The Arab Spring and its Surpriseshttp://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/dech.12030/full 29.06.2013

1. Asef Bayat

Article first published online: 15 MAY 2013

DOI: 10.1111/dech.12030

© 2013 International Institute of Social Studies

Issue

Development and Change

Special Issue: FORUM 2013

Volume 44, Issue 3, pages 587–601, May 2013

Additional Information(Show All)

How to Cite Publication History

How to Cite

Bayat, A. (2013), The Arab Spring and its Surprises. Development and Change, 44: 587–601. doi: 10.1111/dech.12030

Publication History

1. Issue published online: 15 MAY 20132. Article first published online: 15 MAY 2013

ARTICLE TOOLS

Get PDF (145K) Save to My Profile

E-mail Link to this Article

Export Citation for this Article

Get Citation Alerts

Request Permissions

More Sharing ServicesShare|Share on citeulike Share on connotea Share on delicious Share on www.mendeley.com Share on twitter

Abstract Article

References

Cited By

Get PDF (145K)

ABSTRACT1. Top of page

2. ABSTRACT

3. EVERY REVOLUTION IS A SURPRISE

4. POST-ISLAMIST ORIENTATION

5. LIMITS OF STREET POLITICS

6. REFORMIST REVOLUTIONARIES

7. REFERENCES

8. Biography

The occurrence, speed and spread of the ‘Arab revolutions’ took almost everyone by surprise,

including the protagonists. But the real surprise lies, this essay suggests, not in how or why

these revolutions came to fruition; it rather lies in revolutions’ particular attributes — their

ideological orientations and political trajectories. The essay discusses the revolutions’ key

(unexpected) characteristics, arguing that the Arab uprisings occurred in new ideological

times.

EVERY REVOLUTION IS A SURPRISE1. Top of page

2. ABSTRACT

3. EVERY REVOLUTION IS A SURPRISE

4. POST-ISLAMIST ORIENTATION

5. LIMITS OF STREET POLITICS

6. REFORMIST REVOLUTIONARIES

7. REFERENCES

8. Biography

It is now common knowledge that almost no one had anticipated the Arab revolutions, not

even those whose business is monitoring such events. Intelligence agencies, political

establishments and think tanks were reportedly taken by surprise by the monumental events

which began in Tunisia and Egypt and then spread like wildfire throughout the region. Even

the US intelligence services seemed to be confident that the Mubarak regime was safe enough

not to be crumbled by a handful of ‘usual’ demonstrators who appeared in the streets of Cairo

every so often (Norton-Taylor, 2011). The well-known survey of scholarly literature on

Middle East politics over the past decade by the political scientist Gregory Gause offers a

similar conclusion — that no social scientist was able to foresee what happened (Gause,

2011). I suggest that surprise lies not in the unexpected arrival of these revolutions, but in

their character, their ideological make-up and political trajectories.

After all, every revolution is a surprise, no matter how convinced the protagonists or

observers may be of their coming. Alex de Tocqueville famously wrote how the French

Revolution caught everyone off-guard. De Tocqueville found the whole episode surprising

even though he thought, albeit in retrospect, that it was ‘inevitable’ (de Tocqueville, 2011:

11–12). Even a revolutionary like Lenin in early 1917 stated to an audience that he would not

live to see Russia's great revolution (Shapiro, 1984: 19). Nor were the Bolsheviks,

Mensheviks, or foreign observers expecting the fall of the Tsar (Shapiro, 1984: 39). Or take

the Iranian revolution of 1979: just a few months before the fall of the Shah, President Carter

at a dinner in Tehran announced that Iran, based on the CIA's assessment, was an ‘island of

stability’ in a troubled region. For his part, Ayatollah Khomeini in 1970 thought it would take

two centuries to topple the Iranian monarchy; even by 1978 he still doubted if the Shah would

relinquish power (Bakhash, 1984). I recall how my revolutionary friends and I were utterly

surprised by the unfolding of the Iranian revolution, even though we never shed our

teleological conviction that ‘history is on our side’. The story of the 1989 revolutions in

Eastern Europe seems not much different. Only 5 per cent of East Germans had anticipated a

revolution a year before it actually happened. The vast majority of Germans were in a state of

total disbelief (Wong, 2011).

So, why the surprise? The economist Timur Kuran has argued that revolutions come as a

surprise because the dissenting population did not reveal their discontent in public.

Consequently, the opposition remains hidden from the ears and eyes of both adversaries and

observers, who then assume that things are stable. But when an accident triggers a protest, the

hidden dissenters join forces to create formidable public protestation that may undo

authoritarian systems (Kuran, 1989). This sounds like an intriguing argument, but to what

extent it resonates with the Arab revolts remains the question. In my own experience of living

and working in both Iran and Egypt prior to their revolutions, I could not help noticing how

people publicly complained about a range of issues. From high prices and power cuts to

police brutality and traffic jams — and incidentally, they mostly blamed, rightly or wrongly,

the government for these misfortunes. Indeed, the practice of ‘public nagging’ appears to be a

salient feature of public culture in the Middle East, serving as a crucial element in the making

of public opinion, or the ‘political street’. This refers to the collective sentiments, shared

feelings and public opinions of ordinary people in their day-to-day utterances and practices

which are expressed broadly and casually in urban public spaces — in taxis, buses, shops,

streets and sidewalks, or in mass demonstrations (Bayat, 2013a). While the ‘Arab street’

echoed the dissenting voice of the Arab public, certain seemingly ordinary practices of

everyday life became increasingly contentious in the political arena.

