State and Ideology in the Middle East and Pakistan

State and Ideology in the

Middle East and Pakistan
Edited by
Fred Halliday
and
HamzaAlavi

M
MACMILLAN
EDUCATION
Introduction, editorial matter and selection © Fred Halliday
and Hamza Alavi 1988
Chapter 3 ©The Trustees of Columbia University in the
City of New York 1982, Fred Halliday 1988
Chapters 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9 respectively© Nikki Keddie,
Hamza Alavi, Marie-Christine Aulas, Michael Gilsenan,
Caglar Keyder and Teodor Shanin 1988
Chapter 5 ©Hanna Batatu 1982, 1988

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First published 1988

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

State and ideology in the Middle East and
Pakistan.
1. Middle East-Social conditions
2. Ideology
I. Halliday, Fred II. Alavi, Hamza
306' .42'0956 HN656.A8
ISBN 978-0-333-38308-7 ISBN 978-1-349-19029-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-19029-4
Contents

Acknowledgements Vll

Notes on the Contributors Vlll

1 Introduction
Fred Halliday and Hamza Alavi 1

2 Ideology, Society and the State in Post-Colonial

Muslim Societies
Nikki Keddie 9

3 The Iranian Revolution: Uneven Development and

Religious Populism
Fred Halliday 31

4 Pakistan and Islam: Ethnicity and Ideology

Hamza Alavi 64

5 Syria's Muslim Brethren

Hanna Batatu 112

6 State and Ideology in Republican Egypt

Marie-Christine Aulas 133

7 State and Popular Islam in Egypt

Michael Gilsenan 167

8 Class and State in the Transformation of

Modern Turkey
Caglar Keyder 191

v
vi Contents

9 The Zionisms of Israel

Teodor Shanin 222

Index 257
Acknowledgements

The editors and publishers are grateful to MERIP Reports for

permission to reprint Hanna Batatu's 'Syria's Muslim Brethren'
and the Journal of International Affairs for permission to print a
revised version of Fred Halliday's 'The Iranian Revolution: Reli-
gious Populism and Uneven Development'.

vii
Notes on the Contributors

Hamza Alavi is Professor in the Graduate School of International

Studies, University of Denver. A former governor of the Bank of
Pakistan, he has written studies on the theory of the post-colonial
state, the military and bureaucracy in Pakistan, and peasant move-
ments.

Marie-Christine Aulas has conducted research in Egypt and Leba-

non, and is the author of several studies on contemporary society
and politics in these countries. She is based in Paris and is a
contributing editor to MERIP Middle East Reports.

Hanna Batatu is Professor of Arab Studies at Georgetown Univer-

sity. He is the author of The Old Social Classes and the Revolution-
ary Movements of Iraq.

Michael Gilsenan is Khalid bin Abdullah al Saud Professor for the

Study of the Contemporary Arab World at Oxford University. He
is the author of Saint and Sufi in Modern Egypt and Recognizing
Islam.

Fred Halliday is Professor of International Relations at the Lon-

don School of Economics. His books include Arabia without
Sultans, Iran: Dictatorship and Development and, with Maxine
Molyneux, The Ethiopian Revolution. He is a contributing editor
to MERIP Middle East Reports.

Nikkie Keddie is Professor of History at the University of Califor-

nia, Los Angeles, and the author and editor of more than ten
books on modern Iran and the Middle East. These include, Re-
ligion and Rebellion in Iran: The Tobacco Protest of I89I-I892 and
Roots of Revolution: An Interpretive History of Modern Iran.

viii
Notes on the Contributors IX

Caglar Keyder taught at METU (Ankara) for several years. He

has published books and articles on the economic history, agrarian
conditions and political economy of Turkey. He now teaches in the
Department of Sociology, State University of New York, Bing-
hampton.

Teodor Shanin is Professor of Sociology at the University of

Manchester. His books include Peasants and Peasant Societies,
The Awkward Class, Late Marx and the Russian Road, Russia
as a 'Developing Society'.
1 Introduction
FRED HALLIDAY AND HAMZA ALAVI

This is a book about ideologies and their relation to state power on

the one hand and social classes on the other. It presents a com-
parative set of analyses of developing countries, covering Pakistan
and the major states of the Middle East, and begins with a
comparative survey of conditions under which Islamic political
movements do, and do not, develop, before proceeding to a set of
individual studies. Some of these chapters concern Arab countries
(Syria, Egypt), others countries that are Muslim but not Arab
(Iran, Pakistan and Turkey), and one focuses upon Israel. While
written from distinct positions, and with a variety of concrete
objects of analysis, the materials in this volume are convergent in
their identification of key problems in the societies in question,
and in the search for a theoretical framework through which a
better understanding of them can be developed.
Study of this area is to-day conducted under the impact of two
challenges. One is specific to, and produced within, the region
itself, namely the rise of new contestant ideologies and movements
and the apparent inability of the established state and authority
systems to maintain their control over their respective popula-
tions. The 1979 revolution in Iran was the most remarkable of the
challenges to state power in recent years, but the phenomenon of
contestation and of ideological conflict is wider than Iran itself. It
can be seen in Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, and Pakistan. Much of
the literature on these changes has, in our view, conceded too
much to the autonomy of religious beliefs, abstracting social
movements and changes in religious doctrine and interpretation
from the broader social context within which they have occurred.
It has treated 'Islam' in an essentialist way as a reified force that
1
2 Introduction

denotes a common social phenomenon, and a common set of

beliefs, one which transcends different societies and distinct his-
torical epochs. This is, of course, the approach favoured by many
Muslims, but it cannot, for analytic purposes, be the most appro-
priate way in which to treat these phenomena. A similarly essen-
tialist and ahistorical view of 'Zionism' is also common amongst its
proponents and, in contrary form, amongst its enemies.
The second challenge is theoretical. The prevailing and competi-
tive theories of social and political change in the Third World
represented by the poles of 'modernisation theory' and 'depen-
dency theory', with many variants in between, have both been
submitted to substantial empirical and theoretical critique since
their crystallisation in the 1960s. Both can provide an explanation
of recent events in the Third World- the rise to power of civil and
military bureaucracies, and the Iranian revolution, to name but
two: but they are not now as confidently espoused by their sup-
porters as was earlier the case. In general, the theoretical field of
development is in a state of some disarray, without even a profes-
sional consensus on such basic questions as the value of foreign aid
or of appropriate agrarian policies, let alone an agreed historical
explanation of why there exist such asymmetries of wealth and
power in the contemporary world. 1 In the case of the Middle East,
this general crisis of development theory has been compounded by
the debate around 'orientalism', the thesis that Western writing
has been distorting because it has been part of a hegemonic and
exploitative project. 2
There are no ready answers to these theoretical challenges, nor
to the specific questions of interpretation posed by the histories
and character of individual societies. We do, none the less, see this
book as part of a broader reconceptualisation in the field of
development, in an attempt to suggest approaches and examples
that may be of relevance beyond the cases in question. A common
theoretical framework for developing countries is, in our view, a
valid intellectual goal, provided that it eschews both the more
deterministic temptations of dependency theory, and a simplifying
comparativism that suppresses the distinctive characters of devel-
oping countries. Such a theoretical approach, while rejecting
modernisation theory, would not entail either an absolute aban-
donment of 'Western' social concepts, or automatic acceptance of
conceptions suggested by the experience and writings of oppressed
Fred Halliday and Hamza Alavi 3

peoples themselves. Some of the easier escapes suggested by

critics of 'orientalism' may themselves prove to be incarcerating,
because they reflect national or other local values. An approach
that identifies clearly structures of domination at both the na-
tional, and international, levels, and which rejects the oppressive
implications of modernisation theory, may be of more relevance,
both to a critique of dominant ideologies and to an understanding
of social forces, and intellectual and political movements, resisting
such domination.
Four general themes underlie the studies in this book and
provide, in our view, a basis for developing a broader, compara-
tive, theoretical framework. The first is recognition of the degree
to which these societies have been incorporated into the interna-
tional capitalist system, both politically and economically. As a
result of their incorporation into the capitalist market, one long
dominated by colonialism and its political system, the pre-existing,
'traditional', that is, pre-capitalist, social and economic systems of
these countries have been replaced, by radically new systems and
relations. The very distribution of territory of post-colonial states
is a result of such a process, as is the manner in which these states
were founded. One of these states, Israel, was established through
a process of colonisation; others, such as Syria, Egypt and Pakistan,
are the result of the formation of states on the basis of colonial
legacies. The classes that ruled these countries were formed by
colonialism. The political, economic and cultural tensions within
these societies, and the conflicting alliances in which they find
themselves, all reflect this continued and changing incorporation
within a world system dominated by Western capitalism. While the
ideologies of power and opposition found in these societies are, in
the first instance, concerned with internal, domestic, conflict, the
issue of external relations and of the role of external forces is
always central and forms a vivid part of the world view that
sustains such movements.
The second general theme is that of state formation, in the
colonial and post-colonial periods. While states existed in pre-
colonial societies, with identifiable territories and administrative
apparatuses, controlling personnel and recognised powers, the
state system as it exists today in these societies is a product of the
colonial period, and of the reaction to it by indigenous social
classes. This kind of post-colonial state has been evident in Pakistan
4 Introduction

as in Syria, and to a considerable degree, through the grafting

on to it of previously distinct Zionist enterprises, in Israel. In
countries such as Turkey and Iran that escaped colonial rule, new
states systems were established in the post-First World War period
by new military regimes and were encapsulated within world
capitalism, even when they sought to emulate the imperial world
and so preserve their domains. The territories allocated to those
states by the colonial world have proved remarkably durable, the
arbitrary and recent character of the divisions notwithstanding.
Despite many calls for secession in the Third World, no breakup of
a territorially continuous post-colonial state has taken place. The
one case of a post-colonial secession that succeeded, Bangladesh,
occurred precisely because the seceding area was geographically
separated from its oppressor, Pakistan.
Within these post-colonial territories, new administrative enti-
ties have arisen, which have become the focus of contestation for
power. The analyses that follow take up a series of questions
relating to the internal dynamics of these states: the social groups
that have sought power as a means of guaranteeing their interests
in these states are remarkably similar, be they the military-
bureaucratic establishment that heads the salariat in Pakistan, the
military in Egypt, the urban educated in Turkey, the Zionist
bureaucracy in Israel, and their counterpoint, those social forces
that have developed in opposition to the state and have come to
challenge it- with success, as in Iran, or in as yet unsuccessful but
enduring hostility, as in Syria, and Egypt. A central concern of this
book is analysis of the political projects of those with state power-
be they industrialisation, national consolidation under certain
forms of dominance, or secularisation- and the oppositions these
hegemonic projects generate on social and ideological grounds.
One further observation may help to set these studies of state
power in the context of current analysis of the Third World. While
much of the literature of the past two decades has been, quite
properly, concerned with the peasantry and rural change, the
focus here will be on the urban social and political systems of the
countries concerned. It is in the cities that the institutions of the
new states have been situated, and where their employment effects
have been the greatest. This is evident in the creation of a new
educated salariat that is often the protagonist of nationalist and
secular ideas, in the growth of urban working and semi-employed
classes, and in the gradual erosion of pre-established trading
Fred Halliday and Hamza Alavi 5

groups. If the countryside has been the site of some of the most
momentous conflicts of the modern Third World, and if rural
conditions are, directly or indirectly, of immense importance for
development in all societies, it is none the less in the cities that the
decisive political consolidations and confrontations of many of
these countries discussed here have been located. The cities are not
only the locus of state power but, increasingly, of opposition to it.
Vital to the project of states, and to any legitimation of power
within them, are ideologies, the third major theme of this study.
We use ideology in a broad sense, to denote sets of beliefs
concerning social and political issues, which are both explanatory
and normative, that is, which purport to explain why the world is
as it is, how it came to be so, and what the goals of political action
should be. Amongst the core questions which such ideologies
address are: what constitutes the community to which the individ-
ual belongs (for example, is it religious, ethnic, territorial, linguis-
tic and in what combination of these?); what are its legitimate
boundaries; who is entitled to hold power, and who should be
opposed; and, of abiding interest, who is responsible for its
ill-fortune and should be suppressed within the country? In ad-
vanced capitalist societies the importance of values as social bonds
and political legitimisers and as constituents of any stable system
of authority has long been recognised by thinkers as diverse as
Weber and Gramsci. In developing societies, where the very
name, language and identity of the community may be a recent
creation, where no previously recognised territory or political
system may have existed, ideologies have an enhanced role as the
articulators of uncertainty and of contesting demands, both intern-
ally and internationally, as well as serving to instil acceptance of
new and apparently arbitrary political entities.
Some of the studies are concerned with the ideologies of domi-
nation, that is with sets of beliefs designed to legitimise and support
new forms of state and state power: Kemalism in Turkey, so-called
'Islamic ideology' in Pakistan, Pahlavism in Iran, Baathism in Syria,
Nasserism in Egypt, Zionism in Israel. That these are all recently
formed sets of beliefs is irrelevant to estimating their success and
the reasons for it. What determined their success, or the lack of it,
was the degree to which they articulated with social movements
and the skill and tenacity of those holding state power. Some, such
as Pahlavism, failed in the end to maintain themselves. Others
have been more gradually eroded by the advance, and partial
6 Introduction

incorporation into the state, of oppositional ideologies- this has

been true for Turkey and Egypt. Those in power have also
changed by responding to events and emphasising different aspects
of the, necessarily inchoate, ideological whole: Zionism in Israel
and Islam in Pakistan have evolved in this way. Other studies in
this book are concerned with oppositional ideologies: the individ-
ual case studies of Iran, Egypt and Syria discuss social groups
excluded from power3 , while the introductory chapter by Nikki
Keddie analyses the Islamic world as a whole.
This variation in the role of ideologies points to the fourth
general theme of this book, namely the contingency of ideologies.
Against the essentialism of Islam, Zionism or other belief systems,
the studies here stress that ideologies are contingent in two senses
-their dependency upon social support and conjunctures, even if
they are not necessarily the expression of any one group or specific
conjuncture, and their flexibility or ductility, their ability to change
meanings and political character in different circumstances. 4 The
tendency to see ideologies as dominant and virtually autonomous of
other areas of social existence is by no means specific to the study of
the Middle East, although, as already mentioned, it takes the
particular form there of the hypostatisation of 'Islam'. The pri-
macy and autonomy of ideologies, of 'discourses' and belief sys-
tems, have indeed become common currency in much theoretical
writing across a wide range of social sciences during the past
decade. This tendency has been in part a response to a previously
dominant socio-economic reductionism in both political and ideo-
logical analysis. The solution to the problem may, however, not lie
in allotting primacy to the ideological domain, but rather in
producing a more accurate and systematic conceptualisation of the
interaction of the ideological with the socio-economic, and of the
manner in which the latter can shape and influence the former, as
well as of the ways in which ideologies may have an independent
role in society. The upsurge in Islamic militancy has appeared at
first to strengthen those emphasising the ideological and the auton-
omy and pervasive power of belief systems. But the analysis of the
causes of this upsurge, and of the way Islamic states have handled
political power and economic policy, suggests that social contin-
gency has rather more important a part than at first appears. It is
precisely this kind of approach that informs the studies in this
book. In the case of Pakistan, the call for a Muslim state reflected
Fred Halliday and Hamza Alavi 7

a secular project by Indian Muslims, Islamic ideology being

invoked by those in power only after the state was created.
Khomeini's theory of Islamic government contained a challenge
for state power in Iran, as well as a means of legitimising the
maintenance of power once this had been attained. The Islamic
oppositions in Syria and Egypt express the aspirations of social
groups that deny the legitimacy of established power, which is in
the hands of comparatively secular power blocs.
The contingency of ideologies is also evident in the second
sense, that of variation. What specific terms or symbols mean is a
contingent matter in the sense that it is decided by specific situa-
tions and political forces. Ideologies are not infinitely flexible: they
do exclude some possibilities, but they are sufficiently ductile to
allow very different interpretations and uses. Ideologies claim that
they provide a firm, unchanging, answer to the major issues in
question, and that others are to be disqualified on the grounds that
they are deviants or deformers of ideological essence: those that
are not 'true Muslims', or 'true Zionists', or 'true Turks'. But
ideologies supposedly based on long-established bodies of texts,
such as contemporary radical Islam and, in part, Zionism, or
newly confected ones such as Nasserism and Ba'thism, allow of
multiple interpretations and ambiguities, and permit many entail-
ments. The diversity of Islamic movements reflects a diversity of
social forces all using the Islamic texts as their legitimation, just as
the variety of 'Islamic' governments - Iran, Pakistan and Saudi
Arabia - reflects the degree to which different rulers - clergy,
military and a tribal oligarchy - can turn sacred writ to their own
secular ends.
Most recent writing has been tempted to see ideological conflict
in the states of the Middle East and Muslim Asia as one between
an alien secularising and 'modernising' trend, and a more religious
and conservative tendency opposed to such changes. The analysis
of this book will approach the secular-religious conflict as an
internal competition, articulated by predominantly urban social
groups within the society in question, over what the appropriate
response to an externally-initiated transformation process should
be. In this perspective, the secular is as rooted in the societies in
question and in their history as the religious, and the religious is as
innovative and contemporary a development as the secular.
8 Introduction

Notes

1. For more general discussion of these themes see Hamza Alavi and
Teodor Shanin (eds), Introduction to the Sociology of 'Developing
Societies' (London: Macmillan, 1983) and Tala! Asad and Roger
Owen (eds), Sociology of 'Developing Societies': The Middle East,
(London: Macmillan, 1983).
2. On 'orientalism' see Edward Said, Orienta/ism (London, 1978); the
critique by Sadik al-Azm in Khamsin, no. 8, (1981); and Said's
'Orientalism Reconsidered', Race and Class (Autumn 1985).
3. An excellent survey of oppositional ideologies in the Middle East is
given in Forbidden Agendas, Intolerance and Defiance in the Middle
East, articles from the journal Khamsin, edited by Jon Rotschild
(London: al-Saqi, 1984).
4. An outstanding and pioneering analysis of the contingency of ideol-
ogies is Sami Zubeida, 'The Ideological Conditions for Khomeini's
Doctrine of Government', Economy and Society, vol. II, no. 1
(May 1982).
2 Ideology, Society and
the State in Post-Colonial
Muslim Societies
NIKKI R. KEDDIE

This essay will deal analytically with the relations between state,
society and ideology in certain post-colonial Muslim societies. The
emphasis will be comparative, with the aim of using comparison to
shed light on each society and on the differences and similarities
among them. For the purposes of this discussion 'post-colonial' is
taken to begin with the Ataturk and Reza Shah regimes in Turkey
and Iran, when important political and economic breaks were
made with Western power, and to begin with the achievement of
independence from colonialism in the other countries discussed.
Hence there is a gap of twenty-five years or more between the two
categories.

Islam and secularism: the first phase

As others have noted, without sufficient effect, 'Islam' is not a

concept that should be reified, but like other religions, it has
varied with time, place, social class, ethnicity, gender, and other
variables. The varieties of Islamic trends before colonial conquest
or influence differed from what developed after, and both differed
from what developed after independence. Pre-colonial Islamic
trends, at least outside Saudi Arabia, differed greatly from what is
preached by Islamist movements today. As a gross generalisation,
9
10 Post-Colonial Muslim Societies

pre-colonial Islam stressed law and practices led by an ulama who

were normally in general alliance with their governments to main-
tain the status quo. Contrary to some writers, there was major
differentiation between the sphere of the ulama and that of rulers.
Most of the time, Islam tended to be conservative rather than
militant or exclusivist. With Western influence or conquest in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries there grew up schools
of Islamic reformism, associated chiefly with the Young Ottomans,
Jamal ad-Din 'al-Afghani', Muhammad Abduh, Rashid Rida and
the Salafiya movement, and Syed Ahmad Khan. These trends
tried to make Islam compatible with many Western scientific,
economic, and political concepts in order to strengthen Islamic
countries against the West, and adapt Islam to the needs of
modern bourgeois society. In addition, there were other modernist
movements that stressed national rather than Islamic identity -
radical Iranian nationalism stressed by the freethinking nineteenth-
century Mirza Aqa Khan Kermani and the twentieth-century
Ahmad Kasravi; pan-Turanianism in pre-Ataturk Turkey, and
Arab nationalism, which had a special appeal for Christians and
other minorities. The nationalist movements were more secular
than Islamic ones, although Arab nationalists usually paid obeis-
ance to Muhammad and Islam, partly as Arab phenomena.
If one looks at popular movements in the period before the end
of colonial rule, as defined above, it seems clear that for the bazaar
class or petty bourgeoisie, and for the masses of the population,
Islam, without a particularly reformist content, remained a focus
of identity and aspirations. The Iranian revolution of 1905-11 was
fought by its popular leaders in the name of Islam and got much of
its power from support by some of the ulama. On his way to power
in 1921-5 Reza Khan was careful to court ulama support. Similarly
Ataturk fought his popular war of liberation in the name of Islam,
which is frequently invoked in his early speeches. In Egypt the
popular nationalist Mustafa Kamil successfully invoked traditional
Islamic practices, including veiling and seclusion, in his attacks on
the British, while his modernist opponents appealed to a more
restricted bourgeois group.
One may roughly say that in both the colonial and post-colonial
periods Islam of a fairly traditional kind continued to appeal to the
masses, to those of the bourgeoisie who were tied to the traditional
economy, and to the ulama, while modernism, nationalism, and
Nikki R. Keddie 11

secularism had their greatest appeal among classes tied to the

modern economy and state - the bourgeoisie and landed classes
tied to the West, the new army and bureaucracy. In both cases
ideas suited interests.
The post-colonial states, whose leaders wished to centralise
power and to build a stronger economy, were logically moved to
weaken the classes most identified with Islam, especially the
ulama, and to establish what is often called secularism, although
state control over religion would be a more accurate designation.
This was not exclusively a post-colonial trend: already in the
nineteenth century those states most influenced by the West,
notably the Ottoman centre, Tunisia, and Egypt, had taken steps
to weaken the power of the ulama. With Ataturk and Reza Shah,
however, the steps were much more dramatic. Ataturk abolished
the caliphate, outlawed the use of the Arabic alphabet, ended the
religious school system, gave women equal legal rights, encour-
aged unveiling, and so forth. These steps were emulated by Reza
Shah somewhat less radically, though it was he and not Ataturk
who actually outlawed veiling, in 1936.
Both rulers encouraged an ethnic nationalism which had its
roots in the past but now took new forms and strength. While
Iranian nationalism had started as a radical idea, praising the
pre-Islamic religious socialist Mazdak, Reza Shah and his son
favoured a monarchist version, stressing great pre-Islamic kings-
Cyrus, Darius, and the Sasanians. Existing anti-Arab feeling was
encouraged so that most educated Iranians came to feel that the
inferior Arabs had caused Iran's backwardness by imposing their
religion and ways. The break between the bourgeois-nationalist
culture of the elite and the Islamic culture of the masses and
bazaar classes increased with time. Radical nationalism a la
Kasravi remained a trend among the educated classes.
Ataturk and his followers encouraged an ethnic nationalism
which lost nothing in force from the fact that it was based on shaky
intellectual foundations. Ataturk's Turks in Turkey had to adjust
to the loss of empire and to the idea, new to most of them, that
'Turks' were not just unlettered countryfolk, but a nationality with
a proud history. Not having pre-Islamic glories of an Iranian kind,
Ataturk and his followers substituted pure inventions- such as the
idea that the Anatolian Hittites were Turks, and that Turkish was
the root of all human languages. The 'artificiality' of these ideas
12 Post-Colonial Muslim Societies

did not bring discontent or instability. Turkey, in fact, has had

several advantages in maintaining itself in the modern world.
Among these are its long history of Western contact and internal
reform; the unique role of Ataturk as gazi (significantly, an Islamic
term) - the hero who beat the foreigner-infidel in the post-First
World War fighting; and the relative homogeneity of modern
Turkey and its overwhelming Turkish-speaking Muslim identity.
For all the recent rise of Islamic counter-movements, Turkey
remains the most secular of Muslim states, and none of its secular
law codes has yet been repealed.
None the less, the masses, especially in rural areas and among
recent urban migrants, continue to identify strongly with Islam,
regarding the Muslim marriage rather than the civil one as import-
ant, for example. While opposition has arisen from both the
Marxist left and from Islamic movements, the latter appear to
have a wider appeal, and Islamic politics have had a growing
influence, both in the opposition and in the government.
The state-backed ideologies of Ataturk and Reza Shah, includ-
ing strong national identification, identification with the leader, a
downplaying of traditional Islam and its leaders, new freedoms for
women, and stress on self-strengthening, were highly appropriate
to their building of a modern, centralised national state, complete
with new armies, bureaucracies, school systems, and so forth.
They were also appropriate to the state or state-backed capitalism
which encouraged the growth of factory industry and the end of
capitulations (tariff privileges and extra-territoriality for Western
countries). The partial liberation of women allowed them to enter
parts of the modern labour market as teachers, nurses, secretaries
and in certain other positions. Although Reza Shah was more
authoritarian and less lettered than Ataturk, and hence less popu-
lar with intellectuals, he had much more intellectual and pro-
fessional support than later Iranian writers usually claim. While his
Iranian nationalist ideology was more 'natural' than Ataturk's
Turkish one, being based on several prior Iranian dynasties, it
was ultimately less successful among the people as a whole than
Ataturk's 'artificial' ideology, mainly because Iran was more back-
ward and less integrated than Turkey and because Reza Shah
lacked Ataturk's past as a national hero. The Iranian ulama also
retained under Reza Shah powers that the Turkish ulama lost
under Ataturk or even before -the economic power given by their
Nikki R. Keddie 13

direct collection of zakat and khums taxes (a Shi'a feature), more

control over vaqf property and income, and more retention of
Islamic schools and religious powers. Hence, the Iranian ulama,
long more powerful than the ulama elsewhere in the Middle East,
remained in a position to stage a comeback after Reza Shah was
forced by Britain and Russia to abdicate in 1941.
The official ideologies of Reza Shah and Ataturk contained
features already found in the Muslim modernists (rationalised and
partly secularised Islam) and in early nationalists (stress on the
national past and the superiority of one's own nation), but like
other state or governmental ideologies they did not simply adopt
intellectual systems from pre-existing intellectuals. Rather, those
features of earlier systems of thought that were appropriate to the
goals of the state were chosen, whether consciously or uncon-
sciously. Both Islamic modernism and nationalism in fact bor-
rowed heavily from Western liberal and nationalist thought
systems. Modernism found new values in the Islamic past, just as
less liberal Muslims are doing today. In the case of nationalism
such values were found in the national past, and it was natural not
to acknowledge a debt to the West, as each nation tried to
convince itself of its own superiority.

What defines ideology

An important, and insufficiently studied, aspect of ideology is the

question 'Who is the Enemy?' against whom a given ideology is
chiefly directed. In a classic study of medieval Islamic ideologies,
Claude Cahen has noted that the same intellectual movement may
have had opposite social meanings according to who was the
powerful enemy the movement opposed - and opposite-seeming
ideological trends may similarly have allied social roles in relation
to rulers with objectively similar roles but different ideologies. 1 In
the post-war Muslim world the strength among intellectuals of
Islamist ideologies is often in inverse proportion to its strength in
ruling groups opposed by most intellectuals. Notably in Pakistan
today, even though Islamic terminology is de rigueur, there are very
few intellectuals with a really Islamist outlook, and this is largely
because of the unpopularity of a government that calls itself
Islamic. On the other hand, in Egypt, Tunisia, and pre-revolutionary
14 Post-Colonial Muslim Societies

Iran Islamism is or was on the upswing, largely because the govern-

ment opposed by intellectuals and others was or is largely secular,
and also seen as subservient to the secular West.
The papers in this book mostly stress another important aspect
of ideology, its class basis, which is crucial, but which does not in
itself allow us to predict or understand what ideology will be
followed by a given class at a given time and place. The petty-
bourgeoisie, for example, is notorious for switching ideologies, yet
these switches are not random, but reflect given situations. The
petty bourgeoisie as well as what Alavi calls the'salariat' and also
the big bourgeoisie tended to rally round nationalist, secularising,
national unity ideologies when these were seen as the most effec-
tive way to overcome weak monarchies dependent on the West
and backed by old land-owning and clerical classes, and to set up
strong nation-states. This was the case in Pahlavi Iran, Ataturk's
Turkey, and Nasser's Egypt. All three brought in significant
reforms from the top, promoted private and/or state capitalism,
and brought landlords and religious institutions under state con-
trol. As noted above, it is state control of religion rather than
separation of church and state that constitutes what is often
misleadingly called the 'secularism' of these regimes. Although
Nasser's rule is with reason considered more radical and socialist
than were Ataturk and the Pahlavis, the difference is smaller than
rhetoric would suggest. The land reforms of the late Shah were as
extensive as Nasser's, while Nasser's nationalisations did not result
in permanent dispossession of the local bourgeoisie. What ties
the Ataturk, Pahlavi, and Nasserist ideologies and movements
together is their stress on national unity, on reform, on centralised
bureaucratic controls, and on opposition to a prior weak monarchy
that was complaisant to foreigners. The importance of overcoming
weakness and foreign control while playing down internal class
differences that might lead to internal strife brought forth totalistic
and radical-sounding ideologies. The Islam faced by the three
regimes, at least at the beginning of their rule and even later,
found its representatives in an ulama who had ties to traditional
ways and to traditional landlords (ulama were often large land-
lords themselves, or guardians of large landed waqf properties). A
regime that wanted, as all three did, to expand secular education
and a modern unified judicial system, and to introduce other
Nikki R. Keddie 15

modern institutions, would naturally want to control the ulama as

much as possible. Nasser's ideology differs from the secular na-
tionalism of Ataturk and the Pahlavis in stressing Arab unity, and
even larger Islamic and African spheres, but as time went on
Nasser had to fall back increasingly on Egyptian national condi-
tions and interests.
The rise of Islamist movements in the Middle East, beginning
especially in the 1960s and growing in the 1970s and 1980s, is not at
all a traditional phenomenon or a return to the medieval, as some
think, but is largely a reaction of dissatisfied groups and classes to
the areas of failure of secular nationalism. As secular nationalism
may be seen as a response to weak foreign-backed old regimes on
the part especially of several educated classes, so Islamism is
largely a reaction to successor nationalist regimes, like the three
mentioned above. As Alavi's paper suggests, this is true even in
Pakistan, whose founders were secularists, as was Zulfiqar Ali
Bhutto, against whose secularising populist regime an Islamist
movement broke out. In the case of Pakistan Islam has a special
role as the raison d' etre of the state and the only apparent glue
holding together ethnic groups, but the country is, none the less,
less unique than it may seem.

Reasons for the variable strength of Islamism

The term 'Islamism', which apparently originated in both Arabic

and French in North Africa, and has begun to be used in English,
is used in place of the inaccurate and resented 'fundamentalism'
and the overly vague 'Islamic Revival' and the like. Although
some dislike 'lslamism', it has the great practical value of being the
term most acceptable to Muslims. 'Islamism' refers to twentieth-
century movements for political Islam, usually aiming overtly or
covertly at an Islamic state that would enforce at least some
Islamic laws and customs, including those related to dress, sex
segregation, and some economic measures and Qur'anic punish-
ments. Outsiders and even insiders often have the impression of a
trend sweeping the entire Muslim world, but my own extensive
travels from Indonesia to Senegal in the summer of 1983 through
late 1986 (three long summers plus all of 1985) do not support the
view of Islamism as a major force everywhere. I here recount some
16 Post-Colonial Muslim Societies

of my experiences, impressions, and readings, all of which suggest

that Islamism tends to be strong in certain specific circumstances,
and weak in others.
To begin with, Islamism is not strong in states which are really
largely traditional and have not experienced a major Western
cultural impact, though such states are increasingly rare as
Westernisation impinges almost everywhere. The people in such
states may still follow a number of Islamic laws, but militant mass
movements calling for an Islamic state and the end of Western
influence are relatively small. The prime example of such a state in
my travels was the Yemen Arab Republic (North Yemen), as of
1983, though Islamism has developed considerably since then. In
North Yemen republicans overthrew a traditionalist Imam (leader
of the Zaida Fiver Shi'a line) in 1962, and still had to fight for
several years with Nasser's help against the Saudi-backed mon-
archists. The Imam of Yemen had tried to keep out Western
influences, and though he was not wholly successful, he was largely
so. Yemeni emigration to Saudi Arabia, the US, and elsewhere
has brought in large remittances, so that Japanese cars, trucks,
VCRs, video cameras, and so forth, are plentiful, but major
elements of law and custom remain traditional and are considered .
Islamic. Law is a codified sharia; most women veil; and many are
secluded in the home. Even within 'tradition' there are changes, as
unveiled village women have been made to veil by their religious
leaders once modern roads brought in strangers, and many urban
women sport the top-to-toe black skirt, cape and face veil that
used to be reserved by the Imam's family. Its rapid spread after the
Imam's overthrow led it to be called 'the banner of the revolution'.
The spread of such veiling differs from Islamism's conscious 're-
turn to Islam'. The most 'modern' female costume, worn by
students and some professional women, is called the balta (a word
of Franco-Russo-Egyptian derivation). This is a long, unbelted
raincoat worn over blue jeans, topped by a headscarf. When I was
in Yemen, students were turning to this 'modern' dress, not to the
veil. Yemen (as of 1983) had neither the large, alienated, educated
class, nor the extensive break with traditional culture that would
encourage a major Islamist movement, although elements of
socio-economic change and the forced return of emigrant workers
as a result of declines in oil production and world-wide recession
may be bringing in a significant alienated class. It is not certain that
Nikki R. Keddie 17

under Yemeni conditions such a class would turn to Islamism, but

could. Eye-witness reports in 1986 say that the Muslim Brethren
have grown, encouraged by Egyptian teachers and intellectuals.
The profile of countries with strong Islamist movements nearly
always includes the following. The country should have had one or
more nationalist governments which tried to unify the country by
relying more on national than Islamic ideology. It should have
experienced rapid economic development and dislocations, which
have brought rapid urbanisation and visibly differential treatment
for the urban poor and the urban rich. Although not all such
countries have oil income, virtually all have profited from oil
economies at least at second hand, and oil income has hastened
the urbanisation and income gaps, corruption, and visible wealth
for the few that have made many responsive to the Islamists' call
for equity, simplicity, and honesty. In addition, countries ripe for
Islamism have experienced a longer and more radical break with
an Islamically-orientated past government and society than is true
of a country like Yemen. Most have experienced a heavy Western
impact and control and Western and secularly orientated govern-
ments.
The above characteristics are derived from reading and observa-
tion, though naturally to generalise meaningfully one must be able
to see which of the multiplicity of trends within each country
would be likely to encourage Islamism. Since the generalisations
were derived from experience, however, it is not surprising that
they fit experience. Iran, for example, is a prime case of a country
where the rulers tried to suppress Islamic and customary ways and
laws, where a huge oil income allowed rapid economic change and
over-rapid urbanisation, and where Western influence was acutely
felt. Also, on the ideological level, Islamism was encouraged by
the fact that the late Shah and his father actively suppressed
Islamic ways and were thoroughly identified with Western, non-
Islamic powers. Egypt is another country ripe for Islamist trends
and movements, which have been growing. Although not an oil
economy, Egypt in recent decades has been almost a 'rentier state',
living not on the production and export of goods, but on the export
of workers and professionals, primarily to oil countries, and on
foreign aid. Sadat was seen by many Egyptians in much the same
way as the late Shah was by many Iranians - as an American-
supported collaborator with Israel whose economic policies
18 Post-Colonial Muslim Societies

benefited old and new elites while bypassing the needy. Mubarak
has tried to steer a more Arab-orientated course, but it is unclear if
this will help him solve Egypt's overwhelming economic problems,
especially in a period of worldwide oil slump and economic dif-
ficulties
The influence of moderate or radical Islamism in Egyptian cities
is striking to a visitor who had not been there between 1964 and
1985. While in 1964 very few women showed concern for Islamic
dress, now most do, although covering-up takes numerous forms.
It ranges from the top-to-toe gloved outfits of Islamist students, to
the modified look of calf-length skirts and long-sleeved, high-
necked blouses, with scarves worn tied behind the hair which is the
minimum costume. Even foreign residents often adopt the latter
dress as it generally keeps one from being hassled or annoyed.
Many women in Egypt and elsewhere defend Islamic dress by
saying that it keeps male co-workers from seeing and perceiving
them as sex-objects, which may be true, but I have yet to hear any
of them say that young men should be socialised not to harass girls
and women, even if they are not in 'Islamic dress'.
More dramatic has been the continuation of extremist Muslim
movements, some of which are discussed in Gilles Kepel's recent
book. 2 And even more threatening to some has been what many
call 'the unholy alliance' between recently permitted opposition
groups and parties - specifically the hitherto secular Wafd Party
and the Muslim Brethren, today the least militant of Egypt's
Islamist groups. A prominent scholar and member of Egypt's
Human Rights organisation assured me that the Muslim Brethren,
having seen how Human Rights groups defended them when they
were persecuted, are now convinced believers in human rights,
free speech, and the like. One may be permitted some scepticism,
as human rights are generally popular with persons who follow
totalistic ideologies when they are out of power, but are almost
never supported by them when in power.
Tunisia is a country with some features favouring Islamism,
especially the rule since 1956 of President Bourguiba and his
followers, who have enforced a secular, nationalist, and pro-
Western orientation. Some of the burden of flight from the country-
side has been absorbed by emigration, usually conditional on
work, to places like Libya and France. With those countries now
making Tunisians leave, Tunisia faces new economic difficulties. A
Nikki R. Keddie 19

series of riots and risings in recent years, aimed against a rise in

bread prices or having more political goals, suggests that ferment
may be as great in Tunisia as in Egypt. In this situation there have
been various moves back from secularism somewhat reminiscent
of the last years before Iran's Islamic Revolution. Like Egypt and
pre-revolutionary Iran, Tunisia has several Islamically-orientated
groups. The mildest is a small group of intellectuals, known as
progressive Islamists, who put out a journal called 15121 (fifteenth
Muslim, twenty-first Christian century), oppose militant political
activity, and favour an Islamic dialogue with Western and Chris-
tian thinkers. The most militant group is part of an international
clandestine organisation, the Islamic Liberation Party, and its
members have been arrested and blamed for assassinations of
prominent figures. In between, and the most important, is the
Islamic Tendency Movement, MTI, led by men with some Islamic
training who have also had a Western-style education. Recently
the MTI has stressed its moderate and democratic side in the hope,
abortive thus far, of gaining a permit to publish legally and to be a
political party. MTI leaders were arrested and jailed for a time,
but then freed. Their published programme contains nothing
illegal, and, as in Egypt, there are some secular Tunisian oppo-
sitionists who take the programme at face value and wish to work
with the MTI. However, the vagueness of their leader's discourse
when he describes the second, Islamic, phase that follows the
democratic phase; the militance of the student followers of MTI
who won control of the University of Tunis student union; and a
secret document that has been published outlining their clandes-
tine goals and tactics, indicate that democracy is just a way-station
for the MTI. 3
MTI leaders are clever in questioning government policies with-
out putting forth Islamic alternatives that might be controversial.
They call for a referendum to review Tunisia's reformist Personal
Status Code, but do not say what they want in its place. Thus a
male MTI leader could tell me that women have more rights than
men under the code, while a young woman lawyer in the MTI said
review was needed because the code is patriarchal and favours
men!
As in many countries, lslamism of the MTI variety has an appeal
for many young women. Meeting together they get mutual support
and also learn how to argue articulately. They, like Islamist
20 Post-Colonial Muslim Societies

women elsewhere, wear a recognisable 'uniform'. In Tunisia they

wear long dresses in plain colours, usually belted, and a large
scarf, tied in front. They consider that this uniform shows that they
are Islamic activists and also not open to sexual advances. Some
girls actually gain freedom by becoming Islamists: they were
formerly never allowed to go out alone, but now can go to
mosques or meetings. Also, they can reject marriage partners
chosen by their parents on the grounds that they are not suf-
ficiently Islamic. These advantages also apply to many Islamist
women outside Tunisia. It seems that Islamism can present a
cultural alternative that many men and women do not find in
school or in the official discourse, both of which are highly West-
ern and secular. In this way Tunisia somewhat resembles pre-
revolutionary Iran. Secular or feminist-orientated Tunisians have
a discourse hardly distinguishable from Westerners, and know
much more about Foucault or de Beauvoir than they do about
Islamic thought, which in general is barely taught in the schools.
This creates a gap between the Frenchified group with good
secondary or higher education and the masses; in one way the gap
is even greater in Tunisia than in Iran, as the educated group may
speak French by preference, and often cannot deliver a talk in
Arabic, while the masses generally know only Tunisian Arabic.
In both Tunisia and Egypt, it is important to remember that the
Islamists are not the only opponents of the regime, and various
secular groups and parties exist at different points of the left-right
scale. Nevertheless, the Islamists can have a great appeal in an age
of cultural and economic crisis, and so they should be taken
seriously.
In my travels I spent brief periods in two countries where
Islamism has a special point of appeal greater than in Tunisia and
Egypt- namely, Nigeria (northern), and Malaysia. Both countries
fit the 'Islamist' profile of oil-producing countries that have under-
gone rapid economic and social change and migration to cities, and
both have also experienced nationalist governments. It appears to
me that the main reason why Islamism is important in these
countries is that in both Muslims make up a plurality (or a small
majority in Nigeria) who have not been able thus far to impose
their will as much as they wish on the large minority populations.
In both countries the Muslim plurality is also relatively economi-
cally backward, and would like more economic favours to enable
Nikki R. Keddie 21

them to get ahead of the other communities. In Malaysia the two

principal non-Muslim communities are the larger Chinese one and
the smaller Indian one, and it has been noted that a Muslim
immigrant from Indonesia will immediately be regarded as a
native, while a fifth-generation Chinese will not. Although Malay-
sia's current government has favoured the mainly Muslim Malay
community by a variety of economic concessions, this has not
satisfied all of them. Early on the Muslims adopted a formula that
would give them a fictitious majority; if they had called themselves
Muslims, or even Malay-speakers, it would have been clear that
they were not in a majority, so the term 'Bumiputra' ('sons of the
soil') was adopted, which lumped together with its Malay-Muslim
majority, 'natives' of island Malaysia who were neither Muslim
nor Malay. The leading Islamist party, PAS, wishes to enforce the
sharia in all Malaysia, which could hardly be more felicitous than it
was in Sudan. When I was in Malaysia in 1984 PAS had referred to
the ruling Muslims as unbelievers, and there was talk of a debate
between PAS and the ruling party, though each side demanded
different terms for a debate. There were also PAS-supported
risings in 'backward' areas. The government was pleased to have
brought some Islamic leaders into its fold, especially- as a minis-
ter- the leader of the Muslim Youth Movement, Anwar Ibrahim.
This made it hard for PAS to monopolise Islamist sentiment.
Government moves to incorporate Islamist leaders, and policies
like Islamic banking and home loans, helped reduce PAS's appeal.
Women in Islamist dress were numerous in Malaysia in 1984,
but the dress was a world away from that found in Iran. It was a
form-fitting sarong and long-sleeved top, both generally in bright
colors, and a kind of light cowl headdress, often fastened by
jewellery. My Iranian ayatollah informants who noted that the
whole point of Islamic dress was for women not to be noticed
would not have been pleased, and one Malay specialist called it the
dress of 'sexy nuns'. When I spoke to a women's group at one
university I found a clear generation gap; scarcely any of the
teachers or other middle-aged women wore Islamist dress, while
all students did. The older women said that students were coerced
by peer pressure into dressing and behaving in an Islamist way.
Malaysia has features that have reduced the appeal of oppo-
sitional Islamism, as demonstrated by the defeat of PAS in the
1986 elections. Besides the incorporation into the government of
22 Post-Colonial Muslim Societies

Islamist leaders and policies (which may, however, have increased

the Chinese opposition vote), the government is almost unique in
allowing Islamists to have a legal party and contest elections. This
made PAS pronouncements appear strong, but also allowed the
government to gauge the opposition and counter its appeal.
Malaysia is significant in showing the oppositional Islamists can be
reduced. It is possible that legalising Islamist parties in some other
countries might decrease, not increase, their appeal, although only
if accompanied by policies to meet mass grievances.
The main comparative point is that Malaysia, like Nigeria, not
only meets the general criteria of a country favouring Islamism,
but has the added feature that the Islamist path is seen by many
Muslims as a way to overcome their backwardness vis-a-vis other
communities, and to forge ahead economically and politically. As
elsewhere, questions about the rights and status of minorities are
generally met with vague remarks about Islamic tolerance and the
flourishing of minorities under Islamic rule.
Nigeria, like Malaysia, has had Muslim rulers for decades, but
as in Malaysia, this is insufficient to satisfy Islamists. Nigeria with
its population of about 95 million, about half Muslim, is by far the
most populous state in Africa, with by far the most Muslims.
Discussion of Nigerian Islamism is difficult, as there is not a single
Islamist group, and Westerners often mix up a radical heretical
group that was involved in urban risings in the early 1980s; radical
Islamist and Khomeinist mainly student groups; and the old Mus-
lim elite, including lawyers and judges, who have been calling for a
return to sharia law. To an extent the last two are related, but the
last one is in some measure more conservative and traditionalist
than Islamist. Under the British protectorate, the sharia did have a
larger role in Northern Nigeria, and so those who call for the
application of the sharia are not far-out utopians necessarily- they
may actually be calling for a return to a system under which they
flourished more than they do now. What is newly powerful in the
Islamist Yan Izala group is its 'Wahabi' attacks on the Sufi orders. 4
Also new is the movement to extend the sharia to the South, which
is strongly resisted by southern non-Muslims.
Student radical Islam is another matter, and as in many countries
Nigerian Islamists are strongest at the universities. Although Kho-
meini's Iran is the only popular model for many Islamists every-
where, the two places I travelled where Khoemini seemed most
Nikki R. Keddie 23

popular (not counting the Shi'a of Pakistan who have a sectarian

identification with him but are not planning a Khomeinist revolt)
were Northern Nigeria and Malaysia. One might guess that
Khomeini's popularity increases with the square of the distance
from Iran, but this, though it has some merit as an idea, would not
account for his apparently lesser popularity in the more distant
Senegal and Indonesia. Rather, I would guess that the same factor
of economically and educationally backward communities that
want to impose an Islamic state so as to put dominant economic
and political power in Muslim hands operates in both. Among
Nigerian radicals only Khomeini, I was told more than once, is
considered a truly Islamic ruler, largely because of his radical
Islamic rhetoric and programme and his revolutionary path to
power. Islamist students were very angry at a talk I gave at a
northern university in which I tried to show that Khomeini's
Islamic revolution was not replicable elsewhere, as it was heavily
based on the power and independence of Iran's Shi'i ulama, even
though other Islamic revolutionary paths might be possible. Not
only was I openly accused of being a CIA agent sent in to talk
them out of revolution, but I was told that since they had not heard
of Shi'ism until a few years ago, it must be an American invention
to split the Muslims. (Such a reaction is not exclusive to Nigerian
students - some of my Tunisian students in Paris in 1977 were
suspicious of my mention of Arab Shi'a.)
In Northern Nigeria I had the privilege of being an observer at a
three-day conference of Muslim women. This was one of many
experiences that indicated that self-consciously Muslim women's
groups and the behaviour they advocate are far from being the
wholly negative phenomenon that Westerners often think. For in
this gathering educated women Muslim leaders insisted that the
large audience, mostly of college students, should insist on such
rights as the right to be educated, the right to work and to carry
out respectable activities outside the home. In an area where many
women are secluded in the home and rarely can go out, this
insistence was clearly one that would better the position of
women. So too were rights in the family, where a pro-woman view
of Islamic injunctions was presented. On the other hand, the
leaders stressed that Muslim women should not join inter-faith
organisations or follow their programme.
If Islamism is strong in Nigeria and Malaysia, it should be
24 Post-Colonial Muslim Societies

realised that anti-Islamism is also very strong. The secular Muslims

of these countries appreciate what tensions would be brought in
along with Islamic laws and practices, especially if they were
imposed by non-Muslims. So many Muslims and all non-Muslims
oppose the Islamist programme, but economic and other difficul-
ties may none the less increase Islamist strength. In Nigeria there
have been controversial government moves early in 1986 to join an
international Islamic organisation, which may have been aimed
partly at appeasing Islamists, but alarmed secularists and non-
Muslims.
Last, I shall deal with countries where Islamism is apparently
not strong, even though, unlike North Yemen, they have moved
far from traditional ways. One of these is Senegal, where the
weakness of Islamism may be tied to the peculiar interaction of
Islam and politics. Instead of having a single class of ulama, as in
most Muslim countries, Senegal is still dominated by Islamic
orders, especially the large and nearly equally strong Tijaniya and
Muridiya (a local twentieth-century order). These orders offer
support to politicians in return for patronage and favours, and they
are rivals to one another. One might almost say that for many
loyalty to Islam in the abstract is replaced by loyalty to an order,
and that each order vies for influence. In this situation one has
vertical, not horizontal, religious groups and identification, and it
would be hard for an all-Islamic movement to get far. The Catholic
ex-president, Leopold Senghor, was sometimes ridiculed by West-
erners for giving so much attention and patronage to Islamic
orders, but in so doing he helped to perpetuate divisions among
Muslims and to forestall Islamic unity against Christians and
animists; his Muslim successor does the same. Among the highly
educated there are movements for greater Islamic orthodoxy and
all-Islamic identity, but as yet no major radical Islamist move-
ments. In addition, Senegal has seen less rapid socio-economic
change than Islamist-profile countries. A small Islamist current
has, however, developed in recent years.
Another non-Islamist area visited was West Sumatra, in In-
donesia. Although there have been Islamist trends in Indonesia, I
found almost none in West Sumatra, except one from a student of
the Technical University of Bandung, Java, which is the centre of
student Islamism. (In all countries that I know of, scientific and
technical students are the most Islamist - this was dramatically
Nikki R. Keddie 25

true in Iran and also in Tunisia.) To look only at West Sumatra, an

area I know: here is an area which does not have the profile of an
Islamist region; it has had very little industry, its cities are not
overcrowded with migrants, and living standards are relatively
egalitarian (this may be true of Indonesia in general). Most women
wear either Western or Indonesian dress and do not cover their
hair. In addition, West Sumatra is a matrilineal society, and
although its inhabitants are very strict about prayer and the other
'5 pillars' of Islam, they would not want to change their matrilineal
landholding and inheritance system in order to conform to Islamic
law. However, the crucial point is probably the lack of rapid
economic change and inequalities.
The figures for Islamist trends versus non-Islamist trends in the
countries discussed thus far are four with such trends being import-
ant: Egypt, Tunisia, Malaysia, and Nigeria; and three where they
are less important or unimportant: Sumatra, Yemen, Senegal.
With my last two countries the majority turns in favour of those
with weak Islamism, though if one considers Yemen to be border-
line as of 1986, it is a draw.
In my brief observation I would say that true Islamism is weak in
Syria. The government appears to be generally successful in de-
fending the rights of minorities, which include not only its own
Alawi group, but various Christians, Jews, Druze and Shi'a. If it is
true, as it appears to be, that many Sunnis identify with the Sunni
Muslim Brethren, this does not mean that most of them would like
to enforce a Sunni Islamic state. Rather, they would like to see the
Sunni majority favoured in politics and economics. In Syria there
seems to be considerable appreciation of the problems that may
come from stressing sectarian identity, or giving one religious
group the chance to enforce religious law. Hence I would doubt
that true Islamism is growing in Syria, which also does not seem to
have the socio-economic profile of a state that encourages the
growth of Islamism. This is said tentatively, as Westerners say that
the two questions not to discuss in Syria are religion and politics,
and it is difficult to do so in a brief visit. Nor must one forget the
brutal suppression of a Muslim Brethren-sponsored rising in Hama.
More dramatic is my final instance, the case of Pakistan, which
many Westerners, at least until the April 1986 return and huge
rallies of Benazir Bhutto, assumed was a supporter of Islamism.
Visiting Pakistan in the autumn of 1985 and in 1986, I was struck
26 Post-Colonial Muslim Societies

that in conversations with a wide range of intellectuals, including

members of Islamic organisations, I found only one man who
defended the Zia Government. I met him on my last day in 1985,in
Karachi, and that night had dinner with a senior literary figure and
his sons and told them about it. They pressed me to say who it was
who had defended the government, but I prudently decided not to
say; one son burst out laughing and said, 'You see what Pakistan is
like; she has to protect the identity of someone because he favours
our government!'
One may say, with the examples of Zia, Numeiry in Sudan, and
probably ultimately Khomeini and his followers, that there is
nothing like having a government that calls itself Islamic to dis-
credit Islamism. Zia's government has done this in various ways.
For the popular masses he has not brought significant economic or
social improvements, and education, health, and social welfare
remain at abysmally low levels, despite overall economic growth.
In addition, his policies have offended several key groups, who
have generally mounted a more militant and effective opposition
than have their counterparts elsewhere in the Islamic world.
Pakistan has the most effective and militant women's movement of
any Muslim country I know. It originated as a coalition of women's
groups, mostly professional, in response to Zia's proposed Islam-
isation laws that would reduce the status of women. The most
important such law fought by the new coalition organisation, the
Women's Action Forum, was the law of evidence, which made the
testimony of one man equal to that of two women. Women on
peaceful marches protesting against this law were beaten and
jailed, but that did not stop them. Although the law went through,
there seems no doubt that continued protests by women and their
male allies slowed down much of the rest of Zia's Islamisation
programme. For example, the proposal for separate higher edu-
cation for women has not got off the ground. The ruling that women
television broadcasters must cover their hair brought the resigna-
tion of one prominent woman, while the others now wear filmy
chiffon scarves over the back of their hair (of Hollywood 1930s
glamour style), show the rest of their hair, and wear make-up and
jewellery. (Indeed, there are very few women in Islamist dress in
Pakistan; those who veil and cover their hair are in a minority and
are generally popular class or tribal women in traditional dress.)
Women's continued activism was almost certainly largely responsi-
Nikki R. Keddie 27

ble for making Zia set up an activist 'Women's Division' in his

government, and also create a Commission on Women, whose
1985 report, under appropriate Qur'anic quotations, was almost
entirely egalitarian. It remains unpublished and, like the reports of
many US Government commissions, unacted upon.
Zia's regime has had what may turn out to be a long-term
benefit; as discourse must be Islamic, it has forced many women
and other activists to study Islam, and to learn Qur'anic and legal
precedents for their programmes. This means that secular or semi-
secular oppositionists are not nearly as alienated from the masses
and the Islamic petty bourgeoisie as was the case in Iran. It does
not mean that, like the Iranian Ali Shariati and some contempor-
ary Egyptian intellectuals, Pakistan's intellectuals are compro-
mising on such issues as equal rights for women; rather they are
finding Islamic precedents for this. In delivering an endowed
lecture at Radcliffe College in 1985, Benazir Bhutto insisted that
the Qu'ran was egalitarian for women. This brought negative
letters from several Westerners and Muslims, but Benazir was only
following the general pattern of Pakistani oppositionists, which is
aimed at defending equality and making that defence more accept-
able by tying it to Islam. This is the modus operandi of the
Women's Action Forum, and it seems worse than useless to
question its sincerity or its accuracy in depicting what was meant
by the Qu'ran in the seventh century.
Another group offended by Zia's Islamisation have been the
Shi'a (which in Pakistan and most countries means the larger,
Twelver Shi'a - the Isma'ilis are apolitical in accord with the
instructions of their imam, the Aga Khan). Every country that has
tried Islamisation has found that by enforcing one branch of
Islamic Law it offends Muslim minorities - this includes the min-
ority Sunnis in Iran and the minority Shi'a in Saudi Arabia. 5 In
Pakistan the Shi'a, like the women's organisations, became more
activist as a result of Zia's policies. The first object of Shi'a
opposition was Zia's ruling that zakat be collected by a 21/2 per cent
tax on bank accounts. The Shi'a pointed out that their zakat tax
did not go to the government, but to religious leaders, mujtahids.
They had strong enough demonstrations that the government was
forced to rule that anyone who signed an affidavit that the zakat
law was against his or her fiqh was exempt from it. The saying in
Pakistan was that Zia had done more than anyone to create Shi'a,
28 Post-Colonial Muslim Societies

as a number of Sunnis (in a situation where there are no for-

malities for conversion to Shi'ism) declared themselves Shi'a to
escape the tax. In the autumn of 1985 when I visited Pakistan, Zia
was still trying to extend Muslim law (meeting Hanafi Sunni law),
and the Shi'a were still objecting that Shi'a law differed on numer-
ous points, and if Sunni law were to be applied to Sunnis, then
Shi'a law should be applied to Shi'a. Some of the Shi'a lawyers
engaged in finding all the differences between schools that they
could were really aiming at killing the whole idea of promoting
Islamic law: 'Scratch a Shi'a and Find a Secularist' was an apt
expression I heard more than once, and one that would apply to
most minorities, Muslim and non-Muslim, in the Islamic world.
While middle-class and wealthy Shi'a tended to be secularists,
for many this does not preclude admiration for Khomeini as a
great anti-imperialist Shi'a. Popular-class Shi'a mostly admired
Khomeini, whose name and picture were found in homes in the
remotest areas. This should not, I think, be taken as a sign of
widespread militant Islamism so much as of admiration of a Shi'i
hero who had put Shi'ism on the map and made it more prideful to
identify as a Shi'a. There are, however, pro-Khomeini militant
Islamists in Pakistan.
The Pakistani Shi's Westernised middle class had an attitude
towards Shi'ism radically different from the Iranian Shi'i Western-
ised middle class. I asked several educated Pakistani Shi'a what
they identified Shi'ism with, both as children and now, and over-
whelmingly they spoke of the justice, egalitarianism, and self-
sacrifice of Ali and Husain, which they identified with their current
democratic (and in one case left socialist) values. When I asked the
same question of educated Iranians, they identified Shi'ism with
mourning, self-flagellation, fanaticism, and the like. This may be
mostly the difference between a minority and a majority com-
munity, but is also a general situation that educated Muslim
Pakistanis refuse to see Zia's Islam as true Islam, and often study
Islam quite deeply to find precedents for a different kind of Islam.
Zia's encouragement of a rigid Sunni Islam has alienated Sunnis
and also helped produce Sunni - Shi'a tensions expressed in
murderous rioting in the Punjab in Moharram (September) 1986.
Another group in Pakistan who have been militantly active
against Zia are lawyers' associations, who in many marches, publi-
cations, and demonstrations have taken the place of the banned
Nikki R. Keddie 29

political parties. Their members have also been beaten and jailed,
but they have kept up activity. Much of the press has also been
increasingly oppositional as Zia's absolute controls were weakened,
and in late 1985 important newspapers like Karachi's Dawn and
Islamabad's The Muslim were largely oppositional, as was the
serious popular magazine The Herald, whose editors are mostly
women. Finally, the political parties continued to exist, and even
to be constantly referred to in the press as the '(banned) Pakistan
People's Party', and so forth. The latter party, the populist party
of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who was overthrown by Zia in 1977 and
executed in 1979, remains the most popular party in the hetero-
geneous opposition coalition called the Movement for the Resto-
ration of Democracy. Benazir Bhutto is the PPP's chief leader,
and her huge rallies are an indication of her and the Party's
support. The popularity of a young, non-Islamist, Western-
educated woman as the heir apparent of the opposition is one
indication of how little popular support Islamism now has.
Although nobody can predict the future, it seems that Islamism
at present is not as strong worldwide as is sometimes suggested. It
is weak at two ends of the spectrum - places like Senegal, Syria,
and Sumatra, which do not fit the Islamist socio-economic and
political-cultural profile suggested above, and in countries that
have had bad experiences with Islamism, like Sudan and Pakistan.
It is quite strong in countries that do fit the profile, like Egypt and
Tunisia, and in a very few countries where a Muslim plurality or
slight majority wants to increase its economic and legal power, like
Nigeria and Malaysia, although its popularity has now dropped
significantly in Malaysia. Naturally there are specific local situ-
ations and traditions that influence and modify the large generalis-
ations made above, but since such general comparisons are rarely
made and can be illuminating, it seems worth while to hazard
them. Some countries may still have to live through the experience
of Islamist government (which has several models- Pakistan is not
like Iran) before becoming disillusioned with its excesses, while in
others like Sudan and Pakistan, it is or may be on its way out. The
frequent Western (or Islamist) picture of a constant growth of
Islarnism nearly everywhere in recent years is an over-simplification
that can be rectified by local and comparative studies of the Islamist
phenomenon.
A final point concerns the image of Khomeini and the Iranian
30 Post-Colonial Muslim Societies

Revolution. Although both have dropped in popularity since the

early Muslim enthusiasms of 1979, they still represent the only
Islamic government taken seriously as such abroad, and still evoke
various degrees of admiration among educated and urban groups.
Their admirers are not Islamists, however, but include many who
see Khomeini as the first Muslim revolutionary who has effectively
stood up to the West, especially the US, while keeping equally
independent of the USSR. This independence plus Khomeini's
reputation for simplicity, probity, and egalitarianism, give him an
appeal beyond Islamist circles, even among many who dislike
some things about the Islamic republic.

Notes

1. Claude Cahen, 'La changeante portee sociale de quelques doctrines

religieuses', L'Elaboration de /'Islam (Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France, 1961).
2. Gilles Kepel, Le Prophete et Pharaon: Les mouvements islamistes dans
l'Egypte moderne (Paris: La Decouverte, 1984); English editions (under
the title The Prophet and the Pharoah) have been published by al-Saqi
Books, London, and University of California Press, Berkeley (1985).
3. 'The Islamist Movement in Tunisia', forthcoming, The Maghreb Re-
view, special issue honoring Albert Hourani, and the sources and
interviews therein. The MTI internal document and useful articles are
in Sou'al (Paris), V (April, 1985), issue 'lslamisme aujourd'hui'.
4. See especially Peter B. Clarke and Ian Linden, Islam in Modern
Nigeria (Mainz: Grunewald, 1984).
5. See the Introduction and relevant chapters of Juan R. I. Cole and
Nikki R. Keddie (eds.), Shi'ism and Social Protest (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1986).
3 The Iranian
Revolution: Uneven
Development and Religious
Populism
FRED HALLIDAY

Introduction 1

The Iranian Revolution has been one of the epic events of post-
war history, involving remarkable levels of political mobilisation,
international crisis, and political brutality. Contrary to the expec-
tations of many, the apparently stable regime of the Shah was
overthrown in 1978-9 and a new post-revolutionary system suc-
cessfully established and maintained. Yet beyond its importance
for the history of modern Iran and of the world as a whole, the
revolution has posed analytic questions of considerable complex-
ity, both for those who seek to relate it to the overall course of
modern Iranian history, and for those who want to compare it to
other modern revolutions. If the Iranian upheaval deserves the
name 'revolution', defined in terms of levels of mass mobilisation,
destruction of an existing political and social order, and the estab-
lishment of a distinctly new order, then it would seem to be an
unusual variant of this type of social event, a development as
atypical as it was unexpected.
It is, however, worth remembering that all revolutions exhibit
characteristics that are unexpected, that they can upset the sche-
mata of social analysis as much as they overthrow established
31
32 The Iranian Revolution

systems of power. The French Revolution challenged many of the

rationalist assumptions of the Enlightenment. Antonio Gramsci,
himself a Communist leader in Italy, called the Russian Revolu-
tion 'the revolt against Das Kapital' because of the manner in
which it appeared to defy the economic determinism that had
underlain much previous Marxist thinking. The Iranian Revolu-
tion was certainly an original event, but it is advisable to be more
than a little cautious about specifying precisely where this orig-
inality lies.
A tentative discussion of this revolution's originality can serve
two functions: to prevent facile assimilation of the Iranian case
into preconceived schemata of Iranian history or the sociology of
revolutions; and at the same time to rescue it from the claim that
the Iranian Revolution is a wholly original process, a sui generis
revolution to which available concepts of historical analysis and
rational explanation cannot be applied. A proper emphasis upon
the novelty of the Iranian Revolution can be balanced by some
comparative caution, by suggesting that not all that has occurred in
Iran is unique or as resistant to external comprehension as many
would suggest. Such an endeavour is always limited and the
sociology of revolutions is an area of considerable theoretical
contention.
Analysis must confine itself to the fall of the ancien regime and
its immediate aftermath, but the novelty of the Iranian Revolution
can be said to reside, in the first instance, in the role played within
it by religion and in particular by what is loosely termed 'religious
fundamentalism'. For the first time in modern history (that is,
since 1789), a revolution has taken place in which the dominant
ideology, forms of organisation, leading personnel, and pro-
claimed goal have all been religious in appearance and inspiration.
This in itself would mark off the Iranian from other revolutions of
the modern era. Given the manner in which Islam seeks to legis-
late for many areas of social activity, this religious imprint has
involved an attempt to transform the law, culture, polity, and
social practices of Iran to conform with a model supposedly
elaborated in the seventh century AD.
Moreover, other features of the ideology of the Iranian Revolu-
tion may be obscured by the religious emphasis, but these in fact
derive from it and can also serve to distinguish the Iranian case.
The first is that the Iranian rejects ideas of historical progress:
Fred Halliday 33

Ayatollah Khomeini explicitly proposes a return to an earlier

model of social and political practice and a rejection of almost all
that the modern world stands for. Such historical and ideological
throwbacks have been seen in other revolutions and nationalist
movements - the past provides convenient legitimation for many.
But the Iranian case is far more than this, because such a regres-
sion is the basis of the whole revolutionary programme. In the
proper sense of the word, the Iranian revolution is therefore a
comprehensively reactionary revolution, restoring to the term its
original, astronomical, meaning of a return to a previous order. A
second consequence follows from this: while economic and mater-
ial factors and aspirations played a part in the Iranian revolution,
the leaders were reluctant to recognise this and have tended to
reject the idea of material improvement. Khomeini has tried to
lower the material aspirations of the population according to his
ideal of generalised austerity, in which Western consumer goods
are rejected, and in which the faithful can live in a state most
conducive to religious devotion. 2 Khomeini on one occasion de-
clared that the goal of revolution was not to provide the people with
cheap melons. On another, he told President Bani-Sadr th;Jt the
American embargo during the hostages crisis would not be detri-
mental to the population: 'In the time of the Prophet, they ate only
one date a day.' Thirdly, while the Iranian Revolution has articu-
lated nationalist themes of assertion and rejection, it was under-
taken in the name of universalistic religion and laid comparatively
little stress on Iran as a national entity. Its universalism was more
pronounced than that of France or Russia. This was evident both
in the cultural shift accompanying the revolution, where many
features of the indigenous Iranian culture were rejected along with
the values of the West, and in the projection of Iran as the first part
of an insurgent Muslim community to overthrow its oppressors. 3
A fourth ideological peculiarity followed from this, namely the
rejection of history. Far from vaunting the heroes and strugglers of
earlier generations, as other revolutionary and nationalist move-
ments have tended to do, Khomeini appeared to regard almost all
the earlier leaders of Iranian oppositions, secular and religious, as
obstacles to his legitimacy which derived from the Islamic leaders
of the seventh century, the Prophet Muhammad, and the founders
of Shi'ite Islam. 4 This religious legitimacy accounts for the fifth
ideological feature of the Iranian revolution, namely the fact that
34 The Iranian Revolution

while a mass uprising, it cannot be considered a democratic revolu-

tion even in theory. 5 Khomeini's writings and the constitution of
the Islamic Republic made clear that ultimate power rests with the
divinely-inspired religious authority, the faqih, who can override
all elected bodies and can dictate his views to the faithful. Kho-
meini has tended to suggest that this is not a problem since the
faithful and the faqih will not be in contradiction; but were such an
unexpected event to occur then he is in no doubt that it is the faqih
who has superiority. The Iranian Revolution therefore rejects
historical progress, material improvement, national assertion, his-
torical legitimation, and democratic sovereignty - five themes
which, however violated in practice, have been at least formally
invoked by modern revolutions from 1789 onward.
Yet this fundamentalist religious character is not, even in its
appearance, as all-encompassing as might be assumed. First, Kho-
meini's ideas are fundamentalist in their claim to derive everything
from sacred texts, but they are not fundamentalist or traditional if
these terms are meant to imply that Khomeini's views are inherit-
ed from the past. Both the ideas themselves, and, even more so,
the political and social effect they have, are novel ones, dependent
upon modern social conditions and modern political debates upon
which they draw, without attribution. 6 Second, it is possible to
pose the same questions which arise when any set of radical ideas
finds a mass following and makes an impact on history. Which
social groups supported these ideas, and for what reasons? What
were the determining factors in the history of the country con-
cerned which enabled the movement to gather force at the time it
did? Why was it possible for this opposition to defeat the estab-
lished state? What kinds of social and political change have accom-
panied its triumph? The Islamic revolutionaries have their own
answers to these questions which usually involve divine agency.
Others may be hesitant about accepting these answers, even while
they view them with interest for what they tell us about the
intentions and ideology of those who directed the revolution itself.
Different responses may, therefore, be suggested.
Abstracting for a moment from its religious character, the
Iranian Revolution appears more familiar. It was made by a
wide-ranging alliance of social groups, drawing its support from
dissident sections of the civil service and trading communities, and
from much of the poor urban population. They were mobilised
Fred Halliday 35

against a dictatorial political regime by a charismatic leader and by

an ideology of revolutionary legitimacy. 7 In other words, the
Iranian Revolution developed in the context in which populist
movements have arisen in many other Third World societies. Even
the religious character of the revolution is, in historical perspec-
tive, not so unique. History is replete with instances of rebel
movements challenging temporal rulers in the name of God, and
of clerical leaders organising such movements. The aspiration to
create a sanctified order on earth runs through much of the history
of medieval Europe and the Middle East and through that of
nineteenth-century China. Newly-urbanised populations in other
countries have been known to turn to religion as a means of
responding to the tensions of their new environment. In Iran itself,
the mullahs have been at the forefront of other protests in modern
times, specifically the 1891 Tobacco Protest and the Constitutional
Revolution of 1906--8. 8 What is unique about the role of religion in
the Iranian Revolution is that it became prominent in the latter
half of the 1970s and, even more so, that it succeeded in over-
throwing the established regime.
However, the originality of the Iranian Revolution lies not only
in its religious character. If Iran's upheaval was unique in the
prominence occupied by this 'traditional' feature, it was equally so
for the opposite reason: the 'modern' character of the event. If the
Iranian Revolution was the first contemporary instance to be
religious in orientation, it was also the first ever 'modern' revolu-
tion. This 'modernity' is evident in four respects. First of all, the
revolution took place in a society far more socio-economically
developed, in major respects, than was Russia in 1917 or China in
1949. Half of the population lived in urban areas, per capita
income was over $2000 and, however unevenly this was distri-
buted, it meant that most Iranians living in the cities were mater-
ially better off than a decade before. It was not the sans-culottes
who made the revolution, but people who had benefited materially
from a process of a rapid capitalist modernisation. 9 Second, in
contrast to all other Third World revolutions, the Iranian Revolu-
tion took place in the cities. Many of those who participated in it
may have been peasants (that is, of rural origin), but it was an
urban event, produced by the conditions of the major cities in the
1970s. The contrast with China, Vietnam, and Cuba is evident.
Thirdly, and again in contrast to other Third World revolutions,
36 The Iranian Revolution

the Iranian upheaval was carried out by political confrontation,

not by armed conflict. Thousands of people died in the last months
of the Shah's regime, but they were mainly unarmed demonstra-
tors, not guerrillas. Only in the last days of the Shah's regime was
armed confrontation the dominant form of resistance: the preced-
ing months were dominated by the street demonstration and the
political general strike, forms of opposition associated with sche-
mata of revolution in the most advanced capitalist countries. 10
Finally, the fall of the ancien regime happened without it having
been weakened in any external confrontation, which is normally
believed to be necessary for the removal of authoritarian regimes.
Neither defeat in war nor serious international economic pressure
assisted the advance of the Islamic revolutionaries, and they
themselves received no significant help from abroad.
From the perspective of twentieth-century revolutions, these
'modern' features are as original as the Islamic character of the
Iranian case. It can therefore be said that the originality of the
Iranian Revolution resides neither in its 'traditional', nor in its
'modern' character but in the interaction of the two. 11 It is this
combination which accounts for both the success and the peculiar-
ity of the Iranian Revolution in its initial stages, but it may also be
the increasing disassociation of the two which has complicated the
establishment of a post-revolutionary order.

