MER Article Algeria's Crisis Intensifies The military-led regime in Algiers has abruptly terminated its halting year-long effort to initiate a “dialogue” with its Islamist opponents, with no sign of when discussions might be resumed. It appeared for a time that the “reconciliators,” led by President Lamine Zeroual, had won out over hard-line “eradicators” opposed to Arun Kapil • 17 min read
MER Article Islamism and Fundamentalism The Fundamentalism Project, directed by Martin Marty and Scott Appleby of the University of Chicago, has produced a three-volume study of politicized religion in the twentieth century. Fundamentalisms Observed, Fundamentalisms and Society and Fundamentalisms and the State collect articles by interna Saba Mahmood • 7 min read
MER Article Terrorism, Class and Democracy in Egypt During April 1994, armed actions of the radical Islamist opposition in Egypt achieved a new level of lethal efficiency. One Gama‘a Islamiyya (Islamic Group) hit squad killed Maj. Gen. Ra’uf Khayrat, who was responsible for conducting undercover operations against them; another assassinated the chief Joel Beinin • 5 min read
MER Article The Islamic Movement and the Palestinian Authority Bassam Jarrar, a leading Islamist thinker in the Occupied Territories, is a teacher of Islamic studies at UNRWA’s Teacher Training Center in Ramallah in the West Bank and a member of the board of trustees of the Union of Islamic Scholars. He was among the 415 Palestinians expelled by Israel in Decem Graham Usher • 6 min read
MER Article "Silencing Is at the Heart of My Case" When a group of Islamist lawyers filed a suit this summer to divorce a Cairo professor from his wife, against the couple’s wishes and without their knowledge, on the grounds that he was an apostate, the story got attention even in the Western media. But little attention was given to the intellectual Elliott Colla • 11 min read
MER Article The Egyptian Regime and the Left: Between Islamism and Secularism In the spring of 1992, Cairo University’s administration declined to elevate Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd from assistant to full professor in the Department of Arabic Language and Literature after a member of the promotions committee of the Faculty of Arts reported that he is an unbeliever. Abu Zayd’s Joel Beinin • 4 min read
MER Article Secularism, Integralism and Political Islam “The sheikh of al-Azhar should thank God profusely that the shari‘a is not in force in Egypt, for it it were he would certainly be in for a good flogging in punishment for smearing virtuous people,” wrote Farag Fawda in March 1988 -- thus contributing to a debate that had been raging since the begin Alexander Flores • 20 min read
MER Article Egypt's Islamists and the State It has been 20 years since the Egyptian state first unleashed the Islamists against the left. Today the Islamic upsurge has taken on dimensions far beyond state manipulation. The mid-term confrontation, marked by the assassination of Anwar al-Sadat in 1981, ended in a draw. Now, more than a decade later, Ahmed Abdalla • 9 min read
MER Article The Islamist Movements in the Occupied Territories Iyad Barghouti, professor of sociology at al-Najah University in Nablus, is the author of The Palestinian Islamic Movement and the New World Order (1992) and Islamization and Politics in the Palestinian Territories (1990). He spoke with Lisa Hajjar on May 5, 1993. How would you describe the appeal Lisa Hajjar • 8 min read
MER Article Islamist Notions of Democracy Most observers, in attempting to explain why the movement toward pluralism, liberalism and democracy has been relatively weak in the Arab world, have concluded that it must have something to do with culture, and more particularly with Islam. Growing interest and research in the subject have not shak Gudrun Kramer • 19 min read
MER Article The Islamist State and Sudanese Women The Islamist government in Sudan recently celebrated the third anniversary of the military coup that brought it to power by building a huge public park south of the Khartoum airport, featuring hundreds of hurriedly transplanted trees, bushes and flowers. The impressive determination and efficiency t Ellen Gruenbaum • 9 min read
MER Article For Another Kind of Morocco On September 13, 1991, after nearly 17 years in the prisons of His Majesty Hassan II, Moroccan activist Abraham Serfaty was released and expelled to France. This was not, to be sure, out of human rights considerations, or a measure of royal clemency: According to the Ministry of the Interior, an “in Miriam Rosen • 9 min read
