between dissent and power: the transformation of islamic politics in the middle east and asia

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Khoo Boo Teik, Vedi R. Hadiz and Yoshihiro Nakanishi (editors) BETWEEN DISSENT AND POWER The Transformation of Islamic Politics in the Middle East and Asia

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Between Dissent and PowerThe Transformation of Islamic Politics in the Middle East and Asia

Edited by

Khoo Boo TeikExecutive Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Developing Economies, Japan

Vedi R. HadizProfessor of Asian Societies and Politics, Murdoch University, Australia

Yoshihiro NakanishiAssociate Professor, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University, Japan

© IDE-JETRO and Murdoch University 2014

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v

Contents

List of Figures and Tables vii

Acknowledgements viii

Notes on Contributors x

List of Abbreviations xiii

1 Islamic Politics between Dissent and Power: An Overview 1 Khoo Boo Teik, Vedi R. Hadiz and Yoshihiro Nakanishi

2 Political Economy and the Explanation of the Islamic Politics in the Contemporary World 19

Richard Robison

3 The Organizational Vehicles of Islamic Political Dissent: Social Bases, Genealogies and Strategies 42

Vedi R. Hadiz

4 Islamic Dissent in Iran’s Full-fledged Islamic Revolutionary State 66

Yasuyuki Matsunaga

5 Muslimhood and Post-Islamist Power: The Turkish Example 89 Jenny White

6 Survival, Triumph and Fall: The Political Transformation of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt 108

Housam Darwisheh

7 Islamist Ideals and Governing Realities: Nahda’s Project and the Constraint of Adaptation in Post-revolution Tunisia 134

Nadia Marzouki

8 Reforming the Regime or Reforming the Dissidents? The Gradualist Dissent of Islamic Movements in Morocco 154

Shoko Watanabe

9 Social Transformation and the Reinventions of Parti Islam in Malaysia 177

Khoo Boo Teik

10 Political Fragmentation and Islamic Politics in Pakistan 201 Yoshihiro Nakanishi

vi Contents

11 A Perverse Symbiosis: The State, Islam and Political Dissent in Contemporary Algeria 224

Alejandro Colás

12 Morality Racketeering: Vigilantism and Populist Islamic Militancy in Indonesia 248

Ian Wilson

Index 275

vii

List of Figures and Tables

Figures

8.1 Current Account Balance in Morocco (% of GDP, 1975–2011) 162

8.2 Number of Labour Conflicts (1960–2011) and Urban Unemployment Rate (1960–2005) in Morocco 164

10.1 Number of Terrorist Attacks in Pakistan 202

Tables

8.1 Islamist Results in Legislative Elections (1997–2011) 156

8.2 Moroccan Constitutional Reforms 163

10.1 Mobile Telephone Subscriptions per 100 Inhabitants in Pakistan 215

viii

Acknowledgements

Around October 2010 the Editors applied to the Institute of Developing Economies (IDE-JETRO), Japan, and the Asia Research Centre (ARC) of Murdoch University, Perth, Australia for joint sponsorship and shared funding of a research project, ‘Islam and Political Dissent: Studies and Comparisons from Asia and the Middle East’. Almost no sooner was the Project accepted by IDE-JETRO and ARC than an uprising erupted in Tunisia that was quickly followed by uprisings in other countries in what has come to be commonly called the ‘Arab Spring’. The Editors, themselves caught unawares by those historic upheavals, certainly could not claim any prescience in the conception or the timing of this Project. The Project was not originally designed to focus entirely on the Middle East. Nor was it subsequently redesigned to shift attention to the ‘Arab Spring’, as may be seen from the introductory chapter which sets out the broader scope and the longer perspective of the Project. Even so, the dramatic popular challenges to different regimes in the Middle East and North Africa, in which various actors of Islamic dissent played cru-cial roles, added considerable meaning and impetus to the Project. This book is the product of the Project, itself undertaken by an international team of researchers based in Australia, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. The Editors hope that the book captures some of the urgency of the times but also the importance of a deeper compara-tive understanding of the trajectories and pathways of Islamic politics and dissent in parts of the Middle East, North Africa and Asia.

The Editors would like to acknowledge with profound gratitude the generous financial support that we received from IDE-JETRO and ARC between April 2011 and March 2013. The Project funding allowed several researchers to make field trips to the countries that they studied, and sup-ported the convening of two project workshops, at ARC in July 2011 and at IDE-JETRO in November 2012.

Over the duration of the Project, we received enormous encourage-ment and invaluable assistance from many people.

At IDE-JETRO, Takashi Shiraishi, President, and Katsumi Hirano, then Director-General, Area Studies Center, gave their unstinting support and kind advice not only in relation to the Project but also the idea of establishing institutional collaboration between IDE-JETRO and ARC. Our project administrators, Koshi Yamada and Eri Sugiyama, managed

Acknowledgements ix

the logistics of the Project with skill, patience and good cheer. During the November 2012 workshop, many colleagues helped by chairing different sessions and actively participating in discussions of individual papers. In particular, we would like to thank Nobuhiro Aizawa, Yasushi Hazama, Kaoru Murakami, Shinichi Shigetomi, Hitoshi Suzuki and Shinichi Takeuchi for their cooperation.

The support provided by a number of colleagues at the ARC was instrumental in getting the project started. The ARC’s former director, Caroline Hughes, should be singled out for thanks. The role of Craig McGarty, then Director of the Social Research Institute, especially in securing financial support from Murdoch University, is much appreci-ated. We are also grateful to Anne Aly of Curtin University, and Farida Fozdar and Sameena Yasmeen, both of the University of Western Australia, who acted as discussants at the first workshop held in Perth. Finally, thank you, Tamara Dent, for handling the logistical aspects of the Project on the Murdoch side during its early stages.

We would like to thank two anonymous reviewers who conscien-tiously gave criticisms and suggestions that helped us to improve indi-vidual chapters and the manuscript as a whole. While preparing the manuscript for publication, we very much benefited from the experi-ence and help of Masahiro Okada.

Finally, the Editors would like to express their sincere appreciation of the hard work, numerous revisions (necessary not least because of rap-idly changing conditions in many countries under study) and fine chap-ters that the individual writers contributed to the Project and this book.

The EditorsJanuary 2014

x

Notes on Contributors

Alejandro Colás teaches international relations in the Department of Politics, Birkbeck College, University of London. He is author of International Civil Society: Social Movements in World Politics (2002), Empire (2007) and co-editor with Bryan Mabee of Mercenaries, Pirates, Bandits and Empires: Private Violence in Historical Perspective (2011) and The War on Terror and American Empire After the Cold War (2005) with Richard Saull.

Housam Darwisheh is Research Fellow at the Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization. He is a Middle East researcher and his research interest focuses on social movements and politics in Egypt with special reference to Islamism. Among his latest publications are ‘Deciphering Syria’s Power Dynamics and Protracted Conflict,’ in Hitoshi Suzuki (ed.) The Middle East Turmoil and Japanese Response (IDE-JETRO, 2013); and ‘Social Movement and Democratization of Egyptian Politics: Egypt’s January 25 Revolution and the Demise of Mubarak’s Regime’ (co-authored with Takayuki Yokota) in Keiko Sakai (ed.) The Middle East Political Science (Tokyo, 2012).

Vedi R. Hadiz is Professor of Asian Societies and Politics and Director of the Indonesia Research Programme at the Asia Research Centre, Murdoch University, Australia. He is also an Australian Research Council Future Fellow. His current research project examines the politi-cal economy of Islamic populism in Indonesia and the Middle East. His most recent book is Localising Power in Post-Authoritarian Indonesia: A Southeast Asia Perspective (2010).

Khoo Boo Teik, Executive Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Developing Economies, Japan, was born, bred and schooled in Penang, Malaysia, before studying at the University of Rochester, MIT and Flinders University. He is the author of Paradoxes of Mahathirism: An Intellectual Biography of Mahathir Mohamad (1995) and Beyond Mahathir: Malaysian Politics and its Discontents (2003), editor of Policy Regimes and the Political Economy of Poverty Reduction in Malaysia (2012), and co-editor of Democracy in Malaysia: Discourses and Practices (2002). Adjunct Professor, National Graduate Institute of Policy Studies, Tokyo (2012–14), he used to teach at Universiti Sains Malaysia and Universiti Brunei Darusalam.

Notes on Contributors xi

Nadia Marzouki is a Research Fellow at the Centre National de la Recherche Supérieure (CNRS, CESPRA), Paris. She was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Council on Middle Eastern Studies, Yale University (2008–10), and a Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley (2004–5) and at Princeton University (2005–6). Since 2011, she has been part of the Research Project ReligioWest, based at the European University Institute, Florence. Her work examines public controversies about Islam in Europe and the United States, and about Evangelical Christianity and religious freedom in North Africa. She is the author of L’Islam, une religion américaine? (2013). She co-edited, with Olivier Roy, Religious Conversions in the Mediterranean World, (2013). Her recent essays on Tunisia include ‘Tunisian call for dignity or a particular universalism’ (Middle East Law and Governance, 4, 2011), ‘From people to citizens in Tunisia’ (Middle East Report, 259, 41, Summer 2011) and ‘Nahda’s return to history’ (The Immanent Frame, April 30, 2012).

Yasuyuki Matsunaga, Professor of Political Science at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies in Japan, was educated at the University of Tokyo, University of South Carolina and New York University. His current research interest ranges from the historical trajectories of desecu-larization and resecularization in Iran and the greater Middle East to contentious politics and comparative democratization in the Middle East and North Africa. His articles have appeared in Critique Internationale, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, and Die Welt des Islams. He is currently completing a book manuscript entitled Reforming Islamist Iran: Religion, Intellectuals, and Politics under the Rafsanjani-Khatami Years.

Yoshihiro Nakanishi is Associate Professor at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University. His research focuses on politics and civil–military relations in Myanmar and Pakistan. Nakanishi previously worked with the Institute of Developing Economies (IDE-JETRO) and was a visiting scholar with the Southeast Asia Studies Program at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of Strong Soldiers, Failed Revolution: The State and Military in Burma, 1962-1988 (National University of Singapore Press, 2013).

Richard Robison is Emeritus Professor at Murdoch University, Western Australia. He has held professorial chairs at Murdoch University and at the Institute for Social Studies, The Hague, and is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, Australia. His research is focused on the

xii Notes on Contributors

way the market economy shapes social power and political institutions in developing countries. Among his publications are Indonesia: The Rise of Capital (1986) and Reorganising Power in Indonesia: The Politics of Oligarchy in an Age of Markets (2004, with Vedi R. Hadiz).

Shoko Watanabe is Research Fellow in the Area Studies Center, Institute of Developing Economies, Japan. She has a BA in Literature from Kyoto University, MA in Economics from Keio University and PhD from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University of Tokyo. Her area of specialization covers Islamic and nationalist movements in the Maghrib countries, particularly those of colonial Algeria. Her doctoral disserta-tion, Islamic Reformist Movement of the Association of Algerian Ulama, principally investigated the links between Islamic reformism and nationalism. Before joining IDE in April 2012, she was Research Fellow in the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science from 2010 to 2012.

Jenny White is Distinguished Visiting Professor at Stockholm University Institute for Turkish Studies and a professor of anthropology at Boston University. She served as the president of the Turkish Studies Association and of the American Anthropological Association Middle East Section. She is the author of Muslim Nationalism and the New Turks (chosen by Foreign Policy as one of the three best books on the Middle East in 2012); Islamist Mobilization in Turkey: A Study in Vernacular Politics (Winner of the 2003 Douglass Prize for best book in Europeanist anthropology); and Money Makes Us Relatives: Women’s Labor in Urban Turkey. She has authored numerous articles on Turkey and on Turks in Germany and lectures internationally on topics ranging from political Islam and nationalism to ethnic identity and gender issues. Professor White has been following events in Turkey since the mid-1970s.

Ian Wilson is a Research Fellow at the Asia Research Centre and Lecturer in Politics, Development and Security studies in the School of Management & Governance, Murdoch University, Western Australia. His research interests focus upon the political economy of gangs, organized crime and vigilantism in Indonesia, together with urban politics. He has worked collaboratively with NGOs such as Indonesian Corruption Watch and participated in public policy research for AusAID, and is currently working on a multi-country study examining the politi-cal agency of the urban poor in Southeast Asia. He has published widely, including in journals such as Critical Asian Studies, the Asian Journal of Social Sciences and Nationalism and Ethnic Politics.

xiii

List of Abbreviations

ABIM Malaysian Islamic Youth Movement (Angkatan Belia Islam Malaysia)

AIG Armed Islamic Group

AIS Islamic Army of Salvation

AKP Justice and Development Party

ALN National Liberation Army

ANP Awami National Party

AUMA Association des Ulama Musulmans Algériens

BA Alternative Front (Barisan Alternatif)

BERSIH Coalition for Clean and Fair Elections

CHP Republican People’s Party

DAP Democratic Action Party

DSKO World Sharia Liberation Army

EIK-TM Turkish Fighters of the Universal Islamic War of Liberation

EKC-SIM Universal Brotherhood Front-Sharia Revenge Squad

EOI Export-oriented Industrialization

FATA Federal Administered Tribal Areas

FBR Forum Betawi Rempug (Betawi Brotherhood Forum)

FELDA Federal Land Development Authority

FIS Islamic Salvation Front

FJP Freedom and Justice Party

FPI Islamic Defenders Front (Front Pembela Islam)

FPIS Islamic Youth Front of Surakarta

HTI Political Party (Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia)

HuM Harakat-ul-Mujahideen

ICG International Crisis Group

ICMI Indonesian Association of Muslim Intellectuals (Ikatan Cendekiawan Muslim Indonesia)

xiv List of Abbreviations

IDAM Fighters of the Islamic Revolution

IKO Turkish Islamic Liberation Army

IKP-C Islamic Liberation Party Front

IMF International Monetary Fund

IMO Turkish Islamic Fighters Army

Indonesia Tanpa JIL Indonesia Without JIL (Liberal Islam Network)

IRI Islamic Republic of Iran

ISI Inter-Services Intelligence

JAT Jamaah Anshorut Tauhid

JeM Jaish-e-Mohammed

JI Jama’at-i-Islami

JUI Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam

JUI-F Jamiat Ulema-e-Islami (F)

Keadilan National Justice Party (Parti Keadilan Nasional)

KP Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

LeT Lashkar-e-Taiba

MB Muslim Brotherhood

MENA Middle East and North Africa

MMA Muttahida Mulla Association (Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal)

MMI Majelis Mujahidin Indonesia

MNR National Reform Movement (harakat al-islah al-watani)

MPR People’s Consultative Assembly (Majelis Musyawarah Rakyat)

MQM Muhajir Quami Movement

MSP Movement of Society for Peace (harakat mut-jama’ al-silm)

MTLD Movement for the Triumph of Democratic Liberties

MUI Indonesian Ulema Council

MUR Movement of Unicity and Reform

NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization

NEP New Economic Policy

NEPAD New Partnership for African Development

NU Nahdlatul Ulama

List of Abbreviations xv

NWFP North West Frontier Province

OADP Organization of Democratic Popular Forces

OAU Organisation of African Unity

PAN National Mandate Party

PAS Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (Parti Islam SeMalaysia)

PI Party of Independence

PJD Justice and Development Party

PJD Party of Justice and Development

PK Justice Party

PKB National Awakening Party

PKI Indonesian Communist Party

PKK Kurdistan Workers’ Party

PKR People’s Justice Party

PKS Justice and Prosperity Party (Partai Keadilan Sejahtera)

PML Pakistan Muslim League

PML-N Pakistan Muslim League - Nawaz

PPA Algerian People’s Party (Parti du Peuple Algerien)

PPA-MTLD Party of the Algerian People-Movement for the Triumph of Democratic Liberties

PPP Pakistan People’s Party

PPP Muslim United Development Party (Partai Persatuan Pembangunan)

PPS Progress and Socialism Party

PRM Malaysian People’s Party (Parti Rakyat Malaysia)

PTI Pakistan Tahreek-e-Insaf

SCAF Supreme Council of the Armed Forces

RCD Constitutional Democratic Rally

TIKB Turkish Islamic Liberation Union

TIK-C Turkish Islamic Liberation Front

TSIK Turkish Sharia Revenge Commandos

TTP Tehrik Taliban Pakistan

UMNO United Malays National Organization

UNFP National Union of Popular Forces

USFP Socialist Union of Popular Forces

1

1Islamic Politics between Dissent and Power: An OverviewKhoo 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 fanati-cism (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.

2 Islamic Politics between Dissent and Power: An Overview

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 seri-ous 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 inter-national 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 exclu-sively 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 pos-sible 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 cov-ered 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 politi-cal stalemate amidst continuing instability.4 At different points in time, counterparts of these Islamic parties have been co-opted into govern-ment by the monarchy in Morocco and military juntas in Pakistan.5 For that matter, Islamic parties have contested many general elections in

Khoo Boo Teik, Vedi R. Hadiz and Yoshihiro Nakanishi 3

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 them-selves 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 ques-tions 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 ideo logical 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 univer-salistic non-class appeal of Islam as religion? Apart from these, ques-tions 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 practi-tioners 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 trajec-tories 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 cov-ered 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 ideo-logical 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 strug-gles 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 unu-sual 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 dimen-sion to it (Tripp 2006).

While the chapters, and especially the country-specific ones, give diffe-rent 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 ulti-mately 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, margina-lization, competition and even the assumption of power. Some adapta-tions 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 politi-cal 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 poli-tics 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 rejec-tion 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 balances of power between authoritarian regimes and social movements, between oligarchic rule and populist opposition, and between secular and reli-gious institutions. This basic dynamic has been borne out by the reverberations of the ‘Arab Spring’ where the movement of Islamic politics from dissent to power – and to collapse in the Egyptian case – has been enmeshed in all kinds of post-authoritarian controversies. Understanding all this would be a necessary if insufficient condition for appreciating how Islam has become such an important moral and ideological fount of political appeals that make strong claims on power and legitimacy.

1.4 The structure of the book

In Chapter 2, Richard Robison shows how evolving debates on ‘often confusing and contradictory’ Islamic politics are embedded in larger theoretical and ideological frameworks. He argues that the crux of the matter lies in explaining two crucial developments. One is the vast vari-ation in the manifestations of politics conducted in the name of Islam as religion. The other is the seemingly paradoxical failure of moderate and secular Islamic politics despite the rise of a ‘civil society’, the entrench-ment of a bourgeoisie, and the consolidation of ‘rational’ institutions, as well as the emergence of violent and atavist Islamic movements in ‘modern’ social structures and flourishing market capitalism. Neither of these developments can be understood via a conservative ‘essentialist’ cultural approach that sees Islamic societies as immutably adhering to ideas, doctrines and customs that only produce despotism and decay. Nor can satisfactory answers be derived from a liberal/pluralist frame-work that allows for the impact of modernity and cultural transforma-tion but independently of socio-economic interests, forces and conflicts. Instead, Robison contends, critical political economy best accounts for the expressions of Islamic politics within larger processes of socio-political change wrought by modern capitalism as it swept aside older forms of economic and social life, and created new economic interests, social forces and political conflicts. He compares Islamic politics in Egypt, Indonesia and Turkey to demonstrate how shifts in class interests and state power under different phases of national and global capitalist development could give rise to divergent forms of conservative, populist and radical Islamic politics. Hence, the chapter cautions, conservative or liberal policy agendas in Muslim or Western states that aim to dismantle, domesticate or cultivate Islamic political movements may miss the real


point, that is, the unsettled character of Islamic politics is decided by deeper, ultimately domestic, conflicts over interests and power.

Vedi R. Hadiz in Chapter 3 extends the theme of variation in Islamic politics to cover the ‘organizational vehicles’ deployed by Islamic forces in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. He contrasts the fortunes of political parties engaging in electoral contestation with paramilitary groups waging intermittent violence. In his view, Islamic movements’ choices of organizational vehicles are contingent on their social bases, the alliances they construct to represent an increasingly diverse ummah and the strategies that they adopt in profane competition over power and resources. At the successful end of the organizational spectrum stands the AKP of Turkey, presently the ‘exemplar’ of thriving Islamic populism that has so subordinated any aspiration towards an Islamic state in its ascendancy that the AKP now claims to be a conservative rather than Islamic party. Likewise, the Freedom and Justice Party of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, victorious in post-Mubarak elections, favoured broad political and market reform over conservative demands for an Islamic state. In post-Soeharto Indonesia, however, Islamic par-ties have not advanced much, being unable to mobilize a diversified ummah that seeks social mobility via market capitalism and within the state. Consequently, some Islamic mass organizations prefer to be non-parliamentary, steering between formal politics and civil society activism. At the truly ‘failed’ end of the organizational spectrum in Indonesia are small and fragmented terror cells – whether or not asso-ciated with the Jema’ah Islamiyah – whose sporadic violence exposes their social isolation and political ineffectiveness. To that extent, Hadiz concludes, the organizations of new forms of Islamic populism reflect their transformed social bases and emerging multi-class alliances. These are not inherently ‘liberal’ or ‘progressive’. But where their alliances are well developed, they are more likely to espouse agendas that advance the position of the ummah through democratic politics and acceptance of market capitalism.

The first of the nine country studies in this book appears in Chapter 4 and it is principally a dissection of post-revivalist dissent in Iran, the first state to have Islamic dissent erupt into revolution and develop into full rule. Breaking with the religious revivalists who held that Islam was ‘the solution’ and who Islamized Iranian society and polity within a few years of the 1979 revolution, the post-revivalists reject both a religious state and a politicized religion. Seemingly uncharacteristic of people who ‘cherish the Islamic faith’, the latter presently pursue a project of ‘downsizing religion’. Indeed, as is illustrated by a concise treatment of


the career and ideas of one of their leading figures, Mohsen Kadivar, the post-revivalists demand an institutional separation of politics and reli-gion by lowering expectations of what Islam can and is meant to accom-plish in social, economic and political spheres. In other words, they want to ‘separate church and state’. Here, Yasuyuki Matsunaga situates the rise of ‘post-revivalist’ dissent and interprets its significance within a state that is not only ‘full-fledged Islamic’ but ‘anti-imperialist Third World revolutionary’, modern and nationalizing at the same time. It is this multi-layered character of Iran’s post-revolutionary state that has sustained divergent – though necessarily Islamic – politico-ideological currents associated with many struggles over power, policies, leadership and culture. In the past three decades, such struggles have connected with other socio-political developments such as divisions within the power elite over state economic intervention and foreign policy, chal-lenges to the traditional interests and conservative cultural outlook of the bazaar-based ‘Islamic right’, and the empowerment of youthful voters. Within a historical post-revolutionary context, therefore, post-revivalist dissent captures a vibrant ‘culturalization of contentious poli-tics’, significant evidence that the public sphere in contemporary Iran, far from being monolithic, is circumscribed and harsh but ‘inherently pluralistic’.

If Iran was known for its revolutionary route from Islamic dissent to state rule, twenty-first-century Turkey offered a model of how a dis-sident Islamic party could enter the political mainstream and become the status quo. In Chapter 5, Jenny White analyses the ‘Turkish model’. Here, as the Justice and Development Party (AKP) consolidated its power, the balance changed between the government and secular state institutions, especially the military and judiciary. While the AKP’s systemic integration did not necessarily mean heightened religious conservatism in state institutions, the party’s capacity for constrain-ing religiosity in public-political arenas was curbed. Yet the meaning of Islam in power was transformed by the AKP’s need to demonstrate its ability in government as contesting elections required the AKP to broaden its constituency and modify its agenda. If that much was ‘agency’, the historical and structural context was crucial. The AKP rose together with a Muslim bourgeoisie based in global trade and manufac-turing that cast one eye on European Union membership and the other on a global market. Thus, the AKP expressed political participation and entrepreneurial success for a pious Muslim bourgeoisie and middle class for whom radical religiosity or unpredictable liberalism held no attrac-tion. Not for nothing, then, did the AKP re-define itself as a centre-right


party led by pious Muslims managing a secular system. The cultural by-product of the movement of Islamic politics from dissent to rule was ‘post-Islamist Muslimhood’ that led secular and Muslim bourgeoisie to express Islam through lifestyle choices in consumption, fashion, music and media. White suggests that the ‘Turkish model’ has this lesson for a post-‘Arab Spring’ Middle East incorporating Islam in government structures: there is no attraction in a resurgence of Islamic ideology but there is danger from autocracy, patriarchy and intolerance – old habits of power that would subvert any democratic transformation.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s (MB) rise from dissent to power in Egypt in 2012 bore echoes respectively of the revolt against the Shah of Iran and the AKP’s electoral triumph in Turkey. The MB joined the uprising that overthrew Mubarak and then won the 2012 elections via its Freedom and Justice Party (FJP). As Housam Darwisheh shows in Chapter 6, the outright victory belied a torturous trajectory of transformation amidst socio-economic change that positioned the MB as Egypt’s best organized movement ‘at the right time’. Severely suppressed by Nasser, the MB was provoked into radical but disastrous responses. But, tolerated by Sadat and contained by Mubarak, the MB rebuilt itself with a long-term multi-dimensional strategy. As Nasserist populism failed, and economic liberali-zation and corruption rolled back public services, MB activists expanded educational and social service networks, and penetrated and reorganized professional syndicates, battling corruption and fighting for better condi-tions of employment. The MB’s restricted electoral politics was conducted through alliances with ‘legal’ non-Islamist parties from the 1980s to the 1990s. In Mubarak’s final years, Egypt’s economic malaise, the MB’s resilient strategy and organizational cohesion, and the growing audacity of its ‘1970s generation’ of activists made the MB popularly accepted, socially embedded, professionally networked and politically organized. Darwisheh notes that while Islam was unifying and legitimating for the MB, doctrinal matters did not shape its trajectory any more than they did the 2011–12 uprising. Moreover, despite its repeated electoral suc-cesses, the MB’s trajectory of survival under repression could not suffice to keep it long in power. In an open, pluralist, post-authoritarian milieu burdened with economic crisis, the MB’s Islamism was faulted for being non-inclusive while the FJP’s policies were derided for being defective. Facing growing opposition from non-Islamist parties, new dissident movements, and resurging non-electoral forces of the ‘deep state’, the MB and FJP came to grief in the July 2013 military coup.

Like the AKP and the FJP, Nahda – ‘Tunisia’s Muslim Brotherhood’ – reached power from dissent via elections. Unlike AKP and FJP, however,


Nahda virtually had no organization in Tunisia when the ‘Arab Spring’ began there: the Ben Ali regime’s repression had forced its leaders into exile and decimated its membership. Like its secular right and left oppo-nents at Tunisia’s first free election in October 2011, Nahda offered an undistinguished socio-economic platform. But, whereas the secularists reactively campaigned for a rejection of Islamists, Nahda moved towards ‘political inclusion’ in principle and practice. Nahda’s discursive-strate-gic project, Nadia Marzouki explains in Chapter 7, was pioneered by its leader, Rached Ghannouchi, who proposed the idea of Dawla Madaniyya – a ‘civil state’ neither military nor theocratic, which protects the freedom of worship, grounds legislation in popular will, respects minority rights and upholds pluralist competition. Ghannouchi’s Dawla Madaniyya encapsulates a compatibility of Islam with democracy that discards the postcolonial ruling elite’s state hegemony over religion and retrieves lost cultural authenticity. Still, the necessity of Nadha’s project arose from its ‘European exile’, its respected record of resistance, its electoral plurality not majority, and the imperative of forming a coalition government with secular left parties. In her assessment of Nahda in government, Marzouki avoids ‘baseless catastrophism’ and ‘naïve angelicism’, com-mon pitfalls in commentary on Islamism. Islamist–secularist differences may perhaps be eased by discursive innovations. But prospects for Ghannouchi’s ‘civil state’ may well be decided by Nahda’s ability to meet popular expectations and socio-economic frustrations now channelled into spreading unionization. Over the ominous unsolved assassination of Chokri Belaïd, prominent leftwing union leader and secularist critic of the ‘hegemonic ambitions’ of the Islamists, Nahda faces external oppo-sition, internal dissension and the risk of coalitional collapse. Nahda’s movement from dissent to power is unsettled while its political project remains contestable.

Chapter 8, by Shoko Watanabe, examines Morocco’s Islamic move-ment which has developed a distinctively gradualist and reformist outlook. Rejecting theses that assume a direct correlation between political inclusion and political moderation, the chapter demonstrates that changes in the stances of the Moroccan Islamic movement are the product of its interaction with a range of regime and opposition forces over a 40-year trajectory. That trajectory has brought the Islamic movement from the margins of politics to forming the government, albeit within a polity where the King remains supreme, and the power of political parties and parliaments is quite limited. This has been most clearly seen in the journey of the Justice and Development Party (PJD) which superseded the Independence Party (which participated in


the movement for national independence in the 1950s) as Morocco’s dominant Islamic party. Ultimately, vicissitudes in the position of the Islamic movements are intricately related to an understanding of the so-called Makhzan regime as ‘a stable system of violence’, revolving around the King, in which assorted Islamic and Leftist social move-ments can emerge to express social grievances, but regularly succumb to co-optation and domestication. Within this system, Islamic movements have been subjected to a complex process of repression, political exclu-sion and political inclusion amidst socio-economic changes and shifts in economic development policies towards an entrenched neoliberal orientation since the 1980s. Over the years, the King has had to respond to public discontent with minor socio-political reforms. Meanwhile, key elements of the Islamic movement have found it strategically useful to cooperate with the King in order to compete for public support against secular and leftist movements, especially since the King’s legitimacy relies much on the mobilization of Islamic idioms. To that degree, Watanabe concludes, the King and the Islamist have each ‘reformed’ in the direction of gradualist dissent and co-optation.

In Malaysia, over a 60-year political trajectory, the Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS, or the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party) has been in opposition at the national (Parliament) level but has governed some states over different periods. Given its character as an ‘Islamic party’ in a secular political system and ‘Islamist’ aspirations in a society with 40 per cent non-Muslims, many analyses of PAS have focused on its religious goals, moralizing discourse and the theology of its ulama leadership. These matters are assumed to form the core of PAS’s religio-centric rivalry with the ruling party which promotes its own policies of Islamization. However, Khoo Boo Teik suggests in Chapter 9, such a focus may show how PAS is Islamist but not explain how PAS’s Islamists have been political in non-religious ways to develop their states, expand from rural ethnically homogenous to urban ethnically mixed constitu-encies, form alliances with non-religious parties and survive the Federal government’s hostility. Nor would a focus on religion explain two paradoxical experiences in PAS’s record. For a ‘party of Islam’, PAS was electorally more successful when it was less Islamist and vice-versa. For a ‘party of dissent’, PAS had also ruled, sometimes creating tensions with its allies. These experiences arose from PAS’s efforts to adapt its ideo logy and strategy when economic transformation and social engineering altered PAS’s social bases and leadership profiles, but also sparked crises of hegemony and eruptions of popular dissent. As Khoo demonstrates, PAS’s efforts were ineffective until 2007–8 when its Islamic dissent


converged with other streams of dissent to support a new populist coalition of PAS with two non-religious parties. In the May 2013 general election, this coalition won a significant majority of the popular vote but failed to take power because of the regime’s structural advantages in the electoral system. To that degree, PAS’s Islamic dissent could not yet translate into national rule but its more national, more populist and not sectarian appeal seemed partially vindicated.

Carved out of India as a Muslim ‘homeland’, Pakistan identifies itself as an ‘Islamic Republic’ but Islamic discourse has hardly been a unify-ing factor to resolve its often violent political conflicts. In Chapter 10, Yoshihiro Nakanishi argues that Islamic political dissent in Pakistan has been fragmented by links to many powerful local and regional interests in state and society. It has also been complicated by the security and geopolitical environment within which Islamic dissent has had to oper-ate. Thus, a key factor in the development of Islamic dissent has been its encounters with an authoritarian military establishment that promoted or repressed Islamic movements according to its needs, notably follow-ing the US ‘War on Terror’. Islamic political dissent has been further fragmented as social change, accompanying rather modest economic growth, has diversified some of the social bases of Islamic politics to the extent of producing competing interests. Pakistani society has been Islamized, a process partially encouraged by military dictatorships to outmanoeuvre civilian rivals such as the secular Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. As in Indonesia, however, Islamic parties like the Jama’at-i-Islami ( JI), initially formed by Mawdudi, and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam ( JUI) have rarely performed well in electoral politics. Contesting the disappointing claims of those parties to be the representatives of the ummah, various militant groups have conducted violent political activity, often operat-ing in geographical areas beyond the direct gaze of elite politics in the major cities. Quite possibly, the implication of Islamic politics in the struggles to forge a modern nation state of Pakistan has ironically con-signed Islamic politics to relative marginality within party politics and to the murky fringe world of violent groups. It may well be, too, that the now chaotic Islamic politics of Pakistan reflects a ‘soul-less’ condition of failed developmentalism, unresolved regional conflicts and external military intervention.

A long and bloody civil war was fought in Algeria after the military thwarted the probable ascension to power of the Islamist FIS (Islamic Salvation Front) via national elections in 1991. Since the end of the civil war, Alejandro Colás writes in Chapter 11, the state and the Islamist forces have developed a kind of symbiosis on the basis of policies


pursued by Bouteflika after he was elected as President in 1999. The symbiosis was ‘perverse’, Colás suggests, because the major antagonists within the state and the insurgency in fact ‘lived off’ the civil war. For example, a combination of economic inducements and a programme of state protection for former guerrilla fighters eventually subdued and dismantled the armed wing of the FIS even if the remnants of a rival guerrilla force (the GIA, or Armed Islamic Group) have recently mutated into an outpost of ‘Al Qaeda in the Maghreb’. Those state policies have been intertwined with a broad economic agenda that essentially continues the market reforms initiated during the earlier Bendjedid government. These market reforms have been extended into structural adjustment measures in new and diverse areas, including increased for-eign investment in the strategic and lucrative hydrocarbon sector, the control over which has greatly contributed to the ability of a narrow military–bureaucratic oligarchy to maintain order and power through a clientelist form of populist politics. Thus, in place of the massively violent coercive strategies employed in the 1990s, the current regime uses more effective tactics of fragmenting, co-opting and integrating the Islamic opposition into the regime. Apart from caution and trepi-dation linked to the still fresh memories of the terrible toll of the civil war throughout Algerian society, the success of the Bouteflika regime’s policies goes a long way in explaining why the Arab Spring seems to have bypassed Algeria.

Ian Wilson provides the final country study which focuses not on political parties or groups attempting to overthrow the state but on Indonesia’s Islamic Defenders Front (FPI). The FPI is an organization that promotes social conservatism by aggressively attacking what it considers to be bastions of immorality and licentiousness in society. Unlike many similar groups in Indonesia, the FPI is a nationwide organization with branches in various localities, but especially in Java. Intersecting with criminal activity (via protection rackets, for example), the FPI controls urban and peri-urban neighbourhoods by competing with and ejecting rivals usually organized in gangs that are accused of promoting vices such as drunkenness and prostitution. Although it is not politically or theologically radical, the FPI is religiously militant. It uses Islamic politi-cal identity to carve a space for itself in post-authoritarian Indonesia. For the FPI’s (largely urban poor) membership, religious militancy co-exists in dynamic tension with prosaic aims of attaining material wealth and social advancement. Against arguments that the militancy of organizations like the FPI is produced from the desperation of peren-nial socio-economic marginalization, Wilson suggests that this type of


organization has little interest in activities directed at gaining power through elections. Instead, the organization is geared toward exercis-ing control over the sphere of everyday life, ‘on the streets’ and within demarcated territories. Intriguingly, the FPI’s Islamic militancy does not always extend to rigidity in following the precepts of religion. Wilson specifically notes how some FPI members are remarkably relaxed over religious observance, such as answering the call to prayers. All consi-dered, the FPI provides yet another distinctive example of the diverse manifestations of Islamic politics. The FPI’s objective is not to control the state and its resources. It deploys a kind of ‘street politics’ that only targets the neighbourhood with its limited scope of informal economic transaction.

Several considerations influenced the Editors’ selection of the two thematic areas and nine countries for research. Chapter 2 is meant to provide a considered assessment of different paradigmatic approaches to Islam and politics. Its critique of ‘culturalist explanations’ and its recommendation of critical political economy have served to guide the other chapters, without setting a rigid framework, towards linking factors such as changing social bases, and the transformation of the state to ideational, programmatic and policy developments in particular parties or movements in a broader context of changing global capitalism that has created opportunities, crises and conflicts over economic development. Chapter 3, the second thematic chapter dealing with ‘the organizational vehicles of Islamic politics’, provides a comparative per-spective for connecting modes of mobilization and organization with assessments of the relative strengths and weaknesses of Islamic politics operating under conditions of increasing electoral competition. For the country-specific studies, the selection of Egypt, Iran, Morocco, Tunisia and Turkey gives a balanced spread of different experiences and depths of ‘Islamic government’, ranging from narrow and rather superficial co-optation of an Islamic party by much more powerful forces (Morocco) to what is widely regarded today as the dominant candidate model of government ruled by a modern political party that has emerged out of Islamic political traditions (Turkey). The studies of Indonesia, Malaysia and Pakistan not only provide a reminder that Islamic politics is not confined to the Middle East but they also show Islamic politics in various conditions of striving from dissent to rule that in Malaysia and Pakistan have included dissenting and ruling at the same time, but again from weaker positions or at the behest of other dominant forces. In this regard, The Philippines and Thailand were excluded because neither is a Muslim-majority country in which Islamic parties vie in electoral


contestation while the organized dissident Islamic forces are much more clearly engaged in militant separatist struggles which were once regarded as ‘wars of national liberation’.

Notes

1. See the rigorous critique of media coverage of ‘The Iran Story’ in Said (1997: 81–133) which was crucial before ‘September 11’ because, ‘[f]or many in the West, Islam and events in the Muslim world have been viewed primarily through the prism of the Iranian revolution and Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran …’ (Esposito 1998: 179).

2. See, respectively, Chapters 6 and 7 in this volume. 3. On the fall of the Mursi government, see the Epilogue in Chapter 6 of this

volume. 4. For news reports on the political flux and subsequent compromise in

Tunisia, see ‘Tunisia: A political deadlock?’, Aljazeera, 25 October 2013, http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestory/2013/10/tunisia-political-deadlock-201310257621788936 (accessed 10 January 2014) and html ‘Tunisia PM resigns as part of transition plan’, Aljazeera, 9 January 2014, http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/01/tunisia-pm-resigns-as-part-transition-plan-201419145034687910.html (accessed 10 January 2014).

5. See, respectively, Chapters 8 and 10 in this volume. 6. The fortunes of the Islamic parties in Indonesia are variously discussed in

Chapters 2 and 3 in this volume. 7. See Chapter 9 in this volume. The election was held on 5 May 2013. 8. See Chapter 11 in this volume. 9. See Chapter 12 in this volume.10. An instructive overview and survey of vast variations in expressions of

Islamic politics in a number of Muslim countries is provided by Esposito (1998: 158–222).

11. For other pro- and anti-Western images of Muslims, see Said (1997: 64).

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19

2Political Economy and the Explanation of the Islamic Politics in the Contemporary WorldRichard Robison

Attempts to explain the often confusing and contradictory nature of Islamic politics may be seen as falling into two main categories. In one approach Islamic politics is understood as a reflection of the ideas, values and doctrines of Islam itself or as the product of a wider Islamic culture. A second approach is focused on the way Islamic politics has been influenced and shaped within larger processes of social and eco-nomic transformation and by the upheavals in economic and political power that accompany these. Both of these approaches raise questions about whether religious ideas and values – and the politics they produce – operate independently of deeper social and economic processes or whether they are embodied within them in one way or another.

For what we might call the ‘essentialist’ cultural approach, the vast variations and rapidly changing nature of Islamic politics raise substan-tial analytical difficulties. After all, simple reference to an immutable Islamic ‘essence’ hardly explains the radically different nature of such Islamic political movements as Al Qaida, the Taliban, Boko Haram in Nigeria and Al Shabbah in Somalia compared to the long tradition of conservative Islamic politics that has historically sought accommoda-tion within indigenous and colonial empires. And these in turn diverge from that expression of Islamic politics represented by Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), a party claiming Islamic identity but defining itself within the framework of modern globalized capitalism.

At the same time, attempts to provide social or economic explana-tions for Islamic politics confront a range of seeming paradoxes. The rise of a ‘civil society’, the entrenchment of markets and a bourgeoisie and the consolidation of ‘rational’ institutions have not always produced more moderate and secular forms of Islamic politics. In some cases, the most violent and atavist Islamic political movements have emerged and

20 Political Economy and the Explanation of the Islamic Politics

flourished precisely in societies where ‘modern’ social structures are taking root and market capitalism is deepening. It is not always clear what explains these different outcomes. One obvious conclusion, as we shall see, is that Islamic politics, or important elements within it, represent the last desperate stand of a tradition that has no place in the modern, liberal world. Another is that some of the more reactionary and aggressive forms of Islamic politics are themselves the product of upheavals, tensions and conflicts that come with modern global capitalism.

This chapter will show how the debates about the nature of Islamic politics have evolved and how they are embedded in larger theoretical and ideological frameworks. It will traverse in brief form the arguments of conservatives – with their notion of a ‘clash of civilizations’ – and the optimistic liberal ideas about the transformative capacity of moder-nity and the rise of civil society. It will examine, again briefly, how the phenomenon of Islamic politics has been explicitly or implicitly encompassed within neoliberal ideas about the rationality of market society and its institutions. However, the chapter will be focused most specifically on the ideas of ‘critical’ political economy where Islamic politics are seen in the context of larger conflicts over power and its distribution that accompany the advance of market capitalism and the forging of the market state.1

It is important that such debates and disputes have not been simply the preserve of academics or even journalists. They have been the underpin-nings of concrete policy agendas designed by governments, politicians, bureaucrats and think tanks in the West and within Muslim countries themselves intended variously to destroy, dismantle, domesticate or cul-tivate Islamic political movements. Thus an important question for this study is how the different approaches and schools of thought give rise to specific policy agendas, whether to clear the decks through warfare or to cultivate moderate, liberal Islamic groups through alliances and by diffusing liberal values or building institutions, notably democracy. In the course of this analysis it will be proposed that attempts to engage with Islamic politics simply by means of policy and institutional fixes miss the real point and that, as critical political economists argue, the nature of Islamic politics is decided within deeper conflicts over power and interest that are ultimately domestic in nature.

In the final section of the chapter it is proposed that the dyna-mics shaping the various forms of Islamic politics are not to be found exclusively by looking simply at Islamic political movements and their underpinnings. Much depends on the way other forms of politics have been constructed and rooted in society, including secular politics in

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both its authoritarian or democratic forms. Thus, the specific trajectories of Islamic politics in Indonesia and Egypt or Turkey, for example, may be understood in large part in terms of the way secular forms of authority evolved differently in these respective countries.

2.1 Cultural and ideological approaches I: conservatism and the clash of civilizations

There is a long tradition of ‘orientalist’ historical analysis within which politics and societies in Islamic countries are understood as possessing characteristics inherently different from those in the West by virtue of their special cultural and religious underpinnings. It is proposed that Islamic societies are static and unchanging, resting upon a system of ideas and doctrines that can produce only despotism, decay, slavish adherence to formal custom and intolerance. This static and inward looking form of society is contrasted with the dynamism of the West with its ability to transform itself by means of ongoing progressive revo-lutionary change (Lewis 1964; Gibb and Bowen 1950).2 These orientalist assumptions are present to varying degrees in a range of Western studies of Islam, including those of Weber and Marx.

However, they have been most thoroughly embraced by conservative political commentators in their assessment of resurgent Islamic politics in the contemporary world. For such scholars, Islamic politics can be defined in terms of an immutable and monolithic set of doctrines and ideas and cultural practices that are inherently hierarchical, intolerant and despotic. Because Islamic doctrine is understood to admit no sepa-ration of politics and religion, which is so central to secular and liberal traditions, it is seen to provide little room for the emergence of a civil society, debate and divergence in society and politics or accommoda-tion with the West. It represents a tradition that is static and essentially hostile to modern liberal and democratic principles. For conservatives, Islam and Islamic politics represent for the West nothing less than a ‘clash of civilizations’ (see Pipes 1995; Huntington 1984, 1993; Gellner 1994; Lewis 1990; Barber 1995). The policy implications are obvious. The West cannot hope for a domestication of Islam or its accommoda-tion with the modern world as a result of transformation from within. The clash of civilizations can be resolved only by the internal disinte-gration or the military victory of one of the contending civilizations.

This conservative understanding of the political and social nature of Islam confronts several problems. For example, Rodinson (2007: 140, 222) argues that close readings of actual religious texts reveal,


‘… no tendency discernible among Muslims is to be explained by the constraint exercised by a body of sacred writing existing previously and acting as a force to shape men’s minds. If a particular passage is invoked, this is because someone has chosen this rather than another one. Essentially, therefore, post-Quranic ideology is not an external force moulding society but an expression of tendencies emanating from social life as a whole.’ In particular, he notes that there is little in Islamic doctrine that is inherently hostile to the principles of market capitalism or inherently supportive of predatory despotism.

And Islamic societies themselves have proven no less subject to inter-nal conflicts over ideas and policies than any others. One of the surpris-ing outcomes of the ‘Arab Spring’ has been how strong and influential secular ideas and coalitions have been (even if they may not ultimately prevail). ‘Islam’ has been expropriated by various political movements to justify both reaction and reform and to call for political revolution as well as to claim leadership in the rise of a new Islamic capitalism. This does not mean that religion is necessarily used in a cynical way. It does mean, however, that doctrines and culture are sufficiently complex and broad to offer the possibility for endless interpretation. The question is: what determines why some Muslims choose reactionary and violent agendas and others embrace a benign engagement with the prevailing political orthodoxy? Conservatives do not have an answer to this.

2.2 Cultural and ideological approaches II: liberalism and the possibility of a progressive and secular Islamic politics

Following the decline of the colonial era, Western governments and scholars were forced to consider why government in so many newly inde-pendent countries so often relapsed into authoritarian rule or into uncon-strained corruption. A new scholarship emerged in America to develop theories about the dynamics of modernization and why the path to social and political change was often so fraught. For these early modernization theorists, there was no doubt that developing countries would ultimately become modern. And it was the evolution of ideas and culture from within society itself, from traditional to modern, from patrimonial to rational and universal that would lead to a broader structural ‘modernity’ defined in terms of functional integration (Parsons 1960; see Hoogevelt 1976: 20–49).The question is: how do new, rational ideas emerge and how is reli-gion connected to the problem? To an important extent, Max Weber’s famous treatise on religion and capitalism was a central influence in the

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thinking of modernization theorists, including about the relationship of Islamic politics and ideas, and modern society and economy. Briefly put, Weber argued that the rise of modern capitalism, with its require-ment for rationality and calculation in economic activity, accompanied new forms of religious thinking, in particular, the rise of Protestantism in Europe. Within the more ascetic Calvinist varieties of Protestantism at least, individual practices of thrift and restraint became virtues and the accumulation of private wealth was seen to be a reflection of the grace of God. Conversely, the rise of capitalism and its need for rational forms of bureaucratic authority and predictability in governance was inimical to ideas based on ‘magic’ and patrimonial political relation-ships (see Giddens 1971: 119–32). Weber did not specifically propose either that Protestantism gave rise to capitalism or that capitalism resulted in Protestantism, simply that there was an affinity between the two and that Protestantism provided a framework of ideas and practices conducive to rationality, accumulation and secularism.

Thus liberal/pluralist scholars in the West and in the Arab world have argued that Islam itself and Islamic politics could also be transformed by ‘modern’ and liberal ideas, including those that involved secular challenges to the idea that religion should encompass all aspects of political and social life. Some liberals within the developing world itself have argued that Islam, with its traditions of commerce and frugality, could play a historical role similar to that of Protestantism in Europe as a facilitator of modern, rational capitalist society (Alatas 1972). And there is a broad optimism among liberal/pluralist scholars that challenges the conservative idea that Islamic politics necessar-ily reflects a stagnant and unchanging tradition of despotism. They emphasize the possibility that the culture of modernity and liberalism can also penetrate and transform Islam and that progressive, benign and moderate Islamic agendas may ultimately prove to be the domi-nant strand of Islamic politics in the modern world (see, for example, Liddle 2008; Hefner 2004).

However, if we admit the varied nature of Islamic politics, it has to be explained why Islam is politically mobilized in some cases to legitimize ‘moderate’ and ‘progressive’ agendas and in others as confirmation that state and society must be subordinated to a highly reactionary form of religious authority. Why should the progressive form triumph? One view is that the culture is transformed in battles that are independent of social and economic interests and forces and are determined by the strategies, calculations, organizational abilities and persuasiveness of leaders (see Liddle 1996, 2008).


However, there is another important theme within liberal/pluralist thinking that places greater emphasis on the way transformations in society and economy have an influence on ideas and norms at the cultural/religious level. In particular, the rise of a self-reliant and progres-sive civil society with its demands for democracy is seen to challenge both the ascendancy of an arbitrary state and that of patrimonial ideas and practices. History is driven inexorably towards a grand convergence of markets, democracy and rational, secular culture (see, for example, Fukuyama 1992). It is the rise of civil society and its democratic institu-tions that will be reflected in a progressive and moderate Islamic politics. In terms of policy, this means that there is a moderate middle class Islamic politics that can be cultivated and supported against hardliners, that not all Islamic politics is hostile to the modern world and to liberal ideas.

Yet the link between economic and social modernity and progres-sive and open religious politics is not so clear. Highly conservative and reactionary forms of religious politics have historically persisted in some cases even as modern capitalist society becomes more deeply entrenched. This has been the case not only in relation to Islamic poli-tics. Conservative religious fundamentalism in the USA is perhaps the most outstanding case. This raises the question of whether conservative and reactionary politics is not simply a last ditch stand of a vanishing world but may survive and flourish within modern capitalist society and, indeed, within democratic institutions.

2.3 Neoliberal approaches: religion and politics in a rational world

By the 1980s, neoliberal (rational choice/public choice) ideas achieved ascendancy within the governments of major Western powers, including within Foreign Affairs Ministries, Treasuries and international financial and development organizations like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). For neoliberal political economists, politics is understood as a market place where self-interested individuals, both within government and outside, bargain and compete for public goods and to buy and sell monopolies and privilege.3 The natural tendency towards rent-seeking and predatory raids on public resources, in this perspective, produces a countervailing tendency towards the creation of institutions – systems of rules and practices – able to resolve the collective action dilemmas of rational individuals. In the economy, these institu-tions can provide rules and regulations that, for example, lower transac-tion costs or ensure the free flow of information (North 1981).

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Where does religious politics fit into this world of rational individuals and predatory raiders? There has been little work by rational choice political economists that is focused specifically on the question of reli-gion and politics. Where it is mentioned, religion appears to be regarded as a means of resolving collective action dilemmas that emerge from the advance of market capitalism. This is illustrated in two studies, cited by Eva Bellin in her study of religion and politics (Bellin 2008). On the one hand, religious politics can emerge from below as a collective demand for certainty, safety or social solidarity in an uncertain world (Norris and Inglehart 2004). Or, on the other hand, religious politics can be deter-mined on the supply side by the calculations and choices of politicians. For example, using the utility of the firm metaphor, Gill (1998, cited in Bellin 2008) argues that leaders make decisions about how to deal with opponents or how to make alliances – like a firm seeking market share. Thus, it is the way leaders can supply existential security through religion, especially in fragile countries but also where governments pro-vide no social safety nets (Gill 1998, cited in Bellin 2008: 329, 333). In either case, religion and politics are seen almost in Marxian terms of the ‘opium of the masses’ or a device of control and authority.

Rational choice approaches present us with two difficulties. One is that the question of power and interest is absent. Religion becomes a means of achieving some sort of functional order disconnected to deeper struggles over power and how it should be distributed in modern capitalist society. A second is that there is no indication of why some Islamic political movements take root and succeed and others fail. As we shall see, historical institutional theorists and critical political econo-mists try to do this.

2.4 Institutions and Islamic politics: historical institutional approaches

More recently, emphasis upon the cultural, social and economic roots of ‘modernity’ has increasingly given way to the idea that political and economic behaviour is shaped by institutions. At one level, this implies that the possibilities for political and economic change are set within the constraints of historical institutional pathways. This means that there can be different forms of modernity, each fitting within the logic of specific historical institutional trajectories. In many ways, this is a bleak view where the possibilities of change are limited and the weight of the past is heavy. For example, whether religious politics remains tolerated by the state may be a consequence of whether the state has historically


been able to enforce a separation of religion and politics and whether its authority has been centralized and able to dominate local interests (Fetzer and Soper 2005, cited in Bellin 2008: 335). In other words, reli-gious politics is tolerated where the state has been able successfully to establish a powerful institutional base and where the entry of religious politics into these institutions requires religious parties to leave behind any agenda to challenge the ascendancy of secular politics.

While the historical institutional approach might explain continuity it does not easily explain change. For example, how did new religions emerge in Europe in the sixteenth century as central elements in the broader political challenge to aristocratic despotism? Clearly the idea of institutional pathways must also be complemented by the idea of revolution and transformation. And there are, indeed, institutional explanations for political and economic transformation, not by means of social revolution but by means of institutional engineering aimed at providing incentives that can alter behaviour. Weber himself had placed a premium on the building of a rational bureaucracy and institutions that would deliver the critical ingredients of predictability and calcula-bility necessary for modern capitalist society and good governance (see Hutchcroft 1998: 31–64).

The idea that transition to democracy need not wait for the political victory of a progressive middle class but could be created out of institu-tional reforms was developed by theorists of Latin American politics (see O’Donnell, Schmitter and Whitehead 1996) and adopted by American governments as a foreign policy tool through the 1980s and 1990s (Cox, Ikenberry and Inoguchi 2000). Neo-conservative policy makers in the USA and World Bank also saw institutional engineering as a means of making sure old regimes were eliminated and new economic and political orders were consolidated (see Peck 2004; Dalacoura 2006: 509; Haklai 2009: 32–9).

Given that conservatives, liberals and neoliberals alike had associated radical and violent forms of Islamic politics with authoritarian political systems it did not take long for scholars to begin exploring the proposi-tion that building democratic institutions could encourage more benign and moderate forms of politics, including Islamic politics. In this view, while Islamic parties can strengthen their position by engaging in radical rhetoric in opposition to unpopular despots they are ultimately forced to moderate their programmes and language to attract broad support as democratic regimes and electoral politics are established (see Bubalo, Fealy and Mason 2008).

However, institutional approaches encounter some important problems. At one level, the adoption of various forms of democratic institutions

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is never simply a technocratic enterprise. It is a process that invariably takes place in the context of deeper and wider shifts in power or at least the loosening of centralized authoritarian rule. In other words it already reflects larger shifts at work in society and politics that provide a context for the evolution of Islamic politics. A second issue is that democracy has demonstrated an ability not only to take various forms, including highly illiberal forms, and to provide an institutional envi-ronment in which a range of social and economic interests may survive and flourish. What is required, it is argued here, is an understanding of the way market capitalism has transformed social and economic life and produced shifts in the architecture of power and interest within specific countries. These dynamics are reflected in the struggles over power and its distribution that encompass and define Islamic politics as well as those that can be defined as secular.

2.5 Political economy and Islamic politics

There is a long-standing tradition of political economy in studies of mod-ern Islamic politics, mainly focused on the Middle East and North Africa, beginning with the tradition of French scholarship (see Keppel 1984; Roy 1994) and more recently reflected in the works of Onis (1997); Sunar and Toprak (1983); Lubeck (1998); Colas (2004); Halperin (2005); King (2007); and Amin (2008). This tradition has recently been extended into the study of Indonesia, including in a comparative study of Indonesia and the Middle East/North Africa by Hadiz and Robison (2012).

At the heart of these approaches is the proposition that Islamic poli-tics and its various manifestations are part of larger processes of change as modern capitalism is entrenched and sweeps aside older forms of economic and social life based on land or rents or colonial authority. The new economic and social order, in this view, is shaped in conflicts over power between declining and emerging interests and alliances that change over time (see Chaudhry 1997; Robison and Hadiz 2004: 18–39). Understanding Islamic politics means that we must examine how fundamental changes in capitalism itself create new social forces and interests and consign others to the margins. As Hadiz and Robison propose, ‘… we place emphasis on the broader conflicts that accompany the advance of market capitalism. What is critical in our view is the way the social landscape is reshaped by different phases of social and economic change and how Islamic politics becomes grafted onto diffe-rent coalitions and agendas, whether to preserve or reshape the social order’ (Hadiz and Robison 2012: 2).


Marx famously dismissed religion as the opium of the masses, diverting them from an understanding of the real material issues at stake and the exploitative nature of authority. The implication, for Marx at least, is clearly that religion has most commonly been used cynically by the state and by ruling classes to obtain the quiescence of populations even when they are being exploited and repressed (Marx 1844, cited in Bottomore and Rubel 1961: 41).

It is true that the church in Europe historically played a key role in sustaining existing social and economic power relations. But religion has also been invoked by forces challenging the state and various social elites. Methodism in Britain, for example, was at the heart of the labour movement and many Islamic movements today embody welfare and the plight of the poor in their larger political agendas. The use of religious ideas was also at the heart of peasant movements and millenarian events in the middle ages. In other words, religion has been politically expro-priated and mobilized by a range of political interests to preserve or to overthrow systems of power and authority. This is not to say that this is always a conscious or cynical process or that a real belief in doctrine does not exist. Nevertheless, an understanding of religious politics, including Islamic politics, requires that we identify and unpack its specific locations within the architecture of social and economic power and interest.

Based on these premises we may argue that there are three main types of Islamic politics. One is a form of conservative populism associated with a declining and mainly rural landholding and trading petty bour-geoisie that has sought to negotiate its survival and its accommodation with both colonial and modern authoritarian rulers for more than a cen-tury. Another is a more reactionary and violent form of Islamic politics that is the product of modern market capitalism and urbanization and seeks to overturn the new world in which it finds itself. Third is a type of Islamic politics that seeks to expropriate and control market capitalism and which embraces both bourgeois interests and an appeal to populist sentiment.

2.6 Islamic politics, conservative populism and the declining petty bourgeoisie

Through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, most Islamic countries were dominated politically by centralized agrarian bureaucra-cies, including the Ottoman Empire, or increasingly by colonial powers intent on establishing new forms of commercial production for export. Under colonial rule, an emerging banking and international trading

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sector was in the hands of imperial enterprises. Below this level of administrative and military authority and extractive power were small landowners, traders and petty bourgeoisie, largely insulated from the new and increasingly globalized economy. It was among these groups, mainly in rural backwaters and provincial towns that a conservative and reactionary Islamic politics was to emerge (Sunar and Toprak 1983: 432–7; Halperin 2005: 1137). In an important sense, this reactionary form of Islamic politics was not so much a direct challenge to the rule of either pre-colonial despotism or colonial rule as a defence of small propertied interests and local authority over doctrine and justice (Amin 2008: 5). Religious teachers and other figures were an important element in this level of Islamic politics.

When the colonial rulers departed or the despots they backed collapsed they were replaced, not by a politics that represented the interests of the landowners and petty bourgeoisie but by secular politicians drawn from the very military and bureaucracy established by the former colonial rulers. For the most part, these built regimes based on the principles of economic nationalism, the institutions of state-owned corporations and policies of export-oriented industrialization. Among these were the early Baathist regimes in Syria and Iraq, Nasser in Egypt, Boumedienne in Algeria and Sukarno in Indonesia. In such circumstances the position of conservative, petty bourgeois Islamic society was increasingly precari-ous. Marginalized by the rise of a secular urban elite and by state-owned corporate power, Islamic politics was often characterized by xenophobic sentiment and various forms of reactionary rural populism. On one hand they were threatened by various efforts at land reform (see Halperin 2005: 1147). In Indonesia, Islamic politics became embroiled in struggles to pro-tect indigenous traders and small manufacturers against the incursions of Chinese Indonesians. Early Islamic political movements, from the 1920s into the nationalist period in the 1950s (including the Sjarekat Islam, Darul Islam and the Asaat movement), were defined by these specific class interests (Robison, 1986: 57–62; van Bruinessen 2002).

While established regimes moved against these early Islamic political movements, sometimes very violently, conservative Islamic politics was also drawn into various alliances with the state because of shared and growing antipathy to political threats from the Left and from the small liberal movements emerging among secular elites in the big cities. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood, which had historically aligned itself with rural rich and middle classes, played a role in controlling the growth of Leftist movements, including labour unions (Beinin and Lockman 1998). In Indonesia, the rural Nahdlatul Ulama and its associated organizations


played an important role in the elimination of the Communist Party. This ambiguity continued to define the relationship of Islamic politics and the state.

2.7 Market authoritarian rule and the radicalization of Islamic Politics

Why then was this highly conservative and reactionary form of Islamic politics overtaken to a large extent in the 1970s and 1980s by more radical movements aimed at fundamental social and political change and the establishment of an Islamic state? For political economists, this new radicalism was linked to a fundamental shift on the part of authoritarian regimes in the Islamic world towards a deeper engagement with global market economies and the adoption of neoliberal reforms and closer strategic alliances with the major Western powers. Such transforma-tions were manifested in several regimes, including those of Soeharto in Indonesia, Sadat and Mubarak in Egypt, Bendjedid in Algeria and Ben Ali in Tunisia where market-oriented technocrats with strong links to the World Bank played a central role in forming economic policy.

This new globalized market capitalism gave rise to new interests and political forces. At the top, politicians, officials and their families became increasingly intertwined with local and international business and began to evolve into new politico-economic oligarchies (King 2007; Lubeck 1998; Robison and Hadiz 2004). At the same time others were dis-possessed and marginalized by the spread of the new market capitalism. These included a growing urban underclass and poor farmers who, in some cases, were the previous beneficiaries of land distributions as well as disappointed elements of the lower middle classes, especially those for whom education proved unable to open the doors for employment and economic advancement (Colas 2004; Onis 1997: 4; Roy 2004: 48; Dalacoura 2006: 511; Haklai 2009: 38). The combination of resentments across the petty bourgeoisie and the disorganized poor gave rise to a political populism that attempted to harness cross-class anxieties to the politics of Islamic identity and a vision for a more just future (the rise of a global caliphate). This was an Islamic politics that sought to bring down authoritarian market states and to dismantle the new oligarchic elites. In some ways it can be seen as a substitute for Leftist opposition where these political forces have been destroyed.

An interesting question is the extent to which movements built on the reactionary populism of the petty bourgeoisie and lower middle classes have fused with political organizations proposing more radical

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demands for economic redistribution and political change and based upon the poor and marginalized in the new urban conglomerates. There are certainly aspects of such a fusion in the way the Muslim Brotherhood has reorganized its political base in Egypt and in the con-tinuing influence of long-standing Darul Islam ideas, organization and figures in modern radical Islamic politics in Indonesia. Nevertheless, the appeal to a broader politics of political identity papers over a fragile alliance. Whereas reactionary populism looks to the protection of small property and the authority of local religious and commercial leaders within existing (or pre-existing social or economic frameworks), radical populism is concerned with deeper questions of economic and social justice and political transformation.

The complexity of relationships between petty bourgeois and more radical forms of Islamic politics is illustrated particularly well in the case of Iran. There, the traditional petty bourgeois constituencies of Islamic politics developed a stake in the struggle against the Shah. The traditional bazari were being squeezed by a new layer of rentier capitalists that were the product of the oil boom and the traditional landlord classes were threatened by the Shah’s land reforms – aimed at creating a modern commercial agricultural economy. At the same time, the decimation of the political Left by the Shah provided a political lacuna amongst the new urban poor and another opening for Islamic political movements (Skocpol 1982; Gabriel 2001; Halliday 2004). The political success of the Islamic Republic has been to bring these seem-ingly contending interests together within an endless ideological war against secularism and against the ‘West’ and its Iranian liberal middle class allies.

2.8 Islamic politics and the embrace of the modern market capitalism

Given the seemingly inexorable advance of market capitalism and the global nature of its engagement Islamic politics has at one level been forced into increasingly frenetic resistance to secularism and market capitalism, mainly in the form of violent and radical resistance outside the mainstreams of political life. On the other hand, there are impor-tant pressures for Islamic political thought and action to accommodate modern secular politics and popular demands for governments to regu-late economic life and provide services. For some analysts this means that the future of Islamic politics lies within marginalized conservative or centre right movements whose authority is reduced to the arena of


social behaviour and religious adherence outside the political realm (Roy 1994; Berman 2003). In other words, they will exist as forces that may exercise moral influence through the mosques and local communi-ties but do not dominate the core political institutions.

Another model is provided by the rise to power of the AKP in Turkey. Islamic political movements in Turkey had traditionally based their appeals on programmes aimed at ensuring Islamic ideas and values were the defining ideas in society and in the economy. This agenda defined ongoing confrontation with the secular and nationalist agendas of the ruling Kemalist party and its military supporters. This deadlock was broken in the 1980s and 1990s when openly pious Muslim politi-cians abandoned their former approach to the relationship of religion and politics and established the AKP as a party that rejected religious exclusivity and embraced secularism (to the extent it was understood as meaning freedom of religion and separation of religion and politics). The AKP took the approach that religion was appropriately located in the sphere of personal rather than public life (see White 2012: 16–18).4 Under Prime Minister Erdogan, the AKP triumphed in the 2002 elec-tions and has ruled since then. By embracing market capitalism and placing priority on the facilitation of Turkey’s economic success in global markets the party has benefitted from an extended period of economic growth.

Elsewhere, many Islamic parties have claimed to model themselves on the AKP. However, it is far from clear that the AKP can be so easily replicated in countries like Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria and Libya as well as Indonesia, where the stranglehold of centralized and often military-backed regimes has also been loosened and various forms of democratic, or at least electoral, politics established. While it is still early days, the Islamic political movements that have emerged in Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria and Libya following the ‘Arab Spring’ appear to remain more deeply rooted in old-style Islamic politics than the AKP or at least more beholden to more radical factions within their ranks. And the influence of more extremist movements like the Salafists remains substantial. In the case of Indonesia the problem is somewhat different. Islamic political parties have struggled to gain support in elections even when the restrictions of an authoritarian state were lifted and a very open and free-wheeling democratic system was introduced. This came as a surprise to many Islamic politicians and political observers. It had been widely assumed that there was a wellspring of support for Islamic politics waiting to be released (we should note that political parties of the Left and labour also suffered the same difficulties).

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Why, then, has it been so difficult to replicate the AKP experience? Clearly this is not simply a matter of institutions. As we have seen, the decline or disintegration of authoritarian rule and the establishment of democratic/electoral institutions have not always led to a flowering of ‘modern’ and ‘secular’ Islamic politics. For political economists, one critical factor is the way state authority is forged around rapidly chang-ing configurations of social power and interest that result from the development of capitalism.

One of the defining features of the rise of the AKP through the 1990s was its success in mobilizing popular support. The pervasive corruption of the Kemalist ruling oligarchy, its use of military and police to control opposition and its increasing concentration of power and wealth had enabled the AKP to build a popular social base in the provinces through calls for integrity and social justice. Perhaps its defining advantage was its success in appealing to the liberal inclinations of a professional middle class and to a rapidly growing commercial and manufacturing class, in particular among the Anatolian bourgeoisie, outside the narrow and well-connected corporate interests in Istanbul (Tugal 2009; Toprak 1983; Onis 1997; Onis and Keyman 2003; White 2012). The rise of the AKP has been described by Nasr (2005: 18) as ‘less a triumph of religious piety over Kemalist secularism than of an independent bourgeoisie over a centralising state’.

Outside Turkey, no Islamic political movement or party was able to establish itself as the representative of the interests of an independent bourgeoisie (and a professional middle class) to anywhere near the same degree. At one level, Islamic parties elsewhere, including the Muslim Brotherhood, have not been able to make the same break with their fun-damentalist past or with these elements in the broader Islamic movement that would enable them to present the same secular and capitalist face to the middle classes or to the bourgeoisie. It is also the case that there was not to the same degree any Egyptian or Algerian equivalent to the Anatolian manufacturers and traders who had emerged with the same vigour outside the narrow tentacles of a predatory and centralizing state.

Indonesia presents a uniquely different picture. A large and vigorous bourgeoisie did exist and spilled beyond the constraints of state capita-lism or centralized control of rents. However, because this bourgeoisie was comprised predominantly of ethnic Chinese, the possibilities of political alliance were constrained by entrenched cultural and political animosity and mistrust. In any case, the diffusion of centralized state power that followed the collapse of authoritarian rule meant that the potential for a collision between a more independent bourgeoisie and a


centralized form of state-sponsored capitalism had been dissipated (see Robison and Hadiz 2004: 187–222).

2.9 Islamic politics and the resilience of secularism in a post-authoritarian world

In an important sense the opportunities available to Islamic political movements are not confined to the results of their own efforts and strategies but to the way entrenched, secular authoritarian regimes and political movements have been able to handle the shift to global mar-ket economies and to electoral/democratic political systems. It is true that most of these secular regimes in their earlier days had sought to deal with various challenges mounted by Islamic political movements by highly repressive and violent means. In Egypt, Libya, Algeria and Tunisia as well as in Indonesia politicians in Islamic parties were con-stantly harassed and imprisoned by the military and the government and their organizations disrupted. In the case of Algeria, an abortive ‘Arab Spring’ of political reform propelled the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) towards a seemingly inevitable victory in the 1992 election until the military and government stepped in to launch a decade-long war of extreme ferocity to eliminate the Islamic political challenge (see Colas 2012).

