Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam

Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam, by Gilles Kepel. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002. viii + 376 pages. Notes to p. 429. Gloss. to 433. Index to p. 454. $29.95. Few books will so fully and comprehensively intimidate the reader with their depth, breadth, and mastery of argument as Gilles Kepel's new study of Islamist movements. In just 400 pages, Kepel has managed to tell the story of the origins, ideological history, and profile of groups and states which make up the world of "Political Islam." The book is truly a detailed account of the trail of political Islam. Jihad is divided into two parts, but is weak in one important area: it lacks a bibliography! The first of the two parts, a total of eight chapters, tells the tale of the rise of political Islam, tracing its progress across Asia and Africa. In addition to the wealth of information which it provides, Part I also illustrates the ability of Islamists to penetrate Muslim societies of very different cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. The author carefully assesses the impact of key political events - from the Six Day War to the Iranian revolution, from the Jihad in Afghanistan to the rise of the Islamic Salvation Front (Front islamique du salut, or FIS) in Algeria - in the Muslim world on the march of political Islam. By seeking, at each juncture, to evaluate the broader consequences of each of these events on political Islam, Kepel provides readers with a cumulative narrative of forces which have given shape and content to political Islam. He ends Part I with insights on the influence of political Islam in shaping Muslim opinion in one of its newly-adopted homes, Western Europe. In the course of analyzing the multifaceted impact of Muslim immigrants and of political Islam on Western European responses to political Islam, Kepel makes an important statement, and one which has been the source of controversy since Olivier Roy's `Failure of Political Islam' study. Kepel expresses the view that for all its successes, 1989 was to be "the high point of Islamist expansion" (p. 201). In the remaining seven chapters of the book (Part II), Kepel sets out to explain why 1989 may prove to have been the apex of "Islamist expansion." Much of the debate here is about the decline of political Islam since the early 1990s. The analytical focus is very much on the corroding impact on political Islam as a transnational movement of the terror tactics adopted by Islamist groups. Some of the chapter titles convey the message rather well: chapter 11, for example, is entitled "The Logic of Massacre in the Second Algerian War," chapters 12 and 13 are called, respectively, "The Threat of Terrorism in Egypt" and "Osama bin Laden and the War Against the West." These and the other four chapters in Part II make the argument that the Islamists' terror tactics not only turned public opinion against them, not only adversely affected their recruitment drive at home, but also galvanised the ruling regimes into action. The latter made very effective use of their security forces, unleashing them against Islamist strongholds in Egypt, Algeria, and Jordan. But, in addition, the state, with Western support, also attempted to fight the Islamists with economic tools: provision of aid to deprived regions, allocation of extra resources for education, job creation and infrastructural development, and of course, the deepening of economic reform and liberalization strategies in order to attract more private investment. …