Tracking the rise of Islamic influence in the middle east?

[Bala Perdida]

Today it is obvious that Islam in government, and in militant groups, have become a strong influence in the middle east and other parts of the world. I know that Islam has influenced the region for centuries but can anyone help me understand who it got to be what it is today.
From what I see, the middle east used to be a bunch of European colonies and puppet regimes, then a mix of Arab/Islamic nationalism swept the region to an extent. The overthrow of the Shah in Iran led to the first Islamic Republic. The Muslim Brotherhood was formed before that, mainly to counter European imperialism and cultural influence. Then around the 80's or 70's it looks like, the US started arming Islamic militants to counter Soviet influence in the region. Then after the US armed them they started springing up across the region, later spreading across the world, and know we have a mess of Sharia imposing fundamentalists.
They are making it hard to present a legitimate socialist alternative of any kind to our middle eastern comrades. Currently, the region is dominated by authoritarian governments who's opposition, many times, seeks to prop up a religious authoritarian regime.
So ultimately how did this all start, by governments, then by militant groups?

[Tim Cornelis]

whose*

I don't think US support for the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan resulted in armed fighters throughout the Islamic world. What's generally seen as the cause of the Islamic Awakening is a combination of the Iranian Revolution injecting the Islamic world with a perception of self-worth on the one hand, and oil revenues that transformed semi-nomadic lands into filthy rich regional powers that used these revenues to promote Wahabism and Salafism around the world on the other.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_revival

[Sasha]

Islam has its roots in the merchant class, Mohammed himself and his followers where merchants and many of the first conflicts in and with Islam where in essence conflicts over trade routes acces to ports etc etc
Since until this day the non-feudal bourgeoisie have had, in most of the middle east, not succeeded in wrestling power from the various monarchs its no surprise that still many of the Islamist (sunni) movements have a strong (petit) bourgeois merchant class character, not only the MB but al Qaida as well has her roots in this class (the bin ladens are a major industrial family in Saudi arabia.

The Shiite movements in Iran are somewhat a different beast I think because of their stronger theocratic tendencies.

[Blake's Baby]

'Political Islam' was a reaction to European colonisation stoked in the era of inter-imperialist wars.

The British and French particularly fucked up the region in and after WWI as it was part of the Ottoman Empire allied to Germany - the British in particular were prepared to promise it to anyone on the basis that they might fight the Turks. Then the Russians (Soviet government) and the Germans played a part in the period following WWI stirring up anti-British/French sentiment (which let's face it wasn't hard given te actual actions of the British and French administrations). In the Cold War, and especially after the establishment of Israel, the US has also had a hand in stirring the pot. The larger local powers have their own clients, and different groups inside the country sometimes allied to other states, there were de-colonisation movements in North Africa particularly against France, the USSR (then Russia), the USA, Britain, France, to an extent Germany and latterly China have all squabbled for a century about who gets the oil and supported different warlords, and then there are three major religions (with different splinter-groups of each) that all think Jerusalem is 'their' city.

Is that what you're after?

[Rafiq]

Political Islam wasn't a response to colonialism, arab nationalism was. It's incredibly ignorant to conflate arab nationalism, which was secular (many leading figures were not Muslim) and Islamism. Nationalists and Islamists despise each other deeply. Political Islam is a modern trend which would have never developed if not for the machinations of international capital.

[Bala Perdida]

Political Islam wasn't a response to colonialism, arab nationalism was. It's incredibly ignorant to conflate arab nationalism, which was secular (many leading figures were not Muslim) and Islamism. Nationalists and Islamists despise each other deeply. Political Islam is a modern trend which would have never developed if not for the machinations of international capital.
When I referred to the nationalist movements I was mostly thinking of the Muslim Brotherhood, although looking back now it seems it was more of a cultural thing. Also I hear nationalism is the reason many young people join groups like the Afghan Taliban.

[Blake's Baby]

I think Rafiq was talking to me.

I was refering to the foundation of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928, six years after the British granted the country independence (in name at least).

