Over the last quarter century, authoritarian regimes the world
over have found it harder than ever to coerce their citizens into silence. In
Latin America, Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, ordinary
men and women have managed to overcome their fear and do what once
seemed unthinkable: confront their own leaders with demands for sweeping
reform. Recent challenges to authoritarian rule embody different hopes and
dreams. In places as diverse as Prague, Santiago, Johannesburg, Manila, and
Beijing, protesters have raised the banner of liberal democracy, invoking the
example of earlier democratic struggles in the West. In the Muslim world,
however, the most insistent calls for reform have come not from movements
favoring secular democracy but from those seeking to establish a political
system based on Islam. Indeed, Islam has eclipsed secular ideologies as the
primary source of political activism in much of the Muslim world. Although
the goals and strategies of Islamists differ, they are united in their conviction
that the most vexing problems facing contemporary Muslim societies can
be resolved through an individual and collective return to religion. The
Islamic movement is not confined to a single geographic region, but the
idea that al-Islam huwa al-hall—Islam is the Solution—resonates with par-
ticular force in Arab politics. In the Arab world today, the best organized,
most popular, and most effective opposition movements call for an Islamic
reform of society and state. Moreover, the prototypical Islamic activist is not
an illiterate peasant or laborer but a young, upwardly mobile university stu-
dent or professional, often with a scientific or technical degree. Far from
embodying the defensive protest of traditional social classes on the decline,

-1-