Understanding Islamic Politics and Culture

Understanding Islamic Politics and Culture

• Introduction
• State and Politics in the Contemporary Arab World, by Samir Amin
• Culture & Power: Globalisation, the West & the Islamic Resurgence, by Tom Reifer
• "Islam, the West, and the World", by Immanuel Wallerstein

Introduction

For centuries in Europe, Islam has been perceived as 'The threat from the East'. At the beginning of the 21st century, this remains unchanged. The shift in thinking about immigration in EU member states, tightening immigration laws, (primarily implemented to keep citizens from Islamic countries out), together with the fear of terrorist activity in Europe, create a strong sense of 'us and them' among European citizens and politicians. At the same time, in some of the ASEM member states in South and South-East Asia, religious tensions between Islamic and other believers, or the fear of religious clashes, have culminated in a fear for 'the threat from the West'.

Looking at the geographic composition of ASEM, Islam as a religion and the Islamic States as political entities are no party to the treaty of ASEM. Yet, politically, ASEM cannot ignore Islam, and should not. ASEM, as a gathering of the 15 richest European and 10 richest Asian countries, cannot and should not be unaware of the fact that the geopolitical space between the Asian and European blocks is inhabited by a powerful political, economical, religious and cultural movement: Islam. Just as it is impossible to think about global politics or economics without taking notice of the strength of US hegemonic dominance, it is impossible to create a sound and safe future without taking into account the needs and strength of the Islamic religion, its politics and culture in the Middle East and within the ASEM countries.

Fear of the unknown is a common feature of all human beings. One who knows the diversity and richness of Islam throughout the world, will be better equipped to distinguish between the large majority of Islamic people who are 'just like you' and those small factions that may indeed pose a danger to local or regional peace in Europe and Asia.

Throughout the years, TNI gathered and processed bundles of materials on Islam, both politically and culturally focussed. In this ASEM Watch, three analytical papers on Islam, the role of Islam and the relations between Islam and other regions, religions or political forces are highlighted. Since all three articles are too lengthy to put in the body text of an e-mail bulletin, we chose to put the articles on line on the TNI website and to only give short fragments of and the links to these articles in this issue.

State and Politics in the Contemporary Arab World by Samir Amin

1. The Autocratic State versus the Challenge Posed by Modernity

1. Aristotle said that man (today, one would say the human being) is a political animal. In other words, the society is the place of options for political status targeted before all the rules and principles governing its management. The political identification of the nature of challenges facing societies at each moment of their history, and that of the options offered to them, is therefore an inevitable precondition for any analysis of the reality. It is understood that, behind each of the possible options are real class interests and those of social groups and nations of which the contradictions constitute the foundation.

The dominant discourse in vogue evokes an attempt to use the language of so-called "rational", and therefore necessarily "consensual" options concerning social "management", in analysing political conflicts and social struggles. Thus, post-modernism has substituted for the clear language of social struggles that of the discourse on social "movements". There is nothing neutral in any way about this use of terms because the phenomenon presupposes that society is already reconciled with itself and that the "movements" in question transmit an inexorable movement - implicitly to the best of the worlds. The explosion of what is referred to as decentralised initiatives of civil society organisations - women's movements, ecologist movements, all kinds of so-called non-governmental organisations - appears to be the expression of this qualitative change in "post-modern" political life.

Along with the strong comeback of the brutal capital dictatorship, vis-à-vis momentarily weakened adversaries, this discourse loses every day a little more of the transient credibility accorded to it. The reason is that, far from bringing about a peaceful consensus, the imbalance in favour of capital stimulates more social struggles, the condition for any change in the balance of power that can reorient the societal movement towards enhanced justice, democracy and efficiency.

These struggles are not deployed in a political and economic vacuum. They develop in, and at least partially, against the double powers of the managing State and against the globalised economic liberalism that defines the framework for options of both the dominant capital and the State at its service.

Hence, it is initially a question of making a critical review of practices of the State in question, and then analysing the forms of organisation of political and social struggles, their strategic visions (or their absence).

2. There is no democratic State in the Arab world. There are only autocratic States. This is certainly a harsh judgement, but it is essentially correct, even if we later on try to identify the flaws whereby the political and social struggles can initiate the transformation of this reality.

This general autocracy certainly assumes diverse forms. It would not be difficult to cite well-known names corresponding to the identification of each of these forms of the common autocracy. The plight of Arab peoples appears or appeared to depend in some cases on the mood of a General who proved to be an assassin by nature, a junior police officer specialised in torture, or a king who built perpetually dark dungeons, a chief of a tribal pyramid or a religious extremist. In a less negative case, the Arab State was sometimes ruled by an enlightened despot, in the true sense of the term, or by an easy-going heir, and therefore relatively tolerant. Lebanon partly shares the common feature of the Arab States even if it appears as an exception, as elections are held there regularly and the Presidents are actually changed every four years. For one thing, if it is true that the premise that "the elections are not devoid of a certain interest" is meaningful, it is only so because, in fact, the political authorities that follow one another are so much alike that their difference is negligible.

Although autocratic, the Arab political regimes have not always been or are not always denied legitimacy by their own societies. According to Hashem Sharaby, State power has always been synonymous with personal power as opposed to the power of the law defining the modern State. This Weber-like descriptive analysis is worth qualifying since the personal (or personalised) powers in question are legitimate only insofar as they are proclaimed as being respectful of the tradition (and especially of the religious Shariah) and are perceived as such. From a more in-depth perspective, it is the relationship Sharaby establishes between autocracy and the "patriarchal" nature of the system of social values. The term "patriarchy" is understood here to be more than what is ascribed to the popularised commonplace term of "male chauvinism" (asserting and practising the marginalisation of women in society). The patriarchy in question is a system that upholds the duty of obedience at all levels: while school and home education put down the slightest critical attempt and sacralisation of hierarchies in the family system (subordinating women and children of course), in the business sector (subordinating the employee to the employer), in public service (absolute submission to the senior in rank), absolute prohibition of religious interpretation, etc.

This observation - which appears indisputable to me - links up with the conclusions that I have drawn from the definition of modernity, which I proposed, and from the challenge it constitutes.

Modernity is based on the principle that human beings create their history individually and collectively and that, to that effect, they have the right to innovate and to disregard tradition. Proclaiming this principle meant breaking with the fundamental principle that governed all the pre-modern societies, including of course that of Feudal and Christian Europe. Modernity was born with this proclamation. It had nothing to do with rebirth; it was simply a question of birth. The qualification of Renaissance that Europeans themselves gave to history in that era of history is therefore misleading. It is the result of an ideological construction purporting that the Greek-Roman Antiquity was acquainted with the principle of modernity, which was veiled in the "Middle Ages" (between the old modernity and the new modernity) by religious obscurantism. It was the mythical perception of Antiquity that in turn paved the way for Eurocentrism, whereby Europe claims to go back to its past, " to return to its sources" (hence, the Renaissance), whereas in fact, it is engineering a break with its own history.

The European Renaissance was the product of an internal social process, the solution found to contradictions peculiar to the then Europe through the invention of capitalism. On the other hand, what the Arabs by imitation referred to as their Renaissance - the Nahda of the 19th Century - was not so. It was the reaction to an external shock. The Europe that modernity had rendered powerful and triumphant had ambiguous effect on the Arab world through attraction (admiration) and repulsion (through the arrogance of its conquest). The Arab Renaissance takes its qualifying term literally. It is assumed that, if the Arabs "returned" to their sources, as the Europeans would have done (that is what they themselves say), they would regain their greatness, even if debased for some time. The Nahda does not know the nature of the modernity that enhances Europe's power.

This is not the place to refer to different aspects and moments marking Nahda's deployment. I will just state briefly that Nahda does not forge the necessary break with tradition that defines modernity. Nahda does not recognise the meaning of secularism, in other words, separation between religion and politics, the condition to ensure that politics serves as the field for free innovation, and for that matter, for democracy in the modern sense. Nahda thinks it can substitute for secularism an interpretation of religion purged of its obscurantist drifts. At any rate, to date, Arab societies are not adequately equipped to understand that secularism is not a "specific" characteristic of the western world but rather a requirement for modernity. Nahda does not realise the meaning of democracy, which should be understood as the right to break with tradition. It therefore remains prisoner of the concepts of autocratic State; it hopes and prays for a "just" despot (al moustabid al adel) - even if not "enlightened" and the nuance is significant. Nahda does not understand that modernity also promotes women's aspiration to their freedom, thereby exercising their right to innovate and break with tradition. Eventually, Nahda reduces modernity to the immediate aspect of what it produces: technical progress. This voluntarily over-simplified presentation does not mean that its author is not aware of the contradictions expressed in Nahda, nor that certain avant-garde thinkers were aware of the real challenges posed by modernity, like Kassem Amin and the importance of women's emancipation, Ali Abdel Razek and secularism, and Kawakibi and the challenge posed by democracy. However, none of these breakthroughs had any effects; on the contrary, the Arab society reacted by refusing to follow the paths indicated. Nahda is therefore not the time marking the birth of modernity in the Arab world but rather the period of its abortion.

3. Since the Arab States have not yet embraced modernity, whereas they bear the bunt of the daily challenge, Arabs still accept to a large extent these principles of autocratic power, which maintains its legitimacy or loses it in fields other than its non-recognition of the principle of democracy. If it is able to resist imperialist aggression - or to give that impression -, if it is able to promote a visible improvement of the material living conditions of many, if not all, the autocratic power enjoys guaranteed popularity even if it now appears as an enlightened despotic power. It is also because Arab societies have not embraced modernity that the latter's brutal pompous refusal presented as the sole ideological theme placed at the centre of the Islamic project can find a favourable echo as powerful as it is known to be (cf. Political Islam later on).

Beyond this non-modernity principle, the autocratic power therefore owes its legitimacy to tradition. In some cases, this could refer to a tradition of national and religious monarchy like that of Morocco (in which case the specific feature consists in the fact that no Moroccan political party questions the eloquent motto of this monarchy - Allah, The Nation, The King) or of a tribal monarchy in the Arabian Peninsula. But there is another form of tradition - the one inherited from the Ottoman Empire dominant in the territory between Algeria and Iraq, and therefore influencing the largest segment of the Arab world - which I describe as the tradition of "Mameluke power".

What is it about? It is about a complex system that associated the personalised power of warlords (relatively structured and centralised, or otherwise scattered), businessmen and men of religion. I emphasise men, since women are obviously not allowed to assume any responsibilities. The three dimensions of this organisation are not merely juxtaposed; they are actually merged into a single reality of power.

The Mamelukes are men of war who owe their legitimacy to a certain concept of Islam that places emphasis on the opposite of Dar El Islam (Muslim world - a community governed by the rules of peaceful management) / Dar El Harb (an extra-Muslim world, the place for the pursuit of Jihad, "Holy War"). It is not by chance that this military concept of political management was fabricated by the conquering Seldjoukide Turks and the Ottomans, who called themselves "Ghazi" - conquerors and colonisers of Byzantine Anatolia. It is not by chance that the Mamelukes' system was built from the era of Salah El Dine, liberator of the Lands occupied until then by the Crusaders. Populist powers and contemporary nationalists always mention the name of Salah El Dine with respectful admiration without ever considering or making any allusion to the ravages of the system from which it originated. At the end of the Crusades, the Arab world (which became Turkish-Arab) entered into a military feudalisation and isolation process reflecting a decline that put an end to the brilliant civilisation of the early centuries of the Caliphate while Europe was beginning to discard feudalism and preparing to embark on the invention of modernity and move on to conquer the world.

4. In compensation for this service as protectors of Islam, the Mamelukes gave the men of religion monopoly in the interpretation of dogmas, of justice rendered in the name of Islam and in the moral civilisation of the society. Relegated to its purely traditional social dimension - respect for rites being the sole important consideration - religion is absolutely subjugated by the autocratic power of men of war.

Economic life is then subject to the mood of the military-political authority. Whenever possible, the peasantry is directly subjected to the whims of this ruling class and private property is jeopardised (the related principle being indisputably sacralised by the fundamental texts of Islam). The proceeds of trade are no less tapped.

The Mameluke ruling class naturally aspired to the dispersion of its autocratic power. Formally responsible to the Sultan-Caliph, the Mamelukes took advantage of the long distance then separating them from the capital (Istanbul) to personally exercise full powers within the radius of the land under their control. In areas with an age-old tradition of State centralisation, such as Egypt, there have been successive attempts to discipline the whole military corps. It is not by chance that Mohamed Ali established his centralised authority by massacring the Mamalukes, but only to re-establishing a military-real estate aristocracy under his personal authority from that time onwards. The Beys of Tunis tried to do likewise on a more modest scale. The Deys of Algiers never succeeded in doing so. The Ottoman Sultanate did so in turn, thereby integrating its Turkish, Kurdish and Armenian provinces of Anatolia and its Arab provinces of historic Syria and Iraq under an authority "modernised" that way.

Just modernisation? Or just a modernised autocracy? Enlightened despotism? Or just despotism? The fluctuations and variants are situated in this range, which does not usher in anything making it possible to go beyond.

Certainly, the typical autocratic model of Mameluke had to reckon with the numerous and diverse realities that always defined the real limits. Peasant communities that took refuge in their fortified mountains (Kabylians, Maronites, Druzeans, Alaouites, etc.), Sufi brotherhoods almost everywhere and tribes obliged the dominant authorities to reach a compromise with and tolerate the rebellious groups. The contrast in Morocco between Maghzen and Bled Siba is of a similar nature.

Have the forms in which power was exercised in the Arab world changed so much to justify the assertion that those described here belong to a distant past? The autocratic State and the related forms of political management certainly exist to date, as will be seen later. However, they are beset with a profound crisis that has already curtailed their legitimacy, as they were increasingly incapable of meeting the challenges posed by modernity. Some of the testimonies in this regard are the emergence of political Islam, overlapping political conflicts as well as the resumption of social struggles.

2. Political Islam

1. The fatal error lies in thinking that the emergence of mass political movements identified with Islam is the inevitable outcome of the rise of culturally and politically backward people who cannot understand any language other than that of their quasi-atavistic obscurantism. Unfortunately, such an error is not only widely circulated by the dominant simplifying media; it is also echoed in the pseudo-scientific discourses on Eurocentrism and awkward "Orientalism". Such views are based on the biased assumption that only the West can invent modernity, thereby confining Muslims in an immutable "tradition" that makes them incapable of apprehending the significance of the necessary change.

Muslims and Islam have a history, just like those of the other regions of the world. It is a history fraught with diverse interpretations concerning linkages between reason and faith, a history of mutual transformation and adaptation of both society and its religion. However, the reality of this history is denied not only by Eurocentric discourses but also by the contemporary movements associated with Islam. In fact, the two entities have the same cultural bias whereby the "specific" features ascribed to the different careers of their own peoples and religions are allegedly intangible, infinite and trans-historical. To the Western world's Eurocentrism, contemporary Political Islam solely opposes an inverted Eurocentrism.

The emergence of movements claiming to be Islamic is actually expressive of a violent revolt against the destructive effects of the really existent capitalism and against its attendant unaccomplished, truncated and deceptive modernity. It is an expression of an absolutely legitimate revolt against a system that has nothing to offer to the peoples concerned.

2. The discourse of the Islam proposed as an alternative to the capitalist modernity (to which the modern experiences of the historical socialisms are clearly assimilated), is political by nature, and by no means theological. The "fundamentalist" attributes often ascribed to Islam by no means correspond to this discourse, which, moreover, does not even allude to Islam, except in the case of certain contemporary Muslim intellectuals who are referred to in such terms in western opinion more than in theirs.

The proposed Islam is in this case the adversary of every liberation theology. Political Islam advocates submission and not emancipation. It was only Mahmoud Taha of Sudan who attempted to emphasise the element of emancipation in his interpretation of Islam. Sentenced to death and executed by the authorities of Khartoum, Taha was not acknowledged by any "radical" or "moderate" Islamic group, and neither was he defended by any of the intellectuals identifying themselves with "Islamic Renaissance" or even by those who are merely willing to "dialogue" with such movements.

The heralds of the said "Islamic Renaissance" are not interested in theology and they never make any reference to the classical texts concerning theology. Hence, what they understand by Islam appears to be solely a conventional and social version of religion limited to the formal and integral respect for ritual practice. The Islam in question would define a community to which one belongs by inheritance, like ethnicity instead of a strong and intimate personal conviction. It is solely a question of asserting a "collective identity" and nothing more. That is the reason why the term "Political Islam" is certainly more appropriate to qualify all these movements in the Arab countries.

