Understanding Islamism

...Another was Sudan's sweet-tongued "supreme guide" Hassan al-Turabi, who reacted to charges of egregious human rights violations in his African nation with a smile and denied every allegation...

...Miller watches Salah, a naturalized American, reveal the identity of Mousa Abu Marzook, Hamas' U.S.-based political leader, and others involved in the American operation...

...Most encouraging is the portrait of Jordan's enlightened King, who has ruled longer, and on balance more wisely, than any other Arab leader...

...Ninety-nine Names provides chapter-length tours of 10 countries—Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Algeria, Libya, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, and Iran?each representing a different facet of Islamic militancy...

...For all of its disheartening findings, Ninety-nine Names does inspire occasional optimism...

...In a chapter that contrasts the nonviolent Islamic movement in Israel with those in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, we learn how Israel uncovered the intricate fund-raising and training network Hamas operates in the United States to help support its charitable and terrorist activities in the territories and the Jewish State...

...It is a measure of her success that the reader will come away understanding why there is no quick-fix alternative to Islamism...

...Having agreed to turn informant in exchange for"a mere five years in prison," Salah taunts: "You hit Hamas every four to eight months or so...

...This issue was put on the international front-burner by the military coup in Algeria that aborted the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) victory in the 1991 election...

...Her new book neatly bridges the gap between facile journalism and detached, text-based scholarship...

...some are willing participants in terrorism...

...The book's subtitle is similarly on the mark...

...It may be doomed to disappoint its adherents, but it is not going to be made to disappear through suppression or propaganda or the introduction of some new ideology...

...Judith Miller carries no baggage, except her genuine affection for the region and its people...

...Especially fascinating is the detailed account of an Israeli security officer interrogating Muhammad Salah on February 11,1993...

...Miller describes "a giant sign spelling out 'Allah' in green neon letters" erected at the headquarters of President Hosni Mubarak's ruling National Democratic Party...

...Vignettes convey the deepening despair of the masses, the ideological soul-searching of the middle class and the anxiety of political leaders who lack remedies for theircountries' woes...

...One was the evidently "insane" Libyan leader MuammarQaddaffi, who during an interview took her on a wild tractor ride, and whose sexual advances she narrowly evaded fol lowing a later encounter...

...As Miller abundantly demonstrates, there is only one sure answer to its allure: addressing the pressing social, economic and political needs of Middle Eastern societies...

...Typically, Islamic welfare organizations have filled the vacuum...

...So in fact, you're teaching us...

...Now the government is little more than a big stick trying to beat out hostile flames...

...You bring in all the people and clean the area...

...Miller, a master of her craft who has spent a quarter of a century as a Middle East correspondent (mostly with the New York Times), largely confines herself to in-depth reporting...

...Her lament: "If Algeria taught me anything, it was that the terms 'moderate' and 'extreme' meant little as descriptions of the various players in the Islamic movement...

...Her natural sympathy is for those whose democratic triumph was denied, yet she recognizes that even though the FIS had promised to mesh Islam and democracy once elected, "The closer the FIS had gotten to achieving national power, in fact, the less moderate its statements had become...

...But the caveat is a quibble...

...As we read, the Middle East becomes more than that place where oil flows freely, Israel trounces Arabs, and crazies construct chemical weapons...

...varied and culturally distinct countries...

...The quandary arising from Islamists professing to respect democracy is dealt with too...

...Miller sees the King's nuanced policy as a model, but she reminds us that "the most salient variable [is] Hussein himself...

...Too often, the vision of Western analysts of the Middle East is clouded, if not distorted, by their strong personal affinities and prejudices...

...Nor would we accept invitations from most of her hosts...

...This successor-state to the Ottoman Empire has long been looked upon by Arab secularists as a model, however, and considering the possible repercussions of its succumbing to Islamization would, I think, have been useful...

...His Signposts, published in 1964, posited that many Arab leaders who called themselves Muslims were really nonbelievers, hence it was legitimate (if not obligatory) to overthrow them...

...Miller explains in her Introduction, because a book about Saddam Hussein she coauthored before the Gulf War landed her on the dictator's "eternal enemies" list...

...The growing pressure has produced self-defeating efforts by several regimes to promote their own "quiescent brand of Islam...

...Such attempts to "outdo the Islamists" in Egypt, she observes, have "created the very Islamic atmosphere that put secular individuals and institutions on the defensive...

...Qutb was sent to the gallows by Egypt's President Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1966, but his "shocking thesis" continues to reverberate throughout the Muslim world...

...So in essence she restricts herself to trying to determine who is more wrong...

...Cairo's poor and the relatively isolated residents of outlying areas have thus become loyal partisans of their new benefactors...

...Their most important intellectual parent was Brotherhood ideologue Sayy id Qutb...

...It is also an apt metaphor for her central theme: that the Islamic revivalism the world has witnessed since the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini took over Iran in 1979 is so varied as to defy categorization, or any obvious response...

...Talks with militants seeking power (or already possessing it) and their opponents humanize the conflict...

...Miller, who was the Times' Cairo bureau chief from 1983-85, points out that the presence of Egypt's government in the lives of its citizens during the days of Nasser began to steadily diminish after President Anwar Sadat's "capitalist opening...

...Hussein has had noteworthy success in drafting Islamic parties into the democratic process in a limited fashion, and thereby making their performance accountable to the public...

...On the relatively few occasions when she does pass judgment, we have already been presented with ample evidence supporting her opinions...

...And that teaches us to rebuild...

...The originally quietist Muslim Brotherhood, established in 1928 in Egypt, is rightly identified by the author as the organizational progenitor of today's militants...

...Miller is ambivalent about who is "right" in the former French colony, where the ongoing battle between a staunchly secularist government and militants has left as many as 40.000 dead...

...Then we have to rebuild...

...Reviewed by Hanan Cohen JUDITH MILLER'S intriguing title refers to the number of superlatives designating God in the Koran...

...the responses to them in...

...Miller, though, rejects the widespread presumption that religious fervor is the primary motivator of contemporary militancy...

...The author declares at the outset: "This book is my attempt to understand [Islamic] militants and...

...Miller takes us to many places we would normally not be keen about visiting...

...Her reason for skipping Turkey, she further notes, is that "developments there...

...Elsewhere supposedly co-opted Islamic mainstream leaders have become emboldened and increasingly independent...

...Granted permission by the late Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin to witness the proceedings via a hidden television camera...

...Across the Middle East, the failure of political leadership has led numerous professionals as well to join calls for a more "Islamic" government...

...The principal tools used in making the book's case are the insightful interview, the revealing anecdote and an unfailingly acute eye...

...Instead, she shows it is disillusionment—the unfulfilled promise of national independence, of pan-Arabism and even of outwardly Muslim rule?that drives people to what she labels "Islamism...

...seem to have had little impact on the Arab-oriented Middle East...

...Iraq is missing from these travels...