Between Dissent and Power

The Transformation of Islamic Politics in the Middle East and Asia

K. Teik, V. Hadiz, Y. Nakanishi, K. Teik, V. Hadiz, Y. Nakanishi

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781137408792
• eBook ISBN: 9781137408808
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: International Business

This study examines the collective progression of Islamic politics between points of dissent and positions of power. It brings about a more a serious understanding of Islamic politics by critically tracing the pathways by which Islamic politics has been transformed in the Middle East and Asia.

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Islamic Politics between Dissent and Power: An Overview

Khoo Boo Teik, Vedi R. Hadiz and Yoshihiro Nakanishi

For much of the last quarter of the twentieth century, Islamic politics appeared to lie beyond the pale of legitimate politics in many Muslim-majority states in the world. That unenviable condition could be glimpsed from several defining moments that encouraged portrayals of Islamic politics as fundamentalism, extremism, radicalism or fanaticism (Said 1997: xiv–xx, xlvii–xlviii, 31–5).¹ First, the triumph of the clerics in the revolution in Iran led to authoritarian rule that left little space for non-Islamic pluralist political participation or opposition. Second, Anwar Sadat’s assassination by Islamist militants in Egypt exposed the predilection of some strands of political Islam for armed opposition to the state. Third, the cancellation of general elections in Algeria, which the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) was on course to win, precipitated a civil war that pitted the violent insurgency of the Islamic Army of Salvation (AIS) and the Armed Islamic Group (AIG) against the ruthless repression of the Algerian state. Fourth, the internecine struggle among domestic rivals in Afghanistan following the Soviet defeat and withdrawal ended with the seizure of power by the Taliban whose rule was marked by a very harsh religious conservatism. Fifth, a democratically elected Islamic government in Turkey was accused of subverting the secular character of the Turkish state and its prime minister was deposed in 1997. Sixth, in parts of Indonesia (which has the world’s largest Muslim population) in the wake of the collapse of the Soeharto regime, Muslim militias were embroiled in large-scale Christian–Muslim clashes as well as instances of church bombings. Although it can be extended, this list is sufficient to indicate how bedevilled Islamic politics already was before the twenty-first century brought ‘September 11’, the ‘Global War on Terror’ and the ‘blowbacks’ associated with them.

1.1 A spectrum of dissent and power

Yet, as the present volume of studies of Islamic politics shows, to frame Islamic politics in that negative manner would place it beyond any serious understanding of the diverse pathways by which Islamic politics has been transformed in many Muslim-majority states. Indeed, the two thematic and nine country-specific studies here demonstrate that Islamic politics has developed a large and resilient capacity for adaptation and reinvention not only in the Middle East but Asia as well. In truth, Islamic politics had not been static or encased in ineffectual dissent even before the ‘Arab Spring’ took the Middle East closer to historical trends of democratization in post-Soviet Eastern Europe, post-military junta Latin America and post-authoritarian East Asia. If anything, the international spectrum of Islamic politics now stretches from marginalized dissent at one end to established government at the other. The spectrum encompasses political actualities and further possibilities of power. Most movements and parties of Islamic politics occupy different points along that spectrum. They display uneven degrees of success in their efforts to secure representation and compete for power, frequently but not exclusively by electoral means. Some have succeeded. Others failed. More await a breakthrough. To take two contemporary examples, the victories of Nahda in Tunisia and the Freedom and Justice Party in Egypt illustrate how complex the trajectories of Islamic politics are. Each of these two parties, a derivative of its respective ‘Muslim Brotherhood’ movement, owes its shift from dissent to power to democratic elections made possible by the popular overthrow of authoritarianism.²

It is the objective of this volume to trace and explain the collective progression of Islamic politics between points of dissent and positions of power, a subject that has not been directly and systematically covered by the extensive literature on Islam and politics in the world. Of the nine countries covered in this book, governments associated with Islamic parties hold power or have held it until recently. Those in Iran and Turkey continue to rule on their own. Others had governed in the wake of the ‘Arab Spring’, namely, the Freedom and Justice Party in Egypt until it was deposed by a coup d’etat in July 2013,³ and Nahda which led a coalition government but relinquished power in January 2014 by a compromise with other parties that sought to resolve a political stalemate amidst continuing instability.⁴ At different points in time, counterparts of these Islamic parties have been co-opted into government by the monarchy in Morocco and military juntas in Pakistan.⁵ For that matter, Islamic parties have contested many general elections in Indonesia and Malaysia over a long period. Up to now, Islamic parties in Indonesia have failed to attain the power to rule.⁶ More recently in Malaysia, Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS or Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party) has become a key partner of an opposition coalition that is striving to defeat the ruling coalition in the forthcoming general election.⁷ However, the decisive defeat of the Islamic insurgency in Algeria has left the Islamic parties there bereft of any serious political role.⁸ Perhaps unexpectedly the experiences of Islamic politics also include groups whose interest is not to move from dissent to power, but to carve themselves a comfortable niche at the fringes between state and society.⁹

