**2. Discussion**

This paper outlines an historical approach to British foreign policy on the rise of political Islam. While most literature gives an account of international relations from the perspective of this period's power struggles and particularly under the 'Cold War lenses', our approach focuses on the FCO's attempt to stress the importance of social structures, social relations, and social knowledge not as background material but as fundamental historical driving forces (Wood 1978, p. 348). Despite the dominant articulation of the nation, based on identity, our goals here are twofold. First, to stress the importance of translocality in MENA, which is dependent on socio-political dynamics. This translocality is able to reframe the context of identity formation towards a more culture-based that transcends state boundaries (Mandaville 2001, p. 2). Second, our goals are to unravel the facets of British foreign policy analysis concerning the thorny issue of political Islam and its implications for MENA countries and for other major powers in the region, such as the US.

IR scholarship has not paid much attention to the influence of religion in IR (Hasler n.d., p. 138). Given the paradigm shift of social sciences and political history during the 1970's—from grand narrative to a focus on cultural history and identity politics—we note the influence of these transformations to the FCO and, by extension, its approach to MENA regional politics with the use of the nexus of culture and religion. To a certain extent, the English School of IR challenged the position of the non-existent or the marginalized role of religion in the field, acknowledging religion as an aspect of culture and its functionality in social and political relations. Scholars from the English School realized, during the 1970's, that interactions with non-western cultures, particularly in relation to Islam, formed a certain view within IR theory (Thomas 2001, p. 922).

Our main argumen<sup>t</sup> is that in the 1970's political history embedded in its analysis on the rise of political Islam a variety of elements from the emerging fields of social and cultural history. As British scholar Martin Wright maintained in the historical sociology of state systems, religion should be taken seriously, since the main historical religions cast doubts on the progressive character of modernity (Thomas 2001, p. 924). Martin Wight's academic activism in the 1960's influenced distinguished members of the FCO through their interaction in the British Committee meetings (Hall 2014, p. 966).

Our study found that a number of institutions inside the FCO, such as the Near East and North Africa Department (NENAD) or the Middle East Department (MED), moved their analysis towards a cultural/religious and sectarian approach in order to disentangle social relations and transformation inside MENA countries and their causal mechanisms that molded these dynamics into a coherent regional and international foreign policy. During the period under consideration, religious/ethnic identities emerged as an all-important component in local and global politics. Prominent religious

figures created a hybrid revolutionary religious/political discourse exerting considerable influence on local, regional, and international politics.

### **3. The Great Power's Foreign Policies and Reflections on Political Islam**

Even before the Cold War, the Great Powers tried to counterbalance Islamist politics. For instance, British specialists on MENA saw Islam as an obstacle for the spread of communism in the Arab world (Vaughan 2005, p. 152). Hence, British authorities tried to manipulate early political Islam and its organizations, such as the Muslim Brotherhood (M.B.) in Egypt during the WW II.<sup>1</sup> The manipulation included the incorporation of moderate Islam to the ideas of modernization and human rights, but most importantly the struggle against communist ideas (Callaghan 2007, p. 211).<sup>2</sup> Moreover, the rising American hegemony, the economic weakness that World War II brought, and the loss of Commonwealth territories provoked the need for altering the means of influence for Britain in the Middle East (Mayhew 1950, p. 477).

The USSR, in an attempt to manipulate the dynamics of its Muslim population, adopted a system of analysis concerning the origins, the nature, and the perspectives of Islam and its politicized forms since the beginning of the 1920's. After Stalin's persecutions, Brezhnev and eventually Andropov signaled a more consensual approach to Muslim populations, specifically by trying to manipulate ethnic/religious leaders in Central Asia (Fowkes and Gökay 2009, p. 2). At the same time, notwithstanding, the USSR's analysis of political Islam was used as a political tool for hampering capitalism's spheres of influence. More specifically, while after 1979 and for many years on, Islamist power in Iran was perceived as a liberating, egalitarian force, especially vis-à-vis American hegemony. Concomitantly, in Afghanistan, it was understood as a threat to the promising socialist project of the Soviets. Indeed, the USSR and its institutions, such as the Moscow Institute for Oriental Studies and the Communist University for the Toilers of the Orient, developed a number of schemas on the character of Islam throughout the 20th century. Some of them pointed out the compatibility of Islam with the founding principles of communism, such as those of Z. and N. Zavshirvanov and V. Ditiakin, and those that stressed Islam's enmity towards socialist aspirations, such as those of E. Beliaev and L. Klimovich (Kemper 2009, pp. 5–26).<sup>3</sup>