Given the uniformly corrupt character of most authoritarian regimes and the huge divisions of wealth in the societies over which they presided, it would seem that Islamic movements possessed powerful avenues of appeal for popular support on the basis of social justice and honest administration as well as cultural identity. Yet, it is important that such regimes also possessed substantial support within society where the agendas of fundamentalist Islam were not palatable. While many regimes relied mainly on repression and the coercive power of the state security apparatus to keep the challenges of Islamic politics at bay, it was the extent to which regimes had been able to consolidate social support or to co-opt popular forces within a formal institutional apparatus, within specific ideological appeals or by the distribution of patronage that was important. By these means, regimes could occupy the spaces of popular politics and deny oxygen to Islamic political movements.

Thus, in the case of Indonesia, Islamic political parties and move-ments had only limited opportunities to exploit the undoubtedly widespread resentment of the corruption and repression that charac-terized the regimes of Sukarno and then Soeharto. Without doubt this

Richard Robison 35

was initially due to the highly effective exercise of repressive power by these regimes. More important in the long term, the sphere of popular politics was thoroughly occupied by the government which proved able to construct effective mechanisms of ideological and political co-option and control reaching down into the roots of Indonesian society. This was exercised in part by a form of state-managed electoral politics dominated by the state-sponsored party, Golkar, and a bewildering array of state-sponsored front groups. The arena of popular politics and the political ambitions of individuals, including the middle classes, were largely encompassed in these and in networks of patronage and nation-alist and populist ideas. Long before the demise of the Soeharto regime, Islamic parties had either been destroyed or co-opted and their con-stituencies absorbed into the political institutions and ideologies of the state. A state-sponsored organization was established to co-opt a grow-ing Islamic middle class within a state-sponsored Islamic organization for elites (ICMI). It succeeded largely in attracting a range of political opportunists whose Islamic credentials were often highly tendentious. In short, there was simply no way in for Islamic parties (see Hadiz and Robison 2012: 14–16). It is instructive that although the second post-Soeharto president, Abdurahman Wahid, was head of an Islamic party, his influence did not reflect the essentially conservative character of the movement over which he presided. He essentially represented a secular and liberal challenge to a powerful oligarchy. It was one that rapidly disintegrated.

It is not only the effective co-option of Islamic political movements and potential supporters that is important in the Indonesian case. A powerful oligarchy had been consolidated within the Soeharto regime based on the political control of economic rents and commercial alli-ances with (largely ethnic Chinese) business. These oligarchic alliances were able to reorganize themselves following the collapse of authori-tarian rule. Within the new democracy there was little room for the politics of ideas or of identity, whether liberal reformist or Islamic. All were quickly swept up into a vast arena of money politics where parties that had their roots within nationalist and secular traditions of the state became the escalators for political ambitions and for access to largesse and economic rents (see Hadiz and Robison 2012).

In contrast, the ‘Arab Springs’ of North Africa and the Middle East took place in different circumstances. Authoritarian regimes in the Middle East and North Africa have ruled with a heavier hand than in Indonesia and the repressive role of the military was more systematic and central. Sadat and Mubarak in Egypt, Boumediene in Algeria and


Ben Ali in Tunisia were much less successful in mobilizing the broader population within their ideological and political ambits. Organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the FIS in Algeria had plenty of scope to build alternative social and welfare movements and to propagate more radical agendas for reform and social justice, even if from prison. In other words, unlike in Indonesia, institutional reforms were attempted (as in the case of Algeria’s Chadli Bendjedid’s disastrous plan to establish a state-led neo-liberal revolution in the early 1990s) or imposed (as in the case of the implosion of the Mubarak regime in Egypt in 2011) before the social and political ascendancy of secular interests and ideas had been secured and before the appeal and politi-cal organization of resentful and excluded Islamic political movements had been eliminated or marginalized (see, for example, Colas 2012; Marzouki 2012).

Bendjedid’s huge miscalculation was addressed in Algeria by a decade of violent repression of the Islamists and only then followed by an attempt under President Bouteflika to engage in reconciliation and co-option from above combined with other policies of economic growth, globalization and reforms in governance (Colas 2012). In comparison, the remnants of the Mubarak oligarchy confronted both middle class liberal, secular reformers and reactionary Islamic political opposition without a powerful social base of their own. In this fluid situation the mili tary have continued to play a key role. They have been unable to let go after the fall of Mubarak for fear of what might happen. In this situation, the Muslim Brotherhood has been forced to play an uneasy three-way game; trying to calm the fears of the secular middle classes and business interests, to assure the military and to deal with the demands of the more radical and fundamentalist elements within the broader Islamic community (El-Rashidi 2012; Shukralla 2012).

2.10 Conclusion

The intent of this chapter is not to negate the importance of ideologies and cultures in shaping Islamic politics but to argue that these factors are neither immutable nor abstracted from the deeper processes of social and economic change in which they exist. Rather, it is proposed that some form of theoretical explanation is required that links political power and conflict, including that involving Islamic politics, and these deeper material processes. It has been argued that the evolution of dif-ferent forms of Islamic politics have their underpinnings in different forms of social interest and authority – in conservative land-holding and

Richard Robison 37

petty bourgeois interests, in the radicalism of urbanized and dislocated populations and in emerging property-owning interests beginning to operate within the global market economy itself. It has also been pro-posed that the fate of Islamic politics is also defined by the way political power is organized and ideologies developed by other forces in society, including the military and secular political parties. Thus, while the spe-cific form taken by Islamic politics varies from one country to another, these processes are not idiosyncratic or random. They take place in the context of larger conflicts over power and its distribution as market capitalism on a global scale transforms the social and economic under-pinnings of social organization and ideas.

Notes

1. It should be pointed out that there are different forms of political economy. These will be identified later in the chapter. One is a ‘rational choice’ or ‘public choice’ political economy where religious politics are viewed in the context of voluntary transactions between rational individuals and a strug-gle between rent-seeking coalitions and the collective institutional interests of society embedded in the rules of the market. A different form of political economy has its roots in both classical theory and in the Marxist tradition (this will be referred to in this chapter as critical political economy).

2. For an excellent analysis of the debates around the question of orientalism see Turner (1978), especially pp. 1–9.

3. For overviews of public choice/rational choice political economy see Staniland (1985: 36–70); Evans (1995: 21–35); Leys (1996: 80–106).

4. It should be noted that there is scepticism, especially amongst the opponents of parties like the AKP, the Muslim Brotherhood and Tunisia’s Nahda Party, that this apparent embrace of liberal, secular and markets ideas masks a deep and underlying attachment to fundamentalist ideas and represents little more than a tactical device to secure power in a post-authoritarian era (see Marzouki 2012).

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42

3The Organizational Vehicles of Islamic Political Dissent: Social Bases, Genealogies and StrategiesVedi R. Hadiz

The organizational vehicles of Islamic political dissent vary greatly in the contemporary world. At one end of the spectrum, there could be full-fledged political parties occupying recognized positions in the offi-cial sphere of political life, and recently some of these have even come to take power in their respective countries. At the other end, however, one might find terrorist activity centred on small and isolated cells. Located somewhere in between could be a host of mass organizations associated with religious social movements, peaceful or otherwise and in some cases, assorted militias that deal in intimidation or violence. These diverse vehicles have found different levels of success in specific contexts. It is shown here that what kinds of vehicles become predomi-nant is largely contingent on how social alliances come to be built to represent the interests of an increasingly diverse ummah – the commu-nity of believers – in modern and profane competition over power and resources.

These vehicles of Islamic dissent are understood in this chapter in relation to transformations in the social bases of Islamic politics over the last half century or so, making possible the emergence of new multi-class alliances in some parts of the Muslim world. When well developed, it is suggested, such alliances have tended to produce strategies involving the advancement of the ummah through participation in market economies and in democratic politics. However, when they are ill positioned, social agents, typically emerging from frustrated younger and educated sections of the middle class, or perhaps from the expanding lumpenproletariat, may find considerable appeal in strategies involving varying levels of violence.

The analysis is based primarily on the experiences of Indonesia, the country with the largest Muslim population in the world, and those of

Vedi R. Hadiz 43

Turkey and Egypt.1 Like Indonesia, Turkey is recognized as one of the rare – albeit flawed – democracies in the Muslim world (Eligur 2010: 1).2 Egypt, however, has struggled through a process of reform after the fall of the Mubarak dictatorship in February 2011 that, for a time, drew comparison with Indonesia’s experience after the demise of Soeharto’s New Order in 1998.3

It should be noted that ‘Islamic’ political dissent is understood here as organized activity expressing grievances against social, economic and political dislocation and marginalization associated with the moderniza-tion process conveyed in the symbolism, imagery and terminology of the Islamic religion. Though couched in a language of religious morality, much of this dissent cannot be separated from the aim of advancing the social, economic and political position of the ummah, typically consid-ered by its champions to have been disadvantaged historically within inherently unjust secular social orders. Importantly, while the ummah has been traditionally understood in supranational terms, it has increasingly come to be conceived in ways that coincide with the ‘national’. This is because Islamic political dissent has largely evolved through struggle against authoritarian states that espouse nation-building and modernizing projects.4 Moreover, while the overcoming of entrenched conditions of injustice is often regarded to hinge on the establishment of a state based on Sharia, there has been considerable flexibility on this point as the expe-riences of contemporary Turkey, Egypt and Indonesia show.

It is suggested, furthermore, that Islamic political dissent in these Muslim-majority societies fundamentally represents the convergence of the aspirations, frustrations and anxieties found among a broad cross-section of society intrinsically related to the social changes brought about by the advance of capitalist development and the pressures of globaliza-tion. They are also partly rooted in the outcomes of Cold War-era social conflicts that had eliminated or domesticated organizational vehicles representing Left and liberal political streams (Hadiz and Robison 2012; Hadiz 2011).5

Today, therefore, Islamic political dissent can involve combinations of social groups emerging from marginalized sections of the bourgeoi-sie, ambitious and educated members of new urban middle classes still stuck on the lower rungs of the social hierarchy (for example, Roy 1994; Wickham 2002), as well as the swelling masses of urban poor that have descended upon, and come to reside permanently in, sprawling and chaotic mega cities like Cairo (Wickham 2002), Istanbul (White 2002) and Jakarta – seeking education, employment and the promise of a better life (also see Robison, this volume). The product has been the

44 The Organizational Vehicles of Islamic Political Dissent

emergence of a new kind of cross-class politics, a new form of Islamic populism that has found uneven levels of success (Hadiz 2014).

3.1 The social bases of Islamic political dissent

In Turkey and Egypt, new social alliances made possible by transfor-mations rooted in capitalist development and integration with the global economy, as well as long histories of semi-underground organi-zational activity in the name of the ummah, have been recently offered a genuine path to state power through democratic elections. Their Indonesian counterparts, however, have never seriously threatened to exert control over the state, whether under conditions of authoritari-anism or democracy. Thus, the strategy of advancing the interests of the community of believers through secular electoral politics within the present Indonesian democracy can be challenged, if ineffectively, by a host of mass organizations and militia groups, not to mention murky terrorist organizations.

By contrast, the AKP (Justice and Development Party) in Turkey – whose genealogy can be traced to previous Islamic political vehicles, movements as well as tariqa6 – has been the governing party since 2002. In the parliamentary elections of 2011, it won half of the votes cast. The experience of the AKP (see White, this volume), which emphasizes active participation in global capitalism, rather than opposition to it, and an embrace of electoral democracy (partly as a means of countering the power of the military), has inspired Islamic political parties and move-ments from Morocco to Indonesia. Its appeal, moreover, noticeably grew following the Arab Spring.

However, the AKP experience was made possible by a fundamental alteration of the social bases of Turkish Islamic politics, something that does not make it easily replicable. From its rural and small town origins, Islamic politics in Turkey now brings together the interests of a culturally Islamic bourgeoisie that has become stronger, more assertive and global market oriented, pious urban middle class party activists whose social aspirations have grown with their educational attain-ment, as well as the still beleaguered urban poor. Large sections of the latter have been brought into the AKP’s orbit, not just because of the stagnation of Turkish Leftist politics since the 1980s, but also because of the party’s ability to mobilize a vast associated network of charity organizations and informal social service providers, modelled in part on the experience of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. The wealthy Fethullah Gülen movement – based on a tariqa founded on the teachings of the

Vedi R. Hadiz 45

religious scholar Said Nursi – has been an important source of support as well, due to its extensive civil society presence through educational and charitable works (see Yavuz and Esposito 2003).7

In Egypt, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), formed by the Muslim Brotherhood as a vehicle to contest elections in 2011–12, also found appeal in the idea of participation in global markets.8 Like the AKP, and departing from former tradition, it tended to relegate the matter of establishing a state based on Sharia to the background in favour of engagement in secular democratic politics, though this resolve was seri-ously tested during contentious debates on a new Constitution. The FJP’s project was cut short though when mass protests erupted against the Muslim Brotherhood’s poor political and economic management, followed by military intervention, causing the demise of the short-lived government of President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013.

The way the FJP presented itself cannot be separated either from the transformations in the social base of its parent organization. Set up by Hasan Al Bana in 1928 and having produced such luminaries as the ideologue Sayid Qutb – both of whom hailed from the kind of minor rural and small town elite families whose social status were already in decline in the early twentieth century – the Muslim Brotherhood has been recomposed significantly over the last half century. From a petty bourgeois-led organization that was nevertheless able to develop broad popular support during struggles against British rule, including within the labour movement (Beinin and Lockman 1998), it came to be domi-nated by middle class professionals along with some businesspeople, and incorporates large portions of Egypt’s poor. Its middle class actors, in particular, are attracted to an idea of Islamic morality that implies the eradication of cronyistic practices that would notionally make more room for social advancement through educational attainment and skills. If in Turkey there is attraction to the idea of displacing the Istanbul bourgeoisie with a more culturally Islamic, Anatolian and pro-AKP one, an array of businesses linked to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood – many of which were suppressed by Mubarak because of financial sup-port they provided the organization – harboured ambitions of taking the place of old business cronies and securing the commanding heights of the economy for themselves.9 With regard to the poor, no doubt many became more strongly attached to the organization because the social services it provided helped to mitigate against the consequences of mac-roeconomic reforms undertaken under Mubarak, and before him Sadat, especially in terms of slashing state subsidies (Soliman 2011: 56–60). Indeed the poor constituted a reliable vote bank for the FJP in the first


post-Mubarak elections – like it has been for the AKP in Turkey – in spite of competition especially from the more conservative Salafi strand of Islamic politics.

It is notable, in fact, that the FJP was the most successful party of the immediate post-Mubarak era, winning parliamentary as well as presiden-tial polls – though a court decision subsequently annulled the former win – which had brought the party half the seats in the national legis-lature. But even during the authoritarian era, the Muslim Brotherhood’s semi-formal engagement in heavily controlled elections had already shown that it could potentially make significant inroads into state power through electoral means, when it was clearly the dominant force within a diverse political opposition that included liberals, Leftists and the remnants of Nasserism.

In Indonesia, nevertheless, Islamic forces have been far less successful, whether under the authoritarianism of the New Order (1966–98) or in the subsequent democratic era. This has had significant ramifications. It has resulted, unlike in Turkey and Egypt, in persisting schism between those who focus on the electoral arena and vehicles that reject it and may even take recourse to acts of violence, though of varying degrees of gravity.

The PKS (Justice and Prosperity Party) – originally the PK ( Justice Party) and influenced both by the Muslim Brotherhood and the AKP – has been the most successful of Indonesia’s Islamic parties in the post-Soeharto era, winning a modest 7.9 per cent of the votes in the last parliamentary elections in 2009. But it has thus far failed to bring together a significant enough cross-section of the ummah into its agenda, which embraces both democratic politics and market capital-ism, albeit with caveats that refer to notions of social justice ostensibly based on Islamic morality.10 The party is expected to fare more poorly in general elections scheduled for 2014, after having been embroiled in embarrassing corruption scandals.

Emerging from a so-called tarbiyah (educational) movement founded mostly on the support of newly urbanizing middle class students in the 1980s, the PKS faces rivals for leadership of the ummah from a range of other vehicles, most of which were similarly established following the fall of Soeharto in 1998, and also from other types of organizations. While entrenched traditionally petty bourgeois-led mass organizations like the Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah view the PKS as a threat to their standing,11 many newer groupings are disdainful of the party’s apparent lack of conviction in matters relating to the necessity of an Islamic state.12

Vedi R. Hadiz 47

The contrast between Indonesia and Turkey is perhaps the most distinct given that success through political party vehicles in the latter case has severely diminished the room previously available to those employing extra-legal and violent strategies in the name of the ummah. Taken together, the experiences of Indonesia, Turkey and Egypt provide good clues about how the social context to which Islamic political dis-sent responds influences its different organizational expressions.

3.2 Islamic party politics: a way to the state?

It has been suggested elsewhere (Hadiz 2014) that in Indonesia, Turkey and Egypt, alliances built on the basis of common experiences of (relative or absolute) marginalization have facilitated the evolution of a newer form of Islamic populism. This newer form is more distinctly cross-class in its social base compared to the older traditional petty bourgeois dominated one, and attempts to embrace the newer social forces unleashed by contemporary processes of social change. It tends to be led by educated members of the middle class, and when successful, powerful businesspeople too, while incorporating the urban poor typi-cally through charitable and social welfare activities.

Significantly, the agenda of such alliances is thoroughly modern – to reorder power in ways that favour an ummah that has now become increasingly diverse – especially in terms of access to and control over the state and to tangible resources made available through participation in economic globalization. At home within contemporary capitalism, in spite of possibly strenuous criticism of global Western domination,13 these can do without an overhaul of the existing economic system but make appeals instead to an Islamic morality that, by definition, facilitates the political and economic ascendance of the ummah. Indeed, the conception of the ummah has evolved to increasingly highlight a homogenous mass of socially and economically deprived but morally upright ‘ordinary people’ – as opposed to rapacious and immoral elites – which is a hallmark of populist thought (Albertazzi and McDonnell 2008: 3).14 This is the case even as the composition of that ummah, in reality, has become much more internally diverse.

In their attempt to transcend the possible fragmentizing effects of such diversity, new Islamic populist social alliances envision a kind of variant of capitalism in which the state plays an important role in pav-ing the way for the operations of markets that are more favourable to an ummah that is imagined to be homogenized through religious faith. Furthermore, such alliances do not necessarily entail the establishment


of an overtly Islamic state though the call is often made, usually by those least able to make headway through formal mechanisms of politics. But even the latter sort of actors often express little to protest the princi-ple of capital accumulation as such,15 as long as power and resources are distributed more ‘justly’ as ostensibly demanded by Islam, and, by consequence, benefit those currently marginalized within existing social hierarchies.16 Excluded from the main arenas of political and economic contestation, whether under authoritarianism or democracy, such actors may instead carry on their struggle through extra-legal strate-gies that could include the employment of coercion, as well as intracta-ble insistence on the Sharia, as seen most clearly in the Indonesian case. Ironically, however, Indonesia is in that part of the world, Southeast Asia, usually regarded by security analysts as a natural home for Islamic ‘moderation’ – when compared to the Middle East, which is instead seen as a wellspring for radicalism and violence (Peters 2002).

While the general social conditions for the development of new Islamic populist alliances may emerge, it is important to understand that they do not guarantee political success. Thus, a major pillar of the AKP’s forward march has been a readily available source of support from a section of the capitalist class that had been relatively marginalized by the Kemalist establishment – the so-called Anatolian bourgeoisie. This section of the bourgeoisie grew in size and ambition as a result of economic liberalization policies since the 1980s and has an interest in dislodging the largely Istanbul-based business conglomerates that tradi-tionally control the upper reaches of the economy. Businesses belong-ing to this section of the bourgeoisie are useful also as a source of funds for the extensive charitable organizations that help to integrate the urban poor into the AKP project.17 By contrast, there is hardly a Muslim big bourgeoisie in Indonesia due to the division of labour entrenched during the country’s colonial experience. Moreover, the AKP also bene-fitted from the historical fact that Kemalist repression had only allowed enough space for above-ground Islamic politics to be occupied by the party’s immediate predecessors, such as the Refah (Welfare) Party and the various other vehicles that had been led by Necmettin Erbakan, the late grand old man of Turkish Islamic politics.18 In Indonesia, fuelled by the frenzy of money politics, numerous vehicles jostle with each other to ‘represent’ the ummah, exacerbating an existing tendency for fragmentation.

In Egypt, an ambitious section of the bourgeoisie is linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, whose top leadership includes powerful businessmen like Khairat El Shater, subsequently imprisoned by the post-Morsi interim

Vedi R. Hadiz 49

government. However, notwithstanding the Muslim Brotherhood’s well-earned reputation as the most organized force in Egyptian civil society, it has had to contend with competition from assertive though highly fragmented Salafi groups, which were given the opportunity to quietly develop during the old dictatorship, partly to dispel notions that it was anti-Islamic. Thus, the miscellaneous groups that make up the Salafist Call gave rise to the Al Nour Party, which benefitted from the myriad of grassroots charitable activities that had long competed with the Muslim Brotherhood’s networks in garnering support from the poor.

What is at stake in this competition is not only the validity of the claims of each to be the main vehicle of a notionally homogenous ummah, but also the support of sizeable overlapping constituencies among the poor and lower middle classes of Egyptian society in current rounds of struggles over power and resources. Significantly, however, even the Salafi agenda is palpably not immutable. With greater repre-sentations of educated professionals and aspiring businesspeople within its ranks, there are indications that it too has developed acceptance of many aspects of a capitalist economy and of democratic politics, while retaining a deep social conservatism.19

In Indonesia, however, there is no vehicle of any type that is able to credibly claim undisputed leadership of the internally diverse ummah. The Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama both originated from late colonial times, when Islamic movements in the Dutch East Indies were led by declining sections of the traditional urban and rural petty bourgeoisie. Relatively quietist in the New Order era, they concentrated on educational, and to a lesser extent, welfare activities but mostly refrained from active political challenges. Nevertheless, the immedi-ate post-Soeharto period saw a raft of often-tenuous political parties carve out ‘Islamic’ identities by virtue of association with either the Muhammadiyah or NU. None of these have been a big success; in fact they have been outshone by the PKS, the party linked to a more recent tarbiyah movement that had based its structure on the clandestine Muslim Brotherhood in order to evade the long arm of the authoritarian state under Soeharto.

Growing out of university campuses, the PKS has been distinctively the party of pious sections of the new urban middle class produced by the social transformations presided over by the New Order. However, the party has been constrained by the historically dominant role of the ethnic Chinese big bourgeoisie in Indonesia, which by definition, lie beyond the ummah.20 Thus, continuing to rely on a middle class based in the pro-fessions and the civil service, and a newer generation of businesspeople


based on a range of urban small industries and trade, it also lacks the monetary power to entrench itself in charitable activities that have been the mainstay of the NU and Muhammadiyah.21 Given the limited capa-city to grow out of a middle class shell, the PKS does not seem capable of emulating its Turkish or Egyptian counterparts any time soon.

3.3 Organizing from the fringes

In brief, the cases scrutinized suggest that organizational vehicles such as paramilitary groups and violent terrorist cells would tend to be more prominent when Islamic forces fail to build coalitions that can plausibly challenge for state power through the formal political arena. Conversely, where exerting dominance over the state through this arena is viable, the appeal of struggles waged through organizational vehicles outside of it, especially those employing violent ones, has tended to subside.

This is not to say that there are some inherently ‘moderating’ effects of democratic institutions. What is suggested instead is that the evolu-tion of Islamic political dissent must be placed in specific historical and sociological context. Thus factors external to interpretation of Islamic doctrine, whether or not favourable to democratic engagement, and related to the need to navigate through prevailing constellations of social power and interest, deeply influence the way that Islamic political dissent takes organizational form. Sidel (2006) thus suggests that the emergence of violent jihadist groups in Indonesia in the early post-Soeharto period was indicative of the failure of Islamic dissent rather than its growing strength.

Again, it is the contrast between Indonesia and Turkey that is most striking. In Turkey, a number of small militias utilizing violence had emerged by the 1960s, and become more active in the following dec-ades. Karmon (1997) refers to a document compiled by the Turkish intelligence agency and police force as late as 1991 that mentioned the existence of no less than ten violent militia organizations. These were the Turkish Islamic Liberation Army (IKO), the Turkish Islamic Liberation Front (TIK-C), the Fighters of the Islamic Revolution (IDAM), the Turkish Islamic Liberation Union (TIKB), the World Sharia Liberation Army (DSKO), the Universal Brotherhood Front-Sharia Revenge Squad (EKC-SIM), Islamic Liberation Party Front (IKP-C), Turkish Fighters of the Universal Islamic War of Liberation (EIK-TM), Turkish Islamic Fighters Army (IMO) and Turkish Sharia Revenge Commandos (TSIK). Karmon adds other organizations, such as the Islamic Harekat and

Vedi R. Hadiz 51

Islamic Jihad and the particularly mysterious Great Eastern Islamic Fighters Front. Nevertheless, most of these had already suffered great reversals after the military coup of 1980, which was ostensibly aimed to restore order by striking at the heart of violent political groupings that had then emerged out of Islamic, Leftist as well as ultra-nationalist political streams.

Since then, violent activities have been in relative decline in Turkey except when they are linked to the Kurdish struggle, which is associ-ated with Left-wing rather than Islamic political tendencies. The last major violent terrorist activity linked to ‘Islam’ took place in Turkey in 2003, the year after the AKP’s first electoral victory. Nevertheless, it is notable that one of the major opponents of Kurdish nationalism had been the Hizbullah militia (not to be confused with the similarly named Lebanese one), which was often engaged in violent conflict with Kurdish separatist groups in the 1990s, with the alleged backing of the Turkish state. This is not surprising given the broader history of state utilization of Islamic forces in campaigns against the Left in that country, most notably in the 1980s – mirroring similar Cold War era developments in Egypt in the 1970s and Indonesia in the 1960s.

However, the decline of violent Islamic groupings in Turkey was not only due to the responses of the state security apparatus. The rise of the AKP, and the experience of the Refah Party before it, as well as oppor-tunities opened up to tariqa figures by the military-backed technocratic Ozal government of the 1980s, should be regarded as an important contributing factor.22 In essence, the advances made toward state power, culminating in the currently dominant position of the AKP, has long made the expression of Islamic political dissent through violence an increasingly unattractive proposition, especially when coupled with effective state repression.

In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood itself was frequently considered a violent organization partly because of its notorious Nizam al-Khass or Secret Apparatus (Pargeter 2010: 27). Established in the 1930s, the latter became the organization’s militia arm and was accused of a num-ber of violent activities, including high profile political assassinations. Nevertheless, the Secret Apparatus was reportedly dismantled before the Muslim Brotherhood embarked on a strategy to translate its strong civil society presence into a force in parliamentary politics in the 1980s, although still within an environment of hostile authoritarianism. It is true that one and a half years after the fall of Mubarak in 2011, Egypt was rocked by attacks by ‘Islamic extremists’ that took the lives of sixteen soldiers posted in the Sinai. But the genealogies of the groups believed


responsible were more rooted in the historical marginalization of local Bedouin tribes and in the Palestinian struggle on the Gaza strip (El Rashidi 2012) than in broader contests over the Egyptian state. Disconcertingly, however, more geographically spread bombings after Morsi’s ousting and the banning of the Muslim Brotherhood by a military-backed interim government suggest that failure to hold on to power, in spite of electoral successes, may now entice some Muslim Brotherhood followers to once again pursue strategies involving violence.

More strongly associated though with violent strategies in Egypt was the Gama’a al-Islamiyya,23 which had merged with the Muslim Brotherhood at a time of intense Nasserist repression but broke ranks with it over the larger organization’s propensity to compromise with the 1970s Sadat government, which was then making overtures to curb Nasserist and Leftist forces in civil society. But the Gama’a al-Islamiyya also came to renounce violent methods (Meijer 2011), partly because of the sheer force of repression it continued to encounter from an increas-ingly large and pervasive Egyptian internal security apparatus (Stacher 2011; Soliman 2011). Nevertheless, the advances made by the Muslim Brotherhood in the formal political arena and within civil society must have made the strategy of violence increasingly less appealing. By the late 1990s, the field of violent Islamic political dissent was more or less left to a more shadowy organization called Islamic Jihad, a former ally of the Gama’a al-Islamiyya that had developed links with Al Qaeda.

There is no doubt that the prior renunciation of violence by the Gama’a al-Islamiyya had helped to ease its subsequent transition into electoral politics after the end of the Mubarak era through the establish-ment of the rather blandly named Building and Development Party. It came to join forces with the broader Salafist push to stamp a greater Islamic character on the ‘Egyptian Revolution’ by entering a bloc of parties led by Al Nour, which would win about 25 per cent of the seats in the (subsequently annulled) parliamentary elections of 2011–12. We see, therefore, the merging of two Islamic tendencies within this bloc that had previously opposed secular politics but which actively came to engage with it as a response to a changing social and political environment.

In Indonesia, however, the inability of Islamic forces to exert domi-nance over the official sphere of politics means that vehicles operating outside of it continue to enjoy credibility. Thus the sort of cross-class coalitions that had transformed the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and produced the AKP in Turkey has been less distinctly manifest in Indonesia; their political effects have been certainly more muted. As

Vedi R. Hadiz 53

mentioned, therefore, the PKS – the closest Indonesian manifestation of developments found in Turkey and Egypt – faces a range of competitors, not just from other Islamic political parties but also from a diversity of vehicles.

One such rival is the Hizb ut-Tahrir which, like the PKS, is largely middle class and student-based but espouses the idea of resuscitating a global caliphate. Claiming to be a political party, it nevertheless does not engage in electoral competition. Other notable detractors are the Majelis Mujahidin Indonesia (MMI) and the JAT ( Jamaah Anshorut Tauhid) both linked at one time or another to Abubakar Ba’asyir, the alleged spiritual leader of the Jemaah Islamiyah – the organization believed to have been responsible for a number of deadly bombings. Also found among the PKS’s rivals are an array of militia organizations strewn across a range of urban and peri-urban formations in Java and beyond, cultivating followings from the ever-growing lumpenprole-tariat (see Wilson, this volume).24 Among the best known of these are the FPI (Islamic Defenders Front), which originated in Jakarta but now has ‘franchises’ in a number of cities. In addition, there are apparent off-shoots of the Jemaah Islamiyah that continue to eschew the democratic route pursued by Islamic parties like the PKS.

Many, though not all, of the organizations that reject Indonesian democracy – ostensibly as being contrary to Islamic teachings – have genealogies that can be traced back to the storied Darul Islam move-ment (Van Bruinessen 2002), which had waged guerrilla warfare against the Indonesian state from 1949 to 1962, the year it was militarily defeated. Indeed, Darul Islamists were at the centre of Islamic-inspired political dissent during the height of New Order authoritarianism. Importantly, in spite of years of repression, the now greatly disjointed and dispersed Darul Islam movement has managed to retain its appeal to newer generations of Islamic dissenters (Solahudin 2011).

Ironically, it was the New Order itself that had made this possible in the first place. Darul Islamists clearly benefited from the military-led anti-communist campaign of the 1960s, which had opened up new fertile ground for proselytizing and recruitment in areas that used to be bastions of the Left, such as the densely populated hinterland of Central Java. Many peasants in formerly Leftist areas converted to Islam (and other religions) to escape being labelled atheistic communists and the harsh punishment that would have ensued. The controversial Islamic boarding school located in Ngruki, Central Java – alleged to be a place where future terrorists were cultivated – was established in a village that had been distinctly communist and radical nationalist.25 In other


words, Darul Islamists benefitted directly from that most important outcome of the Cold War in Indonesia – the crushing of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI).

Darul Islamists also benefited from subsequent social transformations that produced new generations of marginalized youths as potential recruits to the movement, though each have been different in terms of their sociological outlook. The changing social milieu certainly meant that they became more urban and educated, and often more religiously purist than their forefathers who were led by the militia leader and syncretic religious teacher, S.M. Kartosuwiryo. In the 1970s and early 1980s, some were involved in the mysterious violent entity known as Komando Jihad and paid the price by going to jail. Significantly, it was a section of a still later generation of the Darul Islam movement that would obtain military training and experience through participation in the Afghan War against the Soviets. Under the leadership of the charis-matic late Abdullah Sungkar and his close associate, Abubakar Ba’asyir, this section eventually evolved into the Jemaah Islamiyah, the members of which see themselves as the true heirs to the Darul Islam tradition.26

3.4 Models and histories

It has been pointed out that the Salafi movement’s involvement in electoral politics in Egypt has had less to do with reconsideration of the compatibility of liberal or secular ideas with Islam than with the social interests of key elements within that community. Moreover, the embrace of democracy by the AKP and FJP can be seen, in part, as a sound strategy in dealing with security apparatuses that had been tra-ditionally on the front lines of suppressing Islamic dissent. So rather than doses of liberal enlightenment producing modified doctrinal inter-pretation within democracies, what is more important is how prevail-ing constellations of social power and interest influence the way that Islamic political struggles develop organizational forms and strategies. This does not mean that ideas are not important, but merely that they need to be contextualized. As discussed below, the ideas of the Muslim Brotherhood came to be important to strategies adopted by Indonesian vehicles of Islamic political dissent, and later, those associated with the AKP’s successes would exert an influence too. However, we can easily see that these were respectively latched onto because of the changing exigencies of concrete political struggle.

Significantly, the fact that numerous Islamic political vehicles emerged after the fall of Soeharto reflected two very specific and inter-related

Vedi R. Hadiz 55

processes at work in Indonesia. First was the unravelling of the highly centralized New Order system of patronage and second was the belated attempt to bring in ‘fringe’ elements within Islamic politics onto cen-tre stage on behalf of the remnants of the New Order, particularly to save the besieged short presidency of Soeharto’s immediate successor, B.J. Habibie. The former process resulted in the proliferation of new political parties, a number of them ‘Islamic’. However, political parties in post-Soeharto Indonesia largely became organizational expressions of easily shifting but mutually competing predatory networks of patron-age that mainly grew out of the formerly centralized network that had characterized the New Order (see Robison and Hadiz 2004; Hadiz 2010).

Islamic political parties were no exception. Even the PKS, which had cast itself as the party of integrity, has been associated with cor-rupt practices, most dramatically in the case of party president Luthfi Hasan, who was arrested in early 2013 by agents of the Indonesian Anti-Corruption Commission. From this point of view, the present fragmentation of Indonesian Islamic political struggles is linked to the workings of Indonesia’s money politics-driven democracy, within which diffuse networks of patronage now compete for the spoils of state power (Hadiz 2010). Still, such competition within a democratic environment means that Indonesian Islamic political parties, like those in Turkey and Egypt, have developed a substantial interest in the survival of democracy for reasons that have little to do with religious doctrine. Their aversion to a return to authoritarianism is clearly related to how the latter would erode their power and access to resources, while enhancing that of oth-ers, especially the still feared military.

It is interesting that much of the impetus to form new Islamic politi-cal parties in Indonesia had come from politicians and activists who were well integrated into the New Order system of power. These had quickly come to realize the necessity of adapting to democratization. Among them were individuals who had been co-opted by the state through ICMI (the Association of Indonesian Muslim Intellectuals) – the organization patronised by Soeharto from 1990 to develop support from pious sections of the new urban middle class but which soon fragmented as the regime dissipated (Hefner, 1993).27 Alternately, political parties were formed by groups linked to the major Islamic organizations that had been given a niche within the centralized authoritarianism of the New Order. The NU leadership thus estab-lished the National Awakening Party (PKB), while some associated clerics and politicians formed competing minor electoral vehicles. Several other parties would emerge from within the Muhammadiyah


community too, the most important being the National Mandate Party (PAN).

But the most important developments were taking place slightly beyond the terrain of elite politics, from where the PKS emerged. This party was underpinned by student groupings that had been semi-clandestinely cultivated within a campus-based tarbiyah movement (Rahmat 2008). These included the son of a Darul Islamist contemporary of Kartosuwiryo, who had nevertheless been compromised by association with the Indonesian intelligence service in the 1970s.28 This individual, Hilmy Aminuddin – the head of the highest body of the PKS, its Shura Council – was part of a cohort of activists that went to study in Saudi Arabia in the late 1970s and 1980s, and to a lesser extent, in Egypt,29 where they came to directly encounter the Muslim Brotherhood.30

It must be remembered in this connection that the ideas of the Muslim Brotherhood had become more and more influential by this time outside of Egypt itself. This was the case also in Saudi Arabia and in the Gulf States, where there was a significant Muslim Brotherhood diaspora that had originally arrived to escape state repression at home. In many ways, what transpired as a result was a meeting of Wahhabi-inspired doctrinal rigidity and Muslim Brotherhood organizational capacity and discipline. It was this historic combination that had originally rippled through the tarbiyah movement, although such an influence came to be modified by availability of the AKP model, which would better suit subsequently changing political circumstances and the aspirations of the PKS’s largely new urban middle class constituency.

Significantly, the Muslim Brotherhood influence had been felt even in Turkey, where external models might be expected to be harder to implant due to lingering claims of leadership over the Muslim World that hark back to the Ottoman heyday. Nevertheless, Necmettin Erbakan himself had come to develop an ‘interpretation of politics’ that ‘was heavily influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood’s experience in Egypt’. In particular, he is said to have ‘injected Sayyid Qutb’s anti-colonialist argu-ments into the Islamic politics of Turkey’. Thus, for Erbakan, the politi-cal, economic and cultural subordination of Turkey by Western powers was in large part represented by the long dominance of the radically secular Kemalist ideology and its main political vehicle, the CHP,31 and subsequently, by the dictates of an international constellation dominated by such organizations as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (Leezenberg 2001: 26). Moreover, some of today’s AKP members had become well acquainted with the thinking of Muslim Brotherhood icons like Al-Banna and Qutb at about the same time as their Indonesian

Vedi R. Hadiz 57

counterparts.32 It is possible that this was facilitated through informal connections between the Turkish diaspora and Muslim Brotherhood activists scattered among Muslim immigrant populations in Europe.33

If the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in countries like Indonesia was due to the exigencies of confronting authoritarianism, the attractiveness of the AKP lay in its ability to triumph within a secular democratic framework. But Indonesia is not unique in this respect. Even Egypt’s FJP, produced by the legendary Muslim Brotherhood, has come to conceive of itself as partially following on the path set by the AKP. The point to be made here is that – in spite of the increasingly nation-ally focussed struggles of Islamic politics – successful external models may yet become influential in them. Nevertheless, because models are produced by concrete sets of historical experiences, they will be altered by the specific circumstances found in other milieu. Thus Indonesia’s PKS has never attained political ascendancy for reasons alluded to earlier, while its tarbiyah has largely remained on campuses and failed to penetrate deeply into civil society in the manner of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. The result is no doubt a greater impetus to descend into the quagmire of money politics and corruption, potentially further weakening its hold on the ummah.

As mentioned, there was a second process responsible for the emergence of new Islamic vehicles in Indonesia in the democratic era, particularly those that are anti-democratic. This involved the mobilization of various Islamic informal groupings in an attempt by Soehartoists to stave off student and other protesters in 1998–9. The most blatant manifestation of such mobilization was seen in the so-called Pam Swakarsa, an ostensibly Islamic militia that was put together by the military that was involved in bloody confrontations with anti-regime demonstrators. That these were mobilized was quite interesting given that ICMI – the late New Order’s main vehicle to mollify Islamic dissent – had never quite absorbed the fringe elements of Islamic politics into its well-oiled network. Among those that were largely ignored were Darul Islamists whose networks had diversified, spread and undergone various permutations since Kartosuwiryo’s defeat, but remained distinctly at the margins of state and society.

After the end of the New Order, Darul Islamists, and others that had remained similarly excluded from the institutions of the Soeharto era, would be found among those vocally advocating an Islamic state and critical of secular democracy. If the foregoing observation is correct, such anti-democratic forces were in fact revitalized in the attempt to save the Habibie Presidency, which ironically, is credited with such matters as


promulgating laws on political parties and elections after the fall of Soeharto. It is likely that they will continue to have a small presence, however, within the workings of Indonesia’s democracy, occasionally winning concessions on such matters as regulating the trading hours of pubs, the location of massage parlours and even where churches may be built. Their ability to mobilize people (particularly among the poor and lower middle class) to participate in public demonstrations, and in some cases, their significant intersections with street thugs and elements of the criminal underworld (see Wilson, this volume), may even allow for ad hoc alliances with national or local elites. At times, this will pro-duce something quite dramatic, such as violence against local religious minorities or the establishment of socially conservative but largely un-enforceable local government by-laws regulating public behaviour. But such groups are unlikely to translate what presence they have within civil society into a serious push on state power or to engage in the most important of contests over tangible resources, especially because these are now so intricately linked to the democratic process.

3.5 Conclusion

In recent decades, there has been the emergence of a vigorous, though not always successful, tendency within Islamic politics that is distinctly pro-democracy and pro-economic globalization in many important respects. The tendency is not, however, the product of inculcation of liberal values through participation in the world capitalist economy (Nasr 2009), or of the inherently moderating effects of democratic institutions (Bubalo, Fealy and Mason 2008). Neither of these necessarily results in doctrinal reinterpretation that produces ostensibly ‘good’ Muslims who are ‘moder-ate’ rather than ‘bad’ ones who are ‘radical’ (see Mamdani 2004).

It has been argued that the key factor is the way that the social bases of Islamic movements have changed over time, and which has made possible the emergence of multi-class alliances that express a new kind of Islamic populism in key parts of the Muslim world. When well deve-loped, such alliances can produce agendas of struggle that include the advancement of the ummah through participation in market economies and in democratic politics. Though he paid less attention to issues of class transformations and social structure, and more to those related to political mobilization, such an agenda is closely related to what Bayat (2007) has famously referred to as ‘post-Islamism’.

However, there is nothing that is inherently ‘liberal’ or ‘progressive’ about the new Islamic populist expressions of politics, as described here.

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In some circumstances, the relevant social agents, typically those emerging from frustrated younger and educated sections of the middle class, or from gangs proliferating from within the lumpenproletariat found in large supply within tough urban and peri-urban environments, may take recourse to strategies distinguished by the employment of varying levels of violence. This is shown most clearly in the Indonesian case, where in spite of the opening up of the arenas of contestation over power and resources since democratization, the kinds of Islamic group-ings that had been largely suppressed or ignored during the New Order continue to operate on the fringes of society and the state.

The AKP in Turkey has provided the most thriving example thus far of the new Islamic populist politics. It has famously relegated the struggle for an Islamic state for ascendancy over democratic politics, going so far as to label itself a conservative rather than Islamic party. While successfully competing in the democratic political arena, the AKP has wedded morality – based on Islamic precepts – with a neolibe-ral good governance agenda that enthusiastically embraces the market and globalization. On the other hand, the social justice ideals that had been pervasive within the networks that sustained Islam as a social force during the Kemalist onslaught continue to be cultivated through engagement with charitable activities and the provision of social services to the poor.

The temporarily successful electoral vehicle spawned by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Freedom and Justice Party, evidently looked at the AKP for inspiration, somewhat ironically, since it was the Muslim Brotherhood’s extensive involvement in welfare activities that had pro-vided the original model for politics through social engagement for the agents of Islamic political dissent in Turkey during the era of Kemalist domination. The FJP too had tended to relegate the struggle for an Islamic state in favour of broad political and market reform issues, in spite of on and off collaboration between some of the more conserva-tive elements of the Muslim Brotherhood and some Salafi groupings. It is hard to say whether in spite of Salafist demands for an Islamic state, the agenda of Islamic struggle in Egypt might really have come to more resemble Turkey’s in the emphasis on social mobility of the ummah through favourable repositioning within the existing state and in the market economy. The successful pursuit of such an agenda in Egypt would have depended in the first instance in kick starting the economy, which the Morsi government was unable to accomplish. As mentioned earlier, the fact that clinging to democratic legitimacy turned out to be insufficient for the Muslim Brotherhood to retain power in Egypt might


have important ramifications for the future trajectories of Islamic dissent in that country. Specifically, the return of violent jihadi groups is a distinct possibility.

In Indonesia, however, non-parliamentary vehicles and strategies retain some appeal, though it is important not to exaggerate this. In truth most Islamic political aspirations are absorbed either through existing political parties or through mass organizations that often steer a path between the official sphere of politics and civil society activism. However, the post-Soeharto period has seen the persistence of secretive and increasingly fragmented terror cells – whether or not under the umbrella of the notorious Jemaah Islamiyah – that have sporadically proven their capacity for deadly violence. Still, it is arguable that this sort of Islamic political dissent in Indonesia is at an impasse. With their leadership crippled by Indonesian security forces, terror activities that are more ‘modest’ in scale seem to be undertaken now by small un-coordinated groups.

Organizations such as the MMI, and numerous paramilitaries that agitate for an Islamic state, also admit that they have no idea when their efforts might bear any fruit.34 The same goes for JAT, whose current crop of leaders suggest that preaching should be the primary activity of those desiring the implementation of Sharia, while viewing the acts of those who continue on the path of violence as being ‘too hurried’.35 The return to such relatively unspectacular activity by so-called ‘hard-liners’ is striking and must surely indicate realization by many that violent acts have resulted in isolation from much of the ummah (ICG 2010). Even convicted Bali bomber Ali Imron reflects that his actions were not taken with proper consideration of the political repercussions and public back-lash and how these would negatively impact on the cause.36

Islamic forces are not doing well in the electoral arena either, how-ever, with the PKS being the most successful of Islamic political par-ties in spite of quite modest achievements. In response, the party has declared itself now ‘open’ to non-Muslims – a controversial move that has caused dismay among the rank and file but designed in part to court the support of ethnic Chinese big business. Moreover, the PKS has lost much of its former lustre: as it has become more and more embroiled in Indonesia’s money politics-driven democracy, its image as a genuine party of integrity has suffered considerably. All of this suggests con-straints for the successful replication of the model associated with the Turkish experience in Indonesia. Even in Egypt, however, success has proven to be fleeting in spite of circumstances that appeared to be more amenable.

Vedi R. Hadiz 61

Notes

1. Around 88 per cent of Indonesia’s nearly 240 million population are nomi-nally Muslim, as opposed to about 98 per cent of Turkey’s 73 million and 90 per cent of Egypt’s approximately 80 million people.

2. Indonesia’s democracy is well known to be rife with money politics and corruption. In Turkey, the AKP is often accused of displaying authoritarian tendencies, as seen in its apparent efforts to control the media and in its violent reaction to the Gezi Park protests in mid-2013.

3. See, for example, ‘Is Indonesia a model for Egypt’s transition’, Wall Street Journal, 12 February 2011, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704329104576138490822239336.html.

4. This is the case in spite of the Pan-Islamic Hizb ut-Tahrir’s ambitions of establishing a new Caliphate as well as the groups in different countries with notional links to Al Qaeda.

5. Political liberals were suppressed in Indonesia in the 1970s, a decade after the violent destruction of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), during which Islamic militias assisted the military. They continue to lack a coherent political vehicle even today. In Egypt, where the Left was smashed in the 1970s by an alliance of the state and Islamic forces, the politically liberal Wafd Party has been discredited by close collaboration with the Mubarak regime, as has sec-tions of the leadership of the Leftist Tagammu Party. In Turkey, where Islamic forces also joined in state efforts to domesticate a vibrant if internally chaotic Left in the 1980s, secular political liberals are potentially compromised due to association with the Kemalist establishment, regarded as a bastion against the ruling AKP government in spite of its historically authoritarian inclinations.

6. The word is generally understood to refer to Sufi religious orders. This is the common Arabic transliteration; in Indonesian it appears as tarekat.

7. Also, interview with Huseyin Gulerce, spokesman for the Gülen movement, Istanbul, 16 September 2011. He notes, nevertheless, that the relationship between the movement and the AKP is not always frictionless and that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has sometimes attempted to contain the influence of the followers of Gülen within the party.

8. Interview with Ihab El Fouly, businessman, and adviser to the FJP’s ‘renais-sance committee’ and to Muslim Brotherhood deputy leader Khairat El Shater, Heliopolis 4 April 2012.

9. Interview with businessman Diaa Farhad, Cairo, 4 April 2011. A medical doc-tor by training, he is a member of a Muslim Brotherhood bureau responsible for charitable and civil society activities.

10. Interview with Anis Matta, president and former secretary general of the PKS, Jakarta 28 January 2013; and Rama Pratama, economic section of PKS, Jakarta 14 July 2010.

11. Interview with H. Haedar Nashir, Muhammadiyah Central Leadership, Yogyakarta, 22 July 2010.

12. Interview with Sobarin Syakur, secretary general of the Majelis Mujahidin Indonesia, Solo, 17 July 2007.

13. Thus, Mehmet Bakeraoglu, former MP for the demised Refah Party, declares his support for a market system ‘free of the destructiveness of US imperia-lism’. Interview, Istanbul 14 October 2010.


14. For the theoretical and comparative literature on populism, also see Ionescu and Gellner (1969), Canovan (1981), Mouzelis (1985), Conniff (1999), Taggart (2000), Laclau (2005), Panizza (2005), Kuzminski (2008), Berezin (2009) and Jansen (2011).

15. Interview with Irfan Awwas, Chairman, Majelis Mujahidin Indonesia, Yogyakarta, 21 July 2010.

16. Istanbul City Councilman and AKP member Mustafa Ozman emphasizes that Islam does not prohibit private accumulation but places constraints on it for the sake of social objectives, of which the state should be cognisant. Interview, Istanbul 20 October 2010.

17. Interview with Eyup Vural Aydin, General Secretary and Hatice Karahan Piskin, Deputy Secretary General, MUSIAD (Independent Industrialists’ and Businessmen’s Association), Istanbul 20 September 2011. MUSIAD is the business association regarded as representing the Anatolian bourgeoisie.

18. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as is well known, was a fol-lower of Erbakan, as were numerous other current AKP leaders. As a member of the Refah Party, he had served as Mayor of Istanbul.

19. Interview with Mohamed Nour, spokesman for the Al Nour Party and a multimedia entrepreneur, Cairo, 1 April 2012. He states that Salafis disagree with the philosophy of democracy, because ultimate sovereignty lies with God rather than the people. However, he maintains that this does not keep them from working with the tools of democracy.

20. As admitted by party leader Anis Matta in an interview, Jakarta, 28 January 2013.

21. Hicks (2012), however, suggests that the capacity of the Muhammadiyah and NU to undertake these activities is in decline because of these organiza-tions’ reduced access to state funds in the current post-Soeharto period.

22. Interview with Faik Bulut, Leftist public intellectual, Istanbul, 13 October 2010; interview with Ihsan Dagi, Professor of International Relations, Middle East Technology Institute and Today’s Zaman columnist, Ankara, 22 October 2010.

23. The organization’s name would be transliterated in Indonesian as Jemaah Islamiyah. Interestingly, Temby (2010: 35) points out that would be mem-bers of Indonesia’s Jemaah Islamiyah had a close relationship with members of its Egyptian namesake while fighting together in Afghanistan against the Soviets, with both perceiving themselves as victims of persecution by illegiti-mate tyrannical regimes.

24. Other examples include the Hizbullah, Jundulah, FPIS (Islamic Youth Front of Surakarta) and JAT, which are based in Solo and its environs in Central Java. In this city, there is also a full-fledged ‘Islamic’ gangster organization, the Hisbah, operating in the city’s slum areas, often against gangsters linked to the PDI-P, the major descendant of Soekarnoist secular nationalism. At least one Hisbah leader has been linked to terrorist activity by Indonesian security forces. Another example is the now largely defunct but once infa-mous Lasykar Jihad, based on the outskirts of Yogyakarta.

25. Interview with H.M. Amir, co-founder of Al-Mukmin pesantren, Solo, 12 July 2011.

26. Interview with Ali Imron, member of Jemaah Islamiyah and convicted Bali bomber. The interview took place in his prison cell at the Jakarta Police

Vedi R. Hadiz 63

Headquarters, 7 July 2012; also interview with Farichin, Jema’ah Islamiyah and Indonesian Afghan War veteran, Jakarta, 7 July 2012.

27. Platzdach (2009: 62) notes, however, that key members of ICMI did not necessarily end up setting up overtly Islamic parties. A good example of par-ties they did set up are the short-lived and unsuccessful Partai Daulat Rakyat (People’s Sovereignty Party) led by the ambitious ICMI secretary-general and NGO activist Adi Sasono.

28. Danu Muhammad Hasan, a major figure in the resuscitated Darul Islam of the 1970s, is widely believed to have been an operative for Ali Moertopo’s Special Operations Unit. General Moertopo was a close aide of Soeharto in the early New Order.

29. Interview with Jusuf Supendi, co-founder of Justice Party (PK), Jakarta, 6 July 2011.

30. The tarbiyah was not entirely separated from elite politics, however – some mem-bers, for example, had informal ties with ICMI. More interestingly, among the tarbiyah’s founders was Soeripto, an operative of the state intelligence agency who would have conceivably provided the movement with some protection. An avid anti-communist he was, also interestingly, tied to a faction within the intelligence service that had intense rivalry with the one that had betrayed Hilmy Aminuddin’s father. Interview, Soeripto, Jakarta, 18 January 2013.

31. See Uslu’s reassessment of Erbakan’s legacy upon his death in ‘Erbakan’s Contributions to Turkish Politics’, Today’s Zaman, 1 March 2011, http://www.todayszaman.com/columnist-236902-erbakans-contributions-to-turk-ish-politics.html.

32. Interview with Mustafa Ozman, Istanbul City Council Member and furniture factory owner, Istanbul, 20 October 2010.

33. Interview with Khairy Omar, Muslim Brotherhood Political Bureau, Cairo, 29 March 2012 and (disputed) member of Egyptian Shura Council.

34. Interview with Irfan Awwas, Chairman, Majelis Mujahidin Indonesia, Yogyakarta, 21 July 2010.

35. Interview with Abdul Rohim, son of Abubakar Ba’asyir and spokesman for JAT, Ngruki, Solo, 12 July 2011.

36. Interview with Ali Imron, member of Jemaah Islamiyah and convicted Bali bomber, Jakarta, 7 July 2012.

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66

4Islamic Dissent in Iran’s Full-fledged Islamic Revolutionary StateYasuyuki Matsunaga

4.1 Introduction

In this chapter, I will approach political dissent relationally, drawing on insights gained from the recent theoretical innovations in the field of political sociology (McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly 2001; Tilly 2006). That is, dissent will be examined as adversary relations between sets of contending actors. In the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI), various state institutions, such as the Guardian Council, the Special Court of Clergy, the Islamic Revolution Court and various Election Supervisory Boards, typically constitute one side of these adversary relations. Actors on the other side of those relations range from some rival state institutions, such as the Majlis (Parliament) and the Government (the Executive Branch), to dissident mujtahids and lay religious intellectuals to officially banned but tolerated political groups such as the Freedom Movement of Iran (Nehzat-e Azadi-ye Iran). The relational perspective adopted in this chapter also conceives of political dissent as a form of contentious politics, that is, a series of public, collective and con-sequential claim-making transactions between claimants and their targets. Such claims are considered consequential because, if realized, they will impinge on the interests of at least one of the parties to the contentious interaction other than the claim-makers. They are politi-cal because the state is involved as targets, initiators of claims or third parties (McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly 2001: 5; Tarrow and Tilly 2007: 438; Tilly 2008b: 5).

Political dissent in the IRI has a marked common characteristic: it takes some form of Islamic dissent. This results from the ways in which the IRI state has constructed the contours of public politics since its establishment in 1979. The political regime – or the patterns of repeated

Yasuyuki Matsunaga 67

interactions and relations among state authorities, major political actors and citizens – in the IRI has been strongly shaped by the fact that the IRI has an Islamic revolutionary state. The dual character – being an Islamic state headed by a madrasa-trained Shi‘i jurisprudent ( faqih) and an anti-imperialist Third World revolutionary state – has had a lasting impact on what claims and manners of claim-making are allowed, tole-rated and prohibited, as well as which actors are allowed or tolerated to make such claims publicly. In practical terms, this has meant that all contentious claims must be, and have been, aired as some sort of Islamic dissent. Contentious claims of a secular nature in the sense of being, arguably, anti-religious claims are severely proscribed. But secular claims in other senses – be they institutional, doctrinal or sociocultural – can be, and have been, expressed in some Islamic terms. This has ena-bled various actors within the IRI polity to publicly express a broad spectrum of different views and make claims against each other during the eventful three and a half decades since the 1979 Revolution. Despite the popular impression outside of Iran otherwise, the resultant public sphere in the IRI polity can be characterized as inherently pluralistic, albeit admittedly severely circumscribed both politically and socially.

In the following, I will argue that the particular ways in which the public sphere is shaped by the Islamic revolutionary state go a long way toward explaining why significant political battles are fought culturally in the IRI. It is also my contention that the cultural focus combined with relational perspective on contentious politics that this chapter employs enhances our understanding of significant political dynamics in the IRI. Following Charles Tilly, I conceive of culture as a ‘constitutive element of social relations’ (2008a: 183) and examine how culture as shared understandings and their representations constrains contentious interaction, thereby contributing to what may be considered the cultur-alization of significant contentious political interaction that unfolds in the IRI. To these ends, I will examine (1) the emergence of what I call postrevivalist Islamic dissent, and (2) the dynamics of contention on the institutionalized politics level and its connection with postrevival-ist Islamic dissent. The concrete questions I will address are as follows: How did the rise of the Islamic revolutionary state shape the nature of public political contention in the Islamic Republic polity of Iran? What is postrevivalist Islamic dissent and how does it differ from revivalist Islamic contention? What is the significance of the emergence of postre-vivalist Islamic dissent under the full-fledged Islamic state of Iran? What accounts for the apparent culturalization of significant contentious political interaction that unfolds in the IRI? How was the emergence of

68 Islamic Dissent in Iran’s Full-fledged Islamic Revolutionary State

postrevivalist Islamic dissent shaped by, and also went on to shape, the processes of institutionalized politics in the IRI?

4.2 Islamic dissent in the IRI polity

The February 1979 Revolution in Iran can be considered an Islamic revolution for several reasons. First because its popular political leader, or the so-called ‘foundation-builder’ (bonyan-gozar) of the Revolution, was a widely-followed Shi‘i Islamic jurisprudent and ‘source of emula-tion’ (marja‘ al-taqlid), Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (1902–89). Also because it successfully established an Islamic state – albeit a modern and Shi‘i one – underpinned by the two fundamental principles of having a ‘just Islamic ruler’ and implementing sharia. In the context of the comparative study of Islamic dissent, however, most tellingly because it forcibly Islamized the entire polity – or the whole public sphere encompassing the sociopolitical and sociocultural life of all citizens living under the newly established Islamic Republic, including all those citizens themselves.

Obviously, something as grand a project as Islamizing the whole public sphere of a country with more than 35 million people took some time – and major social and political strife – to complete. But when it was completed roughly three years after the project had begun, the popular, revolutionary, authoritarian but then procedurally democratic Islamic Republic in Iran came to allow only one type of political dissent – Islamic dissent.1 At the minimum, this meant that overtly anti-religious (or even non-religious) political dissent could not be publicly aired without being harshly repressed by the revolution-ary enthusiasts then-called hezabollahis (partisans of God). Unlike the wahhabi kind of pristine Islam found in Saudi Arabia, however, Iranian Shi‘i Islamic sociopolitical thought had by the late 1970s encompassed a fairly wide spectrum of ideological as well as practical views and positions vis-à-vis almost all issues of the time. So much so that to contextually describe any major sociopolitical and sociocultural figure in Iran of this period – be they traditionally or secularly educated – one would need so many different sets of dichotomous adjectives such as progressive/modern vs. traditional, moderate vs. hardline, leftist vs. rightist and reformist vs. conservative. As many Iranian scholars writing in the West have cogently argued, this reflected century-long efforts on the part of numerous Iranians at ‘localizing modernity within their own contemporary cultural experiences and context’ (Mirsepassi 2000: 55; also Rajaee 2007).


During much of the first postrevolutionary decade following the Islamization of public politics, however, one common characteristic united all its participants – save for the traditionalist.2 All these diver-gent and mutually dissenting Islamists were all religious revivalists, or those activists who considered Islam the means to revive their morally/culturally declining and/or sociopolitically challenged society.3 Yet, by the end of the second decade (that is, by the late 1990s), a new type of Islamic dissent had emerged from within the core supporters of the Islamic Revolution and the Islamic Republic. It is this new type, called here postrevivalist Islamic dissent, which is the focus of this chapter.

The postrevivalist Islamic dissent in postrevolutionary Iran deserves our special attention for several reasons. First, those who represent this new voice now were once all revivalists. That is, Islamic postrevivalism apparently is an outgrowth of Islamic revivalism, both logically and personal history-wise. Second, they are still Islamists, broadly defined, in that they not only are personally religious and observant, but expect Islam to play a significant public and positive role in the country’s sociopolitical life. Yet they vehemently disagree with the mainstream revivalists on one crucial point: Islamic postrevivalists reject a religious state (hokumat-e dini). In one way or another, the postrevivalists demand the separation of church and state.4 In practical terms, this aspect alone often brings to Iranian postrevivalists severe political repression in the Islamic Republic, including frequent arrests and jail terms. Third, the postrevivalists cherish Islam as faith; they reject a politicized and ideologized religion. Hence the postrevivalist project of ‘downsizing religion’, that is, lowering the expectation regarding what Islam can and is supposed to accomplish in the sociopolitical and socioeconomic spheres (Kazemi 2004: 79–80; Matsunaga 2007: 321, 2011: 370–2, 379).

Although severely repressed, the Iranian postrevivalist Islamic dissent seems to enjoy widespread potential support within society.5 Many notable advocates of this new sociocultural force, such as Abdolkarim Sorush (1945– ) and Mohsen Kadivar (1959– ), faced politically-motivated violence and criminal prosecution from the mid-to-late 1990s. As a result, a number of them have left Iran in a self-imposed exile, especially since the fall of the reformist government of President Mohammad Khatami in 2005. Those who have stayed in the country are undoubtedly facing increasing pressure. Yet the potential remains for postrevivalist Islamic dissent to provide the religiously-inclined among the contemporary Iranian citizens – who arguably still consti-tute a majority in number – with a crucial alternative, as evidenced in the ways in which many of the Green Movement protest activities


emerged inside Iran in the wake of the 2009 presidential election (see, for example, Nabavi 2012; Harris 2012).

4.2.1 Islamic Revivalist Movement in the prerevolutionary Iranian national context

It was under the modernizing and secularizing Pahlavi state under Reza Shah (r. 1925–41)6 that the Shi‘i ulama of Iran found themselves defend-ing their hitherto autonomous corporate existence, arguably for the first time since the establishment of the Safavid state in the early sixteenth century.7 The Pahlavi state was a secularizing one in that it actively sought to increase institutional separation between itself and the Shi‘i Islam religious establishment, wrestling from the latter its important social – for example, educational and judicial – roles (Akhavi 1980: 38–55). Although this period also witnessed the emergence of puritanical reformists from within the religious establishment – such as Shari‘at-Sangalaji and Ahmad Kasravi – the rule of Reza Shah is notable because it led to the emergence of a revivalist journal, the Qom-based Homayun published from 1934 to 1935, and a militant revivalist organization, The Devotees of Islam (Fedayan-e Eslam) founded by Navvab Safavi in 1945. It was not a mere coincidence that the revivalist tendencies first appeared in the wake of the state-led modernization efforts vis-à-vis the Iranian society. As characterized above, the Islamic revivalist move-ments typically seek to revitalize society through the propagation of what is considered true Islam. It seems to make sense if we see the emergence of such reforms when a perception is widespread that the community of believers, or the society that encompasses it, is seriously threatened and fighting for its survival. This seems to explain why we observe an emphasis placed by the revivalist thinkers and activists on the all-encompassing nature of Islam – one of the common aspects of Islamic revivalist movements everywhere. For it is not Islam as religion that is at risk of its survival; it is the community or society. Hence the need for a ‘cure’ that revitalizes the entire communal life of those involved. Islam as the solution, therefore, needs logically to be all-encompassing.

In the Iranian national context, the period of sociopolitical freedom following the forced abdication of Reza Shah by the invading powers – the UK and the USSR – in 1941 turned out to be a brief pause. The state-led modernization-cum-secularization from above resumed in full force after the 1953 CIA-instigated coup d’état helped consolidate the autocratic power of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi Shah (r. 1941–79). Then the introduction of the state-led ‘White Revolution’ reforms in the early


1960s prompted Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to publicly speak out against the women’s enfranchisement and other proposed measures in the name of Islam (see, for example, Parsa 1994). The doomsday tone in his public dissent was apparent even before his forced exile in 1964. Once in Najaf, Khomeini’s revivalist pronouncements coalesced into a doctrine of the Islamic state headed by a faqih, or ‘the rule of the juris-prudent’ (velayat-e faiqh) (Khomeini 1971).

By the early 1970s, however, Iran’s Shi‘i Islam ceased to be represented exclusively by turbaned scholars whose professional domiciles are called houzeh-ye ‘elmiyeh, or the Islamic Academy. Mehdi Bazargan (1908–95), a founder of the lay-revivalist group Freedom Movement of Iran, and Ali Shari‘ati (1935–77), a popular lecturer in Tehran’s Hosseiniyeh-ye Ershad hall, represented non-houzavi, or lay religious intellectual, trends in Iran’s Islamic activism of this period. In combination, both houzavi and non-houzavi revivalist forces greatly contributed to the culminating political event that later came to be called the ‘Islamic’ Revolution of 1979 (Akhavi 1980; Algar 1983; Chehabi 1990).

4.2.2 Shaping and challenging the contours of public politics in the IRI

Just as many other Third World revolutionary states have, the post-1979 Iranian state has generally stifled open expressions of non-mainstream political dissent. During the first four years following its establishment, the IRI state violently cracked down on the initial opponents of the Khomeinists’ postrevolutionary helm: from the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran to the National Democratic Front to the Muslim People’s Republican Party to the People’s Mojahedin Organization (Rahnema and Nomani 1990: 182–210; Schirazi 1997: 22–52). To complete the series of extensive political purges in this initial period, the IRI state extended the arrests and crackdown to the hitherto ‘regime-friendly’ Tudeh Party early in 1983 (Behrooz 1999: 128–30).

The IRI state also purged the labour organizations and placed them under its control during the initial years after its establishment. The pro-clerical Islamic Republican Party (IRP) – created one week after the fall of the Pahlavi state in February 1979 – initiated the purge of the secular leftist elements from the burgeoning labour activism and its organizational formations (Rahnema and Nomani 1990: 248–9). Ali Rabi‘i and Ali-Reza Mahjub, the two former strike-organizers whom the pro-Khomeini clerical leaders co-opted into the IRP structure, were instrumental in purging the leftist members from the umbrella organi-zation called Labour House (Khane-ye Kargar). Although the legal regime


that enabled the government to control the Islamic labour councils was not put in place until early 1985 due to the opposition from the ‘Islamic right’ faction among the postrevolutionary political elite, the purge of the secular leftist elements was more or less complete by the summer of 1983 (Haqq 2003; also Bayat 1988).

The campaign later named ‘Cultural Revolution’ (enqelab-e farhangi) had similarly targeted the universities and purged them of the Western-oriented and secular leftist faculty members. Initially consisting of vigilante attacks on Marxist and other secular elements on the university campuses, the campaign was given a formal structure in June 1980 when Ayatollah Khomeini established a seven-member ‘Culture Revolution Headquarters’. The campaign ended up closing the entire higher education system for a full two years (1980–2) and prevented many university faculties from admitting new students for three consecutive years (1980–3). When the Minister of Culture and Higher Education reopened the universities in the fall of 1982, nearly half the faculty and other teaching staff had apparently either left or been purged (Rahnema and Nomani 1990: 223–30).

