Islam and International

Relations in the Middle

East: From Umma
to Nation State
PETER MANDAVILLE

Introduction 168
Islam and international relations: history and key concepts 168
Pan-Islam, colonialism, and the modern state 171
The political economy of Islamic revival 175
Islam and geo-politics 177
Thinking about Islam and foreign policy 179
Islam, globalization, and the Middle East 181
Conclusion 184
Further reading 184

Overview
Key international relations concepts have been present in the Islamic tradition for
many centuries and Islam has generally been comfortable with the division of the
world into sovereign polities. Modern efforts to defeat European imperialism by
mobilizing Muslims around the banner of religion proved less effectual than the
alternative model found in national self-determination. The leaders of newly es-
tablished national-secular states in the Middle East have still found it useful from
time to time to explain and justify their foreign policies in terms of religion, and
on a more limited scale several countries in the region have sought to set up dis-
tinctly ‘Islamic’ states. Islam was viewed by the West as a useful ally in the cold
war fight against communism, although with unforeseen consequences later. The
geo-political significance of energy has also permitted certain oil-producing states
in the region to project Islam in their external relations. In more recent years, the
dynamics of globalization has seen the political significance of Islam expand to
include a wide variety of transnational networks and media spaces. Recent popular
revolutions in the Arab world have created new opportunities for Islamic move-
ments to enter the political sphere, with potential impact on the foreign policies
of key states.
168 PETER MANDAVILLE

Introduction
As the dominant religion in most societies of the Middle East and a major socio-cultural
force in its own right, Islam has had a significant bearing on how states and other actors in
the region both think about and conduct international relations. While often dated to the
‘Islamic revival’ of the 1970s and, more specifically, the Iranian Revolution of 1979, Islam’s
relevance to international relations in the Middle East can be said to pre-date both the rise
of the modern international system and the formation of nation states in the region. Islam
played a role in debates about the post-colonial political order in the Middle East, and—at
the level of theory—strongly informed much of the thinking and debate on the nation state
in the early 20th century. Coexisting in distinct tension with a prevailing trend towards Arab
nationalism after the Second World War, however, political Islam, or ‘Islamism’, emerged as
an ideological critique of the secular nation state in the Middle East. Claiming the identity
of an ‘Islamic state’, other key players in the region, such as Saudi Arabia, sought to use their
geo-political clout and dominant position in global energy markets to claim a pre-eminent
role among Muslim nations. Other states in the Middle East, including some of the more
secular regimes, have at times sought recourse to the language and symbols of Islam to ex-
plain and justify aspects of their foreign policy. Here, Islam has often served to complement,
or as a surrogate for, nationalist discourse. The substantive presence of Islam in the foreign
policies of Middle Eastern nations—even in the case of those that consider themselves to be
Islamic states—is, however, often difficult to discern. While the Organization of Islamic
Cooperation (OIC) has sought to represent Muslim nations in the realm of multilateral di-
plomacy, the national interests of its individual members have generally prevailed over any
common Islamic voice or vision. In the wake of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, an event with
important repercussions beyond the Middle East, Iran emerged as a competitor to Saudi
Arabia, criticizing the latter’s close relationship with the United States. During the latter
part of the cold war, Islam came to be regarded by the US and some of its regional allies as
an effective tool with which to combat communism, particularly in the wake of the Soviet
Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Iran sought to develop transnational ties with
Shi’i groups in other parts of the Middle East, thus having an important impact on, for exam-
ple, the civil war in Lebanon. In the wake of the cold war, many of the networks and move-
ments associated with this period have endured, leveraging the trappings of globalization (the
Internet, satellite television, diaspora communities) to find new audiences and to redefine
their political goals. Similarly, new actors and voices have also emerged, seeking to articulate
the relationship between Islam, globalization, and international relations for a new generation.

Islam and international relations: history and key concepts

We made you into nations and tribes so that you may know each other …
(Qur’ān 49: 13)

The idea of interaction between political communities has been present in the Islamic tradi-
tion since it was founded in the 7th century. Not only do the core textual sources of Islam,
such as the Qur’ān and Sunna (the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad), make mention
 ISLAM AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN THE MIDDLE EAST 169

of key concepts from the world of international relations such as nations, power, political
authority, and even treaty making (Qur’ān 8: 72), but we also see in the first centuries of
Islamic history plenty of evidence that Muslim political leaders were actively engaged in
diplomacy, trade negotiations, and warfare with neighbouring polities. Indeed, by about
the 11th century, centralized political authority within the Muslim world had more or less
disappeared, replaced by various regional empires and sultanates. Although the office of the
Caliph, as successor to the Prophet Muhammad and nominal political leader of all Muslims,
endured in one form or another until after the First World War, the occupant of this office
often served as little more than a symbolic figurehead after the decline of the Abbasid Empire
in the 13th century. There is also a rich history of cultural and intellectual engagement be-
tween Muslims and non-Muslims during this period, with Arab philosophers digesting—
and augmenting—Greek philosophy and classical learning. Although it is common to think
of countries in the Muslim world as being on the ‘periphery’ of world power relations, quite
a different perspective emerges if we look at the configuration of global trade flows in the
13th century. At this time, the Indian Ocean emerges as a teeming basin of commercial
and diplomatic activity, connecting eastern Africa to the southern coast of Arabia in the
Middle East across to Persia, India, and further east of the Malay archipelago. If anything,
Europe—still in its medieval slumber—constituted a periphery to the ‘centre’ of this proto-
globalized world system (Abu-Lughod 1989). Nizam al-Mulk’s 11th-century kingship man-
ual, the Siyasatnama (‘Book of Government’), for example, anticipates by several centuries
some of the key themes relating to power, diplomacy, and warfare later found in Niccolò
Machiavelli’s classic The Prince (1532). Europe rapidly re-emerged onto the geo-political
stage from the late 15th century, however, and by the early 17th century the Ottoman Empire
was acceding to trade and military capitulations demanded by the French, marking a geo-
political shift towards Europe.
Several concepts are of particular importance when discussing Islam and politics, per-
haps none more so than the oft-cited claim that, unlike Christianity, Islam recognizes no
distinction between religion and politics—an idea embodied in the commonly invoked
phrase al-islam din wa dawla (‘Islam is both religion and state’). Despite some evidence
that this maxim was introduced to Islamic religio-political discourse only relatively recently
(Piscatori 1986), it has been frequently cited in evidence of the argument that secularism and
Islam are inherently incompatible. While Islam does not, in theological terms, draw a sharp
categorical distinction between worldly power (for example, ‘render under Caesar what is
Caesar’s …’) and divine authority (‘and unto God that which is God’s’), representing itself
instead as a faith system (din), the moral guidelines of which apply to all areas of life, one can
find throughout Islamic history no shortage of evidence that Muslim political leaders have
operated with a sense of religious authority and political power as differentiated spheres of
activity (Brown 2000). The concept of sovereignty (hukm) in the Islamic tradition is similarly
debated. Certain conservative schools of thought in Islam, on the one hand, will argue that
the idea of sovereignty as something that belongs to God alone (al-hukm l’il-allah) renders
illegitimate the sovereign claims of governments and worldly political forces. On the more
progressive end of the spectrum, by contrast, the Islamic green (pro-ecology) movement
has used the same logic to argue that humankind—as the custodian of divine creation—has
a responsibility to protect the environment. Once again, a survey of the historical record
reveals that the theory and practice of territorial sovereignty has had a rich tradition in the
170 PETER MANDAVILLE

