Visiting the way stations of a new 'long war'

[a_majoor]

For many Islamists, the Long War is religious in character, and Christians are bearing the brunt of it on a global scale. The plight of the Egyptian Copts is simply one aspect of a much larger issue. Since Islam is also in the process of a convulsive internal religious war, we can only expect to see more of this religious persecution as fallout from the wider war. It also suggests possible strategies for intervention; Christians compose @ 10% of the Syrian population; enough to form a power block of their own in the region with the right kind of support (the Kurds make up 9% of the Syrian population and the ruling Awalites make up 16%, to  put it in perspective):

http://www.hoover.org/publications/defining-ideas/article/152651

Christian Tragedy in the Muslim World

by Bruce Thornton (Research Fellow and W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow, 2009–10, 2010–11)
We are living through one of the largest persecutions of a religious group in history.
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Few people realize that we are today living through the largest persecution of Christians in history, worse even than the famous attacks under ancient Roman emperors like Diocletian and Nero. Estimates of the numbers of Christians under assault range from 100-200 million. According to one estimate, a Christian is martyred every five minutes. And most of this persecution is taking place at the hands of Muslims. Of the top fifty countries persecuting Christians, forty-two have either a Muslim majority or have sizeable Muslim populations.
   
  Human Events The extent of this disaster, its origins, and the reasons why it has been met with a shrug by most of the Western media are the topics of Raymond Ibrahim’s Crucified Again. Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an associate fellow of the Middle East Forum. Fluent in Arabic, he has been tracking what he calls “one of the most dramatic stories” of our time in the reports and witnesses that appear in Arabic newspapers, news shows, and websites, but that rarely get translated into English or picked up by the Western press. What he documents in this meticulously researched and clearly argued book is a human rights disaster of monumental proportions.

In Crucified Again, Ibrahim performs two invaluable functions for educating people about the new “Great Persecution,” to use the label of the Roman war against Christians. First, he documents hundreds of specific examples from across the Muslim world. By doing so, he shows the extent of the persecution, and forestalls any claims that it is a marginal problem. Additionally, Ibrahim commemorates the forgotten victims, refusing to allow their suffering to be lost because of the indifference or inattention of the media and government officials.

Second, he provides a cogent explanation for why these attacks are concentrated in Muslim nations. In doing so, he corrects the delusional wishful thinking and apologetic spin that mars much of the current discussion of Islamic-inspired violence.

Ibrahim’s copious reports of violence against Christians range across the whole Muslim world, including countries such as Indonesia, which is frequently characterized as “moderate” and “tolerant.” Such attacks are so frequent because they result not just from the jihadists that some Westerners dismiss as “extremists,” but from mobs of ordinary people, and from government policy and laws that discriminate against Christians. Rather than ad hoc reactions to local grievances, then, these attacks reveal a consistent ideology of hatred and contempt that transcends national, geographical, and ethnic differences.

In Afghanistan, for example, where American blood and treasure liberated Afghans from murderous fanatics, a court order in March 2010 led to the destruction of the last Christian church in that country. In Iraq, also free because of America’s sacrifice, half of the Christians have fled; in 2010, Our Lady of Salvation Church in Baghdad was bombed during mass, with fifty-eight killed and hundreds wounded.

In Kuwait, likewise, the beneficiary of American power, the Kuwait City Municipal Council rejected a permit for building a Greek Catholic church. A few years later, a member of parliament said he would submit a law to prohibit all church construction. A delegation of Kuwaitis was then sent to Saudi Arabia––which legally prohibits any Christian worship–– to consult with the Grand Mufti, the highest authority on Islamic law in the birthplace of Islam, the Arabian Peninsula.

The Mufti announced that it is “necessary to destroy all the churches of the region,” a statement ignored in the West until Ibrahim reported it. Imagine the media’s vehement outrage and condemnation if the Pope in Rome had called for the destruction of all the mosques in Italy. The absence of any Western condemnation or even reaction to the Mufti’s statement was stunning. Is there no limit to our tolerance of Islam?

Moreover, it is in Egypt––yet another beneficiary of American money and support–– that the harassment and murder of Christians are particularly intense. Partly this reflects the large number of Coptic Christians, the some sixteen million descendants of the Egyptian Christians who were conquered by Arab armies in 640 A.D. Since the fall of Mubarak, numerous Coptic churches have been attacked by Muslim mobs. Most significant is the destruction of St. George’s church in Edfu in September 2011. Illustrating the continuity of mob violence with government policy, the chief of Edfu’s intelligence unit was observed directing the mob that destroyed the church. The governor who originally approved the permit to renovate the building went on television to announce that the “Copts made a mistake” in seeking to repair the church, “and had to be punished, and Muslims did nothing but set things right.”

