Militant Islam and the Politics of Redemption

Militant Islam has emerged in the 1980s and 1990s as a major political force to be contended with in the Middle East. It is characterized by its readiness to use violence and by the challenge it constitutes to existing political institutions. This article looks at the conditions under which five militant Islamic movements in Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Lebanon, and the Gaza Strip and on the West Bank have emerged as a political force, and the concepts they have used to mobilize public support and to create a mass base for themselves in order to challenge leaders or governments in power. The conditions include political stagnation and the weakening of central authority, economic stagnation leading to the decline in standards of living, deteriorating security conditions, pervasiveness of Western culture, and secular states and leaders perceived as antagonistic to Islamic movements. The leaders of these movements do not portray themselves as revolutionaries trying to create a new society but rather as saviors trying to rescue the old society from self-destruction. Their ideology is an ideology of redemption.