[khad]

From what I see, the middle east used to be a bunch of European colonies and puppet regimes, then a mix of Arab/Islamic nationalism swept the region to an extent. The overthrow of the Shah in Iran led to the first Islamic Republic. The Muslim Brotherhood was formed before that, mainly to counter European imperialism and cultural influence. Then around the 80's or 70's it looks like, the US started arming Islamic militants to counter Soviet influence in the region. Then after the US armed them they started springing up across the region, later spreading across the world, and know we have a mess of Sharia imposing fundamentalists.
They are making it hard to present a legitimate socialist alternative of any kind to our middle eastern comrades. Currently, the region is dominated by authoritarian governments who's opposition, many times, seeks to prop up a religious authoritarian regime.
The muslim brotherhood was endorsed by the British as a means to counteract Arab nationalism and socialism. They were essentially the brown shirts of the arab world, hired by landed elites to smash unions and protests.

I won't even bother with the other obvious criticisms of this tripe.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/what-is-the-muslim-brotherhood

The group known formally as the Society of Muslim Brothers was founded in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna, who from the very start promoted the slogan: "The Koran is our constitution." Banna, a teacher, described this as "a Salafiyya message," meaning that the Brothers intended to restore Islam to the alleged purity of its earliest days. They adhered to an ultra-orthodox view of Islam, and in the 1930s Banna established the Secret Apparatus, an underground intelligence and paramilitary arm with a terrorist wing. The Brotherhood had enormous power behind the scenes in monarchical Egypt, playing politics at the highest level, often in league with King Farouk against his political opponents, including the left, the communists, and the nationalist Wafd Party. In 1937, at Farouk's coronation, the Brotherhood—in Arabic, the Ikhwan—was enlisted to provide "order and security."

For the next five decades, the Muslim Brotherhood would serve as a battering ram against nationalists and communists. Despite the Brothers' Islam-based anti-imperialism, the group often ended up making common cause with the colonial British. It functioned as an intelligence agency, infiltrating left-wing and nationalist groups. But it was also fiercely independent, at times clashing violently with the ruling authorities. On several occasions, Ikhwan assassins murdered top Egyptian officials, including Prime Minister Mahmoud Fahmi al-Nuqrashi in 1948. (Brotherhood founder Banna was assassinated by agents of the regime just weeks later).

[genjer]

It's important to note that the rise of political Islam has coincided with the protracted death-agony of those secular nationalist regimes throughout the Middle East, that arose through anti-imperialist, anti-monarchist revolutions in the 50's, 60's and 70's. One of the last remaining examples is the Assad government in Syria.

These governments were nearly always supported by local Communist Parties and the USSR, even though they were run by small bourgeois elites who refused to unite with each other, enriched themselves without liberating the masses, and carried out grisly massacres of their Communist allies.

Secular nationalism was totally discredited among the Arab masses by 50 years of failure to accomplish even the tasks of capitalist development, (which were only possible for the European bourgeois revolutions 500 years ago because they had other, pre-capitalist continents to conquer and exploit for superprofits). Attempts by 20th century secular nationalist regimes to create empires through conquest - like the 1980 Iraqi invasion of Iran - did not have the same advantageous conditions and failed to change anything.

In its rise to prominence today, political Islam echoes past nationalist revolutions with its pan-Arabist, anti-Western ideology, and similarly targets popular anger against small corrupt families similar to the old pro-Western monarchies. In many ways it is history repeating itself as farce..or tragedy.

I believe that the Communist Parties and the USSR are to blame for modern Islamism. They abandoned the goal of making proletarian revolution in countries like Iraq, Syria and Egypt, where there was a strong Communist following, and instead tied themselves to the pro-Soviet secular regimes and their hopeless course. That road led to the doom not just of the old Arab Communist Parties, but also secular nationalism itself.

[Rafiq]

The fires of class struggle know no boundry. It swept across the arab world just so in a few decades some idiot Leftists could talk of how Islamism is "just their culture" and that "they (Muslims) aren't ready for western ideas".

[Dodo]

Political Islam wasn't a response to colonialism, arab nationalism was. It's incredibly ignorant to conflate arab nationalism, which was secular (many leading figures were not Muslim) and Islamism. Nationalists and Islamists despise each other deeply. Political Islam is a modern trend which would have never developed if not for the machinations of international capital.