Muslim world. This latter point also brings into question the dichotomous world view that
some observers ascribe to Islam. It is often said that, according to Islam, the world is divided
into two realms, dar al-Islam (the domain of Islam) and dar al-harb (the domain of war).
The former is taken to refer to those lands under the control of a Muslim ruler (and in
which, in theory, Islamic law prevails); the latter, to all lands outside Muslim rule and with
which Muslims are potentially in conflict. Such a selective and de-contextualized reading
leaves one with the impression that Islam considers itself to be at war with any non-Muslim
country, and ignores the existence of a wide range of additional categories—such as dar
al-ahd or dar al-sulh (the domain of treaty)—that Muslim political theorists have used at
various times to characterize the relationship between Muslim and non-Muslim sovereign
lands. Of overwhelming importance, as James Piscatori (1986: 145) has argued, ‘is the
consensus that has evolved over the centuries that Islam tolerates, even endorses, territorial
pluralism’.
Given the centrality of war and armed conflict to international relations, it is also impor-
tant here to consider briefly the notion and role of jihad in Islam. This polysemic concept has
been a source of considerable confusion in recent years, with some writers arguing that the
term’s primary meaning is martial in nature, while others focus on its spiritual dimensions.
One thing that can be said for certain is that the translation of jihad as ‘holy war’ is mis-
leading in its characterization. The Arabic root of the term refers generically to the idea of
‘struggle’, and early Islamic sources draw a distinction between greater and lesser jihad. The
former is regarded as an individual’s inner struggle to live in accordance with the precepts
of Islam, while the latter refers to the outward exertion of efforts to bring the surrounding
society into compliance with Islam. This can take a range of forms from teaching activi-
ties, to political struggle, to armed conflict. In this sense, advocates of the spiritualist ap-
proach are not incorrect to stress their understanding of jihad as more fundamental to Islam.
However, the term ‘jihad’, in Islamic political and historical writings, has generally carried
the connotation of armed struggle—so, from the point of view of conventional usage, the
other camp is also not incorrect. Over the centuries and under the custodianship of Islamic
legal scholars (ulema), a body of jurisprudence relating to armed conflict was developed.
This corpus, the fiqh al-jihad, shares much in common as regards both jus ad bellum and
jus in bello with Christian and eventually secular just war theory (Kelsay 1993). Jihad, for
example, is traditionally regarded as defensive in nature—that is, force is to be used only
when Muslim countries come under external threat. This body of thought also makes an
important distinction between combatants and non-combatants, and teaches against the
disproportionate use of force. In the contemporary period, several revisionist interpreta-
tions of this concept have had the effecting of unmooring jihad from its traditional formula-
tions. During the second half of the 20th century, figures such as Sayyid Qutb, Muhammad
Faraj, and Abdullah Azzam systematically dismantled or radically reinterpreted the classical
doctrine of jihad—including, for example, the provision stating that a legitimate war can be
declared only by the proper political authorities. Arguing that, in the contemporary world,
even nominally Muslim rulers had abandoned the true path of Islam, their collective efforts
sought to refigure jihad as an individual duty incumbent on every Muslim. While only mar-
ginally influential in the Muslim mainstream, such thinking strongly informed the global
jihadist movement, and groups such as Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda. This call to jihad found
particular resonance in the context of various geo-political events, such as the failure of Arab
 ISLAM AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN THE MIDDLE EAST 171

national armies in the 1967 war with Israel, Anwar Sadat’s 1979 peace treaty with Tel Aviv,
and the aftermath of the Afghan mujahedin’s victory against the Soviet Union.
Finally, the concept of the umma, or community of believers (potentially global in scope),
has been part of the Islamic political lexicon since the time of the Prophet. As we will see in
this chapter, modern political actors have sought to mobilize Muslims around the notion
of the umma in response to circumstances ranging from European imperialism in the late
19th century to US foreign policy in the contemporary period. In practice, being part of the
Muslim umma has not generally excluded or been viewed as incompatible with membership
in other orders or modes of social affiliation, such as tribe or nation. In this sense, the umma
should not be seen as part of a rigid hierarchy of identities so much as a general sense of be-
longing to a geographically broad and culturally diverse faith tradition. In recent years, some
observers have speculated that the prevalence of information and communication technolo-
gies, and the heightened transnational networking associated with globalization, could give
Muslims a renewed sense of umma consciousness (Mandaville 2001).

Pan-Islam, colonialism, and the modern state

The Ottoman Empire (1300–1922), pre-eminent among modern Muslim polities, was well
integrated into the international system, participating in a complex system of alliances
with European powers. By the late 19th century, Islam had emerged as a focal point of anti-
colonial agitation in the Middle East and elsewhere. The pan-Islam movement of Jamal
al-Din al-Afghani (1838–97) identified European imperialism as an experience common to
Muslims, from Africa across to South-East Asia, seeking to mobilize anti-colonial sentiment
around a renewed sense of umma consciousness (Landau 1990). As an itinerant political
activist who made frequent use of new transnational media—in his case, mass-circulation
newspapers and pamphlets printed in France for distribution in the Middle East—Afghani’s
work prefigures the transnational advocacy networks of today (Keck and Sikkink 1998).
Although he built a following of influential figures in locales as diverse as Afghanistan, India,
Egypt, Iran, and Turkey, Afghani’s pan-Islam project never evolved into a mass political
movement. Its appeal was limited in part by the difficulty that Muslims faced in ‘imagining’
themselves as part of a community so abstract and diffuse as the umma (Anderson 1991a).
Nationalism, by contrast, with its concrete moorings in local territory, language, history, and
experience, proved a far more effective discourse in which to house projects of anti-colonial
resistance. By the time of Woodrow Wilson’s articulation of the doctrine of national self-
determination in the aftermath of the First World War, nationalism had become a leading
aspiration for most Muslims. The break-up of the Ottoman Empire, which had entered the
war on the side of Germany and the central powers, led to the eventual creation of several
new nation states in the Middle East, among them Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan.
That is not to say that Islam immediately disappeared from the scene with the fall of
the Ottoman Empire. With the founding of the modern Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal
(later known as Atatürk), a leading modernist reformer, formally dissolved the institution
of the Caliphate in 1924. For some leading religious scholars of the time, this act prompted a
crisis of Islamic political theory. Some, such as the Egyptian Ali Abd al-Raziq (1888–1966),
saw Islam and the modern nation state as perfectly compatible, arguing that, in relation to
172 PETER MANDAVILLE

