Tutte le voci della "Ikhwanophobia" Categoria
Moderato e Islam radicale
Angel Rabasa
One of the components of this study is relevant to a question that I was asked to address,which is how radical Islam differs from moderate or mainstream Islam. Frankly, one ofthe problems that we have found in the discourse about Islam is that the terms “radical”or “moderate” are often used in a subjective and imprecise way, without going through aprocess of critically examining what these terms mean. In some cases, the term radical ormilitant is defined in terms of support for terrorism or other forms of violence. Webelieve that this is too narrow a focus, that there is, in fact, a much larger universe offundamentalist or Salafi groups who may not themselves practice violence, but thatpropagate an ideology that creates the conditions for violence and that is subversive ofthe values of democratic societies.
Sfide alla Democrazia nel mondo arabo e musulmano
Alon Ben-Meir
President Bush’s notions that democratizing Iraq will have a ripple effect on the rest ofthe Arab world, bringing prosperity and peace to the region, and that democracy is the panaceafor Islamic terrorism are unsubstantiated as well as grossly misleading. Even a cursory review of the Arab political landscape indicates that the rise of democracy will not automatically translateinto the establishment of enduring liberal democracies or undermine terrorism in the region. Thesame conclusion may be generally made for the Muslim political landscape. Infatti, given theopportunity to compete freely and fairly in elections, Islamic extremist organizations will mostlikely emerge triumphant. In the recent elections in Lebanon and Egypt, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood respectively, won substantial gains, and in Palestine Hamas won thenational Parliamentary elections handedly. That they did so is both a vivid example of the today’spolitical realities and an indicator of future trends. And if current sentiments in the Arab statesoffer a guide, any government formed by elected Islamist political parties will be more antagonistic to the West than the authoritarian regimes still in power. In addition, there are noindications that democracy is a prerequisite to defeating terrorism or any empirical data tosupport the claim of linkage between existing authoritarian regimes and terrorism.
L'Ikhwan in Nord America: Breve storia
Douglas Farah
Ron Sandee
Il caso attuale tribunale federale contro la Holy Land Foundation per il soccorso e lo sviluppo (HLF) a Dallas, Texas,1 offre uno sguardo senza precedenti nella storia dei Fratelli Musulmani negli Stati Uniti, così come i suoi obiettivi e la sua struttura. I documenti parlano di reclutamento, organizzazione, ideologia e lo sviluppo dell'organizzazione in diverse fasi negli Stati Uniti. L'accusa nel caso ha presentato molti documenti interni alla Fratellanza Musulmana degli anni '80 e dei primi anni '90 che danno una prima, pubblica visione della storia e dell'ideologia dietro le operazioni dei Fratelli Musulmani (noto come Ikhwan o Il Gruppo) negli Stati Uniti. negli ultimi quattro decenni. Per i ricercatori, i documenti hanno il valore aggiunto di essere stati scritti dagli stessi leader Ikhwan, piuttosto che interpretazioni di fonti secondarie.
The Muslim Brotherhood in Belgium
Steve Merley,
Senior Analyst
The Global Muslim Brotherhood has been present in Europe since 1960 when SaidRamadan, the grandson of Hassan Al-Banna, founded a mosque in Munich.1 Since that time,Brotherhood organizations have been established in almost all of the EU countries, as well asnon-EU countries such as Russia and Turkey. Despite operating under other names, some ofthe organizations in the larger countries are recognized as part of the global MuslimBrotherhood. Per esempio, the Union des Organizations Islamiques de France (UOIF) isgenerally regarded as part of the Muslim Brotherhood in France. The network is alsobecoming known in some of the smaller countries such as the Netherlands, where a recentNEFA Foundation report detailed the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood in that country.2Neighboring Belgium has also become an important center for the Muslim Brotherhood inEurope. A 2002 report by the Intelligence Committee of the Belgian Parliament explainedhow the Brotherhood operates in Belgium:“The State Security Service has been following the activities of the InternationalMuslim Brotherhood in Belgium since 1982. The International MuslimBrotherhood has had a clandestine structure for nearly 20 years. The identityof the members is secret; they operate in the greatest discretion. They seek tospread their ideology within the Islamic community of Belgium and they aimin particular at the young people of the second and third generation ofimmigrants. In Belgium as in other European countries, they try to take controlof the religious, social, and sports associations and establish themselves asprivileged interlocutors of the national authorities in order to manage Islamicaffairs. The Muslim Brotherhood assumes that the national authorities will bepressed more and more to select Muslim leaders for such management and,in this context, they try to insert within the representative bodies, individualsinfluenced by their ideology.