Since the 1980s, activism had remained limited to traditional party politics, a tired method

that lost much of its efficacy and appeal by the mid-2000s. Radical Islamists had resorted to

Leninist-type underground organizations; student activism was forced to remain on campus;

labourers, going beyond conventional organizations, launched wild-cat strikes; middle-class

professionals resorted to NGO work; and all embraced street politics when permitted, for

instance during demonstrations in support of the Palestinian cause. But the vast constituencies

of the urban poor, women, youth and others resorted to ‘non-movements’ — the non-

deliberate and dispersed but contentious practices of individuals and families to enhance their

life chances. The urban poor made sure to secure shelter, consolidate their communities, and

earn a living by devising work in the vast subsistent and street economy. Muslim women

strove to assert their presence in public, go to college, and ensure justice in courts. And youths

took every opportunity to affirm their autonomy, challenge social control and plan for their

future, even though many remained atomized and dreamed of migrating to the West.1

So, while the regimes were able to subdue ‘collective actors’ or organized movements, they

were unable to prevent ‘collective actions’, the diffused but simultaneous practices of the

‘non-movements’. The non-movements had emerged largely to lower the cost of mobilization

in the face of tyrannical regimes, but when some political opportunities arrived in the late

2000s, some of these dispersed struggles assumed coordination and clamour. The Egyptian

urban poor protested against the high price of food, especially bread, against the demolition of

illegal homes, and the shortage of drinking water in the neighbourhoods. Cairo's garbage

collectors waged a series of unprecedented collective protests in 2009 leaving piles of trash in

the streets and at homes, exposing the failure of the state to ensure a modicum of sanitary

urban life. Labour protests against the eroding traditional perks and security reached a new

height in 2009 and 2010, and the young got involved in civic activism and voluntary work on

a scale seen never before. When social media became available for them, the young began to

connect, with some getting involved in mobilizing protest actions. In Tunisia, self-

immolations and labour unrest had previously occurred in the central provinces of Ghabes,

Qasarain and Sidibouzid, and the Tunisian younger generation — some 40 per cent of them

unemployed — were already in the business of online networking and building political

identities (Ayeb, 2011; Shaqroun, 2011). These largely disparate voices and practices seemed

to coalesce by the end of the 2000s to form the backbone of what came to be known as the

Arab spring.

A great deal, then, was happening within the underside of Arab societies, which remained

unnoticed by Middle East observers. Middle East watchers were concerned less with the

theme of change than continuity, less with exploring internal forces of transformation than

explaining how authoritarian rules endured. Many observers, wearing the ‘exceptionalist’

lens, focused on a narrow and static notion of culture — one that was virtually equated with

the religion of Islam — to explain the status quo. Others who found little explanatory power

in the ‘culturalist’ paradigm (because after all the major opposition to the pre-revolution

regimes came from the rank of Muslims, especially the Islamists) pointed instead to oil and

the rentier state as factors that presumably ensured stability and continuity. Certainly, oil

money, especially lots of it, does matter in buying off dissent by helping to establish social

contracts, creating labour aristocracies, funding efficient institutions of political control and,

most importantly, creating a ‘regime class’, a class of loyalists who lend strong support to the

incumbent regimes in exchange for state handouts, as in the Islamic Republic or Gaddafi's

Libya. But the rentier state is also developmental; it ‘modernizes’, helping to establish the

infrastructure of economic and social change, and classes of political actors who may come to

question the very authoritarian states which assisted to create them. The development

processes under the Shah and the Islamic Republic in Iran, or those in Saudi Arabia, Oman,

Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates exemplify the regenerative facet of oil income.2

Surprisingly, such structural factors barely figured in the analyses of the prevailing

scholarship on the Middle East.

Consequently, those who did point to the potential of popular dissent as a source of change

could not find much potency in the doings of ordinary people. If anything, they viewed

popular activism as little more than sporadic angry protestation, with most of it directed by

Islamists mainly against the West and Israel, rather than their own repressive states. Even the

celebrated Arab Human Development Report, arguably the most significant manifesto for

change in the Arab Middle East, could not envision any other alternative to the depressing

state of Arab development but a ‘realistic solution’ of a ‘western-supported project of gradual

and moderate reform aiming at liberalization’ (UNDP, 2004: 164). If there was any

formidable dissent to reckon with, it came only from the rank of the Islamists, not ordinary

people.

