tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/gamal-abdel-nasser-25271/articlesGamal Abdel Nasser – The Conversation2023-12-07T18:29:49Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2180092023-12-07T18:29:49Z2023-12-07T18:29:49ZHolocaust comparisons are overused – but in the case of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel they may reflect more than just the emotional response of a traumatized people<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562232/original/file-20231128-17-5wy2xb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=9%2C9%2C3285%2C2183&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">On Oct. 12, a sign in Tel Aviv says in Hebrew, 'No more words,' near candles lit both in memory of those killed in the Hamas massacres and for the hostages taken to the Gaza Strip. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/sign-saying-in-hebrew-no-more-words-near-candles-that-were-news-photo/1720743293?adppopup=true">Amir Levy/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many observers have referred to the massacre of Israelis by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, as the deadliest attack against the Jewish people in a single day “since the Holocaust.” </p>
<p>As scholars who have spent <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C22&q=AJ+Patt&btnG=">decades studying the history</a> of <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=3-F0XCoAAAAJ&hl=en">Israel’s relationship with the Holocaust</a>, we have argued that the Holocaust should remain unique and not be compared with other atrocities. We have written against <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/06/19/holocaust-education-museum-greene/">simplistic Holocaust analogies</a>, like comparing mask and vaccine mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic to the Nazi persecution of the Jews, or the practice of labeling political opponents “Nazis.” Both seem to trivialize the memory of what is known as the Shoah, the Hebrew word for “catastrophe.”</p>
<p>But the <a href="https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R47754">Oct. 7 massacres perpetrated by Hamas</a> changed our thinking.</p>
<h2>Israeli identity and the Holocaust</h2>
<p>Over the past 75 years, the collective memory of the Shoah has assumed a central place in Israeli national identity. The memory of the Holocaust has increasingly become the prism through which Israelis understand both their past and their present relationships with the Arab and Muslim world. </p>
<p>Israelis saw the Holocaust’s threat of annihilation echoed in many situations. In 1967, there was the waiting period before the Six-Day War, when the Egyptian leader <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/the-1967-six-day-war-and-its-difficult-legacy/a-39117590">Gamal Abdel Nasser threatened to “wipe Israel off the map</a>.” It was there in the trauma of the Yom Kippur War in 1973 and the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Yom-Kippur-War">unexpected, simultaneous attacks by Egypt and Syria</a>. When <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/israeli-raid-against-iraqi-reactor-40-years-later-new-insights-archives">Israel destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981</a>, Prime Minister Menachem Begin justified it with the explanation that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1981/06/10/world/prime-minister-begin-defends-raid-iraqi-nuclear-reactor-pledges-thwart-new.html">“there won’t be another Holocaust in history</a>.” </p>
<p>This association has only strengthened in the past 40 years with the <a href="https://www.bakerinstitute.org/events/2323/">1982 Lebanon war</a>, <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/11/20/18080066/israel-palestine-intifadas-first-second">two Palestinian uprisings, known as intifadas</a>, and with the present <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/smoldering-iran-nuclear-crisis-risks-catching-fire-2023-05-05/">threat posed by a nuclear Iran</a>. </p>
<p>All these events evoke the memory of the Holocaust and are understood within the collective memory of threats of annihilation. This phenomenon represents, for many Israelis, an inability to separate their current situation from the vulnerability of the diaspora Jewish past. And this conflation of past and present continues to play a central role in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1386/iscc.7.2.123_1">Israeli politics, foreign policy and public discourse</a>. </p>
<p>The frequent comparisons between the Oct. 7 massacres and the Shoah are more, we believe, than just the default associations of a people submerged in <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-generation-of-postmemory/9780231156523">Holocaust postmemory</a>, which refers to inherited and imagined memories of subsequent generations who did not personally experience the trauma. In seeking to describe the depths of evil they witnessed on Oct. 7, Israelis were making more than just an emotional connection between the Holocaust and the Oct. 7 massacres.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562231/original/file-20231128-15-x8x3xx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man outside holding a placard that says that 7th October was the day that the most Jews have been killed since The Holocaust." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562231/original/file-20231128-15-x8x3xx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562231/original/file-20231128-15-x8x3xx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562231/original/file-20231128-15-x8x3xx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562231/original/file-20231128-15-x8x3xx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562231/original/file-20231128-15-x8x3xx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562231/original/file-20231128-15-x8x3xx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562231/original/file-20231128-15-x8x3xx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A protester holds a placard during a demonstration on Oct. 9 in London, outside of the prime minister’s residence.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/protester-holds-a-placard-which-states-that-7th-october-was-news-photo/1715821218?adppopup=true">Photo by Vuk Valcic/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To help explain the logic of that connection, specific and reasonable comparisons can be made to better understand Hamas’ traumatic and devastating massacre of Israelis. Below are a few of the many parallels:</p>
<h2>1. Ideology and identification</h2>
<p>Just as the Nazis aimed to annihilate the Jews, Hamas and affiliated terrorist organizations share the same objective: the destruction of Jews. <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp">The 1988 Hamas charter</a> refers to “Jews” and not “Israelis” when calling for the destruction of these people.</p>
<p>While the <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/hamas-2017-document-full">2017 Hamas covenant</a> states that Hamas does not seek war with the Jews, but instead “<a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/doctrine-hamas">wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine</a>,” the slaughter of Jews – many of whom were peace activists – in October has proven otherwise. </p>
<p>The national struggle of Hamas is predicated upon the conquest of land and elimination of the Jews. Hamas officials have subsequently promised to <a href="https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/article-771199">repeat Oct. 7 again and again</a> until Israel is annihilated.</p>
<h2>2. Indoctrination</h2>
<p>While the racial antisemitism of the Nazi regime differs from the antisemitism employed in the fundamentalist Islamic version of Hamas, <a href="https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/history/articles/the-nazi-roots-of-islamist-hate?ref=quillette.com">antisemitism is a key part of the struggle for both ideologies</a>. Indoctrination from an early age aimed at the dehumanization of the Jews is a key part of both how <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/indoctrinating-youth">Nazis taught young German students during the Third Reich</a> and in how <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/04/world/middleeast/to-shape-young-palestinians-hamas-creates-its-own-textbooks.html">Hamas educates children in Gaza</a>. </p>
<h2>3. Methods of killing and survival</h2>
<p>The horrors of Oct. 7 echo the brutal tactics Nazis used during the Holocaust, including not only murder but cruel humiliation of the victims. The testimonies of Oct. 7 survivors <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-forensic-teams-describe-signs-torture-abuse-2023-10-15/">reveal the torture</a> of parents and children, sometimes in front of each other, including <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/11/17/world/israel-investigates-sexual-violence-hamas/index.html">rape and sexual violence</a>, mocking and lingering in the murder process as the terrorists <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-shows-foreign-press-raw-hamas-bodycam-videos-of-murder-torture-decapitation/">relished the atrocities</a> they committed.</p>
<p>When the <a href="https://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/warsaw_ghetto_testimonies/intro.asp">Jews in the Warsaw ghetto</a> realized that the end was near, they worked for months to prepare hiding places for themselves in their homes and created improvised bunkers, doing whatever they could to avoid capture and deportation. They did not imagine that the Nazis would come to eliminate the ghetto in a different way, entering the ghetto with flamethrowers and burning down one building after another. <a href="https://www.historytoday.com/archive/feature/warsaw-flames">Some Jews were burned alive</a>, while others fled outside and fell into the hands of the Nazis. </p>
<p>On Oct. 7, victims in the kibbutzim and communities near Gaza hid in fortified safe rooms designed to protect them from rocket attacks. Hamas terrorists went from house to house, burning one after the other so that inhabitants would be forced to flee from their protected shelters. Others were <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/corpses-and-kids-bikes-burned-homes-and-death-in-kibbutz-where-hamas-butchered-100">burned in their homes</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562244/original/file-20231128-24-g2qbya.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two hooded men burning a white and blue Israeli flag." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562244/original/file-20231128-24-g2qbya.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562244/original/file-20231128-24-g2qbya.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562244/original/file-20231128-24-g2qbya.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562244/original/file-20231128-24-g2qbya.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562244/original/file-20231128-24-g2qbya.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562244/original/file-20231128-24-g2qbya.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562244/original/file-20231128-24-g2qbya.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Two hooded demonstrators burn a flag of Israel on the bridge linking Spain and France on Nov. 11, 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/two-hooded-demonstrators-burned-a-flag-of-israel-at-the-news-photo/1779070556?adppopup=true">Javi Julio/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>4. Using Jews in the killing process</h2>
<p>On Oct. 7, Hamas terrorists took a hostage from Nahal Oz, one of the kibbutzim in the south, and <a href="https://twitter.com/AvivaKlompas/status/1714100611572973893">forced him to go from house to house to knock on doors and lure his neighbors outside</a>. Afterward, they murdered him. Holocaust scholars have described such episodes from World War II in which Jews were forced to cooperate as “choiceless choices.”</p>
<h2>5. Terminology</h2>
<p>The word Shoah is used in the Bible to describe danger from neighboring nations, signifying distress, pain, torment, calamity and a <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/holocaust-remembrance-day/2019-05-01/ty-article/.premium/shoah-how-a-biblical-term-became-the-hebrew-word-for-holocaust/0000017f-dbbf-d3ff-a7ff-fbbf41b70000">“day of destruction</a>.” While it later came to define the total Nazi extermination of Jews in the 1940s, <a href="https://stljewishlight.org/news/israel-news/the-holocaust-all-over-again-the-massacre-at-the-israeli-rave-in-survivors-words/">multiple testimonies</a> collected from survivors of the Oct. 7 massacres use the <a href="https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/middle-east/felt-like-holocaust-terrified-israelis-recount-hamas-terror-after-surprise-invasion/articleshow/104261870.cms?from=mdr">term once again today</a>, echoing the biblical definition, to signal a day of desolation, darkness, destruction and gloom.</p>