3. Modern political Islam had been invented by the orientalists in the service of the British authority in India before being adopted intact by Mawdudi of Pakistan. It consisted in "proving" that Muslim believers are not allowed to live in a State that is itself not Islamic - anticipating the partition of India - because Islam would ignore the possibility of separation between State and Religion. The orientalists in question failed to observe that the English of the 13th Century would not have conceived of their survival either without Christianity!

Abul Ala Al Mawdudi therefore took up the theme stipulating that power comes from God alone (wilaya al faqih), thus repudiating the concept of citizens having the right to make laws, the State being solely entrusted with enforcement of the law defined once and for all (The Shariah). Joseph de Maistre had already written similar things accusing the Revolution of inventing modern democracy and individual emancipation.

Refuting the concept of emancipatory modernity, Political Islam disapproves of the very principle of democracy - the right of society to build its own future through its freedom to legislate. The Shura principle is not the Islamic form of democracy, as claimed by Political Islam, for it is hampered by the ban on innovation (ibda), and accepts, if need be, only that of interpretation of the tradition (ijtihad). The Shura is only one of the multiple forms of the consultation found in all pre-modern and pre-democratic societies. Of course, interpretation has sometimes been the vehicle for real changes imposed by new demands. However, the fact remains that by virtue of its own principle - denial of the right to break with the past - interpretation leads into deadlock the modern fight for social change and democracy. The parallel claimed between the Islamic parties - radical or moderate, since all of them adhere to the same "anti-modernist" principles in the name of the so-called specificity of Islam - and Christian-Democrat parties of modern Europe is therefore not valid, strictly speaking, even though American media and diplomatic circles continue to make allusion to the said parallel so as to legitimise their support of possibly "Islamist" regimes. Christian-Democracy is an element of modernity of which it upholds the fundamental concept of creative democracy as the essential aspect of the concept of secularism. Political Islam refuses modernity and proclaims this fact without being able to understand its significance.

Hence, the proposed Islam does not deserve at all to be qualified as "modern" and the supporting arguments advanced in this regard by friends of "dialogue" are extremely platitudinous: they range from the use of cassettes by its propagandists to the observation that these agents are recruited from among the "educated" classes - engineers for instance! Moreover, these movements' discourse solely reflects Wahabite Islam, which rejects all that the interaction between historical Islam and Greek philosophy had produced in its epoch, as it merely turned over the unimaginative writings of Ibn Taymiya, the most reactionary of the theologians of the Middle Ages. Although some of his heralds qualify this interpretation as "a return to the sources", it is actually a mere reference to the notions that prevailed two hundred years ago, notions of a society whose development has been stalled for several centuries.

4. The contemporary Political Islam is not the outcome of a reaction to the so-called abuses of secularism, as often purported, unfortunately. It is because no Muslim society of modern times - except in the former Soviet Union - has ever been truly secular, let alone appalled at the daring innovations of any atheistic and aggressive power. The semi-modern State of Kemal's Turkey, Nasser's Egypt, Baathist Syria and Iraq merely subjugated the men of religion (as it often happened in former times) to impose on them concepts solely aimed at legitimising its political options. The beginnings of a secular idea existed only in certain critical intellectual circles. The secular idea did not have much impact on the State, which sometimes retreated in this respect when obsessed with its nationalist project, thereby causing a break with the policy adopted by the Wafd since 1919, as testified by the disturbing evolution inaugurated even at the time of Nasser. The reason for this drift is perhaps quite obvious: whereas the democracy of the said regimes was rejected, a substitute was found in the so-called homogeneous community, with its danger obviously extending to the declining democracy of the contemporary Western world itself.

Political Islam intends to perfect an evolution already well established in the countries concerned and aimed at restoring a plainly conservative theocratic order associated with a political power of the "Mameluke" type. The reference to this military caste that ruled up to two centuries ago, placed itself above all laws (by pretending to know no law other than the "Shariah"), monopolised profits from the national economy and accepted to play a subsidiary role in the capitalist globalisation of that era - for the sake of "realism" - instantly crosses the mind of anyone who observes the declined post-nationalist regimes of the region as well as the new so-called Islamic regimes, their twin brothers.

5. From this fundamental point of view, there is no difference between the so-called "radical" movements of Political Islam and those that wanted to appear "moderate" because the aims of both entities are identical.

The case of Iran itself is not an exception to the general rule, despite the confusions that contributed to its success: the concomitance between the rapid development of the Islamist movement and the struggle waged against the Shah who was socially reactionary and politically pro-American. Firstly, the extremely eccentric behaviour of the theocratic ruling power was compensated by its anti-imperialist positions, from which it derived its legitimacy that echoed its powerful popularity beyond the borders of Iran. Gradually, however, the regime showed that it was incapable of meeting the challenge posed by an innovative socio-economic development. The dictatorship of turbaned men of religion, who took over from that of the "Caps" (military and technocrats), as they are referred to in Iran, resulted in a fantastic degradation of the country's economic machinery. Iran, which boasted about "doing the same as Korea", now ranks among the group of "Fourth World" countries. The indifference of the ruling power's hard wing to social problems facing the country's working classes was the basic cause of its take-over by those who described themselves as "reformers" with a project that could certainly attenuate the rigours of the theocratic dictator, but without renouncing, for all that, its principle enshrined in the Constitution ("wilaya al faqih"), which constituted the basis of the monopoly of a power that was therefore gradually induced to give up its "anti-imperialist" postures and integrate the commonplace compradore world of capitalism of the peripheries. The system of Political Islam in Iran has reached deadlock. The political and social struggles in which the Iranian people have now been plunged might one day lead to the rejection of the very principle of "wilaya al faqih", which places the college of the men of religion above all institutions of the political and civil society. That is the condition for their success.

Political Islam is in fact nothing other than an adaptation to the subordinate status of the compradore capitalism. Its so-called "moderate" form therefore probably constitutes the principal danger threatening the peoples concerned since the violence of the "radicals" only serves to destabilise the State to allow for the installation of a new compradore power. The constant support offered by the pro-American diplomacies of the Triad countries towards finding this "solution" to the problem is absolutely consistent with their desire to impose the globalised liberal order in the service of the dominant capital.

6. The two discourses of the globalised liberal capitalism and Political Islam do not conflict; they are rather complementary. The ideology of American "communitarianisms" being popularised by current fashion overshadows the conscience and social struggles and substitutes for them, so-called collective "identities" that ignore them. This ideology is therefore perfectly manipulated in the strategy of capital domination because it transfers the struggle from the arena of real social contradictions to the imaginary world that is said to be cultural, trans-historical and absolute, whereas Political Islam is precisely a communitarianism".

The diplomacies of the G7 powers, and particularly that of the United States, know what they do in choosing to support Political Islam. They have done so in Afghanistan by describing its Islamists as " freedom fighters" (!) against the horrible dictatorship of communism, which was in fact an enlightened, modernist, national and populist despotism that had the audacity to open schools for girls! They continue to do so from Egypt to Algeria. They know that the power of Political Islam has the virtue - to them - of making the peoples concerned helpless and consequently ensuring their compradorisation without difficulty.

Given its inherent cynicism, the American Establishment knows how to take a second advantage of Political Islam. The "drifts" of the regimes that it inspires - the Talibans for instance - who are not drifts in any way but actually come within the logic of their programmes, can be exploited whenever imperialism finds it expedient to intervene brutally, if necessary. The "savagery" attributed to the peoples who are the first victims of Political Islam is likely to encourage "islamophobia" and that facilitates the acceptance of the perspective of a "global apartheid"- the logical and necessary outcome of an ever-polarising capitalist expansion.

The sole political movements using the label of Islam, which are categorically condemned by the G7 powers, are those involved in anti-imperialist struggles - under the objective circumstances at the local level: Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine. It is not a matter of chance.

3. Political Conflicts and Social Struggles

1. A quick look at the global situation today would easily reveal that nothing has changed: the Mameluke power is still in existence.

The first striking similarity with the past consists in the supreme authority exercised by the military institution in Algeria, Egypt, Syria and Iraq; in some areas, the institution is disciplined and strictly subjected to a respected hierarchy (Egypt) while elsewhere, it is parcelled between many generals permanently engaged in muffled or open contentious rivalry (Algeria). Certainly, the military institution is probably not the firm guarantor of stability that it appears to be. At least, even if the military institution is partly influenced by political Islam, and is by no means immunised against the centrifugal forces that can be fanned by ethnic or religious diversity, the fact remains that this institution was the sole inheritor of the era populist nationalism that spanned the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. It therefore preserves a nationalist tradition that has not quite disappeared. It constitutes the sole reference to in terms of devolution of supreme powers. As nobody took the farcical elections seriously and neither did the disinterested working classes in particular, one president succeeded another peacefully or through a "coup", as it happened at the time of the Sultans, Pashas and Mamelukes, who were always under the threat of being assassinated by their peers.

No doubt, in Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Emirates, it is the monarchical institution, which is itself merged with the Moroccan and Wahabite type of religious institution that directly sees to the transfer of supreme power.

The second striking similarity with the Mameluke autocracy lies in the inter-penetration of the business world and the world of power. It is because, truly speaking, there is no genuine "private sector" and not many autonomous capitalists managing their businesses are assured of the ownership of their enterprises. The Egyptian language coined another term for the new millionaires of the "open economy" (infitah) involved in the new liberal globalisation. There are clarifications on the "private" sector (Khas) - in other words, normal and authentic capitalist business - or on the "personal" sector (firdani), that is, business existing through the complicity of the powers that be. Whenever the private sector exists, it is composed of medium-scale enterprises rather jostled by the economic situation and liberal globalisation. On the other hand, the "personal" sector is the one whose turnover increases annually but is at the same time fraught with the scandal of unequal distribution of income. A well-known example can be found in a famous Egyptian firm run by a multi-billionaire, which snaps up all the State contracts to subcontract them subsequently, regardless of the laws against this practice. Most of the profits accruing from the so-called private economy in the Arab world of the last twenty years therefore appear as a real political rent.

The third similarity consists in the exploitation of the traditional conservative religious legitimacy. It is noticed that the more the Mameluke - compradore power is compromised by its concrete submission to the dominant imperialist interests, the more it aligns itself with the exigencies of the liberal globalisation and the more it tries to compensate for the loss of national legitimacy due to such submission which stiffens its so-called "religious" discourse, thereby generating competition with the rival Islamist movement. That was exactly what the Ottoman and Mameluke ancestors did as they yielded to the imperialist diktats of the previous centuries!

Certainly, the reader will be eager to state that the phenomena described above are not specific to the Arab world. Indonesia constitutes an example of dictatorship of the military-mercantile complex with the religious rhetoric of a striking analogy. Would one therefore be tempted to see in it an impact of the "Islamic culture"? But then why is it that yesterday's China of the warlords and Kuo Ming Tang and today's Philippines present similar examples in several essential respects? It would therefore be finally wiser to see in the religious, cultural, conservative, military-mercantile autocratic model (Mameluke-compradore / rent-holders) the product of "underdevelopment", understood not as a "time lag", a "stage" of development, but as the other side of the polarising global expansion of capital. The latter produces not modernisation (and the subsequent potential democracy) but rather the opposite - modernisation of both autocracy and poverty. Authentic modernisation and democratisation are brought under control by taking a stand against the dominant forces of the global system, not by following in their wake.

2. In any case, in the Arab world, this contemporary resurrection of Mameluke autocracy would not have been imagined a century or even fifty years ago. On the contrary, the page seemed to have been turned for good.

In the first phase, the Arab world - at least its Egyptian and Syrian centres - appeared to have embarked on an authentic bourgeois modernisation process. Mohamed Ali and then the Nahda of the 19th Century seemed to have prepared for that. The Egyptian Revolution of 1919 manifested the first strong expression of that process. It was not by chance that this revolution took place under the closest banner of secularism known in the history of the Arab world, with the proclamation of "Religion is for God", the fatherland for all", and the choice of a flag with crescent and cross. In the Ottoman Empire, the Tanzimat initiated a parallel evolution inherited by the Arab provinces and which they even developed after the Empire's decline. Constitutions, civil codes, "liberal" bourgeois parties and parliamentary elections inspired the hope that the society moved in the right direction despite all their inherent weaknesses and inadequacies. In terms of real economic and social development - which easily found expression in the weakness of the local bourgeoisie vis-à-vis the then imperialists and their local reactionary allies, and the aggravation of the social crisis for that matter - the meagre results ultimately ended this first period of ineffective modernisation of the Arab world.

The second phase was therefore that of the populist nationalism of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. The triumphant Nasserism, Baathism and the Algerian revolution seemed capable of stemming the social crisis through the deployment of a more determined anti-imperialist policy (promoted with Soviet support) and active economic and social development policies. This page is turned, for reasons that are not analysed here, which include the system's internal contradictions and restrictions and the reversal of the global economic and political situations.

At this time resurfaced the pre-modern autocratic State while the society was no longer comparable in any way to the one that existed a century or even half-century ago.

The social crisis today is incomparably more acute than it used to be a century or half-century ago. It is not that the society is "poorer" on the whole. On the contrary, the progression is indisputable in terms of average real income. It is not that wealth in this entity is distributed more inequitably than it used to be. On the other hand, the key reality concerning changes in this domain consists in the expansion of the middle classes in Egypt in fifty years: from 5% to 15% for the country's upper class population and 10% to 30% for all the constituent social groups (according to Galal Amin). At any rate, the modernisation in question has also been that of poverty.

The intensity of the crisis is commensurate with the urbanisation of the Arab world, which constitutes its key indicator. More than half of the Arab population is now urbanised. However, this massive transfer is not the outcome of a two-sided agricultural and industrial revolution, more or less similar to the one that built the developed capitalist West or the Soviet world and which contemporary China has embraced for half a century. It is rather the result of the absence of both agricultural revolution and industrial revolution. The growing rural misery is simply transferred to urban areas that modern industries and activities cannot absorb. The structure of social classes and categories in which this crisis found expression no longer has anything to do with that of the Arab world a century or fifty years ago. The crisis is therefore expressed through the one marking the forms of political life, ideologies and organisations, forms of social struggles.

The page of populist nationalism turned, the discredited single party system gave way to the explosion of the multiparty system, which the world media hastened to acknowledge as the beginning of a democratic development naturally and obviously promoted by the opening onto markets as envisaged by the vulgate in fashion.

The paradox here is that this explosion of the multiparty system was accompanied by a prodigious regression to the Mameluke type of autocracy.

3. Nasserism "had nationalised politics" (actually placed politics under State control) as purported in Egypt; that is, it had used violent repression to suppress the two poles between which the active political forces and public opinion were divided - the bourgeois liberal pole and the communist pole. By this means too was created an ideological vacuum that Islam had to fill gradually in the Nasserian era, and violently as from 1970. The influence of the religious institution encouraged by Nasser's modernisation of Al Azhar, did penetrate the expanding middle classes, key beneficiaries of the populism that dawned with improved education and employment. Apparently domesticated, Al Azhar did not manifest any disturbing signs to the regime; that was the time when its "fatwa" justified "socialism". The Muslim Brothers, who some time thought of imposing their presence in the regime, opposed a repression that always proved to be wavering in their regard, as many Free Officers had been closely associated. Whereas they were formally dissolved, these entities continued to be tolerated through the "religious associations" that progressively infiltrated the State machinery, particularly the education, legal and media sector.

When Sadat decided to turn to the right after Nasser's death in 1970, the stage was set to place political Islam abruptly in the limelight with the support of Gulf oil money and the open support of American diplomacy. The price lay in the "opening" (infitah) initiated by Nasser after the 1967 defeat, that prepared the ground for reintegration into the global capitalist system, the break with the Soviet alliance and finally, the trip to Jerusalem (1977) and subsequently, the Madrid-Oslo process (1993).

All the same, it still took ten years for the law to establish (in 1979), a "granted" multiparty system initially limited to the three "tribunes" of the defunct so-called Socialist Union of the left, centre and right. The unchanged constitution vests the President with powers that place him above the Legislature, the Executive and the Judiciary. The new democracy granted and controlled ("elections" must guarantee the perpetuation of the power of the President approved by the military institution), was negotiated with the United States, that gave the President its blessing (as per the 1991 Agreement between the Government of Egypt and USAID!), thereby making it possible for Washington to issue a certificate of democracy to the Egyptian Government.

One cannot therefore have several illusions about the "political parties" arising from such combinations. The Democratic National Union does not have a greater existence than the Socialist Union, which it inherited. The latter did not even enjoy the historic legitimacy of the Communist Party models (of USSR, China or Vietnam) of which it constituted a caricature. Before enduring the deteriorating effect of their solitary exercise of power, the Communist Parties in question organised real revolutions. In contrast, the Egyptian Socialist Union was never but a mere collection of opportunists without much conviction, which was convenient for the enlightened despot. The self-dissolution of the Egyptian communist organisation in 1965, which was obtained not without reluctance on the part of many militants, did not bring about any considerable improvement in the system since the government had taken rigorous measures to forestall the materialisation of this "threat" (to it).

