Written evidence from Usaama al-Azami, PhD Candidate, Department of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University; and Research Fellow at the Markfield Institute of Higher Education, Leicestershire, UK. Area of expertise: modern Islamic political thought. (ISL0048)

NB: A list of recommendations may be found on p. 7 below under the heading Conclusions.

 

What is Political Islam?

  1. “Political Islam”, usually used interchangeably in public discourse with “Islamism”, is a term that often refers to far too diverse a set of phenomena to be useful. An analogy could be drawn with “post-enlightenment ideology” that range from the fascist to the liberal. Ideologies that are at opposite ends of such a spectrum are likely to consider each other anathema. Similarly, “Islamism” is unhelpfully used to characterize extremist groups like ISIL on the one hand, and on the other, those ISIL would consider to be apostates, like the Egyptian Muslim Brothers (MB) or the ruling AKP of Turkey, due to the latter groups’ acceptance of ideas like democratic governance.

 

  1. As a more technical term, “Islamists” can be seen as a translation of the Arabic “Islamiyūn”, which usually refers to groups inspired by the orientation of the MB, and excludes groups such as ISIL and Al Qaeda. In fact these latter groups use the Arabic equivalent of “Islamists” as a term of abuse for those who, in their view, have made too many compromises with the West, most notably the MB and their associates who have systematically accepted (procedural) democracy in both theory and practice.

 

  1. In public discourse in the West, the term “Islamist” is often used in a pejorative sense, and lumps together violent and non-violent groups. In this submission, I will refer to the Egyptian MB and those inspired by them over the past century as mainstream Islamists, although some of these groups have started self-identifying as Islamic democrats. Referring to both ISIL and the AKP as “Islamist” is akin to referring to the KKK and the Church of England as both Christian. While technically accurate, for those who are not familiar with the nuances involved, it is unhelpful and even counterproductive. Given that Turkey’s secular constitution prohibits parties based on religion, the AKP cast themselves as social conservatives rather than Islamists. The Government and the FCO should try and develop and promote a more nuanced usage of such terms, and use them consistently.

 

  1. Unlike mainstream Islamists, ISIL should be understood through a security lens, and as an unintended consequence of the Iraq War, as noted by President Obama, among others. For the purpose of this submission, I will refer to ISIL, AQ and similar groups as extremists. Furthermore, as noted by Obama, calling such extremists “Islamic” gives them the religious legitimacy they crave, which Muslims the world over do not afford them. As Western experts have noted, such groups represent a vanishingly small minority of the global Muslim population.

 

  1. Mainstream Islamists and their scholarly backers in the Arab world have characterized the rise of extremism as a consequence of the region’s social and political disintegration and long-standing dictatorships, with the implication that such forces can in part be countered by promoting democracy.

 

  1. Western scholars are in general agreement that Islam was deeply engaged in political affairs at its inception. According to this reading, which is shared by modern Islamists, phrases like “political Islam” are tautological with respect to historical Islam, as Islam was viewed by pre-modern Muslims as inherently political. Princeton historian, Michael Cook, notes that modern Islamic political movements find much in their scriptural tradition that is in line with the modern democratic and egalitarian ethos of the West. Thus it is hardly surprising that many modern Muslims have not followed the path mainstream Christians have taken in making religion a mostly private affair, but have rather invoked their religion in calling for democratic and egalitarian reform. All the while, these movements have interpreted away aspects of their tradition that are less suited to their modern context.

 

  1. Among other things, this means that modern Muslims of this orientation are in general tolerant of non-Muslims. Due to the Qur’anic prohibition of forced conversion (2:256), the overwhelming majority of modern Muslims believe that freedom of religion is enshrined in the Sharia; and a relative majority believe that Sharia should be the law of the land. On this latter point, the population of much of the Muslim world is to the right of their respective mainstream Islamist parties. Mainstream Islamists and their scholarly backers are often the driving force behind the emergence of relatively less stringent interpretations of the Sharia.

 

  1. Mainstream Islamists, in keeping with popular Muslim opinion, are also overwhelmingly non-violent in their orientation, and have eschewed violence systematically for over half a century. I will discuss the Palestinian exception in brief below.

 

  1. Mainstream Islamists are also responsible for developing the most substantive democratic discourses in modern Islam that have popular purchase in the Arab world. At present, their discourses emphasise procedural democracy over liberal values. Some Western scholars view the rise of such Islamically oriented democracies as an inevitable consequence of democratization in the region in the short-term.