questions of governance, Islam did not prescribe any particular institutional arrangements
(Abd al-Raziq 1925). Even those who regarded the Caliphate as a necessity, such as Rashid
Rida (1865–1935), eventually recognized that, with the recent shift in world order, a revival
of the Caliphate was not a realistic prospect—arguing instead that Muslims should focus
on realizing the moral system of Islam within the confines of the nation state (Rida 1923).
In this last regard, his thinking informed in important ways the intellectuals and activists
who founded the modern Islamist movement. These theoretical deliberations also had a
more practical manifestation in various abortive attempts to institutionalize a system of
international Islamic congresses in Egypt during the inter-war years (Kramer 1986). Since
this time, the idea of political mobilization in the name of the umma has generally been
found only in the programme of certain radical Islamist movements such as the Caliphate-
oriented Hizb ut-Tahrir. At the level of popular discourse, however, it has continued to serve
an important symbolic function as an expression of the aspiration to greater global unity
among Muslims.
The period following the world wars saw an unprecedented expansion of the interna-
tional system as dozens of former European colonies in Africa and Asia emerged as inde-
pendent nation states. This process also dramatically transformed the political geography
of the Middle East. Numerous countries, such as Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Syria,
emerged out of the rubble of the Ottoman Empire, with several others in North Africa, such
as Egypt, Morocco, and Algeria—the latter only after a bitter war with France—gaining their
independence from former European colonial powers. Saudi Arabia was a newcomer, while
others, notably Iran, had avoided ever becoming formally part of the European imperial
system. Egypt and Saudi Arabia represent two particularly useful cases for exploring the re-
lationship between Islam and the establishment of modern nation states in the Middle East.
Egypt, whose independence from Britain was consolidated in the wake of the 1952 Free
Officer’s Revolution that brought Gamal Abd al-Nasser to power, represents the prototypical
national-secular republic in the Arab world. Nasser emerged over the course of the 1950s
as the leading exponent of Arab nationalism, developing a devoted following across the
Middle East and eventually even a global role as a leading figure within the Non-Aligned
Movement during the cold war. As an ideology, Arab nationalism—or ‘pan-Arabism’ as it is
sometimes known—emphasized the historical and cultural affinity of all Arabic-speaking
peoples. As a political project, it reached its apogee with the short-lived union of Egypt and
Syria as the United Arabic Republic (1958–61). As the leading symbol of Arab national-
ism, Egypt often found itself in conflict with other emerging regional powers, such as Saudi
Arabia—a country that sought, by contrast, to emphasize its Islamic identity. Egypt was also
the setting for the founding in 1928 of the Muslim Brotherhood, the prototype for virtually
all modern Islamist movements. The Brotherhood has evolved considerably over the course
of its lifetime, experiencing periods of both political quietism and radical militancy—the
latter associated, in particular, with the intellectual leadership of Sayyid Qutb in the 1960s.
Consistently present in the Muslim Brotherhood political discourse, however, has been a
critique of national-secularism. Convinced that the newly independent Egypt, particu-
larly under the Nasserists, was under threat of losing its Islamic identity through excessive
Westernization, the Brotherhood proposed an alternative ideology in which Islam system-
atically pervades all aspects of life, including public administration and affairs of state. The
 ISLAM AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN THE MIDDLE EAST 173

movement’s concrete goals included the creation of an Islamic state and—rejecting the legiti-
macy of human legislation outside the remit of religion—a legal system based exclusively on
Islamic law (sharia). Also implied here is the priority, in global terms, of Islamic causes over
the interests and policies of nation-state governments. Hence, in 1948, against the wishes
of the Egyptian state, the Muslim Brotherhood sent volunteer fighters to Palestine. While
most commonly associated with its original incarnation in Egypt, at the core of the Muslim
Brotherhood movement is a broad ideology that went on to inspire the founding not only of
Brotherhood branches throughout the Arab world, but also related movements in countries
such as Pakistan, Turkey, Malaysia, and Indonesia (Mandaville 2007). This same ideology
has undergone important shifts over the years, adapting itself to the differing political en-
vironments of specific national settings. For example, Hamas was originally founded out
of the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, but has evolved into what is today
primarily an Islamic-based movement for Palestinian national liberation. Elsewhere, the
ideas of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna had a strong influence on Abul Ala
Maududi, chief ideologue of the Jamaat-i-Islami, Pakistan’s leading Islamist party. Prior to
the establishment of Pakistan at the time of Indian Partition in 1947, Maududi was strongly
opposed to nationalism, seeing in it a doctrine that contradicted the universalism of Islam.
Saudi Arabia represents another important context in which to explore the interface of
Islam, politics, and international relations. Emerging as a sovereign nation in 1932, the po-
litical system of Saudi Arabia was predicated on an alliance between a leading tribal family,
the al-Saud, and a group of Islamic scholars who lent religious legitimacy to the former’s
efforts at unifying diverse tribal regions into a single polity. At the kingdom’s founding, it
was declared to be an Islamic state, with the sharia as its highest law. The enormous oil re-
serves found within its territory soon vaulted Saudi Arabia onto the world stage, with the
US cultivating a particularly close relationship with the kingdom after the Second World
War. Over the next several decades, Saudi Arabia would seek to assert itself as a leader of the
Muslim world, not only because of its geo-political clout, but also because of the presence
on its borders of Islam’s two holiest cities, Mecca and Medina, the setting for the annual
hajj pilgrimage that constitutes one of the core tenets of the Muslim faith. The kingdom
has, at times, also sought to represent and exert Islamic values in international and inter-
governmental forums (see Box 8.1). During the cold war, Saudi Arabia’s ambitions in this
regard, not to mention its close relationship with the US, would bring it into conflict with

Box 8.1 Saudi Arabia and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Brought before the General Assembly of the United Nations in late 1948, the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights (UDHR) was passed by a vote of forty-eight countries in favour, zero opposed, and eight
abstentions. Among the latter was the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, whose delegation felt that several
provisions of the UDHR were not in keeping with sharia law and with the kingdom’s identity as an
Islamic state. Among these were Article 16, guaranteeing equal marriage rights for men and women,
and, more particularly, Article 18, which endorses an individual’s right to change his or her religion. The
austere form of Islam practised in Saudi Arabia views apostasy from the faith as a crime. These views
and religious interpretations, however, were not in keeping with majority opinion among Muslim
nations, most of which—including other Islamic states such as Pakistan—have adopted the UDHR.
174 PETER MANDAVILLE

