Search Results

This chapter seeks to understand how Islamist movements have evolved over time, and, in the process, provide important background on the political and religious contexts of the movements in question. In particular, it shows that Islamist movements coevolve. Focusing on the histories of Morocco's two main Islamist movements—the Justice and Spirituality Organization, or Al Adl wal Ihsan (Al Adl) and the Party of Justice and Development (PJD)—it suggests that their evolutions can only be fully appreciated if they are relayed in unison. These movements mirror one another depending on the competitive context, sometimes reflecting, sometimes refracting, sometimes borrowing, sometimes adapting or even reorganizing in order to keep up with the other.

This chapter continues the discussion of the lives of young Islamists, focusing on their articulations of their hopes and goals. Analyzing the trove of data that the author uncovered from first-person narratives and life histories, transcripts, and extended participant observation, the author found that young people were looking for nothing less than a new sense of self. Their decisions are multiple, multilayered, and constantly renegotiated, but they can only be understood by making sense of the new identities that are sustained by their collective action. The author argues that Islamism is not simply ideological; it is instrumental—an avenue to a new identity, to new ways of seeing and thinking about themselves. The author dubs this the new politics of personal empowerment, where Islamist movements are reimagined as individual improvement factories: places to go not simply to become better Muslims, but to better their lot in life or the perception of that lot.

This chapter delves directly into the lives of young Islamists. Who are the Islamist rank and file? To tackle this initial question, it hones in on the experiences of young people, not because they are anomalous, but because they are decidedly average. These lives are windows into the shared experiences of ordinary young people and an increasingly blurred Islamist base. In this way, they serve as introductions, as springboards, to the stories of citizens, colleagues, peers, confidantes, brothers, and sisters—all seemingly inconspicuous young people of various ages, professions, and backgrounds. To place them in national and regional contexts, the chapter also draws on survey data, census data, and voting results. But it is only from up-close that we can begin to discover critical details that are lost or distorted from afar.

This chapter first offers a general overview of Islamist positions vis-è-vis the United States in both Jordan and Kuwait. Second, it emphasizes the exogenous nature of anti-Americanism, arguing that it is a function of U.S. policies. It also shows how international developments influenced Islamist stances relative to the United States. Jordan's dependency on the West, the continuation of the occupation of Palestinian lands by Israel, the Jordanian peace treaty with Israel, the so-called War on Terror, and the War on Iraq have further reinforced anti-American sentiment among Jordan's Islamist opposition. Finally, the chapter posits that the democratic reversals in Jordan, which marked much of the 1990s and the early years of the twenty-first century, were directly linked to the fear of anti-American opposition movements then gaining momentum. It concludes with a discussion about the role regimes and the United States play in sustaining barriers to democracy in these settings.

This chapter argues that power dynamics within Islamist organizations are changing rapidly and dramatically. And these changes are happening, as they always have, not only from external constraints, but from internal pressures. This book offers new evidence not of the demise of Islamist movements, but of their lasting transformation. Young activists are poised to assert more control within their organizations, even initiate internal rebellions of their own, and perhaps also help break apart the very movements they helped grow. This is the case for four main reasons. First, making room for many might also mean laying the foundation for discord. Second, Islamist successes are increasingly replicable. Third, internal lines of religious authority are growing murky. Finally, skepticism of omnipotent central authority abounds. For members of the next Islamist generation, the Arab Spring is now part of their histories, just as independence struggles were for their grandparents.

This chapter considers how young Islamist activists construct religious authority. To engage these questions, the author asked and allowed activists to construct for themselves what authority meant to them, with some even drawing an evolving organizational chart of their movements. The author observed signs of ambiguity, multiplicity, and even inconsistency. Some activists sought to go out of their way to illustrate that they were not under the control of any kind of religious authority, even conceiving something called “religion” as very much distinct from their work. Others blurred these categories, preferring to place their activism under the domain of some kind of religious authority, both explaining and attempting to show how it is part and parcel of their everyday existence. Some failed to mention religion as important to their work at all. Others spoke solely of it.

