Islamist Movements

In recent decades, Islamist movements have become an important social and (sometimes) political force in many Arab countries. They share three major characteristics:

• 1.
  Islamists are critical of prevailing societal conditions in Arab countries, which they describe interchangeably as decadent, underdeveloped, or unjust.
• 2.
  They blame authoritarian ruling establishments for these societal conditions and therefore consider political change as the first crucial step toward altering Arab reality. Islamist movements operating in the Arab world differ from missionary groups and Islamic charitable organizations, which see change as a long-term process of Islamizing societies that takes place outside of the realm of politics.
• 3.
  They legitimize their practices and create popular appeal for their movements by basing them on religious norms and values, which serve as the ultimate ideological frame of reference for society and politics.

Within the broad category of Islamist movements, groups can be differentiated by their attitudes toward violence and their perceptions of politics. Militant groups such as the Egyptian Jihad and the Algerian Islamic Group use violence and seek to establish theocratic states as the sole means of changing conditions in Islamic societies. Their sources of inspiration are either idealized interpretations of past moments in Islamic history or contemporary models of Islamic republics, be they in Iran, Sudan, or even Afghanistan. Mainstream [Page 1354]Islamists reject violence and endorse competition through pluralistic politics. They exclude radical strategies as options for political transformation and see gradual democratic openings as the only viable way to challenge repressive authoritarian regimes in the Islamic world.

This mainstream position is relatively new. In the 1980s and 1990s, mainstream movements still had not accepted the value of democratic governance. Caught in the iron grip of regime oppression and continuous radicalization at the outer edges of the Islamist spectrum, these movements were sometimes forced out of the official political sphere or violently banned and denied any public role. In a few countries such as Morocco, where Islamists were partly integrated in the political process, Islamists' preoccupation with rhetorically sound though politically unattainable goals—Islamization of legislative environments and educational systems—did not help them overcome general doubts about their real objectives. By the end of the 1990s, Arab Islamists had failed to change political realities in their homelands despite considerable popular support. This failure prompted various revisionist trends that gathered momentum in the past few years. As a result, mainstream Islamists have become increasingly receptive to democratic procedures.