (4). In short, bin Laden was using the United States in order to promote his political goals in the region. The followers of Al Qaeda "had no patience for the slow building of a movement that would reach out to the masses, mobilize them, and guide them on the path to power ... They believed that once the great American Satan had been made to shake on its foundations, for all to see, then a sweeping tide of jihad could overtake the modern world" (376).
With respect to relations between the West and Islamic civilization, Middle East studies has had two Titans: (the popular) Edward Said and (the unpopular) Bernard Lewis. For Said, Middle Eastern hostility toward the West should be seen as a reflexive response to Western imperialism; and the West, because it has been dominant, has had a more difficult time understanding the Middle East than the other way around. On the contrary, for Lewis, Middle Eastern hostility toward the West and radicalism has been less a reaction to imperialism and more a reflection of the region's inferior position vis-à-vis the West. Both September 11 and Kepel's excellent book support Lewis's perspective and challenge the dominant postcolonial and postmodern moorings of Middle East studies.