POST-ISLAMIST ORIENTATION1. Top of page

2. ABSTRACT

3. EVERY REVOLUTION IS A SURPRISE

4. POST-ISLAMIST ORIENTATION

5. LIMITS OF STREET POLITICS

6. REFORMIST REVOLUTIONARIES

7. REFERENCES

8. Biography

In truth, Islamist politics was such an unrivalled trend prior to the uprisings that, for many

observers and policy makers, any real challenge to the despotic regimes would unleash

Islamist revolutions in the region (Bayat, 2011). Contrary to expectations, this was not the

case. Surprisingly, the Arab revolts espoused the kind of aura, idioms, culture and

constituencies that radically distinguished them from the earlier Islamist movements. Of

course most participants were pious Muslims who fought along with seculars, leftists,

nationalists and non-Muslims. Many protestors appeared to deploy religious rituals (such as

praying in streets and squares), utilizing religious times (Fridays) and places (like mosques);

but these religious rituals are all part of the regular doings of all pious Arabs who perform

them in everyday life, rather than carrying them out to Islamize the uprisings. Instead of

Islamist revolutions, the uprisings championed ‘post-Islamist’ convictions. Even though the

Islamist activists were certainly present during the uprisings, they never determined the

direction — after all, there was hardly central leadership in any one of these movements.

Some Islamist groups, as in Egypt, initially were even reluctant to join in the protests; and the

major religious groups, Salafies, al-Azhar and the Coptic Church, initially opposed the

revolution. The Muslim Brothers’ old guard joined in reluctantly only after being pushed by

the group's youths who defied their leaders to cooperate closely with the liberal and leftist

protagonists. In Tunisia, supporters of the Islamic al-Nahda did take part in the revolution, but

their leader, Rashid al-Ghanoushi, made it clear that his party did not want a Khomeini-type

religious state; he favoured a non-religious and civil state. The leadership of the Libyan

uprising, the National Transitional Council, was composed not of Islamists or al-Qaeda

members, but doctors, lawyers, teachers and some defectors from the Gaddafi regime who

suddenly found themselves leading a revolution. In Yemen, the key participating religious

group (Islah Party) in the revolutionary coalition remained moderate, while al-Qaeda only

used the disruption in the security control to launch its own sporadic anti-government attacks

in the provinces. Even in Bahrain, where conflict appeared religious (Shi'a opposition versus

Sunni ruling family), the opposition rejected a religious take-over of the state. Broadly, the

Arab revolts called not for a religious state, but for ‘freedom, dignity and social justice’.

These overwhelmingly civil and non-religious revolts represent a sharp departure from the

region's politics of the mid-1980s and 1990s, when the political class was consumed by the

nationalist and moral politics framed overwhelmingly by an Islamist paradigm. But Islamist

politics had begun to lose its hegemony in the post 9/11 Middle East. The Iranian model had

already faced a deep crisis for its repression, misogyny, exclusionary attitudes and unfulfilled

promises. Al-Qaeda's brutal violence and extremism had caused a widespread Islamophobia

from which largely ordinary Muslims suffered. The challenge faced by Turkish Islamism in

its encounter with strong secular sensibilities and the Turkish military had brought about the

emergence of a post-Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP). Thus, Islamist politics in

the region encountered serious challenges from without and within — from seculars and

faithful alike who felt the deep scars Islamists’ disregard for human rights, tolerance and

pluralism had left on the body politic and religious life. The faithful could no longer accept

Islamists’ exploitation of Islam as a tool to procure power and privilege. It was time to rescue

Islam and the state by abandoning the idea of the Islamic state. This line of thinking broadly

underscored the post-Islamist orientation of a ‘new Arab public’ (young, educated, post-

ideological and variously marginalized) who utilized expanding electronic communication

(satellite dishes, mobile phones, Internet, weblogs and then Facebook) to initiate the

uprisings.3

A surprising element here is that on the morrow of these overwhelmingly civil and non-

religious uprisings, it was mainly the Islamic parties that assumed parliamentary and

governmental power. In Morocco, the Islamic Justice and Development Party scored the

highest number of votes and its leader, Benkirani, became the Prime Minister. The Tunisian

al-Nahda Party won 40 per cent of the seats in the parliamentary elections and became the

dominant power in the Constituent Assembly. In Egypt, the Muslim Brothers and the Salafi

parties together captured 60 per cent of the seats in the Parliament, and Muhammad Morsy of

the Muslim Brothers became the President. Are we not then on the verge of yet another wave

of Islamism in the Middle East? Was the ‘Arab spring’ after all not the season of Islamic

revolutions in the region?4

The concern over ‘Islamist resurgence’ is partly understandable, but has for large part to do

with the common practice of lumping together under the rubric ‘Islamism’ quite different

kinds of religiously-inspired trends, as if any Muslim man with beards and galabiya, or

woman with hijab, or a volunteer in a religious association, is an ‘Islamist’. In fact, many of

the religious parties which seem to cause anxiety in the mainstream media are not actually

‘Islamist’, strictly-speaking; they are ‘post-Islamist’, even though they all self-consciously

remain ‘Islamic’. By Islamism I mean those ideologies and movements that seek to establish

some kind of an Islamic order — a religious state, Sharia law and moral codes in Muslim

societies and communities. An association with the state is a key feature of Islamist

movements. Islamist movements are adamant about controlling state power, not only because

it ensures their rule, but especially because they consider the state to be the most powerful and

efficient institution that is able, whether through da‘wa (preaching) or duress, to ‘command

good and forbid wrong’ in Muslim societies. This means that the Islamists’ normative and

legal perspective places more emphasis on people's obligations than their rights; people are

perceived more as dutiful subjects than rightful citizens. So, Islamism is broadly a duty-

centred religious polity. Examples include the Iranian hardliners led by the supreme leader

Ayatollah Khamenei; the Jama‘at-e Islami or Lashkar-e Tayyubah in Pakistan; Lashkar-i

Jihad in Indonesia; Al-Shibab in Sumalia; and Hizbul-Tahrir in many parts of the world.

