Mohammed M. Hafez. Why Muslims Rebel: Repression and Resistance in the Islamic World.

Mohammed M. Hafez. Why Muslims Rebel: Repression and Resistance in the Islamic World. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 004, 251 pages. Paper $49.95.

The key concept and overall approach to this well-documented work is embedded in the dialectic in its subtitle, repression and resistance as the means to achieve an understanding of why Muslims rebel. Drawing from the primary cases of Algeria and Egypt, the author views Muslim rebellions as a reaction to the predatory actions of states threatened by Islamist upsurge but whose political ambitions they fundamentally oppose and exclude from mainstream political processes. I outline below the well-developed arguments for the benefit of the reader.

Charting militant Islamist activism (from reports in the chronologies in Middle East Journal quarterly) in these two countries beginning in the mid-1970s and peaking in the early 1990s (especially between 1993-1995), and falling back to low levels after 2000, the author follows the increasing extremism as tied to political exclusion. Moreover, where Islamist activists were afforded some political participation--such as in Tunisia and Jordan--Islamist extremism was ameliorated. However, the case of Pakistan is notable since the state afforded some inclusion of the major Islamist party, Jama'at al-Islami, but this did not stem the tide of political extremism. The author thus concludes that political exclusion, while a major contributing factor for Islamist rebellion, is not sufficient unto itself to induce mass insurgency (p. 65).

Moving next to an analysis of the breadth and depth of political repression in the Muslim world, the author expresses surprise and alarm that this fact is given scant attention in theoretical and empirical studies. This underscores the oft-cited point that Western attention has focused more on the results of Islamist extremism than on its causes. In its most repressive phase, Egypt killed, injured, or executed the largest number of extremists between 1993 and 1995. The author distinguishes between selective (targeted individuals, organizations, and regions) and collective repression. He explains the reversal of Egypt's policy toward the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) in the late 1980s and early 1990s balancing the increasing boldness of the MB with the state's general lack of political will to engage in intense repression of its leaders (e.g. short detentions and relatively light sentences). The Egyptian government proved no match for the ability of the MB to form alliances with non-religious parties, such as the Labor and Liberal parties under the umbrella of the 1987 "Islamic Alliance," and for its penetration of civil society and professional organizations. The success of MB alliances was confirmed in recent election results in Egypt. While Egypt engaged in selective repression, by contrast Algeria engaged in more general, collective repression of the Front Islamique du Salut (FIS). In both cases, the author argues that the goal of the Islamist organizations was not to topple the existing secular order but grew as a defensive reaction to state repression that threatened their organization and survival. Other experiences in the Muslim world are analyzed--in Kashmir, southern Philippines, Chechnya, and Tajikistan, for example--which reinforce the deleterious effects of severe repression and of reactive and indiscriminate repression of Islamist movements. Of course, repression has provided the fertile soil upon which the Islamist movements grew and expanded their influence.

The perpetuation of Islamist movements in chronic states of conflict, despite multiple efforts to ameliorate or eliminate them, is analyzed as a function of their being, of necessity, exclusive organizations. There is no small irony in the fact that exclusivist organizations thrive in repressive environments. Added to their exclusivity is the need also to be loosely structured for purposes of mobilization. Small, secretive, exclusivist organizations are capable of engaging in protracted violence and conflict. Increased repression ends in smaller and even more efficient exclusivist organizations, or new organizations that bud in reaction to the imprisonment or exile of the movements' Islamist leaders. This occurred with the rise of the Groupe Islamique Arme (GIA) in Algeria and the Gama at Islami in Egypt both of which expanded Islamist insurgency even as the organizations became more decentralized into cells. This trend virtually guaranteed that efforts at conflict resolution and peace mediation were doomed to fail, having no centralized leaders or mechanism with which to negotiate.

One nearly inevitable result of extremist activism is anticivilian violence, which provides the most challenging moral and political dilemmas for Islamist activists and their supporters. Flow can Muslims rebel to the name of the people and justify killing civilians with impunity? Indeed, although international organizations have failed to agree on what is terrorism and who is a terrorist, one key area of consensus is that of condemning harm or death of innocent, non-combatant civilians. The answer is that a "moral disengagement," born of antisystem ideology, is necessary to justify the loss of civilian life. Anticivilian violence is accepted in terms of means justifying ends arguments; or that such violence is necessary for the resistance against foreign aggression or domination; or that the violence is necessary to reverse historic trends of exploitation, such as was the case with left-wing terrorists in Europe of the 1960s and 1970s, or of Hamas violence against Israeli occupation. A certain logic evolved in Algeria in the 1990s, such that the earliest attacks were mainly on state police and security personnel, then expanded to government officials, representatives of opposition groups, foreigners and finally journalists and intellectuals, the latter groups meeting with the least public approval. In Egypt attacks on the journalist Farag Foda and Nobel laureate Neguib Mahfouz represented a turning point before subsequent attacks on tourists met with widespread international condemnation. Such criticism was met with arguments by Islamist militants of the supremacy of God and the superiority of the Islamic faith, together with a combined Zionist and 'Crusader' Western conspiracy against the Muslim world. Absolutist extremist ideology sees no middle ground between Islam and jahiliya (the time of ignorance before the coming of Islam) and contemporary states in the Muslim world are secular and belong to the realm of jahiliya. This situation necessitates jihad while democracy is rejected as a secular idea alien to the supremacy of the authority of God. More moderate Islamist groups oppose this view and tacitly agree to work within existing political systems.

No author of such a book could resist making policy recommendations based upon the penetrating analysis offered in this work. One "cure," often-cited and rarely implemented, is economic development with programs that put an end to "relative deprivation." A second solution is to intensify state repression, utterly rejected as counterproductive by the analysis in this book. The third option combines the aforementioned two options, but adds to them the vital element of internal political reform. This calls upon governments and their Western allies to distinguish between moderates and extremists through institutional inclusion. In the end the most successful strategy may combine both institutional inclusion with targeted repression of militants.

Why Muslims Rebel would be a useful classroom tool for courses that analyze the root causes, rather than the effects, of Muslim insurgency. One cannot help but speculate how such texts might be utilized by government policy makers, Muslim and non-Muslim.

Reviewed by Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban

Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban is Professor of Anthropology at Rhode Island College, Providence.