Religious Movements in Algeria and Jordan

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This is a study of religious movements in Algeria and Jordan. These countries are additional cases to the list of countries included in an earlier comparative project (SES- 9213209) on "Episode and Discourse: Islamic Modernism, Liberal-Nationalism, and Fundamentalism in the Contemporary Middle East." This larger project is a study of: (i) the determinants of ideological production; (ii) the connection between macro social change and the rise or decline of ideological movements; (iii) the specific manner in which ideology is produced, its themes are formulated, and its social and political orientations take shape; (iv) the factors explaining variations in the success and level of institutionalization of ideological movements; and (v) the relationship between ideology and interest. These theoretical issues are addressed in the analysis of: (i) the rise of Islamic modernist movements in India, Egypt, and Iran in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; (ii) the rise of liberal-nationalism in Egypt, Iran, and Syria in the 1920s to l950s; and (iii) the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, and Syria in the post 1950s. Drawing from John Stuart Mill's methods of experimental inquiry, the comparative logic employed in this project required the addition of Algeria and Jordan to fully assess the explanatory power of the project's causal model and to partial out the confounding effects of other factors: (i) To what extent does Shi'i institutional development explain the strength of fundamentalism in Iran? (ii) To what extent do Western cultural infiltration and the ruling elite's close ties with the West explain the rise of Islamic fundamentalism? Analyses of ideological movements in Algeria and Jordan are important in their own right, because these nations are influential in the Islamic world, having noticeable impacts on world politics. Revolution in Algeria has inspired many revolutionary movements in the region. Algeria is currently experiencing an upsurge of a strong fundamentalist movement on a par with Iranian fundamentalism. Jordan is a secular state which has not faced a serious challenge from the fundamentalist groups and is developing democratic institutions and pluralist politics. From the study of each of these countries one can therefore draw critical lessons that have both scientific merit and practical significance for peace.