Post-Islamism, however, is different. It is not anti-Islamic, nor un-Islamic or secular; it is

religious. But it represents a critique of Islamism from within and without. It wants to

transcend Islamist politics by emphasizing people's rights rather than just their obligations;

people are seen more as citizens than mere subjects. Post-Islamism hopes to mix religiosity

and rights, faith and freedom (with varied degrees), Islam and democracy. It seeks to establish

an electoral democracy, a secular/civil state, while promoting a pious society. The Iranian

Reform Movement under Mohammad Khatami, the Indonesian PKS, and the Turkish AKP

represent variants of the post-Islamist trends in the Muslim world today.5 What has been

unfolding in the aftermath of the ‘Arab spring’ is not ‘Islamist resurgence’ per se, but rather a

new religious polity with a post-Islamist proclivity. After all, in the Algerian and Libyan post-

uprisings elections, the religious parties lost to the secular and liberal counterparts; the Libyan

Abdel-Hakim Belhaj's Islamist party did not get any seats in the General National Congress in

2012, which elected the secular Mostafa Abushagur as Prime Minister. In the cases of both

Morocco and Tunisia, the religious parties which captured most power are not Islamist,

strictly speaking, but rather post-Islamist. Al-Nahda in Tunisia and Justice and Development

Party (PJD) in Morocco remain committed to electoral democracy. They wish to follow a

similar line as the Turkish AKP. They are interested not in a religious state, but in a civil and

secular one, but they also wish to see religion play an active role in civil and political society.

In Egypt things are more complex. The Muslim Brothers (MB) are in the throes of a

transformation, and remain in an ideological quandary. While the old guard still utters the

language of Islamism and the Sharia — with some even subscribing to the ideas of the radical

Sayyid Qutb — their political party, the Freedom and Justice Party, is officially committed to

a civil state, and many of their youths embrace post-Islamism of the AKP type. The

differences of vision within the movement have led to a number of splits since the revolution;

the prominent Abdel Monem Aboul-Fotouh has formed his own party, while the younger

activists, upon splitting from the Muslim Brothers, have established five political parties

including Tayar Masry and al-Adl Party.

Beyond the change in the formal organizations, there appears to be an ideological shift among

the Arab publics in general. A value survey conducted in June–August 2011 in Egypt, Iraq,

Lebanon and Saudi Arabia seems to confirm a move towards post-Islamism. Some 85 per cent

of Egyptians said the aim of the revolution was democracy, economic prosperity and equality,

while only 9 per cent said the goal was an Islamic government. Another poll by TNS reported

in Al-Masry al-Youm in 2011 suggested that 75 per cent of Egyptians favoured a civil, rather

than religious, state. In 2001, 68 per cent of Egyptians favoured democracy; this increased to

84 per cent in 2011 (Moaddel, 2012).6 After all, in the first round of presidential elections in

Egypt, the Muslim Brothers’ Islamist candidate scored less than 25 per cent of the votes, and

in the final round (against the pro-Mubarak Ahmad Shafik) just over 50 per cent.

Nevertheless, the visibility of Salafies in the public arena has caused a real surprise and

concern. Even though Salafism remains a heterogeneous entity — some favour the status-quo,

others focus on enhancing the ethical self, while still others embrace a Jihadi and militant path

— the sporadic and violent intrusions into artistic expressions or women's rights have caused

serious disquiet and debate about the future of Salafi groups in the new Arab political

landscape.

LIMITS OF STREET POLITICS1. Top of page

2. ABSTRACT

3. EVERY REVOLUTION IS A SURPRISE

4. POST-ISLAMIST ORIENTATION

5. LIMITS OF STREET POLITICS

6. REFORMIST REVOLUTIONARIES

7. REFERENCES

8. Biography

Whatever their nature, how did it transpire that the religious parties in particular, rather than

the revolutionaries, ascended to the helm of power? Why were the protagonists — including

the leftists, liberals and post-Islamists — who initiated and pushed through the uprisings

sidelined on the morrow of the uprisings?

In times of revolution/insurrection, the fiercest battles take place in the streets, the locus

where revolutionary breakthrough is achieved. Street politics, then, becomes the most critical

battle-frame in the ‘exceptional episode’ of the revolution's long life-course. This ‘exceptional

episode’ is marked by a swift transformation of consciousness, utopia and euphoria. It is this

extraordinary moment (with its unique spatial, temporal and cognitive elements) that espouses

awe, inspiration and the promise of a new world. Revolutionaries become the master of the

streets at these transitory times. Their unremitting initiatives, bravery and sacrifices appear as

if they signal the coming of a new historical order. This represents the street politics of the

revolutionary times.

