Islamist movements and the problem of democracy in the Arab world

Michael Herb

Georgia State University

herb@gsu.edu

Please contact the author for the most recent draft of this paper before citing.

Revised draft of a paper prepared for delivery at the 2005 Annual Meeting of the Middle East Studies Association, November 19 – November 22, 2005.

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Introduction

Walking in Luxor in early 1993, outside the tourist part of the town, I came across a wall

on which someone had written "Today Algeria, tomorrow Egypt." The author meant this as a

promise. To others, however, it was a threat. And it is in that threat, some scholars of Arab

politics have argued, that we can find an explanation for the failure of Arab countries to

democratize.1 Elections, after all, preceded the Algerian violence. The Algerian catastrophe

reverberated in the rest of the Arab world, where Islamist groups can be expected to win the

largest share of opposition votes in any free election. Yet their political programs profoundly

threaten (or are perceived to threaten) not just the existing regimes, but also a broad array of non-

Islamist political forces. This raises the risks of a transition to democracy and makes it more

difficult to provide Dahlian mutual guarantees not only to the former regime, but also to non-

Islamists and foreign powers. Thus non-Islamists, who might otherwise strongly favor

democracy, instead support (or tolerate) existing authoritarian regimes.

Islamist political groups, of course, exist in non-Arab as well as Arab countries. Yet a

number of Muslim majority countries have made transitions to democracy in the period since

1979. If these countries made transitions despite the presence of strong Islamist groups, we

would have reason to doubt the hypothesis that it is the fear of Islamist groups that discourages

democracy in the Arab world. In this paper I examine each of these transitions. I find that in

almost all cases democratization has occurred where secular parties have been expected to win

the first democratic elections. I then compare these countries to Arab countries today, and find

that systematic differences between the two groups of countries give us no reason to reject the

hypothesis that fear of Islamists prevents transitions in the Arab world. The problem of

democracy in the Arab world is not so much the radicalism of Islamist parties, but the weakness

of non-Islamist parties.

1 Ellen Lust-Okar, 2004, "Institutions, Historical Legacies and the Failure of Liberalization in the Middle East and

North Africa," Paper presented at the annual conference of the American Political Science Association (Chicago);

Eva Bellin, 2004, "The Robustness of Authoritarianism in the Middle East," Comparative Politics 36, no. 2

(January); Daniel Brumberg, 2003, Liberalization Versus Democracy: Understanding Arab Political Reform

(Washington D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace), p. 9. The point has been made in policy circles as

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Islamists, non-Islamists, and the absence of transitions

No single factor explains why there is so little democracy in the Arab world. The region's

relative lack of wealth (except oil), its non-Western cultural heritage, and its durable regime

types (single-party and monarchical regimes, rather than military regimes) all contribute to its

authoritarianism.2 Yet world regions with similar obstacles – notably sub-Saharan Africa – have

seen at least some transitions to democracy. The puzzle, then, is determine what makes the Arab

world so resolutely undemocratic. A number of scholars have found an explanation in the role of

Islamist groups.3 In 1993 Saad Eddin Ibrahim noted that regimes used the threat of Islamist

groups as a survival strategy:

The ruling elites … dangle the prospect of power sharing to … secular

opposition groups to neutralize them, if not induce their outright

support. Although many such groups may have serious distrust of and

misgivings vis-à-vis the regimes, their deeper fears of Islamic militants

may drive them into acceptance of regime accommodation….4

Some scholars have noted that Islamists threaten not only domestic non-Islamists but also

major Western powers that otherwise might support democratizing movements.5

well: Jon Alterman, 2005, "Middle East Freedom Needs a True Shift to the Centre," Financial Times, March 29. 2 Barbara Geddes, 1999, "What Do We Know About Democratization after Twenty Years?," Annual Review of

Political Science 2, no. 1. On monarchies see Jason M. Brownlee, 2004, "Ruling Parties and Durable

Authoritarianism," CDDRL Working Papers no. 23, p. 4. 3 John Waterbury, 1994, "Democracy without Democrats?: The Potential for Political Liberalization in the Middle

East," in Democracy without Democrats? : The Renewal of Politics in the Muslim World, ed. Ghassan Salamah

(London: I.B. Tauris Publishers). Simon Bromley, 1993, "The Prospects for Democracy in the Middle East," in

Prospects for Democracy : North, South, East, West, ed. David Held (Stanford: Stanford University Press).

Emmanuel Sivan, 2000, "Illusions of Change," Journal of Democracy 11, no. 3 (July); Henry Munson, 1993,

Religion and Power in Morocco (New Haven: Yale University Press), p. 178; Najib Ghadbian, 1997,

Democratization and the Islamist Challenge in the Arab World (Boulder: Westview). 4 Saad Eddin Ibrahim, 1993, "Crises, Elites, and Democratization in the Arab-World," Middle East Journal 47, no. 2

(Spring), p. 303. 5 Jason Brownlee, 2002, "...And yet They Persist: Explaining Survival and Transition in Neopatrimonial Regimes,"

Studies in Comparative International Development 37, no. 3 (Fall), pp. 55-56.

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The existence of democratic transitions in a number of Muslim majority countries outside

the Arab world poses a challenge to this argument. Indeed Stepan and Robertson, when they

observe that the democracy gap is "Arab more than Muslim," conclude that Arab

authoritarianism has little or nothing to do with Islam.6 Yet it may be that there is something

different about Islam – or, more specifically, the way that Islam is used politically – in Arab

countries. Ellen Lust-Okar, to my knowledge, makes the most determined attempt to examine

this possibility. In an unpublished article she compares the political role of Islamist groups in

Muslim majority countries, including the non-Arab ones. What makes the Arab countries

different, she argues, is an historical legacy of repression of Islamists which drives the Islamists

to violence, makes it hard to determine their electoral strength, and "create[s] a good deal of

uncertainty about their true intentions."7 These consequences of the exclusion of Islamist groups

makes cooperation between Islamists and non-Islamists difficult to achieve. Outside the Arab

world, by contrast, the opposition did not suffer from the same level of fear, among secularists,

of an "Islamist threat." 8

Study design

I examine all transitions in Muslim majority countries in the period 1979 to 2005. I leave

aside non-Arab countries in which transitions did not occur. The failure to democratize does not

provide evidence either way for the argument that fear of Islamists blocks democracy in the Arab

world because I am not arguing that this factor is the only reason for the absence of democracy in

any country. By contrast, democratization even in the presence of an Islamist party expected to

win the first democratic elections casts real doubt on the thesis I am interested in. Put differently,

transitions can falsify the argument, but persistent authoritarianism cannot.

6 Alfred Stepan and Graeme B. Robertson, 2003, "An 'Arab' More Than 'Muslim' Electoral Gap," Journal of

Democracy 14, no. 3 (July), pp. 41-42. 7 Lust-Okar, "Institutions, Historical Legacies and the Failure of Liberalization," p. 17. 8 See also Mohammed M. Hafez, 2003, Why Muslims Rebel: Repression and Resistance in the Islamic World

(Boulder: Lynne Rienner), p. 50; James Piscatori, 2000, "Islam, Islamists, and the Electoral Principle in the Middle

East," ISIM Papers.

5

I deal only with transitions to democracy and the accompanying elections. The problem

of democratization in the Arab world is not the absence of consolidation, but instead the absence

of transitions. I identify the universe of transitions using Polity IV data.9 In some cases the

democratic interlude was at best fleeting. I include these transitions because the Arab world

lacked even ambiguous transitions. I start with 1979 because the Iranian revolution, for non-

Islamists throughout the Muslim world, vividly brought home the risks of helping an Islamist

movement overthrow an authoritarian regime. I look only at countries with clear Muslim

majorities – I am interested in countries where Muslims disagree about the role of Islam in

politics, not in countries in which Muslims and non-Muslims compete with each other for control

of the state.

I exclude some Arab cases. Confessional issues ensure that Lebanese elections will not

lead to the domination of the country by any single Islamist group, including Hizbullah. Thus

Lebanon's nascent transition to democracy does not suggest that the rest of the Arab world has

emerged out from under the shadow of the Algerian catastrophe. I exclude transitions that

occurred as a result of foreign occupation, and this absolves me of the task of figuring out

whether or not Iraq or Afghanistan have made transitions.