1.2 Themes and comparisons

Such diversity in Islamic politics raises a host of questions, which the chapters in this volume have addressed. To begin with, there are questions connected to the historical conditions under which Islamic politics has traversed different pathways. What social, economic and political circumstances, for example, have facilitated particular routes of opposition or contestation, ranging from violent activity to electoral competition? Moreover, how did crises of development and political economy shape the courses of Islamic politics? Other sets of questions centre on the social bases of support of Islamic politics. In this regard, most chapters explore how the forces of Islamic politics have adapted to the problems and demands of altered social bases. They also inquire whether the adaptations resulted in radical changes in ideological appeals, organizational structures and political strategies. If, for instance, Islamic politics has tended to adopt populist guises, appeals and tones, how much of this is attributable to the articulation of the material interests of multi-class constituencies or the universalistic non-class appeal of Islam as religion? Apart from these, questions have emerged about issues of mobilization and organization. Some chapters ask if and how Islamic politics subordinated political and social life to specific religious principles. Other chapters grapple with the wide range of organizational vehicles adopted by the practitioners of Islamic politics. Among other things, they seek to explain if the organizational diversity reflected the Islamists’ ideological responses to distinct socio-political environments, especially those conducive to the rise of Islamic populism. Finally, there are issues of strategies and policies, in dissent and in power. Here, too, some chapters examine how varieties of Islamic politics have had to reach workable accommodations with secular forces. Given the substantial movement of Islamic politics across the spectrum from dissent to power, certain chapters comment on widely expressed fears that democratically elected Islamic governments would impede democratic contestation and undermine secular institutions. In this respect, one question is intriguing: why have most Islamic-dominated governments not rushed to establish ‘Islamic states’?

To raise such questions is implicitly to view Islamic politics not as the mere epiphenomenon of economics (even failed economics at that) or the mere expression of religion (even inspiring religion at that). It is rather to stress the outcomes of the interactions of Islamic politics with other ethnic, economic, cultural and political forces. Besides, the trajectories of dissent and power shown by Islamic politics have been shaped by massive economic, social and political change. To account for them is to engage with religion, ideology and culture, but also with sociology, political economy and politics. For the themes and the countries covered by this volume, similarities and contrasts across states and political systems are crucially tied to several factors, namely:

• capitalist development and its social consequences

• state transformation and its policy and institutional outcomes

• social trends and shifting bases and constituencies of support and opposition

• crises of political economy and resurgences of dissent

• the relative strengths of regimes, parties, social movements and other forms of organization

• ideological changes and adaptations, and

• the competition between different currents of counter-hegemony, democracy, populism, and/or pluralism.

Across the chapters, the authors stress different combinations of these themes because of the theoretical points with which they want to engage and their chosen subject or topic. For example, some authors emphasize the relationship between crises of political economy and state transformations. Others more closely examine the impact of ideological conflict and change on social movements and organizations. Political parties are prominently featured in some chapters but given fleeting treatment in others. On issues of ideology, this book as a whole relates Islamic politics to various ideological tendencies that have been important to competition for power, such as populism, liberalism, democracy, socialism, etc. Likewise, the book connects different struggles of Islamic politics to major conflicts involving sharp ideological rivalry, as was seen, for instance, during the Cold War. The reasons for the attention to ‘non-Islamic’ matters are clear: throughout the world Islamic politics has evolved via encounters with different ideological tendencies that were themselves responses to the economic, social and political transformation of Muslim societies. To take a notable but unusual example, Indonesia had ‘Islamic communists’ in the early twentieth century who believed in a basic compatibility between Islamic and communist ideals in opposition to colonial domination (McVey 1965). In Turkey and elsewhere today, however, others contend that Islam can well live with global capitalism and contribute a distinct ethical dimension to it (Tripp 2006).

While the chapters, and especially the country-specific ones, give different weightage to different questions, the reader can draw on the detailed analyses and cross-chapter references to construct comparative insights into Islamic politics. For example, the study of Turkey connects the steady rise of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) regime to its relatively successful management of Turkish political economy that, for Muslim-majority countries, is uniquely tied to the European Union. Yet the study also comments on Turkey’s suitability as a model, fashionably suggested for a while but increasingly questioned after the ‘Arab Spring’. In contrast, the study of militia-styled ‘defenders of Islam’ analyses ‘street-level politics’ and ‘turf-based contests’ that underscore the narrow scope and relative failure of Islamic parties in post-Soeharto Indonesia. Straddling these seemingly disparate studies are the chapters on political economy and organizational vehicles of Islamic politics that address both the success of the AKP and the failure of the Indonesian Islamic parties.