However, ‘revolution’ (as insurrection) is different from ‘post-revolution’ — or the day after

the dictators abdicate. Whereas the ‘street’ matters most in times of revolution, in ‘post-

revolution’ it is political society and the state that rule the day. While the ‘exceptional

episode’, the insurrection, echoes the mastery of revolutionaries, ‘post-revolution’ times are

the occasion of the ‘free riders’. The free riders — those non-participants, the well-wishers,

the benign and the watchers of events, if not opportunists — assume immediate power the day

after the dictators relinquish power. They come out, get visible and vocal, and make claims.

Most crucially, they themselves become the target of intense mobilization by the already-

organized and equally free-riding groups and movements.

A paradox of the ‘post-revolution’ period is that either the revolutionaries (banking on their

political capital) impose their agenda through exclusionary populism (as in Iran, Russia,

China or Ethiopia) without much regard for the will of the majority (‘We did the revolution,

so we have the right to rule’). Or, if electoral democracy did matter, they might lose political

society to the free-rider majority whose votes can bring non-revolutionaries to the centres of

power. The fact is that revolutionaries are always in a minority; and revolutions are always

carried out by a minority, albeit a ‘spectacular minority’ — exceptional and extra-ordinary

players who master the art of insurrection. Revolutions are won not because the majority of

people fight the regimes, but because only a tiny minority remains to resist.7

The street politics of revolutionary times shows its limitations when it is deployed in an

electoral democracy. The protests in Tahrir square, in Madrid or in New York's Liberty

Square have truly been the most extra-ordinary expression of street politics in recent memory.

But they are precisely that — extra-ordinary, which in ordinary times reveal their limitations;

they cannot be sustained for a long span of time, for they would be costly, while their

routinization would diminish their clout and effectivity. Ironically, these spectacular and

extra-ordinary street showdowns are too feeble to carry on for long when compared to the

‘street politics’ of the non-movements whose practices are part and parcel of the ordinary

practices of everyday life (such as street vendors spreading their merchandise in streets, or

poor households incorporating public spaces into their private lives). In this latter case, ‘street

politics’ is not an extra-ordinary performance; rather it is an incessant but ordinary practice of

everyday life for sustenance, where the very deed of appropriation of public space is a gain

itself, rather than a means to achieve a political goal. Consequently, post-revolution, winners

are not those who once created the wonders of Tahrir and its magical power, but those who

skilfully mobilize the mass of ordinary people, including the free riders, in their small towns,

farms, factories and unions.

In Tunisia and Egypt, the religious parties began to mobilize the free riders as soon as the

dictators fell. Al-Nahda along with its leader al-Ghanoushi travelled to the provinces, urban

neighbourhoods and villages to hold meetings, establish branches and build networks.

Thousands attended these meetings (Lynch, 2011). In Egypt, groups like Gama‘a al-

Islamiyya, banned and banished under Mubarak, as well as the unassuming Salafies, emerged

out of seclusion and began to mobilize in earnest. The Muslim Brothers already held a well-

established organization and vast network of cells, cadres and local leaders throughout the

country. They revitalized those networks in a more aggressive fashion in mosques, villages

and neighbourhoods, often deploying their messages along with typical populist dispensations

— handouts, food and fuel. When the Gama‘a al-Islamiyya held its first ever free rally in

Masjid Adam in Ain al-Shams of Cairo, some 4,000 attended.8 Through such relentless work

far away from Tahrir or Bourqiba Boulevard, the religious parties managed to score

impressive victories in the constituent assemblies and parliamentary elections in 2011. They

dominated political society through side-lining the left, liberal and post-Islamist

revolutionaries, not to mention women whose mass presence in the revolutions need not be

emphasized, but who ended up being excluded from the centres of power.9

Thus, pushed away from the state and political society, and with street politics running its

course, the revolutionaries were bound to move into associational life in civil society if they

were to continue their activism. But even this is not guaranteed if the state, once it

consolidates itself, extends its surveillance into oppositional civil associations. And it will do

so in the name of ‘safeguarding the revolution’. We saw how the military rulers in Egypt

(SCAF) in 2011 went after Human Rights organizations and non-conformist NGOs, banning a

number of them. The SCAF went as far as bringing 14,000 revolutionaries before a military

tribunal, subjecting many to prosecution and torture. Not just civil society organizations, but

even the sanctuary of the ‘private realm’ should not be taken for granted, if there is anything

to learn from the experience of the Iranian revolution of 1979. In Iran, the secular

revolutionaries and ordinary citizens were pressed so hard by the new regime that they found

themselves struggling to defend the most mundane human rights — what colour clothing to

wear, what kind of music to listen to, or how much hair to show off beneath their headscarves.

