Religion and Secularism in the Middle East

• Revolutionary Islamism

– Social-political revolution in nation state(s)

• Political Islamism

– Transform nation-state by participating in its politics-institutions

• Salafism / Jihadism

– Reject nation-state

– Social activism / bottom-up change

– Jihad (individual, social and military meanings)

• All of them can be violent (mostly 1 and 3)

• but violence is a consequence

• All claim to draw on Islamic sources

• But very different conclusions and political strategies

I. Revolutionary Islamism

• Take over the state with a revolution, restructure all political and socio-economic order

• Messianic/Inspirational figures in political Islamism

• Became more visible after the weakening of Arab nationalism and socialism, defeat in 1967 war

• Islamic Revolution in Iran: Khomeini – Iran – Novel political interpretation of Shi’i doctrine

I. Revolutionary Islamism - Intellectual sources

• Sayyed Qutb (morality and Sharia)

– Egypt – Revolutionary brand of Muslim Brotherhood – Muslim countries not applying Sharia are in a state of Jahiliyya

(ignorance, pre-Islamic) – Muslims have duty to prevent others from committing sin – Muslims are duty bound to overthrow such a state – Executed for refusal to rescind his positions

• Ali Sheriati (socioeconomic justice)

- Iran - revolutionary ‘red’ Shiism -Islamic Left: Marxist and Fanonist themes read into the Quran and Shi’a doctrine -revolution and liberation with an authentic lineage

II. Political Islamism

• National Outlook Movement in Turkey

• «Moderate» wing of Muslim Brothers in Egypt, Syria, Tunisia

• Muslim league in Pakistan

• Indonesia

• Why the rise of political Islamism and Islamic militanism?

– Perceived failure of secular governments/ideologies in generating political and economic development

– Failure of secular ideologies/governments to establish true democracy

– The Palestinian conflict

– Globalization: reactions as well as opportunities

– Conflict within political Islamism: “Islam is the solution!” “Jihad.” But which jihad and how?

Conflict within political Islamism: Ideal Types

I) Conservative Islam

– Morality and social control

– Like other conservatisms, enshrines the values of property, family, and order

– Only political insofar as impose these values through government and law

– Exemplified by Saudi Arabia (state example)

– AL-Azhar (had declared revoutionary S. Qutb heretic!), mainstream Muslim Brotherhood (up to 2011, non state example)

Morsi at al Azhar

Ideal Types Cont.

II) Radical Islam

– Qutbic groups in Egypt

• Bin-Laden was a prominent devotee of Qutb’s work

– Transformation of society through direct action

– Command the good and forbid the evil

– Eliminate un-Islamic ruler

– Assasination of Sadat in 1981

• Major difference between Sunni Islam and Catholic Christianity: No centralized authority such as the Papacy

• Caliphate abolished by Turkey in 1924

• Who can represent and enforce democratic consensus on behalf of Islam?

Iran

• Before Khomeini, radical Islam in opposition

• Post-Khomeini, secularized Islam in opposition

• Reaction to state oppression

• Move away from Islamic government

• Move away from political Islam but not necessary Islam

Conclusion: Qua Vadis Political Islamism?

• Power struggle between conservative and radical Islamism. Pragmatists versus ideologues. Not necessarily principled democrats.

• Ideational/ideological change. Reinterpretation of Islam. Islamist democrats? Liberal Islamism?

• State-dependent versus civil Islam.

• Secular politics. Relying on state versus civil society.

• International environment.

Larry Diamond: Why are there no Arab Democracies?

• By 1995, there were 117 electoral democracies in the world.

• Every major world region had a critical mass of democracies, save one

The Middle East • Why is there no Arab democracy? Unconvincing explanations for the Arab democracy deficit: • The deficit has to do with religion (i.e. Islam) and culture (i.e. Arab) • Economic underdevelopment • The oil curse

Religion and Culture

• Religion does not seem convincing for explaining the deficit since there are non-Arab Muslim majority countries that meet the criteria for electoral democracy.

Ex: Bangladesh, Senegal, Turkey

• By 2010, according to freedom House scores, there are 8 non-Arab Muslim majority states rated as electoral democracies and zero Arab ones.