Among the new political parties, Tagammu, which tried to rally the Nasserian Leftists, and inheritors of the Egyptian Communism, suffered the defection of the Nasserians.
Nostalgic of the past, and apparently lacking the capacity to understand the nature of the new challenges, the old Nasserians contented themselves with the rhetoric of the Arab nationalist discourse (qawmi) and therefore initiated a process of reconciliation with the Islamists who were also very fond of simple rhetoric. At any rate, Tagammu will remain a hope for the revival of a political debate worthy of its name, provided it succeeds in mobilising the militant traditions it has so far been trying to benumb.

The Labour Party organised by Adel Hussein (died in 2001), who was succeeded by a member of his family, had to mobilise the Islamist discourse with greater apprehension, in presenting himself as the rival to the traditional leaders of the Muslim Brotherhoods.

Hitherto, the Egyptian parties' political democracy therefore did not go beyond a bottled-up campaign. Renouncing any form of action - which the regime formally prohibited - and content themselves with discourses, these parties did not present themselves as a real alternative to the ruling power. They did not develop credible alternative programmes but rather took to criticising government action intermittently.

The resultant drift occasioned by this political vacuum did contribute to the reaffirmation of the Mameluke autocratic tradition. The most disturbing demonstration of this drift unexpectedly found expression in during the last parliamentary elections (1999): a crowd of so-called "independent" candidates exploited the possibilities that this situation offered to them. They were not opponents, even disguised, but rather candidates for this class of "entrepreneurs - fund holders supported by the State" (typical of the Mameluke system) who often managed to form a group of lobbyists sufficient to "win" the election amidst the indifference of the majority of the population. The term "baltagui", which the Egyptian people gave them immediately, aptly expressed what they were - since the term slightly reflected what its translation as "loutish - band leaders" could inspire. The liberal "academics" - Americans among others - who hailed the expression "birth of a bourgeoisie of entrepreneurs" probably misleads the ignorant external opinion and not the Egyptian people.

Under these circumstances, the sole force that presents itself as an alternative to the real power - that of the military institution - is represented by the Muslim Brotherhood. However, the latter have no other project than that of an autocratic power of the same nature, in which the religious institution would take the place of that of the military. In that context, the Muslim Brotherhood is not similar to the Christian-Democrats Party, even though people sometimes try to make them appear as such. As for the rest - adhering to the globalised liberalism and local money-oriented compradore economy - there is no difference. That is the reason why the diplomacy of Washington actually sees in them an alternative solution, if necessary.

Nasser's regime was one of a planned project of an enlightened despot. The regime's socio-economic project was a real one that was implemented with determination. That is why, in spite of its dictatorial and police behaviour, the regime had to take - and did take - into account the social forces who expressed themselves through workers' unions, student movements, professional associations, rural co-operatives, the media and intellectuals. Moreover, Nasser's political language had a name for these agencies - marakez quwa (power centres) - and this testified to the acknowledgement of the fact.

In Egypt, there are 25,000 union committees (which still exist) integrated into 23 unions that formed a single confederation of trade unions (General Workers' Union of Egypt) during the Nasser's regime. This body rallied between 3 and 4 million real members (probably small, in comparison with the 15 to 17 million wage earners, but already considerable, as the number included almost all the salaried employees of the modern enterprises). Nasserism had given them real powers, not to participate in the running of enterprises (these powers were mere façade) but rather to manage workforce (tenure, etc.) and living conditions (housing, consumer co-operatives, etc.). Having renounced "class struggles", the working class was compensated with improved material living conditions. However, the militant spirit and Communist influence continued to exist at the grassroots (in the 25,000 local committees) even though the regime took steps to gain effective control over the unions by appointing loyal agents to managerial positions at national level. This explains the low permeability of the working class that hitherto clamoured for Political Islam.

What is the situation today? First, the emigration openly promoted as from 1970, certainly weakened the militant force. Why fight to obtain at best a meagre salary increase if one could achieve more by working for a few months in the Gulf States, in Libya or in Iraq? As usual, emigration encouraged the search for individual solutions and weakened the collective fight. Now that emigration is stemmed, are there any signs of a possible recourse to the Egyptian tradition of collective solutions? The new laws deregulating the labour market in turn weakened the unions, thereby paving the way for wholesale unemployment. This policy, which generated poverty that people were allegedly willing to fight, has so far not appealed to the champions of democracy among the authorities of the globalised system!

Many indices indicate a resumption of the struggles. The actions, often violent, are henceforth to be counted in thousands and no longer in hundreds but these will always be scattered. In 1998, seventy strike actions took place in the largest enterprises of the country. The forceful intervention by the special security forces in each of these strikes was difficult to conceal. Some modest victories were recorded here and there. Very little is said about such events. The political parties are silent about their subject. Nobody - of course not even the Islamists - wants to take the risk of being credited with such struggles. The working class struggles remain isolated but are neither unknown nor unpopular.

In the rural areas, Nasserism operated through some fifteen thousand input purchasing and consumer co-operatives. Although dependent on the fractions of the middle peasantry and mostly influenced by its rich components, these co-operatives were not chambers for recording decisions taken by the Minister of Agriculture, as purported too often, but rather partners whose views were taken into account. That made it possible to avoid conflicts and marginalise the poor classes among the peasantry.

The new liberal policy - suppression of subsidies, credit liberalisation and the increase of interest rates from 5% to 14%, threefold increase in the rates of ground rent and finally the liberalisation of relations between land-owners and tenants (the rights of tenants were guaranteed until then by the renewal of leases) - broke up the co-operative movement, enabled the rich peasantry to get richer while the middle classes became more impoverished. The frequent but isolated acts of violence that accompanied this change of direction did not prevent the implementation of the liberalisation process. In 1993, Tagammu did attempt to establish a new "Peasants Union". However, it retracted against harassment by the administrative authorities. That did not prevent the protest movement of the majority of tenants from assuming an unexpected dimension in 1998. Nevertheless, the Government made manoeuvres, granted concessions to some parties at the expense of others and neutralised the movement (provisionally?) with these tactics.

In taking a stand openly in favour of owners in the name of the sacrosanct right to property, did the Muslim Brotherhood "miss" the opportunity to mobilise in their favour this rural community perpetually sensitive to the religious discourse? In fact, the Muslim Brotherhood knew what they were doing. They deliberately aligned themselves with the rural rich, just as they did with the urban compradores, since they were primarily concerned about preserving their image as the valid intermediary for the dominant capital and American diplomacy. Their discourse appealed to only the middle classes (as will be seen through the efforts they made in the professional associations), by assigning "radical" Islamic organisations (Islamic Jihad and others), to recruit their henchmen among the poor middle classes and the lumpen proletariat. In avoiding attempts to defend or condemn these organisations, the Muslim Brotherhood knew that the State destabilisation operations conducted by these organisations objectively strengthened them, in their capacity as candidates for the "changeover". The Muslim Brotherhood continues to convince their interlocutors that they alone - in power- would be able to put an end to the "terrorist" transgressions.

The discourse and action of Political Islam therefore target the middle classes as a matter of priority. The latter's expansion enhanced the organisations' exceptional influence in the political life of the country. There are twenty-three big professional associations (lawyers, doctors, journalists, engineers, pharmacists, teachers, etc.) with hundreds of thousands of members and a large number of networks of local agencies. Nasserism controlled without much difficulty these entities that pre-eminently constitute the mass of principal beneficiaries of the populist socio-economic growth.

The social crisis fomented by the liberal economic option offered Political Islam the opportunity to assume leadership of many of these associations, all the more so as these associations have traditionally been one of the places for increased verbal polarisation on account of the lack of general debate among the parties. In 1993, the State reacted by taking legislative provisions that enabled it to bring the hostile associations again under control. Demagogic to some extent, the official discourse emphasises the fact that the associations are "politicised" at the expense of their concentration on defending the real interests of the professions, which is true. It remains to be known whether the actual defence of these interests did not in turn conflict with the liberal policies of the State! That could be the starting point for a promising militant action in favour of the Egyptian Leftists.

The outburst of community life, which will be discussed later, offered the opportunity for the formation of new "businessmen" associations. The ancient "Industrial and Commercial Society dispersed by Nasser, and the Chambers of Commerce having lost their functions during the planning period, the new businessmen associations filled a real gap. There is much talk about them and they are presented as the proof of the vitality of capitalism, etc. The reality is very different, for it concerned only a clique of "political rent seekers". However, their impact in real life is far from being negligible. They are understood as "sages" and sometimes they even succeeded in having their points of view adopted (policies guaranteeing their private income) against some recalcitrant ministers.

The student movement had traditionally played a leading role in Egypt, in the Arab world as well as in the Third World as a whole. It was the forum for a dominant Communist influence for decades. Even during the glorious period of Nasserism, when this system was accorded prestige and respect, the Nasserian students themselves were identified with the left wing of the regime. They belonged to those who were mobilised after the 1967 defeat to advocate radicalisation of the regime while Nasser himself chose, on the contrary, to make concessions to the right by initiating the "Infitah".

There is no longer any student movement. This evolution witnessed nearly all over the contemporary Third World certainly has complex reasons, which have not been adequately examined to date. The tremendous expansion of the middle classes, which is the outcome of the wave of post-war national liberation struggles, as well as the population and number of universities, actually has its share of responsibility in this depoliticisation process. However, this process was often aided by the authorities' option for systematic repression. That is the case of Egypt. Before and after Nasser, the Government deliberately supported the establishment of the Muslim Brotherhood in the University so as to prevent Communism, through substantial external funding (by sources in the Gulf States). Moreover, Nasser's "modernisation" of the Azhar University considerably broadened the spectrum opened to the teachings of obscurantists who have their share of responsibility for the drift. The fact remains that the University still plunges into a state of unrest from time to time, but henceforth, exclusively in matters concerning the Palestinian question, (support of the two successive intifadas) and there is no longer any mobilisation for criticisms against the liberal economic and social policies. The aggravation of the social crisis, the worsening situation of middle classes and decline of outlets for graduates have reinforced the instinct for survival, all the more so as the deteriorating quality of education henceforth compromises the analytic potential that the youths had previously. The penetration of Islam is the outcome rather than the cause of this drift.

The worlds of the Press, intellectuals and artists (especially film-makers), writers (poets and novelists) have always been present and active on the Egyptian political scene. In the Nasserian era, Al Ahram, the institution then headed by Hassanein Heykal, was considered as one of the "power centres" that enjoyed a certain dose of tolerance vis-à-vis the enlightened despot. In spite of the high quality maintained by Al Ahram, its newspaper (a 125-year old daily comparable to the world's leading newspapers in terms of quality), and its think tanks these media currently have insignificant influence in the Egyptian society. The mass media - especially the television organisations - are henceforth vying for monopoly of the empty official discourse and an Islamist propaganda equally mediocre and obscurantist. The few "independent" television channels (Nile TV) operate a self-censorship that annihilates its potential scope - those of all the Arab countries are no better, with the exception of Lebanon's copious network of political television channels. Qatar's new television outfit (Al Khaleej) owes its success to its hosting of lively debates, even though this medium's channels are carefully closed to any leftist radical criticism. The suspicion that it may be the agent of identified evil forces poses a problem. Egypt still boasts a quality film industry, even if large-scale commercial production often obscures its existence. Literature - Egypt is a country of novelists - most of them being of considerable merit - also has substantial cultural and political influence. Cinema and novels constitute the mainstay of the survival of Egypt's analytical political culture.

Lack of democratic management reflected in virtually all forms of political and social organisations - parties, workers' unions, professional organisations (and in the new developing community life, as will be seen later) is a major negative feature of Egypt, and perhaps of other Arab countries. These institutions have more quasi-irremovable "historic heads" than militants.

To complete this picture of struggles, it is worth pointing to the increasing emergence of new forms of struggles by the poorest classes that are barely noticeable because isolated from the visible organisations. The world of street vendors, car park attendants and squatters is no longer an "unorganised informal sector". Initially combated for infringing formal rules and regulations, the poor social classes finally asserted themselves - through collective actions - and made their claims heard to such an extent that the State renounced the initially scheduled destruction of shanty towns in Cairo, which it replaced with development projects (water supply, road works, etc.).

4. This picture of politics and social struggles in Egypt cannot be generalised to cover the entire Arab world without considering the real conditions and historical origins varying from country to country, even though a few similar trends could generally be identified.

Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Algeria share in common, the fact that, in the course of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s decades, they carried out a set of populist and nationalist experiments very similar to one another in their essential structures.

In Syria and Iraq, the Baathist Party initiated these experiments. Unlike Egypt, whose evolution in this perspective had been triggered off by the Free Officers' military coup d'état, without any partisan preparation, the Bath remained the central pole for the political organisation of Syria and Iraq (whereas the Socialist Union of Egypt never really existed). The military nature of the Syrian and Iraqi regimes led to an infiltration of armies by the Baath (or its segments). In Egypt, Nasser gradually imposed the populist option against the majority of leaders from among the Free Officers - rather reactionary - but these conflicts at the summit were not transferred at any time into the army, which remained disciplined. There is only one Pharaoh in Egypt, just as there is only one Emperor in China. Thus, the system prevailing in the Baathist model is rather of the nature of a Baathist-military-mercantile autocratic complex in which the rhetoric of Baathism (Arabism initially) fulfilled functions similar to that of the religious discourse elsewhere. The conflict between this model of autocratic power and political Islam therefore assumed more violent dimensions whereas in Egypt the inter-penetration of the two forces at play in the post-Nasserian system operated differently.

Since the Baathist model initially had at least a real partisan base, it consequently became "more efficient" in its dictatorial practices: bringing to heel the dissident political organisations (just as was done to at least some of the Syrian and Iraqi Communists), destroying opponents (bourgeois liberals, non-compliant Communists, Muslim Brotherhood), absolutely subjugating the social organisations (by suppressing all activities at grassroots level, in the workers' unions for instance), whereas in Egypt, the regime had to make do with them). The system's weaknesses are attributed to other equally objective factors, particularly, specific regional characteristics and the ethnic and religious diversity of the two countries. This diversity was managed in a dubious manner, to say the least, if not unskilfully, in any case, without giving a single thought to the principles of democracy. The supreme leaders' personal qualities and flaws were therefore instrumental and became a determining factor. A typical example was Hafez El Assad, a patient, diplomatic and intelligent leader in Syria, who incidentally had direct confrontation with Israeli expansionism, of which he managed to contain the strategic ambitions through firm resistance without falling into the illusions of "negotiated solutions" under the guidance of American diplomacy. As regards Iraq, a series of murderous military officers - from Abdel Salam Aref to Saddam Hussein - led their country to the tragic impasse in which it finds itself today.

The initial populism has faded away. The military-mercantile complex has embarked on an "infitah", unconfirmed but visible in the eyes of the public opinion, and worthy of recognition in one way or another. The legitimacy and credibility of the original vision of society and of the attendant Pan-Arab discourse are therefore considerably eroded. The political and social struggles are resurfacing actively. The fact that a thousand Syrian intellectuals signed a petition pressing for democracy, without facing repression (a novelty) probably foreshadows the starting point.

Algeria had a different history. Here, the national liberation struggle assumed another dimension under the leadership of the National Liberation Front (FLN), an authentic and powerful party comparable, at this level, to the Communist Parties of China or Vietnam even if it was distinguished by its ideology (actually limited to the national claim), its vision of society (or rather the absence of the latter) and therefore by the social content of the resultant power. Similarly, it can be said that, national awareness in Algeria has been the result of this struggle and that the Algerian Nation and FLN have therefore become synonymous.

The tragedy stemmed from the rapid substitution of FLN with ALN (the Army, a border unit that had not been the mainspring of the FLN struggle) right from July 1962, or probably earlier, and subsequently at the time of Boumediene. Hoisted at the summits of power, the exclusive centre for final decisions, the Army destroyed the legitimacy and credibility of the FLN. The Algerian populism did not outlive Boumediene. In choosing Chadli to succeed Boumediene, the Army ceased to be unified and disciplined, as each of its Generals grabbed a segment of the military-mercantile powers - the Mameluke way. Algeria entered into a period of turbulence, serious political conflicts and repeated social struggles that simultaneously produced the worst (the reality to date) but also the best possible results (without that being the outcome of a fake and groundless optimism).

It is because the Algerian people aspire to political and social democracy probably more than any other Arab people. This aspiration certainly dates back to the colonial era, to the ambiguity of its discourse and to the forms of resistance it generated. Not even the FLN populism of the glorious era of Boumediene's short reign could really curtail such an aspiration. The Algerian Charter of 1964 (true copy of the Nasserian model promulgated in 1961), which was revised in 1976, asserted a few major principles aimed at merging social interests, which were not being granted recognition because of their alleged conflicting nature.

