Source: Das Parlament
Dynamics of Participation – Islamists in Arab Poli
I. Modes of Islamist Participation in Arab Politics
At a time when Islamist movements across the Arab world have chosen to participate in official political processes, grave concerns have arisen over the nature and repercussions of this participation and over whether the Islamists are equipped to rule should they rise to power through democratic means. Because of the diversity of Islamists' awareness of, and approach to, such issues, any analysis of these questions must steer clear of generalities (and the reproduction of generalities) stemming from ideological prejudices or founded upon selective citations of past experiences which, by definition, are insufficient to grasp the complexities and constantly unfolding developments of the present. Similarly, the reductionist view of Islamist movements as groups of ideological zealots whose rhetoric, alone, is a sufficient guide to the logic of their actions is overly simplistic. Nor is it particularly productive to dismiss the criteria used to assess previous movements in the Arab world, such as the liberal, socialist and pan-Arabist trends on the grounds that Islamist participation in the political process is too recent and infrequent to be subjected to existing paradigms in a convincing manner. The latter argument is a particular favorite among some Islamists, who maintain that it is premature or unrealistic to question their ability to manage public affairs or participate effectively in government, especially when taking the current power balances between the ruling elites and Islamists into account. These apologists are asking the electorate to invest its vote in a movement whose ways of handling the challenges ahead remain obscure, beyond currently available tools for analysis. It is a dangerous form of procrastination.
It is already possible to identify three major modes of Islamist participation in public life. The first comprises the Iraqi, Lebanese and Palestinian cases. While the Islamist parties and movements in these instances operate with relative organizational freedom in the context of political party plurality, these experiences also take place in a climate of relative chaos, whether because foreign occupation has wrought the collapse of the institutions of government and public security or because an ongoing intractable crisis of internal discord so hampers the efficacy of government as to constantly threaten the stability of the political system and encourage the prevalence of monopolistic/exclusivist tendencies which conflict with the spirit and substance of peaceful participation. Shi‘a-Sunni and pro- and anti-resistance dichotomies aside, the Islamist movements in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine are characterized by regimental internal structures, possession of the means to exercise violence and a tendency to resort to, or to threaten to resort to, violence to resolve their political conflicts. Moreover, while acknowledging the differences in motives and the disparities in local contexts, the political ramifications of the Shi‘a militias' penetration of the government and security agencies in Iraq are identical with Hizbullah's utilization of its military engagement with Israel in the summer of 2006 to generate sufficient political capital to overturn the domestic balance of power in Lebanon, and with Hamas's recourse to its paramilitary machine to resolve its conflict with Fatah in Gaza.
We are thus presented with a fundamental question. Will the assimilation of such Islamist movements into plural politics, at a time when they have yet to develop a full commitment to peaceful participation and when such participation is perhaps only a tactic within the framework of a greater strategy, reduce or even eliminate the chances of propelling political plurality forward through a process of democratization? Or will assimilation gradually inspire the Islamists of collapsed and failed states to demilitarize their movements and revise their means and methods in a manner that prioritizes peaceful participation? Unfortunately, on the evidence of Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine, the latter prospect looks unlikely even if there exists a margin of possibility that the movements change from within (through, perhaps, power struggles between hardliners and moderates) or that their respective societies eventually force them out by gradually turning away from the Islamists' current sources of mass appeal: a populist ideological rhetoric, religious affiliation, and the claim that they are the torchbearers of resistance against an occupying power or common enemy. Theoretically, at least, the only way out of this predicament resides in the coalescing of a collective will to revive the state as a thoroughly civil polity, to reinvigorate its neutrality towards the diverse components of society, and to introduce structures and mechanisms to impede religious or non-religious exclusivist forces monopolizing public affairs.