It is important to note, however, that these crackdowns and purges did not render the remaining political forces inside the IRI a homoge-neous monolith. While sharing unwavering support for the ‘Islamic’ Revolution and allegiance to its paramount leader, the power elite and revolutionary enthusiasts of the time fought with each other over various socioeconomic and sociocultural issues (see Akhavi 1987; Behrooz 1991; Baktiari 1996; Moslem 2002). After the initial purges of the non-Khomeinists, a major divide was found during the first post-revolutionary decade between the ‘Islamic right’ faction that repre-sented the traditional bazaari interests and their conservative cultural outlook, on the one hand, and the ‘Islamic left’ faction that favoured state intervention in the economy on behalf of the ‘dispossessed’ (mostaz‘fan) and anti-imperialist radicalism in foreign policy, on the other. Added to these two mainstream currents were those affiliated with the postrevolutionary Provisional Government headed by Mehdi Bazargan, or the so-called ‘religious nationalists’ (melli-mazhabi-ha). These divergent politico-ideological currents that remained unpurged when the second parliamentary election was held in early 1984 came to represent the whole spectrum of the postrevolutionary elite, that is, those who were allowed to enter electoral politics and/or public sphere debate in the IRI – for more than two decades after that. Under the IRI state, therefore, the bulk of political dissent – as defined as adversarial and contentious political interaction among sets of actors – transpired as Islamic dissent among actors belonging to these currents.8


Besides being a full-fledged Islamic and anti-imperialist Third World revolutionary state, the IRI state that emerged from the 1979 Revolution had several additional characteristics. It was a modern state built on the foundation of the modernization efforts during the late Qajar and Pahlavi periods. It was a nationalizing state reigning over a multi-lingual, multi-ethnic population. The IRI state also had some republican fea-tures, with a written constitution, unicameral Parliament with its deputies elected regularly by their local constituencies for their four year term and, after the 1989 partial revision of the constitution, a president directly elected by the citizens. This republican aspect, however, came to be significantly qualified by the most outstanding characteristic of the IRI state: that it is a full-fledged Islamic state. The dual constitu-tional requirement that the head of the state – the position of the leader (rahbar) – must be a madrasa-trained Islamic jurisprudent ( faqih) and that all legislations must not contravene sharia – or the Islamic precepts (ahkam-e Eslam) as interpreted by the leader-appointed Islamic jurispru-dents sitting in the Guardian Council9 – turned out to be critically con-straining, particularly after the death of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989. In the wake of the 1989 constitutional revision that streamlined the execu-tive positions in favour of the popularly elected president, a period of practical uncertainty ensued as to who or what body has the final say within the state institutions. By mid-1992, however, it became clear that the office of the leader and the institutions directly reporting to him, most notably the Guardian Council, possessed the upper hand, not just constitutionally but politically as well (Matsunaga 2009b: 479–80). As a consequence, although both elections and public politics remained vibrant and contentious, it became increasingly untenable toward the end of the first four-year term of the Khatami presidency to argue that the political regime could be considered somehow democratic – neither by the procedural minimalist standards (Przeworski 1999) nor by the electoral democracy ones (Schedler 2006).10

It is against this backdrop that the significance of the emergence of pos-trevivalist Islamic dissent can be most clearly understood. Postrevivalist Islamic dissent was iconoclastic in that its rise had an effect of jolting and revamping the carefully circumscribed sphere of condoned politi-cal contention. Although they were not the first to criticize the official doctrine of the rule of the jurisprudent,11 the Iranian postrevivalists in the 1990s crucially challenged – in fact, rejected – two of the core components of the Iranian Islamic revivalism: (1) the exalted notion that Islam was the solution, and (2) the Shi‘i notion that the Islamic state requires the incumbency of a qualified individual as its ruler. The


postrevivalist criticized the first notion as responsible for making Islam ‘ideologized’ and ‘governmental’, thereby making it both ‘soulless’, or spirituality-deprived, and ‘serving the interests of the state and political power’ (for example, Sorush 1994; Kadivar 1997, 1999b, 2002a). They criticized the second as awarding the jurisprudents the special privilege in statecraft, thereby undermining the principle of political equality of citizens and opening the way for a type of religious despotism (Sorush 1997; Kadivar 2002b). The latter criticism was particularly relevant in the context of mid-1990s Iran in that it coincided with the growing sen-timent among the citizens – especially the youth – that their individual sense of political empowerment that had roots in the 1979 Revolution grew increasingly inconsistent with the ways in which public politics was circumscribed in the IRI.

For this very reason, postrevivalist Islamic dissent is sometimes called post-Islamism or post-Islamist dissent (Bayat 1996, 2007, 2010; Rajaee 2007). The term post-Islamism is pertinent because it signifies the end of the appeal, within the Iranian society, of Islam as an ideology. Yet it is misleading to the extent that it suggests an exit from Islam as a faith, instead of an exit from Islam as a politicized, or ideologized, religion. I prefer the term postrevivalist Islamic dissent also because it better relates to the fact that it was the revivalist currents that dominated public poli-tics for more than a decade and that the postrevivalists strive to make claims against those revivalists. Just as the various revivalist currents emerged against the backdrop of contentious interaction between the secularist and the traditionalist during the pre-Revolution period, the postrevivalists emerged from within the revivalist currents and strove to set themselves apart from them – through interactive contentious claim-making dynamics.12

4.2.3 An illustrative case of the postrevivalist: Mohsen Kadivar

Although Abdol-Karim Sorush initially received much academic atten-tion as the premier dissident intellectual in the IRI (Boroujerdi 1994; Vakili 1996; Matin-asgari 1997; Sadri 2001; Sadri and Sadri 2002), Mohsen Kadivar deserves our special attention not just because of his background in seminary (houzavi) education, but also because of the more sociopolitically active role he played as a public intellectual during the crucial eight-year period after the election of reformist president Mohammad Khatami in May 1997.13

Born in 1959 and growing up in the ideologized decade of the 1970s in the southern city of Shiraz, Kadivar as a youngster undoubtedly belonged to the broader religious revivalist current.14 He participated


in the revolutionary upheaval as a religiously-inclined student activist at Shiraz University. In 1981 while the universities were still closed nationwide, Kadivar left for Qom to devote himself to studying Islam in a more traditional setting. After nearly two decades of seminary train-ing, scholarly research, and teaching, Kadivar attained the level of ijtihad in 1997 – under the tutorage of Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri – and moved to Tehran. One of his first acts of contentious political – and postrevivalist – claim-making was his article published by Islamic leftist daily Salam two and half months after the election of Khatami on the nature of the latter’s popular support. In the article, Kadivar argued that by electing Khatami the people overwhelmingly voted down ‘the govern-mental religion (din-e doulati), literalism (qeshrigari), violence, wisdom-bashing, despotism of opinion, and populist society’ (1997). In January 1999, when some Iranian Intelligence Ministry agents were implicated in the serial murder of domestic dissidents in the previous year, Kadivar delivered a public lecture entitled ‘The shar‘i prohibition against terror’ in a mosque in Esfahan. In this lecture, he argued that Islam officially grants the right to live to ‘all citizens of a religious society, and not just to the pious or to those who agree with us’ and therefore that any reli-giously motivated assassination or terror is prohibited (haram) according to sharia (Kadivar 1999a: 169, 188). By this time, Kadivar had become one of the few madrasa-trained scholars inside Iran who would publicly lament the perceived negative consequences of the clerical takeover of state power (Kadivar 2000a: 615, 621–2). The power holders within the state reacted swiftly to his speech in Esfahan and arrested him in February 1999. Two months later, Kadivar was convicted by the Special Court of Clergy for ‘propagating against the sacred system’ of the IRI and ‘publishing untruths and disturbing public minds’. After spending 18 months in the notorious Evin Prison in Tehran, Kadivar was released in July 2000. Apparently unintimidated, he quickly resumed his role as an active public intellectual, with his maiden speech entitled ‘The Pharaonic Manner in Qur’an’ in which he listed up to eight Qur’anic criteria to judge someone’s behaviour as Pharaonic (Kadivar 2000b).15

The following excerpt from his conference paper in the pre-May 1997 election period well illustrates what claim-making and challenge Kadivar’s enunciation of his postrevivalist views amounted to vis-à-vis the dominant postrevivalists. In a February 1997 seminar held at a uni-versity in Tehran, Kadivar remarked as follows:

If we investigate the relation of religion and politics, we come across at least the following three views among the religious and the


jurisprudents. The first view [holds that] politics comes under the whole package of religion. It is our religion that specifies our policy, political orientation and ambition… In a society in which the rein of politics is not in the hands of Muslim scholars, so many of the religious precepts will lapse. Therefore Islam cannot be silent about the way the society is administered. On the contrary … it is clear that the entire matters relating to human welfare must be expected from religion. Politics, the way of collective life, social behaviour, and the administration of society without doubt relate to human welfare. Therefore, it is permissible to expect religion to determine obliga-tion on those matters. How can one believe that Islam has dropped politics from God’s grace …The second view [holds that] the domain of religion is a domain of fixed and unchanging matters, and politics embraces time-bound, changing and particular matters. These two domains are distinct… Without doubt, a Muslim with individual virtues will engage in political activities, but it is his [human] rea-son that makes plans and arrangements on these matters… Never expect religion and jurisprudence to settle politics… The supporters of this second view, who are fewer than those of the first, must be searched for outside the class of religious scholars and jurisprudents. The third view … which is more recent than the two previous views, criticizes the bases of those two and chooses the middle way. [It holds that] one cannot have enormous expectation from religion. [Islam as the final and complete divine] religion has not come in order to make human reason obsolete. Religion shows the way on those matters about which humans are completely incompetent to have knowledge, such as the details of heaven and devotional pre-cepts, those matters about which most people err in comprehension, or those matters about which most people must take centuries to understand. It is not a duty of religion to explain those matters that a human can do so with his reason… Religion has shown general and foundational principles, but observing and implementing them are required of a Muslim. It does not suffice [to hold that] it pays to say that Islam has a precept on every ground and that no matter goes outside the confines of the five categories (ahkam-e khamsah) until we consider a matter religious. For so many matters, primarily and in themselves, belong to the domain of ‘permissible’ [because the law is indifferent]… and on the basis of rational arrangements and planning, they come to the middle. In addition, there are a variety of ways to perform a ‘non-forbidden’ matter. So many of human sciences such as management and economic are about presenting


how to handle and make arrangements about those non-forbidden matters… It is below the dignity of religion to concern those mat-ters ordinary human reason is capable of solving… Organizing this world is the job of the [human] reason, [that is] the God-given reason (Kadivar 2000a: 292–5).

In this way, Kadivar made postrevivalist claims for scaling back both the proper domain and the expectation of religion against the revivalist notion that Islam has a say in all matters in society. In addition, Kadivar ardently advocated the institutional separation of politics and religion. In a newspaper interview published just a few days before his February 1999 arrest, Kadivar had argued as follows:

Another serious problem for us [on the eve of the third decade after the Revolution] is the association of religion with politics, power, and government. What we excessively had in the past was the sepa-ration of religion from politics. That is, some of our past religious scholars were so withdrawn from politics that they thought religion should concern only individual ethics and the hereafter. After the Revolution, we face [another] kind of extreme in the sense that reli-gion has now become the expense account of politics and daily rou-tines. That is, [our] religion has become a political religion, instead of politics becoming religious politics. [Our] Revolution and people wanted that politics should not be estranged from religion and that it should follow the goals of the religion. What has resulted, however, was that more than politics became religious, religion became politi-cal and politicized… [The problem is] although Islamic teachings cover social and political precepts, this does mean that the religious institution and the political institution have to be the one and the same. One of the critical [but] difficult tasks of the third decade of the Revolution is that the institution of politics and the institution of religion must be separated from each other, while religion must be the overseer (nazer) of politics and prevent excesses and mistakes [arising from] politics.16 The [concrete] name of the institution of politics is the government, and the [concrete] name[s] of the institu-tion of religion [are] mosque, a religious scholar (‘alim), the sources of emulation (marja‘iyat), and religious rites. These should not be state-run or governmental. Between these two [types of institutions] a serious difference exists. Sometimes people conceive this argument to mean that the intention is to totally separate religion and politics. What I will stress is that for the soundness (salamat) of religion and


the soundness of politics, the institution of religion must be distinct from the institution of politics. In other words, religion should not be governmental and the institution of religion must remain inde-pendent from the government. It is possible for us to have a civil society in which pious people will play the role of politician. The separation of the institution of religion and the institution of poli-tics is indeed different from the separation of religion and politics. I will emphasize that the union of the institution of religion and the institution of government will bring about irreparable damage to religion. Politics is a human affair. It has a friend and a critic. If reli-gion ties the knot with politics, all the day-to-day political problems come to the attention of religion. And then religion will descend from that sacred and respectable place of its own to daily politicking and lose touch with that lofty place. We must preserve religion until such days as politicians no longer find it useful (2000a: 621–2).

As the two excerpts above clearly indicate, Kadivar’s claims were not overtly political, but rather cultural – or more specifically, ‘religious’, albeit in his own postrevivalist sense – and even humanist. Yet, as the harsh repression his claim-making activities invited from the authori-ties within the state indicated, his opponents understood them to be enormously threatening. This, I have argued, was due primarily to the ways in which those in authority within the Islamic revolutionary state constructed the contours of public politics with their revivalist understanding of Islam. If what people – or constituted actors in action – ‘consider valuable and worth fighting over’ cannot but be defined contextually (Ross 2009: 139–41), it is understandable that particular cul-tural claim-making may well become critically consequential politically in a context such as that of Iran in the mid-to-late 1990s, given the dominance therein of the particular revivalist understanding of Islam. Hence the seeming culturalization of significant political battles fought in postrevolutionary Iran’s public politics.

4.3 The dynamics of postrevivalist contention and institutionalized politics

4.3.1 Institutionalized politics under Khomeini

Institutionalized politics began in postrevolutionary Iran with a series of founding elections: (1) the March 1979 referendum about establish-ing an Islamic republic, (2) the August 1979 election of the Experts Assembly for crafting the new constitution, (3) the December 1979


referendum on the new constitution, (4) the January 1980 presidential election and (5) the March 1980 parliamentary election. Continuing the regular electoral cycles without interruption, the Islamic revolutionary state of Iran during the ensuing three decades held ten presidential, nine parliamentary and three local council elections. The most visible site of institutionalized politics is arguably the Parliament (Majles-e Shoura-ye Eslami). For, not only is it where the deliberation and adoption of bills occur, it is the site where the presidential oath-taking, the casting of the vote of confidence for new ministerial positions, the interpellation of the president and cabinet ministers, and the investigation of the affairs of the country take place.

The first decade of institutionalized politics coincided with the period during which Ayatollah Khomeini, as the head of the Islamic revolution-ary state, presided over the entire affairs of the country. It was also a period during which diverse conflicts of political and socioeconomic interests among those with diverse backgrounds within the IRP structure came to the fore as part of the interactive processes of institutionalized politics (Baktiari 1996). The major split was found during this period between the Islamic left faction ( Jehah-e chap-e Eslami) pursuing the construction of an Islamic welfare state that advances anti-colonial and pro-disinherited (mostaz‘fin) causes through major social-engineering projects, on the one hand, and the Islamic right faction ( Jenah-e rast-e Eslami) pursuing the maintenance of the traditional petit bourgeois socioeconomic order centred around the bazaar, on the other. The latter faction was also characterized by its sociocultural conservatism expressed through their understanding of Islam, while its members accepted the revolutionary – that is, political – leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini. In this connection, the role of Khomeini was crucial. Not only did he act first and foremost as the ruling Islamic jurisprudent (vali-ye faqih) of a sharia-sanctioned – that is, fully legitimate – Islamic state, not as the constitutional posi-tion of the head of the state. Various parties to the contentious political processes in institutionalized politics actively and regularly sought his intervention and arbitration in their day-to-day conflicts. Furthermore, Khomeini disliked the predominance of either of the two then main-stream political factions, preferring to have them counterbalance each other over some period. Khomeini, therefore, played a unique and indispensable part in the IRI’s institutionalized politics, all the while transcending the boundaries of institutionalized politics from time to time. For example, Khomeini apparently did not feel constrained at all when he issued the decrees to establish extra-constitutional state bodies such as the Council for Discerning Regime Interest (Majma‘-e


Tashkhis-e Maslahat-e Nezam) in 1988 and the Constitutional Review Board (Shoura-ye Baznegari-ye Qanunu-e Asasi) in 1989.

4.3.2 The ebb and flow of institutionalized politics in the post-Khomeini period

In the wake of the reshuffling and streamlining of the highest posi-tions of the state that followed the death of Khomeini in June 1989, the strengthened position of the popularly-elected president initially became a focal point in institutionalized politics. Khomeini’s succes-sor, the newly-promoted Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, seemed unparalleled with Parliament Speaker-turned-President Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, because of the former’s much lesser status – as compared with Khomeini – both as a Shi‘i jurisprudent and also as the leader of the pre-1979 anti-Shah movement. Much of the contentious interaction on the institutionalized politics level, therefore, took place between the Rafsanjani-headed presidency and the Parliament dominated by the Islamic left faction. This changed three years later as the result of the two major developments that took place in that year. First, the Islamic left faction, which had lost its chief patron when Khomeini died, was pushed out of the institutionalized process after it suffered a major defeat in the fourth parliamentary election that took place in the spring of 1992. Second, during the summer, Khamenei established himself as an independent and forceful actor and started acting as a counterbal-ance against Rafsanjani.

Now the major boundaries were drawn between a set of state insti-tutions controlled by the Islamic right faction, on the one hand, and another set of state institutions that aligned with President Rafsanjani, on the other. When he emerged as a forceful player on his own, Khamenei as the leader had support from those institutions con-trolled by the Islamic right faction, such as the Guardian Council, the Parliament, and the Friday Prayer Leaders’ network, and other affiliated sociocultural organizations such as the Headquarters of Enjoining the Good and Forbidding the Evil. Crucially, he had also formed an alliance with the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps, which needed a new mission after the end of the eight-year-war with Iraq, and the volunteer Basij Resistance Force. For his turn, President Rafsanjani promoted the policy of post-Iran-Iraq-war (re)construction and was in favour of loosening certain sociocultural restrictions. The President counted on interna-tional lenders, including the World Bank, to finance some of his recon-struction projects and tried to boost the modern sector of the Iranian economy. He was badly frustrated, however, by the leader-spearheaded


and petit bourgeoisie-run countermovement that alerted society to what it called Western ‘cultural aggression’ (tahajom-e farhangi), thereby raising the cost of associating with the West. On the societal level, certain sectors in the Iranian civil society including the hitherto sup-pressed liberal or secularist groups were reinvigorated by the moderate governmental policy under Rafsanjani, a development that gave birth to counter-developments, such as morality policing and the restriction of satellite TV receptacles, by the sociocultural conservatives supported by Khamenei. The rise of postrevivalist claim-making activities was part of these interactive contentious processes that proliferated during the eight-year period of the Rafsanjani presidency (1989–97).

These societal-level sociocultural and socioeconomic conflicts between the Islamic right faction and the newly-emerged voices of moderation – dubbed ‘reformists’ (eslah-talaban) – found their way into the processes of institutionalized politics, from the mid-1990s on, mainly through elections. Iran’s electoral system was marred by the introduction in 1992 of what is called ‘approbatory supervision’ (nezarat-e estesvabi), a mecha-nism by which ‘unwanted’ candidates may be barred from running in the elections. This notwithstanding, the existing electoral system did provide opportunities not only for elite-level contentious politics but also for regular citizens to voice their preferences. In preparation for the 1996 parliamentary election, a group of associates of President Rafsanjani com-prising his cabinet ministers and vice presidents launched a new political grouping named the Executives of Construction (Kargozaran-e Sazandegi) and fielded candidates, expanding the range of politico-ideological choice to the benefit of the voters. The invigoration of electoral politics that resulted was also much assisted by the entry of the new generation of young voters who, for the first time in their lifetime, were enjoying the limited opening in their sociocultural space that emerged during the Rafsanjani presidency. Because the electoral laws allowed all citizens aged 15 or above to vote in the national and local elections,17 those teenage and young adult voters, from 1996 on, overwhelmingly backed those candidates that separated themselves from the Islamic right faction – by then dubbed the conservatives (mohafezkaran). The landslide election of Mohammad Khatami, a relatively unknown member of the Islamic left faction, against his state-backed rival candidate, Ali-Akbar Nateq-Nuri, in the 1997 presidential election can only be explained as the majority voters’ rebellion against the expected takeover by the dominant con-servatives of the presidency.

Khatami’s chance election to presidency in 1997, however, turned out to be a mixed blessing for many parties concerned. First, his electoral


victory took place without any organized base of support, including political parties. This meant that the process that was initiated in May 1997 was very much grassroots voter driven, rather than elite politician driven. As noted, most voters were likely to have been motivated pri-marily by their desire to prevent what was seen as the monopolization of power by one political faction, that is, the conservatives. Khatami’s landslide victory as an expression of the majority voters’ preference, however, did raise fresh hope and expectation among his grassroots supporters, thereby imposing on the elevated Islamic left politicians the burden to implement the ‘reforms’ (eslahat) that the voters seemingly demanded. As indicated in the call for freedom (azadi) popular among the youth, any such ‘reform’ would have ultimately involved redefining the public sphere according to some postrevivalist views. Yet, since they themselves were still deeply rooted in a dominant revivalist framework, neither Khatami nor his allies were ready to fundamentally challenge their rivals from the Islamic right faction.

Second, Khatami’s election in 1997, as well as the ensuing ‘reformist’ victories in the 1999 local and 2000 parliamentary elections,18 simply led to heightened contention and further polarization on the institu-tionalized politics level. This soon led to a complete political stalemate between the popularly-elected reformists in the executive and legisla-tive branches of the government, on the one hand, and the Islamic right faction entrenched in the state institutions under the authority of the Leader, such as the Guardian Council, the Judiciary, and the security services, on the other. While President Khatami and his allies in the Parliament were allowed to stay and complete the terms of their elected offices, the Leader and his allies in the Islamic right faction were able to rob them of any tangible ‘reform’ accomplishment.

Third, the sociocultural opening in the larger society that emerged following Khatami’s election was significant, but rather short-lived. As early as in 1998, the Judiciary and the ‘rogue elements’ in the Intelligence Ministry began a crackdown on the reformist press, as well as certain dissidents and critics with various backgrounds, the postrevivalists included. For their turn, youth vigilante groups belonging to the Islamic right faction, such as Ansar-e Hezabollah in Tehran and Ansar-e Velayat in Esfahan, frequently and violently attacked the meetings of grassroots supporters of President Khatami, such as of university students. These acts of institutional and situational repression initially provided the backbone of the electoral victories of the pro-Khatami reformists.19 Yet the sheer inability on the part of the elected reformists to protect their societal supporters or to break the impasse in institutionalized


politics – coupled with the absence of any effort on their part to build their organizational support base – quickly led to the dissipation of sup-port for them on the electorate level after 2001 (Matsunaga 2008). After rising as high as 80 per cent in 1997, the turnout in the national elec-tions also dropped in 2003 to 50 per cent nationally and even lower in big cities including the capital, Tehran, where the turnout plummeted to 12 per cent in the 2003 city council election and to 33 per cent in the 2004 parliamentary election. As a result, the reformists – whose core actors belonged to the Islamic left faction – suffered defeats both in the 2004 parliamentary and 2005 presidential elections, with the Islamic right faction – now dubbed ‘principle-ists’ (osulgarayan) – securing all the three branches of the Government.

4.4 Conclusion

In this chapter, I have made the case that postrevolutionary Iran offers a unique setting and context for a comparative study on Islam and political dissent. The rise of a faqih-headed Islamic state with coercion-wielding enthusiastic supporters in Iran in 1979 not only marked the birth of the first full-fledged modern Islamic state. With its project of total Islamization of the public sphere, the IRI state has severely cir-cumscribed public contention by allowing only one type of political dissent, that is, Islamic dissent. Yet, owing to the fairly wide spectrum of ideological as well as practical sociopolitical views and positions avail-able within the Iranian society at the end of the 1970s, political dissent in the IRI could flourish as Islamic dissent rather pluralistically for the most part of the three decades after the 1979 Revolution.

Against this backdrop, I argued, the emergence of postrevivalist Islamic dissent marked a serious challenge both to the mainstream Islamic revivalists and to the political order based on their understand-ing of how the state and society should be run. The repressive manner in which those in authority within the Islamic revolutionary state reacted indicated the enormity of the impact its claims potentially had. I also argued that the rise of postrevivalist Islamic dissent was shaped by, and went on to shape, the dynamics of contention on the institutionalized politics level. It is important to point out, however, that the political interactions on the institutionalized politics level from the mid-1990s onwards did not transpire between the two rival ideational perspec-tives, that is, between the revivalist and postrevivalist. The contentious political boundaries on that level continued to be drawn between those dubbed, respectively, the conservatives and the reformists. While the


epithet ‘reformist’ initially referred to the newly-emerged voices of moderation – including the postrevivalists – during the Rafsanjani presi-dency, the Islamic left faction that Khatami’s chance election brought back to institutionalized politics came to represent the core of those called reformists during his presidency. The latter development led to heightened contention and polarization on the institutionalized politics level, eventually resulting in a political stalemate. At the same time, heightened contention also led to enhanced levels of institutional and situational repression on a broad range of actors considered the ‘oppo-nents’ of the Islamic revolutionary state, the postrevivalists included. I also argued that partially due to this disjuncture in contentious bound-ary activation on the ideational and institutional politics levels, neither the Islamic left ‘reformists’ on the institutional politics level nor their grassroots supporters – who arguably were more in line with the postre-vivalist currents – were able to secure any lasting or tangible gains from the 16 years of the Rafsanjani and Khatami presidencies.20

Notes

1. I thank the editors of this volume for comments on earlier versions of this chapter. All the translations from the Persian sources are mine. On the discussion of the democratic quality of the initial electoral regime of the IRI, see Matsunaga (2009a).

2. By the traditionalists, I primarily mean those ‘apolitical’ Shi‘i Islamic juris-prudents who were not keen on assuming the executive role advocated by the ‘rule of the jurisprudent’ doctrine, such as Grand Ayatollah Mohammad-Reza Golpaygani (1898–1993). The archetype of this school was Shaykh Morteza Ansari (1781–1864).

3. Unlike reformists, revivalists were not after reviving Islam as faith; for reviv-alists, Islam was ‘the solution’, that is, the means by which to revive their seemingly weakened or challenged society. See Matsunaga (2007: 320–21).

4. While some advocate the separation of the institution of religion from the state as a whole, others focus on their rejection of the special role – for example, the right to veto – preserved for faqih in the nation’s statecraft.

5. This statement is partially based on the author’s personal observation during his trips to Iran, the last of which took place in 2010.

6. Incidentally, both the monarch and officials of the Pahlavi state, such as Ahmad Kasravi (1890–1946), understood that modernization meant seculari-zation in the Iranian context (see, for example, Abrahamian 1973).

7. Many scholarly works exist that point to the unique institutional and financial autonomy that the Shi‘i establishment in Iran was equipped with, a distinc-tion that made possible many instances of traditionalist Islamic activism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. See, for example, Moaddel (1993).

8. Although it is customary to analyse public politics in the IRI as ‘factionalism’ or factional power struggle, political dissent in the sense specified is preferred


in this chapter as the key analytical concept. For one, seeing dissent as contentious claim-making interactions has a benefit of avoiding the reduc-tionist impression that postrevolutionary Iranian politics is nothing but a series of zero-sum power struggles.

9. Article 96, The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran. 10. One could argue that the IRI was undemocratic from its first years (see, for

example, Schirazi 1997); the point here is that the structural and political factors that made the political regime in the IRI undemocratic became solidi-fied, albeit gradually, after the 1989 leadership transition.

11. For example, the Freedom Movement of Iran suggested, in a book published in 1988, that the newly advocated notion of the ‘absolute rule of the jurisprudent’ would amount to religious dictatorship (Nehzat-e Azadi-ye Iran 1988: 69).

12. For a conceptual mapping of dynamic interaction among these forces, see Matsunaga (2007: 321, Figure 1).

13. Kadivar remained in Iran and continued his sociopolitical activities until the fall of 2008, when he moved to the United States to take up an academic position.

14. For more details, see Matsunaga (2007, 2011).15. As I argued elsewhere, no longer just a critic of the ‘rule of the jurisprudent’

doctrine, Kadivar started to set forth his own version of postrevivalist Islam in his post-imprisonment period. See Matsunaga (2011).

16. For his more recent view on how Islam should influence a democratic politi-cal process, see his interview with Sabzlink (Kadivar 2010).

17. The 2000 parliamentary election was an exception during this period. The minimum voting age for this election was raised to 16 by the conservative-dominated Fifth Parliament, only to be reversed by the reformist-dominated Sixth Parliament. The minimum voting age was eventually raised to 18 in 2007 by the conservative-dominated Seventh Parliament.

18. Khatami’s 1997 victory opened the way for some of the Old Guard within the Islamic left faction to be elected as ‘reformists’. Also even among those who represented the ‘voices of moderation’, some emphasized political reforms within the confines of the ideals of the 1979 Revolution, while others favoured nothing but neoliberal economic reforms. Therefore, the elected reformists were very mixed in their political and sociocultural orientations, with varying degrees of Islamic ‘revivalist’ and ‘postrevivalist’ tendencies.

19. Situational repression refers to direct, police or military action to curb certain activities, whereas institutional repression refers to state efforts for similar purposes through such means as regulation, legislation, prosecution and court rulings. See Koopmans (1997) for the distinction.

20. The same disjuncture, combined with the lack of any sustainable organiza-tional base, arguably was also responsible for the failure of the 2009 Green Movement protest movement.

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5Muslimhood and Post-Islamist Power: The Turkish ExampleJenny White

Muslim-majority societies, particularly in the Arab world after the 2011 uprisings, are undergoing a great experiment as Islamic actors move from arenas of dissent into formal positions of power. This opens up new sets of questions. What is necessary for Islamists to successfully become the status quo and gain the votes of a wider citizenry? What new forms of social alliances must be built, and what role does the initial institutional structure of Islam play in hastening or impeding democratic incorporation? Is there a pivotal moment? What is the role of a Muslim middle class, and must there be a liberal market economy for this transformation to occur? What happens to Islam in this pro-cess? And under what conditions does Islamic democracy coexist with liberalism and tolerance? For all of these questions, the Turkish example provides some tantalizing clues.1

In Turkey, the Justice and Development Party (Turkish Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP), a party with roots in Turkey’s Islamic movement that is led by pious politicians, has won every national election since 2002. The party has pushed through a large number of changes in laws and institutions to align Turkey with EU standards according to the Copenhagen Criteria that must be met for eventual EU membership. A parliamentary commission has been established to draw up a new constitution to replace the one drawn up under military oversight after the 1980 coup. A democracy package submitted to Turkish parliament in 2013 removed the ban on headscarves in most public venues and imposed penalties for discrimination on the basis of religion, nationa-lity and race. It also included outreach to minorities, restoring Kurdish cultural and language rights and returning some properties confiscated by the state over past decades from Christian institutions. A peace deal between the AKP government and the Kurdish PKK (Kurdistan Workers’

90 Muslimhood and Post-Islamist Power: The Turkish Example

Party, Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan) may bring an end to decades of violence. GDP growth in 2011 was 9 per cent, rivalling China. An underachiever ten years ago, Turkey now is the seventeenth largest economy in the world. It is more prosperous, democratic and politically influential than even five years ago and consensus is growing that it belongs in the club of rising powers. Until recently, when Turkey’s foreign policy stance regarding Syria and Egypt and its 2013 crackdown on peaceful Gezi protesters raised eyebrows internationally, some in the West and in the Arab world considered Turkey to be a country that might be emulated, a successful model for combining Islam and democracy.

The case of Turkey offers an illustration of what can happen when an Islamic party that had taken an adversarial position against the state enters the political mainstream and in the process becomes the status quo. Are there lessons here for the Arab world that is engaged in its own early phases of incorporation of Islamic ideas and Islam-defined groups into a variety of government structures? Briefly, I will suggest that the Turkish example demonstrates the following principles that may be relevant to the Arab experiment:

1) Islam as a defining identity for both groups and individuals undergoes a transformation when it becomes enmeshed in the democratic pro-cess in the context of a globalized economy. It leads to a diversity of self-definitions as Muslim and to new definitions of ‘proper’ Islamic practice, sometimes pushing aside text- and rule-based religiosity, at other times consolidating practices under new rules of ‘modern’ Islam (Hart 2013). ‘Muslim’ is a cultural definition as much as a declaration of faith. Religion itself becomes secularized, privatized, an object of choice, and remixed with other identities, such as social class and nationalism, leading to new fissures and convergences in the population.

2) Parties that engage in adversarial, ideology-based Islamic politics may initially be successful at the polls, but have a limited constitu-ency. Parties that embrace the ‘new’ privatized Islam that conjures Muslimhood as a personal attribute not overtly linked to political work, are able to expand their constituencies to the broader business community, pragmatic conservatives and, in some cases, liberals.

3) Consolidation of power under the AKP has meant the loss of the social movement aspect of earlier party incarnations, curtailing women’s political role. Historically in the region women have played impor-tant roles as activists, but tend to be kept out of structural leader ship positions.

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4) As a Muslim-rooted party integrates into the political and social system and consolidates power, the balance changes between the government and secular state institutions like the military and judici-ary. This does not necessarily mean the introduction of greater con-servatism or religiosity into those institutions (although it may), but their ability to constrain religiosity in the political and public arenas becomes limited. This increases anxiety and push-back on the part of secularists and may trigger autocratic impulses in the party in power (whether religious or secular) to ban criticism and jail opponents.

The July 3, 2013, military coup against the Muslim Brotherhood-led elected government in Egypt is one example of this. The Gezi riots that shook Turkey in summer 2013 and the ensuing violent government crackdown are another example of a political and social system in which the balance of power had shifted to such an extent that public anxiety spilled into the streets. The Turkish military, however, was no longer able to intervene to ‘protect the secular state’ as it had done in the past, because the Islam-rooted government had fully taken com-mand of the institutions of the state.

In both the Egyptian and the Turkish cases, leaders appealed to a majoritarian understanding of governance in which the winners, hav-ing obtained a majority of the vote (in Egypt, the generals claimed a majority by pointing to the size of street demonstrations), are given the right to rule and, at the same time, to determine what is allowed and what is banned in social life according to the norms of their respective communities (Çarkoglu and Toprak 2007; White 2013).

5) Thus, widely shared conservative cultural values, especially views about women and minorities, come to define political practice regard-less of whether the party in power is secular or has Islamic roots. In Turkey, authoritarianism and intolerance characterize the party in power as much as the population itself, even though these attitudes may contradict the party’s more liberal discourse and actions in changing laws and institutions.

The upshot of Turkey’s example for the post-Arab Spring region is that Islam appears to be transformed by its participation in a government that must actually govern, that is, demonstrate success in mundane mat-ters like picking up the garbage, as well as larger matters like improving the standard of living for the population as a whole, not only for a sup-porting faction. In order to build a broad constituency in a system based


on free elections, ideology must take second place to bread-and-butter issues, and the party’s agenda must speak to a variety of interests. The AKP, for instance, defines itself as a centre-right party led by pious Muslims who are running a secular system. Historically, Turks have tended to vote centre-right, reflecting a constituency of heterogeneous elements, including a large business sector. In order to maintain a winning coali-tion, political parties must balance these varied interests (Waterbury 1992). Until recently, the Turkish AKP has managed to balance many of these interests, but the Morsi government in Egypt instead privileged consolidation of power and ideological purity over broad-based interests and bread-and-butter issues.

The question, these days, is not really about whether Islam is compat-ible with democracy, but rather what kind of Islam enables a party that has come to power to broaden its umbrella to such an extent that it becomes a viable player in a democratic system. To be successful, a party must satisfy a variety of constituencies. This is true even in a majoritarian system that has little space for political back-talk.

The answer might lie in the rise of a Muslim bourgeoisie based on global trade and manufacturing (as opposed to an elite derived from kinship and connections or rent) that in Turkey has led Islam to lose its ideological impetus, becoming instead an expression of personal identity and upward mobility (Silverstein 2011). Increasingly Islam has become expressed as a lifestyle choice, catered to by an entire com-modities sector. Both secular and Muslim bourgeoisie have developed their own enclaves within which distinction is gained through lifestyle, fashion, consumption, musical performance and distinctive media and publishing realms that in many ways mirror secular taste. New Muslim publics have arisen. For instance, in the powerful and ubiquitous Gülen movement, Islam takes the form of economic networks organized around Muslim values and civil action, like founding and administering secular schools, without the traditional training based on the study of Islamic texts or the transmission of secret knowledge, and without the organizational framework of brotherhoods or political organization. The Gülen movement consists primarily of pious businessmen and teachers organized in discrete foundations without overtly Muslim markers.

In other words, political participation and entrepreneurial success in a global economy that led to the development of a pious middle class has transformed Islam into the status quo, which has everything to lose from extremism (and from liberalism). The Islamic bourgeoisie has a vested interest in stability and security that might be undermined by the unpredictable ideas and practices acceptable to liberals who

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advocate individual rights. Thus, even in a stable democratic system like Turkey’s that has incorporated Muslim-rooted ideals, democratic consolidation is threatened not by Islamist ideology, but by autocracy, authoritarianism, patriarchy and intolerance. Turkey has more journal-ists in jail at present than China or Iran (International Press Institute n.d.). In 2008, the World Economic Forum ranked Turkey 127th of 140 nations in status of women in society. Despite all the recent changes, Turkey remains a society characterized by powerful group identities modelled on the autocratic, patriarchal family that is mirrored in social and political relations.

Contextual factors also play a role in shaping the process by which Islam is incorporated into the mainstream. In the case of Turkey, these factors include 1) Turkey’s history as an Ottoman world power that has been revived as a contemporary framework for political action. 2) Turkey’s relatively lengthy history of free elections. 3) A powerful secular state and military that for decades forced parties to moderate extreme ideological positions without permanently disenfranchising them. 3) Alignment with EU norms in the process of attaining membership. 4) A powerful entrepreneurial economy. In addition to the rise of an Islamic bourgeoisie and the secularization of Islamic practice discussed above, such local con-textual elements strengthen the likelihood of successful incorporation of ideological Islam into a non-ideological democratic system.

5.1 Islam and the state

It is important to situate today’s transformations in the context of Republican history, since elements of past identity structures continue to inform and oppose newly emergent Muslim and Turkish identities. After a century of wars with outside powers trying to take Ottoman lands and revolts by Ottoman provinces, often with the support of outsiders, World War I stripped a weakened empire of the rest of its provinces, and it was occupied by the victorious European powers. An army led by Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) and other army officers liberated the heartland of the empire (the provinces of Anatolia and Thrace) and in 1923 established the Turkish Republic. Although citizens of many faiths had once populated the empire, by 1923, most non-Muslims had seceded, migrated, been expelled, killed or forcibly exchanged with other countries in return for their Muslim populations. Turkey’s popula-tion today is almost entirely Muslim, with small minorities of Jews and Christians. About four-fifths of the Muslim population consists of Sunni Muslims; the rest are Alevis, a non-Sunni syncretistic Muslim minority.


Alevis tend to have a more secular, liberal lifestyle than their Sunni neighbours (Shankland 2007). Women play a central role in religious ritual, which involves music and dance and takes place in a ritual house (cemevi), rather than a mosque. They suffered centuries of oppression under the Ottomans, who accused them of not being truly Muslim, and thousands of Alevi Kurds were massacred by nationalists in the Turkish Republic. In the 1970s, Alevis became associated with socialist and other leftist movements, while the political right was dominated by Sunni Muslims. At present, Alevis seek official recognition of their houses of worship and, like Kurds, with whom there is substantial over-lap in population, seek cultural rights.

Kurds make up about 20 per cent of the population, with a majority living in the impoverished east and southeast regions bordering Iran, Iraq and Syria. The Turkish state erased their unique identity (calling them ‘mountain Turks’), banned their language and public rituals, and Turkified Kurdish place names. Some Kurds assimilated into Kemalist soci-ety, taking advantage of the principle that, as Turks, all paths were open to them. Others did not accept Turkification. Since 1984, the Marxist PKK has been fighting an armed struggle against the Turkish state over autonomy of the Kurdish region and greater cultural and political rights. Cycles of PKK and Turkish military violence have cost nearly 40,000 lives to date. Kurdish political parties elected to parliament often found their politicians arrested or the parties closed on charges that they supported the PKK.

Ataturk initially experimented with Islamic language and imagery as a means to unify the nation, but after several religiously and ethnically inspired revolts against the new state, he banned religious orders and closed Islamic educational institutions. The state absorbed the wealthy and powerful Islamic foundations. Challenged by the possibility that Islam (like Kurdish ethnicity) might form the basis for a rival political identity, the new state increasingly secularized and incorporated public Islam into its own institutions (Eissenstat 2004). The founders of the republic, many of whom had been in exile in France before the war, had been strongly influenced by the French Revolution and its Jacobin tra-dition of anti-clericalism and state-enforced secularism, or laïcité. Thus, state Islam became a central pillar of republican national identity. The Turkish term laiklik (laicism, although often translated as secularism) means state control over religion and a strong state role in keeping reli-gion out of the public sphere.

For the Kemalists, that is, followers of Ataturk’s vision of a Westernized, secularized nation of Turks, religion, like ethnicity, was a dangerous,

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divisive force in society that could not be eliminated and so had to be kept under the control of the state. They established the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet Isleri Baskanlıgı) that trains and oversees all religious specialists, supervises mosques, religious schools and Islamic education, vets sermons and translates religious texts and interprets them (Kuru 2009). Religious brotherhoods were outlawed. Thus, Ottoman reli-gious institutions and scholars (ulama) were absorbed by the state and no independent ulama was allowed to emerge, although individual sheikhs and charismatic religious leaders continued to practice out of sight of the state. The display of religious symbols in public places, such as schools, state buildings and hospitals, was banned. Western clothing became compulsory for men, and women were prohibited from covering their heads in public institutions, like parliament, the civil service and, more recently, universities. That prohibition was only lifted in 2013.

Kemalists came to imagine national solidarity as unity of blood and race in which being Muslim was considered to be an essential component of having Turkish blood (Cagaptay 2006). Non-Muslims could be citizens, but were not Turkish. In other words, intolerance against non-Muslims, particularly Armenian and Greek Christians, has roots not in Islam, but in the belief that non-Muslims cannot be loyal to the Turkish state because their primary loyalty is to outside powers that wish to undermine and divide Turkey. This paradigm of the nation threatened by enemies without and within became a Leitmotif of Kemalist nationalism and until recently was heavily indoctrinated through the Turkish educational system.

Kemalism supported a culturally unitary, Westernized society of secu-lar Muslims in which state institutions and the military played a special tutelary role as guarantors of these values. Religious brotherhoods and dervish orders had continued to operate clandestinely after being banned early in the Republic, but after the introduction of multi-party political contests in 1950, they began to play a more open role in the Turkish political arena. Politicians appealed to Islamic sentiment and courted religious leaders who could deliver the votes of their followers.

While the state presented itself as the guardian of laicism, by con-trast, governments represented the interests of their party and of the electo rate, a substantial percentage of which was and is devout in belief and conservative in lifestyle. A 1999 survey showed a high level of religious practice in Turkey, with nine out of ten adults fasting dur-ing the holy month of Ramadan and almost half praying five times a day (Çarkoglu and Toprak 2007). In 2000, between 40 and 60 per cent of all respondents rated themselves as religious. A decade later, 83 per cent defined themselves as religious (Çarkoglu and Kalaycıoglu 2010).


Nevertheless, polls showed very little support in the population for Islamic law or even for Islam in politics (Çarkoglu and Toprak 2007).

As a result, the Kemalist state and elected governments have clashed almost continually. Since 1950, there have been three coups and several interventions by the military that stopped short of tanks in the street. Since the 1960s, 27 political parties were banned in Turkey, most by the Constitutional Court. These fell into two main categories, parties viewed as engaging in political Islam in violation of laicism, and those on the left (particularly the Kurdish left) seen to be threatening territo-rial integrity and national unity (Celep 2012).

5.2 New Muslim publics

The 1980 coup can be considered a turning point in the fate of Islamic politics in Turkey. The coup itself had two consequences of interest here, a loosening of the reins on Islam and development of a new economy. The army withdrew to its barracks and an election was held in 1983 that brought to power an economist, Turgut Özal. The army encouraged Özal’s government to allow more freedom for a modest, state-defined form of Turkish Islam in order to counter the appeal of socialist and communist ideas to Turkey’s youth, a programme that came to be called the Turkish–Islamic Synthesis. The government incorporated Islam in school textbooks and built more preacher training schools. The freedom to discuss Islamic ideas coincided with deregulation of the media as a result of technological changes beyond the ability of the government to control. Long-forbidden topics, including sharia law, began to be publicly aired. Furthermore, the coup had crushed the left, leaving the field open for the emerging Islamist movement to become a voice for social justice.

Özal’s opening of Turkey’s insular, state-led economy to competition in the world market led to the rise of a new political and economic elite. Small- and medium-sized businesses in the provinces, many of which were owned by pious Muslims, became so successful that the press named them the Anatolian Tigers. They built their own business networks and profes-sional organizations and their wealth created a market for Islam-friendly bourgeois products and lifestyles, like stylish Islamic fashions, literature, commodities, leisure activities and gated communities. An elite Muslim lifestyle emerged that was shaped as much by the market as by Islam. Within this consumer framework, to be Muslim could be interpreted as urban and upwardly mobile for the first time in Republican history.

The pious elite’s wealth supported overtly Islamic politicians and their programmes operating within the democratic system. A series of

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Islamist parties under the leadership of Necmettin Erbakan did well in elections in the 1980s and 1990s, expanding their voter base from Anatolian towns to the cities. Two-fifths of those voting for the Welfare Party in 1995 identified themselves as secularist (Kentel 1995; Çarkoglu and Toprak 2000). Election advertisements avoided religious language and instead referred to issues like pensions, affordable housing, health care and the environment (Öncü 1995). The party’s approach to orga-nizing took advantage of local grassroots organizations (White 2002). Pious women played a big role in the parties’ successes by mobilizing support among other women.

However, Erbakan fuelled Kemalist fears by speaking against laicism and Westernization. The works of Egyptian and Indian Islamist thinkers like Mawdudi, Hasan al Banna and Sayyid Qutb had been translated into Turkish in the 1970s and continued to generate interest among Erbakan’s followers. These works advocated Islam as a political project to gain control over the state in order to set up an Islamic govern-ment. In January 1998 the Welfare Party was closed down by the Constitutional Court for violating the laic nature of the state and Erbakan was banned from politics for five years. The Welfare Party was succeeded by the Virtue Party, which Erbakan helped lead from behind the scenes. One after the other, Erbakan’s Islamist parties were closed down by the state, only to re-emerge with a different name and revised, generally more moderate programme. In 2001, two young politicians, the charismatic populist Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Abdullah Gül, broke away and became leaders of a new party, the AKP. The AKP won the 2002 elections and has remained in power, replacing Erbakan’s Islamist movement with a new formula for Islam in politics.

By the 2000s, political Islamism, both as an ideological movement and in the form of political parties like Welfare and Virtue, had been pushed to the social and political margins as the AKP and new Muslim publics came to define the mainstream. These included pious political pragmatists like the AKP leaders (White 2005); a Muslim bourgeoisie (Navaro-Yashin 2002); the global socio-economic networks of the preacher Fethullah Gülen (Turam 2007; Yavuz and Esposito 2003); and what the journalist Mustafa Akyol referred to as ‘free-lance Muslims’, young pious Muslims experimenting with religion and lifestyle and shopping among Islamic forums and communities.2 It became a mark of the modern, thinking Muslim individual to be a ‘conscious’ (suurlu) Muslim, who chooses to practice his or her faith (and chooses also how to do so), as opposed to blindly obeying tradition.


The younger Islamic generation was invested in current political issues, not loyalty to regional patrons and religious brotherhoods. Many were urban youth in their twenties and thirties, educated in secular institutions or theological schools, desiring upward mobility and economic security. They were open to new ideas and models of society that would incorporate these aspirations, while retaining a Muslim lifestyle and moral values. Sixty-three per cent of respondents to a 2007 survey described themselves as ‘modern religious’, rather than ‘traditional religious’ (37 per cent). They tended to be young, upwardly mobile, nationalist, pro-EU and liberal in their views of Muslim practice (Yılmaz: 39–40).

Among the most influential Muslim publics is the Gülen or Hizmet (Service) movement, which consists of independent foundations set up by a global network of modernist Muslims who follow the teachings of a charismatic Turkish preacher, Fethullah Gülen (Turam 2007; Yavuz and Esposito 2003). The Gülenist foundations support a large number of schools in Turkey and abroad that train what Gülen has called a ‘golden generation’ of youth with know-how and knowledge to excel in the modern world, but with the civic and moral values of good Muslims. The foundations coordinate their global charity and investment activi-ties. Gülenist networks overlap with the Muslim bourgeoisie. A recent study indicated that some pious businessmen feel pressured to join these networks or face ostracism and loss of customers (Toprak 2009). The Gülenists have been accused in the media of infiltrating Turkey’s security services and other state institutions. They are arguably the most powerful Muslim network in Turkey at present besides the political and economic networks of the AKP.

Other more traditional Muslim groups, like the Nakshibendi and Suleymanci orders, have limited and primarily moral influence over their followers, perhaps guiding their votes in elections. There is no single emblematic Islamic group or movement that plays a leading role in Turkey and, beyond the state-linked Diyanet, no independent ulama. A group of ‘Islamic intellectuals’, some linked to Gülen, hold conferences and act as media pundits, but none has an extensive following beyond their role as conservative opinion makers.

5.3 ‘A person is not secular, the state is secular’

The AKP won the 2002 elections with 34 per cent of the popular vote. In 2011 it increased its share of the vote to 49.9 per cent (compared to 19 per cent for the main opposition party, the Republican People’s

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Party or CHP). Although led by openly pious Muslim politicians, AKP claims not to be Islamic, but rather a centre-right conservative party that serves a broad and varied constituency across Turkey. AKP’s pro-business policies and its good stewardship of the economy – from severe economic crisis in 2001 to the world’s seventeenth largest economy today – gained not only the votes of entrepreneurs from Anatolia, but also the support of the urban business class. The party has given Turkey much-needed stability and opened new markets. Despite a recent trend towards authoritarianism, the AKP’s call in the early years of its tenure for a more liberal and democratic political order appealed to a wide variety of citizens, from urban cosmopolitan elites and liberals who desired liberal democracy, and pious Muslims who chafed under laicist restrictions, to Kurds who desired cultural rights.

AKP politicians and supportive Muslim theologians have developed a unique national view that envisions pious Muslims running a secular government and state system (White 2005). Islam enters the picture as a quality of personhood that the politician brings to his work in the form of ethics, rather than as an ideological position or a desire to change the system to impose Islamic law. The personalization of Islam as a public identity has encouraged experimentation in public expressions of faith and faith-based lifestyles. It has shaped a new understanding of the nation not based on the Kemalist combination of Turkish blood and Muslim heritage, but on Turkish culture/civilization and Muslim faith. Although the traditional nationalist emphasis on Turkishness remains intact, the meaning of being Turkish and being Muslim has changed.

Prime Minister Erdogan made this distinction clear when he visited post-Mubarak Egypt in September 2011. He was given a hero’s welcome at the Cairo airport by the Muslim Brotherhood that believed he repre-sented an Islamic democracy. To the Brotherhood’s disappointment, in his speech Erdogan clarified that Turkey was not an Islamic democracy, but a secular democracy. A few days later, he repeated his message in Tunis, ‘A secular state has an equal distance to all religious groups, including Muslim, Christian, Jewish and atheist people … this is not secularism in the Anglo-Saxon or Western sense; a person is not secular, the state is secular. A Muslim can govern a secular state in a successful way. In Turkey, 99 percent of the population is Muslim, and it did not pose any problem. You can do the same here’ (Hürriyet Daily News 2011).

It is clear in hindsight that the Muslim Brotherhood’s idea of an Islamic democracy under President Mohamed Morsi was driven by ideological purity, rather than an attempt to extend the umbrella of government representation to encompass non-Islamist Egyptians. Both


Morsi and Erdogan relied on majoritarianism (‘we won the most votes’) for legitimacy. Even though the experiment in Egypt was cut short by a coup, it could be argued that only the AKP’s constituency was broad, varied and skilful enough to perform long term in a healthy electoral democracy. Additionally, Egyptian governments can rely on rents from the Suez Canal and United States assistance to prop up their economies and thus do not feel pushed to initiate reforms, while Turkish govern-ments, by contrast, must actively perform and deliver services and prosperity in order to stay in power.

Widespread street demonstrations in Turkey in summer of 2013 showed the limits of AKP’s centrism. Having neutralized the threat from the military through a series of trials of high-level officers accused of plotting coups that jailed dozens of former military leaders, some for life, the AKP has gone ahead with a conservative social agenda that explicitly ignores liberal views and lifestyles. The government is imple-menting enormous infrastructural transformations of Turkish cities and countryside with little input by either experts or affected citizens. The wave of 2013 protests began with police attacks on a peaceful sit-in to save a public park in the centre of Istanbul, one of the few remaining green spaces, from being bulldozed to build an Ottoman-themed mall. The aim of protests was not, as elsewhere in the MENA region, to over-throw the regime, but was an attempt by young secular and some pious citizens to push back against what was perceived to be the AKP’s (and particularly Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s) increasingly auto-cratic and oppressive style of rule.

Secularists point to a perceived greater number of women covering their heads as an indicator of increasing Islamicization, although sta-tistics show a decline over the past decade (Carkoglu 2009: 456). What has changed is the visibility of covering. Previously headscarves were associated with peasants, squatters and household servants – women invisible to the urban secular population. Now fashionable, eye-catching scarves are worn in previously unwelcome places, behind the wheels of SUVs, in fashionable neighbourhoods and shopping centres and in the presidential palace. Nevertheless, there is some evidence of an increase in community pressure to dress and behave conservatively for both men and women, and to fast during Ramadan, for instance (Toprak 2009). One can observe increased conservatism in state institutions, the bureaucracy and Turkish political and social life in general.

The AKP has shown no interest in instituting sharia law, but the liberal principles behind some AKP-led reforms have been almost continually contradicted in practice, particularly with regard to women’s status.

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AKP municipalities have been consistently unfriendly toward women’s shelters. Party leaders, including the Prime Minister, have reinforced tra-ditional gender norms by emphasizing that women are valued, but not equal, and that their proper role is taking care of the home and children. The number of women in political office has remained extremely low for both secular and conservative parties. Turkey in 2009 had the lowest share of women in the workforce in Europe, 22 per cent (30 per cent in 2011), a number that had actually decreased substantially over the previous decade. By comparison, the average in OECD countries was 62 and developing countries 33 per cent (Turkstat 2011; World Bank and TSPM 2009). Some of this downward trend can be explained by urbanization. As women agricultural labourers move to the city, they no longer wish to ‘work’. The ideals of modernity and upward mobility for many women is represented, as it was in 1950s America, by a finan-cially secure family in which the woman does not need to work, but can express the family’s new class status through consumption (Ayata 2002). Nevertheless, the new Muslim nationalists, from the AKP to the Gülen movement, model conservative gender norms. They have placed few women in decision-making roles or in centres of power.

The conservative view of women as embedded in society continues to stand in the way of implementing new liberal practices and laws. In this view, a person’s rights derive from their family and community status, so women are never individuals. She must be a member in good standing of her family and community, that is, an honourable woman under the himaye (protection, control) of honourable men. As a result, women’s legal rights have been diluted by judges and officials acting out normative, rather than legal, standards. This cultural understanding of rights and requirement of male guardianship impedes women’s freedom of movement and ability to play public and political roles that would require a woman politician, for instance, to live alone in the capital away from her family.

This is a far cry from pious women’s political activism in the Islamist movement in the 1980s and 1990s, albeit in women-only branches. Once the AKP won elections and consolidated its power, Islamist activist women were largely locked out of meaningful participation in political decision-making. A comparative study of women’s participa-tion in Jordan’s Islamic Action Front party and Yemen’s Islah Party suggests that struggle against external challenges opens windows of opportunity for Muslim women to become active, but once strife ends and conditions normalize, those windows tend to close (Clark and Schwedler 2003). As parties consolidate power and activists are absorbed


into male-dominated political systems, women’s revolutionary role is replaced by nationalist discourse and imagery that represents women as passive emblems of national or party virtues.

Since the party’s landslide elections in 2007, if not earlier, the AKP has displayed an à la carte approach to rights, autocratic tendencies and a lack of tolerance of criticism of the government. The AKP has stacked state institutions from the judiciary to the Turkish Academy of Sciences, which had previously been dominated by Kemalists, with conservative insiders. The government has prosecuted, financially punished and repressed its critics. Bans on Internet sites, attacks on press freedom and on freedom of expression are areas of serious concern. It is important to point out that repression was common under past secular governments and certainly under military rule and appears to be a shared authori-tarian attitude and reflective of a general intolerance, rather than something that can be derived from AKP’s Muslim roots. A 2007 survey showed that the majority of the population valued democracy and civil liberties, but had little sensitivity toward others’ rights. Democracy was understood as a system that represented the views of the majority, rather than protecting the rights of minorities. The same survey shows that a third of the population was highly intolerant toward others who were different (Kurdish, Jewish, Armenian, Greek, atheist, gay) (Çarkoglu and Toprak 2007:49–56, 79, 86).

Despite all this, the AKP was in no danger of losing local elections in 2014, even without the votes of the ‘other’ 50 per cent, the Gezi protesters, disgruntled secularists and liberals. The party can still point to its successes – economic stability, infrastructural improvements and an enhanced image abroad. Stability is good for business, whether the owner is pious or not. In an interesting development, a group calling itself ‘Anti-Capitalist Muslims’ took part in the Gezi protests. They object that, under the AKP, Islam has ceased to be a faith, but has instead become a form of upward mobility. In protest, they organized an iftar (fast breaking meal) alternative to the elaborate and expensive affair sponsored by the AKP in Taksim Square. The Anti-Capitalist Muslims laid newspapers on the ground along the road leading from the square, covered them with donated cloths and donated food and invited the public to eat for free.

5.4 Conclusion: Islam in power

In July 2011 the post-Mubarak Egyptian governing council, dominated by the military, came out in favour of a ‘Turkish model’ of governance,

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but it was clear that they had in mind the authoritarian Kemalist model of military tutelage (clearly demonstrated by the 2013 coup), not the ‘Muslim democracy’ desired by the Arab street (Kirkpatrick 2011). Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, at least before Erdogan’s visit, considered AKP to be a model of an Islamic democracy (‘Erdogan Presents’ 2011). On October 23, 2011, Tunisians held the first free election of the Arab Spring and gave the moderate Islamist Nahda Party, which modelled itself on the AKP, 40 per cent of the vote. Voter trust failed as Nahda then appeared to allow radical Islamists free rein. While Arabs may be cool toward Turkey’s goal of regional leadership, there has been great interest – if not success – in emulating Turkey’s apparent ability to keep alive a pious Muslim identity while consolidating power in a demo-cratic system. Of even greater interest is Turkey’s economic success and entrepreneurial know-how as a means of rescuing failing regional economies.

The question raised by our examination of the Turkish experience is what social and political changes are necessary for this to be accom-plished. In Turkey, Islamists were in the opposition and slowly became incorporated into the ruling power structure through the habit of fair elections, despite opposition by the military and Kemalist state institutions. In attempting to gain a greater national constituency, ideological Islamism ceded place to political pragmatism. This resulted in what Asef Bayat has called post-Islamism, that is, the preponderance of non-Islamic motivations in political action by pious Muslims (as in Iran, where secularism is expressed in Islamic terms) (Bayat 2007). In Turkey, this took the form of the privatization of Islam as a personal attribute of ‘Muslimhood’, allowing pious Muslims to run a secular government system.

This points to the importance of localism, as Islam moves away from being a transnationally inspired ideology to a local identity defined in distinction and/or opposition to other identities on the political play-ing field (for instance, in Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood’s identity was shaped by competition with Salafists; in Turkey, competition was within the parameters of Turkish nationalism as Islamists became Muslim nationalists; Islamist agendas were co-opted by the regime in Morocco; Nahda put Islamist discourses aside in favour of nationalism, but its fate was shaped by interaction with Islamist extremists operating on the same political field).

In Turkey, Islam was transformed by the economic opening and the consequent development of a pious bourgeoisie; it became a form of personal expression, a cultural attribute, a conscious choice. The


political and foreign policy agendas were not set according to Islamic principles, but rather in response to pragmatic concerns to broaden the AKP’s electoral constituency, outside pressures from the EU, interest in economic development and a romanticized model of former Ottoman glory and cosmopolitanism. The Gülen movement, while run by pious people motivated by Islamic ideals, similarly appears to be engaged in public activities that pursue non-Islamic goals, whether in pursuit of education or power. It may well be that the willingness to step aside from an Islamic ideological identity is a necessary first step in Muslim-majority countries wishing to emulate Turkey.

As Islam moves away from being an ideology and is privatized, it is subjected to market forces (success at the polls brings success in society; Islamic practices and markers become claims to distinction). Urbanization, technological advances like the cell phone and Internet, media expansion and deregulation and the decline of the left as the voice of social justice all play a role in the rise of Islam as a political and social force and its subsequent transformation once in power.

The AKP also has resurrected the Ottoman past that had been largely ignored by the Kemalists, thereby developing an alternative definition of the Turkish nation that does not imagine Turkey – as the Kemalists do – as a nation embattled within its present political borders, but as the self-confident successor to the Ottomans in a rediscovered (and reinvented) past. For instance, instead of commemorating the 1923 founding of the Turkish nation, Muslim nationalists pay public tribute to historical events like the 1453 Ottoman Muslim conquest of Christian Byzantium. This event is re-enacted by municipalities and visually depicted in public places, the date celebrated with festivities. Under the Ottoman millet system, non-Muslim religious communities were assigned places within the Ottoman system that allowed them semi-independence in daily affairs, but not equality with Muslim subjects of the empire. AKP politicians often refer to the millet model when discussing outreach to Christian communities. Some Islamist pundits in the Erbakan era offered the Prophet Muhammad’s Constitution of Medina as a basis for devising plural legal systems within contemporary Turkey, so that Muslims could choose Islamic law, while non-Muslims could rule themselves as they chose. This idea, however, gained no toehold and is rarely discussed in the AKP era.

While Islam in its present incarnation in Turkey appears to be com-patible with democracy, none of these processes necessarily lead to liberalism or tolerance. When Islam moves away from being driven by ideology and, through the pragmatics of rule, becomes a territorial,

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national, ethnic or racial marker (as in Malay Islamism; or Pakistanis voting for non-Islamic reasons like anti-Americanism), this reflects parochial understandings and local contestations of power and interest that are far from liberal or tolerant, as they are often based in com-munity and cultural norms. Turkey’s AKP has changed laws to meet EU accession standards, but implementation still tends to follow illiberal community norms.

In other words, cultural change is necessary, along with structural change, to integrate a Muslim identity within liberal democratic struc-tures. Asef Bayat (2010) writes about the ‘quiet encroachment of the ordinary’ in Iran and Egypt, the subtle actions taken by individuals within a collective society that re-socialize government and religious movements and thereby create new identities and opportunities for change. This is a slow and unpredictable process, but one that Turkey has accelerated by admitting new and sometimes disconcerting influ-ences through globalization, the free flow of commodities, new media, urbanization and upward mobility. These changes have caused strife, anxiety and push-back, and created new divisions in society, but have opened the door to further transformation. The Turkish example leads one to posit that, aside from local, idiosyncratic factors, central to pro-democratic change may be the development of an entrepreneurial, globalized Islamic bourgeoisie. In the process of gaining upward mobi-lity, these ‘choosing’ Muslims privatize Muslim identity and begin to base policy and other decisions on pragmatic reasoning that maximizes ‘piety and profit’, rather than on Islamic ideology. Local factors provide a map of Turkey’s particular path to an Islamic bourgeoisie, but do not necessarily demarcate the only road there.

Notes

1. These questions emerge from productive discussions held in Chiba and Perth in preparation for this volume. The chapter builds to some extent on ideas developed in White (2012), which are here tested within a boader compara-tive frame.

2. Personal communication, 3 November 2007.

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6Survival, Triumph and Fall: The Political Transformation of the Muslim Brotherhood in EgyptHousam Darwisheh

Post-Mubarak Egypt brought the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) movement to power after decades of being in opposition and facing repression. Through its political wing, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), the MB controlled the newly elected Egyptian parliament before the Supreme Constitutional Court dissolved it in June 2012. One of its leaders, Muhammad Morsi, was elected President in Egypt’s first competitive elections on 24 June 2012 and the MB dominated the drafting of a new constitution that was approved in a referendum on 30 November 2012. Behind these political successes was a strong and experienced movement with an extensive organizational infrastructure and long-term strategic vision that received support from a broad social base on matters that went deeper than simply religion.

The MB, an integral part of Islamist activism in Egypt, had success-fully exploited contingent opportunities that arose under authoritarian conditions and after the overthrow of Mubarak. The social, economic and political contexts in which the MB developed and consolidated its organization and social base were equally important to its achieve-ments. This chapter analyses how the MB’s long trajectory of multi-dimensional activism and deep experiences shaped the MB’s initiatives and manoeuvres that brought it from dissent to power after the uprising of January 2011. The chapter concludes with comments on the over-throw of the MB by a coup d’etat in July 2013 that exposed not just the MB’s own flaws but the overall failure of the ‘Egyptian Spring’ to move from uprising to stable, pluralist democracy.

6.1 The Muslim Brotherhood in opposition: an overview

After Hasan al-Banna founded it in 1928 the MB went on to influence the course of Islamism and dominate the terrain of opposition politics

Housam Darwisheh 109

in Egypt for more than 80 years. In the process, the MB built and capitalized on an organizational model that spread the movement’s religious message and ideological appeal to educated Egyptians. The lat-ter engaged with the MB’s efforts at seeking grassroots support through raising social consciousness, conducting charitable work (Munson 2001) and developing active educational programmes (Langohr 2005).

The MB diverged at important points with significant consequences for the orientation of its activism. In its growth from 1928 to 1954, the MB, like other national movements, assumed the form of cultural, political, economic and military resistance against British colonial rule. The MB mobilized around national and regional issues when national-ist challenges to colonial rule and struggles in Palestine intensified. In 1949, however, its popularity led King Farouk to ban the MB. From 1954 to 1970, there followed a phase of conflict with Gamal Abdel Nasser’s regime. The regime consolidated its power and populist legitimacy by adopting pan-Arab nationalism, socialism and an anti-imperialist foreign policy hostile towards Israel and the West (Waterbury 1983). Up to the 1960s, Nasser constructed a social contract which guaranteed Egyptians employment, free education, medical care, cheap food and housing. Wary of the MB’s strength Nasser contained it in different ways. He brought universities, civil society and professional organizations under direct state control, and restricted the MB’s societal outreach. When eventually he forced the MB underground, accusing its members of attempting to assassinate him in 1954 (Mitchell 1969: 139, 150), Nasser had almost uprooted the MB’s organizational structure and its presence in Egyptian society. The MB’s isolation can also be attributed to the fact that Arab nationalism, and not Islamism, characterized the political con-text and discourse of the 1950s and 1960s.

However, Egypt’s humiliating defeat in the 1967 war damaged the appeal of Nasserism. Nasser’s failure to create a viable mass political movement was compounded by the Saudi Arabia–United States alliance against populist regimes in the Middle East. When Anwar Sadat suc-ceeded Nasser, the former dismantled Nasserism by promoting economic liberalization to encourage growth in private sector investment. Under Sadat and then Husni Mubarak, limited political pluralism and economic opening from 1970 to the early 1990s reintegrated the MB into Egypt’s political and economic system. From then until Mubarak’s overthrow, the MB consolidated its social and political organization.

To understand the MB’s rise and transformation, it is necessary to examine the international and national contexts in which the MB operated. In Alan Richard and John Waterbury’s multilevel analyses,

110 Survival, Triumph and Fall

wealth, diplomacy and military factors aided the rise of Islamism. First, the Islamists’ competitors, particularly those of the secular left (Arab nationalists, communists and Ba‘hists) were defeated by support that the United States and Saudi Arabia gave to Islamist movements against populist regimes. Sadat also employed Islam to mobilize support for his policies and counter the opposition from the left to his abandonment of Nasser’s social and foreign policies. Second, globalization – with its revolution in information technology and communication, and its diffusion of neoliberal ideas – prompted the resistance of Islamists and other dissident movements in the Middle East and North Africa to the resultant poverty, economic inequality and Western economic, political and cultural hegemony. In addition, Islamic groups gained more popular support because of the wars in Iraq, the persistence of the Palestinian problem, the ‘war on terror’ and US backing for corrupt and repressive regimes against Islamic opposition. At the national level, Islamist move-ments joined three social groups disenchanted with nationalist popu-list regimes that failed to achieve satisfactory economic development. These were a counter-elite of businessmen and professionals, a stratum of frustrated intellectuals and unemployed or under-employed univer-sity or secondary school graduates, and a mass base of the young, semi-educated unemployed. The Islamists also recruited from the ranks of the urban lumpenproletariat (Richards and Waterbury 2008: 365–9). In this context, the Islamists tapped anti-regime sentiments to mobilize an emerging political community. From the 1970s the Islamists expanded their networks of educational and social services at a time when public services had collapsed owing to economic crises, corruption and rapid increases in national and student population. Thus, the MB embedded its organization in society such that the regime could neither uproot it nor ignore its existence as a social and political force. By the 1970s, the MB had rebuilt its organization and been revived politically by contest-ing Egypt’s national and local elections.