<p>The words used to describe events are often loaded with emotional associations; the power and meaning of words that attempt to convey the depths of traumatic experiences cannot be discounted.</p>
<h2>Not the same</h2>
<p>There is a difference between pointing out similarities and creating shallow comparisons. We are aware of the tendency, especially in the political sphere, to resort to simplistic, symbolic and performative comparisons to the Holocaust – such as Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/31/world/middleeast/israel-erdan-yellow-star-of-david.html#:%7E:text=Erdan%20vowed%20that%20he%20and,letters%20on%20his%20left%20breast.">donning a yellow star with the words “Never Again”</a> on Oct. 31.</p>
<p>Oct. 7 is not the same as the Holocaust. Even so, we can use the study of the Holocaust to understand the traumatic and devastating encounters between Hamas terrorists and their victims on Oct. 7.</p>
<p>It might be a trivialization of the Holocaust to simply label Hamas as the “new Nazis,” but our analysis reveals that recognizing their eliminationist antisemitism means there can be no return to the pre-Oct. 7 status quo, when <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/11/26/netanyahu-hamas-israel-gaza/">Israel’s policy was to accommodate Hamas’</a> control of the Gaza strip.</p>
<p>Despite the natural tendency to turn away from the most shocking and the most horrific manifestations of human evil, there are times when gazes must not be averted, when horror must be confronted in order to understand the motivations of the perpetrators and the responses of the victims and the survivors. </p>
<p>In this case, at what point do we ignore analogies that seem deliberate and intentional? As Holocaust scholars, we recognize why Israelis are stuck – and struck – by the traumatic nature of Oct. 7.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218009/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Holocaust is not just a memory in Israel. It’s part of how Israelis understand themselves and their country − and it’s playing a part in how the country responds to the Hamas massacres of Oct. 7.Avinoam Patt, Director, Center for Judaic Studies, University of ConnecticutLiat Steir-Livny, Associate Professor of Holocaust, Film & Cultural Studies, Sapir Academic CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/991832018-08-13T10:26:34Z2018-08-13T10:26:34ZSaudi women can drive, but are their voices being heard?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231497/original/file-20180810-2918-inqimf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A woman in Saudi Arabia drives to work for the first time in Riyadh.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Earlier this summer, Saudi Arabia lifted the decades-long ban on women’s driving. The move is part of a series of reforms that the country has been implementing. In April the kingdom loosened <a href="https://english.alarabiya.net/en/features/2018/04/03/Mohammed-bin-Salman-on-Saudi-women-s-rights-and-the-guardianship-laws.html">male guardianship laws</a> – under which women need the permission of a male guardian to work, travel or marry. And in 2015, women were granted the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-35075702">right to vote and run for elections</a>. The reforms serve to revamp the image of Saudi Arabia in the international arena.</p>
<p>More recently, however, in a diplomatic spat, Canada has criticized Saudi Arabia for human rights violations. Saudi officials have responded by <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-fix-big-mistake-saudi-foreign-minister-1.4777438">cutting all economic and diplomatic ties</a>, withdrawing investments and stopping flights. One of the <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/saudia-arabia-expels-canadas-ambassador-recalls-own-row-over-womens-rights-activists-arrests/">main issues for the Canadians</a> is the arrest by Saudi authorities of two prominent women’s rights activists. Tweets by Canadian diplomats called on the kingdom to release the activists. Saudi Arabia <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/20/middleeast/saudi-women-arrests---intl/index.html">arrested several women’s rights activists</a> in weeks prior and following the lifting the ban on women’s driving.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Gq1Xc74AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">scholar of gender politics in Middle Eastern societies</a>, I argue that all this goes to show that the kingdom is extending limited reforms to women to represent itself as modern but is adamant on not opening space for more voices. </p>
<h2>Women, nationalism and modernization</h2>
<p><a href="https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/gender-and-nation/book203639">Historically</a>, the status of women has often served as <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/colonial-fantasies/AA3BEA73927420CDF46E0CC595DCB9B7">a measure of social progress</a>. </p>
<p>Take for example, the regime of <a href="http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780195117394.001.0001/acref-9780195117394-e-0504">Gamal Abdel Nasser</a>, who served as president of Egypt from 1956, until his death in 1970. Nasser promoted the participation of women in the public sector as a symbol of the success of the regime in modernizing Egypt.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231501/original/file-20180810-2915-mv30h6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231501/original/file-20180810-2915-mv30h6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231501/original/file-20180810-2915-mv30h6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231501/original/file-20180810-2915-mv30h6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231501/original/file-20180810-2915-mv30h6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231501/original/file-20180810-2915-mv30h6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231501/original/file-20180810-2915-mv30h6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Women cheer for Gamal Abdel Nasser after he proclaimed a new Egyptian constitution that promised new rights for women in 1956.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Under Nasser, the state adopted a series of laws to encourage women’s participation in the workforce. Between 1961 and 1969, the participation of women in the labor force <a href="http://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/El-KholyDefiance">increased by 31.1 percent</a>. </p>
<p>Paid maternity leave <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=18176">was granted to working mothers</a> during the day and child care was made available. Children and child rearing was no longer the sole responsibility of women, but increasingly that of the state and its institutions as well. There was no discussion, however, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/women-and-the-egyptian-revolution/1141AB709E596C0187C8D050FEB5F6B5">of men’s responsibility</a> or how to balance work and family.</p>
<p>Scholars, thus, argue that these reforms were not genuine efforts by the regime to alter gender inequalities. Rather, they were <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=18176">important symbols</a> in representing the Egyptian society as modern, socialist and progressive, where men and women were seen to work next to each other.</p>
<p>Also, the reforms did not include meaningful political rights. For example, while women were granted the right to vote in <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/international-woman-suffrage-timeline-3530479">1956</a>, unlike men, they had to petition the state to <a href="https://www.bookdepository.com/Gender-Citizenship-Middle-East-Suad-Joseph/9780815628651">include them on the list of registered voters</a>. The regime also moved to suppress independent feminists such as <a href="http://upf.com/book.asp?id=9780813014555">Doria Shafiq</a>, who campaigned for women’s suffrage for years.</p>
<h2>Using women for politics</h2>
<p>It was the same in many Middle Eastern and North African societies. The image of the woman was often constructed based on a political need at a given time and later deconstructed as well. </p>
<p>In Tunisia, for example, Habib Bourguiba, Tunisia’s nationalist leader and president, and after him President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali presented the image of the unveiled Tunisian women as a symbol of <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520225763/states-and-womens-rights">modernization, secularism and democracy</a>.</p>
<p>Following Tunisian independence in 1956, Bourguiba <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2012.730857">rejected the veil</a> and viewed it as a barrier to his modernizing project. In his Dec. 5, 1957, speech, he described the veil as an <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3992658">“odious rag”</a> and an <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2012.730857">obstacle to the country’s path to modernization</a> secluding women from participation in public space.</p>
<p>Bourguiba’s earlier views on the veil were, however, different. At the height of the nationalist struggle, during the 1930s to the 1950s against French colonial rule in Tunisia, Bourguiba emphasized the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2012.730857">significance of the traditional Tunisian veil</a>, the sefsari, as a symbol of national identity. The nationalist leader encouraged women to wear the sefsari as a way to oppose the colonial view. The <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300055832/women-and-gender-islam">colonial powers</a> pushed for unveiling women and viewed it as part of the <a href="https://groveatlantic.com/book/a-dying-colonialism/">modernizing process</a>.</p>
<h2>Crackdown on feminists</h2>
<p>Coming back to Saudi Arabia, the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, has introduced <a href="http://vision2030.gov.sa/en">Vision 2030</a> an ambitious social and economic reform plan, that he first announced in 2016. His goal is to liberalize the Saudi <a href="https://www.sunypress.edu/p-2972-all-in-the-family.aspx">petro-state</a> and <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Political-and-Economic-Challenges-of-Energy-in-the-Middle-East-and/Jalilvand-Westphal/p/book/9781138706224">open its centralized oil market</a> to foreign investment. His promise is to bring larger parts of the Saudi population – especially women and youth – into the labor force. </p>
<p>At this juncture, reforms in women’s rights demonstrate that the kingdom is en route to modernizing. However, some of the actions of Saudi authorities – such as the arrest of prominent activists that Canada has expressed concerns over – are seemingly at odds with the image the reforms want to project. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231499/original/file-20180810-2921-ufd88q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231499/original/file-20180810-2921-ufd88q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231499/original/file-20180810-2921-ufd88q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231499/original/file-20180810-2921-ufd88q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231499/original/file-20180810-2921-ufd88q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231499/original/file-20180810-2921-ufd88q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231499/original/file-20180810-2921-ufd88q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Saudi women’s rights activist Souad al-Shammary, who has been jailed several times.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo</span></span>
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</figure>
<p><a href="https://feminist.org/blog/index.php/2018/05/24/saudi-arabia-arrests-womens-rights-activists/">The arrests started</a> less than a month before the kingdom was due to lift the ban on women’s driving, when the authorities <a href="https://feminist.org/blog/index.php/2018/05/24/saudi-arabia-arrests-womens-rights-activists/">arrested some of the feminists</a> who had campaigned for women’s rights to drive. Several pro-government social media groups were alleged to have launched a <a href="http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/human-rights-groups-slam-saudi-arabia-chilling-smear-campaign-against-activists-786866070">smear campaign</a> tarnishing the activists’ reputation and branding them as “<a href="http://www.al-jazirah.com/2018/20180603/ln29.htm">traitors</a>” and “<a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/05/saudi-arabia-chilling-smear-campaign-tries-to-discredit-loujain-al-hathloul-and-other-detained-womens-rights-defenders/">agents of foreign embassies</a>.</p>