In reality therefore, other "power centres" had to be recognised (in the Egyptian fashion). The first comprised workers' unions, which were important, active and demanding (at least at the grassroots level) with rebellious militants in the bureaucratically imposed departments. Improperly subjected to the FLN, they became active during the last few years: now, thousands of strike actions and "incidents" are recorded each year. On the other hand, the peasantry brutalised and altogether destroyed by colonisation and the liberation war, could not assert itself as an autonomous force, in spite of the hopes initially placed in the "self-management" of domains recovered from colonisation in the 1960s. That is why the "agrarian revolution" proclaimed by Boumediene was a binding official order that did not depend on the support of any peasant movement. It was later smashed silently, in the same way as it was "made". Otherwise, the peasant question found expression in the ethnic diversity - through perpetuation of the Berber phenomenon. But here too, the deplorable management of this real diversity as part of a poorly designed Arabisation policy, and the constant negation of the problem in the tradition of autocratic powers, produced no results other than making the problem explode through many crises.

Another explosion that foreshadowed crisis took place in 1988 in the form of an action taken by the low-class urban population and particularly its marginalised youths without any future, whose more than deplorable conditions worsened as the new liberal policies abolished the vestiges of the social populism. It was therefore not a revolt of the "working class", neither a "peasant rebellion" nor a movement of middle classes and intellectuals demanding political democracy, but actually an explosion of new categories of victims of contemporary capitalism, people without any tradition of organisation and without any ideological culture.

It is therefore understandable if this outburst, which imposed the recourse to elections (1992), obviously ended in deadlock. For one thing, patrons of the "Islamist movement" were intelligent enough to understand that they had all their chances in the process. A furious electorate chose to say "no" to the ruling authority, by saying "yes" to the Islamists, who therefore presented themselves as the sole visible alternative. Fortunately, since the ruling authority opted to fight back but proved incapable of re-forming or had no intention of doing so. Therefore Algeria landed in the infernal cycle created by two opposing accomplices who wanted to ensure that the sole option left for the people be "them" or "us". There is no need to say more about the assassinations for which the Islamists claimed responsibility, particularly, those perpetrated against journalists, teachers and democratic artists - personalities who could constitute the third and sole valid choice. There is no need to recall that the massacre of villagers in Mitidja enabled agri-business speculators to "buy up" the best lands of the country at zero prices. Unlike the writings of several foreign analysts, it is Yasmina Khadra's novels that give a better insight into the nature of the logic dictating the option for Political Islam.

However, the 1988 explosion created a shock such that right from 1989, the law authorised reforms in the country's political life. Fifty political parties, 55,000 associations were registered. What is looming on the horizon, beyond the figures that astonish observers, lies in both range of aspirations to political and social democracy and the objective possibility of their crystallising around a "third force" that is potentially the most powerful. That phenomenon has not materialised to date for reasons that are difficult to accept - personal conflict between resurrected "historic leaders". The proliferation of associations actually engaged in the fight for democracy and social reforms - in defence of human rights, against torture and deliberate killings, for revision of the family law, for cultural rights of the Berber people, etc., do not constitute an alternative to the fundamental shortage of leaders. Not more that the increasing working class struggles pointed out earlier on.

Unfortunately, what is lacking is a unified tribune from which an alternative could be developed in all of its dimensions: defining an authentic economic and social development policy (that will not be a pure rhetoric or the expression of a populist nostalgia), defining a new citizenship, a specific code of democratic rights, defining a modern nationality, at the same time Arab and respectful of the Berber reality, defining terms of compromises between the conflicting interests of the social classes and groups, defining the role of the State and linkages with the global system. That is a lot to do.

For its part, Sudan presents two major contradictions, which have not found a solution - and will not find any - through the acts of violence perpetrated for half a century. The Political Islam - in power here - has proved in turn that it was incapable of finding a solution.

The first of these contradictions oppose the rural world of the Arab-Islamic North to its urban counterpart. Sudan's rural areas are closely managed by two Brotherhoods - the Ansar and the Khatmia - based on a dominant model in the African Sahel from Senegal to the Red Sea.

The two major political parties (Mahdists and National Democratic Party), which are closely linked to frontiers of the brotherhoods (and constitute the historical Islam really existing in Sudan) are therefore assured of their victory in any election, even though they obviously have no programme apart from the one aimed at managing the society as it is. On the contrary, the urban sector is surprisingly developed: there are powerful workers' unions (particularly that of the Railways Sector, which is vital to this vast country), a vanguard students' union, professional organisations comprising active and democratic middle classes (an exception or almost unique in the Arab world), blossoming community life involving women's movements, the strong ideological influence of the Communist Party.

This contradiction is insoluble, for it commands the changeover from military dictatorships, behind which are rallied the two Brotherhoods, amidst popular democratic demonstrations provisionally terminating the existing system.

The second contradiction in Sudan opposes 30 million inhabitants of the Arab-Muslim North to the religiously different South (with between a quarter and one-third of the population). Sudanese Governments are unable to consider managing this contradiction otherwise, except through constant war, whereas it is not difficult to think up a solution based on democracy, local autonomy and recognition of diversity. At any rate, this solution is advocated by all the democratic forces of the North, particularly, the Communist Party, and is even implemented by these forces for very short periods (never exceeding a few months) in places where they wield power, only to be called into question by reactionary forces ever ready to use violence in toppling down the former group. This solution is also recommended by political forces of the South, whose army - under John Garang - is designated as the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army (without reference to secession), not by chance. The intrusion of Political Islam has been the outcome of weariness due to repeated failures, massive injection of Saudi financial resources (channelled through a powerful mercantile class that is itself affiliated to the brotherhoods), and the tactical genius of a very ambitious power-hungry religious fanatic (Hassan Tourabi). In concluding an alliance directly with the military dictatorship (of Numeiri, and of Bechir subsequently) while short-circuiting the Brotherhoods, Tourabi dreamt (or, while seeking in reality to entrench his power, pretended to be dreaming) about "purging" and "wahabising" the country's political Islam (hence, the support enlisted from Saudi Arabia).

The resources used by the military-Islamic dictatorship were therefore meant to be "modern" and to put an end to the "toleration" of the historic brotherhood Islam. This explains the series of harsh laws prohibiting free union activity (1992), subjugating community life (especially the blossoming of associations in charge of humanitarian relief operations in this country plagued with war and famine - the Law of 1995), gagging the Press (Law of 1996) etc. The fact remains that all the attempts made to substitute a network of new "modern" institutions - controlled by Tourabi's personal power - for the prohibited democratic organisations produced no result, strictly speaking. The few "NGOs" that appeared to survive the massacre have integrally been retrieved by the brotherhoods!

Obviously, the regime's economic and social action could only end in disaster: totally subjected to the logic of globalised liberalism, to the extent of caricaturing the political racketeering of the military-Islamic-mercantile clans, the Political Islam in power in Sudan only contributed to a gruesome aggravation of all the problems.

The regime adopted just a "casual attitude" towards this drift by allowing the South war to peter out, by allowing all the western provinces (Kordofan, Dar Four) - mainly Muslim - and the Eastern Provinces (Kassala) to be governed by way of semi-secession. The regime's main concern has been to keep up appearances by remaining masters of the street in the capital and in the immediate neighbourhoods. Its principal achievement therefore consisted in creating the so-called "peoples defence" and "student security" networks recruited among the lumpen, to terrorise people, and nothing more, in the Iranian Pasdaran fashion.

The Achilles' heel of the system is its total absence from any form of legitimacy allowing for political succession. An Islamic power in Sudan other than the Brotherhoods will have much difficulty taking roots in Sudan, unlike Iran, where the "wilaya al faqih" is supported by a real national Church (Chiite in this case) established as an institution dominating the State, in contrast to Saudi Arabia, whose monarchy links up tribal legitimacy and that of the Wahabite version of Islam (or Morocco, whose monarchy is both national and religious in character).

The democratic opposition is not dead. It has survived all the brutalities of Political Islam. However, virtually all of its directorates have been compelled to go into exile in Egypt, which hosts the National Democratic Alliance of Sudan, created in Asmara in 1995 from the merger of all the parties and organisations prohibited in Sudan. Egypt, which has never thought of treating Sudanese nationals as aliens, has therefore received an indefinite number of emigrants estimated at two million at least (the majority being ordinary workers obviously fleeing their country's declining economic life). At any rate, the potentially powerful front has no programme enabling it to co-ordinate struggles - which remain isolated, but frequent in the country - and strengthen their capacity to crystallise into an alternative.

Based on a twofold national and religious legitimacy, the Moroccan monarchy encouraged guaranteed democratic breakthroughs so long as they pleased the King. Moreover, such initiatives have the advantage of not threatening the local dominant classes or the global system. However, it must not be forgotten that the growing contradiction between hopes nurtured by these positive developments on the one hand and the symptoms of social crisis, which the system of options associated with the democracy in question does not even make it possible to attenuate, on the other hand, may cause a violent explosion one day.

Whereas elsewhere - in Egypt, Tunisia and Iraq for example - national liberation struggles were compelled to distance themselves from or even to oppose the local monarchies, in Morocco, things were different. Istiqlal - the movement's conservative wing - which dominated the political scene for a long time and never became negligible even subsequently, intended to do nothing more than restoring Morocco's sovereignty and monarchy. The modernist wing itself was compelled to hush up its possible points of view on the question of monarchy. At any rate, this modernist wing had many bases in the country. These included powerful workers' unions that remained so, despite the erosive effects of economic liberalisation and unemployment, and even managed to safeguard their autonomy not only vis-à-vis the State (which never sought to subjugate them - since it was not a populist State!) but also vis-à-vis its political allies and defenders (UNFP, which became USFP, and the Communist Party, now PPS), the growing middle class itself, which aspires to attain portions of the power monopolised by the Maghzen (the Court).and the peripheral business bourgeoisie groups, which were themselves excluded from the Maghzen.

The phases of graduated concessions made by the Monarchy to these forces are well known: from the first parliamentary elections of 1963 to the constitutional amendments of 1962 and 1996, from the first "democratic" experiences (that is, in accepting that the government emerged from relatively fair elections) to the one that brought USFP and its leader, Abdel Rahman Youssofi, into the government in 1998, it is said that the system is developing into a parliamentary monarchy, which will preserve its religious aura. But, after all, the Queen of England is actually the head of the Anglican Church, is that not so?

The Moroccan authority therefore has no serious political problems. The Moroccan middle classes have no "problem of identity", unlike the case of neighbouring Algeria. By the way, the Moroccan system has managed the cultural-ethnic diversity without provoking cleavages in the Nation, according to the traditional principle of duality between the Maghzen (urban areas and neighbouring countryside)/ Bled Siba (distant countryside, the majority being of the Berber stock), while the King renews tribal allegiance without ever touching the autonomy of the local chieftainships. In taking the initiative to promote Amazigi culture and language, the Moroccan system never considered that there could be a contradiction between Arabity, Islam and the Berber reality. Political Islam, which is trying to make a breakthrough here, just as it did elsewhere, is confronted with a Maghzen religious legitimacy, which it has been unable to call into question to date, at the very least.

On the other hand, however, the ruling power is confronted with social problems that are assuming increasingly serious dimensions, as none of the country's successive governments, not even those that can rightly boast about democratic legitimacy, ever tried to get out of the rut of globalised liberalism. It is therefore not by chance if here too, the repeated explosions are the work of the urban poor, the new class of victims of modern capitalism _ explosions contained or repressed with violence amidst the silence of the leading democratic forces. But up till when?

Does the outburst of the forms of community life itself offer the possibility of bringing about a renewed inventive democratic process? We shall come back to this subject.

4. Geostrategy, Arab Unity and Palestinian Intifadas

1. By virtue of its extraordinary oil wealth, which is vital to the economy of the dominant triad (United States, Europe and Japan), the Middle East has always occupied and continues to occupy a special position in world geopolitics and in the hegemonic military geo-strategy of the United States of America. Moreover, its geographic position along the southern side of USSR enhanced its importance during the Cold War era. This trend was taken over - after the collapse of the Soviet regime - by the important oil resources of the ex-Soviet Caucasus and Central Asia, a region that, above all, is mainly composed of Muslim countries, where there is constant conflict between the diplomacies of Washington and Moscow.

In the American geo-military configuration of the whole world, the region represented and continues to represent a zone considered as a top priority (like the Caribbean), in other words, an area where the United States have assumed the "right" of military intervention. At any rate, the United States did so during the Gulf War (1990) and took advantage of that intervention to place the countries concerned under its permanent military protection.

The United States of America operates in the Middle East in collaboration with Turkey and Israel - its two unconditional supporters. Europe has kept out of the region, accepting that the United States alone defends the overall interests of the Triad, that is to say, its oil supply. In spite of some signs of irritation, the Europeans continue to operate in the region behind Washington.

The Arab national populism project did not accept this situation since its ambition was to impose recognition of the independence of the Arab world by the Super Powers. That was the meaning of the "non-alignment", as supported by the Soviets. The page of this epoch now turned, the Arab world currently has no specific vision of its position in the new global system. That is the reason why the "projects" concerning the organisation of the region are designed elsewhere.

Here too, the United States had taken the initiative in putting forward a strange-looking "Middle East Common Market" project in which the Gulf countries would have invested capital while the other Arab countries provided cheap labour and Israel assisted with technological monitoring in addition to assuming the functions of the inevitable intermediary. It was then that Europe tried to react by formulating in turn the "Euro-Mediterranean Partnership" project also integrating Israel into the plan but excluding the Gulf countries and thus recognising that their "management" was the exclusive responsibility of Washington.

These geo-political dimensions cannot be ignored in the debate on political and social struggles. Having analysed them in detail in other documents, we will only recall their significance here.

Israel's colonial expansionism poses a real challenge and is not the fruit of the imaginative world of Arabs. Israel is the only country in the world that refuses to recognise any established borders (and hence should not have the right to be a member of the United Nations). Like the 19th Century United States of America, Israel thinks it has the right to conquer new areas for the expansion of its colonisation and to treat the people who have been living there for two thousand years - if not more - like Redskins to be hunted or exterminated. Israel is the only country that openly declared that it did not feel bound to the United Nations resolutions.

The 1967 war, which was planned in agreement with Washington right from 1965, pursued several objectives: start working for the decline of the populist nationalist regimes, break up the alliance with the Soviet Union, compel them to reposition themselves and follow the footsteps of America and open up new lands for Zionist colonisation. In the territories conquered in 1967, Israel therefore instituted an apartheid system inspired by that of South Africa. Whenever it is accused of racism - which is absolutely obvious - Zionism responds, as usual, by systematically blackmailing with anti-Semitism and exploitation of the "Holocaust industry". To carry on with its project, Israel therefore requires an Arab world weakened as much as possible at all levels.

It is here that the interests of the globally dominant capital tally with those of Zionism. For one thing, the logic of carrying on with the project of the really existing capitalism has always resulted in and still contributes to polarisation on the world scale. The "development" of any Third World region - in this case, the Arab region - conflicts with that of the global expansion of the really existing capitalism. On the other hand, a modernised, rich and powerful Arab world would call into question the western countries' guaranteed permit to plunder its oil resources as a necessity for the continued wastage associated with capitalist accumulation. Political authorities in the Triad countries do not want a modernised and powerful Arab world because, by their typical nature, these countries are faithful servants of the dominant trans-national capital.

The alliance between the western powers and Israel is therefore built on the solid foundation of their common interests. This alliance is neither the product of a feeling of culpability on the part of the Europeans, who were responsible for anti-Semitism and the Nazi crime, nor that of the "Jewish lobby's" skill in exploiting this sentiment. Had the western powers felt that Zionist colonial expansionism did not serve their interests, they would quickly found ways to overcome their "complex" and "neutralise" the "Jewish lobby". I have no doubts about that, for I am not one of those who naively think that public opinion imposes its views on authorities in the typically democratic countries. Everybody knows that public opinion "is fabricated"; hence, Israel would be unable to resist for more than a couple of days if measures (even if moderate) involving a blockade were taken against it, just as the western powers did to Yugoslavia, Iraq and Cuba. It would therefore not be difficult to bring Israel to its senses and create conditions for genuine peace, if the Western powers wanted it. It but they do not want that.

Arab public opinion is not well equipped to understand the nature of the links of complementary linkage between the Zionist project and that of the general expansion of capitalism - the foundation of their convergence. In this case, Arab public opinion is the victim of the limited scope of the populist nationalist thought whose foundations it has so far been unable to criticise, let alone to transcend.