Egypt under Nasser (particularly during the height of the latter’s dalliance with the Soviet
Union) and with Iran in the wake of that country’s Islamic Revolution in 1979. Windfall
revenues accruing from heightened oil prices in the 1970s allowed the kingdom to propagate
its particular interpretation of Islam, known as Wahhabism, through a wide range of sur-
rogate organizations and charitable organizations. This ‘petro-Islam’, as it came to be known,
subsequently had an important impact on political and conflict dynamics in a wide range of
global settings.
Saudi Arabia, we should note, is not alone in styling itself as an Islamic state. While sev-
eral other countries in the contemporary world make similar claims—notably Sudan and
Afghanistan under the Taliban—two, Pakistan and Iran, are of particular importance and
make for interesting points of contrast with Saudi Arabia.
Pakistan was founded as a homeland for Muslims of the Indian subcontinent, and while
its constitution declares it to be an ‘Islamic republic’, the exact relationship between Islam
and the state in Pakistan has been a matter of considerable political debate over the course
of that country’s history. Some, such as Pakistan’s founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, saw
Muslims as constituting a nation and sought accordingly to establish a largely secular frame-
work in which they could achieve political independence. Islamists led by Maududi and the
Jamaat-i-Islami, by contrast, emphasized the idea that Islam should constitute the ideology
of Pakistani state, arguing for a constitution that would privilege sharia law.
The Islamic Republic of Iran, by contrast, represented the first time that an Islamic state
had been created through a popular revolution. Riding a wave of widespread discontent with
the ruling Pahlavi aristocracy, the Iranian clergy, led by the charismatic Ayatollah Khomeini,
seized power in 1979 through an alliance with disparate political factions, including liberals
and communists, and then proceeded to consolidate power by oppressing anyone who
opposed their conservative brand of Islamic rule.
The Iranian model is distinctive in a number of regards, not least of all because it rep-
resents the only Islamic state in which religious scholars are in direct control of all major
government functions. This model is derived from Khomeini’s doctrine of vilayat-i faqih
(‘guardianship of the jurisconsultant’), which states that political power should rest in the
hands of those possessing the most superior understanding of Islamic law. In the Iranian
system, the preponderance of power resides with the figure of the Supreme Leader, who
controls the judiciary, the military and police, and the media. While there is no require-
ment that the president of the Republic be a religious scholar, the functional power of this
position is limited. In the realm of international relations, the president is invested with the
capacity to negotiate and conclude treaties with other countries, but all matters of security—
as well as the ‘delineation of the general policies of the Islamic Republic’—ultimately fall
to the Supreme Leader. Partly stemming from its rivalry with Saudi Arabia for leadership
of the Muslim world, Iran—one of only very few countries whose population is predomi-
nantly (in this case, 90 per cent) Shia as opposed to Sunni Muslim—has at times sought to
emphasize that, as an Islamic Republic, it operates differently from nation states founded
on the Western model. In terms of its conduct in world politics, however, Iran has tended
to participate in all of the standard practices and to express many of the norms associated
with modern international relations, including membership in major international organi-
zations, treaties, and global legal regimes.
 ISLAM AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN THE MIDDLE EAST 175

The political economy of Islamic revival

Contemporary ‘Islamic Revival’ in the Middle East is commonly dated to the period follow-
ing the 1967 Six-Day War, in which the dismal performance of Arab militaries and Israel’s
success in capturing Jerusalem revealed the failure of the national-secular model. While
the symbolic power of such moments should never be underestimated, a more thorough
understanding of Islam’s renewed political significance can be achieved by situating the
political mobilization of Islamic language and symbols within the political economies of
Middle Eastern states, and, from the early 1970s, against the backdrop of rapidly accelerat-
ing globalization processes. Indeed, the very notion of an Islamic ‘revival’ obscures the fact
that the cultural resonance and everyday language of religion had always been present in the
political discourse of the region.
While our primary focus here is on the growth of Islamist social and political movements,
it is important to recognize that such groups have not been the only significant Islamic ac-
tors; Middle Eastern states themselves have sought to intervene in the religious field, shaping
societal understandings of Islam and deploying religious institutions in pursuit of their own
goals. In Turkey, for example, the Kemalist ideology of the ruling elite has sought to circum-
scribe the practice of religion within very narrow, officially approved boundaries. The gov-
ernment’s directorate of religious affairs—or Diyanet, as it is known—controls all mosques
in the country and oversees the provision of religious services. In Egypt, the Nasserists
brought the institutions of Al-Azhar University, for centuries the pre-eminent world centre
of Islamic knowledge production in the Sunni tradition, into the remit of governmental
bureaucracy—ensuring that the religious scholars (ulema) and their mosques would not
function as spaces of public critique. Furthermore, they sought to promote an understand-
ing of Islam that was in keeping with the government’s own priorities for Egyptian national
development (Starrett 1998).
When it comes to Islamism, it is important to note that the ideology of Hassan al-Banna
and the Muslim Brotherhood has always been primarily a middle-class phenomenon. As a
distinctly modern and ‘systematized’ reform project, it was designed specifically to appeal to
the sensibilities and aspirations of the Middle East’s newly educated middle classes. Islamists
found early success by figuring themselves as the cultural buffer to rapid modernization, en-
suring that Islam remained central to Arab identity and society. As it became clear, particu-
larly from the 1960s, that modernization under the stewardship of national-secular elites
would not translate into continued upward social mobility, urban Arab middle classes—now
untethered from community safety nets and traditional patronage structures—began to
look for alternative answers. Mobilizing behind the slogan al-islam huwa al-hal (‘Islam is the
solution’), the Muslim Brotherhood seized the opportunity presented by this increasingly
prevalent sense of relative deprivation to leverage their programme into a mass social move-
ment. Perceiving the Islamists as a growing threat, the Egyptian government cracked down
on the Muslim Brotherhood from the 1950s, banning the group and jailing a number of its
leaders. This period of oppression coincides with the Brotherhood’s most militant phase.
Its chief ideologue, Sayyid Qutb, had become convinced that direct armed confrontation
with the state was the only way in which to address what he saw as Arab society’s descent—
at the hands of pro-Western authoritarian regimes—into a state of jahiliyyah (pre-Islamic
176 PETER MANDAVILLE

