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, and from what I said at the time that there are five determinants of rethinking, namely reconciliation with the national state while redefining it, and the transition of identity politics to social/economic biases that express the interests of groups Specific social, and the separation between da'wa and partisan, and used the partisan rather than the political, and the ownership of a project to manage the state while transcending the sectarian / organizational dimension towards a broader national horizon.
In the first part of the article, we dealt with the first three axes: the narrative of Islamic political movements in the 20th century, the narrative of the Arab uprisings, and the exceptional end of Islamic political movements. In this article, we continue the axes: Islamists in the transitional time, and a talk about the future.
The advocacy discourse frees itself from the social ground and from the existing material relations, and makes politics of a cultural nature that does not move on a social ground, meaning that it is reduced to cultural and intellectual battles.
Fourth: Islamists in the transitional time
The Islamists entered the era of the Arab Spring with their narrative that was previously referred to, and what was characterized by five characteristics, which produced a number of problems that they have not been able to overcome so far, and they are general problems between the three cases, although they acquired their specificity according to each context:
Between my identities and my program:
The three cases unanimously agree on this problem, which took on multiple manifestations. There was no clear relationship between the two, and it was not determined how the Islamic reference could govern programs and policies in practice, as the demands of identity were sometimes advanced without taking into account the balance of power or fluctuated between the ideological and electoral programs as well. In the case of Tunisia, or resorting to it on the grounds of those who represent Islam politically, as happened between the Brotherhood and the Salafis of Alexandria, or for mobilization and mobilization, as happened in the conflict with the Salvation Front in Egypt.
Finally, the identity component in the three cases highlighted the difference between Islamic idealism and political practice, or what Abu al-Lawz expressed about the “difficulty of building a balanced equation between a reference political discourse based on Islamic identity and a political discourse based on the argument of development” that led all Islamists into politics To take positions that seem far from the Islamic discourse as they used to put it before.
Between advocacy / moral and political:
Characteristics of the advocacy discourse is that it separates from the classes, meaning that it does not realize class contradictions and does not occupy any weight in its priorities. It is in its nature that it penetrates all classes with a desire to express the whole society, and as Wael Gamal sees in his paper “Lost Capital,” “these movements claim that they represent all society, and avoided all approaches that might highlight class differences or social conflicts.
This relative blocking has historically allowed the Brotherhood and what emerged from its thesis to be an attractive force for groups with discordant interests, which enabled the movement to attract diverse individuals.” However, at the same time, it made it fail to express its electoral base, which was mainly concentrated in the middle and lower classes. Which made it lose its popularity.
The advocacy discourse liberates from the social ground and from the existing material relations, and makes politics of a cultural nature that does not move on a social ground, in the sense that it is reduced to cultural and intellectual battles, not changing the balance of political and economic forces and dismantling the structure of tyranny, exploitation and corruption, as it led to the development of comprehensive and cosmic tasks. The Islamic movements are greater than their organizational size, according to Abu al-Lawz, who adds that he has produced a policy that is conducted or governed by the absolute, not by consensual agreement and consensus between different groups and individuals.
If an ethical discourse is mixed with this, talk about social, political, economic, and even cultural structures that produce tyranny, poverty, differentiation and class contradictions in society, and the local, regional and international networks of privilege associated with them, is wasted. Therefore, there is no talk about public policies to dismantle these structures, especially if they accompany or Mix that with talking about charity, alms and zakat.
The problem of political practice, which is not based on specific choices governed by a holistic vision, is exacerbated by the fact that the ideology of Islamic political movements is vague and mixed with pragmatism. Rather, I would argue that one of the main conflicts that took place and is still in the region now revolves around the various patterns of religiosity in society, especially that behind it there is an impetus from internal and external institutions, interests and connections.
The nature of ideology emanating from religions:
It is open to various interpretations and interpretations and interacts multiplely with the contexts in which it moves. It also uses religious sayings to justify choices and economic/social biases, and in many cases the biases are adjacent without feeling the contradictions between them, so they are signs of social justice with a belief in the free market at the same time.
Before the Arab Spring and throughout their extended history, these movements were keen not to choose specific economic, social or political policies unless they were forced, as they realized themselves as an independent party outside society and the state that carries abstract ideas without social/economic implications, and political implications were forced to adopt them.
Combined with this characteristic is that practice is what draws the features of ideology, so it is a methodological mistake that researchers have to analyze texts without following practical practice. Practice among Islamists - in many cases - precedes theoretical vision, and this makes the Islamic idea for them an empty, vague container without content Specific, and leads to their being affected by the contexts in which they work, and this led to their ability to adjust their ideological positions to keep pace with the changes that occur, and at the same time led them to appear pragmatic.
The absence of the ruling vision results in multiple contradictions and a change in attitudes, which Prof. Dr. Abul-Lawz monitored in detail in his research as an application to Moroccan justice and development.
