In prison - when it was available - I was presenting a program on the glasses of the solitary cell entitled "Takhareef", trying to put forward some new ideas that shake the stable convictions of a section of prisoners who varied from one prison to another.
On one occasion, I spoke about the rethinking of Islamic movements and parties in politics through the experience of the Arab Spring. What I said at the time was that there are five determinants of rethinking;
Reconciliation with the national state while redefining it, moving identity policies (use “ba” and not “about” in the word “politics”) identity to social/economic biases that express the interests of specific social groups, separating advocacy and partisanship, using partisan rather than political, and owning a project to manage The state while transcending the sectarian/organizational dimension towards a broader national horizon.
I remembered this talk and it was an opportunity to review it with the Institute of Politics and Society - Amman in Jordan, in cooperation with the German Friedrich Albert Foundation, on Sunday June 6, 2021 - the first session in a series of mini-conferences that raise an important question on the occasion of a decade of the Arab Spring: Where did the Islamists train arrive? In the terrain of Arab politics?
The first session was devoted to studying 3 experiences of Islamists' participation in power in Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia. The essential observation raised by the three papers is the extent to which this participation represents a dilemma for three parties founded on the narrative of the Muslim Brotherhood; Although not linked to one of them organizationally. This predicament comes to you from the first moment of reading the three papers, even though each of them was assigned to a different country; In Egypt, which was "the organization in the face of the state" - in the words of the researcher Ahmed Zagloul Shalata - the question has become about "the reason behind their failure to rule it." As for the Islamists' experience in governing in Morocco, it has become governed by "power auctions", and then it has been hit by "destruction." - In the words of Dr. Abdel Hakim Abu al-Lawz - it means the presence of the development component on the sidelines of the identity component in the practice of the Justice and Development Party, while the Tunisian Renaissance movement fell into the "power net", according to the vision of Professor Salah al-Din al-Jurshi.
There is a new narrative of the Arab Spring uprisings that announces the end of the 20th century formulas, at the heart of which is the post-independence state and the Islamic and secular political movements that were based on totalitarian ideologies, and that we are in the process of new formulas that have not yet been institutionalized;
It was overtaken by protest and lacked the crystallization of its incubating and motivating social base.
What I will try in this article is not a detailed discussion of the papers, but an attempt to provide an explanatory model for the Islamists’ exercise in power and a monitoring of the problems that this practice produced for them.
As a prelude to rethinking how "Islamism" is produced in the political sphere in the 21st century.
First: The narrative of Islamic political movements in the 20th century:
This narrative was based on 5 pillars: the comprehensiveness of Islam; That is, the attachment of the Islamic reference to all matters of life, the centrality of authority as an essential tool for the application of Sharia, the rejection of the national state and its transcendence through Islamic internationalism, and the rebuilding of the nation itself (the Islamization of society) on the basis of a new identity and legitimacy using the sacred organization; His sanctity derives from his mission.
We will not discuss the components of this narrative and what it ended and what are the elements of its failure and success, but what concerns us in this regard is how it left its impact on the work of Islamists in the political field;
Especially that the discourse was mixed with 5 other features, namely: the discourse’s advocacy, its “ethics,” and a vague ideology mixed with pragmatism, with the predominance of protest over the presentation of policies, and finally the divergent organization of its membership.
I studied in detail the impact of these five features on the social issue of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, which prompted them to adopt "neoliberal" policies in government despite their raising slogans of justice.
These features cast a shadow over their practice in the political field, which was captured by the three papers, which we will present to later.
Second: The narrative of the Arab uprisings:
The research project of the Center for Politics and Society did well when it recognized the moment of the Arab Spring as “a turning point in the region and a break with the previous historical path in many matters,” but it was satisfied with this quick reference in the background paper without providing us with the features of this transformation;
The dialogue around it helps a deeper understanding of the Islamic political movements that have witnessed - according to the project - "great transformations, whether at the level of internal structure, ideology, or even the surrounding environment."
The writer of these lines argues that there is a new narrative of the Arab Spring uprisings that announces the end of the 20th century formulas, at the heart of which are the post-independence state and Islamic and secular political movements that were based on totalitarian ideologies, and that we are in the process of new formulas that have not yet been institutionalized;
It was overtaken by protest and lacked the crystallization of its incubating and motivating social base.
The historical reading of the Arab Spring uprisings is that we are facing a reconfiguration of all history in the region, and we are facing a historical watershed; The old led to the explosion, and was no longer able to provide responses to the challenges of society and the state, but the new has not yet crystallized, and this is our historical mission, I think, and the moment is not empty as some think, but rather is filled with many and many that are poured into the future, and the extent of the ability of Islamists or others to capture The ingredients of this moment will be to the extent that they will regain their presence and momentum, which has declined to a large extent, according to what was observed by the three papers, which was the decline in their popularity in the continuous electoral elections, and most importantly, the loss of credibility and confidence in the Islamists’ ability to find solutions to the crisis reality.