ignorance). In this regard, his famous treatise Milestones, authored while in prison (Qutb
was executed by the regime in 1966), can be read as a critique of post-colonial development.
As some analysts have noted, however, it would be wrong simply to reduce the phenomenon
of political Islam to the class interests of a particular actor (Bayat 2007). Islam as a discourse
of transformative social change in the face of modernity goes back to the late 18th century
and cannot be regarded exclusively as a superstructural effect of contemporary economic
development.
The impact of globalization on states in the Middle East is also important to consider
in relation to the growing efficacy of political Islam from the 1970s. During this period,
Nasser’s successor in Egypt, Anwar Sadat, shifted his country’s geo-political orientation to-
wards the West. Egypt’s ‘open door’ (infitah) policy was designed to encourage foreign direct
investment in the country and to integrate Egypt into the emerging structures of a globalized
economy. Sadat, who sought in distinct contrast to Nasser to figure himself as the ‘believer
president’, rehabilitated the Muslim Brotherhood as a social and religious organization (but
kept in place the ban on its political activities), in the hope that the Islamists could serve to
counterbalance the political left. Those within the Brotherhood still beholden to the ideas
of Sayyid Qutb saw the decision by the movement’s mainstream leadership to renounce vio-
lence and operate within parameters prescribed by the government as a form of co-option.
The 1970s saw several militant groups splinter off from the main Brotherhood organization,
some of whom would later become part of the global jihad movement and join forces with
Al Qaeda. For these groups, Sadat’s ultimate betrayal came in 1979, when he signed a peace
agreement with Israel, leading a faction of the Islamic jihad to assassinate him 1981.
Sadat’s successor, Hosni Mubarak, pushed Egypt’s integration with the West and global
capitalism to new heights. With hindsight, it can be said that Egypt’s decision to open itself
up to external economic forces and increased liberalization ended up creating a political
environment highly conducive to the growth of Islamism. Mubarak took Egypt into an
International Monetary Fund (IMF)-mandated structural adjustment programme that
subjected the country’s economy to a number of sudden shocks. The scaling back of the
government sector, for example, led to a major reduction in employment opportunities
and less provision of social services. The Muslim Brotherhood flooded into the vacuum
created by the ‘retreat’ of the Egyptian state. Through the creation of a vast network of
charities and social organizations—in effect, an alternative infrastructure for the delivery
of basic services—the Islamists showed themselves capable of outperforming the state. The
Brotherhood increasingly colonized civil society spaces in Egypt, capturing control, for
example, of all major professional syndicates. While banned from participating as a politi-
cal party, the Islamists nevertheless wielded significant clout through the many influential
social nodes that lay within their sphere of influence. At the height of the Islamists’ social
influence, it was even possible to speak of a separate ‘Islamic economy’ run through a num-
ber of Islamic investment companies—most of which were insoluble and later collapsed.
Meanwhile, the Egyptian government continued, through the 1980s and 1990s, to contend
with the violent tactics of the radical Islamist splinter groups.
Egypt’s experience with Islamism was by no means unique. In Algeria, for example, a
similar socio-economic situation—which here also mapped onto a pre-existing cleavage
between the Western-oriented Francophone urban elite and an emerging middle class
that tended to be more Arab in terms of its cultural and linguistic identity, and also more
 ISLAM AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN THE MIDDLE EAST 177

religiously observant—led to the rapid emergence in the early 1990s of the Front Islamique
du Salut. The FIS was poised to win national elections and to take power in 1991 when the
Algerian military stepped in to annul the vote, precipitating what amounted to a civil war
that would run throughout much of the decade.

Islam and geo-politics

Running in parallel with these global–domestic dynamics was an increasingly prominent
role for Islam in cold war geo-politics. Fuelled by windfall revenues after the oil shock of
the early 1970s, Saudi Arabia sought to consolidate its leadership of the Muslim world by
significantly scaling up support for activities such as mosque-building and religious educa-
tion around the globe. This ‘petro-Islam’ subsequently came to be synonymous with the
worldwide propagation of the kingdom’s austere Wahhabi brand of Islam, which often cross-
fertilized with similarly conservative currents in countries such as Pakistan. In general terms,
this initiative was welcomed by the US, which viewed Saudi Arabia’s religious outreach as
a potential check on the growth of (atheist) communism. The Saudi royal family possessed
sufficient political and economic capital to paper over the initial signs of a signifi cant under-
current of Islamist dissent within the heart of the kingdom itself. This manifested itself in
the dramatic siege on Mecca’s Grand Mosque in 1979, an event that severely embarrassed
Saudi Arabia’s own security forces when they were forced to prevail upon foreign forces to
quell the uprising. The same event also foreshadowed the emergence of concerted religious
opposition in Saudi Arabia in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War.
The year 1979 also saw another watershed event in the form of Iran’s Islamic Revolution.
Mobilizing popular discontent with the regime of Shah Reza Pahlavi, a close ally of the
US, long-time political dissident Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini united a broad
cross-spectrum of ideological forces to topple the royal family and to create the Islamic
Republic of Iran. The Iranian elite, as Khomeini put it, was suffering from a ‘Westoxification’
(gharbzadegi) that could be eliminated only by replacing the country’s political system with
one based on Islamic values. One particularly remarkable aspect of this revolution repre-
sented an early example of the political utility of globalized popular media. In the months
leading up to the revolution, Khomeini primed his audience by smuggling sermons on
audio cassettes from his headquarters outside Paris to Iran, where they were duplicated,
widely distributed, and eagerly consumed by shopkeepers, taxi drivers, and in private homes
(Sreberny-Mohammadi and Mohammadi 1994). Once the revolution had taken place, how-
ever, it soon became clear that what Khomeini had in mind was something different from
the open and accountable democracy for which most Iranians had been hoping. Instead,
Khomeini put his theoretical model of vilayat-i faqih—elaborated earlier in a serious of
essays on Islamic governance—into practice through the implementation of direct cleri-
cal rule. Any political opposition (even from within the ranks of the clergy) was severely
repressed, as Khomeini pushed through a new constitution that enshrined him as the coun-
try’s Supreme Leader—an office that afforded him direct control of the country’s security
forces, judiciary, and media.
Iran’s Islamic Revolution also had important international repercussions. In so far as it
symbolized the successful removal of a secular regime by Islamic forces, Khomeini became
178 PETER MANDAVILLE

