EGYPT               IRAQ                      IRAN

Official
Name:          Arab Republic       Republic       Islamic Republic
               of Egypt            of Iraq             of Iran

Pop.           60.0 m              18.5 m              62.0 m

Area           386                 168                 636 
1,000 miles2

Type of
Government

Nominal        Presidential        Presidential        Presidential
               Republic            Republic            Republic

Actual         Bureaucratic-       One Man             Theocratic
               Authoritarian       Absolute            Oligarchy
               State               Dictatorship        of Shişite
                                                       Clergymen

Date of        July 23, 1952       Oct. 3, 1932        (1947)
Independence

Political
Culture:  --in all three nations; millennia of despotic rule in
          pre-Islamic history; Egypt under rule of Islamic caliphs
          and their viceroys until 1850s; then quasi-independent
          under Albanian sultans under British protection; Iraq
          under rule of Islamic caliphs until 1254 a.d., then
          devastated by Mongols under Chengiz Khan's grandson,
          Haluku Khan; under Ottoman rulers from 1500s to 1918;
          then British Protectorate until 1932; Hashemite kingdom
          until coup of July 14, 1958; then Republic under various
          dictators until Başthist party takeover in 1960s; Iran
          under various empires from 558 b.c. to 1979; parochial,
          village and tribal-oriented political culture in all
          three states; all three states have written constitutions
          and presidential and parliamentary institutions but whose
          functions do not correspond to western usages but really
          are meant as constitutional window-dressing to legitimize
          regime before the outside world and before its own
          educated classes.

          --all three nation-states have a problematic relationship
          with Islam:  Iran considers itself a true Islamic state
          but has experienced first-hand the contradictions of
          trying to make the Islamic law, formulated over 1,400
          years ago, the organic law of a modern state; Iraq is
          officially a secularist state which has systematically
          murdered thousands of dissident clergymen and their
          followers but whose leaders profess to be Muslims and to
          respect Islam; Egypt is a secular state in which Islamic
          law is allowed to play a role analogous to that of common
          law in Anglo-American legal systems; regime allows
          Islamic groups limited participation in elections and
          parliamentary government but is very wary of subversive
          infrastructure of Muslim political organizations.

Special Problems:

     Egypt:  Although Egypt was a pioneer of Pan-Arab nationalism
her separate peace with Israel made her the pariah of the Arab
world.  Egyptian nationalism stressed that Egypt has a civilization
more ancient and dignified than that of the Hebrews (read: the
Israelis), Romans, Greeks, Iranians and the Arabs.  Egypt is the
most technologically advanced of the Arab nations and the most
powerful military force among the Arabs.  Egypt's Cairo (and not
Mecca) is also the center of the Sunni Muslim world in much the
same way that Rome (and not Jerusalem) was the capital of Western
Latin Christianity until the Reformation---Cairo contains the Al
Azhar Mosque and University in which students from over 22 Muslim
nations are trained in classical Arabic studies of the Qurşan (the
holy scripture of Islam), the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad,
and the various schools of Islamic jurisprudence.  Although Islam
lacks any institutional priesthood similar to that of the Christian
denominations, the rector of Al Azhar Mosque is regarded with great
respect throughout the Sunni Muslim world and his fatwas (=rulings
of Islamic religious law) are regarded as carrying great weight
throughout Egypt and the entire Muslim world---he is also under 24
hour surveillance by the Egyptian security police.  

     Egypt is also home of one of the best organized Islamic
fundamentalist movements in history---the Muslim Brotherhood, which
nearly toppled the Egyptian government twice in this century and
which has branches in many Muslim nations.  It runs the anti-
government insurgency in Algeria, which has claimed over 30,000
lives and runs the current dictatorship in the Sudan.  It is
suspected of running the Hamas terrorist organization in Israel and
the Occupied Lands and is a minority member of the coalition
parliamentary government in Jordan.  Although the leaders of the
Egyptian branch of the Brotherhood deny it, most governmental
authorities in Egypt and other Arab and Muslim nations view the
Muslim Brotherhood as a trans-national subversive organization
aimed at destroying existing Arab governments into order to clear
the way to resurrecting a pan-Islamic state that would be similar
in many ways to the existing Islamic Republic of Iran.