The destruction of St. George’s precipitated a Christian protest against government-sanctioned violence against Christians and their churches in the Cairo suburb of Maspero in October 2011. As Muslim mobs attacked the demonstrators to shouts of “Allahu Akbar” and “kill the infidels,” the soldiers sent to keep order helped the attackers. Snipers fired on demonstrators, and armored vehicles ran over several. Despite the gruesome photographs showing the crushed heads of Copts, the Egyptian military denied the charges, but then claimed that Copts had hijacked the vehicles and ran over their co-religionists.

False media reports of Copts murdering soldiers fed the violence. Twenty-eight Christians were killed and several hundred wounded. In the aftermath, thirty-four Copts were retained, including several who had not even been at the demonstration. Later, two Coptic priests had to stand trial. Meanwhile, despite an abundance of video evidence, the Minister of Justice closed an investigation because of a “lack of identification of the culprits.”

The scope of such persecution, the similarity of the attacks, and the attackers’ motives, despite national and ethnic differences, and the role of government officials in abetting them, all cry out for explanation. Ibrahim clearly lays out the historical and theological roots of Muslim intolerance in the book’s most important chapter, “Lost History.” Contrary to the apologists who attribute these attacks to poverty, political oppression, the legacy of colonialism, or the unresolved Israeli-Arab conflict, Ibrahim shows that intolerance of other religions and the use of violence against them reflects traditional Islamic theology and jurisprudence.

First Ibrahim corrects a misconception of history that has abetted this misunderstanding. During the European colonial presence in the Middle East, oppression of Christians and other religious minorities was proscribed. This was also the period in which many Muslims, recognizing how much more powerful the Europeans were than they, began to emulate the political and social mores and institutions of the colonial powers.

Thus they abolished the discriminatory sharia laws that set out how “dhimmis,” the Christians and Jews living under Muslim authority, were to be treated. In 1856, for example, the Ottomans under pressure from the European powers issued a decree that said non-Muslims should be treated equally and guaranteed freedom of worship. This roughly century-long period of relative tolerance Ibrahim calls the Christian “Golden Age” in the Middle East.

Unfortunately, as Ibrahim writes, the century-long flourishing of Middle Eastern Christians “has created chronological confusions and intellectual pitfalls for Westerners” who take the “hundred-year lull in persecution” as the norm. In fact, that century was an anomaly, and after World War I, traditional Islamic attitudes and doctrines began to reassert themselves, a movement that accelerated in the 1970s. The result is the disappearance of Christianity in the land of its birth. In 1900, twenty percent of the Middle East was Christian. Today, less than two percent is.

Having corrected our distorted historical perspective, Ibrahim then lays out the justifying doctrines of Islam that have made such persecution possible during the fourteen centuries of Muslim encounters with non-Muslims. The foundations can be found in the Koran, which Muslims take to be the words of God. There “infidels” are defined as “they who say Allah is one of three” or “Allah is the Christ, [Jesus] son of Mary”––that is, explicitly Christian. As such, according to the Koran, they must be eliminated or subjugated. The most significant verse that guides Muslim treatment of Christians and Jews commands Muslims to wage war against infidels until they are conquered, pay tribute, and acknowledge their humiliation and submission.

In the seventh century, the second Caliph, Omar bin al-Khattab, promulgated the “Conditions of Omar” that specified in more detail how Christians should be treated. These conditions proscribe building churches or repairing existing ones, performing religious processions in public, exhibiting crosses, praying near Muslims, proselytizing, and preventing conversion to Islam, in addition to rules governing how Christians dress, comport themselves, and treat Muslims.

“If they refuse this,” Omar said, “it is the sword without leniency.” These rules have consistently determined treatment of Christians for fourteen centuries, and Muslims regularly cite violations of these rules as the justifying motives for their attacks. As a Saudi Sheikh said recently in a mosque sermon, “If they [Christians] violate these conditions, they have no protection.” From Morocco to Indonesia, Christians are attacked and murdered because they allegedly have tried to renovate a church, proselytized among Muslims, or blasphemed against Mohammed––all reasons consistent with Koranic injunctions codified in laws and the curricula of school textbooks.