This chapter considers the question of how an authoritarian Arab state enables or encumbers Islamist mobilization. It elucidates a different model of state action—different in both content and form: in what policies are pursued and in how they are implemented. The chapter suggests that the Moroccan state under King Mohammed VI has not simply elevated one Islamist group at the expense of the other, but rather, it has aimed to impede and impel distinct forms of activism within groups—in this case, attempting to draw new divides between religious and political modes of activism. These are policies that can be understood not simply by the old theory of divide and conquer, but by one more aptly conceptualized as selective suppression.

This chapter presents the author's reflections on the methods and challenges involved in studying both legal and illegal Islamist movements up close. The author details his attempts to make contact and interview members of the Party of Justice and Development (PJD), a political party modeled after the Muslim Brotherhood. The author describes an approach he calls “shuttle ethnography,” which combines extended ethnographic fieldwork and the analysis of texts and relevant survey data when available (and appropriate). Like a shuttle diplomat, the author bounced between actors, challenging each group's pontifications with insights and objections culled from their competitors. He found that there was no better way to tease out their beliefs and positions than to invoke this contrarian view; and this allowed me to better understand the nuances and distinctions between and within groups.

This chapter evaluates the political impact on the Islamist movement and its social institutions of the following: the second Intifada, Israel's 2005 “disengagement” from Gaza, Hamas' 2006 electoral victory, the subsequent international boycott of the Hamas-led government, and Hamas' June 2007 military takeover of Gaza. Particular consideration is given to how the role of social institutions changed after the second Intifada and after the 2006 elections. The chapter also shows how in the almost two decades since the Oslo process began, the quality of life in Palestine has declined markedly. The political, economic, and social possibilities of the past—both real and illusory—have since disappeared.

This chapter explores how young Islamists relate to the authority of the state. The dawn of the twenty-first century brought new opportunities for Islamist activists, especially ones from illegal movements, to resist authority and to flourish. To begin with, their funding sources cannot easily be cut off. In addition, their overall ability to communicate is less easily disrupted. Finally, and perhaps most significantly, combating the dissemination of propaganda and publicity is nowhere near as straightforward as it once was. Authorities can outlaw the publication of materials or even confiscate books or clamp down on frightened booksellers, but banned movements can simply print more—and elsewhere.

This chapter suggests that the representations of religion in young Islamists' lives are not the product of prevarication, but rather of personalization. Religious authority has become circulated to such an extent that it has come to mean multiple things to multiple members. In the midst of this diversification, political party members increasingly appropriate the authority to interpret and represent what “Islam” means or should mean to others. None of these myriad representations constitutes “lies.” Instead, these words and constructions represent and reflect members' own strategic desires for themselves. The chapter shows how the haraka represents for some a site for religious study, a place of Qurʾanic learning unfettered by politics. For others, it is a place to make contacts and to get ahead: an instrumental, not ideological, site. For still others, it serves as a strategic site, a place to try out new ideas, and even as a convenient scapegoat. And, yet, for others, it is completely ignored; it simply has no place in their lives as party members.

This chapter argues that young Islamists' constructions of authority are complex and multilayered. They have personalized religious authority by circulating it away from a single reading of a single figure, even one as supposedly central as their “guide.” They have re-appropriated and reconfigured the organization Yassine once established and the scope and the range of the guide's substantive reach. They have even re-appropriated Yassine's memory. From spiritual guide to secular politician, the roles assigned to the head of their organization are constructed to fit their own desires, and, in so doing, they preserve and embrace individual choice, making room for multiple voices within their movement.

The “historical leadership” in July 1997, of al-Jama'a al-Islamiya — the largest armed Islamist movement in Egypt during the 1980s and 1990s — declared a unilateral ceasefire. The declaration ran against the group's traditionally militant literature, the previous vows of its leaders to continue armed struggle until the Mubarak regime had been toppled, and the increasingly violent tactics used by IG affiliates since the late 1970s. The phenomenon of deradicalization has not been confined to Egypt and Algeria, nor has it been confined to the Middle East. It took place in several other countries, albeit on a relatively smaller scale. Additionally, deradicalization processes and programs have influenced several British and other European Islamist leaders (Ashour 2009, 14–18).