REFORMIST REVOLUTIONARIES1. Top of page

2. ABSTRACT

3. EVERY REVOLUTION IS A SURPRISE

4. POST-ISLAMIST ORIENTATION

5. LIMITS OF STREET POLITICS

6. REFORMIST REVOLUTIONARIES

7. REFERENCES

8. Biography

The fact that revolutionaries were subjected to prosecution and torture just after the uprisings

by the remnants of the old regime reveals something peculiar about the nature of such

‘revolutions’. The fact is that, and this is the most significant surprise, the Arab ‘revolutions’

failed to bring about a radical transformation of the state — a step necessary to realize the

revolution's objectives. While the protagonists succeeded in creating the magic of Tahrir

square, little changed in state institutions. In Egypt, Yemen, and to a lesser extent in Tunisia,

some of the key institutions of the old regimes — the security apparatus, the judiciary, the

state media, political networks of powerful business circles, cultural organizations, and

especially the military — remained largely unaltered.

In this sense, the ‘Arab uprisings’ are different from the twentieth century revolutions in

Russia, China, Cuba, Iran, or even those in 1989 in Eastern Europe, where revolutions came

to mean a rapid and radical overhaul of the state, driven from below by popular uprisings. In

the Arab world (barring Libya which went through a revolutionary, albeit destructive, war and

violence aided by NATO), the protagonist revolutionaries remained outside the centres of

power, because they were not supposed to seize state power; they were not planning to.

When, in the later stages, they realized that they should, they lacked the resources — the kind

of organization, powerful leaderships and a strategic vision necessary to wrest power from the

old regimes or the free riders. Thus, there was no dual power, no parallel governments, no

revolutionary provisional governments. In a sense then, these were the revolutions without

revolutionaries. For the Arab Spring came to fruition at a political time in the world when the

very idea of revolution had faded and revolutionary utopias had ceased to exist. Consequently,

what came to transpire in the end were not revolutions in the twentieth century sense of the

term, but ‘refo-lutions’ — the revolutionary movements which aimed to compel the tyrannical

incumbent states to reform themselves on behalf of the revolutionaries.10

Until the mid-1990s, three major ideological traditions carried the idea of revolution as the

strategy of fundamental change in societies. They included anti-colonial nationalism,

Marxism–Leninism and Islamism.11 Anti-colonial nationalism — as articulated in the ideas

of such figures as Fanon, Nasser, Nehru and Nkrumah — imagined post-colonial societies as

radically transformed to end the colonial domination and the supremacy of comprador

bourgeoisie. But the nationalist revolutions had come to a halt in the post-colonial era. While

the post-colonial regimes did make some inroads in state building, education, employment

and agrarian reform, for the most part they failed to secure democracy, deep social justice and

the independence that they had promised. Most turned into autocracies, military populists and

developmental failures, if they were not overthrown by military coups. By the late 1980s,

these post-colonial states were shedding their distributive socialism, ‘social contracts’ and

populism by embracing neoliberal policies. Palestinian nationalism remains perhaps the last

of the nationalist revolutionary movements to overcome its state of colonization.

Marxists were perhaps the most significant revolutionaries in the Cold War era, with the key

Marxist–Leninist organizations continuing to embrace the revolutionary ideal. Many of them

inspired a guerrilla-type strategy of social revolutions in developing countries, including the

Middle East. The iconic images of Che Guevara and Ho Chi Minh with the legends of

revolutions in Cuba and Vietnam found passionate receptions not only in the universities and

factories of the Third World, but also in the streets of Paris, New York and London. Despite

the appeal of social democracy and the Eurocommunist reformism in Europe, the radical left

and Trotskyist organizations had retained their elaborate theories of revolution with the

blueprints of state takeover. Even though some strands within the Third World left pursued

the reformist course of ‘non-capitalist road to development’, Marxist–Leninists continued to

advocate revolution passionately.

All of this changed drastically after the collapse of the USSR and the Socialist Eastern Block.

The anti-Communist revolutions of Eastern Europe and the end of the Cold War terminated

the utopia of revolution as a rapid and radical socio-political transformation. The rhetoric of

‘revolution’ was so integral to socialism that the demise of ‘actually existing socialism’ meant

the end of revolution as radical change. The failure of socialism meant the failure of state-

centred policies and perspectives; étatism was equated with centralism, repression,

inefficiency and erosion of individual autonomy, initiatives and freedom. This certainly had a

profound impact on the legitimacy of ‘revolution’ given its emphasis on the take-over of the

state. So ‘revolution’ became a bad word, identified with Marxism, strong state and

authoritarianism — all features of the defeated Communism. The spread of neoliberalism

around the globe beginning with Ronald Reagan in the US and Margaret Thatcher in Britain

enormously aided this change of discourse.

In place of socialism, state and revolution, came an intense interest in ‘the individual’, NGOs,

public sphere, civil society, rational dialogue, non-violence and, in a word, ‘reform’. ‘Reform’

became the name of the game and the strategy of the time. International NGOs, aid agencies

and governments played a key role in spreading the new discourse at the global level, as did

business and conservative think tanks. The impact was impressive. If in the 1970s, Christian

socialism found expression in the collectivist and revolutionary movements of Liberation

theology, the 2000s saw the upsurge, in Africa and Latin America, of a new Evangelist

Christianity whose individualist ethics embraced the spirit of neoliberalism, mixing faith and

fortune.