The political Islam movements in the three countries entered the era of the Arab Spring and were suffering from the repercussions of mixing between the advocacy and the political, and their leadership realized the consequences of this predicament and sought to deal with it. In the Moroccan experience - according to Abul-Lawz - it moved through three stages of mixing them, then separating them Awareness of the difference in the political mission from advocacy with the recognition of specialization, and finally comes the third stage, which is called engaging in pragmatism or its predominance.
Al-Jourshi evaluates Al-Nahda’s attempt to arrange the relationship between the two fields, and concludes that it did not go much in separating the case from the political, which made it within the range of its opponents despite the efforts it made to be a civil party with an Islamic reference, and he believes that what some party cadres put forward from its transition to be a conservative party. In the Western sense, it requires theorizing with its theoretical and practical bases, and here the difference between the two papers Abu Al-Lawz and Al-Jurashi emerges, the first highlights the problem of the relationship between the Islamic religious field and modernity in the political field, and then the Justice and Development Party demands a solution to this problem, and I do not know if this is one of the requirements of its function as a party Or is it a remnant of his advocacy role, while Al-Jourshi sees the transformation of Ennahda into a party in the modern sense, and here the question becomes what will remain of Islamism in the Ennahda party at that time.
Between the protest and the state administration:
This feature does not pertain to Islamists alone, but extends to all Arab opposition forces, as the political regimes before this decade deprived them of the mere imagination to reach the seats of power, and the Arab uprisings surprised them as they surprised everyone, and the situation aggravated among the Islamists by depriving them of assuming any significant positions In the state apparatus, so they did not understand the meaning of the state and how its apparatus works, and they often acted while in power according to the logic of the opposition party or according to the mechanisms of civil society.
As a result, when these movements came to power, they did not have solutions for how to deal with the chronic problems of reality, and they lacked a coherent socio-economic strategy or a plan to deal with the transitional phase.
The short Egyptian experience highlights how the organization’s intervention method was confused as one of the manifestations of civil work with the policies of the authority that has material coercion to implement. The Moroccan experience shows the consequences of moving from protest to the role of mediator in political life, which lost credibility, marginalized and isolated and led to internal division. In Tunisia, the movement - according to Al-Jorshi - even if it raised the slogan of justice, it did not have clear implications for the realization of this slogan, and it did not have the necessary expertise and human cadres capable of implementing this choice.
Transcend historical legitimacy with the ambiguity of the new legitimacy:
The legitimacy of Islamists was historically based on a number of foundations, including the Islamization of society, the establishment of the Islamic state and the application of Sharia. They moved - as in the Tunisian and Moroccan experience - to adopt the concept of the national state despite its crisis and the absence of a project to renew its foundations in the stage of rethinking the post-independence state.
As for the features of the hoped-for society, there is nothing wrong with it, from a clash with the feminist movements, as in Tunisia, and a tendency toward “salvation” and religious conservatism under the pressure of Salafist groups in Egypt, and finally an acceptance of the French education in Morocco.
Abu al-Lawz raises a problem of great importance to which I have already mentioned, which is the position of Islamists on modernity in the political field, which poses the problem of rethinking politics and the state. I wrote a warning in the late eighties of the danger of the inflation of the conflicting/competitive political component in Islamic work. My argument at the time was that politics by nature and definition reformulates the rest of the components of the whole work to be on its example and image, and this deepens in the absence of a theory of the state and an understanding of its contemporary nature, and the situation worsens if we understand that political Islam in part is a rebellion against the modern state as a whole: a rebellion Against the rule and freedom of this state, he rebelled against its coercive applications of Western modernity, but at the same time fell into its traps. Wael Hallaq expressed this dilemma in his book “The Impossible State” best of all.
The experience of the Arab Spring in its second wave - and the Islamists were in power and not in the opposition as in the first wave - that they acted in the face of protests as did others, but the speeches were similar to the statements of any tyrant who rules, although these protests do not object to a specific politician or policy only, But on the true meaning of "power" exercised by these parties.
The three experiences, albeit from different contexts, highlight the limits of the power that Islamists enjoy in power. Here we can refer to the concept of the deep state in Egypt, the storehouse in Morocco, and the balance of local and geopolitical forces in Tunisia. The question becomes about the limits of the Islamization of society using power, and the location Authority is a project of the Islamists in implementing Sharia - as in the Egyptian case - a project, but in the Tunisian and Moroccan cases this goal has been abandoned, so the question becomes what?
The papers of Abu al-Lawz and al-Jourshi provide us with the beginning of an answer. Jurashi sees the need to support the democratic path, while Abu al-Lawz sees the importance of building a balanced equation between a reference political discourse based on Islamic identity and a political discourse based on the argument of development, and adds another more difficult task - to a party governed by the integration strategy. In the Moroccan political field according to its rules - which is dealing with modernity in the political field as it frames this field by managing the contradictions that appear between it and the Islamic culture.
Here, the conference participants allow me to present the narrative of the Arab Spring, as I explained it before, as a way to reproduce Islamism in the political sphere, which I dealt with in detail in a previous article.
