March 2012

Paper Series
The Arab Spring: A Victory for Islamism?
by Hassan Mneimneh
The Arab Spring started as a cry of freedom in response to entrenched authoritarianism. Across North Africa and the Middle East, individuals and groups infectiously mustered the courage to stand up in the face of the repression machines of dictatorial regimes. Virtually no Arabic-speaking country remained unaffected. The notion of an Arab exceptionalism tracing back political apathy to some innate cultural trait was fundamentally challenged, some may argue discredited, with the now visible activism of Arab youth as an inspiration for heterogeneous movements across the world: from riots in London and other U.K. cities in the summer of 2011, through the Occupy movement in the United States, to anti-Putin demonstrations in Russia. Yet, more than one year on, while the turmoil and unrest continues, a distinct change in the outlook of the visible actors at the forefront of the Arab Spring is evident. The electoral results in Tunisia and Egypt seem to confirm the expectations of some that the Arab Spring would yield an Islamist Winter. Opinion polls across the region consistently place Islamist political formations and figures at the top of approval lists. More indicatively, an overview of the Arab media-sphere broadcast, print, and online reveal an imposing preponderance of Islamist voices, with the few liberal public intellectuals often submerged by the rhetorical hegemony of the Islamists. While it is evident that Islamist formations across the Arab world are set to reap the immediate benefits of the uprisings and protests, and that the next phase in Arab political history will witness some of these formations at the helm of government in their nationstates, considerable arguments can be raised against describing the unfolding situation as an Islamist victory or a victory for Islamism. The issue is not about semantics. The different characterizations dictate divergent approaches in engaging both governments and societies in the region. Despite ongoing attempts at historical revisionism, the Islamists neither anticipated nor planned for the uprisings that have dramatically changed the Arab political order. The Arab Spring was ignited by the religiously prohibited act of self-immolation when the Tunisian street vendor, Muhammad Bu-Azizi, set himself on fire in late December 2010. The concept of sustained peaceful mass protests, the appeal to the universal values of freedom, empowerment, and dignity, and the

Summary: Islamists are scoring electoral gains in the Arab Spring. This is indeed a victory for many Islamists, but not a victory for Islamism. Far from a defining triumph, these are precarious gains that will reverse unless Islamism is fundamentally transformed. Such transformed Islamism may retain little from its militant antecedents.

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Islamists neither anticipated nor planned for the uprisings that have dramatically changed the Arab political order.
call for inclusiveness in national transformation all amounting to the toolkit of the Arab Spring as it moved from one society to another were neither contemplated nor articulated by any of the Islamist trends, or stood clearly in contradiction with their stated positions. The Arab Common Cultural Space: The Incubator of the Spring The Arab political order, as it stood in late 2010, gave the illusion of permanence. With virtually no exception, the Arab world was dominated by entrenched, seemingly invulnerable autocracies. The only regime change to be seen in the region in decades had been the 2003 toppling of Saddam Hussein, through the means of external forces, and with less than attractive results of fragmentation, chaos, and a reconstituting autocracy. Prior to the rise of Islamism in the 1980s, Arab political culture had endured three successive grand narratives: paternalistic (elite) liberalism from the 1920s into the 1940s, populist nationalism in the 1950s and 1960s, and revolutionary leftism in the 1970s. None succeeded in delivering promised justice and development. By the early 1980s, instead, an Arab political order of kleptocratic tyrannies coalesced, ruling by intimidation and fear, and reducing much of the population to despair. Islamism the conceptualization of Islam as the framework that ought to shape or dictate political and social institutions evolved as the discourse of dissent and opposition against regimes that relied on the receding grand narratives for their legitimacy. Even in their consecutive heydays, these grand narratives of Arab political culture were characterized by strong rhetorical formulations that were not backed by coherent programs or sustained institutions. The modernity anticipated by the elite liberals, the unity promised by the nationalists, and even the socialism brandished by the leftists, lacked substantive descriptions of plan and content. As the new grand narrative, Islamism followed the same course.