     Minorities:  Egypt once boasted a Jewish community of over
3,000 families, most of whom fled to Israel in the years since the
founding of the State of Israel.  One in eight Egyptians are Coptic
Christians, a branch of Eastern Orthodox Christianity.  The Copts
are the wealthiest minority in Egypt, being a tight-knit business
community and relatively well-educated.  Coptic Christians have
been the object of a hate campaign by extreme Muslim
fundamentalists who resent their disproportionate influence in
Egyptian economic and political affairs.  One Coptic writer, Mahfuz
Naguib, who received the Nobel prize for literature in 1990, has
been threatened with death by fundamentalists who claim his
writings have ridiculed Islam.  The current Secretary General of
the United Nations, Butrous Butrous Ghali, is a Coptic Christian
and former Foreign Minister of Egypt, and his life has also been
threatened by fundamentalists.

     Iraq:     Iraq lives under a stifling and oppressive
dictatorship rivaling Josef Stalin's reign of terror in the Soviet
Union and the Kim Il Sung regime in North Korea.  Whereas Egypt has
a history and identity that goes back 3,000 years before the Common
Era and Iran has around 2,500 years of recorded history, Iraq is
one of those curious inventions of back-handed European
colonialism.  Although modern Iraq occupied the sites of the
Assyrian and Babylonian civilizations the current Arab nation and
government is really the creation of a British-French agreement
during World War I on how to divide up the Ottoman possessions in
the Near East after World War I.  The Mandate of Iraq was made up
of three former Ottoman provinces of Mosul (northern Iraq), Baghdad
(central Iraq) and Basra (southern Iraq).  Fully 40% of Iraq's
population is made up of Kurds, a non-Arab tribal people who speak
a language related to Persian and who have aspirations of creating
their own independent nation-state of Kurdistan (which would
involve taking away not only Iraq's northern latitudes but also
substantial neighboring portions of Turkey and Iran.  Around 80% of
the Arab population of Iraq are Shişites who are subject to rule by
a minority government of Sunni Arabs in Baghdad.  The Shişite sect
has been the subject of repeated harassments and persecutions by
the Iraq government which views the sect as a pestilential
emanation of the civilization of Iran, itself viewed as the
quintessential enemy of all things Arab.  The Ministry of Education
of Iraq once issued a textbook for boys' high schools entitled
Those Three Whom God Should Not Have Created:  Jews, Flies and
Iranians.  Since the rise of the Başthist Party the Iraqi
government has systematically expelled around 10% of its population
for the crime of having Iranian ancestry.  Most Iraqi Jews have
long since fled to Israel.

     Iran:     About one-third of Iranians actually speak Turkish
as their native language.  Strange to say this Turkish-speaking
subgroup has played a role in Iranian politics and literature
similar to that  of the Scots in English politics and literature--
they have contributed way out of proportion to their actual numbers
and view themselves proudly as Iranians.  Persian-speaking Iranians
tend to deride their Turkish speaking cousins as being obtuse and
stupid--largely because Turks are unashamed of manual labor whereas
most Persian-speakers view manual work as degrading but view trade
and commerce as honorable.  Nonetheless the Turks of Tabriz have a
reputation for being sharp traders.

     Minority problems include troubles with those tribal groups
that are Sunni and who do not speak Persian---Baluchis in the East,
Turkomans (=Muslim Mongols) in the northeast, and Kurds in the
West.  Shişite but non-Persian tribal groups include Shah-savani
tribesmen in the northwest and Qashqai and Bakhtiyari tribesmen in
the central mountains.  Those groups have fought intermittent wars
with the central government comparable to the "Indian Wars" of the
American West.  Iran once boasted a large (300,000) Armenian
Christian minority population as well as a large (60,000) Jewish
community which traced its presence in Iran back to the time of
Queen Esther.  Most of the Jews have emigrated to Israel while the
Armenians also have increasingly emigrated since the revolution of
1979.  Iran also had a large population of Bahaşis, a religious
group that emerged out of Iranian Muslims in the last century but
who have been systematically exterminated by the current regime
which views them as pestilential heretics.  As Christians, Jews and
Bahaşis were among the best-educated and most prosperous groups in
Iran---and therefore subject to the envy and hatred of poorer
Muslim Iranians---their declining numbers has been followed by a
decline in the internal prosperity and intellectual vigor of this
nation.

                    ISLAM:  Submission to God
             Timeless World-Wide Faith and Practice

                              And,

                     Islamic Fundamentalism:
                Contemporary Political Phenomenon


Islam:    Arabic verbal noun derived from asalama, "to make peace,
to surrender, to submit to"

Muslim, [alterative spelling, Moslem], noun derived from same verb
meaning, "one who makes peace [with God]," or, "one who surrenders
to [God's will]."