In sharp contrast to these instances, the second mode of Islamist engagement in public life adopts peaceful participation as its one and only strategic option. Here there is no alternative to the preservation of the available spheres and mechanisms of political plurality and to gradually solidifying and expanding the pluralistic system through the formulation of a consensus with ruling elites and liberal and leftist opposition groups over the future of the democratization process. The campaign motto "Participation not Domination" typifies the attitude of these Islamists who are prominent in Morocco, Algeria, Kuwait and Bahrain, and who have reconstituted themselves in political party structures (such as the Moroccan Party for Justice and Development and the Algerian Society for Peace Movement) or quasi-political party structures (such as the Islamic Constitutional Movement in Kuwait and the Islamic Concord Society, a Shi‘a party in Bahrain) of a clearly non-militaristic stamp. Whereas the Society for Peace Movement and the Islamic Constitutional Movement form small parts of the governments of Algeria and Kuwait, the Party for Justice and Development and the Concord Society form part of the loyal opposition in Morocco and Bahrain. More significantly, some of these movements -- notably the Party for Justice and Development and the Constitutional Movement -- have succeeded in formulating a functional separation between Islamist proselytizing activities and politics, thereby transforming themselves into political organizations guided by an Islamist code but that are run by professional politicians and the activities of which steer clear of the rhetoric and activities of a proselytizing movement. This cannot be said of the Bahraini Concord Society, in which the blend of proselytizing and politics is perhaps a natural consequence of the overlap between the party's leadership and the Shi‘a hierarchy in Bahrain.
In spite of qualitative differences between these movements the "participation-comes-first" Islamists share several fundamental characteristics. Above all, they honor the legitimacy of the nation state to which they belong, and they respect that state's governing institutions, the principle of equality among all citizens, and the pluralistic, competitive nature of political life. This attitude, which they have generally adopted as much in spirit as in form, has led to the decline in exclusionary rhetoric, whether directed towards the ruling elite or to the liberal and leftist opposition, and to a gradual shift away from ideological diatribes and categorical judgments, and towards the formulation of practical political platforms and constructive attempts to influence public policy, whether as minor partners in government or as members of the opposition.
The Islamists' experience in Morocco, Algeria, Kuwait and Bahrain testifies to the existence of a direct relationship between the stability of the available realm for political participation as a result of the decline in the government's recourse to the security pretext to exclude or repress them and a relatively rapid rise in their resolve to respect and play by the rules of the game and to reach consensual agreements over the conduct of public affairs in a non-confrontationist manner. Nevertheless, these Islamists still face a number of tests of their intent. On the one hand, they have yet to demonstrate their unconditional commitment to the mechanisms of a pluralistic form of government, even if those mechanisms produce policies that do not conform with their religious beliefs. On the other, they must continue to convince their constituencies of the efficacy of peaceful participation at a time when exclusivist religious forces are positioning themselves for the failure of the peaceful option so as to push their own alternatives and when authoritarian ruling elites have yet to shed their suspicions of the Islamists and have yet to accustom themselves to the consensual approach.
The third mode is epitomized by the cases of Egypt, Sudan, Jordan and Yemen. In spite of the considerable differences between them, Islamist movements in these countries have persisted in the face of a volatile political space and the fragility of their relationship with the ruling elites. If, in Egypt and Jordan, the Muslim Brothers have been given some room to participate in pluralistic mechanisms, in legislative elections, in professional syndicates and other areas of civil society, the sword of the security forces is constantly hanging over their heads. On the other hand, the Islamist movement in Sudan and the Yemeni Congregation for Reform throw into relief the danger of non-democratic accommodations Islamists have struck with ruling elites and the impact of such paramilitary-technocratic alliances on political life and on the internal dynamics of the Islamists themselves.
Perhaps we might call these Islamists who take part until they notify us otherwise. They may have adopted a strategy of peaceful participation, but it is no more than a strategy. In view of the perpetual fluctuation of their role in the political life of Egypt and Jordan or the swings in their positions from partners in authoritarian governments to antagonists, in the case of Yemen and to a certain extent Sudan, their leaders and followers continue to hover in the abstract heights of ideology, social narratives and mega policy (the role of religion, Islamic Law, the individual, the group and the Muslim nation) while ignoring the need to evolve a culture that values consensus-making and constructive mechanisms for influencing public policy. Perhaps the only way to inspire these half-hearted participants in the political process to commit themselves fully is to gradually open the way for them to make a stable contribution to public life.