This. As far as I know, political Islam's rise has a lot to do with decline of secular Arab nationalism and its understanding of "left" with their corrupt welfare. Once this declined, especially with neo-liberalism's overtake aaaaan fall of USSR, field was left to privatizations which led Islam to gather a lot of strenght through its "social protection" mechanisms with waqfs and stuff.

[Blake's Baby]

Yeah, that's how it emerged in the 1920s, because of the 'decline of secular Arab nationalism' in the 1970s. But don't let facts stand in the way of a narrative.

[Rafiq]

Political Islam as it was in the 1920's took the form of the Muslim Brotherhood, which was formed as a response to growing popularity of left-bourgeois movements as well as forms of class struggle. It isn't the same as the Islamism that developed after the 70's.

[Bala Perdida]

So after the 1970's political Islam took the militant stance it's known for today? I'm guessing influenced by the Iranian revolution.

[genjer]

This. As far as I know, political Islam's rise has a lot to do with decline of secular Arab nationalism and its understanding of "left" with their corrupt welfare. Once this declined, especially with neo-liberalism's overtake aaaaan fall of USSR, field was left to privatizations which led Islam to gather a lot of strenght through its "social protection" mechanisms with waqfs and stuff.
Things were already changing by the 1980's as the USSR all but handed over the Iranian Communists to the mullahs, and pushed its own puppet government in Afghanistan to the right.


Yeah, that's how it emerged in the 1920s, because of the 'decline of secular Arab nationalism' in the 1970s. But don't let facts stand in the way of a narrative.
Both tendencies emerged back then, but you are the one who is ignorant of historical facts apparently- no offense! The Arab world was ruled by secular nationalists in the 1970's. Now it is ruled by Islamists, and the only secular government left is Syria.


So after the 1970's political Islam took the militant stance it's known for today? I'm guessing influenced by the Iranian revolution.
No. Secular and Islamist nationalists have always taken equally "militant" and officially anti-Western stances. It's just that now, after the end of the Cold War and 50 years of failure of secular nationalism to help/unite the Arab world, secular Arab regimes have almost all collapsed and been replaced by Islamist regimes.


Political Islam as it was in the 1920's took the form of the Muslim Brotherhood, which was formed as a response to growing popularity of left-bourgeois movements as well as forms of class struggle. It isn't the same as the Islamism that developed after the 70's.
I disagree with calling secular nationalists "left-bourgeois" because movements like the Ba'ath have shown some ability to move fluidly across the political spectrum in pursuit of popular support and foreign assistance.

Also I would argue that rising Islamism and falling secular nationalism today are basically the same, fundamentally, as in the 1920's, the difference is that the Soviet Union is gone and the experience of secularists in power over the last century has ruined their credibility among the masses.

***

And no, before some idiot troll attacks me - I don't sympathize with the Islamists who are killing women and burning schools. Not everyone who criticizes Assad is automatically on the side of jihad.

[khad]

So after the 1970's political Islam took the militant stance it's known for today? I'm guessing influenced by the Iranian revolution.
The Iranian revolution has nothing at all to do with militant islamism. For one, it was explicitly nationalist in orientation, whereas islamic militants today hate nations and speak the language of internationalism.

It's total leftist fantasy and wishful thinking to see these movements as national resistance movements.

Typical examples of salafist rhetoric and propaganda:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bgp-1AgCIAEXS3I.jpg:large

abu_analyst ‏@silenttweep (https://twitter.com/silenttweep) Jan 21 (https://twitter.com/silenttweep/status/425615541777072128) The arguments(nationalism), rhetoric(khwarij), accusations(babulhawa) by IF against ISIS are getting more pathetic everyday,

Abou Moussa / باقية# ‏@AbeMoussa (https://twitter.com/AbeMoussa) Sep 28 (https://twitter.com/AbeMoussa/status/383864753762078720)
Chinese Muslim warriors in the ranks of the beloved ISIS. Thats why we hate nationalism! All the Muslims are equal!

[Rafiq]

The 1970's were when the seeds of political Islam were laid, it wasn't until the late eightees when they were grown.