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The Palestinian Hamas: Vision, Violence, and Coexistence
Shaul Mishal and Avraham Sela
2000
Introduction
A strong revisionist outcry concerning national goals and means as well as social and moral rules marked Hamas’s burst onto the center stage of Palestinian politics. Hamas, an abbreviation of Harakat al-Muqawama al- Islamiyya (Islamic resistance movement), emerged as an Islamic alternative to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) with the outbreak of the Intifada, the Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation. Hamas challenged the PLO’s status as the exclusive political force and sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and, later on, the Palestinian Authority established in the Gaza Strip. Hamas also opposed the PLO’s secular nationalism and political program for Palestinian statehood and national territory, effectively appropriating the original Palestinian national narrative, strategic goals and means, historically identified with the PLO, and placing them in an Islamic context and meaning. By invoking an Islamic-national vision and community activism, Hamas was able to combine religious doctrine with daily concerns.
Viewed in a broad perspective, Hamas is typical of the widespread phenomenon of political Islam in our time, representing an effort by social and political revisionist groups to articulate their grievances and redefine the national agenda accordingly. At the same time, however, Hamas is an exception. In addition to its fundamental commitment to reform Muslim society in accordance with true Islam, Hamas also carries the particular banner of the national liberation of historic Palestine through an armed struggle with Israel and firm opposition to the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. Hamas’s agenda thus plays on both the domestic and international stages, a dual act that shapes Hamas’s political strategies and conduct. Much of this agenda can be described in terms of an inherent tension between the fulfillment of the Islamic duty of holy war (jihad) against Israel and its awareness of the boundaries and constraints of the political and social environment in which it operates.
Hamas’s effort to secure a dominant public position by committing itself to promote Palestinian national interests through violence against Israel while at the same time maintaining its Islamic social institutions of education, welfare, and health has led to a predicament. The problem, present since the movement’s establishment, was sharply aggravated by the signing of the September 1993 Israel-PLO Oslo accord and the creation of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in Gaza and Jericho in June 1994. Hamas’s awareness of its relative weakness compared with Fatah (Yasir Arafat’s faction in the PLO) and the need to secure its presence and influence in the Palestinian population, often at the price of competing with the PA, necessitated a more flexible attitude toward a settlement with Israel. Indeed, our study shows that more than a year before the 1993 accord, Hamas had been considering unofficially joining the political process by taking part, as an Islamic party, in the expected elections to Palestinian representative institutions.
By adopting such a strategy, Hamas would run the risk of losing its standing as the normative opposition to the PLO, thus heightening the danger of friction within the movement and opening itself up to manipulation by the PA. Indeed, Hamas’s failure to adhere to the dogmatic vision would have produced confusion and uncertainty, whereas its conformity to its stated religious doctrine could strengthen its credibility among followers and adversaries alike. But by taking action that would bring retaliation from Israel, Hamas would risk losing the support of large segments of the Palestinian public seeking an end to social and economic hardship in the Israeli-held territories—as well as in currently PA-administered areas.
How has Hamas coped with these dilemmas? More specifically, has Hamas been able to expand its influence by political means without sacrificing its credibility and unity? How has Hamas’s search for space in the political sphere affected its behavior? To what extent has Hamas been able to explain the shift from its dogmatic attitude in the conflict to an innovative approach requiring a deviation from its declared doctrine?
In this study we explore Hamas’s political adjustments in its methods of controlled violence, negotiated coexistence, and strategic decision making in regard to the Intifada and the struggle with the PLO, the Oslo accords and the establishment of the PA, the general election to the PA’s Legislative Council and the issue of participation in the PA’s institutions, and the jihad against Israel or a temporary peaceful settlement. Our findings suggest that Hamas’s decision-making processes have been markedly balanced, combining realistic considerations with traditional beliefs and arguments, emphasizing visionary goals but also immediate needs. They have demonstrated conformity with formal Hamas doctrine while showing signs of political flexibility. While a final peace settlement with Israel was forbidden, Hamas left open the option of an agreement, provided that it was temporary. 1 And even though Hamas rejected the PLO’s right to represent the Palestinian people, it was willing to forge a political coalition “on an agreed program focused on jihad.” 2
Moreover, a major principle in Hamas’s attitude toward the PLO—and later the PA—has been its persistent call to avoid intra-Palestinian violence and bloodshed. Being aware of its weakness versus the PA’s security apparatuses, Hamas used this principle as a powerful argument to justify its resignation to undesirable realities and situations in which the movement’s doctrine dictated strict action. Preached from the pulpits of the mosques and in the movement’s written propaganda, this principle has helped preserve Hamas’s reputation of strictly adhering to its established doctrine while at the same time reinforcing its image as a responsible Palestinian national movement.