<p>The list of detained activists included <a href="https://feminist.org/blog/index.php/2018/05/24/saudi-arabia-arrests-womens-rights-activists/">high-profile feminists</a> such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loujain_al-Hathloul">Loujain al-Hathloul</a> – a vocal Saudi activist who since 2014 has been arrested numerous times for defying the ban on women driving. </p>
<p>Following the decision to lift the ban on driving, the authorities approached the women who had been arrested, in addition to others who previously participated in protests against the driving ban and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-saudi-arrests/rights-groups-condemn-saudi-women-activists-arrests-idUSKCN1IK085">demanded</a> that they completely <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/09/29/brave-female-activists-who-fought-lift-saudi-arabias-driving-ban">refrain</a> from commenting on the decision. </p>
<p>Media coverage has made no mention of the role of activists who had long campaigned for women’s right to drive. Rather, it praised the <a href="https://en.vogue.me/fashion/news/inside-vogue-arabias-groundbreaking-first-ever-saudi-issue/">crown prince</a> for lifting the ban. </p>
<p>In my view, there are many contradictions that surround these recent reforms. By silencing activists, the crown prince appears to tie the decision to allow Saudi women to drive to burnishing his own legacy. More importantly, by imprisoning high-profile feminists, the monarchy attempts to weaken, if not abolish, the ability of women’s groups to organize, advance their rights and be heard.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/99183/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nermin Allam does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Saudi Arabia has arrested a number of feminists, while bringing in reforms for women. An expert argues why this goes to show that the kingdom remains adamant on not opening space for more voices.Nermin Allam, Assistant Professor of Politics, Rutgers University - NewarkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/735762017-03-10T04:18:57Z2017-03-10T04:18:57ZIs the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/160012/original/image-20170308-24211-1grb91k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A member of the Muslim Brotherhood during Egypt's Freedom and Justice Party convention.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/lilianwagdy/6353083693/in/photolist-aFpdrK-fFZ6er-fGgQnQ-fzbW6u-dLak6r-avjwbb-dVjnd3-dVe5kn-4A5iFg-sg9NF7-fGgLhQ-3nbnzX-fFZ8Ue-fFZ9Bn-fFZ5pc-cgfKXh-9moxrU-ck3o9U-aK7mXD-otEhw1-fFZar4-a8PBfM-ck3oD3-dB3CSM-ck3hL1-dAjmMx-a8SkE9-bBCL9k-fGg2fQ-ck3p3h-dApNYA-fw8UVe-dAdHS2-dVjGLf-bygpJs-fGgfmy-fFYF5V-fGg1q9-fFYMvM-fFYvhZ-dAjnmx-fGgi87-a8PtXH-fFYz3t-gPupGq-fFYCgF-fFYKqD-fFYAc2-fFYsPx-fFYuvV">Lilian Wagdy</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/07/world/middleeast/muslim-brotherhood-terrorism-trump.html?_r=0">Trump administration</a> as well as <a href="https://www.cruz.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=2953">Republican lawmakers</a> are seeking to introduce legislation that would designate the Muslim Brotherhood a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). </p>
<p>Many are <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/02/muslim-brotherhood-trump-terror-list-170201090317237.html">questioning</a> this move. The fact is that the Muslim Brotherhood has not been directly involved in any <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/markaz/2017/01/30/should-the-muslim-brotherhood-be-designated-a-terrorist-organization/">violent terror attacks</a> in recent decades. </p>
<p>I have been studying Islam and politics over many years, and have learned that this is a highly complex phenomenon. Given its informal character and the diffuse nature of its organization, labeling the Muslim Brotherhood a foreign terrorist organization is not as simple as it seems.</p>
<p>To understand the Muslim Brotherhood, we need to first know how it is structured, and what it represents ideologically.</p>
<h2>The different groups</h2>
<p>The Muslim Brotherhood exists both in the form of local organizations (in Egypt, Jordan and so on) and in the form of an international organization. The international Muslim Brotherhood has, however, little <a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2010/09/21/the-irrelevance-of-the-international-muslim-brotherhood/">influence</a> over any of the <a href="http://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9780230100695">local organizations</a>. </p>
<p>The point is that the term “Muslim Brotherhood” represents a broader ideological trend. There are numerous organizations and groups across the Muslim world that to a varying degree associate themselves with this current. </p>
<p>Some of them use the name of the Muslim Brotherhood, while others operate under different labels. One example is the <a href="https://www.cmi.no/publications/file/3115-one-against-all-the-national-islamic-front-nif.pdf">National Islamic Front</a> (NIF), that was established in the 1960 as the Sudanese Islamic Charter Front.</p>
<p>There are also a number of informal groups, <a href="http://noref.no/Regions/Africa/Publications/The-Intellectualist-movement-in-Ethiopia-the-Muslim-Brotherhood-and-the-issue-of-moderation-Report">such as the Ethiopian Intellectualist Movement</a>, that rather selectively find inspiration from the Muslim Brotherhood’s thinkers without appropriating the entirety of the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology. </p>
<p>None of these groups could be characterized as <a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2010/09/21/the-irrelevance-of-the-international-muslim-brotherhood/">branches</a> of one unified Muslim Brotherhood. There does not exist any worldwide hierarchical structure. Nor are there any formal links between any of these organizations. </p>
<p>Most of them have produced independent thinkers and developed ideological profiles that <a href="http://www.sunypress.edu/p-3300-the-management-of-islamic-activ.aspx">focus more on local issues</a>. All this makes it difficult to speak about a coherent Muslim Brotherhood ideology.</p>
<h2>The origins and spread of the Brotherhood</h2>
<p>The original Muslim Brotherhood was established in 1928 by <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/hassan-al-banna-9198013">Hassan al-Banna</a>, an Egyptian schoolteacher. Its initial activities were concentrated in the town of Ismailiyah, in northeastern Egypt. However, due to al-Banna’s charismatic personality and skills as a community organizer, the group grew rapidly into a <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-society-of-the-muslim-brothers-9780195084375?cc=us&lang=en&">mass organization</a> throughout Egypt. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/160097/original/image-20170309-24226-b6zwz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/160097/original/image-20170309-24226-b6zwz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160097/original/image-20170309-24226-b6zwz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160097/original/image-20170309-24226-b6zwz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160097/original/image-20170309-24226-b6zwz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160097/original/image-20170309-24226-b6zwz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160097/original/image-20170309-24226-b6zwz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Brotherhood members and Salafists praying in Tahrir Square, Cairo.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/alisdare/6377938093/in/photolist-quQp7-3nbnzX-biwQEz-EADW3-aHAAMT-amUj2u-bdNEei-oEzf8n-dH3gGK-ruZ24h">Alisdare Hickson</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is important to note that the Muslim Brotherhood was not a political movement in the beginning. Instead, it was devoted to education and social work. It was also focused on enhancing religious piety among Muslims and countering Western influences during the colonial period by <a href="http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10.1163/22131418-00101003">building an Islamic identity</a>. </p>
<p>Joining the opposition to the British colonizers, the Muslim Brotherhood leadership reluctantly decided to participate in Egypt’s parliamentary elections in the 1940s. Its anti-colonial attitudes also led the organization to support the coup in 1952 which eventually brought <a href="http://www.oupcanada.com/catalog/9780195069358.html">Gamal Abdel Nasser</a> to power as president.</p>
<p>However, the Muslim Brotherhood’s strong popular support soon led to an open conflict with Nasser, who responded by <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/30069528?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">suppressing</a> it. In addition to filling up Egyptian prisons, Nasser’s policy produced thousands of refugees who became instrumental in spreading the movement’s ideas across the Muslim world.</p>
<h2>Ideological diversity</h2>
<p>While the Muslim Brotherhood’s initial political engagement was within a democratic framework, a more militant and anti-democratic substream gradually emerged within the movement. </p>
<p>The key figure here was <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/sayyid-qutb-and-the-origins-of-radical-islam-9780199333479?cc=us&lang=en&">Sayyid Qutb</a>, an Egyptian writer and thinker, who wrote the seminal book <a href="https://www.kalamullah.com/Books/Milestones%20Special%20Edition.pdf">“Milestones</a>.” He claimed that contemporary secular politics was reminiscent of the pre-Islamic “Jahiliyyah” (age of ignorance), and moreover, that “Hakmiyyah” (God’s sovereignty) could be restored only through armed struggle. </p>
<p>His teaching later inspired groups such as al-Qaida, and caused serious frictions within the Egyptian Brotherhood.</p>
<p>The main leadership made significant efforts to renounce the use of violence and to portray the Muslim Brotherhood <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Muslim-Brotherhood-Hasan-al-Hudaybi-and-ideology/Zollner/p/book/9780415664172%22%22">as a moderate reformist movement</a>. This was evident in the Muslim Brotherhood’s struggle to participate in Egypt’s electoral politics. The authoritarian Egyptian regimes, however, blocked it from gaining much influence. Not until Mohamed Morsi became president of Egypt in 2012 did the Muslim Brotherhood ascend to power. That victory proved, however, to be <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/523085/summary">short-lived</a>. </p>
<p>Globally too the Muslim Brotherhood has been similarly ideologically diverse. For example, some local Muslim Brotherhood-associated organizations, such as those in <a href="http://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9780312238438">Kuwait</a> and <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9948.html">Morocco</a>, were initially influenced by Sayyid Qubt’s thinking. Later, however, they gradually abandoned such ideas. Others developed relatively pragmatic political programs. </p>
<p>The Muslim Brotherhood in <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/4329086?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">Jordan</a>, for example, did not challenge the local political authorities and developed rather cordial relationship with the Jordanian monarchy.</p>
<h2>Islam and democracy</h2>
<p>Ideologically, the Muslim Brotherhood as a current has commonly been categorized under the heading of “Islamism.” This ideology emphasizes <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Islam-and-Politics-2nd-Edition/Mandjjjkiaville/p/book/9780415782579">control over the state</a> as crucial for Islamization of state and society. There are <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Muslim-Brotherhood-Hasan-al-Hudaybi-and-ideology/Zollner/p/book/9780415664172">different opinions</a>, however, about what this means.</p>
<p>Various groups and individuals associated with the Muslim Brotherhood have over the last decades been engaged in elaborate discussions about their views on democracy and secularism. </p>