Such are the domestic environments in which Islamists have been operating in recent years. Building on the case of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, this paper seeks to answer three questions concerning the participation of Islamists in politics:
- What are the institutional and political conditions that have shaped Islamist participation?
- What are the issues that they Islamists have prioritized in their participation, especially in legislative institutions?
- What is the impact of their participation internally on the movement and externally on the wider political environment?
II. The case of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood
For decades since its establishment, the Muslim Brotherhood has had an ambivalent position on political participation. While it largely ignored formal politics from the 1920s to the 1970s, it has been increasingly involved in Egyptian politics since then, with a gradually increasing number of representatives in the Egyptian parliament. Yet internal debates have centered on how political efforts can and should advance the Brotherhood’s broad agenda in Egypt’s shifting political and social environment, and whether they can do so at all. The critical debate within the movement in recent decades centers on how much (and in what ways) to stress political participation. Calls for a total withdrawal from politics are heard only in the margins of the movement, as well as among some critics. But if there is a broad internal consensus that the Brotherhood should remain partially engaged in politics, leaders have nevertheless sharply debated how extensive political participation should be, what forms it should take, and how political activity can be connected to the Brotherhood’s long-term reform goals.
The debate over political participation has been complicated by the movement’s difficult relations with other political actors, from the ruling regime to opposition parties and protest movements. Fearing regime repression, the Brotherhood has been conscious to avoid signaling a determination to challenge the regime’s grip on power or to represent itself as an alternative, and has thus remained reluctant to commit to formal and electoral alliances with other opposition actors. One of the clearest signs of this understanding was the Brotherhood’s self-limited participation in 2005 parliamentary elections, when it fielded candidates in less than one-third of the electoral districts, thus sending the message that did not seek to challenge the ruling National Democratic Party’s two third majority in the People’s Assembly.
Relations between the Brotherhood and other opposition parties have been less hostile but have nonetheless been characterized by a long-standing tradition of mutual mistrust, limiting their attempts to harmonize political positions and coordinate activities. Liberal and leftist parties as well as protest movements have remained deeply concerned by the Brotherhood’s ambiguous positions on equal citizenship rights for Muslims and Copts and women’s rights and empowerment in society. Possible partners fretted about the negative impacts of shari‘a provisions on freedom of expression and pluralism, and ultimately, the contradictions between the Brotherhood’s Islamic frame of reference and the constitutional pillars of Egyptian politics. Some opposition actors also doubt the Brotherhood’s willingness to cooperate with them, accusing it of “arrogant behavior” and an “inability to reach compromises” with others.
The Brotherhood too has had legitimate reasons to mistrust the attitudes of other opposition actors. Some legal parties—such as the leftist Unionist Party, al-Tajammu‘—have maintained their rejectionist attitude towards Islamist participation in politics, and thus allied with the regime to limit the Brotherhood’s political space. In several incidents, the leadership of al-Tajammu‘ has even endorsed repressive government measures against the Brotherhood and justified them on the grounds that they were targeting an undemocratic organization. Other parties have been less openly hostile but have still distanced themselves from the Brotherhood during times of severe regime repression.
But if alliance achievements have been limited, they have left some real effects on the Brotherhood’s positions. Since 2002, the Muslim Brotherhood’s partial search for common ground with other opposition actors has resulted in the strengthening of the movement’s platform on social, economic, and political reform. In different official pronouncements and programmatic statements—for example the 2004 Reform Initiative and the 2005 electoral program—the Brotherhood’s platform has echoed that of liberal and leftist parties, calling for constitutional amendments, democratic reforms, government accountability, and safeguards on personal freedoms.