The Muslim Brotherhood in Europe
The Muslim Brotherhood’s U.S. Network
Zeyno Baran
The Muslim Brotherhood’s Conquest of Europe
Lorenzo Vidino
Since its founding in 1928, i Fratelli Musulmani (Hizb al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun) has profoundly influenced the political life of the Middle East. Its motto is telling: “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Qur’an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.”
While the Brotherhood’s radical ideas have shaped the beliefs of generations of Islamists, over the past two decades, it has lost some of its power and appeal in the Middle East, crushed by harsh repression from local regimes and snubbed by the younger generations of Islamists who often prefer more radical organizations.
But the Middle East is only one part of the Muslim world. Europe has become an incubator for Islamist thought and political development. Since the early 1960s, Muslim Brotherhood members and sympathizers have moved to Europe and slowly but steadily established a wide and well-organized network of mosques, charities, and Islamic organizations. Unlike the larger Islamic community, the Muslim Brotherhood’s ultimate goal may not be simply “to help Muslims be the best citizens they can be,” but rather to extend Islamic law throughout Europe and the United States.[2]
Four decades of teaching and cultivation have paid off. The student refugees who migrated from the Middle East forty years ago and their descendants now lead organizations that represent the local Muslim communities in their engagement with Europe’s political elite. Funded by generous contributors from the Persian Gulf, they preside over a centralized network that spans nearly every European country.
These organizations represent themselves as mainstream, even as they continue to embrace the Brotherhood’s radical views and maintain links to terrorists. With moderate rhetoric and well-spoken German, Olandese, and French, they have gained acceptance among European governments and media alike. Politicians across the political spectrum rush to engage them whenever an issue involving Muslims arises or, more parochially, when they seek the vote of the burgeoning Muslim community.
But, speaking Arabic or Turkish before their fellows Muslims, they drop their facade and embrace radicalism. While their representatives speak about interfaith dialogue and integration on television, their mosques preach hate and warn worshippers about the evils of Western society. While they publicly condemn the murder of commuters in Madrid and school children in Russia, they continue to raise money for Hamas and other terrorist organizations. Europeans, eager to create a dialogue with their increasingly disaffected Muslim minority, overlook this duplicity. The case is particularly visible in Germany, which retains a place of key importance in Europe, not only because of its location at the heart of Europe, but also because it played host to the first major wave of Muslim Brotherhood immigrants and is host to the best-organized Brotherhood presence. The German government’s reaction is also instructive if only to show the dangers of accepting Muslim Brotherhood rhetoric at face value, without looking at the broader scope of its activities.
Qutbism: Un'ideologia dell'islamo-fascismo
DALE C. EIKMEIER
Il Piano Strategico Militare Nazionale per la Guerra al Terrorismo recentemente pubblicato (NMSP-WOT) è lodevole per aver identificato l'”ideologia” come centro di gravità di al Qaeda. causa principale del terrorismo islamico. Di conseguenza, l'obiettivo principale del piano è attaccare e contrastare un'ideologia che alimenta il terrorismo islamico. Purtroppo,l'NMSP-WOT non riesce a identificare l'ideologia o a suggerire modi per contrastarla. Il piano descrive semplicemente l'ideologia come "estremista". Questa descrizione contribuisce poco alla comprensione della minaccia da parte del pubblico o alle capacità dello stratega che alla fine deve attaccarla e sconfiggerla.. L'intento di questo articolo è identificare l'ideologia dei terroristi islamici e raccomandare come contrastarla con successo. Sun Tzu disse saggiamente, “Conosci il nemico e conosci te stesso; in cento battaglie non sarai mai in pericolo.”2 Il nostro successo nella Guerra al Terrorismo dipende dal sapere chi è il nemico e dalla comprensione della sua ideologia., è utile solo se le etichette sono chiaramente definite e comprese. Altrimenti, caratterizzazioni eccessivamente ampie oscurano la nostra capacità di “conoscere veramente il nemico,” diffondono gli sforzi, e posiziona potenziali alleati e neutrali nel campo del nemico. Purtroppo,l'uso di etichette da parte della guerra al terrorismo contribuisce molto ai malintesi associati a quest'ultima. Il fatto è, cinque anni dopo 9/11 theNMSP-WOT fornisce poche indicazioni specifiche, diverso dall'etichettare il nemico come estremista.3 Questa incapacità di concentrarsi sulla minaccia specifica e sulla sua filosofia di supporto riflette la nostra rigida aderenza alla correttezza politica ed è sfruttata dagli islamisti militanti che dipingono queste descrizioni eccessivamente ampie come una guerra contro l'Islam.. Forte afferma “Non dobbiamo fallire . . . distinguere tra i rivoluzionari omicidi come bin Laden e i credenti musulmani tradizionali.