After the defeat in 1967, Sadat declared that, since the United States had "90% of the cards" in their game (that was his actual expression), it was necessary to break with USSR and join the western camp and that, in doing so, Washington could be induced to exert sufficient pressure on Israel and thus bring the latter to its senses. Even beyond this "strategic idea" specific to Sadat - which later developments proved to be flimsy - the Arab public opinion remained altogether unable to realise the global process of capitalist expansion, let alone to identify in it the real contradictions and weaknesses. Is it not alleged and repeated that the "Westerners will finally realise that their actual interest lies in maintaining sound relations with the two hundred million Arabs - their immediate neighbours - and not in sacrificing such relations for the unconditional support of Israel"? It implies thinking that the "Westerners" concerned (that is to say the dominant capital) wished for a modernised and developed Arab world; it also implies not realising that the westerners, who rather want to make the Arab world powerless, consider it expedient to support Israel.

The option made by the Arab governments - apart from Syria and Lebanon - which made them subscribe to the American plan for the so-called "lasting peace" through the Madrid and Oslo negotiations (1993), could not produce any results other than those that it generated: encouraging Israel to carry on with its expansionist project. By openly rejecting the terms of the "Oslo Agreement" today, Ariel Sharon is displaying just what should have been realised much earlier - the fact that it had nothing to do with a "lasting peace" but was rather a question of opening a new phase for Zionist colonial expansion.

The permanent state of war imposed in the region by Israel and the western powers supporting its project in turn constitutes a powerful motive for further perpetuation of the autocratic regimes of the Arab countries. This blockage of a possible democratic evolution weakens the opportunities for revival in the Arab world, thereby paving the way for the deployment of the dominant capital and the hegemonic strategy of the United States. They have come full circle, for the alliance between Israel and America serves the interests of the two partners.

The fight for democracy and social progress in the Arab world is therefore not contingent on the so-called peace plans, which are something else. On the contrary, the effective conduct of this battle is contingent on unveiling the real objectives of these projects to discredit them. To me, it appears necessary to establish the line of arguments that made me draw my personal conclusion.

The arguments concerning geo-strategy, which I have outlined here, have their limits, for they present only those who are in the forefront: the dominant forces; in other words, trans-national capital and the powers placed in its service. Expressions such as "western powers, western interests", refer to "the interests of the dominant capital".

However, the latter does not constitute the entire social reality - the peoples, indeed all the peoples - equally exist. A strategy for effective struggle against the "geo-political" logic concerned calls for the unearthing the contradictions between interests of the victims and those of the forces dominating the authorities. This strategy is neither "easier" in the West - because democracy would help towards its rapid deployment nor "easier" in the East - because the violence of the destructive effects of capitalist expansion there is more obvious. It is difficult here and there, although they are different for specific reasons. However, there is no other possible choice than taking this initiative. It is because, at the end of the deployment of the globalised liberal capitalist project, there is apartheid on the world scale and, in its framework, the apartheid imposed on Palestinians by Zionism. Creating a global front in support of the Palestinian people fighting against apartheid is not only a moral duty but also an important dimension of a strategy for effective war against capital dictatorship; it also constitutes a real contribution in support of the Arab peoples' struggle for democracy and social progress.

2. Pan-Arabism is both a reality and a positive phenomenon. Given the cultural destruction and other effects of the globalisation process, as it is, if the French-speaking community, the Portuguese-speaking community and the spirit of the Latin-American family are frameworks for legitimate resistance (and they are, in my opinion), then what is the basis for sniggering at Pan-Africanism or Pan-Arabism? Why should the familiarity between peoples occupying a territory stretching from the Atlantic to the Gulf and using the same language (despite the variants of the local languages) be devoid of significance and interest?

Yet, saying that there is "only one Arab nation" divided up against its will entails a discrepancy that should be avoided. It is because this national question infinitely remains more complex than what the ideology of "Arab nationalism" connotes (qawmi, as opposed to qutri, concerning the frameworks defined by the borders of the Arab States). The national reality of the Arab peoples is expressed in terms of the overlapping stages of a pyramid. The Pan-Arab dimension (qawmi) is a reality. But the "local" dimensions (qutri) are no less a reality. In fact, if it is true that the demarcation of historical Syria (present-day territories of Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan) is recent (1919), artificial and is actually the outcome of an imperialist partition, like that of the fertile Crescent (historical Syria and Iraq), it would be ridiculous to claim that Egypt, Morocco and Yemen are artificial and recent fabrications. Whether ancient or new, the expression "local nation" (qutri) is based on the interests and real perceptions of their specific characteristics.

The national liberation movements and the populist nationalisms they generated were deployed on the basis of such realities necessarily in the States just as they are. The development strategies they wanted to establish on self-centred foundations - so as to modernise their societies, transform them progressively and assert their autonomy vis-à-vis imperialism - could be nothing other than what they were: designed and implemented in the States (qutri).

The Pan-Arab dimension could have called for implementation of complementary strategies aimed at strengthening each partner's self-centred structures and not those to be substituted for such structures. That was not the case, because the representatives of the populist nationalisms were not equipped to efficiently design such complementarity, their perception of the real nature of the modern capitalist challenge being what it used to be - very insufficient, to say the least. That is why all that the "technocrats" in their service could conceive of was nothing other than "common markets" which, to be precise, is a capitalist strategy that is absolutely inappropriate.

At the political level, the same limitations of both populism and the autocratic State accounted for the failures. The Baath, which presented itself as the promoter of Arabity (ourouba), was unable to go beyond incantation and the analogy with experiences of the German and Italian units, which were caricatured without the least awareness of the fact that the conditions on the periphery of the system in the 20th Century are not those of the 19th Century Europe!

The official Pan-Arabism of the populist authorities has been overtaken leftwards for a while by the qawmiyin movement, a group of young revolutionaries imbued with Marxism, Maoism and Guevarism, who initiated the formation of the radical parties of Palestine (Naief Hawatmeh's Democratic Front and George Habache's Popular Front), the popular revolution in South Yemen and the War of Dhofar. In comparison with most of the analyses proposed, which are almost always too ideological (obsessed with identifying errors and "deviations"), Sanallah Ibrahim's novel (Warda) provides a better insight into the slow death of this movement, its profound aspirations for social, collective and individual liberation (with particular regard to women), and the illusion that the Kalachnikov - over-popularised in this era of modern Arab history - could become an effective substitute for the popular classes' inertia. This Arab "foquism" has passed away, like that of Latin America.

The official Pan-Arabism promoted the blossoming of organisations operating within the whole Arab entity. Each of the professions of the middle classes in particular, was identified with one organisation of this kind that is sometimes active (Arab Lawyers, Arab Engineers, Arab Doctors, Arab Writers, etc.), just as there is, at least on paper, a confederation of trade unions (Arab Workers Union). In the 1970s and 1980s, the intensification of intra-Arab migrations (towards the oil-rich countries) certainly helped to popularise the mutual knowledge of the Arab peoples. But it did so in a general atmosphere of depoliticisation and in an environment dominated by the super-reactionary practices of the Gulf States. Its effects are therefore very ambiguous. The flow of capital in the opposite direction has not had less ambiguous effects, as it mainly enriched the speculators of the Islamist movement.

Autocratic Pan-Arabism is dead. To be convinced about that, it suffices to have attended (as the writer did) some of its (funeral) "services", which assemble each year, the cohort of its "historic leaders"- tie-wearing men currently over seventy years old on average, and closed to younger persons and women - who still feel nostalgic for the populist era, and nothing more. Its sketch of reconciliation with the Islamic movement will certainly not have the virtue of reviving the system. On the contrary, it contributes to its dilution in the new shallow illusion - that of the Islamic Nation (al Umma al islamiya).

This page of history is turned. The Arab world no longer has its own project, neither in the local States nor in that of the entire Pan-Arab entity. That is the reason why the projects thought up for it by external agents (the United States and Europe) seem to impose their programme.

That absolutely does not mean that the objective need for a complex alternative conceived at both national and Pan-Arab levels has disappeared from the peoples' mind. The multiplicity of initiatives in support of the Palestinian intifadas (the Ligan did al Tatbi - Opposition Committees for "normalisation" of relations with Israel) constitutes a glaring testimony of this premise. However, this solidarity - alone - does not represent a substitute for the lack of an overall vision of the status of Arabs in the world of today.

3. The Palestinian people's intifada is a struggle for national liberation, probably the major struggle of this kind in our era. It simply expresses the people's desire not to submit to the racist apartheid system in the Zionist fashion. It will end only if Israel recognises the right of Palestinians to their State, is not for to morrow, or if the powers in the developed capitalist countries underwent profound changes in kind (to the extent of forcing the dominant capital to renounce its strategy aimed at weakening systematically the position of the peripheral peoples - in this case, Arabs - in the global system), which will not be realised in a hurry either.

The Israeli authority in the territories occupied since 1967 (Gaza, the West Bank, the Golan) is setting about pursuing the plan to expand Zionist colonisation, thereby recognising only the rights of Jews alone (I emphasise Jews because in the State of Israel itself, the non-Jews are not accorded the same rights, neither collective nor individual rights), and this constitutes the definition of the apartheid racist State. The set of measures taken to this effect include expropriating lands for new settlers, plundering water resources and jeopardising any form of elementary economic life of Palestinians.

Initially, this system gave the impression of being capable of achieving its ends, as the Palestinian people appeared to have accepted the timid management of daily activities in the occupied territories by notables and the trading bourgeoisie. The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) that was driven away from the region, after the invasion of Lebanon by the Israeli army (1982), appeared not to possess any longer the means of opposing the Zionist annexation - from its exile in Tunis.

The first intifada took place in December 1987. An apparently "spontaneous" explosion, the intifada expresses the outburst of the working classes, and particularly of the most wretched social groups, confined in refugee camps. The intifada boycotts the Israeli authority by organising systematic acts of civil disobedience. Israel reacts with the colonial brutality defining its nature but is unable to re-establish its efficient police force or to leg up that of the timid Palestinian buffer middle classes. On the other hand, the intifada advocates a mass return of the political forces in exile, the establishment of new forms of local organisation, and the middle classes' patronage of the sustained liberation struggle. The intifada was an affair for youths - Chebab al intifada - who were initially not organised in the formal PLO networks. The four components of the PLO (Fath, loyal to its Chief, Yasser Arafat, FDLP and FPLP, and the Communist Party) immediately joined the intifada and thus won the sympathy of many of these Chebab. Overtaken by their slackness in the previous years, despite a couple of actions credited to the Islamic Jihad that reappeared in 1980, the Muslim Brotherhood made way for a new form of struggle embodied in Hamas, which was established in 1988.

Although after two years of expansion this first intifada appeared to lose impetus, on account of the violent suppression by Israeli armed forces and authorities (who used firearms to fight Palestinian children, closure of the "green line" to Palestinian workers, the sole breadwinners of their families, etc.), the stage was set for a United States-sponsored "negotiation" that was crowned with the Madrid meeting (1991) and subsequently with the so-called Oslo Peace Accords (1993) that allowed for the return of the PLO to the occupied territories and its transformation into a "Palestinian Authority" (1994).

The Oslo Accords had imagined the transformation of the occupied territories into one or several Bantoustans to be definitively integrated into the Israeli territory. Without showing much imagination, the Zionists and their American and European sponsors resumed in detail the entire apartheid system of racist South Africa. At any rate, Israel had been a faithful friend of the apartheid regime, which shared with Israel the same fundamental racist vision of humanity. In this context, the Palestinian Authority was to crystallise into nothing other than a false State - like those of the Bantoustans - indeed, the channel for transmitting Zionist order.

Back in Palestine, the PLO-turned Authority managed to establish its order but not without some ambiguity. The Authority absorbed into its new structures most of the Chebab who had co-ordinated the intifada. It acquired legitimacy through the 1996 elections in which the Palestinians participated massively (80%) and an overwhelming majority elected Arafat President of this Authority. All the components of the Palestinian political spectrum (Fath, FDLP, FPLP, Communist Party and Hamas) showed a great sense of political maturity by refusing to be polemical during the campaign and transferred the choice of the electorate to individuals who had been loyal and efficient in the struggle, regardless of their partisan sympathies. However, the Authority had to contend with acute financial problems as Israël controls the entire economy of the territories, which, moreover, cannot maintain direct relations with the outside world. On the other hand, the Gulf States virtually stopped offering financial assistance to the Authority, using the pretext of Palestine's sympathy with Iraq during the invasion of Kuwait in 1990. For their part, the Europeans, who had made pleasant promises, released funds for Palestine in droplets and even accepted to subject their financial transactions to Israeli control. To face up to the situation, the Authority acquired a (de facto) monopoly of commercial transactions by eliminating the unreliable local bourgeoisie and thus managed to realise resources for the survival of its embryonic State machinery.

At this juncture, I will avoid entering into facile arguments "for" or "against" the Authority because, in my opinion, the Palestinian Authority is in an ambiguous situation: will it accept to fulfil the functions assigned to it by Israel, the United States and Europe - " governing a Bantoustan" - or siding with the Palestinian people who refuse to be subjugated?

According to the partisans of the Bantoustan project, the overstaffed Police force - (some 50,000 agents or more) allegedly does not carry out the functions expected of the Service - cracking down on the Palestinian people to compel them to accept their fate. At any rate, it could also be asserted that this Force is not plethoric, considering the level of violence perpetrated by the Israeli Armed Forces with whom they can be confronted, especially if members of the Palestinian Police Force refused to suppress their people.

Financial monopolies - this arrangement offered a propitious opportunity for distributing prebends and facilitating the creation of a new class of nouveaux riches wholly dependent on representatives of the Authority. Alas, that is true so the Palestinian leaders concerned could be reproached for not behaving like exemplary militants administering public property without deriving the least profit for personal use. But then could the Authority survive without such monopolies?

It is actually because the Palestinian people are opposed to the Bantoustan project that Israel decided to denounce the Oslo Accords, of which it had however dictated the terms, with a view to substituting the use of military violence and nothing else for the Accords. War criminal Ariel Sharon's provocation on the Esplanade of the Mosques in 1998 (but with the support of the then Labour Party government, which provided him with tanks), the triumphant election of this same criminal as head of the Israeli government (and the collaboration of "Doves" like Shimon Peres in the Cabinet) are therefore the root causes of the second intifada in progress.

Will this second intifada liberate the Palestinian people from the prospect of their planned submission to the Zionist system of apartheid?

In any case, the Palestinian people now have a real national liberation movement with its specific features. It is not based on the "single party" style; it is apparently (if not really) "united" and homogeneous. It is composed of members who maintain their personality, their visions about the future, their ideologies, their militants and even their clients, but are able to agree to pursue the struggle together. An amorphous group of organisations, associations and NGOs provide for the operational means of this movement. Certainly, this group is a real melting pot with certain NGOs that might merely be serving as screens for speculative corruption or for the penetration of Israeli and American intelligence agencies. But it is this same nebulous group that guarantees daily survival under the dreadful conditions due to military aggression by the enemy. These organisations help the schools and health centres to operate in addition to supplying and distributing basic commodities. Should this positive role be spurned?

Culture and Power: Globalisation, the West and the Islamic Resurgence by Tom Reifer

Culture, Power amd Images

Edward Said's work in Orientalism and Culture and Imperialism highlighted the intersection of power, culture and civilisation in Western discursive practices on the Arab, Middle Eastern and Islamic worlds. Instead of the civilisation discourse later propounded by Western intellectuals such as Samuel Huntington and Francis Fukuyama, Said instead emphasised the centrality of imperial violence and power in the West's construction of the Other. In terms of the work of mainstream intellectuals, it is no surprise that Said's work had little effect.

The special Davos edition of Newsweek, printed to coincide with the World Economic Forum, for the first time to be held in New York, while the World Social Forum occurs simultaneously in Porto Alegre, Brazil, is filled with articles from traditional Western luminaries. Huntington writes about the new Muslim wars, providing a chronology of "Muslim violence," while Francis Fukuyama, former State Department official and chronicler of the "end of history" talks about the "new fascism," namely what he refers to as the war by the Other against "modernity." One can perhaps forgive these two for being selective. Huntington, one of the many Western architects of the Vietnam War, probably could have provided information for a short piece on "decades of Western violence." And besides, the resurgence of social movement activism in the Islamic world must seem challenging to predictions of the end of history.