The course of the Revolution

The events that led directly to the fall of the Shah spanned a period
of little more than one year. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi had been
on the throne since 1941 and had been an autocratic ruler since
1953 when, with the assistance of the United States and Britain, a
military coup had overthrown the nationalist government of Mo-
hammad Mosaddeq. Since that time, there had been only sporadic
open opposition to the regime, with the exception of the period
1960--3, when nationalist politicians and a section of the clergy led
by Ayatollah Khomeini had protested at the Shah's control of
political life and the reforms he was instituting. After over a
decade of apparent calm, marked only by minor urban guerilla
activities, the opposition became more active in 1977, circulating
critical statements and holding protest meetings. In January 1978
Fred Halliday 37

street protests began, organised by religious students in the city of

Qom protesting at a newspaper article which insulted the exiled
Khomeini. For the next few months there were successive protests
and strikes in the main urban centres of Iran, in which the local
clergy usually played an important organising role, and in which
the bazaars, the historical centres of trade and finance, gave
support by going on strike.
The regime did not appear to be in mortal danger, however,
until September 1978 when, at the end of the fasting month of
Ramadan, the traditional religious processions rallied over 1 mil-
lion people in Tehran for what became political protests. The
imposition of martial law, on 8 September, followed by the shoot-
ing of demonstrators, only temporarily stemmed the protest move-
ment, and in October a wave of strikes began. Although at first
organised for economic demands, or as protests at press censor-
ship, these strikes set in motion a process which led to a nation-
wide political general strike in late November and December. The
first victims were the oil fields. This blocked off Iran's export
earnings and deprived the armed forces of diesel fuel. On 5
November, under pressure from a restive military leadership, the
Shah appointed a military government. But it lacked political
cohesion and was in any case unable to end the strikes. It was
forced to permit a new round of street demonstrations in early
December to mark the traditional Shi'ite festival of Ashura, at
which the demand was made more clearly than ever before that
the Shah must depart. By this time, Khomeini had become not
only a symbol of opposition but also an increasingly active leader;
from his base in Paris he insisted on no compromise with the Shah
or those in any way associated with him.
On 15 January 1979 the Shah left Iran, leaving behind a de-
moralised and divided army, and a government healed by former
opposition leader Shahpour Bakhtiar. A committed secularist and
a courageous individual, Bakhtiar overestimated both his own
political resources and the loyalty of the army. He also underesti-
mated the degree to which he had discredited himself by being
seen to accept his office from the Shah. Khomeini refused to
negotiate with the Bakhtiar government and, after returning to
Iran on 1 February, he pronounced Mehdi Bazargan head of a
rival government. For ten days Iran had two governments; but on
10 and 11 February, following pro-Khomeini mutinies in the
38 The Iranian Revolution

garrisons of Tehran, groups of armed civilians seized control of

government buildings and military camps. The army command
declared itself neutral in the conflict between Khomeini and
Bakhtiar; the latter and his associates, together with remnants of
the royalist court, either fled or were arrested.
The new Bazargan government then proceeded to institutional-
ise the post-revolutionary regime. On 30 March a referendum
proclaimed Iran to be an Islamic Republic. In November 1979 a
new Islamic constitution was similarly passed by referendum, and
Khomeini was officially accepted as the faqih or supreme judicial
authority with extensive powers. In January 1980 Abol-Hassan
Bani-Sadr was elected president and, following the election of a
majlis or parliament, dominated by the Islamic Republican Party,
it selected as prime minister Mohammad Ali Rajai, an opponent
of Bani-Sadr. These institutional developments were, however,
over-shadowed by other processes and crises: the virtually undis-
puted dominance of Khomeini as leader of the new republic
weakened any other political forces and encouraged factionalism
among those eager for his support; meanwhile, the deterioration
of the social and economic structures of the country, combined
with increasingly antagonistic international relations, impeded
effective attempts to create a new and viable post-revolutionary
order. 12
Beyond those unique characteristics that comprised its para-
doxical traditional/modern originality there are many remarkable
features of this revolution. One was its suddenness: despite the
underground opposition of the 1960s and 1970s, and despite the
socio-economic tensions associated with the uneven and rapid
economic expansion, the years prior to the revolution were not
marked by major political or social unrest. Neither was the up-
heaval preceded by a significant economic crisis, such as a re-
cession affecting substantial parts of the population. Nor did this
crisis develop inside Iran as a result of conflict with other states:
the frequently observed pattern of revolution following war or
comparable international challenges to the power of a state was
not evident in Iran. Few people, whether observers or partici-
pants, were conscious even six months before the Shah fell that the
regime was in serious trouble, and even the pronouncements of
the Ayatollah Khomeini indicated a progression in his confidence,
as he made more militant demands in response to the course of
Fred Halliday 39

events in Iran itself. Yet the revolution was not a chance event: it
defeated not a decayed autocracy but what had appeared as one of
the stronger and more decisive Third World states, one, more-
over, that enjoyed considerable support from abroad. Although it
is necessary, in the light of subsequent events, to revise the picture
of the Shah's regime as one at the zenith of its power, it would be a
mistake to underestimate the combined force of the revolutionary
pressures which were necessary to overthrow the established Ira-
nian state. In a condensed and preliminary form, there are five
central areas in which the causes of the revolution may be dis-
cerned.

Rapid and uneven economic development

In the two decades prior to the revolution Iran had undergone

substantial socio-economic transformation and had made consid-
erable advances in becoming an industrialised capitalist society. 13
Yet Iran had, in previous decades, undergone relatively little
transformation, and the accelerated changes of the 1960s and
1970s both produced exceptional tensions within the society, and
sustained certain pre-capitalist or pre-industrial sectors that were
to facilitate the upsurge of 1978.
The main reason why the revolution occurred was that conflicts
generated in capitalist development intersected with resilient institu-
tions and popular attitudes which resisted the tran:,formation pro-
cess.
The impetus for economic expansion came from Iran's oil indus-
try, the revenues of which rose from $45 million in 1950 to $1.1
billion in 1970 and, following the multiplication of prices by
OPEC, to $20.5 billion in 1976. By the late 1970s, per capita
income in Iran was over $2000, industrial output was growing at
over 15 per cent a year, and up to half the population was living in
the towns. Urban Iran appeared to be enjoying widespread pros-
perity, virtually no social groups in the cities suffered a net fall in
income. But the very process of transformation, mistermed 'mod-
ernisation', was itself contradictory.
This oil-fuelled growth generated its own problems. First, the
availability of oil revenues subsidised many areas of the economy
and so enabled them to remain uncompetitive and unproductive.
Oil assisted economic changes, but it also subsidised inefficient
40 The Iranian Revolution

sectors, fostered a large service sector and state apparatus, and

gave the Iranian government the illusion that it could dispense
with the disciplines that developing societies without oil had to
respect. Although much of the change was real, there was also
much that was illusory. Even in its own terms, however, the oil
boom could not last, and the period 1977-8 saw a relative slowing
down: GNP stagnated in these years; inflation increased, particu-
larly in rents; certain commodities grew scarce; and power cuts
occurred, angering urban-dwellers. There was no widespread hard-
ship, but the slowing down had political effects, as entrepreneurs lost
confidence, and as the government enforced price controls on
merchants to combat inflation. The decision of the cost-cutting
Amuzegar government to suspend state subsidies to the clergy in
1977 must also have had its consequences.
More important for the mass of urban poor, however, were the
inequalities and tensions associated with the boom itself; while the
gap between rural and urban incomes began growing in the late
1960s, there were also increasingly pronounced inequalities in
the urban areas themselves. By the mid-1970s it was calculated
that the top 10 per cent of the population accounted for 40 per cent
of expenditure; in addition, the urban poor suffered from the
housing shortage, with the result that some had to spend up to 70
per cent of their income on rents. The population of some cities
doubled in a decade: the migrants may have had higher incomes in
the cities, but they lost the support systems of village society. To
make matters worse, there was widespread corruption, involving
members of the royal family. On top of the unevenness of the
expansion, there was the unevenness of the transformation itself;
that is, the fact that together with the industrialisation and partial
modernisation, the transition was not taking effect. In agriculture
the land reforms of the 1960s produced a cash-crop sector tied to
the urban economy, but far more of the land was cultivated in
family-sized units relatively isolated from the rest of the economy.
The towns had a long tradition of commercial and religious institu-
tions grouped around the bazaars which, in the face of the changes
from above, adapted to them but retained their independence and
their hostility to the Shah's state. There was a high degree of
industrialisation, with two and a half million people employed in
manufacturing of some kind- a very high figure by Third World
standards, representing about a quarter of the total labour force.
Fred Halliday 41

Yet, the great majority of these were in small artisanal units,

retaining the production processes and cultural values of an earlier
epoch.
Comparable dichotomies could be observed in the fields of
distribution and finance; despite the emergence of a modern
banking system and of modern retail outlets, a substantial degree
of the financial and commercial activity remained under the con-
trol of the bazaar, which had in the past controlled these sectors.
The bazaar merchants resented their relative demotion by banks
and new retail systems; yet their absolute position improved
greatly with the expansion of economic activity in the country, so
that the two-thirds of retail trade they retained enabled them to
lend to those whom the banks regarded as unacceptable. It was the
bazaar that had traditionally financed the religious institutions -
the mosques, shrines, and religious schools. 14 This was, then, a
sector that combined considerable influence in the country with a
deep antagonism to the economic structures and to the regime that
was trying to reduce the area in which the bazaar merchants could
manoeuvre. It was one component of an explosive triangular
partnership that also incorporated the clergy and the urban poor,
the latter retaining the values of the pre-industrial society. The
transformation of Iranian society therefore preserved and even
promoted institutions of economic and social activity that acquired
new potential for opposition within the altered context created by
this transformation.

The political weakness of the monarchy

The Shah's personality helped weaken not only the army but also
the state. The role of the individual in history is not only as
instigator and agent, but also as a weak link in a system of political
power. This factor alone cannot explain the Iranian Revolution,
any more than the characters of Louis XVI and Nicholas II can
explain the fall of the Bourbons and Romanovs. But the Shah's
grandiose distance from the realities of Iran helped introduce
those development programmes which created the socio-economic
context of the revolution; his ignorance of conditions in the country,
together with his tendency to withdraw into silent meditation and
his paralysis of will, were ill-suited to his coping with the crisis of
1978_15 He seems to have known from about 1974 that he had
42 The Iranian Revolution

cancer, and this may account both for the recklessness of some of
his projects and for the fatalism he displayed in his final months of
power. If such speculation is possible, one could argue that no
monarch could have saved the regime in the last few months of its
existence, but that an autocrat of a different stamp might have
been able to prolong its existence or take effective corrective
measures early in 1978. Whatever importance this personal factor
has, it certainly seems to have contributed to the unexpectedly
rapid disintegration of the regime.
In certain respects, the Pahlavi regime never enjoyed wide-
spread legitimacy. Both the Shah and his father had come to
power through military coups, and both ruled through political
dictatorship. By the time of his fall, the Shah had had many
thousands imprisoned and tortured. Khomeini's designation of the
Shah and his father as ·usurpers' therefore struck a chord in
Iranian political life, although the precise interpretation of this
term may have varied, depending on whether it was alternative
secular forces that were seen as having been displaced (the 1906
Constitution, or Mosaddeq) or rather the legitimate leading role of
the clergy. Both Pahlavis were also seen as illegitimate because of
their reliance on foreign support. Certainly, the attempts by the
Shah to generate intermediate institutions of legitimation in the
post-1960 period were a failure; the Majlis and the parties in it
were phantoms, and neither Pahlavism, as a national ideology
stressing the pre-Islamic past, nor authoritarian concepts of far-
mandari or 'commandism' were widely accepted. Yet the quality
of the Shah's political illegitimacy was not constant: the dictator-
ship of the 1950s, and the prospects of economic improvement of
the 1960s and early 1970s seem to have produced at least some
tacit acceptance. But the ironic consequence of the greater boom
of the mid-1970s was that it undermined this tacit acceptance by
highlighting the inequalities and the corruption inherent in the
regime. Nor was this just a matter of concern to the urban poor
and the bazaar merchants: it exposed one of the fatal weaknesses
of the regime, namely, the alienation of large sectors of the middle
class. Despite the fact that these people benefited from the regime,
and could have had little expectation of improvement without the
Shah, they failed actively to support his government. Nor can this
alienation be attributed solely to the fact that the regime was a
dictatorship which denied the rich and educated a voice in affairs
Fred Halliday 43

of government, reflecting the specific fissures produced in the

favouritism of the court and the distribution of oil wealth. In this
respect, Iran differed from Franco's Spain and Pinochet's Chile:
while the material improvement offered to the middle class was
also far greater, the separation of those in power from the middle
class was far greater in the case of Iran. The result was that the
Shah failed to mobilise an active social constituency in his period
of success and was thus left isolated throughout the course of the
revolution.
This fissure helps explain another important feature of the
revolution, the demoralisation of the army. One cause of this was
the form that the confrontations of the revolution took. Huge
unarmed crowds assembled, backed by the disconcerting and
potentially hegemonic ideology of Islam. This was a threat any
army would have had difficulty resisting in the absence of an
occasion to take the offensive. The army, with its corrupt top
officer corps and mass of conscripts beneath, was also liable to such
political demoralisation. Khomeini himself devoted considerable
attention to this issue, making appeals that would be most likely to
undermine the army while seeking to avoid bloody confrontations.
Another important factor was the conduct of the Shah himself; he
failed to give strong leadership in the final months. When he left
the country in January 1979 the army leadership was divided. The
crisis of the final days was settled because, in the face of Khomei-
ni's movement, the top army leadership signed a secret agreement
with the opposition. 16 Yet beyond all these factors lies the fact that
the army was, from the beginning, isolated in Iranian society: it
was the instrument of the Shah. It had never fought a successful
war and lacked any martial legitimacy. The gap between the
majority of the middle class and the regime meant that in Iran, in
contrast to other countries where armies have seized power to
pre-empt revolutions, the military lacked the political and social
support which an active political constituency can provide.
The broad coalition of opposition forces
Skocpol's study of the French, Russian and Chinese revolutions
forcefully contests the idea that revolutions are purposive activities
in which a group of people consciously organise to overthrow a
regime. 17 It points out that revolutions arise in situations of struc-
tural crisis for the society in question, and that those who initiate
44 The Iranian Revolution

revolutions are not necessarily those who ultimately wield power

in the post-revolutionary order. All revolutions produce groups
who say the cause has been 'betrayed'. In Iran, the liberals and
guerrillas who were openly contesting the regime in 1976 and 1977
were displaced in January 1978 by the clerical and bazaar forces;
indeed, even within the Islamic forces the leadership gradually
passed from cautious clergy like Sharriat-Madari and from re-
formist Muslim militants like Bazargan and Bani-Sadr to the more
fundamentalist clergy of the Khomeini-Beheshti variety. At the
same time, the revolution was not carried out by a political party.
One of the proudest claims of the Islamic militant was: 'Our
greatest strength is our lack of organisation. ' 18
The broad and rapidly congealed coalition of forces that over-
threw the Shah was strong precisely because of its diverse and
spontaneous character; it was also one of the causes of the faction-
alism and paralysis of the post-revolution period. On the other
hand, political organisation did play its part in the Iranian Revolu-
tion. The secular political parties were small and played only a
secondary or even marginal role in the events of 1978-9; even
when they participated they were forced to join the dominant
Islamic trends. Far more important were the organisation of the
clergy themselves which, based on each locality of the city and
with centres in the mosques and shrines, were able to use religious
networks to mobilise the population. These religious networks
may have been decentralised and, initially, not designed for politi-
cal purposes, but they acquired a leading organisational role in the
crisis of 1978 and had, by the latter half of the year, acquired in
Khomeini a determined and appealing leader. Behind the clergy
there also lay the underground Fedayin-i Islam grouping, a mili-
tant sect founded in the 1950s. There is reason to doubt if Kho-
meini himself was a member, but some of the leading clerical
figures were, and they had been determined for over two decades
to wrest power from the Shah. The case of the Iranian Revolution
demonstrates the possibility of purposive action in a revolutionary
situation: it was the clergy who directed the struggle throughout.
The social forces that responded to the movement varied: in the
first clashes of 1978 the main components were theology students
and bazaar merchants, but these groups, far more in touch with
the population than the secular parties, were able to call on the
urban poor who formed the foot-soldiers of the major demonstra-
tions in the latter part of the year. Parallel to these protests the
Fred Halliday 45

students and parties continued their actions, and in the final weeks
of the regime it appears that significant numbers of middle-class
people also joined in the demonstrations. The slogan raised in the
final weeks was simple enough: 'Independence, Freedom, Islamic
Republic'. The one commanding aim was to oust the Shah: many
who doubted the suitability of Khomeini none the less supported
the movement in the hope that it could achieve the desired aim.
Among the secular and middle-class forces many hoped that once
the Shah had gone they could deflect the movement away from its
clerical patrons. This enabled such people to support the move-
ment with appropriate optimism, but it represented an underesti-
mation of the strength of the religious forces.
The resulting relationship between social classes and political
leadership was an example of the combination of traditional and
modern forces in the Iranian revolution. The revolution mobilised
large numbers of people representing various social groups. With-
out a mobilisation of such numbers and the arousing of insurrec-
tionary consciousness in these social groups, the revolution would
not have succeeded. The strikes that paralysed the country from
October 1978 on became a great and unified exertion of social
power by different classes in pursuit of a defined political goal. Yet
these classes acted in the name of, and under the leadership of, an
Islamic force that denied the relevance of class forces and class
goals. The post-revolutionary period showed that the workers and
merchants, despite the power they had demonstrated in the revo-
lution, were unable to wield their power independently of the
religious authorities, let alone in opposition to them. Subsequent
accounts would argue either one side of this process or the other-
that this was an Islamic revolution brought about by the exertions
of an undifferentiated body of believers, or that the revolution was
a proletarian upheaval later betrayed and crushed by a usurping
and counter-revolutionary clergy. Neither of these appears to be
sufficient. The strength, as well as much of the tragedy, of the
Iranian Revolution lay in the manner in which both aspects were
combined.

The mobilising role of the Islamic religion

In the Iranian Revolution the Islamic element is a reflection of

several factors which, together, produced the unique result of a
twentieth-century state run by the clergy along lines derived from
46 The Iranian Revolution

the Koran and Islamic law, and in which the major influence is in
the hands of a personage who is constitutionally designated as the
interpreter of holy texts. One negative factor played its part in
giving prominence to Islam as an ideology of opposition, namely,
the destruction by the Shah and his father of the secular opposition
forces that had mobilised protest movements in earlier decades. 19
Even the guerrilla groups, the Fedayin and Mojahidin, were at a
low ebb by the mid-1970s. The result was that, as in other societies
where secular forms of protest are blocked off, religion in Iran
became a symbol and an organising centre for a protest that might
otherwise have taken a more conventional secular form. Had
Mosaddeq not been kept inside Iran and subsequently died, he might
have developed some of the allure of the Ayatollah Khomeini.
This 'vacuum' theory is not, however, sufficient. Several other
factors have to be taken into account. First, in all its forms Islam
claims to be able to legislate for the whole of human activity. In
Islam there is no formal distinction between church and state. The
very concept of the secular is theoretically excluded, and all social
ideas must be legitimated by derivation from the holy texts. In
terms of political theory this assertion finds its expression in the
attempt to define an 'Islamic' concept of government. In social
activity, Islam prescribes modes of behaviour for everyday life and
human relations. Like Judaism and Hinduism (though not Chris-
tianity), it has concepts of clean and unclean and stipulates ritual
activities for each day. As a result, the call for an Islamic society or
Islamic policy is far more deeply rooted in the basic doctrine of
Islam and in the historical consciousness of Muslim societies than
comparable Christian claims. Islamic countries have in practice
often exhibited a wide gap between the religious and secular
domains, but this has not altered the theoretical overlap of the two
upon which Islamic thinkers can draw.
A second factor is the ideological ductility of Islam in general,
and in Shi'ite Islam in particular. 20 While considerable energy is
expended by believers and non-believers alike in arguing which
political principles can be derived from Islam, both the evidence of
interpretation and the fluid formulations of the Qur'an itself
suggest that Islamic theory allows a wide range of derivations.
These latter depend on the external circumstances of the time, and
the concerns of individual interpreters. The doctrine does not
enjoin a specific course of action but it does provide themes that
Fred Halliday 47

can justify such courses. One possible line of interpretation is what

one may term the demotic (as opposed to democratic). Islam does
not have a religious hierarchy and the position of its clergy de-
pends to a considerable extent upon popular assent. At the same
time some of the themes of Islam can serve the cause of popular
mobilisation: emphasis on the common concerns of the community
of believers, opposition to tyrants, and support for struggle. 21 The
very plainness of Islamic prayer meetings, in contrast to the
ceremonials of Christianity, confirms this demotic tendency. Be-
cause all such policies claim to be derived from the word of God
and are interpreted by those with authority, they are not at all
democratic, but can still serve the purposes of political mobilisation.
In Shi'ite Islam there are further dimensions of this demotic and
undemocratic potential. In Sunni Islam the caliph or his equivalent
is the head of state. The caliphs were direct descendants of the
Prophet and since they embodied temporal and religious power, in
theory at least, there was no problem of deciding how legitimate
government was to be ensured. Born of a division in the early
Islamic movement, Shi'ism holds that the twelfth Imam went into
hiding and it believes in the occultation or gheiba of God's rep-
resentative on earth, the Imam. It also lays great stress on the
sufferings of Shi'ites at the hands of unjust rulers, and upon the
cult of the Shi'ite martyrs, Ali and his sons, Hassan and Hussein.
Both these factors combine to the permit the idea that Shi'ism is an
ideology which rejects temporal order, a permanent dissidence
vis-a-vis both orthodox Sunni Islam and established state authori-
ties. Other interpretations are, of course, possible. Conservatism
and political quietism are just as reconcilable with Shi'ism: it is
neither inherently radical or compliant. For over a century after
Iran become an officially Shi'ite State in 1502 the clergy was
properly integrated into the state structure. Shi'ism in sixteenth-
century Iran served the function of Protestantism in Elizabethan
England- as a state religion designed to distinguish the monarch's
realm from other states, in Iran's case Ottoman Turkey. But this
arrangement broke down in the eighteenth century and from then
on there has tended to be opposition between state and ulema, a
clash that reached its height at the turn of the twentieth century. 22
Within the many variant and contingent consequences of the
original Shi'ite theory, two have had particular political perti-
nence - one institutional, the other ideological. The institutional
48 The Iranian Revolution

consequence concerns the financial bases of the clergy: in Sunni

Islam, where the state is legitimate, the faithful pay their zakat and
a further levy known as the khoms (fifth) is paid directly to the
clergy. This means that the clergy are independent of the state in a
manner unique in the Muslim world, and that the populace is able
to make the religious personnel responsive to their demands. In
Iran in the 1960s and 1970s there existed a religious establishment
of several thousand mosques and shrines, several tens of thou-
sands of mollahs, and a network of madrases (religious schools).
Mainly funded by bazaaris, these were independent of the Shah's
control. 23 Ideologically, this link with the people meant that the
clergy had little room for improvisation or change. Reflecting the
concerns of a conservative constituency, the Iranian mollahs were
far less concerned to face the intellectual challenges of the modern
world than their more autonomous counterparts in the Arab Sunni
countries. 24 One of the central Shi'ite debates concerned the status
of authority in the period of the gheiba: while one school accepted
temporal authority or advised a process of patient dissimulation or
taqiye, others advocated a political role for the clergy and derived
this course of action from certain Qur'anic principles. It was this
latter option that Khomeini was to embrace. In popular Shi'ism,
there also lay ideological themes that could be used for political
advantage. One was the theme of martyrdom and sacrifice, cele-
brated every year in the passion plays commemorating the death
of the Shi'ite leader Hussein in the seventh century. The other was
the belief in a future golden age, a time when the Twelfth Imam
would come and create a just society upon earth. If the former was
conducive to extremes of political militancy in a revolutionary
period, the latter provided a theological goal that enabled many to
hope that an Islamic Revolution would indeed create a new and
better society on earth. By failing to specify the characteristics of
such a society, Khomeini maintained the support of a wide range
of social groups, all of whom could believe in his perfect society.
Revolutions require organisation and ideology, and both were
provided in some measure by Iranian Shi'ism in its traditional
form. But revolutions also require leaders, and in Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini the Islamic movement found such a person.
Khomeini had a history and a personality appropriate to his role.
He had opposed the Shah in the early 1960s and had been exiled in
1964. He was known to be honest and courageous; he spoke in
Fred Halliday 49

clear, uncompromising, and often cruel tone. He also exhibited

shrewd political judgement; he saw that his greatest asset was to
have nothing to do with the Shah's regime, and he kept his
intentions for the future regime as vague as possible in order to
maximise political support. He also found the proper moment to
strike - mobilising his supporters for the final push in late 1978,
skilfully weakening the army, and returning to seize decisive
control of the Iranian state.
Khomeini was in many respects the epitome of a charismatic
leader. He came to the fore during a time of rapid social change
and tension, and appeared to be exempt from the sinful and
compromising world around him. He also appropriated the reli-
gious title of Imam, which suggested that his role was analogous to
that of the returning Twelfth Imam. One reason for his assuming
this title was that is circumvented the problem of his not being the
senior ayatollah. But it also invested him with a religious authority
which suggested he had God-given powers. There are certainly
many who seem to have believed not that he was the Twelfth
Imam, but that he would none the less introduce a just society as
promised in the Shi'ite dramas. 25 He himself never claimed to have
the specific attributes of the Imam in Shi'ite doctrine - the ability
to transmit the word of God as conveyed by angels, the power to
effect miracles, and the quality of being ma'sum (immune from
sin). But the position of faqih, or supreme interpreter of the law,
where both interpretation and law are invested with religious
authority, certainly raised him well above other mortals and mem-
bers of the Shi'ite clergy. Assuming this religious legitimacy had
been established before the revolution, the very success of this
venture appeared to strengthen his authority and the aura of
God-given power he sought to cultivate. 26
It is in this context that the thought of Khomeini became
particularly influential. Khomeini belonged to that minority fac-
tion within Iranian Islam who held to the activist interpretation of
the Shi'ite dilemma: he criticised monarchy and thought the clergy
should play a leading role. Yet even his thought developed in
response to the potential effect it might have. His early writings of
the 1940s were critical of monarchy, but did not condemn it
outright. Even in the 1960s he accepted the 1906 Constitution. His
lectures on Islamic government, published in 1971, reject monar-
chy and advocate the concept of velayat-i-faqih ( velayat means
50 The Iranian Revolution

government or legal authority, and faqih is the standard Islamic

term for someone who interprets the law). The concept of the
faqih as elaborated by Khomeini is therefore a forthright attempt
to solve the Shi'ite problem of legitimacy. In 1978, however, he
went further and openly rejected the 1906 Constitution. Instead he
developed the concept of Islamic Republic, his idea of the society
Muslims should try to recreate.
For all its invocation of the past, however, the concept of the
Islamic Republic is like many of Khomeini's other ideas: a skilful
fusion of Qur'anic and modern themes with the Shi'ite hope of a
just society to be created by the returning Imam. He divides
societies into two categories of people - the mostazafin and mos-
takbarin (literally those made weak and those made big) - two
Qur'anic terms which are used in the populist sense of 'oppressed'
and 'oppressor'. 27 His attacks on fesad or corruption certainly have
a Qur'anic moralism about them: the main charge on which many
of the Shah's supporters are executed is of 'spreading corruption
upon the earth'. 28 Yet the term corruption would, in the eyes of
many poorer Iranians, include more secular derelictions as well.
Even Khomeini's relation to nationalism is ambiguous because in
the first period of his rule he virtually never mentioned the word
Iran at all, laying stress instead on Islam and on the need to
recreate the Islamic 'Universal State'. Yet much of his diatribe
against the West and Western values had an unmistakeably nation-
alist ring, and followed what some secular Iranian intellectuals had
been saying for a long time. 29 It picked up on the influence of
Franz Fanon that had been mediated to Iran via the thought of Ali
Shariati, the lay Muslim philosopher whose writings had a great
impact upon the younger generation. 30 The war with Iraq that
began in September 1980 forced Khomeini to lay greater explicit
stress on nationalist themes: just as Stalin was forced by the
German invasion of 1941 to evoke the greatness of Mother Russia,
so Khomeini turned to mobilising support in the name of Iranian
patriotism. Even the faqih and the role of the Imam epitomise
standard populist leadership themes. 31
Where Khomeini has not accommodated secular forces is in
what may be termed his attitude toward modernity: in contrast to
some earlier Islamic thinkers such as al-Afghani, who did empha-
sise the need for Islam to come to terms with science and demo-
cracy, and who openly acknowledged the ductility of Islamic
thinking, Khomeini has re-asserted the hostility of Islam to mod-
Fred Halliday 51

ern ideas and the need to re-establish authoritative doctrinal purity

in all matters. 32 Yet even this misleading traditionalism is, as we
have seen, not a product of some purely doctrinal derivation, but
an accommodation to the popular mood in Iran itself and of the
way in which the clergy is sensitive to this. Indeed, both the
political strength of the Islamic movement in Iran and the particu-
lar theological interpretations that emerged in the 1970s were
made possible only by the new socio-economic conjuncture in
which the clergy found themselves. In sum, the transformation of
Iran, with the unevenness and transitional features already dis-
cussed, provided the context for the fusion of a discontented urban
coalition with the opposition current within the clergy. What might
otherwise have been a more recognisable populism, a movement
of the oppressed against the oppressor and in search of a perfect
society, was shaped and was given that organisation and ideologi-
cal confidence with which to prevail by the clerical forces led by
Khomeini.

The ambivalent international context

At first glance international factors seemed to play an atypically

minor part in the course of the revolution itself. The Iranian state
had not been weakened by any foreign military defeat or compar-
able external challenge to its prestige and capacity to govern? 3
Neither the opposition movement nor the Shah enjoyed active
foreign support in the final months of the contest. Indeed the
absence of any financial or other material backing for the opposi-
tion, and the failure of the United States more actively to in-
tervene on the Shah's behalf, are among the most striking
characteristics of the whole process.
The Iranian Revolution was in a very definite sense an inter-
national event. It had deeply unsettling effects on the West Asian
region, both westward, where it appeared to challenge the rulers
of Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula, and stimulate Shi'ites in
Lebanon, and eastward, where it encouraged the Islamic forces
fighting the revolutionary Afghan government which came to
power in April 1978. After the revolution, Iran extricated itself
from the alliance system that the United States had created in the
region and became embroiled in two major international conflicts:
the fifteen-month dispute over the American hostages, and the
war with Iraq that began in September 1980. The Iran crisis of
52 The Iranian Revolution

1946 was (together with Poland) one of the two issues which
started the Cold War. The rejection thirty-five years later of the
Yalta arrangements by the populations of the two countries intro-
duced a major element of international uncertainty in the 1980s.
Yet the revolution was international in another overt sense,
namely in the manner in which Iranians perceived it. Despite the
revolutionary universalism posed by Islam, it was felt as a nation-
alist movement against the political, economic, and cultural influ-
ences of the West, and of the United States in particular. This
perception was reinforced by one of the most enduring features of
Iranian political culture, the belief that political events are deter-
mined by a foreign hand. This is as true of the Shah and his
supporters, who blamed the revolution on a Western conspiracy to
'bring' Khomeini to power, as it was of Khomeini and the forces
associated with him, who regarded the Shah as sag-i Carter
('Carter's dog'), and who continued after the Shah's departure to
uncover foreign conspiracies at every turn of events. There was a
considerable degree of foreign influence in Iran prior to the
revolution, and in this sense the perspective of the revolutionaries
had justification; but the real interference was far less than was
supposed and pointed to the prevalence of that collective paranoia
which is such a strong feature of Iranian political life. It fosters
such a debilitating atmosphere of helplessness that, far from
enabling Iranians to emancipate themselves from foreign domina-
tion, it all too often incapacitates them. Although such conspiracy
theories are common in many societies, their particular virulence
in Iran owes much to the pattern of foreign policy domination in
earlier decades: never a formal colony of any European power,
Iran did not therefore pass through the clear break with foreign
authority that independence involves. Moreover the patterns of
semi-colonial control used by Britain, Tsarist Russia and later the
US - influencing ministers, fostering dissension in the provinces,
suborning the military- were precisely those most likely to engen-
der a conspiracy mentality among Iranians. 34 Once this was
coupled with the intense exposure to foreign influences at the
everyday level in the 1960s and 1970s, and to the fact that the Shah
himself had been brought back by American covert assistance in
1953, it was less surprising that a simplified picture of foreign
control should persist and should substitute for more accurate, but
intellectually more demanding, analyses.
Fred Halliday 53

Essentially, foreign forces shaped the revolution in at least three

respects. First, the whole context in which the upheaval occurred
was one of socio-economic transformations under which Iran was
increasingly integrated into the world market and exposed to the
economic, social and cultural influences of the West. The rate of
Iran's oil output- over 6 million barrels a day- was dictated not by
a rational calculation of what revenues Iran could most effectively
absorb but by the demands of other countries for greater supply.
The political and military build-up of the Shah's regime was made
as a result of strategic decisions made in Washington. The cultural
gap between the Westernised middle class and the class of new
migrants in the major towns was one of the underlying tensions
that helped ignite the revolution. Above all, oil revenue was
important as external revenue, introducing revenue into the so-
ciety without any comparable transformation of its socio-economic
and productive structures. 35 Unregulated oil revenues progress-
ively dislocated the regime from its social context and thereby
rendered Iran more vulnerable to a sudden upsurge from below. 36
A second international factor was the Shah's reliance on foreign
support in 1953 and his visible friendship with the United States,
together with his quiet but overt sympathy for Israel. This support
certainly facilitated his control of Iran in the 1950s and 1960s but in
the longer run, like the oil revenues, it undermined his internal
bases of support and encouraged the belief that he could dispense
with a loyal domestic following. For this reason, the United States
was unable to intervene to save him. The pattern of such interven-
tions, from Vietnam to Iran in 1953 shows that an action of this
kind requires certain internal conditions to succeed, and such
conditions- a sympathetic middle class or a motivated, repressive
army- were absent by the time the full dimensions of the crisis had
become clear.
The third aspect was US policy in the 1977-9 period. Certainly,
it would be a mistake wholly to exclude those factors to which the
Shah himself draws attention -the Carter human rights policy and
the confusions of US policy-making in the final weeks. 37 Yet, these
were not the determinant factors. Those issues upon which US
critics focused attention - human rights violations and the high
level of arms sales - were not those most prominent in the
complaints of Khomeini and his followers; the subsequent vicissi-
tudes of Islamic justice do not suggest that a desire for due process
54 The Iranian Revolution

or improved prison conditions was paramount in the minds of

those who flocked to the Ashura demonstrations. What can be said
is that the Carter policy on human rights reinforced the internal
process of political decompression in Iran in 1977 that the prob-
lems of the 1974-6 boom had created, and through which certain
liberal politicians were able to begin some public activity. It was
this example of secular forces that contributed to the feeling
among the bazaaris and mollahs that they too could now be
somewhat bolder.
The events of 1978-9 themselves show little signs of having been
influenced by US policy. Until early November 1978 the American
government did not see that Iran was undergoing a revolution and
by that time no course of action, except the dispatch of substantial
numbers of troops, would have staved off defeat. The constraints
upon the latter were internal to US society - the post-Vietnam
reluctance to engage in foreign wars - and also in Iran's strategic
position. Such an action, as Brezhnev warned in November 1978,
would have run the risk of Soviet intervention in accordance with
the Soviet interpretation of their 1921 treaty with Iran. The over-
riding reason why such a course of action was impossible, how-
ever, was the crumbling of the Shah's own regime and of his own
determination. There remains the question of whether, in the final
days, the United States could have achieved some compromise
between Khomeini and the army commanders which would have
stemmed the full tide of insurrection that followed. 38 This too is an
unlikely scenario since there was little incentive for Khomeini to
accept it, and once in power, Khomeini in fact did not respect the
agreement on immunity of top commanders which he had signed
in early February. Therefore, despite the fact that the revolution
was affected by both the realities and the myths of Iran's inter-
national context, the actual course of events took place on a stage
from which, for a variety of reasons, foreign states were for the
most part excluded.

Conclusions

Three general conclusions seem relevant to the over-all issue of

religion and politics, and of how exemplary the Iranian Revolution
may be of other upheavals in the contemporary world.
Fred Halliday 55

(1) The unique combination of 'modern' and 'traditional' in

the Iranian Revolution had both institutional and ideological
features

The modernity of the revolution was above all accounted for by

the transformation of Iranian society in the 1960s and 1970s, the
rapid urbanisation and industrialisation, and the demographic and
social tensions this produced. Without this transformation, the
Islamic movement could have arisen again, as it had in the 1890s,
1900s, and early 1960s, but it would have been much less likely to
succeed. The destruction of the imperial regime and the neutralis-
ation of its foreign support were made possible by the great force
with which the urban movement erupted, a force derivative of this
transformation. Even in ideological terms, the movement reflected
the world environment, both in the themes it invoked and in the
manner in which the enemy was viewed. At the same time, the
movement drew on traditional forces which had survived and even
flourished in the years of transformation. In the cities, the bazaars
(and the link of bazaar and mosque) gave the opposition a rallying
point and an organisational backbone. The clergy provided an
ideology of resistance and the principles for an alternative society.
The political culture of the mass of the urban population continued
to be characterised by religious beliefs and an acceptance of the
role of the clergy in political life.

(2) The Iranian Revolution was, only to some extent, a religious

revolution: the values, personnel, goals were all defined in
religious terms, and the society which has subsequently been
created is one which its creators argue is modelled on the Koran
and the Islamic law

Undoubtedly, religious beliefs and the specific interests of the

clergy made indispensable contributions to this revolution. Yet the
image of an 'Islamic Revolution' is too simple. First of all, the
concept of religion is itself variable: in Islam it encompassed far
more than in Christianity, where the principle of a division be-
tween church and state has existed for some centuries. The doc-
trine of Islam does not admit the secular: though a separation of
secular and religious has come to prevail over the centuries, it has
been far easier for those who wish to re-assert the comprehensive
56 The Iranian Revolution

claims of Islam over all areas of social and political life to do so.
Second, the factors enabling the clergy to challenge and overthrow
the Shah were eminently secular ones. Thus the Iranian Revolu-
tion has more in common with other societies than the specifically
religious dimension will permit. Material living conditions, opposi-
tion to royal dictatorship, and hostility to foreign influence all
played important roles in preparing the Shah's downfall. Third,
even the very ideology and programme of the revolutionaries
contained many themes common to other revolutionary situations:
re-establishment of national independence, expropriation of the
rich, punishment of the guilty and corrupt, and redistribution of
wealth. The decisive manner in which Khomeini's forces took
control of the state and consolidated their hold by the creation of a
set of new revolutionary institutions was eminently intelligible to
anyone aware of what is involved in the establishment of a new
state power.

(3) The paradoxical unity of the 'modern' and the

'traditional' in the Iranian Revolution accounted for the success
of the Shah's opponents, but this unity did not long survive the
monarch's fall

The history of post-revolutionary Iran is to a considerable extent

that of a growing dislocation of these two components. The at-
tempt to create a clergy-dominated or hierocratic society, based on
allegedly seventh-century principles, in the last quarter of the
twentieth century has encountered many problems that permit no
easy resolution. The impact of the revolution and its aftermath on
the economy has been to lower living standards throughout nearly
all of the urban society and to provoke considerable unemploy-
ment and inflation. The defiance of all outside powers and the call
for the spread of Islamic revolution has led the regime into a
full-scale war with Iraq, with enormous loss of life and consider-
able disruption to the economy. The imposition of a new form of
centralised rule, dominated by the clergy, has generated wide-
spread opposition from political forces who supported the over-
throw of the Shah, but who do not support the establishment of an
Islamic Republic, ruled by the faqih. These three dimensions of
reality - the economic, the international, and the political -
therefore present external limits to the plan of creating an Islamic
Republic.
Fred Halliday 57

The Iranian Revolution achieved great levels of mobilisation

and political impact in the struggle against the Shah and in the
immediate post-revolutionary aftermath. Once difficulties arose,
and the broad united front that had toppled the Shah broke up,
Khomeini was able to establish a regime built in his own image and
successfully to crush the various opposition forces he faced. The
success of the Iranian Revolution lay not, therefore, only in the
destruction of an old regime, but in the successful establishment of
a new one, different in many significant respects from that which it
had replaced. If it shared more than it admitted with the Pahlavis,
it was none the less built on very different systems of power, social
support, and values. Yet, while this regime survived its first few
years, it remained unclear whether its long-run stability was assured.
The hopes raised by the Iranian Revolution were extremely
high, and it is not the only revolution to have disappointed its
original supporters, let alone to have failed to create a perfect
society on this earth. The post-revolutionary history of Iran has
not only showed the limitations of the solutions offered by the
Islamic clergy, but also forced Khomeini to stress an archaism
inherent in this thought: the appeals to blood and sacrifice, .the
persecution of enemies and former allies, the brutal imposition of
discriminatory Islamic codes of behaviour for women, the callous
neglect of human life in the war with Iraq, and the incitement to
persecute sexual and religious deviants. All these and more are the
themes and policies to which the Imam resorted in order to
implement his programme.
Through the revolution Iran became the site of a competition
between the theological and the material, the clerical and the
secular. The first round certainly went to the theological and the
clerical. But how far these forces could sustain their advance in the
face of material problems and an inability to meet many of the
basic needs of the population remained an open question.

Notes and references

1. An earlier version of this chapter was published in the Journal of

International Affairs, vol. 36, no. 2, FalVWinter 1982/3. I am grateful
to Hamza Alavi and Nikki Keddie for their most helpful comments
during the revision. The revised analysis was completed before the
publication of Said Arjomand's pioneering article 'Iran's Islamic
Revolution in comparative Perspective' (World Politics, April 1986)
which touches upon many of the points raised here. Despite its too
 58 The Iranian Revolution

easy dismissal of class factors in the revolution (pp. 40(}.-2), and its
espousal of the fallacious continuity between millennarian and secular
revolutionary thinkers (p. 411), Arjomand's article is a major contri-
bution to understanding of the Iranian revolution.
2. Karl Griewank, Der neuzeitliche Revolutionsbegriff (Weimar, 1955),
ch. 1.
3. Thus Radio Ahvaz, broadcasting in Arabic on 1 September 1980:
'This awaiting universal Islamic state will demolish all tyrannical
thrones built on the corpses of the oppressed. The sword of justice
will claim all charlatans, agents, and traitors.' See my 'Iranian Foreign
Policy Since 1979: Internationalism and Nationalism in the Islamic
Revolution', in Juan Cole and Nikki Keddie (eds), Shi'ism and Social
Protest (London, 1986).
4. One exception is the nineteenth-century Shi'ite writer Mullah Ahmad
Naraqi, an exponent of the Usuli school which did emphasise the
powers of juridical authorities in Islam. But Naraqi did not extend
this to include full political power, as Khomeini was later to do (Said
Amir Arjomand, 'The State and Khomeini's Islamic Order', Iranian
Studies, vol. XIII, nos. 1-4 (1980), p. 154). What is striking is that
Khomeini does not invoke the precedent of those conservative writers
who opposed the secular constitution of 1906. Indeed, while he
exhibited an initial tolerance of the 1906 Constitution, he seems later
to have regarded the whole period of the Constitutional Revolution as
an embarrassment.
5. This point has been well made by Mohammad Ja'far and Azar Tabari,
'Iran: and the Struggle for Socialism', Khamsin, 8, 1981.
6. Sami Zubeida, 'The ideological conditions for Khomeini's doctrine of
government', Economy and Society, vol. II, no. 2 (May 1982).
7. Ervand Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions, (Princeton,
1982), pp. 53(}.-537.
8. For a guide to the earlier role of the clergy in Iran see Nikki Keddie,
Iran: Religion, Politics and Society, (London, 1980) and her Religion
and Rebellion in Iran: The Iranian Tobacco Protest of 1891-92 (Lon-
don, 1966). Strictly speaking Islam does not have a clergy in the sense
of an ordained body of men. But in this text I have used the term
'clergy' interchangeably with the word ulema, literally 'those who
know', the standard Arabic Muslim term, and the word mullah, the
word normally applied to Shi'ite clergy in Iran. Iranians themselves
tend not to use the word mullah, but to talk of the akhund, a slightly
derogatory term for an ordinary clergyman, or of the ruhaniyat, the
body of religious personnel. Higher-ranking clerics are called mujtahids,
meaning that they have the authority of ijtihad, independent judge-
ment on holy matters, whilst the highest ranking are called ayatollah,
literally 'sign of God'. For a general discussion of Iranian terms for
the clergy see Roy Mottahedeh, The Mantle of the Prophet (London,
1986), pp. 231-2. Given the absence of any established hierarchy, the
designation ayatollah is a result of promotion and reputation within
the Islamic institutions. Prior to the revolution it was a term confined
to a small number of clergyman, of whom Khomeini was neither the
Fred Halliday 59

senior nor the most learned. The term Imam, applied to Khomeini,
represents a verbal inflation, but is an honorary title and, at least
officially, does not indicate any claim to his being one of the line of
Twelve Imams of the Shi'ites believe are the true followers of Mo-
hammad.
9. We do not yet have the detailed information necessary to establish
who were 'the faces in the crowd' that made the Iranian Revolution,
that is, a precise evaluation of the social forces behind the revolution.
While it appears, from the very size and superficial appearance of the
demonstrators, that members of all social groups participated, it is
much less clear what the proportions were. Some initial indications
are given in Farhad Kazemi, Poverty and Revolution in Iran (London,
1980). He suggests that it was second-generation migrant industrial
workers, not the poorest inhabitants of shanty towns, who partici-
pated most in the revolutionary protests. The poorest sections were
still outside the social networks that would have drawn them into the
demonstrations of late 1978. For an important, earlier study of this
issue see Ervand Abrahamian, 'The Crowd in Iranian Politics, 1905-53,
in Haleh Afshar (ed.), Iran: A Revolution in Turmoil (London
1985).
10. The demonstrations in the last months of the Shah's regime, involving
up to 2 million people in Tehran, and several million more in provin-
cial towns, were the largest protest demonstrations in human history.
States have mobilised larger numbers in supportive marches - as in
China's Tien An Men Square - but such crowds have never before
been seen in an oppositional context.
11. The terms 'modern' and 'traditional' have been subject to consider-
able criticism. Their use here does not denote acceptance of a more
general picture of social development as being conceivable in terms of
a unilinear progression from one to the other. They are used here in a
more figurative sense, to distinguish characteristics of Iranian society
associated with its past from those resulting from the changes of the
last decade.
12. No full account of the revolution has yet been written, but surveys are
included in Abrahamian, and in Nikki Keddie, Roots of Revolution
(New Haven, 1981). Also of interest are Robert Graham, Iran: The
Illusion of Power, Second Edition (London, 1979), Mohammed Heikal,
The Return of the Ayatollah, (New York, 1981), and L. P.
Elwell-Sutton, "The Iranian Revolution: Triumph or Tragedy", in
Hossein Amirsadeghi, ed., The Security of the Persian Gulf (New
York, 1981). The best eyewitness account is Paul Balta and Claudine
Rulleau, L'Iran Insurge (Paris, 1979). On post-revofutionary devel-
opments the outstanding study is Shaul Bakhash, The Reign of the
Ayatollahs, London 1984. Bakhtiar's own account is given in his Ma
Fidelite, Paris, 1982. See also my interview with him in MERIP
Reports, no. 104, March-April1982.
13. Graham provides invaluable analysis of many aspects of the economic
change; see also my Iran: Dictatorship and Development (London,
1979), and the references contained therein. On rural conditions, see
60 The Iranian Revolution

Eric Hooglund, Land and Revolution in Iran, I960-I980 (Austin,

1982). A general economic overview is given by M. H. Pesaran,
'Economic Development and Revolutionary Upheavals in Iran', in
Haleh Afshar (ed.), Iran: A Revolution in Turmoil.
14. The merchants of the Tehran bazaar were particularly incensed in
1976 when the municipal authorities proposed to build a new urban
highway that would have passed through the middle of the bazaar
area.
15. American Ambassador William Sullivan complained bitterly of the
Shah's indecisiveness, a characteristic foreign observers had noted
during the crisis of the early 1950s. One British journalist who met the
Shah in September reported that the monarch flatly refused to believe
there were any slums in Tehran, a fact evident to the most casual
observer. Some pertinent observations are given in Fereidun
Hoveida, The Fall of the Shah, (London, 1980).
16. The army chief of staff, General Qarabaghi, was allowed to retire to
his home and later went into exile. More mysterious was General
Fardust, the former chief of the Shah's private intelligence service,
who reportedly became head of SA VAMA, a new state security
organization.
17. Theda Skocpol, State and Social Revolution (London, 1979), pp.
14-18. Skocpol's own reflections on the Iranian revolution are in
'Rentier State and Shi'a Islam in the Iranian Revolution' in Theory
and Society, May 1982. She points to the sociological weakness of
rentier states and the mobilising potential of Shi'a Islam as special
factors enabling the Iranian revolution.
18. Ibrahim Yazdi, Foreign Minister of the Islamic Republic, in interview
with the author, Tehran, August 1979.
19. An important comparative perspective on the 1979 revolution is given
by the Mosaddeq period when secular nationalism and a mass Com-
munist movement predominated: see Richard Cottam, Nationalism in
Iran (Pittsburgh, 1964). The clergy at that time gave some support to
Mosaddeq, but turned against him in 1952 and did not oppose the
1953 coup. Khomeini never mentions Mosaddeq's name in a positive
light and argues that his fall was a result of his abandonment of Islam.
20. For discussion of this issue see Said Amir Arjomand, 'Shi'ite Islam
and Revolution in Iran', Government and Opposition, vol. 16, no. 3
(Summer 1981), Edward Mortimer, Faith and Power (London, 1982),
ch. 9, and Hamid Algar, 'The Oppositional Role of the Ulama in
Twentieth Century Iran', in Nikki Keddie ( ed. ), Scholars, Saints and
Sufis, (Berkeley, 1972). Also indispensable is the work of Akhavi,
cited inn. 22 below.
21. Muslim radicals find confirmation in certain verses of the Koran which
are supposed to reinforce their orientation: for example, 'We willed
that those who are being oppressed would become the leaders and the
rightful inheritors of the world' (Sura Qesas, 5); 'Very soon the
oppressors will know how they are going to be punished' (Sura XVIII,
V, 227). The word used for 'oppression', dhulm, is the conventional
Islamic word for tyranny.
Fred Halliday 61

22. An extremely shrewd and careful discussion of these points is con-

tained in Shahrough Akhavi Religion and Politics in Contemporary
Iran (Albany, New York, 1980). Akhavi demonstrates the contin-
gency of Islamic thought and hence the availability of a wide range
of equally valid 'interpretations'. On Islam as a state religion under
the Safavis, see I. B. Petrushevsky, Islam in Iran (London, 1985),
ch. XIII.
23. A careful study of the organisation and curricula of the Qom mad-
rases in the mid-1970s is given by Michael Fischer in Iran: From
Religious Dispute to Revolution (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1980).
24. Akhavi, Religion and Politics, pp. 12~7. He quotes one reforming
mollah who denounced avam zadigi, the effects of mass mindlessness,
and said it was better to be affected by 'floods, earthquakes, snakes,
and scorpions' than to be subject to the will of the masses on matters
of reform.
25. Some of the theorists of Islamic revolution have developed a concept
of a just or unitary society, based on the Islamic concept of touhid, or
unity of God and man. These writers include the lay theoretician Ali
Shariati and former President Abo! Hassan Bani-Sadr. But it does not
seem that Khomeini ever accepted this concept, and he laid much
greater stress on the need to implement the rules of Islamic jurispru-
dence.
26. In the post-revolutionary period Khomeini was officially described by
three titles: Imam, Leader of the Revolution, and Founder of the
Islamic Republic. These three sources of his legitimacy represented
religious authority, the aura of success, and the programme he sought
to implement. His frequent designation as 'Imam of the Islamic
Nation', where 'nation' is a translation of the word umma, illustrates
the ambiguous character of constituency he was meant to represent -
Iran, or a wider Islamic world.
27. Khomeini's main writings are contained in Islam and Revolution,
translated and annotated by Hamid Algar (Berkeley, 1981).
28. The charge of being a mofsid ji'l arz ('spreader of corruption on
earth') is one common charge in such cases. The other is that of being
mohareb be khoda ('declaring war on God'). If concepts of legitimacy
are essential in mobilising populist coalitions, so too are concepts of
denying legitimacy to the other side. Khomeini's favourite term for
the Shah was Taghut, a term usually derived from an Arabic root
meaning to tyrannise. In fact, Taghut has a different root, meaning
idol or a false god. In later terminology Khomeini was referred to as
the Bot shekan, the 'Idol Smasher', with the Shah as the first idol to be
broken, Carter the second, Bani Sadr the third, and it was hoped,
Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein the fourth. Bot is a Persian language
equivalent of Taghut.
29. In particular, the writer Al-i Ahmad, whose work Gharbzadegi ('in-
toxication with the West'), was very popular among university stu-
dents in the 1970s. Although the son of a mollah, Al-i Ahmad himself
was rather anti-clerical in his writings. For an account of his ideas see
Mottahedeh, pp. 287-315.
62 The Iranian Revolution

30. On Shariati see Fischer, Iran, Keddie, Roots of Revolution, and

Mango! Bayat-Phillip 'Shiism in Contemporary Iranian Politics: The
Case of Ali Shariati', in Elie Kedourie and Sylvia Haim, (eds),
Towards a Modern Iran (London, 1980). Shariati too was quite
anti-clerical, and is regarded by most religious authorities as an
unlettered upstart. His writings fall into the mainstream of Third
World cultural and nationalist writings of the 1970s. He died in
London, in 1977. See his On the Sociology of Islam (Berkeley, 1979).
31. One exceptional element in Khomeini's populism is his use of irate
paternalism, as he threatens to chastise and punish his followers. This
is of course partly a note of Qur'anic punitiveness which will be
familiar to his audience, but contrasts with the rhetoric of other
secular populists. In a speech in August 1979 he declared: 'When we
broke down the corrupt regime and destroyed this very corrupt dam;
had we acted in a revolutionary manner from the beginning, had we
closed down this hired press, these corrupt magazines, these corrupt
parties and punished their leaders, had we erected scaffoldings for the
hanging in all the major squares, and had we chopped off all the
corrupters and the corrupted, we would not have had these troubles
today'. But he goes on: 'I beg forgiveness from almighty God and my
dear people.'
32. See Keddie, Religion and Rebellion, pp. 27-8, where the Muslim
reformer Malkam Khan discusses how to justify modern principles in
Qur'anic terms.
33. Skocpol, pp. 19-24, outlines a theory of the international dimension
of revolutions on which I have drawn here.
34. For the earlier decades of the century see the classic E. Brown, The
Persian Revolution (London, 1909); for the early 1950s see Kermit
Roosevelt, Countercoup (New York, 1980), a vivid account of the
American and British roles in preparing the 1953 coup that re-
installed the Shah.
35. Hossein Mahdavy, 'Patterns and Problems of Economic Develop-
ment in Rentier States: the Case of Iran', in M. A. Cook ( ed. ),
Studies in the Economic History of the Middle East (London, 1970)
and Homa Katouzian, The Political Economy of Modern Iran,
1926-1979 (London, 1981).
36. Skocpol stresses the growing autonomy of the state as another central
feature of the revolutions she describes. While in my view she over-
states the disassociation of ruling class and state apparatus, she none
the less indicates a feature of revolutionary situations which contri-
butes to explaining why, at a particular time, an existing state is
overthrown. See n. 16 for her application of this thesis to Iran.
37. In his post revolutionary memoirs, the Shah seeks to ignore the
growing crisis in his country and focuses uniquely on the role of the
US mission to Iran in the last days of his reign: The Shah's Story
(London, 1980).
38. William Sullivan argues that some accommodation with Khomeini
might have been possible in early 1979, but that this was excluded by
Fred Halliday 63

an unrealistic 'hard line' being pursued by Brezezinski, the Presi-

dent's National Security Adviser: in 'Dateline Iran: the Road Not
Taken', Foreign Policy, Washington, no. 40 (Fall 1980) and his
Mission to Iran (New York, 1981). The best accounts of US Iranian
relations are in Barry Rubin, Paved with Good Intentions: The Ameri-
can Experience in Iran (New York: 1980) and Gary Sick, All Fall
Down, America's Tragic Encounter with Iran, London 1985. See also
my discussion of variant US accounts in MERIP Reports no. 140,
May-June 1986.
4 Pakistan and Islam:
Ethnicity and Ideology
HAMZA ALAVI

There is a pervasive belief, held more widely outside Pakistan than

in the country, that Pakistan, with Israel and Iran, is one of three
confessional states in the world; that, like Israel, its very origin was
to fulfil a religious ideal, to create an Islamic state and Islamic
society for Muslims of India. That has been the slogan of the
Jamaat-e-Islami, the fundamentalist extreme right -wing party, since
Pakistan was created. Interestingly enough it was not their slogan
before the creation of Pakistan, for they had opposed the Pakistan
movement. The regime of General Zia has declared likewise, that
Pakistan was created to establish an Islamic state for Muslims of
India. Lacking a popular mandate the military regime has sought
its claim to legitimacy, if not its purpose, in divine ordinance.
When, after seizing power, the Zia regime discovered that it was
totally lacking in authority (its power base being the army itself) it
took refuge in divine providence and it was soon claimed that the
Almighty has communicated with the General in a dream; that he
had experienced ilham, a state of grace in which a divine message
entered his heart, charging him with the task of creating an Islamic
state and Islamic society in Pakistan. Such a claim to the seat of
power is more in line with medieval claims of the divine right of
kingship rather than any desire to submit to the will of the people
who might be given the opportunity to affirm such a purpose
through a free and genuine expression of the popular will. To
justify and reinforce this claim, it is loudly proclaimed with the full
force of Pakistan's captive media that Islamic ideology was indeed

64
Hamza Alavi 65

at the heart of the Pakistan movement, the raison d' etre of the new
state, an ideal that more than thirty years after the foundation of
the state, it had been left to General Zia to realise.
The idea that the Pakistan movement was motivated by Islamic
ideology is, as will soon be quite apparent, a misconception. An
alternative explanation of the Pakistan movement is that it was a
movement of 'feudal' landlords of the Muslim majority provinces
of India, especially the Punjab and Sindh and, to a lesser extent,
Bengal. This has been argued by Indian Nationalist and also
Communist Party historians before 1942 and after 1946. They
suggest further that this movement was instigated and fostered by
the British who wished to divide the nationalist movement. This
theory too is misconceived and slurs over many facts and aspects of
a complex history. 1
A third view, which was adopted by the Communist Party
between 1942 and 1946, held that the Pakistan movement was a
movement of the (weak) Muslim national bourgeoisie and there-
fore a legitimate anti-imperialist movement, deserving of com-
munist support, in line with the stand taken by Lenin at the Second
Congress of the Communist International in 1921. 2 This view has
been reiterated by Soviet scholars, notably in the influential work
by Yuri Gankovsky and Gordon-Polonskaya on the history of
Pakistan, 3 who produce the names of a few prominent Gujerati
Muslims from a business community background who were associ-
ated peripherally with the early Muslim League, to support their
argument. That view is also mistaken. The predominantly Guje-
rati Muslim trading communities of India, barring one or two
individuals, took little part in the Muslim movement, which was
dominated above all by Muslim professionals and the salariat (see
below) of northern India, especially of the UP (United Provinces,
later Uttar Pradesh), Bihar and Punjab. The Gujeratis were
isolated from them linguistically and culturally as well as politically
and had no objective class interests of their own that the Muslim
movement could then serve. There were a few individuals, es-
pecially professionals, drawn from Gujerati business communities
-notably Mr Jinnah himself, a rich and successful lawyer son of a
not too successful trader - who did play a part in the Muslim
movement. But from this we cannot infer class involvement.
66 Pakistan and Islam: Ethnicity and Ideology

Muslim state and Islamic state

Th·.: irony of the argument that Pakistan was founded on religious

ideology lies in the fact that every group and organisation in the
Subcontinent of India that was specifically religious, was hostile to
Jinnah and the Muslim League and had strongly opposed the
Pakistan movement. Foremost amongst them was the Jamiat-ul-
Ulama-e-Hind, the leading organisation of the so-called 'Deobandi
ulama, whom we might categorise as Islamic Traditionalists. A
great deal of effort was devoted by the Muslim League leadership
to win them over. Eventually they succeeded in that, but only
partially, on the eve of the Partition, through the defection of a
section of the ulama, led by Maulana Shabbir Ahmad Usmani,
who formed the Jamiat-ul-Ulama-e-Islam. The Islamic Fundamen-
talist Jamaat-e-Islami, led by Maulana Maududi, was no less op-
posed to the Pakistan movement, although since the Partition they
have gone to great lengths to conceal or explain away their earlier
stance. Again, the Nationalist Muslims who were in the Indian
National Congress not only included secular-minded figures like
Rafi Ahmad Kidwai, but also, and especially, Muslims educated in
the classical tradition who were deeply religious, such as their
leader Abul Kalam Azad who was steeped in Muslim classical and
religious learning.
This was in marked contrast to the modernist education and
style of life and aspirations of the Muslim League leadership. A
claim that the creation of Pakistan was a fulfilment of millenarian
religious aspirations of Indian Muslims would therefore stand in
contradiction to the alienation of the principal bearers of the
religion of Islam in India from the Pakistan movement and,
contrariwise, the explicit commitment of the leaders of the move-
ment to secular politics. These apparently contradictory aspects of
the history of Pakistan are overlooked by scholars who are mes-
merised by the spectre of militant fundamentalist Islam arisen
throughout the 'Muslim world'. 4 In Pakistan itself, history has
been systematically rewritten and ideologists of the regimes in
power have spared few efforts to present the Pakistan movement
as a fundamentalist religious movement.
My contention is that the Pakistan movement was neither a
millenarian ideological movement devoted to the realisation of an
Islamic state nor was it a movement of feudal landlords nor yet
Hamza Alavi 67

again a movement of an emergent Muslim national bourgeoisie. It

is true that by 1946 the Muslim League reached an accommodation
with the landed magnates who ruled over Sindh and Punjab, on
their terms, in order to gain a semblance of authority in those
Muslim majority provinces by virtue of their agreement to take on
the Muslim League label (the implications of that will be examined
below). It will be argued that the central driving force behind the
Muslim movement was a class that has a distinct place in colonised
societies whose role needs to be recognised more fully and expli-
citly. I have labelled this class the salariat, the urban, educated
classes who qualify for employment in the colonial state. With
them were associated the new professionals who emerged in the
context of the colonial transformation of Indian society, the law-
yers, journalists and urban intellectuals generally, who share many
of the problems and aspirations of the salariat.
In a nutshell, the argument of this paper is that the Pakistan
movement was a movement of Muslims rather than of Islam; a
movement in which diverse Muslim ethnic groups from different
regions, representing different social strata and interests, were
allied in pursuit of quite material objectives. At the centre of that
movement was a coalition of the emerging Muslim salariats of
different regions of India, a coalition that was to break down as
soon as Pakistan was created and the Muslim movement had
outlived its purpose. Moreover, Muslim nationalism was at its
weakest in the Muslim majority provinces, having little appeal to
the rural classes. Even for those who were drawn into the move-
ment, there was no automatic or permanent translation of the
attribute of Muslim by faith or Muslim by descent into an enduring
conception of an ethnically undifferentiated Muslim nation. On
the contrary, the central axis of Pakistan's political history has
revolved around strident affirmations of regional and linguistic
ethnic identities that have refused to be set aside, delegitimised
and dissolved by slogans of Islamic ideology or claims of Muslim
nationhood raised on behalf of the dominant ethnic groups.
The unity of the movement that ultimately resulted in the
creation of Pakistan was a precarious one. Jinnah's political genius
lay precisely in his ability to orchestrate a loose, volatile and
unpredictable coalition of forces. He is generally pictured as a man
with a firm and total grip over the groups that he was leading. But
that is a myth, made plausible by his powerful and commanding
68 Pakistan and Islam: Ethnicity and Ideology

personality. In reality his hold over the various groups was quite
tenuous and he had to take them on their own terms. He merely
stood at the centre of a political process around which diverse
regional groups revolved, over whom he had little control.
By the late 1940s, Jinnah and the All India Muslim League
provided the predominantly rural landowning groups, who ruled
in the Muslim majority provinces, with a now necessary and urgent
voice at the centre of Indian politics, in the dialogue with the
Indian National Congress and the colonial masters, at a time when
Independence was in prospect. They were prepared to make use of
him and the All India Muslim League for that purpose. That
supported the illusion of a unified Muslim nation in India. But it
was a marriage of convenience, for the provincial magnates, on
whom Jinnah depended for support and his own legitimacy, were
not prepared to surrender to him or the Muslim League their local
autonomy. It was they rather than the central leadership of the
Muslim League who were in a position to dictate the terms of the
alliance. Nevertheless the idea of a Muslim nation gained tempor-
ary currency and Jinnah became the embodiment of that concep-
tion. The Pakistan movement, in that sense and to that extent,
became a national movement, on the basis of the 'Two Nation
Theory' that Jinnah propounded, affirming that Muslims of India
were a separate nation from Hindus. But, in so far as their politics
entailed the establishment of 'Pakistan', however they might have
conceived it (and that was not at the time very clear to anyone),
their objective was the creation of a 'Muslim state', as a nation
state; they did not seek an 'Islamic state', as a theocratic conception.

