Conclusions: Lack Of A Proactive Agenda.

The observers add that the real weakness among the Islamist movements in the Middle East is that they are unable to put forward an ideological framework that is also applicable to modern realities. There is a fundamental incompatibility between the version of Islam that is popular among these movements and the changes taking place in the world today. The intellectuals among the Islamists have not been able to overcome this incompatibility, and thus revert to emotional appeals such as the demand for the reinstatement of a "caliphate" or to slogans such as "Islam is the solution".

The only movement that has managed to put forward such a framework with some success is the one started by the late Imam Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini in Iran. But in Iran, too, the weaknesses in the framework has led to the emergence of a more pragmatic outlook, one which recognises the need for compromise and adaptation with other global ideologies and systems. In Sudan, although the Islamists came to power, they proved to be a complete failure - so much so that the military side of the Islamist/military partnership has over the past two years ejected the hardline Islamist ideologues led by Shaikh Hassan Al Turabi from the ruling superstructure. Khartoum now is gradually working its way back under the Western umbrella.

Thus, while the Islamist tendency was prospering in the 1990s against a background of political and economic crisis, it had also shown itself to be incapable of responding to the real problems of the system it denounces. So although it was not a surprise that the two North African countries with the strongest Islamist movements - Algeria and Egypt - were also those facing the greatest economic difficulties, it is equally not very surprising that once the economy began to pick up in Egypt the public sympathy for militant movements declined sharply.

This decline was all the more evident because it was the young and relatively educated classes who had no hope of seeing their dreams of material well-being fulfilled who joined militant groups. When they saw the prospects for positive change under new liberalisation measures introduced by various regimes, combined with the risks of militancy, they quickly changed tracks. Ironically, it may be the Islamist movements' popularity that forced the governments in the Middle East to turn towards economic reform as one solution to the problem of militancy.

On the other hand, it is important to note that while the Islamists have shown themselves unable to propose a positive macro-level agenda, they have succeeded in several micro-level initiatives. Indeed, this is what had driven their popularity when the governments were facing a socio-economic crisis in the immediate aftermath of the cold war. Islamist movements had, sometimes through local social projects, managed to give the illusion that they were in a position to straighten out the national economy. This is the case with Hizbollah in Lebanon and Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, for instance. Hizbollah has created an entire social welfare network for Shiites in southern Lebanon, while the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, though formally banned, runs or supports a vast network of hospitals, social centres, schools, banks, legal aid offices, etc.