The Global Village of Islam

The Algerian military, in order to forestall an election victory by the Islamic movement, cracked down relentlessly on the Islamists. As the year opened, Islamic opposition movements across the Arab world believed they stood on verge of a breakthrough in their pursuit of power, after one of these movements won an election: Algeria's Islamic Salvation Front, known by its French acronym, FIS. During 1992, Iran increasingly shifted the emphasis of its Islamic appeal to the Sunni Muslim world. To bolster its standing as the only state openly opposed to an Arab-Israeli accord, Iran tried to expand its influence among Palestinians. The Satanic Verses affair had given some prominence to Kalim Siddiqui, the pro-Iranian Pakistani activist who directed the Muslim Institute in Britain, where he led campaign against Rushdie. Saudi Arabia busily reconstructed the network of Islamic ties which were meant to confirm its primacy in Islam — a pretension damaged by the Gulf War and Saudi reliance on foreign forces.