Note: This is a follow-up to Saturday’s post.
Sayyed Imam Al-Sharif’s recent revision of his longstanding jihadi views have raised some interesting questions about whether his ideological transformation is genuine, or if it was forced by torture-happy Egyptian authorities. No one knows the answer, although there is much speculation. Interestingly, Egypt has the largest “de-radicalization” program in the Arab world — the same program which Al-Sharif was allegedly exposed to. According to The Guardian, Egyptian authorities boast about having reformed numerous Islamic militants. Most notably, the de-radicalization program is credited with transforming the Egyptian Islamic Group, the organization that was responsible for Anwar Sadat’s assassination. The change is quite miraculous:
[The group’s] top ideologues, mostly now freed, have written 25 volumes of revisions in a series called Tashih al-Mafahim (Corrections of Concepts). These tackle key doctrinal issues such as the concept of takfir — declaring a Muslim an apostate and therefore permissible to kill; attacks on civilians and foreign tourists; and waging jihad against a Muslim ruler who does not apply sharia law.
The Egyptian Islamic Group actually went as far as to renounce violence back in 1997 and has largely maintained a ceasefire since then; at the time, however, 20,000 of its supporters were in jail, and thousands of others had been killed by Egyptian security forces. It is unclear, therefore, how much the switch was based on a genuine ideological transformation rather than on pure strategic calculation.
Very little has been written on Egypt’s de-radicalization program, despite its size and alleged successes. Much like other such programs, though, we do know that it involves bringing in moderate Muslim clerics to convince radicals of the fallacy of their views. Outside of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Jordan, and Indonesia have some of the largest de-radicalization programs. The Indonesian program has met with very mixed success, and those who are “cured” often appear to do so because they were bribed, rather than out of a genuine ideological shift. Nonetheless, as The Economist noted recently, Indonesian authorities are getting smarter about how to run these programs; namely, by recruiting former militants with “street cred” to help make the case against violence.
Meeting Nasir Abas at one of Indonesia’s trendiest hotels, it is hard to imagine that this polite man in casual Western clothes was once a leader of Jemaah Islamiah (JI), the region’s most dangerous terrorist group. Now his job is to persuade his former comrades to give up the idea of perpetrating violence against the West in the name of Islam.
As he explains in his mild-mannered way, he uses two lines of argument. One is theological: he points out the verses in the Koran that forbid aggressive warfare, and which insist that the lives of non-combatants, especially women and children, must be protected. The other line is more strategic: to convince his listeners that not all Westerners are anti-Muslim, he stresses the fact that many Americans opposed the war in Iraq. And he challenges them: have terrorist bombs made people respect Islam more? Some prisoners angrily reject his arguments, he says—but as long as they are still prepared to listen to them, he thinks it worth continuing to try.
The Saudi program is similar, relying on more moderate religious clerics to make the case against violence that is not explicitly endorsed by the Saudi monarchy. Interestingly, some observers credit a decrease in foreign fighters in Iraq to Saudi Arabia’s de-radicalization efforts. But, as resident Saudi guru John Burgess has noted, “the question — for which there’s no answer yet–is how effective these programs will be long-term. So far, the Saudis report no recidivism, but the first people to go through the program are just now being released into the general population…”
Getting back to Egypt, there are many more questions than answers. Like the Islamic world’s other de-radicalization programs, the verdict is out on their success. A number of Islamists and outside observers, however, believe that Al-Sharif’s transformation was a genuine one, based on years of thought and discussion with more moderate religious figures. An Al Ahram article quotes Islamist lawyer Montasser El-Zayyar as suggesting that Al Sharif changed his mind not because of torture, but as a result of “long years of reflection and debate” as an inmate in the Egyptian prison system.
It may be years before we know for sure.