Indeed, as one scholar recently wrote in an article on the resurgence of Islamist social movements,

"Haven't these Muslims read Fukuyama's End of History (1992)? Don't they understand his pronouncio declaring that the only route to modernity is the neo-liberal democratic path under global capitalism?" (Lubeck, 2000)

Apparently not. Surprisingly, history may not be over after all, although such arguments now seemed to be replaced in mainstream ideology with Huntington's predictions about the clash of civilisations, which Fukuyama appears to support. In any case, in the aftermath of September 11th, there is a greater need than ever to examine the intersection of US foreign policy, economic globalisation and the variety of cultural responses to these developments. For there has been a resurgence of fundamentalisms and social movements inspired by religious or civilisational identities, both East and West. And yet, due to widespread ignorance of Islamic communities, there has been little analysis of the impact of neoliberal globalisation in the Islamic world, or attempts to relate this to the resurgence of such ethnonational and religious identities. Much more attention has been devoted to the role of geopolitics - namely the Soviet war in Afghanistan and the US organisation of an international jihad to fight this - in the construction of a new generation of Islamic militants (see Lubeck & Reifer, forthcoming).

Part of the difficulty in attempting to assess developments in this area lies in the incredible scope and complexity of the Islamic world, where by 2015, some half to two-thirds of countries in which Muslims are the majority, will live in cities, in conditions of mass poverty and rampant inequality (Lubeck & Britts, 2001: 3, citing UNDP, 1999).

"Although increasingly integrated into a Western dominated urban network, these urban centers stretch across a contiguous, geographic cultural zone -Islamdom-in which most states have Muslim majorities or very large minorities (Hodgson, 1974). This growing diamond shaped zone, which Gellner calls the "Qur'an", stretches from Morocco to Indonesia on the east-west axis and from Kazakhstan to Tanzania on the north-south axis. Herein live the overwhelming majority of the 1.2 billion estimated Muslims, the majority of whom reside in South and Southeast Asia, i.e., at least 650 million (Lubeck & Britts, 2001: 3)."

As Lubeck and Britts (2001: 4) point out, Islamist politics range along a continuum. There are insurrectionary movements from Algeria to Israel-Palestine, electoral politics in parts of Southeast Asia, Turkey and the Middle East, with popular mobilisations in countries such as Nigeria, Morocco and Iran. And after the US began bombing Afghanistan, there were widespread protests throughout much of the Islamic world.

Geopolitics, Neoliberal Globalisation & the Islamist Resurgence

The rise of Islamist movements has many sources, which obviously cannot be discussed in depth in a short piece. Some of the best analysts of Islamist resurgence in its more extreme forms have underscored the centrality of the US-led opposition to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in training a global network of Islamic militants (Cooley, 2000). Numerous analysts have also emphasised the role of the US and its allies Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, in providing indirect and direct support for the Taliban. Indeed, it is widely recognised that the Taliban was to a substantial extent the creation of Pakistan's intelligence service, which trained many refugees of the Afghan war and Pakistanis in the madrasahs, or religious institutions (see Cooley, 2000; Rashid, 2002; MacKenzie, 2001; Waseem, 2000).

The secret many were afraid to mention after September 11th is that Western intelligence services had long seen the potential of a tactical alliance with Islam against the secular left and national liberation movements, which is why the West supported many of these groups.

These factors, while important, should not obfuscate the deeper transformations in the Islamic world related to the failure of the development, the crisis of the post-colonial state and the decline of secular left alternatives, many of them violently crushed, often times with Western complicity. Indeed, the US, by imposing authoritarian "modernisation" from above, notably in Iran where it overthrew a nationalist regime and imposed the dictatorship of the Shah, helped generate the combination of anti-imperialism and Islamic cultural resurgence which led to the Iranian revolution (cf. Moghadam, 1987; cf. Bill, 1988). At the same time, US support for authoritarian Islamic states in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, allies of the US, also led to widespread opposition among Islamic militants.

Paul Lubeck (2000) had situated the resurgence of Islamist movements squarely in the context of the rise and decline of left secular nationalism in the Islamic world. Here the late 1960s was a watershed: the victory of the Israeli Army in 1967, the loss of Jerusalem and the occupation of Arab lands - which left Israel ruling over a large Palestinian population - was seen a seminal defeat for the Arab world. This was also the period that saw the OPEC price rise, increasingly the autonomy of many oil-producing rentier states in the Islamic world.

As Lubeck (2000) points out, this statist rentier regime of accumulation led to a massive boom in urbanisation and rural to urban migration, a rapidly expanding higher education system and a generalised increase in networks of corruption and patronage. Many of the graduates of higher education found little possibility of meaningful employment after graduation. Meanwhile, many of the most conservative Islamic states, notably America's ally Saudi Arabia, began to spend ever more petrodollars on their brand of Islamic revivalism. And then, into this picture, came the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Iranian revolution, America's leadership of a global jihad and the subsequent collapse of oil prices from $41 dollars in 1981 to under $8 a barrel in 1986 amidst a wave of global neoliberal restructuring (Lubeck, 2000).

The demonstration effect of the Iranian revolution had a similar impact in the Islamic world as the Bolshevik revolution did among the world left, or the Cuban revolution had in Latin America. Of course, the Iranian revolution, inspired by the resurgence of a world religion in the context of increasingly global networks of communication and widespread disenchantment with Western models of development made this event radically different from the earlier wave of anti-imperialist revolutions. For instead of drawing inspiration from European ideologies - Marxism or the Enlightenment heritage of which it was a part - the Iranian revolution, as well as related and rival Islamic movements draw upon civilisational resources harkening back to Islam's golden age, before the defeat of Islamic civilisation by the expanding West and Christendom during the Crusades and the age of European expansion that followed.

As for the US role in the Islamic revival, it must be said that despite its fear of radical Islamic movements like that in Iran, it was more than willing to funnel massive resources into the Islam-inspired jihad against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. And this created a major structural political opportunity, not to mention mobilising resources, for the global expansion of extremist terrorist networks, fueled by lavish petrodollars from the Saudis and money from the Americans. The flourishing of transnational Islamic identities in the context of the near universal disappointment in the post-colonial state was made all the more explosive by neoliberalism globalisation. In the 1980s, the South was told to forgot about the project of development and instead pay back their debts, open up their economies and obey the dictates of the world market and US power. The rise of Islamic ideological power and voluntary networks thus took place in the context of a radical decline in state subsidies and state capacity in general in Islamic states. In many ways, these were obverse sides of the same coin. In this context, many states that had adopted Islam as the official religion, such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, tried to reassert their legitimacy based on their support for Islam (see Waseem, 2000). As Islamist voluntary associations stepped in to replace the declining capacity of the state to provide education and social subsidies, the legitimacy of the state became increasingly undermined. Moreover, the agenda of these voluntary associations as well as the international jihad networks with which some of them were associated grew far beyond the desires of many of their state sponsors.

The fall of the Shah and the successful jihad against the Soviets were tremendous expressions of the power of resurgent Islam. And this took place of course in the context of a profound crisis of the development model all through the South. Structural adjustment programs (SAPs) imposed by US-dominated supranational institutions such as the IMF gave activists a change to mobilise their oppositional networks.

"Islamists took advantage of this opportunity....they linked the corruption, authoritarianism, human rights abuses and moral degeneracy...of existing state elites to their inability to provide adequate social services and economic opportunities for new entrants into the labor force. Triumphant neo-liberal economic and social policies, to the chagrin of informed observers, became the midwife to Islamist ascent in civil society....

Neoliberal restructuring of Muslim economies has enraged populist sentiment and rallied moderates to support the radical Islamic opposition to the deflationary policies forced upon secular elites by their global paymasters. From the Muslim perspective, by reducing state subsidies and curtailing state investment for employment, SAPs impoverish the most vulnerable in the Muslim community, i.e., the poor, the aged, the weak. The latter is perceived as an outrageous intrusion and challenge to Islamic principles of charity. Furthermore, not only do SAPs violate Muslim prohibitions against paying interest on debt, as well as the state's obligation to provide alms to the poor (zakkat), typically understood as state subsidies for basic needs, the transparently foreign management of the SAPS rapidly evaporates any residual fig leaf of legitimacy retained by secular political elites" (Lubeck, 2000).

Anglo-American Globalisation and Militarisation Before and After 911

The late seventies, 1980s and 1990s were an especially turbulent time for the Islamic world. The Iranian revolution, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the intifada, the Gulf War and neoliberal globalisation showed the contradictory combination of Islam's power to the help mobilise the masses and the tremendous array of forces underpinning the status quo across the Islamic world. And then, once the US used the opportunity afforded by the Gulf crisis to permanently settle troops onto Saudi soil, there was yet another basis with which Islamist militants could mobilise against US power. What is increasingly evident is that though the strength of Islamic belief has ebbed and flow in relationship to many factors:

"The current international environment has provided a political context in which sectarian conflict has flourished. The common image of the post-colonial state is that of an extension of the colonial state i.e., it is dominated by a Westernised elite, and promotes a vision of development based on Western models. The official language of the post-colonial state is the former colonial language, which effectively keeps the illiterate and semi-literate sections of the population on the margins of the state system. The latter strongly believe that their rulers have entered into a conspiracy with Western masters in the remote, unintelligible, and secret world of English-based diplomacy, MNCs, defence deals, GATT, IMF and World Bank (Waseem, 2000: 38).

It is this abdication of its traditional role by a corrupt and decaying state combined with the surreal neo-liberal economic prescriptions handed down by the politburos of the IMF and the World Bank that have created the space for political Islam" (Ali, 2000: 19).

Indeed, the rise of the Taliban was part of a larger reaction to the violently imposed modernisation by Afghan Communists and the USSR and the chaos that followed Soviet withdrawal. Many Western states, including the US, Britain and France, along with countries such as Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran and China, funded the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, recruiting from many parts of the world. The war also helped to vastly increase the power of the Pakistani intelligence service, which has supported insurgencies against India throughout South Asia and become a major political broker in the Pakistani state, a virtual parallel government to the official holders of power. Pakistan's intelligence service is now, according to experts, "the most powerful institution in the country" (Ali, 2000: 16).

And for all the talk of cutting off the flows of hot money supporting terrorist acts akin to September 11, in the past the CIA and other intelligence agencies have been a key source of such funds, as with the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). BCCI was in fact "one of the main paymasters of the jihad" in Afghanistan (Cooley, 2000: 113-126; cf. Klare, 1989). At the same time, BCCI also "simultaneously acted as the chief financial agent for Pakistan's nuclear weapons program" (Burrows & Windrem, 1994: 72-73).

While September 11 and the US war with Afghanistan led to a US-Pakistan alliance, it also appears to have opened up vastly new possibilities for the US military in throughout Asia. India Today (2001: 1, 26) claims to have recently unearthed "draft proposals for discussions" about a US-India military alliance "calculated to make India the US' foremost military ally in Asia, with a relationship akin to that of the US and NATO members." India is seen as a pivotal state, countering Chinese power and the Islamic states and radicalism in West Asia and Pakistan. Another attraction of this for US elites is that it would allow quicker access to East Asia and Japan than Diego Garcia presently allows. The US is also seeking naval protection for its ships, training facilities for US troops, including joint exercises, port visits, ship repair and a variety of logistical support efforts for the navy. If implemented, the ambitious plans

"would involve the establishment of American bases on Indian soil and India's direct participation in future operations. An attack on the US in the region would automatically invite Indian retribution.
At the core of the US proposals submitted to India...just prior to Rumsfeld's visit, is a key role for US Navy (USN) ships in the Indian Ocean, southern Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea....
The US proposals don't stop at merely identifying the Indian Navy as a reliable escort service. Washington wants...facilities for combined landings...field training...live-fire training (land, air and sea). These facilities would involve establishment of large US military bases (IT, 2001: 26-27).

Though India's reception to such feelers has been cool to say the least, the door has been left open for further discussions soon enough, indicating the Indian elites attraction to future possibilities. US Ambassador to India, Robet Blackwill, in an interview with the Times News Network from the Pacific Command in Hawaii, indicated talks are going ahead: "I believe there is a big future in US-India defence ties and military-to-military cooperation" (Times of India, 10/17/01: 7).

According to the Times of India (10/17/01: 7), the relationship was to be jump-started with the visit of the head of the Pacific Command, Admiral Dennis Blair to New Delhi at November's end, followed up by undersecretary of Defence Douglas Feith, heading the US team of the "resurrected Indo-US Defence Policy Group (DPG) in early-December." One should note too that the US tilt towards India was also clear long before September 11th. This was evident in the visit of US Undersecretary of State Richard Armitage to India in May 2001 on the anniversay of India's nuclear tests, where Indian officials embraced America's plans for Star Wars.

At the moment, it is unclear how closer Indo-US relations might affect India's position in supranational institutions such as the World Trade Organisation. During the latest round of meetings of the WTO, India was the last country to sign the draft document. India's movement in the direction of further liberalisation has generated increasing dissent and protest within the country, partly perhaps because of India's experience with such processes in the past. Thus a future combination of Hindu nationalism, increased Indo-US military ties and economic globalisation from above could create a more solid basis for the convergence of some of the diverse social movements in India around globalisation, communalism and militarisation. There is a strong historical basis for resistance to such processes. As Noam Chomsky noted on a recent trip to the country, "If India wants to return to 18th century liberalisation, then that is its choice. The British-controlled economy was liberalised" (quoted in India Today, 2001: 13).

Indeed, a review of the history of the imposition of economic liberalism in India in this earlier period is instructive in the present, especially as the Indian delegation at the WTO was reported to have held up the final draft due to concerns about Indian textiles, among other things. This is notable, as India formerly had the world's most competitive textile industry when it was a lead value-added industry. India was also home to what Fernand Braudel (1984: 506) called its "wonder of wonders, the naval shipyards" before being destroyed by British power.

Until the forcible imposition of British mercantilism, protectionism and the related mechanisation of British industry destroyed India's vibrant economy, levels of GNP were quite comparable between India and what became the advanced capitalist states (see Braudel, 1984: ch. 5). India's British conquerors, helped by their destruction of India's native industry, became the workshop of the world. Britain and the other advanced capitalist states moved onto higher valued added goods, whereas India had to undergo reindustrialisation just to get its textile industry back, albeit one that because of its low-value added is now an indicator of poverty not wealth.

As was pointed out to British parliamentary committees at the time, while England's imposed "free trade" on India, it maintained huge prohibitive duties on articles from India, resulting in the destruction of much of India's native manufactures (Clairmonte, 1960: 86-87). The foundations of England's own cotton industry, rested on government protection for the earlier woolen industry, which was unable to compete with India's calicoes.

"The woolen interests," wrote Pares, "demanded protection and got it. It did not succeed in protecting them nor did it destroy the Indian textiles directly; but it unintentionally established the English cotton industry which destroyed them a hundred years later." (Economic History Review, Vol. IX, 1939-139, quoted in Clairmonte, 1960: 87).

...As Ireland has been laid waste by mercantalist economic policies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, so was India to be ravaged by liberal economic policies often indistinguishable from their mercantilist predecessors (Clairmonte, 1960: 87).

"Had India been independent," argued [Horace] Wilson, "she would have retaliated and would have imposed preventive duties upon British goods and thus preserved her own productive industry from annihilation. This act of self-defence was not permitted here; she was at the mercy of the foreigner, as a competitor with whom Great Britain could not have contended on equal terms" (quoted in Clairmonte, 1960: 90).

Much the same might be said of the mechanisms of transnational firms and the WTO against the so-called developing world today (see Bello, 2001; see Clairmonte & Cavanagh, 1984). Indeed, it was ironic that India was reported to be holding out for better terms on textiles with the WTO. For as noted above, India has the world's greatest textile industry until it was destroyed by British power.

Conclusion

September 11th is a watershed event both for those presiding over processes of state-corporate neoliberal globalisation and those resisting from below. The brutal slaughter of thousands of innocent people in the US is a major crime against humanity, which can in no way be justified by US policies. At the same time, America's bombing of Afghanistan, in terms of the millions of additional Afghans put at risk of starvation and death, dramatically reveals how completely insensitive the Western establishment and its allies are to the slaughter of innocents not considered their own.

At the same time, however apocalyptic and horrifying, September 11th is a window into the dramatic transformation unleashed by neoliberal globalisation and related processes of militarisation. The impact of those events and reactions to it have, not to mention the broader processes of which it is a part, demonstrate clearly that the global polarisation of power and wealth associated with globalisation has a crucial cultural component as well. There is a real question of whether the movement around globalisation can face up to the challenge and task ahead: to explore honestly the variety of cultural responses to globalisation which steers away both from economic reductionism yet links cultural transformation with the vast changes in the global economy under "neoliberalism" and US and Western foreign policy.

In the estimation of many, the attacks on the US of September 11th were one of the greatest gifts ever given to the jingoist right in the US. Politically, the effects of the attack have been disastrous. Social reform has been pushed even further off the table while the National Security State and related corporations are getting massive infusions of cash. Some analysts are now predicting that the US military budget will rise from its current level of well over $300 billion to half a trillion a year by 2005. Now is therefore the time to directly challenge the militarisation of the discourse on neoliberal globalisation, by addressing the role of both states and corporations in the current conjuncture and the variety of cultural responses and social movements to which these processes have given rise.

