Islamist Terrorism and Democracy in the Middle East, and: Between Religion and Politics (review)

Islamist movements around the world confront a wide array a possible strategies for achieving their objectives, from the use of violence and terrorism at one extreme to peaceful participation in politics at the other. Two thought-provoking new books examine what leads these movements' to adopt one particular strategy over others.

In her ambitious and challenging book Islamist Terrorism and Democracy in the Middle East, Katerina Dalacoura seeks to debunk the idea that Islamist terrorism is the product of a democratic deficit in the region, a form of the exclusion-radicalization hypothesis. According to Dalacoura, this idea developed into an academic and public policy consensus after 9/11 and motivated a dubious, decade-long US foreign policy of democracy promotion in the Middle East. Even after the recent wave of uprisings and revolutions that has swept several authoritarian regimes from power and continues to threaten other Middle Eastern despots, carefully testing the hypothesized relationship between authoritarianism and terrorism could have important implications for US foreign policy in the Middle East and beyond. If, as Dalacoura argues, authoritarianism does not in fact lead to terrorism and democracy is not a solution to it, policies aimed at denying terrorists' objectives so that terrorism becomes a less attractive method, rather than addressing its alleged causes, might well prove more effective at reducing the occurrence of terrorism than democracy promotion policies.

In her own words, Dalacoura's main argument is "that there is no necessary causal link between authoritarianism in the Middle East and Islamist terrorism" (p. 11). Unfortunately, this means that in order to demonstrate that authoritarianism is not a necessary cause of terrorism one need only give an example of terrorism in a non-authoritarian state. Few people (even the neoconservatives Dalacoura targets) would actually claim that if only there were no more authoritarianism, there would be no more terrorism. To contend, in contrast, that there are many, varied causes of terrorism, sometimes including repression and political exclusion, does not shed much new light on the issue.

In the first part of the book, Dalacoura lays out her argument about the tenuous relationship between democracy and terrorism and outlines other suggested causes of Islamist terrorism. Next, she explores the relationship between authoritarianism and Islamist terrorism through six case studies, dividing Islamist terrorism into three types: transnational (al-Qa'ida and Hizb al-Tahrir), national liberationist (Hamas and Hizbullah), and domestic (the Algerian Armed Islamic Group and the Egyptian Gama'a Islamiyya). In the second part of the book, through an additional six case studies, she examines the relationship between political inclusion and moderation, with respect to both Islamists in opposition (the Jordanian and Egyptian Muslim Brotherhoods and Tunisian al-Nahda) and Islamists in government (Turkey's Welfare and Justice and Development Parties and the Islamic Republic of Iran). Dalacoura relies primarily on secondary sources, as well as interviews with Islamists and expert observers, to flesh out her case studies and provide supporting evidence for her argument.

The chapter on transnational Islamist terrorism seems out of place and does little to support Dalacoura's main argument. Because these movements are transnational and authoritarianism is state-based, it is unclear which state's repression and exclusion should be examined as a possible cause of terrorist tactics. Instead, Dalacoura focuses on what she calls "rootlessness" as a proxy for the original independent variable, authoritarianism. She argues that "lack of political participation — the inevitable outcome of a transnational, rootless existence which cuts individuals off from the day-to-day give-and-take of politics" is a plausible explanation for Islamist movements' choice of terrorist tactics (p. 41). To refute that claim, she describes how al-Qa'ida and Hizb al-Tahrir are both "rootless" organizations, but only al-Qa'ida has turned to terrorism.

If one accepts that...