1.3 Some broad claims

Apart from the detailed analyses provided in individual chapters, some broad claims pertaining to Islamic politics may be offered here that can serve to complement analyses of Islamic politics elsewhere.

First, the trajectories of Islamic politics in the Middle East and the Muslim-majority countries of Asia have been more dynamic and diverse than is often reflected in academic literature. On the one hand, this dynamism gives the lie to security approaches to Islamic politics, mostly moulded by ‘September 11’ and the so-called ‘Global War on Terror’, that highlights links between Islamic politics and violence with scant attention to history and context in which domestic struggles were ultimately fought over resources and power. The efforts of Islamic parties to find democratic pathways from dissent to power should be better appreciated. Their tenacity invalidates cultural determinist assumptions about an inherent incompatibility between Islam and democracy. On the other hand, their difficulty also undermines an opposite tendency to anticipate too neatly the arrival of Muslim societies at a terminus of democracy and prosperity supported by an embrace of global capitalism.

Second, Islamic politics as a political project arose within social and historical contexts of the deep multi-dimensional transformation of societies producing experiences of subjection and resistance that find popular resonances to this day. As case after case in this volume will show, Islamic dissent becomes increasingly popular if it can inventively engage with popular uprisings against insecure regimes, particularly in crises of political economy. Even so, these experiences may continue to colour the practices of Islamic politics that have moved in comparatively infrequent instances from points of dissent to positions of rule in their own countries. Here, the viability of Islamic politics in power is less likely to be tested against its demands on morality and religion, say, than its ability to govern and administer with creditable and supportable results.

Third, the practitioners of Islamic politics have adapted their modes of mobilization and organization to conditions of repression, marginalization, competition and even the assumption of power. Some adaptations overtly bear the language, idiom and symbolism of Islam. Others are expressed in modified programmes, compromised policies, forced realignments with social bases, and strategic alliances. In these ways, as if ‘to demonstrate its dynamism and diversity of expression’ (Esposito 1998: 158), Islamic politics will continue to produce innovative political thinking and practices and flourish – or fail to do so and stagnate.¹⁰ Above all, the diversity of Islamic politics challenges what Clive Kessler called the ‘Islamic fallacy’, that is, asserting that ‘a uniquely intimate relationship, deriving from the sociopolitical orientation of the religious tradition, exists between Islamic social and political theory … and the actual political behaviour of Muslims’ and that ‘as a result of this primacy of political theory over institutions and behaviour, Islam is inherently conservative’ (Kessler 1972: 33–4).

Finally, an appreciation of the complex trajectories of Islamic politics will pre-empt the forlorn task of scrutinizing Islamic politics by distinguishing the ‘good Muslim’ from the ‘bad Muslim’, as Mamdani (2002) pithily put it, according to their respective acceptance or rejection of Western security concerns and global capitalism.¹¹ That method of separating ‘moderates or liberals’ from ‘hardliners or radicals’ was in fact applied to non-Islamist dissident forces of earlier times with disastrous results. As this book shows, a broad range of regimes and dissenting Islamic forces continually struggle to re-shape the balanc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on Contributors
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 Islamic Politics between Dissent and Power: An Overview
• 2 Political Economy and the Explanation of the Islamic Politics in the Contemporary World
• 3 The Organizational Vehicles of Islamic Political Dissent: Social Bases, Genealogies and Strategies
• 4 Islamic Dissent in Iran’s Full-fledged Islamic Revolutionary State
• 5 Muslimhood and Post-Islamist Power: The Turkish Example
• 6 Survival, Triumph and Fall: The Political Transformation of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt
• 7 Islamist Ideals and Governing Realities: Nahda’s Project and the Constraint of Adaptation in Post-revolution Tunisia
• 8 Reforming the Regime or Reforming the Dissidents? The Gradualist Dissent of Islamic Movements in Morocco
• 9 Social Transformation and the Reinventions of Parti Islam in Malaysia
• 10 Political Fragmentation and Islamic Politics in Pakistan
• 11 A Perverse Symbiosis: The State, Islam and Political Dissent in Contemporary Algeria
• 12 Morality Racketeering: Vigilantism and Populist Islamic Militancy in Indonesia
• Index