In this study I follow much of the literature and define an Islamist political group as one

that proposes to solve the political predicaments of Muslim societies by setting up an Islamic

state and imposing Islamic law (shari'a).10 The term 'Islamists' corresponds to the Arabic

islamiyyun that is frequently used in the Arab press. Some specific movements do not clearly fit

inside or outside this definition, and I will discuss these cases in more detail. It should be kept in

mind that I am saying nothing here about the intrinsic compatibility between Islamist thought

and democracy (much less Islam and democracy): in the theory I am examining it is the reaction

of non-Islamists to the prospect of Islamist victories in democratic elections that prevents

transitions.

9 I use three indicators in the Polity data instead of the problematic composite POLITY measure: XRCOMP,

XRCONST and PARCOMP. For details, contact the author. 10 This formulation is from Gilles Kepel, 2002, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam (Cambridge: Harvard University

Press), pp. 27-28.

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Table 1: Democratic transitions in Muslim majority countries, 1979 – 2005 Islamic groups

expected to win a plurality in the first election?

Ideological character of parties winning more than 10% of the vote in post-transition elections (in order of votes won).

Was the authoritarian regime more Islamist than its leading opponents?

Albania None present

Bangladesh No 1. Secular, right of center

2. Secular, left of center

3. Islamist

4. Former regime party

No

Indonesia No 1. Secular/left

2. Former regime party

3. Traditional Islamic

4. Islamist former regime party

Yes

Kyrgyzstan 2005

None present

Mali None present

Niger 1993 None present

Niger 1999 None present

Pakistan No 1. Secular

2. Conservative, associated with previous regime, with some Islamists

Yes

Senegal None present (as parties)

Sudan Yes 1. Traditional Islamic

2. Sufi

3. Muslim Brothers

Yes

Turkey No

Algeria 1991 (for comparison)

Unclear 1. Islamist

2. Former regime party

No

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Transitions

In each of these cases I ask three questions: (1) what role did Islamists and non-Islamists

have in the transition?; (2) did Islamist parties compete in the first democratic elections, and did

they have any prospect of winning these elections?; (3) was the authoritarian regime itself

Islamist?; (4) if Islamist parties were weak or absent, why was this the case? I begin my

discussion of the cases with an examination of the failed transition in Algeria, as it provides a

useful contrast for the successful cases in other Muslim majority countries.

The failed transition in Algeria

In the late 1980s the Algerian president – Chadli Benjedid – initiated a liberalization that

resulted in elections to the national parliament in 1991. Economic crises and regime infighting

contributed to his decision to liberalize.11 A variety of parties contested these elections, including

the Islamic Salvation Front (the FIS). This party, despite its internal fissures, was Islamist in the

sense that it called for an Islamic state and the imposition of the shari'a.12

The FIS had trounced the FLN in 1990 municipal elections, but at least some members of

the regime hoped that a new electoral law, wrongly thought favorable to the FLN, could prevent

or limit a FIS victory in legislative elections.13 In the event the FIS won the first round of the

elections in 1991, securing 47% of the vote. The FLN came in second, with only 23%. The FLN

won 15 seats, to the 188 won by the FIS.14 Had the second round taken place, the FIS likely

11 William B. Quandt, 1998, Between Ballots and Bullets: Algeria's Transition from Authoritarianism (Washington,

D.C.: Brookings Institution Press), pp. 40-44, 50-41; Michael Willis, 1997, The Islamist Challenge in Algeria: A

Political History (Washington Square, N.Y.: New York University Press), pp. 126-128; Hugh Roberts, 2003, The

Battlefield Algeria, 1988-2002: Studies in a Broken Polity (London: Verso), pp. 118-120. 12 Ahmed Rouadjia, 1995, "Discourse and Strategy of the Algerian Islamist Movement (1986-1992)," in The Islamist

Dilemma: The Political Role of Islamist Movements in the Contemporary Arab World, ed. Laura Guazzone

(Reading, Berkshire: Ithaca Press), pp. 80-83. 13 Quandt, Between Ballots and Bullets, pp. 52, 54; Mohand Salah Tahi, 1992, "The Arduous Democratization

Process in Algeria," Journal of Modern African Studies 30, no. 3 (September), pp. 402, 409; Willis, The Islamist

Challenge, pp. 171-173; Rouadjia, "Algerian Islamist Movement," p. 92. 14 Tahi, "Arduous Democratization Process," p. 407.

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would have captured a parliamentary majority exceeding two-thirds of the seats. Faced with this

worrisome prospect the Algerian military cancelled the second round of the elections, with little

Western protest. Islamists then rebelled against the military regime, a civil war ensued, and

perhaps 100,000 died.

Table 2: Results of the first round of the 1991 Algerian parliamentary elections

Party Political orientation % of vote # of seats

FIS (Islamic Salvation Front) Islamist 47.3% 188

FLN (National Liberation Front) Regime party 23.4 15

FFS (Front des Forces Socialistes) Berber, secular 7.4 25

All others -- 21.9 3

This bitter experience had a profound effect in other Arab countries. Among secular elites

it reinforced the lessons of the Iranian revolution of 1979, but added the further caution that an

Islamist takeover could be achieved through democratic elections. Non-Arab Muslim countries,

however, successfully made transitions to democracy in the period in which Algeria failed: how

did they escape the Algerian dilemma, and what does this suggest about the prospects for

transition in other Arab countries?

Albania

Albania's 1991 transition (to a short-lived, marginal democracy) followed the collapse of

communism in Eastern Europe. Islamist groups did not pose a threat to non-Islamists in the

transition because there were no organized Islamist groups in the country. The absence of

Islamist groups is sufficiently explained by a single factor: the Communist regime brutally

suppressed all religious life in Albania, be it Islamist, Sufi, Catholic or Orthodox. No

institutionalized religion to speak of survived the Communist period. The regime shut down all

mosques and churches and "imprisoned, tortured, or executed" most religious personnel, while

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most of the remainder died of natural causes without training a new generation of religious

leaders.15

Bangladesh

Bangladesh democratized in 1991 following mass demonstrations against the

authoritarian regime led by students, trade unions, and the major opposition parties, secularist

and Islamist alike. The president, Hossain Muhammad Ershad, lost power when he lost the

support of the military.16

Two powerful non-Islamist parties were expected to win the first democratic elections,

and did so. The center-right Bangladesh National Party (BNP) came in first with 31% of the

vote: the party opposed the ardent secularism of the Awami League, but was not Islamist. One

observer noted that it recognized "the Islamic nature of the Bangladeshi population while staying

far short of any concept of an Islamic state."17 The determinedly secularist Awami League won

30% of the vote, unexpectedly behind the BNP. The overtly Islamist Jamaat-i-Islami Bangladesh

(JI) won 12%, mostly in areas with larger Hindu minorities. Some expected the JI to do better,

but it was not thought that would rival the AL or BNP.18 Ershad's Jatiya party also received 12%

of the vote; in power, Ershad had modified the constitution to declare Islam to be the state

religion, in an effort to deflect criticism from a vociferous opposition.19 Yet, like the BNP, 15 Nicholas Pano, 1997, "The Process of Democratization in Albania," in Politics, Power, and the Struggle for

Democracy in South-East Europe, eds. Karen Dawisha and Bruce Parrott (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press),

p. 329; Nathalie Clayer, 1997, "Islam, State and Society in Post-Communist Albania," in Muslim Identity and the

Balkan State, eds. Hugh Poulton and Suha Taji-Farouki (Washington Square, N.Y.: New York University Press). 16 Steven I. Wilkinson, 2000, "Democratic Consolidation and Failure: Lessons from Bangladesh and Pakistan,"

Democratization 7, no. 3 (Autumn), pp. 212-217. 17 Craig Baxter, 1992, "Bangladesh in 1991: A Parliamentary System," Asian Survey 32, no. 2 (Feb), p. 163; Craig

Baxter and Syedur Rahman, 1991, "Bangladesh Votes-1991: Building Democratic Institutions," Asian Survey 31,

no. 8 (August), p. 686. The BNP nonetheless cooperated with the JI in the indirect elections to the 30 seats reserved

for women. 18 Baxter and Rahman, "Bangladesh Votes," p. 691; Baxter, "Bangladesh in 1991," p. 162; Mohammad Mohabb

Khan and Syed Anwar Husain, 1996, "Process of Democratization in Bangladesh," Contemporary South Asia 5, no.

3. 19 Ali Riaz, 2004, God Willing: The Politics of Islamism in Bangladesh (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield), p.

38.