<p>However, there is still some ambiguity around certain issues. One part of this relates to the way the vast majority of Muslim Brotherhood organizations <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9948.html">embrace Shari’a</a>, or the Islamic law, as foundational for political and constitutional frameworks. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/160015/original/image-20170308-24198-1rkjmex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/160015/original/image-20170308-24198-1rkjmex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160015/original/image-20170308-24198-1rkjmex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160015/original/image-20170308-24198-1rkjmex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160015/original/image-20170308-24198-1rkjmex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160015/original/image-20170308-24198-1rkjmex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160015/original/image-20170308-24198-1rkjmex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Muslim Brotherhood women.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/7408004@N06/2354671081/in/photolist-4A5iFg-5ewgqF-fFZ7bK-aFpdrK-fFZ6er-fGgQnQ-fzbW6u-sg9NF7-fGgLhQ-3nbnzX-fFZ8Ue-fFZ9Bn-fFZ5pc-cgfKXh-9moxrU-ck3o9U-aK7mXD-otEhw1-fFZar4-fw8UVe-dAdHS2-a8PBfM-ck3oD3-dVjGLf-ck3hL1-dAjmMx-a8SkE9-bBCL9k-fGg2fQ-ck3p3h-dApNYA-dB3CSM-dAHNFN-fGgfmy-fFYF5V-bygpJs-fGg1q9-cvmexQ-fFYMvM-fFYvhZ-dVjxaQ-dAjnmx-fGgi87-a8PtXH-fFYz3t-gPupGq-otE2tr-fFYCgF-fFYKqD-fFYAc2">Gaynor Barton</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This relates to tensions between the belief in Shari’a as a divinely ordained authority and the acceptance of the popular will. Some tensions, for example, relate to the question whether Islamists would accept the outcome of a democratic election that does not necessarily correspond with their interpretation of Shari'a. Others are related to whether the Islamists would recognize the freedom of citizens to make individual choices in a state governed according to the Shari'a. Also, would they accommodate the rights of women and religious minorities? </p>
<h2>The current situation</h2>
<p>So what does this mean in assessing the current situation of the Muslim Brotherhood? </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-12813859">Arab Spring</a>, a 2011 democratic uprising that quickly spread in the Arab world, was viewed by many Muslim Brotherhood-associated groups as a moment to put their ideological programs into political action.</p>
<p>However, regional instability across the Middle East, political violence (in Libya and Syria) and the return of an authoritative regime in Egypt shattered such hopes. The political takeover by <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/01/world/africa/abdel-fattah-el-sisi-fast-facts/">Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi</a> as the new president of Egypt in 2014 and the subsequent <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-28722935">banning</a> of the Muslim Brotherhood seriously weakened the organization.</p>
<p>In Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s increasingly <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/review-of-middle-east-studies/article/div-classtitlefrom-islamic-renaissance-to-neo-fascism-in-turkeydiv/3B9E527945D99DD5E575890A48134189">authoritarian rule</a> further blocked debates around Islam and politics. Developments in North Africa have added to the setbacks. The post-Islamist Tunisian Ennadha Party, for example, has been losing in national elections. </p>
<p>All this has exacerbated tensions over the <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/islamism-after-the-arab-spring_english_web_final.pdf">future of the Muslim Brotherhood</a>. These developments have created a space for the emergence of more militant groups such as the Islamic State, although one should be careful not to draw explicit causal links. </p>
<p>Indeed, designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a Foreign Terrorist Organization could have the effect of limiting the opportunities for those Muslims who are attracted by the Muslim Brotherhood’s moderate agenda to engage in politics. </p>
<p>It could even accelerate recruitment to terrorist outfits – a possibility that the Trump administration might seek to take into account.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/73576/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Terje Ostebo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Muslim Brotherhood exists in the form of many local organizations and well as an international organization. Research shows there isn’t a coherent Muslim Brotherhood ideology.Terje Ostebo, Director of the Center for Global Islamic Studies and associate professor in the Department of Religion and the Center for African Studies, University of FloridaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/658442016-10-31T17:10:48Z2016-10-31T17:10:48ZSuez Crisis shows what happens when friends don’t share<p>Sixty years ago, <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/suez-crisis-29039">the Suez Crisis</a> triggered one of the greatest conflicts between allies in NATO history. Britain, France and Israel invaded Egypt after Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Egyptian president, nationalised the Suez Canal. But far from supporting the invasion, the US president, Dwight Eisenhower, feared it would array the “third world” against the West to the benefit of the USSR.</p>
<p>The US <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/7218678">condemned its allies’ military action</a>, demanded their forces leave Egypt and used the considerable economic and diplomatic tools at its disposal to force compliance. </p>
<p>The term “Suez” became shorthand for discord among allies – and there were indeed many obstacles hindering cooperation. Most importantly, the perceived stakes were not the same on the American and European sides of the Atlantic. Compared to Britain and France, US holdings in the <a href="http://www.ebha.org/ebha2007/pdf/Piquet.pdf">Suez Canal Company</a> were insignificant – and America did not rely nearly as much on <a href="https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1955-57v16/d72">oil from the Middle East</a> shipped through the waterway. </p>
<p>Paradoxically, however, the crisis was also exacerbated by excessive agreement between the allies – especially where Britain and the US were concerned. Leaders on both sides mistakenly believed their perceptions of the threat Nasser posed were roughly the same as their ally’s – and, interestingly, this mistake had been encouraged by their communications with one another. </p>
<h2>Common misunderstanding</h2>
<p>Historians have explained the allies’ misperception of one another’s positions during Suez by arguing that they were eager to cooperate, which in turn meant that they wished to avoid discussion of their potential differences. But this assumes that Eisenhower, Britain’s prime minister Anthony Eden and other senior leaders were aware of their disagreements about Nasser – and this is at odds with their private and public statements at the time. </p>
<p>Eisenhower <a href="https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1955-57v16/d190">wrote to Eden</a>: “I do not, repeat not, differ from you in your estimate of [Nasser’s] intentions and purposes.” Eden told his cabinet that the firmness of Britain’s stance was winning over US sceptics – and Harold Macmillan agreed that Eisenhower was determined “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/1989/03/19/englands-big-mac/794b18ee-b9d4-4541-aa55-8e0c7b2cb181/">to bring Nasser down</a>”. </p>
<p>Leaders did agree that Nasser was a threat and that it was undesirable for Egypt to exercise unilateral control over the canal. These beliefs were common information and were thoroughly discussed during allied meetings and in leaders’ correspondence with one another from August 1956 onwards. But unique to both sides were their beliefs about the magnitude of the threat Nasser represented </p>
<p>Given the risk to their country’s economic welfare and influence in the Middle East, Eden and other British leaders saw Nasser as a “Hitler on the Nile”. Those in Washington, although not fond of Nasser, saw him as much less menacing – more of a “stumbling block”, as Eisenhower wrote <a href="http://www.mepc.org/journal/middle-east-policy-archives/what-eisenhower-and-dulles-saw-nasser?print">in his diary</a>. These divergent profiles of Nasser were not seriously debated at a high level until a month-and-a-half after the crisis began. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143942/original/image-20161031-15810-9cq3yi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143942/original/image-20161031-15810-9cq3yi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143942/original/image-20161031-15810-9cq3yi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143942/original/image-20161031-15810-9cq3yi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143942/original/image-20161031-15810-9cq3yi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143942/original/image-20161031-15810-9cq3yi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143942/original/image-20161031-15810-9cq3yi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">British tanks disembarking at Port Said, 1956.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Royal Navy photographer, courtesy of Imperial War Museums</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Even then, US and UK leaders erred in thinking their disagreements were a relatively minor bump in the road. In October, Eden’s secretary Norman Brook <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/dec/01/egypt.past">confidently told the prime minister</a> there had been “a substantial advance in Anglo-American agreement on objectives and methods … The American agencies have joined with us in declaring that our joint objectives require Nasser’s removal from power.” As a result of these mistaken assessments, the US was caught off guard by the invasion of Egypt – and Britain was equally unprepared for the US response. </p>
<p>The illusion of unanimity between the senior political leaders in Washington and London was able to persist despite the “special relationship”, which included sharing large amounts of secret intelligence about Egypt. Officials in the two countries were looking at similar information but drawing different conclusions from it. </p>
<p>Eisenhower ordered the newly created Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities to <a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol51no2/the-art-of-strategic-counterintelligence.html">conduct a review</a> of US intelligence services’ assessments made during the crisis to try to figure out how he had been so mistaken about British intentions. The president’s insistence on an investigation again shows that he was genuinely surprised by the episode’s outcome.</p>
<h2>Psychology of sharing information</h2>
<p>A novel explanation of the allies’ mistaken perceptions of one another in 1956 concerns the psychology of communication and decision-making in coalitions. Even when individuals have diverse interests and knowledge, they often unwittingly avoid areas of difference, instead disproportionately sharing and discussing information that all the members of their decision-making group already know. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143944/original/image-20161031-8691-huri5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143944/original/image-20161031-8691-huri5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143944/original/image-20161031-8691-huri5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143944/original/image-20161031-8691-huri5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143944/original/image-20161031-8691-huri5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143944/original/image-20161031-8691-huri5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143944/original/image-20161031-8691-huri5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">British and US strategists differed in their assessment of Nasser’s threat to Middle East security.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bibliotheca Alexandrina</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This happens for several reasons. Most simply, information that all group members know (called “common information”, such as the belief that Nasser shouldn’t exercise unilateral control over the canal) is more prevalent than information that is only held by one or a few members of the group (“unique information”, like the British belief that Nasser was akin to Hitler). </p>
<p>Common information is thus more likely to be brought up by chance alone, because there is more of it than unique information. This also means common information is likely to be discussed first, which has the effect of establishing it as the “baseline” against which new evidence is judged and interpreted. Decision-makers’ beliefs are slow to move away from the initially discussed common information. In the case of Suez, because US and British leaders discussed their agreement that Nasser posed a threat early on, they inferred that their judgements about the size of that threat were roughly similar. </p>
