CHAPTER 1

Conceptualizing Islamist Movement Change

On June 30, 2012, Muhammad Mursi, a leader in the Muslim Brotherhood, wassworn in as Egypt's new president. To longtime observers of politics in the region,the event felt surreal. An Islamist organization that had spent most of itsexistence denied legal status and subject to the depredations of a hostile authoritarianstate was now in charge of the very apparatus once used to repress it.And it had reached those heights not by way of coup or revolution but throughthe ballot box.

Just eighteen months earlier, the idea of a Brotherhood president of Egyptwas so far-fetched as to be laughable. The Mubarak regime appeared too deeplyentrenched and the Egyptian people too afraid of the security police and tooexhausted by daily struggles to survive to imagine a breakthrough occurringany time soon. Yet on January 25, 2011, a massive uprising broke out in citiesand towns across the country, and eighteen days later, after thirty years inpower, President Mubarak was forced to step down.

The Egyptian uprising was part of a seismic wave of protest that began inTunisia and rapidly spread to other Arab states. Millions of men, women, andchildren poured into the streets to demand their freedom, and Middle Eastexperts, as surprised by the protests as everyone else, struggled to explain whywhat were considered some of the region's most durable regimes had provenmore fragile than anyone had thought.

The "Arab Spring" has set a new dynamic in motion in a region long afflictedby political stagnation. Though the contours of the region's new landscape arestill taking shape, one trend is clear: the power of mainstream Islamist groupsis on the rise. As the largest, most popular, and best-organized sector of theopposition in most Arab states before the protests erupted, Islamist groups wereuniquely positioned to ride the openings that occurred in their wake. In Tunisiaand Egypt, Islamist parties emerged as the resounding victors in parliamentaryelections, and in Egypt, a Brotherhood career politician was elected president.Even in countries where longstanding rulers retained power, Islamists gainedground. For example, in Morocco constitutional reforms enacted after the ArabSpring prompted King Muhammad VI to appoint the head of the Islamist-orientedJustice and Development Party, the largest group in parliament, asprime minister.

The emergence of Islamist actors as a leading force in Arab politics has triggeredcompeting reactions in the region and around the globe. While somehave witnessed this development with equanimity, others have reacted withconsternation and dismay. Such different reactions reflect the fact that the motivesof such actors are hard to fathom. The information we have about Islamistgroups is sketchy and incomplete, and the observations we have to go on aresubject to conflicting interpretations. As a result, the broader implications ofthe Islamist surge, including its impact on the future of democratic governance,economic development, peace, and stability in the region, are open to dispute.

Perhaps the central issue is whether and to what extent contemporary Islamistgroups have moved away from the illiberal features that characterized themin the past, including their support of violence, their rejection of democracy asan "alien" system imported from the West, and their calls for the application ofShari'a, or Islamic law, based on a conservative reading of Islam's sacred textsand juristic precedents. While Islamist leaders have welcomed and, indeed, activelysupported recent democratic reforms, skeptics contend that they do notsupport democracy as an end in itself but as the first step toward establishing asystem governed by the laws of God as they define them. From this perspective,the greater the influence of Islamist groups in the Arab world, the dimmer theregion's prospects for democracy and freedom. Others, by contrast, claim thatmainstream Islamist groups that once rejected democracy have become someof its greatest proponents and that the region's nascent transitions to democracywill hinge on their support.

The main objective of this book is to challenge these and other sweepinggeneralizations. Taking aim at much of what has been written about the EgyptianMuslim Brotherhood and other Arab Islamist groups in recent years, Iargue that they cannot be described as "for" or "against" democracy, any morethan they can be characterized as "moderate" or "extremist." First, by "breakinginto the black box" of Islamist movement organizations and exposing thefactional divisions and debates within them, I show that they are not monolithicentities whose members think and act in lockstep. Second, while demonstratingthat Islamist groups have undergone an important evolution, I showthat it has not been a linear, unidimensional progression toward greater"moderation." Rather, such groups have traced a path marked by profoundinconsistencies and contradictions, yielding agendas in which newly embracedthemes of freedom and democracy coexist uneasily with illiberal religiousconcepts carried over from the past. Third, I highlight the complex motivationsof Islamist actors and demonstrate that recent shifts in their rhetoricand behavior cannot be attributed to a single chain of cause and effect. I arguethat such shifts bear the imprint of strategic and ideational processes of changeoccurring simultaneously.

To gain leverage on the scope and limits of Islamist movement change, aswell as its underlying causes and dynamics, I examine the trajectories of mainstreamSunni revivalist movement organizations in four Arab states. The maincontribution of the book is a finely grained analysis of the evolution of the MuslimBrotherhood in Egypt from its founding in 1928 to the inauguration ofMuhammad Mursi as president in 2012. My analysis draws on insights andobservations from twenty-two years of research on the Brotherhood, beginningwith the fieldwork I conducted in 1990 and 1991 for my first book, MobilizingIslam (2002), and including research conducted specifically for this projectduring multiple trips to the region between 2004 and 2012. Rather than treatthe Brotherhood as a unitary actor, this book highlights ongoing disagreementswithin the organization over ideology and strategy as well as the shifting powerbalance among its competing factions. In so doing, it endeavors to explain whythe Brotherhood opted for one path over another at various points in the pastand to illuminate how such developments have shaped its priorities today.