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Ershad's courting of the religious-minded fell short of Islamism: only the JI supported an Islamic

state and imposition of the shari'a. Overall, there was very little prospect that elections would

lead to an Islamist victory in Bangladesh.

The strength of the secular parties owes something to the fact that each of them traced its

origins to a former regime of recent memory. Indeed, the AL was (and is) led by the daughter of

Bangladesh's first president while the wife of the military strongman who ruled from 1975 to

1981 leads the BNP. Ershad himself leads the Jatiya Party.

Table 3: Results of the 1991 Bangladeshi parliamentary elections20

Party Political orientation % of vote # of seats

BNP (Bangladeshi Nationalist Party) Center right 31 140

AL (Awami League) Center left 30 88

JI (Jamaat-i-Islami Bangladesh) Islamist 12 18

JP (Jatiya Party) Former regime party 12 35

All others (8 parties + independents) 15 19

Several factors led to the relative marginalization of the Islamist JI. The presence of the

AL and BNP limited its electoral appeal: the Islamist party did not become the default choice for

those who opposed the regime for non-religious reasons. The JI also suffered from a serious

historical handicap: many Bangladeshis remember well, and not fondly, that the JI sided with

Pakistan in Bangladesh's bloody 1971 war of independence. Further, civil society groups, and

especially NGOs, have a presence in Bangladesh that far exceeds that in Pakistan or Arab

countries. By some accounts, 15% of the population works with NGOs at any one time.21 These

NGOs, which operate in urban and rural areas, have a conflictual relationship with the Islamist

parties and self-consciously elaborate an ideology that provides a direct alternative to Islamist

ideology.22 As a consequence of these factors, most observers note the moderation of

20 Zillur R. Khan, 1997, "Bangladesh's Experiments with Parliamentary Democracy," Asian Survey 37, no. 6 (June),

p. 581; Baxter and Rahman, "Bangladesh Votes," p. 690. This does not include women's seats indirectly selected by

members of parliament after the election. 21 Wilkinson, "Democratic Consolidation and Failure," p. 217. 22 Riaz, God Willing, pp. 121-130; Elora Shehabuddin, 1999, "Beware the Bed of Fire: Gender, Democracy, and the

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Bangladeshi Islam – in a typical comment one writes that “few observers consider radical

Islamism a significant threat in Bangladesh.”23

Indonesia

Indonesia made its transition to democracy in 1999, following protests against the regime

by a wide variety of opposition groups. The regime failed when a faction of the military forced

president Suharto to resign.

As expected, Megawati Sukarnoputri's Indonesian Democratic Party-Struggle (PDI-P)

won a plurality of votes in the first democratic elections.24 Megawati is the daughter of former

president Sukarno (deposed in 1966), and won support from secular and nationalist voters,

including Javanese syncretists whose Islam is influenced by Hinduism and animism.25 The PDI-

P enjoyed the backing of the 'red and white' (that is, the nationalist, multiethnic and anti-Islamist)

faction of the military in the late 1990s, which used the party as a tool against Suharto and the

rightist faction in the military.26 Yet the party was not a mere tool of the military: it gained

substantial popularity and prominence as the opposition to the regime accelerated in the 1990s.

The former ruling party, Golkar, came in second in the 1991 balloting, drawing support from the

bureaucracy and minorities on outer islands.27

Jama`at-I Islami in Bangladesh," Journal of Women's History 10, no. 4 (Winter); M. Rashiduzzaman, 1994, "The

Liberals and the Religious Right in Bangladesh," Asian Survey 34, no. 11. 23 Howard B. Schaffer, 2002, "Back and Forth in Bangladesh," Journal of Democracy 13, no. 1, p. 79; Yasmeen

Murshed and Nazim Kamran Choudhury, 1997, "Bangladesh's Second Chance," Journal of Democracy 8, no. 1

(January), pp. 72-73. For a somewhat dissenting view, see Riaz, God Willing. 24 Charles U. Zenzie, 1999, "Indonesia's New Political Spectrum," Asian Survey 39, no. 2 (March-April), p. 264. 25 R. William Liddle, 2000, "Indonesia in 1999 - Democracy Restored," Asian Survey 40, no. 1 (Jan-Feb), p. 33; R.

William Liddle, 1996, "The Islamic Turn in Indonesia: A Political Explanation," Journal of Asian Studies 55, no. 3

(August), pp. 622-624; Clifford Geertz, 1960, The Religion of Java (Glencoe, Ill.,: Free Press); Robert W. Hefner,

2001, "Public Islam and the Problem of Democratization," Sociology of Religion 62, no. 4 (Winter), pp. 501-502. 26 Salim Said, 1998, "Suharto's Armed Forces: Building a Power Base in New Order Indonesia, 1966-1998," Asian

Survey 38, no. 6 (June), p. 545. 27 Liddle, "Indonesia in 1999," p. 34.

12

Table 4: Party share of vote in the 1999 Indonesian parliamentary elections28

Party Orientation % of vote # of seats

PDI-P (Megawati Sukarnoputri)

Secular 34% 153

Golkar Former ruling party 22 120

PKB (Abdurrahman Wahid)

NU: traditional Islamic, anti-Islamist 13 51

PPP Islamist/Traditionalist 10 58

PAN (Amien Rais) Moderate Islamist - Muhammadiya 7 34

The National Awakening Party (PKB) won the third largest share of votes and its leader

became the president following the elections. The PKB represented the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU),

an Islamic but anti-Islamist political group founded in 1926 in response to the earlier emergence

of the Muhammadiyah, a reformist group that promoted a return to the scripturalist sources of the

faith, purifying it of later accretions.29 The NU's message, often described as traditionalist,

defended prevailing religious practices against the purifying efforts of the Islamist

Muhammadiyah.30 Rural ulema who ran religious schools formed the original social base of the

NU: their version of Islam is traditional, not modernist, is Shafi'i, and has Sufi influences.31 In

the late 1950s the NU, driven into an uncomfortable alliance with the modernists, atypically

joined a call for the establishment of an Islamic state. And, driven in part by fear of Communist

efforts to impose land redistribution, the NU participated in the mass murders of Communists in

1965.32 Yet in the 1970s and later the NU enlarged its base of support to include younger urban

28 Ibid., p. 33. 29 Fred R. Von der Mehden, 1993, Two Worlds of Islam: Interaction between Southeast Asia and the Middle East

(Gainesville: University Press of Florida), p. 14. 30 Ruth McVey, 1983, "Faith as the Outsider: Islam in Indonesian Politics," in Islam in the Political Process, ed.

James Piscatori (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 204. Among other things, its founders hoped to defend

the Shafi'i mathhab against Ibn Saud's repression of Shafi'i practices in the Hejaz after 1924. Donald J. Porter, 2002,

Managing Politics and Islam in Indonesia (New York: RoutledgeCurzon), p. 68. 31 McVey, "Faith as the Outsider," pp. 209-210. 32 Robert W. Hefner, 2000, Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia (Princeton: Princeton University

Press), pp. 54-55, 63-54, 87.

13

elements who sought an alternative to Islamic modernism. Its leader, Abdurahman Wahid,

developed the ideology of the group in a tolerant, pro-democratic, and moderate direction,

helping to overcome the legacy of distrust between the NU and secularists that grew out of the

NU's role in the mass killings.33

The PPP, which came in fourth, was an Islamic party set up by the previous regime. Its

leadership included both reformists and traditionalists, though it called for imposition of the

shari'a and was more Islamist than either the PKB or the PAN.34 The PAN, which came in fifth,

attracted support from adherents of the Muhammadiya movement, though the party's national

platform was not religious.35 The leader of the PAN, Amien Rais, had been a leader of the

Muhammadiya and subscribed to its reformist view of Islam. He strongly supported the pro-

democracy movement, however, and his party, like the PKB, did not call for imposition of

Islamic law.36 The more resolutely Islamist Crescent Moon and Star Party (PBB) won only 2%

of the vote.

The most radical of Indonesia's Islamists, however, sided with the regime. These

Islamists, and their allies in the 'green' faction of the military, blamed "the IMF, the United

States, Israel, Indonesian-Chinese, and the pro-democracy movement" for all that ailed Indonesia

after the 1997 economic crisis.37 The green military faction, when it provoked mob violence

against ethnic Chinese in Indonesia, triggered intervention by the 'red and white' faction of the

military, and the demise of Suharto's regime.38 The regime's embrace of Islamists dramatically

lowered the risk to Indonesian non-Islamists of supporting a transition to democracy: the regime

could not be viewed as a bulwark against an Islamist takeover because it actively sought the

support of Indonesia's most radical Islamists.