Hamas demonstrated its flexibility by differentiating between the short-term objective of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza and the long-term goal of establishing a Palestinian Islamic state on the territory of Palestine that would replace Israel. Adopting this order of objectives, Hamas effectively subordinated the former to the latter by emphasizing the provisional status of any political settlement with Israel.
By interpreting any political agreement involving the West Bank and Gaza Strip as merely a pause on the historic road of jihad, Hamas achieved political flexibility without forsaking its ideological credibility. Having already adopted the principle of a temporary Israeli-Palestinian settlement, Hamas was prepared to acquiesce in the 1993 Oslo process without recognizing Israel; to support the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem without ending the state of war or renouncing its ultimate goals; and to consider restraint but not to give up the option of armed struggle. Political activity here and now was thus justified in terms of hereafter. Acceptance of a political settlement in the short run was interpreted as being complementary, not contradictory, to long-term desires.
Hamas and Other Arab Islamic Movements
The all-embracing nature of the Islamic doctrine and its prevalence in the Palestinian and other Arab societies has been reflected in the far- reaching effort of political Islamic groups to impose their values and norms on all spheres of life, from education and the economy to law and social behavior. 3 Islam has been argued as being the sole organic culture existing in the Arab world and the only cultural tradition whose symbols and values substantiate and give meaning to collective action. Accordingly, spokesmen of Arab nationalism or socialism have attempted to incorporate Islamic terms and symbols into their secular doctrines, which might explain the relatively easy shift of public discourse back to Islamism that marked the decline of the secular ideologies since the late 1960s and early 1970s. Indeed, there is broad agreement among students of the Middle East and political Islam that since the late 1980s, the dominant interpreters of the region’s cultural symbols have been Islamists.
The return of Islam to the center of international attention has carried a distinctly political overtone, manifested by the appearance of political organizations and movements (labeled in the West as “Islamists”) based on Islamic convictions (labeled in the West as “Islamism”). These Islamic movements have been defined as political because they have adopted Islamic symbols and values as a means of popular mobilization and political influence, with the ultimate aim of obtaining access to power. The Islamists’ political behavior is not necessarily dictated by Islamic zeal, however, even though their activities and goals are defined and phrased in Islamic terms. Islam does, however, serve as a normative system by which the designers of public opinion and agents of interpretation give meaning to changing social and political realities and redefine goals and means in accordance with time and place. 4 The common goal of these movements is to apply Islamic law (shari`a) to all spheres of life and to make it the sole source of legislation by islamizing the society from the bottom up or by gaining, if not seizing, power for the sake of reforming the society “from above.”
Much of the West’s attention to political Islam has derived from the violence accompanying this religious fervor and the fanaticism marking some Islamic groups and regimes, raising fears of “a clash of civilizations” and “a threat” to Western liberal democratic values and social order. Nonetheless, Iran’s Shi`i revolutionary fervor has remained confined to Shi`i communities in the Persian Gulf and Lebanon and has gradually diminished since the late 1980s. And since 1989, Sudan has been the only state in the Muslim Sunni world to become dominated by a radical Islamic regime. Nonetheless, the international dimension of the Islamic radical trend has had an important impact on Islamic movements in the Middle East. Veterans of the Afghan resistance against Soviet occupation form the core of armed Islamic groups in Egypt, Algeria, and Yemen, and some of their leading figures have become role models for Islamic groups, including those in Palestine. 5
In Algeria, the civil war since 1992 between the government and some murderous Islamist groups, and the armed attacks of Islamist groups against tourists, public figures, and Coptic sites and peoples in Egypt underlie these concerns about an Islamist takeover of other states’ power, perceived as detrimental to Western economic and security interests. The violent nature of the Islamist wave has also been nurtured by the suicide bombings conducted by the Shi`i Lebanese Islamist group of Hizballah against the multinational force in Lebanon in 1983 and its continued armed struggle against Israel’s military presence in south Lebanon. More recently, the threat of political Islam has been represented by the suicide bombings conducted by Palestinian fundamentalist groups, such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, against Israeli civilians in an attempt to undermine the Oslo agreement signed by Israel and the PLO in September 1993.