<p>Lastly, people are predisposed to try to confirm beliefs they already hold. When a party to a discussion brings up information the other people involved already know and believe to be true, the speaker is viewed as more credible because it reinforces established beliefs. This positive reception encourages all parties to continue to offer up similar common information, pushing unique perspectives and differences of opinion into the background. Overall, this creates what psychologists <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1449693">Garold Stasser and William Titus call “hidden profiles”</a> of problems under discussion: unique information remains unshared and hidden from most of the group. These dynamics played out between Britain and the US during Suez. </p>
<p>The Suez crisis shows that a group of political leaders cannot assume a comprehensive picture of adversaries and threats will emerge simply because there is a diverse set of viewpoints present during allied deliberations. The bias towards common rather than unique information must be accounted for as well. Because Eden had assumed Eisenhower shared his fears about Nasser, just as US officials presumed the unique views they withheld were in fact known in London, the PM was taken by surprise when the US acted against British interests.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65844/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aaron Rapport does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>60 years ago, Britain and the US believed they were on the same page when it came to Suez. How wrong they were.Aaron Rapport, Lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Studies, University of CambridgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/659662016-10-31T11:33:56Z2016-10-31T11:33:56Z60 years ago, Suez crisis set a dangerous pattern for Western military intervention<p>By a delicious irony, UK prime minister Anthony Eden’s disastrous Suez adventure in 1956 coincided with the withdrawal from publication of Sir John Seeley’s classic text of British imperialism, <a href="https://archive.org/details/expansionofengla00seeluoft">The Expansion of England</a>. Based on a set of lectures he had given at Cambridge, Seeley’s 1882 text was the first attempt to provide a theoretical basis for British expansion and it included the famous claim that the British appeared to have gained an empire “<a href="https://web.viu.ca/davies/H479B.Imperialism.Nationalism/Seeley.Br.Expansion.imperial.1883.htm">in a fit of absence of mind</a>”. How appropriate it seems, then, that Eden seemed in 1956 to have sealed the fate of that empire in a similar fit of absent-mindedness.</p>
<p>Rather like the “moment of madness” that otherwise law-abiding people describe when arrested for an out-of-character breach of the law, Eden’s invasion of Egypt can seem to be the result of a lapse of concentration on a genuinely imperial scale. It’s as if he momentarily forgot he was living in the post-war world of superpowers and atomic weapons and somehow imagined he was Lord Palmerston, the Victorian gunboat diplomatist who did indeed once send a fleet of gunboats to bring a recalcitrant Egyptian ruler to heel. </p>
<p>Interpreted as the disastrous doddering of an imperialist daydreamer, Suez can seem like a fitting epitaph to an empire that was already hastening towards an inglorious end.</p>
<p>That interpretation makes for good exam questions, such: “To what extent was Suez a turning point in the story of British imperialism?” But this is not the only way of looking at it. Far from being an embarrassing throwback to Victorian days – and a revelation of how out of touch Eden was with the modern world – Suez might be better understood as a model for a pattern of liberal interventionism that has grown in scale and frequency in the 60 years since 1956, though with a depressingly similar litany of disastrous results.</p>
<h2>Reponding to a ‘new Hitler’</h2>
<p>The key lies in taking Eden’s reasoning more seriously. He saw Nasser as a new incarnation of Hitler and the nationalising of the Suez Canal as the equivalent of Hitler’s remilitarisation of the German Rhineland 20 years earlier. Historians tend to take this as evidence of Eden’s lack of grip on reality, but his judgement was not so very different from that of others – both before and since. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143809/original/image-20161030-15793-foz5t8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143809/original/image-20161030-15793-foz5t8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143809/original/image-20161030-15793-foz5t8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143809/original/image-20161030-15793-foz5t8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143809/original/image-20161030-15793-foz5t8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1194&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143809/original/image-20161030-15793-foz5t8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1194&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143809/original/image-20161030-15793-foz5t8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1194&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A new Hitler? Nasser in India, 1960.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Gladstone took a similar view of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Urabi-Pasha">Egyptian nationalist leader Arabi Bey</a>, whose anti-foreigner uprising prompted the 1882 invasion that established British control in Egypt in the first place. Mrs Thatcher made overt comparisons with Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler in <a href="http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/114324">denouncing the Argentinian invasion of the Falkland Islands in 1982</a>. </p>
<p>Of course, it’s common practice for leaders to denounce their opponents as criminals or terrorists – and equally common for journalists and academics to ridicule the comparisons. But Eden’s claim merits more serious consideration, not because it was precise – historical comparisons can never be that – but because it set the tone for modern liberal interventionism.</p>
<p>Nasser’s <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/26/newsid_2701000/2701603.stm">nationalisation of the canal</a> may seem justifiable and even reasonable to modern eyes. But it was nevertheless of highly debatable legality in international law. Similarly, Hitler’s remilitarisation of the Rhineland in 1936 <a href="http://spartacus-educational.com/GERrhineland.htm">seemed perfectly reasonable to many</a>, especially as the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/history/mwh/ir1/thetreatyrev1.shtml">Treaty of Versailles</a> which he was breaking was widely regarded as far too draconian. The French, who had insisted on the demilitarised zone in the first place, were regarded in London and Washington as taking far too aggressive and self-interested a tone in their relations with Germany – very like Eden and Egypt, in fact. </p>
<p>Nor was Eden alone in seeing Nasser as a new Hitler – to the Israelis, whose <a href="http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/israel-invades-egypt-suez-crisis-begins">invasion of Sinai</a> actually precipitated the crisis – he represented a danger to their new state every bit as hostile and dangerous as Hitler’s regime had been.</p>
<h2>Judgement call</h2>
<p>The questionable nature of Eden’s judgement was not in the comparison he drew but in his decision about what to do about it – and in this he proved not so much backward-looking as prescient. His belief that the dictatorial nature of actions by a foreign leader can justify military intervention has since proved to be the justification of choice for a succession of Western democratic leaders. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143810/original/image-20161030-15821-1swtwnd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143810/original/image-20161030-15821-1swtwnd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143810/original/image-20161030-15821-1swtwnd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143810/original/image-20161030-15821-1swtwnd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143810/original/image-20161030-15821-1swtwnd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143810/original/image-20161030-15821-1swtwnd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143810/original/image-20161030-15821-1swtwnd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Could have learned a lot from Suez.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Executive Office of the President of the United State</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These have included American intervention in Nicaragua, Granada and Somalia, NATO’s bombing of Kosovo, British intervention in Sierra Leone in 2000 and more recent western military involvement in Afghanistan, Iraq and now Syria.</p>
<p>Eden’s absolute belief in the rightness of his cause led him to concoct a dishonest conspiracy to overthrow Nasser. His big mistake, however, was not his dishonesty but his <a href="http://www.e-ir.info/2011/07/27/examining-the-1956-suez-crisis/">failure to involve the Americans</a>. His reasoning was not so different from American reasoning over regime change in Iraq, or even involvement in Vietnam. Instead of condemning Eden for misjudgement and living in the past, we should take more note of his face staring back at us in the political mirror.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65966/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sean Lang does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>British prime minister Anthony Eden justified attacking Egypt as necessary to restrain the country’s ‘dangerous’ leader. We still hear similar things before every Western intervention.Sean Lang, Senior Lecturer in History, Anglia Ruskin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/659702016-10-28T09:24:41Z2016-10-28T09:24:41Z60 years after Suez: a tale of two prime ministers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143486/original/image-20161027-11271-1d4ii4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">United States Army Heritage and Education Center</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Does history repeat itself? Never perfectly or precisely, but some of the parallels between Anthony Eden’s <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/modern/suez_01.shtml">handling of the 1956 Suez Crisis</a> and Tony Blair’s role in the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36712735">2003 invasion of Iraq</a> are worth pondering. In both cases prime ministerial decision-making dictated the course of British policy and laid bare some of the weaknesses of the British political system.</p>
<p>First, take the conjuring of the threat. Both men framed their struggles in existential terms. For Eden, the nationalisation of the Suez Canal Company at the end of July 1956 by the Egyptian president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, represented a threat to national survival. </p>
<p>A man whom Eden likened to Hitler or Mussolini would have his fingers wrapped round the nation’s economic windpipe. Whenever Nasser wished he might squeeze and strangle the country. “It’s either him or us. Don’t forget that”, Eden warned.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143489/original/image-20161027-11268-9ouild.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143489/original/image-20161027-11268-9ouild.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=706&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143489/original/image-20161027-11268-9ouild.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=706&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143489/original/image-20161027-11268-9ouild.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=706&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143489/original/image-20161027-11268-9ouild.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=888&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143489/original/image-20161027-11268-9ouild.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=888&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143489/original/image-20161027-11268-9ouild.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=888&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The ‘new Hitler’: Egypt’s president Gamal Abdel Nasser.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For Tony Blair, meanwhile, after 9/11, a whole new world had dawned. Terrorism and weapons of mass destruction together formed “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2003/mar/18/foreignpolicy.iraq1">a fundamental assault on our way of life</a>” and “the central security threat of the 21st century”. Blair’s fears focused once again on an Arab dictator, this time the Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein. His supposed arsenal of weapons of mass destruction now formed “a clear danger to British citizens”.</p>
