page_title: Islamism
section_title: Western patronage
hierarchical_section_title: Islamism / Background / State-sponsorship / Western patronage
caption_attribution_description: English: In clockwise order: Ronald Reagan; Gust Avrakotos; Muhammad Omar Babarakzai; Mohammad Ghafoor Yousefzai; Habib-Ur-Rehman Hashemi; Farida Ahmadi; Mir Niamatullah and Gul Mohammad.Original caption&#58; "C12820-32, President Reagan meeting with Afghan Freedom Fighters to discuss Soviet atrocities in Afghanistan. 2/2/83." — Ronald Reagan Library Present: Mir Ne' Matollag, Habib-Ur-Rehman Hashemi, Gol-Mohammed, Omar Babrakzai, Mohammed Suaffor Yousofzai, Farida Ahmadi Caption: Meeting with a group of Afghan Freedom Fighters, Mujahideen, to discuss Soviet atrocities in Afghanistan, especially the September 1982 massacre of 105 Afghan villagers in Lowgar Province.
context_page_description: Islamism is a concept whose meaning has been debated in both public and academic contexts. The term can refer to diverse forms of social and political activism advocating that public and political life should be guided by Islamic principles or more specifically to movements which call for full implementation of sharia. It is commonly used interchangeably with the terms political Islam or Islamic fundamentalism. In academic usage, the term Islamism does not specify what vision of "Islamic order" or sharia are being advocated, or how their advocates intend to bring them about. In Western mass media it tends to refer to groups whose aim is to establish a sharia-based Islamic state, often with implication of violent tactics and human rights violations, and has acquired connotations of political extremism. In the Muslim world, the term has positive connotations among its proponents.
  Different currents of Islamist thought include advocating a "revolutionary" strategy of Islamizing society through exercise of state power, and alternately a "reformist" strategy to re-Islamizing society through grass-roots social and political activism.
context_section_description: During the 1970s and sometimes later, Western and pro-Western governments often supported sometimes fledgling Islamists and Islamist groups that later came to be seen as dangerous enemies. Islamists were considered by Western governments bulwarks against—what were thought to be at the time—more dangerous leftist/communist/nationalist insurgents/opposition, which Islamists were correctly seen as opposing. The US spent billions of dollars to aid the mujahideen Muslim Afghanistan enemies of the Soviet Union, and non-Afghan veterans of the war returned home with their prestige, "experience, ideology, and weapons", and had considerable impact.
  Although it is a strong opponent of Israel's existence, Hamas, officially created in 1987, traces back its origins to institutions and clerics supported by Israel in the 1970s and 1980s. Israel tolerated and supported Islamist movements in Gaza, with figures like Ahmed Yassin, as Israel perceived them preferable to the secular and then more powerful al-Fatah with the PLO.
  Egyptian President Anwar Sadat – whose policies included opening Egypt to Western investment (infitah); transferring Egypt's allegiance from the Soviet Union to the United States; and making peace with Israel—released Islamists from prison and welcomed home exiles in tacit exchange for political support in his struggle against leftists. His "encouraging of the emergence of the Islamist movement" was said to have been "imitated by many other Muslim leaders in the years that followed."  This "gentlemen's agreement" between Sadat and Islamists broke down in 1975 but not before Islamists came to completely dominate university student unions.  Sadat was later assassinated and a formidable insurgency was formed in Egypt in the 1990s. The French government has also been reported to have promoted Islamist preachers "in the hope of channeling Muslim energies into zones of piety and charity."
caption: Afghan mujahideen representatives with President Ronald Reagan at the White House in 1983.
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