Hussam Tammam On Sayyid Imam
Several days ago, Marc Lynch linked to a very a thoughtful article by Hussam Tammam on the significance of the revisions by the Islamic Group and by Sayyid Imam. Today, Rob at the Shack has cited the article as one more piece of incontrovertible evidence for his Imam-doesn’t-matter argument. I won’t rehash all of that (if you’re interested, you can start here), but as you’ll see, Tammam’s article is a lot more complicated than Rob’s assessment suggests. Tammam’s basic argument is that organizations like the Islamic Group and al-Jihad will not be able to stop violence today because the nature of Islamist authority in Egypt has changed. In the past people had to join groups and institutions to engage in Islamist activism. But in the last ten years, the role of organizations and institutions has faded because of the rapprochement between the Egyptian regime and Islamist groups and because the