Terroristiche e movimenti estremisti in Medio Oriente
Terrorism and asymmetric warfare are scarcely new features of the Middle Eastern military balance, and Islamicextremism is scarcely the only source of extremist violence. There are many serious ethnic and sectarian differencesin the Middle East, and these have long led to sporadic violence within given states, and sometimes to major civilconflicts. The civil wars in Yemen and the Dhofar Rebellion in Oman are examples, as are the long history of civilwar in Lebanon and Syria’s violent suppression of Islamic political groups that opposed the regime of Hafez al-Asad. The rising power of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) led to a civil war in Jordan in September1970. The Iranian revolution in 1979 was followed by serious political fighting, and an effort to export a theocraticrevolution that helped trigger the Iran-Iraq War. Bahrain and Saudi Arabia have both had civil clashes between theirSunni ruling elites and hostile Shi’ites and these clashes led to significant violence in the case of Saudi Arabia.There also, però, has been a long history of violent Islamic extremism in the region, sometimes encouraged byregimes that later became the target of the very Islamists they initially supported. Sadat attempted to use Islamicmovements as a counter to his secular opposition in Egypt only to be assassinated by one such movement after hispeace agreement with Israel. Israel thought it safe to sponsor Islamic movements after 1967 as a counter to thePLO, only to see the rapid emergence of violently anti-Israeli groups. North and South Yemen were the scene ofcoups and civil wars since the early 1960s, and it was a civil war in South Yemen that ultimately led to the collapseof its regime and its merger with North Yemen in 1990.The fall of the shah led to an Islamist takeover in Iran, and resistance to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan triggeredan Islamist reaction that still influences the Middle East and the entire Islamic world. Saudi Arabia had to deal withan uprising at the Grand Mosque in Mecca in 1979. The religious character of this uprising shared many elementsof the movements that arose after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Gulf War in 1991.Algerian efforts to suppress the victory of Islamic political parties in a democratic election in 1992 were followed bya civil war that has lasted ever since. Egypt fought a long and largely successful battle with its own Islamicextremists in the 1990s, but Egypt has only managed to have suppressed such movements rather than eradicatedthem. In the rest of the Arab World, the civil wars in Kosovo and Bosnia helped create new Islamic extremist cadres.Saudi Arabia suffered from two major terrorist attacks before 2001. These attacks struck at a National GuardTraining center and USAF barracks at Al Khobar, and at least one seems to have been the result of Islamicextremists. Marocco, Libya, Tunisia, Giordania, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, and Yemen have all seen hard-line Islamistmovements become a serious national threat.While not directly part of the region, the Sudan has fought a 15-year long civil war that has probably cost over twomillion lives, and this war had been supported by hard-line Islamist elements in the Arab north. Somalia has alsobeen the scene of a civil war since 1991 that has allowed Islamist cells to operate in that country.
