Islamist Bubbles.

• Author: Kramer, Martin
• Position: Books

Gilles Kepel, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam, translated by Anthony F. Roberts (Cambridge: Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 2002), 416 pp., $29.95.

Roland Jacquard, In the Name of Osama bin Laden: Global Terrorism and the Bin Laden Brotherhood, translated by George Holoch (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002), 293 pp., $18.95 (paper).

CHRISTOPHER Ross has been in the news. After September 11, the State Department summoned the former U.S. ambassador to Syria and Algeria back into service as "special coordinator for public diplomacy and public affairs." On November 3, he appeared on Al-Jazeera satellite channel to present America 's case--in Arabic. (As one former diplomat put it, "the scuttlebutt around the locker room was always that Chris was the man in terms of being able to wrap significant thoughts in good Arabic." (1)) With his many years of foreign service in Beirut, Damascus, Algiers and Fez, Ross is credited with knowing the currents of Arab opinion, and how best to navigate them.

Consider, then, this prediction Ross made at a conference of public affairs officers from the State Department's Near Eastern Affairs bureau in September 1993:

I predict, regretfully, that the region is fated to witness a wave of Islamist revolutions, successful or failed, over the next decade. To me, this is a likelihood with which we must come to grips. The regimes in place lack motivation, a vision for change, and support. The democrats have vision and motivation, but lack support. The Islamists combine all three--motivation, vision, and support. . . . Left to their own devices, the region's discredited regimes are likely to try to muddle through and repress opposition, its budding democrats are likely to fall on their faces, and its extreme Islamists can be expected to become the next agents of change. (2)

There is still a year to go before the expiry date of this prediction, but the Islamists had better hurry up if it is to come true. In the nine years since Ross gazed into his crystal ball, there has been no wave of Islamist revolutions. There hasn't been even a single one.

To the contrary: the "discredited regimes" of which Ross spoke have pushed the Islamists out of the political arena. They did it in flagrant disregard of Human Rights Watch, but with meticulous regard for the basic axiom of Middle Eastern politics: rule or die. The most dangerous of the Islamists--Osama bin Laden and crowd--found refuge in remote corners of east Africa and south Asia. From there, they did unfurl terrorist tentacles into Europe and America. But Islamists no longer threaten any of the region's rulers. Secretary of State Colin Powell, writing after September 11, announced that Americans and Muslims share "a chilling appreciation of common vulnerability to terrorism." (3) This was a politic and sonorous remark, no doubt; but the truth is that no Middle Eastern state except Israel shares America's sense of vulnerability to terrorism. The Arab states solved their terrorism problem by force, notably by expelling Islamists to places like Afghanistan where they became somebody else's problem--above al l, America's.

This is clear in retrospect. It was not clear at the time, and if an experienced Arabist like Ross anticipated Islamist revolutions, what must his less-knowledgeable listeners have concluded? In the media and the journals, a raft of experts beat the same drum: the United States would have to "come to grips" with an inevitable tide of Islamist revolutions, presumably by coddling those Islamists who could not be intimidated or bribed. A cottage industry grew up around this estimate of Islamism, arguing that it could be tamed through engagement, dialogue and, perhaps, selected policy adjustments. It is no small miracle that key Western policymakers never quite bought the theory. If they had, Ross's prediction might have become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

ENTER GILLES Kepel, a French scholar at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques in Paris. Kepel speaks fluent Arabic, acquired during years of residence and research in Egypt. Islamism has always been his forte, demonstrated in two...