Yet despite the horrifying toll claimed by Islamic violence in Algeria, violence has been relatively marginal in the conduct of mainstream Islamic movements in the Arab world, embodied primarily by the Muslim Brothers since the organization’s emergence in the late 1920s. Their activities and interests have focused on religious guidance and education, communal services, and, since the early 1980s, increasingly on political participation. Indeed, the continuous repression of political activity in most Muslim Middle East states has left the Islamic “party” as the only viable option. As these movements grow more popular, they tend to adopt nonviolent, modern strategies, including a willingness to participate in the political process under non-Islamic regimes. These strategies include the founding of political institutions, the participation and takeover of existing public and voluntary associations, and the coalition with non-Islamic parties in elections. The ability of Islamic movements to legitimize such nonconformist strategies, including the principle of political pluralism, has necessitated religious interpretation, facilitated by charismatic leadership, organizational coherence, and strong popular support.
Hamas is not unlike other political and social movements, secular or religious, whose fundamental principles and ultimate goals have been translated into practical decisions and workable objectives. Although political parties and movements tend to adhere to their worldview when in opposition, they often are reluctant to insist on their principles when in power, recognizing the responsibility of governing as well as of economic constraints, legal limitations, and international rules. Furthermore, even in nondemocratic regimes, opposition parties and movements may lean toward a strategy of coexistence with the ruling power, thereby avoiding confrontation that could expand into social upheaval and mass uprising. This inclination and ability to acquiesce in contradictions are characteristic of groups aware of the vulnerability of their vital interests and high potential loss if they adopt strategies of direct confrontation. As a result, the ideological discrepancies and competing beliefs between the national camp and the Islamic element in the Palestinian society might appear to an outsider as a key element that both shapes Palestinian relations internally and dictates Palestinian behavior externally. Yet a careful examination reveals that close-to-home issues—such as family ties, personal acquaintances, interpersonal affiliations, and intragroup rules of conduct, as well as deeply rooted norms, communal customs, and local traditions—are no less significant than normative perceptions and ideological preferences.
A fruitful and constructive investigation, therefore, should not search so much for areas of ideological dispute and normative disagreement but instead should identify strategies that enable individuals, organizations, and movements to successfully handle potential splits and internal contradictions. Rather than assuming fixed boundaries between organizations and groups, our investigation should focus on the dynamic process of negotiation between and within social entities over shifting boundaries shaped by the meaning of political identity and the interpretation of social values. Accordingly, unsettled tension and unresolved contradiction are intrinsic to societies undergoing national cohesion and rapid social change; it is the search for ways to mitigate conflicts and minimize tensions between opposing forces that is critical to their political survival and social well-being. Indeed, a comparative overview of religious movements affiliated with political Islam in Arab countries reveals the extent to which these movements have been reluctant to adhere to their religious dogma at any price and so have tended to adopt political strategies that minimize the danger of rigidly adhering to principle, doctrine, or ideology. And as in Hamas’s case, they have moved away from dogmatic positions in a quest for innovative and pliable modes of conduct, the opposite of doctrinaire rigidity, ready to respond or adjust to fluid conditions without losing sight of their ultimate objectives. 6
