Political Islam in the Age of Democratization

K. Bokhari, F. Senzai

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781137008046, 9781137008480
• eBook ISBN: 9781137313492
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Comparative Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The continued prominence of Islam in the struggle for democracy in the Muslim world has confounded Western democracy theorists who largely consider secularism a prerequisite for democratic transitions. Kamran Bokhari and Farid Senzai offer a comprehensive view of the complex nature of contemporary political Islam and its relationship to democracy.

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Introduction: The Role of Religion in Politics

The winds of change blowing across the Middle East and North Africa have replaced autocratic leaders with popularly elected officials. But within a span of two years these democratically elected leaders too succumbed to the upheaval that continues throughout the region. The 2011 “Arab Spring” that toppled several military dictators and the ensuing democratization process raised fears among policymakers that Islamists were likely to consolidate power through the ballot box. In several countries, Islamist groups took advantage of popular demands for political reform and won elections, only to find themselves very quickly under pressure from the old civil-military establishment and many of their political opponents. It did not take long for a critical mass to develop, one that led to the July 3, 2013, coup that toppled Egypt’s newly elected Islamist government. The tug of war between the Muslim Brotherhood and its Islamist allies and their opponents has led to a major crackdown and continued violence.

As this manuscript goes to press, the country remains unstable and Brotherhood-type Islamists in other countries remain on the defensive. Regardless of the exact outcome of the unfolding turmoil, what is certain is that the status quo is untenable and that political transformation will continue. What is less certain is whether this transition will lead to liberalization and the eventual consolidation of democracy. The unraveling of entrenched authoritarian regimes, the general lack of coherent secular opposition forces, and a complex array of Islamists have left many wondering who is most likely to fill the void. What type of governments will emerge in the coming years and decades? What role will Islamists play in the future of Muslim-majority countries? More importantly, will religion be incorporated into politics?

Most Western scholars insist that modern Muslim-majority countries must separate religion from the political arena and that the state must be secular to be considered a democracy.¹ The possibility that religion might play a role in the political arena is difficult for most Western scholars of democracy to accept. Since the 1980s, the Western public consciousness has perceived Islam as synonymous with violence,² and the idea that Islamists might have something meaningful to contribute to the political discourse is unfathomable.³ The most recent transformations across the region are fueling these fears as Westerners watch, with growing concern, the increasing presence of Islam in their own countries, as well as the Islamists’ expanding presence in Muslim societies.⁴ For many it comes as a disappointment that the 2011 Arab uprising did not result in liberal secular democrats—but rather Islamists from the Muslim Brotherhood or, even worse, from the ultraconservative Salafis—dominating the ballot-box.

What most outside observers miss is the complex relationship between religion and politics within Muslim societies.⁵ The common tendency to misunderstand Islamist views on the subject, which vary greatly, is often based on the false assertion that Islam makes no distinction between the religious and the political realms.⁶ Commentators share a common exaggeration about the importance or absence of religion in political life. The view of many—ironically in both Western and Muslim countries—is that Muslim thought, in contrast to Western thought, sees the indivisibility of the whole din wa dawla (religion and state).⁷ This is in sharp contrast to the West’s demarcation between God and Caesar, which separates church and state. However, in reality there is little consensus on the exact relationship between religion and politics even in Western societies.⁸ As Nader Hashemi correctly points out, “[H]istorically, the development of liberal democracy in the West (especially in the Anglo-American tradition) emerged not in strict opposition to religious politics but often in concert with it.”⁹ Furthermore, it is often assumed—mistakenly—that the development of democracy in the West was a smooth process. Religious values were fundamental to the founding of its states and remain firmly rooted in the very fabric of modern Western democratic societies.¹⁰ It should therefore come as no surprise that many Americans insist that religion must have a role to play in politics, such as in official policies on abortion, same-sex marriage, or teaching the theory of evolution in public schools.¹¹ Political development was not a smooth process in Western history, so why should it be expected to be so in other regional or cultural contexts?¹²

The tension evident in these public debates on political transition has entered the scholarly writing of political scientists.¹³ The longstanding underlying assumption in comparative politics is that religion is structurally incompatible with democratization.¹⁴ Comparativists writing on democracies often highlight the American or British model, or even the French concept of laïcité, as a secular democratic model for others to emulate.¹⁵ Consequently, those writing on the process of democratic transition in Muslim-majority countries tend to superimpose these Western secular democratic systems of government and the implementation of democratic reform on the Muslim states in question.¹⁶

Similarly, modernization theorists have asserted since the 1950s that religion diminishes in importance as a country’s citizens become wealthier and better educated.¹⁷ Contemporary modernization theorists such as Ronald Inglehart argue that in modern economies urbanization and higher levels of education leading to job opportunities set in motion changes that produce a more secular society.¹⁸ Their studies downplay the importance of leaders who base their power on claims to religious legitimacy.