Fundamental Beliefs of Islam:

Belief in God:  Islam teaches the existence of one God, who is
identified with the God of Abraham and the other Hebrew patriarchs
of the Old Testament and the God worshipped by Jesus Christ.  Islam
denies that there are other gods in addition to this one God.  It
denies that God exists in the form of a trinity of three divine
persons.  It also denies that Jesus is either the "Son of God" or
else of the three persons in a trinity.  The Arabic name used for
God, namely Allah, can be literally translated as "the God,"
although it is often used almost as a personal name for God.

Belief in Revelation:  Islam teaches that God has created humanity
for just purposes and has revealed His will through successive
revelations that have been written down in holy scriptures.  Islam
accepts that Jews and Christians received specific revelations
through their own prophets from God, respectively the Taurat
(Torah) and the Injil (Gospel).  Most Muslim scholars do not accept
the received texts of the Old and New Testaments as faithfully
transmitting those original revelations.  The Qurşan
(="recitation") is the perfect and final revelation given through
Muhammad that supersedes all previous revelations.

Belief in Prophets:  Revelations are given through prophets, that
is, specially appointed messengers who deliver specific warnings or
codes of laws to mankind.  Prophets often are given miraculous
signs in order to confirm their apostolic status.  Muhammad is
viewed as the last of a succession of prophets.

Belief in Heaven and Hell:  Islam teaches that those who believe
and obey the message and laws of Islam will be rewarded by God with
eternal life in paradise in which they will enjoy physical as well
as spiritual pleasures in a resurrected body.  Those who reject
Islam and/or those who refuse to obey the laws of God will be
resurrected and sent to a literal place of eternal fire whose
torment never ceases.  Both the souls of Righteous and the Damned
are kept in an intermediate state known as the Barzakh prior to the
Day of Resurrection.  Exception:  those who die as martyrs of
Islam, either as victims of persecution or as combatants in holy
wars fought to defend or advance Islam are considered to enter
paradise directly without having to await the resurrection.

Belief in the Resurrection
and the Day of Judgment:  On the Day of Judgment the souls of the
righteous and the wicked will be physically resurrected at the
trumpet call of the Archangel Gabriel.  God will pass judgment on
all people and assign them to their eternal destinies accordingly.

Belief in Other 
Supernatural Beings:  Since humans cannot converse with God face to
face He communicates with them through angels.  In addition to
angels there is another class of supernatural beings known as the
"jinn," which are composed of fire.  [This is the source of the
idea of "genies".]  While the angels are all sinless servants of
God the "jinn," like human beings, are a mixed lot, some being
faith and obedient to God and others being wicked and disobedient. 
Shaytan (Satan) or Iblis (from Greek diabolos "devil") is the
leader of the disobedient jinn.  Although Satan is considered to be
a real and personal enemy to mankind he has only the power to tempt
mankind or to insinuate doubt and unbelief.  He and the other jinn
have no power to possess people or to work supernatural acts on
their own.


Fundamental Practices of Muslims:

1.   Confession of Faith:  At least once in his/her life a Muslim
     must make a voluntary, conscious and public oral declaration
     that "There is no god except God (Allah), and Muhammad is the
     Prophet of God."

2.   Prayer:   At five prescribed times each day (before sunrise;
     just after noon; mid-afternoon; just past sunset and once more
     during nighttime prior to midnight) Muslims must say prayers
     according to a specific ritual, using the same Arabic prayers
     and postures ordered by the Prophet.  Prayers must be said in
     a state of ritual purity, in a ritually pure location and said
     facing the direction of Mecca.

3.   Fasting:  For the entire lunar month of Ramadhan Muslims above
     the age of reason must abstain totally from food, drink, sex,
     tobacco, and medicine from 2 hours and ten minutes before
     sunrise until about 20 minutes after sunset.  Nursing and/or
     menstruating women are forbidden to fast but must make up the
     uncompleted days at other times.  Those who are ill, aged or
     who otherwise cannot fast likewise can make up their missed
     fasts or else feed 30 poor persons for each day of missed
     fasting.

4.   Alms:  Muslims should redistribute the equivalent of 2.5% of
     their net worth in the form of alms to the poor.

5.   Hajj Pilgrimage:  If a Muslim has the health, financial means
     and opportunity, he or she must make the ritual pilgrimage to
     Mecca at least once in a lifetime.  This pilgrimage involves
     a series of rituals that must be completed at the proper
     places and times within the precincts of Mecca within the
     first ten days of the lunar month of Dhul Hijja.  The Hajj re-
     enacts certain events in the life of Abraham and Hagar as well
     as involving certain vows and specific rituals.