From the 1980s, those adversely affected by economic crises and inte-gration with global markets increasingly challenged the political ideas of the Arab regimes. New political actors emerged, mobilizing with the power of an Islamic idiom that incorporated themes of nationalism, freedom and social justice:

in the Arab world, the political class par excellence remains the edu-cated middle class – state employees, students, professionals and the intelligentsia – who mobilized the ‘street’ in the 1950s and 1960s with overarching ideologies of nationalism, Ba‘thism, socialism and


social justice. Islamism has been the latest of these grand worldviews (Bayat 2003: 12).

To that extent, the ascendancy of the Islamists after Mubarak derived from decades of opposition and socioeconomic and political activism, which equipped them with legitimacy and organization that other forces lacked. Furthermore, the MB profited when Sadat launched economic liberalization, called infitah (Open Door Economic Policy), accompa-nied by an often overlooked religious infitah meant to legitimize the economic liberalization and transformation. Many MB members active in the liberalized service and financial sectors formed a rising Islamic business class. By 1980, ‘eight of the eighteen families who dominated Egypt’s private sector were affiliated with the Muslim Brothers. Economic enterprises linked to the society, many concentrated in real estate and currency speculation, [might] have constituted as much as 40 percent of the private sector’ (Beinin 2005: 120).

6.2 Old leadership, new generation

The 1970s were a critical period in Egypt’s politics also because of Sadat’s shift towards an alliance with the United States. Before it would resume aid to Egypt, the United States put in place four strict conditions: ‘making peace with Israel, stepping down as the leader of Arab nationa-lism, opening the doors for foreign goods and investments and getting rid of the Soviet influence’ (Amin 2011: 53). This led to dismantling Nasser’s state welfare policies and its institutions and strengthening the relationship between the business and political elites. By the end of the decade, Nasser and Sadat’s policies had brought almost all sectors of the economy to crisis but Egypt’s suffering was mostly blamed on Sadat’s policies of liberalization.

In this milieu, a generation imbued with the spirit of Nasserism came unexpectedly to constitute the nucleus of the Islamic movement in gen-eral and the MB in particular. The defeat of 1967 and Nasser’s death in 1970 created a huge ideological and political vacuum which was signifi-cantly filled by a new youth and student generation. This period and this generation produced some of the most important activists and Islamists, including the presidential candidates in post-Mubarak Egypt, namely Khairat al-Shatir, Abd al-Mun‘in Abul Futuh, Hazim Salah Abu Ismail and Muhammad Morsi. Under Nasser, the MB had been driven under-ground. Many leaders were imprisoned and some members had gone into exile. By the time Sadat released the leaders, the MB no longer had


an organization. Imprisonment produced a generation of conservative MB veterans who formed the leadership but cautiously avoided confron-tation with the regime. Yet although they were not the force of Islamic activism, these leaders were widely respected as a ‘legendary’ force that had withstood imprisonment and suppression. That respect brought them the collaboration of Islamist groups already active on university campuses and in control of many student unions. These groups, which had chosen Islamic activism under the name of al-Gamat al-Islamiyya, did not have an organizational structure until they decided to operate under the MB (Al-Zayat 2005: 85–91; Mustafa 2005: 212–13). With their involvement, the MB revived its organization.

The MB’s 1970s generation was shaped by several factors. It gained from Nasser’s commitment to public education. In the first decade of infitah, it enjoyed a space for activism freed from the spell of Nasserism. Not caught in the confrontation between Nasser and the Islamists, it was independent of the MB itself. Around the same time, they felt the impact of ‘petro-Islam’ on Islamic activism as the ‘energy crisis’ follow-ing the 1973 war against Israel changed the balance of power between Egypt and Saudi Arabia. When Saudi Arabia imposed its oil embargo against the United States, it gained more than untold petrodollars from the escalating energy prices. Saudi Arabia and its interpretation of Islam (Wahhabisim) gained a strong position and legitimacy in Egypt and else-where in the Arab and Muslim world. Through its religious networks, subsidies and the flow of migrant labour, Saudi Arabia exerted influence on state–society relations in other countries. For example, the capable cohort of professionals produced by Nasser’s educational reforms ben-efitted from the opportunities that were present in the oil-rich states. In Saudi Arabia, the oil boom spurred modernization that was a boon for Egyptian educators among whom were a sizeable number of Islamists. The MB managed to expand in the Saudi universities and business sector, including Islamic banking. At the same time, the remittances of migrants injected enormous amounts of money into the national economies of the Middle East (Beinin 2005). Most of all Saudi Arabia directly supported Islamic associations, mosques and Islamic groups in the universities. For instance, Saudi-sponsored Hajj and Umra trips were organized by Islamic groups in Egyptian universities while most of the Islamic books distributed free to university students were supplied by Saudi Arabia (Tammam 2012: 67–8). The MB’s revival was aided by such activities and the attraction of student activists to its ranks.

The main architect behind the union of Islamic activists and MB was Umar al-Timisani (1904–86), the MB’s third Supreme Guide, who later


paved the way for the MB’s participation in Egypt’s parliamentary and syndicate elections. Umar al-Timisani revived al-Banna’s concept of Islam as a comprehensive system that governed all aspects of life:

[I]t is the vastness of the territory covered by Islam that has led to the dramatic resurgence of calls for Islam as the solution to societal issues. Whether the problem is Egypt’s defeat by Israel in 1967 or the lack of affordable housing in 1993, activists promote Islam as a political, social, economic, and spiritual embodiment of the solutions (Abed-Kotob 1995: 323).

A tenacious devotion to this conception of Islam sustained the MB ideologically against state repression and informed its hierarchal organizational structure. The MB had a two-prong strategy: internal recon-struction and organizational consolidation (Tanzim), and external expansion in society through social activism and engagement in state institutions. The MB attained both goals under Sadat and in the first decade of Mubarak’s rule, two periods of relatively tolerant rule that allowed the MB and anti-regime Islamists to participate in politics and ‘play by the rules’. The Islamists’ strategy was to penetrate state insti-tutions to weaken the regime’s control of political and social spheres. An increasing number of young Islamist activists in universities and student unions helped the MB to expand and strengthen its presence in professional organizations, student associations and university fac-ulty clubs (Wickham 2002). Through his writings such as Dhikrayat la Mudhakkarat (Memories Not Memoirs 1988) and practice Al-Tilmisani guided the MB towards active political participation and attracting and using the political experience of the Islamist students. He was able thus to immunize the MB against a repeat of their radicalization and inclina-tion towards violence during Nasser’s rule. Hasan al-Hudaibi, the MB’s second Supreme Guide, through his famous writing, Du’at la Qudata 1977 (Preachers, not Judges), also denounced the ideology of mili-tants. Consequently, the MB’s transformation went beyond ideological change to active interaction with society that broadened the MB’s social bases, a source of the MB’s strength.

6.2.1 Diversification and outreach

Mubarak decided that repressing political dissent would be too costly and counterproductive (Lust-Okar 2005: 65). To neutralize militant Islamic groups, he tolerated the MB’s social and political activism and allowed it to contest local and parliamentary elections. Even so, Mubarak


kept the movement illegal. In 1984 and 1987, the MB fielded candidates on the electoral lists of licensed parties in parliamentary elections that took place under the party-list proportional representation system. After 1990, they contested as independents under the candidate-centred electoral system. Yet this limited electoral scope gave the MB room to manoeuvre within an authoritarian system and marked a turning point in the trajectory of political Islam as formal institutional channels were available to mobilization and the advancement of its goals and agendas.

In fact, the Mubarak regime prevented the growth of any real opposi-tion in parliament or in the streets only to boost the MB’s outreach and image as the only viable opposition given the latter’s relative freedom in the socioeconomic sphere. However, the state under Mubarak used emergency power and military courts to suppress all kinds of opposition. The Mubarak regime could claim that the stability it provided would be undermined if the door of political reform were opened. Still, the regime faced a dilemma: it could check the rise of the Islamists through coercion, proscription and the manipulation of laws and rules govern-ing political participation, but it could not compete with Islamism as a voice against the status quo (Khoury 1983; Tessler 1997). Thus, Islamism penetrated institutions like universities and the judiciary and influenced cultural policy through private-sector Islamic institutions and groups (Tartoussieh 2009). The Islamists also promoted ideational and material alternatives to the regime’s failed policies. Rather than mobilize for an Islamic state, Islamists presented programmes for social, economic and political reforms while drawing on Islam for ethical and legal guidance (Zubaida 2001: 24). Hence, the Islamists’ emphasis on the restoration of dignity and self-empowerment even resonated among the large majority of Muslims of all social and economic strata, who could not be characterized as Islamist (Ayoob 2004: 11). The objective was not to bring down the Mubarak regime but produce a ‘passive revo-lution’ that Islamized civil society (Bayat 2007: 191).

Gradually the politicization of the MB’s social base reconciled its political and cultural agendas into a goal of establishing a state ruled by Islamic law (sharia) and having a democratic system with an Islamic frame of reference. For them to compete for power and popular legiti-macy, the MB had to address and represent the interests of a group much larger than their own ideological constituency (Yilmaz 2009). As the cost of being a rival to the regime via electoral participation rose due to state repression – particularly in the 1990s when the regime used the rise of radical Islamists as an excuse to crush the MB – the MB’s commitment to political participation (without direct confrontation


with the regime) was not disputed by its members and was supported by followers and sympathizers in civil society and even the non-Islamist camp. It was not due to a change in the MB’s ideological orientation that Islamists abided by ‘democratic’ institutional channels to gain power. Rather, the rise of Islamism as a force capable of challenging the political order (Ayoob 2007: 631–2) accounted for the Islamists’ increas-ing commitment to reform and democracy that set fair rules for the political game.

The MB’s organizational strength, abstention from violence and commitment to political engagement under existing arrangements and through formal channels entrenched the MB in the state and soci-ety. Mubarak’s relative tolerance allowed the MB’s members to contest elections but the rules did not allow them to win and form govern-ments (Brown 2012). Nonetheless the MB gained valuable experience. It created a space within which it could organize, promote its agendas in the media, and mobilize its constituencies, and, in short, evolve and expand. As many of its members paid more attention to political participation, the MB emerged as the main group in opposition in terms of electoral influence and social outreach.

Within the boundaries of their participation, the MB’s active young reformers, especially students and professionals, sought more ambi-tious political involvement in three main domains. The first one was the movement’s participation in parliamentary elections. In the 1984 and 1987 parliamentary elections, the ‘illegal’ MB had chances to collaborate and build alliances with licensed parties, particularly those not perceived to be a threat to Mubarak or Egypt’s power politics. The MB also found election campaigns to be a valuable mode of communication for promoting their ideas and raising social awareness of socioeconomic and political issues (Abed-Kotob 1995: 331) that advanced their long-held endeavour to Islamize society. In turn, the liberal and secular parties needed the MB’s votes to overcome the 8 per cent threshold imposed by electoral laws to enter parliament. Such electoral cooperation, however, remained primarily tactical and strategic.

Second, as the MB’s social and political support among professionals widened, its middle-aged members, who came of political age on col-lege campuses in the 1960s and 1970s, gained control of professional syndicates (El-Ghobashy 2005). The MB had three strong reasons for contesting elections in syndicates: the elections were fairer and less circum scribed than parliamentary ones; the MB could field independ-ent candidates since the elections were not restricted to political parties; and the MB could contest and win these elections. Their rising presence


in the syndicates drove many MB leaders to engage in sustained dialogue and cooperation with secular and nationalist political movements. These interactions provided the MB and other opposition forces com-mon ground to press for expanded political rights, public freedom and democracy. Such cooperation across ideological lines became feasible because opposition forces shared demands for political reform; and there was no contestation for power in the authoritarian setting. More than its participation in parliamentary elections, the MB’s experiences in the professional syndicates marked the movement’s transformation from a religious movement to what appeared to be a political party.

Third, the spread of institutions of Islamic finance, such as Islamic banks and Islamic investment companies, that used the same religious appeal as usury-free enterprises by the mid-1980s accumulated sub-stantial deposits from broad strata of Egyptians (Ibrahim 1988: 641). They increasingly formed a legitimate and protective environment for MB activities. The state’s withdrawal from the social sphere, or the ‘post-populist development of an authoritarian-modernizing state’ (Hinnebusch 1985), gradually weakened the social contract which bound peasants, workers, professionals and the educated middle classes to the state and ruling elite. Unlike populism, post-populism was exclu-sive authoritarian rule grounded in smaller state-bourgeoisie alliances in pursuit of capital accumulation. Hence, the regime’s main support base was no longer the mass citizenry (Hinnebusch 2000: 129–30). Economic liberalization altered the structure of Egyptian society by creating a small wealthy class and a large destitute class (Farah 2009). As a result, Egyptians organized themselves among the lower strata of society to secure basic services such as healthcare, education and goods now best served by an Islamist-dominated civil society and professional organi-zations. As socioeconomic deprivation eroded the regime’s legitimacy, the MB presented itself to the majority of Egyptians as a ‘provider’, assuming a role the regime was unable to play. Indeed, Mubarak had to tolerate the MB’s growing social and economic role as the latter’s ventures bore the burdens of a burgeoning middle class (al-Awadi 2009: 106). Hence, by strengthening its social infrastructure, the Islamists took advantage of the failures of the regime to integrate their organiza-tion with society.

These achievements were followed by the spread of charitable Islamic organizations, which may not have been directly connected to the MB, but allowed many of its members to mobilize via them. Welfare provisioning was extensively developed in Egypt as access to state wel-fare became more difficult and the quality of state services declined.


According to the Ministry of Social Solidarity, there are more than 30,000 charitable organizations in Egypt. They received 336 million Egyptian pounds from donors in 2008. Their activities varied. They raised and distributed donations, established orphanages, received blood donations, took care of the blind and mentally handicapped, organized charity trips, delivered medical supplies to the poor, and helped mount national charity campaigns (Ahram Weekly, 16–22 September 2010). A representative example of the oldest and largest charitable organizations and Islamic NGOs in Egypt is al-Gam‘iya al-Shar‘iya which was founded by Sheikh Mahmoud Khattab al-Subki in 1912. Now it has 882 branches, runs about 6000 mosques in the country, operates several medical centres and organizes medical carnivals to pro-vide health services in marginalized areas in governorates (Allam 2012: 3). With the expansion of Islamist economics (Utvik 2006), moreover, the Islamists’ ability to tap a wider financial activism allowed the MB to consolidate its presence in major professional organizations and build a large power base that could be mobilized for different kinds of elections. The political significance of Islamic activism was not unnoticed by state agencies but the state encouraged ‘Islamic services to the extent that it consider[ed] their services to be a contribution toward placating the masses’ (Morsy 1988: 395). But this enhanced the Islamists’ legitimacy and popularity since their social welfare package served as an example of a promising social system.

Within the MB, activism inspired debates over its political role and encouraged many of its members to develop new agendas that suited its rising influence. Unlike the MB’s ad hoc alliance with the Wafd Party in the 1984 elections, the Islamic Alliance in the 1987 elections wit-nessed the MB’s takeover of the Socialist Labor Party which proclaimed its allegiance to Islamism through its spokesman, Adel Husein (Kandil 2008: 5). These alliances saturated election campaigns, opposition news-papers and parliamentary sessions with Islamist ideas, compelling even the communist al-Tagammu and Arab nationalists, the Nasserists, to accommodate some Islamist themes (Kandil 2008: 6). The non-Islamist forces’ lack of funds impeded their electoral participation while their dependence on the state made it difficult for them to act as legitimate opposition to the regime. Thus, although they lost ground to the MB, they allied with its members to gain parliamentary representation and accommodated Islamic politics to win some autonomy from the regime.

By the end of the 1980s, the MB had become the biggest opposition force in parliamentary elections. In 2000, it won 17 seats, more than the combined opposition. In 2005 it won 88 seats. In the first post-Mubarak


parliamentary elections the MB (through its FJP) won 216 or 43 per cent of the seats. Despite its uneasy relations with the regime, the MB’s integration in the system and acceptance of the regime’s rules had a stabilizing effect on the regime. The MB’s slogan, ‘participation, not dominance’ (Ikhwanonline 11 February 2010), which it raised during parliamentary elections, reassured the regime that the MB would not challenge the ruling National Democratic Party’s dominance in parlia-ment or aim for power (Abd al-Fattah 2006). With the MB abiding by electoral rules so, the regime was spared further political opening.

Ironically, however, the MB’s illegal status garnered it popular sym-pathy. The MB’s diversification of its social outreach and expansion at different levels and in different spheres of Egyptian social and political life facilitated its members’ use of the regime’s legal framework for their activism. In the new political environment created by the ‘Arab Spring’, the Islamists, more than secular or liberal forces, emerged the winners in the parliamentary and presidential elections. Whereas Nasser’s political exclusion of the MB led to radical outcomes, political opening and rela-tive tolerance allowed the movement to combine being revolutionary (in opposing the regime’s policies) with being reformist (in accepting the political game and seeking change within state institutions).

6.2.2 The articulation of political agendas

In the 1990s, conflicts with armed Islamist groups supplied a pretext for the regime to stifle political participation and curb liberties to contain the opposition to economic liberalization. Among the opposition, the MB suffered most. Hundreds of its members were referred to military courts and hundreds of sympathizers were arrested (Kienle 1998: 226). Political ‘de-liberalization’ included disbanding the Socialist Labor Party through which MB had made inroads into the 1987 parliament, thus isolating the MB from the legal opposition parties.

Yet the MB articulated its political goals more clearly, chiefly through the 1970s generation of activists who were more politically oriented than the MB veterans. Owing to their rising political weight in the 1987 parliamentary elections and their control of almost all the professional syndicates by the early 1990s, this young but experienced generation was willing to act publicly as an opposition force. The politicization of the MB-led professional syndicates redefined the political community. State-sanctioned parties were no longer the main actors and popular representation was no longer restricted to the regime’s orchestrated channels of elections (Ismail 1995). With its 1970s generation, the MB’s publicity depended less on charitable and religious activities and


shifted to its demands and performance in the institutional spheres of the state. The performance of the MB-affiliated leaders in the profes-sional syndicates was promising and their popularity stemmed from the corruption-related issues they fought, and their achievements in such areas as raising members’ incomes, improving employment conditions, finding jobs for unemployed members and creating systems of social welfare plus many other services (Wickham 1997). In Parliament, the MB members were likewise critical of the government, exposing cases of corruption and demanding transparency. In addition, the MB called into question the credibility of the political order when its members in the professional syndicates outperformed the state with their rapid mobilization of humanitarian aid after the earthquake of October 1992 and the floods of 1994 (Kassem 2004: 113–16).

The MB’s sustained sociopolitical engagement moved it from the rhetoric of generalization, adopted by its veterans to preserve inter-nal unity, organizational consistency and avoid direct confrontation with the regime, to clearer political arguments. Repression helped to preserve organizational unity, but political participation spurred inter-nal debates and conflict. Signs of generational division came to light when the MB’s leadership decided to boycott parliamentary elections in 1990 in response to the regime’s imposition of restrictive laws and measures. Against the regime’s mounting pressure the older generation’s tight control over the decision-making process led to growing internal tension. These developments coincided with the death of the move-ment’s Supreme Guide, Hamid Abu Nasir, in 1996 and the appointment without election of Mustafa Mashhour as his successor. The reformists of the 1970s generation, however, thought that they stood to gain substantially from participation. By 1996 a group had splintered from the MB and formed their own Wasat (Centre) Party that defined itself as ‘a civil party with an Islamic frame of reference’. The party included Christians and women on its executive board (Wickham 2011: 209). In fact, the regime was more troubled by the 1970s generation whose soci-etal outreach transcended a rigidly hierarchal and ideological approach to politics.

The MB also became a renewed target of the regime because of its articulation of reform-based political agendas. The MB’s strategy of non-violent resistance within Egypt’s Islamist spectrum enhanced its standing in light of the failure of the militant Islamist groups to bring change or achieve regime change in the 1990s. Demanding pluralism and reform, the language of the secular opposition, the MB challenged the regime on principles other than religion (Abed-Kotob 1995: 325).


The first MB document, Citizenship Paper, addressing fundamental issues of citizenship and freedom of expression, was issued in 1994. In 2004, the MB released another detailed document, Reform Initiative, outlin-ing the organization’s positions on a number of rights and governance issues (Al-Ahram Weekly 31 December–6 January 2009). Through these documents, the MB argued that a secular state was not essential to enforce liberal values like women’s equality.

In summary, the regime could not exclude the MB from the political and social spheres controlled by its 1970s generation without offend-ing society at large (Wickham 2002: 215). The emergence of the 1970s generation had forced discursive change on the MB towards politics. The altered discourse, more in tune with secular politics, changed the relationships between veterans and young activists, and between the movement and non-Islamist reform demands and agendas. The 1970s generation initiated new agendas from their relatively independent base in civil institutions. On the political front, the MB’s MPs exposed the government’s corruption and mismanagement of social security and policies related to public debt. For instance, in 2008 the MB bloc in parliament directed 104 inquiries and 12 interpellations to the gov-ernment on the import of ‘expired shelf life’ food, especially wheat, allegedly carried out by businessmen close to the regime. They accused the government of wasting billions of Egyptian pounds of grant money provided by international donors to develop education, local govern-ance, agriculture, microcredit and women’s empowerment (Hamzawy and Brown 2010: 24).

6.3 The MB and the return to street politics

Deteriorating state-society relations led Mubarak to loosen his grip on society. A key development occurred in 2000 when the Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC) undermined the regime’s levers of control, declared parliament illegitimate and imposed judicial monitoring on the 2000 and 2005 parliamentary elections. The SCC unexpectedly became an important actor when it was strengthened by the regime to provide institutional guarantees on the rule of law and the security of property rights in order to attract private investments and to reassure international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank (Moustafa 2003). Soon, the domestic political climate changed drastically under regional dynamics with the second Palestinian uprising in 2001 and the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. These two events brought the return of street politics in 2003 when thousands


of Egyptians occupied Tahrir Square, Cairo, for the first time in decades (Schemm 2003).

If regional crises sparked the return of street politics, the debates turned towards domestic issues as the opposition demanded various reforms – an end to emergency rule, the introduction of multi-candidate presidential elections and presidential term limits, immediate expan-sion of political freedoms – and directly criticized the Mubarak family. Such changes in the structures of political opportunity and mobiliza-tion prompted the MB to reassert its commitment to political reform by releasing its Reform Initiative in March 2004 at the Press Syndicate, amidst US pressure on the regime to reform and democratize (Ahram Weekly 11–17 March 2004; Cook 2012: 260–1). Towards the 2005 parliamentary elections, beyond targeting the regime, the MB wanted to contribute to the intensifying debates on political reform and the end of one-party rule. The new turn in oppositionist politics was supported by popular discontent with Mubarak’s plan to groom his son, Jamal, as his succes-sor. The same discontent might have prompted the regime to allow the MB more entries into the 2005 parliament in exchange for its consent to presidential succession. The regime was worried by emerging dissident politics that encouraged Egyptian activists to violate the regime’s rules of opposition and apparently aim for ‘regime change’ in 2011.

The new conditions presented the MB with an important opportunity to position itself as an alternative to the existing order as it campaigned to lead the emerging reform movement. In the event, the MB won 20 per cent of the seats in parliament in 2005 and became the largest opposition force – vindicating the MB’s confidence in its ability to perform well in free elections. In Parliament, 70 per cent of the issues raised by the MB were related to political reform and fighting corruption (Blaydes 2011: 153).

Indeed, the regime was less apprehensive about the MB’s ability to seize power than its influence and potential to be the mobilizing core of the emerging mass movement based in the collective action of undefined social actors acting outside the regime-engineered struc-ture of opposition (Lynch 2007). The return of street politics brought together Islamist and secular activists who mobilized around external and internal issues. Under their leadership, new parties and movements emerged that introduced new ways of political mobilization across ideological divides and decentralized organizational structures which were difficult for the regime to dismantle (Browers 2009). Emphasizing political reform, using its parliamentary bloc, and cooperating with licensed political parties and new societal actors, the MB mobilized


public opposition to Mubarak’s succession plan. In this manner, the MB effectively ruined the regime’s strategy of co-optation particularly when the opposition was expressed in street protests jointly organized with the Kifaya movement, the 20 March Movement for Change, the outlawed Communist Party, and the Popular Movement for Change under the uni-fied slogan, ‘No to renewal, no to hereditary succession, yes to electing the president of the republic’ (Zahid 2010: 226–7).

In 2005, the MB initiated the unprecedentedly large demonstrations of thousands of supporters for political reform in Cairo and other Egyptian governorates (Ahram Weekly 12–18 May 2005). This strategic shift to exert pressure outside the regime’s institutional framework was attributable to the influence of the middle-aged generation who wanted change by building alliances with traditional and emerging political organizations outside that framework.

In the last year of Mubarak’s rule, the MB engaged in new modes of activism in pursuit of constitutional and political change. The MB endorsed Nobel Peace Prize laureate and opposition politician Mohamed El-Baradei’s campaign for political change by collecting signatures to support his presidential nomination against Mubarak (Al-Misri Al-Yawm 18 August 2010). The regime’s alarm at the MB’s influence over the reform movement and in the street produced another wave of security measures to unsettle the MB’s financial networks by targeting their 1970s generation leaders like Khairat al-Shatir, Muhammad Morsi, and Essam al-Iryan. And to prevent the MB from achieving electoral victories in the 2010 parliamentary elections, the judicial supervision of elections was replaced with an electoral commission chosen by the regime (Shehata and Stacher 2007). As a result, the MB pulled out of the elections after failing to win a single seat in the first round. In the years leading to the Egyptian uprising, the regime weakened the MB politically and financially by prosecuting its prominent business leaders on charges of money-laundering, and confiscating its companies (Lynch 2008: 4). The crackdown also weakened the MB’s reformist cadres who favoured greater political engagement and cooperation with the other political forces, and strengthened more conservative forces, who believed in minimizing political participation to save the MB as an organization (Egypt Independent 24 October 2009).

6.4 Survival strategies in repressive e nvironments

There is very little evidence that the MB’s ideological cohesion explains its ability to endure repression by successive regimes. Although al-Banna


was an influential ideologue, the MB had not been monolithic. The MB members have a generally accepted ideology. This is part of a stra-tegy not to be open on major questions, such as Sharia law and what it stands for, that could be ideologically divisive. As such, many genera-tions from different schools of thought have joined the MB and coex-isted throughout its history. Instead, external and internal factors were important to the MB’s survival as an organization. Their illegal status in repressive environments since Nasser’s era necessitated two-pronged defensive mechanisms. The first prong aimed to maintain organiza-tional unity. The other avoided isolation from society and opposition forces by channelling cadres into politics and charitable activities. Internally, the MB adopted a number of principles to which its diverse members could agree: a belief in Islam as an all-compassing system, the rejection of violence as a means to political change, and the embrace of democracy as the only way to empowerment and popular authority (El-Houdaiby 2011). Unlike Jihadist or radical groups, the MB’s gradual empowerment by gaining popular authority dissuaded the rise of revo-lutionary mechanisms for securing power. Externally, its influence in society vis-à-vis the state and opposition forces, its popular support and persistent political participation transformed the MB into a mass organization and strengthened its members’ confidence in using the democratic process even in an authoritarian system.

Social movement theory applied to the Islamist movement explains how the MB remained a coherent unit despite the heterogeneity of its membership, its diverse ideological orientations and even its political inconsistencies. As Asef Bayat has argued, an ‘imagined solidarity’ was important in sustaining the Islamists’ collective action towards social change. For Bayat, what brought the actors in Egypt’s Islamic move-ment together was not the totality of their shared interests and values or their actions and purposes. It was rather their ‘partially’ shared interests and values that ensured collectivity; in that sense, ‘imagined solidarity’ enhanced their commonalities with others:

Egyptian Islamism exhibited such a convergence, based upon partially shared interests and values on the part of its diverse constituencies, including the modern middle classes, some businessmen, the farmers of Upper Egypt, students, youth and women, who all seemed to be interested in some kind of change (Bayat 2005: 902).

Bayat adds that ‘imagined solidarities are usually the characteristics of societies with an authoritarian polity, where the effective exchange


of ideas and communicative action in the public sphere are lacking’ (Bayat 2005: 902). In other words, under a repressive environment, the MB’s lack of specific policies and slogans and its reliance on general platforms and slogans, such as ‘Islam is the solution’, appeared to have bound its members together and allowed its message to resonate among larger and more diverse sectors of society. Besides, the ‘youth factor’ in the MB’s cadre was essential for social dissemination, communication and activism where youth between 15 and 28 years of age accounted for 28 per cent of the total population (Shehata 2008: 2). Distrustful of conventional politics and established parties, the youth was attracted to the regime’s targeted movements such as the MB. Since the 2011 upris-ing, however, the MB’s generational diversity has been a double-edged sword. But where the previous repressive environment necessitated the coexistence of generational variations in ideology and strategy, the youth broadened the MB’s social and political base and advanced its reform initiatives. Finally, strong performances in electoral processes rendered the movement the most viable opposition force.

6.5 The triumph of organizational structure

The pluralistic character of the ‘Egyptian Spring’ took many by surprise. The forces that made the uprising were not equal in political experience, social base and, most importantly, their organizational, socioeconomic and political penetration of society prior to 2011. Therefore, once Mubarak was deposed, the unity of the non-Islamist forces gave way to discord and conflict. Unlike the MB, the non-Islamist forces lacked strong leadership, solid organizational structure, political experience and sustained social outreach in both state and civil society institutions. In contrast, the MB had invested three decades of sociopolitical activism towards consolidating its organizational structure and societal outreach. Although working through the regime’s institutional channels did not save its members from repression, the MB’s activism won grassroots support. The support owed to the leadership of professionals (and not religious scholars) who mastered the mechanics and complexity of Egyptian politics and built an electoral organization ready to dominate the political scene in free elections.

The MB’s endorsement of the constitutional amendments in post-Mubarak Egypt, which were put to a referendum on 19 March 2011, reflected its intention to let the reform process and parliamentary elections be organized quickly (Bernard-Maugiron 2011: 47). The MB endorsed the ‘Yes’ vote to compel the Supreme Council of the Armed


Forces (SCAF) to hold elections, the field that the MB now excelled in. With its memory of Nasser’s rule, the MB wanted, above all, not to repeat its 1954 debacle when it was forced underground and many of its leaders were executed. Hence, the MB focused on elections, consti-tutional and institutional channels. Eschewing major protests against the SCAF, the MB chose to achieve power through the ballot. If it had done well by authoritarian rules before, the MB was confident of doing better by the rules of a non-repressive environment. Its well-established constituencies reassured its members that they would sweep the polls.

The patterns of political activism the MB developed under authoritar-ian rule made its members cautious when faced with new realities. After Mubarak fell, the MB committed itself to the demands of the ‘January 25th Revolution’ while calling for stability. This strategy improved the MB’s standing with its supporters, the military and Western govern-ments. Moreover, the MB’s standing was improved when parliamentary and presidential elections took place amidst active popular protest and anger against the former ruling elites and the secular political parties co-opted by the former regime.

However, the sudden opening of the political system and the new spaces of freedom forced unfamiliar challenges and responsibilities on the MB. While the MB could make use of its strength in the wake of Mubarak’s fall, it could be difficult for the MB to rely on its old tools for maintaining organizational cohesion and internal consistency. Given the generational and ideological differences in its ranks, the MB might have to find new ones to manage internal discord and dissension. The MB had two main tasks. First, it had to distinguish itself from newly emerging Islamist groups of youth activists who seemed to share politi-cal ideologies that transcended specific organizations and their strict rules and preferred broader social, economic and political systems. Second, the MB had to retain the legitimacy it previously enjoyed while it ruled and tried to solve the country’s economic problems. In other words, the MB would have to avoid being consumed by politics and elite rivalry after decades of opposition and devotion to social outreach programmes.

The transformation of the MB and Egyptian politics had clearly been influenced by the 1970s generation. Rather than conform to the MB’s conservative leadership and hierarchical organization, some within that generation inclined towards independent activism. Prominent figures among them have left the MB and founded their own parties, such as Abdel al-Mun’im Abu al-Fotouh and Strong Egypt, Ibrahim al-Za‘farani and al-Nahda (Renaissance) Party, and Khalid Dawoud and al-Riyada


(Pioneer) Party. In the 2012 Presidential election, moreover, a number of influential candidates came from the 1970s generation (of Islamists and non-Islamists), the leaders and famous activists in the student move-ment. These included Abdel al-Mu’im Abu al-Fotouh, former Nasserist, Hamdin Sabbahi, Khairat al-Shatir, multi-millionaire and the MB’s Deputy Supreme Guide, the influential Islamic preacher, Hazem Salah Abu Ismail, and the MB’s former official spokesman, Muhammad Morsi, who won the presidential election.

Epilogue

On 3 July 2013, the Egyptian military staged a coup d’etat. It ousted President Muhammad Morsi and suspended the constitution. The coup came after massive anti-government demonstrations were held on 30 June by an uneasy alliance of young revolutionary activists, left-ists and liberals – those who led the 2011 uprising – and remnants of the Mubarak regime. Morsi’s ousting has been largely attributed to the failure of his administration to tackle Egypt’s economic and security problems. Morsi was accused of concentrating power in the MB, reneg-ing on promises made when he was elected president, and ignoring the demands of the revolution of 2011. The MB was said to have placed its agenda above national interests, imposing a ‘Brotherhoodization’ of state policies and institutions and seeking to shape Egyptian society according to the MB’s conception of Islam. Thus, the military, with popular support, overthrew Morsi to protect state and society.

No doubt, the coup exposed multiple flaws in Morsi’s leadership, the MB’s experiment with power and even the project of political Islam. Yet, undue stress on these flaws neglects the deeper and more ominous failure of the 2011 uprising to dismantle the old military-dominated regime and reform state institutions as part of a thorough transition to democracy. Consequently, the ‘deep state’ of the Mubarak era has reas-serted itself and the security services have returned with a vengeance to overturn the activism and civil liberties won by the uprising of 2011.

One important reason for the old regime’s ability to reassert itself was the severe political polarization in Egyptian civil society that led non-Islamists to side with the military against the MB. As was discussed in preceding sections, the MB’s post-Mubarak priorities and decisions were shaped by its encounters with authoritarian rule that had tamed the MB into a reformist movement that sought gradual change and consolidation according to existing political arrangements and rules. On the one hand, the MB used its experience to build a disciplined


organization known for patient social outreach, extensive campaigning and efficient electoral politics. On the other hand, the MB realized that it would not be permitted to gain electoral victory then. With its electoral participation serving to bolster the legitimacy of the legis-lature and being thereby integrated into the authoritarian system, the MB had already become wary of revolutionary transformation by the time Egyptian society rose against Mubarak. The MB accepted the demands of the ‘January 25th Revolution’ and voted for the 2011 con-stitutional amendments that ushered in early elections. Ironically, that was to opt for change via existing political arrangements. While that strategy improved the MB’s standing with its supporters, the military and Western governments, it alienated most non-Islamist groups. The latter had led the 2011 uprising but, for want of electoral organization and experience, they would be disadvantaged in a quick transition to democratic elections. The non-Islamists wanted a constitution before elections since they expected that the Islamists would dominate the drafting of a constitution after elections. The non-Islamists demanded extensive negotiations to draft a new constitution, form a ‘civilian presi-dential council’, appoint a committee to amend the constitution, and set the rules for parliamentary and presidential elections. The Islamists, however, and the MB in particular, argued that any pre-election consti-tutional agreement would only benefit the old regime. From then on, Islamists and non-Islamist forces were irreconcilably divided. Revolutionary demands were not met when the constitutional amend-ments were approved in the referendum of March 19 2011. Even so, the amendments were followed by the SCAF’s constitutional declarations of 30 March 2011, which stripped Parliament of its powers and allowed the SCAF to continue to rule by decree until the completion of parlia-mentary and presidential elections.

With its memory of past repression, the MB had kept a low profile in the early stages of the 2011 uprising. Even after Mubarak fell, the MB was not revolutionary, anxious to avoid a backlash from the SCAF and foreign states, especially the United States. Still adopting a gradualist approach, the MB announced that it would only place candidates in about half of the seats for Parliament in the September 2011 elec-tions and would not field a candidate for the presidency. Mubarak’s overthrow, though, had precipitously created a political opening that pushed the MB away from its gradualist approach. Now, in free and fair elections, when victory had become a viable option (Brown 2012), the MB seemed ready to discard its well-known slogan, ‘Participation, not domination’.


The rise of a conservative leadership in the MB prior to 2011 hindered its cooperation with other forces. The rise was partly forced by the heavy repression that the Mubarak regime unleashed against the MB’s reformists after its members had won around 20 per cent of the seats in Parliament in 2005. In 2007, the Constitution was amended to pre-vent the MB from making further electoral gains. Within the MB, the response to repression widened the rift between conservatives, who feared for the survival of the movement, and reformists who pressed for political participation and openness. As political space was reduced, so the Islamists’ reformists were weakened vis-à-vis their conservatives. The growing influence of figures such as Mahmoud Izzat and Mahdi Akif in the MB’s Shura Council and the Leadership Bureau, the results of MB’s internal election in late 2009 and the election of Muhammad Badie as its new leader in 2010 handed control to the seniors and conservatives. The struggle between conservatives and reformists was compounded by the defection of important reformists, such as Deputy General Guide Muhammad Habib, Leadership Bureau member Abdul Mun‘im Abul Futuh and certain prominent leaders of the 1970s, who accused the leadership of violating the MB’s regulations and illegally engineering Badie’s ascent.

In post-Mubarak Egypt, the MB appeared to have little incentive to compromise with other newly emerging political forces or to be content with partial victory. The MB’s conservative leadership supported the SCAF’s transition plan and declined to join anti-SCAF protests. Soon, the MB became preoccupied with the procedural aspects of transition as opposed to the task of building political alliances at which their reformist leaders were masters before. In a way, the conservative leadership was correct: the MB won every election – the constitutional referendum (March 2011), parliamentary elections (2011–12), elections to the Shura council (2012), presidential election (2012) and another constitutional referendum (December 2012). In another sense, all that was a Pyrrhic victory: the more handily the MB won, the more polarized was Egyptian society between Islamists and non-Islamists. The MB steadily shed a large part of the populist legitimacy and sympathy it had garnered under authoritarian rule. Above all, its victory in isolation left the MB incapable of creating and leading broad alliances, which might have been the only feasible way to maintain the momentum of the 2011 uprising against the ‘deep state’.

The split between Islamists and non-Islamists was exacerbated by a multi-dimensional ideological legacy of distrust and fear that had long been sown among Egypt’s dissident forces. All previous regimes


cultivated a fear of Islamism and offered themselves as the only secularist bulwark against an Islamist takeover. From 2007 onwards, for example, relentless media campaigns associated terrorism with the MB’s ideo-logy. On their own, non-Islamist forces knew the strength of the MB’s electoral capacity since the 1980s when some parties took advantage of it to enter Parliament. Now grave apprehensions cut both ways. The secularists dreaded an Islamist takeover of the state through elections; the Islamists feared being forced back underground by future secular regimes. The revolutionary youth was afraid of being overwhelmed by a triumphant MB majority while the secular forces, watching the MB’s collaboration with the SCAF, were frightened of an MB-SCAF alliance. In these circumstances, there was no national coordination to manage a transition from an ‘Egyptian Spring’ to stable democracy.

In the space of a year, the balance of power decisively tilted against the MB. The Islamists had organization, societal outreach and electoral victories. Yet, the old regime retained control of state institutions – the military, police, judiciary, media and bureaucracy – which enabled the SCAF to dictate the rules of politics. When the SCAF acquiesced to Mubarak’s ousting, it claimed to be protecting the revolution. The SCAF claimed the same when it turned against Morsi, making it possible for many anti-Morsi or anti-MB forces to welcome the coup as the SCAF’s move to guide Egypt’s transition. Between the overthrow of Mubarak and that of Morsi, the SCAF had grasped de facto executive power, leaving an elected civilian president shorn of centralized power and real authority. In other words, the popular mobilization against the regime in 2011 deposed the president and some of his associates but did not dismantle state institutions or curb the power of the military. It was not a revolu-tion, Asef Bayat astutely noted, only a ‘refolution’, or an uprising that ‘push[ed] for change for reforms in, and through, the institutions of the existing regimes’ (Bayat 2013: 53).

In retrospect, Islamists and non-Islamists alike ended up being reformist, not revolutionary. They shared a failure to go beyond a quick transition that diverted the focus of the uprising from battling the state to fighting themselves, from striving for substantive democratization to engaging in electoral competition. From the beginning, the upris-ing was loosely unified by broad demands. Divided along political and class lines, the uprising lacked strategic cohesion or revolutionary organization that could have forced through a transition independently of the SCAF. As Bayat has observed, the forces of the uprising did not have strong agency or clear plans. They could not move towards radi-cal change. Indeed, ‘the demands for “change”, “freedom” and “social


justice” were so loosely defined that they could even be appropriated by the counter-revolution’ (Bayat 2013). Unlike them all, the SCAF was clear about its interests. Those lay in maintaining the supra-constitutional status, which the military had enjoyed under previous presidents (who came from the military) and which it proceeded to enshrine in the constitution to ensure its complete control of matters related to the armed forces, including the defence budget and US-supplied military assistance. The SCAF preserved the old regime’s institutions, including the bureaucracy, the state-owned enterprises in which former officers are embedded, the police, the state-owned media and the judiciary. The SCAF proceeded to immunize their autonomy from unfavourable electoral outcomes.

One last point about the MB’s short-lived trajectory from dissent to power, which reconnects this chapter to the themes of this book, is crucial. Actually the revolutionary forces had not seen in the MB’s rise an imminent installation of an Islamic state. But they saw in the MB’s ten-dency to act unilaterally a shift from pluralist, inclusive politics towards a monopoly of power. To that degree, whatever the quality of its rule, the MB’s electoral successes and control over the drafting of the constitution were liable to make it an ‘Islamist’ target for most revolutionary forces and the old regime. In fact, the MB’s hold on power was tenuous. The MB had the presidency and dominated parliament, but Morsi’s government never had the state power embedded in the military and the institutions of the ancien regime. And without authority over them, Morsi lacked the scope to implement policies. But for many ordinary Egyptians, the com-pletion of elections and referenda signified the end of ‘transition’: now Morsi’s government and the MB were responsible for managing Egypt’s dire economic situation. Consequently, they were blamed for failing to resolve mundane crises such as shortages in electricity, gasoline, bread and basic services.

Morsi had tried to centralize power by placing the presidency beyond the review of a hostile judiciary. On November 22 2012, he issued constitutional declarations that granted him extraordinary powers. His move backfired, further alienating non-Islamist forces and pitting him against the forces of the old regime. The non-Islamists were unable to win strong representation in Parliament but they could challenge the government through renewed street mobilization. The forces of the old regime, particularly the military, could use instability and Morsi’s mistakes as the pretext for a coup. After the coup, the military, under General Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, suspended the Constitution although that had been approved by nearly 64 per cent of voters in the referendum of


December 2012. The bogeyman of previous regimes – the Islamists – had won power by democratic means only to be forced out by undemo-cratic ones. Yet defeat was not the MB’s alone. To prevent the Islamists from regaining power, the non-Islamists acquiesced to restrictions and repression against which they had revolted in 2011. For now, Egypt’s prospects have ended for sustainable democratization that could have been economically and socially inclusive as well. For that, the blame must be placed on more than the MB’s failure.

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7Islamist Ideals and Governing Realities: Nahda’s Project and the Constraint of Adaptation in Post-revolution Tunisia Nadia Marzouki

The Nahda party of Tunisia is the first Islamist party to come to power in the aftermath of the Arab revolutions that began in late 2010. When it came ahead of its political rivals in Tunisia’s election of October 2011, Nahda moved from a marginal existence as a dissident Islamist move-ment to the leading position in a coalition government. In the process, Nahda not only had to contend with fears and fantasies about an Islamist high-jacking of democracy, it had to tackle the administrative and practical problems of heading a post-authoritarian regime. Nahda has not mishandled the two sets of difficulties disastrously: Tunisia has escaped the large-scale violence that engulfed Libya and Syria, while Nahda has not been deposed by a military coup as has the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) in Egypt. Yet, Nahda’s problems persist: since its ascent to power, it had to redefine and adapt its political project and strategy numerous times. Although the situation in Tunisia is fluid, as it is wherever the uprisings have occurred, Nahda’s experience offers an important illustration of how Islamic politics has had to negotiate complex trajectories in shifting from dissent to rule in various countries under different conditions – a major theme of this book.

For Nahda, the process from building a party from an exiled leader-ship and a decimated membership to leading a government was fraught with dilemmas that may be suggested by several questions. To begin with, what was Nahda’s political project when it engaged into open post-authoritarian politics? How was the project conceived ideologi-cally and how was it presented discursively? Where did Nahda stand vis-à-vis its rivals, secularist or salafist, within the context of democratic contestation and pluralist politics? How far was Nahda in government able to meet the popular expectations of a highly mobilized society?

Nadia Marzouki 135

In subsequent sections, this chapter engages these questions by focusing on several related matters in turn. First, it explores Nahda’s political pro-ject by elucidating the political theory of Dawla Madaniya which Rached Ghannouchi, Nahda’s leader, had elaborated to defend the compatibility of Islam with democracy. Second, there is an account of notable strug-gles and compromises over policies and laws that Nahda undertook in moving ‘from resistance to governance’. Third, some attention is paid to the tensions Nahda faced in being at once a party and a social movement whose membership and support base respectively need not share similar concerns. Fourth, the chapter shows how a heightening of popular frustrations was owed largely to the government’s inadequate approach to economic reform which itself could be traced to Nahda’s Islamist conceptions of what economic reform should mean. Finally, the chapter shows that Nahda’s post-revolution experiment of coalition government with non-Islamist parties was subject to internal strains that were fully exposed when the unsolved assassination of Chokri Belaïd (left-wing union leader and secularist critic of the ‘hegemonic ambitions’ of the Islamists) forced other issues of governance and reform into the open. Approaching Nahda’s experience in this complex manner, and being sensitive to the socio-political flux that characterizes a critical post-revolution conjuncture avoids the ‘baseless catastrophism’ and ‘naïve angelicism’ that so often marks commentary on Islamic politics.

7.1 The ‘victory’ of Islamists in the October 2011 elections

Tunisia’s highly repressive regime under President Ben Ali (1987–2010) left very little space for the development of any dissenting voice, Islamist or non Islamist. A period of severe repression, witch-hunting and human rights abuse significantly weakened the Tunisian Islamist opposition. In an effort to qualify the strong secularist legacy of his predecessor, President Habib Bourguiba (1956–87), and as a response to the increased pietization of Tunisian society, Ben Ali tried to co-opt and include some Islamist politicians within the government. Indeed, even though religious activities (charities, mosque sermons) were strictly monitored by the state, the level of religiosity developed at the individual level: the number of women wearing veils or men wearing beards increased, private forms of religious practice (family or friends gatherings, reading of religious books, interest for religious programmes on satellite channels) also developed. Posing as a ‘modernist’ protector of the Arab and Islamic identity of Tunisia, he denounced any form of

136 Islamist Ideals and Governing Realities

opposition as an expression or an instrument of a supposedly radical ‘Islamist threat’. The attempt to co-opt Islamist opposition, however, did not convince the broader public. The Nahda party, proscribed since the early 1990s, developed mostly in exile.1 Following a wave of arrests in the 1990s and the severe repression and torture of Islamist activists, numerous Islamist leaders had left for Britain, France or Switzerland. After its leader, Rached Ghannouchi, went into exile in London, the party progressively shrank to a couple of thousand members. During the years spent in exile, activists became more acquainted with the (mis)perception that Western publics had of Islam and Islamism. This led some of them to give a more pedagogical and more liberal turn to some of their writings.

As soon as the revolutionary moment started in Tunisia on December 17, with the self-immolation of Mohammed Bouazizi, analysts and commentators worldwide started speculating about the intentions and plans of Nahda’s members in post-Ben Ali Tunisia. Despite their rather tardy support for the uprisings, Nahda leaders soon stepped into the political game, and expressed their intention to be a significant actor in the post-revolutionary politics. On October 23 2011, in their first ever free elections, Tunisians elected a Constitutional Assembly that would take charge of crafting the new constitution of a democratic Tunisia. Nahda candidates won 89 of the 217 seats of the Assembly. Two parties from the secular left performed well – the Congress for the Republic (29 seats) of Moncef Marzouki and Ettakatol (19 seats) of Mustapha Ben Jafar. Based on these results,2 a unity government was established (the ‘troika’), with Moncef Marzouki as President of the republic, Mustapha Ben Jafar as President of the National Constituent Assembly, and Hamadi Jebali as President of the government. More than 100 parties took part in the elections; most were unknown, and being based on very few people, did not win many seats. Nahda’s main opponents were secularist parties of the left and right, who strongly opposed the idea of Islamists’ political inclusion. Their defeat was partly due to the fact that their platform was essentially reactive and based on the critique of Nahda. In terms of social and economic views, most parties proposed a version of the same project (to end corruption, create jobs, and so on). The major fault line was about perception and the credibility of each party as a true opponent to the former regime. Perception was central to the success of Nahda. Indeed, the Tunisian Islamist party did not enjoy the same degree of entrenchment during the Ben Ali era as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt under Mubarak. Whereas the Muslim Brotherhood had been part of the political debate and had woven solid

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networks of charities for several decades, Nahda almost had to begin its grassroots work from scratch.

Admittedly, the 2011 election outcome represented a significant suc-cess for Tunisian Islamists. In addition to its 89 seats in the Constitutional Assembly, Nahda members occupied strategic positions in the government. Nahda members held the key posts of the leadership of the government (Hamadi Jebali), the ministries of the Interior (Ali Larayedh), Justice (Noureddine Bhiri), and Foreign Affairs (Rafik Ben Abdessalem). However, contrary to what some commentators have argued, this was by no means a landslide victory that marked the end of political pluralism. Nahda did not win the majority of the votes, and needed to build alliances with other parties in order to pass laws and promote policy. According to existing surveys, only half of the electoral body went to vote. Right after the elections, the party emphasized its willingness to build a government of national union in which ideological divisions should play a minor role. Even so, the outcome raised fears among the secular components of Tunisian society, and secularist commentators in Tunisia and in Europe. In this tense context, defined by a combination of dramatic social and economic problems and anxiety over Nahda’s commitment to secular principles and democratic values, some key aspects of Nahda’s political project, as articulated by Rached Ghannouchi, were tested in real politics and practical governance.

7.2 The concept of Dawla Madaniyya (civil state) in Ghannouchi’s thought

Rachid Ghannouchi’s theory of the compatibility of Islam and democracy has evolved around three related arguments – a postcolonial critique of the secularist ruling elite, a denunciation of state hegemony over religion, and a call for the re-enactment of cultural authenticity.3

7.2.1 Postcolonial critique

The French protectorate, Ghannouchi argues, has had a devastating effect on Tunisia’s social structure and cultural identity. Ruining Tunisia’s authentic traditions, colonization prevented the development of Tunisia’s own identity and autonomous institutions. Moreover, French rule con-tributed to the formation of a Westernized elite who became increasingly fascinated by the Francophone–secular understanding of modernity and rejected its Arabic–Islamic roots as a form of backwardness. After independence, the Westernized elite began to oppress the Tunisian peo-ple in a way that mirrored French colonial rule. The authoritarian rule


imposed by Bourguiba after 1956 was a consequence and reproduction of the colonial way of ruling. According to Ghannouchi, the opposition between oppressors and oppressed, rather than a conflict between reli-gion and politics, is the relevant paradigm of analysis of Tunisian affairs in the postcolonial era:

The conflict is not a religious one. Nor is it even a conflict between religion and the Western concept of secularism. It is a political con-flict between the oppressor and the oppressed, between a people that has been struggling for its freedom and dignity, for power sharing as well as resource sharing, and an absolute corrupt ruler who has turned the state into a tool for repression. Like snakes, despotic rulers keep changing their skins. In the past Bourguiba practiced repression in the name of national unity, while Nassir did it in the name of liberating Palestine and uniting the Arabs. Today, it is practiced in the name of democracy, human rights, defending civil society, and making peace with Israel.4

In other words, secularism is rejected not as a form of arrangement of the relation between religion and politics, but as the expression of an inauthentic mode of governance, namely, one that does not cohere with the supposedly ‘true’ Identity of Tunisia imposed by the postco-lonial elite.

7.2.2 State hegemony over religion

The corollary of this anti-domination approach is a denunciation of the monopolizing nature of the postcolonial nation state. The state is blamed for entirely monitoring people’s views and emotions. In his struggle to modernize the country, Bourguiba sought to diminish the power of important institutions of civil society such as religious endow-ments, mosques and charities. The personal status code of 1956 was primarily aimed at dismantling tribes and social structures that could threaten or counter-balance the power of the state.5 Ghannouchi’s rejection of secularism derives essentially from his denunciation of state intrusion into people’s minds, hearts and customs. In order to assert the state’s hegemony over society, Bourguiba turned all religious institutions into a sort of ‘church’, separate from, and controlled by the state. ‘Imams in mosques are appointed by the state, which administers their affairs and may even dictate to them what to say and what not to say during the Friday sermons.’6 Under the Ben Ali regime, the tight control of the ruling party RCD (Constitutional Democratic Rally) over

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each province and town further contributed to enhancing the Islamists’ critique of state monopoly over society.

The nationalization of religion by a secularist, Westernized elite blocked the natural progress of Islamic thinking and threw Tunisian society into a state of ignorance and disarray. The key question, there-fore, argues Ghannouchi, is not how to impose religion on politics, but how to liberate religion from the state. Democracy and the empower-ment of civil society are the only remedy against the domination of what he calls a secular autocracy.

7.2.3 The search for authenticity

While strongly supporting the compatibility between Islam and democ-racy, Ghannouchi’s thought remains structured around a series of binaries – tradition and modernity, society and state, Islam and secula-rism, and despotism and democracy. The notion that there exists such a thing as an authentic cultural identity of Tunisia is central to the thought of Nahda’s leader. This authentic reality has allegedly been distorted by colonialism and nationalist-secular despotism. To the fake modernity imposed by colonizers, and based on mimicry of the West, Ghannouchi has long opposed a genuine, Islamic form of modernity that he deems to be more in tune with Tunisian history. The argument for authen-ticity translates into a strong rejection of the liberal-secularist idea of a separation of spheres (private and public, religious and political). Ghannouchi’s definition of the relation between religion and politics is not an uncompromising one,7 to the extent that he rejects the idea that beliefs and practice can be imposed on anyone. He develops, however, a comprehensive view of politics, in which no separation between moral values and pragmatic affairs is needed. Ghannouchi speaks of develop-ment rather than of modernization. His understanding of development is based on a teleological, religiously inspired conception of history, whereby humanity’s morality is meant to improve through scientific education and moral formation. In this process, the use of modern technologies and learning of modern scientific methods is perfectly commendable, but the notion of a separation between two distinct spheres of activities, religious and political, is dismissed as foreign and inauthentic. Human rights are defended within this teleological framework: they essentially designate the rights and duties of mankind to progress, i.e. to move away from its original condition of bestiality, barbarity and ignorance. Ghannouchi’s view resonated to a large extent with the notion of religious democracy proposed by the Iranian phi-losopher Abdelkarim Soroush.8 This concept defines a political situation


where society is religious, but the state refrains from interfering with religious affairs, while allowing for the development of piety and virtue. The concept of religious democracy, just like Ghannouchi’s notion of civil state, are contrary not to secularism as such, but rather, to what is denounced as the moral relativism of liberalism.

7.2.4 Civility

In the past two decades, Ghannouchi has written extensively on the concept of civil society, which he sees at once to be the victim of and the solution to the hegemony of an authoritarian state. Contrary to some Egyptian Islamic thinkers,9 he insists on not giving up the term madaniyya to secularists. A cornerstone of a political order defined by innocuous state institutions, civil society represents both a form of political utopia, and an ideal model of social contract. According to Ghannouchi, the Islamic movement plays a key role in revivifying this ideal model and in inverting the balance between the autocratic state and the weakened civil society:

The Islamic Movement has succeeded in breathing a new life in civil society by tilting the balance in favour of the people’s state rather than the state’s people. This, and the potential threat it poses to the ruling autocracy, prompted the police state to intervene with all forms of repression and persecution, and with staging an election in which the president and his party won 99.99 per cent of the votes.10

Civil society as described by Ghannouchi bears resemblance with the utopic Medina community and defines a political order in which the will of the people had precedence over illegitimate state institu-tions. Pre-colonial Tunisian society, according to this view, was close to such an ideal model: it was an autonomous, lively, self-regulating community that had succeeded in maintaining the integrity of its culture, language and identity. The concrete description of this com-munity remains largely elusive in Ghannouchi’s thought. Its mention essentially serves the purpose of founding the critique of postcolonial modernity. The notion of civil society, while drawing upon this utopian model, also defines a rejection of the state of nature. The civil feeling of belonging to the same community (ummah) replaces former tribal or ethnical allegiances. In this voluntary association, law, not passion, governs interpersonal relations. Good manners and civility, however, stem from the sharing of a common faith, not from the adhesion to secular principles. Likewise, the rule of law is meant to guarantee the

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improvement of the community’s faith and virtue rather than protect individuals from one another. According to Ghannouchi, faith feeds and protects civil sentiment. By contrast, the liberal, individualistic foundation of civility leads to the weakening and destruction of social relations. He uses the term tawahush (return to a state of barbarism) to describe the fake civility that characterizes liberal Western societies.11 Piety and civility are inextricably linked: the more pious people are, the more civil they become; and the more civil they are, the more pious they become. The state’s function is reduced to a minimum: its main role is to enable its citizens to become virtuous (civil and pious).12 Its function comes down to ensuring the security of the people and the sovereignty of the territory. Beyond that, the conceptualization of state institutions remains quite vague. In this narrative, the secularist idea of a separation of worldly and other-worldly affairs is useless and coun-terproductive.13 The state merely fulfils a technical function, but the essential objective of an Islamist policy, as defined by Ghannouchi, is to resist and block arbitrary rule.

7.3 From resistance to governance

Tunisian Islamists’ insistence on the establishment of a civil state thus draws upon a long series of analysis on the relation among the state, civil society and religion. This long established political theory shows that accusations that Islamists’ support for democracy is merely circum-stantial are unfounded. Nonetheless, an important gap has emerged in the past couple of years between Ghannouchi’s political theory and the Islamist government’s approach to governance, an approach that is mostly characterized by an ambiguous relation to the notions of institutionalization and secular law. In the political theory of Tunisian Islamism, society is strong and self-regulating, while the state is reduced to a mere enabler of this process. In particular, they have evaded the question of how exactly the state would regulate social conflicts. By somewhat tautological reasoning, they argue that a democratic soci-ety would inevitably know how to self-regulate its inner conflicts. Circumstances, however, have forced Islamist members of the govern-ment to take a clearer stand on the question of the scope of state inter-vention in the regulation of society. The fact that numerous mosques have been taken over by salafi imams has forced Nahda to intervene, in the name of the state, in the dispute over the appointments of imams. Insofar as this policy seems contradictory with Ghannouchi’s critique of state intervention in religious affairs, Nahdawi ministers of Interior and


Religious affairs have refused to openly admit that they were monitoring the activities of salafi groups and salafi mosques. The constraints inher-ent in the shift from resistance to governance have thus led Nahda to implement a policy that is sometimes contradictory with its own theory. What could be seen merely as a pragmatist capacity to adapt to circumstances is increasingly seen by the Tunisian public as a sign that the Nahda government’s strategy is opaque and incoherent.

In the Islamists’ worldview, Tunisian people are fundamentally united in their quest for freedom, dignity and social justice. The state simply serves as a mediator that helps to arbitrate among different groups. But the question of the standards on which conflict arbitration should be based remains unanswered. When asked about the specific standards of legislation, Islamists keep referring to the ‘will of the peo-ple’. They do, however, have a normative understanding of the people. They define it, in a conservative way, as a community that is essen-tially based on family, who aspires to the same goal, not as a series of individuals. They talk about human rights, using the nouns person and human, as opposed to animals or individuals living in a state of nature. But they rarely use the notion of individual and strongly reject the liberal principle of individualism. While defining the notion of pluralism as natural and acceptable, they reject the possibility of divi-sion as a consequence of the decadent state of liberal Western societies. Islamists contend that they do not want to implement a Sharia state, that the notion of hudud is irrelevant, and that they are only a party with an Islamic referent, not a religious party. 14 Between Sharia-based legislation and secular legislation, there is, however, a wide spectrum of possible norms, and it is not clear what type of law and norms Islamists support.

Nahda’s position towards Salafis has been quite complex since the October 2011 elections. While openly rejecting violence and extrem-ist actions that could jeopardize the transition process, Nahda leaders were reluctant to clearly distance themselves from Salafis. This was not only because Nahda’s electoral basis was quite large, ranging from ‘almost secularists’ to ‘almost salafis’, but it was due also to the memory of the repression of Islamists under Ben Ali. We don’t want to do now, Islamists argued, to salafis what the Ben Ali police did to us. While Nahda was divided along many lines of thinking and strategies, it seemed that a willingness to compromise and to comply with the demands of governance prevailed in most controversies. Pragmatism and the will to maintain stability won over ideology. Nahda’s commit-ment to the democratic process has been challenged during three key

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controversies: the inclusion of Sharia in the constitution; Article 28 on gender complementarity rather than equality; and a proposed law prohibiting offense to the sacred. In each instance, Nahda at first yielded to its most ideological fringe. But eventually, it backed up and gave in to the pressure of public opinion and secular parties. Despite this, the reluctance of Nahda leaders to publically and unambiguously condemn extremist violence has further contributed to diminishing the Islamist party’s credibility. The Ministry of Interior’s lagging response to the attack on the US embassy had been strongly criticized. More recently, the circulation of a video in which Ghannouchi promised salafi leaders that his party’s aim was the Islamicization of the coun-try has challenged even more this increasingly precarious image. The so-called Salafi threat, however, should not be over-ideologized. Salafi groups were themselves very divided. One should distinguish between pietist apolitical groups, political parties such as Hizb ut-Tahrir, and petty bandits and smugglers, and some former RCD police profiting from the social and political confusion.

Two controversies made the limitations of the reference to civil state more apparent. The first controversy involved the trial of Nabil Karoui, head of the Tunisian private Channel Nessma TV, who was charged by a group of 140 lawyers for ‘infringing sacred values and morals’ and ‘dis-rupting public order’ by allowing the broadcast of the movie Persepolis on 7 October 2011.15 One scene of this movie (directed by the French-Iranian director, Marjane Satrapi) that particularly angered the plaintiffs showed God speaking to the main character of the fiction. On the day of the trial (2 January 2012), Nahda issued a public statement firmly condemning the trial and insisting on the movement’s attachment to the principle of freedom of expression. The Nahda party, read the state-ment, considered that the charges against the head of Nessma TV did not represent the best solution to address the question of how to find a balance ‘between the identity of the people and the attachment to the sacred on the one hand, and freedom of expression on the other’.16 The statement concluded by calling for a ‘national consensus among media, civil society and policymakers regarding questions of freedom of information and worship’. Such a statement clearly illustrated a pit-fall in Nahda’s understanding of a civil state. The problem of Nahda’s endorsement of a civil state did not lie in its supposed ambiguity or lack of sincerity. Sincerity was not the issue. Rather, at stake was the comprehensive vision of society on which such a conception rested. What mattered to Nahda leaders in the Persepolis controversy was the collective definition of an equilibrium between safeguarding identity


and sacred values, and fundamental principles such as the freedom of expression. This equilibrium, according to Nahda, could be established through education and debate that would ultimately lead to a consen-sus. In other words, the Nahda statement suggested, society was capable of and committed to finding the equilibrium on its own. Similarly, the response of Nahda officials to the occupation of the University La Manouba by extremist Salafi groups who advocated for the right of female students to wear niqab had been perceived as being too slow and too timid.17 In an effort not to further radicalize Salafi groups who formed part of their electoral base, Nahda leaders were reluctant to take a firm stance in the Manouba controversy. Their attitude was not merely related to electoral strategy. More profoundly, it was based on Nahda’s faith in the capacity of a virtuous society to heal and reconcile through piety, charity and education.

Conspicuously absent from Nahda’s reasoning and from its substan-tive vision of a genuinely good and virtuous society was the role of law. Islamists seemed to assume that society could regulate its own conflicts independently of the courts. No matter how optimistic one was in this matter, that view could appear to be quite inefficient. Debates about Islam and secularism since the revolution were increasingly polarized in Tunisia, making it difficult to envisage that a national consensus would emerge in the near future. In this tense and polarized context, no mat-ter how important a lively public sphere was, it was fair to assume that only law would permit the resolution of conflicts between groups and individuals and guarantee individual freedoms. The civil state could not remain a moral or philosophical reference. It was urgent to specify the type of legal norms it authorized. It was not enough to argue for an equilibrium between sacred values and fundamental rights, and to delegate to the public the responsibility of figuring out the equilibrium. Depending on how the future constitution defined the protection of identity towards the protection of freedoms, controversies regarding freedom of expression and freedom of religion would have very different outcomes. Hence, it was urgent to shift the conversation about civility from a moral and philosophical discussion about virtue and identity to a judicial debate about legal norms and rules.

7.4 A party (hizb) and a movement (haraka)

During the Ben Ali era, Nahda maintained a very coherent and steady opposition to the regime, refusing any form of compromise and coope-ration, and strongly advocating for the demise of the authoritarian

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regime. Since the revolution, Nahda leaders have been very eager to give evidence of their democratic bona fides. Anticipating or responding to questions and accusations about the authenticity of their commitment to democracy, Nahda leaders stated from the outset that if presidential elections were to be held they would not propose a candidate of their own. When numerous analysts began interpreting this statement as evidence of Nahda’s intention to become a hegemonic party in parlia-ment, Nahda leaders declared that the party was not in favour of a purely parliamentary system, in order to refute the accusation. Instead, they advocated a mixed, semi-presidential and semi-parliamentary type of regime.18 Likewise, they repeated that they would not establish Sharia in place of civil law.19 Nor would they change the Code of Personal Status, a code enacted by Bourguiba in 1956 that granted Tunisian women considerable rights in the realm of family law and in the labour sphere. Despite all these marks of commitment to and respect for secu-lar democratic rules, Nahda continued to be perceived by a large part of the Tunisian public, and depicted by many opposing political parties, as an ‘abnormal’ political party, whose inclusion in government was a threat to democracy. While this was partly due to secularist bias, or the opportunist strategy of rival parties, some uncertainty remained as to where exactly Nahda set the boundary between its partisan activity and its practice as a social movement. Relying on a widespread network of charities, educational and health-related associations, the Nahda nebula far exceeded the size of its party membership.20 As a party (hizb) and a social movement (haraka), how would Nahda deal with the ten-sion between its hizbist and harakist dimensions? Unlike other parties, Nahda faced a double challenge: if it only played the card of political inclusion, it might disappoint its less politicized social base by qualify-ing some overly radical aspects of its project. On the other hand, if it only counted on developing its social base its strategy of political inclu-sion and mainstreaming could fail. How then did the Nahda leadership address the challenge of avoiding both absorption and maximalism?

Nahda’s success reflected to a large extent the transformations under-gone by the Tunisian lower and middle classes in past decades. As a response to the constant restriction of liberties and the instrumental use of secularist and feminist arguments to consolidate authoritari-anism, a large part of the population progressively turned pious and morally conservative. The moral and social conservatism was expressed not only in the increase of mosque attendance, or in the augmentation of persons wearing religious attire in the public sphere, but also in a strong emphasis on family and community values and a clear rejection


of corruption. In this context, Nahda candidates appeared as the ones who were the least corrupt, the least associated with the former era of predation and nepotism, and the most committed to respecting values of decency and morality. From a big pool of potential Nahda constitu-ents (made up of men and women of all generations and various socio-economic classes or professions) not all actually voted for Nahda. Some of them were convinced that Islam should not be turned into a matter for political competition and were uncomfortable with the concept of an Islamist party. Others who considered that Nahda’s project had moved too much toward the centre were now courted by more radical groups among the salafi nebula. While Nahda refused to institutionalize the difference between its identity as a political party and its identity as a social movement, it had attempted to address the challenge that this blurred boundary represented in the following ways:

a. Nahda leaders insisted that theirs was not an Islamist organization, but an organization ‘based on an Islamic reference’.21 By this rhetori-cal nuance, they emphasized their commitment to a civil state not based on Sharia. Islamic law could play a role as a source of inspira-tion of moral and social values, but not of legislation and policy.

b. They reaffirmed their commitment to the rules of political pluralism, gender rights and freedom of expression, in order to reassure foreign investors and national constituents who feared the consequences of Nahda’s success.

c. In order to maintain their distinctive aspect, they emphasized their attachment to the Arab and Islamic heritage and presented themselves as the main force that would defend and develop this heritage. In other words, they insisted that Islam had to play a role as a source of moral val-ues and cultural identity, rather than as basis for policy and legislation.

This somewhat Jesuit-like attempt to address everyone’s needs, expecta-tions and fears might prove to be a winning strategy that would enable the formation of national compromise. But it could also alienate some disap-pointed constituents, who thought that Nahda’s project lacked clarity and focus. These discontented people might end up being an appealing target for radical salafi groups, such as Hizb ut-Tahrir, who proposed a more radi-cal vision of politics, and advocated for a return to the caliphate.