Some scholars of Muslim societies view religion as the major obstacle to development. Bernard Lewis, the renowned Orientalist scholar, argues that Islam is to blame for the Arab/Muslim world’s lack of modernization.¹⁹ While Islamism has been gaining ground there since at least the 1940s, most social scientists did not acknowledge it until the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which toppled a pro-Western monarchy and brought to power a cleric-led hybrid political order. Only after this astonishing event did the academic community start to undertake a concerted study of religion’s revival in the public affairs of Muslim societies. The ensuing deluge of studies of Islam and Islamism led the epistemic community away from searching for signs of secularism as a way to measure development and toward focusing on Islam as the main factor shaping Muslim countries. The key, as Robert D. Lee points out, is to move one’s view away from the deterministic modernism of social scientists of the 1950s and 1960s, which downplayed religion’s importance generally, and the reactive overemphasis, within the Muslim context, on Islam that has been characteristic since the 1980s.²⁰

The prominence of religion in politics—particularly in the public sphere—is an important part of history in general and the struggle for democracy in particular. But this has been underappreciated by Western democratic theorists, particularly when commenting on the politics of the Muslim world after September 11, 2001.²¹ At least four inferences can be drawn from this view:

(1) Muslims in general and Islamists in particular will continue to insist on some role for religion within the political landscape of their respective states. The lack of consensus on this subject is the key factor shaping this trend.

(2) Islamists may not have initiated the uprisings in most Arab countries and currently may seem to be in retreat, but they will continue to be key players in post-autocratic rule.

(3) A variety of competing Islamist tendencies exist within any given state.

(4) The institutional context in each country will likely force Islamists to adjust their position toward democracy as they insist that certain aspects of Islam be integrated into the political arena.

Islamists

Islamists remain key players in the ongoing transformation even as they have seen the reversal of their initial electoral success. The Muslim Brotherhood’s loss of power in Egypt threatens the credibility of Islamists and their ability to govern elsewhere in the region. While the weakening of the region’s autocratic regimes initially created opportunities for Islamists, their ensuing squandering of it will force them to reassess their political strategy, internal decision-making, and ideology. There are two likely scenarios in regards to their ideological outlook: Many will push for a more inclusive worldview, whereas others will be tempted to shun electoral politics altogether and feel that violence is the only option. But just as the ongoing social turmoil has manifested itself in different ways in the region, future Islamist behavior will also differ according to the context. Even after the recent Islamist fall in Egypt, international perceptions continue to treat them as a myopic whole while disregarding the acceleration of intra-Islamist fragmentation.

The diversity within Islamism goes back nearly a century. But even now, despite the deluge of ink spilled in newspapers and books, it remains misunderstood. This continuing lack of nuanced examination has only been exacerbated since the 9/11 attacks. Given that this diversity has been around since the early decades of the twentieth century, this exacerbation is rather surprising. For over seventy years Islamism functioned as the political opposition, during which time it underwent considerable fragmentation—primarily along ideological lines and competing strategies on how to realize the shared aim of changing the secular geopolitical status quo. In the 1970s, these differences and the autocratic postcolonial regimes’ suppression further complicated the landscape when a significant number of Islamists adopted armed struggle. This led to the rise of jihadism, a subsidiary form of Islamism that was initially confined to the boundaries of a given nation-state.

The current Arab uprising is based on the demand for social, political, and economic reform.²² With few exceptions, Islamists have engaged with secular civil society actors through nonviolent means and have exerted pressure on the state in an attempt to achieve their political goals through democratic means. The more violent Islamists were almost totally irrelevant throughout this process, although they are now trying to exploit the vacuum created by the meltdown of autocratic orders. A number of former radical and militant Islamists have also been able to play a role in mainstream politics. But even they contain different flavors and diverse currents. In the case of Egypt, the largest Arab state, such historically apolitical forces as the Salafis and even former militant forces such as Tandheem al-Jihad and Gamaah al-Islamiyah are adopting the democratic route in order to compete with the main Islamist movement: the Muslim Brotherhood.