<h2>Déjà vu</h2>
<p>The path to war on both occasions has certain eerie parallels. Both men resorted to the creation of a sort of inner circle or kitchen cabinet of key ministers backed by sympathetic officials. For Eden it was <a href="http://scholarworks.uno.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1503&context=td">the Egypt Committee</a>, a select group which included the key hawks in the Cabinet such as the chancellor of the exchequer, Harold Macmillan. </p>
<p>For Blair <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2003/jun/18/labour.whitehall">the group was more fluid</a>, but it included the then foreign secretary, Jack Straw, and his Number 10 advisers, Jonathan Powell, David Manning and Alastair Campbell. In both cases, despite the doctrine of collective responsibility, the full cabinet was largely cut out of the decision-making process. Remarkably given the drive towards military action, both men’s ministers of defence – for Eden, Walter Monckton, and for Blair, Geoff Hoon – were not part of the inner circle. Indeed, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Suez.html?id=WGCwQgAACAAJ">Monckton was opposed to the use of force</a>, leading Eden quietly to shunt him out of the way. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143485/original/image-20161027-11278-zvugdw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143485/original/image-20161027-11278-zvugdw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143485/original/image-20161027-11278-zvugdw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=570&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143485/original/image-20161027-11278-zvugdw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=570&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143485/original/image-20161027-11278-zvugdw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=570&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143485/original/image-20161027-11278-zvugdw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=716&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143485/original/image-20161027-11278-zvugdw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=716&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143485/original/image-20161027-11278-zvugdw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=716&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Key strategic position.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Yolan Chériaux</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For both men, the military timetable also overshadowed diplomacy. A deadline for military action was imposed by weather conditions in the region. For Eden, an amphibious assault on Egypt had to be launched before the middle of November 1956 – while for Blair the deadline was late March 2003, after which the heat of the Iraqi spring and summer would hinder operations. Admittedly in Blair’s case that deadline was also imposed by American war plans.</p>
<h2>‘Legal war’?</h2>
<p>Both leaders resorted to the United Nations to prepare the ground for war. Neither got what he wanted. While Eden’s foreign secretary, Selwyn Lloyd, made some progress at the UN in agreeing principles for the operation of the Suez Canal, the pretext for war Eden sought – which would put Egypt clearly in the wrong – was elusive. Meanwhile, for Blair, <a href="http://www.un.org/Depts/unmovic/documents/1441.pdf">Security Council resolution 1441</a>, passed in November 2002, proved a double-edged sword. While it was later used as the legal justification for war, it also crystallised the division in the international community. Without a second resolution explicitly justifying war, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/mar/05/iraq.politics">France and Russia opposed military action</a>.</p>
<p>Both Eden and Blair grappled with the concept of legality. Eden didn’t want the government’s law officers consulted at all. “The lawyers are always against our doing anything. <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=i9zyRYYIJK4C&pg=PR3-IA10&lpg=PR3-IA10&dq=the+lawyers+are+always+against+our+doing+anything.+For+God%E2%80%99s+sake+keep+them+out+of+it.+This+is+a+political+affair&source=bl&ots=00FS2Mz2mf&sig=Ij9pUhk-Bzte35_84uNddeuQxBY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjRge6B8_rPAhUCKsAKHe5FDaUQ6AEIHjAA#v=onepage&q=the%20lawyers%20are%20always%20against%20our%20doing%20anything.%20For%20God%E2%80%99s%20sake%20keep%20them%20out%20of%20it.%20This%20is%20a%20political%20affair&f=false">For God’s sake keep them out of it</a>. This is a political affair”, he complained. But the attorney-general, Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/dec/01/egypt.past">stood up to him in private</a>, warning that if he was asked a question in parliament as to whether the Suez invasion was legal, he would have to declare that it was not. The Opposition missed its chance and the question was not asked. In 2003 by contrast, the attorney general Lord Goldsmith proved more malleable, <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8481759.stm">changing his mind at a late stage</a> about the authority granted by resolution 1441.</p>
<h2>Public opposition</h2>
<p>The actions of both leaders brought huge crowds on to the streets of London in protest. Against Eden, the banners called for “law not war”, while for Blair the message was even more direct: “B-liar”. In both cases, war split the nation and led to a fundamental debate about Britain’s role in the world and the justification for military action.</p>
<p>But there, perhaps, the parallels end. Eden’s action over Suez was thwarted by American intervention while Blair acted in concert with Washington. Eden fell over Suez, while Blair held on to office after Iraq. No formal public postmortem was ever carried out over Suez, while over Iraq every detail of decision-making was pored over by the <a href="http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/">Chilcot Inquiry</a>.</p>
<p>Still, Blair’s testimony before the inquiry does show that he and Eden shared at least one more trait in common: the belief that whatever the consequences they were both right all along.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65970/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nigel Ashton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There are striking parallels between Eden’s handling of Suez and Blair’s march into the Iraq War.Nigel Ashton, Professor of International History, London School of Economics and Political ScienceLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/620612016-07-06T11:00:25Z2016-07-06T11:00:25ZBrexit: 60 years on and the ghosts of Suez have come back to haunt the Tories<p>As a broken David Cameron made his dramatic <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/video/2016/jun/24/david-camerons-full-resignation-speech-i-will-go-before-the-autumn-video">resignation statement</a> outside Number 10 Downing Street on the morning after the referendum, the ghosts of Suez seemed to hover ominously in the air.</p>
<p>It was 60 years ago that Britain and France, acting in collusion with Israel, invaded Egypt in an attempt to seize the Suez Canal, which had been <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l78kiUQ-I5Y">nationalised by President Gamal Abdel Nasser</a>. When a furious Dwight David Eisenhower (“Ike”), then US president, demanded a ceasefire, and threatened to cut off Britain’s oil supplies, the Anglo-French <a href="http://www.historynet.com/suez-crisis-operation-musketeer.htm">Operation Musketeer</a> was halted, leaving Nasser emboldened, London humiliated, prime minister Anthony Eden’s reputation and political career in ruins – and Britain isolated internationally.</p>
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<p>In the aftermath of the EU referendum result, commentators have been quick to draw parallels with the Suez Crisis. As <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/25/brexit-has-exposed-the-chasm-between-the-establishment-and-the-r/">Jeremy Paxman put it</a> “no prime minister has made a bigger miscalculation since Anthony Eden”, while in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/29/key-lesson-of-brexit-globalisation-must-work-for-all-of-britain">Gordon Brown’s judgement</a>, the outcome of the referendum has “left us more isolated from our international partners than at any time since the humiliation of Suez”.</p>
<p>The similarities are striking enough. An Old Etonian prime minister, convinced that he knew best, forced to <a href="https://theconversation.com/brexit-resignation-why-british-pm-david-cameron-had-to-go-61594">resign</a> in disgrace, just a year or so after winning a general election. A dramatic run on the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-brexit-triggered-a-global-market-meltdown-61535">pound</a> that threatens economic collapse. Bitter domestic divisions, and diplomatic isolation. </p>
<p>And, as was the case 60 years ago, the ruling class now faces something of an existential crisis. After all, almost the entire British establishment – including the leaders of all the major political parties, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-its-lose-lose-for-unions-in-the-eu-referendum-60487">unions</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/fact-check-do-89-of-businesses-really-support-remain-60897">businesses</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/insularity-is-not-the-way-forward-three-university-vice-chancellors-on-brexit-60660">universities</a>, and the cultural great and good – was united behind Cameron’s efforts to remain within a “reformed” European Union. </p>
<p>In a broader sense, 2016 is, <a href="http://www.faber.co.uk/9780571312320-1956-the-world-in-revolt.html">like 1956</a>, shaping up to be a year of extraordinary drama and international upheaval.</p>
<h2>Different rulebook</h2>
<p>When Eden tendered his resignation on January 9 1957, it was the constitutional responsibility of the Queen, under the power of the royal prerogative, to appoint a new prime minister. Unlike today, there were <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-how-political-parties-choose-their-leaders-41534">no formal rules</a> governing the election of a new Conservative Party leader: no campaign launches, leadership hustings, or formal votes – and certainly no question of balloting ordinary party members. </p>
<p>Instead, it fell to party grandees David Maxwell Fyfe, the Lord Chancellor, and Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, the Lord President of the Council, to advise the palace on the succession. The two men canvassed the views of cabinet members (who were interviewed individually) and gauged opinion among backbenchers and constituency chairmen. Edward Heath, the chief whip, John Morrison who was chairman of the backbench 1922 committee, and Oliver Poole, the party chairman, were consulted. </p>
<p>While commentators appeared certain that R A Butler, the leader of the house and Eden’s de facto deputy, would prevail, opinion within the party swung overwhelmingly behind Harold Macmillan – and so it was the chancellor of the exchequer who, on the afternoon of January 10, was summoned to Buckingham Palace. During his 30-minute audience with the Queen, Macmillan <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Bf8kOUHOfJ8C&pg=PT380&lpg=PT380&dq=macmillan+six+weeks+queen&source=bl&ots=26vMeZaxMe&sig=tAC4M1cyhYSsHkGCn-r2qwG1A1E&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiywaH-3tzNAhViLsAKHehxCnkQ6AEIIjAB#v=onepage&q=macmillan%20six%20weeks%20queen&f=false">famously predicted</a> that his government was unlikely to last six weeks.</p>
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<p>That Suez had delivered Macmillan the keys to Number 10 was ironic, given that he had done a good deal to cause the crisis in the first place. He had egged on the prime minister and argued that the military objectives should be expanded to include the destruction of Nasser’s armies and overthrow of his government. </p>
