Home » » Book Review - Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam By Gilles Kepel

Book Review - Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam By Gilles Kepel

Cambridge Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002, 454 pp.
9/11 marks the beginning and end of Kepel’s Jihad, which argues contrary to what this world-changing set of events is commonly perceived to represent: increased might of the Islamist movement. Jihad evaluates the rates of success of the authors of 9/11 in achieving their dual purposes of mobilizing the Muslim world and terrorizing the rest. The latter, it argues, was achieved immediately; the world was left appalled by the “sheer number of innocent victims, with whom everyone could identify.” The former’s fate is the subject of this book, studied in the light of the historical context of Islamist movement’s growth from mid 1970s to 2001. Jihad evaluates whether the Islamist movement succeeded in connecting to the hearts of Muslims by attempting to create “emotional sympathy and enthusiasm with an example of victory won by violence,” towards the cause of seizing global political power. Kepel’s conclusion relies on the essence rather than the appearance of the Islamist movement, which he argues is on the path of decline in the 21st century.
Jihad’s analysis of the Islamist movement’s growth revolves around the perspectives of three major contributors to this movement: Sayyid Qutb of Egypt, Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran and Sayyid Abul A'la Al-Mawdudi of Pakistan. Kepel maintains however, that political, social and religious contexts of every country have played a significant role in shaping country specific Islamist movements.
Kepel does not deny the apparent expansion of the Islamist movement. However, his analysis of the factors contributing to the popularity of the Islamist movement is not driven by the attraction of the masses towards the movement, but by the repulsion of masses by the opponents of the Islamist movement. This analysis, while on one hand highlights the movements Achilles' heel in feeding on the mistakes of its adversaries for popular support rather than its own strength of mass mobilization, on the other is a confirmation of the fact that Islamists do not hold control of the Muslim heart beat globally. As evidence supporting this argument, Kepel recalls the economic interests driven foreign policies of the US administration in the cases of Iran and Afghanistan. Access and control of the Iranian oil reserves led to the American intervention of 1957 which overthrew the democratically elected nationalist government of Mossadeq.  In the case of Afghanistan, US companies with perceived approval of the US administration entered into a deal with the repressive regime of Taliban to begin work on the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan oil pipeline in 1996.
He further argues that the spread and popularity of the Islamist movement has to be credited, in part, to the political vacuum created as a result of the political and economic isolation of certain classes of society such as “educated urban youth” and “devout middle class.” Alienated by their respective repressive governments and lacking in space for political participation, these groups served as ideal targets for the Islamist movement. The case of Khomeini and the successful Iranian Islamist revolution of February 1979 is evidence to this argument. What Khomeini masterfully achieved was the capacity to fill this political vacuum created by the US backed Shah of Iran, driving on popular religious sentiments that had the capacity to cross-cut class distinctions between the rich and the poor.
Kepel gives the credit of some of the Islamist movement’s achievements to the US administration’s failure to identify and acknowledge the hidden perspectives of their adversaries’ interventions. A glaring example of this failure, Kepel argues, is the absolute lack of any element of surprise in the American reaction to 9/11. The US Administration perceived 9/11 as an end in itself, while it was only a means to a bigger end for the Islamist movement, which had predicted the US reaction accurately: violence. In total counter-dependent mode, US bombarded Afghanistan, an underdeveloped Muslim country, facilitated the smooth transformation of the Islamist movement from “originators” of violence to “victims” of violence, and thus enhanced their access to the strong weapon of mobilizing support of the Muslim world against the oppressor “Great Satan.” If it was not for the changed social, political and cultural circumstances of the developing Muslim world, the authors of 9/11 would have achieved their purpose of mobilizing Muslims easily. Saddam’s attack on Kuwait was another example of US’s misperception of an intervention that had the bigger aim of prompting Saudi and US reaction in order to invalidate Saudi Arabia’s claims to Holy Custodianship.
Continuing to identify and acknowledge the internal flaws of the Islamist movement, Kepel points towards the rebellion of Muslim youth from inside the Islamist movement in the form Islamic Modernity and Islamic Feminism. These alternative interpretations of Islam and of the teachings of Islamic scholars including Qutb, pioneered by scholars like Tariq Ramadan, are a result of the proposed marriage between Islam and democracy and thus serve to emphasize their compatibility. In spite of having a strong Islamic character by virtue of their perceived distinction between modernization and secularization, these interpretations propose a path contrary to what radical Islamist movement would ideally like to be followed by the Muslim youth. 
