The politics of Islamists in Algeria, Egypt and the Sudan

This dissertation is a general survey of the major and minor modern Islamic political movements that erupted in the early 1970s and late, 80s and, 90s in three Middle Eastern countries: Egypt, Algeria and Sudan. It will (1) give a general overview of modern Islamic reformist thought (liberal, conservative and revolutionary) in the first half of the 20th century that directly or indirectly influenced these movements (2) focus on the historical local/political and social problems (e.g., conflict between national parties, as well as restricted participation or monopoly of the one-party political system, illegitimate and corrupt leadership, cultural assault on Islam and moral lassitude, population growth and rural migration), political regional (e.g., defeat and humiliation in Middle Eastern wars dependence on, clienteles or subservience to foreign powers), adverse local economic conditions (e.g., mismanagement of state-controlled economies followed by market economies that favored a few well-placed minority, poverty and unemployment), as well as auspicious occurrences (e.g., democratic opportunistic, pluralism or the opening up of the political system) that led to the formation of organized Islamic groups in each country (3) outline the development of the theoretical formulation as well as the organizational stages through which each of these groups passed, and their relationship to the state within which they developed.In Egypt, the focus will be the Muslim Brotherhood, the main Islamic group the-cut off point will the 1995 November parliamentary election. In Algeria, the focus will be the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) the cut-off point will be Abbasi Madani's September 1997 open letter to U.N. Secretary Kofi Annan endorsing the General's appeal for an international solution to solve Algeria's five-year-old civil war. The focus in Sudan will be the National Islamic Front (NIF) the cut-off point will be the December 28, 1996, military offensive by the National Democratic Alliance NDA), a national alliance of opposition groups. The cut-off point in Islam and Democracy will be the progressive viewpoints of Abdolkarim Souroush.The objective of this study is to show or display: (1) how Islamically oriented indigenous individuals and groups are responding to similar and sometimes dissimilar regional political and economic situations or factors (2) the alternative theoretical world-view (to e.g., secularism, Arab nationalism, sectarianism, Ba'thism and communism) these groups are promoting (3) the evolvement and transformation of modern Islamic thinking within each group, if any, that has transpired in the process (4) the compatibility of Islam and democracy and finally in a concluding chapter (5) a comparison and contrast of these movements to indicate their negative and positive attributes, if any, to forecast tentatively prospects of their possible future development, continuity and responsible participation in the political process.