33 Hefner, "Public Islam and the Problem of Democratization," pp. 505-506; McVey, "Faith as the Outsider," pp.

210-211. 34 Liddle, "Indonesia in 1999," p. 34; Saiful Mujani and R. William Liddle, 2004, "Politics, Islam, and Public

Opinion," Journal of Democracy 15, no. 1 (January), p. 112; Zenzie, "Indonesia's New Political Spectrum," p. 247. 35 Liddle, "Indonesia in 1999," p. 35. 36 Hefner, Civil Islam, pp. 187, 199-200; Mujani and Liddle, "Politics, Islam, and Public Opinion," p. 112. 37 Hefner, Civil Islam, pp. 202, 161, 167. 38 Ibid., pp. 201-207.

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Kyrgyzstan

In March of 2005 protesters overthrew the Kyrgyz regime. The leader of the rebels then

won a presidential election that, according to outside observers, reflected the popularity of the

new president, despite some irregularities in the voting and despite the fact that he won nearly

90% of the vote.39 This may or may not be seen, after the passing of more time, as a transition to

democracy, but it nonetheless bears examination. Accusations of government fraud in the

February and March 2005 parliamentary elections triggered the transition. The regime fell when

protests spiraled out of control, and the military and police declined to support the president.

While a "very diverse" group of protesters overthrew the regime, Islamists had virtually no role.

The International Crisis Group published a twenty page report on the demise of the Kyrgyz

regime in which Islamism (and, in fact, Islam) pass without mention.40

Why this absence of Islamist groups? The legacy of Soviet repression provides a possible

explanation, yet the post-Soviet regime did not devote much energy to repressing religion, and

the "lukewarm" Kyrgyz attachment to Islam predates the Soviet era.41 Scholars often note that

Islam came later, and lay more lightly, on the nomadic Kyrgyz and Kazakhs, especially in

comparison to the more settled Uzbek and Tajik peoples.42 While the nomads of the Arabian

peninsula and Gulf have assimilated the Islamism of the townspeople as they have settled, the

national differences between the Kyrgyz and the settled Uzbeks and Tajiks may have

39 Washington Post, "Kyrgyz Elections Largely Clean, Observers Say," July 12, 2005. 40 International Crisis Group, 2005, "Kyrgyzstan: After the Revolution," Asia Report no. 97. See also Anara

Tabyshalieva, 2003, "The Kyrgyz Republic on the Verge of Change?," Helsinki Monitor 14, no. 3 (July). 41 John Anderson, 1999, Kyrgyzstan, Central Asia's Island of Democracy? (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic

Publishers), pp. 32-33; Olivier Roy, 2000, The New Central Asia: The Creation of Nations (New York: New York

University Press), p. 146; Alexandre Bennigsen and Chantal Lemercier-Quelquejay, 1967, Islam in the Soviet Union

(New York: Praeger), pp. 20, 36; Joseph F. Fletcher and Boris Sergeyev, 2002, "Islam and Intolerance in Central

Asia: The Case of Kyrgyzstan," Europe-Asia Studies 54, no. 2 (March), pp. 253-254. 42 Bennigsen and Lemercier-Quelquejay, Islam in the Soviet Union, pp. 5, 20, 24; Roy, The New Central Asia, pp. 2,

7, 143-144; Mehrdad Haghayeghi, 1995, Islam and Politics in Central Asia (New York: St. Martin's Press), p. 78;

Edward W. Walker, 2003, "Islam, Islamism, and Political Order in Central Asia," Journal of International Affairs

56, no. 2 (Spring), p. 23.

15

discouraged this among the Kyrgyz.43 It is notable that the main locus of Islamist feeling in

Kyrgyzstan is among the Uzbek minority.44

Mali

Mali made a transition to democracy in 1991 and remains democratic today, despite its

poverty and lack of any previous democratic legacy. The 1991 transition was essentially an

urban affair. A series of demonstrations in the capital, some mobilizing many thousands of

protesters, provoked a sharp response from the regime that left hundreds dead. Junior officers in

the military, appalled by this, arrested the president and initiated a democratic transition.45 The

protesters in the capital included students, human rights activists, and other groups in civil

society, but few Islamists.46 The leaders of the movement were "profoundly secular" but did not

fear that democratization would result in increased political power for Islamist groups. Instead,

they criticized the authoritarian regime for failing to adequately defend secularism, despite its

"constantly restated … commitment to the secular state."47

That secularists could see a democracy as a way to solidify the secular state in Mali owed

much to the absence of any Islamist groups that might possibly win an election.48 One observer

notes that there was one "small group" in an early demonstration in the capital in 1991 that

chanted the slogan "Allahu akbar, vive la démocratie," though is seems not to have made much

impression.49 The leaders of the Sufi tariqas did not participate much in the national conference

43 Haghayeghi, Islam and Politics, pp. 186, 194-185. 44 International Crisis Group, 2003, "Radical Islam in Central Asia: Responding to Hizb Ut-Tahrir," Asia Report no.

58, pp. 18, 28. 45 Zeric Kay Smith, 2001, "Mali's Decade of Democracy," Journal of Democracy 12, no. 3 (July), pp. 73-74. 46 Ibid., p. 73. 47 Louis Brenner, 1993, "Constructing Muslim Identities in Mali," in Muslim Identity and Social Change in Sub-

Saharan Africa, ed. Louis Brenner (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), p. 75. 48 Richard Vengroff, 1993, "Governance and the Transition to Democracy: Political Parties and the Party System in

Mali," The Journal of Modern African Studies 31, no. 4 (December). 49 Brenner, "Constructing Muslim Identities in Mali," p. 73. Zeric Kay Smith, "Building African Democracy: The

Role of Civil Society-Based Groups in Strengthening Malian Civic Community," Unpublished Dissertation

(University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1998).

16

that preceded the elections, but they "endorsed the process," even though the new constitution

banned the creation of religiously-based parties.50

Why did Islamists have so little impact in Mali in 1991? It is not that Islamism was

unknown. 'Wahabbism,' as it is known in West Africa, has a long history in Mali.51 Nor can we

attribute the relative weakness of Islamist groups to sheer repression, though the authoritarian

regime certainly did not encourage Islamist political organization. Instead, there seem to be two

factors that distinguish Mali (and also its neighbor Niger) from the Arab world. First, Islamism

has been an ideology, first and foremost, of the merchants. The merchants, moreover, have used

Islam to distinguish themselves from the surrounding population. At first, before the mass

conversion of the surrounding population to Islam, it was enough that the merchants were

Muslims. Once most of the rest of the population of the area converted to Islam, by the first part

of the twentieth century, the merchant class adopted Wahhabism as a social marker of the "rich

and powerful" merchants, among whom "members of the population at large are unlikely to find

acceptance."52 By contrast, Islamism in the Arab world has been an ideology of the educated

middle class generally, and not specifically the merchants.

A second factor distinguishes Islam in Niger and Mali from the Islam of the Arab world.

Sufi tariqas, and in particular the Tijaniyya tariqa, dominate the expression of Islam, especially

in the countryside. The Tijaniyya leadership withdrew from politics during the two authoritarian

regimes that governed from independence to 1991 – in marked contrast to the cooperation of

Sufi tariqas with the neighboring Senegalese regime. But the Tijaniyya leadership did not

attempt to organize an opposition party to compete with the regime. That was left to secular

50 Andrew F. Clark, 1999, "Imperialism, Independence, and Islam in Senegal and Mali," Africa Today 46, no. 3-4

(Summer-Fall), p. 164. 51 Jean-Loup Amselle, 1985, "Le Wahabisme a Bamako (1945-1985)," Canadian Journal of African Studies 19, no.

2. 52 Warms refers here to the city of Sikasso specifically, though the general phenomenon is one mentioned across

Mali, and also in Niger.Richard L. Warms, 1992, "Merchants, Muslims, and Wahhabiyya - the Elaboration of

Islamic Identity in Sikasso, Mali," Canadian Journal of African Studies 26, no. 3, p. 497. On the situation in

neighboring – and comparable – Niger, see Emmanuel Grégoire, 1993, "Islam and the Identity of Merchants in

Maradi (Niger)," in Muslim Identity and Social Change in Sub-Saharan Africa, ed. Louis Brenner (Bloomington:

Indiana University Press), pp. 109, 111.