True, Islam is a religion that does not separate “mosque” from “state,” and the interpretation of Islamic law (shari`a) is strictly the domain of the religious scholars (`ulama'). In addition to being a system of religious beliefs and decrees, Islam is also a juridical system that determines rules of conduct for both individuals and the community and defines internal relations among Muslims and between Muslims and non-Muslims. Still, there is a difference between laws regarding religious duties and moral codes of individual behavior, for which there is relatively little leeway for interpretation, and the wide spectrum of issues concerning the public and political domains. Here the shari`a leaves ample room for interpretation based on historical precedents and equivocal oral traditions that Islamic leaders can use to address current political and social issues. 7 Indeed, the popularity of contemporary Islamic movements has aggravated the problems deriving from the absence of an authoritative religious leadership, for no Muslim scholar is considered an absolute authority, particularly on public affairs. “Every Muslim who is capable and qualified to give a sound opinion on matters of Islamic law, is entitled to interpret the law of God when such interpretation becomes necessary.” 8 Implicitly challenging any central authority, religious or secular, this statement reflects a traditional thrust of the `ulama' in Islam to speak in the name of society as a whole in an attempt to strike a balance in state-society relations and even to bring about society’s domination of the state. More specifically, we find the development by contemporary Islamic movements of autonomous social activities in areas of welfare, health, and education to be filling a governmental void, which in some respects resembles the Western notion of civil society. 9
Nowhere is this proliferation of religious authority and the quest for a workable formula of what might be termed flexible rigidity or pliant conformity more vividly expressed than in the policy adopted by many current Islamic movements to cooperate with the existing political order, even under non-Islamic regimes. Islamic thinkers discern four main strategies that mark Islamic movements: reformist, educational, didactic, and guiding; communal, providing social services; political, exerting pressure on the rulers to implement Islamic law, namely, the shari`a; and combatant- political, using military force or violence against the ruling elites. 10 In practice, Islamic movements have been adaptable, taking various elements from these four strategies for different social and political conditions. 11
Islamic movements tend to be reformist rather than revolutionary, generally preferring to operate overtly and legally unless forced to go underground and use subversive or violent methods in response to severe repression. Islamic political movements operating in Arab regimes in which they are tolerated have been willing to accept the rules of the political game and to refrain from violence, as in the case of the Muslim Brotherhood groups in Jordan and Sudan. 12 Indeed, during the 1980s and 1990s, the novel phenomenon has been the growing inclination of Islamic movements to participate in their respective political systems, even under non-Islamic regimes. Moreover, this pattern has prevailed despite restrictions, or prevention, imposed by various regimes on the participation of Islamic movements in elections, as in the case of al-Nahda in Tunisia, fis in Algeria, and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. 13
Hasan al-Turabi, leader of the Islamic National Front in Sudan, and Rashed Ghanouchi, leader of the Nahda movement of Tunisia, have been the most conspicuous advocates of this increasingly dominant trend in the Arab world. Its aim is active participation in the political process, including the formation of coalitions with non-Islamic movements. Such political activities, it is thought, will help Islamic movements seize power and impose Islamization “from above.” 14 True, both leaders stress the importance of ideological guidance as a necessary stage for creating a wide base of cadres for the Islamic movement. 15 Still, they call for employing strategies of mass mobilization rather than elitist seclusion.
According to their perception, the use of violence is legitimate to counter repression by the regime. But they do not recommend violence because of the overwhelming power of the state and the danger of giving the ruling elite a pretext to wage all-out war against the Islamic movement. Reflecting on his successful experience and road to power in Sudan, Turabi emphasizes the importance of gradual penetration into the armed forces and bureaucratic apparatuses, parallel to participation in the political system. 16
Shaped by social and economic conditions, external constraints, collective values, and common beliefs, the phenomenon of Islamists’ political participation became apparent in the 1990s across the Arab world, from Algeria and Sudan through Yemen, 17 Lebanon, and Jordan. Even in Israel, defined as a Jewish state, a group from the Islamic movement decided—at the cost of a split—to take part in the 1996 general elections and even won two seats in the Knesset. 18 This inclination reflects first and foremost the Islamists’ willingness to accept the rules of the game determined by the regimes in the context of controlled democratization, offering new opportunities for political participation. Although neither side would accept the other fully, both the Islamic movements and the Arab regimes have equally refrained from adopting a position of total rejection.