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© Thomas Eugene Reifer 2002. (consolecb@aol.com) You are free to download this paper or send it electronically to others. If you wish to translate it into another language, or to publish it in a printed medium or on another web site, you must obtain formal authorisation from the author.

Dr. Tom Reifer is a Senior Research Associate at Focus on the Global South & Associate Director of the Institute for Research on World-Systems, University of California, Riverside, where he is also a member of the Sociology Department.

"Islam, the West, and the World" by Immanuel Wallerstein

My title, "Islam, the West, and the World" has two geographic terms in it. So I think it best to start with taking a look at the geography. There are three so-called world religions - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - that have their historical origins in the same rather small area of the world, the south-western corner of the Asian continent. They all claim some special relationship to this region, which is seen as their spiritual home. None of the three religions remained, however, localised in this region.

As a result of their being conquered and the destruction of their states, Jews were relocated (or relocated themselves) to Egypt, then to Babylonia, then in Roman times to various parts of the Mediterranean, then later throughout much of Europe, finally in modern times to the Western Hemisphere and to many other zones of the world. All of this created what is called a diaspora. And, as we know, in the twentieth century, many Jews returned to the original area and a new political structure was created, the state of Israel, which asserts itself to be the reconstructed homeland of the Jewish people.

Christianity started as a religious movement among the Jews in this home area. Relatively soon, however, the Christians cut their ties with the Jewish community and proselytised among non-Jews, primarily within the then-extensive Roman Empire. A mere three centuries later, Christianity had become the state religion of the Empire, and in the succeeding 5-700 years Christians pursued a policy of conversion, primarily throughout the continent of Europe. Later, the construction of the modern world-system involved a so-called expansion of Europe, one that was simultaneously military, political, economic, and religious. Within this context, Christian missionaries spanned the globe, but were noticeably more successful in parts of the world that were not dominated by so-called world religions. The number of converts in largely Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu, and Confucian-Taoist zones were relatively few, and particularly few in Islamic zones.

Finally, Islam appeared in the same home area some six centuries after Christianity. It too was a proselytising religion, and spread very rapidly throughout what we now call the Middle East, northern Africa, and the Iberian Peninsula. In the sixteenth century, it was pushed out of Iberia but simultaneously penetrated what we now call the Balkans. Meanwhile, it had been extending its geographic zone eastward towards south-eastern Asia and southward into the African continent. In the twentieth century, the process of spread continued and eventually, by migration and conversion, reached into the Western Hemisphere and Western Europe.

I have not done more than resume some schoolboy knowledge. I have reviewed this geography in order to point out that, despite the fact that all three religions, and particularly Christianity and Islam, are worldwide in scope and claims, we tend to think and to speak of Christianity as the "West" and Islam as the "East." To be sure, there is no doubt some geographic basis for this shorthand, but less than we assume, and diminishing. Hence, we have a question as to why we insist on using this geographical shorthand. It obviously has more political than geographic meaning.

We have had some answers recently that are well-known to you. Samuel Huntington sees the West and Islam as two antithetical "civilisations " in long-term geopolitical conflict. Edward Said sees Orientalism as a false construct erected for ideological reasons by the Western world, and both pervasive and pernicious in its effects. I prefer to approach the question another way, and ask the question, why has it been that the Christian world seems to have singled out the Islamic world as its particular demon, and not merely recently but ever since the emergence of Islam? Actually the reverse has probably also been true, that Islam has regarded Christianity as its particular demon, but I do not feel I have the competence to discuss the question of why that is so or the degree to which it is so.

Although my emphasis will be on the modern world, I do not believe we can explain what happened without some reference to the European Middle Ages, for it is out of this period that we have derived our mythologies about this relationship. As we all know, Christianity and Islam encompassed at that time large zones which more or less bordered each other. Although each zone was rent with internal strife of multiple kinds, each zone appeared to regard itself as a cultural unit, and one in conflict primarily with the other. In part, the reasons for this lay in the dominant theologies, the sense of each that it incarnated the entire and only possible truth, and probably also the very fact that they had both originated in the same small area. The Christians claimed that they had fulfilled the Jewish law and therefore supplanted it with a new and final revelation. The Moslems in turn claimed that they had built on the wisdom they had inherited from Jews and Christians with a new and truly final form of commitment to Allah. So, one part of the quarrel was an intra-family quarrel about heritage and truth. This is the kind of quarrel that has often turned out to be the most divisive, the most bitter, because in some sense the most filled both with affection and competitiveness.

There was another part to this quarrel, one less about ideas than about resources and power. In the rolling back and forth of conquests - the 8th-century Ommayad thrust into Iberia and France, the Christian Crusades into the Holy Land, the Saracen pushback of the Christian conquests, the Reconquista of Spain, the expansion of the Ottoman Empire, the eventual pushback of the Ottomans - it is true that the Christian world and the Islamic world were struggling over the control of vast areas of land, their resources and their populations, and that for each the other represented the main military threat. To be sure, both were faced at specific points in time with other conquering groups from northern Asia. However, not only were these other conquerors eventually forced back, but many of these conquering groups were converted religiously and thus tamed as a cultural menace.

All this set the scene for the modern world-system, where a capitalist world-economy came into existence in western Europe and began to expand its economic frontiers to encompass more and more of the world. The core of this system was (western) European and Christian. But here we have to observe that the European geographic focus changed. The initial expansion of Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries tended to jump over the Islamic world, or at least its Middle Eastern core. European powers went west, they thought to India, but came instead to the Americas. And they circumnavigated Africa, again to reach out to Asia. In part, this was because they sought what they thought to be the wealth of Asia. But in part this was because it was easier. The Islamic world seemed a hard nut to crack, particularly at that moment, at the height of Ottoman power. In any case, it is as though there was a hiatus, a break in the centrality of the medieval Christian-Islamic struggle. The struggle was not forgotten, but it seemed to take second place for the time being in West European concerns in terms of their immediate geoeconomic and geopolitical projects.

If we look at the history of the modern world-system from its beginning in the long sixteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century, we shall observe that European dominance sometimes took the form of direct colonial rule and sometimes took a more indirect form, one that has sometimes been termed the establishment of semi-colonies, by which has been meant an economic subordination mixed with politico-military intrusions that stopped short of establishing actual imperial rule. Once again, a quick overview of world geography would be useful. The colonised areas were the Americas, most of Africa, most of South and Southeast Asia, and Oceania. The main areas that were not fully colonised were eastern Europe, the Far East, and the Middle East. This is of course a very crude summary, and needs to be specified and nuanced in many ways.

There are a series of very obvious explanations in each case why full colonisation was neither sought nor possible in these regions, and why it was sought and was possible in the others. I shall not review what led to the difference in European attempts to control different regions, but rather ask what was the difference in the consequences for the peoples of any given region that their relationship with Europe in the modern world has been one of being colonies as opposed to one of being semi-colonies. (Of course, as of the late nineteenth century, the term Europe should be considered a cultural term and should be understood to include the United States.)

For the moment, I restrict myself to observing that the fiercest political conflict with Europe in the twentieth century has come exactly from the three regions that were only "semi-colonised": the Soviet Union, the Chinese People's Republic (and North Korea), and "Islam." Of course, "Islam" is not a state, but Iran, Iraq, Libya only begin the list of states which have been in fierce conflict with the pan-European world. Since these are the three regions that have been in sharpest conflict with Europe, it is quite comprehensible that, in the imaginary of European discourse, the demons have been located there: Communism, the Yellow Peril, Islamic terrorism. Today, of course, in the West, the demon of Communism seems an historical memory, China a difficult but cultivated friend (even ally). There remains primarily Islamic terrorism - a demon much discussed and much feared in the West, but essentially an imprecise construct representing a blurred vision of reality.

How did so-called Islamic terrorism become such a central image in the world today, and especially since the collapse of the Communisms in 1989/91? As we know, for several decades now, there have been important social/religious movements in Islamic countries which are often labelled "Islamic fundamentalist," and somewhat more rarely, "Islamic integrist." These labels are not, to my knowledge, self-designations, but are those used in the Western world and in the media. In Islamic countries, these movements are more likely to be called "Islamist."

Where do these Western designations come from, and to what do they refer? Note that the two terms used originate not in the Islamic sphere but in the Christian world. Fundamentalism is a term derived from the early twentieth-century history of Protestantism in the United States, where certain groups, particularly within Baptist churches, called for a return to "fundamentals." By this, they meant that they believed that various modernist, even secularist, ideas had invaded Christian theology and practice, leading it astray. They called for a return to beliefs and practices of an earlier era. Integrism as a term derives from Catholic history in Western Europe, particularly France, and referred to a similar call for the "integral" faith, without dilution from modernist and/or nationalist views and practices.

So, by analogy, Islamic fundamentalism (or integrism) became the label given to those groups in the Islamic world who feel that modernist views and practices have led the faithful astray, and call for a return to older, purer, more correct views and practices. The main target of so-called fundamentalists is always those who bear the same religious label but who either are totally secular in practice or observe what the "fundamentalists" consider to be a diluted and distorted version of the religion. Historians of religious ideas constantly point out that "fundamentalist" groups never represent with full accuracy what were the supposed older, purer, more correct versions of belief and practice. These historians have no trouble demonstrating that these so-called fundamentalist groups always reinvent the tradition with numerous differences, sometimes considerable ones, from the actual beliefs and practices of yesteryear.

But, of course, these movements are not groups of Ranke-ian historians, searching for religious truth wie es eigentlich gewesen ist. They are movements of the present putting forth a claim that everyone should believe certain things and engage in certain practices. And pedantic exercises of the verisimilitude of their historical claims are of no interest to them whatsoever. Nor are they of very much use to those others in the present, not members of these groups, who wish to understand what they are doing and proclaiming, and why.

The fact that the terminology in use derives from Christian religious history gives us a first clue to what is going on. Whatever it is, it is not peculiar to Islam. In the twentieth century, we have had not only Christian and Islamic "fundamentalists," but Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist versions as well, and they all seem to share certain common features - the rejection of "modernist," secularist tendencies within the group; the insistence on a puritanical version of religious practice; a celebration of the integrity of the religious tradition, and its eternal, unchangeable validity. But they share a second feature, even in their Christian versions: an opposition to the dominant power structures of the modern world-system. It is this combination - a reformist demand of a return to "fundamentals" within the religious group, and an antisystemic rhetoric that goes beyond merely religious issues - that is both their defining feature and the key to an analysis of their significance in the evolving history of the modern world-system.

Let us step away from religious issues for a moment, and look at the political economy of the world-system. What do we see? The capitalist world-economy is an historical system that has combined an axial division of labour integrated through a less than perfectly autonomous world market combined with an interstate system composed of allegedly sovereign states, a geoculture that has legitimated a scientific ethos as the underpinnings of economic transformations and profit-making, and liberal reformism as a mode of containing popular discontent with the steadily increasing socio-economic polarisation that capitalist development has entailed. This system originated in Western Europe and over the centuries expanded to incorporate the entire globe.

In the nineteenth century, there emerged within this system antisystemic movements, which were based on the interests of oppressed groups within the system. These movements set themselves the object of transforming the system into something else, something more democratic and more egalitarian. The two main forms they took were those of social and national movements. By the post-1945 period, such movements were well organised throughout the world, and a tripartite de facto geographic division seemed to exist. The so-called social movements had split by the First World War into two main camps - Social-Democrat and Communist - which organised themselves internationally as the 2nd and 3rd Internationals. Both varieties claimed to represent the interests of the working classes. Both kinds of movements were distinct from the nationalist movements within "empires," which spoke in the name of "peoples" whose national identity was not recognised, and who sought to create national states.

All three kinds of movements had emerged in the period 1850-1945, and were originally politically quite weak. All three kinds of movements had however believed that history was on their side and that their cause would eventually be fully realised. All three kinds of movements, after much internal debate, had decided upon a two-stage historical strategy: first gain control of the/a state structure; then transform the world. In the 25 years after 1945, one could say that all three kinds of movements achieved stage one of their strategy, an achievement that might have amazed observers at the beginning of the twentieth century, but one that seemed to validate their own certainty that history was on their side.

Geographically, the three main varieties of movements divided the world. The Communist movements came to power in a zone that went from central Europe to the northern Pacific, and encompassed about a third of the world's area. The Social-Democratic movements came to power (at least to alternating power) in the Western world - Western Europe, North America (if one counts New Deal Democrats as Social-Democrats), and Australasia. And nationalist movements, now frequently called national liberation movements, came to power in Asia and Africa, and somewhat similar populist movements came to power in Latin America.

There are two things to note about this remarkable political surge forward of the antisystemic movements. It occurred at the very moment of time when United States power in the world-system was at its height, and therefore at a moment when prosystemic forces were at their most coordinated, most integrated, presumably at their strongest. Secondly, virtually all of these movements had fulfilled stage one of the strategy - they had achieved power - and thus, having achieved power, could be judged on the degree to which they were able to accomplish the changes promised as stage two of their announced strategy, the transformation of the world.

The world revolution of 1968 constituted the world reaction to this double reality: the worldwide hegemony of the United States, and the establishment of its world order, on the one hand; and the worldwide realisation by the antisystemic movements of stage one, the coming to power of the various movements often grouped together under the label of the Old Left, on the other hand. The revolutionaries condemned the first actor, the United States, for its oppressiveness, and they condemned the second actor, the Old Left movements, for their inadequacy as opposition movements to, if not their actual collusion with, the hegemonic project. While the first denunciation was obvious for a radical world movement, the second loud denunciation, that against the traditional antisystemic movements, was to be the more consequential.

The second denunciation was the cry of deception. To understand deception we have to assess expectations, and perhaps illusions. From the standpoint of 1968, the world was looking back on a history of antisystemic struggle that went back in popular imagination at least to the French Revolution, although the struggles may have begun locally at a later date, some as late as the early twentieth century. In any case, there existed a long historical memory.

What were the major elements in this historical memory? First of all, there had been a difficult struggle, in which the actual movements originated as a weak force and slowly gained strength through mobilisation of popular support, both locally and fraternally from elsewhere. Furthermore, there was the memory not only of struggle but of repression, often severe repression by the powerful forces in the local region, a repression that was actively abetted and supported by worldwide powerful forces (and most immediately the United States government).

The second memory was that of the opposite tactic of the forces of oppression, that of cooption, which had historically split the movements between those who received the fruits of cooption and those who necessarily could not. The latter, when not depressed, were angry and sought ever more radical spokespersons. But since the process of cooption, of concessions that ameliorated the lot of some but not of all, was an ongoing, repetitive process, it was also a confusing process, since the lessons needed to be relearned in each successive generation, and this weakened the ability of various segments of the oppressed to make common cause with each other and to achieve fundamental change.

And there was the third memory, which neutralised the other two memories - of repression and cooption. It was the memory of achievement - achievement measured in the growing strength of the movements themselves in terms of the numbers of persons they could mobilise and in terms of their public recognition as actors in the political realm; and achievement measured in the accumulating concessions that were part of the cooption processes.

This third memory was the source of political and historical hope - the firm expectation that "history was on their side," that a better life was in store for the children and grandchildren of those living now. This third memory was based on what might be called a quantitative reading of recent history - more members in the associations, and improvements in the style of life (that is, more money in the lifetime bank, more gadgets in the style of life). This sense of deep hope in the future, this sense of certainty that there would be more equality and more democracy, especially when it was based on the fact that the oppressed were struggling hard to achieve this and that it was their struggle which was responsible for achieving it, was paradoxically the most depoliticising worldview possible. It allowed one to discount the paltry results of the present in the light of the significant results anticipated in the future.

This vision was in fact the essential message of liberal reformism, as promoted ironically but efficaciously by the antisystemic movements themselves. And the more radical such movements claimed to be, the better they could persuade those they mobilised to be patient about the results of their impatient and vigorous demonstrations. It was in this way that the various antisystemic movements of the Old Left served paradoxically as the most important guarantor of political stability of the world-system in the long run, despite their frequent calls for political turbulence.

There was only one negative in this call to latent passivity beneath the facade of manifest activity, a call justified by a quantification of achievements, measured both locally and worldwide. It was that, eventually, one could do the arithmetic, and assess how significant were the changes that had been realised and what was the real pace of this change. It was precisely at the moment of maximum visible achievement of the antisystemic movements that this eventual moment of overall calculation seemed to come. The world revolution of 1968 was the outcome of this assessment of the effectiveness of the century-long strategy. And the verdict was negative. Disillusion followed the illusion of success. The success was deemed less than real, the beneficiaries of the changes a small group (what in the Soviet system was called the Nomenklatura), the real gap between the privileged and those underneath more polarised than ever (despite all the presumed reforms and successes of the Old Left).