Jihad - The term jihad is an Arabic verbal noun derived from
jahada, meaning "to struggle," that is, to struggle with something
that is disagreeable or else against something that is wrong. 
While "holy war" is not a literal translation, it does summarize
the essential idea of jihad.  The Muslim jurists give the most
general definition of jihad as the Muslim believers' exerting their
abilities, talents, and power in struggling in the path of God
using their resources of life, property, speech, and all available
instruments to make the Word of God prevail in this world.  Muslim
jurists distinguish between a "greater jihad," which is the
struggle against the world, the flesh, and the devil in the
spiritual realm, and a "lesser jihad" consisting of open physical
warfare with the enemies of Islam or of the Muslims.  In the course
of the revival of Islamic fundamentalism the doctrine of jihad has
been invoked to justify resistance, including terrorist actions, to
combat "un-Islamic" regimes, or purported external enemies of
Islam, such as Israel and the United States.

ISLAM:  RELIGION OF LAW

     The Sharişah, or the "Sacred Law of Islam," is viewed as a
complete, organic, perfect, immutable code of laws received by
Almighty God through His Prophet, Muhammad.  Being based on God's
perfect knowledge of mankind's unchanging nature it may be
amplified but never amended or abrogated.

     It sources include:

     The Holy Qurşan:  Revelations given directly to Muhammad
containing laws, decrees, as well as, spiritual instruction,
eschatological doctrine and narratives of previous prophets and
dispensations.

     The Sunnah (Tradition):  Oral traditions concerning what the
Prophet Muhammad approved of,disapproved of, how he lived, what
advice he gave, what actions and what characters he praised or
reproved all form a secondary literature which also are viewed as
guides to correct action.

     Ijma (Consensus):  The consensus of the first two generations
of Muslims who either knew Muhammad personally or else who knew
someone who knew Muhammad personally, are viewed as carrying a
binding authority on all future generations.

     Ijtihad (Independent Reasoning):  Not the private opinion or
individual conscience of just any believer but rather the informed
opinion of scholars of Islamic laws who thoroughly know the Qurşan,
Sunnah, and Ijma.  Such scholars must be men of impeccable moral
character and piety.

     Problem of Secularization in Islamic World:

     Community rights versus individual Rights

     Progress versus continuity

     Cultural integrity and Authenticity versus Cosmopolitanism
ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISM

     Islamic fundamentalism has been identified as the main
ideological inspiration of the assassins of Anwar Sadat, the
Hezbollah (q.v.) militia of Lebanon, and of the Islamic Republic of
Iran, which has engaged in state sponsorship of terrorism.  It is
also associated with a number of political parties as well as non-
political cultural and social organizations which have had nothing
to do with terrorism and which seek to advance their perceived
missions in a peaceful and legal manner.

     What non-Muslim Westerners have called "Islamic
fundamentalism" Muslims prefer to call "al nihdhat al Islami,"
meaning "the Islamic movement," or better, "the Islamic
resurgence."  The term "Islamic fundamentalism" misleadingly
suggests an analogy with Christian fundamentalism, which accepts a
radical distinction between the "kingdom of God" and the kingdom(s)
of this world.  So-called fundamentalist Islam radically rejects
such a separation of life into secular and religious domains, or
any separation of politics and religion.  The closest analogy in
Western Christianity would be rather the prorevolutionary
"liberation theology" of Latin America rather than the private
pietism of mainstream American Protestant fundamentalism.  Although
using the term "Islamic resurgence" would be less misleading, the
currency of the term "Islamic fundamentalism" will likely remain a
linguistic fact of life in American English.

Beliefs and Goals of Islamic Fundamentalists:

     Central to Islamic fundamentalism is its insistence on
reviving and comprehensively applying a unitary system of Islamic
law covering all private and public affairs.  This closed and
comprehensive legal system stems from the Qurşan, an even larger
body of traditions, authoritative commentaries, historic consensus,
and judicial precedents.  The various Islamic fundamentalist
movements hold in common certain beliefs, which may be summarized
as follows:  

     1.   The Islamic laws have comprehensive solutions for all
          economic, social, diplomatic, criminal, and civil
          problems;  
     2.   Islamic law is itself perfect, immutable, and organic,
          not to be abrogated in part or amended;  
     3.   The current Islamic world, with its mixture of
          traditional Muslim and contemporary Western laws and
          institutions, and its division of the historic Islamic
          empire into several nation-states, represents a deviation
          from true Islam; and, 
     4.   The religious duties of jihad, holy war, or of "enjoining
          the good and forbidding the evil" permit violence to rid
          Muslim lands of un-Islamic laws, institutions, rulers,
          foreign powers, and agents when other means fail.