In tandem, US policy towards Islamic revival had also endured two bifurcations. In an attempt to engage with the Muslim world and secure its own interests, US policy experts attempted to maintain equilibrium between extremist and moderate forms of political Islam during the second half of the 20th century (Maghraoui 2006, p. 27). For instance, in certain contentious episodes, American foreign policy had a twofold approach: while supporting movements of political Islam in some countries like Afghanistan, it did oppose them in others such as Lebanon and Iran (Bill 1989, p. 135). Nevertheless, from time to time, Iran's Islamist movements were the object of support by western policy makers, especially when it came time to address dynamic leftist movements. Such was the case with Britain's support to the Iranian authorities in order to crash Tudeh party between 1983–1985 (Aslani 2020) or to manipulate moderate (or established) Islam as a tool for fighting extremism (Maghraoui 2006, p. 27). However, the British often disparagingly referred to the American 'tendency to treat all [Middle East] issues as military problems',<sup>4</sup> even if the issues at stake were essentially political.

<sup>1</sup> People's History Museum (PHM), CPGB Archive, CP/CENT/INT/56/03, Egypt, The Green Shirts, agents of International Fascism, 1942.

<sup>2</sup> After WWII, Britain, indeed, put effort to promote an image of coexistence with the Arab world and Islam through cultural channels. In 1952, the magazine *al-Aalam* was launched in order to promote 'the theme of friendship and mutual respect between the Western and the Arab world'.

<sup>3</sup> More specifically, the early works of Soviet scholars regarding (political) Islam include those of Z. and N. Zavshirvanov, *The Communist Trends in the History of Muslim Civilization* (1923), V. Ditiakin, *Marx and Engels on the Origins and Character of Islam* (1927), S. Asfendiarov, *Reasons for the Emergence of Islam* (1928), E. Beliaev, *The Origin of Islam and its Class Basis* (1930), and L. Klimovich, *The Socialist Construction in the East and Religion* (1929).

<sup>4</sup> British National Archives (BNA), NF 226/1, W98C, D.H. Gillmore to J. Moberly, "Trilateral Meeting at the IISS", 10/11/1981.

The Suez Crisis of 1956 signaled the end of British hegemony in the MENA region. Nevertheless, since the withdrawal of the British troops from the Persian Gulf in 1971, Downing Street launched a di fferent approach to its Middle East foreign policy. This 'new role' was characterized by two variables. The first one was the fact that British interests should be promoted through London's special relationship with Washington, with London remaining at the same time the leading power in European affairs (Çavu¸so ˘glu 2018, p. 39). The second one was that Britain's main concern was to also keep close ties with its Arab–Muslim allies, acknowledging their demands and, at least rhetorically, attempting to identify with them, as seen for instance in the example of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Thus, as Çavu¸so ˘glu suggests, Britain opted to become 'freed of being the target of anti-imperialism criticisms', maintaining its ability to exert 'considerable influence' (Çavu¸so ˘glu 2018, p. 42).

This dual role (Rynhold and Spyer 2007, p. 137), as perceived by British diplomats, would help Britain remain strong and influential in the region. Given the rising tensions in internal British politics regarding a mounting political and ethical conservatism (Garnett and Lynch 2009, p. 406) and a rising Islamic activism (Hamid 2018, pp. 1–14), British polity faced a number of critical dilemmas. As it was assessed in 1978, commercial interests in MENA could not be a ffected by the rise of political Islam thanks to the fact that the revival of Islamic consciousness, which was not directly connected to Islamic extremism. Hence, British intendants encountered the formation of a nascent 'critical Islam', as P. Mandaville coined it, and not necessarily the hegemony of a retrogressive belligerent militant Islamism (Mandaville 2001, p. 4). For instance, in 1978, British o fficials strongly doubted 'that there is a genuine widespread religious revival in the Muslim world'.<sup>5</sup> Islamic revivalism mostly represents, according to FCO's early views, an attempt by a small number of extremists to impose their views upon the masses. This is what J.P. Bannerman from the FCO Research Department underlined to Mr. Lucas from MED in 1978, manifesting his reassurance about political Islam:

I am reluctant to take on a global study of Islam and its political influence [ ... ] because I do not believe there is su fficient political, or for that matter religious, cohesiveness in Islam to justify such a study by us.<sup>6</sup>

However, when the seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca in November 1979 took place, the British were alarmed with the prospects and dynamics of the Islamist movement. This was mainly related to the fact that Saudi Arabia was one of the main allies in the region, while Iran, already a rival by then, was trying to globalize Islamist ideas. A conversation between British diplomats in Washington and the American security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski in 1979 discloses that the latter was highly concerned about the Mecca Incident and its ramifications in a transnational perspective.<sup>7</sup> Therefore, diplomatic orientation often retreats to give space to strategic orientation, which mainly considers the containment of radical anti-western forces as the most fundamental issue in MENA (Rynhold and Spyer 2007, p. 138).
