John P. Sullivan |
Review of Bernard Rougier, Everyday Jihad:
The Rise of Militant Islam among Palestinians in Lebanon.
Trans. Pascale Ghazaleh. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press,
2007. Pp. x, 333. ISBN 978-0-674-02529-5. |
Radicalization is a hot topic
in intelligence, national security, law enforcement, and
international relations circles these days. Policymakers and
security analysts are trying to understand the global allure of
Islamist extremism in order to contain its violent expression as
terrorism. While radicalization and the emergence of militant groups
are not new, understanding specifically of the Islamist case is
poor. Similarly, while many think tank reports attempt to fathom
Islamist radicalization, few get beyond the basics. Everyday
Jihad by Bernard Rougier is a welcome exception.
Rougier, a researcher in Middle
East Affairs at Sciences-Po in Paris, uses southern Lebanon as a
case study for understanding contemporary Islamist radicalization.
In doing so, he synthesizes academic research and fieldwork to
penetrate the mysteries of Lebanon's Palestinian refugee
communities. There are currently about 370,000 Palestinian refugees
in Lebanon. Rougier examines the lives and ideological evolution of
Palestinian nationalists, Shi'a and Sunni fundamentalists, and the
path toward salafist-jihadism in the refugee camps. The
interpretation of sacred texts is conditioned by unemployment,
poverty, despair and deliberate indoctrination to fuel global jihad.
The five Palestinian refugee
camps in Lebanon stem from the establishment of the State of Israel
in 1948: Burj al-Barajneh near Beirut; Nahr al-Barid near Tripoli;
Ain al-Helweh near Saida; and Rashidiyyeh and Burj al-Shamali near
Tyre. One camp in particular--Ain al-Helweh--is the focus of much of
this book. Islamism flourishes in these long-term settlements,
excluded as they are from the Lebanese mainstream. Rougier describes
this marginalization, the competition with Maronite Christians, the
impact of Israeli-Syrian conflict, the rise and decline of the
Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) as an ideological force, the
impact of the Intifadas in Israel, and Lebanon's civil wars.
Everyday Jihad is
divided into two major parts. Part One looks at the Salafist
dynamic, including the competition between Iranian Shi'a influence
(in part, via Hezbollah) and Sunni fundamentalism. Part Two looks at
the impact of civil war, Salafist proselytization (Da'wa),
and particularly the central place of Islamist Institutes, as well
as the role of the jihadi underground in forging the jihadist
vision. In addition, the book features a comprehensive conclusion, a
table of groups discussed, and ample notes to verify and expand upon
Rougier's findings.
The introduction examines the
political geography of Lebanon's Palestinian refugee camps. These
camps initially favored the nationalism expressed by the various
factions of the PLO,
especially Yassir Arafat's Fatah movement. After a series of
confrontations between Syria and the PLO, Palestinian groups were
marginalized, in order to limit their participation in
internal Lebanese politics. A weakened Fatah reduced challenges to
Syrian hegemony. After the 1990 war, the camps were subjected
to severe security measures. In addition, the Palestinian population
in the camps was dispersed to forestall any coordinated political
leadership.
Ain al-Helweh near Saida is the
most politically diverse member of the camp constellation. Built in
1949, it spans about 300 square miles and is home to an estimated
32,645 inhabitants. Until the 1982 Israeli invasion, Fatah
effectively governed Saida and its environs. When the Palestinian
factions evacuated the camp for points north, Islamists organized
its defense, building their resistance credentials. Groups close to
Iran and with a Khomenist orientation briefly filled the
political-military vacuum. This base of religious support in turn
weakened the PLO and its hold on nationalist politics. At the same
time, the camps effectively became ungovernable zones of poverty and
delinquency.
This authority vacuum also
attracted the first expressions of the Salafist ideology nurtured in
Peshawar, Pakistan, a staging area for Arab volunteers fighting
against the Soviet Union in the Afghan War of 1979–89. As a result,
Islamism steadily supplanted nationalism as a unifying force in the
camps. This included an Islamist duality between Hezbollah and
emerging salafist-jihadism with an emphasis on jihad as an
individual duty. The concomitant Islamic sense of belonging
strengthened the development of a closed society:
By looking closely at the jihadist networks in the Ain al-Helweh
camp, it becomes possible to understand the real-time production of
the salafist-jihadist ideology, the way preachers played a decisive
role in reframing social reality exclusively in religious
categories, and the deep changes that these networks effect in self
and other (21).