The Muslim salariat and Muslim ethnicity

There was one particular social group for whom, more than any
other, the conception of 'Muslim' nationhood (and not religious
ideology) was particularly meaningful. That class was the product
of the colonial transformation of Indian social structure in the
nineteenth century and it comprised those who had received an
education that would equip them for employment in the expanding
colonial state apparatus as scribes and functionaries, the men (for
few women were so employed) whose instrument of production
was the pen. For the want of a better term I have referred to them
as the 'salariat'. The term 'middle class' is too wide and 'petty
Hamza Alavi 69

bourgeoisie' has connotations, especially in Marxist political dis-

course, that would not refer to this class.
The 'salariat' is an 'auxiliary class' whose class role can be fully
understood only in terms of its relation (through its role in the
state apparatus) to 'fundamental classes', the economically domi-
nant classes- namely the still dominant metropolitan bourgeoisie,
the nascent indigenous bourgeosie and the powerful landowning
classes - as well as the subordinate classes, the proletariat and the
peasantry. Given a particular configuration of class forces in the
state and society the political role of the salariat entails class
alliances, by virtue of class commitments of its members either
through class origins or through class affiliation. An example of
this is its willingness to serve the anti-national purposes of the
colonial state and, after the Partition, the United States' interests
in the region, (through military alliances) at the cost of the nation
that they purport to serve.
The salariat looms large in colonial societies where the produc-
tion base and the bulk of the population is rural and agricultural.
In the absence of a significant number of people clustered around
urban industrial activities, and leaving aside a small number of
people engaged in petty trading or in the relatively tiny sector of
export trade and finance, the urban society revolves mainly around
functionaries of the state, and the educated look primarily to the
government for employment and advancement. The salariat itself
is not undifferentiated in terms of location and functions of its
members within the state apparatus and access to power. Its upper
echelons, the bureaucratic and military oligarchies, play a role that
is qualitatively different from that of its lower-level petty function-
aries. Their relative weight in the political process vis-a-vis elected
political representatives, is the greater the lower the level of
development of the society in question. It is very prominent in
many societies of Africa, for example, as it is in Pakistan. It is less
prominent in post-colonial India which has experienced relatively
higher levels of economic and political development, though even
there it has not failed to make its mark. The salariat not only
serves the economically dominant classes in the colonial and the
post-colonial state but it also has its own specific interests by virtue
of its particular structural location and its powers, privileges and
opportunities for corruption as the 'governing class' in the post-
colonial state, by virtue of its direct grip over the state apparatus in
the absence of institutional structures of democratic political control.
70 Pakistan and Islam: Ethnicity and Ideology

This is a striking feature of the political scene of Pakistan. 5

It was the Indian salariat and professional classes who were at
the core of the Indian nationalist movement in its early stages
during the late nineteenth century, demanding a rightful place for
Indians in the state apparatus, for 'Indianisation' of the services
and the creation of popular institutions of representative govern-
ment through which they could have a share in the excercise of
power, or at least some measure of control over the state in the
name of 'self-government'. 6 It was only later that the Indian
bourgeoisie threw its weight behind the nationalist movement and
Indian nationalism mobilised wider sections of the Indian people.
Jinnah's 'Two Nations' theory expressed the ideology of the
weaker Muslim salariat vis-a-vis the dominant high caste Hindu
salariat groups. The Muslim salariat was central to the Pakistan
movement. But as a class the salariat itself has a propensity to be
easily fractured into different ethnic groups which vie with each
other for preference and privilege. Such groups are not defined
and determined, once for all, by cultural, linguistic, religious or
regional criteria. There is, rather, a process of definition and
redefinition of ethnic identity in changing political contexts, on the
basis of perceptions of the distribution of privilege and politically
viable options, as they are brought into focus from one stage to the
next. Thus in Pakistan Muslim ethnic identity, once it had fulfilled
its purpose for the salariats of Bengal, Sindh, Sarhad and Baluchistan,
gave way to the respective regional ethnic identities. The
newly affirmed identities are not, of course, constituted out of
nothing. They draw on deeply embedded cultural, linguistic or
regionally significant symbols around which they can mobilise
popular support, symbols that can generate a powerful political
charge.
The conception of a unified 'Muslim Nation' of South Asia did
not outlast the day of independence and the creation of Pakistan.
The inter-regional coalition of the 'Muslim' salariat broke up in
the new state, for a new equation of the distribution of privilege
and deprivation between them became visible. The Punjabis (who
were temporarily joined by an elite group from muhajirs, Urdu-
speaking migrants from India) were preponderant in the bureauc-
racy and the army and were quickly perceived as the privileged
and dominant group, whereas the other ethnic salariat groups had
less than their fair share of access to education, jobs and power.
Hamza Alavi 71

TABLE 4.1 English literates over 20 years of age: Muslims and

non-Muslims (1931)
UP Punjab Bengal Sind
Population
Total 48.4m 28.5m 51m 3.9m
Muslims 7.2m 14.9m 27.8m 2.8m
% of total 14.9 52.3 54.5 71.8

Literates in English of 20 years and over

Total 266 000 185 000 722 435 33 850
Muslims 49 400 58 800 175 600 4 900
% of total 18.6 31.8 24.3 14.5

Source: Census of India, 1931: Compiled from relevant Provincial

Volumes.
Note: The 1931 Census data are used because the 1941 Census, the last
pre-partition Census, is notoriously unreliable.

Overnight the 'Muslim' identity, behind which they had all rallied
together in the Pakistan movement, was laid aside by the regional
groups and new ethnic identities were affirmed- Bengali, Sindhi,
Pathan and Baluch. It must be added though that the Pathan
position has been a little ambiguous after Zia's military coup
d'etat, in view of the relatively strong representation of Pathans
in the army. Again, we find a replication of the Indian example,
for now the slogan of akhand Bharat was echoed in Pakistan by a
new slogan of the indivisibility of the Muslim Nation that was
proclaimed on behalf of the dominant Punjabis. A person could
not legitimately declare himself or herself to be Bengali or Sindhi
or Pathan or Baluch, because he or she was a Muslim, and Islam
was a religion of equality and brotherhood and would recognise no
divisions amongst the people of the faith. It is in that context that
Islamic ideology was first placed at the centre of political debate, only
after Pakistan was created, to oppose regional ethnic movements.
The Muslim salariat was not evenly distributed in size and
influence in different parts of India and its future fragmentation
was written into the pattern of its uneven development. If we take
the numbers of persons of over 20 years of age who were literate in
English as an index of their size, we get the picture shown in
Table 4.1.
72 Pakistan and Islam: Ethnicity and Ideology

Muslim ethnicity therefore was only one stage in a process of

ethnic definition and redefinition. It represented a temporary
alliance of various regional groups. Its original thrust came from
the Muslim salariat of the UP, where it was especially privileged
rather than otherwise but where it was fast losing ground. Else-
where the Muslim salariat was less developed than the Hindu
salariat, so that the interests of the Muslim salariats could be
counterposed to those of Hindus.
The Muslim salariat of the Punjab was the largest in absolute
size amongst Muslims (with the exception of Bengal) though its
relative share of the Punjab salariat was lower than that of Hindus.
This was the principal grievance that fuelled the Muslim move-
ment there. Later, after the creation of Pakistan, the Punjabi
salariat, by virtue of its much greater size and development, came
to occupy a dominant position in the army and the bureaucracy
and thereby in Pakistan society and the state. Those of them who
were on the other side of the boundary at the time of the Partition
came over to Pakistan, thus consolidating their preponderance in
the country.
The Urdu speaking salariat of the Gangetic Plain, that is UP and
Bihar, was the next largest. In contrast to the Punjabis, with the
exodus of Muslims from India only a proportion of them came
over to Pakistan and their relative weight was therefore much
reduced. Historically the share of Muslims in the overall salariat in
the UP was greater than their share of the UP population, but their
relative position declined sharply in the nineteenth century. Their
share of jobs in the highest ranks of colonial service that were then
open to Indians, declined from 64 per cent in 1857 to about 35 per
cent by 1913, a dramatic decline. 7 They developed, as a result, a
deep sense of grievance and insecurity, notwithstanding the fact
that they were still a privileged minority, for their share of popula-
tion was only about 13 per cent. This perceived threat to their
(privileged) position probably explains the fact that the initial and
major thrust of Muslim nationalism in India came from the UP and
Bihar.
The Bengali Muslim salariat was the largest in terms of absolute
size as compared to Muslims of other provinces. But its share of
government jobs was proportionately much smaller than that of
the Bengali Hindus; in sharp contrast to the Muslims of the UP,
Bengali Muslims were always an underprivileged majority and
they were poorly represented in government service, especially in
Hamza Alavi 73

the bureaucracy and the army. This grievance was to be the driving
force behind Bengali nationalism in Pakistan that led eventually to
the liberation of Bangladesh. Sindh figures show how small the
Muslim salariat was in that province. These figures, low as they
are, give a somewhat inflated picture of the insignificant share of
ethnic Sindhi Muslims in salariat positions, as they include the
considerable numbers of non-Sindhi Muslims who were employed
in Sindh.
After Pakistan was created the slogan of Islam was adopted by
the dominant component of the salariat in Pakistan, the Punjabis
and, for a time, the Urdu-speaking Muhajirs, who feared the
challenge of regional ethnic movements. It was invoked at first
only nominally. In so far as it was included in the vocabulary of
political debates in Pakistan during the first thirty years, only a few
symbolic concessions were made to men of religion to make the
argument look convincing. It was no more than a political argu-
ment that was used by the dominant Punjabis against the assertion
of the new regional and linguistic ethnic identities of Bengalis,
Sindhis, Pathans and Baluch. The ruling bureaucratic-military
oligarchy, which has dominated Pakistan since its inception, had
no intention, thereby, of allowing mullahs and Islamic ideologues
to encroach on their monopoly of power and privilege. 8
It was only after the seizure of power by the Zia regime that
Islamic ideology was invoked in a rather more strident manner for
a new purpose, the legitimation of state power itself for a politi-
cally bankrupt regime that lacked legitimate authority. It has had to go
much further in affirming, symbolically, its commitments to Islam
than any previous regime. But the issue of Punjabi dominance
(Urdu-speaking migrants from India who had shared that position
with them gradually fell behind) has not thereby been displaced by
politics of Islamic Ideology, for it was recognised by oppositional
groups that this is only a cover for continued Punjabi domination.
Politics of ethnicity and religious ideology therefore remain closely
intertwined and the various disaffected regional groups are unim-
pressed by the dramaturgy of religious fervour.

The formation of the structure of Muslim society in India

In view of the relatively low development of the Muslim salariat in

general and its uneven development regionally, the question has
74 Pakistan and Islam: Ethnicity and Ideology

often been asked why Muslims did not take more to education or
to trade or commerce, that is, to middle-class occupations. Was
this due to some peculiarities of their religion or culture or was it
due to the idea that is sometimes put forward that Muslims, as the
erstwhile rulers of India, were hostile to the colonial rulers and
their institutions and that, in turn, they were systematically discri-
minated against? Speculation along these lines is most favoured by
Muslim nationalist historians. 9 But the question is better inverted
and we may well ask why in pre-colonial India the urban middle
classes who were engaged in government service or trade did not
convert to Islam. This had much to do with the route through
which Islam came into the Indian subcontinent.
There are clear patterns of conversions to Islam by different
social strata in different regions, which have been little noticed, let
alone explained, although the patterns themselves are not difficult
to see. There are two distinct and contrasting patterns, each
related to the route by which Islam came to a particular region.
One route of the advent of Islam was with the Muslim conquerors
- though this did not mean that Islam was therefore spread by the
sword; quite the contrary. The other route was by the sea, through
contact with Arab seafarers and traders who for centuries domi-
nated the Arabian sea. These two routes of the penetration of
Islam into India had quite different effects on the class distribution
and regional patterns of Islamisation. It is the resulting distribu-
tion of Muslims between different communities and regions that
has constituted the context in which the later ethnic movements,
that we are concerned with here, were to arise.
A paradox of the advent of Islam with Muslim rule was that at
the heartland of the Muslim empires of India, in the Gangetic
Plain, conversions to Islam were minimal. On the other hand, they
were maximal in the two peripheries of the empire, namely the
Indus Plain (now Pakistan) and Bengal. We have no answers yet to
the question why that was so, though we would suspect that there
are social structural explanations to be found. The peripheries
were perennially given to heresy against the Brahminical ortho-
doxy that ruled at the heartland of empire.
Before Islam, Buddhism flourished in the two peripheral re-
gions. Even after the advent of Islam, it was a dissident version of
Islam that took root there rather th~n the orthodox puritanical
version of Islam that was established in the UP, where great
Hamza Alavi 75

seminaries of Muslim religious learning flourished. The Islam of

the periphery was influenced instead by Sufism and was ruled over
by pirs who claimed miraculous powers and made profitable busi-
ness out of the credulity of their followers. It was also infused with
a large dose of syncretism, much condemned by the UP-based
ulama. By contrast in the UP the influence of pirs and Sufism was
minimal.
The divergence in patterns of religious belief between the
Gangetic Plain and the two peripheries is paralleled by di-
vergences in many other aspects of their respective social life. A
study by Marriott, for example, plots the scale of rigidity and
fluidity in caste ranking and ritual between different regions of
India. He found greater fluidity in these the further west one
moved away from the Brahminical heartland of the Gangetic Plain
towards Punjab and Sindh. Marriott found such differences also
among Hindu communities of these regions. 10 My own work in the
Punjab shows likewise that there is no social institution operating
there that can seriously be treated as caste. Even in the matter of
structures of kinship there are differences, for patrilateral-parallel
cousin marriage (that is, preferential marriage to father's brother's
daughter or structural equivalent) is the rule in the Indus Plain
whereas, as one moves east, to East Punjab and Western UP, the
so-called 'Muslim' structure of kinship gives way to gotra exogamy
practised by jat and rajput Muslim peasants. Parallel to the re-
gional differences in religious ideology there were also regional
differences in social structure, which raises questions about the
nature of the connections between the two.
If we consider the pattern of conversion to Islam along another
axis, we find that there is a fairly clear class pattern of Islamis-
ation associated with the advent of Muslim rulers. Muslim rule
installed expatriate Muslims brought from Arabia, Iran, Turkey
and Afghanistan as feudal lords at the foundations of their empires
and many Hindu, especially Rajput, chiefs converted to Islam.
Their dependant peasants 'converted' en masse likewise. Islam was
established thereby as a predominantly rural religion. It made
much less headway in towns and cities.
The relatively low level of conversions to Islam among urban
classes suggests absence of coercion by Muslim rulers, who were
quite happy to be served by Hindu officials. In the UP Kashmiri
Brahmins and Kayasthas are the two main Hindu castes wllo have
76 Pakistan and Islam: Ethnicity and Ideology

traditionally worked for the state both before and after the
colonial conquest. The UP and Punjab diverge from this general
rule, for there far more Muslims found themselves in the salariat
than elsewhere, as descendents of those associated with the courts
at Delhi, Agra, Lucknow and Lahore found their way into salaried
state service. When Pakistan was created men from Punjab and
the UP, where the Muslim salariat was the most developed,
dominated the bureaucratic-military oligarchy. Over the years,
Punjabis have acquired complete ascendency in Pakistan.
In contrast to the UP and Punjab, Muslims had little share of
urban middle-class occupations in Sind and Bengal or in Baluchistan
and the Sarhad. In Sindh, under Muslim rule, government service
was virtually the exclusive prerogative of Amils, a Hindu com-
munity. The number of ethnic Sindhi Muslims in government
service was minute. Trade in Sindh was traditionally in the hands
of another Hindu community called Bhaibands, though during the
latter half of the nineteenth century there was an influx of Muslim
and non-Muslim trading communities mainly from Gujerat (in-
cluding Kathwiawar and Cutch) into Sindh. Bengal was no differ-
ent, for the size of the Muslim salariat there was small and suffered
much from discriminatory colonial policies. Aparna Basu notes
that 'In lists of qualified candidates drawn up by the Council of
Education in Bengal in the years after 1846, Muslim names are
conspicuous by their absence. ' 11 Politics of Muslims in Bengal
were predominantly based on rural classes, especially the struggle
of (mainly Muslim) 'Occupancy Tenants' (de facto landowners),
for abolition of Zamindari overlordship, a cause upheld by the
non-communal Krishak Proja Party led by A. K. Fazlul Haq.
Islam that came by the sea, with Arab control of overseas trade,
resulted in a rather different class configuration of Muslims. (Our
concern in this paper is primarily with northern India and we will
ignore for the moment the logic and patterns of Muslim conver-
sions in southern India.) In Gujerat (including Cutch and Kathia-
war) on the west coast of India, Muslim conversions were mainly
from trading communities, Sunnis such as Memons and Shi'as such
as Bohras and Khojas (both Ismailis) and lthna Asharis. This
seems to be closely related to the fact that the bulk of the export
trade from northern India went abroad through ports in this
region, which were all under Hindu rule. Arabs dominated the
trade of the Arabian sea. Substantial trading communities which
Hamza Alavi 77

were engaged in export trade in Gujerat, not surprisingly, con-

verted to Islam. The myths of origin of these communities speak of
benign and tolerant Hindu rulers who did not discourage this. One
can see the functionality of such tolerance and goodwill when rival
ports were competing with each other to attract Arab trade.
Contrary to the northern Indian pattern, no Muslim landlords
were installed in these areas and there was no dependent peasantry
therefore to take to Islam, except to the extent that the pattern
was to be modified later when Muslim rule itself was extended
southwards and was established in parts of Gujerat. During the
second half of the nineteenth century there was a diffusion of the
Muslim trading communities of Gujerat over various parts of India
when they began to move to the new expanding centres of colonial
trade, such as Bombay, Karachi, Calcutta, and elsewhere.
There was a push effect as well as a pull effect, for the develop-
ment of the railway links between Bombay and Karachi with
northern India short-circuited the traditional trade routes from
northern India to Gujerat ports and the trading communities there
had to look for fresh pastures.
These Muslim trading communities of Gujerat were isolated,
with respect to language and culture, from the northern Indian,
Urdu-speaking, Muslim salariat. These trading communities set a
low value on higher education, which was functional for those
aspiring for salariat positions. In terms of their own values these
communities despised salaried employment, however eminent.
Their children were expected to join the family business after
secondary schooling. They missed therefore even the politicising
effects of university life. Nor were they impelled as a class into the
Muslim movement which at that time had little to offer them. In
the late 1940s Jinnah persuaded a few of them based in Bombay to
form a separate 'Muslim Chamber of Commerce'. But even that
remained a paper organisation. Their role in Muslim movements
was negligible, except for one or two individuals, notably, of
course, Mr Jinnah himself who, however, had cut himself off very
early from the modest background of his family and community in
Karachi and had assimilated himself, as an extremely successful
and very rich lawyer, into cosmopolitan upper-class Bombay so-
ciety.
Much is made by some historians of another exceptional case of
a Gujerati businessmen, namely that of Sir Adamjee Pirbhai, a
78 Pakistan and Islam: Ethnicity and Ideology

Dawoodi Bohra industrialist who owned textile mills and the

Matheran railway, amongst his varied interests. As a friend of the
Agha Khan, he was made to preside over the conference of the
Muslim League at Karachi in 1907, that is when the Muslim
League had just been launched by the Muslim 'notables' and was
about to be seized by the Muslim salariat who soon pushed the
notables aside. They got little joy out of Sir Adamjee, whose
Presidential Address had nothing to say about the aims and
objectives and the anxieties of the Muslim salariat who had
brought him there. Instead he spoke of the importance of 'indus-
trialism' and declared with some pride how Muslim businessmen
were participating fully in that enterprise, shoulder to shoulder
with their Hindu brothers, adding a word of gratitude to the
Viceroy and the (colonial) Government of India. As an enlight-
ened liberal he advocated friendship between Hindus and Muslims.
Sir Adamjee Pirbhai himself was soon to get embroiled in an
anti-clerical movement within his own community for which he
was to sacrifice his time and his fortune. He had little interest in or
time for the Muslim League. It would be a mistake therefore to
read in his momentary participation at the Muslim League confer-
ence (where he was out of tune with all that the League was trying
to achieve) or similar participation of a very few such individuals in
the Muslim movement, to imply the class involvement of the
Gujerat-based Muslim bourgeoisie, much less its leadership of
Muslim nationalism in India.

Islamic and secular ideologies of Muslims in India

There is a widespread tendency, in the language of scholars as well

as in the rhetoric of politicians, to attribute political and ideologi-
cal positions to Indian 'Muslims', in an over-generalised way, as if
Muslims of different social strata and classes in different regions
were equally involved. That is manifestly untrue. There were
sharp differences in these respects not only between different
classes and strata but also between Muslim majority provinces and
Muslim minority provinces. It was in the Muslim minority prov-
inces, especially in the UP, rather than those in which Muslims
were in a majority, that specifically Muslim political and ideologi-
cal movements were generated. Until the late 1940s, when Jinnah
and the Muslim League managed to form an uneasy alliance with
Hamza Alavi 79

TABLE 4.2
I. 'Muslim' positions in India
1. Islamic Traditionalism
The Ulama 1: 'Deobandis'
n. Islamic Traditionalism The Ulama II: 'Barelvis', and Pirs
iii. Islamic Fundamentalism Maududi and the Jamaat-e-Islami
iv. Islamic Modernism Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, and Mohammad
Iqbal
v. Secular Muslim Nationalism exemplified by Jinnah

II Non-communal positions of Muslims in Muslim majority provinces

vi. Secular provincial non-communal transactional politics
Landlord-dominated right-wing Punjab Unionist Party and
various political groups in Sind, being the ruling groups and
parties
vii. Secular provincial non-communal radical politics
The Krishak Proja Party of Bengal, led by A. K. Fazlul Haq, the
ruling party in Bengal
viii. Secular non-communal 'Nationalist Muslims'
The ruling (Congress) party in the Sarhad

dominant groups in the Muslim majority provinces, their politics

were not even Muslim nationalist, let alone 'Islamic'. They were,
rather non-communal politics of landlord-dominated groups and
political parties.
Broadly we can therefore identify eight ideological-political
positions amongst Indian Muslims, before Independence, as
shown in Table 4.2.
In addition to the groups mentioned in Table 4.2, there are also
Shi'as, who are estimated to number about 15 per cent of the
population of Pakistan; some estimates are considerably greater.
No reliable data are available. Shi'as organised the All-India Shi'a
Conference in 1907 to rival Sunni organisations. But leading Shi'as
of the UP were active instead in the Muslim League and the Shi'a
Conference did not make any headway. Lately some (minority)
Shi'a organisations have surfaced in Pakistan, against the back-
ground of the Government's campaign for Islamisation, as well as
the influence of the Iranian revolution, and they are demanding
imposition in the country of Fiqh Ja'faria, the Shi'a code, rather
than a Sunni code; a quite extraordinary and unrealistic demand
which essentially expresses Shi'a fears of being forced to accept
Sunni legislation. This is a minority militant movement which
80 Pakistan and Islam: Ethnicity and Ideology

illustrates where the logic of 'Islamisation' can lead. The main

current of Shi' a opinion in the country, however, seems to favour
the notion of a secular state. Contrariwise there have been equally
strident demands that Pakistan be declared a Sunni Hanafi re-
public and the Hanafi fiqh, or legal code, be made the law of the
land, that all other sects be declared minorities and be given
second-class citizenship. This has led to a great deal of sectarian
violence. But these developments are the logical extension of the
claim made by the Zia regime to impose Islamic Law in Pakistan:
the question is 'Which Islamic Law?'.
There were numerous other Muslim political movements (such
as Khaksars and Ahrars, especially, who were extremely hostile to
the Pakistan movement) and many sectarian divisions among
Sunni Hanafis. I have listed only three main sectarian categories,
namely the Traditionalist Deobandi and Barelvi Ulama and the
Islamic Fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami, whose beliefs and creeds
are quite incompatible with each other. We may also mention two
others, namely the Ahl-i-Hadith who deny the validity of the four
medieval schools of Islam and insist on a literal application of the
Qur'an and Hadith and the Ahl-i-Qur'an who go even further in
demanding absolute reliance only on the Qur'an, considering
reliability of Hadith, transmitted through fallible human channels,
also to be precarious. Each declares the others to be kafirs or
infidels. Summing up evidence taken from all major religious
groups, a high level judicial Committee of Inquiry (into sectarian
riots in 1953) headed by the country's two most eminent judges
concluded as follows: 'The net result of all this is that neither
Shi'as nor Sunnis, nor Deobandis nor Ahl-i-Hadith nor Barelvis
are Muslims and any change from one view to the other must be
accompanied in an Islamic State with the penalty of death, if the
State is in the hands of the party which considers the others to be
kafirs.' 12

Traditionalist Islam: the ulama- 'Deobandi' and Barelvi

The 'ulama' (plural of alim, a man of- religious - learning) is a

grandiose term, which is often used quite loosely, as for example
in the results of a survey recently published by the Government of
Pakistan which finds the vast majority of them to be barely
Hamza Alavi 81

literate. The 'ulama', properly so designated, however, are those

who have been educated at a religious seminary and have gone
through the Dars-e-Nizami, a syllabus that was laid down in
medieval India and has hardly changed. Generally, they have little
knowledge of the world that they live in, nor even perhaps of the
world of Islam except for myths and legends. They inhabit little
temples of their own uncomprehending and enclosed minds in
which they intone slogans, petrified words and dogmas. Affairs of
state and society are, generally, beyond their narrowed vision.
There are only a few amongst them who have had the benefit of
some tolerable education and who, in their own ways, try to follow
current affairs.
The ulama of the Sunni Hanafi Mazhab, as mentioned above,
are themselves divided into warring groups of whom the two main
are popularly known as the 'Deobandis', after the great seminary
at Deoband, and 'Barelvis', after the town of Bareilly in the UP,
which was the seat of their mentor, Maulana Ahmad Raza Khan
Barelvi. Deobandis and Barelvis differ in every respect, by virtue
of their different doctrinal positions, the different classes (and
regions) amongst whom they have influence and their different
political stances. The hallmark of Deobandi ulama in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was their unremitting
anti-colonialism. Barelvi ulama and pirs, unlike the Deobandis,
were not involved in anti-colonial ideology and struggle. On the
contrary, most of them, with few exceptions, supported the col-
onial regime and, were in turn, favoured by it.

The 'Deobandi' ulama

It took the Deobandi ulama many decades of British rule before

they began to show their eventual deep resentment against it. One
should add, parenthetically, that the label 'Deobandi' is not wholly
appropriate here, except for brevity, for the eponymous Dar-ul-
Uloom at Deoband was not founded until1867. Very few of these
worthies played a part in the Wahabi movement of the early
nineteenth century against colonial rule, with which they are often
associated, which was led by men of the sword, the last defenders
of Indian feudalism, rather than dispensers of law. Be that as it
may, the belated hostility of these ulama to British rule was
derived from changes that were being brought about during the
82 Pakistan and Islam: Ethnicity and Ideology

middle decades of the nineteenth century by the colonial state,

that directly impinged upon their lives and livelihood. There were
three contexts in which the changes affected them. Firstly, in
pre-colonial India Muslim ulama and Hindu pandits played a
central role in the judicial system and held lucrative and influential
positions. That continued in the early years of colonial rule. But
soon a new legal system was being established to meet the new
needs of the expanding colonial capitalist economy. The old feudal
dispensations were no longer appropriate. Along with the new
laws and new types of courts to adjudicate them, a new class of
English-educated lawyers and judges took over from the ulama
who were pushed out of their high status and lucrative jobs.
Secondly, the ulama were also being pushed out of the educational
system. That process was a little slower, though that was not
because the colonial regime spared any efforts to speed it up.
Indian clerks were needed who would be educated along lines that
would prepare them for service in the apparatus of colonial
government. The traditional schools run by ulamas (and Hindu
pandits), with their emphasis on classical learning, Arabic, Persian
and Sanskrit, were no longer suited to that purpose. They were
replaced by new anglo-vernacular schools, with the active sponsor-
ship and support from the colonial state. The hostility of the ulama
to the colonial regime no doubt owed much to these bread-and-
butter questions, although it was expressed and legitimised in
terms of moral outrage. A third factor underlying the anti-
colonialism of the ulama was the plight of Indian weavers, the
julahas, who were their most fervent followers. Indian weavers,
once the most prosperous of the Indian artisan classes, were
devasted by the colonial impact and consequent destruction of
Indian textile manufacturing. Julahas were therefore amongst the
most embittered opponents of colonialism. They became ex-
tremely bigoted and developed an uncompromising attitude towards
the West. The ulama's outlook reflected that also.
All these factors bound the ulama to the Indian nationalist
cause. They never argued for the setting up of an 'Islamic' state
nor a Muslim state. Quite the contrary: they called upon Muslims
to join hands with their Hindu brothers in the patriotic cause
against foreign rule. To rationalise that position they put forward a
theory that constituted an essentially secular public philosophy.
They separated the domain of faith, as a private domain, from the
Hamza Alavi 83

public domain of politics and government. This was formulated

quite explicitly by Maulana Hasan Ahmad Madani of Deoband
who argued that
(i) faith was universal and could not be contained within national
boundaries, but
(ii) nationality was a matter of geography and Muslims were
bound to the nation of their birth by obligations of loyalty along
with their non-Muslim fellow citizens.
They would live together in harmony in independent India which,
although not dar-ul-Islam, under Muslim rule, would be dar-ul-
amn, the land of peace, where Muslims would be guaranteed
freedom to practice their faith, where it would be the duty of
Muslims to live as loyal and law abiding citizens. It was the duty of
the Muslim in India to fight with a sense of dedication for the
freedom and independence of his country quite as much as he was
obliged to fight for the liberty of his conscience and the sanctity of
his faith. The political philosophy of the ulama was a peculiar
amalgam of pan-Islamic ideas and Indian nationalist ideas which
were fused in their anti-imperialism. 13
This contradictory amalgam of ideas came together in the Khila-
fat Movement (1919-23) in the aftermath of the First World War,
which was the climactic moment in the political struggles of the
Deobandi ulama. The aim of the movement was to resist the
liquidation of the Ottoman Empire and the office of the Ottoman
Caliph. It was a bizarre movement of religious obscurantism that
unleashed rabid and atavistic passions among Indian Muslims. It
was strongly disapproved of by Jinnah. But, ironically, it was
powerfully backed by Gandhi, the wordly-wise leader of secular
Indian Nationalism, notwithstanding the fact that it ran counter to
the aspirations of Turkish and Arab nationalism! It was Gandhi's
intervention and organisational genius, and the resources of the
Congress Party, that transformed a relatively minor movement
into a mass phenomenon. It was a cynical tactical political move
that promised to isolate the Muslim salariat leadership from Mus-
lim masses by arousing their fanatical passions behind a hopeless
and anachronistic cause. The Muslim League was eclipsed; it was
virtually suspended and did not meet as a body between 1919 and
1924. Gandhi had achieved his purpose. In 1919, under the leader-
ship of Deoband and in the wake of the Khilafat movement, the
84 Pakistan and Islam: Ethnicity and Ideology

Jamiat-ul-Ulama-e-Hind was formed as the political organisation

of the ulama. It was during that movement, that they made their
biggest, though somewhat brief, impact on the Indian political
scene. But they left behind a bitter legacy of narrow communalism
especially amongst some sections of the Muslim urban, subordi-
nate classes. In the late 1940s the Muslim League made great
efforts to win over the ulama to the Pakistan cause. They eventu-
ally succeeded in November 1945, when Pakistan was already in
prospect, in winning over a breakaway group from the Jamiat-ul-
Ulama-e-Hind to form the Jamiat-ul-Ulama-e-Islam which has
established itself as a political party in Pakistan.

Barelvi ulama and pirs

In contrast to the Deobandi ulama, Barelvis profess a populist

Islam, more infused with superstition, and also syncretism, that
make up the religious beliefs of the peasantry. The Barelvi version
of Islam emphasises belief in miracles and and powers of saints and
pirs (mashaikh), worship at shrines and the dispensing of amulets
and charms, which are all condemned by Deobandis as un-Islamic,
Deobandis and Barelvis detest each other and much sectarian
conflict consists of fights between the two.
Pirs or sufi shaikhs, play an important part in the religious life of
the peasantry. Barelvi Islam is closely tied to devotion to pirs and
belief in their powers of intercession (wasilah), whereas Deoban-
dis emphasise personal redemption by rigorous performance of
religious ritual and avoidance of sin. However, in the course of
extended research in Punjab villages I found that the peasant
makes a clear distinction between the powers of the spirit of dead
pirs and those of living pirs. He goes to shrines of dead pirs and
prays for his intercession for a variety of purposes. He believes
that the spirit of the dead pir can hear him so that he communi-
cates with him directly and has no need for intermediaries. He may
show some deterrence but not too much reverence for the Sajjada
Nashins, the guardians of the shrines, who are usually descendants
of the dead saint. The Sajjada Nashins are credited by scholars
with having spiritual powers. But the peasant himself does not
seem to recognise that. Propositions in the literature about the
powers of the Sajjada Nashins over the peasant, 14 not least in the
Hamza Alavi 85

political arena, are a myth which cannot survive close scrutiny in

the light of actual observation of what goes on. Where Sajjada
Nashins do play a role in local level politics, as they often do, they
do so by virtue of their rather more material powers as landowners
rather than some spiritual hold that they are presumed to have
over the peasants.
Living pirs fall into two categories. Firstly there are pirs as petty
practitioners, dealers in miracles and magic, at a price. They
provide amulets or anointed oil to protect the peasant from evil, or
specific remedies which he buys from them. Such pirs can make
barren wombs fertile, or ease the pain of incurable disease, and so
on. They take their lucrative business seriously and avoid getting
involved in politics for, given the factional division of local level
politics, they would run the risk of losing half their clientele if they
were to get politically involved. During my period of fieldwork in
Punjab villages I came across only one solitary case where such a
pir did intervene in politics, due to some exceptional circum-
stances. He declared that as a man of God politics was not a matter
that he would care to get involved in. But he was also able to
invoke some high moral principles to explain why on that particu-
lar occasion he was compelled to do so. In the event his interven-
tion was totally unsuccessful. Everyone (including the pir himself)
could see who, in the event, were those that disobeyed him. The
dissident group, in explaining their behaviour to me, made a
distinction between the spiritual domain in which the pir had
powers and the wordly domain in which he did not, so that they
were not obliged to follow the pir's call in a matter which should
not concern him.
Secondly there are pirs of an altogether different kind who
operate on a much higher level. Their relationship with peasants is
not a direct one based on 'spiritual powers' but is rather a me-
diated one, through landlords and local faction leaders who con-
trol the peasantry politically. Such pirs have mureeds or disciples,
who take an oath of allegiance (bai'a, or, in Punjabi, bait) to the
pir. At the core of such pir's coterie of mureeds are powerful
landlords, village-level faction leaders, and not least government
officials, who together constitute a freemasonry exchanging
patronage and favours, which is tightly organised and controlled
by the pir. They operate with great effect in the political arena, as
well as in the dispensing of government patronage and favours.
86 Pakistan and Islam: Ethnicity and Ideology

Their mutual bonds are expressed in the language of kinship and

the mureeds consider each other pirbhais, or pir-brothers. The pir
himself, being at the centre of such a structure of 'generalised
reciprocity' wields considerable power. But that is not direct
power over the peasantry and it has little to do with religious
beliefs of the peasantry. It is a myth to suppose that such pirs, by
virtue of charismatic power, have political authority over the
peasants in general, although where their landlords are mureeds
pirs may indirectly control peasant followers in the political arena.
In most cases such pirs are big and powerful landowners in their
own right and control their own peasants. Political recruitment of
peasants by such pirs therefore takes place on the basis of dis-
tinctly non-spiritual powers. 15

Deobandi and Barelvi ulama in Pakistan

Historically, Deobandis have tended to be mainly urban and from

the middle and upper strata of society, whereas Barelvi influence
has been mainly in rural areas, with a populist appeal. This has
changed somewhat in recent decades, for Barelvi influence has
extended to towns and cities, amongst the lumpenproletariat
(peasants in cities) and an insecure urban petty bourgeoisie. Tradi-
tionally Barelvi influence has been weaker in the UP (with the
exception perhaps of the peasantry of South-Western UP) than in
the Punjab and to some degree in Sind. On the other hand the
main base of Deobandis was in the UP especially among urban
Muslims, who are the muhajirs (refugees from India), in Pakistan.
As an unmerited legacy of the Wahabi movement they are also
well entrenched amongst Pathans of the Sarhad (the NWFP) and
northern (Pushtun) districts of Baluchistan. That influence now
extends to Pathan workers and lumpenproletariat in Pakistan's
cities, especially in Karachi. These groups are their storm-troopers
in sectarian riots against Shi'as and Barelvis.
In Pakistan both Deobandis and Barelvis have organised them-
selves as political parties, the former as the Jamiat-ul-Ulama-e-
Islam (JUI) founded in November 1945 and the latter as the
Jamiat-ul-Ulama-e-Pakistan (JUP) which was founded in 1948.
The political influence of each is much more limited than their
sectarian following. In Pakistan's first General Election in 1970 the
Hamza Alavi 87

JUI won only seven seats (out of a total of 138 for West Pakistan).
Not surprisingly six of these were from Sarhad and one from a
Pushtun constituency of Baluchistan. The JUP too won seven
seats, all from West Pakistan, of which four were from Punjab and
three from Sind, one of which was from the city of Karachi. 16 In
both cases the rural seats were won not so much on the strength of
religious commitment to the Party concerned but rather because
the JUI candidates were allied to influential tribal leaders, whereas
in the case of the JUP they relied on powerful landlords and pirs.
Before we leave the ulama, we must take note of their position
(both Deobandi and Barelvi) on a doctrinal point which is pivotal
in the political debate between them and the Islamic fundamental-
ists on the one hand and Islamic modernists on the other hand.
That is the concept of ijtihad or interpretative development of
doctrine in keeping with the spirit of Islam, on issues that cannot
be decided by direct applicability of injunctions of the Qur'an or
Hadith, or a solution offered by other prescribed rules. Ijtihad is
the final remedy and there are recognised methods by which it may
be accomplished. The traditionalist ulama will not accept ijtihad.
For them the doctrine, formulated by the ninth century AD,
consisting of the teachings of the four orthodox Sunni schools,
their received tradition, is fixed for eternity. Islamic modernists
and Islamic fundamentalists each reject this traditionalist view of
the immutability and rigidity of the doctrine of the faith, the
principle of taqlid, or doctrinal conformity that the ulama consider
to be fundamental. They each insist on both the possibility and the
necessity of ijtihad, to revivify Islam in keeping with new questions
and issues that arise with new conditions. Their different political
positions turn on their different solutions to the question of ijtihad.

Religious reform movements in India: background to Islamic

modernism

The colonial restructuration of India's political system shifted the

centre of gravity of status and influence in Indian society from the
landed gentry to the emerging salariat, members of the colonial
bureaucratised state. This newly emerging class had different
needs and outlook from those of pre-colonial upper classes. They
began to develop a new life style and new ways and these found
88 Pakistan and Islam: Ethnicity and Ideology

expression in new ideas. There was a 'Hindu Renaissance' which

was followed, after an interval of a few decades by a 'Muslim
Renaissance'. This time-lag is usually explained by an assumption
of Muslim 'backwardness', attributed to a variety of factors. A
more plausible explanation may lie in the fact that in places where
the colonial transformation first got under way, namely the initial
nodal points of colonial rule in Bengal, Bombay and Madras, the
Muslim component of the new salariat was negligible in size and it
was much later that these changes reached the UP, the heartland
of the Muslim salariat. There Muslims were far from backward;
while their proportion in the population was quite small, they held
a preponderant position in the salariat. Not surprisingly it was in
the UP where 'Muslim Renaissance' soon got under way.
The Hindu Renaissance in India began with the Brahmo Samaj
movement in the 1830s in Bengal, under the intellectual leadership
of Raja Ram Mohan Roy. There were parallel movements in the
other two major centres of colonialism in India, namely the Vedic
Samaj in Madras and the Prarthna Samaj in Bombay. Some social
anthropologists have misconceived the nature and purport of this
movement and speak of it as 'an intellectual nativistic revival' and
saying, as Maloney does, that 'Ram Mohan Roy tried to recover
and rationalise the spiritual essence of Hinduism' Y Such a view,
one would suggest, fails to appreciate the rather more positive and
forward-looking rather than nostalgic concerns of these move-
ments. They attempted to articulate quite new ideas though in the
idiom of the established religion.
An opposite kind of misconception about these movements, far
more common, is that they simply packaged ideas imported from
Europe in locally made boxes; that these are examples of mere
reflection of Western ideas, a borrowing and mechanical trans-
mission from one culture to another. Such a view seems plausible,
for liberal ideas were in the ascendancy in the colonial metropolis,
though it would be difficult to accuse British colonial officials of
being the bearers of liberal ideas which they did not consider
suited to India. The diffusionist theory of transmission of Western
ideas to the colonised society fails to account for the fact that the
ideas that were locally produced by intellectuals of the 'Hindu
Renaissance' and the 'Muslim Renaissance' in India bore clearly
the stamp of India's colonial situation and the peculiar character of
its social structure. Their 'liberalism' was not that (at least for-
Hamza Alavi 89

mally) of free and equal individuals nor of laissez faire, the slogans
of triumphant capitalism in England. It would be more accurate to
describe these ideas as rationalism. David Kopf, a perceptive
scholar, referring to these movements, writes: 'Such radical no-
tions as secularism, humanism and rationalism had to be rein-
terpreted to fit the Indian situation'. He points out that the new
Indian classes produced a new ideology to suit their own circum-
stances and needs. These movements repudiated tyrannies of
religious orthodoxy from sources within their own tradition. 18

Islamic modernism: Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and Mohammad

Iqbal

The 'Hindu Renaissance' was followed by 'Muslim Renaissance'

which was pre-figured by writers and poets such as Mirza Ghalib
and, later, articulated most clearly and forcefully by Sir Syed
Ahmad Khan, the most outstanding figure of the 'Muslim Renais-
sance'. Sir Syed Ahmad was a very effective practical organiser as
well as a theoretician and major intellectual figure. His role and
mission in life was to facilitate the transition of upper-class UP
Muslims into the colonial salariat and to encourage them therefore
to move out of the traditional system of education, which was
controlled by the backward-looking ulama, and instead take to
English and Western education. His own personal life reflects such
a transition, of a member of the old UP aristocracy to the new
salariat. He was from a noble family with long connections with
Moghul Imperial rule, now less prosperous. He joined the service
of the East India Company, against the wishes of his family, and
rose to be a munsif, or sub-judge, which was as high a position in
the colonial state apparatus as an Indian could aspire to at the
time. He soon became the leading pioneer of a new rationalist
public philosophy that was expressed in the idiom of Islam. He was
much attacked and reviled by the ulama. Embroidered tales of his
persecution by bigots have become a part of the mythology of the
Muslim salariat.
It is not too surprising that Sir Syed Ahmad, the father of
Islamic modernism was directly influenced by Raja Ram Mohan
Roy, the father of the Hindu Renaissance. As an impressionable
young man Sir Syed Ahmad met Roy, who was on a visit to the
90 Pakistan and Islam: Ethnicity and Ideology

Moghul court in 1831. He gave much prominence to an account of

Roy's visit in his book Sirat-e-Faridiyah. A leading scholar on the
life and work of Sir Syed Ahmad is of the opinion that 'The
personality and work of Ram Mohan Roy were a formative influ-
ence in Sayyid Ahmad Khan's life'. 19 1t is no accident that parallel
religious reform movements arose in different parts of India both
amongst Hindus and Muslims during the mid-nineteenth century
(as well as a Buddhist religious reform movement in Sri Lanka),
for they all reflected similar social developments, the emergence of
different sections of the same class, the new salariat. It might be
more illuminating to think of them therefore as different ethnic
components of a single class and the Hindu and Muslim reform
movements as different strands of a single intellectual movement,
expressing rationalist ideologies and a commitment to a scientific
outlook of the newly emerging Hindu and Muslim salariats, in
their respective religious idioms.
Sir Syed Ahmad's political philosophy, as appropriate to the
concerns of the emerging Muslim salariat in the UP, was cast in
ethnic terms (rather than 'communal', which is a pejorative term)
striving for numerical equality of Muslim representation in the
services with Hindus, although in the UP Muslims were only about
13 per cent of the population. He argued that Muslims, as a
community, were entitled to an equal share because they made up
for their lack of overall numbers by their preponderence amongst
the upper classes. That view did not entail hostility towards Hin-
dus as such, nor was it a question of religion. The issue was that of
equating the two communities, irrespective of their relative size
and demanding an equal share for each. This was nicely expressed
in his much quoted statement that India was a bride adorned by
Hindus and Muslims who were her two beautiful eyes. The bride
would be disfigured if the two eyes were not equal.
Sir Syed Ahmad did not argue for a restoration of Muslim
power, much less an Islamic state. Nor did he want independence
or democracy. His hopes were pinned, rather, on an indefinite
continuation of British rule for that, in his eyes, was the only
impartial guarantee of protection of Muslim interests which lay in
their securing equality with Hindus within the Indian salariat. He
was very suspicious of the Indian National Congress, and feared
that independence and democracy would mean that Hindus would
overwhelm the small numbers of ashraf Muslims, Muslims of the
Hamza Alavi 91

upper classes, who would then have no one to protect them. It is

clear from this that Sir Syed Ahmad's political horizons were
defined by the boundaries of the UP and he did not extend the
logic of his argument to Muslim majority provinces where it could
be inverted.
Education was the sovereign remedy for reversing the decline of
(the UP upper-class) Muslim society. The main thrust of Sir Syed
Ahmad's writing and indefatigable organisational activity there-
fore lay in the pursuit of modern education for Muslims. He
founded the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh in
1877 which later became the famous Aligarh Muslim University,
the heart of Muslim Nationalism in India. In other parts of India
too, Muslim nationalists were preoccupied with the task of pro-
motion of the new education, setting up educational movements
and educational institutions for Muslims.
Sir Syed Ahmad had to fight the bigoted ulama at all levels, not
least on their own ground of theology. His writings on religion
were prolific and reflected a high level of scholarship. Without
going into details of particular controversies one particular issue
can be singled out. This was the burden of the received and
congealed orthodoxy, the immutable Traditions of the Four Sunni
schools, in the name of which the ulama fought him. His counter-
attack was simplicity itself, the wielding of 'Occam's Razor'. He
wiped the slate clean of the hidebound traditions of the four
schools as handed down by the ulama over ten centuries, by
declaring that they had become cluttered with accretions of bid' at
('innovations'), in other words, misconceptions and misinter-
pretations. 20 The only alternative was to go back to the source, the
Qur'an and the Hadith of the Prophet. By that bold stroke he
swept orthodoxy out of the way and gave himself freedom to write
on the cleaned slate a message of a rationalist social philosophy,
invoking the fundamental sources of Islam.
Sir Syed Ahmad's work opened the way for a liberal reinter-
pretation of Islamic political philosophy by Mohammad Iqbal.
Iqbal attacked the dogma of the traditionalist ulama that the
received doctrine was immutable. He passionately attacked the
ulama's commitment to the principle of taqlid, or doctrinal
conformity, which he argued had ossified Islam and made it
remote from realities of the contemporary world. That was the
root cause of the present decline of Muslims. To revitalise Muslim
92 Pakistan and Islam: Ethnicity and Ideology

society, ijtihad had to be reinstated. 21 That could be done through

ijma, or consensus of the community, which he considered to be
'The third source of Mohammedan Law [after the Qur'an and
Hadith of the Prophet] ... which is in my opinion perhaps the
most important legal notion in Islam'. 22 He argued further that
'The transfer of ijtihad from individual representatives of schools
to a legislative assembly ... is the only possible form ijma can
take in modern times. m Iqbal was quite as hostile to the decadent
and obscurantist views of the ulama as they were to his. Referring
to provisions of the Persian Constitution of 1906 he repudiated as
'dangerous' the idea of giving powers to the ulama to supervise
legislative activity. 'The only effective remedy for the possibilities
of erroneous interpretations is to reform the present system of
legal education,' he added. 24 By that formula, of securing ijma
through a legislative body, he legitimised the liberal principle of
representative self-government, the system that the political
leadership of the professionals and the salariat (though not necess-
arily its bureaucratic and military components) best understood
and wanted.

Islamic fundamentalism

The Islamic traditionalism of the ulama and Islamic modernism of

Sir Syed and Mohammad Iqbal as I have suggested, were each
identified with certain social classes whose concerns and aspir-
ations they expressed. The social roots of the Islamic fundamen-
talism of the Jamaat-e-Islami cannot be so clearly identified. It
originated entirely as an ideological movement and its appeal was
initially limited to a small number of dedicated followers whom it
offered a dream of a utopian future. It drew to itself a small band
of idealists in search of a better society. Many of them were
quickly disenchanted and left the Party, often joining left-wing
groups and organisations. Their numbers and weight in that party
have dwindled steadily. The Jamaat was soon to get generous
support from powerful vested interests for whom it began to serve
a political purpose. That changed its character radically.
The Jamaat-e-Islami was founded in 1941 by Maulana Maududi,
a scholar-journalist with a classical education. Maududi was
Hamza Alavi 93

an opponent of Muslim nationalism and the Pakistan movement.

But when Pakistan was created he found it prudent to migrate to
Pakistan. With that his political philosophy went through a radical
transformation. Maududi's opposition to the Pakistan movement
was on the ground that the true vocation of an Islamic militant was
a proselytising one, that Islam was a universal religion that knew
of no national boundaries. After the creation of Pakistan, Mau-
dudi revised the conception of his mission and that of the rationale
of the Pakistan movement. He now argued that the sole object of
the creation of Pakistan was to establish an Islamic state and that it
was his Party alone which possessed a true understanding of Islam
and commitment to bring that about.
To build an Islamic state the existing state must first be captured
and brought under the control of those who, by Maududi's defi-
nition, were the only true bearers of militant and authentic Islam,
namely himself and his Party. Unlike the ulama, control of the
state apparatus was therefore his first priority. His conception of
the Islamic state was a strongly centralised one, run on authori-
tarian lines, with the help of a strong, effective and dedicated
army, under the authority of the Commander of the Faithful.
Democracy was despised, for it gave power to the ignorant and
those whose commitment, and understanding, of the faith could be
doubtful. The onus lay therefore on his Party and on himself as its
Guide and Leader, to take Muslim society forward to its true
destiny. His Party's constitution illustrates this authoritarian phil-
osophy, for it demands unquestioning and total obedience from
members of the Party to its Amir, its Supreme Head, namely
himself. His ideas, justifying dictatorship in the name of Islam
have, not surprisingly, found much favour with Pakistan's authori-
tarian military rulers.
The Jamaat is not a mass party but one with selected cadre
members. Because of its shallow roots in society, the Jamaat has
been quite ineffective as a political party. The full extent of its
isolation from popular support was brought home recently to the
Jamaat as well as its surprised opponents, by its debikle in the
controlled elections staged by the Zia regime in January 1985, for
conditions for its electoral success could not have been made more
favourable. All opposition parties were under a ban and their
leaders and local activists were in prison or in exile. The field was
94 Pakistan and Islam: Ethnicity and Ideology

therefore clear for the Jamaat to make a clean sweep of it. But it
was routed completely.
The Jamaat's electoral bankruptcy ought not to lead anyone into
underestimating its power and influence in today's Pakistan, which
are derived primarily from its symbiotic relationship with
the ruling regime. It tends to function as a pressure group rather
than a political party and uses its influence with government
agencies and power to blackmail and terrorise individuals to
achieve its objectives. The Jamaat has acquired a firm grip over
the universities and the entire educational system, its prime objec-
tive. It has also acquired a powerful influence on the government-
owned and controlled broadcasting media. Its tentacles are
believed to extend everywhere so that its opponents live in fear.
The party, in turn, enjoys enormous capacity of patronage and
thereby attracts support from all kinds of opportunists and career-
ists, which further reinforces its influence within the apparatus of
the government and the army quite apart from its influence di-
rectly at the top.
After the Partition the Jamaat attracted a new following among
Urdu-speaking refugees from India, the muhajirs, who felt insecure
and bitter about India, because of their suffering in the course of
their enforced migration. They responded readily to the chauvin-
istic rhetoric of the Jamaat. But, over the years, this support has
been withering away. In part this is because muhajirs who have
settled in the interior of Sind have developed linkages with the
Sindhi community, being traders and professionals who serve
Sindhi peasants and landlords. They have become the 'New Sind-
his', and sympathise with the Sindhi movement which has got
under way quite powerfully in recent years. They dislike the
anti-democratic support by the Jamaat of the repression let loose
by the military regime against Sindhi nationalism. Even in big
cities, like Karachi, where muhajir support for Sindhis is much
less, there are elements within the Jamaat, like Professor Ghafoor
Ahmad of Karachi and Jan Mohammad Abbasi, who are critical of
their party's support of the martial law regime because that has
been losing the Jamaat popular support.
The leadership of the Jamaat has passed into non-ideologist
hands, although exploitation of their ideology remains their princi-
pal political weapon. Its bosses seem to feel that its diminishing
support from its meagre popular base, mostly amongst the muha-
Hamza Alavi 95

jirs is of less consequence than the support that it is deriving from

powerful classes in Pakistan for whom its value lies in its ability to
bludgeon radical and left-wing groups, very often literally so. The
J amaat receives generous donations from big businessmen and
landlords and is believed to be a recipient of generous donations
from the Americans and from potentates in the Middle East. But
an excess of money and, for that matter, influence, has also
brought problems. New vested interests have grown up in the
Party bureaucracy and its old ideological wing, in decline, resents
this. There is a considerable tension (to say the least) between the
ideologists in the Party, mainly Karachi based, and those whose
political ambitions lie in what they can get from the military
regime. This latter consists mainly of the Punjab-based, so-called
'pragmatic' wing of the Jamaat, led by Mian Tufail Mohammed,
the Amir of the Jamaat and successor of Maududi. However, to
retrieve its standing amongst the people the Party has begun to
voice carefully measured criticism of the military regime, to dis-
tance itself from it. There is also a third element in the Party,
namely armed thugs, an element that was reinforced by the re-
patriation from East Pakistan of members of Al-Badar and As-
Shams, its fascist paramilitary organisations, after the liberation of
Bangladesh. They go about beating up opponents and breaking-up
meetings. These elements are especially associated with the
Islami-Jamiyat-e- Tulaba, the student organisation of the Jamaat,
which maintains an armed presence on university campuses.
To end our account of the Jamaat-e-Islami, we return to the
central doctrinal issue of ijtihad, or interpretative development of
doctrine, around which the political debate about the Islamic state
has turned. The Jamaat stands for ijtihad, contrary to the tra-
ditionalist ulama position, but at the same time derides the method
proposed by the modernist Iqbal for achieving it under contempor-
ary conditions, by legitimating representative democracy in the
name of ijma. Maududi contends against this that this could not
lead to a reliable interpretation of Islam, for the voters may not be
Muslim and even if they are, they may not have a 'true under-
standing' of Islam, such as only Maududi and his followers have.
Iqbal's exhortation to educate the people was no solution either.
Scholarship was no guarantee, for even the ulama were misled and
ignorant.
96 Pakistan and Islam: Ethnicity and Ideology

The logic of that argument, leads Maududi to an authoritarian

solution, for by his lights there is only one true and reliable
interpretation of Islam and Maududi and his Jamaat are the
custodians of that true knowledge. They are a gifted and select
elite, and amongst them only its great leader knows what Islam is.
'According to Maududi', says K. K. Aziz,

there is always a person (Mizaj Shanas-i Rasool) who alone is

competent to decide what the Holy Prophet would have done in
a given situation if he were alive .... He left no doubt in the
minds of his followers that he was the only candidate for this
supreme pontifical office. And his chief lieutenant, Maulana
Islahi declared before the Punjab Disturbances Inquiry Com-
mittee that he wholeheartedly and unreservedly accepted
Maududi as the Mizaj Shanas-i Rasool. 25

As far as the Jamaat claims and ideology are concerned, there can
be no objective or logical criteria by which their validity can be
settled. They can be accepted only as an act of faith, by a religious
conversion in effect, to the Maududi sect, which may therefore be
properly regarded to be yet another sect of Islam which, like every
sect, claims to be the only true one.
Paradoxically Maududi's elitism itself militates against a prin-
ciple which would be regarded as a central tenet of Islam, namely
that ijtihad by ijma, the consensus of the community, has pre-
cedence over ijtihad by the alim, the man of religious learning,
because an individual, however learned he may be, is fallible, but
Allah in his mercy would not allow his community collectively to
go in error. This has always been recognised as the principle of
democracy in Islam. Maududi's argument contradicts that. The
Jamaat-e-Islami ideology while insisting on ijtihad in effect rejects
ijma.
It must be said that by virtue of reinterpretation of Islam to suit
the needs of the feudal Abbasid empire in the eighth century AD,
the concept of ijma was narrowed down to that of a consensus
between 'qualified' scholars, which took away the power from the
community and abolished its power of representation in the state.
But even this narrowed conception contradicts Maududi's claim,
quite apart from the impossibility of such a 'consensus' of scholars
Hamza Alavi 97

in a world in which those of different sectarian persuasions call

each other kafirs. So on doctrinal grounds we can see that there
are contradictions underlying every position. There is no way of
resolving it except by either imposing one sectarian position over
all the others or by accepting a secular conception of the political
process and the state so that every individual, whatever his or her
religious persuasion may be, would be free to participate in the
democratic process, following his or her own private faith and
conscience, to shape policies of the state. We will refrain from
pursuing this arcane and insoluble debate any further, for it cannot
be resolved by logic.

Secular Muslim nationalism - Jinnah

Most of the salariat in fact, implicitly or explicitly, espoused a

secular conception of being part of a Muslim nation. Jinnah, their
spokesman, was always quite explicit about it and on this issue he
put his position quite unambiguously. In recent years there has
been a systematic attempt by Pakistan's captive media to misrep-
resent Jinnah on this point and they are trying hard to build up an
image of the Father of the Nation as a religious bigot. The reality
was very different. Jinnah was a member of cosmopolitan Bombay
society, a close colleague and friend of Sir Pherozeshah Mehta, a
Parsi Indian nationalist and, along with M. K. Gandhi, a protege
and close friend of G. K. Gokhale, the great Indian liberal leader.
Jinnah began as an active member of the Congress Party. He was
not among the founders of the Muslim League in 1907. He joined
it much later, in 1913, at the invitation of Muslim League leaders,
by which time the Congress and the Muslim League were already
drawing steadily closer together, holding their annual conferences
at the same time and in the same place. The high point of that
rapprochement was the Lucknow Pact of 1916 between the Con-
gress and the League. Ironically, the basis of this growing unity
was destroyed by a decision to pander to Muslim bigotry not by the
League but by the Congress, much to the disgust and resentment
of the league leadership. This was by virtue of Gandhi's decision to
back fanatical Muslim ulama in launching the Khilafat movement
(1919-23). If there had been any intention to drive a wedge
98 Pakistan and Islam: Ethnicity and Ideology

between the secular-minded Muslim salariat and the Muslim

masses and to shift leadership in the direction of the obscurantist
ulama, the Congress could not have taken up a more potent issue.
It is true that it was Muslim notables, so-called 'feudals', who
presided over the birth of the Muslim League in December 1906 at
Dacca. This has misled too many historians about the class charac-
ter of the Muslim League. The fact of the matter is that the Muslim
League, soon after its initiation by Muslim notables, was taken
over by the Muslim salariat. At the initial meeting at Dacca two
leading lights of Aligarh, Mohsin-ul Mulk and Viqar-ul Mulk,
were appointed as joint secretaries and two-fifths of the Pro-
visional Committee were from the UP. These were as yet 'men of
property and influence' although quite committed to the salariat
cause. Later, by 1910, the leadership and control of the Muslim
League passed into the hands of men from a relatively more
modest background who have been described as 'men of progress-
ive tendencies', under the leadership of Wazir Hassan and others
like him, who were based at Lucknow. They pushed the Muslim
League in a new direction and sought co-operation with the larger
Indian nationalist movement and the Congress, provided Muslim
salariat rights were protected.
Jinnah himself was to be brought into the Muslim League by
these elements three years later. It would be a mistake to think that
the Muslim League was dominated and controlled by the so-called
'feudals' during the four decades after its inception. That is the
nub of a complicated story, of which a most perceptive account
will be found in Robinson's excellent study of the early Muslim
Movement in the UP. 26 Naturally, like all great political and social
movements, there are many different strands that are interwoven
in the tapestry of Muslim history in India during the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries. But its essential features were engraved
on the map of Indian politics by the aspirations and anxieties of the
Muslim salariat, the force behind Muslim nationalism.
A number of factors contributed to a new turn in the develop-
ment of Muslim politics in India by the first decade of this century.
The Muslim salariat was by now detached from its total reliance on
the goodwill and patronage of the colonial regime. It turned
towards its own self-reliant political organisation for which it
looked to Muslim professionals to provide political leadership.
That was prompted above all by the prospective constitutional
Hamza Alavi 99

changes that offered an opportunity and need for representation in

the state apparatus. It is not an accident that the Muslim salariat's
political organisation took shape in that decade. Nawab Salimullah
Khan's initiative and invitation to Dacca had merely provided an
opportunity and an occasion for that.
The Muslim salariat had begun to crystallise its political identity.
Its key objectives were, again, defined by the narrow perspectives
of the privileged UP Muslim salariat in the light of its sharply
deteriorating position relative to Hindus, whilst still remaining a
privileged minority. Its demands corresponded to the problems of
a group that felt itself to be beleaguered in a Muslim minority
province. They do not make too much sense in the context of
Muslim majority provinces. Their central demand was for a separ-
ate electorate for Muslims so that they may not be outvoted by the
overwhelming Hindu majority in the UP. Robinson sums up
developments in the first decade of the century as follows: 'By 1909
a Muslim identity was firmly established in Indian politics . . . [by
virtue of] the creation of a Muslim political organisation . . . [and]
the winning of separate Muslim electorate .... The creation of a
protected share of power for Muslims ... stimulated the further
development of Muslim politics. m Jinnah, who was brought into
the Muslim League in 1913, reassessed the situation and recog-
nised the value of an organised Muslim constituency and a role for
himself as a spokesman for Muslims but as yet within the Indian
nationalist movement. Robinson comments 'He brought to the
League leadership important connections with all India Congress
circles and the distinction of having been a close friend of Gokhale. ' 28
Jinnah eventually began to get disillusioned with the Congress
Party, from the 1920s, not because he was a Muslim communalist
but quite the reverse. It was the Congress, under Gandhi's leader-
ship, which had embarked upon a course that encouraged Muslim
fanaticism under the leadership of the ulama, by taking up the
cause of the Khilafat movement and giving it a thrust that it could
not have achieved without that support. Jinnah was quite outraged
by this cynical move. No greater disservice could have been done
to the cause of inter-communal harmony in India. Nothing that the
Muslim League ever did or wanted to do could have done more to
excite Muslim communalist passions and to evoke corresponding
responses from Hindus.
The failure to reach an accommodation with the Congress after
100 Pakistan and Islam: Ethnicity and Ideology

the 1937 elections finally forced Jinnah to reconsider his strategy.