Marxism–Leninism and its idea of revolution had declined, but it had left its revolutionary

mark on its archetypical rival — Islamism. Since the 1970s, the revolutionary ideas of Sayyid

Qutb dominated the various strands of political Islam. Informed by the political theology of

the Indian Abul-ala’ Maududi (who had learnt the organizational strategy of the Indian

Communist Party), Qutb's ideas formed the ideological foundation for Muslim militants to

forcefully seize and refurbish the Jahili state to establish an Islamic order. Indeed, Qutb's

Ma‘alim fi al-Tariq (Signposts) (1964) held the same value for militant Islamists (such as

Gama‘a Islamiyya, Hizbul-Tahrir or various Jihadi groups) as Lenin's What is to Be Done

(1902) did for Marxist–Leninists. In Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the current supreme

leader, had translated the Signposts into Persian, while Ali Shariati, a student of French leftist

George Gorwitch, had advocated revolution in Marxist–Islamic idioms to realize the idea of

the ‘divine classless society’. Thus, unlike the Muslim Brotherhood which favoured a

gradualist strategy of Islamization, militant Islamism stayed passionate about revolution.

This also began to shift, however. With the crisis of Islamism and the rise of post-Islamist

trends, the idea of revolution began to lose its allure. Post-Islamist criticism of Islamism also

meant a departure from the Islamist discourse of violence, militancy and revolutionary

rhetoric. Post-Islamists advocated non-violence, gradualism and a reformist path towards

political and social change. In Iran, for instance, the idiom of ‘revolution’ that was so revered

in the 1980s lost its appeal by the late 1990s. ‘Revolution’ literally became a stigma,

identified with violence, destruction and authoritarian rule. While Islamism had roots in Cold

War politics, post-Islamist politics is shaped by the prevailing idioms of the post-Cold War

period — the free market, civil society, non-violence and reform.

So, the Arab uprisings occurred at a time on the global stage when the idea of revolution had

dissipated. The decline of the key grand ideologies — revolutionary nationalism, Marxism–

Leninism and Islamism — had left the protagonists with no revolutionary utopia to imagine. It

is not surprising then that few in the Arab world had really envisioned, strategized or prepared

for the unfolding of the revolutions, even though they might have dreamed about them. These,

then, seem to be very different times to my youth in the Iran of the late 1970s when my

friends and I would often invoke the image of revolution in our conversations, even if it

looked very far-fetched. Biking through the opulent neighbourhoods of north Tehran, we

always wondered how the Shah's palaces would be taken over, how those lavish mansions

would be distributed. We were thinking about ‘revolution’.

In the Middle East of the 2000s hardly any group imagined change in terms of revolution.

They had been preoccupied with reform; meaningful change in unjust and tyrannical regimes.

In the Tunisian police state, the political class had gone through a ‘political death’. In Egypt,

the Kifaya movement and later the April 6 movement, despite their political innovations, were

essentially reformist — they were lacking the strategy to completely overhaul the state.12

And there was hardly anything revolutionary in the kinds of training that some activists had

reportedly received in Qatar or Serbia. Consequently, what transpired when the uprisings

unfolded were not revolutions per se, beginning with the radical shift in the state power, but

‘refo-lutions’, that is, revolutionary movements that wished to compel the incumbent regimes

to reform themselves.

In truth, people may or may not have an idea about revolutions before they actually happen,

for the occurrence of a revolution has little to do with the idea (and even less with a ‘theory’)

of revolution. Revolutions ‘simply’ happen; but having or not having an idea about

revolutions will have a marked impact on the aftermath. The political field in the Arab world

remains open. There are still real possibilities for a profoundly emancipatory transformation

of the region. Indeed, we might encounter yet another surprise in the coming years by the

gradual realization of what propelled the Arab uprisings in the first place —‘freedom, dignity

and social justice’. But this may not transpire unless activists and the subaltern subjects

continue their incessant mobilization in civil society, the streets, communities and in the

private realm.

1. 1

See Bayat (2013a) for a documentation of some of these practices.

2. 2

I am indebted to Kaveh Ehsani for bringing this to my attention. Recently Timothy

Mitchell has discussed the wider democratizing potential of oil and other extractive

industries; see Mitchell (2011).

3. 3

This ‘new Arab public’ shared with their counterparts in the rest of the world many

features of what Biekart and Fowler, in their Introduction, call ‘transforming activisms

2010+’.

4. 4

The fear is so pronounced that some have called the trend the ‘Islamist Spring’; see for

instance Walt (2012).

5. 5

For a detailed conceptualization and historical accounts of post-Islamism see Bayat

(2013b).

6. 6

The value survey interviewed 3,500 Egyptian adults; see Moaddel (2012).

7. 7

During the Cuban revolution, while a handful of Castro's group took over the

mountains of Sierra Mystera, Che Guevara began to conquer the rest of the country

with 148 men; see Hobsbawm (1996: 438). John Adams famously stated that only a

third of the population supported the revolutionaries; just imagine how many were

revolutionaries themselves. Adams also believed that another third supported the

British, and the remaining third were neutral. See Fisher (2003) for a detailed account

of the ‘American Revolution’.