La morte di Islam politico
Jon B. Alterman
The obituaries for political Islam have begun to be written. After years of seemingly unstoppablegrowth, Islamic parties have begun to stumble. In Morocco, the Justice and DevelopmentParty (or PJD) did far worse than expected in last September’s elections, and Jordan’sIslamic Action Front lost more than half its seats in last month’s polling. The eagerly awaitedmanifesto of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, a draft of which appeared last September,showed neither strength nor boldness. Instead, it suggested the group was beset by intellectualcontradictions and consumed by infighting.It is too early to declare the death of political Islam, as it was premature to proclaim therebirth of liberalism in the Arab world in 2003-04, but its prospects seem notably dimmerthan they did even a year ago.To some, the fall from grace was inevitable; political Islam has collapsed under its owncontradictions, they say. They argue that, in objective terms, political Islam was never morethan smoke and mirrors. Religion is about faith and truth, and politics are about compromiseand accommodation. Seen this way, political Islam was never a holy enterprise, butmerely an effort to boost the political prospects of one side in a political debate. Backed byreligious authority and legitimacy, opposition to Islamists’ will ceased to be merely political—it became heresy—and the Islamists benefited.These skeptics see political Islam as having been a useful way to protect political movements,cow political foes, and rally support. As a governing strategy, però, they arguethat political Islam has not produced any successes. In two areas where it recently rose topower, the Palestinian Authority and Iraq, governance has been anemic. In Iran, where themullahs have been in power for almost three decades, clerics struggle for respect and thecountry hemorrhages money to Dubai and other overseas markets with more predictablerules and more positive returns. The most avowedly religious state in the Middle East, SaudiArabia, has notably less intellectual freedom than many of its neighbors, and the guardiansof orthodoxy there carefully circumscribe religious thought. As the French scholar of Islam,Olivier Roy, memorably observed more than a decade ago, the melding of religion and politics did not sanctify politics, it politicizedreligion.But while Islam has not provided a coherent theory of governance, let alone a universally accepted approach to the problems ofhumanity, the salience of religion continues to grow among many Muslims.That salience goes far beyond issues of dress, which have become more conservative for both women and men in recent years, andbeyond language, which invokes God’s name far more than was the case a decade ago. It also goes beyond the daily practice ofIslam—from prayer to charity to fasting—all of which are on the upswing.What has changed is something even more fundamental than physical appearance or ritual practice, and that is this: A growingnumber of Muslims start from the proposition that Islam is relevant to all aspects of their daily lives, and not merely the province oftheology or personal belief.Some see this as a return to traditionalism in the Middle East, when varying measures of superstition and spirituality governed dailylife. More accurately, though, what we are seeing is the rise of “neo-traditionalism,” in which symbols and slogans of the past areenlisted in the pursuit of hastening entry into the future. Islamic finance—which is to say, finance that relies on shares and returnsrather than interest—is booming, and sleek bank branches contain separate entrances for men and women. Slick young televangelistsrely on the tropes of sanctifying the everyday and seeking forgiveness, drawing tens of thousands to their meetings and televisionaudiences in the millions. Music videos—viewable on YouTube—implore young viewers to embrace faith and turn away froma meaningless secular life.Many in the West see secularism and relativism as concrete signs of modernity. In the Middle East, many see them as symbols ofa bankrupt secular nationalist past that failed to deliver justice or development, freedom or progress. The suffering of secularism ismeaningless, but the discipline of Islam is filled with signficance.It is for this reason that it is premature to declare the death of political Islam. Islam, increasingly, cannot be contained. It is spreadingto all aspects of life, and it is robust among some of the most dynamic forces in the Middle East. It enjoys state subsidies to be sure,but states have little to do with the creativity occurring in the religious field.The danger is that this Islamization of public life will cast aside what little tolerance is left in the Middle East, after centuries asa—fundamentally Islamic—multicultural entrepôt. It is hard to imagine how Islamizing societies can flourish if they do not embraceinnovation and creativity, diversity and difference. “Islamic” is not a self-evident concept, as my friend Mustapha Kamal Pasha onceobserved, but it cannot be a source of strength in modern societies if it is tied to ossified and parochial notions of its nature.Dealing with difference is fundamentally a political task, and it is here that political Islam will face its true test. The formal structuresof government in the Middle East have proven durable, and they are unlikely to crumble under a wave of Islamic activism. For politicalIslam to succeed, it needs to find a way to unite diverse coalitions of varying faiths and degrees of faith, not merely speak to itsbase. It has not yet found a way to do so, but that is not to say that it cannot.
