I think that was the closest we came to real peace within the region, but the very fact Sadat was assassinated, proves that anyone who thinks there will be peace in the middle east is deluded...
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Feel free to enlighten me, if I'm way off base.
You hit on a lot of things here and I have limited space:
We know why matters have developed this way throughout the twentieth century. Sadat's assassination doesn't prove anything. But his assassination was a turning point for Islamists. We can trace
Islamist (NOT ISLAMIC MODERNISTS) thought here:
1) Al-Banna - Not militant. Understood that the
ulema had failed Islam by allowing Muslim society to weaken, thus opening it up to colonial and imperial subjugation. He also understood that foreign systems (secularism) were too alien for Muslims and this was why Muslim society had begun to crumble. He also understood that foreign systems had much to offer in terms of economy, technology, and philosophy. He appreciated democracy and argued that Islam featured its own a democratic system. He loathed communism. His fix in the 1920s and 1930s was to convince the king that colonial systems needed to be replaced with Islamic ones (orphanages, schools, government), create a proper Islamic state, thus allowing Muslim society to grow again and meet Western society on even ground. He and so many pothers, as they gained political popularity were routinely jailed and tortured.
2) Qutb - Turned militant. Understood everything al-Banna did. However, he understood that local leaders would never adopt local systems and that foreign governments had grown even more dominant. He was also angry that the West dared to try to convince Muslim society that they must adhere to foreign systems of government. After all, it was these "enlightened" governments that started two World Wars. It was these governments that created countries in the Middle East after WWI and exacerbated tribal friction. It was these "enlightened" governments that tossed millions of people into ovens or gassed them. It was these governments that dropped Israel right in the middle of the Palestinian territory. It was these governments that joined with Israel to attack Egypt. Qutb witnessed one Muslim humiliation after another and witnessed one Islamist after another jailed, tortured, and executed for their thoughts (including al-Banna while Qutb was visiting Colorado). Qutb understood that the world had grown very wicked and only a true Islamic state as an example would correct the course. Therefore, in 1964, he called for the creation of a vanguard anywhere to "throw out" the corrupt leaders his prison manifesto and to finally establish an Islamic state anywhere. He also redefined
jihad, which had historically been within the domain of the
ulema.
3) Faraj - Very militant. By the 1970s, much had happened in the region and most at the instigation of outside forces. Faraj understood everything Qutb did.
Jihad had taken on an even newer meaning. Faraj created a splinter group from the Muslim Brotherhood. In his 1981
The Neglected Duty, Faraj concluded that the establishment of an Islamic state meant first to exterminate local infidel leaders and replace them with a complete Islamic order. Extermination was a far cry from Qutb’s message that corrupt leaders should be “thrown out.” It was Faraj' group that assassinated Sadat. For Sadat’s eventual negotiations and peace treaty with Israel in 1979, members of Faraj’s group used hand grenades and AK-47s to kill him in 1981. And like so many other Islamists in the century, even those who were simply political and not militant, Faraj was executed.
Mubarak, having just witnessed the Islamist accomplishments during Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution and the murder of his own Egyptian President, recognized an earlier Islamist philosopher who taught al-Banna, Rida, that leaders needed to associate with the culture of their population. Too much secularization in a religious population was dangerous. He began to mix Islamic systems with secular ones to give the impression of Islamism in government. In the mean time, largely beginning with the assassination of Sadat, Egyptian Islamism faced growing fragmentation. Islamism took the form of a protracted war of attrition against the state. Eventually we would see the ISIL/ISIS/IS organization (vanguard) create an absolute perversion of an Islamic state. Qutb would not have approved of what they did. But at the same time we saw the Arab Spring (Islamic Modernist thought). These two competing philosophies are at the heart of what is going on today.