17

urban elements.53 The authoritarian regime did set up a national-level Muslim organization of a

corporate sort, but split the leadership between "Wahhabis" and Muslims of a more traditional

mien. This paralyzed the institution.54

Niger

Niger, another overwhelmingly Muslim country in the Sahara, has experienced two

recent transitions. One was the result of a national conference held in 1990 and 1991 – the

conference was inspired by the earlier conference in Benin.55 This transition resulted in free and

fair elections held in 1993. A coup ended the democratic interlude in 1996, but a subsequent

coup led to a second transition to democracy in 1999.

None of the parties that participated in the national conference, or which contested the

1993 elections, had an Islamist cast.56 The authoritarian regimes that governed Niger from

independence proscribed Islamist parties, though the government did set up one Islamist group as

part of an effort to – in corporatist style – allow representation from various facets of society.

This group was widely seen as corrupt, had little influence, and did not in any case act as a

political party.57

A military coup ended the brief democratic interlude in 1996, and the new leader held

fraudulent elections. He was, however, assassinated in a countercoup three years later, and the

new regime held honest elections in 1999. The democratic interlude of the early 1990s had seen

an upsurge in Islamist activity in Niger, albeit from a very modest foundation.58 Yet Islamist

53 Clark, "Imperialism, Independence, and Islam in Senegal and Mali." 54 Brenner, "Constructing Muslim Identities in Mali," p. 72. 55 Jibrin Ibrahim, 1994, "Political Exclusion, Democratization and Dynamics of Ethnicity in Niger," Africa Today

41, no. 3. 56 Ibid. 57 Robert Glew, 1996, "Islamic Associations in Niger," Islam et sociétés au sud du Sahara 10 (November), p. 190;

Leonardo A. Villalón, 1996, "The Moral and the Political in African Democratization: The Code De La Famille in

Niger's Troubled Transition," Democratization 3, no. 2, pp. 56-57. 58 Villalón notes that democracy made it more difficult to pass a family law pleasing to secularists. Villalón, "The

Moral and the Political in African Democratization."

18

parties again did not compete in the elections, and as a result there was no possible threat of an

takeover of the regime by Islamists via the democratic process.59

Why, then, were Islamists so weak in Niger? As in Mali, Islamism has been an ideology

of the merchant class.60 Second, the authoritarian regimes that ruled Niger from independence in

1960 to the transition of 1993 had little sympathy with Islamism or with organized dissent, and

as a result Islamists were given few – or no – opportunities to form political organizations. In

Niger, control of the state at independence passed to new groups from modest backgrounds, but

who had educations in French schools and who adopted a thoroughly secular worldview that

placed little value on traditional institutions or practices: this set of values permeated elite

institutions and colored the attitude of the state.61 Finally, while Sufi brotherhoods are not as

prominent or powerful in Niger as they are in Senegal, nonetheless they do have a strong

presence and one scholar observes that both the Qadriyya and Tijaniyya tariqas work to counter

the influence of the Wahhabis.62 This hostility has roots that go back to the period of the Fulani

jihad: the border between modern Nigeria and Niger marked the northern extent of the rule of the

jihadi state. Those north of the emirate's reach resisted its influence and its brand of Islam.63

Pakistan

Pakistan's authoritarian ruler, Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, died in an airplane crash in 1988.

The military, faced with a choice between finding a new authoritarian leader or holding

elections, decided to extricate itself from direct responsibility for rule. Pressure from the

opposition for democratization (led by Benazir Bhutto's People's Party) contributed to the

59 John Uniack Davis and Aboubacar B. Kossomi, 2001, "Niger Gets Back on Track," Journal of Democracy 12, no.

3. 60 Grégoire, "Islam and Identity in Maradi," pp. 109, 111. 61 William F. S. Miles, 1987, "Partitioned Royalty: The Evolution of Hausa Chiefs in Nigeria and Niger," Journal of

Modern African Studies 25, no. 2 (June), pp. 240, 251-253. 62 Grégoire, "Islam and Identity in Maradi," p. 110. 63 Finn Fuglestad, 1983, A History of Niger, 1850-1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 19, 24;

William F. S. Miles, 2003, "Shari'a as De-Africanization: Evidence from Hausaland," Africa Today 50, no. 1

(Spring-Summer), p. 56.

19

military's decision to hold elections, but the death of Zia served as the proximate trigger of the

transition.64

Two main parties contested the 1988 elections. The most popular, Benazir Bhutto's

People's Party (PPP), was founded by her father Zulfikar Bhutto. He ruled Pakistan in its

previous democratic interlude, from 1971 to 1977. The party was secular, leaned to the left, and

generally had poor relations with Pakistan's leading Islamist political party, the Jama'at i-Islami

(JI).65 The second party (the Islamic Democratic Alliance) was assembled by the military regime

before the transition, and leaned to the right.66 The authoritarian regime itself had courted the

Islamist Jama'at i-Islami and had implemented a range of Islamist policies, so it stood to reason

that the regime party would include Islamists.67 The Jama'at i-Islami participated as a junior

partner in the right-wing coalition, but its candidates fared relatively poorly in the elections. One

observer attributes this to the party's close association with the unpopular Zia regime.68 As

expected, Bhutto's party won the 1988 elections, though the party cobbled together by the

military came in a close second: the military retained a very substantial political influence as a

consequence of its control over the transition.

64 Sayyid Vali Reza Nasr, 1992, "Democracy and the Crisis of Governability in Pakistan," Asian Survey 32, no. 6

(June), pp. 521-522; Ian Talbot, 1998, Pakistan, a Modern History (New York: St. Martin's Press), p. 285. 65 Nasr, "Democracy and the Crisis of Governability," pp. 522-523. 66 Talbot, Pakistan, a Modern History, p. 295; Nasr, "Democracy and the Crisis of Governability," p. 523. 67 Nasr, "Democracy and the Crisis of Governability," p. 523; Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, 1994, The Vanguard of the

Islamic Revolution: The Jama'at-I Islami of Pakistan (University of California Press), p. 202. 68 Nasr, Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution.

20

Table 5: Results of the 1988 parliamentary elections in Pakistan69

Party Orientation % of vote % of seats

PPP (People's Party – Benazir Bhutto)

Secular 38.70% 93

IJI (Islamic Democratic Alliance – Nawaz Sharif)

Former ruling party, including Islamists

30.60 55

Independents 13.4 40

Other parties 5.25 30

A relatively moderate version of Islam prevails in most Muslim majority countries that

have recently made transitions to democracy. This not true of Pakistan, where the strength of

Islamist sentiment compares to the Arab world.70 What accounts for the success of democracy in

1988, in the face of the strength of Islamist ideology? The authoritarian regime that ruled to 1988

did not fear that democracy would bring Islamists to power because the authoritarian regime

itself favored Islamist policies. In part, this was because the chief opposition group, the PPP,

advocated secular policies, and the regime thus found a potential base of support in Islamists and

the right: the authoritarian regime, it is important to recall, came to power as a result of

overthrowing the democratic Bhutto government, which leaned to the left. This dynamic differs

sharply from that of presidential regimes in the Arab world, which originated in left-leaning

military coups and which face opposition from the Islamist right, and not from popular

opposition parties on the left. In recent years, however, Pakistan's most recent authoritarian

regime, led by Pervez Musharraf, has moved against Islamist groups, and has thus created

conditions which resemble much more those of the Arab world: an authoritarian regime that

protects foreign powers and non-Islamists from the specter of Islamist rule.

Senegal

Senegal's 2000 transition followed the Mexican and Taiwanese pattern: the former ruling

party dominated Senegalese politics from 1960, winning a string of elections of varying degrees

69 Iftikhar H. Malik, 1997, State and Civil Society in Pakistan: Politics of Authority, Ideology, and Ethnicity (New

York: St. Martin's Press), p. 36. 70 This owes something to the sectarian origins of the Pakistani state.

21

of fairness. In 2000, it finally lost a presidential election, surrendered power, and cemented

Senegal's status as a democracy.

