Arab World Sees a Resurgence of Islamic Politics

Gripped by frustration and a sense of powerlessness, particularly in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, multitudes of Arabs are embracing a more conservative interpretation of Islam to define their identity and reclaim some faith in the future.

The growing influence of Islamism, Arab scholars and Western analysts generally agree, has turned religion into the leading political force in the region. It is, they say, the most significant political movement since Pan-Arabism, preached by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser in the 1950s and ‘60s, and a source of concern to Arab regimes that allow little democracy or freedom of expression.

In Morocco’s September election, a moderate Islamist party was the third-largest vote-getter.

In Egypt, Islamists, who by government order had to run as independents, won at least one-quarter of the National Assembly seats in 2000. Preachers such as Amr Khaled in Cairo have been elevated to celebrity status with sermons that are conservative but not inflammatory. And across much of the Arab world, women of all classes are putting on the hijab, the head scarf their grandmothers fought to take off half a century ago as a symbol of women’s oppression.

“My neighbor had been going to religion classes for several years and tried to convince me to go, but I wasn’t ready,” said Omniya Mahmoud, 27, a Cairo teacher. “I used to be the type who really took care of what I wore, dyed my hair, put on makeup. But when I started the classes, I found lots of other women my age. I realized this was the right thing to do. It is what God wants.

“I veiled about a year ago,” she said. “Being veiled doesn’t mean I’m a fanatic, despite what they think abroad. It just means I’m doing what God wants me to do as a good Muslim.”

In Cairo’s sidewalk coffee shops, where men sip coffee and puff on water pipes, the topic that is endlessly debated is not Arab unity, Iraq or the fate of the Palestinians. It is what actions and beliefs fit into an Islamic context. Saudi Arabia and Iran also are debating the meaning of being Muslim.

Scholars are divided over whether this searching represents reform or is a discussion somehow manipulated by regimes sensitive to Islam’s image and Western misperceptions that Islam condones violence and condemns modernity.

“The moderate Muslim is looking for a Muslim ideology he can identify with, one that doesn’t put him on a collision course with world powers and doesn’t lead to catastrophic killings or psychotic acts like we’ve seen,” said Frank Vogel, an Islamic scholar at Harvard University. “What he doesn’t want is some kind of new Western or global order imposed on him willy-nilly that has nothing to do with his Islamic identity or authenticity.

“But ‘moderate Muslim’ doesn’t mean what many people think. A mainstream Muslim often does believe in things like religion having a role in politics and in state law. At first blush those beliefs seem fundamentalist. But if we mistranslate them as extremist, we’ll misjudge what’s going on in the Middle East and we’ll fail to play a positive role in the emergence there of moderate and successful political systems.”

The roots of Islamic revival go back to 1967, when Arabs believed that their defeat in the Six-Day War against Israel was an expression of God’s anger for drifting too far from their religion. The mosques started filling and the veils reappearing.

Many attribute the latest wave of Islamism, at least in part, to signals and language emanating from the United States: the Bush administration’s disengagement from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the war in Afghanistan and the possibility of another in Iraq, President Bush’s remark in April that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was “a man of peace” as Israel was reoccupying the West Bank, and the Rev. Jerry Falwell’s comment that the prophet Muhammad was “a terrorist.”

“What we’re seeing now isn’t about Islam; it’s about frustration and finding an identity for yourself,” said Manal Kahmhawy, a 54-year-old homemaker. “I think also that since Sept. 11 more people are considering themselves Muslims because Islam is threatened now. It’s an enemy of the West, so people cling to it. It’s a matter of pride, not religion. We’re on the defensive.”

The frustrations are understandable, given the fact that Arabs were once on the cutting edge of progress and knowledge. Fifteen centuries ago, while Attila the Hun was raiding Gaul and Italy, Arab tribes were gathering annually for weeklong poetry festivals. Arabs believed that the world was round when Europeans thought that it was flat. Arabs devised algebra, invented the universal astrolabe -- forerunner of the sextant -- and discovered and named chemical substances such as alkaline.

Later, after the birth of Islam in the 7th century, the great Arab cities -- Cairo, Damascus, Baghdad and Cordoba in Spain -- were the intellectual centers of the world.

Egyptians recorded their history in a written language while nomadic tribes were still roaming Europe and sleeping in mud huts. Egyptians invented surveying, produced the first paper, made the first beer from grain (which they put in glass jars sealed with mud tops), developed astrology and established the 365-day calendar, with each day divided into 24 hours. Men shaved, cut their hair, wore wigs. Women used perfume and cosmetics.

“There’s a feeling today we didn’t really participate in the postindustrial era, that we haven’t achieved anything to add to the modern progress of the world,” said Hala Mustafa, an Egyptian social and political commentator. “This lack of accomplishment creates a gap between the Arab and Western worlds.”

A United Nations report, prepared by Arab scholars and published this year, offers confirmation of social and economic stagnation in the 22 members of the Arab League. Their access to the Internet and use of computers are lower than that in sub-Saharan Africa. Their 1999 gross domestic product of $531 billion was less than that of Spain. Their 15% unemployment is among the highest in the developing world. About 10 million children between the ages of 6 and 15 don’t go to school. Half of the women are illiterate. One out of every five people in the Arab world lives on less than $2 a day.

Just as disturbing, the wave of democracy that swept over Latin America, Asia, Eastern Europe and parts of Africa in the 1980s and ‘90s hardly touched the lives of the 280 million Arabs. Using indicators such as the political process, civil liberties, political rights and independence of the media, the U.N.’s Arab Human Development Report 2002 said the Arab world has the lowest “freedom score” of the globe’s seven regions.

“When so much has failed, it’s natural for people to say: ‘Let’s try Islam. Maybe that will give us some of the happiness the world holds,’ ” said Ali Darwish, an Egyptian poet.

There is no word in classical Arabic for fundamentalism, so linguists have had to invent one: usuliyya, which translates roughly as “basic principles.”

If the debate over Islam in the cafes of Cairo and other places indeed represents a reform movement, it is not clear what triumphs: tradition or modernity, extremism or tolerance, secularism or sectarianism.

The answer, many believe, depends on whether regimes are willing to give people more civil liberties and open the safety valve of free expression in a region where democracy has never been part of culture and collectivism has always been valued more than individualism.

“All regimes in the region became concerned with the implications of a lack of social and economic development after 9/11,” said Hafez abu Saada, secretary-general of the Egyptian Human Rights Organization. “It’s late in the game, but their future, and Egypt’s, depends on taking steps toward democracy. The alternative is chaos or Islamism.”