The Essence of Islamist Resistance: A Different View of Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas

Abstract

The Iranian revolution -the political realization of the "Great Refusal" of Western modernization -was a direct consequence a half century later of the forced secularization of the Ottoman Caliphate by Kemal Ataturk. With the superstructure of the Muslim ummah dismantled and replaced by the Turkish nation state, insurgent religious movements, from the (Sunni) Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt to the Shiite imams of Qum and Najaf, moved into the vacuum to reclaim Islam from the shadow of Western dominance.Now, history is turning again. Iran has been seized by violent turmoil as it seeks to reconcile democracy and religious rule. Secular Turkey is governed by an Islamist-rooted party. As they struggle to regain their balance, the global economic meltdown threatens a convergence against globalization that joins the Islamist resistance with populist backlashes elsewhere. Two legendary intelligence agents, a Hezbollah leader, an Iranian dissident philosopher and Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian human rights lawyer and Nobel Laureate, examine this historical turn. ALASTAIR CROOKE, the legendary former British intelligence (M16) agent, was adviser to EU High Commissioner Javier Solana on Middle East issues from 1997 to 2003 as well as to the Mitchell Commission looking into the causes of the Palestinian intifada. He has been involved in negotiating with Hamas and other Islamist movements, including ending the Church of the Nativity siege in Bethlehem in 2002. Currently, he heads the Conflicts Forum in Beirut. His recent book is Resistance:The Essence of the Islamist Revolution. In June, both Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iran head into critical elections.beirut -Most Western analysts of political Islam make the same mistake. They instinctively assume that conflict with the West has mainly to do with specific foreign policies, particularly of the United States with respect to Israel, the Arab world and Iran, and, if those changed, all would be well. In fact, my intensive contact over the years with Iranian clerics, Hezbollah and other movements of the recent Islamic awakening suggest the conflict with the West is much deeper. It is rooted in radically different worldviews about human nature and the good society. Failing to grasp this reality, the West continually misreads what is going on in the Muslim world. At root, the West is about individualistic, instrumental rationality and materialism, the Islamic resistance movements are about a communal and spiritual approach to life.It has been thirty years now since the Iranian Revolution, and fifty years since the first Islamist resistance movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, was formed in Egypt.Yet many in the West remain bemused: Why is there an Islamist resistance at all? "Against what are Muslims in revolt?" Westerners ask. Even now, more shockingly, there seems still no clarity about the Iranian Revolution: Was it nothing more than a populist kick against power, and the Shah's heavy-handedness that was hijacked by the Ayatollahsas many assert?Such explanations seem blindingly inadequate to ...

Islam, violence and the ‘four dogmas of Orientalism’

“…[as] a messianic saviour to implement a transfiguration of the world' in ways not so very different from claims of legitimacy issued by many non-state armed actors from the Middle East. 44 Numerous studies have also indicated a positive relationship between the articulation of a strong Christian faith and recruitment patterns within all branches of the United States military. burdette et al, for instance, find this to be true of a large cross-section of male college students; both for those they classify as 'highly religious evangelical' and 'moderately religious nonevangelical', with the 'nonreligious consistently exhibit[ing] lower odds of enlistment' overall.…”