I am aware that the projects of the nomadic past were not mere formulations and passing phrases carried by the power of authority in the expanded sense that Foucault presents, but rather they are a form or proposal for life, and the nature of society with its network of relations, a discourse and practice of political, social and economic perceptions and imagination, and a cognitive perception of life and the state, which emanate from Customs, traditions, institutions, language and perception of society and its individuals, and a perception of the self and the other that expresses itself in laws, legislation, constitution and production relations.
The narrative of the Arab uprisings is a search for a new social contract by which the nation-state is rebuilt with new elites. This contract is based on 3 components: freedom/democracy, social justice/equitable distribution of wealth, and liberation of the national will from regional and international domination.
This dream is almost compatible with the middle and lower classes and some segments of the upper class, but its driving force is new generations of young people with an overwhelming female presence.
The 2021 Jerusalem Intifada - which I consider the third wave of the Arab Spring - added a fourth aspect, which is the restoration of the centrality of Palestine; Especially in its relationship to the issue of democracy, which the Arab Spring added to it.
In the relationship of the Jerusalem Intifada with the Arab Spring, there are many aspects that need elaboration, but we refer here to some aspects of convergence whose essence is to complete the fourth aspect of the Arab social contract; Although the escalating Arab popular response to the Palestinian uprisings in the first decade of the new millennium was one of the main precursors to these uprisings; The Palestinian issue - for reasons that are not detailed here - has witnessed a decline over the past decade; lifetime this spring. The ongoing uprising is a restoration of popular interest in the issue again and the restoration of a component of legitimacy in the Arab political systems, but with a new awareness that transcends the experience of the nationalist regimes in the sixties and beyond, which employed the issue to confiscate the peoples’ demand for freedom and political participation when the slogan was “No Voice” louder than the sound of battle.
There are many similarities between what is happening in Palestine and the two waves of the Arab Spring. There is the first mover, which is young generations and a dominant female presence that preceded the organizations in their movement, while transcending the old mechanisms of action and opposing binary (peaceful / armed), the two-state solution, and political and organizational differences towards a national goal. Common against the Zionist occupation in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Jerusalem, racial discrimination in the Green Line, and the use of social media (the Tik Tok generation) as tools for mobilization, mobilization, documenting violations and presenting the case to the world, and also as a knowledge and value model characterized by networking, decentralization and creativity in action with speed of initiative.
The peoples of Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco were able to distinguish in the Islamic parties between the religious and political components in them, when they accepted to deal with them as a political actor to give or prevent them from their voice in the elections.
Third: An Exceptional End to Islamic Political Movements:
The main impression he got after completing the reading of the three papers is the normalization of these movements with the Arab political reality with all the negative and positive connotations this word carries, with which it can be said that the Islamic exceptionalism has ended, which its followers and opponents alike tried to stigmatize; And if the motives differ between them, the followers want to confer on it a kind of holiness, in a clear confusion between the revealed text and its expression, whether it is a discourse or a practice. As for the opponents, they wanted to question its ability to integrate into the political system as a way to deprive it of existence. As for the analysts and researchers, they In its relationship with democracy, they saw the need for a number of conditions to be met to ensure the success of its integration into the existing political system, as if this were not required by other political forces.
The Islamists in power - as in the opposition - act like other political actors when they are motivated by their perceptions of their self-interests that they want to achieve, and they build their alliances not according to ideological foundations; Rather, according to the competition among them that is more intense than their competition with others, and most importantly, the Arab Spring in its two waves proved - beyond any doubt - that they do not have a different project for power and wealth, but rather behave like any Arab ruler, because of their political opportunism behavior that marked the experience and practice of many of them. In and outside the government, the fluctuations of their positions and alliances, their multiple transitions from one trench to another, and the spread of corruption in some of their circles, and this stripped them of the veil of “piety” and removed the “aura of holiness” from over the heads of their leaders; The recent years have proven that the project in its political structure is too inconsistent to qualify it to be a government project that presents an alternative to the crisis Arab state. It tends mostly to slogans, which are not supported by clear and practical programs and projects for the administration of the state.
The conclusion that comes out from reading the three papers is that the peoples of Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco were able to distinguish in the Islamic parties between the religious and political components in them, when they accepted to deal with them as a political actor to give him or prevent him from their voice in the elections, in which they notice the decline in the popularity of Islamists In all the electoral elections that took place over the past decade, I would argue that the most important indication of the June 30, 2013 protests in Egypt is that they recognized the Brotherhood as any political actor.
Here is an observation confirmed by the experience of the three countries (Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia) which is the symbolic capital consumption of Islamists after a decade of political practice.
With the absence of Islamic exceptionalism in the political field;
Should the study of these movements be in a field of knowledge independent of the study of other political actors in the region?