Culture

• The British historian Elie Kedourie argues that there is ‘’nothing’’ in the Arab culture that can make it compatible with constitutional and representative government.

• YET, the culture in a number of African and Asian countries also hardly contains anything conducive to representation.

Ex: consider Mongolia or Zimbabwe in Africa WHY has democracy taken place in such ‘alien’ cultures, but NOT in the Arab world?

Ethnic and sectarian divisions are an obstacle to democracy in the Arab

world • This seems dubious according to Diamond • WHY, then Lebanon which is one of the most divided

societies in terms of ethnic and sectarian lines, is closest to full electoral democracy.

WHEREAS EGYPT and TUNISIA Two of the most homogenous countries YET also two of the most authoritarian !!! Diamond is speaking by the year 2010. This is before the Arab Spring revolts began.

MAYBE Arab population does not want or value democracy

• Still dubious

• Yet according to a recent survey by the Arab Barometer,

• well over 80 percent in Algeria, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, the Palestinian Authority, and even Iraq value that democracy would be good for their countries.

• Amaney Jamal and Mark Tessler conclude that Arabs value democracy and that neither religious politics nor personal religiosity pose a major obstacle

Economic development and social structure

• Lipset’s thesis: The more economically developed a country is, the better are the prospects for gaining and keeping democracy

STILL, by 2010 many Arab countries are quite ‘well-to-do’. EX: Kuwait is nearly as rich as Norway Bahrain is on a par with France Saudi Arabia with South Korea Economic structure?

• Out of sixteen, eleven Arab countries are rentier states. Meaning, they get so much revenue from oil and gas that they do not need to TAX their own populations. No taxes no expectations of accountability Rentier states are also: • Heavily centralized • İntensely policed • Profoundly corrupt • İnexistent, weak civil society

There is, then, an economic basis for the absence of democracy in the Arab

world. • BUT it is structural

It is the repressive institutions the Arab states have built that permit them to use oil for authoritarian purposes.

Remember Chavez case in Venezuela!!!

Corrales and Penfold argue that in rentier states, we do NOT have to do with ‘resource (i.e. Oil) curse’ but instead with institutional resource curse

• Without the institutional structure in place, rentier states will not be able to use resources for authoritarian purposes.

INDEED, in the Arab world, states; • Have build an amply funded and technologically

sophisticated secret police and intelligence apparatus

• These states are the world leaders in terms of proportion of GNP spent on security

• YET, repression is selective and heavily mixed with fake mechanisms of representation and consultation.

For ex: unfair elections Ottaway calls them elections for ‘cosmetic’ purposes. They frequently liberalize BUT do not democratize. Ex: presidential elections in 2004 in Egypt – grossly rigged and unfair Mubarak permitted some civic activity; freedom of speech

• In these unfair elections, regime opponents are completely disadvantaged and disempowered.

Such as Jordan’s use of the Single Non-Transferrable Vote, or SNTV)

Second Reason for the Arab democracy deficit

• The unfavorable geopolitical situation of the Middle East

• External powerful actors (during the Cold War Soviet Union and USA; now EU,USA and China) provide substantial financial resources, security assistance and political legitimacy to Arab regimes.

• To get favorable oil policies

• The security of Israel (for USA)

• Arab-Israeli Conflict

(it gives Arab states convenient means to divert public frustration from their authoritarian policies)

• The 22- member Arab League has become an autocrats’ club.

Will anything Change?

• Three factors could precipitate democratic change across the region.

• 1. The emergence of a model democratic country in the region Lebanon??? Iraq??? Egypt??? • 2. A change in US policy to resume principled engagement to

further democratic reforms.

• 3. The biggest game changer would be a prolonged, steep decline in • world oil prices This has proven beneficial in the case of Nigeria, Russia and Venezuela

Frederic Volpi: Pseudo-Democracy in the Arab World

• The notion of 'pseudo-democracy' can be usefully deployed as an analytical tool for comprehending the processes of partial democratisation in the Muslim world in the post-cold war era and post-9/11 order.

