It is not only since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 that political Islam has been considered one of the biggest threats to the West. In public debate and in the media Islamism has been reduced to a militant and radical grouping and so to a relatively small part of a larger Islamist social movement in the Muslim world. In fact, national Islamist organizations and movements above all represent a substantial political challenge to states in the Middle East and their authoritarian rulers, and not primarily to the West. The reduction to their militant incarnation obscures the view of political Islam as a social mass movement, which in its ideological and organizational diversity, its societal dynamics, and its potential as a political counter-movement has a substantial influence on contemporary Arab countries, Europe’s immediate neighbors.

The Islamist movement in the Middle East has developed very different organizational forms in different countries: from small, militant terrorist groups in Algeria and Egypt, larger resistance movements against the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, to societal mass movements in Egypt, Jordan, or Morocco; from underground movements, as in Tunisia and Syria, tolerated organizations as in Egypt, Bahrain, or Kuwait, to legal political parties, as in Yemen, Morocco, and Jordan; from purely politically motivated groups, social organizations, and cultural associations to Islamic banks and financial services firms. Representatives of political Islam range from conservative radical-Islamist ideologues to open-minded, Western oriented and liberal intellectuals. Common to the most diverse Islamist organizations is that they mostly operate independently of the influence of authoritarian rulers, have at their disposal considerable organizational potential and broad support among the population, and above all represent the dynamic social strata in their countries. The political strategies with which authoritarian rulers in the Arab world meet the challenge posed by political Islam are as many and varied as the organizational manifestations of the regional Islamist movement. These range from the integration of Islam into the political regime, as in Iran, Saudi Arabia, or Yemen, tolerance, as in Morocco, Kuwait, and Jordan, to containment of the Islamists by the military and security forces, as in Algeria or Tunisia.