So far the Muslim League's influence was limited to the salariat;
hence its relative ineffectiveness in elections in a society in which
landlords controlled the mainly rural vote. Jinnah decided now to
secure Muslim landlord support at any price and he soon set about
making deals with those of them who were in power in Muslim
majority provinces, persuading them to accept the Muslim League
label, even if it was to be only nominally. In return he gave them
carte blanche, and in effect surrendered the local Muslim League
organisations to them. Jinnah's objective in this was to secure at
least the formal position of the Muslim League as the nominally
'ruling Party' in Muslim majority provinces. This would legitimise
his claim that the Muslim League was the sole and legitimate
spokesman for the Muslims of India.
The alliance with the landed magnates did not deliver the
landowners into the hands of the Muslim League - quite the
reverse. It delivered the League into their hands. In the Punjab
there was a wide gulf between the urban Punjabi salariat and the
powerful landowners. In Sindh there was no ethnic Sindhi Muslim
salariat to speak of. In the alliance between the landed magnates
of the Punjab and Sindh and the Muslim salariat, it was the former
who were the senior partners, the holders of power. The alliance
was effected between the national leadership of the salariat,
Jinnah and the All India Muslim League and the landed magnates.
The local leadership of the salariat counted for little. The national
leadership of the Muslim League had something to offer to the
regional power-holders by way of ensuring that the post-
Independence government would not be in the hands of the
Congress Party (which was committed to land reform) but rather a
party that was dependent on them and under their control and
which would ensure their own survival as a class.
In contrast to the character of the alliance between the rural
magnates of Punjab and Sind and the All India Muslim League
during the Pakistan movement, the relationship between the
movements of the salariats of Bengal and Sindh in regional ethnic
movements that arose after Independence, was quite different in
character. That is because in both those cases there was an organic
alliance or bond between the respective salariats and the dominant
rural classes of these provinces, for the ethnic Bengali and Sindhi
salariats, respectively, were the sons of well-to-do peasants and
Hamza Alavi 101

landlords big and small of those provinces. Their interests were

linked through ties of kinship. Such organic ties are often over-
looked when questions of class formation and class alignment are
considered entirely in the abstract, and analytic divisions in society
are thought to imply the existence of the respective groups in
separate compartments. That is not always the case. Landlords
and well-off peasants who could give their sons a decent education
were concerned about their prospects for employment and ad-
vancement in government service. The motivations for the deci-
sion of landlords of Muslim majority provinces to back the Muslim
League in the late 1940s were quite different from those that
elicited powerful support from rural power-holders for the Bengali
and Sindhi movements later.
Jinnah looked upon the landed magnates, the political bosses of
the Muslim majority provinces, with contempt and dislike quite as
much as they in turn showed little inclination to allow him and the
central Muslim League leadership to encroach on their domains of
power. In Punjab the Jinnah-Sikander Pact of 1936 was the first of
these one-sided arrangements between the Unionist Party and the
Muslim League. The Unionist Party was an alliance of Muslim,
Hindu and Sikh landowners. In return for the Muslim Unionists'
nominal allegiance to the League it delivered the Punjab League
into the hands of the Unionists' leader, Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan.
The political cleavage in the Punjab was urban-rural and the rural
magnates had always shown contempt for the urban salariat, which
was the Muslim League's mainstay. The Unionist Party, especially
earlier under Sir Fazl-i-Husain, was determined to keep Punjab
politics 'non-communal'. Fazl-i-Husain's closest and most trusted
associate was Sir Chhotu Ram, a Hindu, another close associate
being Sir Sunder Singh Majithia, a Sikh landowner. Although he
was prepared to patronise members of the Muslim salariat, Sir
Fazl-i-Husain and his associates had no intention of letting the
urbanites, on whom they looked down with some disdain, en-
croach on their power. Iqbal complained of Sir Fazl-i-Husain's
anti-urban bias in a speech in 1935 and his associate Malik Barkat
Ali did so too; both were urban stalwarts of the Muslim League. 29
Later Iqbal was to protest repeatedly to Jinnah about his pact with
Sir Sikandar Hayat, Sir F'azl-i-Husain's successor. In a series of
letters in October and November 1937, Iqbal complained to
Jinnah that 'Sir Sikandar wants nothing less than complete control
102 Pakistan and Islam: Ethnicity and Ideology

of the League and the Provincial Parliamentary Board. ' 30 Jinnah

maintained a prudent silence over the matter and did not reply to
Iqbal's repeated letters. Having handed over the League to Sir
Sikandar Hayat Khan and the Unionists, there was little that he
could have said.
In Sindh the story was no different, for there the local base of
the Muslim salariat was narrower than that in the Punjab; it was
minute. The urban leadership of the Muslim League, mainly in
Karachi, was mainly ethnic non-Sindhi. The rural-based ethnic
Sindhi leadership was divided into warring factions led by Sir
Ghulam Hussain Hidayatullah and G. M. Syed. In terms of its
social composition Hidayatullah's faction was a replica of the
Punjab Unionist Party. Jinnah decided to put his bets on the
Hidayatullah faction, which was the more powerful; but it was
evidently an unpalatable decision. Jinnah confided his views about
his Party colleagues to Sir Hugh Dow, Governor of Sind (which
itself is an extraordinary reflection on Jinnah's relationship with
the servitors of Empire). Dow, in a secret letter to Wavell, the
Viceroy, reporting on political developments, wrote:

Jinnah made a prolonged stay in Karachi . . . and held pro-

longed conferences with the 'leaders' .... Jinnah dislikes them
all (he once told me that he could buy the lot of them for 5 lakhs
of rupees to which I replied that I could do it much cheaper) and
has been mainly concerned that the League ticket should go to
the man who was most likely to be returned, his previous and
subsequent loyalty to the League being a minor consideration. 31

All that Jinnah was looking for was pinning the Muslim League
label on the Provincial governments and little more.
It is not difficult to see the short-term advantages of this strategy
for Jinnah, for it legitimised his All-India position and strengthened
his bargaining position. The reason for the decision of the Provincial
magnates to accept the Muslim League label is less obvious. It was
not the vote-pulling power of the League, for it was the landed
magnates themselves who controlled the mainly rural vote. What
the League offered to the landed magnates of Punjab and Sindh is
best understood only if we consider the fundamental shift in the
long-term political prospects that began to be visible to the landed
magnates whose eyes were so far focused too narrowly on the
Hamza Alavi 103

provincial scene. With Independence in sight, they had to look

beyond their provincial horizons and some of them could see the
writing on the wall earlier than others. It was clear that it was only
a matter of time before colonial rule would end. With the depar-
ture of their colonial patrons they were faced with the prospects of
the rule of the Congress Party, with its commitment to land
reform. If they were to preserve their class position, the only
viable option for them was a government, at the centre, of the
Muslim League rather than the Congress. If that was to mean
Pakistan, so be it. Whatever form it took it would guarantee their
own survival, for the Muslim League was wholly dependent on
them. It was they who would wield power in any autonomous
regional grouping of Muslim majority provinces that would ensue.
It was not a question of ideology but clearly understood class
interest that lined them up behind the Muslim League. They were
unimpressed by Muslim League politics until the imminence of
Independence. Only at that juncture did they decide to jump on to
the Muslim League bandwagon and, in fact, took it over.
When the Pakistan slogan was raised Jinnah's opponents con-
tinually complained that he was refusing to specify precisely what
Pakistan was actually to be. As a seasoned negotiator evidently
Jinnah did not lay all his cards prematurely on the table. But it was
not difficult to see that what he was aiming for was a grouping of
Muslim majority provinces enjoying a degree of regional auton-
omy, possibly within an overall Indian Federal Union rather than
the Partition of India, especially if that was to entail carving up
Punjab and Bengal. That he was quite happy to accept Pakistan as
a regional grouping within an Indian federal union is testified by
his ready acceptance of the three-tier Cabinet Mission Plan which
offered just that in April 1946. It was the Congress who rejected
it. Such a solution, resulting in a weak centre, would have under-
mined a major objective of the Congress and the Indian bour-
geoisie, namely to embark on planned development of free India;
one may well conclude that India's progress in planned industrial
development has justified that strategic decision. For the Muslim
League, the federal union solution was particularly important for
the sake of the Muslims of the UP and the Muslim minority
provinces, for that would have established a link between them
and those in power in the Muslim majority regions within the
federal union. This 'reciprocal hostages' theory was based on the
104 Pakistan and Islam: Ethnicity and Ideology

idea that the fate of non-Muslims in the Muslim majority zone

would be a guarantee for their own protection in the other zone in
which they were in a minority. The issue revolved around the fate
of minority communities on either side. Furthermore, if only to
guarantee the safety and interests of the Muslims of the UP and
Bihar, who were the backbone of the Pakistan movement, Pakistan,
in whatever form, was not to be a theocracy.
Jinnah had consistently opposed theocratic ideas and influences
and never minced his words about his commitment to a secular
state. Speaking to students in Aligarh Muslim University, the
heart of the Muslim salariat, in February 1938, he declared: 'What
the League has done is to set you free from the reactionary
elements of Muslims and to create the opinion that those who play
their selfish game are traitors. It has certainly freed you from that
undesirable element of Maul vis and Maulanas [a derogatory refer-
ence to the ulama ]'. 32 He reiterated, time and again, that Pakistan
would be 'without any distinction of caste, creed or sect.' Ayesha
Jalal, in her excellent study of Jinnah's political role, records at
least two occasions on which Jinnah successfully resisted attempts
to commit the Muslim League to an 'Islamic Ideology'. 33 His
inaugural address to the Pakistan Constituent Assembly on
11 August 1947 was a clarion call for the establishment of Pakistan
as a secular state. From the principal forum of the new state he
declared:

You may belong to any religion or caste or creed - that has

nothing to do with the business of the state ... We are starting
with this fundamental principle, that we are all citizens of one
state . ... I think we should keep that in front of us as our idea
and you will find that in the course of time Hindus will cease to be
Hindus and Muslims will cease to be Muslims, not in the religious
sense because that is the personal faith of each individual but in
the political sense, as citizens of the state. 34

There could be no clearer statement of the secular principle as the

basis of Pakistan.
The true heirs in today's Pakistan of what the Pakistan ideology
really was, are the secularists, many of them practising Muslims,
who reject and repudiate the idea of exploitation of Islamic ideol-
ogy in pursuit of political ends. If Islamic modernism was the
Hamza Alavi 105

initial ideology of the emerging Muslim salariat, it has long ceased

to be a live intellectual movement and has been marginalised. It
exists in small and peripheral groupings such as the Tulu-e Islam
group led by Ghulam Ahmad Parvaiz. Many of the basic ideas of
Islamic modernism, have passed into conventional wisdom. In so
far as they still have currency, they are accommodated within
secular political attitudes. It may help to put things into perspec-
tive if we quote from an account by Rosenthal, a renowned Islamic
scholar, of his investigations in Pakistan, even though his report is
over twenty-two years old. He summed up his impressions of
attitudes in Pakistan with the words

On balance, I should say that among the academic youth there is

a minority in favour of an Islamic state in substance, not just in
name. The majority are divided in their allegiance to Islam from
personal faith to indifference and outright rejection as being out
of date and dividing men instead of unifying and leading them to
a world state. 35

More recently this issue has been dealt with sensitively and percep-
tively by Sibte Hassan in his influential book Naveed-e-Fikr, 36
where he arrives at similar conclusions.

Islam in Pakistan

Muslim ethnicity had outlived its original purpose when Pakistan

was created, for the 'Muslim' salariat, no longer stood in oppo-
sition to Hindus. Instead a new dominant ethnic group identified
itself, the ruling Punjabis. In turn, other sections of the once-
Muslim salariat now redefined their respective ethnic identities, as
Bengalis, Sindhis, Pathans and Baluch, who were underprivileged
in the new state. They demanded fairer shares for themselves.
They had left Muslim ethnicity behind in the pre-Partition world.
Now the regional question was to be at the centre of politics in
Pakistan, ill-concealed by the rhetoric of Islamic ideology that was
deployed against them to deny the legitimacy of their newly
affirmed separate regional and cultural identities.
There was a fresh process of accounting of regional privilege and
deprivation. Although there were 41.9 million East Pakistanis, as
106 Pakistan and Islam: Ethnicity and Ideology

against only 33.7 million West Pakistanis (1951 census), shares in

public appointments bore no comparison to that, not even re-
motely. In 1948 East Pakistanis numbered only 11 per cent of the
members of the CSP, the Civil Service of Pakistan, the elite cadre
that controlled the bureaucracy and thereby the state in Pakistan.
East Pakistani share in the army was even worse, for only 1.5 per
cent of army officers were East Pakistani. Bengali Muslims owned
no more than 3.5 per cent of the assets of all private Muslim
firms. 37 A wave of political militancy swept through the whole of
East Pakistan. The Bengali language movement erupted with
dramatic force in February 1952 when, for a few days, the writ of
the government ceased to run in that province. Every Bengali
government employee went on strike. That movement, signi-
ficantly, started on the Dacca University Campus. The Bengali
language movement repudiated the ruling Muslim League's claim
to represent the people of East Pakistan. In the 1954 provincial
elections the ruling Muslim League Party won no more than 10
seats out of a total of 309, notwithstanding repression of opposi-
tion parties and the fact that many of the elected candidates were
in prison at the time. The opposition United Front, which articu-
lated Bengali nationalism, swept the elections. Sindhis, Pathans
and Baluch movements were soon to develop likewise.
At first in Pakistan the secular tradition of Jinnah was main-
tained. In March 1949, moving the 'Objectives Resolution' in the
Constituent Assembly, Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan declared:
'The people are the real recipients of power. This naturally elimin-
ates any danger of the establishment of a theocracy. ' 38 Choudhury,
editor of Documents and Speeches on the Constitution of Pakistan,
a champion of Islamic ideology, complained that 'The Ulama were
also not happy with the first draft constitution [that is, the Interim
Report of the Basic Principles Committee, 1950] as it contained
very little, if at all any, provisions as to the Islamic character of the
proposed constitution'. 39
As soon as the regional protest against Punjabi rule began to get
under way, the ideological tune changed. Suddenly Islam and the
notion of Islamic brotherhood became the order of the day. It was
unpatriotic on the part of Bengalis, Sindhis, Pathans and Baluch to
make demands in terms of their regional ethnic identities because
all Pakistanis were brothers in Islam. The constitutional proposals
were quickly redrafted. Choudhury happily reported that 'The
Hamza Alavi 107

Second Draft Constitution [the Report of the Basic Principles

Committee, 1952] was noted for elaborate provisions relating to
the Islamic character of the proposed Constitution. The most
noble feature of the Islamic provision was a board of ulama which
would examine if any law was repugnant to Qur'an and Sunnah'. 40
All that this 'noble feature' added up to was a smokescreen, for
it went little beyond setting up a 'Board of Talimat-i-Islamia'
(Board of Islamic Learning) which had some advisory functions,
and existed only on paper, for the ruling bureaucratic-military
oligarchy (with the Punjabi salariat in the saddle) had no intention
of giving the mullahs a share in power. The only concrete
result of all this, after years of rhetorical Islamisation, was a
decision to change the name of the Republic to 'The Islamic
Republic of Pakistan' and, further, a provision was inserted in the
Constitution that the President shall be a Muslim. The ruling
oligarchy would not make any concessions of substance to the
Islamic ideologists. But all this was quite enough to serve its
purpose, namely to generate rhetorical steam on behalf of the
dominant Punjabis who made it plain that 'Islamic' Pakistan would
not tolerate any regional movements.
The secular mood of the country was dramatically demonstrated
by the rout of 'Islam Loving' Parties in the first national election of
Pakistan in 1970. The secular Awami League, predominantly
Bengali with no influence in West Pakistan, swept the board in
East Pakistan, winning every seat but one, that one seat for the
Chittagong Hill Tracts being uncontested to allow its tribal leader
to be elected there. In West Pakistan the Pakistan People's Party,
with its secular slogan of 'Roti, Kapra aur Makan' ('Bread, Cloth
and Shelter') got a landslide victory in Sind and Punjab and the
left-wing National Awami Party made a very good showing in
Sarhad and Baluchistan. The Islamic parties got nowhere.
The Bengali movement was eventually to lead to the liberation
of Bangladesh. It was the Bengali salariat which spearheaded that
movement, although it had deep roots in the countryside. In a
predominantly rural country (the urban population in 1960 being
only about 5 per cent) most members of the Bengali salariat were
sons of well-to-do peasants or the landed gentry and had solid
support from the rural power base. The same is happening today
with the powerful Sindhi movement that has erupted with force in
the last few years. Its ideology too is explicitly secular.
108 Pakistan and Islam: Ethnicity and Ideology

The Sindhi salariat is backed by the entire rural population, as

happened in Bengal. Their grievances are compounded by those of
all other ethnic-Sindhi classes. Sindhi landlords and peasants are
concerned about the question of equitable sharing of the waters of
the Indus river system between Sindh and Punjab, of which the
Sindhis feel they get less than their due share. Dispossessed Sindhi
sharecroppers thrown out of their traditional source of livelihood
by farm mechanisation and driven to the cities to look for work,
find that the Sindhi urban society, of Karachi, Hyderabad and
Sukkur, the major industrial cities of Sindh, has become non-
Sindhi. They are therefore strangers in their own cities and are
denied working-class jobs which are monopolised by immigrants
from Sarhad and the Punjab. There is therefore an accumulation
of grievances of all classes of the Sindhi people. The Sindhi
movement therefore erupted with great force in 1983, drawing
together all sections of the ethnic Sindhi people. It is not confined
to the Sindhi salariat. But the Sindhi movement failed to build a
united front with the predominantly non-Sindhi working class in
Sindh, which isolated it in urban areas and made it ineffective.
Currently leaders of the Sindhi movement, aware of this problem,
have redefined and expanded the concept of Sindhi ethnicity so as
to include also the Urdu-speaking muhajirs from India who pre-
dominate in Sindhi cities. They declare that ethnicity is not a
matter of language or culture or of origin but, rather, it is a
question of roots. Muhajirs, victims of the history of the Partition,
have nowhere else to go and have put down their roots in Sindh.
They are Sindhis. But that is not so in the case of Punjabis, mainly
bureaucrats and army personnel or their relatives, who have been
granted lands in Sindh and have brought with them their own
Punjabi workers. They have come as invaders and conquerors,
they say, and must be made to return to Punjab and return the
lands to Sindhi hands.
With the assumption of power by the Zia regime another factor
has come into play, namely the exploitation of Islamic ideology to
legitimate state power in the hands of the military. Afraid to face a
free electorate and having no mandate to govern, the General
turned to Allah. But he was forced to go much beyond the
worn-out old rhetoric and had to show to a cynical public, who had
heard it all before, that he actually meant business. But there was
not much that he could do in practice, at least with regard to the
Hamza Alavi 109

economy. He is charged with the business of running a peripheral

capitalist economy which has its own rules and logic and its own
imperatives that he cannot afford to disregard. So he drew the
lines clearly. He would make symbolic changes but he could not
afford to interfere with the economy. In the Act setting up Sharia
Courts, under the Constitution (Amendment) Order 1980, issued
by Presidential decree, to Islamise Pakistan's laws, everything
connected with the working of the economy is explicitly excluded
from the jurisdiction of these Courts, under subsection (c) of
section 203 A.
All that was left to the regime to do, in the name of Islamisation,
was to undertake cosmetic measures, although the word 'cosmetic'
is an outrageous word to describe the barbaric punishments that
were prescribed under Hudud ordinances. The regime also launched
a systematic attack, both symbolically and practically, on the status
and privileges of women in Pakistan society. That in turn sparked
off a women's movement which has generated a force that is
unknown in Pakistan's history. The only measure that can prop-
erly be called cosmetic is 'interest free banking', the regime's pride
and joy in its record of 'Islamisation'. Banks, instead of charging
interest, are required, technically, to 'buy' their customers' goods
which otherwise would have been hypothecated to the bank
against the loan. Simultaneously the bank has to 'resell' the same
goods to the customers, at a higher price. The difference between
the nominal 'purchase' and 'sale' prices is thereby 'profit' and not
un-Islamic interest, though in practice it makes no difference. This
is just petty deception leaving the essentials unchanged.
The Zia regime seemed to have reached a dead-end in its
Islamisation strategy by 1984. Its strident rhetoric about the Islamic
basis of the Pakistan ideology failed to give it the basis of legitimacy
that it sought. On the contrary, it only compounded its problems
by raising the hopes of some naive ideologists and Islamic fun-
damentalists that it was in no position to fulfil. Its bigoted sup-
porters were already getting disillusioned and especially in the
light of their electoral debacle, they began to voice criticism of the
regime that had so far patronised and protected them. There were
soon signs that the regime had begun to soft-pedal the slogan of
Islamic ideology. It turned instead to figure out alternative ways to
build legitimacy, and has experimented with an Assembly elected
under controlled conditions with all the opposition Parties under
110 Pakistan and Islam: Ethnicity and Ideology

ban and their political activists under arrest. But even this does not
seem to be working very well for the purposes of the regime and its
problem remains unresolved.

Notes and references

1. See Ram Gopal, Indian Muslims (London, 1959), ch. 11 for an Indian
nationalist view, and R. Palme Dutt, India Today (Bombay, 1970),
pp. 456-9 and D. N. Pritt 'India', in Labour Monthly, XXIV (April
1942), for the Communist view. This view was reiterated by R. Palme
Dutt, 'India and Pakistan', in Labour Monthly, XXVIII (March 1946).
2. G. Adhikari, Pakistan and Indian National Unity (Bombay, 1943) and
also R. Palme Dutt, 'Notes of the Month', Labour Monthly, XXIV
(September 1942).
3. Y. Gankovsky and L. Gordon-Polanskaya, A History of Pakistan
(Lahore, n.d.).
4. Edward Mortimer, Faith and Power: The Politics of Islam (London,
1982).
5. H. A. Alavi, 'The State in Post-Colonial Societies', New Left Review
74 July-August 1972, reprinted in Kathleen Gough and H. Sharma
(eds), Imperialism and Revolution in South Asia (1973), and in
H. Goulbourne, Politics and the State in the Third World (London,
1979).
6. B. T. McCully, English Education and the Origins of Indian Nationalism
(Williamsburg, 1940), and Aparna Basu, The Growth of Education
and Political Development in India 1897-1920 (Delhi, 1974).
7. Francis Robinson, Separatism Among Indian Muslims: The Politics of
the UP Muslims 1860-1923 (Cambridge, 1974), p. 46.
8. For an analysis of the role of the bureaucratic-military oligarchy in
Pakistan see Hamza Alavi, 'Class and State in Pakistan', in H. N.
Gardezi and J. Rashid (eds), Pakistan: The Roots of Dictatorship: The
Political Economy of a Praetorian State (London, 1983). Within the
bureaucratic-military oligarchy, the military emerged as the senior
partner by the 1970s and the coherence of the once tightly-knit
bureaucracy, controlled by the CSP cadres, has been largely under-
mined. Punjabis dominate both the military as well as the civil
bureaucracy.
9. Abdul Hamid, Muslim Separatism in India (Lahore, 1967).
10. McKim Marriott, Caste Ranking and Community Structure in Five
Regions of India and Pakistan (Poona, 1960).
11. Aparna Basu, The Growth of Education, p. 151.
12. Report of the Court of Inquiry ... into the Punjab Disturbances, 1953
(Munir Report) (Lahore: Government of West Pakistan Press, 1954),
p. 219.
13. Zia-ul-Hassan Faruqi, The Deoband School and the Demand for
Hamza Alavi 111
Pakistan (London, 1963); Barbara Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British
India: Deoband I860-I900 (Princeton, 1982), passim.
14. David Gilmartin, 'Religious Leadership and the Pakistan Movement
in the Punjab', in Modern Asian Studies, vol. XIII, No. 3 (1979);
Barbara Metcalf (ed.), Moral Conduct and Authority (London, 1984)
- articles by David Gilmartin and Richard Eaton.
15. For an account of political factions dominated by landlords and pirs,
see Hamza Alavi, 'Politics of Dependence: A Village in West Pun-
jab', South Asian Review, vo!. IV, no. 4 (January 1971).
16. Iftikhar Ahmad, Pakistan General Elections 1970 (Lahore, 1976).
17. Clarence Maloney, Peoples of South Asia (New York, 1974), p. 506.
18. David Kopf, The Brahmo Samaj and the Shaping of the Modern
Indian Mind (Princeton, 1979).
19. Christian W. Troll, Sayyid Ahmad Khan: A Reinterpretation of Muslim
Theology (Karachi, 1979), p. 18 and n. 75.
20. Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, Rah-e-Sunnat dar Radd-e-Bid'at, Tasanif-e-
Ahmadiya vol. I (Aligarh, 1883).
21. Mohammad Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam
(Lahore, 1958 reprint).
22. Ibid., p. 173.
23. Ibid., p. 174.
24. Ibid., pp. 175-6.
25. K. K. Aziz, Party Politics in Pakistan 1947-58 (Islamabad, 1976),
pp. 143-4.
26. Francis Robinson, Separatism, passim.
27. Ibid., pp. 173--5.
28. Ibid., p. 252.
29. Azim Husain, Fazl-i-Husain: A Political Biography (Bombay, 1946),
pp. 315-16.
30. Mohammad Iqbal, Letters of Iqbal to Jinnah (Lahore, 1963),
pp. 28-32.
31. Dow to Wavell, 20 September 1945, Fortnightly Reports- Sind, LIP
& J I 5-261, Jan.-Dec. 1945, India Office Records.
32. Jamil-ud-Din Ahmad (ed.), Speeches and Writings of Mr. Jinnah,
vol. 1 (6th edition, Lahore, 1960), p. 43.
33. Ayesha Jalal, The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, Muslim League and the
Demand for Pakistan (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 95-6.
34. G. W. Choudhury (ed.), Documents and Speeches on the Constitution
of Pakistan (Dacca, 1967), pp. 21-2.
35: E. I. J. Rosenthal, Islam and the Modern National State (Cambridge,
1965), p. 245.
36. S. Sibte Hassan, Naveed-e-Fikr, (Urdu) (Karachi, 1983).
37. Rounaq Jehan, Pakistan: A Failure in National Integration (London,
1972), pp. 25-7.
38. G. W. Choudhury, Documents and Speeches, p. 25.
39. Ibid., p. 30.
40. Ibid., p. 31.
5 Syria's Muslim
Brethren
HANNA BATATU

Who are the Muslim Brethren in Syria? What is their significance

socially? How are they related to Syria's social structure? What is
the social meaning of their ideas and values? Are these ideas and
values responses to distinguishable conditions and interests of one
or more identifiable social groups? Are the Muslim Brethren, in
other words, an incidental phenomenon or the organisational
expression of a basic structural force? For the most part, this chapter
deals with these and related questions. It provides a tentative,
exploratory interpretation, with some vivid and sharp images, rather
than a thorough and refined picture of the movement. 1

Programme and ideas

The Muslim Brethren of Syria can initially be identified by the

ideas which they have espoused. At first, they had no clear
thoughts on social or economic issues or the problems of govern-
ment. In the late 1940s and the 1950s they flirted with an undefined
'Islamic socialism', 2 but by 1961 they had excised the term al-
together from their political vocabulary. Their earliest programme
- that of 1954 - offered only generalities. It committed them to
such objectives as 'the combating of ignorance, disease, want,
fear, and indignity' and 'the establishment of a virtuous polity
which would carry out the rules and teachings of Islam.' 3 Their
central slogans were no more definite: 'God is our End; His
Messenger our Example; the Qur'an our Constitution: the Jihad
our Path; and Death for God's Cause our Highest Desire.' 4 These
formulas had an immense weight of popular sentiment behind
112
Hanna Batatu 113

them, but their practical implications were vague and difficult to

ascertain. The Qur'an and the Muslim heritage, like the Bible and
the Christian traditions, contain rich and varied elements which
can be and were in the past interpreted in different directions by
different Muslims according to their circumstances.
In 1980, in the light of the accumulating experience of the
intervening decades and under the red-hot pressure of the bloody
events in Aleppo, Hamah, and Palmyra, the Muslim Brethren
published a new programme. Here they spelled out their position
on several issues in somewhat clearer and more concrete terms. A
number of points stand out.
First, there is a forthright appeal to the 'wise men' of the 'Alawi
community. '9 or 10 per cent of the population,' the appeal reads,
'cannot [indefinitely] dominate the majority in Syria.' This would
be against 'the logic of things.' 'The ['Alawi] minority has forgot-
ten itself and is ignoring the facts of history.' This state of affairs
and 'the provocative and aggressive practices' of the regime with
which it has linked its fate 'could ignite a murderous civil war.' The
appeal ends with the hope that the 'Alawi community would shake
off the 'guardianship' of Hafiz al-Asad and his brother Rif'at and
thus 'prevent the tragedy from reaching its sad end. ' 5
In this appeal, the Muslim Brethren clearly put themselves
forward as the natural spokesmen of the Sunni community; and
define their conflict with Syria's rulers as a conflict between Sunnis
and 'Alawis. To no little extent, the conflict has indeed taken on
this aspect in the past few years. At the same time, it is quite plain
that the conflict is not about religion. It is not the beliefs of the
Sunnis that have been in danger or under attack since the Ba'thist
take-over in 1963, but the social interests of the upper and middle
elements of their landed, mercantile, and manufacturing classes.
It should be noted parenthetically that the 1980 programme is
remarkable for the absence of any mention of Iran's Islamic
Revolution. This is easily explained. The Muslim Brethren had
appealed to Ruhullah al-Khomeini in 1979 for moral support
against Syria's regime but received no response whatever. It did
not escape their leaders that an informal coalition embracing
Syria's rulers, the Shi'i 'Amal movement in Lebanon, and Iran's
theocracy had taken shape. Moreover, they could not afford to
displease the Iraq government which had been helping them with
money and military supplies 6 and continues to be their principal
114 Syria's Muslim Brethren

source of support. Over and above this, Sa'id Hawwa, the chief
ideologist of Syria's Muslim Brethren, had made clear in no
uncertain terms that the authentic community of Muslims is 'the
community in which has appeared the only form of truth conven-
tionally recognised through history and which finds its embodi-
ment in the People of the Sunnah.' 7 This appears to exclude, at
least tacitly, an ideological accommodation with a regime so
uncompromisingly Shi'i as that of present-day Iran.
More to the point is the great emphasis which the Muslim
Brethren place in their 1980 programme on the political emancipa-
tion of the common citizens: 'the need of the nation to regain its
freedom is as vital as its need for air, water, and food.' They
strongly condemn martial law, arbitrary decrees, and inhuman
police practices and proclaim their attachment to the freedom of
the citizenry to think, publish, assemble, protest, oppose, and
form political parties and trade unions. They also declare them-
selves firmly for the principles of the separation of powers and the
independence of the judiciary, and for a government subordinate
to the rule of law and resting on shura (mutual consultation). 8
Except for the last point, there is nothing characteristically
Islamic about these values. They are obviously drawn from the
moral armouries of classical liberalism. There may be a temptation
to dismiss them as empty formulas in an uncongenial context, but
the temptation ought to be resisted. The recurring rise to power in
the past three decades or so in Syria and other parts of the Arab
world of unrepresentative and narrowly-based groups, their dis-
charge of public affairs in manners prejudicial to the general
interest, their violent and often bloody suppression of dissenters,
their bringing of writers, journalists, and teachers to low esteem,
and the sad deterioration of Arab thought have pushed the ques-
tion of basic freedoms to the political forefront. Through bitter
experiences, increasing numbers of politically conscious Syrians
have realised that these freedoms are very important human
values and have incalculable practical significance. What may have
been in the 1940s mere catchwords have become now a living faith.
By hoisting high the standard of political and civil liberties, the
Muslim Brethren hope to press this faith into the service of their
cause.
No less interesting are the economic demands of the Muslim
Brethren. They insist on the need for vesting 'full ownership of the
land' in the farmers and for their liberation from middlemen,
Hanna Batatu 115

guardians, and officials who 'suck [their] blood in the name of the
state, party, and socialism'. They call for the transfer of the
ownership of public industrial establishments unrelated to national
security from the state to the workers. They favour adequate
rewards and better conditions for the labourers in factories owned
by private individuals, but in the same breath castigate workers
who 'think they are entitled to everything and others possess no
right to demand anything from them' and who 'convert factories
into takaya [hospices] for the lazy and the indolent'. They also call
for the encouragement of artisans, and the freedom of private
capital to export, import and manufacture within the limits of a
'studied plan approved by the shura [consultative council]'. While
conceding that 'some merchants may be excessively greedy' and
'inclined towards monopolism', they express their conviction that
'the state is bound to fail ... when it turns into a merchant. ' 9
In brief, the economic programme of the Muslim Brethren is
consonant with the outlook and interests of the urban Sunni
trading and manufacturing middle and lower middle classes. Can it
be inferred from this that the Muslim Brethren are the organised
expression and forward arm of these classes? To answer this
question, it is necessary to cast a glance at the origins and evolu-
tion of this movement.

Roots of the movement

The Syrian branch of the Society of the Muslim Brethren struck

roots first among young men who were for the most part students
of the sharia (Islamic law). Some of them had attended courses at
Cairo's al-Azhar University; there they had come under the influ-
ence of the ideas of Hasan al-Banna, the society's founder. Others
had apparently been won over by Egyptian Muslim Brethren who
toured Syria in the mid-1930s.
With few exceptions, the earliest of the society's Syrian devotees
stemmed from families of 'men of religion' . 10 Thus Mohammad
al-Mubarak and Salah ash-Shash, who founded its Damascus
branch in 1937, belonged to families of 'ulama' of middling income
and status. Mustafa as-Siba'i, the first superintendent general 11 of
the society in Syria and its foremost leader from 1945 to 1961,
came from a family which had for long provided the khatibs
(preachers) of the Grand Mosque of Horns. His successor, 'Isam
al-'Attar, who guided the entire organisation from 1961 until the
116 Syria's Muslim Brethren

rift in its ranks in 1972 and continued up to 1980 to inspire only its
Horns, Dayr az-Zur, and Damascus branches, also sprang from
ulama of intermediate social standing and was himself the imam
(prayer leader) at the mosque of Damascus University. 'Abd-ul
Fattah Abu Ghuddah, who led the seceding elements in 1972 and
had set up the Aleppo branch in 1935, descended from a family of
artisans and began life as a weaver but subsequently became a
mudarris (teacher) of the sharia. 12
The religious class with which the Muslim Brethren were and
still are closely connected is not, relatively speaking, very large in
Syria. It is not, in a numerical sense, anything like its Iranian
counterpart. According to an informed Shi'i source, the mullahs in
Iran counted no fewer than 120 000 in 1979; 13 if correct, this would
translate roughly into one mullah for every 308 Iranians. By
contrast there were in Syria among all denominations in 1960 only
1761 and in 1970 only 2843 'men of religion and persons connected
with them'/ 4 including muwaqqits (timekeepers), mosque ser-
vants, and reciters of Qur'anic verses. In other words, there was
one man from this broadly defined religious class for every 2592
Syrians in 1960 15 and for every 2217 Syrians in 1970. 16 The ratio
was higher in urban than in rural areas: one for every 1638
city-dwellers as against one for every 3042 rural inhabitants in
1970. In clearer terms, there were in 1970 only 1173 urban men of
religion and related functionaries and servants for no fewer than
5000 villages. 17 Due allowance must be made for statistical imper-
fections, but the figures confirm the discernible absence of men of
religion from many of Syria's villages.
The bulk of the 'men of religion' were and are very poorly
remunerated, as is evident from Table 5.1. The meagreness of the
imam compensation can be gathered from whispers among mer-
chants relating to the income of senior army officers: they are said,
not perhaps without exaggeration, to average no less than 8000
Syrians pounds (about $1840) monthly. In addition, they can
purchase subsidised goods from army co-operatives, build apart-
ments or villas with state loans obtained on very easy terms, and-
as the merchants wistfully point out - have the use of the cars not
subject to customs' inspection at official borders. By contrast, the
minimum pay of the khatib and the mudarris is lower than that of
the mosque servant; their maximum pay is higher only by 9 and 18
per cent respectively. Even the imam's maximum salary exceeds
that of the servant by only 58 per cent.
Hanna Batatu 117

TABLE 5.1 Monthly pay scales, in Syrian pounds,* of 'men of

religion' and of 'persons connected to them' as of 6
March 1980

imam (prayer leader) 385-610

mudarris (teacher) 285-455
khatib (preacher) 250-420
mu'azzin (announcer of the hour of prayer) 285-320
qari' (reciter of Qur'anic verses) 190-270
muwaqqit (timekeeper) 180-250
khadim (servant) 305-385

* The Syrian pound exchanged for roughly 23 US cents in 1980.

t Excluding muftis (consultative jurists) and qadis (judges in sharian cases).

Source: Prime Minister's Decision No. 61 of March 6, 1980, Syrian Arab

Republic, Al-Jaridah ar-Rasmiyyah ... [Official Gazette], Part I, No. 11
of 1980, pp. 466-467.

Of course, the servant puts in long hours at the mosque, whereas

the imam merely leads the assembly of the faithful in reciting the five
daily prayers, and the khatib preaches to them only on Fridays.
Moreover, a 'man of religion' may discharge two or more religious
functions. He may also receive fees on the occasion of ceremonies
attendant upon circumcision, marriage, and death. Even so, ex-
cept for the muftis and qadis, who draw much higher salaries- and
there are no muftis and few qadis among the Muslim Brethren -
the 'men of religion' cannot, as a rule, live on the income they
derive from religious service. They must frequently engage in
petty trade or handicraft. Many of them are drapers or stationers
or booksellers or perfume vendors.
In fact, there is a substantial degree of coincidence between the
class of tradesmen and the religious shaikhly class. The shops of
the tradesmen-shaikhs are usually located in the neighbourhood of
mosques. In Damascus, for example, they are established in the
suqs (markets) of al-'Asruniyyah and al-Madinah close to the
Umayyad Mosque. Some of the founders and earliest devotees of
the Society of Muslim Brethren descended from this class of
people, as is apparent from their family names: 'Attar is the
Arabic for perfumist, Tunji 18 for goldsmith, ash-Shash for muslin or
white cloth. Incidentally, the father of Hasan al-Banna belonged also
to this class: he was both a religious mudarris and a watch-repairer,
and thus known as as-Sa'ati.
118 Syria's Muslim Brethren

The economic self-support of the bulk of the Muslim 'men of

religion' has had important consequences. In as much as they have
not depended for their livelihood on the government, they have
not on the whole truckled to it or cringed at its feet. On the other
hand, by dint of their trading interests and the government's
ability to damage or impair these interests, and in view of the
appropriation by the government in 1965 of the right to appoint
and dismiss the khatibs in the mosques, the 'men of religion' have
on the whole been careful - unless ideologically provoked or
economically injured, as at some points in the Ba'thist period- not
to take sharp political positions.
This is true not only of the tradesmen-shaikhs but of the whole
small-scale trading and artisan class among whom, as could be
expected, the Muslim Brethren penetrated deeply and with ease.
But in this regard two distinctions must be made. According to the
society's deputy superintendent general, 'Adnan Sa'd-ud-Din,
craftsmen and petty traders indeed form a major component of its
membership, but its most militant activists are drawn from their
offspring or their educated elements - students and members of
the intelligentsia by and large 19 - who are in their teens, twenties
and thirties and, being youthful, are more daring and reckless than
their elders and more prone to take uncomplicated and brisk
attitudes. To the generational difference must be added regional
dissimilarities. The Damascene Muslim Brethren, like other Da-
mascenes, are in general milder, more flexible, more subtle, more
cautious, and less inclined to violence than, say, the Aleppans,
possibly by reason of climatic and environmental differences.
There is nothing similar to Damascus' fertile oasis of Ghutah on
any side of Aleppo. Its landscape is more barren, its climate drier
and more severe. Damascus, being the principal seat of govern-
ment, has also been more favoured economically in recent de-
cades.
There has been another consequence of the economic self-
reliance of the Muslim 'men of religion'. Since most of them have
lived by their own effort rather than on exactions from the people
and since their class has not, on the whole, enjoyed privileges or
special rights, they have not been viewed by the mass of Syrians as
a parasitic body or an economic burden upon society. Moreover,
they have never been a highly organised or closely integrated
group, and, at least in recent times, have not presented a united
Hanna Batatu 119

ideological front or constituted a powerful or insurmountable

impediment to the advance of secular ideas. This explains the
absence in Syria (and in other Arab countries) of strong anti-
shaikh or anti-religious trends. There were, in the past, protests or
demonstrations against individual arbitrary or unpopular muftis or
qadis, but not against the shaikhs as such. Irreligion or indifference
to ancestral beliefs or doubt concerning basic sharia principles
have progressed among leftist intellectuals but have not resulted in
intense anti-religious feeling. In the 1920s, the Communists fron-
tally attacked the men of religion. Making no headway among the
populace, they quickly desisted from this course.

Significance of the small traders

The small-scale trading class has a number of features which throw

some light on the ideas, policies, and history of the Muslim
Brethren. First, the urban small tradesmen and artisans were and
still are the most religiously orientated class in Syria. They by and
large observe faithfully and regularly the precepts of Islam. Their
idiom is that of the religious shaikhs, and they are akin to the
religious shaikhs in values and way of life.
Second, they are strongly attached to 'free enterprise'. They
favour competition among the big merchants and simultaneously
fear it in their own sphere. The terms of trade between them and
the big merchants are often not to their advantage. In this sense
the interests of the two classes are opposed. In another sense,
however, they are complementary. Under certain conditions,
when the big merchants suffer they are also affected. After the rise
of the Ba'thists to power in 1963, some of the functions of the big
merchants, like the wholesale import and export of goods, were
assimilated by new public organisations. Small-scale traders had to
deal with government employees who were often of rural origin
and, if not hostile to the urban trading community, had little
understanding of the intricacies of trade and thus wittingly or
unwittingly raised all sorts of impediments in its path. The small-
scale traders had clearly been more comfortable with the tradi-
tional big merchants who, in addition, were Muslim Sunni like
themselves.
Interestingly enough, some of the important merchants of the
suq of Hamidiyyah somehow continued all along to exercise
120 Syria's Muslim Brethren

influence over the small tradesmen of Damascus. The adoption by

Hafiz al-Asad in 1970 of the policy of 'economic liberalisation'
greatly enhanced their position. Subsequently, they appeared not
only to control the small traders but also to maintain relations with
influential army officers and with the Ba'th party apparatus. In
fact, there is reason to believe that the merchants of suq al-
Hamidiyyah were playing a double game. At least some of them
were thought to be liberally subsidising the Muslim Brethren.
Others, by gestures of support to the government through the
Chamber of Commerce which they controlled were obtaining
concessions for the class as a whole. In 1980, for instance, when
the activities of the Muslim Brethren were at one of their peaks,
the import quotas of the merchants for consumer goods were
sharply increased.
The trading class as a whole has been adversely affected by the
rise of agricultural co-operatives in rural districts and consumers'
co-operatives in urban areas. Sellers who travel from village to
village and constitute a large group at Hamah, where they are
known as al-muta'iyyishin, have apparently been similarly hurt.
Co-operative stores were the first establishments to be destroyed
in a rising organised by the Muslim Brethren in 1980 in Aleppo.
One other point needs to be underlined: the small-scale artisan
and trading class is very significant not only in terms of skills and
economic savoir-faire but also numerically. The traditional big land-
owners and their mercantile allies consisted of a few hundred families
and were hit or overthrown with relative ease. By contrast the
small-scale traders and artisans counted in 1970 nearly a quarter of
a million. 20 With their dependents, they easily accounted for
one-sixth of the entire population. They are not a force that can be
discounted or effortlessly suppressed.

The movement in Syria

At this point it is appropriate to highlight and explain the major

events in the history of the Muslim Brethren.
One thing that at once attracts our attention is that the move-
ment first took shape in Aleppo. It appeared there in 1935 under
the name of 'The House of al-Arqam' and was so-called after
al-Arqam b. 'Abd Manaf b. Asad who was one of the earliest
converts to Islam and in AD 614 offered his house at Mecca as a
Hanna Batatu 121

meeting-place for the Prophet Muhammad and his followers. 21

The 'House of al-Arqam' at Aleppo remained for several years the
most active centre of the Brotherhood and served as its head-
quarters until 1944. How can one account for this fact?
Of course, the Aleppan Muslims were deeply disturbed by the
passage of Syria after the First World War from Turkish Muslim
into 'infidel' French hands. But this feeling was shared by the
believers in the rest of the country. More to the point is that
Aleppo was at that time the largest and most important city in
Syria. Moreover, the Aleppan Muslims had special reasons to be
aggrieved. Between 1919 and 1925 no fewer than 89 000 Arme-
nians moved from Turkey to Syria, most of whom settled in
Aleppo 22 and, by virtue of their industrial skills and aptitude for
making money, not only disturbed the denominational balance of
the population in the city but also the position of its trading class.
Much more seriously, the artificial detachment from Syria- to the
benefit of Turkey and in defiance of the factors of trade, history,
and ethnic origin - of the port and district of Alexandretta in the
late 1930s and of the Cilician wheatlands, the cities of 'Aintab and
Urfah, and the Baghdad railway territory across northern Syria in
the wake of the First World War, cut off Aleppo from its natural
outlet to the sea and from its natural markets and hinterland and
limited its commerce to the district lying within a radius of some
twenty miles from the city. 23 The Muslim trading community in all
its components suffered more profoundly than the Christian mer-
chants, who were connected with the European rather than with
inter-Ottoman trade. By the mid-1930s, the Muslim men of com-
merce had not yet adapted to their shrunken markets. 24 All these
factors resulted in the revival of Muslim sentiments and in move-
ments against European and for native products 25 and no doubt
assisted the advance of the ideas of the Muslim Brethren.
In 1944, sensing, in the light of an open and sharp clash between
French and British interests, the approach of political indepen-
dence, the society shifted its main center to Damascus. In the
following year it adopted the appellation of 'Muslim Brethren' 26
and elected Mustafa as-Siba'i 27 as its first superintendent-general.
The short supply of consumer goods during the Second World
War, which was then nearing its end, and the accompanying
inflated prices, heightened by speculation and profiteering, en-
riched the local merchants and improved the conditions of the
122 Syria's Muslim Brethren

small traders. This decreased their susceptibility to the views of the

Muslim Brethren who, however, gained some support among
lower middle-class state employees, and especially schoolteachers,
with fixed incomes. 28
It was the defeat of the Arab armies and the creation of the state
of Israel in 1948 which gave a considerable impetus to the move-
ment. The disruption of a large part of the Palestinian community
and of its economic structures inflicted special harm on the Damas-
cene merchants and traders for whom Palestine had, for genera-
tions, served as an important market. Indeed, the interests of the
mercantile classes of Damascus were far more closely interwoven
with the interests of the Palestinian trading families than with the
interests of the commercial communities of Aleppo and northern
Syria. 29
The rise of the Nasserist pan-Arab trend in the second half of
the 1950s tangibly reduced the appeal of the movement. The
Egyptian leader drew part of his strength in Syria from the very
same urban Sunni petty trading elements which nourished the
Brotherhood. In 1958, upon the creation of the United Arab
Republic, Mustafa as-Siba'i yielded unconditionally to Nasser and
officially dissolved the society.
The attitude of the Muslim Brethren towards the break-up of
the UAR in 1961 was ambiguous. 'Isam al-'Attar, 30 who had just
succeeded Siba'i as superintendent-general, refused to sign the
historic manifesto issued by eighteen of Syria's foremost poli-
ticians in support of secession. At the same time, Lieutenant-
Colonel 'Abd-ul-Karim an-Nahlawi, the principal author of the
separatist coup, who descended from a family of traders and
artisans and shaikhs of the defunct Ahmadi mystic order, 31 moved
in an ideological environment pretty much dominated by the
Muslim Brethren. After the coup he relied on them and gave them
a free hand. 32 This led to a noticeable expansion of their ranks.
The comparative strength of the Muslim Brethren in the four-
teen years or so prior to the conquest of state power by the
Ba'thists in 1963 may be gathered from the figures in Tables 5.2
and 5.3. For the proper interpretation of these figures, it is necess-
ary to keep in mind that every district and the chief centre of every
province and the villages attached to it constituted single electoral
districts. Thus, in 1961, the city of Damascus and six of its sur-
rounding villages formed only one constituency. Moreover, every
TABLE 5.2 Distribution of Parliament seats in the pre-Ba'thi period
Year Total Parties of big land- Akram Ba'th Muslim Independent Other
seats owners and merchants Hurani's Party and Brethren deputies elements
People's National Socialists allies and allies
Party Party
1949 114 43 14 I 4 3 (2.6%) 45a 4b
1954 141 27 14 5 13 5 (3.5%) 64c !3d
1961 173 25 13 7 8 10 (5.8%) 96e 14"

a Includes 9 tribal representatives d Includes 2 seats for PPS and 1 seat for Communists
b Includes I seat for Parti Populaire Syrien (PPS) e Includes 13 tribal representatives
c Includes 18 tribal representatives 1 Includes 5 Nasserists and I Arab Nationalist

Sources: Great Britain, F.O. 371175541/XL/A/11644 E 14487E. Letter of 28 November 1949 from British Legation. Damascus to Foreign Office, London:
Khalid Al'Azm. Mudhakkirat [Memoirs], vol. n (Beirut, 1973), pp. 300-7; Amin Isbir, Tatawwur-un-Nuzum as-Siyasiyyah wa-d-Dusturiyyah fi Suriyyah
(Development of Political and Constitutional Systems in Syria) (Beirut, 1979), p. 89, and 'Adnan Sa'd-un-Din, deputy superintendent-general of the Muslim
Brethren, conversation, January 1982.

TABLE 5.3 Distribution of Parliament seats in the pre-Ba'thi period

Year Total seats Parties of big land Ba'th Muslim Independent Other
in Damascus owners and merchants Party brethren deputies elements
People's National
Party Party
1949 13 2 3 (23.0%) 6 2a
1954 16 2 2 3 (18.7%) 5 3b
1961 17 1 4 3 (17.6%) 8 1

a Includes I seat for Parti Populaire Syrien (PPS) b Includes I seat for PPS and 1 for Communist Party

Sources: Great Britain, Foreign Office, FO 371 75541 XL A 11644 E 13908. Telegram no. 618 of 17 November 1949, from British Legation. Damascus to ,_..
Foreign Office London: Khahd ai-'Azm, Mudhakkirat, vol. III (Beirut, 1973), pp. 220-1, and Amin Isbir. Tatawwur-un-Nuzum as-Siyasiyyah wa-d- N
Dusturiyyah fi Suriyyah, p. 93. w
124 Syria's Muslim Brethren

eligible voter could cast as many votes as there were candidates in

his district and could thus endorse more than one list. The big
merchants and landowners of Damascus, for example, threw their
principal weight behind the People's Party and the National Party,
but they and their supporters also voted for the Muslim Brethren,
not out of sympathy for them but out of their fear of the Com-
munists and Ba'thists. At the same time, in the hope of enhancing
their electoral chances, the Muslim Brethren pursued, at least in
1961, the tactic of voting exclusively for their own candidates. For
these reasons, the figures may not provide an accurate index of the
actual distribution of the influence of the Muslim Brethren or of
their rivals. The favour they enjoyed with Lieutenant-Colonel
'Abd-ul-Karim an-Nahlawi in 1961 may also have had a distorting
effect.
Even though at that time they were making headway, they did
not enjoy wide support in the country as a whole. In the par-
liamentary elections they won only 2.6 per cent of the seats in
1949, 3.5 per cent in 1954, and 5.8 per cent in 1961. In Damascus,
though, in striking contrast to the marked frailness of the Ba'th
Party, they occupied a relatively strong position: they captured 23
per cent of the seats in 1949, but 18.7 per cent in 1954 and 17.6 per
cent in 1961.
While showing vitality in Damascus and other Syrian cities, the
Muslim Brethren had scarcely any foothold in the countryside.
Indeed, until 1975 there was, according to their deputy superintend-
ent-general,33 a discernible resistance within the society to any
orientation towards the peasants: influential leaders in the organi-
sation apparently did not think it desirable to politicise country
people. On the eve of the Ba'th's seizure of power, therefore, the
movement of the Muslim Brethren was and has, to a lesser extent,
remained to this very day essentially a movement of the cities, in
sharp contradistinction to the rurally orientated and rurally sup-
ported Ba'th party. Of this point we should not lose sight, if only
to understand the conflicts to which Syria fell prey in the last two
decades.

Stages under the Ba'th

For the same purpose, and in order to grasp the meaning of the
policies and tactics of the Muslim Brethren in the Ba'thi period, it
Hanna Batatu 125

will help to emphasise the three main stages that the Ba'th regime
has gone through.
Its first stage began in 1963 and ended in 1968. The regime was
then more broadly based than it is at the present time. At bottom,
it rested on an authentic if uneasy alliance within the army be-
tween varying groups which shared similar rural roots and similar
rural orientations and included 'Alawis from the Latakia province.
Druzes from the Jabal al-'Arab, and Sunnis from the region of
Hawran and the district of Dayr az-Zur, and from different small
country towns. The inadequately studied and rather carelessly
applied socialist policies with which these groups became ident-
ified, and the rapid penetration of the bureaucratic apparatus by
rural elements allied to them, severely damaged the interests not
only of the big men of commerce, industry, and finance but also of
the broad class of urban artisans, petty traders, middling state
employees, and members of the professions. Indeed, on the whole,
the intermediate urban classes viewed the 'socialism' of the day as
a weapon by which the more conscious segments of the long
neglected and long suppressed rural people sought revenge against
the main cities and the decisive impoverishment of their inhabi-
tants. Consequently, in this period the political conflict took on
much the aspect of an urban-rural conflict, and the Sunni element
of the population itself split clearly along urban-rural lines.
To understand better the dynamics of the conflict, it would help
to focus briefly on the relationships between the Sunni Hawran
and Sunni Damascus. For a very long time, the Hawran was the
granary of Damascus. Its people, who were for the most part small
farmers, sold their produce in markets controlled by the merchants
of the capital. Even in the towns of Hawran, the shopkeepers were
more often than not Damascenes. Their relationships became in
essence relationships of debtors and creditors. This is in part
explicable by the improvidence of the Hawranis: 'isrif ma fi-j-jayb,
ya'tika ma fi-1-ghayb' ('spend what is in the pocket and you will
share in that which is in invisible') runs one of their favourite
sayings. The Damascenes, on the other hand, prefer the adage
'khabbi irshak-il-abyad liyomak-il-aswad' ('save your white piaster
for your black day'). But the merchants of the capital were also
more artful than the Hawranis in money matters, and markedly
more calculating. Moreover, in the past the state machine was
pliable to their wishes. They were, therefore, able to set the
126 Syria's Muslim Brethren

conditions of trade in manners consistent with their interests.

As the merchants of Damascus dominated the Hawran, so did the
entrepreneurs of Aleppo dominate Dayr az-Zur and the Jazirah.
But here there was also a tribal division at work. For example, at
Dayr az-Zur the affluent traditional leaders stemmed from the
Albu Saraya, a section of the Baggarah tribe, whereas many of the
Ba'thists descended from such inferior clans as the Khorshan and
Shuyukh.
In this many-sided situation, the Muslim Brethren emerged in
the mid-1960s as the most implacable opponents of the Ba'this and
the forward arm of the endangered urban traders. They promoted
a campaign of civil disobedience, using the mosques as their
centres and mobilising or encouraging for this purpose ulama
hostile to the secular orientation of the Ba'thists, including Shaikh
Hasan Habannakah, a popular figure in the Damascus district of
al-Maydan.
Their agitation attained such a force that it succeeded in bring-
ing about in 1965 a partial polarisation within the officer corps
along sectarian lines, with many of the rural Sunni officers gravi-
tating towards the compromise-minded Sunni General Amin al-
Hafiz and the 'Alawi Druze, and part of the Sunni Hawrani officers
towards an inflexible bloc led by the 'Alawi Salah Jadid and the
Druze Hamad 'Ubayd.
From the ensuing tug-of-war, Jadid emerged supreme. He
pulled down Amin al-Hafiz in 1966 and, not long afterward, got rid
of his erstwhile Druze and Hawrani allies. By 1968, the 'Alawi
dominance of the armed forces was well-nigh complete.
But at this point as the regime entered its second stage, which
was to last until 1970, the military 'Alawis split. One section,
buttressed by the bulk of the civilian component of the Ba'th
Party, gave its loyalty to Salah Jadid, the other to Hafiz al-Asad.
The division arose partly out of a conflict of personalities. It may
also have had a tribal aspect: Salah Jadid belonged to the 'Alawi
tribe of al-Haddadin, Hafiz al-Asad to the 'Alawi tribe of al-
Matawirah. Publicly, the division assumed the form of a clash of
policies, with the more pragmatic Asad insisting on the need for
moderating the urban-rural conflict and J adid bent on a radical
'socialist' line.
Dissensions also set in within the Society of the Muslim Breth-
ren in this period. The younger members of the Aleppo and
Hanna Batatu 127

Hamah branches, shaken by the Arab military defeat of 1967,

agitated for the continuance of the policy of confrontation with the
regime. The Society's superintendent-general, 'Isam al-'Attar,
backed by the bulk of the membership in Damascus and Horns,
determinedly and successfully opposed this tendency. 34 Strength-
ening the hand of Asad in his contest with Jadid served better the
interests of the natural supporters of the Muslim Brethren, the
urban artisans and petty traders.
In 1968 irreconcilable young militants led by Marwan Hadid,
a 34-year-old agronomist and the son of a small agricultural
entrepreneur from Hamah, left Syria for Jordan. There they
joined Fatah, the principal arm of the Palestinian resistance move-
ment, and received commando training in one of its camps. This
marks the beginning of the militarisation of the policy of the
Muslim Brethren.
The third phase in the development of the Ba'th regime opened
in 1970, with the triumph of Asad over Jadid and his seizure of the
reins of government. Throughout the first half of the 1970s, he
steered Syria in a manner congenial to the urban traders and the
Damascus leadership of the Muslim Brethren. He drew close to
Egypt, waged with Sadat the October War of 1973, and mended
Syria's relations with the Saudis and the Jordanians. He simul-
taneously liberalised the country's economic policies, attracting
wide-scale aid and some investment capital from the Arab Gulf
states. A sort of de facto axis developed between military 'Alawis
and the commercially-minded Damascenes. The traders of suq
al-Hamidiyyah never had it so good as in these years.

The Brethren against the Ba'th

After 1975, however, things began to change. The flow of Arab

oil money, which had been copious, diminished sharply. The
heightened scale of peasant migration and a mounting rate of
inflation deepened the injury to the social fabric of the principal
cities. 35 Rents became inaccessible for the middle and humbler
classes, with modest apartments in the better parts of the capital
going for 60 000 or even 80 000 Syrian pounds a year. An honest
man could no longer live on his salary. Labourers and petty state
employees had to take two jobs just to survive. The growth of a
parasitic class of state contractors, the rampant corruption in the
128 Syria's Muslim Brethren

upper layers of the bureaucracy, and the fat commissions made on

government contracts by men close to the pinnacle of power added
to the popular discontent. Even more aggravating was the in-
tervention of the Syrian regime against the Palestinians in the
Lebanese conflict: at one point, in 1976, the Syrian units pinned
down the main Palestinian forces in the mountains, allowing the
Maronite Phalange to destroy completely the camp of Tal az-
Za'tar with considerable loss of life. Since 1917, no regime in
Syria, whatever its colouring, had taken an anti-Palestinian stand.
It was a policy without precedent, and shocked and alienated wide
segments of Syrian opinion.
But what above all incurred the hostility of the Muslim Brethren
was the sharpened 'Alawi bias of the regime and the deepening
erosion of the status and power of the Sunni community. Two
political orders, both headed by President Asad, had by now
crystallised in the country and still function at the present time. In
the first, which consists of a Council of Ministers, a People's
Assembly, the Ba'th Party Command, and their subordinate or-
gans, the Sunnis play conspicuous roles. But all these bodies have
merely an apparent or derivative authority. Real power lies on
another, more fundamental level. It is held by Asad and the
'Alawi leaders of the intelligence apparatuses and the crucial
armoured divisions and air and missile units which underpin the
whole structure.
The Muslim Brethren began their offensive against this order of
things in 1976, not long after the intervention of Syria's armed
forces in Lebanon. At first they confined themselves to persistent
minor blows in the hope of provoking Syria's rulers, involving
them in repressive policies, and estranging them further from the
people. They concentrated on hit-and-run killings of 'Alawi func-
tionaries, security agents, and professional men, focusing atten-
tion on their origins and the origins of Hafiz al-Asad outside the
Sunni Muslim main current of Syria's life.
In a second stage, they escalated their acts and widened their
scope: they carried out attacks on government buildings, police
stations, Ba'th party institutions, and army units. They provoked
demonstrations and large-scale shutdowns of shops and schools as
at Hamah and Aleppo on 8-10 March 1980, and at Hamah in
February 1982. They also struck spectacular blows at the ruling
power: in June 1979, with the help of a Ba'thi Sunni officer who
Hanna Batatu 129

had been won over to their cause, they assailed with grenades and
machine-gun fire 200 or so 'Alawi cadets of the Artillery Academy
at Aleppo, killing 83 of them and wounding many others. 36
The violence produced an atmosphere of crisis and great danger.
The Muslim Brethren's defiance of the authorities also em-
boldened other opposition forces to follow along.
The militants who carried out these acts were men in their 20s or
early 30s, ardently attached to their beliefs, daring to the point of
recklessness. In large part, they were university students, sch.ool-
teachers, engineers, physicians, and the like. This is evident from
the occupational distribution of the activists - mostly Muslim
Brethren - who fell into the hands of the government between
1976 and May 1981. Out of a total of 1384 no fewer than 27.7 per
cent were students 7.9 per cent schoolteachers, and 13.3 per cent
members of the professions, including 79 engineers, 57 physicians,
25 lawyers, and 10 pharmacists. 37 The profiles of the leaders of the
Military Sections of the Muslim Brethren point to the same conclu-
sion. 'Adnan 'Uqlah, who led the latest rising at Hamah, is a civil
engineer and the son of a baker. His predecessor, 'Abd-us-Sattar
az-Za'im, was a dentist and the son of a tradesman. Husni Abbu,
who was the chief of the Military Branch of the Aleppo region in
1979, was a teacher of French, the son of a well-to-do merchant,
and the son-in-law of Shaikh Zayn-ud-Din Khayr-ul-Lah, the
Imam of the Grand Mosque of Aleppo. 38
What have the Muslim Brethren achieved? They have suc-
ceeded in widening the distance between the government and the
majority of the people, but not in destabilising the regime. Instead
of splitting the 'Alawis and thus weakening their foothold in the
army, they have, by their anti-'Alawi practical line, frightened the
'Alawi community into rallying behind Asad. They have also
provoked a ferocious response on the part of the government. In
June 1980, in putting down an attempted breakout by political
prisoners at Palmyra, the security forces killed no fewer than 100
men. 39 In February 1982, in order to suppress a rising by the
Muslim Brethren at Hamah, the government went to the length of
leveling whole sections of the northern and eastern parts of the
city. In the process, they killed at least 5000 people, according to
Western diplomats, 40 but eye witnesses from Hamah insist that no
fewer than 25 000 perished. About 1000 government troops are
also said to have died in the fighting.
130 Syria's Muslim Brethren

What is the outlook for the Muslim Brethren? In the past

decade, the movement underwent acute shifts in its strength. For
example, on the reckoning of its own leaders, its membership in
the city of Aleppo did not exceed 800 in 1975, but had by 1978
swollen to an estimated maximum of 5000 to 7000. 41 There is
reason to believe that its numerical weight - but not moral sym-
pathy for its cause - shrank noticeably after the passage of Law
no. 49 of 8 July 1980, which regarded adherence to the Muslim
Brethren as 'a crime' punishable by death. 42 Its total strength at
the beginning of 1982 probably did not surpass 5000. At Hamah it
suffered a deep wound from which it will not recover easily. Many
of its natural supporters in Syria's other cities may have come to
entertain second thoughts about its tactics, which have no doubt
been too costly in human lives and material possessions. However,
so long as the present regime remains narrowly based and unrep-
resentative of the country's majority, there is bound to be a revival
of the spirit of revolt which no repression, however brutal, can
extinguish.

