Terrorists, Islamic

Individuals or groups who use violence in order to advance a political or cultural agenda based on their own interpretation of Muslim religious and social ideology. Islamic terrorism is not a single entity; it consists of many proponents and practitioners using violence to achieve a variety of goals. Many Islamic terrorist groups are devoted to establishing an independent Palestinian state in the Middle East. Many have pledged to destroy the state of Israel. Some seek to overthrow secular governments in the region and replace them with Islamic regimes. Others fight non-Muslim (especially Western) influence in the Middle [Page 717]East, and still others pursue several or all of these goals at once. One thing these different groups share in common is a willingness to use violence—and often their own suicides—to achieve their ends.

The Muslim Brotherhood

The philosophical roots of Islamic terrorism lie in the Arab nationalist and religious movements of the early 20th century. Perhaps the most influential of these was the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928. Members of the Muslim Brotherhood were upset with reforms in the Islamic world following the fall of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. Under its reformist president Kemal Ataturk, Turkey—which had inherited the administrative and political structures of the old Ottoman Empire—became a thoroughly secular state. Ataturk abolished the position of caliph (secular leader of all Muslims) and replaced Muslim religious law with Western-style civil law.

The Muslim Brotherhood saw these moves as a betrayal of Islam to the materialist and secular ideals of the West. However, prior to the 1940s, the brotherhood confined its activities largely to political protest and organization. After World War II, the group's lack of peaceful progress led it to embrace violent action against Egypt's pro-Western government. The brotherhood also took up arms against Israel in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. In 1954, the brotherhood tried to assassinate Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. In retaliation, Nasser outlawed the group in Egypt.

Over the next 25 years, the brotherhood spread to other countries in the Middle East and carried out many terrorist acts. It particularly targeted Arab politicians who were seen as too secular or not sufficiently anti-Israeli. The group was very active in Syria until a failed 1980 attempt against the life of Syrian president Hafaz al-Assad. The incident led to an all-out government campaign that decimated the brotherhood in Syria. After the so-called Hama Massacre, the Muslim Brotherhood disappeared as a political force in the region. In the late 1980s it reinvented itself as a religious and social organization that is now seen as a relatively moderate voice in the Islamic world.

The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO)

Many young Muslims heard the brotherhood's call for the restoration of what it saw as “pure” Islamic society in the Middle East. Quite a few of these founded their own organizations to pursue violent political change. In the 1970s, several of these groups came together under the banner of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). The members of the PLO were united by opposition to Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands taken in previous Arab-Israeli wars. They also objected to the denial of Israeli citizenship to Palestinians living in Israel and the so-called occupied territories. The PLO denied Israel's right to exist and called for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.

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