In the light of the above, the three researchers discuss the realistic goal of each party, as justice, development and Ennahda have become their goal to adapt to the requirements of existing politics as its features are drawn by the store with its network of interests and privileges, or to remain in power - despite the continuous loss and decline in popularity - to preserve oneself, as in Tunisia, while Egypt As Zaghloul sees it, the goal was for the organization to dominate the state, while sensing that it would remain in power for a long time.
Between the reformist and the revolutionary:
Shallata presents in his paper this dilemma that faced the Brotherhood after the military coup in Egypt in 2013, but the dilemma in this duality came from two angles: the first is that the discussion took place from the entrance of the use of political violence or what was called qualitative work at the time, and the second is that The discussion took place on the grounds of jurisprudence in the traditional sense without capturing the modern discussions on this subject, and most importantly, from my point of view, what the Arab uprisings raised about the need to change the formula of existing wealth and power, with what it means of radical change, but within a gradual framework, i.e. revolutionary demands and reformist work.
Is this consistent with a movement whose nature was historically reformist, even if it carried a radical change in the foundations of nation-building?
Fifthly: talk about the future
The three papers suffered from weakness in discussing the contexts that took place, are taking place, and the Islamists experience will take place, and were mostly limited to national contexts only and in the political field, without paying attention to the changes of society and its active forces among young people, the transformations of the religious phenomenon - especially among young men and women - which deserves to be followed, as it is a phenomenon A dynamic dynamic that is not always stable and bears the new, and the conflict has become over patterns of religiosity or what was called the spirit of Islam.
In the region, one of the axes of polarization, and finally, Islam still has the ability to attract the region today, and the way in which the various Islamic intellectual tendencies deal with the multiple crises facing the region in the coming years will affect the evolving role of religion in it in the long run.
Four determinants govern the future of Islam in our region, and I do not mean Islam as a religion, but the various Islamic discourses and their various challenges: The first determinant is its ability to renew in the face of the transformations of young people in their relationship to religion, and the predicament that all of them ended after a decade of the Arab Spring, and this is linked to the second determinant, which is the results of The ongoing regional conflict between the contentious axes, which is characterized by fluidity, uncertainty and repositioning between its main parties, and third: global developments come in terms of their relationship to the region and the flows they pose that change the nature of the world, especially in the post-Corona stage, which is, in my view, the fourth and final determinant.
6 traits of youthful religiosity
There are many features of youth religiosity. The religiosity of university students, both men and women after the uprisings, is of an individual nature. Its solid core is not formed by organizations, but by the network of interactions and the large number of initiatives brought together by legal science and emotional mysticism. Its features are shaped on social media and in practice, not ideological discourse. It is characterized by the presence of A woman is a tyrant, and his position on politics has not yet been determined, but is drawn by the contexts and their development.
These features find their interpretation in the social media model as a cognitive model, as social media are not just tools used, but rather an expression of values, practices and a cognitive model.
The struggle for the spirit of Islam: Five common features of this Islam presented by regional forces and axes, and if the conflict prevails between them, it revolves around an Islam that is devoid of democracy, integrated into the market, that is, with a neoliberal character, and mixed with violence because it combines soft power with hard, even though it presents itself to the world as being open. It is tolerant and plays a role in combating violent extremism, but at the same time it does not look at the situation of its people.
From the clash of civilizations to the clash of identities
Speaking about the conflict of identities, there is a prediction in the Strategic Directions 2040 Report - which was issued last March by the US intelligence community - that for the next two decades there will be a revitalization of sub-national identities that will challenge the national affiliation on which the nation-state is based, in addition to the emergence of supranational identities. Due to globalization, especially after the flow of information.
As the report envisions, many people gravitate toward familiar, like-minded groups for community and security, including ethnic, religious and cultural identities, as well as groupings around interests and causes. These groups are more prominent, and in conflict, creating a cacophony between competing visions, goals, and beliefs.
A mixture of newly emerging transnational identities is being created, the resurgence of entrenched loyalties, the information environment isolated, the divergence of fault lines within states, the undermining of civic nationalism, and the increase in volatility.
Although the report does not present to its reader the American policy maker and decision-maker, what can he do to confront or benefit from what we can call the “conflict of identities”, the basic thesis on which the analysis was based would nourish aspects of this conflict, as it was unable to distinguish between the grievances that These identities move between them and the components of identity, in other words: is the conflict revolving around identities, or are identities used and used to mobilize around common grievances that are de facto transcending identities but have become globalized as well?
So we find economic and social inequalities in America as we find them in any developing country, and so corruption, to the last of the phenomena, and here we are facing the basic question: Are we facing a conflict of identities or a conflict over interests and resources, in light of a strong mixture of religious, cultural and ethnic feelings with grievances and inequalities In distributing resources?!
The question arises about the impact of the conflict of identities on Islamic political movements.
This is the tip of the iceberg of the future, which could have repercussions on where the Islamists' train will reach in the terrain of Arab politics?