The second chapter of Juan Cole’s Engaging the Muslim World tells the story of two organizations, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda, which are vastly different but yet too often conflated in American minds. He portrays the Muslim Brotherhood as a critical component of Egypt’s political landscape which the United States needs to engage if it is serious about democratic reform in the Arab world, while arguing that al-Qaeda is not only a minor group in the larger scheme of things, but a spent force. In fact, he says that, “The September 11 operation…was the flailing about of aging revolutionaries banished to camps in the rugged wastelands of failed states.”
Much of the first half of the chapter is taken up with a history of the Muslim Brotherhood, which places its origins in the context of the Egyptian and Arab nationalist movements of the early 20th century, and traces it through the Nasser era and into the present as its relations with the government, organizational structure and activities, and attitude toward violence fluctuates over time. He also addresses the thinking of Sayyid Qutb, whose thinking was never accepted by most Islamists, let alone most Muslims, but has become important in terrorist circles.
Many of the innovations in this chapter concern terminology, and a common thread is that, by positing a normative Islam, Cole then denies the use of Islamic terminology to al-Qaeda and similar organizations. With the base term of “Islamic,” Cole asserts early that because it refers to the ideals of the religion, it cannot modify “terrorism,” and much of the chapter can be read as a defense of how terrorist activities are contrary to Islam as understood by most Muslims. He also replaces “Salafi Jihadis” with “fundamentalist vigilantes” by reference to standard theological definitions of “salafi” and “jihad.” This feels chancier, as Thomas Hegghammer, in trying to cull labels for these phenomena from Arabic sources, found that “jihadi salafi” today refers in practice to transnational fundamentalist militants. Cole also makes a strong case for seeing the militant Islamist movements as cults, of which his core definition is, “a religious group characterized by values that put it in severe tension with the outside society, and organized so as to demand very high levels of obedience and conformity to the cult leader.”
In laying out his view of al-Qaeda as a desperate force, Cole places emphasis on the defeat of Egypt’s internal terrorists in the 1990′s, which led Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden to shift their focus to the United States as the “far enemy.” A few pages later he mentions Egyptian dominance of al-Qaeda leadership. He also defines al-Qaeda narrowly as only those fighters who have pledged loyalty to Bin Laden. I happen to agree that al-Qaeda is falling apart, but I can’t draw these connections so neatly given the multiple theaters of “fundamentalist vigilante” activity, and I’m also interested in the possible “banner definition” of al-Qaeda which the index suggests may be addressed in future chapters.
Cole also assigns Israel a crucial role for both the Muslim Brotherood and al-Qaeda. I don’t know much about the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1930′s, but Cole’s assigning it a role in the MB’s activities during that period fits the general picture I have of Arab politics during that decade. As far as al-Qaeda is concerned, he refers to Muhammad Atta’s radicalization by the Israeli attack on Lebanon in 1996 called Operation Grapes of Wrath, and particularly the Qana debacle, and also cites Flagg Miller’s work on al-Qaeda documents retrieved from Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban government. I’ve been someone inclined to downplay the Israeli role for al-Qaeda, but found all this convincing.
Cole’s most controversial conclusion is likely to be his comparison between the Islamic militants and the far right in the United States represented by Timothy McVeigh and other fringe figures from the 1990′s. I find that, frankly, a perfectly good analogy. I hope, however, that with such groups starting to resurface now that an African-American Democrat is in the White House, Cole doesn’t get any more material for future commentary along those lines.
Related posts:
- Engaging the Muslim World: The Struggle for Islamic Oil
- Engaging the Muslim World: The Wahhabi Myth
- Engaging the Muslim World: Iraq and Islam Anxiety
- Engaging the Muslim World: Pakistan and Afghanistan
- Engaging the Muslim World: From Tehran to Beirut
- Engaging the Muslim World: Overview
- Reacting Against al-Qaeda
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