Ibn Khaldun was a renowned fourteenth-century Tunisian historian, philosopher, and sociologist, whose observations about Arab, North African, and Middle Eastern social and leadership structures still resonate today. His theories reflect the social bonds, struggles, and tensions between religion and politics that persist in modern-day Tunisia as well as throughout the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). His mapping of historical cycles deserves attention in the post-2011 Arab Awakening MENA region. From these historical observations, one can see that certain patterns run through the region. Such patterns pertain to socioeconomic and resource deficiencies; authoritarianism in political and religious institutions; identity politics and the need for bonding based on tribal, ethnic, sectarian, and national classifications; marginalization of women and minorities; and yearning for reconstructing the “Golden Age” of past empires and Islamic civilization.
For Ibn Khaldun, the Golden Age “was the time of Mohammed and the first four caliphs. He looked back with huge nostalgia for when things were simpler and people didn’t wear fancy clothes, and they didn’t eat expensive meals.”1 Ibn Khaldun expressed disdain for the “city-state” and the urban scene. He preferred the rural nomadic setting, where, according to his theories, social bonding drives politics, economics, trade, security, and survival—in general, life. He referred to the social bonding as Asabiyyah . The MENA region’s political economy has long been based on the desert culture and way of life and has evolved from them. In fact, “The German travel writer Wilfred Thesiger describes how [Asabiyyah] develops in the desert because you’re heavily dependent on each other to survive. But it’s not just esprit de corps, it’s also elan vital, a drive to conquer, supplement that with religion and you’re just about unbeatable.”2
Fast forward to the twenty-first century, and it is clear that not much has changed in the MENA region. Moreover, rather than bonding and unity, the region has never been more divided along political, socioeconomic, and religious fault lines. Asabiyyah is what the people in the MENA region may have aspired to achieve throughout generations, but due to centuries of authoritarianism and religious schisms, the goals of social bonding at a larger scale have remained unrealized. The problems of authoritarianism, illiteracy and undereducation, and marginalization of women persist and have continued to plague the region well into the modern era.
For instance, if we examine the groundbreaking 2002 report entitled the Arab Human Development Report (AHDR) 2002 , we see that nothing much has changed in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region in political economy terms even after the earthshaking 2011 Arab Awakening uprisings and revolutions. The AHDR 2002 , which followed the model of the annual United Nations Human Development Report, serves as a significant marker to analyze the MENA region’s political economy even today.
The report encompasses the political, economic, and sociocultural variables of Arab states in the Middle East. The conclusions of the AHDR 2002 are described in three “deficiencies” based on these findings: (1) deficiencies in freedoms and rights, and the preponderance for authoritarian rule in the region; (2) deficiencies in a knowledge-based society, that is, concerning literacy and education standards, and intellectual productivity in the form of patents, book publishing and translations of books, and research and development and innovations; and (3) deficiencies in women’s empowerment.3
The twenty-first century continues to pummel the MENA region’s economies, politics, and societies with continuous, seemingly implacable challenges. This book examines the comparative traits and components of political Islam along with the political economy of the MENA region since the 2011 Arab uprisings and revolutions, as well as the secular and religious ideologies affecting and shaping societies. This book also provides a special case study analysis of Tunisia since its 2011 “Jasmine Revolution.” While most of the MENA countries suffer from political and economic problems and deficiencies, in some cases manifesting themselves in violent conflicts, Tunisia has mostly maintained stability throughout its post-revolution transitions, notwithstanding some serious obstacles and tribulations. Tunisia is the “outlier,” or the anomaly in the region. The reasons behind its uniqueness in securing political and economic stability—however fragile—require examination and elucidation.
While the three major deficiencies continue to plague the MENA region since 2002, the Republic of Tunisia, with approximately 11 million people, has initiated a fearless internal regime change through the 2011 Jasmine Revolution, demanding freedoms, rights, economic opportunities, justice, and, most importantly, dignity. In the process of post-revolution transformation (i.e., evolution), Tunisia has implemented anti-corruption action plans, economic and foreign direct investment (FDI) initiatives, and political and electoral developments and transitions in the face of daunting challenges to the country’s stability and security. Tunisia has also secured a substantial measure of democracy, which it has not experienced in its past and which remains elusive throughout the MENA region. Tunisia has achieved these goals, albeit with degrees of success, because of (a) the Tunisian people’s commitment to dialogue, negotiations, and compromise in the domestic political processes; (b) the emergence and functions of a vibrant civil society, which could not operate freely and openly under the dictatorship; and (c) lessons learned from the democracy failures and violent repression in Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, Syria, and Yemen, the latter three of which have precipitated into bloody civil conflicts.
Tunisia’s 2011 Jasmine Revolution provided the inspiration and impetus for other countries in the MENA region to follow its example and carry out uprisings and revolutions within their own settings. The 2011 uprisings caught on like dominoes throughout the region. However, democratization efforts have been far from successful in other countries, mainly because of the violent repression against pro-democracy movements at the hands of preexisting political elites, the military (in the case of Egypt and Syria), and remnants of the previous regimes. Civil society in these other countries has not been allowed to flourish, and democracy as a concept in and of itself has been vilified by both secular and religious forces, even though the latter has opportunistically sought empowerment through elections in post-revolution political systems (e.g., the case of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Libya; the Salafist party in Egypt; and the case of Ennahda in Tunisia). The post-2011 regimes and political institutions in Egypt, Syria, Libya, and Bahrain have sought to maintain the status quo ante, mainly because these regimes and political elites have benefited greatly from the pre-2011 economic, political, and security systems and apparatuses. Their systems have included extreme corruption, violent repression with torture, and long-term detentions of political and human rights activists as well as journalists, and boundless appetites for power through authoritarian rule. Wherein the protestors have demanded rule of law, accountability and transparency, observance of basic human rights, the freedoms and right to political representation, and access to education and economic opportunities, the regimes in the MENA region have delivered the opposite.
In fact, the notion of self-imperialism, or auto-imperialism , is what various MENA regimes and political elites have been inflicting on their respective countries. Auto-imperialism is a modern take on the traditional concept of imperialism, but instead of foreign forces pursuing imperial economic and political advantages in developing countries, the governments and regimes of a given state are pursuing “conq...