Notes and references

1. I am grateful for comments on this paper by Hafiz ash-Shaikh, a

knowledgeable journalist from Bahrain.
2. See, for example, Mustafa as-Siba'i (the then superintendent-general
of the Society), 'Al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun' [the Muslim Brethren),
House of ar-Ruwwad, al-Ahzab as-Siyasiyyah fi Suriyyah [The Politi-
cal Parties in Syria] (Damascus, 1954), pp. 30-1.
3. Article 6 of the Society's Basic Rules of 1954, The Muslim Brethren,
Syria, an-Nizam al-Asasi (Aleppo, 1954), pp. 8-9.
4. Quoted by Sa'id Hawwa (the Syrian Muslim Brethren's principal
ideologist) in his Fi Afaq-it-ta'alim [In the Horizons of the (Society's)
Instructions] Cairo, 1980), p. 162.
5. The Command of the Islamic Revolution in Syria, Bayan-uth-
Thawrat-il-Islamiyyahfi Suriyyah wa Minhajuha [The Declaration and
Program of the Islamic Revolution in Syria] (Damascus, November 9,
1980), pp. 10-12. The Declaration was signed by Sa'id Hawwa. 'Ali
al-Bayanuni, and 'Adnan Sa'd-ud-din, members of the Executive
Bureau of the Society of Muslim Brethren.
6. Letters dated July 26 and August 8, 1980 from Iraq's First Deputy
Premier Taha Yasin aj-Jazrawi to 'Adnan 'Uqlah, Chief of the Mili-
tary Section of the Muslim Brethren, attest to this fact. For photoco-
pies of these letters, whose authenticity has not been called into
question, see Tishrin (Damascus), 26 October, 1980.
Hanna Batatu 131
7. Sa'id Hawwa, al-Madkhal ila Da'wat-il-Ikhwan-il-Muslimin [Intro-
duction to the Mission of the Muslim Brethren] second edition.
('Amman, 1979), p. 22.
8. The Command of the Islamic Revolution in Syria, Bayan-
uth-Thawrah . .. , pp. 14--20.
9. Ibid., pp. 2~32.
10. The Muslim Brethren insist that strictly speaking, there are no 'men
of religion' in Islam but only 'men of the sharia' or 'men of 'ilm
(Islamic knowledge).' However, they are clearly distinguishable from
others by their religious functions and titles, even though they may
revert to purely civilian occupation and thus do not necessarily form a
fixed or stable group. The term 'men of religion' will be used in this
paper with these qualifications in mind.
11. The Arabic terms is 'al-Muraqib al-' Am'.
12. The foregoing observations are essentially based on a conversation
with 'Adnan Sa'd-ud-Din, deputy superintendent-general of Syria's
Muslim Brethren, January 1982.
13. Conversation with this writer, November 1980. Paul Balta and
Claudine Rulleau, in L'Iran insurge (Paris, 1979), p. 152, gave the
higher figure of 180 000.
14. The Syrian Republic, Ministry of Planning, At- Ti' dad-Am li-s-Sukkan
li'Am 1960 . .. [The Population Census of 1960 in the Syrian Republic]
(Damascus, n.d.), pp. 224--225 and 23~231; and Central Statistical
Office, Nata'ij at-Ti dad al-Am li-s-Sukkan ... , 1970 [The Results of
the Population Census for 1970 in the Syrian Arab Republic], p. 225.
15. The total population of Syria in 1960 was 44 565 121.
16. The total population of Syria in 1970 was 6 304 685.
17. There were 5,476 towns and villages in 1952, Syrian Republic, At-
taqsimat al-ldariyyah fi-j-Jumhuriyyah as-Suriyyah [Administrative
Divisions in the Syrian Republic] (Damascus, 1952), pp. 295-301.
18. Abd-ul-Wahhab at-Tunji was one of the founders of the society's
Aleppo branch.
19. Conversation with this writer, January 1982.
20. Consult the Syrian Arab Republic, Nata'ij at- Ti' dad al-'Am li-s-
Sukkan ... 1970, Part I, pp. 247-250
21. Conversation with 'Adnan Sa'd-ud-Din, January 1982.
22. In 1928, out of an estimated population of 300 000, not less than
50 000 were Armenians: see Great Britain, Foreign Office, F.O.
406/62/4694 E5338/141/89 Letter of October 30, 1928 from Consul
Monck-Mason, Aleppo, to Lord Cushendun.
23. Consult Great Britain, Foreign Office, F.O. 406/46/4694 E5774/117/89
Letter of April23, 1921 and F.O. 406/51/4694 E2345/2204/89 Letter of
February 12, 1923, both from Consul Smart, Aleppo to Earl Curzon,
London: and F.O. 406/75/4694 E196/3/89 Memorandum of January
11, 1937 by J.G. Ward of the Eastern Department.
24. Great Britain, F.O. 406/74/4694 E961/195/89 Letter of February 15,
1936 from Consul Parr, Aleppo to Mr. Eden, London.
25. Movements of this kind first appeared in the 1920s. See Great Britain,
132 Syria's Muslim Brethren

F.O. 406/51/4694 E6332/867/89 Letter of May 31, 1921, from Consul

Smart, Aleppo, to the Marquess Curzon of Kedleston.
26. Mustafa as-Siba'i, 'al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun', House of ar-Ruwwad,
al-Ahzab ... , op. cit., p. 11.
27. For Siba'i, see ibid., p. 6.
28. According to the Society's deputy superintendent-general, inferior
state officials and schoolteachers still constitute a substantial portion
of the Society's membership: conversation with this writer, January
1982.
29. In the 1930s, Palestine was the most important customer of Syria:
consult the figures for Syria's exports provided in Great Britain,
F.O. 406/74 E4121/1403/89 Letters of April 13 and June 24, 1936
from Consul-General Havard, Beirut, to Mr Eden and F.O. 406/74
E6898/1403/89 Letter of 22 October 1936 from Acting Consul General
Furlonge, Beirut, to Mr Eden.
30. For al-'Attar, seep. 6.
31. Muhammad Adib Al-Taqi-ud Din al-Husni, Kitab Muntakhabat at-
Tawarikh li-Dimashq [Selections from the Histories of Damascus],
Beirut, 1979, p. 885.
32. Sami aj-Jundi, al-Ba'th, Beirut, 1969, p. 101.
33. Adnan Sa'd-ud-Din, conversation, January 1982.
34. The particulars relating to the dissension in the ranks of the Muslim
Brethren provided in this and the succeeding passages are based on
'Adnan Sa'd-ud-Din's account.
35. The official wholesale price index rose from 100 in the base year 1962
to 226 in 1973 and 350 in 1979 for cereals and flour and, in the same
years, to 294 and 509 for vegetables and to 328 and 483 for meat.
(Central Bureau of Statistics, Statistical Abstract, 1980 [Damascus,
1980]).
36. An-Nadhir (underground organ of the Muslim Brethren) No. 16 of
April 29, 1980, pp. 7-10 and No. 17 of May 25, 1980, pp. 26-7: Le
Monde Diplomatique (Paris), April1980, pp. 4-5 and October 1979,
p. 7; and The New York Times, June 23, 26, 29 and September 4,
1979.
37. Based on figures provided by the Committee for the Defence of
Freedom and Political Prisoners in Syria, in its organ al-Minbar
(Geneva), No. 3 of January 1981, pp. i-xl, and No. 4 of May 1981,
annex after p. 95.
38. The particulars concerning these leaders were obtained from 'Adnan
Sa'd-ud-Din, conversation, January 1982.
39. The leaders of the Syrian opposition estimated the number of killed at
Palmyra prison at between 550 and 700 in their letter of May 18, 1981
addressed to the secretary-general of the United Nations and pub-
lished in an-Nadhir No. 35 of 17 June 1981, pp. 40-3.
40. The New York Times, 29 May 1982.
41. 'Adnan Sa'd-ud-Din, conversation, January 1982.
42. Article of the Law, Syrian Arab Republic, al-Jaridah ar-
Rasmiyyah ... , Part I, No. 29 of 1980, pp. 1450-1.
6 State and Ideology in
Republican Egypt: 1952-82

MARIE-CHRISTINE AULAS

On 23 July 1982 the Egyptian republic was thirty-years old - the

age when a generation reaches maturity. Although it was a public
holiday and the Ramadan fast had recently ended, the Nile Valley
did not take the opportunity for one of its characteristic displays of
exuberance. The authorities celebrated in a mood of respect for
tradition: a speech here, a bunch of flowers there, amid the
nervous ritual of starchy official ceremonies. The popular symbols
of the event, however, were almost entirely absent, as if republi-
can Egypt feared to look at itself in the mirror of recollection.
At the time Israeli and American bombs were raining down on
Beirut. But even without them, it would have been rather im-
proper to commemorate the tremendous wave of hopes which,
thirty years earlier, had spread over Egypt and so many other
countries in the region. It would not have been wise to evoke the
earlier dreams of independence and development, at a time when
Egypt, though once again territorially intact, 1 was unable to recog-
nise itself and was searching more than ever to understand where
its future lay. In more senses than one, its situation might be
compared to the background of the 1950s revolt - a situation in
which social inequalities and external dependence impregnate and
mould the panorama of everyday life.
Egypt does present a continuity in that its regime is the legal
inheritor of the July Revolution. The men have changed over
133
134 State and Ideology in Republican Egypt: 1952-82

time, but the state apparatus still functions within republican

structures which, despite the harsh trial of military defeat in 1967
and the assassination of the head of state by members of his own
army in 1981, have remained essentially the same since 1952. It is
somewhat as if the body, deprived of its soul, were clinging to life
through an eternity reflex of this old nation-state.
How has Egypt come to this pass within a mere generation?
How could the republic have spawned opposite principles to those
it initially bore?

The construction of Republican Egypt

New foundations for an old project

The whole story began on 23 July 1952, when a group of twelve

officers managed to seize power in one of those coups d'etat that
involve a discontinuity of the political order. The Republic took
the place of the monarchy. But there was also a profound upheaval
in the social order. Before the various changes had taken shape,
the new regime announced its twin goals: to secure independence
from any foreign tutelage, and to develop the country's economy.
It was certainly a vote-winning platform, corresponding to the
ideological spectrum of the Free Officers themselves, some of
whom were close to Islamic currents such as the Muslim Brother-
hood, and others to secular currents such as the Communist
parties? There was even a possibility that the programme would
win over some of the old rulers - above all, the 'national bour-
geoisie' in the Wafd Party, one of whose leaders, Mustafa El
Nahas Pasha, had been prime minister until the great Cairo fire of
January 1952. 3 After all, independence had been the main goal of
the Wafd Party since its creation in 1918. And even in its decline,
as late as October 1951, it had yet again denounced the treaty of 26
August 19364 and refused to join the proto-Baghdad Pact, the
'Middle East Supreme Command'. As to economic development,
this was already the great aspiration of the national bourgeoisie,
which had set up the Bank Misr and fostered other such projects as
long ago as the 1920s. To be sure, development still required not
only industrialisation but also agrarian reform. But that was not a
particularly revolutionary demand: the UN had itself embraced it
Marie-Christine Aulas 135

in 1950 on the proposal of the United States; and it had been

widely sounded by the big bourgeois Miritt Butros Ghali, 5 and
even debated in Parliament. In short, the objectives of the new
regime corresponded to evident needs that were the subject of
deep and widely held aspirations.
The group of officers, who had barely turned thirty and were
united by an ardent nationalism, were taking charge of the country
in the name of the most traditional ideals. But these did not add up
to a project that would immediately go beyond a merely political
break with the previous order. Like so many other Third World
leaders on the morrow of independence (including the Algerian
FLN), the Free Officers sorely lacked a programme of action. Yet
the challenge that lay ahead would concern the fundamental issues
of the battle for development and national security, and even such
unprecedented problems as the nationalisation of the Suez Canal
Company. 6 The years brought no correction of this gap- at most
there were short-term measures of one kind or another. New
institutions, and the Action Charter of 1962, then tried to give a
form and a content to those measures, infusing an ad hoc mobilis-
ing ideology.
With the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to see that the often bold
initiatives of the new regime were more a reaction to events than
the implementation of a coherent programme. 7 Still, the pragma-
tic approach did have its hours of glory for a decade or more. From
1954 to 1967 Egypt lived at a furious pace, as the British with-
drawal was followed by Cairo's rejection of the Baghdad Pact, the
Bandung Conference, the Suez nationalisation, the blocked in-
vasion of 1956, the creation of the Non-Aligned Movement, the
union with Syria, and so on. At a less spectacular level, closer to
everyday reality, there were also major internal achievements:
agrarian reform, the development of an industrial infrastructure
and of numerous public services (health, education, housing, and
so on), and the construction of the High Dam, the country's main
energy resource. It was an impressive list, which could hardly have
failed to convince its originators that they were on the right track.
As it shook the old social equilibrium and the tacit rules of the
international game, Nasser's Egypt had the illusion of controlling
the new course of post-war history. In reality, however, it was
merely riding the crest of a wave, and its successes could not last
forever. After careful and prolonged study, the host of Western
136 State and Ideology in Republican Egypt: 1952-82

research centres would come up with ways of countering the new

pattern. And by then Egypt's internal social dialectic would have
run out of steam, never having really been allowed to develop
freely by those who had control of it.
For reality was deeply ingrained in those who held power on the
banks of the Nile. In socio-economic terms, those impertinent
young officers could not be described as bourgeois, since they did
not own any property. Nor were they proletarian, since they had
not been directly linked to the production process. As army men,
they belonged to that layer of state functionaries whose weight, in
the land of the 'crouching scribe', can be truly enormous. Their
perception of world realities, like their underlying aspirations,
were those of the middle-class milieu from which they had issued.
It is true that this class has still to be satisfactorily defined. But above
all in the Third World, it is a fractured class and hence a nest of
contradictions. It is mainly given over to tertiary activities, which
most often developed under the impetus of economic necessities in
the colonial period. The middle class is torn between its essentially
traditionalist cultural attachments, and its thirst to climb the social
ladder through education that is usually modernist and Western in
its left-right, capitalist-socialist dichotomies of political and ideo-
logical discourse. In short, as the Free Officers group itself tes-
tifies, we are dealing with a class in which the most diverse and
contradictory ideologies, whether Islamic or Marxist in origin, are
caught up and jumbled together. A nationalist orientation will
clearly have a large following among this class, because its affect-
ive virtues attract opposites and dispense with the need for analysis.
In Egypt, where history has a quite special weight, nationalism
appears as more coherent perhaps than elsewhere. But beyond the
short-term mobilising effect of nationalist discourse, the eternal
dilemma of 'tradition' and 'modernity' continues to traverse par-
ticularly the middle class, and inevitably resurfaces in the end.
Nasser's Egypt would obscure the cultural and ideological di-
mensions of the dilemma by perceiving it only in political and
economic terms. In fact, although the accents were different, it
took over the basic problematic of the Nahda movement of a
century before. The Arab 'renaissance' had then sought to breathe
new life into Arab-Islamic civilisation by drawing inspiration from
the European advances in science and technology. However, the
Marie-Christine Aulas 137

intellectual upsurge had been unable to stem the process of colon-

isation, which began in 1882, after Mohammed Ali's first steps in
industrialisation, after the creation of a publishing industry, the
completion of the Suez Canal, and the opening of an Egyptian
Parliament in 1876. Just like its unacknowledged forerunners, the
Nasser regime was unconsciously mined by the dilemma and
condemned to eventual failure. For even if it is not explicitly
formulated, the choice between 'tradition' (an ideological and
cultural identity, of which the economy is but one dimension) and
'modernity' (a goal imposed by the West in its 'capitalist' or
'social-Marxist' variant 8 ) cannot fail to make itself felt- whether in
the way of directing development or in the model fostered by the
class in power.
Only today are we in a position to ask how Egypt could claim to
be freeing itself, while it strove to imitate the very forces against
which it was locked in political and economic struggle. At the time,
Egypt was not the only country to live such an illusion.

The building of state capitalism

Once in power, the stratum that had emerged from the. middle
class imposed a new de facto social order by supplanting the old
ruling class that had taken shape a century before around the
Mohammed Ali dynasty. By its very nature, this stratum identified
with the state as the bulwark of national independence, and as the
key instrument of political and economic action. In the stage of
construction, the state would forge the structures that assured the
legitimacy of its controllers: the armed forces, and then the single
party. In a parallel process, it became the country's principal
entrepreneur, if not its only employer: as one nationalisation
measure followed another9 and development assumed an indus-
trialist inflection, the state acquired supreme control over the bulk
of industrial production and a sizeable portion of agriculture.
Outside the state, no salvation for the Egyptian people! There can
be no doubt that this statist, authoritarian dynamic did raise many
structural blocks and resistances in a number of areas. Yet the
transformation of economic structures proceeded on the basis of a
state capitalism which in no way altered the capitalist relations of
production. On the contrary, these now spread to sectors of the
138 State and Ideology in Republican Egypt: I952-82

economy and society which had formerly lived on their margin.

Once the initial stage was over, the concentration of responsi-
bilities in the expanding bureaucratic order gave birth to a form of
economic statism and internal political rivalries. These rigid ten-
sions had all the more paralysing an effect in that the nationalist
momentum never structured a broad social base or a will to sweep
away the old social order. However great the aspirations and
initial steps towards equality, any further progress was rendered
highly problematic by the essential incapacity of this social class to
formulate a coherent project. Its very nationalism, which had been
intended as a revolutionary force, later served to mystify the
crucial socio-economic differentiation of the traditional classes and
of the privileged layer emerging from the new state-capitalist class.

Ideological elaboration

As the Egyptian leaders empirically developed new state struc-

tures and a new political orientation, they gradually became aware
of the ideological holes in their project. They never tired of
inventing new forms to motivate and regiment the population, but
they did so less from ideological conviction than out of a pragmatic
need to acquire a broad popular following. This explains their
fascination with the experience of the Communist countries, whose
ideology explains and justifies an apparatus of popular mobilisa-
tion. Indeed, during the ascendancy of its nationalist discourse,
Nasserism sought to rally the masses by borrowing a number of
ideological elements that it felt to be either imposed or justified by
the circumstances. This approach underlay the role given to intel-
lectuals, and it allows us to understand the mistrustful and ambi-
valent way in which the regime always related to them. Conftictual
for the first ten years, this relationship improved after the in-
tervention of Mohammed Heikal, the enterprising editor of Al-
Ahram and the regime's chief ideologue- if ever there was one.

Explicit ideologies

Arab nationalist ideology was advanced at the time when Cairo's

triumphant acts of defiance (rejection of the Baghdad Pact, the
1956 nationalisation, and so on) galvanised the Arab masses from
Baghdad to Rabat. To be sure, Nasser had strongly evoked Egypt's
Marie-Christine Aulas 139

Arab identity in the theory of 'the three circles' in his one and only
work, The Philosophy of the Revolution. But that would seem to
be an obvious fact of culture and geography, of politics and
history. Many others in Egypt had already said as much, and
various pacts signed with Arab countries since 1952 provided the
proof, if any were necessary. One would have expected from Cairo
a more sustained analysis of its Arab nationalist ideology - for the
heart of the Arab world beats in the Egyptian capital, even if it is
not there that the greatest Arab thinkers have been produced.
Most often they went there -from Syria, Lebanon, Palestine- to
achieve recognition and freedom of expression. The Nasser period
did little to reverse this trend: none of its intellectual output,
painted on to reality in order to justify or flatter, has proved able
to withstand the test of time. Not by chance did Doctor Hussein
Fawzi's Sinbad al-masri ('An Egyptian Sinbad') enjoy such success
during those years. 10 Nor was it the only systematic study of the
Egyptian personality: Gamal Hamdan's Shakhsiyat Masr ('Egypt's
Personality'), for example, was a geo-strategic variation on the
same theme. But where were the basic works on Arab national-
ism? It is true, however, that the official encouragement of pan-
Arabism drew attention to several great works of classical Arabic
literature, as well as to contemporary non-Egyptian Arab writers.
When the schools and universities were opened to all, this opening
to Arab culture would form a whole generation.
In the cultural domain proper, Arab nationalism and the Palesti-
nian question bore little fruit. The cinema, for instance, then bursting
with creativity, could only produce a clumsy epic, Salah-el-Din, 11 in
which the features of Nasser, the Ra'is, were barely disguised. The
lack of anything solid on the Palestinian drama or the Algerian war
of liberation also marked the literature of the period. Only after
the defeat of 1967 did Egypt face the Arab world with a few films
and literary works of interest concerning Palestine and the conflict
with Israel. Sinai had just been occupied.
Given the image in the West of Nasser's Egypt, 12 it is strange to
note the marginal place of the Palestinian problem in the cultural
life of the time. Even when the problem was addressed, it was
analysed in such a feeble way that it appeared as a question of duty
or solidarity vis-a-vis despoiled Arab brothers, never as an in-
trinsic part of the Egyptian national cause. Similarly, Egypt's total
ignorance of Zionist ideology, though explicable in terms of the
140 State and Ideology in Republican Egypt: 1952-82

denial of the Jewish state, hindered a concrete knowledge of

Israel. Later, all these things would smooth the way for Sadat's
trip to Jerusalem, the signing of the Camp David accords, and so
on.
As for socialist ideology, Nasser's Egypt took even longer to
develop its distinctive themes. Political discourse turned to them
only after a transitional stage of 'positive neutralism' and at the
same time as the Non-Aligned Movement was coming to the fore.
These semantic precautions tell us a great deal about the con-
straints and reservations standing in the way of such an ideological
orientation. Like many other Third World countries, Nasser's
Egypt became socialist by economic determinism (choice of a
development model) and strategic necessity (US-European col-
lusion with Israel forcing an alliance with the USSR), rather than
from a concern for equality, as is usually the case in the West.
During the same period, the positions of the USSR vis-a-vis
decolonising Third World countries underwent a significant evolu-
tion. Khrushchev's advent to power was followed by de-Stalinisa-
tion and a thaw in the international situation, and the Twentieth
Congress of the CPSU moved away from the old line, defined by
Zhdanov in 1949, which denounced 'the putrid idea of the
possibility of some third, middle road between communism and
capitalism' . 13 The new approach, which was more adapted to the
needs of the Third World leaders, stressed the concepts of 'na-
tional democracy' and 'a non-capitalist path of development'.
Eschewing any class analysis of the anti-imperialist states, a stream
of articles substituted definitions in terms of 'unity' or 'working
together' in the general interest. Such theorisations, correspond-
ing to the bloc interests of the Soviet Union, entailed that local
Communist parties should dissolve themselves in the national
effort, while the USSR sought an alliance with the new national
bourgeoisies.
Both Cairo and Moscow had an interest in such a convergence.
However, Egypt wanted to chart its own path of development and
its own socialism. Already in the late 1950s a number of working
groups and research institutes were set up to develop a 'scientific'
approach that would result in a specifically 'Egyptian road to
socialism' . 14 Yet despite the scientistic phrases, dear to every type
of socialism, the research projects often merely compounded the
ideological confusion. In 1962- a full ten years after the seizure of
Marie-Christine Aulas 141

power- a Charter of National Action finally set the guidelines for

the regime's political activity, but without coming near to a resolu-
tion of the fundamental contradictions. For how could Egypt claim
to embrace socialism if the regime blocked the class struggle and
strove to absorb and freeze any rank-and-file pressure within an
all-powerful single party? How could Egypt be socialist if it in-
terned for several years those of its citizens who were most ready
to defend and advance socialism?
Egypt was the first, but not the only, Third World country to live
these 'socialist' contradictions with the obliging approval of Moscow.
The Egyptian Communists would be sacrificed on the altar of bloc
politics and forced to participate in 'national democracy'. Within
this framework the progressive intellectuals began to be released
from detention, although they were not invited to help in drafting
the Charter that was then under preparation. While the Com-
munist Party was dissolved, Heikal intervened to encourage intellec-
tuals to join the regime in its efforts along 'the non-capitalist path
of development' - a theoretical novelty which made them pre-
pared to accept the offer. However, they were being asked only to
supply intellectual substance for analyses which the regime itself
was far from living up to.
Emanating from the summit, with no grassroots consultation or
participation, this rather intangible Egyptian socialism did not
enter the national consciousness. Only in education, health, housing
and purchasing co-operatives did it leave some trace and a fairly
widespread nostalgia for a time when the state concerned itself
with citizen's welfare.

The implicit ideology of modernisation

Neither Arab nationalism nor 'particularist socialism' managed to

awaken a process of reflection that went beyond the passing
conjuncture. By wedding themselves to practical necessities -
whether of a political, economic or strategic order- these orienta-
tions would eventually run up against the regime's implicit ideology.
After all, it is undeniable that there was a Nasserite project,
unconsciously conveyed by the 'fractured' social class in power.
This project never appeared in speeches but only in actual deeds -
for the good reason that it conflicted with the publicly declared
anti-imperialist political options. We might summarise the Nasserite
142 State and Ideology in Republican Egypt: 1952-82

project as one of Western-style modernisation that borrowed the

non-capitalist (or state-capitalist) path of development. The West-
ern- or, to be more precise, American- model had also been the
goal of Moscow in its pursuit of scientific and technological prog-
ress; and at about that time Khrushchev was continually uttering
the challenge: 'We shall catch up with the Americans!' In this
regard, a semantic approach to the material achievements of the
Nasser regime may prove quite instructive. We can see this in
many areas.

(a) The production choices of the industrialisation programme,

then in full swing. Import substitution favoured those aspira-
tions which the middle class had never managed to achieve:
refrigerator, hot-water system, air conditioning, a Fiat Nasr
car, and all the varieties of comfort propagated by American
TV series in the newly-born Egyptian television network.
Possession of such consumer goods was not just a question of
greater well-being, but was dialectically related to social status.
The harder they were to acquire for anyone without the right
connections to the state apparatus, the more their owner was
held in esteem. The alternative was to go to Gaza, which had a
privileged import regime. 15
(b) House-building programmes geared to the social class ident-
ified with the state apparatus. The most striking feature here
was 'neo-Californian' architecture, whether in the private
villas of Dokki Mohandessin and the new destricts of Cairo,
or in the recreational complexes of the resort towns of
Maamura and Gamassa, designed to meet the leisure needs of
this class.
(c) Co-operation with other Arab countries, particularly Syria (the
Union of 1958-61) and North Yemen (after the overthrow of
the Imam in 1962). In each case, the haughty and contemptu-
ous attitude of Cairo's officers and functionaries was so intol-
erable to the local population that the Egyptian presence was
phased out by those who had requested it.
(d) The magnetic attraction of Beirut. Like West Berlin in Eastern
Europe, Beirut serves as a shop-window of the West in the
Arab world. At the time when Cairo was capitalising on
regional political aspirations, the Egyptian petty bourgeoisie
had its eyes firmly fixed on Hamra . . . on the road to
Moscow. 16
Marie-Christine Aulas 143

This 'modernising' perspective was basically continuous with the

'Nahda' of a century before. Yet the fact that it was only implicit
excluded any reflection on its inevitable cultural impact. Modern-
isation involved no more than an often clumsy application of a
borrowed model, in which no attention was paid to the ideological
dimensions conveyed by science and technology. As it intoned the
hymn to progress and aseptic science, Egypt believed that it was
genuinely creating something. But it was merely relaying the
ideological conceptions of the Euro-American West, from which it
claimed to be freeing itself politically and economically.
Once it had passed the colonial stage, Egypt fell into the
evolutionist trap of the 'stages of economic growth' theory devel-
oped in WashingtonY Whole chapters of Rostow's work were
translated and serialised in Al-Ahram, with the headline taken
from Rostow's sub-title 'a non-communist manifesto'. And that
was when the regime was deciding to embark on the socialist path!
The extension of school education to all layers of society, as well as
Cairo's influence in a number of Arab and 'non-aligned' countries,
helped to spread the 'model' beyond the limits that the West could
hope to achieve through its own dynamic. North Yemen, for
instance, which had been virtually closed to the world for cen-
turies, was introduced by Egyptians to reinforced concrete and the
tie-and-suit before anyone arrived from UN development agencies.
Egypt thereby revived the pioneering role it had played a century
before, when the Austro-Hungarian strategist Friedrich List could
write:

No traveller doubts that [Mohammed] Ali has the strength of

will and sufficient means so to found a power that would intro-
duce European civilisation to the most beautiful countries in the
world and beam, by the shortest route, the European sense of
initiative to southern Asia and eastern and southern Africa. 18

Ardently encouraged by progressives, Communists and Marxist-

Leninists, 19 the Nasserite ideology of modernism helped to ease
the spread of the Western capitalist market and to topple the
whole Arab world irresistibly into a new kind of ideological
alienation (the Western model implicitly conveyed by modernisa-
tion). This was done in the name of socialism and Arab national-
ism, in accents which celebrated the regaining of freedom and
independence.
144 State and Ideology in Republican Egypt: 1952-82

Furthermore, the regime's monopoly of expression (education,

the printing and distribution of books and magazines, and so on,
and its ideological monolithism froze any creative thought outside
the institutional channels. Unable to free the social dialectic and
the expressions of national culture, the institutions gradually be-
came constricting forces whose wooden language, fed by taboos,
silences, artifices and stereotypes, distorted information when it
did not obscure it completely. In this sense it was the Soviet model
that was at work in Egypt- although the regime's conception of its
intellectuals was much more restrictive than in Moscow. The
intellectual had to discard any critical spirit and become a mere
scribe in the service of a regime whose cultural horizon, unlike that
of the Nahda period, was extremely narrow and displayed all the
ambiguity of the 'fractured' social class in power. The nationalist
stage did produce some valuable achievements, but then the
dynamic of the state came to petrify the intellectual capacities of a
whole generation. Sooner or later, it seemed, there might be no
one left but hacks ready to argue for any new course or decision of
the regime.

The end of Nasserism

Wherever Egypt may have been heading, Washington could not

wait for this internal revolution to run its course. This was because
Egypt opened the way for the key international difference (one
now conceived in the North-South vocabulary) to be converted
into a tactical confrontation, one between East and West. The
country's political weight and influence in the world was seen as
intensifying the threat to the strategic balance; and as, after 1968,
the British prepared to withdraw from East of Suez, 20 it became an
urgent necessity to stem the Nasserite tide.
The tripartite attack on Egypt in 1956 had been a failure. So in
June 1967, Israel was called upon to secure a clear-cut victory, by
acting militarily on its own. As a result, after fifteen years of
independence, Egypt found itself defeated militarily and with a
partial occupation of its territory. The ideologies of Arab national-
ism and a particularist socialism began to evaporate as Cairo
strengthened its alliance with Moscow and disengaged from
Yemen. The traumatic character of the defeat bred sceptical and
self-critical attitudes, overturning certain shibboleths in favour of a
Marie-Christine Aulas 145

few elementary truths. These could be seen emerging in the press,

in various cultural, literary2 1 and cinematic works, 22 and in the
newly founded Palestinian Research Centre. 23 However, although
the crisis did introduce a certain freedom of expression, it was not
long before this was obstructed by the state apparatus, which had
emerged unscathed, if emptied of all substance, from the war.
Despite the defeat, Nasser remained until his death in Septem-
ber 1970 the charismatic leader of both Egypt and the Arab world.
He never ceased to be faithful to, or perhaps imprisoned by, his
image: that of a man who would fight with the means available to
assure his country's independence and security.

The end of state capitalism

The preconditions

Defeat in 1967 initiated the decomposition of state capitalism,

even as Nasser still lived. Cracks appeared here and there in the
hitherto monolithic structure of the state, leading not only to a
relative cultural relaxation but also to a degree of economic
liberalism vis-a-vis the national bourgeoisie. In 1968 student re-
volts broke out in Alexandria and Cairo, calling for the punish-
ment of officers with operational responsibility in the June War,
and for genuine popular participation. 24 In response, the National
Charter of 1962 was amended in a few purely formal ways by the
proclamation of 30 March 1968.
The country's dramatic situation made the choice of a policy all
the more crucial. The regime could no longer get by on artificial
ideological constructs, nor appeal to a nationalist mobilisation that
abstracted from the social dynamic. The Israeli occupation of the
Sinai imposed a new priority, one that would take precedence over
the battle for development and constitute the national question in
whose name the later compromises and political changes would be
justified. In the meantime, Nasser devoted his final efforts to
rebuilding the army and, in 1969, to a war of attrition that would
only end with his acceptance of the Rogers Plan in July 1970. The
mobilisation of military resources, culminating in the triumphant
crossing of the Suez Canal, would dispense with the need for
popular mobilisation.
146 State and Ideology in Republican Egypt: 1952-82

Gathering momentum

Nasser's death removed the main obstacle to Egypt's integration

into the capitalists sphere of influence. But his charisma was still so
powerful that his successor had to await the momentous events of
the October War before daring to proclaim the new orientation. In
the half-light of the neither-war-nor peace period (1970-3), how-
ever, the new regime would introduce certain profound changes
and various mechanisms that prepared the ground for the official
re-integration.
Rivalries within Nasser's small group of legatees soon burst into
the open. They took the form of an ideological conflict over
whether Washington or Moscow could best allow the national
question to be resolved. But this debate concealed what was no
more than a struggle for power within the ruling class - a struggle
in which the population remained completely marginal. Although,
at this stage, each clan waged its struggle purely from its positions
of power within the state apparatus, the rivalries heralded a
gradual return to other forms of social differentiation.
Anwar al Sadat finally asserted himself as head of state on 14
May 1971. Under cover of eliminating rival 'centres of power', a
huge process of reorganisation shifted the goals of the state appar-
atus while preserving its essential structures. In the trade unions,
the single party, the national assembly and so forth, a series of
elections brought forward new faces and new political currents. A
new constitution25 reaffirmed the commitment to socialism, 'which
will prevent exploitation, and aim to dissolve class differences' ,26
but it also strengthened the powers of the head of state and
underlined the Islamic character of the regime. The press, brought
into conformity with the other media, was purged. A few months
later, in the wake of the student riots of January 1972, numerous
intellectuals lost their job or were banned from publishing. The
crisis also yielded a new government, most of whose main figures,
though known from the previous regime, had the common feature
of being Western-trained technocrats. In the 1960s many of them
had helped to draft socialist measures, and now they were being
called upon to assure the return to capitalism. Their actions spoke
for themselves.
In 1971 the Aziz Sedki government decreed a reorganisation of
the public sector, under which companies whose activity depended
Marie-Christine Aulas 147

upon it would enjoy freedom of movement and initiative without

being subject to government or other supervisory intervention. It
was also decided to set up an international foreign-trade bank
whose function would be to strengthen the ties with Arab countries,
and to create free enterprise zones in which Arab and foreign
capital would be encouraged to participate in industrial and com-
mercial ventures. In summer 1973, a new government under the
head of state himself (but with the economy and finance portfolio
going to Abdel Aziz Hegazi) announced the broad lines of its
economic policy, which included the creation of a parallel currency
market free of import-export restrictions.
This series of measures naturally reassured those at whom they
were aimed. They were certainly more than enough for the
hitherto veiled class differences to express themselves with con-
fidence: the wives of officials now dared to sport their jewellery at
receptions, and 'top' weddings began to be celebrated at the only
two big international hotels of the time (the Nile Hilton and the
Sheraton). Nor was the ruling class of petty-bourgeois origin alone
in displaying the economic resources it had acquired under state
capitalism- it was soon joined by all those who had preserved the
bulk of their fortune through the years of socialist austerity.
It was precisely to this kind of clientele that the new regime
turned in order to build a social base. It produced one concession
and one conciliatory advance after another: 800 landowners whose
property had been sequestered ten years earlier were handed back
their land; and 5000 more who had been affected by the 1967land
reform were given cash compensation.
Strict controls on trips abroad were lifted. Journalistic contacts
with Western embassies were actively encouraged, after many
years of strong official disapproval. Shawarbi Street, in the heart of
Cairo and the centre of the black market, overflowed more than
ever with anything from tights to washing-machines that had been
smuggled in from Beirut. Both the government and the privileged
classes had an interest in this nod-and-a-wink form of liberalisa-
tion. Yet it was still too early for it to be officially proclaimed.
Official discourse began to stammer as it tried to legitimate itself
with references to Nasser while giving signs of a new departure. It
was a difficult balancing act, not without danger in this period of
uncertainty and looming war. Indeed, it was this weakness which
lay at the root of the serious student disturbances in the winter of
148 State and Ideology in Republican Egypt: 1952-82

1972. For President Sadat, having declared in June 1971 that this
year would see the decisive conflict with Israel, had announced at
the beginning of January 1972 that the 'fog' of the Indo-Pakistan
war had ruled out a renewal of hostilities.
It was at this time that Sadat introduced two ideological surro-
gates that would serve him throughout his years in power. First,
the espousal of Islam initially allowed him to broaden his social
base by releasing the members of the Muslim Brotherhood who
had been jailed in the repressive campaign of 1965. He then
encouraged Islamic forces to enter the university in order to
counter the influence of progressive-Nasserite groups. Character-
ising himself as 'Al-Rais al-Mumen' (the Believer President), he
invited Egyptian television every Friday to film his participation in
mosque services. The brown patch or zebiba that he marked on his
brow offered tangible proof of his piety. Nor were these references
to Islam entirely without an economic basis, since Egypt's re-
lations with Libya (then in its anti-Soviet phase) and Saudi Arabia
(previously disliked in Cairo) were continually undergoing expan-
sion.
As a complement to religion, the head of state also invoked
themes of traditional morality. In his first speech to the People's
Assembly after the launching of the 'rectification movement', the
President declared: 'I want us to return to the village source, to
our origin ... I want the constitution to take this into account, not
only for the sake of the villages, but so that the whole of Egypt
should take shape in this way and become a single village.' The
wisdom of tradition and of the paterfamilias would become a
recurrent theme of official discourse, constantly backed up by the
President's trips to his home village, Mit Abul Kom, and illus-
trated by photos of him in the peasant jallabieh. The clear purpose
was to substitute the wisdom of tradition for the perils of class
struggle.
As for Egyptian nationalism, which lends itself so easily to
popular mobilisation, the regime was content to strengthen its
outward emblems. Having been known since 1958 as the United
Arab Republic, the country was renamed Egypt. The falcon of the
Qoraish appeared on the national flag, in place of the two stars
that had symbolised the union with SyriaY But this nationalism no
longer had the militant tone of defiance.
Throughout the period between 1970 and 1973, one marked by
the political succession, clan rivalry and incipient economic liber-
Marie-Christine Aulas 149

alisation, the contradictions of Nasserite ideology were apparent

in Heikal's continuing role as chief ideologue of the regime.
Nasser's former confidant supplied Sadat with the arguments to
justify many of his new policy initiatives: the 'rectification move-
ment'; Egyptian intervention against the pro-communist coup
d'etat in Khartum, in July 1971; the rapprochement with Saudi
Arabia and the United States. 28 Heikal was truly the eminence
grise of the regime, writing most of the key speeches and using his
journalistic talent to launch a good number of media slogans, such
as that 'rectification movement' itself, which were later adopted by
others. Although Heikal was dismissed as Al-Ahram editor on 4
February 1974, many friends and disciples continued to occupy the
highest posts throughout the period of the Sadat regime.

Practical applications

Whatever the scope of the internal changes impelling Egypt tow-

ards the capitalist sphere of influence, they always came up against
the obstacle of the national question. Unless a solution could be
sketched out, it was difficult to see how diplomatic and economic
links could be restored with W ashington 29 and a final shift made
towards the Western camp. All diplomatic endeavours - the
Rogers Plan, the Jarring mission, the initiative by African senior
statesmen - had so far failed to produce results. The only other
way of unblocking the situation was actually to initiate hostilities
with Israel - something never before attempted by Republican
Egypt. However, if the regime was to overcome the obstacles to
joining the camp of Israel's allies there would have to be an
appearance of victory.
In the name of 'Allah Akbar', the Egyptian army successfully
crossed the Suez Canal and the Bar Lev line. The general mood of
elation demonstrated that the 1973 October War was serving its
catalysing function: once again the conflict with Israel became a
crucial determinant of the evolution not only of Egypt but of the
whole Arab world. Anwar al-Sadat, the hero of the crossing of the
Canal, thereby managed to establish a new centre of his legit-
imacy. Having done what Nasser never achieved, he was able to
shake off the influence of his predecessor and uninhibitedly de-
clare a new orientation of his own. The wave of national unity
swept aside the remaining detractors. Egypt had rediscovered
hope in victory.
150 State and Ideology in Republican Egypt: 1952-82

Just as the war had not been confined to the sands of Sinai, so
the euphoria did not stop at the Nile Valley. For the first time the
'moderate' Arab regimes took part in the battle by means of their
oil weapon. Apart from the embargo, the price of the black gold
was drastically increased - as James Akins, US ambassador to
Saudi Arabia, had suggested a year earlier in the corridors of
OPEC. 30

Economic applications

Signs of a peaceful and prosperous era began to appear with Arab

money and a pax Americana with Israel on the horizon. These
seemed to offer a solution to all problems, particularly those which
lay at the origins of Republican Egypt. But the original project -
which, as we have seen, aimed at independence, national security
and economic development - no longer revolved around dynamic
internal initiatives but crucially required the assistance of external
forces.
A single word sums up the whole new project: infitah or 'open-
ing'. So rich are its semantic associations that it sounds like a magic
password. 31 In its opposition to inghilaq ('closure'), infitah en-
compasses the ideological and political notions of socialism and
capitalism, with all their components (bloc alignment, choice of
another mode of development) and with all their consequences.
Officially announced on the morrow of the October War, the
policy of economic opening followed the logic of the previous few
years. There was no need for a change in the government, except
for the appointment of Ismail Fahmi, one of Heikal's close colla-
borators, to head the ministry of foreign affairs. Abdel Aziz
Hegazi combined his office as minister of economics and finance
with that of prime minister. Together with Ismail Sabri Abdallah,
the planning minister known for his Marxist leanings, Hegazi drew
up the 'economic crossing plan' (a reference to the crossing of the
Canal). If not exactly new, the goal of the Hegazi cabinet had the
virtue of clarity: to stimulate national capitalism, both public and
private, with the financial and technological assistance of Arab and
Western capital. This showed conclusively that Egypt's state capi-
talists were unable to sustain their original project, and that new
forms of social differentiation had emerged within the state-
capitalist society. At the same time, however, there was a clear
Marie-Christine Aulas 151

wish to keep the process of opening under control, and to give the
economy a new impetus through the introduction of foreign capital
and improved means of production. According to the logic of the
time, Egypt was to contribute its manpower for a Brazilian or
South Korean type of peripheral capitalist development that
would be adapted to its own social formation.
The plan drawn up by the regime's technocrats only partially
married with the thinking of the major international financial
agencies, the IMF and the World Bank. Whereas the former set
their sights on gradual development within a 'national' framework,
the latter looked forward to radical change within a global per-
spective. The former considered that the traditional stage of state
capitalism had been fully accomplished, but the latter saw infitah
as itself the transition stage 32 that would adapt the structures of the
Egyptian economy to the model of Milton Friedman and the
Trilateral Commission. In practice, this meant that free compe-
tition was to become the sole regulator of economic activity, and
that the public sector and the 'welfare state' were to be &,carded.
But in a Third World country more than elsewhere, the economic
transition also requires a social 'transition': it is necessary to create
capitalists who are capable of directing the take-off on the basis of
a primitive accumulation of capital. Thus the Egyptian road to
capitalism depended not on an internal evolution, one within the
social formation, but on shock therapy designed to shake its very
foundations. What already existed of the Egyptian economy was
placed in a stranglehold - not only the public sector that had
accounted for the bulk of production, but also the private sector
that was assigned for development.

Political applications

Before the economy reached explosion point, the opening had to

embrace the field of politics and to establish the system which
capitalism claims as its prerogative: namely, democracy. The
regime had already promised this as part of the 'rectification
movement', in honour of Point 6 of the Revolution. But whereas it
had hitherto remained a pious wish, pressure was now mounting
on all sides: not only did the external allies want Egypt to abandon
its socialist application, but the dynamic of infitah made this
inevitable. How could new social classes be asked to make an
152 State and Ideology in Republican Egypt: 1952-82

active contribution if they were not allowed to express themselves

or to participate in power? Besides, the evident incompetence of
the single party, the Arab Socialist Union, was widely denounced
even within the regime. Thus, in 1976, the date for renewal of the
People's Assembly became associated with a democratisation pro-
cess that had been the object of political debate since the October
War.
In March 1976 the regime decided to create three 'platforms',
with a view to their becoming parties. In this way it cut short the
numerous grassroots initiatives and sought to define the rules of
'its' democracy: 'The experiment will begin with the constitution
of three platforms representing the right, the centre (which is the
key tendency in our country) and the left. 133 This skilful ma-
noeuvre illustrated the limits of the official conception of democ-
racy. For it granted no place to the main currents of thought within
society, those most likely to demand a say in the media and
parliament. These were: the Nasserite current, which was not
allowed a party of that name 34 since the regime claimed the
heritage for itself alone; the Wafd current, whose nationalist
discourse was dangerously attractive to citizens of every
affiliation; 35 and the Islamic current around the old Muslim
Brotherhood leaders, who were nevertheless granted permission
by the head of state to publish a monthly magazine, Al-Da'wa. The
elections of November 1976, like the new assembly that resulted
from them, reproduced the mechanisms and defects of the old
single party. A dozen deputies out of nearly 360 provided the
democratic alibi.
Through the debate on democratisation, the broad ideological
currents running across Egyptian society but on the margin of its
institutions began to emerge into the light of day. The principal
effect, however, was a 'de-Nasserisation' campaign. The new
rulers very one-sidedly presented the previous regime as a state of
the mukhabarat ('secret services'), one trapped in socialist aus-
terity, and from which all the ills of contemporary Egypt derived.
This way of defining themselves by negative opposition did not
apply in one key area: the modernisation model. However, it was
the Western-American model that was now so explicitly pro-
claimed and which formed the core of the dominant discourse.
Modernisation was no longer presented as a goal of collective,
auto-centred effort, but as an existing reality. Eventually peace
Marie-Christine Aulas 153

and prosperity would bring the model to the whole population -

and meanwhile the virtue, or even the miracle, of infitah was to
make it accessible to some by introducing it ready-made into
Egypt. Not only did imported consumer goods flood the market,
but people were called on to 'modernise' their social practices and
life-style. Official discourse was relayed by the numerous Ameri-
can and West European tourists and residents, while various
experts arrived with a particular interest in Egypt's past difficulties
and future options. Modernisation was at work in every practical
and ideological area. Whether concrete or abstract, the model was
asserted in an exclusivist manner. As a result, modernisation
scorned any developmental imperative and produce nothing but
mechanisms of alienation. The question became one of how to
assuage consumer frustrations whose outward signs served more
than ever as criteria of social belonging. How could one be modern
and yet remain Egyptian?
If the economic dynamic of infitah profoundly unbalanced Egyp-
tian society, the corresponding dynamic of 'modernism' had a very
serious impact on the psycho-cultural foundations of society.

Egypt falls apart

The situation exploded in the early hours of 1977. From Aswam to

Alexandria the people took to the streets as soon as the radio
announced the ending of subsidies on basic goods. It was a long
time since Egypt had witnessed demonstrations of such breadth
and violence. The regime was caught unprepared. After hesitating
for forty-eight hours, 36 it responded with a show of force and
simultaneously went back on the measures imposed by the IMF.
But it had been a full-scale alert. It was clear that the hopes raised
three years earlier had still not been realised: neither those of
economic prosperity nor the prospect of peace. A new policy had
to be found that would solve these two crucial and inextricably
linked problems.

Towards a rentier economy

Once it had been condemned by most of the population, the term

infitah was banished from official discourse. But the regime
154 State and Ideology in Republican Egypt: 1952--82

remained faithful to the policy of an economic opening, while

transforming its fundamental logic. Having failed to attract private
investment into projects that would have boosted internal produc-
tivity and opened the road to a peripheral capitalist economy, the
government tried to fend off the most pressing dangers by finding
capital where it already existed. Prosperity could come later. This
rentier quese 7 became the basic of the economy principle- if there
was one at all - through a rare combination of factors:

(a) the urge to liquidate state capitalism;

(b) the possibility of supplying labour to Arab oil-producing
countries with a low population; and
(c) Egypt's strategic weight, which the Arab-Israeli conflict
turned into a source of income.

Such an an economic philosophy, in a Third World country with no

major natural resources and a population of more than 40 million,
distorted any perspective for the future by taking the present as its
field of purposive action. This high-risk course launched Egypt on
what was no longer anything but a headlong flight.
The state itself began to profit from 'rents' to a degree never
seen before -whether it was the major oil strikes in the Red Sea,
the reopening of the Suez Canal to international shipping, the
SUMED oil pipeline, 38 or, less significantly, the growth of tour-
ism. These sources of revenue- to which we should add the wages
of expatriate workers - came to play a key role in the national
budget. Yet they did not make Egypt a rentier state comparable to
its neighbours in the Arabian Peninsula, and they were far from
sufficient to meet the needs and commitments of the national
economy. However much the regime may have wished to unbur-
den itself of the socio-economic gains that the population inherited
from state capitalism, the riots of January 1977 demonstrated just
how great were the political risks of such an operation. After
dismantling the public sector's production units, the authorities
were not able to sell shares in these enterprises to Egyptian
capitalists, nor to hand them over to foreign companies within the
framework of joint venture agreements. Very often bureaucratic
resistance from the layer of state employees prevented the process
from going beyond very narrow limits. Thus, the state remained in
charge of a public sector which, despite its falling productivity and
Marie-Christine Aulas 155

exposure to repeated attacks, still occupied a dominant position

within the production apparatus and still had no stimulus from
local or foreign competition of the kind that the infitah policy had
originally envisaged. Since the hoped-for rent cannot be derived
from sales of public sector industry, it has been the latter's output
which has allowed certain figures within, or close to, the regime to
draw a rent.
In reality, however, it is on the external plane that state action
has counted for most, both in balancing the country's finances and
in securing food supplies (60 per cent of which now come from
abroad). The sizeable financial contribution from Arab countries,
although not originally intended for that purpose, has helped the
state to carry out such activities. Egypt can also expect to receive
aid from the West so long as it adopts its political goals. Foreign
businessmen may have refused to invest in Egypt, but the West
does not hesitate to provide government aid to an extent that
many other Third World countries can only envy. In return, Cairo
has only to make ever greater and ever less reversible political
concessions. Egypt can command a price for its political and
strategic weight.
All these sources of revenue have helped the Egyptian state to
avert a new wave of popular disturbances. But this does not
explain how the system has managed to survive the state's gradual
unloading of its social obligations (health, education, employ-
ment, housing, transport, and so on), and the lack of any incentive
to engage in productive activity. The fact is that the regime's
slogans in favour of al-Kasb (profit) have invited citizens to adopt
a rentier philosophy similar to its own. The dominant ideology
frees the state of any responsibility for the problems of the hour.
These are attributed not only to past socialism but also to the
ungratefulness of the Arab countries and, more seriously, to
personal incapacity on the part of those who cannot find a source
of rent. Thus, several million dollars have gone into a birth control
campaign whose purpose, apart from encouraging couples to have
fewer children, is to demonstrate that population growth implies
individual responsibility for the shortage of social, health and
educational services, and for problems of work, transport and
housing. Government is thereby absolved of blame: it has created
the peacetime conditions for prosperity, and every citizen is
(theoretically) free to make their fortune without constraints. The
156 State and Ideology in Republican Egypt: 1952-82

myth of Osman Ahmed Osman, 39 overseer of the new economy

and symbol of individual success, has played a role similar to that
of Rockefeller in the collective imagination. Everyone who has the
capacity can at least become a 'self-made man', if not exactly a
millionaire. It is up to everyone to find the way.
The way is simple indeed to enter into the system introduced by
the infitah, itself only a semi-legal one. This involves, on the one
hand, activity in the commercial sector and foreign-linked services
and, on the other, the receipt of state orders. These are the pillars
on which the new Egyptian capitalism is developing, in complete
divorce from the pre-revolutionary agrarian and then industrial
bases of national capitalism. Indeed, the term 'capitalist' needs
further specification before it can be applied to the new economic
logic. Very few Egyptian capitalists can claim to be the head of a
company, since it is hardly worth taking the risk when huge
fortunes can be made through service activities requiring no more
than an initial capital outlay. Even existing company bosses are
being forced to halt operations in the face of foreign competition
and labour emigration, and to take part in the infitah system in
order to survive. Among the new capitalists are to be found old
feudalists who have used their name, connections or knowledge of
foreign languages to join the world of international business; many
a chairman or member of a public sector board of directors who
has used his influence to branch out into the private sector; and
businessmen who have been spontaneously generated by the
infitah. This third category is most clearly typified in the irresistible
rise of Rashad Osman, an illiterate 40-year-old from the Alexandria
dockland, a man of no fixed occupation who, after the October
War, managed to smuggle in a large amount of hashish. With this
illicit capital he launched into import-export activity and accumu-
lated a fortune that has been estimated at several hundred million
Egyptian pounds. 40 He was elected to parliament, where he en-
joyed the support of certain high officials and won many a state
contract. 41 His case is by no means exceptional, and there are a
number of films which portray the theme of social success along
similar lines.
The infitah does not, however, stop with these get-rich-quick
millionaires. Its virtue is that it has been able to penetrate all
layers of society, inducing the doctor to raise his fees, the teacher
to make private lessons compulsory, the butcher to charge double
Marie-Christine Aulas 157

the official price for meat, the grocer to sell deregulated foreign
produce instead of controlled local foodstuffs, and the taxi-driver,
plumber, garage-owner, hairdresser, and suchlike, to engage in a
host of similar operations. In short, every social group without a
fixed wage and without state or industrial employment is in on the
act.
Another solution has been to run. The old barriers to emi-
gration have been progressively removed, and the sharp rise in oil
prices created a market for all kinds of labour in nearby Arab
countries. Job difficulties and a rising cost of living forced many
people into emigration, even though this is alien to the national
tradition, unlike in Greece or Lebanon. By 1976 the authorities
were citing a total of 1.4 million Egyptians living abroad - or 10
pe~ cent of the economically active population. In subsequent
years the official figure grew without interruption, and even that
only recorded the 'stock' of stable emigres and took no account of
the large number of people working under contract in the Arab
world. Whatever the precise figure, emigration remained a central
feature of the infitah and of accompanying social and economic
changes.
Emigration involved every layer of society - from lecturers to
peasants, from bank clerks to skilled workers. Yet it was an option
only for the chosen ones, who would later be able to use their
accumulated income to return to the Nile Valley and significantly
improve their material circumstances. In every social milieu, in
country as well as town, there are now 'enclaves of modern life'
which the regime and its devotees - Westerners for the most part -
hold up as vindication of the dominant ideology and the policy of
opening.
However, for the small peasant and artisan producers who have
never left the country, for the growing numbers without any
'assets', the new dynamic has been a veritable catastrophe. Its
economic thrust and the values it bears are driving them into
poverty and marginalisation. The middle layer of state employees
and civil servants, which provided the main social base for the
Nasser regime, is also seriously affected as its fixed salaries have
not kept pace with inflation. The state, to which it is tied both
politically and economically, is disintegrating before its eyes.
Many have been forced to assist the disintegration simply in order
to survive - by absenting themselves from work to earn money
158 State and Ideology in Republican Egypt: 1952-82

elsewhere, and by cashing in on their status or influence and

thereby joining the spiral of corruption.
The Egyptian social pyramid is being shaken to its foundations.
The mechanisms of infitah and emigration affect all classes, dis-
turbing their system of values and blurring their national, social
and even family identity. In a situation devoid of economic co-
hesion, some are rich and others growing poor along the very
faultline between 'tradition' and 'modernity' that defines the
'model'. Only those who are maierially or intellectually closest to
the Western model come through by one means or another. Those
still attached to the national framework- to its culture, its values,
its productive economy, its institutions - are thrown aside in the
process. The faultline does not simply run through the field of the
social; it is also tearing apart the identity of the individual. There is
much here to challenge traditional analyses in terms of the nation-
state or the class struggle. As state capitalism decomposes, Egypt
is undergoing a mutation without precedent in its recent history,
and without the emergence of another coherent system. Reduced
to its coercive functions, which have become increasingly elabor-
ate since January 1977, the state retains monopoly control of the
ideological apparatus.

One solution: peace

Rentier logic is only one aspect of this headlong political flight.

More important still - because it concerns the very stuff of the
national question - has been the recovery of the occupied terri-
tories within the framework of a solution to the conflict with Israel.
The October War had unblocked the situation by allowing the
regime to find a new centre of legitimacy, to proclaim its new line
of approach, and to enter diplomatic negotiations. Three years
later, however, the process ran into an economic and diplomatic
impasse, since the signing of the second Sinai accords in Septem-
ber 1975 was not followed up in practice. The task then was to take
a sufficiently bold initiative to unblock the situation again, with the
same policy aims in view. In other words, it had become a question
of carrying the new political, economic and ideological course
through to its logical conclusion.
On 9 November 1977 Sadat surprised his associates by an-
nouncing to the People's Assembly that he intended to go to
Marie-Christine Aulas 159

Israel. Ten days later he surprised the world by offering peace

proposals in a speech to the Knesset. Even if his decision was a
continuation of previous policy, the effect was still that of an
electric shock. The prospect of peace caused hopes to rise anew.
For most Egyptians they were hopes of a solution to problems of
a mainly economic order. Naturally this was the aspect underlined
in the official speeches and newspaper articles of the time. Peace
would be the road to prosperity. It would remove the need for
spending on war; 42 it would attract foreign investors and lead the
supposedly pro-Israeli banks and multinationals to take an interest
in joint Egyptian-Israeli ventures. Some journalists, like Mustapha
Amin in Al-Akhbar, went so far as to praise 'Egyptian genius and
Israeli money'. Such talk did have some resonance: the head of
Austria's Jewish community, the banker Kahan, visited Cairo in
1979 and helped in negotiations for a fabulous $1800 million
contract to modernise Egypt's telecommunications system. 43 A
delegation of 'thirty-six Swiss-Jewish millionaires' stated in Cairo
that 'its visit could make a positive contribution to normalising
relations between the Egyptian and Jewish peoples'. 44 Baron
Edmond de Rothschild also paid a visit to Egypt and declared his
readiness to finance construction projects.
The economic function of peace was not confined to such hopes.
For the Egyptian state it was inserted within the logic of rent. In
civil society, the appeal for peace was greatest for the infitah
'capitalists' who were expected to show the greatest dynamism.
Any future co-operation with Israel would enable them to adopt
more rational practices and to undertake more daring initiatives.
Once more Osman Ahmed Osman came forward as a pioneer. He
accompanied the head of state to Jerusalem and took to arguing
that Egypt's future lay in high technology. (His state-funded
Salheya agricultural project served this psychological role, even
though it proved to be an economic disaster.)
When it was presented in this way to the Egyptian population,
peace with Israel appeared not only as the solution to economic
difficulties but also as the highest stage of modern life: civilisation.
By choosing peace Egypt would become ... civilised! Elizabeth
Taylor made this clear on 18 September 1979, having been invited
to Cairo by the head of state himself. But even official discourse
and the dominant ideology said as much. Once again the regime was
defining itself by opposition. Just as Egypt had become modem
160 State and Ideology in Republican Egypt: 1952-82

by setting itself against the austerity of socialism, so it would

become civilised by counterposing itself to the Arabs and finally
breaking down the two ideological bases of the Nasser regime
(Arab nationalism and particularist socialism). As early as 5
December 1977, at a large popular demonstration before the
presidential palace, President Sadat extolled the defiant breadth of
vision that was supposedly lacking in Arabs of all political orienta-
tion, so numerous were their inborn defects. Sadat's very daring
would spring from the age-old 'distinctiveness' of the Nile Valley.
Before signing a separate peace treaty, Egypt was discovering its
'Egypticity' in a political form. This was, of course, the kind of
formula used by European powers in order to detach Egypt from
the regional whole. In the new context, it had the merit of
accounting for Egypt's ties with the West, and indirectly of estab-
lishing a common heritage with the Jewish state.
The economic infitah, like political 'de-Nasserisation', had
created the space in which to denounce a wide yet selective range
of errors committed by the previous regime. This was done with
the help of numerous Western experts and intellectuals, who came
to lend a hand in the 'modernisation' of Egypt. But the new
reading of history collided with the Egyptian view of Israel - a
view shared by monarchical and republican governments and
associated, in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other authorised
milieux, with the fundamental problem of national security. 45
President Sadat's initiative offered a new line of approach: the
conflict with Israel now involved nothing more than a clash of
national psychologies; and peace, desired by one and all, was a
question not of international law but of moral virtue. This argu-
ment, which the head of state expounded to the Knesset on 19
November 1977, carried all the more weight in that it belonged to
the same register as the dominant Western conception of the
psychological, or even religious, basis of the conflict. To preach
peace, then, was to preach Reason itself. The last, ideological,
barrier was removed to Egypt's full assimilation to the Western
model. Egypt was at last embracing the full rationality of Civilis-
ation.
There can be little doubt that most Egyptians approved of the
head of state's initiative. Its surprise announcement and rapid
execution did not leave any time for reflection. And the authorities
took care to ensure that their arguments were the only ones heard.
Marie-Christine Aulas 161

No debate was allowed on the national question in the media or

parliament. The non-Western foreign press was censored, and the
regime set about staging media events and orchestrating a master-
ful publicity campaign. But how long could it last? The 'momen-
tum' of peace- from the Camp David accords in September 1978
to the Washington treaty of March 1979- allowed the flame of
illusion to be rekindled. Yet it gradually lost strength as the results
failed to materialise.
Having followed all the logical steps through to the end, the
regime now faced growing unrest even among sections of the
population who had initially been close to it. Sadat's discourse
became more and more aggressive, especially since none of the
few actively sympathetic journalists and intellectuals managed to
utter a word against his incoherent decisions and frenzied attacks.
By September 1981, when the head of state lashed out against all
oppositional thinking, the repression was already taking a daily
toll of individuals and grinding down one professional group after
another: lawyers, journalists forbidden to publish, deputies ex-
pelled from parliament, well-known political figures driven into
the cold, and so on. Now that Egypt had broken with its regional
environment and its own history, intellectual activity centred more
on the quest for a lost identity (the dominant theme of Yussef
Shahin's films of this period, and of many poems and short sto-
ries), and on the exaltation of the most traditional symbols such as
the Nile and the pyramids (used in many films and short stories to
invoke hope and rooted identity), than on the celebration of a
rediscovered self-assurance. There would be no celluloid depic-
tions of peace; and no major voice would sing its praise after the
death of Urn Khalthum and Abdel Halim Hafez.
While the regime grew ever more isolated, the silenced parties
of the legal opposition did not pick up any broad popular support.
In fact neither the Socialist Labour Party, 46 with its bourgeois-
nationalist discourse, nor the National Progressive Unionist
Party, 47 with its blend of nostalgic and progressivist ideology,
proved able to analyse the new realities of the country or to work
out a coherent alternative.
An almost fin-de-regne atmosphere of despair settled over the
Nile Valley, at the very time when the West was praising it to the
skies. The Egyptian-Pharaonic style was high fashion in the shop
windows of Fifth Avenue and the Avenue de l'Opera, as it was on
162 State and Ideology in Republican Egypt: 1952-82

Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv. Literature, games, holidays- the big

metropolitan newspapers were overflowing with articles about
Egypt. President Sadat and his family were treated in exactly the
way that had once been reserved for the Shah of Iran. Nor did the
similarities end there: the Iranian scenario came to dominate the
new 'scientific' analyses that the Egypt experts applied to the
economic failure of the infitah. Ever careful to justify the basic
model of modernisation, they explained all the difficulties by
reference ... to Islam. The rise of extremist groups was held up
as proof of the positivist analysis that the Muslim religion is
impermeable to modernisation. 48
The assassination of the head of state by an Islamic fundamen-
talist soldier fitted in perfectly with this essentialist diagnosis. But
as far as the mass of Egyptians were concerned, their apparent
lack of emotion was not without significance. Very few official
institutions or shops in the Cairo city centre followed the custom of
displaying a black-rimmed portrait of the dead leader. Equally
rare were the office-workers, teachers or civil servants who wore
mourning. Silence filled the capital and other large towns; no sad
song was heard to mark the occasion. And as soon as the funeral
was over, those naktas (jokes) which tell so much about the
popular view of politics began to compete in their irony, sarcasm
and even contempt towards the tragic victim.

Mubarak's Egypt: the hour of realism

An epoch is coming to an end - not of Republican Egypt, but of

the hopes that gave birth to it and the illusions that changed its
shape. After thirty years of vain efforts the hour of realism can no
longer be avoided.
In its structures, policy guidelines and personnel, the regime is
still the same today. But its role is now just one of pragmatically
managing the situation, however difficult that too may be. Its
language has abandoned any talk of new orientations and instead
enjoins acceptance of reality. Its tone, at once sober and frank,
contrasts with the ideological flights of fancy of the high Nasser
period, and with the psychological shocks of the Sadat years.
Reassured by the lack of any political alternative, either internally
Marie-Christine Aulas 163

or externally, the regime is able to use the trumps that the model
itself has dropped into its hand. Social inequality is a fact that has
to be accepted, just like external dependence. Any claim to find a
remedy would be harking back to illusions. Thanks to a new
generation of scribes trained on the other side of the Atlantic, 49
the West can transmit its message throughout the state-controlled
ideological apparatus. A cover of tolerance is designed to gain
acceptance for certain differences - particularly those of an econ-
omic nature - while masking others that might threaten the mod-
el's evolution towards global ideological uniformity. This is the
goal that Mubarak's Egypt has set out to achieve, through the
opening of non-institutionalised dialogue with the various currents
in society, and through an attempt at economic rationality that will
try to steer the infitah towards production.
What of the two national objectives - independence/security
and economic development- which for the past two centuries have
impelled history of this old nation-state? Political independence
was achieved with the Republic, and territorial integrity with the
return of Sinai. The economy has become a simple matter of
managing reality, within the framework of an opening to the
capitalist sphere of influence. Has Egypt, then, finally exhausted
the sources of its own forward movement? Has it solved its own
contradictions? Is Egypt's long history coming to a halt on the eve
of the year 2000? Such a conclusion hardly seems credible: except
to those, inside and outside the country, whose political, economic
and ideological exertions have helped to anaesthetise it, for the
time being.

Notes and references

1. Egypt regained its territorial integrity on 26 April1982, except for the

enclave of Taba which remained an object of litigation.
2. On the eve of the revolution there were several (clandestine) Com-
munist parties in Egypt. The most important was the Hadeto, an
acronym for the Arabic al-haraka ad-demoqratiyya li-t-taharror al-
watani (the Democratic Movement for National Liberation).
3. This was the customary way of referring to the two wings of the
Egyptian bourgeoisie- that is, the Wafd and the big bourgeoisie. See
Anwar Abdel-Malek, Egypt: Military Society (New York, 1967).
4. Under the terms of this treaty, which was signed by the Wafd, British
164 State and Ideology in Republican Egypt: 1952-82

military occupation was ended in law but retained in reality through a

treaty of alliance.
5. In 1945, in the name of 'Gamaat al-nahda al-kawmiyya', Miritt Butros
Ghali put forward a twenty-five year programme of agrarian reform.
See Abdel-Malek, Egypt, p. 70.
6. The only previous nationalisation had been that of the Anglo-Iranian
Oil Company in 1951. It is well known what became of Mosaddeq,
who carried out this measure.
7. Mao Zedong's China did have one ....
8. Georges Corm, 'Saper l'ideologie du developpement', Le Monde
Diplomatique, April1978; Fran'<ois Partant, La fin du developpement
(Paris: Maspero 1982) and 'The End of Development', Democracy,
vol. III, no. 4 (1983).
9. The nationalisations were carried out in two stages: after the 1956 act
of aggression in the cases of French and British property; after 1960 in
the case of the large Egyptian enterprises.
10. Dean of the Alexandria Faculty of Sciences in 1948, under-secretary
at Nasser's Ministry of Culture, Hussein Fawzi would be the first
well-known Egyptian intellectual to go to Israel.
11. Directed by Yussef Shahin in 1962.
12. Paul Balta and Claudine Rulleau, La vision nasserienne, (Paris:
Sindbad, 1982). These texts (speeches and articles) show the extent to
which the main concern of the Nasser epoch was economic develop-
ment.
13. E. Zhukov, 'Questions of the National and Colonial Struggle after the
Second World War', in Heli':ne Carrere d'Encausse and Stuart
Schram, Marxism and Asia (London: Allen Lane, 1969), p. 266.
14. Dar El-Maaref (ed.), La voie egyptienne vers le socialisme (Cairo,
n.d. after 1964).
15. Only the Gaza Strip then enjoyed a special import regime, having
been placed under a UN mandate in 1947.
16. The main commercial thoroughfare in Beirut.
17. E. Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth (London, 1957).
18. J. Hajjar, L'Europe et les destinees du Proche-Orient 1815-1848
(Belgium: Bloud & Gay, 1970), p. 172.
19. The Egyptian Marxist-Leninists were essentially intellectuals who
stated their views in French or English from their place of exile in the
West. Highly critical of the Nasser regime, their theoretical analyses
referred only to problems of class struggle and ignored altogether the
national dimension of the Egyptian 'case'. Still implicit in their
positions, however, was a Western-style ideology of modernism.
20. Lotfallah Soliman, 'Aux origines de Ia guerre israelo-arabe de 1967',
Peuples Mediterraneens, no. 1 (October-December 1977).
21. Among others Faruk Munib's short story Pieces of Paper (Qusasat
waraq), published in Al-Adab, March 1969, and Acre, My Homeland
(Watani Akka), a play in verse by Abdel Rahman al-Sharkawi
(Cairo: Dar Al-Churur, 1970).
Marie-Christine Aulas 165

22. Aly Abdel Khalek's Passage Song (1971); HusseiR Kamal's Chats on
the Nile (1971); and Yussef Shahin's The Sparrow, which was only
allowed to be shown in 1974, as part of the de-Nasserisation cam-
paign.
23. Located at the Centre for Strategic Studies of the daily paper
Al-Ahram.
24. Abdel-Hakim Amer, chief of staff and minister of defence at the time
of the defeat, was found dead in his cell in 1968.
25. Until then Egypt had had only a provisional constitution. After the
1967 defeat, Nasser had promised that a parliamentary commission
would be entrusted with drawing up a permanent constitution.
26. Article 4 of the chapter on the economy in the Constitution.
27. al-Qoraish, name of the Prophet Muhammed's tribe.
28. Mohammed Heikal, The Road to Ramadan (London: Collins, 1975).
29. Diplomatic links with Washington had been broken off in June 1967.
30. See his famous article in Foreign Affairs, April 1973.
31. Despite the connotations of infitah Egypt had not previously been
closed. Foreign trade as a percentage of national income had risen
from 36 per cent to 44 per cent during the first and only five-year plan.
32. See the World Bank report: Khalil Ikram, Egypt: Economic Manage-
ment in a Period of Transition (Johns Hopkins University, 1980).
33. Speech of President Sadat, 14 March 1976.
34. While the 'left' Nasserites joined Marxists and other progressive
elements in the 'left' platform, the 'right' Nasserites were not allowed
to form a party.
35. The Wafd current only managed to create a party in January 1978. On
2 June 1978, however, it was scuttled as a result of a referendum
which, among other things, forbade figures active before the 1952
Revolution to return to political life.
36. Sadat, who was on holiday at Aswan, thought it amounted to a coup
d'etat; while his government, led by Mamduh Salem, did not dare to
take the initiative of calling in the army.
37. The term 'rent' is not used here in its Marxist sense, but refers to the
wish to obtain money without work. See my article 'Anatomie d'une
dependance: Egypte', Peuples Mediterraneens, no. 19 (April-June
1982), part of which was translated in MERIP Report, no. 107
(July-August 1982).
38. The SUMED (Suez-Mediterranean) pipeline was opened in 1977
between Ain Sokhna on the Red Sea and Alexandria. It complements
the Suez Canal, which is not accessible to large oil-tankers.
39. Originally a small public-works entrepreneur who made his fortune
on the Aswan Dam. See Mohamed Sid Ahmed, 'Sadat's Alter Ego',
MERIP Report, no. 107 (July-August 1982).
40. In November 1984 an Egyptian pound was on a par with sterling for
commercial transactions, while the tourist rate of exchange was
£1st. =£E1.4.
41. His case was the subject of a widely discussed trial in autumn 1981.
166 State and Ideology in Republican Egypt: 1952-82

42. In fact Egypt's military spending would rise constantly in the follow-
ing years. See 'Higher Spending Aims to Keep Armed Forces
Happy', Financial Times, 4 October 1983.
43. Signed on 17 September 1979 by a European consortium headed by
Siemens and its Austrian subsidiary.
44. Le Progres Egyptien, 3 November 1979.
45. We should mention the resignations of Ismail Fahmi, m1mster of
foreign affairs before Sadat's trip to Jerusalem; Ibrahim Kamel,
minister of foreign affairs after the signing of the Camp David ac-
cords; and Murad Ghaleb, ambassador to Yugoslavia and former
minister of foreign affairs under Sadat. See Mahmud Riad (one-time
minister of foreign affairs under both Nasser and Sadat, and sec-
retary-general of the Arab League), The Struggle for Peace in the
Middle East (London: Quartet Books, 1981); Ismail Fahmi, Negotiat-
ing Peace in the Middle East (London: Croom Helm, 1983); and
Ibrahim Kamel, The Failed Peace (in Arabic) (Cairo, 1983).
46. This party, led by Ibrahim Shukri, was created in 1978 on the
initiative of President Sadat. Ibrahim Shukri was minister of agricul-
ture at that time. In February 1981 this party denounced the Camp
David accords, and in September of the same year several of its
members were interned.
47. A party which grew out of the platform, led by the former Free
Officer Khaled Mohieddin. It comprises 'left' Nasserites, former
members of the Egyptian Communist Party that dissolved in 1965,
some members of the Egyptian Communist Party that was formed in
Beirut in 1 May 1975 (and worked underground in Egypt), and a
variety of progressive forces. See Bertus Hendricks, 'The Legal Left
in Egypt', Arab Studies Quarterly, vol. v no. 3 (Summer 1983).
48. It should be pointed out that 8 to 10 per cent of the Egyptian
population are Coptic-Orthodox Christians, and that extremist
groups are also to be found among them.
49. Marie-Christine Aulas, 'L'Egypte a Ia recherche d'une coherence
ideologique', Le Monde Diplomatique (December 1982).

