Islamism and the state after the Arab uprisings: Between people power and state power (original) (raw)
Related papers
"Political Islam: Theory," Annual Review of Political Science, vol. 18 (June 2015), pp. 103–23.
Annual Review of Political Science, 2015
This essay focuses on questions that pertain to the ideological, normative, symbolic, and epochal aspects of political Islam. Political theorists, historians, sociologists, and anthropologists have disagreed on whether political Islam is an exclusively modern political phenomenon or is indebted to longstanding Islamic religious commitments. More specifically, they have also disagreed on whether the shape and ambitions of political Islam are entirely determined by the powers and institutions of the modern, bureaucratic state, particularly its secular desire to control, regulate, and reshape religion. These interpretive debates have often sat uneasily with ongoing normative debates about what kind of secularism democracy requires and whether democracy has priority over liberal rights and freedoms.
Jadaliyya, 2020
In the early stages of the Arab uprisings, one of the questions frequently posed in the analysis of the mass mobilizations revolved around the role that Islamists would play in post-authoritarian transitions. To that end, when the Critical Currents in Islam page launched in 2013, it featured a roundtable exploring Islamism as a political force that presented a popular challenge to authoritarian rule. As events unfolded and gains of revolutionary movements were rolled back, however, the conversation shifted to the fallout from a resurgent authoritarian wave and its impact on forces of political Islam moving forward. In the interim, a phenomenon that came to demand more attention from observers was the construction of theological arguments and the enlisting of Islamic institutions in support of the authoritarian resurgence. This roundtable facilitates critical discussion on the state of this question ten years after the Arab uprisings.
Political Islam: A 40 Year Retrospective
Religions
The year 2020 roughly corresponds with the 40th anniversary of the rise of political Islam on the world stage. This topic has generated controversy about its impact on Muslims societies and international affairs more broadly, including how governments should respond to this socio-political phenomenon. This article has modest aims. It seeks to reflect on the broad theme of political Islam four decades after it first captured global headlines by critically examining two separate but interrelated controversies. The first theme is political Islam’s acquisition of state power. Specifically, how have the various experiments of Islamism in power effected the popularity, prestige, and future trajectory of political Islam? Secondly, the theme of political Islam and violence is examined. In this section, I interrogate the claim that mainstream political Islam acts as a “gateway drug” to radical extremism in the form of Al Qaeda or ISIS. This thesis gained popularity in recent years, yet its v...
The Paradox of Islamist Politics
Middle East Report, 2001
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Revisiting Post-Islamism a Decade After the Arab Spring
Philosophy and Society, 2024
The Arab Spring uprisings marked a watershed moment in regional politics, significantly impacting Islamist movements in terms of strategies, ideologies, and organizational structures. Accordingly, this paper examines whether these dramatic events strengthened or weakened the post-Islamist evolution of traditional political Islam movements, focusing on the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (E-MB) and the Tunisian Ennahda Movement Party (EMP) as case studies. The proposed hypothesis is that the Arab Spring has variably influenced Islamists. In Egypt, it initially weakened the post-Islamist turn of the E-MB. However, owing to the 2013 coup and subsequent repression, the E-MB was politically excluded and weakened, creating a vacuum that was filled by various forms of less political or non-ideological forms of Islamic activism. The Tunisian Islamists had a different story. The Arab Spring seems to have strengthened their transition to post-Islamism. In its tenth conference, the EMP declared its exit from political Islam, adopting the new concept of Muslim Democracy. Even after the presidential takeover in July 2021, which resulted in the political exclusion of the EMP, the Work and Achievement party that defected from it maintained clear post-Islamist features.