True, Islamic movements have been reluctant to publicly compromise their ultimate objectives, officially modify their positions, make reciprocal concessions, avoid criticizing the regime, admit to understanding the viewpoint of others, or accept mutually rewarding solutions to joint problems. But at the same time, they have hesitated to pursue their dogma at the price of all-out confrontation. Even though the goals and activities of these movements are justified in Islamic terms, the religious drive does not always guide the political conduct of these movements. Moreover, it is this Islamic value system that allows these movements to interpret unorthodox political moves in normative terms, thus enabling them to adjust to the rapid changes in social and political life and to redefine their strategic goals to fit the exigencies of time and place. 19
Neither Fixed Identity nor Distinct Boundaries
The willingness of Islamic movements to take part in varying levels of state-controlled, limited democratic rule demonstrates the Islamists’ conviction that they can gain influence and promote their objectives by operating within the existing political order. In this respect, Hamas and other Islamic movements in the Arab world escaped a binary perception regarding their relations with their ideological rivals and political opponents. They took care not to depict their social and political reality as a cluster of mutually exclusive, diametrically opposed categories, characterized by “either-or” relations. And they refrained from portraying themselves in terms of fixed identities, distinct boundaries, and stable, well-established preferences. In short, they recognized the limits beyond which they could not go in pursuing an “all or nothing” policy to advance their ultimate political goals. Given the deteriorating social and economic conditions in the Arab states in the 1980s and 1990s and the political constraints in which Hamas and other Islamic movements operated, the price for attempting to remove the other side from the political stage was seen as intolerable. Underlying this pattern of relations was the realization by the Islamic movements that making a clear decision in their ideological and political conflict with the Arab regimes would always remain mere wishful thinking and, crucially, that a straightforward conflict and a mode of action based on a zero-sum game could threaten their very existence.
It is here that we should look in order to understand the Islamic movements’ inclination to consolidate their position and to enhance their bargaining ability vis-à-vis their opponents by formulating an eclectic formula and finding a workable compromise between doctrinal considerations and practical calculations: religious norms and material interests, social obli-gations and sectoral preferences, a broad national solidarity and a narrow communal loyalty. Indeed, Islamic political movements deal with “cultural issues of restoring familial and patriarchal authority, regulation of gender relations and sexual mores, cultural authenticity, and the restructuring of the political community according to religious norms. But at the same time, practices associated with these movements are colored by more profane, material concerns.” 20
The preference of Hamas and other Islamic movements for composite strategies and compromise tactics over an “all or nothing” policy and binary perspectives is not exceptional in the history of Islam and the politics of the Middle East. As Eickelman and Piscatori argue, the boundaries between social, political, and religious duties and preferences are constantly shifting. Thus, political power, religious symbols, and social interests are always located in a particular context and in a nexus of social and cultural relationships. “Doctrinal prescriptions,” claim Eickelman and Piscatori,
are but one factor in motivating social action. As traditional Muslim theorists maintain, ideas such as zakat [alms imposed by the Qur'an] and jihad play a role in inspiring social and political conduct. However, considerations such as family, ethnicity, class, gender, and bureaucratic access can be equally important. Doctrine enjoins the pilgrimage to Mecca on all believers able to do so, but believers are just as likely to fulfill this obligation because of the opportunity to improve their social status, commercial possibilities or . . . political influence. 21
The process of finding a workable compromise between the doctrine and practice, ideas and interests that we have been describing, applies with equal force to Middle Eastern tribal settings:
When one examines the ethnographic record to determine what it is that Middle Eastern tribesmen are doing in political acts, one finds that they are talking to each other probably more than they are fighting . . . with the consequent or attendant belief that the basis of power is persuasion rather than the exercise of force. 22 (emphasis in original)
For Hamas and other Islamic movements, the utility and advantages of nonbinary policy devices such as composite strategies, workable compromise, flexible rigidity, and pliant conformity are quite clear. In religious fundamentalist movements, support is usually gained at the price of conformity, by publicly renouncing any tactic that could offset the group’s normative values. Our study shows, however, that the many policy devices, described earlier, that Hamas uses, have enabled its leaders to manipulate normative rules in a pragmatic fashion. Indeed, Hamas leaders have been able to move publicly from an “unrealistic” posture of conflict—of total moral commitment to a principle, whatever the cost—toward a more pragmatic bargaining posture, which recognizes that certain norms and interests are shared with the other side and can be used as a basis for a workable compromise. 23
The need of Hamas to adjust to a changing of political and social environment and its leaders’ ability to justify its deviation from official doctrine and from public commitments have reduced the risk of intraorganizational disorder and enhanced the prospects of maintaining public support and gaining the rank and file’s compliance.
