Learning From Moderate Governments' Approaches to Islamist Extremism

Summary

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[...] Taymiyya considers foreign threats a product of disunity in the Islamic world. [...] resisting invaders starts with strengthening the faith through a return to orthodoxy and ritual purity.12 The Islamic scholar's duty is to command what is good and to forbid what is evil.13 In practice, this takes the form of education and preaching (da 'wa).

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Learning From Moderate Governments' Approaches to Islamist Extremism

ACCORDING TO FIELD MANUAL (FM) 3.0, Operations, "Landpower is the ability - by threat, force, or occupation - to gain, sustain, and exploit control over land, resources, and people."1 When, in the aftermath of a conventional victory, the need arises for Army forces to control people during an occupation, it is useful to consider how and why the ousted enemy regime controlled the population in the first place. This question is especially important in Muslim countries, where Islamist militant organizations often are the predominant challenge to the government. Recent conflicts have increased the awareness that democracy is not "a kind of default condition to which societies revert" after a military victory over a repressive regime.2 On the contrary, the party that won the conventional fight seems to inherit the overthrown government's problem of controlling Islamist militant organizations. Several Muslim governments have over 50 years of experience in dealing with this threat, and their methods are worth studying. Westerners can learn a lot from moderate Arab government approaches to this problem.

This article briefly addresses the following:

* The two predominant Islamic schools of thought concerning the attitude of an individual towards his ruler.

* How Islamist militant organizations apply teachings of the more extremist schools of thought to challenge Muslim governments or foreign occupiers.

* How Muslim governments cope with this challenge.

* What happens when a conventional military victory disables these coping mechanisms.

* What important implications matter for stabilization operations aimed at controlling extremists.

Islamist militant organizations,...

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