8. 8

As reported in al-Masry al-Youm [Egypt Independent], 16 April 2011.

9. 9

Only eight women managed to enter Egypt's parliament of 480 members in the 2011

elections. Thanks to a quota system, the Tunisian assembly accommodates a more

reasonable number of women deputies.

10. 10

In their Introduction to this Debate, Biekart and Fowler correctly stress the ‘newness’

of these movements and wonder about their particular character. ‘Refo-lution’ is how I

characterize the Arab trajectory; and I attempt to explain why they were so. I

understand the term ‘refo-lution’ differently from Timothy Garton Ash who used it

first in reference to the 1989 Polish and Hungarian revolutions. Writing as early as 15

June 1989, Garton Ash's term refers to the initial stages of change where the ruling

Communist Parties, pushed by popular mobilization, agreed to some political reforms;

yet these reforms entailed in a matter of months a radical overhaul of the states,

political systems, economic models and Eastern Europe as a whole. In this sense, the

Eastern European experience of 1989 resonates more with ‘revolutions’ than ‘refo-

lutions’.

11. 11

For more extensive discussions see Bayat (2013a: Ch. 13) and Bayat (2013c).

12. 12

On the Egyptian case see also Maha Abdelrahman's contribution to this Debate

section.

REFERENCES1. Top of page

2. ABSTRACT

3. EVERY REVOLUTION IS A SURPRISE

4. POST-ISLAMIST ORIENTATION

5. LIMITS OF STREET POLITICS

6. REFORMIST REVOLUTIONARIES

7. REFERENCES

8. Biography

Ayeb, Habib (2011) ‘Social Geography of the Tunisian Revolution’, Review of African

Political Economy 38(129): 473–85.

Bakhash, Shaul (1984) The Reign of Ayatollahs. New York: Basic Books.

o Web of Science®

Bayat, Asef (2011) ‘Egypt and the Post-Islamist Middle East’, OpenDemcoracy,

February.

Bayat, Asef (2013a) Post-Islamism: The Changing Faces of Political Islam. New

York: Oxford University Press.

Bayat, Asef (2013b) ‘Revolutions in Bad Times’, New Left Review March/April.

Bayat, Asef (2013c) Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East

(2nd edn). Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.

Fisher, S. George (2003) The True History of the American Revolution. Chestnut Hill,

MA: Adamant Media Corporation.

Gause, Gregory (2011) ‘Why Middle East Studies Missed the Arab Spring: The Myth

of Authoritarian Stability’, Foreign Affairs 90(4): 81–90.

Hobsbawm, Eric (1996) The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914–1991.

New York: Vintage.

Kuran, Timur (1989) ‘Sparks and Prairie Fires: A Theory of Un-anticipated Political

Revolutions’, Public Choice 61: 41–74.

o CrossRef ,

o Web of Science® Times Cited: 136

Lenin, V.I. (1902) What Is to Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement.

http://marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/index.htm

Lynch, Marc (2011) ‘Tunisia's New al-Nahda’, Foreign Policy 29 June.

Mitchell, Timothy (2011) Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil.

London: Verso.

Moaddel, Mansoor (2012) ‘What do Arabs Want?’. Project Syndicate 4 January.

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/what-do-arabs-want-

Norton-Taylor, Richard (2011) ‘Why Do Revolutions such as Tunisia's Come by

Surprise?’, The Guardian 1 February.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/01/revolutions-surprise-tunisia-

diplomats-intelligence

Qutb, S. (1964) Ma'alim fi al-Tariq. Cairo: Kazi Publications.

Shapiro, Leonard (1984) The Russian Revolutions of 1917: The Origins of Modern

Communism. New York: Basic Books.

Shaqroun, Nizar (2011) Rawaya al-Thawra al-Tunisiya. Tunis and Bahrain: Al-

Dosari.

de Tocqueville, Alex (2011) The French Revolution and the Old Regime. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

UNDP (2004) Arab Human Development Report 2004. New York: United Nations

Development Programme.

Walt, Yigal (2012) ‘Islamist Spring Is Upon Us’, Ynetnews 24 June.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4246722,00.html

Wong, Y.C. Richard (2011) ‘On the Surprise Elements of Revolution: Why Tunisia and

Egypt?’. 4 March. http://www.wangyujian.com/?p=650&lang=en

Biography1. Top of page

2. ABSTRACT

3. EVERY REVOLUTION IS A SURPRISE

4. POST-ISLAMIST ORIENTATION

5. LIMITS OF STREET POLITICS

6. REFORMIST REVOLUTIONARIES

7. REFERENCES

8. Biography

Asef Bayat, the Catherine and Bruce Bastian Professor of Global and

Transnational Studies, teaches Sociology and Middle East Studies at the University of

Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 910 South Fifth Street, Champaign, IL 61820, USA. His

areas of interest range from political sociology and social movements, to religion and

society, and urban space and politics. His most recent books include Life as Politics:

How Ordinary People Change the Middle East (Stanford University Press, 2013, 2nd

edn), and Post-Islamism: The Changing Faces of Political Islam (Oxford University

Press, 2013).