a hero to Islamists everywhere—even those of a Sunni persuasion. At a time when the lead-
ers of Saudi Arabia were vulnerable to accusations of collusion with the West, the Islamic
Revolution allowed Iran to vault itself into direct competition with the Saudis—and, to some
extent, with Zia ul-Haq’s Pakistan—for the mantle of Muslim leadership. Over the next dec-
ades, Riyadh and Tehran would frequently find themselves engaged in a game of ‘holier
than thou’, with each trying to outdo the other in support of global Islamic causes such as
Palestine. Khomeini’s fatwa against the British author Salman Rushdie in 1988 can be partly
understood in this light. Tehran also began to cultivate its own clients and proxy groups
overseas, including significant financial and material support for the Lebanese Shia move-
ment Hezbollah. It is also interesting to note that Iran’s revolution had a significant impact
even beyond the Muslim world. Khomeini’s project had broader ‘Third World-ist’ appeal,
and was viewed in parts of Africa and Asia as a triumph for the developing world that tran-
scended the religion dimension. By appearing to carve a geo-political pathway autonomous
of both the US and the Soviet Union, Iran also seemed to embody the aspirations of the
Non-Aligned Movement (Esposito 1990). This aspect of the revolution has even resurfaced
in the first decade of the 21st century, with Iran reaching out to partners in Latin America
and Africa in an effort to form a coalition of emerging powers critical of US hegemony.
Closer to home, the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution seemed less inspiring. Khomeini
soon sought to distract discontent with his revolution on the home front by focusing on a
new national cause in the form of the 1980–88 war with neighbouring Iraq—a situation
rendered even more complicated by the fact that, like Iran, the majority of Iraq’s population
was Shi’i Muslim.
Roughly coterminous with the Islamic Revolution and the outbreak of the Iran–Iraq War,
the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan provided yet another opportunity for Islam to
become implicated in cold war international relations. Although it occurred beyond the
geographic scope of the Middle East, the struggle of the Afghan mujahedin against the
Soviets was intimately tied to political dynamics in the region. Afghan fighters received
important financial and material support from the US and Saudi Arabia, often using
Pakistan’s security services as intermediary. More important to the long term, however, was
the flow of volunteer fighters (generally estimated to have numbered in the tens of thou-
sands) from the Arab world—‘Arab Afghans’ as they came to be known—who flocked to
Afghanistan and Pakistan in response to calls for jihad from radical Islamic leaders such as
the Palestinian Abdullah Azzam. Azzam, who would prove highly influential in shaping the
world view of a young Osama bin Laden, was instrumental in building the religious justi-
fication for Muslims to leave their countries of citizenship and to fight abroad in the name
of Islamic causes (Gerges 2005). Despite their overwhelming numbers and technological
superiority, the Soviets did not manage to defeat the mujahedin and their withdrawal in
1988 after eight years was widely perceived as a victory for the Afghan resistance. For those
jihadists harbouring global aspirations, Afghanistan was seen as evidence that it was indeed
possible to subdue a world superpower under the banner of Islam. Many went on to join
Islamic causes elsewhere, such as in Kashmir or Bosnia, while others returned to the Middle
East to continue their battle with local regimes in countries such as Algeria and Egypt. It
was in this crucible that Osama bin Laden, a young Saudi from a prominent commercial
who had found his calling in the Afghan jihad, decided to establish an organizational infra-
structure to support the conduct of global jihad. Thus, out of a nucleus of Arab-Afghans
 ISLAM AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN THE MIDDLE EAST 179

whose efforts had been at least indirectly supported by (and were strategically in line with)
the United States, Al Qaeda was established in 1988. Over the next decade, bin Laden’s
group built a shadowy network of operatives and finances that spanned much of the Middle
East and beyond, culminating in a series of attacks in New York City and Washington on 11
September 2001 (‘9/11’) that would have major repercussions not only on international
relations in the Middle East, but on global order more generally. The increased human
mobility and communications infrastructure associated with globalization (see ‘Islam,
globalization, and the Middle East’) were central to the mobilization capacity found in
these and other Islamist groups.

Thinking about Islam and foreign policy

Thus far we have explored topics such as Islamic thinking on the nation state, and the im-
pact of Islamist groups and the governments of ‘Islamic states’ on various domestic and
geo-political dynamics. But how should we understand the relationship between Islam and
the behaviour of various international relations actors? How is it possible to know when
Islam plays a role in the decision calculus of foreign policymakers? Likewise, by what criteria
might we decide that the content of a particular policy choice is ‘Islamic’? In approaching
these questions, one obviously wants to find a middle way between those approaches—often
described as ‘orientalist’—that explain all Muslim behaviour (social, cultural, economic, po-
litical) by reference to Islam and, on the other extreme of the spectrum, purely instrumental-
ist approaches that view Islam as representing nothing more than a form of rhetoric used to
justify policies the real motivation of which lies elsewhere.
It is, of course, impossible for us ever to claim that we can discern the true intention,
motivation, or meaning behind a particular social or political action. This does not mean,
however, that, when it comes to so pervasive and deeply inscribed a source of social mean-
ing as Islam, we cannot attempt to account for the role of Islamic norms and symbols in a
given political situation. Thus we must broadly concur with Adeed Dawisha (1983: 5) when
he writes:

It is simply taken for granted that, notwithstanding the variety of interpretations, there still exists
an ideological force called Islam that has a symbolic value, ranging from nebulous to significant
among people who call themselves Muslims. If this is true, then one should expect that in the
actual making of foreign policy, decision-makers of countries, a substantial part of whose popu-
lation is Muslim, must take Islam into consideration when formulating their policies. At this
level of analysis, therefore, one can legitimately assume that Islam must constitute a part (how
significant a part is another matter) of the images and perceptions, even attitudes and value-
systems, of decision-makers. However, this does not explain how relevant Islam is to particular
policies, for to identify factors is not to trace their influence. To uncover processes that affect
external behaviour is not to explain how and why they are operative under certain circumstances
and not under others.

Theories of international relations have traditionally struggled to take culture and identity
into account. Privileging the (objectively defined) national interests of a given state, concep-
tual traditions such as realism, for example, have tended to find little relevance for religion
180 PETER MANDAVILLE

in their explanatory schemas. More recently, theories such as constructivism have sought
to appreciate the inter-subjectively defined meanings through which international political
actors define and make sense of the situations in which they find themselves (Wendt 1992).
Such approaches, however, can often lead to culture or identity functioning as little more
than an ‘independent variable’—a methodological position that still posits that somehow
the ‘Islamic factor’ in a given situation can be discerned, defined, and isolated relevant to
other factors:

The effort to isolate Islam from other values and to determine its precise (or at least probable)
functional role is usually undertaken by reference to the articulated images of the decision-makers.
But this immediately raises a further problem … with a little interpretation nearly anything can
be justified through reference to Islam, and as such its power to explain and unravel ambiguities
can be questioned.
Dawisha (1983: 6)