This chapter was translated by Patrick Camiller.

7 Popular Islam and the
State in Contemporary
Egypt
MICHAEL GILSENAN

One of the most striking features of Egyptian society in the

post-Nasser period has been the intensity and explicitness of
attempts by different classes and strata to find modes of apprehen-
sion and expression through which the current Egyptian experi-
ence can be grasped and, in the same process, transformed and
determined. There is a public emergence of various kinds of
discourse for imaging and guiding the reconstruction, reform, or,
more radically, reconstitution from the base up, of the structures
and meaning of Egyptian society. Certain of these discourses are
secular, non-religious, or anti-religious (as is the case with groups
on the left, or with that heterogeneous set of forces clustered
under the label of the Wafd, the old liberal bourgeois consti-
tutional party dominated largely by landed interests with some
fractions of the commercial and industrial bourgeoisie); others are
religious (as, obviously, the Muslim Brothers and a range of
groups who styled themselves as 'Islamic'); yet another is part of
the ideological production of the Egyptian nation-state and those
classes particularly associated with it. All are fragmentary, full of
certain contradictions and incoherences and silences that their
absolutist and totalist tendencies mask and try to eradicate to
greater or lesser degrees. Their internal and external tensions with
the social world resist such eradications at the level of language
alone and recur again and again as problems not fully grasped, or
even grasped at all.
167
168 Popular Islam and the State in Contemporary Egypt

At a deeper level that only partially finds its formulation,

representation, systematisation in such social movements and their
ideologies, are cultural and symbolic complexes whose relation-
ship to the changes in Egyptian society are many-layered and
difficult for a student to mould, even tentatively, into his own
language.
All these various discourses and social patterns of association,
however, have one element in common: a sense of replication and
repetition, of a series of critical blockages that are both ideological
and social in their nature. Languages evolved in the 1920s and
1930s and earlier reappear in the critically different circumstances
of the 1970s, but without the transformation and development
necessary to give an account for and of Egyptian society in its
contemporary forms.
Sometimes it seems as though individuals and groups are aware
of this and seek to break out to what they see as the true course and
form that Egypt should take, through the power of pre-existing
paradigms and symbols about what society is and should be. In
other instances this sense of tension is subordinated to the formu-
laic, incantation of what is clearly regarded as a 'given' and
'known' set of propositions in some ultimately transcendental
dimension. As social reality proves obstinately resistant to the
power of verbal reiteration there is a spiralling into a mystifying,
essentially magical rhetoric that is in turn ever more impermeable
by the social experience to which it is none the less intimately
linked. It becomes ever less capable of making real relations
beyond the spell of the 'word' to that experience. A radical,
indeed desperate, disjunction grows more acute. This growing
acuteness of the separation between discourse and social reality
accelerates the processes of magic and ritualised repetition still
further.
The understanding of forms of popular religion can be ap-
proached in a general context which clarifies the relations between
such forms and the state's and dominant classes' own conceptions
of religion, and their attempted manipulations of religious forces.
Such conceptions of religion (and what is considered to be appro-
priate religion for the masses) of the dominant strata also contain,
of course, internal incoherences and tensions. Equally important
are the contradictions and uncertainties that mark the relation of
these religious conceptions to other interests, ideologies and struc-
tural relations within the state and ruling classes.
Michael Gilsenan 169

In local apprehensions of power in and over society the state

itself, as dominating institution, and the symbolic-political role of
the leader (the za'im), have a mixed and ambiguous ideological
inheritance. Though there are very ancient traditional elements of
rulership contained within it, there is a very specific and post-
imperial component which has a limited historical depth and a very
particular basis in social experience for Egyptians at all levels. It
was formed predominantly by the highly concentrated and con-
crete but at the same time diffuse phenomenon of 'Nasser' (as
symbolic construct, the za'im) and 'Nasserism'.
In the context of modern Egyptian history in its relationship to
Europe the struggle for independence, realised by the Revolution
of 1952, was 'appropriated' by the Free Officer group. The logic of
the institution of rule by the military and those who were in
whatever degrees its social and political allies and shared its
conceptions of the nature of development and independence,
demanded that other groups and tendencies who had in any sense
helped to constitute for good or ill the period of imperial rule (and
even the struggle against it) were to be excluded from, or discredi-
ted in, the new history of the Revolution. The struggle was
generalised to that of 'the people' for independence from col-
onialism. But the concrete forms that struggle had in fact histori-
cally taken (in the liberal bourgeois Wafd party, the Communists,
the Muslim Brothers, and so on) were ideologically eliminated
without a developed, critical history being produced. Within ini-
tially very limited and conservative notions of property and strong
etatist ideas of social development imposed from above, the new
nation-state that came into being consigned the 'pre-Nasser' period
largely to oblivion. History, liberation and dignity took their true
course with the army and the Free Officers.
The latter were not a mass movement, though they represented
an overwhelming concern of the masses already seen in years of
protest, demonstration and opposition that the British, the Palace
and the landed and commercial classes had never been able totally
to channel or control. The Free Officers were never to form the
basis for a mass movement either and, as new state forms ap-
peared, they were to do everything possible to block any such
movement emerging save as tame official organisations.
The new regime that was becoming the director of the nation-
state was therefore seen 'from below', even while it could well
claim to incarnate for the first time Egyptian rulership of Egypt,
170 Popular Islam and the State in Contemporary Egypt

the voice of the people, its only voice. The great landowners of the
agrarian bourgeoisie were to be politically neutralised and pro-
gressively economically displaced by land reform. Their class, and
what was seen as the vehicle for that class's interests and the means
for controlling the countryside, the Wafd Party, was to become a
thing of the past. On the other hand, those movements sharing
much of the class basis of the Free Officers in that vast and
heterogeneous complex of social levels schematically included in
the ranks of the petite bourgeoisie, were suppressed and forbidden
political activity. This was to include the Society of the Muslim
Brothers, who had enormous mass appeal in the cities in the
immediate post -war period of the 1940s particularly, and were
deeply opposed to the left. They also possessed ideological appeal
in terms both of a commitment to fighting the British and the
Zionists, and on the grounds of religion and the reforming of an
idealised social totality of 'Egyptian society', a restoring to whole-
ness of what had been dislocated and fragmented by alien and
unbelieving rule and the social inequity of capitalism. They were
suppressed after two uneasy years of relations following the Revol-
ution, not on the basis of an understanding of what had made them
so significant a force, but on the basis of superceding them by the
mere fact of controlling, of having the power, of incarnating power
in Egyptian society and taking on the mantle of Egypt's triumph.
It was the Free Officers who were to be sole guardians of the
new nation-state, new in that for the first time it was figured as the
representative and expression of the Egyptian people and not as
an entity imposed upon them. History, as it were, began again de
novo. The regime created in the 1950s and the emergence of the
enormously powerful person of Nasser and the cult that became
associated with him, a combination of an age-old set of symbols of
the dominant centre, the army, the ruler, with a new aspect of
directing one's own society, of leading national forces through
domestic transformation outwards against Egypt's enemies and to
the victory of the regional (even global) currents of anti-
imperialism. Society would determine itself, transform itself, but
through the unique agency of the state. The nation-state, and the
za'im, would bind together what imperialism and the old classes
had torn apart. The disarticulations of society in the economic,
political and ideological spheres would be resolved into a com-
prehensive wholeness at all three levels by the same means. If
Michael Gilsenan 171

village communities had been ruptured by the fragmentation of

the lower peasantry, the increasing numbers of landless, the domi-
nance of capitalism through the dominance of cotton in the agra-
rian sector, and migration to the cities, 'Nasserism' and the
transcendent personal symbol of the za'im himself would in some
way restore coherence and a historical purpose, autonomy and
meaning to the otherwise meaningless and externally determined
processes imposed upon Egyptian society in the colonial period.
Victory over the imperialist forces in 1952, the clearing of the
Canal Zone and the Gaza Strip of British troops, the Suez War,
the apparently irresistible tide of the Third World and nationalism,
Bandung and the flow of neutralist leaders to one of the new world
centres that was Cairo, gave a dynamic to this new ideology. Yet
the same period was marked by a growing and complementary
division between the figure of the za'im incarnating in personal
but abstract form a collective personality, and the apparatus of the
state organs of control (not least the Army intelligence which
became more and more vital, the mukhabarat). Identification with
the people in a ritualised cult of symbolic relationships went hand
in hand with the development of the control function of the
nation-state, the formation of an elite of army officers, and the use
of rubber stamp organisation and assemblies.
Imperialism and changes in class relations that were part of
Egypt's incorporation in the world system of nineteenth and
twentieth-century capitalism had politicised broad strata of so-
ciety. Parties, movements, associations, clubs, disparate groupings
and tendencies reflecting often contradictory interests, had all
developed. Forms of nationalism, forms of reaction had emerged,
sometimes in bitter opposition. A 'street politics' of demonstra-
tions, slogans and riots had developed. Now, with the Revolution,
nationalism was to attain its unique realisation and fulfilment in
the nation-state and its discourse of liberation. What was inchoate
and contradictory within the previous phase was to be unified and
shaped, controlled and directed. This meant a powerful mobilis-
ation and crystallising of unity around the Revolution. It also
meant, as the nation-state became more reliant on the bureaucracy
and intelligence services and its internal blockages emerged, that
there was a kind of radical depoliticisation or ossifying of the politi-
cal dimensions of society. A genuine liberation, in the context of
immense external threat that seemed to require imperatively a
172 Popular Islam and the State in Contemporary Egypt

vigilant and omnipresent state to ensure that no factions within

Egyptian society could be used by outside powers to undermine
Arab nationalism from within, had as its other face a repression
and negation on the plane of ideology and association.
Alternative readings of economic and political development, of
Egyptian history, were blocked. Groups and movements were
suppressed. Members of the Communist Party at different times
were in prison camps or exile and their social base severely
damaged. Leftist critiques became largely impossible, outside the
fluctuating forms of 'N asserism'. Leaders and activists of the
Muslim Brotherhood fled or were imprisoned while the member-
ship and those diverse social elements who found expression in
them were silenced. Groups and organisations, such as the Wafd,
were dissolved as groups, but not in their social base of economic
and political relations which remained intact to a degree far
greater than was realised at the time.
In short, opposition seems frequently to have been defined in
terms of formal institutions rather than as sets of economic and
political relations. Ideological transformation appeared com-
prehensive and monolithic and the ideology of the za'im and the
nation-state was comprehensively and monolithically imposed.
Yet this naturally entailed a futher blockage, in this instance to the
state's own conceptions of its relations to the society and the
nature of the forces operating within society. It made it difficult to
gauge the diversities and contradictions that might exist at the base
(except where 'plots' or 'enemies' were specifically revealed). The
increasing expansion of control meant also increasing ossification
of state forms in their relation to society, as the growth of the
bureaucracy brought chaos to the administration whose servant
and instrument it was intended to be. Censure and imposed silence
had their price.
Such blocking factors, insidious, gradual, multi-faceted, were of
course not emerging or grasped as a totality or as a counter-logic
developing within the heart of the nation-state system. The expan-
sion of the state at different levels rather seemed the dynamic and
over-riding social force, especially in the impact of Nasserism and
the pan-Arab and Third World and neutralist front against col-
onialism (at the same time as neo-colonial types of dependency
were in fact being established, a new form of relationship less
immediate and 'transparent' than the political and military dimen-
Michael Gilsenan 173

sions of imperialism). The struggle enhanced the identification of

army, state and nation, and the army itself was presented as the
agent, representative and symbol of the new Egypt.
The nation-state was not, therefore, based on an ideology of the
reconstitution of society on the basis of a return to the past, to a
golden age, to a remodelling on the inspiration of eternal and
pre-existent paradigms. Rather it was founded on a conception of
a constant forward motion and an active forming of history and
national destiny in the only possible total framework that would
and could make a new Egypt. There was no critical recuperation of
the past, which was rather 'put in brackets' or 'frozen'. It was
frozen, too, in the sense that there were actually relatively few
radical changes in the overall structures and processes of the
economy. Cotton remained dominant in agricultural production
and agriculture as a whole remained in disequilibrium as a result.
Co-operative policies largely benefited an expanding middle
peasantry. The fragmentation of small plots continued and the
numbers of landless and migrants to evermore infrastructurally
inadequate cities grew.
Development meant state-created heavy industries that ab-
sorbed enormous amounts of capital and tended to increase the
general imbalance of the economy. The industrial and state bour-
geoisie took on a greater importance and the state's interests were
identified at this level of management and control. Trade unions
were therefore weak and subject to stringent regulation. Political
and economic hegemony and the mystification of 'the people' and
the za'im in the realm of the transcendent 'nation' proceeded, but
the practices of the state and the experience of Egyptians made the
structures more vulnerable than they seemed at the time.
Over and above the blockages to which I have referred, state
ideologies obscured the degree to which the conditions for a
re-emergence of the 'old' ideologies and discourses still existed. It
disguised the intensification of those conditions, not least by the
disjuncture between the language of the nation-state and the
group and class interests and practices that it actually represented.
The key 'visible' moment of disjuncture came in the defeat of
1967. Here was a moment of political and ideological reversal of
traumatic proportions. That defeat, which coincided with the
growing power of finance capital in the conservative oil states (and
especially with the movement of the arch-enemy of Nasserism,
174 Popular Islam and the State in Contemporary Egypt

Saudi Arabia, towards a leading position), left the army in total

discredit and humiliation. The terms on which 'the nation' had
been ideologically constituted were abruptly revealed as false,
illusory, lacking precisely the powers and capacities they were
supposed to enshrine and realise in practice. They produced, not
the fulfilment of an ever-expanding role for Egypt, but disaster.
Uncertainties born of the collapse of the union with Syria or of the
war in the Yemen which had cost more than had ever been
foreseen became, almost overnight, the conviction of betrayal.
The whole logic and symbolism of the nation-state, which had
been developed as the only authentic language, was undercut and
revealed as without substance in exactly those dimensions where it
had most claimed to be powerful.
What was, however, intact and was increasingly able to exert
itself because of Egypt's de facto dependency on foreign powers,
her large external debts, and the vacuum left by the desecration of
and by the ideologically sacralised forces of the Army, were
elements of the state bureaucratic, management and technocratic
cadres. These were allied with those sections of the bourgeoisie
who operated both in the state sector of the public corporations
and in those many areas of the private sector that fed into it,
depended on it and creamed off a lot of its profits. To this social
level the discredit of Arab socialism and progressivism and the
whole heterogeneous vision that N asserism had carried as a new,
the new, true language of Egypt, came as a release. These el-
ements were, and have become ever more, able to follow out a
narrower class ideology of Western-dominated 'modernisation'
and 'non-ideological', business-orientated and technocratic con-
ceptions of Egypt's future that under Sadat was growingly and
profitably linked to the West and capitalist notions of what consti-
tutes 'social change'.
The Revolution of 1952 had defeated the old feudal order of the
Pashas (the agrarian bourgeoisie and rural notables led by the
great landowners linked to the international market through foreign
control of Egypt's exports). That order seemed irrevocably
tainted. Now the Revolution itself was also tainted, defiled and
dishonoured. Experience of capitalism and of Arab socialism, for
the petites gens and the masses, had entailed both experience of
domination and economic and political exclusion and contradic-
tion.
Michael Gilsenan 175

For many occupying quite different class and status positions,

only one total conception of social order, one language, retained
its pristine and unqualified authenticity: Islam.
Islam was of course 'used' by the state as an ideological support.
Reference can be made to the control of the mosque-university of
AI Azhar and to the later emphasis on 'Islamic socialism' or 'Islam
and socialism' and the way in which Islam would ensure justice in
the form of Arab socialism in the years of the early 1960s. It is
possible, however, to see the Islamic element as relatively limited
- organisationally, politically and ideologically - for any funda-
mental purposes.
In the first phase of the Revolution much of what Nasserism
opposed was framed in terms of 'Islam' and Western hopes of
'Islamic pacts' of conservative client regimes that would stand
against revolutionary forces in the Middle East. The attempted
appropriation of an Islamic discourse by governments dominated
by the West reinforced deeper elements in the ideological bases of
the strata supporting the Revolution of 1952. For though many, of
course, were deeply religious, and were not far from movements
such as the Muslim Brothers in their personal orientations, re-
ligion in the public sense was in multiple ways identified as obstruc-
tive to the full realisation of the nation-state, unless rigorously
channelled and controlled. Islam was the language of a serious
rival for popular support in the Muslim Brotherhood (as it was of
the sheikhs of AI Azhar who had been on the margins during the
period of the British and who were identified in part as a force
against the development of the society in modern terms.)
Then there were the Sufi Orders, identified often with tra-
ditional notables, with 'feudalism', suspected of being used by the
landowners and by the British and reactionary forces to bolster
'traditional' attitudes of passivity and hostility to a nationalism
which threatened these sections of the colonial order. Further-
more, popular Sufism was seen as an excrescence and an agglom-
eration of discreditable practices by the new religious movements
as well. The latter sought a purified Islam, socially dynamic, active
in the world, organised, urban, politically associated with elements
of the lower middle and middle classes.
Moreover, the whole notion of tradition was permeated with
ambiguities: profoundly authentic on the one hand, all that had to
be overcome and was backward, superstitious, ignorant, ossified,
176 Popular Islam and the State in Contemporary Egypt

inert on the other. Islamic modernism had seemed to come to a halt

after the death of sheikh Muhammed Abduh and to have pre-
sented no viable ground in the nationalist struggle. The Wafd, the
main and most popular party organisation, which had largely
defined the political discourse of nationalism for so long, had been
secularist and the language of 'progress' and of independence- for
many whose ideas were formed at that period- saw no specifically
Islamic form which political and economic activity might take.
The relation between the ideology of the nation-state and
'Islam' (however conceived) became tenuous. It was politically
made all the more so by the strained relations with the Muslim
Brothers which led, in 1954, to the proscription of the movement.
The trials that followed had a large impact at the popular and the
student-intellectual levels. In the union with Syria in 1958 there
was no reference to Islam as the religion of the state. To the pious
this strengthened the belief that the government was anti-Islamic.
The move into Arab socialism and towards a closer relationship
with Russia after 1956 seemed to separate 'Islam' even further
from political and economic trends. The socialist laws of 1961, now
referred to by many serious Egyptian Muslims as 'the beginning of
the Communist period', though they represented rather an at-
tempt of the state to impose further on the economic structures of
agriculture and industry without a transformation of the relations
of production of a revolutionary kind, confirmed the division of
state and religion for many. A second clampdown on the Muslim
Brothers in the mid-1960s was announced while the President was
in Moscow and it was said that it was Soviet intelligence that had
informed him of the assassination attempts that were to be made.
There thus occurred a continuing, phased process of a limited
separation of religion from the state. The latter took over ideologi-
cal space in toto as its domain.
In a sense, therefore, this period of the formation and develop-
ment of the nation state 'cocooned' religion. Organised religious
forces seemed to be an obstruction to the kind of social order and
institutions of power that the army and the dominant strata came
to define as the nature of Egypt. By distancing Islam from the
political field the state sought to preserve it in a congregational,
educational and private sphere and to block its broader public
ideological relationship to the state itself as well as to social
experience at the national level. This blockage was at the same
Michael Gilsenan 177

time apprehended as imposed by the dominant classes of the state

and national bourgeoisie upon the subordinated levels of society.
Nasserism and the apparatuses of the nation-state attempted to
redefine ideological space altogether rather than merely 'taking
over' the ideological functions (whatever they may be!) of religion.
Therefore as a set of symbols of collectivity and a language of
fundamental, common identity, Islam was too inclusive, total and
deep-rooted for the nation-state and the za'im either satisfactorily
to incorporate or destroy within their own logic of symbolic-
ideological totality.
This placing of religion as it were 'beyond' on-going 'national'
history, outside the stream of collective national events meant that
religion could later be perceived as constant, unchanging, pure,
transcendent. These dimensions were crystallised when the histori-
cally challenging forces of nationalism and Arab socialism seemed
defeated by the history they were supposed to determine and
transform. The peripheralisation of Islam was thus to become in
time of crisis an additional kind of guarantee of its relevance to a
world in which the military and political forces particularly were
shaken on their foundation and discredited in all their self-image
of historical forward movement and representativeness· of the
nation, of 'the people'.
The blockage that the institutional depoliticising of the people
produced meant that at the moment of trauma Islam seemed
re-authenticated: as the eternal, transcendent Word, and as the
only total language and mode of apprehending experience that
remained that was at the same time not brought into question by
that experience. The defeat of 1967 was God's punishment of a
political and social order not founded upon Islam. The Canal
crossing of 1973 was a proof of the greatness of God, in its own
way a vision and a miracle. These perceptions found a ready echo
in the post-Nasser regime and fertile soil in many levels of Egyp-
tian society - middle and lower level bureaucracy, white-collar
workers, students and teachers, as well as among the urban poor
and the different strata of the peasantry.
The collapse of 1967 could be taken to reveal Islam as once
again a publicly, concretely, relevant discourse over the widest
range of social practice. For the Sadatian regime it was clearly
hoped that it would be one of the key cultural-organisational-
ideological pillars of the post-Nasserite order, a pillar which the
178 Popular Islam and the State in Contemporary Egypt

state became most anxious to appropriate for its own foundations.

'Islam' could be a perfect instrument of reaction.
How was such an appropriation to be accomplished and by what
modalities, given that so much of the symbolic capital of the
nation-state had been exhausted? It is here that ambiguities and
contradictions again emerge. For it is by no means an easy matter
for the state, even at the formal institutional level which is most
amenable to control, to recuperate its ideological structures through
Islam. Relations with AI Azhar indicate some of the strains and
tensions inherent in attempts to reincorporate in an active dimen-
sion the key institutions that relate to legal and cultural 'ortho-
doxy' and define it.
It was noticeable that the Islamic university emerged into greater
prominence in the 1970s, though by no means in a totally unambi-
guous way. For a start it was no mere pliable and obliging instru-
ment of government policy (and the evidence is not at all strong
either that when Nasser attempted to use given sheikhs to put the
government line on birth control, for example, that this was at all a
spectacularly successful 'manipulation'). It was divided into differ-
ent, though not always clearly differentiated, factions and tenden-
cies in which the publicly dominant one was until his death in
November 1978 that headed by the Rector, Sheikh'Abd el Halim
Mahmud. He was often held to be a kind of ideological pole de
relais for a Saudi interpretation of religion by his critics. But he
was also strongly identified with Sufism in its form of an emphasis
on teaching and an elite of the illuminated. Some members of this
trend were not too far from similar elements in the Muslim
Brotherhood. They felt themselves to be in a historical position in
which lost ground might be regained, and saw the opportunity of
an 'Islamic state' in which they would be the guardians of an
expanded realm covered by Islamic legal proscriptions for long
subordinated to Western legal models. They looked for a far more
influential role in education and public counselling on religious
affairs as being integral to state affairs.
This in itself brought tension with the regime, whose 'new rich'
supports, technocratic cadres and management, were interested in
the prospect of Islamic law being appropriated to the state in a
possibly expanded way, but not in a serious extension of influence
by the clerical estate who are seen rather as a useful adjunct to the
apparatus and ruling strata. It is characteristic at this social level to
Michael Gilsenan 179

find a combination of an emphasis on Islamic law in its punitive and

repressive dimensions and interpretations going hand in hand with:
(a) an ostentatious, luxurious and socially competitive lifestyle; and
(b) disinterest in, or contempt for, sheikhly or Saudi ideological
formulations, except where instrumental concerns dictate
otherwise.
Furthermore, with regard to the position of the sheikhs them-
selves as members of Al Azhar, it is interesting to record how
many pious Egyptians, even while admiring a particular sheikh,
are indifferent to the Azhar or suspicious of the motives and
connections of its members as a whole when it comes to political
pronouncements. It should never be forgotten that the programme
of the Muslim Brothers, not to mention that of other more ex-
treme groups, opposes any special position being given to the
sheikhs. The latter are seen merely as advisory, legally skilled
specialists and not at all immune to radical criticism. None the less,
the Sadat years were clearly a period of relative independence for
one stream within the Azhar which emphasised a 'hard' definition
of religious imperatives. It did so, with uncertainties and mis-
givings on the part of the government that encouraged it; that same
government which also did the most to ensure at the same time the
development of the luxury sector of the consumer economy, the
reemergence of old forces that had been eclipsed, the strength-
ening of new social strata, and increased reliance on Western
economic and political relations. A major role in ideological
activity was given to the 'conservative' religious forces represented
by the late sheikh of Azhar and by much media cultivation of
religion. Whether this effectively masked the disjunctions within
the society or exacerbated them, we shall consider in a moment.
The very eagerness with which the state courted religion reflects
a further point of ideological and political tension. Nasserism,
particularly in its 'socialist' forms, was anathema to many of those
who were the support base of the state and President Sadat. A
whole class-in-formation built on finance and land speculation,
construction, brokerage of various kinds, was blocked under Nasser
and they felt (as well they might) economically and politically
liberated. Yet the calling in question of Nasserism, the reversal of
some of its most cherished priorities, and the distance, sometimes
clumsily taken, from the figure of the late za'im (no newspaper
180 Popular Islam and the State in Contemporary Egypt

photographs on the day of his death, a loud omission), put the

state in a quandary with regard to its mass ideological appeal and
legitimation. Nasserism may have been historically profoundly
undermined by external dependency and debt and the increasing
influence of the Western-orientated bourgeoisie as well as the
complex problems posed by the blockages that I have mentioned.
But it generated powerful and continuing structures of relations
and interests (not least in the public sector, the army's position,
the bureaucracy and the whole nature of the nation-state). Presi-
dent Sadat was part of the original Free Officer movement.
It is a familiar and recurring problem - how does one separate
oneself from a system to which one owes the bases of one's position
while in certain vital respects maintaining it? What language is to
be used in this process, when particular dominant symbols have
lost their symbolic power (and, indeed, one has an interest in
finding some reformulation of the discourse of the nation-state
that will exclude them)?
In this ideological partial vacuum, the 'Islamic' dimension is one
alternative source of legitimacy on which the state can try to call,
but which, of course, exists and springs from sources 'outside' it
rather than being generated 'from within'. Moreover, the notion
of an opposition of political power system and religion, not a new
theme in Egyptian history, had been strengthened precisely by the
disaster of 1967.
The state was, therefore, in an ambiguous position. To encour-
age religious forces of a particular kind that were held to be
anti-left, insistent on punitive law, opposed to Nasserism, respect-
ful of property, pious and concentrating on the moral-legal-
consensual basis of society was important. Yet the state was in the
same process presented with the problem of maintaining a distance
from and control over the religious forces it sought to employ as
ideological instruments for partial purposes directed at very parti-
cular and possibly 'unstable' strata: the urban poor, elements of
the petite bourgeoisie, the peasantry in its supposedly 'traditional
minded' forms. For dominant Azharite interpretations and those
of some of the more fundamentalist religious movements do not
reflect the conceptions of the majority of the state's support in the
fractions of the bourgeoisie, the landowners and prosperous 'middle
peasantry', save in very specific and limited areas of personal piety
and in terms of social control.
Michael Gilsenan 181

The logic of this conjunction, as I have schematically indicated

it, leads to a position in which the state found itself caught in the
incoherencies and contradictory imperatives and those aspects of
religious ideology it wished to adopt. It also found that the con-
tradictions between the social and economic processes it had to
follow to reproduce and expand its own base necessarily were in
opposition to the fundamentalist conceptions of religious groups,
and to the class interests, life chances and conceptions of the
religious constituency that was to be controlled.
It is thus no paradox that the rise in 'popular religion' (ascetic,
puritan, sometimes tinged with millenialism, resentful, activitist)
went hand in hand with a period of conspicuous consumption, and
Ia parade sauvage of 'Hiltonisation' which is of the essence of
establishing those appearances that are essential to the social
world of the new rich.
We must not obscure the religious elements that entered into
the ideology of the newly dominant social groups. Regarding the
post-Nasserite state as salvation and provider of an economic
liberation, they also saw themselves as following out patterns of
piety in many possible avenues of which I shall only indicate three,
using reference to three individual members of the elite of differ-
ent levels.

Case 1

A university teacher and researcher in his early thirties, brought

up in a comfortable middle-class setting, educated in English in a
school established by the British (there are French equivalents
too). He had to learn Arabic. His entire socialisation of home and
school was saturated in 'Western' values and lifestyle. He has
been, it is not too much to say, converted to Islam and to a concern
with currents of Sufism. In this view the world is essentially that of
the interior essence of things. That which is of the exterior,
external forms, is totally unimportant and not to be taken as a
basis for judging the meaning and significance of the world at all.
Only God can judge, only He knows what is behind the veil, that
hidden essence of which social forms are but the misleading
appearance. Asceticism is a quality of the heart and of the inten-
tion, not of economic standing and external way of life. One needs
a teacher on the individual way to truth, that truth which is
182 Popular Islam and the State in Contemporary Egypt

constituted in the individual's self-purification. The individual

alone can purify himself.
Society is not problematic therefore. The peasants are happy,
one can see it if one can see into their eyes and beyond the merely
external signs of poverty. The true task is located not at the social,
but at the individual level and in the heart. One can pursue any
number of projects and business schemes and connections without
contradiction since they are not the inner core of the self and the
self's worth. What uncertainties, unsureness or tension there may
be is masked in conversation by invocations of the divinity, pious
phrases, Qur'anic quotations, the citing of paradigms of right
conduct from the Hadith, parables of the Sufi masters.
This is by no means an untypical pattern. There has been a
resurgence of Sufism in this particular mode at this social level- in
the universities, amongst some of those of the bourgeoisie margin-
alised in the Nasserite period (which they detest), who because of
their ages have only a limited personal grasp of the social context
out of which came the ideology of nationalism and the nation-state
and the nature of the forces it sought to combat. Nasser's rule for
them is often seen as despotism and wasteful, frustrating adventur-
ism. They are aligned with the now dominant forces and approve
the liberal economic model. But they are not in an economic and
social position to participate fully in it and do not share, by and
large, the ethic and opportunism of the new rich. They are thus on
the periphery still, but in a different sense from before. Their
milieu and intellectual formation distance them from a time of
speculative opportunity, make them hostile to the apotheosis of
the arriviste. and ajfairisme is distasteful. Ofter. not 'organically'
socialised in an Islamic background through either family or edu-
cation, such individuals find in Sufism a private source of interpret-
ation of the world. With no inclination whatever for, or social
point of contact with, the 'traditional' congregations of the popular
Sufi brotherhoods, they meet rather in select. meditative circles
round a teacher.

Case 2

This brings me to a second case which illustrates a point made to

me by an Egyptian intellectual. He caustically remarked that many
people were astonished to find men with doctorates, chemists and
scientists and engineers and administrators, supporting the Saudi
Michael Gilsenan 183

line on religious law or belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood but

having only minimal understanding of the whole Islamic philosophi-
cal-poetic-theological-legal tradition. They operate with such a
restricted code of religious meaning, in his view, because they
come from strata, now part of the intellectual and social elite
broadly defined, that are highly educated but not highly cultured.
The attachment to a vigorous and simplistic view of the need for
Islamic law to rule society does reflect a kind of coupure in their
experience. Technocratic, seeing themselves as without ideology,
trained in the concept of the neutral quality of scientific knowl-
edge, there are problems to be solved and solutions available. Yet
in their own eyes they are constantly hedged around with a society
of a singularly unscientific and irrational dimension that resists
their worldview. It lacks control. They have risen through a
university career themselves. Knowledge for them has been the
key to advancement. What now prevents the realisation of what
they know should be done for society is the irrational nature of
that society itself. It is religious law which can rationalise and
order Egypt! It is indeed a necessity of state at this level of
development. Is not the reason for the absence of theft and
dishonesty in Saudi Arabia today the relentless application of the
sharia? Society has to be strictly disciplined, loose morals must be
fought and the instrument is to hand in the logical and severe
precepts of holy law. To them there is no contradiction at all in the
idea of applying the strict Hanbali school of law to Egyptian
society (as it is in Saudi Arabia) because after all Saudi Arabia is
no longer really different from Egypt. It has made enormous
progress, perhaps more. And Islam is a religion of morality and
concern for the individual and private property. A leading admin-
istrator of Cairo University in discussion saw no contradiction in
asserting that religion was a private affair for the individual and at
the same time that the corporate state should impose it and use it
as an instrument of control over the masses. For he is aware that
'the ignorant people' may pose problems to the new order of which
he sees himself as an intellectual representative.

Case 3

Our third case is a judge, now retired, from an old landed family
that supported the Wafd party and indeed still does. For him Islam
presents an alternative to both capitalism and socialism (a very
184 Popular Islam and the State in Contemporary Egypt

common theme across many social strata at the current conjunc-

ture). It is against the first because it is opposed to interest and
profit which are the source of evil in society. It is against the latter
because it is founded on respect for the individual and for private
property. Nasser was an ignorant tyrant, the new rich are as
ignorant and are vulgar exploiters. The ancien regime and the old
landed bourgeoisie from which he comes had its faults, but they
were nothing compared to the faults of those who succeeded them.
Then 'we looked after our peasants, lived with them as one family
on the estates', there was none of the class antagonism which has
since arisen.
Probity in public affairs and social control would be restored
through the Islamic law. This centres, not on the debate about
penalties, but on a worked out, logical system in which the role of
skilled opinion, judge's discretion and analogy give ample room
for adaptation to the modern state. To turn to the law would not
be a step backwards, but rather a step towards the rational organ-
isation of society. The sheikhs are ignorant and obscurantist and
could not administer the Islamic law in modern circumstances.
Even such brief and sketchy examples show that it is dangerous
to talk of a dominant religious ideology or shared set of apprehen-
sions at the upper levels of government and society. The picture
was, of course, far more complex than I have indicated here. None
the less, the Sadatian state did attempt to mantle itself in religion.
As part of the means of controlling society it did attempt to make
effective what it conceived to be a model of 'traditional' Islam. It
evoked the authenticity of the 'traditional' as though that category
was 'there', objectively given, something which could, as it were,
be applied. What it actually did, in fact, was to construct its own
version of traditional Islam in ways which reflected the perceptions
of the ruling strata, rather than a realisation of the inner religious
apprehensions of 'the people· it was taken to express.
Let us take only one example of this attempted ideological
imposition. The programme of mosque building illustrated very
well the endeavour to construct a model of Islam in space and to
witness to the Islamic nature of the ruling order. It had a double
aspect. On the one hand, old mosques were preserved while
around them urban areas were demolished or 'developed', and
they were thus left quasi-isolated in a transformed environment.
On the other hand, new mosques were put up in the great public
Michael Gilsenan 185

spaces as government mosques. They are of great interest because

they reveal how far removed from whatever 'traditional' might be
taken to be are the perceptions of religion of the builders. The
massive, ostentatious new mosques are built in a totally 'untradi-
tional' spatial and relational universe. They do not articulate
space, a social form of which they are a focus, but rather break
with old models precisely because they are, as it were, 'just there',
isolated, built for their publicness of siting but without relation or
making relation to other spaces. They have none of the symbolic-
social complexity of mosques in 'traditional' settings but exist to
dominate the characteristically open spaces of a modern, capital-
ist, twentieth-century city. They are placed next to motorways, by
the main railway station, on large open sites where they can be
seen. The conception of an appropriate site obeys this one-
dimensional imperative.
Moreover, such mosques are made up of an arbitrary selection
of elements of dome, minaret, internal proportions and so forth,
which are drawn from quite different historical periods and put
together as a kind of bricolage which fits better a European view of
what a generalised 'mosque' ought to look like- it has a dome, a
minaret, and so on - than an indigenous conception. The inner
structural relations of such buildings are a kind of patching to-
gether, a mixture of elements that does not actually obey the
principles of a given period's conceptions of religion but represents
a very modern revelation of what the dominant social groups'
vision of religion is: a separate category, a cobbling together of
elements chosen by superficial and surface criteria rather than
springing from some real understanding based on deep apprecia-
tion of Islamic culture and practice. The new mosques reveal,
therefore, a certain class conception of the nature and public
significance of religion and of authentic tradition which can be
appropriated by the state.
It is interesting that many people see such mosques as a proof of
the nan-religiousness of the state and as inauthentic. They are
perceived as a kind of ideological rhetoric in stone and one might
argue that their political and class nature is evident rather than
concealed. They do not clothe the state in a traditionalist mantle,
but by traditionalist standards they reveal the state to be precisely
making a show of religion, an outward form for reasons of secular
power, for hypocritical reasons. They are 'external', 'from outside'
186 Popular Islam and the State in Contemporary Egypt

and do not disguise what the pious regard as the use of religion.
The 'spectacular' nature of the mosques, the show with no reality
behind it (or not the reality its builders imagine it expresses!), is all
too clear.
If the state, therefore, does attempt to identify itself with
religious forces without in fact pursuing the kinds of programmes
that in ideo-logic such an identification would entail, this in-
creases the consciousness that religion for the state is an artificial
language. The sense of break between the class interests and
structures that the state in part represents and the discourse within
which such interests are formulated for popular consumption,
sharpens a feeling of tension upon which other religious forces
thrive. The state does not appear to touch the foundations of the
society in its public religiosity. It certainly does not thereby pre-empt
groups which identify themselves as religious but, if anything,
tends to intensify their apprehension of a continuing non-
integration of society, a non-integration which can only be tran-
scended by a true remodelling of society on Islamic foundations.
The most extreme of these groups, the now proscribed takfir wa
higra, showed the ultimate stages to which this conjuncture of
religious forces might lead. This links with the Muslim Brother-
hood in class and ideological terms were strong. The founder and
leader of the group was a disciple of one of the chief intellectuals
of the Brotherhood, Sayyid Qutb, and particularly the Sayyid
Qutb of the latter part of his career in which he was far more
radical and intransigent than before. Prison under Nasser had a
profound effect on the young disciple. No entente could be possible
with the socialists or communists. There was to be no discussion,
as among certain elements of the Brotherhood, of the possible
benefits of the state sector of the economy or the positive role of
the army in society. There was unrelenting hatred for the Nasserite
period and everything it represented. The young leader took up
the notion that the entire society was a society of unbelievers who
should be destroyed. A new, complete, Islamic state based on the
Qur'an and the Sunna- the basis of much Brotherhood thinking
too- should take its place.
This visionary follower was the son of a provincial notable (an
'umdah or mayor) and a student at university. This background of
the provincial petite bourgeoisie that had migrated to the capital
via university and there become socially organised in religious
Michael Gilsenan 187

groups has occured with every greater frequency since the Second
World War in the Islamic movements. There is a sense of exclu-
sion from the nation, of being drawn in and then blocked by
society. Attracted to the cities in thousands, often occupying jobs
in that vast level of the private sector which is made up of one or
two-man establishments, in small trading, ill-paid white-collar
positions they are at the fringes round the centre which dominates
power and services. Dependent, exposed to the ravages of infla-
tion and the uncertain margins of petit bourgeois life and least able
to ensure against them, they are intensely hostile to the practices
of those who dominate the economic order and whose lifestyles
are aggressively luxurious and 'Western'. They have some intellec-
tual attainment, and they are young. There is a strong generational
element with many of the members of this and other less extreme
groups being under thirty and often drawn from families in which
traditional piety is strong.
The defeat of 1967 only confirmed for them the total invalidity
of the entire social, political, economic and ideological order. Yet
it produced no fundamental reformulation. Nasserism was de-
valued but its basic framework appeared to continue. Economic
and social conditions in the cities grew worse in the early 1970s,
strengthening the social pressures to which they were subjected.
They formed, in short, a classic constituency for a radical 'Islamism'.
The leader added to Sayyid Qutb's notion that the society is a
society of unbelievers in the powerful force of higra, of going out
from the corrupt society. The two ideas combine in a very power-
ful symbolic-ideological set: namely, the image of the just com-
munity withdrawing from the world, fleeing the domain of the
unjust and hypocrites to take refuge and spiritual discipline in
seclusion and asceticism. This prepares them for the day when
they will return to sweep away the corrupt society and establish the
reign of a pure and original Islam. It will be original in the fullest
sense too, for it recreates the original experience of 'going out' of
the first community of seventh century Arabia. It will go to the
desert, or the mountains of Yemen, and create a kind of 'out of
time, out of history' that will reproduce the conditions under
which Islam emerged. This is a highly charged mimesis. It is
carried to the furthest point at which the leader assumes prophet-
like authority. His word is absolute, he uses the Qur'anic verse
that the earth and all that is on it is God's and takes the earth as
188 Popular Islam and the State in Contemporary Egypt

belonging to the group. Those who leave are apostates punishable

by death.
Society has no external enemies, as the Nasserite period pro-
claimed, but internal ones. It must be remodelled from within, not
directed against the outside. The aim is not to control, but to
purge. The blockage of social and economic and political forms
produces a move into a chiliastic-totalitarian mode and an extreme
formulation of the nature of salvation through action breaking the
mould of society. It is the extreme form of the religious critique
that will shatter frozen constraints in the dazzling force of symbols
of recreation and renaissance.
What for the state is an ambivalent, tentative, heterodox culti-
vation of religion and the invocation of an (anti-left) Islamic
constitution is taken here to the ultimate millenia! point from
which perspective the state and the society in general appear as
sunk in unbelief.
Now this movement, whose leaders were executed following the
murder of a former Minister of Religious Endowments in 1977, did
not represent their religious conceptions of the masses, or of a
particular class. But one may see in it the development of certain
themes that in a far more limited way are not without resonance in
Egyptian society. Religion is being recuperated, it re-emerges
from its partial seclusion since the Revolution. As the consolida-
tion of the middle peasantry of the countryside and certain frac-
tions of the professional classes allowed the Wafd to re-form after
over twenty years of being apparently not only banned but in
actuality no longer a living force, so other groups and movements
and tendencies that seem also to 'come from the past' were
revealed as possessing new significance.
The strata that formed the original recruitment level for the
Muslim Brotherhood - the petite bourgeoisie of the provincial
towns and of Cairo itself- are placed under growing strain. Below
them in the cities the mass of the urban population copes with a
decaying infrastructure of housing and services and, by multiple
links of kinship, connections, favours, hammers together a patch-
work of occupations, odd jobs, activities in the vast 'informal'
sector of the economy which in part services the creaking and
ossified structures of the formal economy. Bricolage becomes
more and more a necessity, even for the state, if spare parts are to
be obtained, repairs carried out, services obtained, and if one can
know 'how to do it'.
Michael Gilsenan 189

In the 1970s the migration abroad by professionals, skilled and

semi-skilled workers and fellahin meant remittances and pros-
perity for some. Internally, however, migration to the cities (and
outside the country) came from the vast, disorganised, peripatetic
army of sans terres whose only chances of livelihood in the rural
areas lay in gang labour sent all over the countryside, or on
irregular wage labour for farmers at particular seasons. Their
ranks were swelled by those who belonged to the small peasantry
(owning less than two feddans) who operated at the economic
margins and were being sweated by the government in taxes which
were not paid by the wealthy, large, citrus-growers and commer-
cial farmers. The fragmentation of the rural universe, a return to
payment in kind, increased pressure on the peasantry through the
dismantling of Nasserist legislation intended to protect their posi-
tion, created indeed a 'traditional' agrarian sector and reinforced
the dependency of the peasantry and labourers.
It is not, therefore, surprising that the Muslim Brotherhood
re-emerged form the clandestinity into which it was forced,
together with the whole ideology of Islamic integrationism. Nor is
it surprising that reiteration, repetition of the old discourse in
virtually unchanged forms gives one an illusion of timelessness, or
of frozen forms whose life has been suspended for twenty years,
slowly revivifying. The blockages to which I referred at the begin-
ning of this chapter profoundly affected these religious move-
ments, not only because of the imprisonment of particular groups
and individuals and their isolation from social life, but because of
the history of the basic social and economic structures of Egyptian
society over the past two decades, and the legacy that the Revolu-
tion itself had to deal with. The constancy and the unchangingness
to which I have referred. the very inflexibility and rigidity of the
insistence on the Qur'an and the Sunna, are paradoxically increas-
ingly vital in the current conjuncture as the social world of the
masses becomes more and more subject to pressures of many
different levels. For the urban lumpenproletariat and the fringes of
the working classes, religion is not necessarily in an organised
group form at all. It is rather a kind of refusal or challenge in a
situation of impotence, as the external dependency of Egypt grows
and as internal disarticulation and incoherence once again be-
comes a present element of everyday life.
The contradictions between the interests of the new rich and
groups close to the controlling elements of the state and the broad
190 Popular Islam and the State in Contemporary Egypt

mass of the people are not grasped analytically in the 'fundamen-

talist' vocabulary. Equally, religious forces have no monopoly on
the different cultural and ideological apprehensions and practices
of the people and are not to be seen in some unproblematic way as
necessarily the determining force. The practical concerns of every-
day life are not structured by 'Islam' but by broad material and
cultural factors of increasingly immediate concern. But at the
collective level religion is a complex of association, meaning,
action that has not been displaced or diminished by the state's
controls from above and by the changes imposed from above.
Ironically, the state has played an important role in ensuring that
religious discourse retains its symbolic power and authenticity
which may be turned in many different political and economic
directions that the state itself may find difficult or impossible to
control.
8 Class and State in the
Transformation of Modern
Turkey
CAGLAR KEYDER

The origins of the Republican state in Turkey may be traced back

to the bureaucratic rebellion against the peripheralisation of the
Ottoman Empire. The mechanisms of nineteenth-century integra-
tion of the Ottoman economy into capitalist networks, that is
trade, debt, and direct investment, had allowed for the rapid
expansion of a class that acted as intermediary between the local
economy and European capitalism. From a systemic point of view
there were two reasons establishing the material basis of a conflict
between the traditional bureaucracy and the new class of mer-
chants and bankers. First, these intermediaries were the physical
agents of capitalist integration, threatening to change the very
principles of the traditional system guarded and defended by state
functionaries. It did not require great foresight to comprehend the
implications of the replacement of a bureaucratic system by
market rationality for the traditional role of the bureaucracy.
Secondly, if the bureaucracy attempted to take a more active role
in the new world, through effecting a transformation from above
of the social system, it risked losing its legitimacy in the eyes of the
social groups making up the traditional order. In other words, the
social disruption caused by the growth of a new class pushed the
bureaucracy towards a dilemma and located them in an ambivalent
position vis-a-vis displaced social groups of the traditional order.
The existence of potential or actual conflict between a class rep-
resenting the traditional order and the new class of intermediaries
191
192 Transformation of Modern Turkey

nurtured through the dissolution of that order was due to the mode
of peripheralisation of the Empire. In pure colonial situations
(such as India) the traditional ruling class had been reduced to
being an appendage of the colonial merchant state, precluding a
conflict either at the level of surplus appropriation or system
definition. Also, in the countries of white settlement, political rule
had been established in accordance with the requirements of a
merchant, commercial-landowning class. The Ottoman Empire,
however, together with a few other cases such as China (and, of
course, Japan) had never been colonised, nor had it been an
undisputed domain of 'informal empire'. It is not coincidental that
the two most prominent examples of non-colonial peripheralisa-
tion were similarly inheritors of rich political traditions, and, more
importantly, of state officials-cum-ruling classes. Imperial rivalry,
an absence of colonisation, and the relative autonomy (vis-a-vis
imperialist pressure) of the traditional bureaucracy constituted an
interdependent set of definitional parameters which guaranteed
that the process of peripheralisation would be accompanied by a
conflict at the level of the definition of the system. In other words,
the social project of the bureaucracy, implicit or declared, whether
of a transformationist or a restorationist nature, would necessarily
oppose the system definition implied in capitalist integration and
mercantile activity.
There was one additional specificity of the Ottoman Empire. It
had been a multi-ethnic empire in which a traditional ethnic
division of labour had prevailed. During the process of its capital-
ist integration, however, this ethnic division acquired a new di-
mension as it was the Christian minorities who predominantly
assumed the intermediary role between European capital and the,
mostly Muslim, producers. European capitalists found Greeks,
Armenians and Levantines more suitable partners in their deal-
ings with the Empire, for understandable reasons. Thus, Euro-
pean economic penetration of the realm was seen and understood
by the Muslim bureaucracy to be equivalent to the rise of a
Christian comprador class. This equation attained greater salience
as, throughout the nineteenth century, the Great Powers sought to
pry privileges from the Porte for the Christian millets, or com-
munities. As a result the bureaucracy came to see their conflict
with the minorities in terms of the potential separatism of growing
nationalisms - a perspective which gained exclusivity towards the
end of the nineteenth century.
Caglar Keyder 193

Nineteenth-century reformism and the Young Turks

The reformism which characterised most of the nineteenth century

may be seen as derivative and well within the space accorded to
Ottoman bureaucrats in the European inter-state system. The
Young Turk movement towards the end of the century, however,
was of a novel character in breaking away from immediate imperi-
alist impositions. 1 During the last quarter of the nineteenth cen-
tury new departments within the government and the modernis-
ation of local administrations had served to inflate the numbers of
functionaries associated with the central administration. There
were qualitative changes within the bureaucratic class as well -
that modern and secular component of it which supplied the ranks
of both reformists and revolutionaries grew in size and import-
ance, due in large part to the educational institutions established
to reproduce their cadres. The graduates of imperial schools of
engineering, medicine, and administration, all founded around the
middle of the century, joined the bureaucracy, to serve either in
the military or in the central government.
These 'intellectuals' initiated both the reformist and the revolu-
tionary movement. Their class position, that is, the fact that all
intellectuals belonged to the bureaucratic class - not only in a
genealogical sense, but also in terms of their employment and
location within the surplus-extraction relationship - endowed
them with a state-centred perspective. Hence their primary pur-
pose always remained the reform of the state in order to better
cope with internal conflict and external pressure. This perspective
ensured that they served as the organic intelligentsia of their own
class, formulating its projects and politicising its members whose
interests lay in controlling the transformation of the social struc-
ture while safeguarding their privileged position.
Before bureaucratic activism evolved into its revolutionary
version with the Young Turks, it went through several stages.
At first, recentralisation of the Empire was the predominant
concern, following upon the Sultan's centralising initiatives
during the 1820s and 1830s. A conciliatory attitude toward the
West was paramount during this stage, since the central govern-
ment could only oppose threats with the active support of
European powers. Accordingly, reformism responded to de-
mands by the West to curb the absolutism of the political
authority, and to institute guarantees of citizens' rights and
194 Transformation of Modern Turkey

equality. Reforming bureaucrats went unchallenged not only be-

cause they held power over weak sultans, but also because world
conditions allowed for a fulfillment of the promises contained in
westernising reforms. It seemed, indeed, that the Empire could
remain intact, and that its economic integration with Europe
would bring immediate benefits as well as long-term prosperity.
During the next stage, official disillusionment with the results of
integration into the capitalist system began to reflect the resent-
ment of displaced craftsmen and Muslim merchants. The period
had started with the signs of a downturn in the world economy
(1873) followed by a disastrous famine in Anatolia in 1874 (whose
distant causes could be found in the new orientation of the econ-
omy) and was crowned by the bankruptcy of the Porte in 1875.
The Russian war of 1877-8 and the 1878 Berlin Treaty following it,
served to awaken Ottoman bureaucrats to the external threat of
dismemberment of the Empire. It became evident that foreign
markets and international funds, and even wars, obeyed an exter-
nal dynamic against which sincere declarations of the liberal creed
and good behaviour in general in Instanbul had no effect. The
forcing upon the Porte of the Public Debt Administration (PDA),
a form of official financial tutelage, must have emerged as the final
demonstration of a capitalist logic to the less suspecting western-
isers among the bureaucracy. 2
During the second stage, the careers of the first generation of
westernisers ended as part of the shift of power from the more
autonomous civil service in the Porte to the Palace secretariat
under Abd-iil Hamid (1876-1909). The new Sultan and a strength-
ened Palace bureaucracy maintained a certain suspiciousness tow-
ard the West: they exercised the old statecraft, of a balancing act,
one which had become appropriate in the epoch of intense imperi-
alist rivalry. Such tactics resulted in the constitution of a bureau-
cratic faction which was avowedly in search of a restorative scheme
and which frequently found Islam to be a rallying force extolling
the virtues of the traditional order. The restorationist bureaucracy
and the Sultan enjoyed an ideological success at the popular level
which had been withheld from the administration for at least half a
century. Not only had economic transformations disturbed the
essentially static order, but the Muslim masses, the peasantry as
well as the urban petty bourgeoisie, had found it difficult to
accommodate the hastily transplanted tenets of equality and con-
Caglar Keyder 195

stitutionality - especially since these seemed to serve the immedi-

ate needs of mercantile (and non-Muslim) interests. Under such
circumstances, conservatism propagated from above, and doused
with religious legitimation, must have been reassuring. This prob-
ably explains the otherwise difficult to comprehend fact of Abd-iil
Hamid's continuing popular appeal to this day.
Westernising intellectuals were excluded from these restora-
tionist schemes. Having fallen out of favour, they experienced a
transformation after which they were reincarnated in a more
radical version, as Young Turks. Young Turk activism, which
defines the third stage, was based on a desire to change the
political system and was characterised by its uncompromising
opposition to the conservative faction in power. It was, however,
also informed by intellectual and political currents in late
nineteenth-century Europe, and was, therefore, no longer de-
limited by an unsuspecting adulation of French republicanism and
British parliamentarianism. Its activism derived not from social-
ism, which was at the time only beginning to attain ideological
hegemony among revolutionary intellectuals, but from a radical
'positivism' acquired through contact with French Comtians.
Thus, while sharing the social engineering perspective of most
intellectual movements in less-developed contexts, their under-
standing of the Empire and its problems was not based on an
analysis of its social structure, nor on a study of the mechanisms of
imperialism. Instead, their discourse was primarily anti-absolutist,
tinted with an ill-defined resentment of economic dependence.
Anti-absolutism was, of course, a platform which could appeal to
democrats in Europe: it could even articulate into the official
policies of the Great Powers which aspired to establish spheres of
influence in a loosely federated Ottoman Empire. This double
attraction explains the enormous popularity enjoyed by the Young
Turks in European (intellectual and official) public opinion- prior
to their coming to power.
There was, however, a second facet to the intellectual constitu-
tion of the Young Turk movement, one which supplied its activism
with an insufficiently articulated desire to overcome economic
backwardness. Since the middle of the century, a neo-mercantilist
platform of 'national economic' development had been current
among radicals of middle-European and Italian origin. In the case
of the Listian doctrine as appropriated in Germany, the idea of a
196 Transformation of Modern Turkey

'national economy' could provide a programme for a bourgeoisie

preparing itself for the world stage. Similarly, in Italy, backward-
ness was seen primarily as a problem of technological catching-up;
and it was in terms of industrial development that the Risor-
gimento had interpreted the idea of 'national economy'. The
location of the Young Turks in the social structure was quite
different from such proponents of Listian doctrines in Germany or
Italy; rather than constituting a group within the society whose
immediate interests would be served through the establishment of
a protected domestic market, and who would seek to influence the
political structure, the Young Turks were part of the administrat-
ive cadre. They lacked precisely what their European counterparts
possessed: there was, as yet, no manufacturing bourgeoisie in the
Ottoman Empire whose interests could be served through the
construction of a national economy. On the contrary, the trading
bourgeoisie would be against any such attempt. Since, however, it
was the state mechanism which was aimed at by the Young Turks,
this all-powerful position could be used to create a client group
which would serve as a surrogate bourgeoisie. It was primarily
important to take over and defend the state in order to safeguard
its privileged status in the social structure: if the state mechanism
lost its structural dominance the bureaucracy would no longer be
in a position to save the Empire or nurture a bourgeoisie; nor
would they be able to protect their own class interest.
The Young Turks came to power in the form of the Committee
of Union and Progress (CUP) in 1909, following the adoption of a
Parliament and a Constitution in 1908. It is important to recognise
that the initial purpose of saving the state was cloaked in various
principles of cohesion between 1908 and the defeat of 1918. The
Young Turks were initially considered, by themselves and others,
as Ottomanists whose struggle aimed at equality and federation
among the various ethnic and religious groups of the realm. Upon
having to confront the reality of secessionism supported by Euro-
pean intervention, the naive version of Ottomanism soon ceased
to exist. Implementation of policies which attempted to establish
uniform practices in the Empire, for example in the field of
education and language of instruction, were prevented by Euro-
pean embassies through invoking the Capitulations and late nine-
teenth century treaties. Administrative reform, although carried
out to a certain degree, was impeded by the insufficiency of state
Caglar Keyder 197

revenue; an insufficiency due to an inability to raise customs duties

and to tax foreigners, and the necessity of ceding close to one-third
of the revenue to the PDA. All of these obstacles began to appear
to the bureaucracy as extensions of the ethnic heterogeneity of the
Empire, or as the consequences of co-existence with Christian
minorities. Their attempts at constructing a political entity based
on the European model of the nation-state were opposed by the
same statesmen they were trying to emulate.
The Balkan Wars constituted a turning point in relations be-
tween the CUP and the Greeks and Armenians. After 1912,
Armenian political parties reneged on their support for the CUP,
and were convinced of the necessity of internationalising the
Armenian problem; Greeks were becoming 'Venizelist'- follow-
ers of Venizelos, who advocated a summary solution to the Otto-
man problem through annexation of Christian-populated regions
by Greece. It was in this political context that the CUP leaders
veered rapidly towards a policy of Turkish nationalism.
Without delving into the intellectual background of Turkish
nationalism, we can mention briefly that a majority of the propo-
nents of this ideology had recently arrived from outlying Turkic
areas of the Empire, and had received their nationalist schooling
mostly in Europe. The CUP leaders themselves knew next to
nothing about Anatolia, the supposed motherland. It was, how-
ever, becoming apparent that Muslim Turks constituted not only
the largest ethnic group, but also, by default, the most loyal. If the
state were to be saved, such a loyal group was a necessary prere-
quisite even if it had so far remained silent. It did not take long for
the CUP to advance from this diagnosis to an active policy of
nationalist cultivation, one which excluded Christian minorities.
In the process of cultivating the Muslim Turkish element, the CUP
enjoyed a particular freedom during the war years due to the
absence of inner-state constraints on bureaucratic policy-making.
When the principal imperialist powers controlling the Empire
became active enemies, the CUP leaders had the occasion to
pursue their ideological design freely. The alliance with Germany
not only provided the autonomous space they needed, but also
actively supported the nationalist goal.
It might have been possible for the bureaucracy to recreate its
hegemony in the social structure through the establishment of
political control over the economy, had it not been the case that
198 Transformation of Modern Turkey

their class struggle with the bourgeoisie was displaced ideologi-

cally on to a level of ethnic and religious conflict. Greek and
Armenian minorities were seen not only as carriers of the logic
of the market and agents of a social system which would eventu-
ally dispense with the traditional ruling class, but also as the
internal support of an imperialism preventing the bureaucracy
from reconstituting traditional class balances. When the First
World War started, the bureaucracy felt two simultaneous needs;
to neutralise the minorities in order to prevent a resurgence of
imperialist imposition; and to find for itself a client group in the
economy without running the risk of this group becoming another
internal support mechanism for external pressure. Therefore the
economic actors subject to political control by the bureaucracy
could not be the Greek or Armenian bourgeoisies: they had to
originate from ethnic groups which did not pose any threat to the
integrity of the state.
It was through such a process that the organisation of a war
economy came to depend on the promotion of Muslim merchants
and businessmen. These aspiring entrepreneurs were brought
together under the aegis of the CUP party organisation, usually in
co-operative schemes, to found 'national' companies for the
financing and carrying out of trade. These companies replaced to
some extent the minority merchants who had until then monopol-
ised both internal and external trade; the war period witnessed a
move towards the fulfilment of the Ottoman bureaucratic ideal of
total political control over the economy. 3
The constitution of a Muslim merchant class during the First
World War, although important as a reflection of Young Turk
nationalism, could not entirely replace the overwhelming econ-
omic dominance of Greeks and Armenians whose numbers and
networks embodied quite a different order of strength. In other
words, in carrying out its economic policy the bureaucracy, even if
it could establish political domination over the realm of the
market, still had to confront a distrusted Christian bourgeoisie.
This situation was resolved with the expulsion of the Christian
minorities during and after the war. Armenians were driven out of
Anatolia in 1915 and when the Greek army occupied western
Anatolia in 1919, a state of active belligerence ensued. Most of the
Greek population of the Empire rallied to the Hellenistic idea,
forcing them to emigrate when the Turkish army recaptured the
Caglar Keyder 199

occupied lands. When the war ended, a massive exchange of

populations with Greece was agreed upon. 4 As a result of the First
World War, 1.2 million Greeks had escaped or were expelled to
Greece. Thus the neutralisation of the minorities which began
during the war was completed in 1924, the first post-war year in
Anatolia. In less than a decade, about 3 million Greeks and
Armenians had perished, departed or been expelled from what
became Turkey. This number was equivalent to one-quarter of the
remaining Muslim population, and probably contained 90 per cent
of the Ottoman bourgeoisie. Thus did the bureaucracy win the
war.