Both Islamic doctrine and history show the continuity of motive behind today’s persecution of Christians. As Ibrahim writes, “The same exact patterns of persecution are evident from one end of the Islamic world to the other––in lands that do not share the same language, race, or culture––that share only Islam.” But received wisdom in the West today denies this obvious truth. The reasons for this attitude of denial would fill another book. As Ibrahim points out, the corruption of history in the academy and in elementary school textbooks have replaced historical truth with various melodramas in which Western colonialists and imperialists have oppressed Muslims.

These and other prejudices have led American media outlets to ignore or distort Islamic-inspired violence, as can be seen in the coverage of the Nigerian jihadist movement Boko Haram. These jihadists have publicly announced their aim of cleansing Nigeria of Christians and establishing sharia law, yet Western media coverage consistently ignores this aim and casts the conflict as a “cycle of violence” in which both sides are equally guilty.

As Ibrahim concludes, even when Western media report on violence against Christians, “they employ an arsenal of semantic games, key phrases, convenient omissions, and moral relativism” to promote the anti-Western narrative that “Muslim violence and intolerance are products of anything and everything––poverty, political and historical grievances, or territorial disputes––except Islam.”

Within the global Muslim community, there is a civil war between those who want to adapt their faith to the modern world, and those who want to wage war in order to recreate a lost past of Muslim dominance. We do the former no favor by indulging Islam’s more unsavory aspects, since those aspects are exactly what need to be changed if Muslims want to enjoy the freedom and prosperity that come from political orders founded on human rights and inclusive tolerance. Raymond Ibrahim’s Crucified Again is an invaluable resource for telling the truth that could promote such change.

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Bruce S. Thornton is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. He received his BA in Latin in 1975 and his PhD in comparative literature–Greek, Latin, and English–in 1983, both from the University of California, Los Angeles. Thornton is currently a professor of classics and humanities at California State University in Fresno, California. He is the author of nine books and numerous essays and reviews on Greek culture and civilization and their influence on Western civilization. His latest book, published in March 2011, is titled The Wages of Appeasement: Ancient Athens, Munich, and Obama's America.

 

[a_majoor]

The Muslim Brotherhoods get knocked back across the region. In Egypt, an estimated 35 million people come out in support of the new regime (even more than came out to demand the overthrow of the Brotherhoods in the first place), and there is a laundry list of nations where the Brotherhoods are being sset back. This sin't to say that they are down and out; the Brotherhoods have a strong internal structure, international reach (even in Canada and the United States), have built a system of parallel governments in many regions and have backing from Turkey. They are also not shy about using force to achieve their goals, coupled to their strength, backing and organization they will be a powerful force in the region for decades to come:

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/07/27/a-bad-week-for-the-muslim-brotherhood/?singlepage=true

A Bad Week for the Muslim Brotherhood

by
PATRICK POOLE
Bio
July 27, 2013 - 12:52 pm
     
Two weeks ago, Muslim Brotherhood leaders from across Africa and the Middle East gathered in Istanbul to regroup following the ouster of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, former head of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party. (Morsi, as I noted previously here, was recruited into the group while studying in the U.S.) But after even more setbacks suffered by the Muslim Brotherhood in a number of countries this past week, another meeting might be in order.

Here’s a rundown of the week’s events:

Egypt: The most prominent example, the MB there rejected calls for reconciliation meetings by the interim government and demanded Morsi’s reinstatement as president before any negotiations. That’s not remotely likely. So that set the stage this week for a game of chicken, with the MB refusing to stand down and Defense Minister Sisi calling for rallies yesterday in support of the interim government, ostensibly to legitimize a crackdown on a terror campaign being waged by Morsi supporters against police and military targets in the Sinai. Of note is the statement last week by a senior MB leader that the terrorist acts would stop when Morsi is reinstated, indicating some degree of MB control over the terror cells.

The result yesterday was massive rallies supporting both sides, predominately backing the new anti-MB government, with as many as 35 million taking the streets in support of the army despite a fatwa issued by Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the senior international MB jurist, prohibiting participation in the protests. Those protests led to a series of clashes last night and this morning that have reportedly left dozens dead. Meanwhile, Morsi was charged with murder and other crimes by the new government this week, and will probably be sent to the same prison currently housing former Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak.

