Eliminating the networks of alleged arch terrorist Osama bin Laden will not put an end to the threats posed by militant Islam. There are literally millions of potential converts to his cause: men and women recruited by members or associates of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, the mother and father of all quietist and militant Islamic movements in the Middle East.
The movement was founded in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna as a youth club engaged in religious and moral uplift and social and political reform. Six years later the brotherhood was politicised by anti-colonialism and Palestine. The brotherhood joined mass protests against the perpetuation of British control over Egypt and gave support to the Palestinian rising against the Anglo-Zionist project of building a Jewish homeland in Palestine. These two issues continue to dominate the agenda of Islamists everywhere.
During the second World War the ranks of the brotherhood swelled with half a million students, professionals, artisans, businessmen and prosperous peasants. Brothers fought alongside the Egyptian army in the 1948 war precipitated by the establishment of Israel. The movement reacted to the Arab defeat by mounting a campaign of terror which led to suppression and banning. Controls were relaxed after the Free Officers' group took power in 1952 but repression was reinstated when a brother attempted to assassinate Egyptian President Nasser in 1954. Since then the relationship between the movement and the authorities has see-sawed between toleration and suppression, with the movement exercising considerable influence whether operating above or below ground.
Hassan al-Banna travelled widely to spread his message and founded branches of the movement in Jordan and Palestine. His strategy involved the fusing of Islam and nationalism to create "three hundred battalions, each one equipped spiritually with faith and belief, intellectually with science and learning, and physically with training and athletics". His objective was to conquer "every obstinate tyrant" ruling Arabs and Muslims. This philosophy attracted many pious and nationalist young Muslims, particularly those in university medical, engineering and science faculties and continues to do so today.
Branches emerged in Syria when Syrians returned home from studies in Egypt. The movement secured a foothold in Saudi Arabia in the 1950s when Egyptian brothers sought sanctuary in the kingdom.
Arab youths educated in Egypt and expatriate Egyptians exported the brotherhood's ideology and cellular system of organisation throughout the Muslim world. Brotherhood-type groupings took root in countries where Muslims were fighting European colonial powers for independence.
The influence of these groupings waxed because independence did not deliver the economic prosperity and political freedom people expected. The brotherhood made up for the failings of governments by establishing schools, mosque clincs and support networks for the disadvantaged and dispossessed.
From time to time Muslim governments and external powers attempted to use the brotherhood as a foil against nationalist and leftist movements and regimes. Colonial Britain played the game of divide and rule in Egypt and Holland in Indonesia. In the 1940s a young naval attachΘ in Cairo initiated US contacts with the brotherhood.
In the 1950s the brotherhood was enlisted by the West to counter the drive by secular nationalists to unite the Arab world. The US and Saudi Arabia backed the brotherhood's failed attempt on Nasser's life and the disastrous 1979-1982 brotherhood revolt in Syria which was brutally crushed.
Failure did not dissuade regional and global players from courting the brotherhood and its associates. But, as one veteran observer of the Islamic scene told The Irish Times, "No one ever uses the Islamists". Egypt's President Sadat discovered this to his great cost: he was assassinated in 1981 by members of a militant splinter, "Gama'at al-Islamiyeh", the "Islamic Groups", which have proliferated in North Africa and are now prosecuting a nine-year civil war in Algeria.
The only Arab leader who successfully co-opted the brotherhood was Jordan's King Hussein. Menaced by a coup mounted by nationalists in 1957, he made the brotherhood one of the three props of the monarchy along with the army and the tribes.
This alliance ended in 1994 when the king signed a peace treaty with Israel and the brotherhood went into loyal opposition. Today brotherhood loyalty depends on how the present Jordanian ruler, King Abdullah, identifies with the US "war against terror".
The recruitment and training of brothers like Osama bin Laden for a guerrilla war against Soviet forces in Afghanistan produced 20 years of warfare. As a result of this cynical exploitation of militant Islam the world was seeded with thousands of Afghan veterans, some of whom may have inspired or organised the men who carried out the devastating attack on the US.
The Afghan war also put Pakistan at risk. In 1983, the architect of the alliance between the Afghan mujahedin or "holy warriors", Pakistan, the US, Britain, and Saudi Arabia, the then President of Pakistan, Gen Zia al-Haq, told an Indian journalist that the Afghan campaign was destroying Pakistan.
Afghan exiles had introduced drugs, guns and criminal networks, undermining security, while militant preachers (who inspired the Afghan Taliban) were stirring up alienated sectors of the society, jeopardising political stability.
The flow of US arms to Pakistan's army was not worth the risks of prosecuting the conflict, Gen Zia said.
He was right. Today, Pakistan faces the very real danger of "Talibanisation", transformation into a retrograde Islamist state.