This chapter identifies key individuals involved in the women’s right movement in Morocco, such as the’ulama, the monarchy, the Islamists, political parties, and women’s groups. It shows the relevance of gender to negotiations for access to a highly centralized political system, and defines gender as a field in which tensions over political legitimacy rise and may unfold. The negotiations among the key individuals portray a manipulation of gender hierarchies that limit the range of rights that women might enjoy in both the private and the public spheres. The chapter concludes with an analysis of women’s position in Islamist movements, focusing on the cases of al-Tawhīd wa-l-islāh and al-’Adl wa-l-ihsāne.

This chapter charts the evolution of political Islam in the Arab world and, in particular, highlights its growing engagement with the state. The decades of experience of groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood provide a rich pool of data from which one can draw more careful conclusions regarding the movement’s posture in a post-authoritarian setting. Some Islamist groups, long considered to be revolutionary forces in Arab societies, have transformed into reform-minded organizations and found some accommodation with the region’s authoritarian regimes. Islamic movements by and large broadened the scope of their missions and adopted the popular refrain of “dignity, freedom, and social justice,” around which millions of fellow citizens had united. This chapter also looks at long-term trends developing out of the contributions of Islamist movements to the emerging governance structures across the Arab world. Specifically, the interpretations of the Shari’a, the understanding of the nature of the civil state, and the shape of democratic participation are set to define future modes of governance. Internally, the Islamist movement faces its own challenges, attempting to temper its traditional ideology to the changing political realities, while also adapting its organizational structure to meet the needs of a democratic society.

Since its inception in the mid-1970s, Islamic finance was been firmly embedded within the US-centred international economic order under the tutelage of Saudi-supported pan-Islamism. With the end of the Cold War and the increased globalisation of the economy, new sets of rules, norms and institutions began to emerge. The position of Islamic finance is paradoxical. On one hand, Islamic finance thrived. But political Islam grew more diverse and complicated, and was designated in many influential circles as the successor of Communism as the main enemy of the post-Cold War period. Adding to this is the events of September 11th, which bolstered the view of Islam as the new enemy in the West. As the war against terrorism came to be the staple of world politics, many Islamic institutions came under attack and their integration in the global economy suffered a severe blow. This chapter discusses the evolution of global politics, Islamic finance and Islamist politics over three periods, beginning its discussion with the later stages of the Cold War (1917 to 89), during which the first aggiornamento of Islamic finance took place. It then discusses the ‘New World Order’ that followed the end of the Cold War (1990 to 2001) and ends by examining the ‘New New World Order’ which was ushered in by the events of September 11, 2001. Each of the periods in the chapter was characterised by different political alignments and priorities, different forms of Islamic finance and different types of Islamist movements.

This chapter critically examines the strength of Islamist opposition movements in terms of their social mobilization capacities. While the Muslim Brotherhood (MB)/Islamic Action Front (IAF) size and popularity cannot be determined with any certainty due to the lack of free and fair elections, among other factors, there are numerous indicators that the election results may indeed be reflective of a deeper loss of support for the MB/IAF. After providing the historical background of the MB/IAF and the above-mentioned polling results, this chapter examines Islamist victories in previous national elections and in those of the professional associations. This section argues that their apparent ability to mobilize large numbers of supporters may be more a reflection of regime policy and the population's lack of other political options than of the strength of the Islamists per se.

This chapter uncovers strategies, mechanisms, and tools that enable collective actors to produce meanings, symbols, norms, and values that shape their identity. The key objective of this chapter is to propose an analytical framework that explains the process of identity construction within Islamist movements. This framework seeks to answer the following questions: How do social movements construct their identity? What are the components of collective identity? To what extent can collective identity sustain collective action? What is the relationship, if any, between the political environment and identity formation processes? This chapter contends that the construction of Islamic collective identity is contingent upon the movement’s aims and objectives, its internal structure, and the political environment within which it operates. Islamic identity is treated as a frame of reference that Islamists use to recruit members, generate collective action, and preserve their existence.