Islamist parties did not field a candidate in the presidential contest of 2000.71 This was

not because the government repressed Islamist groups. Throughout the 1990s, and before, these

groups had attempted to attract Senegalese to their vision of Islam, and had failed. The cause of

this, or at least the proximate cause, is clear. While West African Islam in general is

characterized by the importance of Sufi tariqas, in Senegal Sufi orders enjoy a strong hold on the

religious loyalties of a great many Senegalese, especially those of rural origin. The leaders of the

two main Sufi orders in Senegal – the Murides and the Tijaniyya – have long had close and

cooperative relationships with the Senegalese state, dating back even to the colonial period. This

entails, of course, a recognition by the Sufi tariqas that there is, at least in practice, a division

between their sphere of authority and that of the political leadership. That Léopold Senghor, the

leader of Senegal from 1960 to 1980, was Catholic, illustrates the nature of their attitude toward

the political authorities: Senegal is 70% Muslim and the tariqas are easily the most powerful

non-state groups in Senegalese society, enjoying both an economic and religious authority.72

Leaders of the Sufi tariqas thus do not run for election, nor do they directly sponsor

parties. But they do endorse candidates in elections, and their endorsement carries a great deal of

weight. The heads of the Sufi orders did not throw their weight behind the ruling party in 2000

(or in 1993), and this contributed to the ruling party's failure to hold onto power.73 Yet the Sufi

leaders did not threaten to take over political power – instead, they were willing to work with a

new set of political leaders, on largely the same basis on which they worked with the old.

The failure of Islamist groups to sell their version of Islam to Senegalese has not been

from a lack of effort. Indeed, the accounts of their failure are reminiscent of discussions of

71 Dennis Galvan, 2001, "Political Turnover and Social Change in Senegal," Journal of Democracy 12, no. 3 (July),

p. 53. 72 Clark, "Imperialism, Independence, and Islam in Senegal and Mali." 73 Ibid., pp. 161-162; Leonardo A. Villalón, 1994, "Democratizing a (Quasi) Democracy: The Senegalese Election of

1993," African Affairs 93, no. 371 (April), p. 180; Donal B. Cruise O'Brien, 1996, "The Senegalese Exception,"

Africa 66, no. 3, p. 198; Vengroff, "Political Parties and the Party System in Mali," pp. 149-150; Leonardo A.

Villalón, 1995, Islamic Society and State Power in Senegal: Disciples and Citizens in Fatick (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press).

22

liberals in the Arab world: Villalón writes that those who "have adhered to a strictly reformist

line have tended to remain limited to a small group of urban Muslims with virtually no resonance

among the majority of Senegalese".74 The reformists gained a good deal of attention in the 1980s

early 1990s but they ultimately had little success in attracting the loyalties of Senegalese away

from the Sufi tariqas. Indeed, many appear to have given up, or to have been coopted by the Sufi

orders.75 The leader of one reformist group lamented in 1991 that reformist Islam "doesn’t sell

any more."76 Loimeier says that the Islamists gave up their religious message, and "turned out to

be almost indistinguishable from other political opposition groups in the country."77 An Islamist

activist lamented that his efforts to raise money were discouraged by the fact that potential

donors were "'simply afraid and ashamed to be considered integrists.'"78 The end result of the

marginalization and cooptation of the Islamists, in the view of one observer, was the

strengthening of the "secular character of the state."79

Sudan

Alone among Arab countries, Sudan made a transition to democracy in the period under

study – and in Sudan, alone among the cases that made transitions, Islamic parties were expected

to win the first democratic elections, and did so, taking first, second, and third places in

parliamentary elections. Yet this did not threaten non-Islamists, because the authoritarian regime

was more Islamist than the two parties that were expected to win the first democratic elections.

The former regime's Islamist policies contributed much to its undoing in 1985. While the

regime had its origins in a coup by "Free Officers", and early adopted an aggressively secular

program, after 1971 it turned sharply to the right.80 By the late 1970s the head of the regime, 74 Villalón, Islamic Society and State Power in Senegal, p. 236. 75 Ed van Hoven, 2000, "The Nation Turbaned? The Construction of Nationalist Muslim Identities in Senegal,"

Journal of Religion in Africa 30, no. 2, p. 233. 76 Roman Loimeier, 2000, "L'islam Ne Se Vend Plus: The Islamic Reform Movement and the State in Senegal,"

Journal of Religion in Africa 30, no. 2, p. 169. 77 Ibid., p. 186. 78 Marleen Renders, 2002, "An Ambiguous Adventure: Muslim Organisations and the Discourse of 'Development' in

Senegal," Journal of Religion in Africa 32, no. 1, p. 72. 79 Loimeier, "L'islam Ne Se Vend Plus," p. 187. 80 Gabriel Warburg, 1985, "Islam and State in Numayri's Sudan," Africa 55, no. 4, p. 406.

23

Ja'far Muhammad Numayri, drafted a set of laws that would impose the shari'a across Sudan. In

1983 he imposed these laws by decree, following a revolt by Southerners that resulted from

earlier Islamizing moves. The regime's Islamizing bent also led to economic crisis: the regime

imposed the zakat, cancelled other taxes, and banned alcohol, all of which eviscerated the tax

basis of the state. This contributed to an economic crises that resulted in an IMF intervention,

and in turn to the increases in prices of basic goods that immediately preceded the collapse of the

regime.81

A variety of groups participated in the demonstrations that eventually brought down the

regime: students, unions, the traditional parties, professionals, and many other Sudanese fed up

with the economic crisis caused by the Islamizing policies of the previous regime. The protests

prompted the military to depose Numayri – senior officers may also have feared a more radical

coup by junior officers. Elections followed the next year.82

The expected victors in the elections were the two Islamic parties that had dominated

Sudanese elections since independence.83 One, the DUP, was the political party of the Sufi

Khatamiyya tariqa: it won 63 seats.84 The other was the Umma party, the political party of the

neo-Mahdist movement. The great-grandfather of this party's leader, Sadiq al-Mahdi, had

famously declared himself the Mahdi, defeated the British, and created a Mahdist state that ruled

most of what is now Sudan from 1885 to 1898. The Umma party won 100 seats in the 1986

elections, the largest single bloc.85

The Mahdiyya movement is, in many respects, Islamist. The movement's doctrine is

revivalist, with an emphasis on the shari'a.86 It is not Sufi, and it has at times adopted an overtly

81 Gabriel Warburg, 2003, Islam, Sectarianism, and Politics in Sudan since the Mahdiyya (Madison: University of

Wisconsin Press), p. 159. 82 Abbas Abdelkarim, Abdallah el-Hassan and David Seddon, 1985, "The Generals Step In," MERIP Reports, no.

135 (September), p. 23; Eric Rouleau, Diane James and Jim Paul, 1985, "Sudan's Revolutionary Spring," MERIP

Reports, no. 135 (September). 83 Peter Woodward, 1990, Sudan, 1898-1989: The Unstable State (Boulder: Lynne Rienner), pp. 207-208. 84 Ann Mosely Lesch, 1998, The Sudan: Contested National Identities (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), p.

72. 85 Ibid. 86 Gabriel Warburg, 1995, "Mahdism and Islamism in Sudan," International Journal of Middle East Studies 27, no.

24

hostile attitude toward Sufism.87 Yet neither is it in the mold of the Muslim Brothers, which has

its own separate organization and political party in Sudan. The Mahdiya's founder was the leader

of a Sufi tariqa, and the Mahdist movement found support in traditional religious leaders

threatened by the formal state-sponsored, Egyptian-educated, and legalist ulema.88 The

movement, like Sufi tariqas, has a tradition of a powerful leader drawn from a single family.

Sadiq al-Mahdi is said to have described the movement as "a synthesis between the Sunni, Shi'i

and Sufi schools of thought."89 On occasion the movement is described as a tariqa.90 On balance,

however, the movement's original ideology is a good deal more Islamist than not: if it is less so

today, that is a result of the development and moderation of the movement's ideology.91

The more overtly Islamist party of the Sudanese Muslim Brothers also contested the 1986

elections. It exceeded expectations, but still came in third behind the Umma and DUP, with 51

seats. The Muslim Brothers's party did particularly well in urban areas and in the seats reserved

for university graduates (which it nearly swept).92 It did poorly in the rural areas, where most of

Sudan's voters live, and whose voters favor the Umma and the DUP. While all of the Islamic

parties reconciled with Numayri when he moved to the right, the Mahdiyya and Khatmiyya

movements soon fell out with him. The Muslim Brothers, by contrast, supported Numayri until

close to the end, when they wound up in the regime's jails.93

The desire to impose the shari'a and to create an Islamic state is a defining one for

Islamists – in the view of most scholars, it sets them apart from more moderate Islamic groups.

