A Restless Revival: Political Islam After the 2011 Uprisings
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VOLUME 1 A Restless Revival: Political Islam After the 2011 Uprisings Maha Yahya and Mohanad Hage Ali, editors VOLUME 1 A Restless Revival: Po liti cal Islam After the 2011 Uprisings Maha Yahya and Mohanad Hage Ali, editors This publication was made possible with the generous support of the Carnegie Corporation of New York (CCNY). The articles contained herein were previously published on Carnegie’s website as part of the CCNY-funded Political Islam series. © 2021 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. All rights reserved. Carnegie does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center or the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Please direct inquiries to: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Publications Department 1779 Massachusetts Avenue NW Washington, DC 20036 P: + 1 202 483 7600 F: + 1 202 483 1840 CarnegieEndowment.org Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center Emir Bechir Street, Lazarieh Tower Bldg. No. 2026 1210, 5th flr. Downtown Beirut, P.O.Box 11-1061 Riad El Solh, Lebanon P: + 961 1 99 15 91 F: + 961 1 99 15 91 Carnegie-MEC.org This publication can be downloaded at no cost at Carnegie-MEC.org. Photo: MOHAMMED HUWAIS/AFP via Getty Images Remember that you are“ not mere actualities. You were born as potentialities. Dare to be and dare to know.” Vartan Gregorian 1934–2021 President, Carnegie Corporation of New York This publication is dedicated to the memory of Vartan Gregorian. CONTENTS About the Authors vii Introduction 1 Maha Yahya and Mohanad Hage Ali THEME 1: SHIFTS IN REGIONAL ALLIANCES AND NATIONAL POLITICS Flexible Resistance: How Hezbollah and Hamas Are Mending Ties 9 Maren Koss Mismatched Expectations: Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood After the Arab Uprisings 17 Tamer Badawi and Osama al- Sayyad THEME 2: THE RISE OF SALAFIST AUTHORITY The Emir’s Gift: Given a Greater Role, Kuwait’s Salafis Face the Costs 25 Zoltan Pall Brothers in Alms: Salafi Financiers and the Syrian Insurgency 31 Thomas Pierret THEME 3: PRAGMATISM AND FLEXIBILITY Hamas: Constrained or Nimble? 39 Imad Alsoos and Nathan J. Brown Hezbollah’s Journey from Syria’s Battlefield to Lebanon’s Political Minefield 47 Ali Hashem Lost Capital: The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s Neoliberal Transformation 55 Wael Gamal Money and Morals: Salafi Economics in the Arab World 63 Francesco Cavatorta and Valeria Resta Challenges to Sunni Islamism in Bahrain Since 2011 71 Courtney Freer Surviving Repression: How Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood Has Carried On 79 Barbara Zollner THEME 4: THRIVING IN TRIBAL CONTEXTS Our Common Enemy: Ambiguous Ties Between al-Qaeda and Yemen’s Tribes 87 Nadwa Al-Dawsari Syria’s Regime Has Given the Fatah Islamic Institute Influence, But at What Cost? 95 Laila Rifai Yemen’s Houthis Used Multiple Identities to Advance 103 Ahmed Nagi The Religious Domain Continues to Expand in Syria 111 Harout Akdedian How Syria’s Regime Used Local Clerics to Reassert Its Authority in Rural Damascus Governorate 119 Hadeel Al-Saidawi Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center 126 ABOUT THE AUTHORS Harout Akdedian is a Carnegie senior postdoctoral fellow at the Central European University and a visiting scholar in the Middle East Studies Center at Portland State University. He is co-editor of Striking From The Margins: State, Religion and Devolution of Authority in the Middle East (with Aziz Al-Azemeh, Nadia Al-Bagdadi, and Harith Hasan). Akdedian holds a Ph.D. in Islamic studies from the University of New England. Imad Alsoos is a Palestinian researcher on social and Islamic movements. vii Tamer Badawi is an independent analyst and writer. He is associate at Center for Applied Research in Partnership with the Orient and Al Sharq Strategic Research. His research focuses on Iranian foreign and trade policy toward the Arab countries and nonstate actors, and dialogue initiatives between Iranian and Arab elites. He’s on Twitter @TamerBadawi1. Nathan J. Brown is a nonresident senior fellow at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Middle East Program, professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, and distinguished scholar and author of six well-received books on Arab politics. Francesco Cavatorta is a professor in the Department of Political Science at Laval University, Quebec City. His research focuses on the dynamics of democratization and authoritarianism, political parties and movements, and civil society activism in the Arab world. Nadwa Al-Dawsari is a nonresident senior fellow at the Project on Middle East Democracy and a Yemeni conflict researcher with over twenty years of field experience working with Yemeni tribes. Courtney Freer is a research fellow in the Middle East Center at the London School of Economics and Political Science. In 2018, she published Rentier Islamism: The Influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gulf Monarchies (Oxford