How has Hamas combined religious dogma with practice? What were the roots of flexibility enabling Hamas to escape the pressure to translate its normative rigidity into an “all or nothing” practice?
To understand how and to what extent Hamas has been able to transform hybrid strategies and policies founded on the principle of flexible rigidity from tactical episodes into strategic patterns, we must turn from formal dimensions, like strategies of control and command, to issues that are critical and relevant, such as interrelationships and mechanisms of cooperation and conflict regulation. We need to go beyond the binary perspective and escape the linear boxes of political thought in order to home in on interconnectedness.
To follow Hamas’s modes of thinking and conduct, we have to think in terms other than the political commonsense issues of stability, legitimacy, control, and hierarchy that have occupied many students of religious movements, states, and societies in the Middle East as well as in developing countries in Africa, Asia, or Latin America. The flexible organizational perspective turns these concepts on their head. The question thus becomes how a movement, state, or community can forge and encourage a political reality based on perceptions of bounded instability, negotiated coexistence, blurred boundaries, and conflicting, competing, and overlapping preferences instead of secure and prolonged stability, fixed boundaries, and consistent preferences.
The flexible, informal approach also provides an apt metaphor for the world order today. Our world is characterized more by instability than stability, by flux and not stasis, by boundaries that are ambiguous and shifting rather than distinct and static, by multiple identities and fluid loyalties. Analytical perspectives based on linear metaphors and binary modes of thinking cannot capture these uncertainties and complexities. In the Arab world, in which “defeat is never total, victory never complete, tension never ending, and all gains and losses are merely marginal and temporary as winners fall out and losers regroup,” 24 a departure from binary perception provides a novel way to comprehend the intricacies of Hamas’s policy, which has enabled the movement to maneuver within the prose of political reality while never ceasing to recite the poetry of ideology.
Endnotes
Note 1: Hamas, Mu'tamar `Ulama' Filastin, “Fatwa al-Musharaka fi Mu'tamar Madrid wal-Sulh Ma`a Isra'il” [Council of Palestine Islamic Scholars, “Fatwa (learned opinion) on the participation in the Madrid conference and peace with Israel”], Jerusalem, November 1, 1991. Back.
Note 2: Ibid.; Hamas leaflet, “Bayan lil-Tarikh . . . La Limu'tamar Bay` Filastin wa-Bayt al-Maqdis” [Announcement to history . . . no to the conference of sale of Palestine and Jerusalem], September 23, 1991; Hamas charter, article 27. Back.
Note 3: Islam, Democracy, the State and the West: A Round Table with Dr. Hasan Turabi, May 19, 1992, World and Islam Studies Enterprise and University of South Florida, Committee for Middle Eastern Studies, pp. 17&-;18, 24–35. Back.
Note 4: Ira M. Lapidus, “Islam Political Movements: Patterns of Historical Change,” in Edmund Burke and Ira M. Lapidus, eds., Islam, Politics, and Social Movements (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988), p. 5. Back.
Note 5: A conspicuous case is that of Sheikh `Abdallah `Azzam, who, by means of a learned Muslim verdict (fatwa), tried to validate the priority of holy war (jihad) in Afghanistan, volunteered, and was killed there (see chap. 2). For his biography, see al-Sabil, December 30, 1989, pp. 4–5. Back.
Note 6: On features of flexible conduct and strategies, see Daniel Druckman and Christopher Mitchell, “Flexibility in Negotiation and Mediation,” Annals 542 (Novem-ber 1995): 11. Back.
Note 7: In his extreme challenge to modern state sovereignty, Abu-l-A`la Mawdudi, a Pakistani Islamic thinker, even coined the term “the sovereignty of God” (hakimiyyat allah). Yet Mawdudi also stated that “the power to rule over the earth has been promised to the whole community of believers. . . . Every believer is a Caliph of God in his individual capacity.” See Abu-l-`Ala' Mawdudi, “Political Theory of Islam,” in John Donohue and John I. Esposito, eds., Islam in Transition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 258. Back.