It is time to return from this general worldwide assessment to the Islamic world. Of course, the processes described here were as true of it as of most other regions of the world outside the core zones - no more, no less. But of course, each region had its historical specificity and the reactions took a local guise. What had been the historical specificity of the Islamic world, and in particular its historic Arab core?

If one looks at all the successive movements in the various Arab countries from say 1900 on, the calls for nahda, for an Arab revolt, for a nationalist awakening all tended to be modernist in their rhetoric. They analysed the oppression they felt as in part the result of outside control (imperialism) and in part the result of internal "traditionalism." They called therefore for a simultaneous rejection of outside control and an internal cultural change. The two went together and reinforced each other, indeed might be said to make each other possible. To be sure, the movements to which these sentiments gave rise were diffuse in their social base and multiple in their visions of the social future. Some had more conservative and some more radical views of the good society.

Generally speaking, however, for all these movements, Islam as a religion played only a small role, and for many of them a somewhat negative one. To be sure, they might insist on the fact that they were Moslems, but this was thought of as a sort of cultural affiliation, and perhaps as a necessary claim to appease less enlightened potential followers. The future they envisaged was a modern one, by which they meant a secular one. The various Arab movements shared many of the premises of Kemalism in Turkey. The Moslem League in colonial India was not very different.

These movements, especially the more radical ones, were by and large successful in the post-1945 period. They came to power in various forms: Nasserism in Egypt, the Baath in Syria and Iraq, the Neo-Destour in Tunisia, the FLN in Algeria. These regimes all tended to join with parallel movements in other parts of what was now called the Third World in movements of the so-called non-aligned powers, movements inspired by the Bandung conference. Indeed, as we know, Gamal Abdel Nasser personally played an important role in the creation of this world network, and the Algerian FLN provided an inspirational model across this network, similar to that of the Vietnamese movement.

On the other hand, the post-1945 period saw some major difficulties for the Arab world, and by extension for the Islamic world as a whole. The biggest was the creation of the state of Israel. I would not like to discuss here the whole history and merits of this story. I merely wish to underline a few facts. The Zionist movement came into existence more or less at the same time, the turn of the twentieth century, as Arab nationalist movements. It shared much of the same rhetoric - the need to create an independent state, the sense of oppression by the powerful of the world-system, the sense that there should be an internal transformation of the psychology of the Jewish people, the ambiguous (and reticent) relationship with Judaism as a religion. In the Zionist imaginary, the Arabs did not play a real role before 1948. The enemy was the Christian world, and of course, after 1918, Great Britain in particular.

But this imaginary changed radically with the creation of the state of Israel. The military resistance of the Arab states to the creation of Israel meant that the primary opponent became the Arab world, and this was largely an Islamic world. This attitude was all the more reinforced by the Israeli victory in the 1967 wars, which brought a large Arab population under Israeli rule. It was at this moment that a modern Palestinian nationalist movement, the PLO, was organised. The PLO was a movement of the same type and rhetoric as the other modernist, nationalist movements I have mentioned. And it had the same reticent, ambiguous relationship with Islam as a religion, all the more since in Palestine there is a significant Christian Arab population, who in fact support the PLO.

Without reviewing the history of Israeli-Arab and Israeli-Palestinian relationships from 1948 to today, one can say that, by and large, the Israelis have had the upper hand militarily and politically. But we can also say that the Palestinian mobilisation has been sufficiently successful to force the Israelis, on the whole reluctantly, to enter into what are now very protracted, inconclusive, and frustrating so-called peace negotiations, negotiations which could collapse completely.

The existence of Israel has posed a problem for Arab nationalism in that it added a locally-based enemy to the more remote Western world, a locally-based enemy that was less ready to make concessions that the collective West. They only real parallel in the non-European world in the twentieth century was the existence of an apartheid state in South Africa, and the latter problem has now been resolved with the change in the constitution and the coming to power of the African National Congress.

The Arab world has had, in addition, a second special problem, almost as great as that of Israel, and imbricated with it. This is the fact that it is the locus of a large part of the world's oil supply. This had not been known in the nineteenth century. It only became a consideration after the First World War, but it has been a central geopolitical reality ever since, and especially since 1945. The United States has not been at all indifferent to the politics of the region for this reason. Nor has Russia or Western Europe. Maintaining a continuous flow of oil supply, and a reasonable limit on oil rent, has been a major concern of the great powers. This has given them an additional reason both to support Israel and to invest in an effort to encourage and stabilise relatively more conservative regimes in power.

If one looks at Islamist movements in the Arab world, they actually have a history as long as that of nationalist movements, and in some countries could be confused with them. The Wahabite movement in the Arabian Desert, and the Senussi movement in Cyrenaica shared some features with the secular nationalist movements. They too worried about outside oppression, and they too called for an internal renewal that laid stress on purer, more puritanical, behaviour. They too moved toward the creation of a modern state structure. But of course they used a religious rhetoric unlike the secularist movements. They too came to power. The Senussi regime was replaced by a more secular regime in 1969. The Saudi regime has successfully resisted such a fate up to now.

When we look at so-called Islamist movements, what do we see? We see groups who say two things. They say, first of all, that all these movements that have come to power in the various countries have not succeeded in removing or undoing the role of outside powers in their internal affairs, even if they are technically independent states. They take note of the continuing role of the US in the region, and of the powerful presence of Israel, which is regarded as primarily an outpost of the West, a settler state akin to the Crusader states of the Middle Ages. And they say secondly that this situation is abetted and indeed made possible by the very regimes that say they are opposing this - not only the secularist regimes but also, be it noted, presumably religiously-based regimes such as that of Saudi Arabia.

Hence, what Islamists say is that, if one wishes to overthrow outside oppression and foster internal renewal, one has to get rid of these modernist Arab regimes, including in this category the Wahabites. Of course, this is the same thing that Ayatollah Khomeini said about the Shah's regime in Iran, and the Taliban have said about the pseudo-Communist regime in Afghanistan, as well as of its various successors. Thus far, in the Arab world, no Islamist regime has come to power, except in the Sudan.

Furthermore, if one looks at the ways in which these Islamist groups have mobilised politically, one can see that they have not merely put forth an alternative rhetoric, and hence an alternative analysis of the mode of functioning of the modern world-system, from the modernist movements they have been opposing, but they are also saying that these modernist regimes have failed in the primary task of modern states, providing for the minimal ongoing welfare and security of the citizens. It is well known that the Islamist organisations provide extensive social service to those in need, and frequently fill serious voids in state functions. Another noted feature of Islamist movements is that they recruit extensively and successfully among students in technical/scientific branches of the universities, and then make use of their skills in advancing their cause.

Now both these features - the social service function and the attractiveness of Islamism to young engineers/scientists - demonstrate that the Islamists are not romantics of a bygone agricultural society. They are rather purveyors of an alternative form of modernity, one that is open to technological advance but rejects secularism and its attendant values. Where they are ambivalent is in their attitude to the state structures. Out of power, they are a powerful antistatist force, not merely in politics but in ideology. They reject the centrepiece of secular modernism, the centrality of the embracing, presumably neutral, state as a moral and political fulcrum. They insist on the priority of a set of spiritual values, as expounded by an authorised group of interpreters. This priority creates problems when the Islamists actually achieve political power, as today in Iran, for example, and has the potential of creating an ongoing tension between state and religious authorities, the exact problem the modern secular state was intended to resolve. Thus far, Islamism as a political force has continued to give priority to its extra-statist rhetoric.

So how may we interpret what has been happening in Islamic countries in the last twenty years or so? I think the prime element has been the disillusionment, both among the educated elite and the populations at large, with the performance of the historic antisystemic movements, the movements of national renewal and liberation, which were the major expressions of popular struggle in the twentieth century. These movements, in all their variants, have been found wanting. They are condemned for having pursued a futile strategy. They are condemned for permitting a small group to profit venally from the struggle. They are condemned for having failed in their primary objective, to enable the peoples of their region to attain either real political autonomy or real economic advancement compared to the dominant zones of the world. Whether or not this condemnation represents a balanced judgment on the activity of these movements is irrelevant; the fact is that this disillusionment is massive.

The disillusionment has had the consequence that the underlying long-term reformist strategy of the antisystemic movements seems pointless, especially two central tactics: the transformation of mores via secularisation; and the creation of strong state structures. The way was open for an alternative vision, one that used neither of these allegedly pointless tactics. In the Islamic world, this alternative vision has been Islamism. In other parts of the world, the same disillusionment has bred different visions, all of which however share the feature that they reject the allegedly pointless tactics.

From the point of view of the holders of power in the world-system, such alternative visions are both better and worse than the now antiquated tactics of the movements of national liberation. They are better in the sense that the Old Left is always pointing out. The alternative visions push people away from a penetrating analysis of the actual structures of the modern world-system, and thereby make it easier for the privileged in the world-system to maintain these structures on a day-by-day basis. The charge is that when the holders of alternative visions, such as Islamism, come to state power, they find either that they have no real foreign policy, or that they have an ineffective one, or that they can be in fact easily co-opted into operating within the framework of the system. Up to a point, this charge is true.

On the other hand, the rise of forces with an alternative vision is desperately bad for the holders of power in the world-system, for one simple reason. One of the key stabilising features of the modern world-system is the confidence populations put in their state structures as their efficacious political defenders vis-à-vis the whole range of outside forces that impinge on their daily lives. In this sense, these state structures, especially after secularist antisystemic movements come to state power, are veritable political demobilisers. They preach confidence in the leadership, and hence they preach patience. When the alternative movements break down the confidence in the state structures, they remove the constraint that caused political demobilisation.

This calculation of the pluses and minuses, from the point of view of the powerful in the world-system, of the rise of these alternative movements explains much in the current demonisation of Islam in the West. While the West constantly plays with the option of cooperative cooption of Islamist forces, in general they have emphasised the dangers in the breakdown of popular confidence in their own state structures. This has been reinforced in the case of the Islamic world by two factors, which are special to them: the existence of Israel, and their role as a locus of oil supply. These latter two factors alone explain little, but as reinforcement for the choice of tactical response to Islamism, they are crucial.

If the existence of oil resources is both a blessing and a curse for the Arab world, it is nonetheless a reality outside their control, even if it is a reality that may not go on forever. The existence of Israel, on the other hand, is a historically contingent reality, one that is therefore more changeable, and therefore one that has been the focus of acute struggle. Thus, we must look briefly at the source of the very strong support the Western world has given to the state of Israel. It was never inevitable. And I remind you that it had been very uncertain as of 1945, even as of 1948. I don't believe in fact that it was locked in as a policy priority, either in the United States or Western Europe, until 1967.

There are three elements in this policy. One is that the historic anti-Semitism of the Christian world, which was pervasive virtually from the beginning of Christianity, reached a morally repulsive acme in Nazism and the Holocaust, and this caused a very deep guilt reaction. It would be a mistake to underestimate the role this sense of Christian guilt plays in the current situation. It has led to dramatic changes in the rhetoric of a range of major social groups in the West - secular intellectuals, the Catholic Church, and fundamentalist Protestant sects some of whom are now talking a language of the necessity of having the state of Israel as a prerequisite for the second coming of Christ.

The guilt complex might not have withstood other geopolitical considerations had it not been for Israeli victory in the wars of 1967. This victory did two things. On the one hand, it created an overwhelming support for Israel on the part of world Jewry, a level of support that had not been there before. This victory over Arabs had the psychological effect of being at one and the same time a compensation for the Holocaust and a belief that the Arab world threatened a second version of it. Once again, I do not discuss the degree to which such a vision was justified, but I insist on its occurrence.

The second consequence was doubtless that, for the first time, the Western world was persuaded that Israel might serve a function as a military control on restless Arab countries, and Israel became integrated to Western geopolitical strategy. The price of this second decision went up severely once the Intifada began, which accounts for Western concern with the so-called peace process, and the increasing disgruntlement of Western powers with the Israeli government. But the basic support of Israel has not yet disappeared.

In any case, the combination of Christian guilt about anti-Semitism, worldwide Jewish support of Israel, and the Western view of the utility of Israel as an element in the political stabilisation of the world's major oil zone has resulted in the mediatisation of so-called Islamic terrorism as the grand demon of the 1990's. This is all the more the case since the demons of Soviet Communism and of the Yellow Peril seem to have evaporated. And it is all the easier to demonise Islamism to the degree that Islam is culturally a cousin of Christianity, unlike Buddhism or Hinduism. The family feud tonality adds to the irrationality and the persistence of the demonisation. Another element that adds to choosing Islam as the demon is the fact that most of the core of the Islamic world was never truly colonised. In an important sense, the West feels somewhat confident in dealing with ex-colonies. After all, they had conquered these areas once militarily and governed them, and think they know their weaknesses. The non-colonised or only semi-colonised zones retain an aura of mystery and therefore of danger.

Let me resume what I have been arguing. On the one hand, what has been happening in the Islamic world, and in particular the rise of Islamism as a social and political force, is simply one variant of what has been going on everywhere in the peripheral zones of the world-system. The basic interpretation has to revolve around the historic rise of antisystemic movements, their seeming success and their real political failure, the consequent disillusionment, and the search for alternative strategies. All of this is part and parcel of the development of the modern world-system as an historic social system.

On the other hand, there are some special elements in the relationship of the West and Islam that result in the quite extraordinary demonisation of Islam in the West. I have tried to indicate the complex of these elements: the millennial relationship of Christianity and Islam, and the millennial relationship of Christianity and Judaism; as well as the fact that all three religions are linked in a sort of set of extended family ties. I added an unbudgeable but theoretically accidental geoeconomic reality, the location of oil. And finally, I added the elimination of alternative possible demons from non-colonised areas of the world.

This brings me to my very last theme. Can the West do without a demon? I doubt it at the moment. The West is facing a massive crisis - not merely economic, but fundamentally political and social. The capitalist world-economy is in crisis as an historical social system. I cannot review here the crisis in detail, something I have done elsewhere on several occasions(1), but I raise these issues to insist that the consequence is a great deal of confusion and self-doubt in the West, a situation which always evokes the need for demons. This same confusion and self-doubt pervades the Islamic world, as is evident from the zigzagging tactics of all the main actors. the secularist forces are in disarray. The Islamist forces are not very clear, and not at all agreed among themselves, what their real political program is or ought to be.

Once again, we should put this in the context of the world-system as a whole, and not limit our attention to the Islamic world. Systems that are in crisis enter into a chaotic period, out of which eventually emerges a new order. Their trajectories bifurcate, and it is intrinsically impossible to predict the branch that will prevail. In practice this means two things. Even small pressures in one direction or another may be decisive, since the system is far from equilibrium. And the social struggle is therefore extremely acute. The question that arises therefore is how the sides in the struggle for shaping the successor social system will align themselves.

When the struggles were less acute, the lines seemed to be sharp. That is why we can speak of antisystemic movements within the modern world-system. These movements thought they knew what they were about and who their primary enemy was. So did the forces that defended the existing system. What the last twenty-five years has taught us all - I think of it as the lesson of the world revolution of 1968 - was that our vision of the struggle was deeply flawed, that opponents were not real opponents, and allies not real allies, whichever side one was on. In this sense, the Islamists are profoundly correct in saying that we have to recalibrate our understanding of what are the issues that divide the existing historical system and what are the alternative historical possibilities of a possible reconstructed world-system.

Their critique is on the mark, but what of their solution? As I have said, I do not believe they are sure of what solution they really intend. Those of us who do not share some or most of their premises and are heirs of a more secularist tradition find it difficult to accept most of what they offer as first steps to a better future. What I do feel is that there is a need for a genuine dialogue, or multilogue, about the essential limitations of our existing world-system, and the parameters of our historical alternatives. Personally, I think the basic conflict is that between those who seek to establish/re-establish a hierarchical world order in which some are privileged and most others not and those who wish to construct a maximally democratic and egalitarian order. I think that each requires different kinds of value-systems to undergird it, and that the historic world religions may have much to teach us about what is crucial in such value-systems.

The real problem is that among the secularist and the fundamentalist camps in all parts of the world, there are persons on both sides of what I anticipate will be the great politico-social struggle of the coming fifty years. I think myself that posing the issue as one of secularism versus fundamentalism is distracting us in a very major way from clarity of vision. And clarity, not demons, is what we need most at the present time.

1. See in particular Utopistics: Or, historical Choices for the Twenty-first Century, New York: New Press, 1998

(c) Immanuel Wallerstein 1997.
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[Lecture in series, "Islam and World System," Michaelmas Term, at Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, Oct. 21, 1998] Later version published in the Journal of Islamic Studies, X, 2, May 1999