The state of the new republic

Through the period of its retreat, the Ottoman Empire had been
carved into nation-states: its final demise arrived with the pro-
tracted war that ended in 1922. In 1923 what remained of the old
Empire was a potentially viable unit where Muslims represented
some 97 per cent of the population, and Turks were by far the
dominant ethnic group. Irridentist threats dispelled, the fashioning
of a nation-state had become possible. The upheaval of the war
period had, however, greatly altered the social structure and the
class balances within what remained of the Empire. The actors
who were to be involved in the attempt to impose their projects on
the social system as a whole had changed greatly due to geographi-
cal and demographic dynamics. The class conflict between the
bureaucracy and the merchant bourgeoisie, whose outcome, under
a more orderly historical evolution, would be expected to deter-
mine the social structure of the new political unit, had found its
denouement through displacement and annihilation.
An alternative scenario to what ensued could have been a
'middle-class' rebellion by the commercial bourgeoisie - akin to
some Latin American trajectories. This scenario was excluded,
however, for two reasons. First, the 'middle class' in Latin
America often included a section of the landed oligarchy who had
themselves diversified into industrial production. The rebellion,
therefore, had an aspect of intra-class struggle, where the political
authority representing the oligarchy was not totally opposed to the
new challenge. In the Ottoman case, however, such a landed
200 Transformation of Modern Turkey

commercial class was lacking; besides the bureaucracy derived

their raison d'etre from peasants and petty producers, that is, the
stratum whose existence would be most threatened under capital-
ist development. The bureaucrats' attitudes toward capitalist de-
velopment were, therefore, highly ambivalent. This was unlike the
situation in which political authority was linked to large commer-
cial landholdings - precisely the economic form whose defeat
would have been required for the further development of the
urban classes. Secondly, and more importantly, the commercial
classes, like the bureaucracy, suffered the same ideological dislo-
cation of their class conflict, in seeing their principal problem in
religious and ethnic terms. For that reason the Christian bour-
geoisie attempted to stage their struggle in the inter-state theatre,
not principally through social demands designed to favour their
access to political authority, but through demands of ethnic and
religious autonomy. From this point of view, the Christian com-
mercial bourgeoisie never entertained the option of becoming a
class for itself through exercising influence over the state. Es-
pecially during the later period, rather than looking at the Porte as
a political authority to be swayed in the direction of its economic
interests, they had rejected the Ottoman state as a legitimate field
to be conquered and utilised. Christian merchants, by opposing
the legitimacy of the Ottoman state in favour of its dismantling,
also relinquished the possibility of a bid for political struggle and
primacy through a 'middle-class' revolution. More than any other
single factor, this reluctance and inability of the Ottoman bour-
geoisie to claim political power decided the subsequent develop-
ment of the state and ruling classes in Turkey.
In summary, it was the peculiar status of the bureaucracy as a
ruling class, which implied the absence of a land-owning commer-
cial oligarchy, and the ethnic differentiation which occluded the
class struggle, that prevented Ottoman social development from
embarking upon any of the well-known trajectories seen else-
where. At the end of the war, a balance emerged which pitted a
strong bureaucracy without a clear social project against weak
commercial interests who were, as yet, in no position to entertain
the possibility of class rule.
The principal determinant of this balance was the fact that
during the war years Turkey had lost most of its Christian commer-
cial class. Whatever remained of the bourgeoisie was too weak to
Caglar Keyder 201

constitute a class with an autonomous stance against the bureauc-

racy.5 Furthermore, the surviving commercial class was concen-
trated - to a greater degree than before - in the two cities of
Istanbul and Izmir, now pale reflections of their former glory. The
provincial cities, where economic change and cultural awakening
could be observed at the end of the nineteenth century, had lost
most of this momentum and reverted to their sleepy incarnations
as administrative centres. The beginnings of a civil society had thus
been suffocated before their fruition: once again the rule of the
state threatened to become compact and supreme.
It was as a result of an arduous struggle that the Turkish
Republic was established in 1923, with its capital in Ankara, but
with essentially the same bureaucratic cadres which had governed
the Empire in Istanbul. The 1920s were a period of 'modernisation
from above' or superstructural reformism, carried out by an in-
creasingly authoritarian regime. The Kemalist faction within the
bureaucracy behaved in an exclusionary manner in an attempt to
isolate and eradicate the better-known CUP cadres, and in forcing
Kemal's potential rivals into a passive positions. By 1929, the
process of forming a single-party dictatorship had also been largely
completed. There was an assembly to which deputies were ap-
pointed, through a process euphemistically known as 'elections'.
But an electorate was lacking: a system of two-degree elections
amounted to the designation of a group of men who then ratified
the names sent to them from Ankara. There was not much need
for the deputies to function in any legislative capacity, since the
government neither felt accountable to the Parliament, nor
seemed to be in need of legislative initiative. Although the rank
and file of the administrative apparatus were imported directly
from the imperial bureaucracy of the Porte, the government which
came to enjoy unchallenged power represented one particular
faction within the bureaucratic class. This was a result achieved
after years of intra-elite struggle, with waves of purges which left a
uniform cadre in Ankara professing total obedience to Kemal. 6
The ruling faction was concerned not only with eradicating all
rival elites but also with achieving a formal appearance of uni-
formity among the populace, supposedly reflecting the individual
bereft of any local affiliation. Thus all associations of popular
Islam in the form of sects, orders and tekkes (Dervish groups)
were banned while, at the same time, the traditional head-dress
202 Transformation of Modern Turkey

and clothing were outlawed. In rejecting communal structures of

cohesion, the bureaucracy sought to delocalise and departicular-
ise. This rejection reflected the desire that universal associative
principles should apply to all individuals and from such association
should follow the reproduction of the society. Since, however,
they could not embrace the market as an organising principle, the
bureaucrats would have liked to ensure cohesion by fashioning
novel links between the state and society. Like their predecessors,
however, they could not successfully conceive of the form and the
nature of such links. Instead, they redoubled their militancy to
combat what they thought of as rival principles. Only towards the
end of the 1920s, with the Italian and Soviet examples in sight, did
it become possible to envisage alternative linkages with society
while safeguarding the status of the bureaucratic mechanism. As a
result, the 1920s witnessed a recourse to the characteristic authori-
tarian equation: a politically strengthened centre combating rival
principles of social cohesion, while reluctantly permitting the
development of the market and its implicit organisational forms.

Statist authoritarianism

By 1929 the bureaucratic faction in power had emerged victorious

from the intra-class struggle, while the frantic pace of reformism
had subsided with the potential and actual rivals of the leadership
dead or exiled. It seemed that the forthcoming task of the bureau-
cracy would be to prepare the ground for transforming the econ-
omic system in such a way that their own position within it would
conform to that envisioned in the Young Turk project. A new
trade regime with specific duties was instituted at the end of 1929,
and the coincidence of this with the world crisis allowed the
government to embark on a restrictive trade policy. It was fortu-
itous that political developments and the economic cycle were
mutually reinforcing, thus allowing the attention of the bureau-
cracy to be concentrated on economic matters. In fact, 1930 and
1931 were periods of feverish economic innovation; perforce they
became years of major transformation in the political regime as
well. A new state form (the range of state functions and the nature
of the relationship between the political power and the economy),
together with the set of measures originally formulated to combat
Caglar Keyder 203

the crisis, resulted in a regime which embodied the culmination of

bureaucratic reformism. In its basic dimensions this regime, and
consequently the bureaucracy-bourgeoisie balance, remained in
force until the end of the Second World War.
Various official and para-governmental organisations were es-
tablished in the early 1930s, in order to guide the economy and the
population toward a statist scheme of self-sufficiency. One signifi-
cant aspect of these undertakings was the emerging propensity of
government activity to colonise society: not only directly, but also
through the formation of strictly ideological apparatuses which
were de facto under the control of the central authority. The 1931
Congress of the Republican People's Party and subsequent govern-
ment action aimed at banning all existing organisations with any
kind of autonomy, confirmed this course. It also became clear that
the Turkish republicans had discovered the organisational inno-
vations brought to the European scene by Italian fascism. This was
most apparent in the self-conception of the party and its place in
society. The 1931 Congress defined the political order as a single-
party regime where the party assumed the responsibility of ruling
in the name of the nation. In doing so the party would abide by
'populist' principles, being vigilant against special privileges that
sought to divide the population. In fact. 'a main principle' was to
consider the 'people of the Turkish Republic not as composed of
separate classes but divided into members of various occupations
for the purpose of individual and social life'. Hence the Party
would aim at 'establishing social order and solidarity instead of
class struggle'. This solidarity would be immediately instrumental
in 'involving the State directly in activities required by the general
and supreme interest of the nation - especially in the economic
field'. 7
The combined administrative and economic policy innovations
indicated that the bureaucracy had succeeded in unifying itself
around the principle of politically-led social change. This goal
required both a defensive and an active stance: the first led to the
elimination of all societal autonomy while the second invited
attempts at economic planning and ideological conformity. Within
the defensive rubric proscriptions arrived rapidly. In 1931 the
Turkish Hearts, a legacy of Young Turk nationalism, were closed
down. Again in 1931, a new press law gave the government the
right to close newspapers and magazines for publishing anything
204 Transformation of Modern Turkey

that 'conflicted with the general policies of the country'. In 1933 a

university 'reform' expelled two-thirds of the 150 teaching staff at
the only institution of higher learning, Istanbul University. In 1935
freemasonry was outlawed despite its roster of former and actual
dignitaries; shortly after, the Turkish Women's Association was
closed. During this entire period party hacks exaltedly wrote
about the requirements of the revolution, the need to be unified,
the necessity to sacrifice. Of greater interest was their penchant for
analogy: examples were drawn indiscriminately from Italy, the
Soviet Union, and, later, Germany. The point was repeatedly
made that in these countries the necessity of the press, or the
university, to be aligned with government policy was recognised
and requisite measures were taken. These three countries were
seen as paving the way for a new social system (as a revolution out
of a defunct liberalism).
By 1933, and definitely by 1935, the authoritarian nature of the
government had been well established, leaving no channels of
dissent remaining. The crowning touch, but really a pronounce-
ment after the fact, came in 1936 when Ismet Inonu, the prime
minister, in his capacity as acting secretary general of the Republi-
can People's Party, declared full congruency between state ad-
ministration and party organisation. With this declaration, all state
officials in the administrative branch became loyal party officials.
With the hindsight provided by Third-World nationalist develop-
ment schemes in the 1960s and 1970s, the Turkish experience
emerges as one of the first examples of what was to become a fairly
common pattern. Under the guise of a novel social system, a
political elite and a nascent bourgeoisie joined forces to isolate a
national economic space for themselves in which heavy oppression
of the working class and exploitation of the agricultural sector
would allow for rapid accumulation. All this was to be achieved
under a more or less xenophobic ideology of national solidarity,
one denying the existence of conflicting class interests in favour of
a corporatist model of society.
During the 1930s a measure of industrial development had
created opportunities for the bourgeoisie, but wartime shortages
led to favourites and profiteering, resulting in bitter divisions. One
significant instance of the developing rift between the bureaucracy
and the bourgeoisie was the 1942 Wealth Levy. Ostensibly insti-
tuted to tax extraordinary earnings, its burden fell mainly on
Caglar Keyder 205

minority merchants. Rather than coalescing the Muslim bour-

geoisie with the bureaucracy, however, this levy seriously da-
maged business confidence. Once extraordinary conditions
passed, the seriousness of the damage became apparent, with
politicians repudiating the experience and bureaucrats rushing to
condemn it. The damage had been done, however, to the previ-
ously unassailable alliance between the bureaucracy and the
bourgeoisie. 8
The last years of the war exhibited further instances of aliena-
tion between the bureaucracy and the bourgeoisie. A more radical
wing of state managers had attempted to speculate about the
post-war world, believing there would be an independent niche for
Turkey between the two emerging world orders. Expanding upon
the left version of etatist ideology' they planned for a bureaucrati-
cally controlled post-war reconstruction. However, neither inter-
nal class balances, nor the ill-diagnosed state of the world, would
allow such bids at autonomous solutions. The final effect of such a
bureaucratic endeavour was to convince the bourgeoisie of the
necessity of ending the pre-1945 political balance and declaring
unambiguously Turkey's position in the world system. Immedi-
ately after the war, when the casus belli of the Cold War was being
discovered, a Soviet demand concerning territorial concessions by
Turkey came to their aid, convincing the US Government of
Turkey's need for economic and military aid. Simultaneously, and
in rather direct response to various American critics who ex-
pressed their hesitation with regard to Turkey's previous pro-
German attitude, to the Wealth Levy, and to the single-party
regime, the Turkish government announced that there was a
pressing need for an opposition party in the Parliament and that
elections would be held in 1946.
It seems that the bureaucratic ranks in power greatly underesti-
mated both the strength attained by the bourgeoisie and the
distance which now separated business circles from the statist
policies of the previous period. What was hoped for was a party of
loyal opposition that would work with the bureaucracy in order to
evolve a negotiated set of policies to suit the new world situation.
The political regime would remain essentially the same even if the
economy gained some autonomy and some of the statist admini-
strative apparatus were dismantled. Elections in 1946 provided a
rude awakening for the bureaucracy: the opposition party (the
206 Transformation of Modern Turkey

Democrat Party) had gained surprising strength after only a brief

period of organisation. With extensive allegations of fraud, the
single party returned to power and the main opposition party
remained a minority in the Parliament. From 1946 until the new
elections in 1950 accomodation and appeasement were the princi-
pal tenets of government behaviour. All public criticism was
recuperated in the form of new policies and new appointments;
American experts were allowed to draw up the new economic
programmes. Concessions were given in the realm of religion,
tainting a previously pristine record of militant secularism. The
field of opposition that was conceded, however, had irreversibly
created a public space in which all classes joined to participate in
the impending anti-authoritarian revolution. Agreements among
the elite on the proper management of the economy would no
longer be sufficient to contain the anti-absolutist current. A politi-
cal solution to the debacle was inevitable.

The ideology of the 1950 Revolution

Until the 1950 elections, politics had been the business of the elite,
with power being transferred within the bureaucracy, or shared
with a bourgeoisie who were few enough to permit face-to-face
negotiation. With the decision to introduce a multi-party parlia-
ment in 1946, however, universal suffrage and electoral politics
arrived together to articulate the split in the ruling coalition.
Parliament was transformed into a forum of debate. The two
pillars of the opposition platform were economic and religious
freedom: these upheld the market against statist intervention, and
local traditions over the political oppression and ideological on-
slaught of the centre. This platform, which was a necessarily
transformed, but readily recognisable, version of the first bour-
geois revolution succeeded in mobilising a following of truly mass
proportions.
The sudden discovery of the market was, of course, primarily
due to the bourgeoisie's disenchantment with bureaucratic control
over the economy. Having gained sufficient strength through pol-
itically mediated accumulation, they had reinforced their ranks
with profiteering under wartime policies. Now, they could dif-
ferentiate themselves from the bureaucracy at the level of ideology
Caglar Keyder 207

as well. Against a corporatist solidarism which employed the

'national good' as a categorical imperative, they reached out to the
tenets of market liberalism. Individuals were promised freedom
from controlled prices, from various arbitrary restrictions and
from a state whose principal concern remained the collection of
taxes. The market would bring with it a field opportunity where
economic accomplishment could be pursued independently of the
structure of state-granted privilege. The promise of an autonom-
ous economy carried with it the image of producers freely compet-
ing in the market without the interference of bureaucratic control.
For the bourgeoisie who felt themselves to have come of age, this
would be a desirable state of affairs. It must be remembered,
however, that the population which could be characterised as
living within capitalist relations of production remained and ex-
tremely small minority. In 1950, out of a population of 20 million,
80 per cent lived in the countryside - the great majority being
small producers. Self-employment was the rule in urban retail
trade and in services as well. Even in manufacturing, 37 per cent of
the workers were self- or family - employed, while around 400 000
wage-earners worked for employers. These figures indicate that
the overwhelming majority of the population were petty producers
who might well be expected to subscribe to the ideals of a 'simple
market society'. In other words, the market ideal did enjoy an
objective correlate in the Turkish political arithmetic, and did not
remain a purely ideological construct mystifying capitalist relations
of production.
Together with the market, religion constituted the second focus
of opposition during the 1946--50 period. The reformist current
during the 1920s had aimed at eroding autonomous community
traditions, especially religious ones, thereby seeking to replace
such cohesive principles with centrally propagated rules of con-
duct. The ruling faction of the bureaucracy, consistent with the
reformist project, had sought to implement a programme whereby
the state-society linkage would be grounded in the novel status of
the state, which would be exclusively secular. While the state
would still dominate society, the bureaucracy could no longer be
legitimated through recourse to official religion. Instead legitima-
tion would spring from behaviour in harmony with principles
associated with modernity. The ruling faction was adamant in its
understanding of these principles as entailing militant secularism.
208 Transformation of Modern Turkey

For this reason it came into conflict with a variety of local and
popular traditions, its excessive zeal in lai:cisation often inciting
reaction against the regime.
It was by no means the case that the religious establishment,
representing official Islam had opposed the idea of reformism. The
Ottoman ulama were part of the bureaucratic class, and during the
latter half of the nineteenth century, the higher ulama had been
instrumental in providing ideological justification for the reforms.
It was mentioned above that Abd-Ul Hamid's restorationism which
succeeded in combining official and popular Islam at one level, had
found wide support among the common people. Later, at the
beginning of CUP rule, an important rebellion had expressed
discontent with the new constitutional regime in exclusively re-
ligious terms. At that time, as was also to be the case during the
Republic, the rallying call was the presumed loss of the sharia- the
Islamic legal code- meaning that the reforms were infringing upon
the established order, and, more importantly, on the life-world of
the groups rebelling. Islam emerged as the binding principle of
that life-world, that sphere of existence which had not been
penetrated by political society. For the peasantry and the urban
petty bourgeoisie above all, Islam became a banner of defence
against the political centre whose guiding principle was believed to
be militant reformism. Accordingly, the type of Islamic faith and
organisation employed under this banner was not of the ortho-
dox-official variety: it was a version easily articulated with local
traditions, and with accounts of the exploits of legendary heroes
and mystical sects. 9
The Young Turks had acted to separate the political establish-
ment from its religious legitimation by secularising all Islamic
courts, schools, and foundations: Kemalists had followed by abol-
ishing the Caliphate and adopting a state policy of strict laicism.
This divorce, however, amounted to an amputation of the princi-
pal ideological apparatus of the state, with the important conse-
quence of leading to a separation between a secular state and a
society for which Islam, in providing rules of conduct at individual
and communal levels, continued for some time to be the popular
cohesive principle. The bureaucracy was forced to cope with this
separation not only to legitimate themselves at the popular level,
but also to pre-empt uncontrolled ideologies from filling the vac-
uum created by the divorce of ruling and popular belief systems.
Caglar Keyder 209

On the other hand, with the rejection of religious orthodoxy as a

pillar of state authority, a more popular Islam had a chance to
solidify around an increasingly unitary basis in society. It may
therefore be argued that the reformist zeal of the bureaucracy was
uniquely instrumental in coalescing the various elements of popu-
lar culture into an 'Islamic reaction'.
The economic crisis of the 1930s had seen attempts at arousing a
nationalist consciousness in response to the failure of an economic
society organised through the market mechanism. Nationalism,
however, remained an elite ideology, employed more effectively
as an instrument of control than as a mobilising platform. The
centre itself never attained an economic and social dynamic to
carry the urban petty bourgeoisie and the peasantry out of their
tradition-bound world. As a result, popular forms of social trans-
action continued to be those of the imperial past, and this apparent
conservatism came to define the ideological confrontation with the
centre. When the centre became more oppressive in its ideological
intrusion, the peasantry and the petty bourgeoisie of small towns
took refuge more resolutely in tradition, inviting the bureaucracy
conveniently to label their behaviour as obscurantist reaction.
The creation of a modern society according to Western norms
had been an avowed goal of all reformers since the nineteenth
century. What this project amounted to in context was the eradica-
tion of parochial and particularistic allegiances in favour of the
constitution of a Gesellschaft whose functioning was presumed to
assure the cohesion of isolated but rational individuals. The target,
then, was not religion per se, but those traditions, customs and
rules of daily conduct which were claimed to be grounded in, and
legitimated by, the maxims of Islam. Islam in its Turkish version is
not a particularly otherwordly religion; its lack of a separate
religious institution is perhaps an indication that its realm is
primarily that of the caesar. It seeks to define and provide meaning
to a social universe: its believers thus identify as Islamic the
meaning and the structure behind their entire lived relation with
the socio-political sphere. It is curious that Ottoman-Turkish
reforms identified their task negatively, as unseating, rather than
constructing an alternative to, community-based social life. In
other words, they had to accept violence at the symbolic level as
the desirable course of action. The notion that a particularly
intolerant attitude toward the symbols of traditional society- such
210 Transformation of Modern Turkey

as clothing, or daily religious observances - would entail lasting

and substantive changes at the level of practice was, perhaps,
nowhere as fervently pursued as in Turkey. With Kemalism, not
only was religion repudiated as the basis of the political and
ideological authority of the centre, but popular Islam also lost all
its institutional foundation through the banning of the tarikats, or
Islamic brotherhoods; the closing down of sacred tombs; and the
proscription of traditional dress. The Kemalist government cre-
ated various departments within the bureaucracy designed to
control from the centre all aspects of religious life. Thus, secular-
ism came to signify political control over religious life by bureau-
crats, rather than, as the term usually implies, separation of church
and state.
A corollary to such an understanding of the relationship be-
tween religion and the state was that any oppositional mobilisation
protesting the oppressive political authority could claim to be
acting to restore the social status of Islam. In the absence of an
entrenched political tradition, resentment of the reformism of the
state was expressed in the vocabulary of religious conservatism -
the only language commonly accessible to the majority of the
people.
The opposition's political contestation in the 1950 elections was
a declaredly populist one: 'the people' had been politically domi-
nated, socially oppressed, and economically exploited by the bureau-
crat-bourgeois bloc. The two dimensions of the opposition platform
reflected this antagonism in appealing to universal principles of
economic and religious freedom, the ideological content of which
did not readily reveal a class bias. It was, of course, a former
component of the power bloc, the maturing bourgeoisie, which
acted as the mobilising elite, and probably stood to gain the most
from a populist victory. Nevertheless, against the absolutist auth-
ority of the bureaucracy, resistance based on universal principles
potentially unified all social classes, whether or not they had
become aware of their particularist class interests. Even the illegal
communist party supported the Democrat Party in the 1950 elec-
tions. What is historically curious is that the organising principle of
Latin American populisms was an anti-liberalism, seeking to re-
place the rule of the market with political mediation of economic
outcomes. The 1950 movement in Turkey took on the character of
a latter day liberal resistance to absolutist rule, except that a much
Caglar Keyder 211

larger proportion of the population (compared to, for example,

seventeenth-century England) was mobilised to form a common
front with the bourgeoisie. In the following three decades the
elements of this 1950 populist mobilisation remained important
dimensions of Turkish politics even when class-based interests
came to be much more fully articulated.

The demise of liberal populism

By any measure, the Democrat Party's accession to power in 1950

constituted a fundamental break in Turkish history. For the first
time, a popular electorate expressed its political choice and voted
against the statist tradition of several centuries. Paternalism, con-
trol from the centre, and reformism from above decisively rejected
while the market (and capitalism) were given free rein. Of course,
the large majority of the population was as yet ignorant of the
implications of an unbridled market economy. None the less, its
immediate benefits appeared tangible, and the unknown seemed
far more desirable than what was recently experienced. The bour-
geoisie, however, was politically the most conscious party in the
populist mobilisation. It was aware that the new era heralded its
political and ideological domination at the expense of the bureauc-
racy and its awkward attempts to propagate a statist system with a
nationalist ideology. It must certainly not be forgotten that the
bourgeoisie had engaged in a relatively easy battle, as the war had
already been fought on the world scale and won (as far as Turkey
was concerned) by the proponents of free enterprise and the
market. Nevertheless, it was this battle which signalled the transi-
tion from a capitalism under bureaucratic tutelage to a capitalism
based much more solidly on the market mechanism.
The bureaucracy's (or the Republican People's Party's) defeat
in electoral politics, assured its subordination to the bourgeoisie
during the subsequent phase of Turkish political-economic devel-
opment. The bureaucracy lost its status as a social class with its
own project and individual bureaucrats became state managers
whose autonomy (and the degree of it) would depend on the
nature of the accumulation process and intra-bourgeois balances.
Despite the rich historical heritage of a state tradition, after 1950
political power remained in the hands of the bourgeoisie.
212 Transformation of Modern Turkey

The unleashing of the forces of the market after 1950 was

accompanied by rapid economic development, social and geogra-
phical mobility and the formation of a bourgeoisie and a working
class. Peasants migrated to urban areas. The cities were trans-
formed from seats of the elite to poles of economic activity. The
anti-bureaucratic sentiments of the previous period were gradually
reincarnated into a populist agenda which aimed at incorporating a
new population into the capitalist sector as workers and consumers.
Between 1950 and 1960 the population of the four largest cities
increased by 75 per cent and the urban population (settlements of
10 000 or more) from 19 per cent to 26 per cent of the total. This
meant the arrival of 1.5 million immigrants into urban areas and of
600 000 into the four largest cities (net of natural growth). In other
words, one out of every ten villagers migrated to an urban area in
the 1950s. Such geographical mobility was truly the beginning of
national integration, eradicating physical distances and bringing
into brutal confrontation peripheral and central cultures. Until the
1960s the city retained enough of its elite heritage to intimidate the
newcomers. Immigrants who now lived in shantytowns reacted by
staying apart and reproducing their village culture in the fau-
bourgs. During the 1970s, however, the culture of the city was
totally absorbed into that of the suburbs. With the resulting
homogenisation, political behaviour more consonant with the class
model became prevalent. By this time second-generation immi-
grants who had not readily experienced material improvements in
their lives had become the dominant urban group.
Despite frequent accusations of catering to religious obscuran-
tism, the Democrat Party had managed - through its economic
programme- to transpose the terms of the ideological debate to an
essentially secular domain. The principal confrontation of the
1950s was that between the proponents of unbridled market free-
dom and of a politically directed economic development. On the
necessity of rapid economic change the parties did not differ. Yet
the implications of economic growth were fervently, but mostly
implicitly, debated. The inheritors of the elite tradition, the bu-
reaucracy and the intelligentsia, resented the new alignment of
social classes which seemed to leave out of the equation the role to
be played by an as yet unchartered cultural capital. This resent-
ment surfaced in the form of nationalism and a crude version of
Caglar Keyder 213

the dependency perspective whose prescnptwn was economic

planning by the intelligentsia in the service of the nation.
In fact, the demise of the Democrat Party in power was precisely
due to the failure of the market model in assuring the continuation
of the economic prosperity that had characterised the early 1950s.
It was then that arguments favouring a degree of political manage-
ment of the economy gained force. Bolstered by international
concern over an increasingly haphazard economic policy which did
not respect the exigencies of the world market, the opposition plat-
form succeeded in driving a wedge between the government and
an aspiring industrial bourgeoisie. The military coup d'etat of 1960
which responded to the discontent was supported by the intel-
ligentsia, the bureaucracy, and the industrialists, who were in-
creasingly wary of the wasteful populism of the ruling Democrat
Party. The regime which followed was a synthesis of the two
ideological positions prevalent in the 1950s, that is, market liber-
alism and planning for capitalist development. With this successful
synthesis the conflict between the elite tradition and market pro-
motion lost its importance. Capitalist differentiation had allowed
for the evolution of a significant industrial bourgeoisie that was in
need of an efficient administrative mechanism to manage the
external and internal aspects of economic policy. Institutional
innovations following the 1960 coup established just that.

Politics and ideology of import-substituting industrialisation

The post-1960 political synthesis was based on an agreement

concerning the desirability of constituting and strengthening an
internal market. 10 A ·national' capitalism would be pursued
through protectionism to devise the means of rapid accumulation
for the industrial bourgeoisie. Rapid accumulation, of coufse,
involved an accelerated pace of economic growth and social relo-
cation. In Turkey the years of import-substituting industrialisation
wilut:ssed a sustained economic growth rate of around 7 per cent
per annum, bringing with it opportunities for urbanisation and
rising expectations. As long as growth could be maintained, social
dislocation was contained within the bargaining channels sanc-
tioned by the system. When economic growth slackened during
214 Transformation of Modern Turkey

the second half of the 1970s, however, all the implicit conflicts rose
to the surface and the permitted field of ideological competition
was no longer sufficient to respond to all the needs.
Regardless of party affiliation, governments of the period
pursued the goal of industrial development with political manage-
ment of the economy. The largest right liberal party (the Justice
Party, which replaced the Democrat Party banned in 1960) nat-
urally emphasised the market component of the ideology, while
the old bureaucratic party (the Republican People's Party) now in
opposition embraced the managerial aspects. Both, however, es-
poused an incorporationist rhetoric which exhibited strong popu-
list elements. Economic and social transformation were celebrated
and the 'people' were promised a share in newly available material
wealth. At this level of appeal to popular groups not much differ-
ence could be found between the two major parties: independent
producers in agriculture and newly urbanised shantytowners as
well as the working class were equally courted within electoral
contest. Around this shared core the right-wing Justice Party
utilised a large dose of nationalist symbolism, while the bureau-
cratic party upheld universalism and an aspiration to European
standards of human rights. The prevailing economic model and its
policy requirements, however, prevented either party from ap-
pearing conservative or defending losing social groups, a fact
which invited other political movements to fill the gap.
Material progress and economic amelioration came to repre-
sent, in this atmosphere, the unquestioned goal. This goal, how-
ever, was not grounded in a belief in the autonomous individual
and his freedom of action, as it had been during its initial formula-
tion. Instead, individuals still regarded the state as the paternalist
source of fair rewards. This was especially true in as much as the
state assumed the role of guarantor of an equitable distribution of
income. The 1961 constitution, in setting up the institutions of the
new era, had stipulated that the state would assume all the func-
tions required by social justice. A precocious welfare model of
entitlements had been formulated which was also consistent with
an economic model based on the expansion of the internal market.
The state was intimately involved in all aspects of distribution
through legislating various components of the social wage and
producers' prices. 11 One of the significant dimensions of the period
was precisely this politicisation of all distributional problems. Due
Caglar Keyder 215

to this political dimension being so visibly present in the economy

all debate on the distribution of income was conducted at the level
of the state. Political parties campaigned explicitly on issues of
distribution and the chimera of an autonomous economy never
took hold. Under conditions of economic growth bargaining over
distribution took place at the political level, but the accountability
of the state was especially highlighted during economic failure. In
other words, while economic growth served to legitimate the
political system, economic difficulty immediately resulted in a
questioning of the state's legitimacy.
The two characteristics which have been mentioned here pro-
vide clues toward an understanding of the crisis at the end of the
period, that distributional problems had come to the forefront and
that the two major parties could not respond to the needs of the
losing groups. Hence the rapidity of economic transformation both
required a split and polarisation within the core ideology - due to
growing distributional problems - and strengthened marginal ideo-
logical currents seeking to respond to the demands of neglected
groups.
The ideological crisis depended closely on the nature of the
economic transformation. It was already mentioned that the econ-
omic model privileged the construction of an internal market
through protection of the industrial bourgeoisie. This protection
and the high profits received through it allowed for the creation of
a unionised working class which fought for and received high
wages. The success of collective bargaining together with a rela-
tively tight labour market led to considerable union strength
which, in turn, gained its own momentum. The Republican People's
Party saw this potential as the necessary ingredient of its trans-
formation into a social democratic party. Thus, in the early 1970s a
separation between the two main currents of the ideological plat-
form began along the traditional (European) lines of right-wing
liberalism and social democracy. What prevented the transform-
ation of the RPP into a social democratic party was the limited
weight of organised labour within the working class, and the small
proportion of the working class within the total population. Non-
union workers tended to be either less proletarianised or much
worse paid - prone to other ideologies than social democracy in
both cases. Petty producers and traders, including the peasantry,
felt naturally closer to the conservative flank behind a market
216 Transformation of Modern Turkey

ideology. Thus, it was not politically expedient to opt for a strictly

social democratic social base. However, as capital became less
willing to accommodate labour's demands during the second half
of the 1970s, industrial conflict became prevalent and the two
centre parties - the RPP and the Justice Party - were forced to
define themselves in strictly pro-capital and pro-labour terms. This
effectively eroded the common ground of populist appeal.
Long before this erosion, this very concern for covering the
middle had allowed for a proliferation of political platforms falling
outside the sanctioned field of contest and which were thus la-
belled 'extremist'. The search for a stronger ideology than populist
developmentalism started earlier on the right, mostly because the
resentments of the neglected groups could articulate more readily
into the more particularistic versions of past ideologies. The goal
of constructing modern industry had necessarily meant a rapid
destruction of the old order. Not only was traditional small capital
gradually driven off the market, but the entire balance of social
forces, especially in small provincial towns, suffered an upheaval.
As new growth poles developed in the north-west and the south,
these drew the rest of the country under their influence and
violated the previously insular nature of small town Anatolia.
There was no restructuration for these towns: they lost their
standing and became subordinate to the new pattern of domina-
tion emanating from the seat of modern industry. Agencies of new
corporations were set up and their representatives gained a new
status which now evaded small capital of local origin. A similar
dynamic could be observed in larger towns, with the traditional
petty bourgeoisie, formerly of 'middle-class' status, rapidly losing
their relative position even if not succumbing to proletarianisation.
The recently urbanised shantytown population contributed another
element whose resentment in the face of declining opportunities
would lead to a disenchantment with populist rhetoric.
As long as economic growth persisted, the 'costs' of industrial
development were covered through the opening up of new invest-
ment and employment opportunites. Once the slack appeared,
however, the populist-developmentalist rhetoric of the political
core lost its appeal. The development of modern industry ap-
peared only in its destructive mode, without any redemption
through the creation of new employment. Resentment built up at
the lopsidedly incorporationist ideology of development which had
Caglar Keyder 217

depended strictly on economic growth for its fulfilment. It was this

gap that right-wing political currents successfully filled. Their
appeal ranged over a large spectrum from the unemployed infor-
mal sector of the big cities to traditional, small town businessmen
in relative decline. What connected this loose tissue was the explicit
rejection of economic ends as final goals. In an appeal either to the
spiritual values of religion or to a transcendentally defined nation-
alism, immediate material gains were relativised. At the same time
the left was blamed for the excessively 'materialist' preoccupation
which was held responsible for the spiritual bankruptcy of the
country. In both these currents- nationalistic and religious- new
platforms were built upon elements derived from the dominant
and contesting ideologies of former periods. In the case of the
religious party, for instance, the discourse consciously evolved out
of the reaction against the militant secularism discussed above.
The constituency targeted by the new religious party was necess-
arily more limited compared to the populist mobilisation of 1950,
consisting of social groups which felt ready to abandon hope for
material salvation under the existing regime. This constituency
was attracted to the National Salvation Party's electoral platform
which advocated a national development strategy as well as a
programme to stabilise the losses of the small town petty bour-
geoisie. Yet their numbers remained small, confined to social
groups remaining outside the axial class formation.
A similar judgement may be passed on the nationalist move-
ment although its discourse enjoyed a very different articulation.
In the 1930s in particular official ideology propagated from above
had briefly appropriated some of the more extreme themes of pan-
Turkism. This racist reading of history derived from an exclusively
intellectual heritage with scarcely any resonance in popular cul-
ture. During the Republican period a sensitive balance between
the official ideology of nationalism and its more militant versions
attaining popularity among university students, with the latter
tending to be instrumentalised against the left. The post-1970
evolution of the nationalist movement was partly due to the
concurrent strength of the socialist movement, but it also enjoyed
a seemingly autonomous popular appeal. Once again, in terms of
electoral performance the political party representing this move-
ment (the Nationalist Action Party) did not even attain 10 per cent
of the votes, yet it did succeed in forging a fascist social movement
218 Transformation of Modern Turkey

which ruled the streets, especially in the periphery of urban

centres and in small towns. The organisational model of fascism
allowed the nationalist current to transform itself from its former
elitism to a movement aiming at the same social base as the
religious movement. The differences in constituency between the
two right-wing currents were probably due to age and tempera-
ment rather than to any discernible sociological stratification,
which also explains their intense rivalry during the 1970--80 period.
However, the fascist movement made much more significant in-
roads into the administrative mechanism due to the attraction of
its activism to technical cadres in state employment holding disap-
pointing jobs. During two periods in the 1970s when the National-
ist Action Party was part of the government in coalition with the
Justice Party, its cadres virtually controlled certain state agencies,
and were able to use this control toward the recruitment of
militants.
In the face of economic crisis during the late 1970s, not only did
the argument over distribution become more acute, but also the
neglected social strata came to suffer more immediately the results
of a truncated transformation. Organised labour could protect
some of its gains but unions succumbed to lower real wages after
1977; non-union labour and the informal sector suffered more
abrupt reversals together with unemployment. At the same time as
the capital-labour struggle intensified, divisions within the working
class also became significant. 12 In provincial towns outside the
growth poles of modern industry, the costs of progress became
tangible as the economic boom of mid-1970s came to an abrupt
end. The landscape was dotted with unfinished construction pro-
jects and empty factory buildings. On one axis, then, the two
major parties veered toward the polar ends of the formerly shared
legitimating ideology; while on the other axis various articulations
of resentment competed for primacy. The crucial new develop-
ment was the disappearing of the middle in the ideological spec-
trum and the concomitant de-legitimation of the state. The state
could no longer perform its institutional role of distribution; its
economic agencies were more and more privatised; its ideological
apparatus was divided up among the more radical political cur-
rents. In this explosion of a previously compact ideological dis-
course, the state lost all of its legitimate authority, and existing
political movements were too polarised in their commitments to
attempt a joint rescue mission.
Caglar Keyder 219

Epilogue

During the last sixty years Turkish history has traversed two
distinct periods. The first, which lasted until 1950, was character-
ised by militant secularism and the creation of a capitalist nucleus.
In 1950, an alienated communal tradition was mobilised by the
new bourgeoisie through an appeal to anti-authoritarian economic
liberalism and religious freedom, to replace the republican bu-
reaucrats. Islam served, in this juncture, to represent all in the old
social order that had been threatened. In the second stage, from
1950 to 1980, what transpired could more readily be interpreted
through the normal evolution of capitalism. The principal axis of
confrontation shifted from an elite-masses problematic to a class
one, where certain alliances prevailed as a function of the econ-
omic model. Religion, together with secular nationalism, was now
relegated to the role of a vocabulary of protest. The dominant
discourse gradually became class based.
For a brief period in the 1960s and the 1970s it looked as if
Turkey would experience a transformation similar to those of
southern European countries, with a strong social democratic
movement defending democracy and civil rights, maintaining a
check against the renascence of traditionalist and chauvinist reac-
tions and able to secure a relatively even distribution of economic
gains. The civilising impact of social dissolution and economic
growth, the integration of multitudes into the urban world and the
gradual marketisation of agricultural petty producers seemed to
augur a bright future within the folds of an expanding Europe. By
contrast, the prognoses of the late 1970s were uniformly pessimis-
tic: it became evident that whatever feeble social contract had
earlier emerged did not penetrate deep into the consciousness, nor
could faltering economic growth provide a sufficient gravitation.
The state, which appeared to have completed its transformation
into a capitalist one, was marred by the unsettled political spec-
trum giving way to privatisation and internal conflict. In addition
to being unable to fulfil its functions toward the industrial bour-
geoisie, it rapidly lost its legitimation first in the eyes of the social
groups excluded from the populist equation, and eventually -
parallel to its privatisation - for the vast majority of the popula-
tion. It was a classic case of social disintegration which might have
led to civil war had the political sides been more clearly defined or
polarisation more universal. As it was, the vestiges of legitimacy
220 Transformation of Modern Turkey

that the military enjoyed once again came on the agenda and the
state's monopoly of violence was re-asserted. The process of this
assertion demonstated incontrovertibly the exclusion of Turkey
from any European trajectory; instead the pattern of populism-
crisis-coup suggested a path more similar to Latin-American
examples. If indeed such an assimilation has occurred, the be-
leaguered democratisation process observable since 1983 may yet
come into its own.

Notes and references

1. For the history of Ottoman reform movements, see R. Davison,

Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1856-1876 (Princeton, 1963); S. J.
Shaw and E. K. Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern
Turkey, vol. II: Reform, Revolution and Republic (Cambridge, 1977).
For the Young Turks see E. E. Ramsaur, The Young Turks: Prelude
to the Revolution of 1908 (Princeton, 1957), and F. Ahmad, 'Van-
guard of a nascent bourgeoisie: The social and economic policy of the
Young Turks, 1908-1918', in 0. Okyar and H. Inalcik (eds), Social
and Economic History of Turkey (Ankara, 1980).
2. On the Public Debt Administration see D. C. Blaisdell, European
Financial Control in the Ottoman Empire (New York, 1929).
3. Ahmad, 'Vanguard of a nascent bourgeoisie'; and Z. Toprak,
Tiirkiye'de 'Milli 1ktisat' ('National Economics' in Turkey)
(Ankara, 1982).
4. This exchange was compulsory for Greeks living in all parts of Turkey
except in Istanbul, and for Muslims in Greece except those living in
Western Thrace. See D. Pentzopoulos, The Balkan Exchange of
Minorities and Its Impact on Greece (Mouton, 1962).
5. For the economic situation in the 1920s, see my Definition of a
Peripheral Economy: Turkey 1923-29 (Cambridge, 1981).
6. The best account of the politics of this period is in M. Tun<_<ay, Tiirkiye
Cumhuriyetinde Tek Parti Yonetiminin Kurulmasi (1923-1931) (The
Establishment of Single-Party Government in the Turkish Republic)
(Ankara, 1981).
7. <:;. Yetkin, Tiirkiye'de Tek Parti Yonetimi, 1930-1945 (Single-Party
Government in Turkey) (Istanbul, 1983), p. 98.
8. On the Wealth Levy, see E. C. Clark, 'The Turkish Varlik Vergisi
reconsidered', Middle Eastern Studies (May 1972).
9. ~-Mardin, 'Religion and secularism in Turkey', in A. Kazancigil and
E. Ozbudun (eds), Atatiirk, Founder of a Modern State (London,
1981); and B. Toprak, Islam and Political Development in Turkey
(Brill, 1981).
10. A useful collection of essays on the so-called 'planned' period in
Caglar Keyder 221

Turkish economy is 0. Tiirel (ed), Two Decades of Planned Develop-

ment in Turkey (1981 ~pecial Issue, METU Studies in Development).
11. See the essays in E. Ozbudun and A. Ulusan (eds), The Political
Economy of Income Distribution in Turkey (New York, 1980).
12. For the more economic aspects of the crisis see K. Boratav, <;.
Keyder, ~· Pamuk, Krizin Geli§imi ve Tiirkiye'nin Alternatif Sorunu
(The Evolution of the Crisis and the Problem of Alternatives for
Turkey) (Istanbul, 1984).
9 The Zionisms of Israel
TEODOR SHANIN 1

'Until a people confronts its own past, it has no future.'

(E. Genovese)

'Hie Rhodus, hie salta.'

Zionism and Zionisms: the road to Israel

Let us begin with a paradox: social complexity is often best

presented and grasped in this way. At the heart of the questions of
Zionism lie two seemingly contradictory sets of facts, and a ques-
tion, 'Why?'. To the broad lay public of outsiders with liberal or
socialist sympathies, Zionism is the guiding ideology of Israel. This
state emerged some decades ago as the Middle East's chief bully,
an oppressor of Arabs and a global ally of most reactionary
regimes. The 1982 bombing of Beirut and other conduct sustain
this image. But then, how does one fit into it the Tel Aviv
demonstration of 400 000 who shouted their fury against the
Lebanese war and blocked its further unfolding? What about the
2000 Israelis who pledged to go to military prison rather than serve
in the army of occupation? After all, the mass of them were
Zionists by self-definition, and indeed believed themselves to be
defying their government because of Zionism.
To those who know more of the history of Zionism or who have
lived it, another related contradiction presents itself. Both as an
ideology and as a political movement, Zionism has displayed a
heterogeneity of direction and purpose. Within this heterogeneity
two trends appeared whose opponents disagreed violently; a fun-
damentalist wing of extreme nationalism ('monistic', that is, undi-
222
Teodor Shanin 223

luted in self-definition) and a moderate (in its nationalism) liberal

and socialist tendency. During the initial seventy years of the
history of Zionism, the political organisation professing moderate
Zionism consistently had the upper hand in numbers, resources,
votes and, at a later stage, in the control of the state machinery of
Israel. This majority harshly fought its weaker adversaries and yet,
in the last resort, retreated before them and adopted their aims.
The question 'why?' must begin with a review of the nature of
Zionism. Zionism represented a multiplicity of concepts, values,
emotions, strategies and tactics, closely interlinked with powerful
networks or organisation. Yet, two, or possibly three, long-term
political goals formed the hard core of the Zionist declaration of
faith and definition of purpose, as well as Zionism's self-applied
measure of ultimate success. It is these which distinguish Zionism
as an ideological entity. 2
In order of importance, the most crucial of these aims was
defined at the first Zionist congress in 1897 as the creation of a
legally recognised Jewish national home in Palestine. This was
formally ratified by the 1917 Balfour Declaration and facilitated by
the mandate subsequently granted to Great Britain by the League
of Nations. After decades of doubts, changing interpretations and
political vicissitudes concerning the advisability and possibility of
statehood, it took final shape in the so-called 'Biltmore Declar-
ation' of 1942, in which the Zionist leadership unequivocally
interpreted this aim as the creation of a Jewish State in the land of
Israel. The main engineer and spokesman of the Biltmore Declar-
ation was David Ben Gurion, by 1948 the first Prime Minister of
the state of Israel.
The second aim of Zionism was the concentration of the Jewish
people from all around the world in the National Home/State of
Israel. While the general aim was accepted by the whole of the
movement, the measure of concentration deemed advisable or
necessary, varied from an elite, which would form the culturally
unifying centre of world Jewry (the Achad Ha'am view), to the
'in-gathering' in Palestine of every single Jew in the world. The
explanations and/or rationalisations of this aim varied once again:
the building of a new better society away from the old ghetto-
world, the wish to counter ethnic assimilation, the experience or
fear of anti-Semitic persecutions.
The third aim, that of 'productivisation', was somewhat less
224 The Zionisms of Israel

commonly accepted and traditionally associated with the socialist

wing of the Zionist movement. Indeed, it formed the specific
contribution of this wing but, for a time, permeated the whole of
the movement. Initiated by the Russian radical Zionists, it called
for a transformation of the social structure of the Jews from being
a 'pyramid standing on its top', with numerous merchants and
intellectuals and few workers and farmers, to the like-that-of-the-
other-people position, where this situation is reversed. The
creation of a National Home and the concentration of Jews was to
provide the necessary preconditions for such a transformation,
leading to a 'healthier society' or even to Tolstoian pacifist com-
munalism expounded by the writings and followers of A. G.
Gordon. To the Poalei-Zion supporters of Borochov, this transform-
ation entailed the proletarianisation necessary for the subsequent
proletarian revolution. 3
The roots of our paradoxes lie in the fact that this widespread
Zionist political goal was underlaid and informed by two dramati-
cally different and contradictory Weltanschauungen, one fun-
damentalist, the other universalist.
The thought world of fundamentalist Zionism resembles that of
nineteenth-century European romanticism. Man is a wolf to other
men, yet he is not alone, for he is born into a nation. National
exclusivity is the basic unity of men. The world is divided into
nations - supreme, natural and eternal collectivities locked in a
constant struggle, which constitutes the crux of history. Social
organisation, fully expressed in the modern state, must serve the
main purposes of the nation, that is, to secure its maximum
strength and unity against external foes. True morality consists in
transcending personal interests for the sake of the national com-
munity and the state. To do otherwise is treason. Realism consists
in grasping all this to the full. A powerful mystical link relates the
exclusive symbols of nationhood, a territory, a language, and so
on. To the initiated, history often appears as a Manichean vision of
poetic grandeur as, for example, in Jabotinsky's poem-dream of
the future, in which 'From blood and sweat/A race will emerge/
strong, generous and cruel.' Powerful emotions link feelings of
collective grievance toward outsiders with ambivalent love/hate
relations toward one's own people, who never measure up to what
is seen to be their manifest capacity and destiny. In the Jewish/
Zionist context, the main issue in such a world outlook is that of
Teodor Shanin 225

the weakness of the Jewish nation. The aim is to overcome this

weakness, resulting mainly from the dispersion, and to make the
nation and its state all-powerful. Zionism is the political and
organisational expression of the Jewish claimant-combatant in the
eternal worldwide power-struggle between nations.
The second world-outlook underlying Zionism has been very
much the opposite of nationalist fundamentalism. It has its roots in
the universalism and anthropocentrism of the Renaissance and in
the evolutionary rationalism of the nineteenth century, providing
the point of departure for both liberal and socialist movements and
for most of the European social sciences. Man as such is the
supreme value and the primary unit of analysis. The supra-human
entities: nation, religion, state, class, and so on, are historical and
relative; the attitude adopted toward them must depend on the
extent to which they (or their abolishments) would serve the
maximum self-realisation of the greatest number of individuals.
Man equals man or, in formal political symbols, vote equals vote
at an election. It is in the unrestrictedly equal relation to the racial,
national or religious outsiders that universalism and humanism are
best measured. True morality consists in transcending personal
and group egoism and securing universal and equal suffrage for all.
Realism consists in demystifying the supra-human and laughing
out of court eternal national claims. History is the progression
from barbarism toward the society of man - rational, tolerant,
peaceful, co-operative and equal. The alternative was spelled out
with an uncomfortable predictive force by an Austrian writer,
Grillparzer, at the end of the nineteenth century: 'From humanity,
through nationality, to bestiality.'
The liberal-socialist wing of Zionism adopted the universalist
world outlook, while at the same time accepting the strategic
supremacy of exclusively Jewish interests, aims and organisations.
(These have been expressed in the World Zionist Organisation
and, with respect to Palestine, by the demand for an exclusive use
of Jewish labour.) Logical, ideological and political inconsistencies
resulted. Those were conceptually bridged by a more or less
sophisticated theory of temporary suspension of aims - a 'theory of
stages'. Universalist aims and ethics were adopted in principle, but
temporarily and exceptionally suspended to ensure realisation of
basic national aims - an essential preliminary stage. The creation
of an independent state, or a Jewish majority or else an Arab-
226 The Zionisms of Israel

Jewish parity in Palestine, were treated as the point at which the

dispensation ends, a dividing line beyond which the farther parts
of the political programme would be put into operation. To be
sure, even before 'the farther stage' is reached, some political
measures of a universalist nature should be introduced, the right
mixture of 'national' and universal to be defined pragmatically. In
any case, the faster one goes, the faster the end of the nationalist
stage would be reached: this would then leave the movement and
its members free to expose fully their true universalist and human-
ist selves, liberal or socialist as the case might be.
The history of Zionism in the period 1917-48 was dominated by
the confrontation between the coalition of the 'moderate' Zionists
led by Weizman and of fundamentalists who eventually formed the
Revisionist party led by J abotinsky. 4 The main carrier of the
'moderate' universalist world outlook in the Palestinian Zionist
context and the major political force within Weizmann's coalition
has been the Zionist labour movement, which dominated the
Palestinian Jewish political arena.
The period commenced with the Balfour Declaration, which
committed Britain to the establishment of a Jewish National Home
in Palestine, while British troops marched into the country where
they were to stay for the next thirty years. The euphoria within the
Zionist movement was quickly quelled by the events which fol-
lowed. Arab political and armed struggle in 1920/1, the British
White Paper of 1922 (introducing formal limitations on Jewish
immigration), and the 1923 British suggestion for establishing an
Arab Agency in Palestine on par with the Jewish one, all acted as a
forceful reminder of the political realities of the 'Middle East'. The
country was not simply an empty property which could be given
away, the Arabs of Palestine could not be simply written off. The
new British rulers, and even their Jewish first High Commissioner,
were British first and foremost and pursued interests which were
primarily those of Great Britain. Nor was there any overwhelming
wish within the Jewish Diaspora to avail itself of the new oppor-
tunities. Even among the 4500 volunteers - soldiers of the Jewish
Legion who reached Palestine with the British army - only 260
decided to settle there. 5 The so-called Third Immigration ( 1920-4)
never exceeded 9000 per annum, and many left within a short
time. The Jewish population of Palestine in 1922 was 83 000 out of
a total of 725 000, that is, 11 per cent in all. 6 Hopes for massive
Teodor Shanin 227

financial help from wealthy Jews around the world did not materi-
alise either.
The reappraisal of the political scene which followed defined the
outlook of the Zionist movement between the two world wars and
emphasised its fundamental divisions. Attitudes toward statehood,
relationships with the Palestinian Arabs, British rule and the 'class
issue' provided the crucial dividing line. From 1925 onwards, the
newly-established Revisionist Party demanded the immediate
creation of a Jewish state which would then solve the problem of
immigration and settlement by a worldwide 'evacuation of Jews
into Palestine'. This conception of Zionism, expressed by Jabotinsky,
held also that the decisive political factors are military in nature.
To this end the Zionist movement should concentrate on the
creation of Legions - a professional military force. Arab objec-
tions would be inevitable and were to be met by an 'iron wall' until
they submitted. Class division in Palestine weakened national
unity and was anyway bogus because 'there are no classes in Israel,
only pioneers'. Compulsory national arbitration was to settle any
dispute concerning Jewish wages, while Arab/Jewish trade union
action of other forms of inter-ethnic co-operation were to be
totally opposed as treasonable. 7
As to the Zionist majority, their interpretations of the term
'National Home' varied over time. In 1917, Weizmann as well as
Balfour aimed at a fully fledged statehood using a synonym for
reasons of tactical expedience. Yet before too long statehood as an
aim receded into the indeterminate future or else disappeared
altogether, while 'National Home' came increasingly to mean
freedom of immigration, the social advance of Palestinian Jewry
and its self-autonomy under friendly rule. By 1930, Weizmann
could declare that 'The context of Zionism is to create a number of
material foundations on which an autonomous, compact and pro-
ductive community can be built. . . . Palestine could become a
Jewish state if it were an uninhabited country. But it is not an
uninhabited country.' This statement (described by a contempor-
ary historian as 'not a tactical device' but 'a deep and genuine
reaction to the political cul-de-sac') was powerfully supported on
behalf of the Zionist Labour party by its leaders Katzenelson, Ben
Gurian, Tabenkin and others. 8 The organisation of settlements
and construction was presented as the only way to 'do' Zionism
and to confront sucessfully British rule and Arab nationalism. The
228 The Zionisms of Israel

Zionist socialists and liberals declared their commitment to live on

equal terms with the Arabs. (Their long-term programmes varied
from a Jewish state with the right of an Arab minority secured, via
a confederation of ethnic 'cantons', and as far as a Jewish-Arab
state of two equal nations in the whole of Palestine - the Brit
Shalom and Hashomer Hatzair view.) This approach found its
fullest political expression in the tactics of Havlaga (self-restraint),
when in the 1930s the Jewish armed units of Haganah were
ordered not to retaliate over and above strict self-defence, for 'we
shall have to live together in the future'. 9 Policies of co-operation
with the British Government were also adopted, although to a
decreasing extent as the British restricted Jewish immigration and
settlement. Inter-class compulsory arbitration and class peace
were vehemently opposed by the Zionist Labour movement.
Struggle for social justice was to proceed on a par with that aimed
'national goals'.
The historical development of the 1930s- Hitler's rise to power,
anti-Jewish policies elsewhere in the world (especially in Poland
and Rumania), the resulting wave of Jewish emigration to Pales-
tine, the military struggle of Palestinian Arabs in 1936/39 and
finally the Second World War- resulted in a general heightening
of Jewish nationalist feelings. The Jewish population of Palestine
was growing numerically as well as in its economic and political
strength and confidence. All this was closely linked with changes
within the Zionist movement. A shift of power occurred toward
the Palestine-based Zionist labour movement, which since 1933
came to represent about 40 per cent of the delegates to the Zionist
World Congresses. A major political shock hit them in 1938. The
British Government declared its intention to limit Jewish immigra-
tion immediately, to stop it altogether within five years and to turn
Palestine into an independent Arab state thereafter. In what
followed, the majority of the Zionist moderate leaders were ra-
pidly converted to the idea of immediate Jewish statehood: Ben
Gurion in 1939, Katzenelson in 1941, Weizmann in 1942. 10
Despite those developments, the main ideological dividing line
within Zionism remained. In the political competition for the
support of Jewry in Palestine and on a world scale, it was the
moderates who dominated Zionism, for decades winning every
election and forming the majority in every one of the executive
bodies. The Revisionist opposition increased its representation
Teodor Shanin 229

within the Zionist Congress to 15 per cent in 1929 and, at the peak
of its influence in 1931, had about 23 per cent of the delegates. By
1933 their support among the electorate was back to 14 per cent,
after which the Revisionist Party left the Zionist Congresses to
reappear in 1946 with only 11 per cent of delegates.'' They did not
fare any better inside Palestine.
The superiority of the moderate wing of Zionism over the
fundamentalists was rooted in the social characteristics of Palesti-
nian Jewry before 1948. It came mainly from the Jewish-European
secularised middle classes, especially its idealist student spear-
head. They brought with them the powerful impact of a universal-
ist, often socialist, outlook. In the countries (and universities)
which they had left behind, they encountered radical and socialist
movements with which they were often closely linked as natural
allies in battles against anti-Semitism. In Palestine they found
themselves struggling for minimal wages in an erratic labour
market, facing grasping Jewish farmers who preferred cheap Arab
labour. Many left the country. Others built trade unions and
co-operatives, crystallising the political self-consciousness of a
militant labour movement. Labour militancy was 'anti-boss' but
also 'anti' the ethnically defined competitors in the labour market
(a situation only too common in the rest of the world). The labour
movement, and especially the General Confederation of Unions
(the Histadrut), rapidly grew into the most important power or-
ganisation of the Palestinian Jewry, dominating the political, econ-
omic and cultural scene and reinforcing in turn its own mass
support. Israeli-born sabras - still few in number- took their cues
from their elders. To all these, the extreme nationalist declara-
tions, military tactics, forms and salutes and the loud unity-of-the-
nation anti-socialism of the Revisionists conjured up memories of
the anti-democratic and anti-semitic forces of Europe. The Revis-
ionists could count on massive support only in some of the poor
quarters of Oriental Jewry, less orientated towards Europe, less
universalist, less working-class conscious and more anti-Arab. 12
But these Oriental Jews were relatively few in number before the
creation of the state of Israel.
Relations between the two wings of Zionism in Palestine were
characterised by severe infighting, mutual recriminations and, at
times, ruthless use of force. The Revisionists castigated the Zionist
majority as opportunist, if not downright treasonable in its
230 The Zionisms of Israel

universalist/nationalist ambivalence and in its anti-militarist stand.

They attempted to build up an alternative Zionist world organisa-
tion. Revisionist trade unions were organised, calling for co-
operation with the Jewish employers, breaking up strikes and
fighting socialist symbols. A Revisionist military underground
(Irgun Tzvai Leumi) was set up, challenging the supremacy of the
Haganah- the mainstream Zionist organisation's military arm.
The Zionist majority reacted in kind. The ideas of the Revision-
ists were rejected as Fascist and their similarity to those of Musso-
lini repeatedly stressed. The Clausewitzian doctrine of a world of
constantly fighting nation-states was declared to be a self-fulfilling
prophecy, especially when related to territorial demands of a
kingdom-of-David size state: it was a way to entangle Israeli Jews
in a war which would never end. Slogans of national unity were
said to serve and conceal class exploitation and social injustice.
Most importantly, chauvinist rejection of universalism was treated
as dangerous as much to the suppressors as to the suppressed,
since 'a people oppressing another people cannot itself be free'.
The stand of the Zionist majority was backed vigorously by all
the force of the main Jewish organisations in Israel: the Jewish
Agency, the Haganah, and Histadrut. The minority position of the
Revisionists was turned against them as powerful emotions were
mobilised against the 'splinterers of national unity'. The Revision-
ists fought back. On both sides militants were slandered, dismissed
and physically assaulted in meetings, pickets and street fights. In
1928, when the Revisionists celebrated Jabotinsky's arrival in
Palestine with a military parade through the streets of Tel-Aviv,
their own historian noted that: 'the route was jammed by a
dense and violently antagonistic crowd shouting "Militarists!",
"Generals!" ' 13 The political and physical confrontation peaked in
1933 and again in the 1940s when a virtual civil war developed (the
so-called 'Season' operation of the Haganah in which adversaries
were kidnapped, beaten up and even handed over to the British
police 14 ). The battle lines were unequally drawn, the relatively
weaker Revisionists getting, on the whole, the worst of the
fighting.
The creation of the state of Israel and the war which followed
did not lead to reconciliation within the Zionist movement. If
anything, the controversies over the character of the new state
Teodor Shanin 231

acted as a new divisive force. The stakes were higher, both

politically and personally. The new political context re-established
both the pre-state dividing lines and the decisive superiority of the
moderate Zionists. The Revisionists were kept out of the Provi-
sional Government. The various military undergrounds, now
legal, became part of the newly created Israeli army but main-
tained autonomy and jostled for power and prestige. In April
1948, the Irgun (the Revisionist military arm) and its allies cap-
tured the village of Deir Yasin near Jerusalem and slaughtered its
population, while the Revisionist leadership later defined this
action as a necessary and justified strategem to put the Arab
population to flight. The anger and revulsion with which this news
was received by the Zionist majority emphasised sharply the
underlying divisions in general outlook, in political stance and in
their emotional/moral underpinnings. 15 In June 1948, with the
Arab armies still only ten miles from Tel-Aviv, a head-on clash
came in the 'Altalena affair.' The Irgun refused to hand over the
arms on this ship despite an order to do so by the Provisional
Government. A short but furious civil war was fought as a result,
lasting only a couple of days but leaving sixteen killed on both
sides and hundreds disarmed and arrested. The Irgun military struc-
ture was smashed, Begin and the rest of its leadership was put under
temporary arrest and their particular military units dispersed.
The political finale of this stage was reached in the first par-
liamentary election in January 1949. The Herut Movement cam-
paigned as the main fundamentalist group. It called for support for
the Irgun activists, commanded by Begin, invoked the martyrdom
of the movement in the anti-British struggle, and demanded that
war be waged until the whole of Palestine was conquered. In the
election the Herut came in a poor fourth with 11.5 per cent of the
vote and, to the surprise of commentators, took an even lesser
share of the vote within the army units still at war. By the second
election, in 1951, Herut's support was down to 6.6 per cent of the
total. The two main Zionist labour parties, Mapai and Mapam,
collected more than half the total vote in both these elections, with
the remainder going chiefly to other Zionist moderates. Non-
Zionist electees were few. By the early 1950s the Jewish state (and
its Jewish majority) was an undeniable political reality: Mapai
dominated the government, Mapam provided the major opposition.
232 The Zionisms of Israel

De jure belli and by the will of an overwhelming majority, the

stage was set for the realisation of the moderate Zionist prog-
ramme and its universalist perspective within the state of Israel.

The jump which was not: 1949-67

In Greek mythology there is a story of a notorious braggart who

boasted continually of an exceptionally long jump he once made
on the far-distant island of Rhodes. Greek mythology has immor-
talised the <Pl.swer of a local wit to those claims. The response, as
much a joke as a basic law of verification, was Hie Rhodus, hie
salta ('Here is Rhodes, jump!'). When all is said and done, deeds
are the best test of declarations of intent, even if one does not
accept for political life the simplicities of moral fables.
One cannot and should not write a history of the state of Israel
in a few pages. But one can highlight in this way the essential
trends and basic evidence relevant to the matter at hand. The
history of Israel is the history of an increasing sliding towards
fundamentalist policies, of national self-centredness disregarding
rights of the 'others' and of the acceptance of power as self-
legitimating- all these enmeshed with extreme self-righteousness.
The universalist commitment to total equality of rights for the
non-Jews in Israel in the Manifesto of Independence 1948, was
closely followed by the Law of Return, 1950, which gave immedi-
ate citizen's rights to every Jewish immigrant. Simultaneously, a
set of laws concerning 'absentees' (nifkadim) made every locally
born Arab who was outside the territory of Israel, at a given date,
a foreigner subject to expropriation. 16 A Jew from the Bronx by
the very fact of his Jewishness acquired legal rights within Israel
while most of the Arabs born in Haifa had lost it. A consequent
legal debate, over 'Who is a Jew?' specified that the Jewishness of
a Jew is valid only if she/he is of true Jewish stock by the orthodox
standards, that is, either born of a Jewish mother or else reli-
giously converted. It was also ruled that a Jew who converted to
Christianity loses the legal rights which go with Jewishness (the
case of the brother Daniel, 1962). The logical and legal contradic-
tions between the Manifesto of Independence and these laws were
simply disregarded.
As to the 'absentees', the 1948/9 war created hundreds of
Teodor Shanin 233

thousands of Arab refugees, creating a sight as disturbing as it was

familiar to those who had symbolised the problem of refugees in
Europe five years earlier. Furthermore, with the refugees in
camps, attempts at peace negotiations were checkmated. An offer
by the Israeli government to negotiate on the basis of a proposal to
allow back 100 000 refugees and to participate in the resettlement
of others was made in the early days of July 1949 - very much a
nationalist/universalist compromise within the moderate Zionist
frame of reference. It was rejected by the Arab governments,
furiously condemned as treason by the Zionist fundamentalists,
promptly dropped, and never heard of again. Nobody bothered to
ask the Palestinians. The non-negotiability of the return of the
refugees has since become the formal stand of the Israeli govern-
ment.
An even more poignant test of the de facto rules of the game
according to which Israel was being run arose over the fundamen-
tal issue of property. In the public mind of the Israelis the issues of
residence and citizenship were often interlinked with, and clouded
by, the genuine enough problems of military security. Issues of
personal ownership would not qualify as easily for such a criterion.
The main non-Jewish group on the territory of Israel was the Arab
peasantry. The main non-Jewish property was land. Right at the
very beginning the Israeli government took over both government
lands and the landed properties of the 'absentees'. Within twelve
months, additional lands were taken over by the state, including
property belonging to those Arabs who still resided in Israel but
were in a different village at the doomsday date, and that belong-
ing to those who were ordered out 'temporarily' by the Israeli
army and to those whose lands were handed over to Israel by
agreement. A new, grotesque term- 'A resident absentee'- was
coined for the non-Jews (and only non-Jews) manipulated out of
their property. In the 1950s and 1960s the creeping process of
expropriation of Arab lands continued. For example, in 196112 an
area in Galilee was closed for unspecified 'security reasons', then
given over to build the township of Karmiel, in which Arabs were
formally barred from residing. (In official sources, the campaign
was explicitly referred to as the 'Judaisation' of Galilee). At the
same time, Arab agriculture has had its economic viability severely
curtailed by being excluded as such (that is, as Arab) from a
variety of extension services and improvement measures. 17 By
234 The Zionisms of Israel

1967 two-thirds of the Arab lands as of 1948 were in Jewish hands.

Most of this land was now owned by the KKL national foundations
and was rented out on long-term leases to Jewish farmers under
conditions explicitly barring sub-letting to Arab peasants. 18
There is a long list of examples of aspects of discrimination,
formal and informal, along ethnic lines within Israel. Military rule
was established territorially in some districts of the country, but
the consequent administrative limitations, such as the necessity to
ask for a military permit to leave the area, or subjection to the
proceedings of military courts, were used only against the Arab
residents of those districts. Equal voting rights existed, but the
only attempt to create an autonomous Arab political movement,
with a programme of moderate nationalism very much resembling
the Zionist one (al-Ard), was banned by the courts in 1964 and its
leaders detained. 19 (It was declared illegal despite the fact that it
was never claimed any illegal action had been attempted by it.)
There were practically no Arabs in the main sections of the civil
service, especially in its top grades. Arabs were formally barred
from joining most of the political parties, and so on.
It was clear, that after Independence the moderate Zionist
government was implementing the basic assumptions of the earlier
'theory of stages'; Independence did not lead to policies and
perspectives of ethnic equality. These contradictions between the
universalist outlook and brazenly nationalist practices did not go
utterly unchallenged. Within the 'moderate' camp, the internal
opposition to the aggressive nationalism pursued by the govern-
ment found symbolic expression in the confrontation between Ben
Gurian and Sharett, Israel's first and second Prime Ministers.
With most of the political parties of Israel too weak to play a
substantial role and the Zionist-socialist Mapam immobilised by a
factional split, the duel was fought mainly within the leadership of
Mapai, the ruling party.
Typically, the confrontation focused on foreign/military poli-
cies, even though a much broader set of issues was clearly at stake.
Again typically, Ben Gurian had chosen for himself the Ministry
of Defence in the government, while Sharett took the Foreign
Office. Sharett and his friends demanded 'policies of negotiations'
and objected to many of the 'retaliatory actions' by the military.
They were opposed primarily by Ben Gurion, his 'young men' and
army commanders. In the resulting conflict, Mapai's moderates
Teodor Shanin 235

showed weaknesses which were to reappear time and time again in

similar situations (for example, when the relatively moderate
Prime Minister Eshkol faced the war pressures of 1967). Com-
promises were achieved and hailed as a victory for moderation.
Ben Gurian came under increasing pressure and eventually re-
signed after the Israeli raid on the Jordanian village of Khibya in
1953, with Sharett taking over the Prime Minister's office. But, this
led to the unleashing of powerful anti-Sharett political pressures.
Every border clash (often following Israeli initial attacks, as re-
ported in Sharett's memoirs) led to an immediate clamour for
retaliation from the army command and from the press. Gossip
campaigns were launched attacking the 'soft' Prime Minister for
failing in his defence duties, and every attempt to cool things down
was sabotaged by Ben Gurian's men in the army- especially by its
Commander-in-Chief, Dayan. After numerous defence scandals
and party rows, having authorised 'retaliation actions' time after
time against his better judgement, Sharett finally resigned in 1955
and Ben Gurian returned triumphantly to power. 20 Nearly at
once, in 1956, came the war against Egypt in alliance with Britain
and France. The humiliation of retreat under barely concealed US
orders, the lack of any tangible political results, and the bitter
feeling of many that a big opportunity to come to terms with the
reforming Egypt of Nasser had been lost, did not lead to a reversal
of the hard-line policies. It did not even lead to a return to
Sharett's policies of ambivalance. After 1956, the Ben Gurian
'hard line' was irreversibly 'in', in terms both of institutionalised
power and of popular support. It promoted a further slide towards
nationalism.
The failure to realise universalist goals by a government of the
moderate Zionist majority was by no means merely a trick of a
small group of legislators and politicians. If anything, the 'masses'
of Israeli Jews often expressed themselves in a more fundamental-
ist fashion than their leaders. The anti-Arab mass hysteria which
preceded and followed the 1956 war bears clear testimony on that
score. However, the character and direction of how views and feel-
ings developed can best be grasped by watching those explicitly
committed to the internationalist brotherhood of man. The
kibbutz Gan-Shmuel was for years one of the most left-wing
communities of the Hashomer Hatzair brand of left Zionism- a
symbolic hotbed of treason in the eyes of the Israeli fundamentalists.
236 The Zionisms of Israel

In the 1960s a girl born in the kibbutz fell in love with an Arab
neighbour. They married and the husband applied for membership
in the wife's commune. In a secret ballot the majority of the
members of Gan-Shmuel refused to accept him despite the outcry
of its radicals. The questions 'Would you share your neighbour-
hood with a Negro?' or 'Would you let your daughter marry a
Jew?' are a fair test of the actual norms of human relations all over
the world.
On a less personal level, the expropriation of Arab land was
tacitly or explicitly accepted by the majority of Israelis, who
considered such behaviour elsewhere to be criminal. What is
more, the group directly involved was the elite of the Zionist
labour movement - the kibbutzim settlers. Once again it was the
kibbutz movement of Hashomer Hatzair (as we may recall, the
former supporters of a programme for a dualist, Jewish-Arab,
state) which took over the lands of the village of Bir Im. (This was
an exceptionally sordid story of a Christian Arab village which had
shown particular friendship to Israelis in the 1948-9 war. Its
inhabitants were later asked to evacuate their houses for a week
and then brazenly refused permission to return. They were later to
see their houses dynamited by the army while an appeal was still
pending in the courts. The case became the symbol of Israeli
disregard for Arab minority rights, of the stubborn insistence of its
people to go back and of the moral unease of Israeli intellectuals,
including some Establishment figures.)