 

British Interests vis-à-vis Mainstream Islamism

  1. Canadian legal scholar, Anver Emon, has characterised the Sharia as a pre-modern system of rule of law. Sharia scholars also have a conception of human rights that is centuries old, but does not always align with dominant British values of the present day. Mainstream Islamists and their religious scholars are some of the most prominent advocates of conceptions of Sharia that are adapted to modern democratic norms, but there are inevitable differences. Thus one may read the Canadian-Egyptian mainstream Islamist intellectual, Jāsir ‘Awda, writing in Arabic, present interpretations of the Sharia that would prevent the enactment of corporal punishment in a modern Islamist run multi-party democratic nation-state.

 

  1. These are ongoing debates of a sort that took centuries in Europe to arrive at their current conclusions. To have a lasting effect, they will need to take place in an organic fashion and not be seen as the foreign imposition of alien values. If friendly relations are maintained with Islamist organisations, then the British government can indirectly influence these conversations, but should in no way attempt to do so directly.

 

Islamists, Secularists, and Democracy

  1. Mainstream Islamists and secularists come in a variety of shades in the Middle East. In most countries, secularists do not call themselves as such. Secularism and liberalism, having arrived in the colonial period to the region, are widely perceived in the Arab Middle East to be imperialist projects, and ideologies that are alien to Islam. Islamists in Egypt have tended to encourage such an understanding, while in Tunisia, the Islamist party has tried to promote a nuanced understanding of secularism. They note the differences between the less compromising French model, and the more moderate Anglo-American model of secularism. This nuanced perspective has been beneficial in the Tunisian context. The Egyptian Islamist strategy has not worked in their favour, though the conditions in which they were operating appear to have been more challenging, given the influence of the so-called “deep state” and its sympathisers among the social elite.

 

  1. In the 20th century, countries like Iran, Tunisia, and Turkey imposed bans on certain forms of religious practice, such as women wearing the headscarf in public, in the name of secularism. This is probably not a form of secularism that the British Government would recognize, but it is often what “secularism” is perceived to be in the region.

 

  1. In certain Middle Eastern countries, secularism and liberalism are often associated with a rejection of the Islamic faith, and in Egypt, Islamists benefitted from this branding problem in their electoral successes, such that Muslim liberal and secular candidates spent much of their campaigns countering accusations that they were not true Muslims. In the rough and tumble of politics, this kind of mud-slinging is not unusual, as London recently witnessed in the failed Conservative mayoral campaign in which Sadiq Khan was cast as an extremist sympathiser, in a move some have described as racist and Islamophobic. In Egypt, it is likely that the stakes involved were much higher.

 

  1. Certainly, in the course of the Egyptian coup of 2013, those who called themselves liberals and secularists, alongside the state religious establishment, felt no compunction in supporting the ouster of the failing MB government. Their main representatives’ commitment to democracy is demonstrably less thoroughgoing than that of mainstream Islamists. In contrast with this, some Western scholars argue that after the Egyptian Revolutions of 2011 the MB generally demonstrated a genuine commitment to democracy.

 

  1. A month after the Egyptian coup of 2013, supporters of the democratically elected Islamists were also killed en masse by the security forces of the coup regime in a move that was characterized by Human Rights Watch as “one of the world’s largest killings of demonstrators in a single day in recent history.”

 

  1. An exception to this antagonistic pattern of behaviour is found in Tunisia, where both Islamists and secular liberals are less dogmatic and hostile towards the other side. Both sides have made an effort to be more inclusive. Perhaps this country is a beacon for the rest of the region as to how these two ideological tendencies should engage each other. The other example is Turkey, where the Islamists’ success of the last decade and a half appears to be based on the taming of the military, and the complete failure of the secular parties at providing a credible opposition party. One of the worrying consequences of this is that the AKP does not have a meaningful counterbalance in the political arena.

 

Regional Trends Political Islam and autocracy

  1. In a region that is quite unpredictable, building good relations with mainstream Islamists may be useful for several reasons. Firstly, with respect to the promotion of democratic norms, mainstream Islamism has demonstrated itself to be more committed to such norms in the Arab world than those who claim to be liberals or secularists. They have developed the most robust and widely disseminated arguments in favour of democracy; and in power, they have generally proved more democratic than their opponents according to Western political scientists.

