John Entelis is a Professor of Political Science and Director of the Middle East Studies Program at Fordham University.

Political Islam in the North African region known as the Maghreb (Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco), as in other parts of the Arab-Islamic world, represents the expression of populist discontent with an authoritarian political order. As the Arab state has failed to produce prosperity and has exploited religion as an instrument of control, it has increasingly come to be viewed by Islamists and many others as little more than an extension of an avaricious international political system, dominated by the West and serving its interests. In its essence, populist Islam speaks to the millions of men and women in North Africa who feel marginalized and neglected by their rulers, whether self-defined as “secular” (Algeria’s Abdelaziz Bouteflika and Tunisia’s Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali) or “religious” (King Mohamed VI of Morocco).

In response to calls for socioeconomic change in the 1980s, North African regimes began to “liberalize” state and society, permitting opposition groups (among them Islamist movements) to emerge and express their points of view. Whether legal parties such as the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) in Algeria or unofficial ones such as the an-Nahda (“Renaissance”) movement in Tunisia or the Welfare and Justice Association in Morocco, political Islam emerged with impressive vigor and vitality. These groups seemed to fuse issues of moral rectitude, cultural integrity, religious piety, social purpose, economic honesty and political democracy, and their work had a direct impact on people’s lives. For example, they fulfilled basic social needs that the state (for various reasons) increasingly neglected, such as religious instruction, education, social services or emergency assistance. In short, political Islam, for the first time in the modern history of the Maghreb, came to represent an alternative to the state that was not itself a product of that state or its elites.

Algeria’s FIS party, as evaluated by its electoral and governing performance in 1990-91, was probably the quintessential prototype of an Islamist reformist movement. Nonviolent and led by religiously devout laypeople, it sought to gain power though democratic means. The FIS captured the imagination of hundreds of thousands of Algerians suffering from long government misrule, endemic corruption and political repression. However, Algeria’s 1992 military coup marked the end of the FIS’ political ambitions and the start of a bloody civil war that eliminated reformist Islam as a political force in Algeria.

Political Islam has always had an extremist dimension. Indeed, Islamism represents a broad range of political responses to the challenges of the modern world expressed through an Islamic idiom. Yet it was not until the Iranian revolution of 1979 that the Muslim world was presented with the political reality of an Islamic republic. Nonetheless, Islamism in the Maghreb in the 1980s maintained a moderate and reformist tone. But some 20 years later, Moroccan extremists led terrorist attacks in Casablanca and Madrid that killed hundreds of people. What caused North African Islamist moderates to become militants who then became madmen?

Central to this transformation has been the policies and actions of North African regimes towards Islamist movements. Initially, Moroccan, Algerian and Tunisian state authorities implemented accommodationist policies, which quickly revealed the populist potential inherent in Islamist movements. Through elections, street demonstrations, student unions and so on, Islamist parties showed the capacity to seriously challenge if not defeat incumbent regimes under democratic conditions.

Faced with that stark reality, governments responded with an array of coercive, co-optive and conciliatory gestures intended to restrain Islamism as a legitimate political force. Morocco employed legal and technical obstructions while Algeria and Tunisia have pursued eradicationist approaches to Islamist parties. For their part, Islamist movements, once on the verge of achieving power through peaceful means, have now turned to violence, which in turn has degenerated into terrorism. In some cases, terrorists in the region have found logistical, ideological and financial support from global terrorist networks like al-Qaeda.

Western nations face a “Catch-22” situation when addressing Islamism and democracy in North Africa. Ruling elites in the Maghreb are unwilling to open up their political systems to allow societal grievances to find nonviolent expression and have proved fully capable of fending off all domestic political challenges whether peaceful or violent in nature. The history of the FIS suggests that North African Islamists are capable of moderate and lawful engagement in the political system; however, they are unlikely to embrace such an approach before North African governments allow the creation of a public sphere in which citizens of all political persuasions can participate.

North African regimes remain fundamentally weak and devoid of institutionalized legitimacy. The strength and popularity of radical Islamic movements and the violent tactics they have chosen to use in their struggle with ruling elites flow directly from the political illegitimacy of the Arab state. In blocking the rise of moderate Islamism, incumbent regimes unleashed a much more virulent form of Islamic radicalism that cares little for cooperation or compromise. Reformist Islamism could have mediated society’s anger through democratic processes had the state been sincere in its invocation of pluralist principles. Instead, a “clash of cultures” erupted. Perhaps more important to Arab democracy than any imagined cultural clash with the West is the clash between elitist, secular and despotic governments versus the religious, populist masses. This clash leads to chaos at home and terrorism abroad.


© 2005 IFES
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