The replacement of the
influence of traditional Sunni schools of jurisprudence by
salafist-jihadism laid the ideological foundations for violent
action in the camps during the 1990s:
Rhetorical violence has paved the way for physical violence, whose
legitimacy is trumpeted through the teaching and preaching networks
....
It was not an accident that a video aired by al-Qa'ida in September
2006 showed a young Saudi--one of the nineteen operatives who died
on September 11--dedicating a poem to "Abu Mahjin the Palestinian,"
the main leader of the Ain al-Helweh jihadist network (22).
The shift from Iranian to Sunni
influence is examined in chapter 1. The ideological influence of the
Iranian Revolution led to the displacement of the PLO and Fatah by
Shaykhs linked to Hezbollah and Iran. Rougier provides a detailed
description of the birth of Palestinian Islamism and the subsequent
transition from Iranian to salafist-jihadist tutelage. In the camps,
Hezbollah was hampered by a combination of nationalist, pro-Fatah,
pro-Arafat loyalties and Shi'a-Sunni sectarian differences.
Salafist-jihadi Islamists exploited these factors to secure their own
ascendancy. A jihadist core resulted. An example is the clandestine
Usbat al-Ansar militia in Ain al-Helweh: "The network may be
decentralized, but it is not fragmented: despite the names that
distinguish them, members share an ideological core, a militant,
jihadist conception of Islam" (65).
The ideological influence of
Peshawar on Ain al-Helweh is amply detailed in chapter 2, which
treats the influence of Abdallah Azzam, films of whose martyrdom
dominate student life and the influential Muslim Student Union.
Saudi influences, the growth of al-Qa'ida, and the insertion of
religious parties in the camps are also discussed. Rougier
considers key religious parties that identify with the global
Islamist movement, including the Combatant Islamic Movement
(al-Haraka al-Islamiyya al Mujahida) and the Partisan's League
(Usbat al Ansar). Chapter 3 expands this discussion to illustrate
the struggle for primacy against traditional non-jihadist movements.
The profound influence of the
civil war is a pervasive topic of Part Two. Chapter 4 describes
inter-group conflict in the struggle to control the Ain al-Helweh
camp. Chapter 5, "Topics for Preaching," explores the deep influence
of teachers and preachers, stressing the writings of Egypt's Sayyid
Qutb. The role of Islamic institutes, and of their students and
faculty as an Islamist vanguard is the subject of chapter 6, while
chapter 7 is devoted to underground jihad, with attention to the solidification of Islamist thought as a dominant influence in the
camps and an examination of network development.
In his book's conclusion,
Rougier highlights the interplay between global and local jihadism:
Whatever the nature of the ties between Islamists in Lebanon--or
some of them--and Osama bin Laden or Ayman al-Zawahiri, the
salafist-jihadist phenomenon exists autonomously: its development
does not depend on "international terrorist networks" (275).
This is an important
observation. Privatized utopia and violence replaced reliance on
states. Where once Palestine was central to a Palestinian
national struggle, it is now the locus of a global Islamist
struggle. As a police officer dedicated to understanding the causes
and proliferation of political violence, I find the underlying group
dynamics that triggered and sustained this shift essential to
understanding the emergence and spread of extremist groups.
Rougier's contribution here is significant.
The rich--albeit sometimes
dense--documentation of Everyday Jihad provides valuable
insight into Lebanon's contested political space and shows how
radical religious ideology has replaced traditional nationalism as a
driver of jihadist networks. This illumination of the intricate
social relationships used to seize political control and stimulate
violence on a global plane is a valuable contribution to our
understanding of Islamist extremism and contemporary political
violence. Students of the Middle East, strategic analysts seeking to
understand the Shi'a-Sunni divide, and counterterrorism analysts
will find this book a useful and thoughtful counterbalance to the
many sensationalized accounts that cross their desks.
Emergency Operations Bureau
Los Angeles Sheriff's Department
jpsulliv@lasd.org
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