Rethinking Islamist Politics

Why and how have Islamist politics thrived?  Thursday afternoon the Project on Middle East Political Science hosted a panel discussion analyzing Islamist politics in the Middle East.  Featured speakers were François Burgat (Institut de Recherches et d’Études sur le Monde Arabe et Musulman), Thomas Hegghammer (Norwegian Defense Research Establishment), Bruce Lawrence (Duke University), and Tarek Masoud (Harvard University). Marc Lynch (George Washington University) moderated.

François Burgat: The problems that societies are facing in the Arab world today cannot be related to the fact that Islamists are or have been in power. They are linked to circumstances at the end of an authoritarian period in which societies were de-institutionalized.  Islamists were not visible in the first stages of the protests.  They seemed to have disappeared. Some scholars claimed “No one in the Arab world will vote for Islamists!”  Three weeks later, 66% of the voters in Egypt voted for Islamists.

We are in the wrong time frame. If an Islamist government faces difficulties, that is not the end of Islamism. It is not the end of the capacity for mobilization that is specific to the Islamic reference.  The fact that people are comfortable identifying as Muslims is written in a time frame that is much longer than the failure of one government in Tunisia or Egypt. The strength of the Islamic reference does not come from its being sacred, it comes from the fact that it is indigenous.

Tarek Masoud: We study political Islam for three reasons.

First, the popularity of Islamist parties in the Muslim world is puzzling to social scientists who have long believed in the rational actor theory.  The rational actor theory is the idea that when people vote, they vote primarily on the basis of their economic concerns.  They do not vote on the basis of identity or morality.  However, the majority of people who vote for Islamist parties choose those parties for reasons other than religion.  In Egypt people voted for Islamists because they wanted a more redistributive welfare state than other parties would provide.  Passion for Islam was only a small part of explaining support for Islamists.

The second reason we American scholars study political Islam is geopolitical. We are worried that Islamist parties will challenge America’s interests in the Middle East and the existence of Israel.  Article 2 of the Muslim Brotherhood bylaws states that it aims to liberate the Islamic nation in all of its parts from every non-Islamic power, to help Muslim minorities everywhere, and to unite Muslims into a single polity. Consequently, it seems that if Islamists were to come to power, this would be bad for the US.  But in fact the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government pursued a policy towards the US that was the same as its predecessor. President Morsi’s government was particularly helpful to the Obama administration in bringing about a cessation of hostilities between Hamas and Israel.

The third reason to study political Islam is that we thought it represented a threat to two things we care about deeply:  liberty and democracy.  You cannot doubt the illiberalism of Islamists.  The Muslim Brotherhood is heavily bounded not just by a conception of what God wants, but also by the same belief in a strong Egyptian state displayed by the old and new military-backed regimes.  Muslim Brotherhood leaders have underlined the inadmissibility of protests, the courage of the police, and the necessity of respecting the armed forces. If Islamists represent a threat to liberalism, it’s not their Islamism that renders them that threat. It is their “Egyptian-ness.”

We fear Islamists are undemocratic. The Muslim Brotherhood’s moment in power, especially Morsi’s constitutional declaration, reinforced this belief.  In 2011 he issued a series of unilateral amendments to the constitution and declared his word was final and binding. The president’s supporters argue that Morsi had to declare himself above judicial review because the judiciary had proven itself hostile to Egypt’s democratic experiment.

Even if you think the Muslim Brotherhood not sufficiently dedicated to democracy, they are not distinguishable on this issue from other political parties.  It feels as if more than 40 years of our scholarly inquiry about Islamists was wasted. We should have been thinking about the institutional and intellectual landscapes, which have guaranteed that the Middle East is bereft of those who would lead it to genuine democratic, representative, and accountable governments.

Thomas Hegghammer:  The growth of jihadism in the Middle East defies the optimism of mid-2011, when many people thought the Arab Spring would undermine it.  Instead, the Arab Spring and the fall of several Arab republics loosened the constraints on militant Islamism and weakened the repressive apparatuses of the Arab republics. The Arab Spring allowed jihadis a much easier operating platform.

Another factor is Syria.  It is responsible for much of the militant activism in the region.

A third factor is the stickiness and malleability of jihadi ideology. It is a form of identity and draws its force from its indigenousness. Jihadism is the radical version of Islamism. It is a worldview that can be filled with political content.  Jihadi groups are flexible and unpredictable, which will keep them in the game for many years to come.

Bruce Lawrence: Sufism is not a buffer against extremism; it is a catalyst that provokes and enhances it.  I will look at three cases.

Forty five percent of the population in Ethiopia is Muslim. Some of the Muslims in Ethiopia are Sufis and migrated to Lebanon, developing into the group Al Ahbash. Consequently, there is a Sufi, Ethiopian-derived group that has played a significant role in modern Lebanese history.

The next group is from Pakistan, the Barelvi. The group these Sufis confront is the Tablighi Jamaat, which also derives from Sufism. The Tablighi Jamaat are responsible for no less than 20 shrine attacks in Pakistan during the last 2 years. Sufism is the goad to a more fervent Islamist notion of what it means to be Muslim.

That brings us to Dagestan, where the Boston marathon bombers originated.  The Caucasus are now back in the media because of the Sochi winter Olympics. There were Sufis in Dagestan that were part of the Boston marathon bombing and now there are Sufis in Dagestan threatening plans for the Sochi Olympics.  We lose if we think Sufis are fighting hardline Islamists in an internal battle that we are not affected by. We are affected and we have to figure out ways to make the future a little better than the most recent past.