Islamism posited the Islamic State as its end goal. However, beyond ritualism and social regimentation, little substance was offered as to the nature of the state institutions and structures, or to the process leading to its establishment. Instead, each of the two main schools of Islamism tapped into the discourse of a previous grand narrative for its methodology. The majority accommodationist school, represented in the last few decades by the Muslim Brotherhood movement, adopted many facets of modernism, accepting the ballot box as the means to accede to power and thus advocating a degree of compatibility between its understanding of Islam and democratic processes. The minority radical school, represented by the various Salafist currents, was itself split between a large quietist faction that opted out of active politics and was hence often encouraged and/or supported by the regimes and a small Jihadist faction that embraced the methods and nomenclature of revolutionary leftism. A third path within Islamism, inspired by the nationalist coups dtat that the region endured in mid-20th century, advocated the mobilization of the military and other state institutions for a top-down takeover leading to the Islamic state. In contrast to the dearth of content in ideological formulations, the expansion and integration of the Arab cultural space in the 1990s and 2000s largely attributable to the new media, particularly satellite television and the internet allowed for the appropriation of both ideas and means by the disparate youth of the Arab region. A considerable fraction of this new popular culture was consumerist in character, and was thus implicitly encouraged by the regimes (and denounced by the Islamists) for its escapism. However, the new media also served for the consolidation of concepts and values in line with the inherent expectation of justice and development common across Arab societies. Freedom of expression, the right to diversity, and individualism values inconsistent with the interests of both autocrats and theocrats were strengthened in practice, even when their theoretical expression was absent. The spontaneous, almost unstoppable spread of protests and uprisings in 2011 was indeed informed, if not outright fueled by thoughts and methods that had matured in the new common Arab cultural space. A considerable dissonance was evident between the unitary, often totalitarian, ideal of the ideological formulations circulating in the common Arab cultural space, and its de facto untamable pluralism. Propositions of, and instructions for, the most austere of religious regimen-

tation coexisted in the media-sphere with the profane, the curious, and the obscene. Even when the values promoted were ones of intolerance and violence, the meta-values of the common cultural space were coexistence and right of choice. Through the inter-state organizations of the Arab League, the Arab political order had long claimed to adhere to the ideal of an ultimate unification of the Arab homeland. The Arab world entered the 21st century with the illusionary promise of such political unity having been dissipated by the realization of differences between and within Arab societies, as well as by the raging conflicts between Arab states. Still, the Arab common cultural space elevated the interaction between Arab societies to create a community of shared concerns, and indeed reified the previously merely stipulated notion of an Arab culture. This nonideological cultural convergence evolved in the context of an enhanced exposure to global, and particularly Western, culture. Western cultural formats were thus widely adapted and adopted, but the production and consumption of content remained largely an intra-Arab affair. The angst of the previous generation of intellectuals and activists regarding the appropriate balance between native authenticity and imported modernity lost its prominence, if not its significance. Islam, Islamism, and the Evolving Political Culture Undoubtedly, Islam and Islamism have occupied a large segment of the new cultural space. Actually, it is through this shared occupation that Islamism may have accomplished its most significant (yet incomplete) victory: that of positing an equation between itself and Islam. Historically, Islam as a religious system was presented and lived by its many adherents as a consistent core, with multiple, often contradictory, ramifications expanding on it, while leaving large swaths of life and society outside of its confines. Ecstatic mystics, rationalist philosophers, dogmatic scholars, and even syncretistic worshipers presented credible arguments for the claim of rooting their belief and practice in Islamic essence, while actions and institutions not addressed by the core were widely adopted by Muslims. Islamism engaged in a novel truncation and expansion of this system, excluding most ramifications, and imposing an arbitrary (and undeveloped) umbrella over much of what was previously not included. In its most radical forms, it thus became a totalitarian attempt at incorporating all facets of the life of adherents into an evolving regimentation. Still, through obfuscation and targeted saturation, Islamists have succeeded