At one point or another, all three of the main Islamic parties in Sudan in the 1980s had supported

the imposition of the shari'a (though the Mahdiyya and Khatmiyya movements had second 2 (May), pp. 221-222, 233; Warburg, Islam, Sectarianism, and Politics, p. 100. 87 Warburg, Islam, Sectarianism, and Politics, pp. 33, 35, but also 95. 88 Ibid., pp. 31, 34, 59-60. 89 Warburg, "Mahdism and Islamism," p. 223. 90 Ibid., p. 220. 91 John Voll, 1979, "The Sudanese Mahdi: Frontier Fundamentalist," International Journal of Middle East Studies

10, no. 2 (May). 92 Lesch, The Sudan: Contested National Identities, p. 72. 93 The Muslim Brothers spent most of the democratic interlude outside of power, and proved a main beneficiary of

the coup that ended the democratic regime in 1989. Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban, 1990, "Islamization in Sudan: A

Critical Assessment," Middle East Journal 44, no. 4 (Autumn), pp. 620-621.

25

thoughts when Numayri actually tried it). The political meaning of the imposition of the shari'a

in Sudan, however, is inescapably colored by the fact that southern Sudan is neither Muslim nor

Arab, and has opposed the imposition of the shari'a since independence. Thus the question of the

shari'a has been one of the identity of the state, and the role of southerners in the state, as much

as it has been about religious ideology.94 In the end, however, the key fact of Sudan's brief

transition to democracy is this: while democracy brought a somewhat Islamist party to power,

the democratic regime was less Islamist than either its immediate predecessor or than the military

regime that overthrew it. The Islamist threat in Sudan comes from military regimes, and not from

democratic ones.

Turkey

Turkey has a longer experience with democracy than any other Muslim-majority

country. One transition – in fact, more of a resumption – of democracy did occur in the period

that we are concerned with here: elections were held in 1983 following a military coup in 1980.

There was no possibility of an Islamist victory in the 1983 elections: the military banned

Turkey's Islamist party from competing – it had run candidates in earlier elections, winning a

modest share of the vote.95 Moreover, the Turkish military has long guaranteed the secularism of

the Turkish state, and it hardly intended to relinquish that role by holding elections in 1983, and

in fact did not do so (though that was changing twenty years later, after the triumph of an Islamic

party in the 2002 elections).96 In any case, in 1983 the military perceived the threat, at the time,

as coming mostly from the left, and the military deliberately sought to bring Islam farther into

the political system in the 1980s as an explicit counterbalance to the left.97

Turkey stands out, in contrast with its Muslim neighbors, for the moderation of its Islam.

As Yavuz puts it, Turkish Islam is "pluralistic and liberal."98 Islamist parties, by the standards of

the Arab world, hew to remarkably liberal positions – indeed, they are not very Islamist at all by

94 C.C. Stewart, 1985, "Introduction: Popular Islam in Twentieth-Century Africa," Africa 55, no. 4, p. 365. 95 M. Hakan Yavuz, 2003, Islamic Political Identity in Turkey (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 218. 96 Sultan Tepe, 2005, "Turkey's Akp: A Model "Muslim-Democratic" Party?," Journal of Democracy 16, no. 3. 97 Yavuz, Islamic Political Identity in Turkey, p. 214. 98 Ibid., p. 274. A less sympathetic author calls the Refah party "moderate fundamentalists." Ziya Öniş, 2001,

"Political Islam at the Crossroads: From Hegemony to Co-Existence," Contemporary Politics 7, no. 4, p. 286.

26

the standard definition. In part we can attribute this to the determined repression of the Kemalist

state, and its promotion of secularism.99 Certainly the state persecuted even those Islamic groups

that advocated the sorts of programs that anywhere else in the Muslim world would be viewed as

liberal and tolerant.100 Yet this repression did not radicalize Islamic groups, but instead seems to

have reinforced their moderation.101 Thus the those groups that did emerge, from the 1970s

onward, tended to be liberal and pluralistic, with no small amount of Sufi influence even among

the "Islamist" parties.102 In recent years the Islamic parties have embraced the notion of joining

the EU, in part because EU norms curb the power of the Kemalist state to repress religious

expression.103 But repression alone is not the entire story. Despite repeated military

interventions, Turkey has been democratic in most of the period since the end of the Second

World War, and Islamist parties have participated in elections since the 1970s. And despite the

constant shadow of the secularist state, Islamist parties have been allowed to win seats in

parliament, participate in ruling coalitions, and even form governments. Moderation has been

rewarded. In short, Turkey does not provide unambiguous support for the proposition that

liberalization moderates Islamic politics, nor that repression can impose moderation: Turkey

combines a state-imposed secularism exceeded only by Communist states, along with a tradition

of democracy that also has few peers in the Muslim world.

Islamists and democracy in the Arab world

It was not the absence of Islamist groups, or their moderation, that distinguished the

Muslim majority countries that made transitions from the Arab world. In two ways the

transitions in Muslim majority countries did not resemble the failed Algerian transition of 1991:

99 Öniş, "Political Islam at the Crossroads," pp. 293-294. 100 Yavuz, Islamic Political Identity in Turkey. 101 On Egypt see Carrie Rosefsky Wickham, 2004, "The Path to Moderation - Strategy and Learning in the

Formation of Egypt's Wasat Party," Comparative Politics 36, no. 2 (Jan), p. 224. 102 On Erdogan see Metin Heper and Şule Toktaş, 2003, "Islam, Modernity, and Democracy in Contemporary

Turkey: The Case of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan," The Muslim World 93, no. 2, p. 165. 103 Ziya Öniş, 2003, "Globalization, Democratization and the Far Right: Turkey's Nationalist Action in Critical

Perspective," Democratization 10, no. 1 (Spring).

27

• In all cases except Sudan, secular parties were expected to win the first democratic

elections, and in fact did so.

• In Sudan (as well as Pakistan and Indonesia) the transition was expected to bring to

power a regime that would be less Islamist than the existing authoritarian regime.

How then do Arab countries today compare on these two points?

Islamist regimes

Arab non-Islamists regularly accuse the existing Arab authoritarian regimes of coddling,

pandering to, and encouraging the growth of Islamist political movements. Yet nowhere in the

Arab world today can we expect that a democratic transition would lead to a government that is

less Islamist than the current authoritarian regime. Put differently, Arab regimes – excepting

again Sudan – are to the left of their strongest opponents.

Secular and Islamist parties

Secular parties in the Arab world come in two forms: regime parties, and opposition

parties. It is not quite true that the Arab world lacks strong secular parties: some of the secular

regime parties have substantial electoral appeal. This is perhaps most true of the GPC in Yemen,

though the NDP in Egypt also has electoral appeal, as does Fatah in the Occupied Territories.

Yet a vote for these parties (except in the Territories) is a vote for the existing authoritarian

regime. Secular parties that are in the opposition, by contrast, have shown only modest electoral

appeal. The once proud Egyptian Wafd saw its share of the vote fall again in the 2005

parliamentary elections, and no other secular opposition parties did well. The liberal/left

opposition has fared poorly in recent Kuwaiti elections. The Yemeni Socialist Party has done a

bit better, but still trails the regime party and the Islamist Islah. By some accounts, Jordan's many

secular parties failed to return any candidates to parliament in the 2003 elections.

Islamist parties consistently fare better than secular opposition parties in the Arab world.

Thus in Egypt the Muslim Brothers collected the lion's share of opposition seats in the 2005

elections; in Yemen, the (mostly Islamist) Islah is strong; 104 in Kuwait, the salafis; in the 104 Paul Dresch and Bernard Haykel, 1995, "Stereotypes and Political Styles: Islamists and Tribesfolk in Yemen,"

International Journal of Middle East Studies 27, no. 4 (November). See also Sheila Carapico, 1998, Civil Society in

28

Occupied Territories, Hamas soundly defeated Fatah in the January 2006 parliamentary

elections. Islamist candidates won many more votes than did non-Islamist opposition candidates

in the Tunisian elections of 1989, when the regime allowed Islamist independents to run.105 In

Saudi Arabia an Islamist list did well in the 2005 municipal elections in Riyadh.

The single exception to this dismal record is found in Morocco, where two secular

parties, the Ittihad al-Ishtiraki (FSP) and the Istiqlal, took the top two places in the 2002

legislative elections. Yet the Islamist PJD (Parti de la Justice et du Développement) came in a

close third even though it ran candidates in only 56 of the country's 91 districts, and did so

precisely in order to minimize the threat that it posed to the secular parties and the monarchy.106

Moreover, given the long history of regime cooptation of the FSP and Istiqlal, they have become

identified with the current status quo, rather than the opposition, which is – as elsewhere in the

Arab world – the province of the Islamists.