TERORRIST DIASPORAS IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND SOUTH ASIA
Shannon Peterson
David Goetze
Ever since the Bush administration’s declaration of a global war on terror after 9/11,academics and policymakers have sought ways to counter the global terrorist threat. However asJeffrey Record (2003) has noted, treating terrorism monolithically and failing to discriminatebetween terrorist groups and other actors reduces the ability to produce effectivecounterterrorism strategies. inoltre, it can set actors “on a course of open-ended andgratuitous conflict with states and nonstate entities that pose no serious threat.” If terrorism andterrorist groups are not homogenous entities, then understanding the differences and similaritiesbetween groups is a crucial first step in constructing an effective counterterrorist response.This research seeks to better discriminate between terrorist groups by examining thegoals, tactics and images embedded in the narratives of terrorist or terrorist spawningorganizations. We define narratives as shared understandings of historical events and relevantactors that are used to justify past political actions or mobilize people for contemporary politicalactions as generally expressed through descriptions or charters issued by organizations orthrough statements of organizational leaders.2 Narrative, as noted by Benedict Anderson, formsthe underbelly of an “imagined community:” the glue binding a group of like-minded individualswho, “will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet inthe minds of each lives the image of their communion” (Anderson 6). Consequently, we believethat narratives are excellent sources for uncovering group conceptions of “self” and “others” thatare key in attracting and maintaining ties to diaspora communities, as well as related group goals,strategies and tactics. We argue that by comparing the goals, images and tactics embedded in thenarratives of these different organizations, we can shed insight on crucial differences andsimilarities between these terrorist groups. These insights not only help discriminate betweenterrorist groups and other organizations, but also shed insight on the evolution of suchorganizations themselves.Specifically, this research examines the narratives of four groups: the MuslimBrotherhood, Hamas, Al Qaeda and the Tamil Tigers. Two of these groups, Hamas and AlQaeda, have roots in the Muslim Brotherhood and therefore can be viewed as diasporas of thelatter. Tuttavia, while the Muslim Brotherhood takes an evolutionary and nonviolent approachto goal attainment, Hamas and Al Qaeda advocate violence and terrorism to advance their cause,tactics that are also promoted by the fourth group in the analysis, the Tamil Tigers. Since theTamil Tigers have no connection with the Muslim Brotherhood, their inclusion in ourcomparative analysis allows us to determine how much of the commonality of goals acrossterrorist organizations pertains to common roots and how much pertains to commonality oforganizational type, function or tactics.
Islamic Movements and the Use of Violence:
Blowing Kirdis
Despite recent academic and popular focus on violent transnational Islamic terrorist networks,there is a multiplicity of Islamic movements. This multiplicity presents scholars with two puzzles. The first puzzle is understanding why domestic-oriented Islamic movements that were formed as a reaction to the establishment of secular nation-states shifted their activities and targets onto a multi-layered transnational space. The second puzzle is understanding why groups with similar aims and targets adopt different strategies of using violence or nonviolence when they “go transnational.” The two main questions that this paper will address are: Why do Islamic movements go transnational? And, why do they take on different forms when they transnationalize? First, I argue that the transnational level presents a new political venue for Islamic movements which are limited in their claim making at the domestic level. Second, I argue that transnationalization creates uncertainty for groups about their identity and claims at the transnational level. The medium adopted, cioè. use of violence versus non-violence, is dependent on type of transnationalization, the actors encounter at the transnational level, and leadership’s interpretations on where the movement should go next. To answer my questions, I will look at four cases: (1) Turkish Islam, (2) i Fratelli Musulmani, (3) Jemaah Islamiyah, e (4) Tablighi Jamaat
La Fratellanza musulmana negli Stati Uniti
Steven Merley
The leadership of the U.S. Fratelli musulmani (MB, or Ikhwan) has said that its goal was and is jihad aimed at destroying the U.S. from within.
The Brotherhood leadership has also said that the means of achieving this goal is to establish Islamic organizations in the U.S. under the control of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Since the early 1960s, the Brotherhood has constructed an elaborate covert organizational infrastructure on which was built a set of public or “front” organizations.
The current U.S. Brotherhood leadership has attempted to deny this history, both claiming that it is not accurate and at the same time that saying that it represents an older form of thought inside the Brotherhood.
An examination of public and private Brotherhood documents, però, indicates that this history is both accurate and that the Brotherhood has taken no action to demonstrate change in its mode of thought and/or activity.