Middle East Politics Term Paper

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surge of Islamic movements, revolutions and political life in the last fifty years, as well as some of the events of the last ten or fifteen years, culminating with the attack on September 11 and the fight against terrorism, have brought about a legitimate discussion around the causes and effects of political Islam, as well as on the main factors that have influenced it in the last half a century.

The first issue that needs to be taken into consideration is the element of extreme cohesion that the Islamic world has: the Qur'an. According to the Islamic world, the Qur'an is the "literal, hence absolutely true, word of God as revealed to the Prophet Mohammed"

In my opinion, the direct and most important implication, both in terms of internal politics and international relation, is the creation and practice of Islamic law, as one of the three fundamental systems of law (the other two are Anglo-Saxon and the Roman system). In many Islamic countries, like the Islamic Republic of Iran, the judicial system is strictly organized around the sayings of the Qur'an and these are often strictly applied in everyday life.

It seemed important to mention at least this particularity of the Islamic world in order to emphasize and justify the fact that in some of the Islamic states where the religion plays the most important role, namely Iran for example, the intrinsic relationship between the political leader and the religious leader is extremely powerful. It is often the case here that they are one and the same person.

This should be believed only natural, since the importance of religion and of the spiritual leader in Islam is so great. In many ways, the political leader is strictly connected to his religious identity, given the fact that the separation between church and state is not existent here and that the religious basis is key to all political decisions.

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It would be interesting to note and argue that the countries that had previously enjoyed the most spectacular approaches towards the Western civilizations have nowadays approached fundamental Islamic ideas most. Again, the case of Iran seems best: previous to the return of the Ayatollah Khomeini to Iran, in 1979, the rule of the Shah was one of the most 'modern' of the entire region. Assimilation of American and European elements of culture later led, however, to an extreme return to Islamic value and rule.

The export of the Iranian Revolution was later attempted in nearby states of the region, especially in Iraq, in Syria or Algeria and the only reason that it failed to materialize to the degree it had in Iran was that the international power did not see it as strategically fit. On the other hand, the fact that political Islam or the political component of Islam had significant sympathies in the area must have relied on something, a common element in all regions of the Broader Middle East and Northern Africa.

This was strictly related to post-colonialism and to the conditions that developed in this area after the collapse of the British and French Empires, after the Second World War. Naturally, the void of power that was produced in the region had to be filled with something. In countries like Egypt, Syria or Iraq, an experimental Arab socialism was attempted, relying on the friendship and advice from the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Its failure left, in many cases, "massive corruption….....

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