None of this is not to say that we can be sure that Islamist parties would win free

elections outright in Arab countries.107 But were elections to be held in most Arab countries

today, it is difficult to identify secular opposition parties that could plausibly win more votes

than the strongest Islamist party. The problem faced by Algerian in 1991 has not dissipated in the

rest of the Arab world. The weakness of the secular opposition allows the ruling parties to attract

support on the basis that they, and only they, stand between Islamists and political power.

Why?

The contribution that I make in this article is in examining the role of Islamist and secular

parties in the Muslim majority countries that have made transitions, and comparing this to the

Arab world. I will, however, go beyond this and provide some preliminary thoughts on the

Yemen: The Political Economy of Activism in Modern Arabia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 143-

145; Janine Clark, 2004, "Islamist Women in Yemen: Informal Nodes of Activism," in Islamic Activism: A Social

Movement Theory Approach, ed. Quintan Wiktorowicz (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), p. 172. 105 Kenneth J. Perkins, 2004, A History of Modern Tunisia (New York: Cambridge University Press), pp. 189-190. 106 Al-Hayat September 26, 2002; Le Monde September 27 & 29, 2002. See

www.mincom.gov.ma/french/generalites/orga_eta/elections2002/resultatglobal.htm for the official results. Accessed

20 August 2005. 107 Vickie Langohr, 2002, "An Exit from Arab Autocracy," Journal of Democracy 13, no. 3 (July).

29

obvious question raised by my findings: What explains the strength of secular parties in those

Muslim majority countries that made transitions, and their weakness in Arab countries?

Historical legacies

In Pakistan, Bangladesh and Indonesia – countries with active Islamist parties – the

important secular opposition parties had their origins as the ruling parties of regimes that

governed in the 1960s or later, and enjoyed mass support. Each of these regimes was overthrown

in a military coup, and the new regime was typically to the right of the previous regime. This

appears to have provided these parties with an organizational advantage and an appeal among a

sizeable group in the population. This was supplemented by a direct tie to the former leader: each

party was led by a daughter or wife of a former ruler. Many Arab presidential regimes, by

contrast, are ruled by the direct successors of the parties that ruled at independence, or when the

monarchy was overthrown: this is true of Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen. In Iraq and Syria, no

former regime party retains any substantial popularity.

Separation between parties and the military

In Turkey the military has set itself up as the protector of secularism, separate from any

particular political party. In the Arab presidential regimes, by contrast, the regime parties,

presidents and militaries together provide a bulwark against Islamists. The disadvantages with

this are two. First, the regime parties stifle any competitors among non-Islamists. Second, the

regime parties become identified with the regime and all its faults, but cannot lose an election. In

Algeria, alone among the Arab cases, the relationship between the military and the regime party

has weakened, and the military has stepped into the background to some degree.

Sufism and the strength of Islamism

Islamism is undeniably stronger in the Arab world than in most other parts of the Muslim

world (Sudan and Pakistan are the main exceptions, among countries that made transitions to

democracy). The strength of Islamism is not a result of the absence of Islamist thought outside

the Arab world: Islamists have had a presence of one sort or another, for a long period, in all of

the countries examined here. Instead, it appears again that the main explanation lies in the failure

of organized Islamic, but not Islamist, groups to provide a strong counter to Islamists in the Arab

world. In Senegal, Mali and Niger, Sufi tariqas dominate the religious life of rural areas. All

three countries are ruled by secular elites, but these elites have generally been able to use the Sufi

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tariqas to counterbalance and marginalize the threat from small urban Islamist parties and

groups: the cooperation has been most pronounced in Senegal. In Sudan, the Khatmiyya tariqa

and the Mahdiyya movement each have their own political party, and have done well in the

countryside, largely limiting the Muslim Brothers to urban areas. On the other side of the

Muslim world, the NU in Indonesia provides a strong organizational alternative, also rooted in

rural areas, to the Islamism of the Muhammadiya movement and other groups farther to the right.

Even in Turkey, albeit to a lesser degree, Sufi movements continue to provide the main religious

alternative to the Kemalist regime's aggressive secularism.108 In the Arab world, by contrast, Sufi

movements have largely lost their political role in the past century.109 This is partly a result of

regime hostility to Sufism, as for example in Saudi Arabia but also in Egypt before Nasser.110 In

this governments have reflected the prevailing (and often overwhelming) critiques of Sufi Islam

as obscurantist and questionably Islamic. Moreover, in some Arab societies, it is clear that

Sufism in the past has also suffered from its association with rural areas and with poorer social

classes, at least in the eyes of the more educated and urban groups which have flocked to Islamist

movements.111

Repression

In some cases the weakness of Islamist sentiment owes something to government

repression. In Albania, determined government repression eliminated Islamist groups – though

there is not much that is generalizable in its experience. In Turkey the state did not allow Islamist

parties to run in the 1983 elections. Yet regime repression of Islamists is not a theme that runs

through all the cases of successful transitions. In Senegal, for example, Islamists had

opportunities to gain adherents, and largely failed. Indeed, in some cases the regime itself

adopted the Islamists, which lessened the risks to non-Islamists of a transition.

108 Yavuz, Islamic Political Identity in Turkey. 109 Munson, Religion and Power in Morocco, p. 168. 110 Frederick de Jong, 1999, "Opposition to Sufism in Twentieth-Century Egypt (1900-1970): A Preliminary

Survey," in Islamic Mysticism Contested: Thirteen Centuries of Controversies and Polemics, eds. Frederick de Jong

and Bernd Radtke (Leiden: Brill); Frederick de Jong, 1978, Turuq and Turuq-Linked Institutions in Nineteenth

Century Egypt: A Historical Study in Organizational Dimensions of Islamic Mysticism (Leiden: Brill); Valerie J.

Hoffman, 1995, Sufism, Mystics, and Saints in Modern Egypt (Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press). 111 Hoffman, Sufism, Mystics, and Saints in Modern Egypt, pp. 11-18, 373.

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Idiosyncratic factors

Elsewhere, Islamist sentiment is weak for more idiosyncratic reasons. In Kyrgyzstan the

dominant Kyrgyz ethnic group appears to have maintained a comparatively high degree of

secularism for a long period, a secularism that is not entirely explained by the repression of the

Soviet years. In Bangladesh the Islamists sided with Pakistan at independence, permanently

weakening their influence – moreover, secular NGOs have penetrated the countryside and offer

an alternative to Islamist ideology.

Conclusions

Scholars of the Arab world often look for moderation in Islamist groups, arguing that

moderation would reduce the perceived threat from Islamists and facilitate transitions to

democracy. Yet in none of the cases of transition in Muslim majority countries was a transition

made when an Islamist party quelled the apprehensions of non-Islamists. Instead, transitions

were made where Islamists were not expected to win the elections or where the regime was

already Islamist. If the cases have any lessons at all, what the Arab world needs most is the

emergence of electorally credible non-Islamist opposition parties. Bermeo, in her examination of

transitions in Southern Europe and South America, notes that transitions could proceed even

where radicals made a great deal of noise, so long as existing elites could be sure that moderates

would win the elections.112

Unfortunately, there are only modest prospects for the emergence of strong secular Arab

parties in the Arab world. Few of the existing parties enjoy the historical legacies of Bhutto's

PPP or Megawati Sukarnoputri's PDI-P. Secular Arab parties have little appeal outside urban

elites. Parties on the left might have more success outside this urban elite, but the Islamists today

appear to have garnered the opposition vote, including that among rural and disadvantaged urban

groups. What would really galvanize a secular opposition would be an Islamist government:

short of that, secular parties are squeezed between the Islamists and the regime parties (or, in the

monarchies, the independents who are loyal to the monarchy). Electorates can be fickle, but the

current electoral map of the Middle East provides few reasons to think that secular opposition 112 Nancy Bermeo, 1997, "Myths of Moderation: Confrontation and Conflict During Democratic Transitions,"

Comparative Politics 29, no. 3 (April).

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parties will easily escape their predicament and attract enough voters to make them the likely

winners in a future transition.

Thus the focus of many scholars on the moderation of Islamist parties is not misplaced: if

there is to be democracy in the Arab world in the short or medium terms, it will come only at a

real risk of Islamist victory in the first elections. What I have shown here is that this has few

precedents among other Muslim majority countries. This does not mean that transitions are

impossible, by any means: the obstacles, however, are substantial.