Abstract: During the last decade, Islamist movements have established themselves as major political players in the Middle East. Together with the governments, Islamist movements, moderate as well as radical, will determine how the politics of the region unfold in the foreseeable future. They have shown the ability not only to craft messages with widespread popular appeal but also, and most importantly, to create organizations with genuine social bases and develop coherent political strategies. Other parties, by and large, have failed on all accounts.

It is the mainstream Islamist organization, not the radical ones, that will have the greatest impact on the future political evolution of the Middle East. The radicals’ grandiose goals of re-establishing a caliphate uniting the entire Arab world, or even of imposing on individual Arab countries laws and social customs inspired by a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam are simply too far removed from today’s reality to be realized. This does not mean that terrorist groups are not dangerous – they could cause great loss of life even in the pursuit of impossible goals – but that they are unlikely to change the face of the Middle East.