• It is necessary to look beyond the well-established argument that pseudo-democracy tries to look like a liberal democracy without trying to become one. Ottaway’s cosmetic reforms argument

• One of the necessary paradoxes of democratisation is that democratisation may entail curtailing some of the prerogatives of the demos for the benefit of a liberal constitutional ideal.

• This paradox was the democratic norm at the end of the 20th century;

Namely, a type of democracy that is designed to place restraints on majority rule with the view to protect very specific individual rights and civil liberties. Eg: The 2004 new Iraqi constitution with its proviso on minority rights and its gender quota. It appears that the political ethos that is promoted in most of the Muslim world is grounded in alternative notions of democracy that emphasise NOT the individual but the community

Three types of democracy

• The ‘republicanist’ and ‘Islamicist’ types

They both promote a ‘positive’ notion of freedom and citizenship.

• political participation is understood in terms of proactive civic religious commitments.

• liberty is couched in the terms of positive secular or religious law

• The liberal type of democracy - Promotes a ‘negative’ conception of freedom and citizenship - political systems trying to maximise individual rights and imposing

constraints on liberties only to avoid people's personal freedom being trampled upon by other people's personal freedom

The particularity of the Muslim world as a distinct socio-historical and geopolitical entity is that the main social and political forces promote 'positive' notions of freedom and citizenship instead of the 'negative'

Strong society vs. weak nation-state

• In most of the Muslim countries (Arab ones) regardless of the political orientation of the elite, there is a lack of deference from many segments of society to the notion that the state is a legitimate agency by which to shape the social and political preferences of the citizenry.

Joel Migdal’s state-in-society approach • Only in few instances have secular, nationalistic elites

been able to engineer a ‘good’ societal transformation. Prominent example: Turkey

• This is important because the existence of a relatively strong state is a prerequisite for strong and ‘healthy’ democracy to take hold.

• Volpi: which is probably why Turkey's claim to be a genuine democracy is relatively well articulated today

Political analysts have widely diverging

views on the prospects for liberal democracy in the Muslim world;

• According to the first view by scholars like Ernest Gellner and Samuel Huntington, they view Islam as the reason behind the liberal democracy deficit in the Muslim world.

• Second view, scholars like Augustus Norton or Massoud

Kamali argue, that a 'civil society' is slowly being created and that a liberal democratic ethos is consolidating in the Muslim world.

• Mark Tessler: religious beliefs in itself do not prevent Muslims from taking an interest in democracy.

Self-serving justifications of autocratic leaders

• Many autocratic leaders in the Muslim world argue that their citizens

are as yet ‘unfit’ for democracy and need to be educated with the democratic ideals.

• The 1994 Algerian PM Redah Malek justified the coup d'etat in his country by arguing that 'democracy is not a matter of going to the voting booths...democracy is a culture, a formation, and organisation’

• Similarly, when General Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan boldly declared a few days after his successful 1999 coup that this was 'not martial law, only another path towards democracy.’

Important Argument!

• The republicanist versions of democracy implemented by countries like Turkey and Algeria is NOT merely a stop-gap measure designed to contain the rise and spread of Islamism in their societies.

• It was also the affirmation of the institutional model that could best promote the political ethos that republicanist political forces wanted to have in the country.

• ‘The kind of democracy to which Turkish and Algerians could legitimately aspire’

• In Turkey, the issue of winning the hearts and minds of a new generation of citizens (eg in the Refah-sponsored religious schools) was at the heart of the constitutional coup of 1997 aimed at ousting the Islamist Refah party from power.

• In the Muslim majority countries, the kind of associational life being promoted is not the one in line with the liberal conception

BUT instead it is in accordance with social commitments promoted and demanded by Islamist and republicanist organisations. EX: It is not entirely coincidental that, after the 1997 confrontation between the Turkish military and the Refah party, a flurry of 'Associations for Ataturkist Thought‘ (Atatürkçü Düşünce Toplulukları) were created throughout the country in an attempt to revive the republican message of Ataturk.

Conclusion

• This straightforward competition between different forms of social commitment (liberal vs republicanist/islamist) contributes significantly to the repeated failures of liberal democratic practices to become entrenched in the Arab world, as well as to the reinvention and reproduction of pseudo-democratic systems.