Toward the end of the book, I compare the trajectory of the Egyptian Brotherhoodto those of its counterparts in Jordan, Kuwait, and Morocco, highlightingthe features they share as well as those that set them apart. In Jordan andKuwait, I focus on regional offshoots of the Brotherhood, as well as their politicalaffiliates, the Islamic Action Front (IAF) in Jordan and the Islamic ConstitutionalMovement (ICM) in Kuwait. In Morocco, I focus on the Movement ofUnity and Reform (MUR) and its political arm, the Justice and DevelopmentParty (Parti de Justice et Developpement, or PJD). While formally independentof the Brotherhood's network, the MUR and the PJD were historically influencedby the Brotherhood's ideas and institutional arrangements and retain aclose "family resemblance" to their Brotherhood counterparts.

To be clear, the four cases chosen for inclusion in this book cannot be said torepresent the wider universe of Islamist movement groups and organizationsaround the globe, or even within the Arab states of the Middle East and NorthAfrica. All of the groups covered in this study are situated within the movementof Sunni revivalist Islam. They also have focused primarily on issues of domesticsocial and political reform, committed themselves to a path of nonviolencein pursuit of their objectives, and accrued long records of participating in electoralpolitics. Such characteristics distinguish them from Shi'ite Islamist groupsand parties, "national resistance" movements like Hamas (Sunni) and Hizbollah(Shi'ite), and militant Islamist groups engaged in a holy war or jihad againstincumbent rulers and their foreign patrons, such as al-Qa'ida and its regionalaffiliates. They also distinguish them from Islamist movement organizationssuch as al-'Adl wa al-Ihsan (Justice and Charity) in Morocco that have chosento boycott the formal political system. Likewise, such characteristics set themapart from Salafi Islamist groups that engage in grassroots religious outreachbut, except in Kuwait, have not until recently participated in electoral contestsfor political power.

The four Islamist groups included in this study hence constitute a distinctivesubset within the broader matrix of groups and movements that define theiridentities and objectives in Islamic terms. My objective is not to articulate ageneral set of propositions that apply to all Islamist groups. Rather, it is to capturethe impact of political participation on four groups that started out withsimilar agendas and sought to pursue them under roughly similar conditions:as nonviolent opposition groups situated within systems of authoritarian rule.

In all four of the countries under study, Islamist groups took advantage ofregime experiments with political liberalization in the 1980s and 1990s by expandingtheir participation in electoral politics. Participating in the politicalsystems of "un-Islamic" regimes was intended to advance such groups' partisanobjectives, but it triggered fundamental changes in the Islamic movement itself.The aim of this book is to specify the changes that have occurred, the causalprocesses that produced them, and the impact they will have on Arab politicsand society. My hope is that by offering new leverage on such issues the bookwill make a significant contribution to the fields of Middle East studies andcomparative politics, as well as to the study of social movements and contentiouspolitics more generally.

Yet as those who have worked the longest and thought the hardest aboutsuch matters are often the first to admit, the effects of participation on the goalsand strategies of Islamist opposition groups are extraordinarily difficult to pindown. In recent years, a number of Middle East scholars have begun to explorethe impact of political participation on Islamist movement organizations, goals,and strategies. A pathbreaking work in this regard is Jillian Schwedler's Faith inModeration (2006), which traced the divergent effects of participation on Islamistgroups in Jordan and Yemen. Other scholars who have made noteworthycontributions to the analysis of Islamist participation within and across countriesin the Middle East and North Africa (including the non-Arab states ofTurkey and Iran) include Asef Bayat, Michelle Browers, Nathan Brown, JanineClark, Mona El-Ghobashy, 'Amr Hamzawy, Quinn Mecham, Curtis Ryan,Samer Shehata, Joshua Stacher, Gunes Murat Tezcur, Eva Wegner, and MichaelWillis. In order to gain traction on such issues, some Middle East scholars,myself included, have turned to the work of Przeworski and Sprague (1988) andKalyvas (1996) on the democratic integration of socialist and Catholic partiesin late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century western Europe and of Share(1985), Huntington (1991), Mainwaring (1992), and others on the deradicalizationof leftist parties and movements during "third wave" democratic transitionsin southern Europe and Latin America. Although they differ in their particulars,such studies generally frame the ideological and behavioral moderationof former radicals as a response to incentives generated by the democratic (ordemocratizing) environments in which they are embedded. For example, socialistparties renounced violence and diluted their calls for revolutionarychange in order to gain the acceptance of erstwhile rivals, achieve legal status,and appeal to wider sectors of the electorate. Hence the prime movers in suchaccounts are considerations of strategic advantage, which prompted "rational"movement actors to adapt their goals and methods to changing political opportunitiesand constraints.