Legislative Priorities and Activities - Sketching a Comprehensive Islamist Agenda
The Brotherhood’s recent parliamentary activity must be seen against the backdrop of its growing parliamentary presence. Moving up from only one representative out of 444 in the 1995-2000 parliament, and then seventeen in the 2000-2005 session, the Muslim Brotherhood now has eighty-eight members in the 2005-2010 Egyptian parliament, second only to the ruling-NDP. This growing parliamentary presence is one important reason for its increased parliamentary activity.
The nature of the movement’s parliamentary platform has also shifted throughout the last three decades: calls for the application of shari‘a and the promotion of religious and moral values that the bloc prioritized until the 1990s have given way to issues of legal and political reform, socio-economic policies, and human rights violations in the 2000-2005 and 2005-2010 assemblies. Although religious and shari‘a-based priorities remain key elements in the Brotherhood’s parliamentary activities, their significance in shaping the movement’s platform has gradually diminished. Other elements have remained unchanged, such as the preoccupation with government accountability, anti-corruption measures, and the group’s vague stance with regard to women’s rights and equality between Muslims and Copts in Egypt.
But, despite their increased size and more practical focus, it is important not to overstate what the Brotherhood’s parliamentary deputies can achieve. Although the group’s nearly continuous presence in parliament since the late 1970s has enabled its MPs to acquire extensive oversight tools as well as a collective ability to challenge the government, its impact on the legislative process has been minimal. The Brotherhood bloc’s failure to pass platform legislation is ultimately linked to the ruling National Democratic Party’s firm grip on the legislative process, as it has persistently secured a comfortable two-thirds majority in all assemblies since 1976. Even in the current assembly, despite the significant growth of the Muslim Brotherhood’s representation to almost one-fifth of the entire body, the NDP holds three-quarters of the seats and is virtually unchallenged in forming the cabinet and passing its draft legislation.
In this context of strong oversight performance and weak legislative impact, the Brotherhood’s parliamentary activities in recent years have centered on five pillars: constitutional and legal amendments, political reform, social and economic legislation, religious and moral legislation, and women’s rights. The following passage examines the parliamentary platform of the Brotherhood MPs in relation to one of these five pillars in both the 2000-2005 and the current 2005-2010 assemblies.
Constitutional Amendments
In general, the Brotherhood’s parliamentary bloc has developed its own set of proposals for reforming Egypt’s constitutional order while simultaneously advancing a critique of the constitutional amendments proposed by the regime. Indeed, the issue of constitutional amendments has occupied a prominent position in the debates and platforms of various political actors in Egypt since 2002.
In the run-up to the 2005 presidential and parliamentary elections, President Mubarak proposed an amendment to Article 76 of the constitution allowing multi-candidate presidential elections. In so doing, he appeared to give in to opposition demands to abandon the decades-old system of popular referenda designed merely to confirm the regime’s candidate for the presidency. But the Brotherhood rejected the proposed amendment as insufficient and later called for a boycott of the referendum held in May 2005 to confirm the amendment because it restricted the ability of independents and opposition parties to field presidential candidates. Specifically, political parties—and only those founded five years before the enactment of the amendment—who wish to put forth a presidential candidate must have at least five percent of the assembly’s seats. Independents in particular were required to have the support of 250 elected members of the People’s Assembly, Shura Council (the upper house of the Egyptian parliament), and local councils.
The Muslim Brotherhood continued its opposition to constitutional amendments proposed by the president and the NDP throughout the 2005-2010 People’s Assembly. The largest battle took place over a large set of presidentially-proposed amendments in 2006 and 2007: on December 26th, 2006, President Hosni Mubarak called for the amendment of 34 constitutional articles to prohibit the establishment of religious parties and introduce more changes to presidential and legislative election laws, without setting a term limit for the presidency. Of the 34 amendments introduced and eventually approved, the Brotherhood bloc focused its critique on the following elements, which it interpreted as limiting political freedoms and impeding its political activism:
- Amendments banning religious based political parties and activities, which clearly limit the Muslim Brotherhood’s participation in politics and obstruct its transformation into a legal party. The Brotherhood views the ban as completely inconsistent with Article 2 of the existing text, which stipulates Islam as the religion of the state in Egypt and Islamic shari‘a as its major source of legislation.