The 1967 war as a moment of truth

To moderate Zionists, the main legitimation of nationalist pol-

icies, and of the ever delayed end to the 'suspension' of universal-
ist principles, was fear for the existence of Israel. Since 1948, Israel
has lived in a state of uneasy truce with its neighbours: with no
formal mutual peace treaty, with mutual military infiltrations and
clashes, an arms race, and so forth. Fear of 'showing weakness' in
the face of an enemy, who was numerically superior and was
calling for the destruction of the newly created state, was delib-
erately mingled with memories of the European slaughter of
1942-5. There was no military opposition from the 13 per cent
Arab minority in Israel, but they could still be regarded with alarm
Teodor Shanin 237

as the 'fifth column' of the Arab states. Relative weakness was felt
to justify, at least partly, nationalist policies and reactions 'as long
as the conditions are what they are'.
This explains why the 1967 war marked not only a turning point
in the history of Israel, but also a moment of truth in the political
history of moderate Zionism. The military defeat of the Arabs
created occupied territories with a mass of 'additional' Palestinian
Arabs living there. The manifest military superiority of Israel over
its neighbours undercut any justification for the perpetual delay in
the realisation of universalist principles. The exchange of the
occupied territories for peace, a Palestinian 'national home',
and a reversal of the process of escalation with the neighbouring
countries, seemed distinct possibilities. A sense of the unlimited
power of Israeli arms swept the Middle East while an economic
boom added to the optimism of the Israelis. After a short inter-
mezzo the government was once again completely in the hands of
self-professed Zionist moderates. In the eyes of its citizens, Israel
finally seemed powerful enough to choose. 'Here is Rhodes -
jump!'
Within a short time the Israeli government of Golda Meir made
its post -1967 policies clear. In spite of an explicit declaration to the
contrary (in the speech of the Minister of Defence on the day the
war began), a policy of territorial aggrandisement was adopted.
The only problem within the government was how much of the
occupied territories to hold on to. Once again, 'public opinion' -
organised and spontaneous- was, if anything, even more extreme.
A 'not one step back' stance was forcefully advanced by the
neo-fundamentalist 'Greater Israel Movement', which for once
united Herut, the religious factions and numerous Labour Party
members of extreme nationalist persuasion. That was not the end
of the demands, for within a few years, an editorial comment of
Davar- the Israeli Labour Party mouthpiece- could declare that,
'our current outlook which regards the River Jordan as a "security
border", may have to be revised and moved further on in view of
the delivery of American aircraft to Saudi Arabia.'
While at its beginnings the occupation was kept sensibly flexible
('liberal' on the West Bank, much harsher in Gaza, where the
resistance was stronger), the political self-organisation of the
Palestinians was banned and potential or actual leaders detained,
exiled or dismissed from public functions. The existence of the
238 The Zionisms of Israel

Palestinians as a distinct entity was rejected. The declaration of

the Israeli Minister of Defence, that the Palestinians do not exist
because they missed the boat by not claiming self-emancipation in
1948, was supported for a time by many liberals, including,
Haaretz, the leading daily paper in Israel. 21 (It sounded like a
macabre joke- a notice 'Further applications for nationhood will
not be considered, by Authority', hung on a locked door by a
second-generation immigrant.) As usual, on both sides of the
nationalist Jewish/ Arab fence, the denial of existence of an ethnic
group was used to justify disregard of its legal rights. The policy of
expropriation of Arab lands proceeded and was intensified. In
Rafah, Akraba, and so on, Arab farmers were ordered out, Jewish
farmers settled, often employing the expropriated Arab farmers as
wage labourers. 22 The protests inside Israel were answered by
Ben-Porat (a journalist who often acted as a mouthpiece for the
Ministry of Defence) with a demand 'to rip aside the veil of
hypocrisy' and to remember that in the present as in the past 'there
is no Zionism, no settlement of land, no Jewish state, without the
removal of Arabs, without confiscations'. 23 By 1973 the so-called
Galili protocol became the official government policy, supported
by the most powerful trio of Labourite ministers: Meir, Dayan and
Galili. It made explicit and official the 'Judaisation' and stage-by-
stage, de facto annexation of the occupied territories. 24
Post -1967 military policy seemed to be at pains to prove Isaac
Deutscher's remark that Israel was turning into the 'Prussia of the
Middle East'. It was characterised by a constant brandishing of
power, by disregard of non-military considerations and by a
sweeping arrogance along the lines of 'we are above everybody,
everybody all over the world'. 25 The February 1973 shooting down
of a Libyan civilian aircraft on the personal order of Israel's
Commander-in-Chief, resulting in the death of 100 civilians, and
the flashy commando raids on Beirut, were typically linked with
the manifest decrease in competence of the army command and in
the unchecked spread of corruption within its supply and organisa-
tion networks. Reports about torture of prisoners were increas-
ingly heard. Internationally, Israel found itself in alliances with
some of the most reactionary and corrupt of the world's politicians
and regimes: with South Africa, Somoza of Nicaragua, and Amin
of Uganda.
Teodor Shanin 239

This expansionist, militarist and reactionary image of post-1967

Israel, increasingly devoid of the former justification of military
weakness, shocked the more conscientious moderate Zionists.
This was not the Zionism they believed they had been realising.
Many of them condemned 'the infamy of Bir Im' and 'the crude
slander . . . which maintains that Zionism was founded upon
expropriation and exploitation'. Bar Nir, a Mapam MP and one of
the pioneers' generation, angrily answered Ben-Porat that he
would never have come to Palestine if he had thought that Zionism
was to be founded on Arab expropriation. Writers, artists, profes-
sors and political militants of a moderate Zionist background
spoke, petitioned and demonstrated against the fundamentalist
policies of the Israeli government. In spite of vicious hostility in
the mass media and 'public opinion', waves of protest arose in
1968, 1970, and 1972. The petitions were rejected, the demonstra-
tions met by police force, the direction of political developments
did not change. The heterogeneous protest movements proved no
match for the consistent and ruthless pressure from 'the machine'
of the state and the mass media.
As against the increasing hawkishness of the dominant policies,
some voices of 'dovish' moderate opposition could also be heard
within the Labour Party and government circles. The Minister of
Finance complained about the costs of the occupation. The Minis-
ter of Foreign Affairs talked about the moral dangers of power.
The head of the Confederation of Labour declared that the utilisa-
tion of Arab labour was defeating the Zionist aim of productivisa-
tion, since by now it was Arabs who are building Tel-Aviv. A
Labour Party general secretary even demanded the recognition of
the Palestinians and negotiation with them. Yet, notwithstanding
these cases of non-conformity at the top, invariably followed by a
public witch-hunt of the offenders by the press and right-wing
politicians, the direction of Israeli politics did not change. Of these
politicians who challenged the hawkish avalanche (Sapir, Eban,
Ben Aharon, and Eliav), the first died while the others rapidly
became ex-Ministers and ex-Secretaries. The government of what
used to be called the moderate Zionist proceeded to execute
fundamentalist Zionist policies with the support of a 'moderate
Zionist' electorate. Within one generation and without dictator-
ship, concentration camps, executions or a one-party state, a
240 The Zionisms of Israel

massive liberal and socialist force in Israel was democratically

deradicalised - an outstanding example of political thought-
reform.
The next war, that of 1973 with Egypt, tore down the veil of
post-1967 self-congratulatory euphoria. The surprise was over-
whelming. The 1967 war was not 'the end of it'. Arabs could fight,
conquer and kill. Israeli generals could be stupid, and were. The
Israeli army could be and was ill-prepared. The help of the United
States was essential and already needed on the third day of the
war. The majority of the Israelis felt bitterly cheated and unjustly
punished. So they had been, in terms of the government promises
of 1967-73, even though the war was not in the end a defeat, nor
was the country in any danger of destruction. The defeat was
mainly in the mind: in the feeling that the many extra dead could
not be accounted for in terms of unambivalent 'success' and that
the deeply believed 1967 promise of final victory turned out not to
be true. Each war seemed only to lead to another. In terms of the
Zionist debate in the 1930s and 1950s, and the moderate Zionists'
premises of old, the time had clearly come to look at the political
balance sheet and to consider a new strategy. But those were not
the old days. Israeli society had changed. The creature of mod-
erate Zionism was displaying a momentum of its own.
Shadows of the 1973 war hung heavily over the Israeli political
scene; recriminations and resignations were followed by a political
realignment. A group of ex-Labourite, ex-generals and some
others in the 'middle generation' (the 'youngsters' of Ben Gurion
days) established a new party of the 'middle ground'- the DMC.
Some of them, like Sharon, 'went all the way' and joined the
Herut. The DMC was breaking Labourite hegemony over the
state apparatus, the professional soldiers and the senior police. In
the same period the pent-up resentment of the Oriental Jews,
supporters of Herut, was now politically allied with the Confedera-
tion of Industry Owners' representation, the party of General
Zionists. The resulting Likud party coalition overtook the Align-
ment of Mapai and Mapam in the May 1977 election.
The new government of Begin was the first to give the fun-
damentalist Zionists state power in Israel. Its junior partners were
the DMC and the smaller religious parties. The change in the
political arena was, in fact, even deeper. The whole party scene
shifted toward the fundamentalists. Within a few years the hetero-
Teodor Shanin 241

geneity and careerism of the DMC leaders made it disintegrate

with very little of its electoral support going back to Labour. The
religious parties not only joined the Likud government but also
moved sharply to the right. The leader of Herut was in full control
of the government coalition. The smaller factions of the Zionist
left proceeded to decline. Most importantly, the Likud's main
alternative, the Alignment, was now led by Peres- another of Ben
Gurion's 'young men' of the 1950s and someone on the right wing
of the Labourite spectrum.
Likud government policies - the 'heavy hand' toward the oc-
cupied territories, monetarism and a free market economy, the
first invasion of Lebanon, and so forth, contained little surprise.
They did what they said they would. The peace treaty with Egypt
and the inflationary boom gave it all the appearances of success.
New elections strengthened Begin's personal prestige and Herut's
party hold. In their view, to suppress the political will of the
Palestinians, a few more steps were needed, of which the destruc-
tion of the PLO in Beirut came first. It looked like a simple
military matter: the loyal support of Israelis for their army and
government seemed assured. But the explosion of dissent among
the Israeli middle classes, and among their sons in the officer ranks
and crack units of the army, came as a nightmare to Begin and his
men. In the Israeli context, it meant that the Lebanon war had to
stop fast. The report implicating Sharon in a massacre and his
departure from the Ministry of Defence, the inability of the Israeli
army effectively to control southern Lebanon and the army's
mounting losses, were quickly followed by Begin's resignation in
1983. A Chile-like crisis of a Friedman-like economic strategy led
to further disarray. The close correlation of European/middle-
class dissent and Oriental/plebeian loyalty added a particularly
brutal and racist dimension to the political conflict.
This historical, thumb-nail sketch of Zionism and Israel brings
us to the heart of the paradoxes named above to the question
'Why?' It was moderate Zionism that lay at the origins of Israel
but showed little ability to turn its own ideological promise into a
viable political strategy for the government it controlled. It gave
way to most of the fundamentalists' demands. It eventually gave
way to a fundamentalist government. But then, the resilience of
some of its deeper premises came as a shock to the fundamentalists
and to the cynics alike. The dreams of the 1930s and 1940s were
242 The Zionisms of Israel

down, but not out. The younger generation of army-educated

Israelis was not immune to the universalist message and was well
able to turn moderate Zionism overnight into a banner of de-
fiance. Its strength clearly lay outside the party organisations and
manipulations - the reserve officers who led the Peace Now
movement, were mostly 'non-party' with strong 'moderate Zionist'
leanings. Many thousands were ready to march at their summons,
to protest and to refuse. For many decades the 'moderate' lady has
been riding a tiger of chauvinism, unable to climb down or to
control its charge. It seems now that the tiger is unable to get rid of
its rider either.

The simple answers

There are two quick and easy answers to the question as to why a
quarter of a century of moderate Zionist rule produced results at
such variance with its formal goals. They are popular with the
nationalist theoreticians of both sides. On the Arab side it is the
everlasting falsehood of the Zionists; on the Israeli side the patho-
logical anti-Israeli hostility of the Arabs. Both are sustained by a
grain of truth. Both are false when used as the complete explana-
tion of the question at issue.
There is little doubt that within the ranks of the moderate
Zionists there were those who preached lofty humanism while
never actually meaning what they said. Others simply followed the
most powerful leaders. Yet, the bitterness and bloodshed in the
intra-Zionist struggle before the 1950s cannot be simply dismissed
as personal, or as a factional settling of scores. It reflected the
force of the liberal-socialist stand within the leadership and the
rank-and-file of the Zionist majority. Even a two-faced declaration
would be indicative here, for, as the English say, hypocrisy is a
bow to morality; it shows what people believe to be right. It is the
true ambivalence of thought (not window dressing but genuine
intellectual confusion) which seems particularly relevant here. Too
many of the old guard of trusted Zionist supporters and those who
followed them have displayed a deep emotional outrage and
political opposition since 1967 to have been simply reacting to an
essentially known and accepted 'white lie'.
There is little doubt, on the other hand, that the undifferen-
Teodor Shanin 243

tiated hostility of the Arabs and their fiery rhetoric hampered the
compromise-prone or internationalist tendencies in Israel. While
constantly cheering and quoting the Israeli critics of Israel, the
Arab side could hardly show any ideological equivalents. And
what can arouse more suspicion of nationalist double-talk than
such double standards? The hostility of the defeated after 1948,
and especially the hostility of the Palestinian refugees could be,
and at times was, understood by many within Israel. However, in
contrast to the consistently nationalist policy, an internationalist or
even moderately 'dovish' policy needs a partner. One cannot
practise it fully on one's own any more than one can make love
singly. For many years not one small Arab group operating in any
Arab country was explicitly and consistently universalist in its
attitude toward the Israeli Jews, that is, genuinely ready to grant
them all that it assumed for itself in terms of national self-
expression.Z6 Israeli fundamentalists and the mass media have
never missed an opportunity to rub this in, together with daily
quotations from the destruction-of-Israel rhetoric of the Arab
press and Arab leadership. As Brecht once remarked, one be-
comes a nationalist for a moment by the very fact of meeting a
nationalist of the opposite side: stupidity makes those it meets stupid.
Nevertheless, to attribute the nationalist degeneration of Israel
mainly to Arab hostility, or Arab chauvinism simply to Zionist
cruelty and falsehood, was usually but another means of escape
towards the infectious stupidity that Brecht talked about, an
only-too-easy moral indignation against the shortcomings of
others. Nor is it satisfactory simply to point to the 'objectivity' of
the vicious circles of nationalist hostility, since behind such supra-
human concepts stand people and leaders who decide, choose and
act. It was the lack of a consistent and powerful attempt to quell
the nationalism of both 'us' and 'them' by the political action of the
Zionist 'moderates' which has to be explained. Jewish and Arab
chauvinisms have contributed handsomely to the existing situa-
tion, but the strength of nationalism and its capacity to impose its
positions on the moderates need further analysis. The issue of
Arab and Palestinian nationalism and where it leads should be
discussed elsewhere and by another person. Here I shall pursue
the question 'why?' as it concerns the Israelis, by looking at its
elements: Israel's classes, parties, international connections and
ideological determination.
244 The Zionisms of Israel

Before attempting this, a reference should be made to a mode of

analysis which, while in no sense definable as an 'easy answer',
shares with such explanations an essential determinism of ap-
proach. This mode of analysis assumes that it was inevitable that
the very fact of the acceptance of a Jewish state (that is, a state 'of'
an ethnically defined nation and not simply of its residents and
citizens) produced nationalist and repressive policies and pre-
determined the history of Israel. The point is taken, but as a
complete analysis it seems unsatisfactory because of the historical
experience. Ethnically defined states (for example, the USA) have
been oppressive, but origins marked by extreme nationalism have
not necessarily blocked later developments toward universalism.
And it is the direction of development which is at issue.

The new rulers and the new proles

The degeneration into a fundamentalist world-outlook cannot be

explained purely in terms of political ideologies. Thought does not
float in the air but is linked with the social structure of power
relations. Israel is a new political society and a new state; its class
divisions and elites came into being within the last two genera-
tions. It is the development and character of the Israeli power
elite, its classes and its ethno-classes, that have relegated to the
margin some of the basic principles of moderate Zionism, espe-
cially its socialist component.
First, there has been the role of the army, its senior officers and
defence-related new capitalists. The sudden emergence of explicit
and public pressure by army generals and their allies in 1967, their
capacity to impose 'their own' Minister of Defence and to force the
hand of the Prime Minister as far as war was concerned, was the
first time that the previously politically tame military leadership
had openly shown its teeth in Israel. The seven-fold increase in
value of the production of the defence industries in 1967-73
(inflation made later figures less meaningful) has meant the rapid
growth of classes and groups to whom militarisation and occupa-
tion were excellent business. The Israeli-wrought changes to the
economy of Israel and of the occupied territories and the 'deluxe
colonisation' financed by the authorities and increasingly based on
Arab labour, have had similar effects. There has been a rapid
Teodor Shanin 245

growth of local millionaires while at the same time well-to-do

non-Israeli Jews have increasingly invested capital, stimulated as
much by the high profits as by national sentiments and plans for
retirement. 27
In the Israel of pre-Independence and early post-Independence
days there was a deep division between the power elite of 'those
who serve' and the entrepreneurial top of the middle class- 'those
who make money'. By now, the business elite, rapidly increasing
its wealth, has acquired a significant social bridge to the political
leadership. The linkage is via the increasing number of retired
senior army officers taking up management posts in private and
public industries, or else moving into politics. By the mid-1970s
the numbers of colonels and generals in the reserve reached in all
about 3000, of whom about 20 per cent 'went into politics' the
others mostly 'accepting posts' or going into business. 28 By now
the number would have doubled. The army officers turned politi-
cians or business managers are steeped in military experience,
linked by a common past, very Israeli in their appeal to the locally
born sabras and indeed representative of many of them. This new
caucus of 'men of action', rapidly growing into the main establish-
ment 'cadre', has been 'pragmatic' in the sense of sneering at lofty
principles and egoistic in its personal and public outlook. To these
'new men' the universalist, and often socialist, principles of mod-
erate Zionism are empty phrases, a rhetoric to be shed painlessly if
need be. Their group intuitions are either fundamentalist or op-
portunist. In the context of post 1967 Israel, both have meant the
perpetuation of the existing reality.
With moderate Zionism increasingly turning into a rhetorical
mask at the top of the politico-economic pyramid, some have
looked for its defence to the 'lower classes' in Israel. The socialist
tendency within moderate Zionism could be, and at times was,
used as a unifying banner in the fight for social equality, within
Israeli Jewry. Yet, such chances became slim as a result of the
violent nationalism of the overwhelming majority of the Jewish/
oriental plebian ethno-class, created by the very success of the
Zionist enterprise. Arab workers in Israel are excluded as far as
any 'unity of the deprived' is concerned, because of the hostility
and reluctance of these Jewish proles to make common cause with
'ethnic enemies'. The tens of thousands of Arabs coming daily to
work in Israel from the occupied territories, deprived of citizen
246 The Zionisms of Israel

rights, underpaid and under the heavy surveillance of the security

service, provide an atomised stratum at the very bottom. Above
both Arab strata, those from Israel and those from the territories,
stand Jewish labourers and small entrepreneurs originating from
Oriental Jewry. While limited in their life-chances, Oriental Jews
are prone (in a manner reminiscent of the poor whites of the South
in the USA and South Africa) to express anti-government opposi-
tion through 'rightist' slogans and to define their own identity
through violent anti-Arabism. The few attempts to organise
Oriental Jews on their own and around the issues of socio-
economic inferiority (especially the so-called Black Panthers
movement of the 1970s initiated by children of immigrants from
Morocco) scared the Establishment badly but were contained and
dissipated by small reforms and 'large' nationalist slogans. The
demographic change within Israeli Jewry (with the 'Orientals'
increasing from less than 10 per cent to more than 50 per cent of
the population) has been one of the major reasons for the increase
in the power of the political 'right'. The old-comers who once
organised socialist unions have by now retired or else have been
promoted out of the working class by the influx of new immigrants
or Arabs. They know that they are 'part of it all', even though
often feeling ambivalent towards post-1967lsrael. (It is this consti-
tuency, and their families, which provides a major part of the
middle-class non-conformist vote.) Strikes continued, but there
was no related increase in consciousness of the need to relate these
to the moderate Zionist dream, or, for that matter, to any other
programme of structural social change.

Political parties and Trojan horses

The life of political parties of Israel has displayed some specific

characteristics which were of relevance to the issue at hand. These
political parties were never simply voluntary organisations of the
supporters of some particular views. To use the Dutch/Indonesian
term, these have been aliranes: vertical organisations which, in
addition to orientating political action, also attempt to satisfy the
institutional needs of their members, through the party bank,
party housing schemes, party contacts and controls in schools,
labour exchange, medical care, and so forth. To belong to a party
Teodor Shanin 247

involved a reciprocal relationship embracing a range of social and

political benefits paid for by an unconditional political loyalty to
the party leadership. This was true in particular of the religious
Zionist movement and of rural communities. Political constituen-
cies held captive by the party system facilitated the control of
non-conformist ideas and doubts. With the process of deradicalisa-
tion of the Left, these captive electorates were often led wherever
their leaders wanted them to go. 29 It is not accidental that it is
the urban middle-class areas of North Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem's
Rechavia - that is, the residential areas of the secular and econ-
omically more independent better-offs - where most of the liberal
and socialist non-conformism survived best.
Also significant has been the characteristics of 'the top' of the
political parties, that is, the stratum of professional politicians.
The origins of the parties/aliran meant that many members joined
up for reasons which had little to do with ideology. In the period of
statehood, the parties increasingly became coalitions of voca-
tional, ethnic, and other interest groups, led by people to whom
politics was just another way to go after personal gain - a line of
business. De-ideologisation of the political parties and the barrage
from the nationalist news media have weakened the defenders of
universalist causes more than their xenophobic counterparts. An
important role in the defeat of moderate Zionism was played by
the internal take-overs of the Labour parties by their right-wing
factions, led by alleged pragmatists, but actual cynics. It was
matched by the phenomenon of Trojan horses- Labour leaders
breaking ranks and forming more nationalist and careerist parties
of little consistency which however, 'opened the gates' of the
Zionist Labour camp to its enemies. Peres and Dayan symbolised
these two trends and there were many more Pereses and Dayans,
large and small.

Israel and the external connections

The life of Israel has been particularly closely related to that of the
world at large. Ideologically, the Zionist movement has seen itself
as the vanguard of Jews all over the world. As time went by the
meaning of the Jewry/Israel connection shifted but its significance
remained strong. To American Jews, unconditional support of
248 The Zionisms of Israel

Israel (referred to, quite wrongly, as 'Zionism') became a central

communalist ideology related to emotions of guilt or anxiety as
much as symbols of identity and 'machismo', reinforced by ostra-
cism against any 'internal' offenders of the new faith. To Israel, the
financial and political support of American Jewry became increas-
ingly important for the balancing of its defence budgets and for the
lobbying support of Israeli foreign policy in the face of its growing
international unpopularity. The major change in Israel, felt parti-
cularly strongly since 1967, was the shift to the US diaspora from
the initial political orientation towards Europe and European
Jews, or towards the Third World. It meant new cross-currents
which were more conservative and came to assert the duty of
Jewish outsiders 'to put their money where their mouth is', rather
than to put their lives and careers on the line as in the older days of
the European-bound Zionist movement. In addition, Israel's small
size, military needs, international ambitions and hostile neigh-
bours made alliances with world powers particularly important.
Those self-defined needs of Israeli policy-makers merged with the
US post-Vietnam attempt to hand over regional police functions to
suitable allies. This 'opening' tied Israelis into the growing signifi-
cance of US Jewry in US politics and its deepening hostility
towards the USSR. The Soviet Union was blamed for supporting
'the Arabs' as much as for the repression inside its own territories
of Jewish ethnic identity, itself often Zionist in form. Many of the
exploits of the Israeli army and intelligence services in the 1970s
carried the unmistakeable characteristic of 'playing to the gallery'
of present and future patrons. The problem of autonomy of Jewish
and Israeli interests as against those of the global powers was
increasingly coming to the fore. So did the possible diversity of
goals between Israeli policies, that of its patrons, and those of local
Jewish communities. The discovery that the anti-semitic junta
of Argentina (supported by the US) was supplied by Israeli
weaponry, while Israeli diplomats kept strangely silent about
anti-Jewish attacks there, exemplify those tensions.

Concepts, emotions and controls

While governing, moderate Zionism has performed most ineffec-

tually in conditions of major international crisis. To take an
Teodor Shanin 249

example: the 'dovish' Mapam opposed on principle military 'retali-

ation policies' and territorial aggrandisement; in the decision
taken to begin the 1956 war its cabinet ministers were simply
side-stepped. Yet, in the following week Mapam declared the war
necessary and even managed to put in its bid against retreating
from the freshly occupied territories. Many of the other Zionist
moderates have done likewise, then and since. Such about-turns
were often followed by a shamefaced return to the initial 'mod-
erate' positions at times paradoxically strengthened (for example
Uri Avneri and his Haolam Haze journal in the 1956 war and
after). The impression left was that of people simply swept off
their feet. Accepting the strength of the institutional pressures for
'national unity,' an additional major factor appeared within the
very idelogical structure of moderate Zionism. When, in the days
of upheaval, a Weltanschauung of strict overall consistency and
easily propagandised simplicity, like that of the extremist Zionist
'monism', confronts an eclectic outlook with contradictory princi-
ples and suspending clauses, the simpler outlook proves superior
in impact. In particular, it wins with those less versed in and less
inclined towards conceptual speculations and ambivalence: farm-
ers and workers, petty clerks and petty politicians, soldiers and
generals. Like patches on a fabric, political ambivalence and
doubtful ideological bridges, dispensations and somersaults are
the first to fail under conditions of high pressure. The 'theory of
stages' has been the focus of these ambivalences.
Extreme nationalist solutions have found powerful support in
Israel in the institutions of socialisation. These have operated at
two levels. The daily schooling in national symbols and national
emotions, the spread and partial imposition of religious education
and mores, the educational experience of military service - all
have deepened and perpetuated nationalist views. The results
were evident in the swing to the right of many in politically active
youth in Israel. 30 However, to understand the full force of the
'ordinary' socialisation on an otherwise critical population, one
must consider a second type of ideological control. For two de-
cades, Israel has been repeatedly swept by emotional upheavals of
nationalist hysteria - public rectification campaigns one can say,
unleashed by the political leadership, the army command and the
mass media. Frequent wars have often, but not exclusively, provided
the pretext. Fear of destruction; Jewish blood spilt; Gentiles'
250 The Zionisms of Israel

eternal hate; only power can secure existence; national unity -

these messages have been hammered mercilessly home, concep-
tually and emotionally. When such a therapeutic brain-storm
subsided, the mind was left a neurotic desert of drained emotions.
With this went the compulsively repetitive talk about 'politics', the
compulsion to switch on the radio every hour to hear the latest
news and the hate of symbolic enemies and traitors. And each time
this happened a few more of those who previously doubted the
pure nationalist gospel and who questioned military solutions,
gave in, at least for a time. Some retreated, others hid, still others
were fully absorbed into the nationalist fold.

The paradoxes and the future

Our tale began with a double paradox and is to end with a few
more of them. It has been said that paradoxes, once recognised,
improve vision. One should add that unresolved social paradoxes
do not disappear with time but rather become part of a new crop of
super-paradoxes and make them harsher. Also, by uncovering
contradictions, paradoxes throw light on possible dynamics and on
alternative outcomes.
Moderate Zionism, combining a universalist perspective with
the nationalist 'suspension' of parts of it, has for generations acted
as the dominant ideological formula, self-image and legitimation
of Israeli Jewry. After the Second World War, and even more so
since 1948, it has also been accepted by Jewish communities
around the world. Over the years it gradually lost its initial
humanist and radical stimulus. It was not dead and exercised its
influence by making some political solutions more acceptable,
while limiting and blocking others, and keeping under its spell,
consciously or unconsciously, thousands of political activists of
undoubted political vigour. All the same, the kernel of genuine
moderate Zionism, often unrealistic but sincere, shrunk. The signs
of 'the end of ideology', as regards moderate Zionism were strong.
Not for nothing, did Israeli youth use the idiom 'to flog Zionism'
(leharbits tsionut) to signify the contrast between mumbled
preaching and reality. The preferable alternative became a brisk
command by the state authority.
Israelis, old and young, who grew up within the norms and
Teodor Shanin 251

values of moderate Zionism, gradually learned to follow any

governmental authority, responding to the ever-repeated call for
national unity against the ever-hostile world. Faced with the defeat
of an ideology they had lived by, some, especially the elder ones,
simply hid from the horrors of a recognition, negating a life span.
Others, especially those who went through the social education of
the Israeli school and army, 'dropped their dreams', and became
'pragmatic' in the sense of do-your-job-efficiently, look-after-
your-family-and-to-hell-with-them, any 'them'. Thoughts about
emigration to a softer spot of the world often followed - there are
many of them now around the world. At the same time, explicit
and outspoken fundamentalism proceeds to make new converts.
Since 1967, the occupation has accentuated it all, reproducing
the vicious circles of anti-Palestinian repression, ethnic clashes and
chauvinistic self-justifications. Combined with the social and
ethnic processes in Israel it resulted, by 1977, in Begin's Govern-
ment, and in the perspective of fundamental Zionism ruling Israel
for generations through the democratic consent of its majority. A
chain of local wars against disobedient neighbours was to supple-
ment the internal chauvinism-producing cycle of ideological hege-
mony. Lebanon was its beginning.
But then, something went wrong with the scenario. The para-
doxes of the past within the present caught up with Israel in a
moment of strife. At least temporarily, it shifted the political scene
and immobilised those who had seen themselves as its new direc-
tors and script-writers. It appeared as a set of new super-paradoxes
of the future.
First, the leaders of fundamentalist Zionism treated their ad-
vance to power and the victories of Israeli arms as a law of nature.
Jews were bound to produce victories. The fury of many 'good
Jews' over Beirut and the sharp decline in the effectiveness of the
army and its further losses staggered them. Severe social, econ-
omic and military crises followed a war which was neither lost nor
won. Moderate Zionism was back in the running. Spiritless in the
government and party opposition, it has shown its teeth in a
spontaneous swell of dissenting public opinion- a major blocking
force to the government's will. It could not simply be disregarded-
too many of its adherents were Israel's best officers, most effective
commandos, ablest writers, and most prominent professionals.
The fundamentalists came to face the paradox of the Israeli
252 The Zionisms of Israel

democracy-for-the-Jews. Its universalist ingredient cannot be re-

duced democratically, at least not for a time. One has to live with
it or substitute it with a military dictatorship confronting (and
thereby alienating) much of the country's intellectual elite and
source of strength. It would also mean, for once, to repress Jews,
something at which some of the extreme nationalists would balk.
Second, the parallel paradox of moderate Zionism is that of
their own social constructions and analytical inadequacies. It was
their policies which shaped Israeli society as it is today: the
resentment of Oriental Jews turned underclass in a society of
alleged social democracy, the enhancement of religious bigotry,
the wars, and the 'vicious circle' of the occupation. Begin's war
infuriated and remobilised many of them, enhancing their ability
to oppose some of the policies they objected to. But they have
little to offer except a return to positions which produced the
situation they are fighting. The rise of the moderate Zionist masses
checked the war in the north. A moderate Zionist government
would change but little.
Those few Israelis who have thought it through, face a third
paradox, linked to the others. The only force capable of changing
Israel from the inside, and doing so democratically, are the mod-
erate Zionists. It is on them also that the defence of parliamenta-
rianism in Israel and the defence of the Palestinians from a new
forced exodus has to depend in the future. Yet the whole history of
moderate Zionism's rule and decline shows their weakness. Jewish
anti-Zionism tried to drop this baggage of ideological inconsisten-
cies, but it failed time and time again to construct a real political
force. In a nationalist perspective, Jewish and Arab nationalism
produce each other, blocking internationalism as a view accept-
able to large majorities. The broad international perspective
in which extra-Israeli forces play their role- the USA, the USSR,
Arab states, American Jews, and so on, does not internationalise
Middle Eastern cognition. On the contrary, it makes nationalism
and particularism harsher and more convincing.
There are only two possible general approaches for those who
search for an alternative 'from the inside' to the Israeli status quo.
One is to call an end to the 'dispensation', that is, to the theory-
of-stages suspension of principles which led moderate Zionism
right into the ideological and political house of its fundamentalist
adversaries. This would mean trying once more to purify what was
Teodor Shanin 253

universalist and humanist in Zionism and to reclaim the Zionist

banner from the hands of the overwhelmingly Zionist majority of
today. The chances for this alternative do not look good. A basic
problem remains within any honest and thus mericiless self-
analysis of the type required. What would prevent such an opposi-
tion from sliding into nationalism in the same way that its left-
Zionist predecessors did? That second possibility is to cut loose
from an ideology which facilitated moderate Zionism's surrender
of its long-term programme and to build up a consistent world
outlook(s) and political programme(s) and movement(s) based on
universalist principles, to face on equal ground the ideological and
political consistency of extremist nationalism. The moral collapse
of Soviet communism, its Great Power politics, has blocked for the
Israeli majority and especially its youth the simple solution of
turning in this direction for the answer (as was often enough done
before the 1960s). A non-Zionist solution for Israeli Jewry, cap-
able of laying foundations for 'a new majority', will have to be
more original. This perspective is again not very promising. Any
attempts to challenge the nationalism which now reigns supreme
will encounter the high suppressive efficiency of the Israeli estab-
lishment, which can count on the massive support of the majority
in Israel. An anti-nationalist challenge will have to face the vicious
circles in which outbursts of Jewish and Palestinian nationalism
again and again reinforce each other. It will be as short of people
and resources as of concepts and ideas.
What happens when political and social paradoxes coalesce into
situations where all alternatives seem no longer realistic? In the
first place - nothing happens. The status quo proceeds, its con-
tradictions may worsen, but its powers of compulsion and corrup-
tion are sufficient to keep it going all the same. Of those who
oppose it, large numbers retreat into private worlds. In the longer
term, slow, deep and implicit processes proceed and eventually
break the surface, and then the unexpected takes its turn. The
fundamental rules of the game change, shaping new worlds and
opening up possibilities of new solutions. But these new scenes are
built out existing human and ideological materials and under-
standings. In that sense, the nature of Zionism and the fundamen-
tal division in it - the entrenched collective cognition of Israeli
Jews- will be central to those futures.
254 The Zionisms of Israel

Notes and References

1. This chapter is based on an early version published as 'The Price of

Suspension', in U. Davis, A. Mack and N. Yuval-Davis, Israel and the
Palestinians (London: Ithaca Press, 1975). The considerable changes
introduced represent another decade of experience, and some new
conclusions.
2. The relevant sources are too numerous to be quoted in full. To name
a few of the most significant (all of which will be of importance insofar
as the next paragraph is concerned): W. Laqueur, A History of
Zionism (London, 1972); I. Cohen, A Short History of Zionism
(London, 1951); N. Lucas, The Modern History of Israel (London
1974); S. Avineri, The Making of Modern Zionism (New York, 1982).
And more critical of Zionism, M. Selzer, Zionism Reconsidered (New
York, 1950); A. Buber, The Other Israel (New York, 1972); I. Ham,
Introduction to a Different History of Zionism (Hebrew) (Ramat Gan,
1973); N. Chomsky, Peace in the Middle East (New York, 1974).
3. Laqueur, History of Zionism, ch. 6; Lucas, Modern History of Israel,
ch. 3; Avineri, Making of Modern Zionism pts 13, 14, 15. Also P.
Merchav, A Short History of the Israeli Labour Movement (Hebrew)
(Marchavia, 1967), chs B, C and D.
4. Laqueur, History of Zionism chs 5 to 9; Ilam, Introduction to a
Different History; Chomsky, Peace in the Middle East Introduction.
Also J. B. Schachtman et al., History of the Revisionist Movement
(Tel-Aviv, 1970).
5. Laqueur, History of Zionism, p. 447.
6. Cohen, Short History of Zionism, pp. 254--9.
7. Schachtman et al., Revisionist Movement, especially pp. 18, 39-41,
220-3; Laqueur, History of Zionism, ch. 7.
8. Ilam, Introduction to a Different History, p. 99; Laqueur, History of
Zionism, pp. 356, 515; Schatman et al., Revisionist Movement,
p. 281. To quote a declaration by Ben Gurion at the time: 'We do not
want the Arabs to sacrifice Eretz Israel. The Arabs of Eretz Israel will
not be victims of Zionist fulfillment. To our understanding of what
Zionism is about we do not want and we cannot build here our life on
account of the Arabs' (I! am, Introduction to a Different History,
p. 63).
9. S. H. Sankovsky, A Short History of Zionism (New York, 1947), pp.
153-9; E. Luttwak et al., The Israeli Army (London, 1975), pp. 12 and
13; T. Lamm, Zionism's Path from Realism to Autism (Jerusalem,
1974); Lucas, Modern History of Israel, p. 178.
10. Laqueur, History of Zionism, pp. 530-47; Ilam, Introduction to a
Different History, pp. 136, 149.
11. Cohen, Short History of Zionism, p. 262.
12. For example, Schachtman et al., Revisionist Movement, p. 331.
13. Ibid., p. 184, Also pp. 182, 212-14, 329.
14. Lucas, Modern History of Israel pp. 214--21.
Teodor Shanin 255

15. J. de Raynier, A Jerusalem Un Drapeau Flottait sur La Ligne de Feu

(Neuchatal, 1950), pp. 69-74. Also a declaration of the Haganah
commander of Jerusalem in Davar, 12.4.48. For the Altalena affair,
see Luttwak, The Israeli Army, p. 38.
16. Introduced as emergency regulation 1949 and made law in March
1950, seeS. Jiryis, Arabs in Israel (Hebrew) (Tel-Aviv, 1966), ch. 2,
especially pp. 62-7.
17. Ibid. pp. 67-80, especially section 125 of the mandatory Emergency
Regulation (Defence) 1945.
18. Reports on the Legal Structure, Activities, Assets, Income and Liabili-
ties of the Keren Kaiemet Leisrael (Jerusalem, 1973), pp. 6, 18, 49,
56-7. For exemplification, see the legal proceedings against the
Jewish farmers subletting land to the Arab peasant, for example,
Haaretz 5.11. 71 (see also n. 30).
19. Jiryis, Arabs in Israel, pp. 117-21.
20. See Sharett's diaries for 1955, Maariv of 14.6.74, 28.6.74, 5.7.74,
12.7.74, especially the records of 11.4.55 and 7.8.55. For a short
political history of the moderate trend from Weizmann via Sharett to
Eshkol, see Lamm, Zionism's Path.
21. Haaretz editorial on 8.7.73.
22. The Israeli press had documented it all (for example, ibid. 10.3. 75
and 13.8. 73 for takeover of the Rafah lands and the use of the labour
and its ex-owners by the new settlers).
23. Yediot Ahronot, 20.6.72.
24. Ibid., 16.9.1973. In view of the highly propagandised, in Europe,
declarations of moderation by the Labour Party leaders those facts
should be kept in mind.
25. See his excellent description and critique of the spirit of the military
elation in 'The Non-Jewish Jew', Selzer, op. cit. pp. 73--86.
26. The one such case since the 1950s seemed to come in the 1970s in the
declaration of the Palestinian Community Party. Quoted after Be-
maavak, February 1974.
27. See 'The Secret of Polak', Haaretz, 21 June 1974, as exemplifying the
success story of an entreprenuer who left Chile because of the 'Reds'
and now makes high profits in Israel employing under-paid Arab
labour from the occupied territories. Also a PhD thesis by J. Yatziv at
the Department of Sociology, Hebrew University, discussing the land
deals at the occupied territories and so on.
28. A. 1\.apeliuk, 'Generals in Demand', Le Monde/Guardian Weekly,
6 November 1973.
29. See P.Y. Medding, Mapai in Israel (Cambridge 1972) who related
depoliticisation of the Labour Party membership to its social charac-
teristics.
30. Lamm, op. cit.; Chomsky, op. cit.
Index
Abbasi, Jan Mohammad 94 Anatolia
Abbu, Husni 130 Armenians out of 197, 198-9
'Abd-iil Hamid, Sultan 194--5, famine 194
208 Ankara 201
Abduh, Muhammad 10, 176 anti-absolutism in Turkey 195
'absentees', Israel and 232-3 Arab 'renaissance' 136-7
Abu Ghuddah, Abd-ul Arab Socialist Union 152
Fattah 116 Arabs, Palestinian
'Adnan, Sa'd-ud-Din 118 expropriation of lands 232-4,
al-Afghani, Jamal ad-Din 10, 236, 238
50 hostility to Israeli Jews 242-3
agrarian sector in Egypt 189 hysteria against 235--6
Ahmad, Prof Ghafoor 94 Jewish National Home and
Ahrars 80 226-8
Ahl-i-Hadith 80 Argentina 248
Ahl-i-Qur'an 80 Armenians, Turkey and 192,
aid for Egypt 155 197-9
Akins, J. 150 army
Al-Ahram 143 demoralisation of Iran's 43
Al-Akhbar 159 Egyptian humiliated 173, 174
Al-Badar 95 Israeli: corruption within 238;
Al-Dawa 152 dissent 241; generals
'Alawis 126-7, 129-31 powerful 244--5
Aleppo Syrian and the Muslim
centre of the Muslim Brethren 126, 127-8
Brethren 121 al-Arqam, House of 121
membership of the Muslim al-Asad, Hafiz
Brethren 131 economic liberalisation 120
violence in 130 head of government 128, 129
Ali 28, 47 Muslim Brethren and 113,
Aligarh (Muslim University) 91 130, 131
Alignment of Mapai and al-Asad, Rif'at 113
Mapam 240 As-Shams 95
All India Muslim League see Ataturk, Mustafa Kemal
Muslim League and Islam 10, 11
Altalena affair 231 and nationalism 11-13, 14--15
Amin, Idi 238 see also Kemalism
Amin, Mustapha 159 austerity, generalised in Iran 33
an-Nahlawi 'Abd-ul-Karim authoritarianism, statist in Turkey
122,123 202-6

257
258 Index

Avneri, Uri 249 traditional bureaucracy

Awami League 107 and 191-2, 199-201, 204-5,
AI Azhar 175, 178, 179 20&-7, 211
Azad, Abu! Kalam 66 Bourguiba, Pres Habib 18
Aziz, K. K. 96 Brahmo Samaj movement 88
az-Za'im, 'Abd-us-Sattar 130 Brecht, B. 243
Brezhnev, L. I. 54
Bakhtiar, Shahpour 37-8 Bumiputra 21
Balfour Declaration ( 1917) 223, bureaucrats, Turkish
226 activism 193-9
Bangia Desh 107 conflict with bourgeoisie see
Bani-Sadr, A.-H. 33, 38, 44 bourgeoisie
banking, interest free 109 ruling faction 201-4
al-Banna, Hasan 115
Bar Nir 239 Cabinet Mission Plan (1946) 103
Barelvi, Ahmad Raza Khan Cahen, C. 13
Maulana 81 Camp David accords 140, 161
Barelvi ulama 81, 84-7 capitalism
Basu, A. 76 Egypt: new 155-7; state
Ba'th regime 12&.8 137-8, 142-4, 145-53
Muslim Brethren international and colonial
against 129-31 legacy 3
bazaar and Iran's finance 41 Carter, J. E. 53-4
Bazargan, Mehdi 37-8, 44 Charter of National Action
Beauvoir, S. de 20 (1962) 135, 141
Begin, Menachem 231, 240-1 Chhotu Ram, Sir 101
Beheshti, Mohammad 44 Choudhury, G. W. 106
Beirut 133, 222, 238, 241, 251 Christian minorities, Turkey
Ben Gurion, David 223, 227, and 192, 197-9
228 cities
confrontation with Egyptian 188-9
Sharett 234-5 importance of in new
Bengal states 4-5
penetration of Islam 74-5, 76 migration into, Turkey 212
salariat 71 tab, 72-3 Muslim Brethren and 123, 126
Bengali language civilisation, Egypt and 159-60
movement 106, 107 class, social
Ben-Porat, Y. 238, 239 basis of ideology 14-15
Berlin Treaty (1878) 194 divisions in Israel 244-6
Bhutto, Benazir 25, 27, 29 Islamisation in India 75-6
Bhutto, Zulfiqar Ali 15, 29 see also bourgeoisie;
Bihar see Gangetic Plain bureaucracy; salariat; traders;
Biltmore Declaration (1942) 223 working class
Bir Im 236 clergy, Iranian
Borochov, Ber 224 and revolution 44, 45
boucgeoisie, Turkish dominating society 5&.7
created by Young Turks financial bases 48
195-6, 198 see also Khomeini
Index 259

colonialism Constitution of Pakistan

British and Deobandi (Choudhury) 106
ulama 81-2 domination, ideologies of 5-6
legacy and states 3-4 Dow, Sir Hugh 102
Committee of Union and Progress ductility, ideological see flexibility
see CUP
Communist Party Eban, A. 239
Egyptian 141, 172 'economic crossing plan' 150--1
Indian 65 Egypt
Comtians, French 195 Islam and 17-18, 167-90
concentration of Jewish Mubarak 162-3
people 223 Nasser 134-45: ideologies
Congress Party 97-8, 99-100, 138-41;modemisation 141-4;
103 state capitalism 137-8, 145
conspiracy mentality, Sadat 146-62: democracy
Iranians' 52 152-3; economic
Constitutional Revolution liberalisation 146-7, 148-9,
(1906-8) 35 150--1; peace 158-62; rentier
consumption, conspicuous, and economy 153-8
religion 179, 181 emigration from Egypt 157
contingency of ideologies 6-7 entrepreneurs, Egypt and 155-6
conversions to Islam, India 74-8 Eshkol, L. 235
corruption, Khomeini and 50 ethnicity, Muslim in
CUP 196-9 Pakistan 70--3
see also Young Turks Europe, Young Turks and 195-6

Damascus 122, 126-7 Fahmi, Ismail 150

Dars-e-Nizami 81 falsehood, Zionists' 242
Davar 237 Fanon, Franz 50
Dawn 29 faqih, Khomeini as 34, 38, 49-50
Dayan, Moshe 235, 237, 238, Fatah 128
247 Fawzi, Dr Hussein 139
Deir Y as in 231 Fazl-i-Husain, Sir 101
democracy, Egypt and 151-3 Fazlul Haq, A. K. 76
Democrat Party (Turkey) 205-6, Fedayin 44, 46
211-13, 214 15121 19
demonstrations Fiqh Ja'faria 79-80
Iranian Revolution 44-5 flexibility of ideologies 6-7, 46-7
Tel Aviv 222 Foucault, M. 20
demotic tendency of Islam 47 Free Officers 134-6, 169-70
Deobandi ulama 81-4, 86-7 freedom
dependency theory 2 Muslim Brethren and
Deutscher, I. 238 basic 114-15
discrimination, ethnic in of expression in Egypt see
Israel 232-4, 237-8 repression
distribution of income 214-15 French Revolution 32
DMC 240--1 fundamentalism, Islamic 92-7
Documents and Speeches on the and Iranian revolution 32-4
260 Index

fundamentalist Zionism 222-3, Hawwa, Sa'id 114

224-5, 240, 251-2 Hegazi, AbdelAziz 147, 150
see also nationalism (Israeli) Heikal, Mohammed 138, 141,
149
Galili, I. 238 Herald, The 29
Gan-Shmuel 235--6 Herut Movement 231, 240--1
Gandhi, M. K. 83, 97 Hidayatullah, Ghulam
Gangetic Plain Hussain 102
penetration of Islam 74-5 Hindu Renaissance 88--9
salariat 72 Histadrut 229, 230
Gankovsky, Y. 65 history, Khomeini's rejection
General Confederation of Unions of 33--4
see Histadrut House of al-Arqam 121
General Zionists 240 Hussein son of Ali 28, 47, 48
Genovese, E. 222
Ghalib, Mirza 89 Ibrahim, Anwar 21
Ghulam Admad Parvaiz 105 ideologies
Gokhale, G. K. 97 contingency of 6-7
Gordon, A. G. 224 variation in role 5-6
Gordon-Polanskaya, L. 65 what defines 13-15
Gramsci, A. 5, 32 ijma 92, 96-7
Great Britain ijtihad 87, 92, 95-6
and Israel 226 imam 116-17
Deobandi ulama and IMF 151
colonialism 81-2 import-substituting
Greater Israel Movement 237 industrialisation,
Greeks, Christian and Turkey 213-18
Turkey 192, 197-9 income distribution,
Grillparzer, F. 225 Turkey 214-15
Gujerat independence, Egypt's struggle
penetration of Islam 76-7 for 169
traders and Muslim India
movement 65 Islamic state and Muslim
state 66-8
Haaretz 238 Muslims: ideologies 78--105;
Habannakah, Shaikh Hasan 127 penetration of Islam 73-8;
Hadid, Marwan 128 salariat 68--73
Hafez, Abdel Halim 161 see also Pakistan
al-Hafiz, Amin 127 Indian Federal Union 103
Haganah 228, 230 Indian Nationalist Party 65
Hamah, violence in 130, 131 Indonesia 24-5
Hamdan, Gamal 139 Indus Plain 74-5
Haolam Haze 249 see also Pakistan
Hasan Ahmad Madani, industrialisation,
Maulana 83 import-substituting in
Hashomer Hatzair 228, 235, 236 Turkey 213
Hassan son of Ali 47 inequality
Hassan, Wazir 98 Egypt 157-8, 188--9
Hawran 126-7 Iran 40--1
 Index 261

infitah 150--1, 153 Maududi and 93

capitalists and 156, 159 Muslim state and 66--8
intellectuals, Egyptian Islamic Tendency
and Islam 182-3 Movement 19--20
restricted 144 Israel 222-53
Iqbal, Mohammad 91-2, 95, fundamentalism:
101-2 government 240--2;
Iran growth 232-6
growth of nationalism 10, nationalism 242-4: class
11-13 244-6; emotions 248-50;
Islamism encouraged by external support 247-8;
suppression 17 paradoxes and future 250--3;
Iranian Revolution (1978-9) political parties 246--7
causes: international Palestinian Arabs 232-4,
context 51-4; Islam 45-51; 237-8
monarchy politically weak war with Egypt 144, 149--50,
41-3; opposition forces 43--5; 158-61, 240
rapid uneven economic Zionism(s) 222-32
development 39-41 Istanbul University 204
course 36--9
interaction of traditionalism and Jabotinsky, Vladimir 224, 226,
modernity 31-6, 55-6 227, 230
Iraq 56, 57 Jadid, Salah 127-8
Irgun Tzvai Leumi 230, 231 Jalal, A. 104
'Isam a!-' Attar 116, 122, 128 Jamaat-e-Islami 64, 66, 92-7
Islahi, Maulama 96 Jamiat-ul-Ulama-e-Hind 66, 84
Islam Jamiat-ul-Ulama-e-Islam 66, 84,
and secularism 9-13, 14-15 86--7
Egypt 148, 162, 175-90 J amiat-ul-Ulama-e-Pakistan 86--7
India: fundamentalist 92-7; Jewish national home 223, 226
modernist 87-92; penetration varied interpretation 227-8
74-7; positions 78-80; Jinnah, Mohammed Ali
traditionalist 80--7 commanding personality 67-8
Iranian Revolution 45-51, Khilafat movement 83
55-6 Muslim movement 65, 77,
Pakistan 105-10 97-105
reified force 1-2 Jinnah-Sikander Pact (1936) 101
Syria see Muslim Brethren julahas 82
Turkey: banned 201-2; taken JUI see Jamiat-ul-Ulama-e-Islam
up by bourgeoisie 207-11, July Revolution 133, 134
217, 219 June War (1967) 144, 145, 236--8
variable strength 15-30 JUP see
/slami-1amiyat-e- Tulaba 95 J amiat -ul-Ulama-e-Pakistan
Islamic Liberation Party 19 Justice Party 214, 218
Islamic Republic, Khomeini's
concept 50 Karmiel 233
opposition to 56 Kasravi, Ahmed 10
Islamic socialism 112 Katzenelson, Bert 227, 228
Islamic state Kemalism 201, 208, 210
262 Index

see also Ataturk Maloney, C. 88

Kepel, G. 18 Manifesto of Independence
Kermani, Aqa Khan 10 (1948) 232
Khaksars 80 Mapai 231, 234
Khan, Syed Ahmad, Sir 10, Mapam 231, 234, 249
89-91 market liberalism,
khatibs 117-18 Turkey 206--7, 211-13
Khilafat movement 83, 97, 99 Marriott, M. 75
Khomeini, Ayatollah Ruhollah Maududi, Maulana 66, 92-3,
emergence as leader 44, 48-51 95-6
Iranian Revolution 36--9 Meir, Golda 237, 238
legitimising power 7, 33-4, 'men of religion'
49-50 Syrian 115-19
Muslim Brethren and 113-14 see also ulama
Pahlavis as usurpers 42 Mian Tufail Mohammed 95
popularity 22-3, 28, 29-30 middle class
regime established 57 alienation in Iran 42-3
undermining army 43 see also bourgeoisie; salariat
US and 54 Middle East Supreme
Khrushchev, N. S. 140, 142 Command 134
Kopf, D. 89 Miritt Butros Ghali 135
Krishak Proja Party 76 moderate Zionism
confrontation with
labour movement, Israel 229, fundamentalists 226--32
240, 247 defiant 241-2
see also Histadrut end of ideology 250-1
landed magnates, Muslim 68, future 251-3
100-3 government adopting
lawyers' associations, nationalism 232-40
Pakistan 28-9 poor in crises 248-9
Lebanon, Syrian intervention universalism 222-3, 225-6
in 129 modernisation, Western model in
legitimacy, political Egypt 141-4, 152-3
Islam and 7 modernisation theory 2
Khomeini and 7, 33-4, 49-50 modernism, Islamic 89-92
Pahlavi regime 42 modernity
Zia regime in search Iranian Revolution 35-6, 55
of 108-10 Khomeini and 50-1
Lenin, V. I. 65 tradition and in Egypt 136--7
Liaquat Ali Khan 106 Mohammed Ali 137
Likud party coalition 240-1 Mojahidin 46
List, F. 143 monistic Zionism see
Louis XVI, King 41 fundamentalist Zionism
Lucknow Pact (1916) 97 Mosaddeq, Mohammad 36, 46
mosque building programme,
Mahmud, 'Abd el Halim 178 Egypt 184--6
Majithia, Sunder Singh, Sir 101 Movement for the Restoration of
Malaysia 20-2, 23 Democracy 29
Index 263

MTI 19-20 Nasser, Gamal Abdel

Mubarak, H. 18 Muslim Brethren and 122
realism 162-3 nationalism 14-15
Mubarak, Mohammad a!- 115 regime 13~5
muftis 117, 119 Nasserism 152, 169-74, 177,
muhajirs, Sindhi movement 179-80
and 94-5, 108 National Awami Party 107
Mulk, Mohsin-ul 98 National Progressive Unionist
Mulk, Vigar-ul 98 Party 161
mullahs 116 National Salvation Party 217
mureeds 85-6 nationalism
Muridiya 24 Egypt 136, 138-9, 148
Muslim, The 29 India 70, 82-3
Muslim Brethren Iran 11, 50
Egypt: popularity 175; Israel: class-based 245-6;
proscription 176; degeneration due to 243-4;
re-emergence 152, 189; emotions and 249-50;
release by Sadat 148; sheikhs growth of 232-4;
179; suppression non-Zionist solution 253;
170, 172 policy of extreme 237-40
human rights 18 secular 10
Syria: Ba'th 12~31; secular Muslim (Pakistan)
history 121-6; programme 97-105
and ideas 112-15; roots Turkey 11-12, 197-9, 209,
115-19; small traders 217-18
119-20 Nationalist Action Party 217-18
Yemen 17 Naveed-e-Fikr (Sibte Hassan) 105
see also Qutb, Sayyid Nicholas II, Emperor 41
Muslim Chamber of Nigeria 20, 22-4
Commerce 77 North Yemen Republic 16, 17
Muslim League Egypt and 142, 143, 144
Gujeratis and 65 Numeiry, Jaafar 26
Jinnah and 97-105
Khilafat movement 83 occupied territories, Egypt's, by
Muslim state 6~8 Israel 144, 237-8
seized by salariat 78 October War (1973) 128, 149,
ulama 84 158
'Muslim Nation' see Pakistan oil
Muslim Renaissance 88-92 as Arab weapon 150
Muslims Iran and 39-40, 53
Indian formation of opening, economic of Egypt see
society 73-8; ideologies infitah
78-97; salariat and oppositional ideologies 5-6
ethnicity 68-73 organised labour in
Turkish 197, 198 Turkey 215-16, 218
Mustafa Kamil 10 Oriental Jews in Palestine 229,
240, 246
Nahda movement 13~7 Osman, Osman Ahmed 156, 159
264 Index

Osman, Rashad 156 Prarthna Samaj 88

Ottoman Empire 191, 192, 196, productivisation in Israel 223-4
199 progressive Islamists 19
property, Israeli expropriation of
Pahlavi, Mohammad Reza Arab 233-4, 238
ideology 14--15 proscriptions in Turkey 203-4
Iranian Revolution 36-9 prosperity, peace and in Egypt
political weakness 41-3 159
reliance on foreign support 53 provincial magnates, Muslim 68,
Pakistan 100-3
ethnic identities 70-1 Public Debt Administration 194
formation 103-5 Punjab
Islam in 25-6, 105-10 Islam into 76
'Muslim Nation' 66-8 Jinnah-Sikander Pact 101-2
Pakistan movement 64--8 salariat 71, 72, 73
Pakistan People's Party 29, 107 Punjabis, dominant in Pakistan
Palestine 105, 108
Egypt and 139
Jewish national home 223; qadis 117, 119
Qutb, Sayyid 186, 187
Arabs against 226-7,
228--30, 237-8 Rafi Ahmad Kidwai 66
market for Damascene traders Rajai, Mohammad Ali 38
122 Ram Mohan Roy 88, 89-90
Syrian intervention against Rashid Rida, Muhammad 10
129 realism, Egypt and 162-3
see also PLO reformism
Palestinian Research Centre 145 Islamic 10
Palmyra 131 Turkish bureaucrats and 193-4
pan-Turanianism 10 refugees, Israel's creation of
Parliament, Syrian pre-Ba'th Arab 232-3
123-6 regression, Iranian Revolution
Parvaiz, Ghulam Admad 105 and 33
PAS 21-2 religion
Pasha, Mustafa El Nahas 134 men of see men of religion
peace, Egypt and 158-62 over-emphasis on 1-2
Peres, S. 241, 247 see also Islam; Muslim
Pherozeshah Mehta, Sir 97 Brethren; Zionism
Philosophy of the Revolution. The rentier economy in Egypt 153-8
(Nasser) 139 repression in Egypt 144, 145,
Pirbhai, Sir Adamjee 77-8 160-1, 172
pirs 84-6 Republican People's Party
PLO, destruction in Beirut 241 and economy 214
Poalei-Zionists 224 and organised labour 215-16
populism in Turkey 210-13 single party regime 203, 204-6
power restorationism in Turkey 194--5
cities and 4--5 Return, Law of (1950) 232
ideologies of 5-6 Revisionist Party 227, 228--9,
PPP see Pakistan People's Party 229-31
Index 265

Reza Shah 10, 11, 12-13, 42 shaikhs

right-wing currents in Egyptians and 179
Turkey 217-18 see also ulama
riots Shakhsiyat Masr (Gamal
in Egypt 153, 154 Hamdan) 139
see also strikes; student revolts Sharett, M. 234-5
Rogers Plan 145 Sharia courts, Pakistan 109
Rothschild, Baron Edmond Shariati, Ali 27, 50
de 159 Sharriat Madari, Ayatollah
Rostow, E. 143 Kazem 44
Robinson, F. 98, 99 Sharon, A. 240, 241
Rosenthal, E. I. J. 105 Shi-ism 47-8
Russian Revolution 32 Pakistan 27-8, 79-80
Russian War (1877-8) 194 as-Siba'i, Mustafa 116, 122
Sibte Hassan, S. 105
Sabri Abdallah, Ismail 150 Sikander Hayat Khan, Sir 101-2
Sadat, Anwar al- Sinbad al-masri (Fawzi) 139
assassination 162 Sindh
Egyptians' perception of 17-18 Jinnah and 102
Free Officer 180 salariat 71, 73, 76
peace with Israel 158-61 Sindhi movement 107-8
regime 146-9, 177-9; and Sirat-e-Faridiyah (Syed Ahmad
Islam 184--6 Khan) 90
Sajjada Nashins 84-5 Skocpol, T. 43
Salafiya movement 10 socialism
Salah ash-Shash 115 Egypt and 140-1
Salah-el-Din (film) 139 Islamic 112, 175
salariat, Muslim 67, 68-70 Socialist Labour Party 161
and Muslim ethnicity 70-3 Somoza, Anastasio 238
and the Muslim League 98-9, Stalin, J. 50
100-1 strikes, Iranian Revolution 37,
religious reform movements 45
and 90 student revolts, Egypt 145, 146,
Salimullah Khan, Nawab 99 147-8
Sapir, P. 239 student radical Islam 22-3
secular Muslim Suez Canal Company 135
nationalism 97-105 Suez Canal Crossing (1973) 145,
secularism 149, 177
and religion 7, 14; Islam 9-13 sufi shaikhs see pirs
concept excluded in Iran 46, Sufism 175, 181-2
55-6 Sumatra, West 24-5
Turkey 210, 219 Sunni Islam 47-8
Sedki, Aziz government 146-7 Muslim Brethren 113-15,
Senegal 24 126-7, 129-30
Senghor, L. 24 Pakistan 28, 80
Shabbir Ahmad Usmani, ulama 81-7
Maulana 66 Syed, G. M. 102
Shahin, Yussef 161 Syria
266 Index

and Egypt 142, 176 Deobandi and Barelvi 80--7;

Islamism 25 doctrine attacked 91-2
see also Muslim Brethren Ottoman 208
see also men of religion
Tabenkin, J. 227 Urn Khalthum 161
taqlid 81, 91 Unionist Party 101
Tal az-Za'tar camp 129 United Arab Republic 122
takfir wa higra 186--8 renamed Egypt 148
Taylor, E. 159 United Provinces see UP
Tel Aviv 222 universalism
Third immigration 226 and moderate Zionism
Third World countries and 225--6, 230
socialism 140 and nationalism 232-4, 235-40
Tijaniya 24 UP
Tobacco Protest (1891) 35 penetration of Islam 75- 6
towns, upheaval in Turkish 216 salariat 71 tab, 72
traders, Syrian 117-18, 119-20, Uqlah, 'Adnan 130
128 USA
tradition and Iranian Revolution 51,
and modernity: Egypt 136--7; 53-4
Iran 35-6, 55 and Turkey 205
Sadat and 148, 184-6 Jews and Israel 247-8
traditionalist Islam 80--7 USSR
transformation, Iran's and Third World countries
socio-economic 39-41, 55 140
Tulu-e Islam 105 Egypt and 176
Tunisia 18-20 Israel's hostility to 248
Turkey 191-220 Uttar Pradesh see UP
creation of Republic 199-202
demise of liberal populism Vedic Samaj 88
211-13 Venizelos, E. 197
growth of nationalism 10, violence, Muslim Brethren
11-13 and 129-30
ideology of 1950 revolution
206--11
import-substituting Wafd Party
industrialisation 213-18 alliance with Muslim Brethren
19th-century reformism 193-5 18
statist authoritarianism 202-6 bourgeois 167
Young Turks 195-9 independence as aim 134
Turkish Hearts 203 nationalism 152
Turkish Women's Association secularist 176
204 Wavell, A. P. 102
Twelfth Imam, Khomeini as 49 Wealth Levy (1942) 204-5
'Two Nations Theory' 68, 70 Weber, M. 5
Weizmann, Chaim 226, 227, 228
'Ubayd, Hamad 127 women
ulama Egypt 18
Index 267

Malaysia 21 Yan lzala group 22

Nigeria 23 Young Turks 10, 193, 195-7
North Yemen 16 see also CUP
Pakistan 26-7, 109
partial liberation 11, 12
Tunisia 19-20 Zayn-ud-Din Khayr-ul-Lah 130
West Sumatra 25 Zhdanov, A. 140
Women's Action Forum 26-7 Zia Ul-Haq, General Mohammad
working class in Israel 245-6 26-9, 64-5, 108-10
World Bank 151 Zionism 2
World Zionist Organisation 225 clashes in Israel 222-53
Egypt and 139-40
Yalta arrangements 52 Zionist Labour Party 227-8