The overthrow of President Morsi has prompted new debate about the future of Islamist movements in Egypt and beyond. To some, it signals the beginning of the end for political Islam. Writing in the London Review of Books, for instance, Hazem Kandil suggests“the country that invented Islamism may well be on its way to undoing the spell”. 

In the long run such predictions may prove correct but we are not there yet. What can be safely said, though, is that at present the wind is not blowing the Islamists' way. 

Despite some electoral successes since the outbreak of the Arab Spring, Islamist movements are now clearly on the defensive – and not just because of their confrontation with the military in Egypt. Arab (and Muslim) opponents of Islamism, whose voices were often marginalised in the past, are speaking out as never before.

In Egypt, Kandil suggests, the Muslim Brotherhood deluded itself about its popularity and is probably continuing to do so:

The Brothers would certainly like to think that their unseating was purely a coup by the old regime. After an eight-decade cultural war to impose their unorthodox interpretation of Islam, they believed they had the hearts and minds of Egyptians safely tucked away in their pockets. Nothing could persuade them that ‘the people’ (or so many of them) would freely reject them. 

They were not alone in this belief. Over the years, dozens of news reports and academic studies have assured us that the ‘politics of piety’ would be the trump card in any power contest – at least if it were free. And once the rebellion unfolded, journalists and scholars found solace in the conviction that what was happening was no different from the Algerian, Turkish and Pakistani cases, where anti-Islamist coups repressed the pious majority.

In Egypt’s most recent parliamentary election (2011-12) the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, together with allied parties, won 37.5% of the popular vote – well short of an overall majority. Given that the 2011-12 poll was probably as good an electoral opportunity as the Brotherhood is likely to get, this result ought to have prompted some deep reflection within the movement about its future strategy – though its subsequent behaviour suggests the voters’ warning went unheeded.

Whatever disappointment the Brothers felt over their parliamentary result was quickly overtaken by hubris when Mohamed Morsi passed the magical 50% mark in the run-off of last year’s presidential election. Unfortunately, they seem to have interpreted this as a sign of their own popularity rather than a sign of his opponent’s unpopularity among voters who would not normally support the Brotherhood.

The Salafi alternative

Another important (but not much discussed) signal from the parliamentary election was the Brotherhood’s waning support among Islamists. Around 40% of Egyptians who voted for Islamist parties did not choose the Muslim Brotherhood, preferring an alliance of Salafist parties instead.

The Salafis achieved their unexpected electoral breakthrough partly by characterising the Brotherhood as staid and bourgeois – a movement that didn’t really have the people’s interests at heart. Stéphane Lacroix, an expert on the Egyptian Salafis, writes:

Branding Muslim Brotherhood contenders as “candidates of the system,” Salafis often presented themselves as the only real “anti-system” candidates and genuinely “new” political actors …

In the Cairo suburb of Shubra al-Khayma, for instance, Salafi supporters were keen to emphasise that the local popular Muslim Brotherhood candidate had been in politics for decades and had “done nothing for the people of the district when he was in the People’s Assembly.”

Although the Brotherhood rightly responded that, if their candidate had done little, it was only due to the obstruction of Mubarak’s National Democratic Party, the Salafis’ argument seems to have had some effect on voters.

In lower-class neighbourhoods, the Salafis were also quick to denounce the Brotherhood as composed of bourgeois elites disconnected from the street. As a local Nour party leader in a poor Tanta suburb argued, “we are from the people, we were on their side constantly during the Mubarak days, we have developed intimate knowledge of their problems… while the Brotherhood were wasting their time [with] useless institutional politics.”

Although the Brotherhood and the Salafis might be regarded as fellow-travellers to some extent, their reactions to Morsi’s overthrow have been different. The Salafis are the Islamists now working with “the system” while the Brothers sulk and protest.

In the run-up to the anti-Morsi demonstrations on June 30, the Salafis initially declared themselves neutral, though the Nour Party and the Salafist Call later changed course by joining calls for early presidential elections and the formation of an unbiased technocratic cabinet. In its latest move, the Nour party put forward a plan for “genuine national reconciliation between all political forces, excluding no one”.

It remains to be seen where that will lead but, even if the Brotherhood is not strong enough to win elections single-handedly it is still a major force in Egyptian politics that has to be allowed to function as such: it cannot be excluded indefinitely. Preferably, though, the Brotherhood will return to the political process because that is the way forward for Egypt, and not because of what it does (or threatens to do) if its exclusion continues.

Even so, there are fundamental questions about how far a reconciliation process can go unless the Brotherhood (and the Salafis too) change their approach towards working in a democracy. They are happy to accept electoral politics but still tend to view it as a tool for gaining power rather than a means for determining and implementing the will of the people.

Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Doha Center seems to have fallen for the Brotherhood’s grand delusions when he writes that Egypt’s Islamists must be “free to contest – and win – parliamentary and presidential elections”.

As far as winning is concerned, Morsi’s dismal performance in his year as Egyptian president suggests the Brotherhood is still pretty clueless about handling power in non-confrontational ways. 

But winning is not the only consequence of being free to contest elections. They may also lose or, as seems likely in Egypt for the forseeable future, have to share power with others.

This, however, strikes at the ideological core of Islamism and it’s difficult to see how it can be resolved without changing the ideology.

Root of the problem

One of the basic requirements for freedom in politics is that sovereignty belongs to the people. Power may be delegated to representatives but the people should remain the ultimate arbiters. Islamists, no matter how they try to dress up their ideology, do not accept this key point. Islamism, by definition, seeks to apply “Islamic” principles to the state.

The precise relationship between religion and the state is a matter of debate among Islamists themselves. Some aspire to a full-blooded theocracy while others envisage a degree of popular decision-making – at least up to the point where it conflicts with the “principles of Islam” (which of course begs the question of how the principles of Islam are to be determined, and by whom). 
In practice, the Brotherhood has distanced itself from its famous slogans that “Islam is the solution” and “The Qur’an is our constitution” but the underlying problem is still the same: an anti-libertarian assumption that linking the state with religion is both legitimate and necessary. Not only that, but religion claims the right, at least in some circumstances, to over-ride the will of the people.

In this area, the Egyptian Salafis are even further away from most concepts of democracy than the Brotherhood. Lacroix writes:

Regarding the political system, the Nour Party now explicitly defends democratic mechanisms (i.e. elections at all levels, separation of powers, freedom of speech, etc.). They are keen, however, to stress that they distinguish between the “procedures of democracy,” which they accept, and the “philosophy of democracy,” which they reject. For them, ultimate sovereignty cannot be held by the people, but only by God, meaning that there can be no discussion as to whether sharia, understood as an all-encompassing corpus of law, should be enforced … 

When it comes to the status of religious minorities, the Nour Party’s platform is not explicit, simply stating that the “sharia guarantees religious freedom for Copts” and that “they have the same rights and duties as Muslims.” In interviews, Salafi figures have advocated a much stricter framework than that put forward by the Muslim Brotherhood. 

While the latter recognises the concept of citizenship and is ready to proclaim the political and legal equality of all citizens, Salafis tend to favour the traditional Islamic system of dhimma (protection), which existed during the period of the Caliphate. According to this system, Christians and Jews living under an Islamic state are not asked to serve in the military and receive protection from the authorities, but are required to pay a special tax, the jizya. 
  

Posted by Brian Whitaker
Wednesday, 10 July 2013