Farid Senzai

Political Islam in the age of democratization

Foreword Fawaz A. Gerges 1. Introduction: The Role of Religion in Politics 2. The Complexity of Political Islam 3. Theoretical Framework: Democratization and Islamists 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: Hezbollah and Iraqi Shia Islamists 10. Post-Islamism: The Case of Turkeys AKP 11. Conclusion: Prospect for Muslim Democracies

Participatory Shia Islamism: The Islamic Republic of Iran

Thus far, we have examined four trends of Sunni Islamism on the basis of their approaches to power and their attitudes to democracy. This exercise suggests that the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) is comfortable with democratic politics, while the other groups are either participating with reservations (e.g., Salafis) or rejecting democracy outright as un-Islamic (e.g., some Salafi, Taliban, and alQaeda-style transnational jihadists). In this chapter, we will explain how the Shia Islamist trend in Iran has responded to the democratic political system. By examining the historical development of Shia political thought, we will show how contemporary Shia political ideas and behavior, regarding the state, adhere to the acceptor form of Islamism. Additionally, Iran’s Shia Islamists, like the MB, are participatory in regards to democracy. In fact, in some respects they are more acceptor and participatory than the MB, which is rather surprising given the origins and nature of Shia theology.1 Unlike Sunni Islamists, over the centuries Shia Islam has gravitated toward a clerical hierarchy. Intuitively, this should mean that the minority branch of Islam would be far more resistant to what prominent contemporary Iranian philosopher Abdolkarim Soroush calls “extra-religious” ideas.2 On the contrary, there has been an evolution in Shia religio-political thought and practice—facilitating an embrace of presidential-parliamentary republicanism that is lacking among several of their Sunni counterparts.

Conclusion: Prospects for Muslim Democracies

This book has sought to assess the role of religion in politics within Muslim societies, especially in light of the transformational changes taking place since the Arab Spring.1 Most Western scholars have long asserted that religion has no place in a democratic polity. Our goal here was to determine the validity of this claim in Muslim-majority countries with a focus on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Our central argument is that Islamists have played a decisive role and will continue to do so in the years and decades ahead as the region transitions through this democratization process. As scholars, we have gone to great length to approach this subject objectively and with sensitivity to avoid the polemic tensions on both ends of the spectrum. This is especially necessary on a topic as contentious and oft-politicized as this one. Undoubtedly there will be critics that disagree with the merits of our argument while others will oppose it on ideological grounds. We look forward to a lively and constructive discussion with the former while we find the polemic nature of the later more difficult to engage.

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.

Understanding the Complexity of Political Islam

The contemporary phenomenon popularly referred to as political Islam or Islamism has existed for well over a century, and yet much of the scholarly literature on it only appeared after the 1960s. This was due largely to regional developments that overshadowed the Islamists’ visibility, including the British and French occupation of Middle Eastern lands after the Ottoman Empire’s collapse shortly after World War I, the region’s subsequent decolonization after World War II, and the indigenous struggle for independence. But more importantly, during this tumultuous period Islamists were no more than marginal players in a region ideologically dominated by secular nationalist forces. Consequently, the scholarly literature of that time reflected this reality and was therefore dominated by books and articles on Arab nationalism.

Conditionalist Islamists: The Case of the Salafis

The Salafis represent a diverse community with core constituents in Saudi Arabia and additional millions of adherents across the Muslim world and the West. Unlike the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), which is a distinct organization with easily identifiable branches, “salafi” refers to a trend or, as the Salafis prefer to describe themselves, a methodology (manhaj). Consequently, their universe has come to encompass a highly varied set of actors who share a common religious doctrine but exhibit quite divergent political views.1 Thus they are comprised of multiple and often competing neighborhood preachers, societal groups, televangelists, and, largely after the Arab Spring, political parties. The vast majority, however, continue to shun politics. In fact, some of its most senior scholars insist that those who engage in politics are outside the Salafi tradition. We will only touch on Salafi religious views to explain their location in the wider Islamist milieu, for our focus in this chapter is the movement’s recent political manifestations and, in particular, on those groups that have moved toward political participation. But before we analyze Salafism as a political subgroup within Islamism, a definition of the phenomenon and a brief discussion of its origins are in order.