The MB strategy appears to be leveraging the deaths of supporters killed during nearly continuous clashes with the police and army to gain domestic and international sympathy. Yet that doesn’t seem to be happening. Some clashes in which MB supporters were killed have not been with the government, but rather with residents of the areas occupied by the MB protests. And assaults on Egyptian and foreign journalists alike by Morsi supporters and news reports of torture and killing of so-called “infiltrators“ at the MB protests aren’t helping either.

And while the MB might have temporarily taken comfort in the Obama administration’s decision this week to halt the transfer of a few F-16 aircraft to the Egyptian military (though the administration continued such military hardware transfers while Morsi declared himself dictator in November and was killing protesters earlier this year), any hopes of backing their “legitimacy” campaign were dashed when administration officials said that no determination will probably be made as to whether Morsi’s ouster was a coup or not, which would trigger sanctions against the Egyptian military under a law passed by Congress last year.

So the MB doesn’t appear to be gaining support, and the majority of Egyptians appear willing to hold their nose over the violence against the MB while the army and the police attempt to create some stability. The result will be an increase in the violence and more deaths, and the low-grade terrorism in the Sinai will also probably escalate into more acts of terrorism, prompting greater crackdowns.

Gaza: Another big loser in Morsi’s overthrow is the Hamas government in Gaza. In recent weeks the Egyptian military has put a stranglehold on trafficking through tunnels, which provides Hamas with considerable funds. A UN estimate this week said that 80 percent of the traffic through the tunnels running from Egypt into Gaza has been shut down. The Hamas economic minister said the Egyptian crackdown has cost the terror group $230 million – one tenth of the gross domestic product of Gaza. Things aren’t likely to improve with the Egyptian government either, as one of the charges against former President Morsi is collaboration with Hamas in his prison escape back in 2011.

Tunisia: The country was rocked on Thursday by the assassination of political opposition leader Mohamed Brahmi, an open critic of the ruling Ennahda party’s Islamization policies. The assassination outside Brahmi’s home took place on the country’s Republic Day, so many Tunisians were not at work and began gathering around government buildings in protest. The Ennahda office in Sidi Bouzid – the birthplace of the “Arab Spring” – was torched by protesters.

Many in Tunisia are blaming Ennahda for Brahmi’s murder, particularly because of the inability on the part of the government to bring to justice the assassins of Brahmi’s political partner, Chokri Belaid, who was killed back in February. Reports indicated that the same gun used to kill Brahmi had also been used to kill Belaid. Now protesters are calling for the dissolution of the government led by Ennahda.

A government official this week blamed the assassinations on a cell of Ansar al-Shariah, but it’s not likely that Tunisians are going to buy the attempt by Ennahda to distance itself from the jihadist group. In the past, Ennahda leader Rachid Ghannouchi has played a public double game, denouncing Salafists to the Western press, and then colluding with them in private to push Islamization policies. He’s also known for making his own supremacist statements, such as his claim back in November that Islamists would rule the Arab world.

It should be noted that Ghannouchi has been greeted with open arms by top U.S. Islamic groups closely tied to the Obama administration, despite Ghannouchi being subject to a ban on entering the U.S. since the early days of the Clinton administration for terrorist activities until the Obama administration dropped the ban two years ago. Since, he’s been feted on Capitol Hill by the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) and he was recently the keynote speaker at an event with top Obama Muslim adviser and Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) president Mohamed Majid outside D.C.

Libya: A wave of assassinations on Friday included the killing of reformist leader and outspoken MB critic Abdulsalam Musmari, who was killed Friday in Benghazi as he was walking home from his mosque. In what was apparently retaliation for Musmari’s assassination, a mob burned down the MB headquarters in Benghazi as well as the offices of the MB’s Justice and Construction Party (JCP). Protesters also stormed the JCP offices in the capital of Tripoli. Amidst political uncertainty in Libya and attempts by the MB to distance itself from the ongoing assassination campaign, many still blame the JCP of trying to overcome political opposition by murdering their opponents (a familiar claim that is also heard in Tunisia).

Morocco: The ruling MB Party of Justice and Development (PJD) suffered a major blow this week when King Mohammed accepted the resignation of five ministers from the Istiqlal party, the junior coalition member with PJD. Istiqlal’s withdrawal from the government coalition now sets up a cabinet crisis with the potential of PJD not being able to find another coalition partner and the government having to be dissolved and new elections held. So far no other party has been willing to step up to join PJD, with most seeing elections as an opportunity to gain from PJD’s current weakness.