The essence of Kepel’s argument in favor of the decline of the Islamist movement lies in his comparison of the strategies adopted by Islamists in order to achieve their bigger purpose of seizing political power. Here, he compares the cases of Khomeini inspired Iran’s Islamist revolution and Mawdudi inspired Pakistan’s evolutionary Islamization carried out by General Zia-Ul-Haq. Though Kepel maintains that by virtue of the “direct dependence” of Pakistan’s national identity on its religious identity, Mawdudi and Zia had the power to define the latter and “maintain the nation’s cohesion,” Zia’s decision to adopt the path of evolutionary Islamization was critical in ensuring durable success.   
What makes this comparison interesting is that it is between two neighboring countries that embarked on the path of Islamization in the same year: 1979. Two decades later, the revolutionary Islamization of Khomeini in Iran was seriously challenged by the mobilized “educated urban youth,” an opposition that led to the election of a reformist politician and religious scholar Muhammad Khatemi in 1997. The Green Revolution of 2009-2010 is another example of the failing Islamist regime, which is helpless in the face of mass resistance to its rule and has no other option but to use force, an indication of regime’s weakness.
Pakistan on the other hand, embarked on the path of evolutionary Islamization under Zia’s leadership and in the light of Mawdudi’s teachings. The trajectory of sustainable success of Islamization in Pakistan is by virtue of its design which facilitated “elite rule” through “access to military power.” In addition to the financial and technical benefits of the Afghan Jihad of 1979-1989, the state policy for Islamization in Pakistan succeeded by not alienating the elite, which ensured that, they remained unaffected by the opposition of the “educated urban youth.” The effects of Zia’s Islamization live to date, and the horrifying tremors of decisions made by the Shariat Courts under the Shari’a inspired Hudood Ordinance are still felt by the majority of population in Pakistan, in particular religious minorities and women.
This shows that Islamist movement had greater impact in countries where Islamization was carried out through mass mobilization over large periods of time, but was less successful in countries where long periods of mass mobilization was skipped in favor of immediate interventions of mostly violent nature. For this reason, acknowledging the durability of the evolutionary model as compared to the revolutionary model is important, Kepel argues, in building an understanding of 9/11, what it signifies and how it is going to affect the world. The authors of 9/11 preferred to raise Muslim solidarity by a sudden shock of “victory through violence,” and did not have patience for long term mass mobilization. Basically they opted for a short cut, which tells the story of their inability-driven hesitance to take the long route of mobilization. Choosing to shock the world through an act of violence such as 9/11 is a decision driven by the fear of lacking capacity and resources for trial and error, and thus opting for violence as a last resort.
Kepel concludes his arguments with final evidential support from Abdel Wahab al-Effendi, one of the respected writers of a London-based Arabic daily newspaper Al-Quds al Arabi, who in 1999 wrote about the “crisis of the contemporary Islamist movement.” Kepel argues that the weight in Effendi’s analysis cannot be ignored, who considers the case of Afghanistan “the movement’s greatest triumph of modern times,” but which he believes became a disaster in the hands of the Islamists themselves “with no interference by any foreign foe.” Effendi considers the inability of the Islamist movement to resolve its internal conflicts calamitous, since disagreements have been “about power and glory” and have had nothing to do with “matters of faith.” It is this inability that may render the movement faced with a tragedy “bigger than what communism faced.”
Iranian regime’s inability to deal with post-revolution issues highlights the failure of the Islamists in maintaining popularity with urban youth. The late 20th century urbanization makes this job more difficult as the numbers of pragmatic youth increases, a group that does not know what Iran was like under the Shah, but can see the current “unemployment and moral repression under the domination of the religious hierarchy.” And this is where the difference between Effendi’s analysis and Kepel’s arguments becomes obvious: Effendi sums up the internal conflicts in the clash of personalities, while Kepel considers it to be a form of “social antagonism between the devout middle class and the young urban poor.”