When it comes to Islam and international relations, therefore, our task cannot be one of
trying to identify definitive causal relationships between religious faith or normativity, and
particular political behaviours. Rather, embracing the ‘Muslim politics’ approach outlined
by Eickelman and Piscatori (1996), we should seek to understand how language, symbols,
and values associated with Islam come to be implicated in the representation and delibera-
tion of world political issues, not only by state policymakers, but also, and especially today,
by an increasingly diverse range of social actors.
This does not mean that we cannot essay some judgement as to when, for example, the
invocation of Islam by political elites leans towards something that looks like the instru-
mentalization of religion. It has not been uncommon for political leaders associated with
strongly national-secular, and even leftist, ideologies to garb themselves in religion during
times of crisis, or when their reputations are suffering. Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, for example,
sought to rally his nation during the long war with Iran (1980–88) by figuring it as, in part,
a struggle against the heterodoxy of Shi’ism. Likewise, in the run-up to the Gulf War of
1991, Iraq’s conflict with the US was described through the concept of jihad. In television
interviews around this time, Saddam would make a point of breaking off the conversation in
order to pray. Such public performances of piety by struggling leaders are not uncommon,
with the state media often mobilized to provide comprehensive coverage of, for example,
a Middle Eastern leader’s journey to Mecca and Medina to perform hajj. For Nasser, Islam
was not always an obstacle to the realization of Arab nationalism, but rather could often be
woven into the broader narrative of Arab identity. Indeed, Islam has often functioned not in
opposition to, but as a form of, national cohesion. Also relevant here is the use of religious
scholars (ulema) by the state to provide religious justification for particular courses of action
(Alianak 2007). Thus we saw Saudi Arabia seeking a warrant from its religious establish-
ment for the controversial stationing on the kingdom’s soil of hundreds of thousands of
non-Muslim soldiers in the run-up to the Gulf War of 1991. Similarly, the Egyptian state’s
control of Al-Azhar University (the Grand Sheikh of which is technically a high-ranking
civil servant) has meant that the institution can be counted on to buttress the positions of
Hosni Mubarak’s government. More recently, in the case of the Danish cartoon affair of
2006, we saw certain governments in the region taking seemingly counter-intuitive posi-
tions. Syria, for example, whose secular Baathist government rarely rallies around religion,
 ISLAM AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN THE MIDDLE EAST 181

saw fit to allow protests against the cartoons to be held in major cities—seemingly to turn to
the attention of Syrians away from a variety of domestic ills.
Islam also has an institutional identity in international relations beyond the policies and
actions of individual states and leaders. Of primary importance here is the Organization of
Islamic Cooperation (OIC), an intergovernmental forum composed of Muslim-majority
countries (and several with significant Muslim minorities) founded in 1969 to represent
and advocate for Islamic issues before the international community. With international
relations dominated by the pursuit of national interests, it is not surprising to find that,
over the course of its history, the OIC has often struggled to reconcile the interests of its
more powerful individual members (notably, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran, and Turkey) with
the pursuit of a common Islamic position on world issues. As Murden (2002: 198) notes,
the OIC has tended to be most unified—and effective—when serving to aggregate Muslim
opinion on broadly agreed-upon issues that do not threaten the direct interests of a particu-
lar member state—such as expressions of generic support for Palestine, the Danish cartoon
crisis (for which the OIC cleared the agenda of its 2005 summit), or the war in Bosnia,
in which few OIC members had a real stake. Within the broader OIC ‘family’ is a range
of organizations that mirror certain functional organs of the United Nations. The Islamic
Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (ISESCO), for example, is roughly analo-
gous to UNESCO. The Islamic Red Crescent Society is now an important partner within the
worldwide Red Cross movement, and the Islamic Development Bank works alongside other
multilateral donor institutions and regional development banks. Working more specifically
in the realm of religion, non-governmental entities such as the Muslim World League and
the World Assembly of Muslim Youth have served as important conduits for Saudi petro-
Islam and transnational Islamist networking (Schulze 1990). In the humanitarian field, a
number of Islamic charities and relief organizations, such as Muslim Aid and Islamic Relief,
have played a prominent role in recent disasters and complex human emergencies. The in-
fluence of religion can also be seen in non-Islamic multilateral forums. For example, during
the United Nations Conference on Population and Development in 2002, Saudi Arabia and
the Vatican formed a coalition to oppose family planning.

Islam, globalization, and the Middle East

Of particular importance in recent years has been a substantive increase in the extent and
range of Muslim transnationalism in the Middle East—especially the growing prominence
of non-governmental actors. While the region may, in some regards, appear relatively un-
touched by or unintegrated into many processes of economic globalization (Henry and
Springborg 2001), one cannot deny that the phenomenal rise of information and com-
munications technologies commonly associated with globalization have produced a teem-
ing ‘media-scape’ in the Middle East (Appadurai 1996). Islam is very much part of this
new media terrain, with some analysts linking its growth to a significant expansion and
pluralization of the ‘Muslim public sphere’ (Eickelman and Anderson 2003). A number
of important new Islamic voices have emerged in recent years through satellite television.
Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an octogenarian religious scholar from Egypt based in the Gulf
sheikhdom of Qatar, became a household name through his show on Al-Jazeera television.
182 PETER MANDAVILLE

For our purposes, Qaradawi’s significance lies not so much in the mere fact of his projecting
religious authority via new media, but rather in his ability, through satellite television, to
bypass government-censored national media and thereby challenge the boundaries of
‘official’ Islam (Skovgaard-Petersen 2004). Where the scholars of Al-Azhar, for example,
refrain from addressing matters of foreign policy, Qaradawi does not hesitate to hold forth
on the Israel–Palestine conflict or the US war in Iraq. Qaradawi was also instrumental in
advocating a Middle Eastern boycott on Danish goods in response to the 2006 cartoons
featuring the Prophet Muhammad. New kinds of popular religious figure without any
formal Islamic training are also leveraging new media to get into the game. Hence we see
accountant-turned-television-preacher Amr Khaled calling for inter-civilizational dialogue
in the wake of the Danish cartoons. The fact that the Egyptian government pressured him
to leave the country in 2002 shows that states are themselves aware that they are operating
in an extremely volatile environment in which individuals and groups can cultivate mass
followings and accumulate social capital very quickly.
Conventional Islamist groups have also seen globalization as an opportunity to expand
their international political influence. The new generation of Islamists, represented by the
ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey, is pro-business, globally savvy, and
able to build a broad electoral base through its focus on curbing corruption (here, the reli-
gious credentials are crucial) and bringing Turkey into the European Union. We see a similar
approach in its namesake in Morocco, the Partie de la justice et du développement (PJD)
and also in the Egyptian Hizb al-Wasat (Centrist Party). These new ‘pragmatic’ Islamists
are committed to the democratic process and are generally seen to be more interested in
achieving results than in towing a rigid ideological line (Nasr 2005). While the political
platforms, agendas, and priorities of these parties reflect their respective national settings,
there is also a sense in which they can be viewed as part of a broader, generational trend in
which the Islamist project seeks to accommodate itself—often more effectively than state
governments—to the phenomenon of globalization. The leaders of these parties, some of
whom studied together in universities in the West, are informally networked and regularly
in contact. But we should not think that Islamism is uniformly adopting the normative
agenda of neoliberal globalization. For some within the Muslim Brotherhood movement,
for example, globalization is primarily associated with increased socio-economic inequality
around the world. These Islamists have sought to build tactical alliances with the political left
in the Middle East (Schwedler and Clark 2007). Among those living in the West, this ‘anti-
hegemonic Islamism’ has taken the form of opposition to the Iraq War, or even outreach to
environmental groups and the broader global justice or anti-globalization (altermondialisa-
tion) movements. Iran’s recent efforts to link up with partners—particularly leftists such as
Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez—in Latin America and elsewhere in the name of countering US
hegemony are also relevant here.
The landscape of Islamic politics in the Middle East was transformed dramatically in 2011,
with popular revolutions that brought down the regimes of long-standing autocrats such as
Tunisia’s Ben Ali, Egypt’s Mubarak, and Qaddafi in Libya. Yemen, Bahran, and Syria also
experienced transitions, protests, and violence bordering on civil war, respectively. Some
of the region’s monarchies—notably Jordan and Morocco—undertook pre-emptive reform
measures to stave off pressures stemming from deeply entrenched socio-economic malaise
and popular frustration at the lack of accountable and effective government. In all countries
 ISLAM AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN THE MIDDLE EAST 183