<p>Catastrophically, on the eve of the crisis, Macmillian also assured his cabinet colleagues that, if presented with a <em>fait accompli</em>, Washington would simply acquiesce. “I know Ike,”<a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=uGw9CwAAQBAJ&pg=PT271&lpg=PT271&dq=%22I+know+Ike+he+will+lie+doggo%22&source=bl&ots=guBze5dsXu&sig=18zZje6duZ62LUVeUa9TvxP2v2A&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiZsJHy8NzNAhXBA8AKHdPpDNAQ6AEIKDAC#v=onepage&q=%22I%20know%20Ike%20he%20will%20lie%20doggo%22&f=false"> explained Macmillan</a> – who had worked closely with Eisenhower during the Second World War – “He will lie doggo!” He couldn’t have been more wrong.</p>
<h2>Clearing up the mess</h2>
<p>Rejecting calls from Hugh Gaitskell, the Labour leader, <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/january/10/newsid_3783000/3783251.stm">to call an immediate general election</a>, Macmillan – who was unfairly derided by his critics as a mere “showman” – worked assiduously to mend the transatlantic alliance. He made the most of his personal connections and considerable charm: although the ultimate price was, effectively, subservience to Washington. </p>
<p>In Whitehall, it became something of an article of faith after Suez that no significant gap could ever be allowed to open up between the UK and the US on a major question of war and peace. And, as the British Empire was dismantled in Africa and the Caribbean, Macmillan sought to re-orient British foreign policy towards Europe, leading the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_vRHj29Zww">failed attempt to join the Common Market in 1963</a>. </p>
<p>At home, Macmillan focused his efforts on restoring the confidence of the nation (as well as that of his shattered party), and governed as a one-nation Tory during a period of rising economic prosperity. A patrician figure, Macmillan sought to exude a spirit of calm authority – hanging up a sign in Downing Street that declared “Quiet, calm deliberation disentangles every knot.” In 1959, he won a landslide victory in the general election, campaigning under the slogan <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/vote_2005/basics/4393287.stm">“Life’s Better with the Conservatives – Don’t Let Labour Ruin It.”</a></p>
<p>In 1956, those who believed that Britain was a great power, entitled to act independently to safeguard what were seen as vital national interests, learned a harsh lesson about the economic and geopolitical realities of the post-war era. In the end, those who had helped to cause the disaster proved able to save the country from ruin. It is too soon to be able to predict with any confidence whether history might be about to repeat itself.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/62061/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon Hall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Cameron has followed in Eden’s footsteps, but in the 1950s the leadership race was a different ballgame.Simon Hall, Professor of Modern History, University of LeedsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/546442016-03-01T19:05:58Z2016-03-01T19:05:58ZHow the political crises of the modern Muslim world created the climate for Islamic State<p><em>How do we account for forces and events that paved the way for the emergence of Islamic State? <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/understanding-islamic-state">Our series on the jihadist group’s origins</a> tries to address this question by looking at the interplay of historical and social forces that led to its advent.</em></p>
<p><em>In the penultimate article of the series, Harith Bin Ramli traces the Muslim world’s growing disaffection with its rulers through the 20th century and how it created the climate for both the genesis of Islamic State and its continuing success in recruiting followers.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Islamic State (IS) declared its re-establishment of the caliphate on <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/29/isis-iraq-caliphate-delcaration-war">June 29, 2014</a>, almost exactly 100 years after the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, <a href="http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/archduke-franz-ferdinand-assassinated">was assassinated</a>. Ferdinand’s death set off a series of events that would lead to the first world war and the fall of three great multinational world empires: the Austro-Hungarian (1867-1918), the Russian (1721-1917) and the Ottoman (1299-1922). </p>
<p>That IS’s leadership chose to declare its caliphate so close to the anniversary of Ferdinand’s assassination may not entirely <a href="http://www.jonathanhtodd.com/2014/06/27/6-degrees-geopolitcal-separation-franz-ferdinand-isis/">be a coincidence</a>. In a sense, the two events are connected. </p>
<p>Ferdinand’s assassination and the events it brought about (culminating in the <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/treaty-of-versailles">1919 Treaty of Versailles</a>) symbolised the <a href="http://ejil.oxfordjournals.org/content/17/2/463.full">final triumph of a new idea</a> of <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sovereignty/">sovereignty</a>. This modern conception was based on the popular will of a nation, rather than on noble lineage. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113015/original/image-20160226-26719-1crjex5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113015/original/image-20160226-26719-1crjex5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=826&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113015/original/image-20160226-26719-1crjex5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=826&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113015/original/image-20160226-26719-1crjex5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=826&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113015/original/image-20160226-26719-1crjex5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1038&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113015/original/image-20160226-26719-1crjex5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1038&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113015/original/image-20160226-26719-1crjex5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1038&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was assassinated on June 28, 1914.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Archduke_Franz_Ferdinand_of_Austria_-_b%26w.jpg">Carl Pietzner [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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<p>In declaring the resurrection of a medieval political institution almost exactly 100 years later, IS was announcing its explicit rejection of the modern international system based on that very idea of sovereignty. </p>
<h2>Early secularisation</h2>
<p>Other than the Ottoman Sultanate’s <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/middle-east/2014-11-19/myth-caliphate">very late and disputed claim</a> to the title, no attempt has been made to re-establish a caliphate since the fall of the Abbasid dynasty at the hands of the Mongols in 1258. In other words, Sunni Islam has carried on for hundreds of years since the 13th century without the need for a central political figurehead. </p>
<p>If we go further back in history, it seems that <a href="http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100141493">Sunni political theory</a> had already anticipated this problem. </p>
<p>The Abbasid caliphs began to lose power from the mid-ninth century, effectively becoming puppets of various warlords by the tenth. And the caliphate underwent a serious process of decentralisation at the same time. </p>
<p><a href="http://ilsp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/hurvitz.pdf">Key contemporary texts on statecraft</a>, such as Abu al-Hasan al-Mawardi’s (952-1058) Ordinances of Government (<em>al-Ahkam al-sultaniyya</em>), described the caliph as the necessary symbolic figurehead providing constitutional legitimacy for the real rulers – emirs or sultans – whose power was based on military might. </p>
<p>As in the case of the <a href="http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/buyids">Shi'i Buyid dynasty (934-1048)</a>, these rulers didn’t even have to be Sunni. And they were often expected to provide legislation based on practical and functional, rather than religious, considerations. </p>
<p>The Muslim world, then, had arguably already experienced secularisation of sorts before the modern age. Or, at the very least, it had for quite some time existed within a political system that balanced power between religious and worldly interests. </p>
<p>And when the caliphate came to an end in the 13th century, both the institutions of kingship and the religious courts (run by the scholar-jurists) were able to carry on functioning without difficulty.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113020/original/image-20160226-26673-dwg0r7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113020/original/image-20160226-26673-dwg0r7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113020/original/image-20160226-26673-dwg0r7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113020/original/image-20160226-26673-dwg0r7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113020/original/image-20160226-26673-dwg0r7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113020/original/image-20160226-26673-dwg0r7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113020/original/image-20160226-26673-dwg0r7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AWilayah_Abbasiyyah_semasa_khalifah_Harun_al-Rashid.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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<p>It was the 19th-century Muslim revivalist and anti-colonial movement known as <a href="http://www.oxfordislamicstudies.com/article/opr/t125/e1819?_hi=3&_pos=1">Pan-Islamism</a> that was responsible for reviving the Ottoman claim to the caliphate. The idea was revived again briefly in early 20th-century British India as the <a href="http://www.britannica.com/event/Khilafat-movement">anti-colonial Khilafat movement</a>. </p>
<p>But anti-colonial efforts after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, even those primarily based on religious beliefs, have rarely called for a return of the caliphate. </p>
<p>If anything, successors of Pan-Islamism, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, have generally worked within the framework of nation states. Putting aside doubts about their actual ability to commit to democracy and secularism, such movements have generally envisioned an Islamic state along more modern lines, with room for political participation and elections.</p>
<h2>Modern utopias and old dynasties</h2>
<p>So why evoke the caliphate in the first place? The simple answer is that it has never been completely dismissed as an option. </p>
<p>In Sunni law and political theology, once <a href="http://www.oxfordislamicstudies.com/article/opr/t125/e989?_hi=0&_pos=3182">consensus</a> over an issue has been reached, it is hard for later generations to go against it. This was why Egyptian scholar <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2009/apr/09/religion-islam-secularism-egypt">Ali Abd al-Raziq</a> was removed from his post at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Azhar_University">Al-Azhar University</a> and attacked for introducing a deviant interpretation after he wrote an argument for a secular interpretation of the caliphate in 1925.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113021/original/image-20160226-26697-17h3h4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113021/original/image-20160226-26697-17h3h4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=765&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113021/original/image-20160226-26697-17h3h4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=765&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113021/original/image-20160226-26697-17h3h4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=765&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113021/original/image-20160226-26697-17h3h4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=962&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113021/original/image-20160226-26697-17h3h4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=962&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113021/original/image-20160226-26697-17h3h4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=962&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Thinkers such as Abul Ala Mawdudi tried to place a revived caliphate within some type of democratic framework.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AAbul_ala_maududi.jpg">DiLeeF via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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<p>As <a href="http://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/the-inevitable-caliphate/">many</a> <a href="http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/13267/new-texts-out-now_madawi-al-rasheed-carool-kersten">recent</a> <a href="http://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/recalling-the-caliphate/">studies</a> show, the idea of the caliphate and its revival has had a certain utopian appeal for a wide spectrum of modern Muslim thinkers. And not just those with authoritarian or militant inclinations. </p>