Note 8: Ibid., p. 254; Islam, Democracy, the State and the West, p. 19. Back.
Note 9: Islam, Democracy, the State and the West, pp. 27–28; Michael Watts, “Islamic Modernities, Citizenship, Civil Society and Islamism in a Nigerian City,” Public Culture 8 (1996): 251–289. Back.
Note 10: Yusuf al-Qaradawi, al-Hall al-Islami Farida wa-Darura [The Islamic solution, duty and necessity], 5th ed. (Cairo: Maktabat Wahaba, 1993), pp. 155–192; Fathi Yakan, Nahwa Haraka Islamiyya `Alamiyya Wahida [Toward one global Islamic movement], 3d ed. (Beirut: Mu'assassat al-Risala, 1977), pp. 8–21. Back.
Note 11: An example is the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which under the guidance of Hasan al-Banna adopted mainly a reformist approach but also prepared a violent option, by creating its own armed force. Martin Kramer, “Fundamentalist Islam at Large: The Drive for Power,” Middle East Quarterly (June 1996): 39. Back.
Note 12: See for example, `Abdallah al-`Akailah, “Tajribat al-haraka al-Islamiyya fi al-Urdun” [The experience of the Islamic movement in Jordan], in `Azzam al-Tamimi, ed., Musharakat al-Islamiyyin fi al-Sulta [The Islamists’ sharing in power] (London: Liberty for the Muslim World, 1994), pp. 101–112; al-Hayat, September 12, pp. 1, 6. Back.
Note 13: For the Egyptian case, see Sana Abed-Kotob, “The Accommodationists Speak: Goals and Strategies of the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 27 (1995): 321–339. Back.
Note 14: See, for example, Hasan al-Turabi’s interview in Qira'at Siyasiyya [Political readings], (Florida), no. 3, (Summer 1992), p. 20; interview with Filastin al-Muslima (November 1992): 34; Olivier Roy, The Failure of Political Islam (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994), pp. 47, 56–57. Back.
Note 15: Islam, Democracy, The State and The West, p. 18; Rashed al-Ghanouchi, Mahawir Islamiyya [Islamic pivots] (Cairo: Bait al-Ma`rifa, 1992), pp. 142–144; Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Awlawiyyat al-Haraka al-Islamiyya fi al-Marhala al-Qadima [Preferences of the Islamic movement in the coming phase] (Beirut: Mu'assassat al-Risala, 1991], pp. 16–17. Back.
Note 16: al-Wasat, November 7, 1994; Filastin al-Muslima (November 1992): 34. Back.
Note 17: Taha Nasr Mustafa, “al-Haraka al-Islamiyya al-Yamaniyya: `Ishruna `Aaman Min al-Musharaka al-Siyasiyya,” in `Azzam al-Tamimi, Musharakat al-Islamiyyin fi al-Sulta, pp. 140–171. Back.
Note 18: On the considerations and vacillations concerning this decision, see Filastin al-Muslima (August 1991): 21–23 and (June 1992): 15–17. Back.
Note 19: David Waldner, “Civic Exclusion and Its Discontents,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, New York, September 1994, p. 1. Back.
Note 20: Dale F. Eickelman and James Piscatori, Muslim Politics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 20. Back.
Note 21: Ibid., p. 17; see also Dale F. Eickelman and James Piscatori, “Social Theory in the Study of Muslim Societies,” in Dale F. Eickelman and James Piscatori, eds., Muslim Travelers: Pilgrimage, Migration, and the Religious Imagination (London: Routledge; and Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990), pp. 1–25. Back.
Note 22: Steven C. Caton, “Power, Persuasion, and Language: A Critique of the Segmentary Model in the Middle East,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 19, no. 1 (February 1987): 89. Back.
Note 23: F. G. Bailey, Stratagems and Spoils: A Social Anthropology of Politics (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), pp. 174–181. Back.
Note 24: Clifford Geertz, as cited in Avraham Diskin and Saul Mishal, “Coalition Formation in the Arab World: An Analytical Perspective,” International Interactions 11, no. 1 (1984): 44. Back.
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