Yet the application of causal models derived from Western scenarios to theanalysis of contemporary Islamist groups is hardly a straightforward endeavor.First, it is unclear whether groups that seek to establish a political system basedon God's instructions for humankind are analogous to leftist parties, or even toCatholic parties that have a religious foundation but whose platforms containnothing akin to the call for the application of a comprehensive system of divinelaw. Second, the participation of Islamist groups during the time frame in questionoccurred within the context of stable "semi-authoritarian" regimes, notwithin established democracies or during turbulent and open-ended periods ofregime change. Finally, the resonance of Islam, the weakness of rival secularideologies, and the limited—and largely disappointing—record of previous experimentsin democracy in the Arab world have arguably lessened the pressuresfacing Islamist groups to dilute their agendas in order to appeal to wider sectorsof the electorate. Indeed, the leaders of mainstream Islamist groups routinelycontend that their agendas are already supported by a majority of the public atlarge.

Equally if not more vexing for those seeking to capture the effects of participationon Islamist groups in the Arab world is the fact that key terms in the"participation-moderation" thesis remain woefully underspecified. Indeed, areview of the literature on the subject reveals a striking lack of consensus on thedefinition of the outcome(s) to be explained, the conditions under which theyoccur, and the causal processes presumed to be at play. Let me describe each ofthese areas of contention and briefly explain how I will approach them in thisbook.

Characterizing Islamist Movement Change

Much of the literature on contemporary Islamist groups seeks to identifywhether and how their participation in the domain of formal politics has contributedto the "moderation" of their goals and strategies. Yet the concept of"moderation" suffers from a high degree of imprecision. First and most obvious,it can refer to both an end state and a process. Second, as a relative rather thanan absolute concept, it begs the question, "Moderate in comparison to what?"Third, it may refer to changes in behavior, such as a renunciation of violence,and/or to changes in broader worldviews, goals, and values, such as a growingcommitment to freedom of expression or women's rights. Fourth, the term canbe applied to changes both at the level of individual actors and at the level of thecomplex organizations of which they are a part. Yet when used as a descriptorof an Islamist organization as a whole (the Muslim Brotherhood is or is not"moderate") or to capture change over time in an organization's rhetoric andbehavior (the Muslim Brotherhood is or is not "moderating"), it may gloss oversome important vectors of internal differentiation. First, the term implies anoverarching, internally consistent, and linear process of behavioral or ideologicalchange when in fact an Islamist group may "moderate" its official rhetoricand practice in some areas while retaining, or even radicalizing, them in others.Second, treating Islamist organizations as unitary actors entails the risk ofexaggerating the extent of the ideological and behavior uniformity withinthem—that is, of failing to discern instances in which the beliefs and practicesof some individuals or factions of a group have changed while those of othershave not.

Rather than aiming to determine whether the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhoodand similar groups are "moderating," I take a more open-ended approachto the study of Islamist movement change. That is, I seek to capture the effectsof participation on Islamist groups without assuming a priori that such changeis likely to assume a particular form or direction. Like many other Middle Eastscholars, I am particularly interested in the type of changes implied by the conceptof "moderation." But rather than employ "moderation" as a shorthand, Idisaggregate the concept and attempt to specify the multiple dimensions ofchange it encompasses while leaving open the question of whether such changeshave in fact occurred. Below I summarize the dimensions of primary interest.

To begin, I consider whether Islamist groups have renounced violence andcome to support the democratic alternation of power, a system in which leadersare chosen through free and fair elections. Further, I seek to determine whetherand to what extent Islamist groups as a whole—or some individuals and factionswithin them—have adjusted their broader worldviews, values, and beliefsalong four dimensions. First is whether they have moved toward a more relativisticapproach to religion—that is, they have begun to frame their interpretationof Islam as one among many—as opposed to equating that interpretation withIslam itself. Second is whether they have moved toward greater toleration of theexpression of values and perspectives that conflict with their own, not only inthe domain of politics but also in the spheres of art, literature, film, and scholarship.Third is whether they have deepened their commitment to the legalguarantee of individual rights and freedoms, including the right to make lifechoices (with respect to styles of dress, forms of recreation, social interactions,and sexual conduct) that violate Islamic mandates as they define them. Fourthis the extent to which they have embraced the principle of equal citizenshiprights, both for Muslims and non-Muslims and for men and women, with thelatter extending to support for gender equality in the "private" domains of marriage,divorce, and inheritance. What should be amply clear is that such ideologicalchanges go far beyond support for the procedural aspects of democracyand the principle of majority rule. What may be less obvious is that they do notnecessarily entail or require a shift from a religious frame of reference to a secularone, though they do require a fundamental break with the letter and spiritof Shari'a rulings inherited from the past.

In addition to the ideational dimensions of Islamist movement change, thebook investigates changes in the relationships of Islamist groups with other socialand political forces, as well as the types of issues and activities to which theydevote their time, energy, and resources. Further, to the extent that availableinformation permits, it examines changes in their institutional norms anddecision-making processes. At issue here is whether and to what extent Islamistgroups are becoming more transparent, rule based, and internally democratic,as well as more accommodating of members with different views and opinions,including those advocating the reform of group norms and practices.