Spokesmen for the Despised: Fundamentalist Leaders of the Middle East

By R.Scott Appleby

Book Overview

Behind the bloody acts of terrorism, the mobs chanting with upraised fists, the backroom and front-page politics in the Middle East, stand powerful religious leaders cloaked in mystery and fanaticism. Spokesmen for the Despised lifts the veils, presenting eight vivid portraits of fundamentalist leaders who have turned their charismatic religious authority to powerful political ends.

The deeds of the men profiled in this book make history and headlines, whether through the anti-American rhetoric of the late Iranian revolutionary, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini; the violent acts of Hizbullah, the Lebanese Shi'ite movement headed by Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah; or the group of Jewish rabbis who appear to have inspired the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. No one better exemplifies this history-making than Shaykh Ahmad Yasin, the spiritual leader of Hamas, who from his Israeli jail cell continues to influence Hamas's efforts to eliminate both Israel and the PLO. Also featured are the spiritual guides of the radical Jewish settler movement Gush Emunim, the Sudanese sponsor of "the Islamic Awakening," the preacher who inflamed Upper Egypt, and the ideological leader of the Zionist International Christian Embassy.

These riveting biographies include interviews with true believers and bitter opponents, and in several cases with the subjects themselves, carefully placing the lives of these charismatic leaders in the contexts of their religious traditions and their varied social, political, and religious settings. Spokesmen for the Despised is an essential volume for anyone wishing to understand the relationship between religion and politics in the Middle East.

Contributors: Ziad Abu Amr, Gideon Aran, Yaakov Ariel, Daniel Brumberg, Patrick D. Gaffney, Samuel Heilman, Martin Kramer, and Judith Miller

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226021254
• ISBN13: 9780226021256
• Release Date: December 1996
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 438 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Spokesmen for the Despised

One likely reason for the limited appeal of fundamentalist movements before 1975 had to do with their dearth of leadership. Conversely, the emergence of highly competent leaders helps explain the surge of the past two decades. The excellent essays in Spokesmen for the Despised focus on this important personal angle; although the title seemingly refers only to fundamentalists of the Islamic variety, the volume also includes Jewish leaders (the Kooks, Moshe Levinger) and even an oddball Christian (Jan Willem van der Hoeven, a Dutch minister living in Jerusalem). Muslims fill most of the book however: Khomeini, Fadlallah, Turabi, Yasin, and the lesser-known but significant Ahmad Isma`il of Minya, Egypt. All the accounts bear careful reading; but especially so Martin Kramer's 99-page study of Fadlallah, an outstandingly subtle study of an outstandingly subtle figure. Kramer traces the sheikh's early life, his sudden rise to prominence in 1984, and his career over the subsequent decade as the "spiritual leader" of Lebanon's Hizbullah. Noting that "once he started talking, he never stopped," Kramer sifts through a vast number of Fadlallah's interviews to distill his unchanging strategic aims (an Islamic state in Lebanon, the destruction of Israel) as well as his highly flexible tactics. In Kramer's words: "Demand Jerusalem but settle (for now) for the south [of Lebanon]; demand an Islamic state, then settle (for now) for a `humane' state. In his plea for the despised, Fadlallah remained both pragmatic and principled." And therein lies the danger he poses. Middle East Quarterly, June 1997