7.5 Social and economic challenges to Nahda’s theory

After the elections of October 2011, the Nahda-led government had to face numerous challenges that were mostly related to pressing economic

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and social demands. The theoretical framework on which Tunisian Islamist thought was based proved to be quite inadequate to address those challenges. The January revolution was largely based on social demands, not religious ones. The demand for the recognition of a right to work, and the rejection of the predatory practices of the Ben Ali reigning clan were the essential motives for the protests. Indeed, one of the major surprises of the October 2011 elections was the success of an unknown party – Popular and Petition – led by a UK-based millionaire (Mohammed Hashimi al-Hamidi) who proposed a purely populist pro-ject (work for all, right away).22 To a large extent, the relative victory of Nahda in past elections could be explained by Nahda’s image of not having corrupt leaders or candidates. Tunisia had so far tackled post-revolutionary difficulties relatively better than other countries such as Libya. State and financial institutions were functioning. Tourism was slowly recovering,23 and corruption and predation at the apex of the state had largely disappeared.24 However, the Nahda-led government has so far been unable to address the pressing need for social and eco-nomic reforms. The Tunisian middle and lower classes are increasingly unhappy and worried. The idea that ‘it was better before the revolu-tion’ resurfaced from time to time. The informal economic sector was expanding, especially in the area neighbouring Libya. The development gap between the Sahel and the interior remained a large one.25 Tunisia’s economy, heavily dependent on its relation with Europe, had suffered from the consequences of the European economic crisis. Exports had decreased,26 as had remittances from Tunisian migrants in Europe. The rate of unemployment increased to 18.9 per cent in November 2011, higher than in December 2010.27 There were countless demonstrations, sit-ins, strikes and road blockades. With popular expectations and impatience growing rapidly, labour in all sectors was now organizing into unions.

Although no reliable survey of Nahda’s constituents had been conducted, it seemed that a number of Nahda’s supporters were disappointed by the results of the Islamist party’s efforts in the economy. In July 2012, Nahda’s headquarters in Sidi Bouzid were burnt by workers protesting that their salaries had not been paid for too long and resentful of the lack of response from the Nahda mayor to their plight.28 Nahda had also been criticized for encouraging a high level of bureaucratic inertia and appointing party members to the posts of governors of most regions. Nahda was increasingly viewed as resorting to the same strategy as the former ruling party, RCD, of establishing a tight network of domina-tion over the territory. The economic solutions proposed by Nahda were based on large-scale investment projects funded by Gulf countries


(Qatar),29 the struggle against corruption and the development of an Islamic economy that, for example, utilized interest-free loans (sukuk). But the Nahda-led government was hesitant to initiate the much needed reforms, notably the decentralization of economic and political life, and the transition from an informal to a more formal economy. Ironically, Nahda’s victory seemed to be contributing to the empowerment of a liberal, free-market oriented economic approach, even though the revo-lution was based on a call for social justice, and against the excesses of crony capitalism. As Khalil Al Anani has shown, Islamists in Tunisia like in Egypt have adopted the economics of the old regime:

There is a state of schizophrenia and separation between the Islamist religious and ideological discourse on the one hand, and their eco-nomic behaviour, on the other. Excessive talk about transparency, asceticism, social justice and fair competition is met with an accumu-lated capital, an inflated wealth and interest in ‘Islamist’ businessmen at the expense of the poor.30

The Islamists’ approach to economic reform was largely based on the notion that one needed to moralize the leaders rather than on the realization that one needed to radically change the structural factors causing inequalities (between regions, for example) and the practice of transparency, and so on:

Islamists believe that they can manage the country’s economic activ-ity as they manage their social pastoral activities. The Brotherhood’s social, service and economic networks, for example, represent a kind of a parallel or informal economy that supports the principle of ‘subsidies’, not partnership between equal citizens, let alone trans-parency and accountability.

7.6 Nahda’s implosion and the end of the first coalition

On 6 February 2013, Chokri Belaïd, the leader of the left-wing, secular-ist party, the Movement of Democrat Patriots, and a vocal critique of the hegemonic ambitions of Tunisian Islamists was shot dead outside his home in Tunis.31 His brutal assassination triggered one of the most profound crises within Nahda, the coalition government and the Tunisian public since the beginning of the transition era. The question of who committed this murder was unanswered and would probably remain open for quite a long time. Yet most of the public immediately

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blamed Nahda and the Nahda-led government. Their suspicion, which revealed the extent of anger and dissatisfaction towards the Islamist party across parties, was fed by the fact that C. Belaïd had always been a vehement critic. Held on 8 February, the funeral of Chokri Belaid attracted a huge crowd that came from all over the country to express their solidarity with the Belaïd family and vent their anger at the radi-calization of the Islamist party and the inefficiency of the government.

Most importantly, the crisis made more visible the divisions within the Nahda party itself. The assassination occurred in a context already made tense by the numerous failed attempts to organize a cabinet reshuffle. On 6 February, Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali called for a radical reshuffle that would permit the replacement of most present ministers by ‘technocrats’, that is, ministers not affiliated with any par-ticular party but prominent for their administrative skills. In his view, this was the only way to avoid further polarization between the secular-ists and Islamists. The majority in Nahda, especially Ghannouchi and the members of the Council of the Shoura, immediately rejected this solution. By contrast, numerous parties from the secular left and Nida Tounes, the main opposition party to Nahda that was led by Beji Caïd Essebsi, backed H. Jebali’s proposal. The Belaïd crisis thus consolidated an important fracture within the Islamist party and among its support-ers. It remained to be seen whether the fracture would lead to a definite split of the party into two Islamist parties but certainly Nahda’s mem-bers and supporters were deeply divided over the strategy they should adopt. While the disagreements within Nahda were profound and real, the crisis could not be analysed solely through the prism of Nahda’s internal division without, for instance, considering the role of national or foreign counter-revolutionary forces that had an interest in destabi-lizing the transition process.

The Belaïd assassination led to the suspension of the experiment of the coalition, at least in the form it had taken so far. The two secular parties of the ‘troika’, CPR and Ettakatol, themselves underwent diffi-cult crises. The majority of the two parties’ supporters became increas-ingly critical of the Islamist party’s hegemonic ambitions and called for the withdrawal of the two parties from the troika. As a matter of fact, numerous deputies from Ettakatol resigned from the Constituent Assembly and a couple of CPR ministers subsequently resigned from the government. The crisis therefore exacerbated disagreements among the three parties of the coalition, and their likely individual choices remained uncertain. The complexity of the strategy chosen by CPR, for example, illustrated more generally the confusion and turmoil within


each party. However, the possibility also emerged of forming a new and wider coalition that included other parties.

Nahda won the elections of 2011 thanks to its image of an authenti-cally anti-authoritarian party. Its long and costly resistance against Ben Ali’s regime largely contributed to its popularity and image as a non-corrupt party. Just two years later, Nahda appeared to be a party that had hegemonic and authoritarian ambitions. To some of the public, the party of dissent had turned into a party that prevented the realization of the objectives of the revolution. It also remained unclear whether that perception reflected the true objectives of Nahda. But if the call for the formation of a government of technocrats, that is, of apolitical ministers, now seemed to be very popular, the reasons given by Nahda and some of their secular allies for rejecting this particular option could not be simply dismissed as irrelevant. In a context where all the issues at stake were so highly politicized, an appeal to ‘neutral technocrats’ who had no electoral legitimacy whatsoever could be highly problematic, not to say anti-democratic.

Ironically, amidst a growing sense of insecurity and anxiety, the reaction of the Tunisian public gave reason to be optimistic about the outcome of the political transition. The demonstrations that took place on 9 February, the day of Belaid’s funeral, showed that the Tunisian public remained highly mobilized, alert and vigilant, very well aware of the dangers of polarization and violence. The generalized exasperation and anger at the Nahda government had not been translated into a civil conflict pitting secularists and Islamists in the streets. The Algerian scenario of a civil war that is often raised by alarmist commentators in the West has not taken root in Tunisia. So far, Tunisians have shown a great sense of responsibility and unity in their rejection of violence and in their reiterated calls for national union and reconciliation.

7.7 Conclusion

Writing on the relations among the state, religion and secularism, the Islamist thinker Lajmi Lourimi insists on how imperative it is for Tunisia to ‘enter a new period, that goes beyond the fracture between the secular Islamists and the modernists’.32 He draws a clear distinction between a positive and inclusive form of democracy that is defined by its capacity to include diversity, and an exclusive form of democracy that is based on rejection of differences. The first, he argues, corres ponds to the model of the ‘Medina democracy’, whereas the second is based on the model of the ‘Athens democracy’.33 The role of the state is to permit the people

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to develop dignity, liberty and progress, not to impose secularism from above. In order to do so, the state has to find a balance between the preservation of the ‘Oriental pages of the history of the country’ and the promise of the ‘pages of a better future’.34 One can only agree with the necessity of countering the polarization of the public sphere and avoiding the trap of a perpetuation of the secularist–Islamist divide. As I have shown in this chapter, the Islamists’ endorsement of the notion of civility and civil state is based on several decades of debate and reflection on the relation among religion and democracy. From this point of view, it would be unfair to discredit the Islamists’ discourse and policy as evidence of a so-called hidden agenda or a form of double-speak. However, an important question remains: what are the concrete and legal tools needed to implement the Islamists’ ideal of a civil state? While the Islamists’ con-ception rests on a comprehensive and optimistic view of society, seen as an organic body that can reach piety and virtue through education and development, this view seems contradicted in the controversies that have repeatedly broken out in Tunisia since the revolution. As long as the con-cepts of civility and civil state are not judicially and constitutionally speci-fied, the reference to this concept will be insufficient for the resolution of conflicts and the protection of individual liberties. This process of legal and constitutional characterization is indeed the responsibility not only of Islamist politicians and intellectuals, but of all Tunisian citizens together.

Tunis/Florence, September 2013.

Notes

1. On the volatile relationship between Nahda and the state during this period, see Alexander, Christopher (2010) Tunisia: Stability and Reform in the Modern Maghreb, London: Routledge, especially chapter 2.

2. See ‘Final Tunisian election results announced’, Aljazeera Online, 4 November 2011, http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2011/11/20111114171420907168.html.

3. See Marzouki, Nadia (forthcoming, 2014) ‘From resistance to governance: the category of Civility in Tunisian Islamists’ political theory’, in Nouri Gana (ed.), Genealogies of Resistance, Indiana: Indiana University Press.

4. Ghannouchi, Rachid (1995) ‘The conflict between the West and Islam, the Tunisian case: Reality and prospects’, Paper presented at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House, London, 9 May 1995.

5. Maya Charrad, Mounira (2001) States and Women’s Rights: The Making of Postcolonial Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco, Berkeley: Berkeley University Press.

6. Quoted in Tamimi, Azzam (1994) ‘Secularism in the Arab Maghreb . . . what secularism?’, Paper presented to the Collapse of Secularism seminar, Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of Westminster, London, 10 June 1994, p. 12.


7. Here I refer to the distinction between ‘intransigeantisme’ (an uncompromising and fundamentalist attitude towards the sacred text) and ‘intégralisme’ (a conception of world affairs that refuses the idea of a separation between religion and politics), developed by Jean-Marie Donegani in Donegani, Jean-Marie (1993) La liberté de choisir Pluralisme religieux et pluralisme politique dans le catholicisme français contemporain, Paris, Presses de Sciences-Po.

8. Sadri, M. and A. Sadri (eds) (2000) Reason, Freedom and Democracy in Islam, Essential Writings of Adbolkarim Soroush, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

9. This disagreement came up at a conference organized in Cairo, ‘the Civil State vs. The Islamic state’, in which many Egyptian Islamists argued that the term ‘ahli’ is a more adequate term to translate ‘civil’ into Arabic. See Huwaidi, F. (1993) Al-Islam Wad-Dimuqratiyah (Islam and democracy), Cairo: al-Ahram Translation and Publishing Centre, p. 192.

10. Ghannouchi, Rachid (1994) ‘Al-Harakah al-Islamiyah Wal-Mujtama’ al-Madani’ [The Islamic movement and civil society], Paper presented at Pretoria University, South Africa, August 1994.

11. See interview with Azzam Tamimi, in Tamimi, op. cit.12. Roy, Olivier (1994) The Failure of Political Islam, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard

University Press.13. Ghannouchi, R. (1994) ‘Al-Harakah al-Islamiyah Wal-Mujtama’ al-Madani’

[The Islamic movement and civil society], Paper presented at Pretoria University, South Africa, August 1994.

14. See Nahda’s programme, p. 5, http://www.365p.info/livre/index.html: ‘Islam is a moderate referential (marja’iyya wasatiyya)… that interacts with all human experience (khibra bachariyya)’. See Press conference given by Rachid Ghannouchi when Nahda’s programme was presented in September 2011, http://www.365p.info/

15. Ghribi, Asma (2012) ‘Trial of Nabil Karoui, owner of Nessma TV for broadcasting Persepolis last October’, All Africa, 24 January 2012.

16. http://www.monmag.com/communiques/ennahdha-soutient-nessma-tv-et-defend-la-liberte-d%E2%80%99expression.html.

17. ‘Country Watch List: Tunisia’, Economist Intelligence Unit, 16 January 201218. ‘The coalition has differing views on this, with Ettakatol and CPR favour-

ing a semi-presidential system to limit both the possible abuses of a strong presidency and the instability of an unfettered parliament. Al-Nahda has traditionally supported a parliamentary system, but officials have recently indicated a softening in the party’s stance towards a semi-presidential model’ (Cochrane, Richard (2011) ‘Tunisian National Constituent Assembly Holds Inaugural Session’, IHS Global Insight, 23 November 2011).

19. See, for example, ‘Tunisie: que veulent vraiment les islamistes d’Ennahdha?’, Jeune Afrique, 21 February 2012.

20. See Gana, Alia, Gilles Van Hamme and Maher Ben Rebah (2012) ‘Géographie électorale et disparité socio-territoriales: les enseignements des élections pour l’assemblée constituante en Tunisie,’ L’Espace politique, no.18, 2012, http://espacepolitique.revues.org.

21. Translated from Article 1 of the party statutes of Nahda.22. See Gana, Alia, Gilles Van Hamme and Maher Ben Rebah, op. cit.23. As reported by the Economist Intelligence Unit in its Analysis Report, ‘The

Troubled Tourism Sector’, Economist Intelligence Unit, 27 November 2012.

Nadia Marzouki 153

24. The high-level predation of the overthrown regime was no longer practiced but popular perceptions of corruption were not insignificant; see the Transparency International report on Tunisia, 2013, http://www.transparency.org/gcb2013/country/?country=tunisia.

25. For an assessment of the regional inequality, see Gana, Alia (2011) ‘Les inégalités socio-territoriales aux origines de la révolution tunisienne: Défis du développement, enjeux pour la recherche’, Lettre de L’IRMC, no.6, April–August 2011, pp. 19–20.

26. Exports in 2012 had fallen almost to the level of 2001; see Central Bank of Tunisia, ‘Receipts of Balance of External Payments’, http://www.bct.gov.tn/bct/siteprod/english/services/service5.jsp.

27. The figure for November 2011 is from the Tunisian National Institute of Statistics, http://www.ins.nat.tn/communiques/Note_emploi_1T2012_15052012_V3.pdf.

28. For a report on growing socio-economic problems and political tensions in Sidi Bouzid, see Barrie, Christopher (2012) ‘Tunisia: Al-Nahda’s Failures Lead Sidi Bouzid to Rise Again’, Al-Akhabar English, August 17, 2012, http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/11211.

29. An agreement was signed for the state-owned Qatar Petroleum Company (QPC) to build, own and operate a US$2–3bn oil refinery at Skhira on the Gulf of Gabès, 350 km south of Tunis, a project due for completion in 2014 or 2015. See Analysis Report ‘Qatar Agrees to Build Oil Refinery at Skhira’, Economist Intelligence Unit, July 23 2012.

30. http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/business/2012/08/islamist-in-society-neoliberal-in-the-economy.html.

31. It was said of Belaid that he was ‘at the forefront of the early lawyer’s protests in December 2010, which grew to become the uprising that toppled the Tunisian government in January 2011’ whereas the ‘Ennahdha movement and most of the country’s opposition parties did not give the uprising their explicit backing until the last days’, and that he was ‘a figurehead of the protests in Siliana last November, when tensions over unemployment and stalling economic progress erupted’ (Ryan, Yasmine (2013) ‘Tunisia: Murder most foul’, Aljazeera, 7 February 2013, http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/02/20132712952351890.html).

32. Lourimi, Lajmi (2011) ‘Secularism is not the role of the state’, 1 April 2011, http://www.nahda.info/arabe/News-file-article-sid-4570.html; my translation.

33. Lourimi, Lajmi (2011) ‘Secularism is not the role of the state’.34. Lourimi, Lajmi (2011) ‘Secularism is not the role of the state’.

154

8Reforming the Regime or Reforming the Dissidents? The Gradualist Dissent of Islamic Movements in MoroccoShoko Watanabe

Among the different courses that Islamic movements have taken in the Middle East, the Islamic movements in Morocco are distinguished by their gradualist character. By ‘gradualist’, I mean a movement which seeks change in society and the political system within the exist-ing socio-political framework and over the long term. This tendency sharply contrasts with insurrectionary movements, which aim for radical and even violent breaks with the established order. There are many examples of the latter, such as the Iranian Islamic revolution of 1979, coup d’état by Hasan al-Turabi and his National Islamic Front in Sudan in 1989, and establishment of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan by the Taliban in 1996. An example of a ‘failed’ Islamic insurrection is the movement by Front islamique du salut (FIS or Islamic Front of Salvation) after the cancellation of the 1991 elections in Algeria (Kepel 2000: 166–82). On the other hand, gradualist movements include AKP in Turkey.1 In Morocco, the Parti de la justice et du développement (PJD or Party of Justice and Development), a political party whose ‘mother’ social movement is the Islamic Harakat al-Tawhid wa al-Islah (MUR or Movement of Unicity and Reform), can be regarded as a gradualist movement because, fundamentally, they do not intend to overthrow the regime of the Kingdom of Morocco even if they do criticize it as a means of obtaining their desired reforms. Why do we see, then, such opposed tendencies among Islamic movements?

With regard to this question, Asef Bayat (1998) distinguished the ‘insurrectionary’ type of Islamic movement from that of a ‘social move-ment’ by the latter’s potential for ‘passive revolution’. Comparing the Iranian Islamic revolution in 1979 with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in the early 1990s, Bayat suggested that one striking difference

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between the two cases is derived from the social position of the Islamic movements. In Iran, the absence of intermediate associations between the state and society other than religious institutions and clergymen facilitated the rise of a highly politicized Islamic movement that opted for revolution. In Egypt, however, the deep penetration of the Muslim Brotherhood as a religious movement into civil institutions permitted the Islamic movement to seek reform by pursuing the goal of gradual change (Bayat 1998, 2007: 16–48). Meanwhile, Cihan Tugal adapted the Gramscian concept of ‘passive revolution’ to explain Islamic politics in Turkey. For Tugal, Islamic mobilization in Turkey successfully reconsti-tuted hegemony in response to an ‘organic crisis’ that could make social integration infeasible. Yet, the existing hegemony was sufficiently strong in Turkey that it managed to absorb the dissident Islamic move-ment. In this case, ‘passive revolution’ meant the incorporation of the revolutionary movement into the existing system (Tugal 2009).2

Gradualist movements became an issue recently when scholars paid some attention to the political effects of ‘Islamist inclusion’ in the for-mal decision-making process in countries such as Turkey, Egypt, Yemen, Jordan, Kuwait, Palestine and Morocco (Schwedler 1998). Some scholars expected Islamic movements to become more ideologically moderate once they integrated into the formal political arena (Cavatorta 2006, 2010; Çavdar 2006; Wickham 2004). Others have presented evidence against such expectations (Clark 2006; Pratt 2006; Schwedler 2006). Some arguments have been made within a theoretical framework based on democratization, especially that of Huntington, who advanced a ‘participation/moderation trade-off’ hypothesis claiming that ideo-logical moderation is a precondition for any political actor seeking participation in the formal political sphere (Huntington 1991: 165–74). At first sight, the Moroccan case seems to fit this hypothesis given that PJD, the Islamic party now in power, became a legal, officially accepted movement during the regime’s ‘political opening’ in 1996–7. Indeed, MUR, PJD’s mother movement (whose predecessor was called al-Islah wa al-Tajdid or Reform and Renewal), first participated in legislative elections in 1997 under the banner of the Movement populaire constitu-tionnel démocratique (MPCD, or Constitutional and Democratic Popular Movement). In 1996, the party integrated the activists of al-Islah wa al-Tajdid and those Islamists who became later PJD gradually obtained electoral success. MUR/PJD never resorted to electoral boycotts, unlike Islamic parties in Egypt and Jordan (Wegner 2011: xxvi). After 2000, PJD became one of the major parties, and it finally won the largest share of seats in 2011 (Table 8.1). Even after emerging as the leading political party

156 Reforming the Regime or Reforming the Dissidents?

and forming a government under Abdelilah Benkiran, PJD’s strategy has been based on compromise and a conformist attitude towards the regime headed by the King. This is a surprising and significant turn since Benkiran began his political activities as the young leader of a hardliner Islamic movement called al-Shabiba al-Islamiya (or Islamic Youth), whose aim was to overthrow the regime and establish a true Islamic state.

It is difficult to understand this gradualist turn in Benkiran’s move-ment without taking into consideration the Islamists’ strategy for survival under the repressive regime. Some observers have pointed out that the political attitude of the Islamic movement has been shaped by the interactions between the regime and opposition forces, not by ideological choice (Clark and Young 2008; Wegner and Pellicer 2011). The reason the Islamists ceased to be revolutionary and took a more gradualist character was because the regime decided to provide them a competitive arena for power through the introduction of political plu-ralism and the acceptance of opposition groups into the formal political sphere. Socio-economic crisis and foreign pressure for ‘democratization’ prodded the regime to switch to ‘Islamist inclusion’, which was little more than the structuralization of violence as a means to control the opposition.

8.1 The scope of Islamic movements in Morocco

PJD’s 1990s motto was ‘Islam, constitutional monarchy and non-violence’, and its first principle is Islam. In Morocco, the Hizb al-Istiqlal (PI, or Party of Independence), which played a crucial role in the movement for national independence in 1956, was based mainly on traditional religious families and urban elites of modern education (Benhlal 1998: 533). PI traditionally monopolized issues concerning the Arabic language and Islam in its discourse (Benhlal 1999: 213). However, the Islamic

Table 8.1 Islamist Results in Legislative Elections (1997–2011)

1997 2002 2007 2011

Party MPCD MPCD/PJD PJD PJDNumber of Seats Won

(Total Number of Seats)9 (325) 42 (325) 46 (325) 107 (395)

Percentage of Seats 2.8 12.9 14.1 27.1Position 9th 3rd 2nd 1st

Source: CMIESI (2011), Daadaoui (2011: Appendix D).

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ideology of PJD, which is more open to foreign influence and better suited to the aspirations of the younger generations,3 has served as important political capital, especially to differentiate PJD from its major rivals, the left-wing parties. The second principle of PJD is a commit-ment to the constitutional monarchy. Contrary to the position of Abdessalam Yasin, another important Islamic leader and founder of Jama‘at al-Adl wa al-Ihsan (JAI or Justice and Charity Group) who con-demned the ritual of bay‘a (fealty to the King) as merely a pragmatic invention at odds with the true Islamic sense of bay‘a because the for-mer is not based on the consensus of the community as a whole, PJD recognized bay‘a for King Muhammad VI as the legitimate foundation of a ‘contract’ between the new King and the nation (el-Mossadeq 2002: 240). PJD’s third principle of ‘non-violence’ accompanies its ideas of political openness and dialogue with other democratic political parties. It is not coincidental that this principle was signalled in the publication of two books written by MUR activists who favoured the political par-ticipation of the Islamists in 1997, when MUR participated in elections (el-Mossadeq 1999: 278). In theory, therefore, the movement opted deliberately for legal participation in exchange for coordination with non-Islamic movements.

Besides MUR/PJD, other Islamic movements in Morocco developed different strategies towards the regime. One of the oldest Islamic organi-zations, Jama‘at al-Tabligh wa al-Da‘wa, started its activities as early as the 1960s and sought recognition as an official association in 1975, even though it was only a regional branch of the movement founded in India in 1941–2 (Tozy 1999: 259). However, the organization was especially active in Casablanca and spread to the national level via its network of private mosques (Tozy 1999: 261). The goal of the movement was the spiritual awakening of Muslims through religious education and activities that kept a distance from political affairs.

The Butshishiya order was a traditional Sufi order that gained popu-larity through the persuasive language of its sheikhs and government support, especially after 2002 when Ahmed Tawfiq became Minister of Religious Affairs. The minister supported the Butshishiya and promoted it among Moroccan youth. His intention was to use the order’s Sufism as a philosophy of spiritualism and pacifism to counter the radical and violent Islamic tendencies of those who carried out the 2003 attacks in Casablanca (Bekkaoui and Larémont 2011; Bekkaoui, Larémont and Rddad 2011).

The JAI was considered to be a political movement dangerous to the regime even though the group proclaimed that it would limit itself to


social and moral activities and remain outside the domain of political parties. Among the Moroccan Islamic movements, JAI was probably the most popular, but it was also the most oppressed by the regime. Founded by its charismatic leader, Abdessalam Yasin, the movement’s goal was spiritual education of Sufi inspiration.4 JAI was typically based on educational circles formed to read Yasin’s book, al-Minhaj al-Nabawi (The Prophetic Path), which served as a manual for their cultural pro-gramme. However, it is well known that the movement operated a vast and dense network of activities among teachers and students in high schools and universities, as well as in trade unions and charity asso-ciations, with the aim of extending its power of popular mobilization. Moreover, via his letter to the King in 1974, Yasin directly criticized the religious legitimacy of the King, which made Yasin the object of severe political repression even before he launched his movement, al-Usra (or Family), in 1981. In 1987, al-Usra became Usrat al-‘Adl wa al-Ihsan (or Family of Justice and Charity), but it was later banned in 1989. Most of Yasin’s books are forbidden in Morocco, but they have been distributed secretly within Morocco as well as abroad through the organization’s international network. Refusing to form a political party, the group discreetly conducted grassroots activities. The scope of their influence and the reach of their mobilization were usually known only on the occasional popular demonstrations and through the summer camps they organized (Tozy 1999: 185–225; Zeghal 2005: 115–90).

In 2003, the jihadist movement al-Salafiya al-Jihadiya carried out suicide attacks in Casablanca, which were treated by the regime as an attempt to overthrow the monarchy. The regime’s immediate response was severe repression by imposing imprisonment and carrying out executions. Yet, deciding that poverty lay behind the attacks, the regime also introduced social policies to address the problems faced by those who felt excluded from the system’s distribution of wealth. The poli-cies also included the reinforcement of security measures in big cities (Catusse 2005: 208–9; Zeghal 2005: 274–93).

In a way, if the regime in Morocco presently faces no serious threat to its legitimacy except from a marginalized jihadist movement, it owes this in part to the success of its policy of co-opting a part of opposition groups. For this reason, it is interesting to see how Morocco has suc-ceeded in formulating a gradualist solution for Islamists. Moreover, this has occurred without a deep political rupture, such as the rupture that occurred in Algeria in 1992. In other words, although the Moroccan regime reinforced its control over different Islamic tendencies, espe-cially after the Casablanca suicide bombings of 2003, why and how

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could the regime allow PJD to gain electoral victory peacefully? One reason lies in the character of the regime. It has been able to introduce reforms when necessary, particularly when it was vulnerable to social protest. The second reason is the structure of the opposition, which is fragmented into many weak movements that have little capacity for massive mobilization and can be easily manipulated by the regime. This ‘fragmentation’ has always existed in Morocco since its independence and performs what Daadaoui (2011) referred to as ‘rituals of power’. Smith and Loudiy explained, with reference to Daniel Brumberg, the mechanism of the fragmentation of power among political actors with the King acting as the regulator.5

Curiously, this traditional policy of divide-and-rule was reinforced during the 1990s by the introduction of measures for ‘political liberali-zation’, which partly incorporated Islamist aspirations of participation. Thus, between the regime and the Islamists emerged a peculiar encoun-ter of reformist policy from above with reformist discourse from some Islamists, notwithstanding that every such encounter has been made against the backdrop of visible or invisible violence and repression by the regime.

8.2 Alternation of state–society relations

The most important characteristic of the Moroccan regime that influ-ences its relations with the Islamic movements is the religiosity of the King. Within the structure of the Moroccan state, the King is located at the centre not only of national political affairs but also of religious affairs and representation. This state structure, well known to students of Moroccan society, is called Makhzan (originally ‘storehouse’ or ‘repository’ as an allusion to the government finance department, the word has come to mean the Sultan’s central government as a whole) (Waterbury 1970: 17). Although the name has referred to the state since the sixteenth century, the Makhzan system should be understood in the contemporary context as a re-invented tradition rather than an unchanged heritage. For example, the two rituals of bay‘a – one for suc-cession to the throne and the other as an annual ceremony for renewed dele gation to the King – uphold the King’s legitimacy as a leader selected by the consensus of the community whereas it was not enshrined in the Constitution (Maghraoui 2001; el-Mossadeq 2002). In the first post-independent constitution of 1962, which declared the kingdom to be hereditary, the King is described as amir al-mu’minin (Commander of the Faithful), which defines the religious authority of the King over


Muslims.6 However, according to Tozy, the title was considered to be a symbolic term of no political consequence until the 1980s when the King began to refer to the title to justify his ability to enact legislation through zahir (decree) independent of the Parliament. The title was also evoked to show that the King holds the legitimate power of ijti-had (efforts toward new legal interpretations), which is applied to law reforms (Tozy 1999: 90–5). Then, King Hasan II constructed a system that allowed him to introduce his own regulations and reforms. Given that he possesses far more decision-making authority in all state appa-ratuses than the government and parliament, challenges to the King’s legitimacy by social movements, including Islamic movements, have been constrained by the King’s response, whether negative or positive. Thus, the relationship as an opposition force to the regime is mainly expressed by the former’s attitude toward the King. The government and parliament constitute an arena of competition among different forces, loyal or oppositional, rather than an apparatus of repression.

In this sense, the trajectory of the regime’s stance toward opposition movements is essential to understanding the development of the Islamic movements. The critical change occurred in 1996–7 when Hasan II introduced ‘political liberalization’, an initiative influenced by socio-economic conditions and Morocco’s vulnerability to the international milieu. The transformation of Moroccan state–society relations occurred in two historical phases: first came the state-led economy based on patron–client relations favouring a very limited group of people, and second, a liberalized economy was supported by more numerous and competitive actors in society. The adoption of a structural adjustment programme (SAP) followed by the ‘political opening’ in 1996–7 was the turning point.

Up to the 1970s, the regime maintained the ‘Moroccanization’ of the economy, best known by the requirement that at least 51 per cent of a foreign-managed industrial or commercial company be Moroccan owned. This policy was accompanied by the nationalization of ex-colonial settlers’ farmlands, while state revenues were boosted by a raise of the price of phosphate rock, Morocco’s most important export item. Unlike Tunisia, which opted for infitah (or opening of the market) very early and switched to an export-oriented industrialization policy and integration into the periphery of the European market from 1969, Morocco retained a state-led economy marked by economic nationa-lism up to the 1970s (White 2001: 2–3, 128). This choice was possible partly because the phosphate industry, which was commercialized by the national Royal Phosphate Office, performed well and raised export

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earnings, while Tunisia does not possess such a resource (White 2001: 129). Backed by a phosphate boom, the King – who was otherwise shocked by attempted coups in 1971 and 1972 – was able to pursue populist policies such as raising legal minimum wages.

This state-led economy later became no longer sustainable. Economic conditions soured in the mid-1970s when the price of phosphate fell while oil prices soared. Under the state of declining export revenue and rising inflation, Morocco resorted to foreign debt to cover the costs of state-led investment. In addition, the expenses due to the western Sahara war7 weighed heavily on the national budget. As the regime moved to reduce expenses by cutting civil service salaries and investments, it was met with strikes and labour unrest in 1978 and 1979 (White 2001: 133). By the early 1980s, rising consumer prices and a paralysed urban infra-structure provoked street demonstrations. The reduction of food subsi-dies led to severe riots in Casablanca in June 1981, which resulted in more than 600 deaths and 2000 arrests. At the end of 1983, nationwide riots against price increases led to hundreds of deaths. The public exter-nal debt continued to grow, from US$712 million in 1970 to US$7.9 billion in 1980 and US$11.8 billion in 1983 (White 2001: 134). In 1983, domestic social unrest and international pressure compelled Morocco to accept the SAP of the IMF and the World Bank, and with that, Morocco entered a period of economic overhaul.

If the economic reforms ‘from above’ were meant to deal with griev-ances ‘from below’, the regime was still far from being tolerant of opposition movements. Accused of ‘complot’ to assassinate King Hasan II in 1963, several activists of the socialist Union nationale des forces populaires (UNFP, or National Union of Popular Forces) were sentenced to death (Hughes 2001: 128–9; Perrault 1990: 62–81). Still, anger over inequality triggered riots in Casablanca, Rabat and Fes in March 1965. In Casablanca, bloody rioting by students and slum dwellers was also blamed on leftist activists. When UNFP militants led an abortive popu-lar uprising in 1973, the King retaliated with large-scale imprisonment and many death sentences (Hughes 2001: 197–204).

Although the ten-year SAP (1983–92) improved the economic perfor-mance of the state sector and achieved a better current account balance (Figure 8.1), the neo-liberal integration with the global economy came along with the abolition of many price controls, increases in the price of food and basic commodities, and a reduction in real wages (Agénor and Aynaoui 2003: 16). Actually, the increase in consumer prices caused massive demonstrations throughout the country in December 1983, which led to the arrest of around 9000 people (White 2001: 134). Under


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the SAP, the privatization of state companies and the adoption of an export-oriented growth strategy accelerated social mobility for some but also restructured society towards growing economic inequality. Social inequality widened during the 1980s and 1990s. The Gini coefficient in 1985 was 39.19, subsequently rising to 39.46 in 1999 and 40.63 in 2001 (World Bank 2011). Yet, Morocco persisted with its integration into the global economy by joining the World Trade Organization in 1995 and signing a free-trade agreement with the European Union in 1996.

In addition, economic liberalization was accompanied by the realign-ment of economic elites. Before liberalization, state interventionist policies allowed the monarchy to maintain a patron-client system that concen-trated wealth in the hands of privileged groups, especially rural elites, the regime’s key ally in agricultural projects (Joffé 1988: 211–15). However, following the neoliberal policies and privatization, employers’ associations became a powerful pressure group. For example, the Conféderation général des entreprises du Maroc (CGEM, or Moroccan General Confederation of Enterprises8), which represented a new generation of entrepreneurs, even started to play an important role in politics by giving opinions on state control over informal sectors so that fair competition could take place in favour of legally constituted firms (Benhlal 1998: 528).

The regime’s vulnerability to internal pressure and its flexibility in political and economic reform were demonstrated when the King responded to a crisis involving his legitimacy by introducing successive constitutional reforms (Table 8.2). There is correlation between the King’s

Shoko Watanabe 163

Table 8.2 Moroccan Constitutional Reforms

Constitution Year Legislation Nation King

1st 1962 Two chambers. The lower chamber is elected by direct universal suffrage.

The right to receive an education, seek employment, strike and own private property.

Amir al-mu’minin, symbol of national unity. Nominates the Prime Minister and ministers.

2nd 1970 Abolishment of the upper chamber. Only a proportion of the representatives is elected by direct universal suffrage suffrage.

No substantial change. No substantial change.

3rd 1972 Two thirds of representatives are elected by direct universal suffrage.

No substantial change. No substantial change.

4th 1992 No substantial change. No substantial change. Nominates the Prime Minister. Nominates other ministers upon the recommandation of the Prime Minister.

5th 1996 Restitution of the upper chamber. All members of the lower chamber are elected by direct universal suffrage.

Introduction of the right to free enterprise.

No substantial change.

6th 2011 No substantial change. Addition of Amazigh (Berber) as an offi cial language.

Nominates the Head of Government from the largest party in the lower chamber. Nominates other ministers upon the recommandation of the Head of Government.

Source: Summarized from Manshurat al-majalla al-maghribıya li al-idara al-mah˙allıya wa

al-tanmiya (1998), al-Dustur al-jadıd li al-mamlaka al-maghribıya (2011).

economic and legislative policies and the reactions from outside the palace (including social protest movements and even attempted coup d’état), as Zartman indicated.9 Indeed, moments of social crisis (1961, 1971–2, 1979–83, 1995 and 2011) generally correspond with times of political reform (Figure 8.2). The country’s first Constitution was set up in 1962 one year after Hasan II took the throne; constitutional reform came in 1972 in the direction of political opening; SAP was introduced in 1983 after a long economic crisis; and the constitutional reform in


1992 followed a protest movement against the Gulf War in 1990, which was supported by traditional opposition groups (PI and USFP) and led to large demonstrations against the regime at the end of 1990 into 1991 (Storm 2007: 54). The Kutla alliance, made up of PI, USFP, PPS, OADP and UNFP,10 judged the reforms to be insufficient and tried to boycott the constitutional referendum, but their efforts were in vain. Given the alliance’s strength as evidenced by the legislative elections in 1993 and their refusal to participate in the government, the King introduced another constitutional reform in 1996, probably for the sake of reconcil-ing with the Kutla before a monarchical transition, which had become more likely due to the King’s health problems (Storm 2007: 72). The

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Figure 8.2 Number of Labour Conflicts (1960–2011) and Urban Unemployment Rate (1960–2005) in Morocco Source: Moroccan Ministry of Employment and Professional Training (2011), Moroccan Ministry of National Economy (1960–2006). Unemployment rate has been calculated by the author for 1971. Unemployment rates up to 1982 do not cover the Saharan provinces.

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latest constitutional reform was introduced in 2011 in response both to rising labour conflicts and growing calls for democracy inspired by the ‘Arab Spring’.

At the same time, the more Morocco became integrated into the world market, the more pressure foreign partners applied on the Moroccan regime for ‘democratization’, which gave the regime an incentive for ‘rational’ economic reforms and ‘good governance’ as a means of invit-ing foreign aid and investment (Zemmi and Boegaert 2009). Actually, the Western media was critical of the human rights violations and severe repression of both leftist and Islamic movements under the reign of Hasan II (Perrault 1990; White 2001: 160–1). In the early 1990s the regime enacted several measures towards ‘political liberalization’ that appeared to accompany the economic liberalization. After the consti-tutional reform in 1992, new election laws were adopted in June 1992 in line with the demands from opposition parties to reduce the ages of candidates and voters, allow all parties broader access to media, and pro-vide state allocation for election campaigns. In the subsequent legislative elections in 1993, the Kutla alliance parties performed well, especially in the direct elections in which two-thirds of the representatives were elected (Storm 2007: 62–8). Furthermore, constitutional reform in 1996 restored the upper chamber (Chambre des conseillers), which had been non-existent since 1970, and allowed all (instead of two-thirds) of the members of the Chamber of Representatives (Chambre des représentants or the lower chamber) to be directly elected. Following the referendum and dissolution of the Chamber of Representatives, the national elections in 1997 were held under universal suffrage. The Islamists of al-Islah wa al-Tajdid led by Benkiran contested the elections under the banner of the existing MPCD party. After the election, the King appointed the social-ist USFP’s Abderrahman Yusufi as Prime Minister. This was the first time that Moroccan socialists formed a government. The country appeared to be taking a real turn towards democracy with Yusufi’s governement d’alternance (government of alternation), which comprised figures from USFP, PI of the Kutla alliance and several royalist politicians.

After the death of Hasan II in July 1999, the young King Muhammad VI was enthroned. After the ceremony of bay‘a for the new King, Muhammad began to act as amir al-mu’minin of all Moroccans, who were eager for more freedom after years of severe political control under the reign of Hasan II (Maghraoui 2001: 14). Because his father had already prepared a path towards political freedom in his final years with the two constitutional reforms in 1992 and 1996, Muhammad VI could easily find himself on the same path. Proffering reform, justice


and dialogue with society, he tried to cultivate an image of being a ‘King of the poor’. National elections were held in 2002 with considerable care for transparency and electoral justice, adequate corruption-free campaigns, and increased women’s representation (el-Messaoudi 2004). The new monarch established the Equity and Reconciliation Commission in 2004 to restore social confidence damaged by the human rights abuses during the reign of his father. All this, however, was predicated on the continuation of the monarchical strategy of top-down ‘liberalization’ initiated by Hasan II, which aimed to maintain state power while appearing to be a pro-democratic monarchy. In this way, reforms and the inclusion of opposition parties into the politi-cal decision-making process contributed to the regime’s strategy of dividing and conquering the opposition forces, including the Islamic movements. During the reign of Muhammad VI, diverse actors from a variety of political parties, NGOs, women’s and human rights asso-ciations, business groups and local authorities have been recognized within a system of ‘national consensus’ that requires social and politi-cal actors to negotiate with the King.11 In short, alternance represented not only a real process of participation in government by traditional opposition parties, but it has also been a drawn-out co-optation of ex-opposition actors. Indeed, popular support for USFP declined after Yusufi’s term in office (1998–2002). When PI led the government from 2007, its leader, Abbas al-Fassi, was irreproachably loyal to the King. By then, the parties of the Kutla alliance, which had opposed the ruling regime since the 1960s, were integrated into the power system.12 At the same time, the political opening in the late 1990s officially recognized one group with an Islamic tendency into the legal sphere of politics. That group is MUR/PJD.

8.3 Alternation of the Islamic movements

With reform being important in the relations between the regime and Islamic movements, it is instructive to examine the language of reform used by the latter as it moved along its gradualist path. In Arabic, reform can refer to tanzim (restructuring) or islah (amending, improving).13 If tanzim captured the regime’s stance of restructuring and regulating the state apparatus from above, islah, via amelioration in quality, char-acterized the Islamic movements’ goal of transforming society through Islamic revival. In this sense, Benkiran’s MUR/PJD was reformist. Yet, even if MUR/PJD seemed to use the language of reform and not that of revolution, as if in response to the regime’s top-down reforms, their

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dialogue was absolutely asymmetric. The Islamists’ language of reform is nothing less than a by-product of the regime’s violence and repres-sion, which has not ceased even if it is less overt now.

Al-Shabiba al-Islamiya, or Islamic Youth, was founded in 1969 by Abdelkarim Muti, a veteran of the teachers’ union and the Union social-iste des forces populaires (USPF, which splintered from the Union nationale des forces populaires in 1972). The movement had two organizations: one was a legal cultural association recognized in 1972, and the other was a secret political structure whose ideology was inspired by Sayid Kutb (Zeghal 2005: 198–9). As his movement attracted supporters from high schools and universities during the 1970s, it frequently clashed with Marxist groups operating in the same arena (Munson 1993: 160). In 1975, Muti’s group was accused by the Moroccan authorities of murder-ing Umar Ben Jelloun, an eminent socialist assassinated under unclear circumstances. Muti was compelled to leave Morocco after which his movement fractured and its activists joined various other Islamic move-ments. While most radicals formed an al-Jihad group outside Morocco, others joined Yasin’s group (Munson 1993: 160; Tozy 1999: 230–2). The ex-activists of al-Shabiba gathered around Abdellilah Benkiran, who had joined the group in 1976, to found al- Jama‘a al-Islamiya (or Islamic Group) in 1981. This group, which consisted of followers of Muti’s ideology and other neutral elements, gradually switched to accommo-dation and favoured dialogue with the regime in subsequent years (Tozy 1999: 232–7). Benkiran himself criticized the line of secret organization and tried to lead the group in legal activities. Benkiran’s original idea in founding al- Jama‘a al-Islamiya was to promote an Islamic movement within a framework that had the Moroccan monarchy as ‘an actually existing Islamic state’ as he stated:

I realized very early that what we tried to do was practically impos-sible. We would not have any chance when we remained outside the society. (...) We should support and reform from inside. We under-stood that we had a chance to have an Islamic state (Zeghal 2005: 205, translated).

As Zeghal stated, it is obvious that the leaders of al- Jama‘a al-Islamiya tried to make the Moroccan elites forget about the sectarian intoler-ance of al-Shabiba and the killing of Ben Jelloun (Zeghal 2005: 205). It is important to note that the ideological conversion of al- Jama‘a al-Islamiya occurred under the severe repression of Islamic (as well as leftist) movements during the 1980s. After his first death sentence for


the murder of Ben Jelloun, Muti was sentenced by default to capital punishment again in 1984 for plotting Islamic revolution and for a third time in 1985 for smuggling arms from Algeria to carry out an armed insurrection. In each case, young Islamists, including students, were sentenced to death, life imprisonment or a long prison sentence. In another case, which happened in Marrakesh in 1985, 31 members of the Mujahidin movement were accused of trying to establish an Islamic republic, and 20 of them were sentenced to life imprisonment (Hughes 2001: 302–3). Under these circumstances, Benkiran had no hope of securing legal status for his group. Their chance came after the ‘politi-cal liberalization’ of the 1990s (Zeghal 2005: 205). In 1992, al- Jama‘a al-Islamiya changed its name to al-Islah wa al-Tajdid. This change was made to avoid the risk of the words ‘Islamic Group’ giving the impres-sion of being a religiously exclusive and sectarian movement. Instead, the goals of the movement were ‘principles of participation, interaction and collaboration with others’.14 Four years later, it joined the Rabitat al-Mustaqbal al-Islami (or League of Islamic Future) led by Ahmed Raisuni to form Harakat al-Tawhid wa al-Islah (MUR or Movement of Unicity and Reform). These organizational changes are not insignificant. They reflect the movement’s transformation from illegal, informal activity to recognizing the legitimacy of the regime and becoming a legal, pluralist political organization. Forming a political party, participating in elec-tions, and winning seats in parliament or the government was a critical choice that differentiated PJD from other non-legalized rival Islamic movements such as JAI.

What happened to Islamists, then, in the age of ‘political liberaliza-tion’? In the age of liberalization, the King has tried to play the essen-tial role of decision-maker not by direct repression of opposition forces but rather by making use of competition among these forces to weaken each of them. The King can take advantage of any conflict within the opposition, whether it is ideological (such as the secularist/Islamist divide), social (when several groups vie for support from the same social base) or political (competition for legal status and political participa-tion). Here, the change in the attitude of the Islamic MUR/PJD towards the issue of family law reform is an instructive illustration of how, in Morocco, divisions in political circumstances make loyalist opposi-tions more ‘moderate’, or in other words, tactically cooperative with others.15

At the time, the issue of Mudawwana or Moroccan family law16 reform was the centre of dispute. When the Union de l’action féminine (or Union of Female Action), a women’s association of the leftist OADP, launched

Shoko Watanabe 169

a campaign to collect a million signatures to submit to Parliament in favour of family law reform in 1992, Benkiran’s al-Islah wa al-Tajdid published a fatwa (judicial opinion) in their journal, al-Raya, that condemned those who signed the petition as apostates. Perceiving the accusation as a serious threat not only for the women’s movement but also for human rights, the Organisation marocaine des droits de l’homme (or Moroccan Organization of Human Rights) criticized the fatwa and defended the women’s union (Catalano 2010; Cavatorta and Durac 2011; Tozy 1999: 249–52). Given the tension between the Islamists of al-Islah wa al-Tajdid (who opposed any change in the family law that was at odds with Islamic law) and the activists for women’s rights (who felt that they were subjected to the same threat of violence that their Algerian counterparts faced from the Islamists), Hasan II intervened and promised to reform the family law in his capacity as amir al-mu’minin and through the process of ijtihad after consulting with religious experts. The new family law was promulgated in 1993 by zahir (decree) of the King without any discussion in the Parliament as the Parliament remained dissolved at that time and the King held the power to enact legislation in such cases (Catalano 2010; Cavatorta and Durac 2011). The reform brought some improvements to the condition of women as it allowed women over the age of 20 whose fathers had deceased to enter into marriage without a guardian (wali) as well as imposed certain conditions on the practice of polygamy and repudiation (unilateral divorce proclaimed by a husband).17

When the family law was amended for the second time in 2004, the Islamists made some accommodations. The initiative was taken by Yusufi’s gouvernment de l’alternance when it submitted in 1999 the Project of National Action for Integration of Women in Development (Plan d’action national pour l’intégration de la femme au développement), which proposed amendments to the family law. The Project planned to raise the marriage age of women from 15 to 18, remove guardianship over marriage for adult women, abolish repudiation and establish equality between men and women in divorce proceedings. Wary of the liberalist, secular spirit behind the project of the socialist-led government, tradi-tionalist religious officials, including those in the Ministry of Religious Affairs18 and the Moroccan League of ‘Ulama’ in Rabat, criticized the reform proposition as being against Islamic law (Buskens 2003; Daoud 2002). On the other hand, 41 women’s associations and human rights organizations formed a network to support the Project (Buskens 2003). Many of the Islamists in MUR/PJD were unhappy with the Project, but political circumstances required them not to act violently or invite


isolation, as they did in 1992. Rather they were forced to act in accord with other political forces following their participation in the legisla-tive elections in 1997, and MUR/PJD had representatives in Parliament who officially supported Yusufi’s government. Moreover, MUR/PJD tried to show that it was cooperative towards Muhammad VI, who seemed to be very favourable to the government’s Project (Clark and Young 2008). Even though MUR published criticisms of the reform project in al-Raya, the criticisms were not accompanied by any violent condemna-tion of those in favour of the reform. In addition, it solicited opinions from others, such as the Hasan Hadith Institute, a state institution for training religious scholars (Buskens 2003). MUR/PJD also campaigned against the reform in collaboration with JAI and the National Committee for Defence of Moroccan Family. The latter was a nationwide movement launched in November 1999 by MUR activists with the support of some members of PI and USFP, the Kutla alliance parties. On 12 March 2000, Islamist protesters gathered in Casablanca for a counter-demonstration against a demonstration in Rabat to support the family law reform. It was estimated that the former attracted about 60,000 or even 70–100,000 protesters while the latter, organized by the USFP, PPS, PI and women’s associations only drew 40–100,000 people (Daoud 2002).

In the face of Islamist mobilization and internal discord, Yusufi was obliged to renounce the government’s ability to realize the reforms and appealed for the King’s intervention in February 2001. After the legisla-tive elections of 2002, which left PJD third, behind USFP and PI, and following the Islamist suicide attacks in Casablanca on 15 May 2003, the King’s family law reform commission submitted the draft that was to be enacted in 2004. Certainly, members of MUR/PJD were forced to abstain from action to a certain extent because of the hostile public opinion against Islamic movements as a whole after the bombings even though they had no direct connection to the perpetrators, who were activists with a Salafist-Jihadist tendency. More importantly, however, the PJD representatives in the lower chamber participated in the vote for the draft that finally passed the reform (Clark and Young 2008: 336–7). The new family law introduced many substantial amendments with some differ-ences from the initial government draft. It raised the age of marriage for women to 18, abolished guardianship for adult women when they mar-ried, imposed more complicated procedures for polygamy and repudia-tion, and declared equality of roles for men and women in the family.19

The case of the two family law reforms shows that the Islamic MUR/PJD, once it became involved in the decision-making process, displayed a more conformist behaviour not only towards the regime

Shoko Watanabe 171

but also towards the other political forces. This point is significant for understanding how Islamic movements in Morocco progressively transformed their orientation from radicalism to reformism, or in other words ‘strategic gradualism’, as well as adopted a prudent approach towards an eventual assumption of power. The regime’s reforms of the 1990s, often referred to as ‘political liberalization’, allowed the regime to divide and conquer the opposition forces by permitting only some of them (first Kutla and then MUR/PJD) to enter the circle of political decision-making while excluding other groups (such as JAI). After the inclusion of MUR/PJD, the Islamic opposition forces not only faced an ideological conflict with the leftist movements and parties but also a division within Islamists themselves, mainly between the legal MUR/PJD and the illegal JAI. The regime knows how to counterbalance one opposition force with another by successive and selective co-optation. Thus, we might interpret the PJD’s assumption of power after the legislative elections in 2011 as a political option of the regime, which integrated the Islamic PJD and then allowed it assume power when the regime saw that the co-optation of the Kutla parties had fallen in. Although this mechanism of regime manipulation is well understood, the regime and PJD accept it so long as they consider the situation to be beneficial to both (Wegner 2007).

8.4 Conclusion

Islamic movements in Morocco cannot be understood without viewing the Makhzan regime as ‘a stable system of violence’ (Waterbury 1970: 15). Opposition forces, including Islamic movements, can start as bottom-up movements to express social grievances or aspirations, but they can also end up as co-opted tools of the regime. In this game of inclusion and exclusion, the ‘radical’ and ‘moderate’ distinctions advanced by some authors may not adequately explain the directions of the various Islamic movements. This is because these movements became ‘moderate’ not in terms of ideology but rather with regard to their positions in relation to the formal circle of political decision-making. In this context, the direction that MUR/PJD took was to obtain gradual access to power in exchange for ideological coherence. If in Morocco the Islamist language appears as the language of reform and not of rupture, that is because it indicates a way of survival under the regime’s continual violence, whether the violence was the obvious violence under the reign of Hasan II that became the target of foreign critics or the invisible and structural violence under Muhammad VI. Political reforms introduced by the King


in response to social protests reshaped the structure and mechanism of the violence. Political actors, including those of political Islam, have determined their conduct in relation and sometimes in interaction with the central power of the monarchy under controlled, divided political situations and in an asymmetric relationship with the regime. In the peculiar circumstances of the Makhzan system in Morocco, economic crisis and the process of ‘political liberalization’ might have produced a situation where the regime and Islamic dissent were both forced to undertake a significant reform in governance, discourse and political activity.

Notes

1. On the AKP, see Chapter 5 in this volume. 2. On this point, also see the comparison between Indonesia and Egypt in

Chapter 2 in this volume. 3. The movement started as a students’ movement in the 1970s. See Tozy

(1999: 229). 4. Abdessalam Yasin was an ex-adherent of the Butshishiya Sufi order. He bor-

rowed many of his concepts from Sufi philosophy. See Lauzière (2012). 5. ‘... the king remains effective as both chief arbiter of disputes and the major

patron of religious institutions only to the extent that rival political and reli-gious groups realize that they need the king (so conceived) in order to survive themselves. That is, most social, ethnic, and religious groups need the king to act as arbiter in order to obtain rulings in their favor and to increase their institutional influence and legitimacy ...’ (Smith and Loudiy, 2005: 1107).

6. In the first constitutional draft established in 1908, the Sultan was sim-ply called imam al-muslimin (Imam of the Muslims). See Article 6 of the constitutional draft in 1908: ‘the sultan is entitled imam of Muslims and protector holder of religion’ (Manshurat al-majalla al-maghribıya li al-idara al-mah

˙allıya wa al-tanmiya 1998: 132). See also el-Mossadeq (2002: 237).

7. In the early 1970s Morocco claimed the Spanish Sahara. Hasan II mobilized 350,000 unarmed people for a march into the region in November 1975. However, to secure independence, Polisario, the local guerrillas’ organiza-tion, declared war against Morocco in 1975. The war that continued into the 1980s was costly to Morocco in terms of finance and troop losses (Hughes 2001: 231–61).

8. Founded originally as the Comité central des industriels in 1941 to regroup the heads of societies normally bigger than those represented by the Chambres de commerce. On the CGEM, see Catusse (2008).

9. As he stated that ‘economic matters are a problem category, whereas legisla-tive matters fall in a response category, and keeping the two in balance pro-vides an image of mobilization and responsiveness that supports the king’s own message’ (Zartman 1987: 15).

10. Hizb al-Istiqlal (PI or Independence Party), Union socialiste des forces populaires (USFP or Socialist Union of Popular Forces), Parti du progrès et du socialisme

Shoko Watanabe 173

(PPS or Progress and Socialism Party), Organisation de l’action démocratique et populaire (OADP or Organisation of Democratic and Popular Action), and Union nationale des forces populaires (UNFP or National Union of Popular Forces). Kutla started as a parliamentary bloc in 1989 (Storm 2007: 56).

11. Regarding changes in the way the King intervenes in social affairs, see Ferrié (2002: 228–9).

12. Regarding the process of the co-optation of USFP, see el-Maslouhi (2009).13. For the differences and historical use of the two concepts, see McDougall

(2009: 281–2).14. Communiqué of the movement in 1992 quoted in (Tozy 1999: 236).15. Lust-Okar (2004, 2005, 2007) verifies this hypothesis by discussing the

cases of oppositional forces in Egypt, Jordan and Morocco. However, in the Moroccan case, only labour unions and leftist parties are discussed.

16. Moroccan family law was first established as written code in 1957, a year after the country’s independence. The prescriptions such as guardianship of women for marriage, forced marriage under judge’s agreement and a husband’s right to divorce without consent from the woman (repudiation) were criticized and considered to be the subject of reform since then (Buskens 2003).

17. Articles 12, 30 and 48 of the family law published in the official gazette of 29 September 1993 (Kingdom of Morocco 1993).

18. M’Daghri Alaoui, a conservative religious scholar who is politically loyal to the monarchy.

19. See the family law of 2004 (Kingdom of Morocco 2004). See also Catalano (2010: 539) and Ramírez (2007).

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177

9Social Transformation and the Reinventions of Parti Islam in MalaysiaKhoo Boo Teik

In the 12th General Election of 8 March 2008 (GE12) in Malaysia, the combined opposition – of the Democratic Action Party (DAP), Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS, or the Islamic Party) and Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR, or People’s Justice Party) – won 49 per cent of the popular vote, 82 out of 222 parliamentary seats,1 ten out of 11 parliamentary seats in the capital of Kuala Lumpur and five out of 13 states in the coun-try. Thereafter, the opposition parties entered into a coalition, Pakatan Rakyat (PR, or the People’s Pact), that formed state governments led by PAS in Kedah, Kelantan and Perak,2 by DAP in Penang and by PKR in Selangor. Although the ruling coalition, Barisan Nasional (BN, or National Front) retained power with a large majority, its first ever loss of a two-thirds majority in Parliament and of five states was taken as a sign that BN could be defeated by PR in a subsequent election.3

Of the PR parties, PAS was the oldest, largest, best organized and most disciplined. Its detractors and even potential allies were often wary of PAS because of its claim to be an ‘Islamic party’ in a secular politi-cal system and its ‘Islamist’ aspirations in a society with a 40 per cent non-Muslim population. Academic analysts frequently fastened on the party’s programmatic goals, religious discourse, moralizing worldview and ulama leadership as the core elements of a religio-centric rivalry for Malay-Muslim support that PAS conducted against BN’s dominant party, the United Malays National Organization (UMNO). To approach PAS in either way may show how PAS’s politics is Islamist in its self-declared ways or by certain perceptions of the substance of Islamic politics. That would not explain, though, how PAS’s Islamists have been political in non-religious ways to develop the states they ruled, break out of a confining rural environment, reach urban voters in PAS’s non-traditional constituencies and always to survive the UMNO-led Federal

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government’s hostility. Indeed, that approach would not account for PAS’s willingness and ability to ally with non-religious parties in the hope of moving from perennial opposition to power.4

For that, one should understand that while PAS’s discourse was framed by an ‘Islamic political imagination’ (Roy 1994), its practice was bound to ‘sociological factors beyond religion’ (Halliday 2000). In its 60-year trajectory as a party, as this chapter shows, PAS’s electoral performances fluctuated as its ideological appeal and strategic moves converged with or were marginal to other non-religiously defined struggles grounded in socio-economic transformation and major policy regimes. At crucial moments, PAS had had to grapple with changes to its social bases, turnovers in its leadership, crises of hegemony and eruptions of popular dissent. As a result, PAS’s trajectory displayed two paradoxical experiences. First, and for a ‘party of Islam’, PAS was more successful in elections when it was less Islamist and vice-versa (Farish 2004; Liow 2004; Maznah 2010a).5 Second, and for a ‘party of dissent’, PAS has been ruling at the same time, albeit at the level of state govern-ments. Those experiences, advancing or hindering PAS’s alliances with non-religious parties, raise questions about PAS’s chances of moving from dissent to power, albeit as part of PR’s ascendance. Beyond PAS’s fortunes, however, analysing the party’s experiences indirectly addresses broader thematic issues, such as the ‘compatibility of Islam with democ-racy and pluralism’ (Esposito and Voll 1996), the ‘inclusion-moderation hypothesis’ (Schwedler 2006), the tendency of Islamic political dissent towards populism (Abrahamian 1991), the ‘failure of political Islam’ (Roy 1994) or the portent of a ‘post-Islamist turn’ (Bayat 2007). It is hoped that this chapter can thereby add to understanding Islam and political dissent beyond Malaysia.

9.1 Political economy and social transformation: a context for PAS’s politics

From the perspective of postcolonial experience, Malaysia’s economic development was a process of overcoming historical weaknesses that included dependence on primary commodities, declining terms of trade, non-autonomous export-reliant growth and foreign domination of key economic sectors. Initially, Malaysia had a moderately successful, middle-income, commodity-producing and net oil-exporting national economy. Within two decades from 1970, rapid state-supported, multinational corporation-led export-oriented industrialization (EOI) produced a structural shift from an agrarian to an industrial society.

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Manufacturing-led growth turned Malaysia into a second-tier, newly industrializing economy that had intermediate success. In bad times, the economy did not sink to the wretched level of disastrous postcolo-nial experiences. In the best of times, it could not scale the heights of Northeast Asian late industrialization. The reasons for this outcome lie beyond this chapter. But, briefly, how was this context significant to PAS’s Islamic politics?

First, PAS’s Islamic politics did not arise as a response to ‘failed developmentalism’ as happened in many Muslim-majority countries (Rahnema 2008). Once past an initial relatively laissez faire stage, Malaysia’s capitalist development proceeded along pathways of state interventionism and economic nationalism that relied on a high state capacity for planning, implementation and regulation that permitted flexible responses to economic crises. Second, and unlike countries where Islamic movements provided basic social services, the state in Malaysia maintained extensive public education, healthcare services, public housing and so on. Above all, the state implemented its New Economic Policy (NEP) from 1970 to ‘eradicate poverty irrespective of race’ and to ‘restructure society to abolish the identification of race with occupational function’ in response to the crisis created by ethnic violence on 13 May 1969 (hereafter ‘May 13’). Third, decades of economic growth, rural development, urbanization and social policy programmes reduced the incidence of household poverty from 49 per cent in Peninsular Malaysia in 1970, 58 per cent in Sabah and 57 per cent in Sarawak in 1976 to 3 per cent, 17 per cent and 4 per cent respectively in 2004.

Fourth, Malaysia’s political system has institutionalized ethnic repre-sentation and power-sharing and its key policies are laden with ethnic dimensions. Real and imagined interethnic differences and inequali-ties are susceptible to political manipulation although the economy, society and politics may more accurately be seen as being beset by ‘race, class and state’ contradictions. Fifth, the regime was authoritarian but not unpopular while the opposition was tenacious if cramped. In 12 general elections held between 1959 and 2008, there was vigorous multi-party contestation under electoral and administrative condi-tions that favoured the ruling coalition without absurdly denying the opposition parties a chance of success. Although BN has held an unbro-ken hold over government, crises in the past 25 years have amplified challenges to its hegemony. Sixth, an oligarchy captured state policies of social engineering after the 1980s. The oligarchy is multi-ethnic. Its wealth lies largely in state-protected sectors, its political power is


concentrated in UMNO and its hegemony is discursively sustained by ethnic formulations.

From the above context of long-term socio-economic change and sustained political contestation has emerged a dynamic, uncertain, even chaotic politics that is not adequately explicable by formulaic notions of Malaysia’s ethnic politics, simplistic assumptions about Islamic poli-tics, rigid representations of ‘hybrid democracy’ and so on. Within this context, PAS’s politics has been marked by moments of triumph and defeat.

9.2 Social origins of Islamic politics

The critical launch of PAS’s trajectory happened in the first post-inde-pendence general election of 1959 when the Pan-Malayan Islamic Party (PMIP), as PAS was originally called, gained ten seats in Parliament and won control of Kelantan and Terengganu, the two states having the highest proportions of Malay-Muslim population. During the 1960s, PAS’s politics was mostly ‘Malay nationalistic’ but it had a discernible class dimension. While UMNO was led by aristocrats and senior civil servants, PAS was supported by three social groupings wary of the political order. One group was made up of religious figures – members of state Islamic bureaucracies and the rural ulama (Funston 1980: 96), and graduates of religious institutions in Indonesia, India and the Middle-East. Another group comprised graduates of the Malay educational stream and Malay-medium schoolteachers who objected to the regime’s educational policies that favoured English-medium education (Kessler 1978: 170–1). A mass base of smallholders and peasantry rallied to PAS when UMNO became the party of the local nobility, salaried officials and party functionaries whose new wealth and acquisition of land aggravated local ‘peasant anxieties’ (Kessler 1978: 121, 125). Within two years, the PAS government in Terengganu had been deposed by the defection of some PAS representatives to UMNO (Farish 2004: 159–60). In Kelantan, however, PAS consolidated its position, largely led by lead-ers of ‘urban, petty bourgeois origins’ whose vernacular or religious education disqualified them from the regime’s high ranks that formed the preserve of an UMNO-linked ‘politico-administrative bourgeoisie’ (Kessler 1978: 170–1). But, in the 1960s, as left-wing opposition was crushed and ethnic politics peaked before ‘May 13’, the ‘Malay-centric Islamism’ of PAS under Mohamad Asri superseded the party’s earlier and more radical ‘Islamist nationalism’ and ‘anti-imperialism’ under Burhanuddin al-Helmy.6

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From 1970, the dual impact of EOI and the NEP changed the terrain and terms of political mobilization. The MNC factories in urban export-processing zones drew young rural Malays (and especially women). The state inducted rural Malay students into urban schools and national and foreign universities, and afterwards recruited them into an expanding civil service. Landless peasants and ex-servicemen were absorbed into the Federal Land Development Authority (FELDA) schemes, supported with subsidies and promised eventual ownership of land cultivated with oil palm and rubber. These diverse developments relocated population from communities that once supported PAS and, in the case of FELDA, created new agricultural settlements that became UMNO’s electoral strongholds. The Malay experiences of land resettlement, proletari-anization, urbanization, education and embourgeoisment created new social tensions that could have opened opportunities for PAS. But the party was hindered by the ‘de-politicized’ post-‘May 13’ situation and restrained when Asri led it to collaborate with UMNO in a reorganized political order. Now PAS headed a BN government in Kelantan while being a subordinate member of the Federal government. It turned out to be a ruinous experience for PAS. Ideologically and programmatically, PAS had no more purchase on Malay nationalism, not with UMNO using the NEP to assist the Malays and redefining the parameters of interethnic relations to privilege Malay culture, language and politics. When PAS broke with UMNO in 1977, the cause was not religious or doctrinal but a split in PAS that UMNO exploited. Taking advan-tage of some low-level disturbances, the Federal government placed Kelantan under emergency rule (Salahuddin 2010: 270–84, 298–305). In December 1977, BN expelled PAS which went on to lose its bastion of Kelantan in the election of March 1978.

9.3 Between strident Islamism and fortuitous religiosity

As PAS lurched to another defeat in the 1982 general election, Asri was ousted from the party after being criticized for taking PAS into BN (Salahuddin 2010: 301). With Asri’s departure PAS no longer walked ‘the tightrope between its commitment to political Islam and its Malay-centric nationalist leanings’ (Farish 2004, vol. 1: 328). A new leadership was formed around the party’s ulama, joined by younger Islamists some of whom were trained in Western universities on government scholarships. The social constituency remained Malay but it was steadily dispersed between rural and urban locations. Squeezed between UMNO’s ‘Malay dominance’ and an Islamic resurgence – closely associated with the Angkatan Belia Islam


Malaysia (ABIM, or Malaysian Islamic Youth Movement) at home and rendered most visible by the revolution in Iran – PAS reinvented itself as an ‘Islamist’ party. A more forcefully Islamic language and stance attended PAS’s religious one-upmanship vis-à-vis the regime (Kamarulnizam 2003: 191–6). In hindsight, PAS was trying to formulate a dissident discourse with Islamic references to inequality and ethnicity that could address emerging intra-Malay conflicts and persisting interethnic tensions. The strategy suf-fered from being ‘too much, too early’. Whereas PAS in dissent could not implement anything, the Mahathir Mohamad regime advanced a policy of Islamization through establishing an Islamic bank, an international Islamic university and facilities for Islamic insurance. Moreover, Mahathir advocated an ‘assimilation of Islamic values’ that went beyond stealing the religious thunder from PAS. He tried to harness an ‘Islamic work ethic’ to late industrialization (Khoo 1995). For the first time, PAS tried to moderate non-Malay antipathy towards the party, notably by setting up ‘Chinese Consultative Councils’ to engage with non-Malay-Muslim voters. Still, PAS was a Malay party with rural roots while its targeted non-Malay communities were urban middle-class ones tied to non-agricultural sectors. The socio-cultural distance between them was too vast to bridge without drastically changed circumstances.