experiencing either transition or new political openings, Islamic political parties—both

classic Islamists and newly enfranchised, ultra-conservative Salafis—achieved stunning suc-
cess at the ballot box. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and Tunisia’s En-Nahda became the
dominant political forces in their respective countries after years of oppression at the hands
of autocratic regimes. Both parties immediately faced the challenge of transforming them-
selves from opposition movements into governing parties, all the while struggling to navigate
the practical challenges of improving dire economic conditions, and managing the increased
scrutiny and scepticism levelled at them by displaced secular forces and external actors.
The Iraq War and Arab Spring of 2011 (see Box 8.2) have both also had a significant effect
on Muslim transnationalism in the region. Some authors, such as Vali Nasr (2006), have
spoken of a ‘Shia Revival’ marked by an upsurge in sectarian political mobilization follow-
ing the Iraq War. The war undoubtedly provided Iran with new opportunities to wield geo-
political influence in the region and beyond. The popular uprising across the Arab world
in 2011 threw these same issues into even starker relief, with countries ruled by minority
sectarian groups—particularly Bahrain and Syria—experiencing high levels of tension and
violence, and Iran using the opportunity to exert pressure in key countries. The global jihadist
movement, increasingly fragmented post-9/11, was able to some limited extent to use the
widespread unpopularity of the Iraq War to reconstitute its ranks and regional networks.
The peaceful, cross-ideological Arab uprisings of 2011, however, severely discredited their
claim that political change in the region could come about only through the combination
of Islam and violence. With the death of Osama bin Laden at the hands of the US military
that same year, the global jihadist movement also suffered an important symbolic blow. The
volatility of the region in recent years has, however, allowed those Islamists operating in situ-
ations of conflict or weak and failed states, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, to become more
assertive. Both have enjoyed considerable electoral success and renewed popular legitimacy
as symbols of resistance against external influence, even as they continue to be regarded with
considerable scepticism by the West.

Box 8.2 The Arab Spring, Islam, and foreign policy

The downfall of major Western allies such as Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak in the Arab Spring of 2011 has raised
questions about a possible realignment in the foreign policies of lynchpin states in the region. The US
expressed concern that new political actors in Egypt—particularly ascendant Islamist forces—might seek
to alter the terms of that country’s peace treaty with Israel, long regarded as a cornerstone of regional
security arrangements. Others have voiced fears that Iran might seize the opportunity to bring new
governments influenced by Islam more closely into its orbit. Since coming to power, however, Islamists
in Tunisia and Egypt have gone out of their way to project a positive and cooperative image to external
actors, emphasizing their intention to maintain existing security arrangements with Israel, as well as to
seek opportunities for new regional and global trade arrangements, and even partnership with unpopular
multilateral financial institutions such as the IMF. Some observers continue to harbour concerns,
however, that if the Islamists fail to deliver practicial solutions, they could turn to populist strategies—
including anti-Western and anti-Israel sentiment—to shore up support. Even without Islamists in power,
it is unlikely that the foreign policies of countries such as Egypt will be as amenable to US and European
interests as they once were. In a ‘post-Western’ world, newly transitioned Arab states are likely to
entertain doing business with emerging global powers such as China and India—not to mention regional
aspirants such as Turkey and Qatar—even as they continue to maintain solid relations with the West.
184 PETER MANDAVILLE

Conclusion
As we have seen in this chapter, Islam has figured in the foreign policies and positions of
states in the Middle East in a variety of ways. In concluding, however, we should also note
Islam’s increased salience within broader international relations. In the aftermath of 9/11
and the declaration by the US of a ‘global war on terror’, Islam has come to inform the per-
ception and positions of states and other actors outside the Middle East. Terms such as
‘jihad’ and topics such as the Sunni–Shia divide are now the stuff of household conversation
in Europe and North America. In the field of international security, Islamism has in many
regards come to play much the same function as communism during the cold war, with
various policymakers and commentators figuring it as the West’s chief ideological ‘other’. In
a geo-political environment in which efforts to deter militant Islam carry a premium in the
eyes of Western powers, numerous countries have sought to use their stated commitment
to fighting terrorism as a bargaining chip in their own efforts to secure increased levels
of development assistance or lucrative memberships in international organizations. More
recently, a string of popular revolutions across the Arab world have brought Islamic par-
ties into power and raised questions about the geo-political alignment of key states such as
Egypt. Given the continued resonance of religious language and symbols in politics, the per-
vasiveness of media, and the increasingly broad range of actors—including states, political
parties, non-governmental organizations, and transnational networks—Islam will remain
an important feature of international relations in the Middle East and beyond.

Further reading
Abu Sulayman, A. (1993) Towards an Islamic Theory of International Relations: New Directions for
Methodology and Thought (Herndon, VA: International Institute of Islamic Thought)
An exploration of the possibilities and boundaries of a modern Islamic theory of international relations.
Dawisha, A. (ed.) (1983) Islam in Foreign Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)
A collection of case studies analysing the role of Islam in the foreign policies of various key states in the
late 20th century.
Hashmi, S. (ed.) (2002) Islamic Political Ethics: Civil Society, Pluralism, and Conflict (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press)
A superb collection of essays providing an overview of Islam, international society, territorial boundaries,
and just war.
Khadduri, M. (1955) War and Peace in the Law of Islam (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press)
A classic account of Islamic legal thought on war and armed conflict between states.
Mandaville, P. (2007) Global Political Islam (London: Routledge)
A broad overview of Islam, politics, and the impact of global factors, with significant coverage of the
Middle East.
Murden, S. (2002) Islam, the Middle East, and the New Global Hegemony (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner)
An analysis of Middle Eastern political responses to globalization and the role of Islam.
Piscatori, J. (1986) Islam in a World of Nation-States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)
Justifiably the standard reference point on Islam and international relations; an excellent overview of
Islamic thought and practice regarding the world system of states.