Forms of Islamic Fundamentalism:

     Islamic fundamentalism is not a monolithic phenomenon but
exists both in an "official" form and a "populist" form.  

     The religious establishments within Saudi Arabia and the
Persian Gulf emirates are officially fundamentalist in the sense
outlined above but with the difference that they maintain that the
true Islam is already being implemented in those countries.  Such
an Islamic fundamentalism is politically conservative and even
counterrevolutionary.  

     The opposing "populist" variety of Islamic fundamentalism
comes also in two forms, namely, an islahi (reformist) version and
a salafi (puritan) version.  

     Reformist fundamentalists accept the notion of incrementalist
reform of corrupt Muslim societies through educational efforts and
such political participation or agitation as is permitted by the
local Muslim government.  Examples of such fundamentalists are to
be found in the various Muslim Brotherhood groups (q.v.) that have
operated as political parties and social welfare organizations in
Egypt, the Sudan, Syria, Algeria, and other Muslim lands.  

     The salafi fundamentalists reject such reformism as
compromising with unbelief and insist instead on violent,
revolutionary means to achieve the true Islamic state and society. 
An example of such fundamentalists was the Sunnite group that
attacked and occupied the Masjid al Haram complex in Mecca on 20
November 1979.  Nonetheless, even reformist fundamentalists have
shown a willingness to resort to political violence and terrorism
if they are frustrated in their attempts to work peacefully within
the political system.  The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in the
Nasser period, the Brotherhood in Syria under Hafez al-Asad, and,
more recently, the Islamic Salvation Front (q.v.) in Algeria and
Islamic Tendency Movement (q.v.) in Tunisia have all resorted to
political violence when denied the chance to reform those countries
through political channels.  

     Most "populist" fundamentalists are hostile to the West, and
to the United States in particular, for three main reasons:  

     First, the United States is perceived as the main backer of
     the State of Israel, which is viewed as a Judaic and European
     imposition into the midst of the Muslim world.  

     Second, the United States is viewed as the backer and
     supporter of those Muslim states that populist fundamentalists
     regard as apostate regimes.  

     Third, the United States is the source of an attractive
     materialistic and individualistic culture that is incompatible
     with the traditional and community-centered ethos of an
     integral Islamic moral order.  

     These perceived antagonisms will continue to provoke violent
reactions, including terrorist attacks or threats against American
citizens and U.S. interests in, or near, the Muslim world for the
foreseeable future.  Apart from antagonism toward the West and the
United States, the incompatibility of Islamic fundamentalist
aspirations with the conscious secularism of many Muslim states,
especially the Pan-Arabist Başthist Syrian and Iraqi regimes, also
portends terrorism by fundamentalists against such regimes as well
as reciprocal state terror directed by those regimes against
fundamentalists.    

     Although Islamic fundamentalism is perhaps the only remaining
transnational ideological movement that challenges Western liberal
democracy following the collapse of international communism, even
among the salafi fundamentalists there is no monolithic ideological
or organizational unity.  Sectarian differences between Sunnite and
Shişite fundamentalists, nationalistic differences between Arab and
non-Arab nationals, and idiosyncratic antagonisms among and within
groups or between individual leaders have vitiated efforts to
create a cohesive Pan-Islamic movement.  This was particularly
evident in the case of the Iranian revolution in which the Shişite
complexion of Iranian Islam and the historical animosity between
Iranians and Arabs neutralized much of the appeal of that
revolution even among fundamentalists in the Arab Sunnite
countries.  Nonetheless given the failure of attempts to implement
socialism or Western-style democracy in the various Muslim
countries and the repeated failures of Arab nationalist leaders to
defeat Israel or the West, Islamic fundamentalism continues to grow
in its appeal within Muslim countries as an indigenous moral-
ethical and populist political ideology with which to answer the
political and cultural challenges of the non-Muslim world.


Bibliography for Further Reading:

About Islam Generally:

     Ideals and Realities of Islam, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Beacon
Press, Boston 1975.

     Faith and Power:  The Politics of Islam, Edward Mortimer,
Vintage Books, New York, 1982.

     Militant Islam, G.H. Jansen, Harper/Colophon, New York, 1979

     Sacred Rage:  The Wrath of Militant Islam, Robin Wright, Simon
and Schuster, New Yrok, 1986.

     Holy Wars:  The Rise of Islamic Fundamentalism, Dilip Hiro,
Routledge, London, 1989.

     Islamic Fundamentalism and the Gulf Crisis, ed. by James
Piscatori, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Chicago, 1991.