The politics of the mid-1980s rested on two sets of tensions connected to the recession of 1985–6. The regime imposed fiscal austerity, selectively disciplined state-owned enterprises and suspended the NEP’s restructur-ing requirement which created a deep split in the regime, UMNO, the Malay capitalist class and the Malay community at large. Within UMNO the split culminated in a battle led by Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah against Mahathir’s leadership that continued to 1996. Meanwhile, the urban non-Malay middle-classes were enraged by recession, corruption scan-dals and crises in the domestic financial system. These parallel streams of discontent were manipulated towards interethnic recrimination. The Islamic politics of PAS was not complicit in the ethnic brinkmanship that came to a head in October 1987. Neither could it address the tensions. Isolated from more powerful streams of dissent, PAS lost all parliamentary contests save one against UMNO in the 1986 general election.

The fortunes of PAS rose twice in the 1990s, at each end of the dec-ade. But they owed little to religious issues although PAS was decidedly Islamist by then. The post-1987 split in UMNO divided into the political system and the 1990 general election. This time, UMNO was completely defeated in Kelantan by a coalition of PAS and the UMNO splinter called Parti Semangat 46 (S46, or the Spirit of 46 Party). Then, PAS seemed to have an opportunity to ‘build Islam in one state’, its declared mission.

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Still, having the secular S46 in tow limited the Islamic content that PAS could introduce into government while Federal government hostil-ity defeated the Kelantan government’s attempt to enact the Syariah Criminal Code Enactment in 1993. Neither had PAS the financial resources to fulfil its mission. In fact, PAS had little to counterbal-ance Mahathir’s personal popularity which resounded with East Asian regional triumphalism. At the 1995 general election, PAS suffered set-backs but managed to retain Kelantan with S46. In 1996, S46 dissolved itself and most of its leaders and members returned to UMNO.

An isolated PAS might have succumbed in its fight against UMNO and the Federal government over funds and projects, Islamic law, and piety and morality. In 1999, however, UMNO suffered another crisis. When he fell out with Deputy Prime Minister (and Minister of Finance) Anwar Ibrahim over the management of the 1997–8 ‘East Asian financial crisis’, Mahathir sacked and persecuted Anwar. Anwar’s maltreatment provoked a nationwide Malay rejection of the regime and a campaign for Reformasi (reforms) (Khoo 2003: 100−8). Within a year, PAS had ridden the overwhelmingly Malay but non-religious dis-sent of Reformasi to defend Kelantan, regain power in Terengganu and win its highest ever representation in Parliament. Although PAS won most of its contests in rural Malay-majority constituencies, the party connected with young urban Malays not necessarily drawn to Islamist discourse but rallied in solidarity with Reformasi-committed parties. With its control of Terengganu, PAS seemed set to deploy the state’s petroleum royalty to show what economic progress could mean under an ‘Islamic government’.7 However, that option vanished when the Federal government diverted the oil royalty (worth about RM850 mil-lion annually) from the state government to Federal agencies operating in Terengganu. Left with few pragmatic development options – save to lighten the burdens of everyday life by small and practicable remedies, popular or administrative – PAS tried a dogmatic recourse of injecting a stricter observance of religious piety, moral fervour and exemplary conduct. It expanded religious education and enforced moral conduct by regulations, restrictions and prohibitions. Most controversially, the Terengganu government passed the Syariah Criminal Offences (Hudud and Qisas) Bill in July 2002. Again, the state enactment was ultra vires the Federal Constitution and could not become law.

By a circuitous route PAS appeared in the first years of the twenty-first century to have fulfilled prophecies of its ‘fundamentalism’ by escalating its ideological battles against the regime. Yet PAS’s problem was more complex. After 1999, PAS was the strongest party in Barisan


Alternatif (BA, or Alternative Front), a coalition that included DAP, Parti Keadilan Nasional (Keadilan, or National Justice Party) and Parti Rakyat Malaysia (PRM, or Malaysian People’s Party).8 Here, the strain of balancing dissent with rule led PAS to bifurcate its programme. Being in opposition at the national level and as a member of BA, PAS maintained a course of political liberalism by defending civil liberties, human rights, minority rights, democracy and the rule of law. Being in government at the state level and on its own, though, PAS inclined towards social con-servatism that intruded into the sphere of private life, personal choices and individual liberties. In short, PAS juggled a more inclusive secular appeal to civil society against a stricter religious demand on the Muslim community.

The PAS bifurcation caused many tensions with DAP. Even after ‘September 11’ when non-Muslim suspicion of Islamism ran highest, PAS was not deterred from pushing its ‘Islamic state’ aspiration after which DAP broke with PAS and BA was virtually finished.9 In October 2003, the month of Mahathir’s retirement, PAS unveiled its Negara Islam (Islamic State) document in anticipation of general elections the following year.10 If PAS hoped thereby to extend its gains, it had mis-read the situations of 1999 and 2004. When Abdullah Ahmad Badawi succeeded Mahathir, he offered an Islam Hadhari programme. Again, the impending political battle had little to do with religion, whether packaged as Negara Islam or Islam Hadhari, both being obscure to the public. But Abdullah set out to ‘de-Mahathirize’ the regime while mak-ing overtures to the civil service and rural Malay communities, two large blocks of Malay votes that Mahathir had alienated by persecuting Anwar. To the rest of the electorate, Abdullah promised anti-corruption measures and the reform of key institutions such as the police and the judiciary. Abdullah’s initiatives and popular Malay hopes of a closure of the Anwar affair helped UMNO to recover its lost ground. At the 11th General Election of March 2004, PAS’s representation in Parliament fell from 27 to six. Terengganu was recaptured by UMNO,11 while Kelantan was retained by PAS by a tenuous majority of three seats.

The failure in 2004 at the height of its strength and optimism lent an odd aspect to PAS’s trajectory. Its defeats had come in moments of strident Islamism, its triumphs at points of fortuitous religiosity. That was a seeming paradox noted by others, albeit with different formu-lations (Farish 2004; Liow 2004: 369; Maznah 2010a: 507). To wit, PAS’s incipient Islamism was tangential to the major conflicts of the mid-1980s while its Negara Islam was irrelevant in the immediate post-Mahathir milieu. In contrast, PAS’s alliance with S46 in 1990 profited

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from UMNO’s split while PAS in BA was the rallying-point in 1999 of anti-regime protests over the Anwar affair. By implication, PAS’s electoral performance typically depended far less on its ideological articulations than its positioning vis-à-vis variable conditions and voters’ concerns.

9.4 A confluence of dissent

To be sure, both setbacks and successes showed that PAS could reinvent itself, as might be expected of a 60-year old party organized to compete for power. But reinvention requires more than a party’s internal initia-tive. Mass political engagement may redefine political agendas, redirect pathways of contestation, or reconstitute the political order against which ideological reinvention stands or falls. Such a situation arose in 2006–7 when UMNO turned brazenly arrogant, which caused large seg-ments of society to become recalcitrant. The origin of this development lay in the insecurity of the oligarchy after Mahathir’s retirement. On the one hand, Abdullah Badawi commenced an oligarchic reconstitution that privileged some corporate groups aligned with him and his son-in-law, Khairy Jamaluddin, over others associated with Mahathir. This drove Mahathir to unrestrained public criticism of Abdullah, Khairy and their corporate allies. On the other hand, the UMNO-elite segment of the oligarchy, not quite recovered from their 1997–8 problems, clung to state patronage. Consequently, UMNO unravelled one of Mahathir’s post-1990 political compromises – a National Development Plan that eschewed ethnic quotas and targets without discarding NEP restructur-ing in practice. At their Annual General Assembly in 2006 and 2007, UMNO leaders and delegates insisted that the NEP’s Malay corporate ownership target would be retained as part of a ‘timeless Malay agenda’. Non-Malay (and especially Chinese) voters were incensed. They had saved UMNO in 1999 and supported it in 2004 only to see UMNO renege on the National Development Plan.

There was a parallel development. To UMNO, PAS was defeated, PKR posed no threat and the Malays would hold to UMNO’s ideology of ‘Malay supremacy’, mollified by NEP restructuring and pacified by ‘bureaucratic Islamism’.12 In that, UMNO leaders overlooked how 40 years of urbanization, education, extension of capitalist social relations, acculturation to industrial discipline and, loosely speaking, engagement with globalization had produced more than a generation of Melayu Baru (New Malays). The ‘New Malays’ were not only the lionized tokoh korporat (corporate leaders) and lauded high-achieving professionals but also the despised kutu and dreaded Mat Rempit.13 Crucially, the ‘New


Malays’ included opposition Islamists and Reformasi dissidents. The political ramifications of Malay social re-composition and ideological differentiation were evident from Reformasi when PAS decided to form BA with DAP and PRM, parties for whom PAS had no empathy before. From September 1998 to mid-2000, all large demonstrations of dissent were essentially Malay affairs – the protests in support of Anwar, the commemoration of Operasi Lalang at the Kamunting Camp (27 October 2000) and the anti-toll protest at Kesas Highway (5 November 2000) before the big rally for electoral reform (BERSIH) was launched in 2007.14

Those were expressions of ‘Malay politics’ that were not manifestations of ethnic politics. They were articulations of ‘Malay grievances’ that did not target a ‘non-Malay Other’. Besides Reformasi, Malay dissidents led movements against the Internal Security Act because they – and not the Chinese dissidents of an earlier era – were the principal targets of pre-emptive detention. The protests against Kuala Lumpur’s highway tolls, fuel price increases and higher sewerage charges were connected to the burdens of urban life aggravated by indirect taxation linked to the privatization of public services and ‘user-pay’ systems.15 The protests exposed UMNO’s growing remoteness from a disaffected urban Malay populace. In fact, the ‘vertical inequality’ between Malay oligarchy and Malay masses had widened owing to the elite capture of policy that directed the bulk of the benefits of NEP restructuring upwards to the oligarchy (Khoo Khay Jin 2012). The obverse of that dynamic of unequal wealth distribution was the growing grievance of a mass of Malay mid-level businesses, professionals and middle-classes. They had emerged under the NEP but their advance was obstructed by the non-transparent and non-competitive awards of lucrative state projects and contracts to powerful conglomerates. And amidst endemic cronyism and corruption, one UMNO leader after another flaunted wealth well in excess of what could have been acquired in ‘a lifetime of honest public service’.

In those conditions, masses of urban middle-class, yuppie, working-class and lumpen Malays responded differently to the excesses of the oligarchy and UMNO. Many Malays in rural and land resettlement areas, the civil service16 and the lower to middle strata of Malay busi-nesses who relied on the state for subsidies, employment and patronage supported UMNO’s ‘Malay agenda’. Yet other Malays opposed UMNO and supplied the counter-hegemonic articulations that spread through BERSIH to March 2008.

For a long time, Malay resentment towards the oligarchy simmered unnoticed because intra-Malay politics was assumed to be no more than interminable UMNO-PAS ‘out-Islamisation’ (Maznah 2010a: 507). Yet

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the UMNO–PAS rivalry was loosened from the confines of ideological or theological disputes to embrace new material matters. The Federal government denied development funding to the PAS government in Kelantan and refused to pay oil royalty to this state whose 95 per cent Malay population had a relatively high incidence of poverty. When PAS ruled Terengganu from 1999 to 2004, oil royalty paid directly to the state government for 25 years was diverted as ‘goodwill money’ to the Federal ministries operating in this other overwhelmingly Malay state with a high incidence of poverty. The character of UMNO–PAS animos-ity was changing because its social basis had been altered. The rivalry that was laced with religious idioms and once raged over the ‘rural Malay heartland’ extended into urban constituencies with unfamiliar impacts. Here, PAS reached out to many urban, younger, Malays who formed the backbone of the Reformasi and BERSIH rallies. Their social profiles were noted by eyewitness accounts of those rallies (Sabri 2000; Interview with P Subramaniam 2011; Interview with Toh Kin Woon 2011). Generally younger than their rural counterparts, and better schooled and trained, they included male and female college and uni-versity students, and production and technical workers in manufactur-ing and services. If they worked in the civil service, they ranged from low-level administrative staff to mid-level managers and professionals. The social profile of PAS’s candidates had changed, too. Both as the outcome and the amplification of social transformation, PAS fielded more urban, younger and professional candidates, especially from 1999 onwards. The political sensibilities and mobilizing capabilities of new PAS candidates, such as Dzukefly Ahmad, Hatta Ramli, Husam Musa, Khalid Samad and Lo’ Lo Mohd Ghazali, drew from their immersion in urbanization, higher education and social transformation. By 2008, their ranks had been expanded with the likes of Mujahid Yusof Rawa, Nizar Jamaluddin and Siti Mariah Mahmud. These were soon to be PAS’s best known ‘non-ulama’ figures, professional ‘PAS Malays’, no less con-cerned with the profane as they were moved by the sacred and as ready to dispute economic matters as moral ones.

The altered social terrain of Malay politics spawned another source of challenge to UMNO, namely, PKR. The substance of UMNO–PKR rivalry was once masked by the singularity of the ‘Anwar affair’. Its seri-ousness was disregarded after Mahathir’s departure, PKR’s defeat in the April 2004 election and Anwar’s release from prison five months later. Moreover, PKR was not quite a ‘Malay party’; it had several non-Malay leaders who had joined the party from their original bases in dissident NGOs. Yet the Malay dimension of UMNO–PKR rivalry was sharpened


by many ‘new generation PKR Malays’. Their emergence was earlier obscured by the dominant presence in PKR of ex-UMNO ‘Anwar loyal-ists’ (such as Azmin Ali and Saifuddin Nasution), veteran politicians from the merged PRM (notably Syed Husin Ali) and Reformasi era NGO-based ‘Anwaristas’ (like Badrul Hisham Shaharin). Coming to prominence just before 2008, young, urban and professional ‘PKR Malays’, such as Fuziah Salleh, Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad, Nurul Izzah Anwar and Rafizi Ramli, were just the social types to demand political reform in pursuit of merit, competence, equity and good governance.

Self-interest and/or public interest, and religious and/or political con-viction, then, led more Malays – as pious, anti-corruption Islamists, or civil-society-based institution-oriented reformists – to oppose UMNO. Not without irony, state-sponsored Malay capitalism disguised as the advance of UMNO-led Malay nationalism had produced dissident Malays who blunted the ethnic edges of dissent. Dominant within the ethnicized political system, UMNO treated politics as being immutably ethnic or religious. As for its Malay constituency, UMNO assumed that voters cared only for ‘Malay issues’ under which were subsumed ‘Islamic issues’ regulated by ‘bureaucratic Islamism’ (Ahmad Fauzi 2009; Maznah 2010a). Hence, UMNO failed to grasp that Malays as Muslims and Islamists could be moved by values that were sanctioned by Islam but expressive of its ‘universalist’ directions, not the ethnic tones sounded by UMNO-controlled religious bureaucrats. This was another outcome of long-term socio-economic transformation that, in urbanizing the Malay population, forced PAS to expand from its traditional rural Malay bases.

As Reformasi had shown, a ‘realignment of forces between Islamists and liberal civil society’ (Ahmad Fauzi 2009, no pagination) could move PAS closer to dissident non-Malays and non-Muslims. En route to March 2008, PAS strove to overcome its former ‘negative stereotyping and bad image’ among non-Malay and non-Muslim voters; it presented itself as a ‘more progressive Islamic party with a middle-ground appeal’ by being ‘relentless in the fight for democratic rights and against dra-conian rules and laws’, and engaging with ‘PAS support clubs in the Chinese and Indian communities’ (Dzulkefly 2012: 6). For 2008, PAS’s manifesto was based on Negara Berkebajikan (Welfare State). This was ‘a state that made the welfare and wellbeing of the people the principal agenda of national development’, among others, by stressing ‘moral attainment and humanist values’ and ‘ensuring basic justice for all citizens and encouraging individual excellence’ (Abdul Hadi 2008). The manifesto proposed measures to ease the burdens of voters but those

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were not startling ones in a society that had large-scale state-provided social services.17 The real impact came from PAS’s decision to replace its deeply contentious idea of an ‘Islamic State’ with this mildly con-ceived ‘Welfare State’.18 With that ideological realignment, PAS could reinvent a ‘second coalition’ with DAP and PKR around ‘justice, good governance, transparency, accountability and human rights’ – causes that transcended ‘ethnocentric and religious considerations’ (Ahmad Fauzi 2008: 233) without compromising the universalism that Islamists claimed for their faith.

Here, at last, Islamic dissent found confluence with non-religious streams of disaffection. From PKR came revived Reformasi stances that drew on Anwar’s populist leanings (Khoo 2003) and opposed them to UMNO’s patronage of oligarchy. From DAP there was the largely non-Malay, taxpayer-based, anti-statist anger at restructuring abuses and corruption which profited cronies but squandered public resources. There was also resentment of UMNO’s retention of NEP-style discrimi-nation against non-Malays in education, the professions, civil service and public contracts. And from PAS arose rural and lower- to mid-level urban revulsion against UMNO’s corruption and arrogance. Most PAS leaders were not poor. But staying ‘organically’ close to their grassroots (Farish 2004, vol. II: 704–9) and ‘stressing values of social collectivism, civil justice and redistribution through Islamic practices’ (Hilley 2001: 194), they could credibly pit the privations endured by PAS members and supporters at UMNO’s hands against the ‘un-Islamic’ ostentation of UMNO leaders. Thus, PAS could tap the proud ‘parochial integrity’ of the Kelantanese (Kershaw 1969) as a moral-political resource to reject UMNO’s ‘counterfeit religiosity of the rich man’ (Kershaw 1969: 65, fn. 13) that would have PAS barter dissent for Federal aid. The PR parties cam-paigned with the differentially nuanced messages conveyed by PAS’s Negara Berkebajikan, PKR’s New Malaysian Agenda and DAP’s Change! (in policies and governance) that allowed them to keep faith with their core constituencies while collectively displaying a roughly hewn, populist, anti-oligarchic commonality that resonated across ethnic boundaries.

Between them, PAS and PKR built a new social base of Malay disaf-fection and dissent that set aside ‘bureaucratic Islamism’ for Negara Berkebajikan and gave up UMNO’s restructuring for the NMA. Four decades of economic transformation and urbanization had re-shaped the occupational and social world of the Malays such that their lived material experiences could reduce the socio-cultural distances between them and non-Malays. An additional convergence of understanding came from the large protests of 2007 – the Lawyers’ March, BERSIH and


HINDRAF – when experiences of solidarity under repression connected disparate segments of society in the causes of judicial reform, electoral reform and social reform. To that extent, the wonder of the 2008 general election lay in the conduct of voters who shed a presumed identifi-cation with their ‘ethnic parties’. As voters swung more freely than before,19 Chinese voters spurned BN’s ‘Chinese-based parties’, Indian voters massively rejected BN’s ‘Indian-based parties’ and urban Malay voters turned from UMNO (albeit to a lesser degree) to produce PR’s historic breakthrough. More likely to have been influenced by ‘trans-ethnic considerations’, it has been suggested, ‘[y]oung urban Malay-Muslims … overwhelmingly voted for the opposition pact, regardless of its candidates’ ethnic or religious identities’ (Ahmad Fauzi 2008: 233). The ‘ethnic converse’ also held: a large majority of non-Malay voters supported PR’s Malay candidates generally, and PAS candidates probably for the first time. The results of one election may not portend of struc-tural shifts in voting preferences that persist to future elections but they pointed to socio-cultural change that underlay political transformation.

9.5 Dissent beyond Islamism?

In 2008, PAS had variously advanced. First, although its representation in Parliament was short of its peak of 1999 and lower than either PKR or DAP’s, its influence in national politics had grown with PR’s rise as a credible ‘second coalition’. Second, PAS headed or belonged to PR state governments that controlled Peninsular Malaysia’s highly urban-ized, economically most developed and ethnically mixed west coast. Third, the party had made a creditable entry into urban constituencies whose non-Malay voters once lay beyond PAS’s reach. On its own, PAS – or DAP or PKR – had no hope of challenging BN for Federal power. By itself, PAS could not have won the western peninsular states. Had it not shared PR’s broad, populist anti-oligarchic platform, PAS would not have overcome the non-Malay and non-Muslim antipathy it used to face. Conversely, PAS’s presence strengthened PR. For PKR, PAS’s declared confidence in Anwar Ibrahim’s leadership of PR was price-less especially when he was again persecuted after mid-2008. For DAP, it made all the difference that PAS would defend it against UMNO’s accusations of being anti-Malay and anti-Islam. Above all, PR’s cohe-sion would have been shattered had PAS not spurned UMNO’s secret overtures to form UMNO-PAS governments in Selangor and Perak right after the 2008 election, and not rejected UMNO’s urgings thereafter to engage in ‘Malay/Muslim unity’ talks.20 Not for nothing, then, a pro-PR

Khoo Boo Teik 191

slogan had appealed to voters, ‘Naik Roket pergi ke Bulan mendapatkan Keadilan!’ (Ride the Rocket to the Moon for Justice!21)

Even so, one ‘loaded question’ (Farish 10 April 2008) was continu-ally posed: Could an Islamist PAS stay in a coalition with a secularist DAP if the former had to abandon its long-held ‘Islamic State’ goal?22 Opponents of PR insisted that PAS and DAP could not work together because of their ideological differences. Leaders of PAS and DAP reas-sured their supporters that they could cooperate because of their shared concerns. Non-partisan quarters were curious if a supposed DAP–PAS ‘incompatibility’ made any difference. To that ‘loaded question’, Farish (10 April 2008) responded:

PAS has made some electoral blunders in the past, admittedly. But PAS also has a progressive past it can and should be proud of, when the party was led by its most progressive leader Dr. Burhanuddin al-Helmy in the 1960s. PAS was then widely seen as a left-leaning Islamist party due to its strong anti-colonial stand, its support of the trade union movement and its willingness to support the Malayan Communist Party in its struggle against British colonialism. If PAS could have been so forward thinking in the past, then what is stopping it from being as progressive today?

It may be right to be indignant that the ‘loaded question … presupposes a certain fixity of discourse and modality on the part of Islamist par-ties like PAS which apparently … is not present in other parties’ (Farish 10 April 2008). It may be true that ‘the Islamisation of Malay politics needs to be appreciated in relation to shifting socio-political ideas and boundaries that define the political process’ (Liow 2004: 369). And no doubt PAS and DAP (and PKR) had to be conciliatory over issues they could not resolve in the short term.23 Still, strategic cooperation among parties involves more than ‘discourse and modality’ or ‘ideas and boundaries’. As the preceding analysis suggested, PR’s revival of the failed BA had a material basis in long-term social transformation and crises of political economy that unsettled a troubled regime, an insecure oligarchy and an alienated ruling party. Against them surged a multi-ethnic, populist, anti-oligarchic opposition of mostly urban voters that permitted dissident parties, leaders and social movements to overturn previous antipathy between particular parties and their non-traditional constituencies.

Along this line of reasoning, a concluding observation may be made of PAS’s trajectory of Islamic dissent. For PAS, the significance of March 2008


lay in a deep transformation of its dissent and politics. Although PAS was never a peripheral party, its pre-2008 dissent had been expressed from the margins. Up to 1969, PAS articulated the estrangement of vari-ous rural social groups from the Alliance’s policies. The estrangement cast a lasting impact: ‘social life in rural areas with clear and strong opposition to the government, such as in Kelantan, Kedah and Perlis, [was] split along party lines’ and ‘dissenting voices from marginalized groups’ sought refuge in PAS whose programme offered ‘more than vulgar material concerns’ (Halim 1999: 191). Subsequently, subordinate in BN or out of power, PAS had no influence over the state’s social engi-neering while its strongholds were distant from industrialization and economic transformation. During the 1980s, PAS’s ‘Islamic politics’ was not much more than the tentative dissent of marginal sections of the NEP-nurtured ‘Bumiputera Commercial and Industrial Community’ – mainly students and middle-class professionals who had not joined an emerging Malay capitalist class or had not yet been absorbed by an expanding state sector. Then PAS’s ‘radicalism’ only moralized against the contradictions of a nationalist-capitalist project that Mahathir would superintend for 22 years. By the time PAS allied with S46, the latter – the side of smaller Malay capitalists, managers of state-owned enterprises and civil servants (Khoo 1992) – had been defeated by Mahathir’s camp which seized the commanding heights of the economy. Under PAS rule once more, Kelantan and Terengganu were funding-deprived states bypassed by mainstream capitalist expansion that brought unmatched prosperity before the East Asian financial debacle. Left to ‘develop with Islam’, PAS’s Islamic responses to the inequities of Malay and Malaysian capitalism were moralistic, promoting piety and opposing vice without elaborating an economic alternative. Such a ‘backward’ PAS had noth-ing materially attractive to offer the electorates of the developed states.

What PAS’s dissent of the margins could offer was a well-honed ability to cast issues in religiously informed populist terms, attacking privilege, corruption and vice, and mobilizing ‘the people’ against abuses by the regime. But PAS’s populist experiences could only be widely applied after socio-economic transformation had re-shaped Malay economy and society and extruded PAS from its rural bases. Only then did ‘[t]he entrée of [a] growing Malay middle class into the upper echelons of PAS … counterbalance the perennially negative image associated with Haji Hadi Awang’s past radicalism’ (Ahmad Fauzi 2009, no pagination). Whereas PAS’s ulama leadership had retained ‘the core support of the Malay belt’, it fell to this urban middle-class cadre of well-educated, highly qualified and pious professionals to ‘extend the support base and

Khoo Boo Teik 193

engage in new avenues … once … unknown to PAS’ (Dzulkefly 2012: 193). They ‘positioned the party in the centre-stage of national politics’ at the direction of Fadzil Nor, PAS President at the time of Anwar’s fall (Dzulkefly 2012: 203). In the Reformasi milieu, they supplied PAS the ideational reinvention needed to ‘relate Islam to the pressing issues of the day’ (Liow 2009: 186) or to ‘match oneself with the requirements of the times’ (Mujahid 2012: 101, translated).24

Then, tentatively in 1999 but more firmly in 2008, PAS’s ideational reinvention was effective because its organizational discipline permitted it to rally mass, urban, middle-class, young and ethnically mixed dissent that had erupted against the regime. Around 2006–7, PAS’s dissent joined other streams of dissidence to create the tsunami of 2008. With that, PAS shed its backwater past. It was no longer confined to its ‘comfort zone’ of the ‘Malay belt’ of Peninsular Malaysia’s east coast, unable ‘to engage and articulate broader, more multi-cultural-racial-religious constituencies and not known to be able to articulate [any] such open and inclusive stance’ (Dzulkefly 2012: 202–3). Thus has PAS gone national, expecting to have to

manage issues that cross boundaries of ethnicity and religion … questions of environmental impact, economy, burdens of life, issues of law, basic human rights, problems of interethnic relations, public safety, the integrity of the public service, foreign relations and others (Mujahid 2012: 207, translated).

The continued movement of PAS towards coalitional-pluralist politics was recently captured by its Deputy President’s appeal to PR’s support-ers to attend a rally in Kuala Lumpur on 3 November 2012, donning one of four colours: yellow for BERSIH, red to demand oil royalty for Kelantan, green in solidarity with the environmentalists and orange to support the ‘children of FELDA’ (Muhammad Sabu 21 October 2012). In short, PAS’s Islamic dissent is being transformed within the larger flux that is Malaysian politics today. Its practitioners are not likely to come from an aging ulama leadership but the younger PAS leaders ‘exposed to [the] ideas and the works of Rashid Ghannouchi, Yusuf Qaradawi, Tariq Ramadan, et al since the 1970s’ (Dzukefly 2012: 211). From their vantage point, there is a new politics abroad. It will not be led by the Islamists of old who were inspired by the revolution in Iran but ‘Islamist democrats’ who are part of a ‘generational shift’ to ‘the Muslim Brotherhood post-Arab Spring experience [and] the Turkish Tayyib Erdogan AK Party’s experiment on political Islam’ (Dzulkefly


13 August 2012). They insist that PAS has not ‘mellowed’ or ‘diluted’ its ‘Islamic agenda’ but

has now come strong on her Islamic stance of attack on Umno/BN over the narrow racial approach of Malay Supremacy, perversion of power, the spread of corruption, the plunder of the nation’s wealth and the repression of the people’s rights, which are all in total con-tradiction with and diametrically opposed to Islam and its Islamic principles (Dzukefly 2012: 236−7).25

Epilogue26

At the 13th General Election of 5 May 2013, PR failed to defeat BN. In Parliament, PR improved its share by only seven seats, winning 89 against BN’s 133. While PR retained control of Kelantan, Penang and Selangor, it lost Kedah and failed narrowly to regain Perak or capture Terengganu. Within PR, whereas DAP’s representation in Parliament reached an all-time high of 38 seats, PKR (with 30) lost one seat and PAS (with 21) lost two. Remarkably, though, PR took 50.8 per cent of the popular vote to BN’s 47.4 per cent. That was only a moral victory. But this first ever ‘popular victory’ by the opposition was an advance in a first-past-the-post system carefully moulded to favour BN and par-ticularly UMNO.

No doubt, PAS was still unable to move from dissent to power at the national level. Yet, this analysis of PAS’s transformed politics at the 2008 conjuncture applied just as well to PAS’s politics from 2008 onwards. Up to GE 13, PR joined or organized mass rallies, clarified its populist platform and extended its reach in civil society. Its parties had to cooperate to manage internal problems, such as inter-party seat allocations. Or else they had to confront external pressures, notably the intensification of ethno-religious chauvinism by certain agencies of state, UMNO, its NGO allies and its print and broadcast media which tried to provoke rifts between PAS and DAP, and prevent PAS and PKR from advancing into Malay-majority constituencies upon which UMNO desperately depended. In the event, PR held together – as dramatically shown by a tactical agreement between PAS and DAP to have all DAP candidates run on the PAS ticket when the Registrar of Societies refused to recognize the DAP’s central committee just two days before election nominations. Across the board, non-Malay goodwill towards PAS rose for its ‘rescue’ of DAP but also out of a new confidence in PAS’s religious

Khoo Boo Teik 195

moderation. However, UMNO dominated the Malay constituencies where voters stayed loyal because of the regime’s direct hand-outs of money and other material benefits and/or were alarmed by UMNO’s warnings that its defeat would lose ‘Malay supremacy’ to the Chinese or even Christians. Not without irony, Muhammad Sabu later observed:

in mixed areas, PAS did well The Chinese were threatened with ‘1 vote for PR is 1 vote for Hudud’ but the Chinese said, ‘We want Ubah (Change), we do not care!’ So, 85% of Chinese voted for Pakatan. Which is why we could get Selangor back. The Malays were trapped in the racial issue, which is why we (PAS) lost in Malay majority areas. It was the fence sitters – the government officers – who voted for BN. The postal votes we got only 15% (Zakiah 11 November 2013).

In November 2013, PAS held its latest party election. There was some soul-searching: Would a leadership with more ulama, pushing religious issues to the fore again, win greater Malay support? However, the party voted to retain a majority of non-ulama in the top leadership. The outcome vindicated PAS’s continuation with PR’s coalitional approach (Malaysiakini 23 November 2012; Welsh 25 November 2013). Therein lies a certain realism of PAS’s: it comes from being Islamist and political within a long trajectory of simultaneously dissenting and ruling that has not precluded reinventions towards more pluralist democratic politics.

Notes

1. PKR, DAP and PAS won 31, 28 and 23 seats respectively.2. In Perak, DAP had 18 seats to PKR’s seven and PAS’s six, but the state’s con-

stitutional stipulations and compromises within PR led to the appointment of PAS’s Nizar Jamaluddin as Chief Minister. Kuala Lumpur, being a ‘Federal Territory’, was administered by the BN-led Federal government via an une-lected city hall.

3. Besides, BN and PR each won eight of 16 (Parliamentary and state) by-elections held after March 2008, giving credence to PR’s goal of supplanting BN.

4. PAS had always been in opposition in Parliament except when it belonged to BN from 1974 to 1977. Before 2008, PAS had ruled Kelantan (1959–77 and since 1990) and Terengganu (1959–61 and 1999–2004).

5. Halim (2000: 3) argued that religion did not feature in UMNO-PAS competi-tion in Kelantan and Terengganu. For Malaysia as a whole, ‘[while] UMNO and PAS both use ethnicity and religion in their electoral platforms ... UMNO succeeded in becoming the ruling party not because of its promises of “more” Islam in the system, just as PAS had lost in elections not because of its failure in delivering “too little” Islam for its voters’ Maznah (2010a: 507).

6. The characterizations are drawn from Farish (2004, vol. I: 110, 213).


7. For Terengganu, PAS’s 1999 General Election Manifesto had planned to ‘make [petroleum] royalty revenue the catalyst of state economic produc-tion’ and to ‘generate economic growth and expansion based on natural resources such as petroleum and gas’ (PAS 1999: subsections 7.2 and 7.3).

8. Keadilan and PRM later merged to form PKR. 9. ‘This writer, who was also a secretariat member of the Barisan Alternatif ...

witnessed its demise after PAS launched the Islamic Document’ (Dzulkefly 2012: 185).

10. On differing views in PAS on the decision to publish the Islamic State Document see Liew (2007: 113–18).

11. PAS expressed strong suspicions that tampering with Terengganu’s electoral roll contributed to its defeat.

12. For a critique of ‘bureaucratic Islamism’, see Ahmad Fauzi (2010: 163).13. Mahathir’s idea of Melayu Baru (New Malays) is reviewed in Khoo (1995:

331–8). The kutu were followers of local ‘heavy metal’ rock bands while the Mat Rempit were members of motorcycle gangs.

14. Operasi Lalang was the police term for the mass detention of dissident politi-cians and social activists launched on 27 October 1987.

15. Adding the rising incidence of crime in urban areas to these burdens would more or less complete a pre-election picture of ‘the everyday issues of human security’ (Maznah 2008: 448).

16. Yet, in Putrajaya, ‘almost entirely populated by government officials and senior civil servants and their families, who are under enormous pressure to vote for the BN’ (Brown 2005: 433), about 25 per cent of the valid votes cast in 2008 went to the PAS candidate.

17. The main proposals were: free education and the abolition of all fees from primary to tertiary education; National Health Support Scheme for citizens without employer-provided health benefits; return to the provision of scholarships as guaranteed by the Federal Constitution; lower petrol and gas prices; reduce the wealth disparity between rich and poor; pass minimum wage law; and to introduce 90 days’ maternity leave and seven days’ pater-nity leave (Abdul Hadi Awang 2008).

18. ‘In a rare exercise of intellectual renewal or Ijtihad, PAS committed and shifted itself – prior to the 12th General Election 2008 – to a political trajec-tory and a manifesto of “Negara Berkebajikan” (A Nation of Compassion and Opportunity) rather than the overworked concept of Islamic State’ (Dzulkefly 13 August 2012).

19. It was estimated that the Malay vote swing was 5.13 per cent at the national level while the Chinese and Indian vote swings were 56.3 per cent and 69.1 per cent respectively; in Selangor and Kedah, the Malay swing was 11.82 per cent and 15.84 per cent respectively (Dzulkefly 2012: 5).

20. Those were divisive issues for PAS. The line was drawn between those who wanted to form governments with UMNO in Perak and Selangor so that ‘the position of Islam could be consolidated’ and those who maintained that ‘the majority of those who voted PAS had “rejected” UMNO and BN’ (Mujahid 2005: 61). But PAS has a deep memory of betrayals by UMNO.

21. For example, see Sakmongkol AK47 (2012). The ‘rocket’ is DAP’s party symbol, the ‘moon’ is PAS’s and keadilan in PKR’s name means ‘justice’.

Khoo Boo Teik 197

22. PKR would be found in the middle with no Islamic State aspirations but many Malay and Muslim leaders.

23. ‘… we thank God that Pakatan survived the nerve-racking hudud debate in a three-hour closed-door meeting’ (Dzulkefly 2012: 185). Hadi Awang recently explained that, ‘PAS and DAP still have a huge difference in opinion on hudud, but both sides will have frequent dialogues. This difference will not affect our relationship,’ Malaysiakini (13 August 2012)

24. Here is an example of the difference the new cadre could make to PAS’s stance: ‘We continue to uphold the rights of marginalized people of all eth-nic groups and political persuasions…. This writer was amongst the earliest to throw support to Hindraf when everyone was anxious about their alleged “marked racial overtones”’ (Dzulkefly 2012: 6). PAS President Abdul Hadi Awang supported HINDRAF’s right to assemble but considered some of its demands to be ‘extreme’ (Malaysiakini 3 December 2007).

25. Note in passing that ‘ultimately it may still be political Islam that would have the capacity to undo this authoritarian state’ by mounting ‘challenges to the kind of statist Islam that has emerged’ (Maznah 2010b: 69)

26. The original chapter was completed two months before GE 13.

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201

10Political Fragmentation and Islamic Politics in PakistanYoshihiro Nakanishi

How does Islamism influence politics in the world today? Does Islamism turn Muslim people into extremists who seek to create an Islamic state that strictly adheres to Sharia? Or is Islam compatible with the modern nation state system and democracy? These questions about the relation-ship between Islam and politics have been the topic of recent political discussions in Muslim countries. This chapter aims to contribute to the development of the discussion by looking at the case of Pakistan, which provides us with an intriguing example of political fragmenta-tion caused by Islamic dissent.

10.1 Introduction

To begin, the Pakistan Constitution identifies the state as an Islamic Republic, and Article 2 stipulates that ‘Islam shall be the State religion of Pakistan.’ More than 95 per cent of the total population (187 million) is Muslim, which makes Pakistan the second largest Islamic country in the world behind Indonesia. Pakistan as a Muslim homeland was an idea created by several of Pakistan’s founding fathers in the 1940s to counter the Hindu population in the Indian empire. In this sense the idea of Pakistan was literally an ideal community. Even today, the lead-ers in Pakistan are struggling to turn the idea into reality, but it has been difficult to consolidate national unity through Islamic discourse largely because the political use of religion is always exposed to the risk that contentions will arise from intra-Islamic sectarian differences as well as from the classic cleavages of secular–religious debate. In fact, state leaders in Pakistan recently have faced serious security threats by Islamic mili-tants who try to justify their violent activities as jihad and by frequent sectarian conflicts between Sunni and Shia, which have recently been

202 Political Fragmentation and Islamic Politics in Pakistan

producing more and more victims (Nasr 2002). The connections between Islam and political violence have become particularly salient. Although it is wrong to associate Islam as a religion with violence or ter-rorism, the violent aspect is an important part of the problems related to Islamic politics in Pakistan. Then the literature has focused on the militarization of the relationship between Islamic social forces and the state security apparatus (Abbas 2004; Madalena et al 2004; Rashid 2008; Gul 2009; Gunaratna et al 2011; Gul 2012).

Most of the discussions about the violent aspects of Islamic politics in Pakistan are generally critical of the security policies of the Pakistani government, especially those of the army and intelligence agency (Inter-Services Intelligence: ISI), and they argue that their tactical use of Islamic militants in the Kashmir conflicts and Afghan war has created potential security threats and that the country’s decision to partici-pate in the US operations on terrorist groups in the region has incited Islamic militants to launch attacks against the Pakistani government and domestic population. In fact, as shown in Figure 10.1, the number of terrorist attacks in Pakistan has dramatically increased and remained high since 2004, suggesting that the Taliban and other Islamic militants who escaped from US intervention in Afghanistan in 2001 contributed to a change in the landscape of terrorism in Pakistan.

Addressing the security problem in Pakistan is almost impossible to do without exploring the regional setting of South Asia and Pakistan’s national security policy. The literature often attributes the insecurity caused mainly by Islamic militants to Islamization in society. This chapter defines the concept of Islamization as the process by which Islamic institutions, life and values are (re)introduced and (re)spread within a community.

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

Figure 10.1 Number of Terrorist Attacks in PakistanSource: National Counterterrorism Center.

Yoshihiro Nakanishi 203

Even though few Pakistani people support the political violence committed by Islamic extremists, some assume that the recent Islami-zation of the country has provided space and opportunity for such groups to recruit members and develop an organization. This assump-tion itself is not necessarily wrong when focusing only on the causes of the spreading violence in Pakistan. However, violence is only one of the tools that social forces can adopt to express their political dissent. Since Islamization has a variety of impacts on society, one must be cau-tious about oversimplifying the causes of political violence as well as implicating terrorism. This chapter discusses both the impacts and causes of the political violence, focusing on various aspects of political Islam.

What interests us here is that while terrorist attacks under the ban-ner of Islam have increased, political parties with a strong commit-ment to Islam, such as Jama’at-i-Islami ( JI) and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam ( JUI), remain far from significant in formal politics in Pakistan today. Although a coalition of six Islamic parties recorded unprecedented success in the 2002 general election, gaining 61 seats and emerging as the third-largest party in the National Assembly, it failed to maintain the momentum in the subsequent general election in 2008 and 2013. This may suggest that Islamization in Pakistan has resulted in a rise in political violence while failing to produce strong Islamic political par-ties on the other. Why are Islamic parties in Pakistan marginalized in party politics even as Islamization is progressing in society? How has recent Islamization affected politics in Pakistan? What accounts for the contrasting result of frequent violence in the name of Islam and low performance of Islamic parties? To answer these questions, this chap-ter aims to examine Islamic forces and to develop a balanced view for analysing the relationship between Islam, political dissent and the state in Pakistan. Also, context matters. Political violence, including terrorist acts, should be understood by exploring the trajectory that led Islamic militants to the decision to use physical violence for their political purpose. The argument that will be made here is that Pakistan’s politi-cal dissent with Islamic ideology has been fragmented by state, politi-cal regime, local societies and regional security environment and that recent Islamization combined with rapid urbanization and the spread of new information technology is contributing to the diversification of people’s political demands and to intensification of social contention, which in turn has led to more fragmentation of Islamic political dissent.

The structure of this chapter is as follows. The first section will introduce the history of Islamic militants as they emerged as an actor associated with Pakistan’s national security, being initially formed and


developed through the transformation of the security policies, and they are still one of the security tools used by the Pakistani military despite their problematic activities inside and outside of the country. The second section will address the question of why Islamic parties in Pakistan have failed to gain wider social support in Pakistan. As the most influential and well-organized Islamic party, the analysis will mainly focus on JI, which was founded in 1941 by the Islamic intellectual, Saiyyad Abul ala Mawdudi. This section will point out the three main factors that appear to undermine the possibility of their political rise: contradictive positions on Islamic ideals and modernity, their relationships with the previous military dictatorship and a weak and imbalanced social support base. The third section will discuss how the recent socio-economic changes after Musharraf’s coup d’état in 1999 are affecting politics in Pakistan and their impact on Islamic dissent. Although rapid urbanization and the development of information technology provided civil society with opportunities to make a direct impact on formal politics through social mobilization, as of today they have not led to the emergence of a widely supported Islamic political force that can bridge across the social classes and ethnicities in the country. Instead, they have brought about further fragmentation in politics and a new form of populism based on anti-American sentiments.

10.2 Islam as a security tool/threat

General Pervez Musharraf, the head of the Army, launched a coup d’état on 12 October 1999 in reaction to his sudden dismissal by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. After the coup, he did not declare martial law like the preceding two military dictators, and he also did not rely on Islam as a national ideology to justify his rule to their extent. Instead of religious and ideological justification, he sought international legitimacy and suc-ceeded in gaining US acceptance of his military rule soon after the coup, and additionally, on 12 March 2000, the Supreme Court delivered the final judgement legally approving the necessity of the military’s interven-tion as it did in the previous military rules (Khan 2009: 118–19). With support in place, Musharraf’s leadership was able to keep some distance from Islam as political ideology. It was often argued that he hoped to establish a relatively secular Muslim country similar to Turkey, where he had lived in his childhood. During his rule, however, Pakistan has turned into a country of increasing political violence in the name of Islam.

In order to consider the paradoxical consequences of Musharraf’s attempt, it is necessary to focus on the historical collaboration between


the Jihadists and the national security policy in Pakistan. His decision to cooperate with the US war on terror in Afghanistan in 2001 severely affected the state-Jihadists linkage, leading to a transformation in the conventional security policy as well as the violent side effects. A part of his memoir describes his decision to stop supporting the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and to involve Pakistan in US anti-Taliban operations as follows:

Twenty-one years earlier it was natural for us to join the jihad against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan because we did not want the Soviet Union to consolidate its position and turn its attention toward our warm waters. In 2001 it was just as natural for us to join the war against terror because Pakistan had been a victim of sectarian and external terrorism for years and certainly had no desire to be ‘Talibanized.’ In both instances, it was in our national interest to do what we did. Just as we could not tolerate Soviet hegemony, under no circumstances could we tolerate homegrown terrorism or extrem-ists who try to indoctrinate our society with a radical and violent interpretation of Islam (Musharraf 2006: 223).

In this explanation ‘national interest’ is oversimplified here, and Musharraf, arguably intentionally, ignores an important fact that had been a fundamental part of the security policy in Pakistan for a long time. Pakistan was an informal ally of the Taliban once. Although the Taliban adopted terrorism as a tactic when they fought with other rival forces in the 1990s civil war, Pakistan’s military aid was crucial for the Taliban’s survival and expansion. Since Pakistan strategically required a stable and pro-Pakistan government in the west for the national security necessary to counter India, the first ‘enemy’, it accepted Taliban’s ruling role in Afghanistan (Barfield 2010: 258). As Kapur and Ganguly vividly argued, Pakistan’s use of Islamic militants in Afghanistan is ‘the centerpiece of a sophisticated asymmetric warfare campaign, painstakingly developed and prosecuted since Pakistan’s founding’ (Kapur and Ganguly 2012: 113).

Furthermore, Musharraf definitely knew that the Taliban was not solely an Islamic extremist group, but rather a social movement that attempted to promote a vision rooted in Afghanistan rural values.1 When considering the long-term state of war and lack of modern state governance in Afghanistan, as well as the existence of Taliban sympa-thizers in Pakistan who share ideology and have direct relations, top-pling the Taliban by force might not have been a good idea at all for Pakistan’s security interests and for Afghanistan society as well.


However, Pakistan seemed to have no option but to accept the US ‘request’. Even though it could have made the security situation on the Pakistani home front more difficult, rejecting the US ‘request’ would have been highly risky in the mood right after 9/11. Additionally, it was a good opportunity to revitalize the Pakistan–United States alli-ance, which had been stagnant since the country’s nuclear test in 1998 and military coup in 1999. By taking advantage of this oppor-tunity provided from the United States, Musharraf disallowed the ISI to sponsor and train Islamic militants, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammed ( JeM), al-Qaeda and Harakat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM) for deploying them to liberate Kashmir from India and establish a Pashtun Islamist government. This meant a fundamental restructuring of the security policy. Then, in January 2002, the Musharraf govern-ment banned Islamic militants in an anti-terrorism effort, and he also moved toward normalization of the relationship with India when Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Musharraf signed the 4 January 2004 declaration during the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation summit conference in Islamabad. The declaration promised that the two countries would restart the peace process aimed at solving the Kashmir issue, which would lead to a decline in the stra-tegic significance of Islamic militants supported by ISI. However, as a result of these actions, Pakistan became one of the most conflict prone countries in the world.

The most severely affected region is the Federal Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), which is composed of seven areas. The areas have been governed under a system of indirect rule, which was introduced by the British colonial government. Since that time, the local councils ( jirgas) and tribal notables or tribal chiefs (maliks) have exercised administrative and judicial authority almost independent of the federal government. The total population of the area is about 3.5 million, and most of them are Pathan and Sunni Muslims. After the US attack on the Taliban regime in October 2001, many Afghan refugees, including Taliban and Al-Qaeda members, fled into FATA, and in some towns and villages they replaced the local authority and launched offices to rule the local people as the Taliban did in Afghanistan.

The security situation in FATA has deteriorated since 2007, and the sporadic military operations by Pakistan’s army appeared to have further undermined the autonomous social order in the region, even though some militant groups have been successfully removed (Rana and Gunaratna 2008: 120–1). The violent influence of Islamic mili-tants in the region resulted in the formation of Tehrik Taliban Pakistan


(TTP) in 2007. The TTP was founded by Baitullah Mehsud in the South Waziristan Agency of FATA. It is composed mainly of Pashtun fighters but also includes Arab, Afghan, Chechen, Uzbek and Punjabi militants (Siddique 2010: 7). One of the important characteristics of the TTP is that its main mission is to fight against the Pakistani army and government.2 They emerged as a result of Musharraf’s two instances of mismanagement, which encouraged militants to create a coalition to defy the Pakistani government. The first was Musharraf’s dismissal of the chief justice of the Supreme Court, Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, and the subsequent lawyer-led mass movement against the decision and Musharraf’s authoritarian rule itself. This domestic politi-cal contention undermined his political legitimacy as well as slowed down the counter-insurgency operations by the army. The second was the Red Mosque (the Lal Masjid) incident of July 2007. Two extremist brothers (Maulana Abdul Aziz and Abdul Rashid Ghazi) headed the Red Mosque in the centre of Islamabad and had influence over other mosques and madrasas in Islamabad. Musharraf attempted to close and demolish their mosque. The students of the Red Mosque occupied the library to oppose the government’s policy, and their clash with the Ranger Police led to the tragedy in which the government’s paramilitary troops were involved in a gun battle with students, resulting in more than 20 deaths. This clash was enough to stimulate the Islamic mili-tants. The formation of TTP was one of the reactions.

Subsequently, terrorist attacks increased in FATA and spread to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). As time passed, the militants expanded their targets from military facilities, such as military outposts and police check-points, to ordinary civilians, so-called soft targets. KP has suffered from this, and an estimate in 2011 shows that the province had 521 terrorist attacks in which 836 people were killed, of which 545 were civilians (Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies 2011: 9).

The observation above suggests that the US war on terror and Musharraf’s restructure of the security policy could be the main factors that contributed to the rise of Islamic militants in Pakistan. Of course, Musharraf must have been aware of the difficulties of transforming con-ventional security policy. The regional setting of South Asia has under-pinned Pakistan’s security policy since the country’s independence, while 9/11 and terrorist threats in the West were not a ‘game changer’ for the regional security regime. It would be fair to say that it was easy to foresee that sharing the enemies of the US war on terror would cre-ate contradictions and tensions among security stakeholders in Pakistan and neighbouring countries.


10.3 The weakness of the Islamic parties

Pakistan was created as a Muslim homeland in 1947, but this does not mean that the country was meant to be an Islamic state. On the con-trary, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founding father of Pakistan, hoped that religion would be separate from politics so that people become citizens of the state, regardless of their religion (Haqqani 2005: 13). Unfortunately, his ambition for a secular nation has not been accom-plished yet, mainly because political leaders, including Jinnah, have failed to develop a solution to unify the new nation, called Pakistan, and it has turned out to be very difficult for them to create a shared identity that unites the ethnically and religiously diverse people in the country without Islamic symbolism and hostility toward India.

As will be discussed in the latter part of this chapter, although the pace of Islamization appears to have slowed down during democratic periods (1947–57, 1971–7, 1988–99), two military dictators, Muhammad Ayub Khan and Zia ul Haq, forged ahead with Islamization of the state and society. Major political parties, such as Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League (PML), have been basically moderate in terms of religious ideology, and more interestingly, Islamic parties, which have been allowed to legally exist except for a short period in the 1950s, still remain far from significant in party politics in Pakistan. What accounts for the Islamic parties’ political weakness? Here, with a focus on Jama’at-i-Islami ( JI), the argument will be made that the following three factors have contributed to it: contradictive positions on Islamic ideals and modernity, the parties’ relationships with past military dicta-torships, and ethnic and local fragmentation.

In terms of political ideology, JI has been obsessed with the party’s original political stance, which disrupted the expansion of mass sup-port to some degree. Before Pakistan’s independence, the founder of JI, Mawdudi, was critical of the Muslim independence movement, which was supported by the majority of leaders. He thought a Muslim majority province should be established within colonial India. After the promulgation of the Pakistan Resolution by the Muslim League at Lahore in 1940, he pragmatically revised his political vision, and the newly formed JI adopted a strategy to materialize Islamic reformation within the constitutional framework after the country’s independence in 1947. Since then the party was tied for a long time to the original platforms that Mawdudi had embedded within the party ideology. One of the limitations is that Mawdudi was ambivalent toward the compat-ibility of modernity and Islam. He stressed the necessity of a modern


political party with the ‘right’ ideology for his Islamic movement on one hand, but at the same time, he did not accept the concept of a modern nation state based on popular sovereignty.3 Mawdudi was basi-cally negative on modernization within the Islamic context and argued for the necessity of an Islamic nizam-e-zindagi (way of life), which introduces Islam as the sole guide in life. This ambivalence toward the relationship between Islam and modernity was true of the party organizational structure as well. The party placed several strict religious qualifications on party membership, which was appealing to educated, middle-class youth. As a result, university students became potential supporters, and the student organization, the Islami Jami’at-I Tulabah (Islamic Society of Students), was formed as a major offshoot designed to recruit party members. This elitist approach was effective for consoli-dating the limited party cadre, but it prevented the party from turning into a mass party which could gain wider support in the election. Even today, the party still follows Mawdudi’s expectations for a strictly disci-plined party. Consequently, the majority of the party’s core supporters are always from the middle class, which is still small in Pakistan. As Anatol Lieven argued, ‘In some ways the Jamaat is too intellectual for its own good’ (Lieven 2011: 149).

The second reason for the weakness of Islamic parties is their past collaborations with undemocratic governments. Since Pakistan’s Islamic parties have performed poorly in the polls, they have instead played an important role in past military dictators’ Islamization projects. The two military dictators before Musharraf required the cooperation of the Islamic forces in creating an alternative means of justifying their undemocratic political system, mainly because they regarded repre-sentative democracy as an institution which can disorganize the nation. While this commitment provided them an opportunity to realize some of their Islamization goals, it also resulted in undermining the people’s trust in the Islamic parties’ view on democracy.

Two historical cases illustrate this point. The first case is Field Marshall Muhammad Ayub Khan’s rule, which began following a coup d’état in 1958. Among Ayub’s motivations for political intervention were his frustration with the Westminster model of democracy and his aspirations to modernize the country. In taking over the state, Ayub clearly rejected the Westminster model of democracy, arguing that it was inappropriate for Pakistan. Instead, he attempted to legiti-mize his non-democratic rule and modernization policies via Islamic discourses. This rhetoric was shaped by Islamic intellectuals and was spread through propaganda campaigns by the Ministry of the Interior


and Education and the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. He sponsored the establishment of the Central Institute of Islamic Research in 1960 and appointed Fazlur Rhaman Malik, who was a well-known scholar for his works on Islamic modernism, as its dean. Furthermore, Ayub nationalized religious endowments, and the state began to man-age some mosques and shrines. Nonetheless, Ayub did not utilize Islamic parties such as JI. Rather, they were regarded as rivals in the competition over Islamic discourse. He legally banned their activities and imprisoned some Islamic party leaders, including Mawdudi, but JI and other Islamic parties did not yield to the suppression, insisting that Ayub’s policy was not Islamic, but ‘a blind copying of the West’ (Esposito and Voll 1996: 106).

Two decades later, General Zia ul Haq’s rule (1977–88) also promoted the Islamization of laws, policies and culture. Unlike Ayub, Zia strongly believed that he was chosen to purify Pakistan through Islam and that almost all Pakistani people desired it (Haqqani 2005: 131–7). Here it is noteworthy to point out that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s ‘Islamic socialism’ provided the environment in which Islam-oriented generals, such as Zia, were promoted in the military.4 He placed Islam as the core symbol of his regime by assigning ulema and Islamic parties, and JI in particular, to important roles in his regime. Mawdudi praised Zia’s Islamization, such as the Nizam-i Mustafa movement that aimed to enforce the Prophet Muhammad’s way of life or Sharia law in society. In turn, Zia treated Mawdudi as a sage and provided cabinet positions to JI leaders, as well as permitting some intellectuals who supported JI to become advisers in his inner circle. This occurred as the election commission excluded conventional secular political parties through a revision to the party registration rules. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 helped Islamization expand to foreign policies. Zia requested advice from JI leaders to justify Pakistan’s intervention in Afghan as jihad. However, as Zia’s popularity declined among the general populace, partly because of his radical Islamization and undemocratic character,5 JI also lost support within society. As a result, in spite of its powerful position in the regime, only ten of 68 JI candidates won National Assembly seats in the 1985 election, which shows how risky JI’s collaboration with the military dictatorship had become.

The final reason for Islamic parties’ poor performance at the polls is that they are polarized by ethnic division and localism. An ironic case in point is Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (Muttahida Mulla Association (MMA)), a coalition of six Islamic parties.6 As noted at the beginning of


the chapter, MMA recorded unprecedented success in the 2002 general election, gaining 61 seats and emerging as the third largest party in the National Assembly. More importantly, MMA gained 68 (53 general, 13 women and two minority) out of 168 seats in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), now known as Khyber Pashutunkhua (KP), and became the ruling party in the province.7

Although many observers interpret MMA’s win to be a symptom of Islamization in Pakistan (Pupcenoks 2012), I argue that MMA’s win and its successive political leadership ironically resulted in demonstrating the limitations of Islamic political parties. First, this electoral success was not necessarily a result of religious motivation. MMA’s perfor-mance represented a surge in anti-Americanism following US military attacks against the Taliban government in Afghanistan, which began in September 2001 (Brohi 2006: 46–54). A public poll conducted in 2001 showed that almost half of the people supported Mullah Omar’s regime in Afghanistan, and they did not consider the Taliban as a threat to the regional security setting (Akbar 2011: 156). To them, it seemed wrong for the Pakistani government to cooperate with the US war against the Taliban government; it was like a war against a close associate. Even Musharraf, who decided to make Pakistan a US ally in the war, under-stood this sentiment. He wrote in his biography: ‘We stood with the United States, and we stand with the entire world, in opposing terro-rism. Yet we face threats from within and without. Afghanistan is our neighbor; we share a porous boundary and religious, ethnic, and tribal affinities as well as familial links’ (Musharraf 2006: 222).

As a result, MMA emerged and functioned as a pillar for anti-American sentiment, especially in KP, which borders Afghanistan. However, despite nationwide anti-American sentiment, MMA could not main-tain its momentum in two major provinces, Punjab and Sindh. It won only three seats in Punjab Province and six seats in Sindh Province. JI’s influence had largely been replaced by the Muhajir Quami Movement (MQM), which was formed in 1984 for the purpose of the protection of equal rights for the Muhajil, Urdu-speaking migrants of four native ethnicities (Punjab, Pathan, Balochis and Sindhis) in Sindh Province. The MQM attracted a number of Muhajil, mostly from the upper- and middle-classes in urban areas, in Sindh state. MMA’s disappointing performance was of more importance here because JI’s organizational network had extended to almost all districts in Punjab (Nasr 1994: 47–51). If anti-American sentiment had been reflected in the number of votes through those networks, MMA would have


gained more seats. This suggests that voters’ preference for JI was basically unchanged since the last election. Rather than the Islamic factor, the combination of ethnic factors and anti-American senti-ment can account for the rise of the Islamic coalition more clearly because MMA’s win was brought about by Pashtuns’ votes for Jamiat Ulema-e-Islami (F) ( JUI-F), which was led by conservative Islamic clerics and had supporters among Pashtu people in the provinces bordering Afghanistan (Ahmed 2010: 332). This party’s inference is demonstrated by the electoral failure of the Awami National Party (ANP), which also embraces Pashtu ethnic nationalism but was opposed to the Taliban in Afghanistan and supported the newly established Karzai administra-tion at that time. Therefore, I argue that MMA’s rise in KP should be understood to be the result of ethnic votes based on anti-American sentiment, rather than Islamization.

Furthermore, the case of MMA’s rule in KP suggests the difficulty of Islamic rule itself. During the five years that MMA was in power in KP, the MMA government imposed Islamic practices on the people through provincial legislation. For instance, the government required that provin-cial banks stop charging interest (riba), music be banned on buses, public schools change the curriculum to a more Islamic one and all people offer daily prayers. Then, in July 2005, the MMA government introduced the Hasba Bill (Sharia Implementation Bill) to supervise the implementation of Sharia in society. However, this Islamization policy was criticized by even Islamic organizations, mainly because the policies seemed to derive from the interpretation of a specific Islamic school, namely Wahabi or Deobandi (International Crisis Group 2011: 5). Secular sides also responded negatively to the legislation. The Supreme Court blocked the enactment of the Hasba bill on the grounds that the bill aimed to build a parallel judicial system and that some of its clauses were unconventional. These attacks from religious and secular sides obviously undermined the popularity of MMA and soon led to a split in the coalition. It then won only seven seats in the 2008 provincial election, while the ANP regained the majority, and an election coalition of Islamic parties failed to be formed in the 2013 election due to conflicting policy preferences.

Consequently, Islamic parties in Pakistan have not sufficiently func-tioned to convey popular dissent to the formal political arena by obtain-ing votes in elections. Instead of electoral success, some Islamic forces, such as JI, helped military regimes provide ideological legitimacy to their rule and policies, which undermined support for Islamic parties within society. Furthermore, Pakistan’s deep ethnic and class divisions deprived them of an opportunity to consolidate a nationwide base.8


10.4 Social changes, Islam and political dissent

Today the debate over the compatibility between Islam and democracy has reached a new phase as the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ has resulted in higher expectations for democratic revolution in Muslim countries. However, it is also too optimistic to assume that democratization will equally and safely proceed in other Muslim countries because first, some authorita rian regimes (Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Iran and so on) still remain robust, and second, democracy under fragile political orders and weak states can easily come to a standstill, resulting in messy political struggles and the possibility of self-destructive outcomes.

As we’ve already seen, in Pakistan, it is extremely hard to predict whether Islamization will prevail in the formal political arena and the state level in the short run. It may be more realistic to predict a politi-cal intervention by the military. Still, we are left with the impression that Islamization or intolerance to non-Islamic elements is ubiquitous in Pakistani society. To refer to one recent example; on 4 January 2011, a man shot the governor of the Punjab state, Salman Taseer, at the Kohsar Market in Islamabad. The assassin was one of his security guards, Mumtaz Qaderi. Qaderi shot Taseer at least 27 times with an AK-47 as the other security guards simply watched. Afterwards, he surrendered with his hands up. A religious matter motivated Qaderi to kill Taseer. He said later, ‘Salman Taseer is a blasphemer and this is the punishment for a blasphemer.’9 Indeed Salman Taseer supported reforms to the blas-phemy provisions in Pakistan’s penal codes, which originally prohibited ‘deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage the religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs’; then, in the 1980s, General Zia ul Haq’s government added new clauses to impose more severe sanctions – life imprisonment or the death penalty – on any-one who blasphemed the holy Quran or the holy Prophet Muhammad (International Crisis Group 2011). Later, this reform resulted in a biased representation, in which about half of the 647 people who were charged with blasphemy between 1988 and 2005 were non-Muslims.10 Considering the fact that 98 per cent of Pakistan’s population is Muslim, it is no wonder that some were suspicious enough to bring up a discus-sion about discrimination against religious minorities by the police and courts. Salman Taseer was one of the loudest advocates who called for amending the law. Mumtaz Qaderi, who had strong views about Islam, simply hated him. His hatred caused him to shoot Taseer in public during broad daylight. Of course, I believe that many people reject such violent acts, even if they are justified by Islamic discourse, but when Mumtaz


Qaderi appeared in an Islamabad court right after the assassination, many lawyers welcomed him with flower necklaces and kisses on the cheek. About 200 sympathizers outside of the court chanted, ‘Death is acceptable for Muhammad’s slave.’11 Members of the Islamic parties were part of the admiring crowd. This case may show that social intolerance to non-Islamic elements is growing.

It seems insufficient and biased to explain this social Islamization and intolerance in Pakistan by mentioning the security issues dis-cussed in the second section. I think that the current social change regarding Islamization was created through more complicated mecha-nisms. In particular, while observers often provide negative views on Musharraf’s political leadership, less attention has been paid to the effects of economic growth and subsequent social changes. In the fol-lowing section, the effects of socio-economic changes in Islam and politics will be examined.

Pakistan had moderate economic growth in the 2000s, mainly due to the development of the service sector and growing remittances from Pakistani immigrant workers in foreign countries. According to IMF data, the country recorded relatively high economic growth from 2003 to 2008 at a 6.7 per cent average rate, which raised its GDP per capita to over US$1000 for the first time in its history (US$1018.15 in 2008).12 One of the main reasons for this growth was US support in exchange for Pakistan’s cooperation with the war on terror. The Paris Club donors fully rescheduled US$12.5 billion of debt in December 2001, resulting in an improved investment climate and an influx of foreign investments. Nevertheless, the growth did not last long, largely because of the dete-riorating domestic political situation and international economic reces-sion. For example, the share of the industrial sector today is at almost the same level as it was in the late 1980s.13 However, this does not negate the fact that economic growth has contributed to improvements in living standards. The point is rather that the economic growth pro-moted urbanization and media development, which resulted in changes in the opportunity structure for the social movements.

In regards to urbanization, while the rural population rate in Pakistan was 82.26 per cent in 1951, it dropped to 63.78 per cent (112.73 mil-lion people) in 2011. Comparison of 2010 figures reveals that about two million people moved from rural to urban areas during that year. In the past four years, the urban population grew about 3.5 per cent every year, which is more than 1 percentage point higher than the total popula-tion growth rate (Ministry of Finance 2012: 167). As people continue to immigrate to urban areas, mainly to seek jobs and other economic


opportunities; Pakistan’s labour market is unable to absorb the influx. This has resulted in higher unemployment rates in urban areas than in rural areas.14 Like many developing countries, Pakistan is facing the problem of insufficient urban infrastructure to meet its increasing needs. This deficiency in infrastructure is mainly due to a lack of gov-ernment funding.15

What is relevant here is how urbanization affects political Islam. Generally speaking, urbanization helps create conditions that provide political parties and social forces with more opportunities to connect with ordinary people (Herbst 2006: 658–60). Additionally, the recent development of information technology provides a tool to decrease the transaction costs required to gather information and mobilize people on the street, even under repressive governments. In Pakistan, as Table 10.1 shows, mobile phone subscriptions steadily increased and reached the point where over half of the population used mobile phones in 2008. This trend suggests that people, especially those in urban areas, were able to enjoy more civil freedom under Musharraf’s rule compared to other military regimes. It turned out that anti-government demonstra-tions on the street led by lawyers became the decisive factor for the regime change in 2008.

When considering the relationship between Islam and political dis-sent in Pakistan, it appears that urbanization and the development of information technology did not directly contribute to the rise of Islamic parties in Parliament, even though many supporters reside in urban areas, and that Islamization is occurring in society. This weak connec-tion may suggest that political institutions only weakly represent social demands, for reasons such as the feudal system, low literacy rate and gender inequality. Without the people’s voice, democracy never works. The weak political institutions together with the weak state of govern-ability have had two consequences. Since conventional political par-ties like PPP and PML (N) have succeeded in sustaining their bases of

Table 10.1 Mobile Telephone Subscriptions per 100 Inhabitants in Pakistan

Year 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006

No. of Subscription 0.50 1.13 1.57 3.22 8.05 21.36Year 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012No. of Subscription 38.22 52.57 55.33 57.14 61.61 66.77

Source: International Telecommunication Union (http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/statistics).


support through a network of feudal landowners in Sindh and Punjab, respectively, the fragile democracy prevents Islamists from turning Pakistan into an Islamic state. On the other hand, the weak state of gov-ernability encourages radical Islamist groups to adopt physical violence as a tactic, and the recent jihad against civilians has undermined their popular support (Fair 2010). As a result, urbanization and development of technology have not resulted in Islamic populism as of this point; rather, they have created a new form of populism. Imran Khan, the for-mer captain of the national cricket team is an example of this.

When he founded the political party Pakistan Tahreek-e-Insaf (PTI) in 1996 with successful funding enabled by his popularity as the person who once took the national team to the world championship in 1992, his party’s and his own political influence in the Parliament was not that impressive despite his media coverage.16 However, after 2010, he suddenly emerged as a new type of political leader backed by people’s distrust of conventional political parties following PPP’s return to power in the 2008 election and anti-American sentiment, which has rapidly intensified after the recent covert US actions, such as drone attacks on border regions of Pakistani territory and the killing of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad. Polls conducted by the International Republican Institute have indicated that he is highly popular, and his political campaigns of demanding changes in Pakistani politics and criticizing the CIA’s drone attacks have garnered enormous popular support on the streets of Karachi and Lahore. Even though his popularity may not last, as Ahmed Rashid wrote, ‘His emergence now after two decades of failed politics is a reflection of public frustration with the feudal political class and the crisis that Pakistan faces’ (Rashid 2012: 206). In the recent elec-tion in 2013, PTI gained 35 seats, including one reserved minority seat and six reserved women’s seats, to become the third largest party in the national assembly behind the Pakistan Muslim League (N) and PPP. More interestingly, PTI is now the largest party in KP following a gain of 39 seats, which indicates the huge effect that the anti-Americanism campaign had on the voting behaviour of people in the province during the 2013 election.

