 |
| Volume XIV, Winter 2007, Number 4 |
| |
ABSTRACT
The Dialectics of Political Islam in North Africa
|
| |
| Clement M. Henry |
| |
Dr. Henry is a professor in the Department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin.
As the most intensively colonized region of the Muslim world for the longest periods of time, North Africa deserves special attention from U.S. policy makers and analysts concerned with the evolution of political Islam. Indeed, policy-making circles in the Pentagon were reported to be viewing "The Battle of Algiers" (1965) as the situation in Baghdad worsened. American policy makers need to understand the colonial and postcolonial dialectics of political Islam, now that the United States has become the principal imperial power. The film, however, gave them the wrong message – that one can beat down an urban insurgency – because the French could not win the war. Like our "global war on terror" (GWOT), it was essentially a political rather than a military contest.
In all of its many forms, ranging from reformist movements to transnational jihad, against "far" as well "near" enemies, political Islam must be viewed as a series of responses to the penetration of Western ideas and practices into Muslim societies; and North Africa, geographically closest to the European imperial powers, suffered the most penetration and has exhibited the greatest variety of responses over the past century. Now that the United States has replaced the Europeans as the principal hegemon and foil for political Islam, it is especially instructive to review its evolution in North Africa over the past half century and the mutation of some of its elements into "al-Qaeda of the Islamic Maghrib."
|
| |
|
