Muslim Democrats In Turkey and Egypt: Participatory Politics As a Catalyst (original) (raw)
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Recently there have been arguments about the unwillingness of the political Islamists towards democracy or the impossibility of any harmony between the two due to especially the recent developments in Turkey. Arguments go as “Never enter into alliance with the Islamists”, “Never trust them with democracy” and the old familiar assertion that “Islam is inherently incompatible with democracy.” While it is a pretty much accurate observation that most of the liberals and leftists in the region who for long supported Islamists have been frustrated by their actions and no longer trust them with democracy especially in the case of Turkey. Some still choose to be hopeful for them to embrace democratic values and freedoms. This research is an academic endeavor to understand and discuss if an Islamic democracy is possible and the conditions for it. It will open to debate if the Muslim social movements in the Middle East can really embrace a truly democratic state and abide by the rules of this structure. This paper will attempt to accomplish the mentioned endeavor and seeks to evaluate the above arguments about the political Islamists’ behavior by comparing the two conflicting cases of Turkey and Tunisia where Islamists elected to power and for a time had the opportunity to rule their countries. It intends to contribute to the literature at hand about the compatibility of Islam and democracy or a possible Islamic democracy. This research will also critically engage with the ‘moderation through inclusion’ argument through these cases. It intends to contribute to the literature at hand about the compatibility of Islam and democracy and political behavior and actions of Islamist elites.
Mediterranean Politics, 2013
The Muslim Brotherhood (MB) emerged in Egypt in the early twentieth century to resist secularism and political pluralism in favour of religious revival and a unitary Islamic state. After three decades of political participation culminating in the formation of a government in Egypt, the movement has prioritized electoral paths to power, and defended individual rights, popular majorities and a civil state. Yet its discourse continues to straddle religious and secular terrain: in recent election campaigns, MB leaders promised to build an "Islamic state" and a "caliphate," all the while insisting that the people, not God, are the source of all power. What explains these contradictions, and what do they tell us about the Brotherhood"s apparent adoption of political and ideational pluralism and democratic values? I argue that the MB"s ambivalence about democracy is not a sign of dissimulation or lack of ideological evolution but has its roots in a thirtyyear process of partially adaptating to democratic and "secular" political ideas by reframing them in religious terms that ended up creating a hybrid "secularized" Islamism. This hybridization has both enabled and constrained the Brothers" adaptation to democracy in the post-Mubarak period.
Islam and Turkey: From Muslim Democracy to Islamist Autocracy?
Faith, Freedom and Foreign Policy: Challenges for the Transatlantic Community, Transatlantic Academy, 2015
In this chapter for a collection on the theme "Religion and the Liberal Order", I investigated whether Turkey is Islamicizing. I argue that it is, but this is neither new nor always a source of illiberal politics. Nevertheless, today, the Turkish leadership is pursuing a policy of polarization with Islamist overtones. This is part of a short-term strategy to win elections, a medium-term strategy to police dissent, and a long-term strategy of raising a presumptively compliant “devout generation” - a process I document empirically via changes to the education system. The danger of the approach is that by suppressing Turkey’s intrinsic diversity it creates fertile ground for ethno-sectarian tensions.
The Muslim Brotherhood: Between Democracy, Ideology and Distrust
The Muslim Brotherhood: Between Democracy, Ideology and Distrust, 2014
Following the Arab Spring, democracy exercised through free and fair elections had allowed Islamist political parties to gain power in Egypt. There was a transformation happening in the ideology of Islamists, who were increasingly trying to influence legislation through democratic processes and social activism. It could be argued that for a time, the u.s. and other Western governments no longer viewed Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood as a threat comparable with Jihadist groups such as Al-Qaeda. This did not translate into a domestic political success, however, once Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood was elected into power in 2012, it simplified good governance to a single and effective slogan: "Islam is the solution!" Yet, it had no real solution to the everyday problems of Egyptians and the sheer chaos that characterizes the daily lives of its people. In a devout region with growing inequality and poverty, religious credentials will matter less than offering specific solutions to these growing social issues. This paper argues that the myth of political Islam has been exposed in Egypt and that the Muslim Brotherhood's identity, torn between political pragmatism and religious conservatism, shaped its political actions under Morsi's rule.
Paola Rivetti and Hendrik Kraetzschmar , 2017
Is it still important to consider the issue of participation and moderation in post-Spring Egypt? The question of inclusion and moderation was at the heart of debates about the prospect of the 'taming' of Islamist movements and parties throughout the early 2000s, that is at a time when democratisation seemed to be a possibility, albeit a distant one. In the post-Spring era, which saw the return of an authoritarian regime under President 'Abd al-Fatah al-Sisi, there seems to be little taste for discussing whether there is still scope for the inclusion of Islamists in the political system. Yet, there is good reason to stipulate an ongoing relevance of this topic, particularly when studying Egypt's Islamist parties in the post-Spring setting. Firstly, the change of context, that is from a semi-authoritarian multi-party-system under Mubarak to a democratising system during the Arab Spring and finally to a much more politically restrictive framework under al-Sisi, allows us to investigate the trajectories of Islamist parties and, in reference to pre-Spring analyses, to appraise their commitment to democratic values. 1 A second reason is related to the fact that there are a range of Islamist parties in post-Spring and post-coup Egyptian politics. Aside from the al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin (Muslim Brotherhood; MB) and its subsidiary Hizb al-Hurriyya wa al-'Adala (Freedom and Justice Party; FJP), which were banned following the coup of 2013, there exists a wide spectrum of religious-based parties, which is, as Lynch rightly remarked, 'unchartered'. 2 When mapping these, one encounters a paradox. Salafi parties, which are ultra-conservative in their religious 1
The Role of Political Islam in Egyptian Democratic Experience
Journal of Social and Political science, 2019
The aim of the study was to understand the role of political Islamists in Egyptian democratic experience by the two research questions. Islamists' Ideological self-contradiction and conflicting ideals with democracy turned the democratic transition into failure in Egypt. They have accepted election to attain the power but not the democratic values and culture as a whole. Military, the most significant internal actor, with their authoritarian state apparatus, also played an imperative role to make the political transition unsuccessful. In this qualitative study, documents are analyzed in the case of Egyptian political change.