UAE: Three MB Al-Islah members were arrested this week in an ongoing crackdown on the group, which is accused of plotting to overthrow the government. Sixty-eight members were convicted earlier this month on related charges as part of a widespread effort by the government to counteract the group.

As a result, one of Al-Islah’s co-founders has established the Ummah Party from exile in Turkey. It aims to marry al-Qaeda’s global jihadist ambitions with the MB’s country-by-country platform. Ummah Party affiliates have sprung up in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and members are reported to be training with al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria.

Syria: The Syrian resistance, largely backed by the Muslim Brotherhood, continues to suffer losses this week, including in the strategic city of Homs. Syrian rebel leaders met with Secretary of State John Kerry this week amidst the Obama administration’s “half steps and mixed messages” in support for rebel forces. That frustration spilled over this week as Joint Chiefs chairman Gen. Dempsey was grilled before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about what the administration intends to do.

Meanwhile, a U.S.-based group dedicated to raising money to arm the Syrian rebels under a special license granted by the State Department last year refused to answer questions this week from investigative reporter Ryan Mauro about its practices. The Syrian Support Group is chaired by former Obama campaign Muslim adviser Mazen Asbahi.

Jordan: King Abdullah was the first head of state to travel to Egypt to meet with the new interim government there, much to the consternation of the MB Islamic Action Front, the largest opposition party that has been reeling from Morsi’s ouster. Abdullah is clearly hoping to capitalize on the Egyptian MB’s downfall to help ease pressure from the IAF, which has been stirring up trouble since last year, even inducing Syrian refugees to join in protest to destabilize the government there. The IAF has also announced plans to boycott elections scheduled for next month.

U.S.: Just weeks after top international MB cleric and terror supporter Sheikh Bin Bayyah was received in the White House, the Obama administration’s reliance on the MB has blown back on them. U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Anne Patterson is universally reviled in the country, and Obama’s image is caricatured in protests on both sides. Meanwhile, the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood, which has been advising the administration and crafting its disastrous Middle East policy, was well represented at Obama’s White House Iftar dinner this week.

One U.S. MB leader who wasn’t present at the White House or State Department Iftar dinners was former Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) secretary general and president of Imams of America Ashrafuzzaman Khan, who went on trial in absentia this week in Bangledesh for war crimes and genocide during the 1971 war. Khan has been an outspoken supporter of the Ground Zero mosque.

Canada: A report this week revealed that a federal audit of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) Development Foundation found that the organization may have sent as much as $280,000 to a jihadist group in the disputed Kashmir region. Now the Canadian Revenue Agency, which conducted the audit, is considering revoking ISNA’s charity status. ISNA was founded in the U.S. in the early 1980s by Muslim Brotherhood leaders and was named unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism finance trial.

* * *

So the Muslim Brotherhood has been set back on their heels, but while they may be down they’re by no means out. The organization thrives on the victimization narrative, and they’re getting it in spades.

The big winner from this week’s events is Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan, who beat back widespread popular protests last month and has taken the lead in calling for Morsi’s reinstatement. Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) have expressed their hopes for the formation of a neo-Ottoman commonwealth, and Erdogan is one of the few leading international MB contenders still standing and able to direct leadership of the Islamic movement.

I predict the pressure of the MB in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Gaza, Syria, and in other countries will lead to the escalation in the use of violence, and not necessarily through the MB’s usual “Salafist” proxies but by the organization itself. Back here at home, the Obama administration’s catastrophic policies in the Middle East allying the U.S. with the Muslim Brotherhood have left us with rapidly declining influence in the region and increase our profile as a target for terrorism. Meanwhile, a single spark could ignite the whole Middle East tinderbox into a full-scale regional war. And a no-show American president could leave the region wide open for other competing superpowers to exert their influence at our expense.

 

[jollyjacktar]

I do enjoy reading about the Bros and the Beards getting kicked in the goolies, however temporary.  Hopefully there's more where those setbacks came from.

 

[a_majoor]

I do enjoy reading about the Bros and the Beards getting kicked in the goolies, however temporary.  Hopefully there's more where those setbacks came from.

Perhaps so. From today's Kingston Whig-Standard:

http://www.thewhig.com/2013/07/28/the-backlash-against-islamism

The backlash against Islamism 
By Louis A. Delvoie

Sunday, July 28, 2013 8:25:08 EDT PM

Protesters supporting the Egyptian army in its overthrow of President Mohammed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood backers mass in Cairo's Tahrir Sqaure on Friday. Morsi's ouster is but one setback Islamists have faced as a growing political force.

