The violence has undermined recent efforts to improve relations in the region. Islam's standard-bearers – Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran – had begun to bridge their sectarian divides. In addition to accepting each other, the Muslim states also began to accept the Jewish states. Since 2020, four Arab states have joined the Abraham Accords, normalizing their interactions with Israel. ., including Saudi Arabia, were about to follow.
Now the war in Gaza is radicalizing and frightening the Muslim world. After years of neglect, the Palestinians have received global attention for their plight. Hamas could consider that a success of sorts. But many blame the Islamist terrorist group for bringing down Israel's hellfire.
The consequences show that Muslims are at a crucial moment in the evolution of their faith. Massive religious, political and social transformations are changing the Middle East and its 400 million inhabitants. The question is whether Hamas's attack will reverse this revolution by stoking Islamism. Anti-Israeli and anti-Western passion could stir the grassroots again.
To understand why such an outcome would be so damaging, consider how much Muslim attitudes toward religion had changed in the years leading up to the October 7 attacks. Religious practice has changed from a political mobilization for communal salvation, as embraced by Islamists, to a more personal quest for spirituality. The result is that Islam has become increasingly depoliticized for many Muslims.
This trend is clearly visible in Iran. Since the revolution in 1979, it has been led by a Shiite cleric. It calls itself an Islamic republic and officially 99.5% of its 89 million inhabitants are Muslim. But in 2021, an online poll by Gamaan, a Dutch research group, claimed that around half of 50,000 Iranian respondents said they had lost or changed their religion. . than a third identify as Shia, the ruling Muslim sect. And despite the country's ban on proselytizing, interest in the country's non-Muslim religions, such as Zoroastrian and Bahá'í faiths, is booming. Evangelicals in Iran say Christianity is growing faster there than in any other country. Iran is “the first post-Islamic society,” says Shahriyar Ahy, an expert from the country.
Across the Muslim world, once untouchable clerics have been excoriated in recent years for greed and hypocrisy. Tax breaks, land allocations and gay sex tapes in countries such as Iran, Iraq and Pakistan have sparked outrage. Some theologians have tried to adapt, either out of conviction or in an effort to stay relevant. In Morocco, Abderrahmane Taha, perhaps the most influential philosopher in the Muslim world, synthesized humanism with the ethical code of Islam.
Institutions that were previously closely tied to Islam, such as the Saudi royal family, have loosened up. The kingdom's crown prince and de facto ruler, Muhammad bin Salman (MBS), has cast aside his family's 250-year alliance with followers of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, an 18th-century fanatic. He had also declared himself a mujaddid, or renewer of the faith, in 2018. In a survey last year by James Zogby, an American pollster, more than two-thirds of young adults in the Middle East said they wanted religious institutions to “modernize.” .
Religious tolerance has increased sharply among Muslim countries. . than a dozen have hosted Pope Francis over the past decade. Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Morocco have renovated synagogues or built new ones. And in Iraq, a center for interfaith dialogue was opened opposite the gates of Shiism's holiest shrine in Najaf.
Vanity honest
Social reforms were accompanied by declining Islamist fervor. In Saudi Arabia, the pressure came from above, but many citizens were happy with it. Mosques there now compete for the public's attention with star-studded concerts, film festivals and sporting events. Men and women are no longer separated in universities, offices and restaurants. Economic necessity has also pushed women to take on traditionally male jobs, from herding cattle to driving taxis. Meanwhile, in 2017, Tunisia's parliament overturned a sharia-based ban on Muslim women marrying non-Muslim men.
Other changes are being promoted by ordinary Muslims, if not by the elites. Iran saw massive protests for women's rights last year; the regime killed 500 people in retaliation. The divorce rate in the once conservative Gulf is now higher than in many Western countries. And as economic hardships have forced couples to postpone their weddings, premarital sex has become increasingly common in the region, sociologists say.
Political Islam faltered during a decade in which social and cultural norms became increasingly global. In 2011, it flourished during the Arab Spring. But in 2019, protesters in Algeria, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon and Sudan demanded civil status. In 2021, Moroccans voted out an Islamic prime minister and his party.