- Further amendments to Article 76 regarding presidential elections that upheld the requirement of independent candidates to gain the support of 250 elected members in the NDP-dominated People’s Assembly, Shura Council, and local councils. (The amendments did reduce the number of seats in parliament required for a legal political party to field a presidential candidate from five percent to three percent.)
- An amendment laying the groundwork for a proportional system of legislative elections, which suggested that Egyptians would no longer vote for individuals but instead for party lists. In the Brotherhood’s view, this amendment cemented its exclusion from regular electoral politics, since it is not allowed to form a political party.
- An amendment to Article 88 that reduced judicial oversight of elections by forming special oversight committees comprised of both judges and former government officials. The Brotherhood charged that the new system would increase opportunities for election rigging and manipulation.
- Amendments to Article 179, which would allow the enactment of a terrorism law. The Brotherhood joined other opposition critics to charge that the effect would be to allow the regime to replace the longstanding state of emergency with a new set of permanent legal tools designed to restrict political life. The constitutional amendments asserted the right of the Ministry of Interior to curb political and civic rights by restricting the press, subjecting journalists to potential imprisonment, and allowing governmental bodies to observe and control the activities of political parties.
- The absence, yet again, of any amendments dealing with Article 77, thus leaving the number of presidential terms unlimited.
Dilemmas of Participation
While the Brotherhood has worked hard to pursue this comprehensive agenda on constitutional amendments, it has attempted to do so without abandoning its longstanding emphasis on religion, morality, and the family. The Brotherhood has tried to portray its religious agenda as compatible with—and even a full expression of—its comprehensive reform program. Some of the religious issues it has raised, for instance—such as the right of veiled women to be hired for government funded-television channels—have been linked to the freedom of expression and religious belief. On other issues, such as torture and the rights of the press, the Brotherhood has used its religious and moral priorities to defend political freedoms and human rights.
Yet while the remarkably active Muslim Brotherhood bloc has dealt with these moral and religious issues from 2000 to 2010, social, economic, and political legislation has been at the core of its platform and activities, both in terms of oversight and legislative attempts. The prioritization of these issues has often come at the cost of the Brotherhood’s moral and religious platform, which enjoyed a formative role in the movement’s parliamentary participation before 2000. Indeed, the Brotherhood’s moral and religious platform has been reduced to illiberal stances on women’s issues and scattered calls for the application of shari‘a provisions. The relative marginalization of the Brotherhood’s moral and religious platform in parliament has posed a serious challenge for the movement: how can it pursue social, economic, and political reform in parliament while still sustaining its “Islamic” credentials geared toward its religious constituencies? While the Brotherhood has been blocked from forming a political party, one strategy for dealing with the tension between its broad political and specific religious agenda has been to formalize political operations under a functionally separate institutional structure. And indeed, in recent years, it is possible to detect a functional separation between the parliamentary bloc, which addresses reform issues, and the leadership of the movement—the General Guide and the Guidance Office—which prioritizes moral and religious concerns in official pronouncements, media statements, and other activities.
A second and equally serious challenge has emerged from the limited outcome of the Brotherhood’s participation in parliament. In the eyes of many Brotherhood constituents and activists, the movement’s pursuit of reform issues in parliament has simply not paid off; the de-emphasis of moral and religious issues has proven vain and unfruitful. And the Brotherhood’s participation in parliament, they argue, has not opened Egypt’s political sphere. Increasingly, the Brotherhood’s leadership has felt the need to account for this negative balance and offer explanations for its priorities to the rank and file. Discussion and debate surrounding this issue in recent years has thrown the value of political participation as a strategic objective into question, especially in comparison to the success of wider social and religious activities. One of the outcomes of this growing tension has been a changing balance of power within the movement’s leadership between advocates of political participation and those concerned with the Brotherhood’s social and religious role.