The last 25 years or so have seen advocates of political Islam or Islamism make remarkable strides forward throughout the Muslim world. The phenomenon has been experienced from the jungles of Malaysia to the mountains of Afghanistan to the deserts of Mali. Along the way the Islamists have, however, suffered a number of setbacks, to the extent that one of the world’s leading experts on the subject, Olivier Roy, was prompted to entitle one of his books “The Failure of Political Islam.” Those setbacks came into sharp focus with recent events in Turkey and Egypt.

To understand the ebb and flow of Islamism it is necessary to delineate some of its characteristics and manifestations, even at the risk of sounding pedantic and erring on the side of generalization.

DELINEATIONS

Islamism or political Islam draws most of it inspiration from one of three schools of religious and politico-religious reform and revivalism in the Muslim community at large. These are the Wahabi movement in the Arabian Peninsula, the Deobandi movement in the Indian subcontinent and the Muslim Brotherhood, which originated in Egypt and spread to other countries in the Middle East. Although frequently divergent in their theological positions, these schools of thought share one thing in common: they advocate the creation of an Islamic political order at either a universal or state level.

The most immediate objective of most Islamist movements is to convert Muslim countries into Islamic states. The distinction between the two is of key importance. A Muslim country is a nation composed of a majority Muslim population in which sovereignty rests with the people or with a reigning family and which bases its political and legal systems on essentially secular models, whether of European, tribal or other origins. An Islamic state, on the other hand, is one in which sovereignty rests with God and in which the political and legal systems are based on the Koran and the Sharia.

Islamists come in all shapes and sizes and resort to a wide variety of tactics in pursuit of their aims. At one end of the spectrum are terrorist movements such as Al Qaida, led by the late Osama Bin Laden and by Ayman al-Zawahiri. Then there are armed insurgent movements seeking to overthrow existing governments; these include the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Al Shabab in Somalia.

Further along the spectrum are groups that are both political parties and armed movements, such as Hamas in the Palestinian territories. Finally, there are Islamist political parties, which seek to achieve power through peaceful means and through participation in domestic political processes. Such parties have had a long existence in countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Morocco.

THE ISLAMIST SURGE

In whatever guise, Islamists have pushed the political boundaries of the Muslim world in the last 25 years, starting with Algeria in the late 1980s and early 1990s. At that time Algerians were becoming increasingly disenchanted with a regime and a political party that had been in power for almost three decades.

They began to rally to an Islamist opposition party, the Front Islamique du Salut (FIS), which, above all, promised radical change from the status quo. In the parliamentary elections of 1991 the F1S was en route to winning a majority of seats when the military establishment intervened and cancelled the elections. What ensued was a 10-year armed insurrection in which both the Islamist insurgents and the government’s security forces behaved with shocking brutality, causing, in the process, some 100,000 deaths.

In the mid 1990s the Taliban emerged on the scene in war-torn Afghanistan. In a matter of two years they managed to rout the contending mujahideen groups and to establish their supremacy over most of the country. Under the leadership of Mullah Omar they proclaimed the creation of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and began to run the country on the basis of what they interpreted as the dictates of the Koran and the Sharia.

Although not recognized as a legitimate government by most of the international community and widely condemned for human rights abuses, the Taliban exercised effective power for nearly six years.

In 2002, what is generally described as a “mildly” Islamist party, the AKP, won a remarkable victory in Turkey’s general election and has remained in power ever since, thanks to two further electoral wins. In its time in office the AKP has transformed Turkey into a major emerging economy. It has curbed the role of the military in Turkish politics and has taken major steps to bring an end to confrontation with the country’s Kurdish minority.

At the same time, the AKP government has sought to contest some of the secularist reforms of the country’s founding father, Mustafa Kemal, and to allow more visible expressions of the country’s Muslim faith in public places and institutions. But in this, the government has proceeded slowly and cautiously.

Then came the much-touted “Arab Spring” of 2011. Popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt resulted in the overthrow of the two long-standing, essentially secular dictatorships of Zein Abidine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak. In subsequent elections, the electorates in both countries gave the nod to Islamist parties, the moderate Al Nahda in Tunisia and the harder-line Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

Did this mean that a majority of the population in both countries had suddenly become Islamist? Probably not. The Islamist parties benefited from two important circumstances. On the one hand, they were seen as honest and not contaminated by association with the corruption and abuses of the ousted regimes. On the other hand, they were fairly united and well organized, whereas their secular opponents were divided and disorganized. That said, their successes did mark an important step forward in the march of Islamism.

