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Social Forces 82.2 (2003) 863-865



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Why Muslims Rebel: Repression and Resistance in the Islamic World. By Mohammed M. Hafez. Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2003. 253 pp. Cloth, $52.00.

While Islamist activism grew over the past quarter century to become the most important social movement sector in the world, the study of these phenomena remained quarantined from the rest of social movement studies. The leading scholars in social movement studies ignored Islamist cases, and the specialists on these cases, by and large, ignored the theories developed for activism in North America and Europe. Mohammed M. Hafez's book Why Muslims Rebel is part of a recent trend to bridge this chasm from the Islamic studies side. Hafez and several other scholars are now drawing on and contributing to social movement theory through the study of Islamist activism.

Hafez focuses specifically on armed Islamist rebellions, which are relatively few in number, and not on Islamist activism more generally. His primary case studies are rebellions that emerged in 1992 in Algeria and Egypt. In each country, Islamist violence and the state repression that accompanied it were responsible for thousands of deaths; in both countries the regimes have (so far, at least) survived. Hafez complements these primary cases with short comparative vignettes on Islamist rebellions elsewhere: Afghanistan (Al-Qaeda), India (Kashmir), Jordan, Pakistan, Philippines (Mindanao and other southern regions), Russia (Chechnya), Tajikistan, and Tunisia.

The title of Hafez's book, Why Muslims Rebel, plays on Ted Robert Gurr's well-known book, Why Men Rebel (Princeton University Press 1970). The borrowing does not reflect a shared interest in relative deprivation; rather, Hafez's title highlights the broader question of whether theories developed through the study of democratic Western settings travel well to nondemocratic, non-Western settings, or whether Muslims rebel for reasons other than those [End Page 863] that motivate non-Muslims. Hafez argues that Islamist activism can be studied with the same theoretical tools as other forms of activism, and can even teach us a thing or two about activism in general.

Hafez structures his analysis around the three themes that have become a sort of holy trinity in social movement studies, though the labels are sometimes contested: political opportunity, organizational resources, and ideological frames. Hafez deals first with political opportunity, dividing it into two sub-themes: political exclusion and repression. Political exclusion has not by itself generated Islamist rebellion, he argues, pointing to the case of Tunisia; and partial inclusion has not prevented Islamist rebellion in Pakistan. By contrast, Hafez continues, repression of a certain sort — reactive instead of proactive, indiscriminate instead of targeted — has generated rebellion in numerous countries. Hafez presents quotations from movement leaders — often cited from Arabic sources for the North African cases — showing their awareness of a shift in repression and their ensuing radicalization.

This splitting of political opportunity represents a significant contribution to the study of the concept, though Hafez appears to soft-pedal the novelty of his approach, preferring to emphasize linkages with precursors in the literature. The argument might have been buttressed further with case studies of repression that worked, to complement the cases he presents of repression that backfired. (This is a tricky matter, though, since freedom-loving academics may not want to offer up recipes for authoritarian regimes.)

Next, Hafez discusses the organizational basis of Islamist rebellion. He argues that authoritarian regimes squelch all but decentralized, exclusionary oppositional groups, and that competition for adherents and leadership of the movement radicalizes these groups and makes it impossible for soft-liners to negotiate peaceful settlements. The evidence for Algeria fits the analysis perfectly: on several occasions, armed Islamist groups splintered, declared each other infidels, assassinated each other's leaders, and refused to abide by settlements proposed by less radical Islamists. This is a satisfying account of a perplexing spiral of violence. The analysis works somewhat less well in Egypt, where, as Hafez notes, radical groups declared a unilateral cease-fire in 1997-98. Hafez's approach seems to suggest a one-way tightening of the screws, and it is unclear how exclusionary...

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