In order to understand the dynamism of society–Islam relations, it is necessary to look not only at political movements but also at the other side of the street. Here, Asef Bayat’s argument with a Gramscian approach is insightful. Since before the Arab Spring, Bayat has attempted to provide an alternative perspective by analysing unortho-dox forms of political dissent in Arab countries. According to Bayat, political societies under authoritarian rule do not function as a place


for political discussion in a true sense. However, he argues, this does not mean there is no place for political dissent and insists that ‘the street is the physical place where collective dissent is expressed’ (Bayat 2003: 12). In another study, he presented a sceptical view toward the conventional theories on social movements and argued that more attention must be paid to the spheres that are normally regarded as less political in developed liberal democracies. This is partly because those spheres may become the places where future political changes can origi-nate by giving people an opportunity to recreate the ‘dominant codes’ of order (Melucci 1996). Following his view, Islamization can, in a sense, be understood as a movement toward changing the ‘dominant codes’, such as capitalism, democracy and other Western political values. When a society is neither Islamized enough, nor modernized enough, the politics of ‘dominant codes’ can emerge as significant predictors of the outcomes of social Islamization.

For example, according to Humeira Iqtidar’s study on female activists in JI in Lahore, they have to deal simultaneously with two agendas in their activities. On one hand, they are obliged to follow Islamic princi-ples as a pious Muslim in daily life, but on the other hand, economic development and subsequent social changes compel them to adapt their positions to new situations, such as modern technology, international migration and other cultural conflicts that are associated with moder-nity. In that process of adaptation, Iqtidar argues, ‘Islamist women and men are engaging in a refashioning of beliefs in Muslim societies. This refashioning is best looked at not in terms of an increase or decrease in the quantity of belief, but a change in the texture, substantive elements, and quality of belief’ (Iqtidar 2011: 150). This argument leads us to the implication that the aim of Islamic social movements can be compatible with secular modernization. Indeed, many female Islamic activists have learned concepts and methodologies from secular feminist movements. However, as Muslims they refuse to accept the secularism or universal-ism that Western feminism usually conveys, and they instead redefine the value of women’s rights for modern education, health and mobility as ‘Islamic women’s rights’ ( Jamal 2005: 54).

Secular movements for women’s rights in Pakistan also have been changing (Afmad 2009). The history of women’s movements in Pakistan can be traced back to the progressive participation by women in the anti-colonial struggle and Pakistan’s independence movement in the 1940s. At that time, gender issues were not the main focus of the move-ment while they were fighting against the colonial power. In the 1950s and 1960s, some charitable organizations that were run by progressive


women emerged and spread, but few records exist of active women’s movements for gender issues. It was during Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto’s rule (1973–7) that women’s organizations dramatically increased and became common in Pakistan. One of the main reasons for this is that Bhutto’s ‘Islamic socialism’ was generally supportive of women’s rights. For instance, Article 25 of the 1973 Constitution enacted by Bhutto stipu-lates that ‘there shall be no discrimination on the basis of sex alone.’ Moreover, Article 34 states that ‘steps shall be taken to ensure the full participation of women in all spheres of national life.’ This formal com-mitment encouraged progressive women to question the existing gender inequalities and marked the beginning of the women’s movement.

In the 1980s, as the middle-class in urban areas grew and new intellectual perspectives, such as feminism, flowed into the country, some large-scale women’s organizations emerged. For example, the Women’s Action Forum (WAF) was founded in 1981 to fight against Zia’s Islamization, including the Zina Ordinance of 1979, which could enforce gender inequalities (Rouse 1986: 12).17 This movement was led by educated, middle- and upper-class women in urban areas, and their leftist orienta-tion and anti-Islamization campaigns motivated them to adopt a secular tone. This secular tone caused the leaders to face serious difficulties over the next two decades. Whereas state Islamization lost its momentum due to the collapse of Zia’s rule in 1988, Islamic revivalism gradually transformed people’s orientations, leading to the unpopularity of secu-lar movements because of their non-Islamic nature and/or pro-Western character. Even today, secular social movements often seek a pragmatic way to convince people to improve the human rights situation through the use of Islamic discourse (Jafar 2006: 74). Islam is an unreliable ban-ner for the politics of ‘dominant codes’. Even in movements that involve Islamic discourse, there are different struggles between social forces regarding the meanings of ‘women’, ‘Muslim’, ‘Pakistani’ and so on. Therefore, more attention should be placed on the interactions between the social agencies.

10.5 Conclusion

It is fair to say that the current Islamization in Pakistan will not bring about radical transformation through state legislative activities and the introduction of Islamic principles like Sharia. While the self-perception as an Islamic Republic is not necessarily shared as a national identity, reforming the current state into an Islamic state has never been attrac-tive, irrespective of the party. The major politicians and political parties


are basically moderate and liberal regardless of differences within the political spectrum. Although the emergence of Imran Khan’s urban-centric populism and its success in the 2013 general election is a new and important phenomenon in terms of political movements, his strategy and popularity will never rely on specific religious discourse because it would create intense controversies among the population. Anti-American sentiment is likely easier for him to handle.

On the other hand, Islamic militant groups have become potent since the 2000s not only in the regions bordering Afghanistan, such as FATA and Baluchistan, but also in KP and even Punjab and Sindh. They have expanded their targets from external enemies, such as the United States, NATO and India to former friends in the Pakistani army and ordinary people. This expansion has aroused social anxiety among the people and has never has led to sympathy for extremism. This fact should not be surprising, and perhaps the militants themselves realize it, because, as many studies indicate, social movements adopt violent tactics when they are fatally weak (Lawrence 2010: 148). Therefore, the present inse-curity in Pakistan should be understood to be the result of the incom-plete US victory against the Taliban in Afghanistan and of Musharraf’s restructuring of the conventional security policy (Krasner 2012). These factors definitely damaged the organizational foundation and activi-ties of the Taliban and other Islamic militants, but mainly due to the porous border between Afghanistan and Pakistan and the low level of governance in the border areas, as well as likely support from ISI, they were able to survive and persist. As long as these conditions remain unchanged, it appears to be impossible to root out Islamic militants.

In addition, even though physical violence has not led to popularity, it can undermine the trust between the people and the state because every time a terrorist attack occurs, it indirectly proves the vulnerability of the state governance, which is not strong enough to ensure the safety of the people. Therefore, the more important problem lies in this weak-ness and the devastating effects that Islamization has on the state. As the Salman Taseer incident suggests, Islamization in Pakistan often goes beyond the rule of law. Even peaceful Islamic social movements some-times embrace an anarchistic and non-secular orientation in which Islam and Islamic norms present an alternative to the government and modern code. On the other hand, political Islamic forces have failed to unite and consolidate support from society because of deep internal rifts based on religion, ethnicity and localism. As a result, Islam in Pakistan, which was once a symbol of national integration, is now becoming a source of national disintegration and state vulnerability.


The Pakistan case probably provides us with a possible negative prediction about the compatibility between the nation state and Islamism because the country was founded as a Muslim homeland, which relies on the sole element that people can share: Islam. However, at the same time, it may presage the difficulties that newly-democratized Muslim countries in the Middle East and North Africa will have to face at some point.

Notes

1. In effect, their radical policies were generally unpopular in urban areas because they were based less on Islam. See Barfield (2010: 258).

2. TTP’s goals are as follows: enforce sharia, unite against coalition forces in Afghanistan, perform defensive jihad against the Pakistani Army, demand the release of Lal Masjid Imam Abdul Aziz, demand the abolition of all military checkpoints in the FATA area and refuse future peace deals with the government of Pakistan. See Daily Times, 16 December 2007.

3. The following statement is a typical example of his ambivalence:

Being a Muslim I am not at all interested that Muslim governments are formed in areas where Muslims are in a majority. For me the most impor-tant question is whether in your Pakistan the system of government will be based on the Sovereignty of God or on popular sovereignty based on western democratic theories. In the case of the former it will certainly be Pakistan; otherwise it will be a ‘na-Pakistan’ (unholy land) as in the other areas where according to your scheme, non-Muslims will rule. But in the eyes of God it will be much more reprehensible and unholy than even that (Bahadur 1977: 39).

4. Bhutto’s motivation for Islamization was not sincere; it was political. He later admitted that promoting and encouraging Zia was the biggest mistake he had made. See Cohen (2004: 170).

5. Appointing Mohammed Khan Junejo as Prime Minister in 1985 was another reason for Zia’s fall. Zia did not expect Junejo’s demand for the end of mar-tial law.

6. MMA is a coalition of the following six Islamic parties: Maulana Fazal-ur-Rehamn’s faction of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islami, the Sami-ul-Haq faction of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, Jamiat Ulema-e-Pakistan, Jama’at-i Islami, Tehrik-e-Jafaria Pakistan and Jamiat Ahle Hadith.

7. In the Baluchistan Provincial Assembly, MMA won 18 (14 general, three women and one minority) out of 65 seats, and then it joined the ruling coalition.

8. Even if Islamic parties are relatively non-extreme in terms of ideology and party strategy, the use of the word ‘moderate’ could be misleading because the boundary between moderate and extreme in Islamic forces is unclear (White 2012: 184). Pakistan’s so-called moderate Islamic forces have not always approved of the state’s dominance of legitimate physical violence, which was a principle of the modern state in Weber’s definition. Sometimes, they do not hesitate to cross the line with respect to the Prophet. For instance, in the case of the Salman Taseer assassination mentioned above,


JI’s shura (council) passed a resolution to request amnesty for Mumtaz Qaderi from the President because JI regarded Qaderi’s killing of Taseer as a justifiable act in Islam. In fact, JI backed the Hizb-e-Mujahideen’s militant arm that violently fought against India in Kashmir, and it was also critical of Salman Taseer’s stance on the blasphemy law.

9. The Telegraph, January 8, 201110. The Evangelization Station, ‘Christians often victims under Pakistan’s blas-

phemy law’, http://www.evangelizationstation.com/htm_html/Around%20the%20World/Pakistan/christians_often_victims_under_p.htm (accessed on 6 Feb 2013).

11. Dawn, 5 January 2011. And only two months later, another politician was brought down by about 30 gunshots in Islamabad. Soon after, Tehrik-i-Taliban, an extreme Islamist group, claimed responsibility for the assassina-tion. The victim, Shahbaz Bhatti, was a PPP minister for minorities and the only Christian in the federal cabinet; he had been receiving death threats from some Islamist groups because he was speaking against the blasphemy laws, under which Asia Bibi, a Christian woman living in the Sheikhupura District of Punjab Province, was sentenced to death by hanging for speaking ill of the Prophet Muhammad. As Ahmed Rashid wrote, ‘[I]n 2011, every symbol of moderate Islam in Pakistan since its founding is under attack.’

12. Interestingly, Pakistan’s economic performance was relatively higher during the periods of military rule compared to the democratic periods. The average growth rate of real GDP by political regime is as follows: 3 per cent (democratic period, 1947–58), 5.8 per cent (military regime, 1958–71), 3.7 per cent (demo-cratic period, 1971–7), 6.3 per cent (military regime, 1977–88), 4.1 per cent (democratic period, 1988–99) and 5.7 per cent (military regime, 1999–2008). See Oda (2011: 273).

13. See Oda (2011: 279).14. In reference to formal statistics, the unemployment rates in rural and urban

areas are as follows: Rural, Urban = 4.7 per cent, 7.1 per cent in 2009; 4.8 per cent, 7.2 per cent in 2010; 4.7 per cent, 8.8 per cent in 2011.

15. Rural development is also necessary for preventing adventurous rural-urban immigration. See Shair and Rehman (2011: 2).

16. Imran Khan was the only candidate from his party to win a seat in the 2002 parliamentary elections.

17. For example, according to the Zina Ordinance, punishment for rape could be issued only when the accused confessed and the act was witnessed by four adult, pious men. For additional information about Zia’s Islamization and women, see chapter 3 in Jamal (2002).

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224

11A Perverse Symbiosis: The State, Islam and Political Dissent in Contemporary AlgeriaAlejandro Colás

11.1 Introduction and background

Algeria is the second largest country in Africa in terms of land mass and one of the first to have been formally colonized by a European power during the nineteenth century. It currently has close to 38 million inhab-itants, mainly concentrated along towns and cities of the Mediterranean littoral. Over three quarters of Algerians are currently under the age of 30. Most of the population has Arabic as their first language, although a sig-nificant minority (about 20–5 per cent) is Berberophone or Amazigh, and French is widely spoken in urban areas. This reflects the rich legacy of successive invasions, originally by Arabs (who conquered and converted local Berber populations from the dominant animism to Islam from the seventh century onwards); subsequently by Ottoman authorities (who established a garrison in Algiers and three regencies or beyliks with capi-tals in Médea, Constantine and Mascara, lasting from the sixteenth to early nineteenth century); and finally, from 1830 to 1962 through its administrative incorporation into France and colonization by diverse European settlers.

The one continuity throughout this 13-century history has been the presence of Islam as the dominant religion and civilizational referent. Although devout Algerians overwhelmingly follow Sunni Maliki rites, historically Sufism has played a significant cultural and political role throughout the country. (There are also tiny remnants of Kharajite Shi’ite, Christian and Jewish populations.) Logically enough, Islam has in the modern period been mobilized as a political and cultural resource against foreign invaders, but not always homogenously or consistently. Sufi-inspired, charismatic-millenarian (‘maraboutic’) movements characterized resistance to both Ottoman rule and early

Alejandro Colás 225

French colonization. But by the first decades of the twentieth century, the rise of mass political movements in Algeria swung the ideological pendulum toward secular nationalist, liberal, pan-Arab, socialist and even communist forces. Islamic reformism or Islamism was certainly influential politically and culturally throughout the colonial period, its principal expression being the Association of Algerian Muslim Ulama (henceforth, AUMA) founded in 1931 under the charismatic leadership of the religious notable Abdelhamid Ben Badis. This political strand, however, was only one – arguably less powerful – of several interwar anti-colonial political forces. Ben Badis’ association was fashioned as a self-consciously elitist organization, explicitly eschewing political engagement at the time of its emergence, and instead directing its ener-gies toward the ‘moral education’ of the country’s Muslims through a network of schools and religious clubs.

With the rise of the French Popular Front in 1936, the Islamic reform-ists became more politicized, joining with Algerian communists and the integrationist Federation of Elected Natives (Fédération des Elus Indigènes) in convening a Muslim Congress aimed at securing full civil equality between Muslims and non-Muslims in Algeria. By the outbreak of World War II, this assimilationist stance was transformed into a more explicitly independentist position, articulated in Ben Badis’ iconic slogan ‘Islam is my religion, Arabic is my language and Algeria is my fatherland’. Yet the mass mobilization for Algerian independence and its strategic direction was determined by the radical nationalists of Messali Hadj’s Algerian People’s Party (Parti du Peuple Algerien, PPA) in combination with various smaller dissident liberal and leftist forces. The National Liberation Front (FLN) that subsequently led the anti-colonial struggle inherited this very broad and eclectic ideological mix, including among its cadres and discourse aspects of all the above political tendencies.

Algeria’s revolutionary war of national liberation (1954–62) delivered a 20-year experiment in state-planned development. Despite this, the post-colonial economy continued to be tightly linked to the former metropolitan centres: GDP growth – an average of 7.2 per cent between 1967 and 1978 – was strongly dependent on exports throughout these years (95 per cent of the foreign currency earnings stemmed from hydrocarbons exports), while European partners to this day account for over two-thirds of Algeria’s foreign trade (France being the largest single partner) (Henry 1996; Martín 2003; Ruedy 1992). The nation-alization in the 1970s of the strategic hydrocarbons sector did little to undermine the disproportionate reliance on international markets as a source of national income – most notably the energy markets, but

226 A Perverse Symbiosis: The State, Islam and Political Dissent

also through the sizeable income generated through remittances from Algerian workers living abroad. Oil and gas today still constitute 90 per cent of Algeria’s export value. So long as the international energy prices remained high, such external dependence was able to fuel some degree of domestic industrialization and democratic socio-economic infrastructure in education, health, transport and welfare. Once prices plummeted in the 1980s and 1990s, the country was forced to borrow from international financial institutions, raising the debt ratio to GDP, and the debt service to crippling levels by the mid-1980s.

With the unexpected death of President Houari Boumediene in 1978, Algeria began a process of economic liberalization under the new President Chadli Bendjedid in the course of the 1980s, dropping much of the country’s revolutionary programme and socialist orientation, and initiating a timid process of political pluralization. This was in part a response to the wider international context – involving the fall in oil and gas prices – and the beginnings of the neo-liberal ‘counter-revolution’ across the world. But it also corresponded to a deliberate strategy among the country’s elites – principally the Army General Staff – to selectively extend the reach of the private sector in the economy and de-centralize industry.

Widespread rioting across Algeria in the autumn of 1988 spurred on this process, and in February 1989 a popular referendum approved the country’s new constitution, which, among other state-society reforms, authorized the formation of independent associations ‘with a political character’ (Ruedy 1992). Thirty new political parties emerged in the following months and in June 1990 the country’s first freely contested local elections resulted in a resounding victory for the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS in the French acronym). The Islamist ascendancy was con-firmed in the first round of legislative elections in December 1991, where the FIS gained 44 per cent of the votes. Faced with the now unstoppable (and electorally-mandated) rise to power of the Islamists, the country’s military command, backed by secular political and social forces, cancelled the second and definitive round of legislative elections scheduled for January 1992. The Army declared a state of emergency, outlawed the FIS, incarcerated its leaders and followers and established a military junta – the High Council of State – as the country’s new execu-tive power.

For all its fragmentary political platform, the FIS managed during the brief period of ‘opening’ (or infitah) to socially coalesce a generalized rejection of the Algerian state as it had evolved 30 years after liberation, replacing civic conceptions of national solidarity with religious ones.


The FIS’s gambit was to shroud the foundational stone of ‘national authenticity’ – chiefly mythologized in the war of liberation and the rev-olutionary state that ensued – with an Islamic mantle. As Hugh Roberts averred as early as 1988, ‘The question raised by the radical Islamist movement in Algeria is therefore this: what does it mean to speak of “the framework of Islamic principles” [enshrined in the Constitution] if the state which claims to have been established within this framework does not embody or base itself upon these principles, is not an Islamic state? The Algerian government does not have a clear answer to this question’ (Roberts 2003: 4 and 6. Italics in original). It was this frontal challenge to the State’s legitimacy – a removal of the Emperor’s religious garb of ‘authenticity’, so to speak – that focused the minds of the country’s elites and their supporters, and elicited a correspondingly radical reaction to the Islamist resurgence.

These series of events were the proximate cause of the violent conflict that raged between (and indeed among) Islamist insurgents and the State – as well as other Algerian social and political forces on both sides of the conflict – during the 1990s and has since then shaped Algerian politics. There is no need to delve here into the detail of this protracted civil strife – its various phases, actors and turning points. Suffice it to say that the conflict cost close to 200,000 lives (including the assassination of a Head of State), resulted in thousands of ‘disappearances’ and gross violations of human rights by both state and insurgent forces, and has consequently directly affected the bulk of the Algerian population to one degree or another (Evans 2007; Willis 1999).

It is the dialectical, perversely symbiotic relationship between the State and Islamist contestation in Algeria over the past two decades that is emphasized in what follows – symbiotic because factions within both the state and the insurgency literally lived off the civil war; perverse because these parties were ostensibly irreconcilable antagonists. The political economy of post-colonial Algeria has given state authority – particularly the Army and the nationalized hydrocarbon sector – a pro-nounced patrimonial/clientelist quality that has in turn shaped the form and content of Islam and political dissent (henceforth IPD). The specific expression of such patrimonialism has certainly shifted over time: the revolutionary populism of the Boumediene years gave way to Chadli’s attempts at implementing a state-led neo-liberal revolution, which in turn has delivered a form of authoritarian market state over the past decade. Across each of these periods however, we find the valo-rization of the Algerian state and its Army as the main, or even sole, source of legitimate authority, underwritten by these institutions’ origins


in the foundational moment of the Algerian war of independence. For all the ideological and political permutations within the State and the Islamist opposition over the years, two bodies – the FLN and the National Liberation Army, ALN – remain the touchstones of nationalist ‘authenticity’ and therefore indispensable referents of political legiti-macy. The historical memory of the war continues to play a profound role in Algerian public life and the revolution won ‘by the people, for the people’ has been appropriated in one of two ways, usefully identi-fied by Omar Carlier as a ‘populism of contestation’ and a ‘populism of regulation’ (Carlier 1995: 310).

The rest of this chapter aims to probe the tension between these two manifestations of Algerian populism in explaining the fraught relation-ship between Islam and political dissent in that country. After a first section sketching the anatomy and development of contemporary Algerian Islamism, subsequent parts of the chapter will focus on how the agenda of IPD in Algeria was shifted by President Bouteflika’s strategy of national reconciliation. What I call ‘Bouteflika’s gambit’ (and others have labelled the ‘Bouteflika effect’) combined domestic reform and reconciliation with an international strategy of diplomatic recognition and economic integration into the world market. As such, international and indeed transnational forces – from the Global War on Terror to the influence of regional politics and diasporic communities – should also be factored in as a signal influence on IPD in Algeria.

Throughout the chapter I adopt a broadly materialist framework that sees IPD as an expression of concrete socio-economic and political conjunctures, rather than some transcendental, cultural feature of Islam. To that extent, the Algerian trajectory resembles that of other patrimonial post-colonial states like Egypt, Indonesia or Pakistan where generalized crisis of revolutionary forces – secular, leftist, radical nationalist – has given way to what Olivier Roy labels ‘Islamo-nationalism’ and Asef Bayat calls ‘post-Islamism’: a situation where conservative renditions of Islam and nationalism coalesce around mass organizations seeking state authority and legitimacy, rather than revolutionary overthrow and theocratic rule. From this perspective, Islamism is seen as one of multiple political responses to (and of) modernity which can (and should) be compared across both cultural–geographical contexts and the left–right ideological spec-trum. Specifically, Algeria’s recent history and its peculiar dynamics of dissent and legitimation can thus be read in a ‘post-Islamist’ register: as a polity that has moved beyond a political culture framed by the global Islamist resurgence of the past decades. This, as we’ll see, may


help to explain the country’s apparent immunity to the dynamics of transformation associated to the ‘Arab Spring’.

11.2 An anatomy of dissent

Commenting on the Chadli government’s reaction to the 1988 riots, Omar Carlier has suggested that it was almost as if the Islamist opposition was given the following injunction: ‘We’ll leave you with the mosques and the town halls, you leave us with the market and the State’ (Carlier 1996: 380). Although laced with some irony, this statement nonetheless offers a neat entry-point into one of the deeper continuities in the rela-tionship between Islam and political dissent in Algeria. As already noted, Islam has been present in Algerian politics throughout the modern period, yet the form and force of this presence has varied considerably. Séverine Labat makes the point elegantly when she affirms that ‘The struggle for Algerian independence has in effect been organized around two axes, the one “cultural”, represented by the Association of Ulema, the other political, embodied in the PPA-MTLD, and subsequently the FLN. In making Islam an expression of national unanimity, each of these two poles of Algerian nationalism simultaneously turned Islam and the Nation into the major issues in the quest for legitimacy by the different clans aspiring to exercise power’ (Labat 1995: 59).

This tension between Nation and Islam, or between civic and reli-gious conceptions of nationalism, was initially resolved by the new Algerian Republic through a relegation of Islam to the cultural or spiritual sphere, broadly conceived. What remained of the Association of Ulemas had already been assimilated into the FLN during the war and with independence much of their previous activity and concerns were now directed through the Ministry of Religious Affairs. Although all of the country’s post-colonial Constitutions have made reference to Algeria’s Arab-Muslim character, the substantive socio-economic and political implications of this affirmation have remained nebulous (beyond symbolic gestures like making Islam the religion of state, reserving the Office of President for Muslims only, or keeping the pan-Islamic star and crescent on the national flag). If anything, it has been the absence of properly Islamic policies and orientations within Algerian government and society that has historically exercised Islamist political forces in the country.

These were initially expressed through al-Qiyam al-islamiyya (Islamic Values) – an association of former AUMA members, led by Hachemi Tedjini, who rejected integration into the FLN and became one of the


early critics of Ben Bella’s ‘impious’ adoption of ‘foreign’ and ‘Westernized’ ideas of Marxism, socialism and autogestion (Evans and Phillips 1997; Labat 1995; Roberts 2003; Willis 1999). Al-Qiyam’s influence was chiefly denunciatory, focusing its energies – as the AUMA had done at its incep-tion – on policing what it deemed to be immoral and un-Islamic public behaviour (consumption of alcohol, immodest dress, mingling of the sexes) as well as challenging the influence of secular, leftists ideas and culture through its own publications and religious activities.

Such denunciations were opportunistically instrumentalized by Boudemdiene on deposing Ben Bella in June 1965. Although the dynamics of the coup responded to more deep-seated factional and personal antagonisms among the revolutionary leadership, rather than to any fundamental dispute over the place of Islam in the new republic, Boumediene and his supporters were intent on ‘nationalizing’ Islam. Instead, Boumediene’s incorporation of Islamic reformists such as Ahmed Taleb Ibrahimi into the cabinet as Minister of Education (and later, Minster of Information and Culture) together with his ‘Arabization’ policy during the 1970s opened new avenues for the ‘Islamization’ of the public sphere, outside the Army and the State. It was during the Boumediene years that Islamist figures like Abbasi Madani and Sheikh Abdellatif Soltani – both leading lights in al-Qiyam, the former a future leader of the FIS – made inroads for their cause among university stu-dents, the urban slum-dwellers and disaffected civil servants (Willis 1999). The contrasting conceptions of Islam and the Nation were increasingly, if very unequally polarized between secular leftist sup-porters of Boumediene and his Islamist opponents – many of which had been inspired by the post-1967 ‘Qutbist’ turn in the Mashreq. The antagonism was played out – both physically and philosophically – in university campuses, in public spaces and in many workplaces. With the launch of an ‘Agrarian Revolution’ in 1971 aimed at, among other reforms, radically redistributing private land to local cooperatives and ‘socialist villages’, Boumediene took, for many of his Islamist critics, a leftist turn too far. Sheikh Soltani articulated this anti-leftist senti-ment in his 1974 polemic ‘Mazdaqism Is the Source of Socialism’ which famously argued that true Muslims should not pray on nationalized land (Evans and Phillips 1997).

Indeed for Evans and Phillips, ‘Boumediene’s leftward turn was a crys-tallizing moment. The roots of the Islamist movement which emerged in the 1980s are to be found in this episode. On the one hand it cemented the alliance with those groups most threatened by the Boumediene regime – large landowners, business interests, conservative elements of the state


administration who provided the Islamist movement with important financial support. On the other hand Soltani’s arguments wielded enor-mous influence and came to form the basis of an all-encompassing critique of the Boumediene regime. Anti-socialism and anti-communism, along with the call for government based upon the sharia, became the corner-stones of the Islamist lexicon’ (Evans and Phillips 1997: 93). It is to this new phase of Islam and political dissent that we now turn.

In somewhat stylized form, we can identify three broad strands of dissident Islamic movements emerging from Algeria’s 20-year crisis after 1988. The first crystallized around what might be labelled ‘col-laborative dissidents’ willing to compromise and work with the existing state power, not least since some of their cadres and leadership were former state functionaries. The harakat mutjama’ al-silm (Movement of Society for Peace, MSP), founded by Mahfoud Nahnah and two of its splinter parties, Ennahda (Renaissance Movement) led by Lahbib Adami, and Abdallah Djaballah’s harakat al-islah al-watani (National Reform Movement, MNR in its French acronym) all represent the more con-servative, pious and accommodationist wing of Algerian political Islam (see Boubekeur 2007 for a good overview). They have all participated in elections, some have won representation in the Popular Assembly and the MSP has held several portfolios in successive cabinets since 1988.

A second, more powerful expression of Islamism, which we may label ‘oppositional’ or ‘militant’, comes in the shape of the FIS. Unusually among Islamist organizations (across the Arab world at least) the FIS is explicitly a ‘front’ in that it encompassed very different tendencies, from the pragmatic ‘technocratic-nationalist’ Jaz’airists (i.e. ‘Algerianists’) to more ideological Salafists (in a historical, rather than contemporary sense) who adopted a pan-Islamic stance (Labat 1996). The broad and under-specified programme of the FIS was a deliberate ploy to tap into popular discontent with the ruling FLN and the state. Indeed the French pun that suggests the FIS is the ‘child’ of the FLN (‘le FIS est le fils du FLN’) captures well the Islamists’ intention to challenge the ruling party’s monopoly over the liberation war’s nationalist legacy.

A final manifestation of Islamist political dissent is properly jihadist in that it adopted armed struggle (the ‘lesser jihad’) as its main opposition strategy. Although some have traced this form of dissent back to the warlordism and banditry of the Ottoman period, and subsequently to the anti-colonial resistance of the maquis, the explicitly jihadist move-ments only emerged over the past 30 years (Martinez 1998; Layachi 2004). The short-lived al-Haraka al-islamiyya al-musallaha (The Armed Islamic Movement) of the 1980s gave way in subsequent decades to the


armed wing of the FIS, the al-Jaysh al-islami lil-inqadh (Islamic Army of Salvation, AIS in its French acronym) and the more radical al-Jama‘at al-islamiyya al-musallaha (Armed Islamic Group – GIA in French). The latter group in turn morphed into the Salafi Group for Preaching and Combat (al-Jamaa’atu l-Salafiyyatu li l-Da’wati wa l-Qitaa) and from Spring 2007 into al Qaeda in the Islamic Countries of the Maghreb (Tandhim Al Qaeda fil Maghreb al-Islami) (Steinberg and Werenfels 2007; Ashour 2010).

The ‘bloody decade’ of the 1990s caused significant economic dis-ruption and market distortion for the everyday lives of Algerians as the ‘informal’ sector, fuelled by criminality, violence and cross-border smuggling (trabendo, a shortened version of Spanish for ‘contraband’), coupled with official corruption deepened social inequalities, stunted growth and promoted inflation (Martinez 1998). By the end of the 1990s, official unemployment in Algeria stood at 29 per cent, infla-tion at 20 per cent, while the share of expenditure going to investment dropped to 28 per cent of GDP (Hodd 2004: 42). It is against this back-drop that we should then understand the Islamist resurgence of the last three decades as a ‘re-invention’ of populism. Algerian Islamists have drawn extensively from the imagery, language, programme, idiom, organization and indeed cadres of the national liberation movements. The one crucial ingredient they have added to the populist mix is the seeming incorruptibility and authenticity of ‘Islam’. Whilst the pop-ulism of the national liberation movements was institutionalized into state power – in the process acquiring all the secular, this-worldly trap-pings of such forms of political rule – Islamist populism allowed itself, in the main, to resist the world of ‘le pouvoir’ and instead built (and billed) itself as an opposition, grassroots movement guided by other-worldly piety. As the legitimacy of post-colonial states collapsed in tandem with that of secular Arab ideologies, the social base of this ‘populism of contestation’ remained relatively unaltered, drawn from a combination of urban under-employed university graduates, petit bourgeois traders and the lower echelons of state bureaucracy. But its ideological axis was re-aligned toward the only worldview which remained seemingly untar-nished: that of political Islam. Three broad political issues in particular have sustained this realignment.

The first of these is the conjunctural response to a general crisis. Algerian Islamism in the various expressions just outlined succeeded above all as a protest movement capable of channelling multiple sources of popular discontent through a generic, and therefore broadly appealing, grammar of ‘corruption’, ‘power’, ‘degradation’, ‘the people’


and so forth – as a political formation that was against the existing decadent order and promised moral and political regeneration. The con-tent of such regeneration was once again, overwhelmingly generic and under specified: it included the wider application of sharia law, the shift towards a ‘Muslim’ or ‘Islamic’ society, the jihad against corruption – all of which was neatly packaged in one of the preferred slogans of the Algerian FIS: ‘Islam is the solution’.

The second arena of Islamist politics refers to the critique of political representation as constructed by the post-colonial state. Rampant cor-ruption, ostentatious display of wealth, cynical manipulation of power and influence and naked oppression have characterized much of the ruling classes’ political behaviour in the region during this period. The military regime’s obstinate monopoly of economic and political power, and its opaque campaign against armed Islamist insurgency after 1991 have severely dented any faith in representative politics as an expres-sion of democracy. The rejection of democracy as a concept ‘imported’ by ‘distant powers’, and its replacement by a ‘socially and culturally profound’ notion of shura which is ‘immediate’ and ‘direct’, is all the more powerful when Islamists reduce secular post-colonial regimes to mere puppets of the former metropole.

Finally, Algerian Islamism has captured the country’s anti-imperialist agenda and legacy by aligning it to a broader transnational Islamism. The dual emphasis on the inferiority and humiliation of the Arab-Muslim world on the one hand, and the possible alternative in the ‘path’ of Islamic civilization on the other, echoes forms of Third World anti-imperialism, which characterized the international relations of other Islamist move-ments across the globe. Algerian Islamists have in the past readily adopted the Iranian revolution’s slogan ‘Neither East nor West’ (la sharqui, la gharbi) as a rallying point for their more internationally minded sympathizers.

If ‘democracy’ is understood in Schumpeterian terms as a mere pro-cess involving transparently competitive elections among a plurality of political candidates who are able to freely express their programme and principles, then there is no question that the bulk of Algerian Islamist forces were perfectly compatible with democracy. At its height in the early 1990s, the FIS plainly represented a significant section of Algerian political opinion and as such it mobilized and participated in successive electoral contests, in the main respecting due process, freedom of expression and the rule of law. Once we consider ‘democracy’ as a set of substantive rights (to personal autonomy, basic human needs, involving the separation of powers and so forth) then the Islamist attachment to democracy becomes more problematic. It is certainly the case – as elsewhere in the Muslim


world – that Islamists offered welfare, health, education and legal support where the state failed to do so. Yet this ‘third sector’ provision was not premised on universalist assumptions of democracy, but has itself acted as a form of political patronage, attached to the particularistic religious-ideological beliefs of Islamists. Similarly, the internal workings of the FIS and its successors were closer to the proclaimed ‘Islamic’ alternative to democracy, captured in the neologism ‘shurikratiyya’: rule through con-sultation of (male) elders, clerics or notables rather than through a trans-parent and participatory process of internal democracy. The issue, then, as Asef Bayat has helpfully put it, is not whether Islam is compatible with democracy (which it clearly can be), but rather ‘under what conditions can Muslims make them compatible’ (Bayat 2007: 4). The argument made here is that the twin forces of a patrimonial state founded on hydrocar-bons wealth and a post-colonial praetorian guard on the one hand, and a narrowly populist and ideologically involutionist form of political dissent on the other hand, have made it very difficult for Algerian Muslims to make democracy compatible with Islam.

Of course, the core ideological components of Algerian Islamic politi-cal dissent have been expressed in a wide variety of ways at different junctures over the past two decades – all of which often complicates reference to a catch-all category like ‘Islamism’. As we shall shortly see, on the accommodationist end of the spectrum, both the MSP and MNR leaderships have effectively been co-opted by the state, while the MNR has established tactical alliances with the staunchly secular (and Berberist) Rally for Culture and Democracy as well as the (Trotskyist) Workers’ Party. Such political professionalization and ideological prag-matism has nonetheless generated some dissonance with their grassroots membership: ‘[w]hile the MSP and the MNR have succeeded politically by accepting co-optation, many of their supporters still vote for them in protest at Western policies and state authoritarianism’ (Boubekeur 2007: 4). Similarly, on the extreme jihadist end of the spectrum there is consider-able evidence to suggest that these groups were so deeply infiltrated by the state’s secret services, that in some instances they simply acted as agents of those factions of ‘le pouvoir’ intent on ramping up a ‘strategy of tension’ (Yous 2000). The one underlying theme in these diverse expe-riences, then, is the constant interaction between the state and forces of political dissent that produced complex dynamics of conflict and cooperation; of contestation, manipulation and accommodation; and of convergence and fragmentation.

Over the last decade these political tensions have in the main been resolved in favour of the state and its supporters within civil society.


Crudely put, ‘le pouvoir’ has won the civil war, reducing the emergency of the 1990s to a series of politically and geographically marginal and – from the state’s perspective – manageable local insurgencies. Co-optation and reconciliation have replaced repression and counterinsurgency as the dominant responses to political dissent in Algeria. One individual, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, has symbolized this successful switch in strategy, which we now explore in greater detail.

11.3 Bouteflika’s gambit

The principal political objective of Algeria’s ruling elites since the failed pluralization of 1988 has been securing social stability and political continuity. This should of course not be confused with the quest for democracy, accountability or increased socio-economic equality. The ‘normalization’ or ‘pacification’ of Algerian politics through the 1990s was instead pursued through the age-old combination of ruthless suppres-sion and electoral legitimation. The parameters that structured this aim for stability and continuity are not clear-cut, and involve complicated and often opaque struggles among and within various interconnected loci of socio-economic and political power in Algeria, including the Army High Command, diverse political parties and social movements, terrorist groups and assorted business interests. It was into that maelstrom that Abdelaziz Bouteflika returned to Algerian politics from a 20-year exile to win the presidential elections of April 1999 with an overwhelming majority of 73.9 per cent of the vote (albeit from an unofficially estimated 23 per cent turn-out and after the withdrawal of six major opposition candidates in the face of widespread media bias and eventual rigging).

Bouteflika’s electoral success seems implausible without the endorse-ment of Algeria’s General Staff. It would be naïve to interpret his ascent to power as the work of a lone maverick. As one acute observer of Algerian politics commented at the time of the new president’s acces-sion, ‘Bouteflika has a long way to go before he can claim to be com-mander in chief as well as in name’ (Roberts 2003: 276). For Roberts, the vigorous reshuffle of the army leadership in February 2000 ‘completed a take-over of the Algerian army by former officers of the French army at the expense of the last survivors of the maquis tradition’, which in turn suggested that ‘The army commanders may be counting on the develop-ment of strong ties to Western defence establishments to compensate them … for the loss of traditional internal public support and legitima-tion as well as provide organisational models, training and hardware’ (Roberts 2003: 273–4).


Yet what Benjamin Stora has labelled ‘the invisible constructions’ of Algerian politics (Stora 2001) make it especially challenging to decipher who exactly drives the decision-making process at the top levels of gov-ernment and what their overarching strategy might be. Without falling blithely into Orientalist tropes of some unfathomable and exceptional ‘East’, Stora nonetheless draws our attention to the opacity, duplicity and paranoia that has characterized much of Algerian politics (or what some Algerians call la boulitique – roughly translated as ‘politicking’): ‘This deliberate opacity hinders our attempts at explanation, at eliciting some measure of solidarity from outside the country. Like negotiation, war unfolds within closed doors, in the shadows. The culture of secrecy, a working-mode of French political society, explains the veil thrown over this conflict’ (Stora 2001: 45). Far from representing some inscru-table, essentialist feature of an exotic ‘Other’, such a ‘culture of secrecy’ might be seen as a direct product of the vicious eight-year war of libe-ration fought largely by an underground and maquisard organization which has continued into the post-independence period. Indeed, in a different context, Paul Silverstein has made a cogent case for taking conspiracy theories, rumour-mongering and the causal accounts (révéla-tions) that accompany them in contemporary Algeria as powerful and meaningful ‘communicative practices’ that reproduce the unequal rela-tionship between ‘le pouvoir’ and ‘the street’ or ‘the stadium’:

Alongside media, scholarly and official discourses, conspiracy theo-rizing, as practiced in the streets of Algiers or on the Internet sites maintained by the Algerian diaspora, produces a particular subject at the interstices of power and knowledge, a sceptical citizen who ques-tions official narratives through an embrace of the over-profusion of information and a fetish of causality and intentionality. […] In the end, this hegemonic process of mutual determination reproduces a particular civil war political culture marked by excesses of truth and violence. (Silverstein 2002: 656)

These reservations and qualifications are worth bearing in mind when interpreting the dynamics of the ‘Bouteflika effect’. Bouteflika’s ‘two-pronged approach to the Algerian crisis’, according to Robert Mortimer, involved ‘a policy of amnesty towards the armed groups and a policy of projecting Algeria on to the world stage’ (Mortimer 2004: 185). On this reading, it is possible to discern a fraught and precarious, but viable align-ment between the Army leadership’s objectives and those of the President as identified by Mortimer, where Bouteflika acted as the ‘public face’ of


the Army’s wider strategy for domestic and international rehabilitation of Algeria in the eyes of the world. The ‘professionalization’ of the Army and the accompanying ‘civilianization’ of the Presidency have, together with the reconstitution of the historic FLN as a party of government further re-arranged the balance of power between military, executive and legisla-tive authority in Algeria.

Domestically, the centrepiece of Bouteflika’s successive presidencies was the process of national reconciliation aimed at closing the period of civil strife inaugurated in 1992. A ‘Concorde Civile’ law approved by referendum in September 2000 offered different levels of amnesty for those rebels involved in the insurgency of the 1990s while a presidential amnesty was extended to the AIS. In the wake of his re-election in April 2004, Bouteflika launched a second phase of political normalization through the Charter of National Reconciliation and Peace (once again approved by referendum in September 2005) which ‘was divided into four sections, designed to consolidate peace, consolidate national rec-onciliation, address the issue of the “disappeared” and solidify national cohesion’ (Joffé 2008: 219). Together, these successive exercises in recon-ciliation delivered what Ashour (2010) has identified as one successful, and one flawed process of ‘de-radicalization’. Among the former is the case of the FIS’s armed wing, the AIS, where a combination of economic inducements (securing employment or facilitating small-business start-ups for those who demobilized) as well as a comprehensive programme of state protection for former guerrillas, effectively secured the dismantling of the AIS as a paramilitary organization after 2000. The unsuccessful case of de-radicalization involves the GIA, which by 2005 had all but disappeared through a process of splintering and military ‘eradication’. Only a tiny fraction of the estimated 10,000 GIA militants from 1994 survive today as the al Qaeda in the Islamic Countries of the Maghreb. In Ashour’s estimation, ‘Unsuccessful de-radicalization can be explained in the GIA’s case by the lack of charismatic leadership due to short term tenures, limited educational and theological backgrounds, excessively violent behavior and virulent factionalization’ (Ashour 2010: 131).

The political process aimed at neutralizing and dismantling the jihad-ist wing of Algerian Islamism was subtly intertwined with Bouteflika’s economic policies, associated by Iván Martín to three ‘broad axes’: ‘[t]o continue with the already initiated “market reforms”, promoting the private sector’s role in the economy and creating a favourable environ-ment for investments […] the reduction of trade protection in Algerian markets’ (Martín 2003: 41) as well as a range of ‘structural reforms’ in public and judicial administration, education and, as we shall shortly


see, in the hydrocarbons sector. Such reforms have been widely contested by, among other forces, the trades unions, and in many respects still remain unrealized. Similarly, it is far from clear that Bouteflika’s ploy of articulating national reconciliation with international prestige has yet paid off. ‘The high oil price and resulting buoyant revenue have given the “distributive state” in Algeria a new lease on life’, Hugh Roberts persuasively maintained in 2007. ‘As a result, the regime’s capacity to co-opt opposition and buy social peace is high and the effective pressure for fundamental institutional reform is low’ (Roberts 2007: 19). The reli-ance on the hydrocarbons sector to periodically inject the regime with a new lease of life is, however, a risky enterprise, for it is hostage to both the vagaries of international commodity markets and the precariousness of domestic patrimonial-clientelist alliances and their accompanying de-radicalization processes. The next section explores both these deter-minants in the so-called ‘Bouteflika effect’.

11.4 The role of energy in the ‘Bouteflika effect’

Algeria’s hydrocarbon sector was first developed on a serious com-mercial scale in the years after World War II. The opening decades of the twentieth century had witnessed generally unsuccessful oil explorations in the north of the country, and it was not until 1954 – the very same year the revolutionary war for national liberation was launched – that significant gas findings were confirmed in the Sahara, first in Djebel Berga and subsequently at the giant Hassi Messaoud oilfield (Aïssaoui 2001). Initially, and despite the intensification of the war, exploration and exploitation was conducted by private French companies supported by public authorities. The defeat of the French in 1962 saw the creation of the Algerian Societé Nationale de Transports et de Commercialisation des Hydrocarbons (SONATRACH) responsible not just for the research, development, exploration, transport and marketing of Algeria’s hydrocarbons resources but subsequently their downstream refinement, liquefaction and petrochemical transforma-tion (Nelson 1985). Emboldened by the rise of OPEC and spurred on by Boumediene’s bourgeoning strategy of ‘industrializing industries’, the Algerian state took a 51 per cent stake in SONATRACH in 1971 and effectively nationalized the country’s hydrocarbons sector.

Since then SONATRACH has operated as a major arm of the state and a critical resource in Algeria’s external relations. During the first 20 years of its existence, the company adopted a ‘do-it-alone’ policy in line with the government’s revolutionary nationalist ideology, placing


significant barriers on private and overseas investments in the country’s hydrocarbons sector – one consequence of which was an extraordinarily low density of exploration (Aïssaoui 2001). In the face of this under-exploitation and the plummeting international oil and gas prices, the Chadli regime introduced a new Hydrocarbons Law in 1986, replacing the existing arrangements with legislation that authorized access of foreign capital to production-sharing contracts, joint ventures, joint-stock investments and risk–service contracts with SONATRACH. The national company still retained 51 per cent participation in national oil, restricted foreign access to gas and limited joint ventures to fields discovered after 1986. But a protracted process of what during the 1990s became known as ‘capital opening’ was now underway. In 1991 fresh amendments to the 1986 Hydrocarbons Law opened a new gas and oil strategy which according to one expert revolved around ‘three policy directions: first increasing the hydrocarbons resource and production through a boost in E&D efforts; secondly, enhancing the oil recovery of existing fields within a re-development programme; thirdly, bringing on stream all discovered, but not yet developed, gas fields’ (Aïssaoui 2001: 101). This in turn facilitated the award, between 1987 and 2000, of 45 production-sharing exploration contracts with 27 companies from 20 different countries (Aïssaoui 2001: 101). It is with this background that we can begin to identify the main contours of the ‘Bouteflika effect’ as it unfolded in the wake of the former foreign minister’s first electoral victory in April 1999.

Two fairly contingent and largely exogenous political and economic developments have shaped the tight connections between Algeria’s foreign and domestic politics. The first is the sharp and sustained rise in oil and gas prices during the first decade of the twenty-first century. The second was the launch of a ‘war on terror’ after 9/11. Bouteflika demonstrated great skill in turning these global events to his country’s advantage. Specifically, Bouteflika’s three terms in office have seen an attempt at the complex conjugation of (a) the diversification and intensification of Algeria’s external relations, accompanied by (b) the diplomatic rapprochement with Paris and Washington which in turn has fostered (c) the process of domestic political ‘normalization’ aimed at (d) transforming Algeria into a ‘pivotal state’ of the world market and global geopolitics (Zoubir 2004). Once again, the country’s energy sector has been pivotal in this strategy.

Three major diplomatic events in as many years reflect the reinvig-oration of Algeria’s foreign policy under Bouteflika. Algiers hosted the 35th Summit of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in July 1999,


thereby reopening an era of pan-African and Third Worldist activism on the part of Algeria, which, as Boumedienne’s foreign minister, Bouteflika himself had embodied in the 1970s. While holding the OAU Presidency for one year, Bouteflika brokered the December 2000 ceasefire between Eritrea and Ethiopia, mediated between conflicting parties in the Great Lakes region, launched – with South Africa and Nigeria – the New Partnership for African development (NEPAD) and represented African interests at the Kananaskis G-8 Summit and at other international fora dealing with the continent’s debt burden. Most tellingly, under Bouteflika Algeria has intensified diplomatic and strategic links with Nigeria, among other initiatives opening negotiations for the future construction of a Nigeria–Algeria Gasline (Nigal) (Clarke 2008; Mortimer 2006; Zoubir, 2004).

Twelve months after the OAU summit, Bouteflika flew to Paris for the first ever full state visit of an Algerian president.1 This was subsequently reciprocated by the French president and, while the benefit of hind-sight suggests such exchanges were of more symbolic than substantive value, most informed accounts of the visit recognize the kernel of truth in Bouteflika’s diplomatic rhetoric on leaving France in the summer of 2000: ‘Algeria seeks to have an exceptional, not simply normal or trivial, relations with France’ (cited in Zoubir 2004).

These same observers note that Algeria’s diplomatic normalization with France served as the prelude to a rapprochement with the rest of the European Union. In December 2001 – after a five-year delay caused by Algeria’s civil war – Algiers signed an Association Agreement with Brussels. This brought both political dividends for Algeria (in the dedication of a specific chapter to terrorism in the Agreement) and economic benefits in the form of greater European investment in the country. But it is the two pipelines delivering Saharan gas to the Iberian and Italian peninsulas (Medgaz and Galis respectively) that have ‘locked in’ southern Europe’s energy security to Algeria’s key role as natural gas supplier (Darbouche 2008). This is, to be sure, not a foregone conclu-sion as Libyan competition and Europe’s own attempts at diversification of supply can modify the terms of such interdependence. But as one specialist has succinctly noted: ‘In the long term, Algeria’s gas market is dependent on the European economy and the direction of environ-mental pressures, currently running in its favour’ (Clarke 2008: 235).

The frantic shift from relative isolation to multilateral engagement in Algeria’s foreign relations culminated in July 2001 with Bouteflika’s two-day visit to Washington, DC. As in previous high-profile visits to Western capitals, this gathering bore mixed fruits for Algiers. On the


one hand, investment and trade accords reinforced American capital’s position as the largest foreign direct investor in Algeria with US$5 billion worth of assets in the Algerian economy (principally the hydrocarbons sector). On the other hand, American business made it clear at this and subsequent bilateral gatherings that such figures reflected half of the potential investment should Algeria deliver improvements in security, infrastructure and legislation favourable to foreign investors. The 9/11 attacks paradoxically (some might argue, cynically) worked in Bouteflika’s favour as his officials were now able to make a strong case for the connections between George W. Bush’s ‘global war on terror’ and Algeria’s ten-year counterinsurgency against domestic ter-rorism. Successive visits to Washington in November 2001 and July 2003 cemented this counter-terrorist partnership, as did Algiers’ closer relations with NATO. Algeria has been one of a handful of African states engaged in AFRICOM’s Joint Combined Exchange Training (‘Flintlock’) exercises, and a signal member of the Trans-Saharan Counter-Terrorism Partnership. Algiers authorized the use of its Tamanrasset airfield in the deployment of American P-2 ‘Orion’ aerial surveillance and a subsidi-ary of Halliburton, Brown and Root-Condor, was reportedly partner to a joint venture with SONATRACH for the extension of the Tamanrasset and Bou Saada military air bases (Volman 2007).

‘Restoration of civil peace and economic recovery’, Yahia Zoubir has astutely observed, constitute the strategic aims underpinning this flurry of diplomatic activity (Zoubir 2004: 164). The great challenge for Bouteflika and his supporters has been to reconcile these two objectives, for without the restoration of peace there will be no recovery; yet the chosen path of recovery (a deeper integration into the world market) can still upset the restoration of civil peace.

Algeria is actively courting foreign investment in a bid to find employment for its youthful and educated working population, as well as upgrading the country’s economic infrastructure. Bouteflika’s diplo-matic campaigns have been geared at marketing Algeria as a stable and resourceful ‘emerging market’ full of lucrative potential for those firms willing to bet on country’s future. And the hydrocarbons sector has been at the forefront of this process of rebranding. Algeria’s full hydrocarbons potential is elusive, although its natural gas reserves were estimated at the start of 2008 to be the ninth in the world, with 2.6 per cent of global reserves (‘Worldwide Look at Reserves and Production’ 2007). On some calculations ‘Only 15% of Algeria’s 1.5 million sq km of prospec-tive sedimentary area has been explored to date’ (Clarke 2008: 239). Vast areas of the western Sahara and the Atlas mountains still remain


untapped, and SONATRACH is intent on significantly increasing both oil and gas production (in the process re-balancing its output in the direction of oil). The ‘go-it-alone’ policy of the 1970s and early 1980s has gradually been replaced by a regime much more accommodating of foreign investors, with 25 international companies today operating in Algeria’s hydrocarbon sector. Yet SONATRACH still remains in firm control of Algerian hydrocarbon resources, and recent international bid-ding rounds have been extremely selective and in some cases dismissive of foreign partners and players (most notoriously in excluding Spain’s Repsol-YPF and Gas Natural from the Gassi Touil LNG venture).

There is an intrinsic risk to hedging a country’s economic recovery on international commodity markets like those of oil and gas. This is especially so for a country like Algeria where a full 90 per cent of foreign earnings stem from gas. Still, the record price increases of the last decade allowed Algeria to reverse its current account deficit and by the end of that decade it held an estimated US$110 billion foreign exchange surplus – over 50 per cent of its GDP. Much of this has been reinvested through public expenditure, ostensibly to secure future economic growth and drastically reduce the country’s high unemploy-ment (still officially at 14 per cent) – all of which indicates a sharp sensitivity to the perils of an economic and political dependency on hydrocarbon rents. For our purposes, the two arenas where such pat-rimonial redistribution has proven especially relevant are with regard to the co-optation strategy and the factional instrumentalization of hydrocarbon revenues.

Miriam R. Lowi has documented how the initial ‘eradicationist’ strategy of repression which came to dominate the state’s response to insurgency in the 1990s gave way by the turn of the new century to co-optation and manipulation of the opposition (Lowi 2009). As we saw earlier with regard to de-radicalization, the regime proved especially adept at exploiting the progressive fragmentation of the Islamist oppo-sition, playing the personality cult of various insurgent ‘emirs’ against each other and undertaking selective negotiations, and eventual agree-ments, with different rebellious factions. It is estimated that shortly before his re-election in 2004, Bouteflika distributed ‘on average, the equivalent of US$50–60 million to every wilaya [administrative prov-ince] he visited’ (Lowi 2009: 141). This, combined with the emphasis on the country’s new-found diplomatic prestige (an elusive but very valu-able property given Algeria’s signal role in post-colonial Pan-Africanism and the campaign for a New International Economic Order) furnished


Bouteflika and his supporters with a powerful ideological narrative of national unity and reconciliation.

Yet Bouteflika’s ascendancy has, predictably enough, not gone uncontested – and not just from the ‘usual suspects’ among civil society. At the start of 2010, the complex edifice of the Algerian state was rocked by a series of scandals, high-level sackings and the assassination of a police chief, which have shaken the foundations of Bouteflika’s regime. Four Bouteflika allies at the helm of SONATRACH were dismissed from their posts over alleged corruption relating to international procure-ment contracts. The investigation was led by the country’s top intel-ligence and security agency, the Département du Reseignement et de la Sécurité, (DRS) – a bastion of the ‘deep state’, and then followed by the assassination under suspicious circumstances of Ali Tounsi, the chief of another law enforcement agency, politically closer to the President’s office. The upshot of all this intrigue, according to John P. Entelis, is ‘[a]n Algerian political economy strategy increasingly in the hands of resource nationalists with the critical support of le pouvoir, in which control of Sonatrach is essential’ (Entelis 2011: 671). This in turn may well complicate or even reverse Bouteflika’s two-pronged strategy of external rehabilitation and domestic reconciliation.

Bouteflika’s wager, then, has not rested solely on this awareness of the potential contagion of the ‘Dutch disease’. It is also, and fundamentally, premised on the assumption that Algeria’s domestic recovery is deeply reliant on ending its international isolation. The closure of the 20-year crisis in Algeria lies, for Bouteflika and his supporters, in reinstating Algeria’s international diplomatic and economic stature in world affairs. The benefits of such a policy for many Algerians is not immediately palpable, beyond the rhetorical power of restoring this nation’s past dignity and prestige. The political and economic price of Bouteflika’s gambit is likely to be high among public sector workers, secular defend-ers of the regime and among the many millions that may not see the direct benefits of foreign investment, international prestige and political normalization in terms of employment, housing, inflation or general standard of living. Yet, because the other possible alternative – a return to the political turmoil and socio-economic involution of the 1990s – is currently unacceptable to most Algerians, it is also likely that the ‘Bouteflika effect’ may well succeed in delivering the stability and continuity that has eluded Algeria since Boumediene’s demise in 1978. Here the historical memory of the war of national liberation and the more recent civil war generally plays in favour of the President’s


strategy of normalization (see Githens-Mazer 2009). The one significant imponderable is what happens after Bouteflika? A few years short of his 80th birthday and with markedly deteriorating health, it is remark-able that the President stood for a fourth term in the 2014 elections. The political costs attached to such a personalized ‘solution’ to the Algerian crisis remain to be calculated. Until then, however, the avail-able evidence suggests that Bouteflika’s ‘narrative’ has gained legitimacy while the counter-discourse of ‘Islam is the Solution’ no longer acts as a credible mobilizing force.

11.5 Conclusions: the Algerian exception

There is a certain circular quality to the experience of Islam and political dissent in contemporary Algeria. After 20 years of crisis, the country is still run by a narrow military-bureaucratic oligarchy, which has staked its survival on the distribution of hydrocarbon wealth to curry political favour from supporters and contenders alike. Despite the ripple effects of the ‘Arab Spring’ across that part of the world, the Algerian regime thus far seems to have snuffed out local expressions of the regional revolts, not least through the support proffered by its European and American allies. In Lise Storm’s blunt but accurate rendition, ‘The rea-son why the democratic opposition is so weak can be summed up in one word: repression’ (Storm 2009). It was under very similar circumstances – albeit with the locus of revolutionary change in the Soviet bloc – that Chadli Bendjedid opened a process of political reform which was to mark his own demise, the rise of Islamism and the subsequent ten-year civil war. The crucial difference between the current conjuncture and that of the early 1990s is that, in Algeria at least, it is Islamism that is in political decline while ‘le pouvoir’ has reasserted its hegemony.

There are two basic reasons why Algeria’s 20-year crisis has come full-circle. The first of these, as we have seen, is the defeat of the Islamist insurgency and the accompanying success of co-option strategies. Islamist insurgents have been geographically contained to the moun-tainous hinterlands of the country. Perhaps more importantly, jihadists have been politically marginalized by their self-proclaimed associa-tion with al Qaeda, a network that has never had popular backing in Algeria, nor indeed elsewhere across the Muslim world. In contrast, the regime has managed to incorporate aspects of the Islamist programme and some of its ‘accommodationist’ personnel into the bricolage of the regime itself. In this regard, one legacy of 1990s Islamist populism has been the recycling by Bouteflika’s regime of some of that decade’s dis-sident discourse, particularly surrounding ‘national resurgence’ and


‘moral regeneration’. Ironically, the appropriation by the FIS of the historical FLN’s nationalist mantle in the 1990s has now been inverted with the re-incorporation of populist components from the FIS into the re-launched FLN. As the foreign minister under the nationalist ‘golden age’ of Boumediene, Abdelaziz Bouteflika literally embodies the ‘retro’ turn to the 1970s, almost acting as an amnesiac for the ‘lost decades’ of the 1980s and 1990s (Werenfels 2008).

The second factor behind the reassertion of state power over dissident movements in Algeria has been the regime’s successful manipulation of hydrocarbon wealth for the purpose of acquiring legitimacy. Here, it is the core of the state apparatus itself that has taken on a populist turn, mobilizing the nation’s natural resources not simply for economic redistribution at home, but also for the purposes of diplomatic reha-bilitation abroad. In Lowi’s apt summary, ‘It is through the selective distribution of rent and other material favors that loyalties are bought, alliances are cemented, and networks are greased. Similarly, the with-holding of material favors is itself a powerful means of destroying alli-ances and networks’ (Lowi 2009: 179). True, the ‘populism’ on display in Bouteflika’s Algeria is no longer of a revolutionary type – one seeking to radically transform social relations ‘from above’. It is rather a patri-monial/clientelist sort of populism that invokes many of the nationalist tropes of ‘unity’ and ‘resurgence’, but in fact (re)distributes wealth and privilege in a politically selective and instrumental fashion.

As this chapter has argued, the triumph of a ‘populism of regulation’ has broadly achieved its aims of securing social stability and regime continuity. The coercive strategies of the 1990s have slowly been replaced by the co-optive tactics of the new century, as the combina-tion of socio-economic and political incentives and the disincentive of returning to civil war have fragmented the Islamist opposition and integrated it into the regime’s political machinery. These have also been the fundamental reasons why the country seems to have weathered the recent ‘Arab Spring’ without much tumult. In many respects, Algeria was two decades ahead of its neighbours: the ‘Arab Spring’ arrived there in 1988 and subsequently turned into a dark, cold 20-year killing season. It is that memory, above all, that helps to explain the reluctance of Algerians to follow the lead of their Arab counterparts further east in challenging ‘le pouvoir’.

Notes

1. As the ever meticulous Hugh Roberts indicates, the 1983 visit by Chadli was an ‘official’ visit (Roberts 2003).


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12Morality Racketeering: Vigilantism and Populist Islamic Militancy in IndonesiaIan Wilson

Unlike Islamist groups ostensibly concerned with the overturning or radical transformation of the state, or Islamic political parties seeking to wrest power via elections, Islamic vigilante groups in Indonesia such as the Defenders of Islam Front, or Front Pembela Islam (FPI) have pursued a socially conservative ‘anti-vice’ and ‘anti-apostasy’ agenda against the perceived liberal excesses, ‘licentiousness’ and moral corruption of con-temporary Indonesian society, which are seen as threatening the cohe-siveness and integrity of the wider Islamic community.1 This mission, framed by the Quranic edict of amar makruf nahi mungkar, usually trans-lated as ‘enjoining good and forbidding evil’, has been operationalized via violent attacks on ‘dens of iniquity’ (tempat maksiat) and religious minorities, street protests and mobilizations, together with attempts at ‘capturing’ and wresting control of local neighbourhoods from compet-ing predatory and violence-wielding groups.2 Organizationally it has developed a nation wide branch system, with the central leadership based in the central Jakarta district of Pertamburan. Street level action has been combined at the local and national leadership levels by alli-ance building and patronage with political elites, which has enabled them to continue since 1998 with little in the way of sustained legal sanction and with an increasing capacity to exert leverage over local government and the police.3

These forms of direct political action combined with charismatic leadership, ‘militant chic’ and what Philippe Bourgois (2002) referred to as a ‘search for respect’ and identity have attracted a steadily growing membership drawn from two broad groups: unemployed youths and men from slums, poor neighbourhoods and peri-urban areas together with students and lower middle-class graduates from Islamic boarding schools, colleges and universities.4 A third lesser constituency has been

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local kyai, traditional Islamic community leaders, many of them ethnic Betawi and from communities marginalized by Jakarta’s rapid economic and social transformation.5

Focusing on the nation’s capital, Jakarta, the chapter will argue that the FPI, and other similar Islamic vigilante groups, constitute what I refer to as populist ‘pragmatic Islamic militancy’.6 The appeal of this militancy for the urban poor, who make up the bulk of its active membership, comes not from a comprehensive and coherent ideological or political programme, for example the imposition of a Sharia-based system, than through the particular combination of normative Islamic practice, tradi-tion and social conservatism, aggressive rhetoric, together with opportu-nities offered for the pursuit of instrumentalist livelihood strategies (such as making money from imposing ‘haram levies’), strategic advantage in local contestations over resources and space and the expressing of a broad range of grievances and resentments. Religious militancy and more ‘profane’ desires for material and political advancement co-exist within these vigilante groups in a dynamic tension.

In this respect it will be contended that Islamic vigilantism does not have a direct connection to Islamic ‘radicalization’ in any strictly ideological, political or theological sense, and has more to do with the dynamics of Indonesia’s post-authoritarian environment, in particular the spatial politics of urbanization and the interplay of identity, resources and land, patron-clientism together with shifting power relationships at the local level. Nor is it, as in the case of political Islam in Egypt, Algeria or Turkey, concerned with capturing formal authority and institutions either through mass movements, the ballot box or violence.7 It has been argued by Roy (1996), and Sidel (2006) in the case of Indonesia, that political Islam can be assessed as having ‘failed’ in so far as it’s been unable to win formal power in Muslim majority states.8 This failure has, it is argued, often manifested in a tendency to move outside of formal politics resulting in ‘radicalization’, including resorting to various forms of violence such as terrorism. According to this view the presence of violent jihadist and Islamist groups, with which groups such as the FPI are often identified, suggests desperation born of political failure rather than a movement growing in strength. However, such analyses are prem-ised upon a particular set of assumptions regarding the type of political sphere that is being contested. It will be argued here that it is the local and informal political sphere, the politics of the everyday as found in streets and urban kampung that has been the political field of contes-tation of Islamic vigilantes, and is where this specific kind of political Islam has had success in consolidating its authority, power and influence.

250 Morality Racketeering: Vigilantism and Populist Islamic Militancy in Indonesia

This reflects the realm of the political of those making up the bulk of its membership, the urban poor. The kinds of violence characteristic of Islamic vigilantes is also not born of desperation, but rather is of a type that is well known in Indonesia, reflecting long standing practices of informal policing, the post-independence prevalence of militias as both autonomous and state sanctioned sources of coercive force, together with the territorial violence of preman gangs, a frequent feature of urban kampung life.

Of central importance then is the local and territorial nature of Islamic vigilantism, and why and how ‘Islam’ has emerged as a key, though not exclusivist, marker of territorial identity to be aggressively ‘defended’, and the identification of what these threats are. The chapter also contends that the urban poor and socially marginal in particular join these groups for decidedly local and pragmatic reasons, with ‘Islam’ operating as a normative and territorial identity, one which affords a degree of protection, legitimacy and social capital in local power and resource contestations and facilitating identification and solidarity with other organizations and communities, nationally and transnationally. The organizational success of these groups, measured in terms of lon-gevity, size and ability to shape public discourse, has come from the relative ease with which they’ve managed to appropriate a variety of localized tensions and conflicts and frame them as part of a broader and unified ‘Islamic’ response to what are seen as the threats posed to the Islamic community by decadence and immorality. This includes the so called spread of ‘sepilis’, the Indonesian term for syphilis, used as an acronym for secularism, pluralism and liberalism, which the FPI leadership argues, together with a growing coalition of groups under the banner of Indonesia Tanpa JIL (Indonesian without the Islamic Liberals Network), poses the most dire existential threat to the coherence and integrity of the Islamic community.9

In capturing and provoking local tensions, many linked to the socio-economic conditions of poor and impoverished urban communities and local politics reinvigorated and intensified by political decentralization, vigilante groups such as the FPI have fostered an image of themselves as a significant Islamic social force, despite the loyalty and commit-ment of urban poor members often being highly contingent, and actual numbers being relatively small, at least in comparison to mainstream and established Islamic organizations such as Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama, or Islamist political parties such as the PKS. By main-taining a high public visibility, and with links to figures in the military and police, it has enabled them to ‘punch above their weight’ when it

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comes to the ability to influence and gain access to formal power, and to shape public discourse.

Vigilantes such as the FPI do not represent a clearly articulated school of Islamic thought or religious practice, with members drawn from a relatively diverse range of Islamic backgrounds.10 Neither do they engage in the kinds of oppositional ideological organization of groups such as Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia or in acts of covert activity of outlawed groups such as Negara Islam Indonesia or Jemah Islamiyah. While at times operating in clear defiance of state interests and the law, Islamic vigilantes have also been at times crucial elements of the ruling strate-gies of local political elites, and as power brokers in their own right, sometimes in open conflict with the formal authorities, at others work-ing in ‘partnership’ in the maintenance of particular kinds of social order. As the FPI’s leader Habib Rizieq has stated, ‘we are not aligned to this or that group, political party or figure. In essence we are open to collaborating with anyone who shares our immediate or long term goals’.11 Islamic vigilantism occupies in this respect a distinct ‘niche’ as a vehicle for a particular kind of populist ‘dissent’ that is simultaneously oppositional, opportunistic and hegemonic.12 Frequently characterized as either a front for criminal extortion and racketeering using the sym-bols and rhetoric of Islamic morality, or as manifestations of a growing ideological militancy, a closer examination of Islamic vigilante groups, in particular the motivations for involvement of rank-and-file members, suggests a far more complex intertwining of class, territorialism and conservatism, local translations of transnational Islamist discourse and populist forms of political protest.