in gaining wide acceptance, even when reluctant, of their proposition of Islam as a unitary total system, with their competing versions as genuine. Islamism, as Islam, is presumably the comprehensive solution, means, methods, and end. Yet, while decades of ideological haranguing had failed to produce an Islamist popular uprising, the Arab Spring unfolded out of the scope anticipated or advocated by Islamists. The Islamists may rejoice in the unraveling of the Arab political order. Many of them have or will benefit politically, in a more or less lasting victory. Islamism itself, however, has not been vindicated. The Arab Spring has handed the Islamists an unexpected, maybe undeserved, victory. It is a considerable victory nonetheless. Islamists have won, or are poised to win, every reasonably fair election since the advent of the transformations in the region. The basis of their appeal is, however, not indicative of the identification of the electorate with their ideology. It can be even argued that the current good fortunes of the Islamists is due both to their (partial) success in conflating Islam and Islamism and to their failure to articulate the applicability of their thus total Islam on politics and the economy.

The basis of the Islamists appeal is not indicative of the identification of the electorate with their ideology.
With the previous grand narratives discredited by their association with the regimes, and with many of the substantive political ideas lacking adequate articulation and thus often being summarily dismissed (secularism as atheism, liberalism as debauchery, capitalism as exploitation), the lack of substance of an Islamism that is even vaguely equitable with Islam offers Islamists the affinity vote of large segments of the electorate. While the assumption of power provides the Islamists with the ability to consolidate their stands through visibility and patronage, it also exposes them to the scrutiny of the public eye. As the opposition, Islamism was able to thrive without substance through its reliance on the provision of services to limited segments of the population, its rejec-

tion of the political order, and its appeal to the emotional identification of much of the population with its devotion to Islam. These elements indeed constitute an adequate recipe for a first electoral victory. Unless Islamists are able to perform the magical act of pulling a welfare state out of the ashes left by the kleptocrats, their options to maintain power are limited to the convincing articulation of development policies or the forceful subjugation of the population. The latter option, while not impossible, is improbable unless sustained conditions of chaos are coupled with a successful takeover of the armed forces. None of the Arab states having undergone revolutions seem to be facing this situation. The more likely outcome, provided that chaos is avoided or contained, would be the attempt of Islamists to provide discourse and policies amenable to satisfy the empowered citizenries. The current pressure from the public is distinctly towards the evolution of the postrevolution Arab states into political orders with a tangible degree of accountability and representativeness. If this pressure is allowed to yield its results, the evident course available for the Islamists is to be ushered in the direction of a mundane political party with an Islamic frame of reference, away from the comprehensive or totalitarian ideological formulation. In fact, such an Islamic frame of reference, theory notwithstanding, is likely to be confined to social conservatism. Lacking both the legitimacy of an Islamic revolution and the extensive clerical institution that occupies the core of the Iranian regime, the ability of an Islamist-ruled Egypt, Tunisia, or even Libya to enforce social conservatism is unlikely to approximate that of Iran, or a fortiori Saudi Arabia. Indeed, the evolving configuration of the Arab political spectrum provides important insights. While the previous evolution of Islamism, since its appearance as the primary discourse of dissent and opposition in the early 1980s, has been from the less radical to the more radical with accommodationist Islamists graduating to radical Islamists, and violent Jihadists emerging from the midst of those the Arab Spring presents concrete examples of a motion in the opposite direction. Offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood openly embrace liberal notions, while the Brotherhood consolidates its discourse of compatibility of Islam and democracy, and many previously rejectionist Salafists accept a conditional integration into the democratic framework.