University Press). Wael Gamal is an Egyptian economic journalist, columnist, trainer and researcher. He was the El- Erian fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center, where his research focused on political economy in the Middle East and North Africa, the growing inequality gap, and the hollowing out of the middle class in the Arab world. Mohanad Hage Ali is director of communications and a fellow at the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, a lecturer in journalism and politics at the Lebanese American University, and the author of Nationalism, Transnationalism, and Political Islam: Hizbullah’s Institutional Identity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) Ali Hashem is a columnist for Al-Monitor and a reporter who covers the Middle East in general with special emphasis on Iranian affairs. He currently serves as a senior journalist at Al Jazeera English and prior to that he was BBC’s Iran affairs correspondent. His articles have also appeared in the Guardian, the Sunday Times, the National, and the Japanese magazine Facta. viii Maren Koss is a research fellow at the GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies. She is the author of Resistance, Power, and Conceptions of Political Order in Islamist Organizations: Comparing Hezbollah and Hamas (Routledge, 2018). Ahmed Nagi is a nonresident scholar at the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, where his research centers on Yemen. Zoltan Pall is an anthropologist specialising in transnational Islamic movements in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. His main research topics include the structure and function of transnational Muslim networks, the political dynamics of Islamic movements and religious authority. Thomas Pierret is a senior researcher at the University of Aix-Marseille, CNRS, IREMAM, in Aix-en-Provence, France. Valeria Resta is an adjunct professor in the Department of Political Science at Sapienza University, Rome. Her research focuses on party politics and regime change in the Middle East and North Africa. Laila Rifai is a Syrian journalist, writer, and former student of the Fatah Islamic Institute, who focuses on Syrian religious actors and their evolution after the 2011 uprising. Hadeel Al-Saidawi was a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center, where her research focused on Syria. Osama al-Sayyad is an Egyptian journalist and researcher. His work focuses on political Islam movements and civil-military relations in the Middle East and North Africa. He’s on Twitter @ ElsayadOsama. Maha Yahya is director of the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center, where her research focuses on citizenship, pluralism, and social justice in the aftermath of the Arab uprisings. Barbara Zollner is a lecturer in Middle East politics in the Department of Politics, Birkbeck College, London. Her research focuses on Islamist politics, social movements, and parties in the Middle ALI, editors and HAGE YAHYA East and North Africa. She is the author of The Muslim Brotherhood: Hasan al-Hudaybi and Ideology (Routledge, 2008). ix A RESTLESS REVIVAL: POLITICAL ISLAM AFTER THE 2011 UPRISINGS ISLAM AFTER THE 2011 POLITICAL REVIVAL: A RESTLESS INTRODUCTION MAHA YAHYA AND MOHANAD HAGE ALI The Arab uprisings in 2011 heralded a new era in the politi cal landscape of the Middle East and North Africa. Long- standing autocrats in Tunisia and Egypt were forced to step down under mass public pres- sure. Overnight, closely and forcibly regulated spheres of po liti cal debate and po liti cal action were cracked 1 open. The space was filled by a multitude of new actors, both civic and religious, proclaiming a variety of agendas and forms of po liti cal action. Institutions, modes of governance, and societies in often authori- tarian, fragile, and conflict- ridden states were thrown into a vortex of sometimes epic changes, including those brought on by catastrophic wars and humanitarian disasters. The effects of these changes at both the national and regional levels have been significant and will be long- lasting. Islamist movements initially appeared to be the best poised to take advantage of the politi cal openings pro- vided by the uprisings. In recent de cades, Islamist groups have increasingly focused on ser vice provision in their local communities. This has taken place as many Arab regimes liberalized their economies. In the process, the regimes restricted politi cal freedoms and clamped down on civic organizations that they believed were seeking po liti cal change, while quietly encouraging nongovernmental organizations, especially Islamist organizations, to expand their social ser vices. Consequently, Islamist- leaning parties developed formidable orga nizational capacities, with the ability to muster hundreds of thousands of supporters at any given moment. Such singular capacities and broad social appeal enabled the Muslim Brotherhood, the region’s largest transnational organ ization operating under the banner of po liti cal Islam, to win post-2011 elections in several Arab states.