Anand Gopal

It’s easy to look at the political forces today in the Middle East and assume that political Islam has always been dominant, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. In the 1940s and 1950s, the Iraqi Communist Party was one of the most powerful actors in Iraqi politics; at its height, it was a cross-sectarian party with tens of thousands of members. The rising Ba‘ath Party eventually crushed it — possibly with help from the CIA.

In addition to its role in eliminating progressive movements, Saddam Hussein’s Ba‘ath Party damaged the legitimacy and credibility of secular politics because of its oppressive rule. Secularism received a bad name because the most important remaining secular force was so cruel and corrupt. So, with the two main representatives of mass dissent — communism and Arab nationalism — eliminated, a tiny minority of politicized individuals turned to various interpretations of political Islam. This process took place across the Middle East from the 1970s on, though it was muted among Sunnis in Iraq because of state repression.