Sheik Omar does not speak for all Muslim fundamentalists; many of them recoil from his vulgar rhetoric and violent teachings. But he has caught the desperate mood of millions of Muslims, devoutly religious people with gigantic grievances against their own governments and the non-Muslim world. His brand of militant fundamentalism has shaken political and social life in the Islamic world as violently as the explosion in the World Trade Center. “This is a movement of the alienated, the crippled and the dispossessed,” says James Bill of the College of William and Mary, an expert on Islamic populism. “They feel they’re at the bottom of the social structure and on the receiving end of some terrible things.” In countries like Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia, they have seen their secular governments wallowing in corruption, repression and economic stagnation. Overseas, they see Christians murdering Muslims in Bosnia and Hindus killing Muslims in India-while the world stands by. They see United Nations sanctions enforced against Iraq but not against Israel. They see themselves as perennial victims.
So far, Muslim fundamentalism is not a monolithic movement, despite efforts by the Shiites in Iran to enlist the larger Sunni sect in their violent crusade against the “Great Satan” and its Zionist “stepchild.” Most fundamentalist terrorism is not high tech or centrally controlled or state sponsored; it consists of small, intensely clannish gangs that scheme in manic isolation and are more adept in the use of guns and knives than elaborate explosives. They are dangerous because of their zealotry, not their sophistication.
Egypt has become fertile ground for the fundamentalists. With an exploding population and a sputtering economy, it cannot provide enough employment, even for educated men. Thousands of college graduates are jobless or underemployed; they go into middle age without wives, because Egyptian tradition requires the purchase of a house or apartment before marriage. But when a young man turns fundamentalist, he no longer needs the expensive suits and blue jeans, the television set and car demanded by his Westernized peers. All he needs is a simple robe, a Koran and a willingness to submit to God’s will. Even the marriage problem can be solved; fundamentalists reject the obligation to buy a home first. Islam also provides a handy villain to explain the ills of Egyptian society: the nefarious influence of the West.
Egypt’s long-established Muslim Brotherhood fights its battles in the political arena, but on the radical fringe, splinter groups have turned to terrorism. They assassinated President Anwar Sadat in 1981. Two weeks ago, on the same day as the trade-center explosion, terrorists set off a homemade bomb in the center of Cairo, killing three people, one a Western tourist. Sheik Omar’s faction, the radical Gamaa al-Islamiya (Islamic Group), preaches openly against the state and has admitted to shooting at tourist buses and riverboats.
The government has responded with severe repression, arresting thousands of men-including boys as young as 8-and increasingly resorting to torture, according to international human-rights monitors. But fundamentalist terror groups are almost impossible to track or penetrate. “They use a kind of jungle drum to pass on orders, which are never written down,” says a former Western diplomat in the Middle East. “No outsider can aspire to joining overnight. It would take years and years of Islamic devotion in a particular neighborhood for you to be tapped on the shoulder some evening.”
For years the United States, Israel and the conservative Arab states of the Persian Gulf actually encouraged Sunni fundamentalism, hoping to offset such radical forces as Iran and the Palestine Liberation Organization (NEWSWEEK, Feb. 15). But now some of the Sunnis are biting the hands that fed them, undermining pro-Western regimes. Iran has exploited the opening, financing fundamentalist movements in Sudan, Jordan, Algeria, Egypt and Tunisia. U.S. intelligence sources say Iranian Revolutionary Guards and their Hizbullah allies in Lebanon have provided paramilitary training to members of Hamas, the militants in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Sunni fundamentalism remains a fragmented force, and parts of it still do not advocate violence against the West. But if secular Arab governments continue to repress their own people-and provide them with corrupt, incompetent leadership-the ranks of the alienated and oppressed are sure to grow and coalesce. Islamic fundamentalism could yet be a Western nightmare come true.