 

  1. There are also considerable security risks in siding with harshly repressive autocratic regimes while making calls for democracy. Aside from giving the impression that such calls are little more than lip service to ones principles, scholars have noted that there is a direct relationship between “extreme levels of repression” and extremism. Muslim democrats are arguably the most effective counter to the regional extremist tendencies that are frequently a consequence of repression.

 

  1. In the medium- to long-term, the Islamist case for democracy appears to be one of the few reasonably developed counter-weights to regional repression; and it is likely to be with us for the foreseeable future. Whether it will be a stepping stone to more liberal forms of democracy, as hoped by scholars like Nader Hashemi, remains to be seen. Polling in the Middle East suggests that the short-term consequence of a move away from autocracy would mean the rise of mainstream Islamism. However, as noted, it is difficult to predict whether there is likely to be any move away from autocracy in the near future.

The Muslim Brotherhood Review

  1. The Government’s “Muslim Brotherhood Review: Main Findings”, presents a mix of accurate and inaccurate information. The former is to be expected, the latter is unhelpful to the proper promotion of British interests in the Middle East, inasmuch as it prevents the government from correctly understanding the nature of the organisation.

 

  1. One major flaw is the characterisation of Sayyid Qutb’s (d. 1966) doctrine of takfirism (anathematization)—that was developed into a violent doctrine by later interpreters outside the MB—as somehow relevant to how the organisation is to be understood today. As scholarship has shown, notably in Barbara Zollner’s recent work on the MB’s ideology, such a doctrine and its violent evolution outside the organisation were systematically rejected by the leadership of the MB from at least the 1970s. Qutb as an individual, whose legacy is considerably broader than his doctrine of takfirism, remains a respected figure in the MB pantheon, but their leaders today tend to paper over this doctrine, arguing, somewhat implausibly, that he never advocated it; or more plausibly, that he never tried to act on a violent interpretation of it. However, given their adamant denials of the doctrine in Qutb’s writings, they do share in the mainstream Islamist consensus that such anathematization and its potentially violent consequences are unacceptable.

 

  1. The violent interpretation of Qutb spawned groups such as ISIL and Al Qaeda, but have no purchase within the MB as an organisation, or mainstream Islamism as a whole. Indeed, as noted by Barbara Zollner, they have been systematically refuted by the MB’s scholars and leadership since the 1970s.

 

  1. The MB’s support for Hamas, while rightfully problematic for the FCO, must be seen in the context of Middle Eastern politics, where Palestine is widely viewed as a case of long-standing foreign occupation. There is nothing particularly unique in the MB’s support for what it sees as the Palestinian cause. This is a view that is shared with a majority of the populations of the Arab world. This is also illustrated by the fact that until the Syrian uprisings of 2011, Hamas’ main backers were the secular Alawite regime of Bashar al Assad.

 

  1. Similarly, the Review’s highlighting the MB and associates defending attacks against coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, or that its members give credence to 9/11 conspiracy theories are nothing that is peculiar to these groups, nor essential to their ideology, but rather better understood as a symptom of the regional political culture in the shadow of dictatorship and perceived imperialism.

 

  1. Perhaps the most damaging feature of the MB Review for the FCO’s mission in promoting democracy is the widespread perception in the Muslim world that a clear double standard applies to democracy promotion when the democrats in question are Islamists. Such criticisms are extremely damaging to the British Government’s standing in the eyes of the region’s populations. The Review has also been credibly criticized in the press as motivated by the British Government’s desire to develop better diplomatic relations with certain Gulf autocracies at the expense of the MB whose democratic tendencies are seen as a grave threat by the established monarchies. Perhaps most notably, there is no mention of the fact that the democratically elected MB were forced out of office in a Gulf-backed brutal military coup just months before the Review was commissioned.

 

  1. As The Economist perceptively remarked in an article entitled “Democracy and hypocrisy” shortly after the Egyptian coup of 2013: “The West’s failure to condemn the shooting of unarmed Islamists in Cairo was craven and short-sighted”. This is probably not how most in the West perceived the matter, but crucially, this is how it is viewed by large numbers of the people in the region, including mainstream Islamists. Indeed extremists used the occasion to claim that mainstream Islamists had been naïve in their adoption of democracy and their expectation of Western support.

 

  1. The Review’s characterizing the MB as a “clandestine” organisation ignores the repressive contexts in which such organisations operate. The MB of the last few decades up to the present should best be understood as an Islamic civil society organisation operating under severely repressive regimes that do not tolerate independent civil society organisations. This does mean that organisations that emerge in such contexts do have pathologies of certain kinds, but the context is important. The failures of the MB’s political wing were in general shared by other democratic actors in the failed democratic experiment in Egypt from 2011-2013. As the ‘ruling’ political party, they deserve particular blame, but by no means exclusive blame.

