the failure of political Islam in the Muslim World. Roy argues that Islamist
thinkers did not provide the population with any other alternative to the
existing situation that is the main reason for their frustration. Saying that
Islam is the solution would not help decreasing the both internal and external
debt, raising the rate of growth of the GNP, develop up to date technical
assistance to develop industrial infrastructure and high value added products or
solve the problem of repression and authoritarianism. In addition, the
Islamists do not have a clear political agenda to tell what they are going to do
with the banking system that is based on interest. Neither do they have a clear
view of how to keep the government budget and save it from deficit while
canceling out taxes according to the Shari’a Law, depending only on Zakat which
is only 5-10 % of the yearly income of the population .
For the Algerian case, Roy makes perfect sense. Hugh Roberts reports on
that by saying, “Yet, in fact Algerian Islamists had virtually nothing to say
about economic policy. Not only did not have positions of its own, it did not
even bother to canvass the kind of notion concerning properly Islamic banking
and so forth that has been fashionable in international Islamist circles since
the Iranian revolution.” In addition the FIS did take the government side on
the issue of economic reform and saw that privatization of government’s
enterprises . This resulted in the decline of their popularity among the
workers in Algeria.
The notion of “Bleak Society” is mentioned by Roy to emphasize that the
Islamic movement have drawn an image of their ideal society which seems rather
bleak and depressing. All entertainment methods would be “Haram” banned because
they are either Western or they are helping the bad habits to spread away among
people which makes them not virtuous. The Islamists, he argues, want to live in
the past while it is impossible because people have gotten used to entertain
themselves in many way that are not harmful. Closing cinemas, theaters and
night clubs and banning music would be very unacceptable by the population.
This is exactly what the FIS did when they controlled the local level of the
society after the local elections. They banned the Rai Music and they banned
serving alcohol.
This is a very valid point that Roy makes. Yet, the Algerians
themselves participated in mobs, as mentioned above in one of the greatest
demonstrations ever seen in Algeria since independence. A huge number of people
have adopted the ideas of how the society should be. The ideology of the FIS
was well known by the Algerians and every one knew what they would do if they
assume power in the Parliament. Still, the first round of the elections gave
them 188 seats while the FLN got only 16. The movement has succeeded to
socialize and sell their ideas to the population. This results should not be
considered as a failure by all means.
The notion of “Islam of Resentment” was mentioned by Roy to illustrate
why these movements got established from the very beginning. For Algeria, with
its history of being a colony of France till the mid 1960s, and the FLN failure
to find a paradigm to solve the problems of the society with its socialist model,
it is quiet probable that resentment was a basic factor for the creation of the
movement and its success among the population. The socialization of the FIS was
more than excellent, especially if one takes in account the very short period it
took to form a political party and defeat the ruling regime.
In conclusion, the failure of political Islam is a theory, although
seems to apply successfully to the Algerian model, but it is rather a mistake to
think that Islam has failed in Algeria. Although the FIS did not have a real
economic plan that could save the Algerian economy, one cannot say that if they
are to come back and elections are to be held again democratically they would
loose the elections because they have failed. The FIS had been very successful
in convincing the masses with their plans and what they would do. Yet, the
extremely undemocratic action that was carried out by the army to cancel the
elections was what prevented the movement from doing something to save Algeria.
In fact, no one can say whether or not Political Islam would have failed in
Algeria hadn’t the army intervened to cancel the elections. Yet, it is very
obvious that the FIS would have had a really hard time to solve these problems
and, at the same time, keep their popularity among the crushed masses that were
striving under very poor conditions.