Islamism and Pluralism: The New Arab Political Spectrum Across the Arab world, and in particular in the new post-revolution states, four distinct political forces have imposed themselves on the political spectrum, the first three of which derive their ideological pedigree from Islamism: 1. Rejectionists today constitute a small minority that remains potent ideologically. They include both violent (Jihadist) and nonviolent (doctrinal Salafist) radical groups, and insist that the post-revolutionary political order will remain illegitimate unless determined by their understanding of Islam. In recognition of the diminished popularity of their positions, rejectionists have either retreated from or carefully refashioned public statements. 2. The majority of Salafists, however, seem to have chosen the course of conditional accommodation. Through their claim of representing the purity of Islam, they appeal to a sizable fraction of the electorate. But as a result of the crippling dogmatic constraints stipulated by Salafism for any policy formulation, they are intrinsically unequipped to generate a concrete political and economic approach that would enable them to consolidate their appeal. They are likely to focus instead on attempting to enforce social conservatism. It can be indeed argued that the current shift away from radicalism among Salafists may not be sustainable. It has not occurred as a result of an ideological revision, but rather as a reaction to the euphoria of the popular base. This euphoria will undoubtedly recede, forcing accommodationist Salafists to heed the call of their steadfast radical brethren by once again rejecting the democratic system as inherently corrupt and religiously forbidden, and inviting less flexibility from the Muslim Brotherhood. 3. For the time being, however, the Muslim Brotherhood and its associated parties and organizations are still engaged in transitioning their platform from symbolism to action. In many Arab Spring societies, the Muslim Brotherhood commands the support of a large fraction of the population a plurality, or may even be a slim majority. However, except for social conservatism, Muslim Brotherhood formations lack a coherent and consistent approach to policy, and retain a considerable degree of conceptual flexibility. They are thus likely to adopt and develop multiple

hybrid courses, some of which may be conflicting. The Muslim Brotherhood has historically been home to different constituencies as well as being the incubator of divergent movements. Barring the unlikely emergence of a centralized leadership with enforcement powers, the Brotherhood will continue yielding offshoots, some with less of a focus on social conservatism and more of a stress on political economy. 4. Previously assumed to be alien to the native political scene, liberals in the Arab World have emerged as an acknowledged super-category of non-Islamists. As such, the designation liberal might reference groups with a distinctly anti-liberal message. Yet, in Egypt, Tunisia, and elsewhere, genuine liberal voices have succeeded in framing the public political debate as one between liberal concerns (democracy, development, citizen empowerment, transparency, and pluralism) and Islamism, with Islamism striving to reframing the debate to the more comfortable socio-cultural dimension. Liberals command the support of a sizable and disproportionately influential minority. While enjoying the currency of many of their ideas in the post-revolution environment, they face the serious challenge of demonstrating the continuing relevance and substance of their discourse. Their challenge is compounded by their incoherent composition as a group, their internal contradictions and disputes, and their lack of capacity. Still, the ability of liberals to confirm their presence and influence seems to hinge more on incidental issues than on essential limitations. The trajectories of these four main political forces are naturally a function of the the ability of the emerging states to maintain law and order, and to avoid the collapse of state and society. Only some violent radical formations may benefit from the descent into chaos with no reasonable chance, however, of translating such benefit into an actual assumption of power. In the case of the more likely confirmation of a functioning order, the current political brands can be expected to migrate in ideology, with the quadripartite division of the political spectrum into functional categories (rejectionist, accommodationist, hybrid, and liberal) still continuing. Conditional accommodationists are likely to settle for the sustainable minority role of guardians of social conservatism, while the concerns advocated by liberals will continue to inform and reshape the Muslim Brotherhood universe. The challenge for genuine liberalism will remain its ability to articulate an acceptable popular

message that breeches the social conservatism to which the Muslim Brotherhood constellation is bound. To talk of an Islamist Winter is premature, even erroneous. Rather than an expansion and consolidation of Islamist doctrine, the Arab Spring is seemingly prompting both divergences within Islamism and the retreat of its radical wing to social conservatism. The liberal challenge to Islamism will continue to reshape it. A redefined Islamism may even attempt to claim large parts of the liberal program, at the exclusion of the social and cultural issues that in fact constitute the protective core for a sustainable democracy. In the crucial battle of the portrayal of the political problmatique, the importance of identifying the electoral victories as a success for Islamists, not a success for Islamism, is vital for liberal propositions that have been able to affect the substance of the public discussion but are yet to find powerful proponents for their own viability. In many ways, political culture in the Arab world is fueled by feedback loops through which standing and power are amplified by claims of even greater standing and power. The formulations by the Western media, academy, and world of politics are often recycled into this loop.
About the Author
Hassan Mneimneh is a Senior Transatlantic Fellow with the German Marshall Fund in Washington, DC.

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