This rejection of political Islam reflects how little its followers have done to address the deep economic malaise in the countries where they have held power. In Egypt, Gaza and Tunisia, incomes fell under their rule. Unemployment mushroomed; foreign investment plummeted. Idlib, a jihadist redoubt in northwestern Syria, is among the country's poorest provinces. The malaise was not always caused by the Islamists themselves. But they had promised that “Islam is the solution.” That was not the case.
In countries like Egypt, the army could drive Islamists from power. (Due to popular disillusionment, they were not always missed.) There and in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the Muslim Brotherhood, the world's oldest Islamist movement, was banned. Last year, Tunisia jailed Rached Ghannouchi, the Islamist who chaired the country's parliament. Overt religiosity has also confused governments. In September, Egypt banned the niqab, or face covering, in schools.
Violent jihadism declined along with political Islam. From 2001 onwards, Western governments waged a 'war on terror'. Twenty years later, 'spectaculars' are considered a thing of the past in much of the world. In Syria and Iraq, an American-led coalition destroyed the Islamic State (IS) caliphate, an area the size of Britain that housed and trained tens of thousands of fighters. Since 2019, jihadist attacks in Syria have fallen from more than 1,000 per year to around 100.
Other Islamist movements curbed their behavior in order to survive. The Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda was one of them. For years, Hamas seemed, at least superficially, to be part of that club. It halted suicide bombings in Israel and issued a new charter in 2017, stripped of the overt anti-Semitism of the original. Many women in Gaza City took off the veil. It is ironic that, in order to divide the Palestinians, Israel has essentially preserved one of the last Islamic redoubts in the region and learned to live with its rule. However, Hamas's rampage in southern Israel has shattered any illusion of possible coexistence.
How will political Islam develop in response to the war in Gaza? It is possible that a new generation of extremists will emerge. Economic misery, poor governance and pernicious despotism all provide fertile ground for a comeback. Libya, Lebanon and Yemen are already failed states. The Middle East's most populous countries, Egypt and Iran, are both economically unstable.
The Gaza war “could be the kiss of life for the Muslim Brotherhood,” said Ahmed Abu Douh, an Egyptian analyst at Chatham House, a British think tank. Outside the government, Hamas could wreak even more destruction. And on Islam's periphery, the ideological “The fires are burning unquenchable. Jihadists are thriving in Afghanistan and eastern Syria as the Kurds retreat to their barracks. They control much of the Sahel and are pushing into other parts of Africa. “It is too early to celebrate the end of jihadism,” said Rajan Basra of the War Studies department in London.
Governments in the Middle East are trying to suppress any revival. Many Muslim rulers see an Islamist revival as a threat to themselves as much as to the West. They may even support Israel's goal of destroying Hamas, if not its means. Not a single country that recently normalized relations with Israel has cut ties or called on America to abandon its regional bases. And most Gulf states have banned protests and sermons in solidarity with the Palestinians. Even Qatar, the protector of Hamas and other Islamic causes, offered to expel the Islamists if its ally, America, asked. Iran and its resistance axis have also withdrawn from the fighting, leaving the group to fight alone.
Yet it would be wrong to confuse silence with resignation. “Beware of the peace,” said Ali Bakir, an expert on political Islam at the Atlantic Council, an American think tank. “It may herald the coming explosion.” Islamism has a habit of bouncing back. Many cheered the death of jihadism after the killing of Osama Bin Laden in 2011. Two years later, however, IS swept through the Middle East.
The overthrow of Hamas in Gaza could bring a brief period of silence, but over time it could spread its ideas and its militants across the Middle East. Islamism itself could evolve into something less sectarian as it spreads, perhaps bringing together Sunni and Shia followers but could intensify its militancy. “The world is dreaming when it thinks the Islamic moment is over,” says Andrew Hammond of the University of Oxford.
To keep political Islam reasonably calm, the gap between Israel and the Palestinians will have to be closed. Muslim regimes across the region must urgently address the socio-economic problems that Islamists feed on. The oil-rich states of the Middle East can afford a contract that offers individual freedom rather than political freedom. But poorer countries cannot pay for the social protection this guarantees. Yet locking up Islamists will do nothing to compensate for this. Islam has often flourished in a multi-religious world. That's possible again.
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