 

  1. In the Review, it is somewhat bemusing to read the following normative Islamic judgement: “Both Sir John Jenkins and Charles Farr drew the […conclusion that…] the Muslim Brotherhood have promoted a radical, transformative politics, at odds with a millennium of Islamic jurisprudence and statecraft.” Aside from being an assessment more befitting theologians than civil servants, it is somewhat inaccurate. Islamic jurisprudence and statecraft have historically been in theoretical agreement on the necessity of a single unified caliphate. The framing of the MB’s ideology in the Review suggests that this is an innovation, whereas it is simply an unreconstructed restatement of a millennium of classical Islamic law. A reconstructed understanding of Islamic law will probably take several generations of Islamic scholarship to crystallise on the part of modern Muslims who wish to preserve aspects of their religious heritage. In the course of this, it is important in free societies not to criminalize or stigmatize non-violent thought, but rather to cultivate free and open debate. Criminalizing or stigmatizing non-violent thought is likely to be counterproductive, and allow extremists to level the charge of hypocrisy at Western governments.

Conclusion: Guiding Principles

  1. Given their popularity, and their relatively modernizing tendencies, it is in the British Government’s interest to maintain warm relations with moderate Islamist movements throughout the Middle East as a way of both projecting influence, and enjoying greater popularity with the region’s populations.

 

  1. The British Government should adopt and promote a more nuanced use of terminology with respect to Islamism that does not lump together groups like ISIL and Al Qaeda with the AKP and the MB. The Government may even consider using a term like Muslim democrats, akin to “Christian democrats”. This is a practice already emerging among Tunisian Islamists, and such terminological choices may encourage a greater degree of democratic self-identity among mainstream Islamist groups.

 

  1. The MB, and its fellow mainstream Islamists throughout the region, have much to learn about democratic culture. This is to be expected in a region that has been burdened with repressive autocracies for decades, and mainstream Islamists are often more democratic in their culture than their non-Islamist counterparts. But they also happen to be the largest scale democratic civil society organisations in these regions. As such, they are important vehicles for the promotion of democratic culture in the region. Western scholars, such as Bruce Rutherford, have documented the intellectual shifts that have integrated democratic constitutionalism into the MB’s ideology over the past decades.

 

  1. The MB and its fellow travellers are not liberal organisations, but as noted by Western scholar, Shadi Hamid, in recent years they have been considerably to the left of their typically conservative support base. This is, in part, due to their desire to appeal to Western policymakers. The FCO which wishes to promote certain values may find a partner in mainstream Islamists like the MB; and given their considerable popularity in the region, this would likely serve the FCO well.

 

  1. The FCO, with the assistance of scholars, institutional exchange programmes akin to the Fulbright Program of the US Government, and through the light-touch sponsoring of joint conferences and opportunities for cross-cultural dialogue, could encourage a more nuanced understanding of secularism in the region, and a more nuanced understanding of Islamism among British partners. These could focus on the difference between what Prof Tariq Modood characterises as “ideological secularism” and “moderate secularism”; and the nuanced variety of mainstream ‘Islamisms’ represented by the Egyptian MB, Turkish AKP, Tunisian Ennahda, Moroccan PJD, and the vast variety of politically-oriented Islamic organisations in South and South East Asia. Such initiatives should not be undertaken in a fashion that may in any way be perceived as high-handed or culturally imperialistic on the part of the FCO. If the FCO were to pursue such an agenda that cultivates dialogue and intellectual cross-fertilization, it should make sure that it cannot be construed simply as a strategic move for the promotion of British interests, with disregard for regional interests.

 

  1. In the wake of the crushing of popular revolutions in the region, leading Western governments who have cooperated with counter-revolutionary forces, have been consistently seen as hypocritical in their valuing of the principles of political freedom and human dignity. Mainstream Islamist organisations, as mainly democratic institutions, try to respond to the sentiments of the societies in which they operate. As such, the perception of hypocrisy places pressures on these organisations to adopt stances that are critical and oppositional to Western governments, including the British Government. The FCO should attempt to develop a strategy that counters such a perception through meaningful and respectful engagement with mainstream Islamists and other civil society organisations.

May 2016