Effendi, who according to Kepel belongs to “a segment of the Islamic intelligentsia,” which unlike the radicals “yearns for an alliance with the mainstream secular society,” suggests that the movement would have been “better off when it was frankly repressed… for afterward it could bask in the glow of martyrdom.” And this is the opportunity that the US response to 9/11 offered to the Islamist movement: to “bask in the glow of martyrdom.”
Though Kepel doesn’t address doubts about the chances of a durable marriage between Islam and democracy, in particular in economically under-developed Muslim countries, or the possibility of genuine popularity of Islamists, his arguments make a strong case of the Islamist movement’s decline, an indication of which are the horrors of 9/11. Arguing against Kepel is not easy as he creatively rids the readers of any space for pointing towards the increased instances of violence as evidence for counter argument.
Kepel’s arguments have a number of real-world implications for political players, some of which are given below:
        i.            United States, by virtue of its position in the world has a major responsibility and must shoulder it. This sense of responsibility must reflect itself in the US foreign policy and its global presence. In a CNN blog on December 4, 2011 Fareed Zakaria noted the increased anti-Americanism in Pakistan after the recent NATO attacks that left 24 Pakistani soldiers dead. What Zakaria points towards is Washington’s policy of supporting military regimes in Pakistan or repressive authoritarian regimes in the Middle East for that matter, the consequences of which have encouraged nothing but violence including radical Islamist violence. It is interesting to see that Kepel’s argument of 2002 holds true for 2011, which shows how little Washington has learned from its foreign policy mistakes.
      ii.            Kepel’s arguments highlight the failure of global political leadership in two important areas of interpretation and response. In the first area, the need for developing the ability to read between the lines, listen to the music beneath the words and see the hidden perspectives of adversaries’ interventions is pressing, not for Washington alone. In the second area, the capacity to respond as compared to dependent or counter-dependent reaction is imperative. The training that policy makers, politicians and diplomats receive prior to joining service in any country must involve some form of capacity building in these fields as well. Considering the significance and complexity of these abilities, as well as the commonly seen failures of global political leadership, inclusion of a framework that builds and strengthens these capacities at earlier levels of education may not be an invalid idea.
    iii.            Globalization and increased rapid urbanization are some of the forces behind the celebration of the democratic essence of Islam by Islamic scholars and organizations. Tariq Ramadan’s individual rights driven debate about veil and the women led movement of Islamic feminism are representatives of Islamic democracy in the future. This proposed marriage between democracy and Islam is noteworthy and must be supported, which propagates secular values, and can be one of the potential avenues leading to the path of peaceful co-existence between the Muslim world and the west. Support to this movement can come in the form of withdrawing support from repressive, undemocratic and authoritarian elite rule in developing Muslim countries. The youth of these countries have had enough of the failed experiences of authoritarian as well as Islamist regimes. For them democracy now presents a serious alternative.
    iv.       The role of the fourth pillar of the government can never be overestimated. National and international media with capacity to shape public opinion plays a major role in the making and unmaking of heroes or villains of the world. By making Osama the face of the Islamic terrorism, the media made him a hero for a proportion of the Muslim population, who, dissatisfied and unhappy, were in search of a leader to look up to. That was when the international media handed them Osama, a man with a utopian vision of welfare that appeared to be just a sacrifice away.
      v.            Popularity of the Islamist movement feeds on the lack of popularity of political regimes. In addition to the political vacuum created by dictators due to continued suppression of freedom of expression, the inefficiency of governments in ensuring quality public service delivery in developing countries provides the Islamist movement with its target audience. Ensuring basic individual rights, freedom of information, participatory governance mechanism, and people-driven national and local development planning can not only provide youth with a platform for positive political activism but can also ensure inclusiveness and durability.
The Islamist movement can no longer rely on the youth bulge in the developing Muslim countries, because this generation has different demands, most of which seem to have not been fulfilled by the Islamist regimes of today. The case of Iran and the post-revolution suppression of basic individual rights is evidence to this argument, where Islamists failed to forge alliance with the young urban secular, the very supporters of the authentic Islamic revolution years earlier. The only source of hope and reliance for the radical Islamization in the 21st century is the ability to forge alliances with elite, mostly by securing their financial interests.
9/11 as a sign of “desperation, fragmentation and isolation of radical Islamists” did not mark an end to large scale violence. But what is certain is that violence is a “death trap” for Islamists because it defeats the purpose of mobilizing masses towards the bigger goal of seizing political power.