Much has been written about the Islamists’ metamorphosis during these early decades—a critical formative period for individuals seeking to understand the revival of political Islam. This work, however, is about unpacking the increasing complexity of political Islam during a time of democratization in the Arab world. But even more important is how these two trends will interact over time to produce Muslim democracies in which religion is likely to play a role in public affairs.²³ In order to understand how democratization will evolve in a Muslim context featuring politically powerful Islamists, one must examine both Islamism and democratization. As authoritarian regimes began to lose their grip on power, Islamists evolved and ultimately became key drivers of democratization. The 1991 Gulf War proved to be a watershed event that brought Salafis into the Islamist fold and led to transnational jihadism with the founding of al-Qaeda. Observers of Islamism are still trying to make sense of the growing post–9/11 Islamist convolution. Al-Qaeda’s terrorist attacks and Washington’s response in the form of a global war against militant Islamists have further complicated the picture.

Both the intended and unintended consequences of Washington’s nearly decade-long campaign against Islamist militancy have altered Islamism from within. The United States needed to isolate extremists from the wider Muslim landscape, which created opportunities for mainstream Islamists. Although some Islamists continue to engage in violence, many others opted for mainstream democratic politics even after the ouster of President Mohamed Morsi. The democratic openings accelerated this shift for some previously violent groups such as Tandheem al-Jihad and Gamaah al-Islamiyah. Many radical and even militant Islamists embraced electoral politics, either because of specific circumstances within the country or because the Arab Spring brought new-found reason to moderate their position and abandon violence. This latest wave of moderation differs greatly from previous ones, because Islamists have transformed themselves from purely societal forces to forces that work within the state. In other words, the issue is no longer simply about Islamism’s complexity as a non-state ideological phenomenon, but rather about the messy process of democratization and how the latter shapes Islamists as key stakeholders in the emerging post-autocratic (dis)order.

Democratization

The popular unrest that toppled autocratic rulers in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen is the most profound sociopolitical development that the Middle East and North Africa region has experienced in nearly a century.²⁴ Not since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1920 has it witnessed such a massive upheaval and unraveling. Authoritarian rule is gradually being replaced by a mixed system located somewhere between authoritarianism and democracy.²⁵ Some have referred to these as “hybrid regimes” (Karl 1995, Diamond 2002)²⁶ or as “illiberal democracies” (Zakaria 2003).²⁷ Others view them as “semi-authoritarianism” (Ottaway 2003)²⁸ or “liberalized autocracies” (Brumberg 2002).²⁹ Each of these terms refers to mixed regimes situated in the messy “gray zone” (Carothers 2002),³⁰ located somewhere between the poles of authoritarian dictatorship and liberal democracy.

The literature on democratization, although still unable to define these mixed systems clearly,³¹ nevertheless provides an important theoretical framework for assessing regimes in Muslim-majority countries during this transitional period. It also offers an important vantage point for reviewing the role of Islamists engaging with the political system, as well as a unique opportunity to make sense of the political landscape as we evaluate the fluid and dynamic relationship between religion and politics in those countries. The most important questions are as follows: What type of governments will emerge as a consequence of the ongoing momentous changes? Will the transition lead to stable, consolidated democracies? If so, will these democracies be secular or religious? What role will Islamists play, and should there be a role for them to play, in shaping modern Muslim societies?

In order to better understand the nature of the political systems that will emerge in the Arab and (by extension) the wider Muslim world, we need to dispassionately take stock of what has taken place so far and where the region is headed. The popular agitation that began in Tunisia in December 2010 has led to the ouster of three dictators in North Africa and one in the Arabian Peninsula. That same culture of protest also led to the toppling of Egypt’s first democratically elected president in July 2013. All eyes at the time of writing this book are on the Levant, where the next major fall of an autocratic regime is expected to take place in Syria. This will have far-reaching consequences for the entire region. Autocratic governments in Tunisia and Egypt were thrown out, and their counterpart in Libya collapsed. Meanwhile, in Yemen former president Ali Abdullah Saleh (r. 1978–2012) negotiated an exit; however, his regime remains in place under the leadership of his former vice-preside...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables and Figure
• Acknowledgments
• Acronyms
• Foreword
• 1. Introduction: The Role of Religion in Politics
• 2. Understanding the Complexity of Political Islam
• 3. Theoretical Framework: Democratization and Islamism
• 4. Participatory Islamists: The Case of the Muslim Brotherhood
• 5. Conditionalist Islamists: The Case of the Salafis
• 6. Rejector Islamists: al-Qaeda and Transnational Jihadism
• 7. Rejector Islamists: Taliban and Nationalist Jihadism
• 8. Participatory Shia Islamism: The Islamic Republic of Iran
• 9. Arab Shia Islamism: Iraqi Shia Islamists and Hezbollah
• 10. Post-Islamism: The Case of Turkey’s AKP
• 11. Conclusion: Prospects for Muslim Democracies
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index