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The varied faces of political Islam

Atul Aneja

In the absence of egalitarian secular alternatives, the masses in West Asia are turning to Islamist forces.

THE VICTORY of Hamas in the recent Palestinian parliamentary elections follows a trend in the last one year of political Islam, in its various shades, acquiring high visibility in West Asia. In Iraq, the Shia religious parties had won impressively despite efforts by the United States to boost the prospects of rival groups. And in Iran, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, a new generation leader who promised the poor a better deal under Islamic revolutionary principles, was elected President.

In Lebanon, the poorly represented Shias made a strong showing under Hizbollah, a battle hardened Islamic militant group with strong ties with Iran, when general elections were held last year. Saudi Arabia also conducted its first experiment with democracy when it allowed men to vote in municipal elections nationwide. The results did not surprise many — Islamists swept the polls. The Egyptian elections saw the Muslim Brotherhood winning 88 out of the 150 seats it chose to contest.

While it is tempting to assume that a single Islamist juggernaut is engulfing West Asia, in reality local conditions have thrown up a wide variety of groups whose activities are largely uncoordinated. Most of these outfits are not known to have any active links with terrorist groups such as like Al Qaeda.

In the Palestinian territories, the Fatah party formed by the late Yasser Arafat, which lost heavily to Hamas, was seen as corrupt and self-centred. In the Palestinian Street, it was commonly heard that Fatah's top leaders had cornered millions of dollars in western aid.

Many young voters were unable to identify with the "foreign" Palestinian old guard, which had arrived in the territories from Tunis following the Oslo accords of 1993. The Fatah did its best to woo voters by projecting Marwan Barghouti, the Charismatic young local leader now languishing in an Israeli jail, by plastering his posters in several towns and cities during the campaign.

In contrast, Hamas had developed an excellent community service network. The assassinations of its top leaders, Sheikh Yassin and Abdelaziz Rantisi, by Israel also turned the emotional tide in its favour. Finally, Israel's unilateral Gaza withdrawal played into the hands of Hamas, which claimed its militant campaign had forced the Israelis to quit.

Unlike the dramatic rise of Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood began to challenge political authority in Egypt much more slowly. Israel's defeat of the Arabs led by Egypt in 1967 was a turning point. It provided the Brotherhood the first major opportunity to acquire significant political influence. It was a common perception in Egypt then that Israel's unmatched religious zeal was responsible for the Arab defeat and that, therefore, Islam was the right antidote.

With the emergence of Anwar Sadat, Nasser's successor, the crackdown against the Brotherhood somewhat eased. Repression resumed with a vengeance when Hosni Mubarak took over. But with Mr. Mubarak's rule benefiting only a small elite, the Muslim Brotherhood began to make fresh political inroads, by projecting itself as an alternative to the secular brand of Nasserite socialism, and Mr. Mubarak's pro-American "free-market" economics.

The rise of Shia dominated political Islam has taken a different route in Iraq. The Shias have faced discrimination since the establishment of Ottoman rule in 1638, as the minority Sunni community has ruled it since then. Many of them faced serious deprivations under Ba'ath party rule, but the community developed an intricate underground support network during these years. The Shias have made a serious effort to fill the political vacuum following the end of Baathist rule resulting from the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. In the recent elections, the Shias won nearly 80 per cent of the seats in their established strongholds in Iraq.

The Sunnis, on the other hand, have converged on religious organisations after political and military suppression by American forces began. The Sunni religious bonds were reinforced after the Americans indiscriminately bombed Fallujah and reports about the torture of the largely Sunni inmates in the Abu Ghraib prison hit international headlines.

Not surprisingly, the Sunni religious Iraqi Accordance Front won an impressive number of seats in the Sunni dominated areas during the polls.

While the causes of Islamist resurgence have varied, it needs to be emphasised that this phenomena masks the assertion of the long suppressed aspirations of the underclass. In the absence of credible secular and egalitarian alternatives at the moment, Islam is fast emerging as the vehicle for self-expression and mass mobilisation in West Asia.

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