<p>Some leading Muslim revivalists such as <a href="http://muhammad-asad.com/Principles-State-Government-Islam.pdf">Muhammad Asad (1900-1992)</a> and <a href="http://www.meforum.org/151/islams-democratic-essence">Abul Ala Mawdudi (1903-1979)</a>, for example, have tried to place a revived caliphate within some type of <a href="https://www.academia.edu/421254/Democracy_in_Islam_The_Views_of_Several_Modern_Muslim_Scholars">democratic framework</a>.</p>
<p>But, in practice, the dominant tendency here too has really been to seek the liberation or revival of Muslim societies within the nation-state framework. </p>
<p>If anything, national aspirations and the desire to modernise society existed before the formation of the new political order after the first world war. The majority of the populations of Muslim lands welcomed the fall of the three empires, or at least didn’t feel very strongly about the survival of traditional ruling dynasties. </p>
<p>And, with the exception of Saudi Arabia, most dynasties that stayed in power did so by reinventing their states along modern, mainly secular, models. </p>
<p>But this did not always succeed. The waves of <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/september/7/newsid_3074000/3074069.stm">revolutions</a> and <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/september/1/newsid_3911000/3911587.stm">military coups</a> that swept the Middle East and other parts of the Muslim world throughout the 1950s and 1960s amply illustrate that popular sentiment identified traditional dynasties with the continuing influence of colonial powers. </p>
<p>In Egypt, under the Muhammad Ali dynasty (1805-1952), for example, the control of the then-French Canal epitomised the interdependent relationship between the dynasty and Western power. This was why <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/focus/arabunity/2008/02/200852517252821627.html">Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918-1970)</a> made great efforts to regain it in the name of Egyptian sovereignty when he became the country’s second president in 1956.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113027/original/image-20160226-26679-ul3rf3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113027/original/image-20160226-26679-ul3rf3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113027/original/image-20160226-26679-ul3rf3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113027/original/image-20160226-26679-ul3rf3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113027/original/image-20160226-26679-ul3rf3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113027/original/image-20160226-26679-ul3rf3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113027/original/image-20160226-26679-ul3rf3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Inauguration of the Suez Canal at Port Said, Egypt, in 1869.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASuezkanal1869.jpg">Public domain via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Dissolving political legitimacy</h2>
<p>Either way, the success of the new Muslim nation states could be said to be predicated on two major expectations. The first was improvement of citizens’ lives – not only in terms of material progress, but also the benefits of freedom and the ability to represent the popular will through participatory politics. </p>
<p>The second was the ability of Muslim nations to unite against outside interference and commit to the liberation of Palestine. On both counts, the latter half of the 20th century witnessed abysmal failures and an increasing sense of frustration with Muslim leaders. </p>
<p>In many places, populism eventually gave way to authoritarianism. And the loss of further lands to Israel in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six-Day_War">1967 Six-Day War</a> revealed the inherent weakness and lack of unity among the new Muslim nations.</p>
<p>Anwar Sadat’s peace treaty with Israel after the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/october/6/newsid_2514000/2514317.stm">1973 Yom Kippur War</a> was widely seen as an act of betrayal, for breaking ranks in what should have been a united front. His decision to do so despite lacking popular support in Egypt only revealed the extent to which the country had evolved into a dictatorship. </p>
<p>Sadat’s consequent <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/october/6/newsid_2515000/2515841.stm">assassination</a> at the hands of a small radical splinter group of religious militants acted as a warning to other Muslim leaders. Now they couldn’t simply ignore or lock away religious critics, even if the majority of the population still subscribed to the secular nation-state model. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113031/original/image-20160226-26697-q9jcf8.JPEG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113031/original/image-20160226-26697-q9jcf8.JPEG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113031/original/image-20160226-26697-q9jcf8.JPEG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113031/original/image-20160226-26697-q9jcf8.JPEG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113031/original/image-20160226-26697-q9jcf8.JPEG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1125&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113031/original/image-20160226-26697-q9jcf8.JPEG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1125&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113031/original/image-20160226-26697-q9jcf8.JPEG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1125&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s peace treaty with Israel was widely seen as an act of betrayal.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3APresident_Anwar_Sadat_of_Egypt_arrives_in_the_United_States.JPEG">US Department of Defence Visual information via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This idea was reinforced by Iran’s <a href="http://www.britannica.com/event/Iranian-Revolution-of-1978-1979">1979 Islamic Revolution</a>, as well as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Mosque_seizure">failed religious revolution</a> in the holy city of Mecca the same year. </p>
<p>Throughout the late 1970s and 1980s, Muslim leaders around the world increasingly made compromises with religious reactionary forces, allowing them to expand influence in the public sphere. In many cases, these leaders increasingly adopted religious rhetoric themselves.</p>
<p>Showing support for fellow Muslims in the Soviet-Afghan War (1979-1987) or the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Intifada">First Palestinian Intifada</a> provided an opportunity to manage the threat of religious radicalism. National leaders probably also saw this as an effective way to deflect attention from the authoritarian nature of many Muslim states. </p>
<p>And, as demonstrated by <a href="https://kyleorton1991.wordpress.com/2015/09/12/did-saddam-hussein-become-a-religious-believer/">Saddam Hussain’s turn to religious propaganda</a> after the 1990-91 Gulf War, it could be used as a last resort when other ways of demonstrating legitimacy had failed.</p>
<h2>The longer view</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.britannica.com/event/Persian-Gulf-War">The Gulf War</a> also brought non-Muslim troops to Arabian soil, inspiring <a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/military-july-dec96-fatwa_1996/">Osama bin Laden’s call for jihad</a> against the Western nations that participated in it. And it eventually led to the US invasion of Iraq. That set off a chain of events that created in the country the chaotic conditions that enabled the rise of Islamic State. </p>
<p>If the IS leadership is really an <a href="http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/mideast-crisis-iraq-islamicstate/">alliance between ex-Ba'athist generals and an offshoot of al-Qaeda</a>, as has often been depicted, then we don’t have to go far beyond the events of this war to explain how the group formed. But the rise of Islamic State and its declaration of the caliphate can also be read as part of a wider story that has unfolded since the formation of modern nation states in the Muslim world. </p>
<p>As <a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/86c958c2-ff78-11e3-8a35-00144feab7de.html#axzz367SAUfPl">some commentators</a> have pointed out, it’s not so much the Sykes-Picot agreement and the drawing of artificial national borders by colonial powers that brought about IS. </p>
<p>The modern nation-state model – as much as it’s based on <a href="https://nationalismstudies.wordpress.com/2012/10/24/benedict-anderson/">a kind of fiction</a> – is still strong in most parts of the Muslim world. And, I believe, it’s still the preferred option for most Muslims today. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113024/original/image-20160226-26669-1pzyzn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113024/original/image-20160226-26669-1pzyzn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113024/original/image-20160226-26669-1pzyzn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113024/original/image-20160226-26669-1pzyzn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113024/original/image-20160226-26669-1pzyzn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113024/original/image-20160226-26669-1pzyzn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113024/original/image-20160226-26669-1pzyzn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People of Arak toppled the Shah’s statue in Bāgh Mwlli (central square of Arak) during 1979 revolution.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AIranian_Revolution_in_Arak.jpg">Dooste Amin [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But the long century that has passed since the first world war has been increasingly marked by frustration. It’s littered with the broken promises of Muslim rulers to bring about a transition to more representative forms of government. And it has been marked by a sense that Western powers continue to control and manipulate events in the region, in a way that doesn’t always represent the best interests of Muslim societies.</p>
<p>An extreme <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/the-arab-spring-five-years-on-a-season-that-began-in-hope-but-ended-in-desolation-a6803161.html">high point of frustration</a> was reached in the events of the so-called <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12813859">Arab Spring</a>. The wave of popular demonstrations against the autocratic regimes of the Arab world were seen as the first winds of change that would bring democracy to the region. </p>
<p>But, with the possible exception of Tunisia, all of these countries underwent either destabilisation (Libya, Syria), the return of military rule (Egypt), or the further clamping down on civil rights (Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and other Gulf monarchies). </p>
<p>I would hesitate to describe IS’s declaration of a caliphate as a serious challenge to the modern nation-state model. But the small, albeit substantial, stream of followers it manages to recruit daily shows it would be wrong to take for granted that the terms of the international order can simply be dictated from above forever. </p>
<p>When brute force increasingly has the final say over how people live their lives, it becomes harder for them to differentiate between the lesser of two evils.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This is the eighth article in our series on the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/understanding-islamic-state">historical roots of Islamic State</a>. <a href="http://bit.ly/UnderstandingIS">Download our special report</a> collating the whole the series.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/54644/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Harith Bin Ramli does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The rise of Islamic State and its declaration of the caliphate can be read as part of a wider story that has unfolded since the formation of modern nation states in the Muslim world.Harith Bin Ramli, Research Fellow, Cambridge Muslim College & Teaching Fellow, SOAS, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.