In Libya, the third country at the heart of the “Arab Spring,” the situation remains sufficiently chaotic that it is impossible to come to any firm conclusions regarding the progress of Islamism there. Suffice it to say that an Islamist party, the Justice and Construction Party, which is affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, now holds the second-largest number of seats in the National Congress. And the disorder which dominates the country’s politics is fuelled by the activities of armed militias, some of which are clearly Islamist in character. The Islamists have obviously made some headway in Libya, but how much is difficult to say.

Far less spectacular is the progress which Islamist political parties have made in countries such as Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia. While they are nowhere near achieving majorities in elections in those countries, they have gained sufficient strength that their views and adherents must be factored into the calculations of the more secular parties. Their influence on government policies seems likely to grow in the years ahead, if only because of their ability to play a “spoiler” role in domestic politics.

Finally, there is the rather episodic eruption of Islamist forces in North-West Africa in 2012. In Nigeria a movement known as Boko Haram has been responsible for numerous attacks on Christians and government installations and has required the government to deploy a significant proportion of its armed forces to counter it. In Mali, various groups of Islamist fighters, some associated with Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, took advantage of the political chaos prevailing in the country. In a matter of a few short months they took control of most of Northern Mali, including its principal urban centres. At the very least, these events are indicative of the geographic spread of Islamism.

THE BACKLASH

The last 25 years have not, however, seen an uninterrupted progression of Islamism in the Muslim world. Quite the contrary. The advance of the ideology has been repeatedly reversed in many places and in many ways.

In Algeria, after 10 years of fighting, the security forces finally put an end to the Islamist insurgency. Although there are now occasional incidents of violence, the country is largely at peace and under the firm control of its secular government.

In Afghanistan, the invasion mounted by the United States in 2001 resulted in the overthrow and expulsion of the Taliban government. While the future of Afghanistan is still very much up in the air and while the Taliban may be able to secure for themselves a new role in government, it seems unlikely that they will be able to regain the mastery of the country which they enjoyed between 1996 and 2001.

In Somalia, the weak central government aided by a peacekeeping force of the African Union has been able to check the advances of the Islamist Al Shabab militia, and may well have defeated them.

Then the extremist wing of the movement was dealt a major symbolic setback when U.S. Navy Seals located and killed Osama Bin Laden. Earlier this year in Mali, a robust French military force was able to rid the north of the country of Islamist insurgents. The deployment of an international peacekeeping force in Mali may ensure that they do not return.

In recent weeks, demonstrations followed by riots have broken out in several cities in Turkey. Originally intended to protect the government’s plans to put up buildings in a park in central Istanbul, these manifestations have morphed into something with far broader political significance.

In part, they represent a protest against the increasingly autocratic behaviour of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, including his muzzling of the media and his capricious use of the courts to prosecute political opponents. Equally, they represent a protest by secularists against what they see as the attempts by Erdogan and his AKP government to transform Turkey into an Islamic state. While some of the fears of the secularists may well be exaggerated, they have by their actions sent a clear message to the government not to proceed too much further in this direction.

Most recently the attention of the world has been captured by events in Egypt. After days of demonstrations and riots in Cairo and Alexandria, the military gave the duly elected president, Mohammad Morsi, an ultimatum to come to some sort of modus vivendi with his opponents. When he proved either unwilling or incapable of doing so, the military simply deposed him.

The public dissatisfaction which led to this result had two principal causes. On the one hand, there were those who were angry that Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood associates had proved totally incapable of tackling the country’s economic problems and of restoring law and order.

On the other, there were secularists who objected strongly to the Brotherhood’s endeavours to re-shape the country in a manner consistent with their conservative ideology, not least in matters relating to the status of women. While the standoff between Islamists and secularists in Egypt may last for some time, the deposition of President Morsi represents a significant setback for the Islamists in the Arab world’s most populous country.

The to-ing and fro-ing in the fortunes of the Islamists is likely to continue for many years. As it does, it is likely to be the cause of considerable instability in many parts of the world.

Louis A. Delvoie is a Fellow at Queen's University's Centre for International and Defence Policy and Former Canadian Ambassador to Algeria and High Commissioner to Pakistan.