Participatory Islamists: The Case of the Muslim Brotherhood

The Muslim Brotherhood (MB), the world’s oldest and most significant Islamist movement, was founded in 1928 by Egyptian-born Hassan al-Banna (1906–1949), the “father of Islamism.”1 His thinking and the organization were rooted in the ideas propagated by such Ottoman-era Arab-Islamic thinkers as Rifa’a Tahtawi (1801–1873), Khairuddin al-Tunisi (1810–1899), and Abdurrahman al-Kawakibi (1849–1903).2 These three men, who held senior positions in the Ottoman bureaucracy, played a key role in trying to effect an intellectual revival in the long-stagnant Arab-Muslim world. Faced with the rise of European modernization and Western political thought, they sought to balance modernity with Islamic traditions.

Arab Shia Islamism: Iraqi Shia Islamists and Hezbollah

The Iranian model of a Shia Islamist state was made possible only through the convergence of unique circumstances that do not exist in the Arab Shia milieu. For example, Iran has an overwhelming majority Shia population (slightly over 90 percent) and its 1979 revolution completely dismantled the monarchical order and established the Islamic republic. Moreover, the proponents of velayat e-faqih were the most coherent and organized revolutionary faction. As the only fully Shia state, Iran became the de facto leader of the global Shia community. The geopolitical context of countries with significant religious and ethnic diversity has set Arab Shia Islamists apart from their Iranian counterparts. This chapter focuses on Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Iraq’s Hizb al-Dawah, the al-Sadrite movement, and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) Islamists. A third group, Bahrain’s Jamiyat al-Wefaq al-Watani al-Islamiyah, is less consequential and only discussed in a cursory manner.1 Each is based on the acceptor model of Islamism regarding the state and is predominantly participatory Islamist in regards to democracy. Clerics have played a major role in their development but, for the most part, do not seek a theocratic state. In fact, without the velayat-e-faqih, Arab Shia Islamism is more acceptor and participatory in nature than the Iranian incarnation.

Rejector Islamists: al-Qaeda and Transnational Jihadism

Over the last three decades, Muslim religio-political resurgence has undergone a significant metamorphosis insofar as its approach to establishing an “Islamic” polity is concerned. Disillusioned with what they perceived as their forerunners’ passivity, in the late 1960s and early 1970s a much younger and radical generation of Islamists adopted a more violent and combative posture toward the region’s incumbent pro-Western, secular, nationalist regimes and the Western governments that supported them.1 A small segment of Islamists2 were radicalized and became militant in the aftermath of the Arab defeat in the June 1967 war with Israel. This event, along with the general suppression of mainstream Islamists by the autocratic Egyptian state in the 1950s and 1960s, prompted certain individuals and groups to turn to armed insurrection as a means to establish an Islamic state. To justify their new militant approach, they incorporated the concept of jihad into the body of their political discourse. Consequently, over the last three decades the world has witnessed the emergence of a new type of Islamist political grouping: jihadist movements.3

Rejector Islamists: Taliban and Nationalist Jihadism

Like al-Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban are rejector Islamists who have not yet moved much beyond the idea that democracy is incompatible with Islam.1 Like other jihadist groups, they are insurrectionist Islamists, waging an insurgency against Western forces and the Afghan state. Yet, unlike Al-Qaeda which is a transnationalist, the Taliban is a nationalist jihadist group. As a nationalist jihadists group the Taliban accept the framework of the Afghan nation-state. This still begs the question why devote an entire chapter to relatively small group of largely militant Pashtun Islamists who reject democracy. The case of the Taliban provides unique insight into an ultraconservative manifestation of Islamism that cannot escape the geopolitical context it finds itself. Indeed, the Afghan Taliban’s behavior in the post-9/11 decade increasingly shows that they have cautiously adjusted their behavior and ideology in order to remain relevant at a time when the country continues to democratize.