A brief note on method

Berna Turam (2001) has argued the importance of exploring the street, neighbourhood and the mundane aspects of daily life when examining Islamist groups, suggesting that an exclusive emphasis upon deliber-ate action, mobilization and symbolic forms of protest can lead to the development of misleading causalities. Militant anti-pornography demonstrations, for example, can, when observed in isolation, sug-gest these social practices and attitudes are a unique product of the movement, even though, as Turam states, these may be ‘more deeply rooted in a place, neighbourhood, city or society’ (2001: 145). In this way a focus upon the everyday, the ‘banal’, the non-strategic and the local as a central context can help to expose the extent to which often assumed dichotomies within these movements and between them and


greater society in fact exist, such as ‘Islamic vs. secularist’, ideas of the ‘sacred vs. profane’ or of ‘radical vs. moderate’, and if so how they are constructed, negotiated, understood and lived in an everyday context and shaped by different types of urban space. With these considerations in mind, the chapter draws upon ethnographic work carried out in the greater Jakarta region, in total approximately six months from 2008 to 2012, together with interviews conducted with vigilante members rang-ing from casual affiliates, rank and file members, branch commanders, through to the group’s central leadership.13

12.1 Vigilantism in post-authoritarian Indonesia

Vigilantism, either Islamic or otherwise, is by no means a new pheno-menon in Indonesia. As Joshua Barker has stated, forms of organized vigilantism have been a longstanding feature of communal life through-out the archipelago. During the authoritarian New Order (1965–98), neighbourhood watches and community self-policing were an integral aspect of the state’s surveillance apparatus which, in Barker’s words ‘created a citizenry that thought and acted like police’ (2007: 89). The persistent presence of militias, be they secular, ethnic or religious, can be linked to the specific historical processes of state formation in Indonesia. Ariel Ahram (2011: 14) argues that, ‘revolutionary states often adopt military doctrines emphasizing popular participation in military affairs and thus encourage the formation of civilian militias’. New-born states emerging from armed struggles for independence and sovereignty tend to appropriate networks of local-violence wielders converting them from ‘anticolonial insurgents into pro-state militias’ (Ahram 2011: 4). In Indonesia armed resistance to Dutch colonial rule was led by rag-tag mili-tias, guerrillas, gangs and vigilantes, parts of which would later constitute the embryo of what would become the Indonesian armed forces (Cribb 1991). Following independence the state remained heavily dependent on militias and para-institutional violence, which has continued to this day. The laskar or militia has also continued as a mode of populist non-state organization holding a particular romanticized image, one frequently reproduced in popular culture, as a manifestation of the people’s ‘revolu-tionary’ fervour and popular sovereignty. There are any number of laskar groups throughout the country that range from nationalist, ethnic and religiously framed, as auxiliaries for political parties, elite figures or social organizations, or as purely local and territorial.

While militias and vigilantism have been a common feature of Indonesia’s pre- and post-independence history, it was with the end of

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Suharto’s New Order regime in 1998 that vigilante and militia groups identifying specifically with ‘Islam’ began to emerge en masse, initially with the tacit support of elements of state elites. The first explicitly ‘Islamic’ vigilantes were those linked to the so called Pamswakarsa forces. In the lead-up to the special legislative session of the People’s Consultative Assembly in November 1998 following Suharto’s resignation, around 100,000 civilians, many affiliated to Muslim groups, were mobilized around the national parliament. The motley civilian security force was intended to bolster the over-stretched police force and help counter opposition to the interim Habibie presidency from the student-led reform movement.14 With its public profile at an all-time low, the commander of the armed forces, Wiranto, turned to proxies armed with bamboo spears and machetes to carry out the task of defending state interests. The composition of the Pamswakarsa forces revealed an alliance of Muslim groups sympathetic to Habibie, considered to have strong Muslim credentials, such as Furkon (Muslim Forum to Uphold the Constitution and Justice), the newly formed FPI, alongside a hodge-podge of martial arts and semi-criminal youth groups from Banten, together with the nationalist groups such as Pemuda Pancasila, and the unemployed (‘Berjihad Mendukung Sidang’ 1998).

The circulation of rumours that ‘anti-Islamic’ and ‘communist’ forces, identified with students, would attempt to derail the 1998 parliamen tary session and overthrow the Habibie government led the Pamswakarsa and other Muslim groups to mobilize their forces around the People’s Consultative Assembly (Majelis Musyawarah Rakyat, or MPR) (‘Berjihad Mendukung Sidang’ 1998). For these groups, some of whom had faced suppression during the New Order and the regular frustration of their desires for political Islam, the threat of his overthrow by what was framed as a secular, communist and Christian-led student reform movement warranted jihad. Habibie represented an opportunity for the realization of their political aspirations for Islam to be at the forefront of shaping the nation’s post-Suharto future, putting them at odds with the largely secular reformist movement. For the military this logger-head was a useful one, and used to their own advantage. Other forces manoeuvring in the jostle for power and influence in the streets also saw the utility value of Islamist vigilantes. This was evident in the FPI’s next major public showing in the Jakarta neighbourhood of Ketapang in November 1998, where it attacked a stronghold of Ambonese gang-sters, 15 dying as a result. Ostensibly a response to the damaging of a mosque, it also took down a well-established gambling den, signalling to elements of the Jakarta underworld that a shakeup was taking place.15


In the public domain, widely circulated images of robe-clad vigilantes armed with machetes, bashing and beheading local preman gangsters both horrified and enthralled. The FPI emerged as a new force in the streets, fighting not in the name of money, turf or political patrons, but the defence of Islam.

12.2 Jakarta’s new street-cleaners

The introduction from 2001 of regional autonomy and political decen-tralization in Indonesia, a response to the centralized authoritarianism of the New Order, saw many local governments, political parties and religious organizations invoke religious and ethnic identity as a means of mobilizing support. Identity-based militias and vigilantes had a role to play, creating political pressure for the introduction of various Sharia-bylaws, which provided opportunities for revenue raising and a new ‘post-Pancasila’ discourse of power.16 Abidin Kusno (2004) has described how in post-1998 Jakarta the ‘loosening’ of power at the centre resulted in a proliferation of civil groups formed around identities that ‘are all linked by a sense that the nation-state no longer commands any power to protect and rule, or, at best, the political elites only safeguard their own interests’ (2004: 2384). This sense that political elites had little concern with improving the conditions of the general populace has, according to Kusno, encouraged citizen groups, often violently, ‘to act on their own, creating a condition in which everyone safeguards his or her own space, often without regard for the public’ (2004: 2384). Contestation over the use and ‘ownership’ of the streets of the capital intensified between the poor and middle-classes, the city’s administra-tion, developers, business and a range of new social and political forces.

In the midst of this often aggressive politics of space localism and indigenism intensified as poles for contesting the territorial bounda-ries of these emerging forms of ‘spatial power’ within the city, urban kampung and slums. Finding itself with declining authority and sub-ject to unparalleled levels of scrutiny and resistance from its residents post-1998, the Jakarta administration, then led by governor Sutiyoso, sought to find local partners to help it reassert itself. Drawing on a well-established tradition, it turned to militias, gangs and vigilantes, in particular those networks citing localism and protection of the social and moral integrity of the neighbourhood as their central purpose. One core group was the Betawi, the indigenous population of Jakarta. Betawi gangs together with informal leaders such as kyai formed associations and Betawi ‘empowerment’ groups that mobilized on behalf of the

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administration as part of its attempts to contain Jakarta’s burgeoning population to harass poor migrant communities, frequently blamed for Jakarta’s chronic problems of overpopulation, traffic and flooding, using a rationale of indigenous rights to jobs and land (Brown and Wilson 2007). These included groups such as the Forum Betawi Rempug (FBR, or Betawi Brotherhood Forum) and Forkabi. The other was Islamic vigilantes, many of whom also came from these same Betawi communi-ties, who were seen as having a role to perform in re-establishing forms of control over the nightlife industry.

Subsequently in Jakarta ethnicity and religious identity became pre-ferred modes of organization and territorial assertion as each offered a particular utility value in re-establishing forms of territorial legitimacy as well as potential lines of patronage with the city’s administration. In some cases previous regime henchmen, political gangsters and crimi-nal opportunists changed uniforms, leaving the camouflage fatigues of discredited nationalist paramilitaries such as Pemuda Pancasila and Pemuda Pancamarga and donning the robes, sarong and turbans of Islamic militias, vigilantes and paramilitary groups (Wilson 2008). Others joined for less predatory reasons; in order to protect their com-munities and territory from encroachment by rival groups, including the influx of gangs profiting from gambling, narcotics and prostitution. The economic crisis of 1997 had accelerated the spread of illicit and illegal businesses, and there was a perception it was filtering deeper into many local communities than had previously been the case.17 Coinciding with the post-authoritarian political transformation, it led in some quarters to moral panic and a sense that ‘democracy’ and ‘refor-masi’ had unleashed forces that threatened Islamic morality, identified with existing social and cultural norms.

The changed nature of the socio-political environment and discursive space in which territorial contestations were taking place has allowed these vigilante groups to gain leverage from elements of various levels of government, in particular the police, to consolidate themselves in ways that have increased their independence and autonomy from them. As an example, one of the FPI’s first major actions was in December 1999, when around 4000 FPI members blockaded and occupied the office of the Jakarta regional government for over ten hours, demand-ing that governor Sutiyoso close down all nightlife spots during the holy fasting month of Ramadan (‘13 Jam Diduduki FPI’ 1999). After lengthy negotiations with Sutiyoso and Jakarta police chief, Noegroho Djajoesman, the governor issued a statement of support for the FPI’s demands, saying he would work with the FPI to ensure that new


regulations regarding hours of operation were enforced. The FPI was able to pressure an administration who felt a need to maintain work-ing relations with religious militias to introduce regulations which the FPI was strategically positioned to enforce. Leaked US diplomatic cables from its embassy in Jakarta from 2006 published by Wikileaks outlined what many had long suspected regarding the FPI’s relationship with the national police; the former national chief of police Sutanto allegedly stated it was useful to have the FPI available as an ‘attack dog’ when needed and that as such they had regularly received funding from the police and State Intelligence Service (Saragih 2011). Like all vigilantes, however, the notion that they are simply appendages of elite interests available for mobilization when and where they choose is a misleading one. Extending the canine metaphor, former police chief, Noegroho Djajoesman, described the FPI in particular as a ‘dog that had broken free from its leash’.18 It may have been useful, but it was now beyond their direct control.

So the political Islam of these new vigilantes presented itself as a strange concoction; it adopted a language of radical dissent and opposi-tion against vice and the dangers of secularism but was not necessarily oppositional to the secular state, and was even amenable to protecting the interests of its elites. It was opportunistic and politically predatory, but also had roots in deep anxieties felt in many poorer communities about the nature, pace and possible direction of post-authoritarian change and the tensions and contradictions of market capitalism as a force shaping the space and order of the city.

12.3 FPI history, lineages and politics

The FPI was founded on 17 August 1998, Indonesia’s national day inde-pendence anniversary, by a group of religious scholars, many of whom were of Hadhrami Arab descent. The FPI’s leader, Habib Shihab Rizieq, was born in Jakarta in 1965, of a mixed Hadhrami Arab-Betawi heritage; his father Sayyid Husein was a founder of the Panda Arab movement, a kind of boy scout movement for Arab Indonesians. In the early 1990s Rizieq studied Islamic law at the University of Imam Muhammad ibn Saud in Saudi Arabia before returning to Indonesia where he became an outspo-ken mubaligh preacher and also school principal at a Hadhrami run mad-rassa. As a habib, in particular one who had studied in Saudi Arabia, Rizieq commanded a certain reverential authority amongst traditional Betawi society in particular.19 Other founding members included Misbahul Alam, head of the Al-Umm Islamic boarding school, whose religious background

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was in the Nahdlatul Ulama. According to anecdotal accounts, the FPI was originally intended to be a nationwide support base for the Muslim United Development Party (Partai Persatuan Pembangunan, or PPP) of Hamzah Haz, modelled along the lines of the Banser paramilitary wing of the Nahdlatul Ulama (‘Pesan Buat Para Pembela Islam’ 1999). With the emergence of the PPP-aligned Ka’abah Youth Movement and FPI’s initial failure to create strong support bases outside of Jakarta, the FPI leadership redefined the organization as a street-level anti-vice movement not affili-ated to any political party.20 While its leadership has consisted of habib scholars and many Betawi kyai, rank-and-file members have been drawn mainly from poor urban youth in districts of central Jakarta such as Tanah Abang, though since 2006 it has expanded its base into the satellite city of Bekasi and parts of West Java.21

Vigilantism, which as Abrahams has argued flourishes on the ‘fron-tiers of the state’, is an alternate form of social ordering whose existence is driven not just by a functional or regulatory vacuum of state power, but also by anomie and negative attitudes towards the state (Abrahams 1998). When gaps emerge between institutional and ‘moral’ orders, as is common in times of social and political change or when the capacity of the state is compromised or weak, violent vigilantism often emerges. In Jakarta, vigilantism has emerged on two fronts: as a reaction to the failures of the post-New Order state to provide physical safety and eco-nomic security, hence the need for citizens to establish and maintain forms of social order themselves (or on behalf of elements of the state apparatus), and also as crucial brokers in local contestations over power, territory and resources. Varieties of vigilante and community policing groups can be found in almost any poor or lower middle-class neigh-bourhood in Jakarta and other major urban centres.22 The result has been what Barker (2007: 93) describes as ‘a patchwork of jurisdictions, each with its own “morality”’. Travelling through any Jakarta kampung the extent of the presence of these groups can be seen from the hun-dreds of guard posts, watchtowers, flags and banners that demarcate their territory, and are far more visible than the police. Rejecting media labels of their own violence as criminal, Islamic vigilantes represent themselves as a virtuous vanguard protecting communities and society at large from moral and social decay and religious deviancy.23 As one vigilante member explained, ‘If they [the state] won’t uphold decency and order, then we will’.24 FPI leaders go to great pains to explain that violence is always a ‘last resort’, used when local authorities, usually the police, do not respond to their demands to take action against alleged violations of existing law, as well as moral order as they define it.25


The FPI leadership has represented the organization not as an alternative to state order, but as potentially ‘willing assistants’ to a state considered to be unable or unwilling to enforce law and norms in keeping with Islamic morality, either due to institutional weakness, foreign interven-tion or corruption. What we can see from this is that the current crop of Islamic vigilantes both reproduce patterns of the state outsourcing of regime maintenance functions established during the New Order, such as the harassment of progressive and liberal forces in 1998, but have at the same time pursued agendas for political and social change that run counter to or directly challenge elite interests, such as attacking industries from which they profit, that is, alcohol manufacturing and distribution. The populist dimension is the focus upon the street and the neighbourhood, rather than more distant halls of power, as the stage on which authentic struggle takes place.

12.4 The benefits of being virtuous: negotiating maksiat

‘Please let everyone know, we aren’t vicious … Islam doesn’t teach that. We’re decent, courteous ordinary kampung people. But if someone wants to challenge us, to spread maksiat, in our neighbourhood we’ll use violence … especially if it’s an infidel!’26

The public rhetoric of the FPI suggests an uncompromising and militant opposition to all forms of maksiat. Formal membership requires accepting three possible outcomes in the struggle to eliminate it from Indonesian society: ‘prison, hospital, death’ (penjara, rumah sakit, mati).27 In practice, however, the FPI is far more nuanced as it oper-ates strategically on a number of fronts in the pursuit of amar makruf nahi mungkar. The central leadership based in the Jakarta district of Pertamburan mobilizes branches and coordinates with affiliate groups around key strategic ‘issues’ aimed at maximizing public exposure. 28 For example, since 2007 they have been at the forefront of a broad alliance of groups advocating, often violently, the outlawing of the Ahmadiyah sect whom they claim are heretics.29 The divisive nature of the issue within Indonesia allowed the FPI to gain support from quarters usu-ally hostile to them and the use of violent protest pushed the issue of Ahmadiyah’s ‘deviancy’ onto the national stage. The national govern-ment, wary of alienating a Muslim majority, responded by issuing a compromise law that curtailed Ahmadiyah activities while falling short of directly outlawing the sect.30 That the FPI could claim to represent mainstream Islam on this issue was considered a major strategic and public relations success by its leadership.31

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Similarly, the FPI’s leadership has skilfully manipulated local tensions arising from demographic shifts in Jakarta’s peri-urban periphery into moral panics regarding the so-called ‘Christianization’ of Jakarta, often linked in FPI rhetoric to the spread of secularism and ‘liberalism’.32 In Bekasi and Depok large influxes of economic migrants from North Sumatra, predominantly Christian ethnic Batak, have seen tensions emerge between them and traditional Betawi-dominated communities over limited space, jobs and economic resources. Focusing upon the complex 2006 joint Ministerial decree on houses of worship which regulates the conditions under which places of worship can be built, the FPI and others have manipulated these socio-economic tensions, in particular those linked to conflicts over land acquisition, to discursively reframe them as an attack on the integrity of the Islamic community.33 The outcome was that vigilante and populist militant groups were able to pressure local governments to revoke already issued permits, in doing so enabling an expansion of their organizational and territorial influ-ence as well as ‘radicalizing’ some residents and community groups.34

In the case of identifying places of ‘vice’, decisions by the FPI leader-ship regarding which targets to prioritize are preceded by background checks to identify if there is any significant elite, military or mass organization backing, and are informed by intelligence reports from local branches and sympathetic residents. For example, markets selling pornographic DVDs in North Jakarta, a seemingly logical target, have been avoided as Indonesian Marines provide security. Clubs and broth-els owned by powerful figures in Jakarta’s underworld are also routinely bypassed as it would lead to levels of conflict detrimental to the group. By targeting smaller clubs and bars the FPI has in fact helped to con-solidate the monopoly of some kingpins of Jakarta’s nightlife, forcing smaller business owners to be bought out or seek their protection.35

The FPI’s vigilantism falls within a grey area in Indonesian law regarding the role of citizens in upholding law and order. Many of their targets are technically in breach of both criminal law, such as gambling dens and brothels, or unlicensed bars or those operating outside of legis-lated zones or hours. So despite frequent public outrage over its attacks, successive governors of Jakarta and both the national and Jakarta chiefs of police have continued to endorse the FPI and other similar mass organizations as ‘partners’ in maintaining law and order (Tampubolon 2011). The relationship between the FPI and the police at local levels, however, is frequently far more strained and often marked by both instances of cooperation and conflict. Islamic vigilantes can compete with local police for access to protection rents, and through anti-vice


activities threaten sources of income derived from gambling dens or brothels. Generally the imperative upon both parties is to establish some kind of mutual accommodation or workable arrangement.36 It has become commonplace for police to accompany FPI raids on the pretext of making sure things ‘don’t get out of hand’ while taking no action to prevent the raids which on paper are clearly illegal.

At the level of local affiliate branches, the localized forms of order the FPI vigilantes seek to impose are largely in keeping with existing broadly conservative social and cultural norms. Despite the image sometimes presented in the Indonesian media of a severe Taliban-like group obsessed with religious piety, which has seen the FPI labelled as ‘wannabe Arabs’, even performing daily prayers is often not enforced in the community, nor are those who are ‘ritually lax’ subjected to much in the way of intimidation or social sanction.37 This extends to mem-bers themselves. Frequently during interviews, members, including FPI-affiliated kyai, would ignore calls to prayer and carry on chatting and smoking cigarettes. The atmosphere was little different to that of any other nominally Muslim community in Bekasi or Depok. In Pertamburan, FPI headquarters, ethnic Chinese women returning from office jobs and dressed in skirts and heels walk through the group’s stronghold without eliciting comments or being subject to harassment.

This relative flexibility in practice has seen the FPI ‘brand’ franchised, with similar groups and branches springing up throughout the coun-try.38 Franchising has operated both as a means to expand the group’s sphere of influence, for example by absorbing local kyai and pesantren, or through ‘converting’ local preman gangs to the FPI cause, while for local youth or kyai, affiliation with the FPI can bring with it status, power and access to rent-seeking. The initial impetus for a new branch is often a particular issue emerging from tensions between ethnic, reli-gious or class group, or objections to the presence of a ‘social ill’ such as prostitution or gambling dens.39 In interview, these objections often flowed seamlessly into wider grievances regarding the perceived nega-tive impacts to the community from demographic changes, with vice and deviancy almost always identified with non-locals or ‘outsiders’, who were often economic rivals for jobs and competitors in the informal markets that are the lifeblood of many poorer communities. Members interviewed at new branches in Pekayon, Bekasi for example, stated that their involvement with the FPI grew out of desperation and anger at the ease with which ‘drug dealers’, identified as Batak truck drivers, were able to establish themselves in their neighbourhoods, compounded by what was seen as the complicity of local police. As one member

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explained, ‘at first we didn’t wear FPI uniforms. We already had a group of us in the community who were trying to do something about the influx of drug dealers and troublemakers. However, the police ignored us and the dealers weren’t afraid. So we started wearing uniforms, the FPI name scared all of them’.40 Invocation of Islam, via identification with the FPI, was considered more ‘potent’ and made it easier to mobi-lize other segments of the community.

Escaping the boredom of everyday existence via partaking in the aura of radicalism and the excitement of living out the fantasy of being a ‘Jihadi warrior’ should not be underestimated as a draw card, and was frequently cited by younger members as part of the attraction for involvement. As Khan (2011: 580) has argued, ‘fantasy is a necessary facet of marginalization, one which reconfigures locality in relations to imaginings of a truer, more potent world’, which in relation to the dis-course of ‘jihad’, ‘fuses spectacular destruction of unjust forms of power with the realization of desires for omnipotence’. Ritualized violence in the form of anti-maksiat raids is an intrinsic reason for participation in and of itself. ‘Ideology’ and the vigilantes’ particular brand of jihadi discourse, was embodied for these youth in modes of style, dress and habitus rather than in states of mind, commitment or belief. For exam-ple, posting photos of themselves on social networking sites such as Facebook dressed in ‘mujahedin’ outfits modelled on those of Afghani and Taliban fighters, often holding toy replica firearms or cardboard rocket launchers, was done with great seriousness, and was, I was told, a display of ‘militancy’. There was also identification with distant Islamic struggles, in particular the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and a sense of participation, via vigilantism, in a globalized jihad against the West, US imperialism and ‘the Jews’ all of whom are intent on destroying Islam, usually crudely articulated via popular conspiracy theories consumed and circulated on the internet.41

That combating vice offered opportunities not only for rewards in the afterlife, but also for potential self-enrichment and social advance-ment, was not denied but rather seen as an unintentional but logical bi-product of protecting the community and the faith. As one member from a poor neighbourhood in Bekasi explained, ‘We get respect, and when people respect you good things flow your way’.42 The position of the leadership, however, emphasizes that ‘the struggle’ required sacrifice without any hope of material benefit. Living in relatively simple sur-roundings and with two periods in prison, Rizieq is taken as a role model of asceticism, piety and martyrdom. Unlike groups such as the FBR, the FPI does not operate formal businesses nor overtly seek to gain control


of staples of the street economy such as parking. The leadership’s official position is that members should make a living however they can so long as it doesn’t involve theft and is otherwise not in conflict with Islam.43

The relationship between ideals of sacrifice on behalf of Islam and pred-atory self-interest has remained a point of contention and tension within the group, with leaders frequently seeking to either deny or rationalize cases of extortion by FPI members. There have been numerous reports of FPI members operating as land-brokers, strong men hired to intimi-date and forcibly occupy contested land in Jakarta’s frequent land title disputes, as supporter groups for particular political figures as well as gen-eral ‘rent-a-crowds’.44 This underscores the often instrumentalist nature of involvement, with the FPI’s name and reputation used to provide legitimation for local contestations and as social and political capital in the competitive market in violent entrepreneurship. According to Habib Selon, a senior FPI kyai, the prevalence of extortion and ‘haram levies’ racketeering by FPI members was an outcome of the FPI’s efforts to reach out to and help reform petty criminals and preman street thugs. As he explained ‘We’ve guided them to the right way … . But apparently, in the middle of the way they’ve gone astray again’ (Yusron and Mandiri 2012).

This problem of ‘control’ has dogged the FPI from its outset. While the FPI leadership in Jakarta has been able to exercise strong control over branches within Jakarta, sub-branches further from the centre are generally more autonomous of the group’s chain of command, and outside of calls for larger actions frequently pursue a divergent range of objectives that can be outside or even counter to the FPI’s stated aims. Yet there have also been transparent examples of the readiness of the FPI leadership to ‘Islamicize’ an issue when financial inducements are provided. For example, in 2011 the FPI, along with a number of other ethnic and religious militias, threatened to attack Greenpeace Indonesia on the grounds that it allegedly was funded by haram money coming from gambling.45 When this proved to be false it then accused Greenpeace of not holding proper permits and of being a front for ‘foreign interests’. FPI’s own interest, including an unusual temporary alliance with the Indonesian Protestant Church Union, was suspected to be due to significant financial incentives provided by the palm-oil industry, a target of Greenpeace’s campaigns.46

12.5 Relationship to other Islamic organizations

The FPI has been something of an ongoing irritation for many of the larger mainstream organizations. Tensions have often been less due to

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the issues that it has campaigned, that is, anti-maksiat, which has some level of broader support, but its methods and discourse. The NU under the leadership of former president Abdurahman Wahid in particular was one of the staunchest critics of the FPI and of its brand of street vigilan-tism, repeatedly calling for it to be disbanded, and mobilizing its own paramilitary force, Banser, in a number of street-level stand-offs includ-ing the closure of FPI branches in East Java (‘FPI Surabaya bubarkan diri’ 2008). In parliament, the political party of the NU, the PKB, has also lobbied several times for revisions to laws governing social organiza-tions, which would give the government greater provisions to disband those that disturbed public order, with direct implications for the FPI (Lastania 2012a). Yet in recent years as the group has expanded and consolidated new branches in Nahdlatul Ulama strongholds, many kyai and rank-and-file members have been drawn to it and similar groups. As one kyai and FPI branch leader in Cikarang explained, affiliation with the NU tradition was not an acceptance of the ‘liberal pluralist politics’ of former head Abdurahman Wahid (commonly referred to as Gus Dur):

We are NU, but not the Gus Dur camp. In terms of religious practice and tradition most FPI here are NU men, but not politically. In fact we are opposed to the poisonous liberalism that’s taken over the leadership. Many feel the same way.47

Disillusionment with the distance of the NU national leadership from everyday concerns was often cited as a reason why NU kyai moved to vigilante groups. According to Kyai Aaim, head of the FSUI, a vigilante group in Jonggol on Jakarta’s outskirts, the attraction of such groups was the ‘grassroots’ dimension:

Larger organisations, particularly those involved in elite politics, are less and less interested in the issues we face at the local level. Social problems, the infiltration of social diseases like prostitution or the community being threatened by deviant teachings. They don’t want to know…they’re too busy playing elite politics. These (vigi-lante) groups do care. It’s about taking action and control over your community.48

Like the NU, the leadership of the modernist Muhammadiyah have also been staunch critics of the FPI, with former chairman Ahmad Syafi Maarif stating in reference to Rizieq that, ‘the Habib is an Arab who seeks to gain social status and material benefit’ (Bamualim 2011: 276).


Youth wings of Muhammadiyah, however, such as the Ikatan Mahasiswa Muhammadiyah, have taken part in demonstrations in support of the FPI when calls have been made of its disbandment (‘Dukung FPI, Umat Solo kecam’ 2012).49 Similarly NU’s paramilitary wing Banser, despite tough-talking and mobilizing against the FPI, is well known to have many sympathizers within its ranks.50 What this suggests is that the FPI and vigilantes may have a level of support far greater than the leader-ships of the NU and Muhammadiyah care to admit.

The FPI has a much closer collaborative relationship, usually in joint street actions, with a number of ‘hard-line’ groups, including fellow vigilantes such as the Majelis Mujahedin Indonesia, the Forum Umat Islam and to a lesser extent Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia. Osman suggests that there has been a flow of members between the HTI and the FPI, claiming that many former FPI, MMI and Laskar Jihad members have joined the HTI’s ranks after denouncing violence, one of its key plat-forms (Osman 2010: 53). On the other hand, a number of HTI members have either left or been expelled from the HTI, going on to join the FPI or affiliate groups due to their refusal to reject violence as a strategy. The most well-known of these is Muhammad al-Khathath, a former leader of the HTI, who was expelled from the group in 2008 due to his involvement in the infamous Monas incident, in which the FPI and other Islamic militias violently attacked a peaceful demonstration in support of religious pluralism.51

A key ally of the FPI, and source of legitimation for its vigilantism, has been the Majelis Ulama Indonesia.52 Through its fatwa declaring Ahmadiyah sesat (deviant) and forbidding liberalism, pluralism and secularism, it has provided the Islamic legalistic foundation for vigilan-tes to take action. For their part, the FPI’s violence has also been used by the MUI as evidence that the failure of government to turn its legally non-binding fatwa into national law results in social conflict.53

Despite the FPI and Islamic vigilantes being defined by the use of vio-lence, there is little evidence that involvement has been a ‘pathway’ to Islamist terrorism as writers such as Abuza have suggested (Abuza 2003: 24).54 It is in fact the aura of ‘radicalism’ without the associated dangers and commitment required of an underground or terrorist group that forms part of its appeal. A more alarming dimension in the wake of the 2010 Cikeusik incident, in which Ahmadiyah members were murdered by a mob, is the frequent incendiary rhetoric from FPI leaders, such as a widely distributed speech by its secretary general, Sobri Lubis, in 2008 in which he called for Ahmadiyah followers to be killed.55 Overall, however, the FPI has sought to occupy an ambiguous middle-ground

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between Islamic organization, assistant to the authorities and also ‘radicals’ prepared to take violent direct action, but not taking it to a level that would result in the state taking definitive action against them. Its ability to do so for over 15 years while avoiding direct censure is indicative of its relative ‘success’.

12.6 Class tensions: between hegemony and dissent

The organizational framework of the FPI, and the practice of Islamic vig-ilantism more generally, has been interpreted as providing an opportu-nity for expressing resentments at economic and social marginalization, despite the leadership displaying little overt interest in the urban poor or issues of social and economic inequality. Often with little in the way of religious background or scriptural knowledge, the notion of ‘direct action as piety’ and protection of local turf as protection of the faith and community of believers under the guidance of a charismatic leader, held strong appeal to urban poor members. In interviews, concern for the explicitly ‘religious’ usually took a back seat to discussion of the intrigues of local politics or of more general critiques of the Indonesian state, in particular its failure to provide basic services and employment as well as moral order. As one informant expressed it:

When you have children in this so-called modern democracy dying from preventable illnesses as their parents can’t afford medical treat-ment, or missing out on schooling due to lack of funds, are you surprised that some start to think and act more radically? We don’t believe in the system or trust the government, and the government has no one to blame but themselves.56

Class resentments were frequently a thinly veiled sub-text in accounts of the sources and causes of maksiat by urban poor members. In Bekasi, when asked about maksiat, one member gestured to an ostentatious high-walled gated community for the rich not far from their kampung, speculating that all manner of liberal maksiat no doubt took place inside.57 In Pekayon, near Bekasi, numerous local Islamic groups, includ-ing the FPI, rallied to demand the removal of a replica statue of liberty erected at the front of a newly constructed gated community, objecting to it as a sign of ‘US imperialism’, though also reflecting tensions over the encroachment of gated enclaves for the rich into poor and working class neighbourhoods (‘Patung Liberty’ 2011).58 The clearing of vast tracts of land in Cikarang in preparation for the building of manufacturing plants


has also seen the local FPI branch becoming a focal point for resentment and anger at the environmental damage and loss of farming land, as well as the failure of the longstanding community to gain jobs. As the branch leader expressed it, ‘the factory owners are just getting richer while the poor here get poorer. If the rich keep monopolizing it all, we’ll take whatever kind of tough action is necessary’.59 More generally, maksiat was seen as being integral to liberal and secular lifestyles, associated with the upper-middle classes and the city’s rich.

This contrasted with the overtly more ideological commitment and abstract concern with issues of piety, morality and the engagement and consumption of global Islamic politics of middle-class and university and college educated members, many of whom also hold mid-level leadership roles in the central leadership structure. For them, the FPI was a vehicle for engaging with transnational Jihadist discourse, and for the radical transformation of Indonesian society to one guided and structured by Sharia and Islamic norms. It was an accessible populist form of ‘radicalism’ with the emphasis on street action appealing to a sense of urgency in the face of the perceived onslaught of liberalism and secularism. Many spent as much time as possible at the FPI’s head-quarters in Pertamburan, a place of regular sermons, prayer sessions and discussions, where they could voraciously consume the books, theo-logical treatises and CDs produced by Habib Rizieq. A number of these middle-class educated members were also frustrated defectors from the Nahdlatul Ulama and the PKS, where they had either been unable to establish networks or advance in the organization’s hierarchy, or had become bored with organizational and party politics.

At the same time the central leadership has also faced internal ten-sions between the Hadhrami Habib who have dominated it and other emerging leaders within the group. Relative newcomers such as the politically ambitious Munarman in particular, immensely popular amongst many street laskar members, are seen as potentially challeng-ing the Habib domination of leadership, and the FPI’s political align-ment.60 What this indicates is the existence of divergent class-based interests and orientations within the organization. In some respects the resilience and growing appeal of the ‘populist militancy’ of the FPI and vigilantism is in part explained by this ability to accommodate these dif-fering interests, ambitions and grievances under its loose organizational umbrella, combining rhetorical and ideological Islamic militancy at the level of public action, mobilization and discourse, and the opportunity for a more pragmatic instrumentalism at the level of daily life. In many of the communities where the FPI has a base its general anti-maksiat

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objectives of eliminating the presence of gambling, alcohol and illicit drugs had general widespread support, in particular with little in the way of effective responses, if not complicity, from the police.

This disjuncture between the thee levels of the FPI suggests interesting parallels with Asef Bayat’s analysis (2007) of the relationship between middle-class Islamists and the urban poor in the slums of Egypt and Iran. Bayat argues that the social life of the urban poor is characterized not by anomie or receptiveness to extremism as is often assumed, but by ‘informal life’, ‘a social existence characterised by autonomy, flexi-bility and pragmatism, where survival and self-development occupy a central place’ (Bayat 2007: 580). Subsequently their loyalty to political movements is conditional upon them somehow contributing to these objectives. In the case of the FPI and the involvement of the urban poor, Bayat’s analysis poses some intriguing questions as to the possible future development of the organization, and of populist street-level Islamic movements in Indonesia more generally. Do, for example, the pragmatic concerns of urban poor members hold the potential to transform or alter the group’s public rhetoric and the issues it prioritizes? Since 2006 the FPI has formed an ‘anti-corruption militia’, in part to try and hitch a ride on popular sentiment opposed to endemic government corruption. In 2002 and 2008 it also distributed leaflets declaring it haram for the government to remove subsidies on fuel oil, which would have had dis-astrous impacts on the poor.61 However, aside from these instances the leadership continues to show little overt interest, rhetorically at least, in livelihood and welfare issues affecting its grass roots members despite socio-economic pressures being central to why many become involved. As in the case of Islamists and the urban disenfranchised discussed by Bayat (2007), the relationship between the urban poor membership and the FPI’s leaders appears mutually utilitarian.

12.7 Conclusions

The example of Islamic vigilantism suggests that ‘Islam’ can and does operate politically as a front for local contestations of power and inter-est, and is invoked spatially as a territorial identity in the defence of communities from perceived or actual encroachment from new or accelerated social forces. It is a defensive and reactive form of social conservatism, reflecting culturally embedded understandings of Islam that are often more parochial than radical despite the use of radical and militant symbolism. Looking behind the rhetorical stance of the FPI’s leadership and it’s ostensive concern with enforcing piety, public


morality and conformity to its interpretation of Islam, the interests of urban poor members remained focused upon three key areas: defending notions of a socially heterogeneous and conservative community in the wake of demographic and socio-economic shifts; using this process as a means of increasing their own social and political capital; and having a means through which to voice generalized rather than specifically reli-gious resentments and grievances at the state, social and political elites and the impacts of market capitalism.

This type of militancy has gained some degree of traction amongst the poor over that of other Islamic organizations in Indonesia, both traditional quietist groups as well as political parties, precisely due to the accommodation of instrumental and everyday concerns, and more generally due to its focus upon the streets and urban space as the cen-tral site of agency, action and religiosity, the streets being economic, political and living space for the poor who are structurally absent from institutional power and formal politics at almost every level. In the crowded neighbourhoods of greater Jakarta the politics of the urban poor is to be found in contestations over the use, access and ownership of space, including its moral economy, and here Islamic vigilantism has proven to be an effective vehicle for expressing dissent and gaining instrumental advantage. For this same reason it continues to attract the attention of local politicians and elites who see in it a potential tool for mobilization in contesting formal power at the sub-national level, whilst national elites have largely continued to understand it within the frame of the previous regime: publicly disavowing its violence while privately courting its leadership.

Notes

1. In Indonesia Muslim groups cover a vast spectrum from non-violent ideologues advocating for a caliphate such as Hizbut Tahrir, terrorist organizations such as Jemaah Islamiyah, missionary dakwah movements such as Jemaah Tarbiyah, political parties like the Partai Keadilan Sejahtera (PKS) to mainstream broad-based organizations and ‘traditions’ such as Muhammadiyah, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Persis. The FPI was established in Jakarta in 1998 and now has branches throughout Indonesia, though remains strongest in and around Jakarta. While its leadership claims a membership in the millions, the actual number is arguably closer to around 150,000. Numbers however fluctuate widely with many involved only in street actions or mobilized around specific issues.

2. The FPI’s leader Habib Rizieq Shihab has written a number of lengthy texts outlining his own particular interpretation of amar makruf nahi mungkar and the dangers posed to the Islamic community by maksiat (vice). See, for

Ian Wilson 269

example, Habib Muhammad bin Rizieq Syihab (2008), Dialog FPI: Amar ma’ruf nahi munkar, Pustaka Ibnu Sidah, Jakarta.

3. Rizieq has served two short prison terms as a result of the group’s activities, and several dozen members have been given sentences between two months to four years. There has been no action taken to dissolve or disband the FPI, despite frequent calls to do so from segments of parliament, civil society and human rights groups.

4. Bourgois, in his study of crack dealing gangs in East Harlem, argues that the violent and misogynist cultures focused on ‘respect’ that characterized them emerged as a reaction to the deindustrialization of the urban economy and structural conditions producing economic and social marginalization. Economic and political disempowerment was compensated by exaggerated displays of violent machismo and notions of honour. It is worth noting that while groups such as the FPI do have small active women’s auxiliary divi-sions, such as the Mujahidah, membership remains overwhelmingly male and leadership positions are held by men. The FPI opposes women holding political office.

5. Kyai converts to the FPI cause often bring many of their followers with them, and hence are often courted by the FPI.

6. Aside from the FPI, there are numerous other vigilante-style groups many of which are highly localized. Examples include the Forum Umat Islam (FUI), Gerakan Reformis Islam (GARIS), Tholiban, Pagar Aqidah (GARDAM), Majelis Mujahedin Indonesia (MMI), Gerakan Pemuda Islam (GPI) and Gerakan Anti Pemurtadan dan Aliran Sesat (GAPAS). The choice of focus upon the FPI in this chapter is based on a number of considerations, includ-ing its arguably being the largest and most influential of existing vigilante groups in the country.

7. See, respectively, Chapters 6, 11 and 5 in this volume. 8. A situation that has changed since the Arab Spring. See, respectively,

Chapters 6 and 7 in this volume. 9. The Islamic Liberals Network is a loose network of intellectuals disseminat-

ing a critical and liberal interpretation of Islam. While being little more than a small think tank, JIL has become emblematic to many militants and conservatives of what is believed to be attempts by the West to undermine Islam. In his sermons, Habib Rizieq frequently warns of the ‘Sepilis mafia’, with their ‘warehouse full of academic titles’ who ‘destroy and rape the Sharia in the name of upholding freedom, human rights and justice’. See, for example, Habib Muhammad Rizieq Syihab (2011). This position is backed by the Majelis Ulama Indonesia, the Indonesian Council of Islamic Scholars, a government backed organization that in 2005 issued a fatwa labelling each as ‘haram’. The opposition was that secularism separates the religious from worldly affairs, pluralism argues that religious truth is relative rather than absolute and that liberalism only accepts religious doctrines that conform to its notions of free thought and individual rights. The MUI concluded that all three were hence haram for Muslims. See ‘Fatwa MUI’ (2010).

10. And often with very little in the way of any religious background.11. Interview with Habib Rizieq, Jakarta, June 2008. 12. ‘Populist’ is used here in the sense outlined by Albertazzi and McDonnell

(2008: 4) as ‘an ideology which pits a virtuous and homogeneous people


against a set of elites and dangerous “others” who are together depicted as depriving(or attempting to deprive) the sovereign people of their rights, values, prosperity, identity and voice’.

13. Interviews were done primarily with those associated with the FPI; however, they also included the FBR (Forum Betawi Rempug), FUI (Forum Umat Islam), Pagar (Pagar Akidah), Garis, the FSUI (Forum Silaturahmi Umat Islam) as well as the MUI (Majelis Ulama Indonesia).

14. Publicly, the commander of the Indonesian armed forces, General Wiranto, denied coordinating or funding the vigilante forces, claiming that they were a ‘spontaneous act of the people’. Pamswakarsa leaders themselves however named Wiranto as the architect of the force. See ‘Wiranto: “Semua Dipolitisir ke Saya”’ (1999) and ‘Pamswakarsa: Aktor atau Korban?’ (1999).

15. The gambling den was run by Christian Ambonese gangsters. The attack, intentionally or not, ultimately favoured a rival casino operated by tycoon and Suharto-family associate Tommy Winata. For a more detailed account of the background to Ketapang see Aditjondro (2001).

16. For more on the introduction of Sharia by-laws see Buehler (2008).17. This was a view often recounted by informants, usually citing as evidence an

increase in the number of places locally offering prostitution, places selling alcohol, etc.

18. Interview with Noegroho Djaejoesman, Jakarta, July 2006. Djajoesman also stated that he was not a ‘fundamentalist’, and that his support of the FPI and other Islamic militias was ‘purely strategic’, adding ‘Plus it was clear to me that they were really about feeding their stomachs. So in trying to keep their leaders fed I hoped to keep them under control’.

19. FPI members often stated that they considered Rizieq as reflecting character-istics of the Prophet Muhammad.

20. The FPI has till the present time remained unaffiliated. 21. Habib are Islamic scholars usually of Hadhrami-Arab descent, claiming to

have genealogical links to the family of the Prophet Muhammad. As such they have traditionally been held in high regard in Jakarta, particularly amongst indigenous Betawi communities.

22. Upper-middle class neighbourhoods and gated communities generally hire private security guards.

23. Interview with Habib Rizieq, Jakarta, 6 July 2011.24. Interview with FPI member, Jakarta, 2007.25. Interview with Sabri Lubis, FPI Secretary General , Jakarta, August 2006.26. Interview with FPI member, Tangerang, July 2011.27. Interview with Haji Mulyana, FPI branch leader, Cikarang, July 2011.28. In the past a focus has been raids on bars, clubs and eating places that

remain open during Ramadan. Other publicity orientated campaigns have included protests against the scheduled concert of US pop star Lady Gaga, objections to Latin telenovela and transgender beauty pageants amongst others.

29. For a detailed background of the campaign against Ahmadiyah in Indonesia, see Platzdasch (2011).

30. The most violent incident was in February 2011 in Cikesik, West Java when a crowd of around 1000, including FPI members, attacked the house of a local Ahmadiyah leader. Three Ahmadiyah members were killed. The FPI was not

Ian Wilson 271

the only group who attempted to use the Ahmadiyah issue as a means to gain more mainstream support. Osman notes that HTI in particular used the issue in a similar way. See Osman 2010.

31. Interview with Habib Rizieq, Jakarta, 6 July 2011. 32. For more background on this see the ICG report, ‘Indonesia: “Christianisation”

and intolerance’, 24 November 2010. 33. As one informant expressed it, ‘we didn’t sell our land to those Batak so they

could build churches!’ Interview with resident, Pekayon, Bekasi, July 2011. 34. Based on a 1969 decree, it stipulates that the construction of a place of worship

must be based on ‘clear and genuine need’ as determined by local government, and requires signatures of 60 households of a different faith. It has been rou-tinely criticized as discriminating against minority faiths. See Ropi (2007).

35. Confidential interview, bar owner, Jakarta, June 2011. 36. Interview with FPI branch leader, Bekasi, July 2012. 37. The exception to a general laxity in ritual obligations is in the group’s head-

quarters in the crowded inner-city district of Pertamburan, where militancy is ‘performed’ in a more conspicuous manner, due to the audience of fellow militants as well as the group’s leadership, in particular Habib Rizieq. The leadership has also aggressively critiqued liberal Muslims on the grounds that they rationalize avoidance of core aspects of Islamic practice.

38. This contrasted with other groups such as the Forum Umat Islam and the Majelis Mujahedin Indonesia where overt conscious displays of piety in the home, community and group were apparent and core to group iden-tity, and created a clear distinction between themselves and the broader community.

39. This in turn can also mean the presence of organized criminal networks that disrupt and extort the community more generally, or challenge the local youth’s territory.

40. Interview with FPI member, Pekayon, July 2011. 41. When questioned few could make a coherent connection between social

issues and maksiat in their own neighbourhoods and the impact of US impe-rialism or global forces.

42. Interview with FPI member, Bekasi, 4 July 2011. 43. Interview with Habib Rizieq, Jakarta, 6 July 2011.44. As the FPI’s leadership has gained a greater national profile it has sought to

crack down on this. Others have been more benign, such as in Riau where the FPI hosted sporting activities such as volleyball, in order to ‘tire youth out, so they are not tempted by the allure of nightlife and the vice it con-tains’. Interview with FPI Riau leader, Jakarta, August 2008. See also Witular, R.A. and H. D. Tampubolon (2011).

45. This was based on the fact that Greenpeace in the Netherlands receives funds from the national lotteries commission. None of this money, however, is used to fund the Indonesian branch. ‘FPI add voice to threats’ (2011).

46. On the back of these threats in October 2011 the head of Greenpeace UK was barred from entering Indonesia despite already having been granted a visa. See ‘FPI mengancam tindak Greenpeace’, 2011.

47. Interview with Ustad Mulyana, Cikarang 201148. Interview with Kyai Aaim, Jonggol, 10 July 201149. See also Lastania (2012b).


50. Interview with Banser member, Jakarta, 2010. This support, however, is largely confined to the greater Jakarta region. In Banser’s stronghold regions in East Java a number of FPI branches have been forcibly closed.

51. For an account of the background to the attack see ICG (2008). Al-Khathath had been a foundational member of the Forum Umat Islam, initially estab-lished in 2005 as a loose organizational network dominated by hard-line and vigilante groups, with the aim of facilitating communication, training programmes and da’awah activities. Since his expulsion from the HTI it has become a platform for his own views, especially via the Suara Islam newspa-per. He has worked closely with Munarman, a former HTI cadre and legal aid activist who is now the FPI spokesman.

52. The MUI was established in 1975 by Suharto in order to co-opt potential crit-ics of the regime and as a body to provide fatwas to legitimate government policy. In the post New Order environment the MUI has continued to retain government support and funding.

53. For more on the MUI–FPI relationship see Wilson (2008). 54. An ICG report from 2012 suggests a link between vigilantes and more

violent jihadism in Cirebon, North Java; however, this case appears as an isolated one rather than indicative of a trend or pattern.

55. The sermon, which included Abu Bakar Baashyir and Muhammad Al-Khaththath, can be viewed at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7RLCXNdKF4 (accessed 26 December 2013).

56. Interview with FPI member, Bekasi, 6 July 2011.57. Interview with FPI member, Jakarta, August 2008.58. Since the 1990s many middle- and upper-class Jakartans have moved to peri-

urban regions such as Cikarang in search of better lifestyles, usually in the form of exclusivist gated housing estates.

59. Interview with FPI member, Bekasi, 6 July 2011. He admitted that this posi-tion was not endorsed by the central leadership.

60. Interview with FPI leader, Jakarta, 2010. 61. The fatwa states that capitalism and socialism are both flawed economic sys-

tems, and that an Islamic economic system is the best alternative. See Front Pembela Islam (2012).

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275

Index

Aaim, Kyai 263Abu-al-Fotouh, Abdel

al-Muni’im 125, 126Abu Ismail, Hazim Salah 111, 126Abul Futuh, Abd al-Mun’in 111,

128Adami, Lahbib 231Afghanistan 62, 154, 212, 219

Soviet invasion 205, 210Taliban 1, 19, 205, 206, 211, 219US intervention 202

Ahmad, Nik Nazmi Nik 188Ahram, Ariel 252Akif, Mahdi 128Akyol, Mustafa 97Alam, Misbahul 256Al Anani, Khalil 148Al-Banna, Hasan 45, 56, 97, 108,

113, 122–3Algeria 1, 3, 13–14, 29, 34–6, 224–47

al-Haraka al-islamiyya al-musallaha 231–2

al-Jamaa’atu l-Salafiyyatu li l-Da’wati wa l-Qitaa 232

al-Jama’atal-islamiyya al-musallaha 1, 232

al-Jaysh al-islami lil-inqadh 232al-Qiyam al-islamiyya 229–30Association of Algerian Muslim

Ulama (AUMA) 225Bouteflika effect 235–44

role of energy in 238–44Charter of National Reconciliation

and Peace 237de-radicalization 237, 242disappearances 227Ennahda 231harakat al-islah al-watani 231harakat mutjama’ al-silm 231history 224–5Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) 226–7Islamism 232–3la boulitique 236

National Liberation Army (ALN) 228National Liberation Front (FLN) 225political dissent 229–35political unrest 226Salafi groups 231–2SONATRACH 238–9, 242Tandhim Al Qaeda fil Maghreb

al-Islami 232Algerian People’s Party 225al-Hamidi, Mohammed Hashimi 147al-Helmy, Burhanuddin 180, 191Ali, Azmin 188al-Iryan, Essam 122al-Qaeda 19, 206Al Shabbah 19al-Shatir, Khairat 111, 122, 126al-Sisi, Abdul Fattah 130al-Timisani, Umar 112–13al-Turabi, Hasan 154al-Za’farani, Ibrahim 125Aminuddin, Hilmy 56Ansar-e Hezabollah 82Ansar-e Velayat 82Ansari, Shaykh Morteza 84Anwar, Nurul Izzah 188Arab Spring 2, 5, 7, 10, 22, 32, 34,

44, 118, 165, 213, 216, 244Asri, Mohamad 180authoritarianism 1, 2, 7, 13, 22, 26,

27, 28, 30–4, 43, 44, 46see also individual countries

Awwas, Irfan 62Aydin, Eyup Vural 62Ayub Khan, Muhammad 208, 209–10

Ba’asyir, Abubakar 54Badawi, Abdullah Ahmad 184, 185Bakeraoglu, Mehmet 61Barker, Joshua 252Bayat, Asef 103, 123, 129, 154–5,

216–17, 228, 234, 267Bazargan, Mehdi 72Belaïd, Chokri 11, 135, 148–9

276 Index

Bellin, Eva 25Ben Abdessalem, Rafik 137Ben Badis, Abdelhamid 225Ben Jafar, Mustapha 136Bendjedid, Chadli 36, 226, 244, 245Ben Jelloun, Umar 168Benkiran, Abdellilah 167, 169Bhatti, Shahbaz 221Bhiri, Noureddine 137Bhutto, Zulfikar Ali 210, 218bin Laden, Osama 216Boko Haram 19Bouazizi, Mohammed 136Boumediene, Houari 226, 230–1Bourgois, Philippe 248, 269Bourguiba, Habib 135, 138, 145Bouteflika, Abdelaziz 235–44Bulut, Faik 62

capitalism 4, 23, 47, 192, 217crony 148global 5, 6, 15, 19, 30, 44market 7, 8, 20, 22, 25, 27, 28,

31–4, 46, 256Carlier, Omar 228Chaudhry, Iftikhar Muhammad 207civil society 7, 8, 19, 20, 21, 24, 45,

49, 51, 52, 57, 60, 78, 81, 109, 114–16, 124, 138, 140–1, 143, 188, 194, 204, 243

clash of civilizations 21–2colonialism 28–9, 139, 191conservatism 1, 9, 14, 21–2, 49, 79,

91, 100, 145, 184, 249, 251, 267conservative populism 28–30corruption 10, 22, 33, 34, 46, 55, 57,

110, 119–21, 146–7, 182, 186, 189, 192, 232–3

cronyism 148, 186

Dawoud, Khalid 125–6dissent see political dissentDjaballah, Abdallah 231Djajoesman, Noegroho 255, 256Dutch disease 243

economics 4, 19–41Islamist 117political economy 27–8

Egypt 1, 7, 10, 29, 34–6, 43, 45–6, 108–33

Al Nour Party 49charitable organizations 116–17Freedom and Justice Party 2, 8, 10,

45–6, 59, 108Gama’a al-Islamiyya 52infitah 111–12Islamic movements 123, 129Kifaya movement 122Muslim Brotherhood see Muslim

Brotherhoodpolitical alliances 48–9post-Mubarak 124–5post-Nasser 111–20Salafi groups 49, 59street politics 120–2Supreme Council of the Armed

Forces (SCAF) 124–5, 127, 129–30

Tahrir Square occupation 121Wasat Party 119

Egyptian Spring 124El-Baradei, Mohamed 122El Shater, Khairat 48–9Entelis, John P. 243Erbakan, Necmettin 48, 56, 97Erdogan, Recep Tayyip 62, 97, 99,

193Essebsi, Beji Caïd 149essentialist cultural approach 19extremism 1, 92, 219, 267

fanaticism 1Farhad, Diaa 61financial institutions 116, 120, 147,

226fringe organizations 50–4fundamentalism 1, 24, 183

Ghannouchi, Rached 11, 135, 136, 193

Dawla Madaniyya 11, 135, 137–41Nahda party 10–11, 134–53

global capitalism 5, 6, 15, 19, 30, 44Golpaygani, Grand Ayatolla

Mohammad-Reza 84gradualist movements 11, 127,

154–6, 158, 166

Index 277

Great Eastern Islamic Fighters Front 51

Gül, Abdulla 97Gülen, Fethullah 97, 98Gulerce, Huseyin 61

Habib, Muhammad 128Habibie, B.J. 55, 253Hamzah, Tengku Razaleigh 182Harakat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM) 206Hasan, Danu Muhammad 63Hashemi-Rafsanjani, Akbar 80Hizb al-Istiqlal 156, 172Hizb ut-Tahrir 53, 61, 143, 146, 268Hizb ut-Tahrir Indonesia 251, 264hokumat-e dini 69Husein, Adel 117Husein, Sayyid 256

Ibrahim, Anwar 183, 190Ibrahimi, Ahmed Taleb 230imagined solidarity 123–4Imron, Ali 62, 63inclusion-moderation

hypothesis 178Indonesia 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 14–15, 27,

29, 33–5, 61Anti-Corruption Commission 55Association of Indonesian Muslim

Intellectuals (ICMI) 55class tensions 265–7Darul Islam movement 53–4, 57Forum Umat Islam 264Furkon 253Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia 251, 264Ikatan Mahasiswa

Muhammadiyah 264Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) 14–15,

53, 248, 250–1, 255–6amar makrufnahi mungkar 248,

258, 268history and politics 256–8relations with other Islamic

organizations 262–5vigilantism 258–62

Islamic organization for elites (ICMI) 35

Islamic vigilantism 248–74Betawi gangs 254–5

Jamaah Anshorut Tauhid (JAT) 53Jemaah Islamiyah 53, 54, 60, 62,

251Jemaah Tarbiyah 268Justice and Prosperity Party

(PKS) 46–7, 49–50, 55, 250Komando Jihad 54Majelis Mujahidin Indonesia

(MMI) 53, 60, 264, 271Majelis Ulama Indonesia 269maksiat 258, 261, 263, 265–6Muhammadiyah 46, 49, 250Nahdatul Ulama 29–30, 46, 49,

250, 257, 263National Awakening Party (PKB) 55National Mandate Party (PAN) 56Negara Islam Indonesia 251New Order 46, 49–50, 53, 55, 59,

252, 254Pamswakarsa 57, 253Partai Persatuan Pembangunan

(PPP) 257Pemuda Pancamarga 255Pemuda Pancasila 253, 255political alliances 49political dissent 42–65

fringe organizations 50–4models and histories 54–8social bases 44–7

Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) 54, 61

infitah 111–12, 160institutionalized politics 78–83institutions

financial 116, 120, 147, 226and Islamic politics 25–7

International Monetary Fund (IMF) 24, 120

Iqtidar, Humeira 217Iran 1, 2, 8–9, 155

‘approbatory supervision’ 81Cultural Revolution 72Executives of Construction 81Freedom Movement 66houzeh-ye ‘elmiyeh 71institutionalized politics 78–83

Khomeini era 78–80post-Khomeini period 80–3

Islamic Revivalist Movement 70–1

278 Index

Iran – continuedKurdish Democratic Party 71Labour House 71mujtahids 66Muslim People’s Republican

Party 71National Democratic Front 71People’s Mojahedin

Organization 71political dissent 66–88

postrevivalist 69–78‘principle-ists’ 83public politics 71–4‘reformists’ 81Western ‘cultural aggression’ 81

Iraq 29, 80, 94, 110, 120Islamic Army of Salvation (AIS) 1Islamic fallacy 6Islamic government 2–3, 15

see also individual countriesIslamic Harekat 50Islamic Jihad 51, 52Islamic Liberals Network 269Islamic movements

Egypt 123, 129Malaysia 180–5Morocco 155–9, 166–71Tunisia 135–7, 148see also individual movements and

partiesIslamic politics 19–41

conservative populism 28–30institutions 25–7market authoritarian rule 30–1modern market capitalism 31–4political dissent see political dissentpolitical economy 27–8radicalization 1, 6, 30–1, 113, 149,

249secularism 23, 31–6, 94, 99, 103,

138–40, 144, 150, 217, 250, 256, 259, 264, 266

Islamic Republican Party 71Islamic Revivalist Movement 70–1Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) 1, 34Islamic vigilantism 248–74

methods 251–2post-authoritarian

Indonesia 252–4

Islamization 12, 69, 83, 182, 202–3, 208–15, 217–18

Islamo-nationalism 228Izzat, Mahmoud 128

Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) 206Jamaluddin, Khairy 185Jebali, Hamadi 137, 149Jema’ah Islamiyah 8jihadists 50, 201, 205, 244Jinna, Mohammad Ali 208Junejo, Mohammed Khan 220

Kadivar, Mohsen 9, 69, 74–8, 85Karoui, Nabil 143Kartosuwiryo, S.M. 54Kasravi, Ahmad 84Kemal, Mustafa (Ataturk) 93,

94Kessler, Clive 6Khamenei, Ayotollah Ali 80Khatami, Mohammad 69, 81–2Khomeini, Ayatollah Ruhollah 68,

71, 72, 78–80Kifaya movement 122Kurdistan Workers’ Party 94Kusno, Abidin 254

Labat, Sévérine 229Larayedh, Ali 137Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) 206liberalism 4, 9, 22–4, 89, 104, 140,

184, 250, 259see also political liberalization

Libya 32, 34, 134, 147, 240Lieven, Anatol 209localism 103, 210, 219, 254Lourimi, Lajmi 150Lowi, Miriam R. 242–3, 245Lubis, Sobri 264

Maarif, Ahmmad Syafi 263Madani, Abbasi 230Mahathir Mohamad 182Mahjub, Ali-Reza 71Malaysia 3, 12–13, 177–200

Angkatan Belia Islam Malaysia (ABIM) 181–2

Barisan Nasional 177, 179

Index 279

Bumiputera Commercial and Industrial Community 192

Democratic Action Party (DAP) 177, 191

Change! 189dissident movements 185–90Federal Land Development

Authority (FELDA) schemes 181

industrialization 178–9Islamic movements 180–5Melayu Baru 185–6New Economic Policy 179Pakatan Rakyat 177, 187Pan-Malayan Islamic Party 180Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS) 3,

12–13, 177–85, 190–2Islamic dissent 190–4Negara Berkebajikan 189Negara Islam 184

Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) 177, 187–8, 190

New Malaysia Agenda 189Parti Rakyat Malaysia 184political economy 178–80Reformasi 186, 188–9social transformation 178–80United Malays National

Organization (UNMO) 177, 180, 182–3, 185, 188, 190

welfare state 188–9Malik, Fazlur Rhaman 210market authoritarian rule 30–1market capitalism 7, 8, 20, 22, 25,

27, 28, 31–4, 46, 256Martín, Iván 237Marx, Karl 28Marzouki, Moncef 136Matta, Anis 61, 62Mawdudi 97, 208, 210Mehsud, Baitullah 207Middle East 8, 35–6moderation 11, 48, 50, 81, 84, 85,

155, 178modernization theory 22–3Morocco 2, 11–12, 154–76

al-’Adl wa al-Ihsan 157–8al-Salafiya al-Jihadiya 158al-Usra 158

Casablanca riots 161Conféderation général des entreprises

du Maroc 162constitutional reforms 163, 165economy 160–1

current account balance 162Gini coefficient 162

Equity and Reconciliation Commission 166

gradualist movements 154–5, 171Hizb al-Istiqlal 156human rights 169Islamic movements 155–9,

166–71al-Islah wa al-Tajdid 155, 165,

168, 169al-Jama’a al-Islamiya 167al-Shabiba al-Islamiya 156, 167Harakat al-Tawhid wa al-Islah

(MUR) 154, 168–70Jama’at al-Adl wa al-Ihsan 157Jama’at al-Tabligh wa al-Da’wa 157King’s role 159–60Kutla alliance 164, 165, 166, 170labour conflicts 164Makhzan regime 12, 159, 171Party of Justice and Development

(PJD) 154, 156–7political liberalization 160, 162,

165, 168–9, 172Project of National Action for

Integration of Women in Development 169

state-society relations 159–66structural adjustment pro-

gramme 160, 161–2unemployment rate 164Union nationale des forces

populaires 161women’s rights 165–6

Morsi, Mohamed 45, 99, 108, 111, 122, 126, 130

see also Muslim BrotherhoodMubarak, Husni 8, 10, 30, 35, 36,

43, 45–6, 51, 52, 61, 99, 109, 113–14, 121

Mubarak, Jamal 121Musharraf, Pervez 204–5Muslim bourgeoisie 92, 103–4

280 Index

Muslim Brotherhood 2, 8, 10, 33, 44, 45–6, 48–9, 51–2, 56–7, 59, 91, 99, 108–33

diversification and outreach 113–18Nizam al-Khass 51in opposition 108–11organizational structure 124–6political agendas 118–20politicization of 114–18Qutb 56street politics 120–2survival strategies 122–4

Muti, Abdelkarim 168

Nahdlatul Ulama 29, 46, 49, 250, 257, 263, 266, 268

Nahnah, Mahfoud 231Nashir, H. Haedar 61Nasser, Gamal Abdel 10, 29, 46, 52, 109Nasution, Saifuddin 188Nateq-Nuri, Ali-Akbar 81neoliberalism 24–5New Partnership for African

development (NEPAD) 240Nizam al-Khass 51North Africa 35–6Nour, Mohamed 62Nursi, Said 45

Organisation of African Unity 239–40

orientalist historical analysis 21–2Ottoman Empire 28, 104Özal, Turgut 96Ozman, Mustafa 62, 63

Pakistan 2, 13, 201–23Awami National Party (ANP) 212Constitution 201economic growth 214Federal Administered Tribal Areas

(FATA) 206–7Islamic parties

Jama’at-i-Islami 13, 203, 208–12Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam 13, 203Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal

(MMA) 210–11weakness of 208–12

Islami Jami’at-ITulabah 209

Islamization 203, 208–15, 217–18Islam as security tool 204–7Jihadists 205Muhajir Quami Movement

(MQM) 211political dissent 213–18political violence 201–3, 207Red Mosque incident 207social change 213–18Tehrik Taliban Pakistan (TTP) 206–7,

220urbanization 214–16Women’s Action Forum (WAF) 218women’s rights 217–18

Pakistan Muslim League (PML) 208Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) 208Pakistan Tahreek-e-Insaf (PTI) 216paramilitary groups 8, 50–1, 207,

237, 255, 257, 263, 264see also individual movements and

partiespassive revolution 114, 154–5petty bourgeoisie, decline of 28–30Piskin, Hatice Karahan 62political alliances 47–50political dissent 2–3

Algeria 229–35Indonesia 42–65

fringe organizations 50–4models and histories 54–8social bases 44–7

Iran 66–88postrevivalist 69–78

Malaysia 190–4Pakistan 213–18

political economy 27–8political liberalization 160, 162, 165,

168–9, 172see also liberalism

political violence 201–3, 207see also terrorism

populism 3, 4, 8, 10, 44, 47, 58, 116, 178, 204, 216, 219, 227, 244, 245

conservative 28–30of contestation 228, 232post-populism 116reactionary 31of regulation 228re-invention of 232

Index 281

post-Islamism 58, 74, 103, 228post-populism 116postrevivalist dissent 69–78

Islamic Revivalist Movement 70–1Protestantism 23

Qaderi, Mumtaza 213–14Qaradawi, Yusuf 193Qutb, Sayid 45, 97

Rabi’i, Ali 71radicalization 1, 6, 30–1, 113, 149, 249Raisuni, Ahmed 168Ramadan, Tariq 193Ramli, Rafizi 188Rashid, Ahmed 216rational choice 24, 25, 37reactionary populism 31Red Mosque incident 207religious politics 24, 25, 26, 28, 37, 77

see also Islamic politicsRichard, Alan 109–10Rizieq, Habib 251, 256, 266, 268Roberts, Hugh 238Roy, Oliver 228

Sabbahi, Hamdin 126Sabu, Muhammad 195Sadat, Anwar 1, 109–10Safavi, Navvab 70Salafi groups

Algeria 231Egypt 49, 59Tunisia 141–3

Salleh, Fuziah 188Saudi Arabia, Wahhabisim 112secularism 23, 31–6, 94, 99, 103,

138–40, 144, 150, 217, 250, 256, 259, 264, 266

secular politics 20, 22–4, 26, 31, 52, 120

Selon, Habib 262September 11 1, 5Shaharin, Bardrul Hisham 188Sharia law 43, 45, 48, 60, 68, 73, 96,

100, 114, 123, 143, 254ahkam-e Eslam 73hezabollhis 68

Sharif, Nawaz 204

Silverstein, Paul 236social movements 4, 12, 42, 123,

145, 154, 160, 191, 205, 217–19, 235

Soeharto 1, 5, 8, 30, 34–5, 43, 46, 49, 50, 54–5, 58

Soltani, Sheikh Abdellatif 230Soroush, Abdelkarim 69, 139Southeast Asia 8Stora, Benjamin 236Storm, Lise 244street politics 120–2Sungkar, Abdullah 54Supendi, Jusuf 63Syakur, Sobarin 61Syria 29, 90, 94, 134

Taliban 1, 19, 205, 206, 211, 219tarbiyah movements 46, 49, 56, 57, 63tariqa movements 44, 51Taseer, Salman 213tawahush 141Tedjini, Hachemi 229–30Tehrik Taliban Pakistan (TTP) 206–7,

220terrorism 42, 50, 202–3, 249

Red Mosque incident 207September 11 1, 5war on terror 1, 5, 207, 239, 241

Tilly, Charles 67tolerance see liberalismTounsi, Ali 243Tugal, Cihan 155Tunisia 2, 10–11, 36, 103, 134–53

authenticity 139–40civil society 140–1Dawla Madaniyya 11, 135, 137–41governance 141–4infitah 160Islamic movements 135–7, 148Nahda party 10–11, 134–53

implosion of 148–50social and economic

challenges 146–8as social movement 144–6

post-colonial critique 137–8Salafi groups 141–3state hegemony vs. religion 138–9women’s rights 145

282 Index

Turam, Berna 251Turkey 1, 2, 5, 7, 9–10, 43, 44–5,

89–107Alevi Muslims 94Anatolian Tigers 48, 96–7Directorate of Religious Affairs 95Fethullah Gülen movement 44–5Fighters of the Islamic Revolution

(IDAM) 50‘free-lance Muslims’ 97fringe organizations 50–1Gülen movement 92, 98Hizbullah 51, 62Islamic Liberation Party Front

(IKP-C) 50as Islamic state 93–6Justice and Development Party

(AKP) 8, 9–10, 19, 32–3, 44, 48, 59, 89, 92, 97, 99, 102

Kurds 94laicism 94–7Muslim bourgeoisie 92, 103–4Nakshibendi movement 98Ottoman Empire 28, 104Refah (Welfare) Party 48, 51Republican People’s Party 98–9as secular state 98–102Suleymanci movement 98Virtue Party 97Welfare Party 97women’s political

participation 100–2Turkish Fighters of the Universal

Islamic War of Liberation (EIK-TM) 50

Turkish Islamic Fighters Army (IMO) 50

Turkish Islamic Liberation Army (IKO) 50

Turkish Islamic Liberation Front (TIK-C) 50

Turkish Islamic Liberation Union (TIKB) 50

Turkish-Islamic Synthesis 96Turkish Sharia Revenge Commandos

(TSIK) 50

ul Haq, Zia 208, 210, 213, 220ummah 8, 42, 43, 44, 46, 47, 49, 57,

60, 140unemployment 164Universal Brotherhood Front-Sharia

Revenge Squad (EKC-SIM) 50

Vajpayee, Atal Bihari 206

Wahhabi Islam 68Wahid, Abdurahman 35, 263war on terror 1, 5, 207, 239, 241Waterbury, John 109–10Weber, Max 22–3, 26women’s rights

Morocco 165–6, 169Pakistan 217–18Tunisia 145Turkey 100–2

World Bank 24, 120World Sharia Liberation Army

(DSKO) 50World Trade Organisation 162

Yasin, Abdessalam 157–8, 172Yusufi, Abderrahman 165, 169

Zoubir, Yahia 241

between dissent and power: the transformation of islamic politics in the middle east and asia

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