i RETHINKING POLITICALQ ISLAM ii iii RETHINKING POLITICAL ISLAMQ Edited by SHADI HAMID WILLIAM MCCANTS 1 iv 1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2017 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. CIP data is on file at the Library of Congress ISBN 978– 0– 19– 064919– 7 (hbk) ISBN 978– 0– 19– 064920– 3 (pbk) 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Paperback printed by WebCom, Inc., Canada Hardback printed by Bridgeport National Bindery, Inc., United States of America v CONTENTSq Acknowledgments ix List of Contributors xi Introduction 1 Shadi Hamid and William McCants Countries 1. Egypt 17 Steven Brooke 2. Tunisia 32 Monica Marks 3. Morocco 54 Avi Max Spiegel 4. Syria 73 Raphaël Lef èvre v vi vi Contents 5. Yemen 88 Stacey Philbrick Yadav 6. Libya 101 Omar Ashour 7. Saudi Arabia 118 Toby Matthiesen 8. Kuwait 132 Courtney Freer 9. Jordan 149 David Siddhartha Patel 10. Pakistan 163 Matthew Nelson 11. Southeast Asia 178 Joseph Chinyong Liow Engaging Islamists 12. Islamism and U.S. Foreign Policy 203 Peter Mandaville 13. Politics or Piety? Why the Muslim Brotherhood Engages in Social Service Provision 218 Amr Darrag, Freedom and Justice Party Leader, in Conversation with Steven Brooke 14. Ennahda from Within: Islamists or “Muslim Democrats”? 230 Sayida Ounissi, Ennahda Member of the Tunisian Parliament, in Conversation with Monica Marks 15. Is the Crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood Pushing the Group Toward Violence? 244 Ammar Fayed, Muslim Brotherhood vii Contents vii 16. The Islamist Experience in Pakistan 262 Asif Luqman Qazi, Jamaat-e-Islami 17. More than the Muslim Brotherhood: The Problem of Hamas and Jordan’s Islamic Movement 274 Nael al-Masalha, of the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood in Conversation with Shadi Hamid Religion, Ideology, and Organization 18. How Much Do Organizational Structures Matter? 285 Jacob Olidort in Conversation with Raphaël Lef èvre 19. How “Religious” Are ISIS Fighters? The Relationship Between Religious Literacy and Religious Motivation 295 Andrew Lebovich 20. Do Islamists Have an Intellectual Deficit? 300 Ovamir Anjum Notes 309 Index 363 viii ix ACKNOWLEDGMENTSq This book has been more than two years in the making. We had little idea of how it would all come out in the end, which is what made this such a fascinating learning experience for the both of us. There has long been a need for a deeper understanding of the groups that constitute the complex and sometimes contradictory world of political Islam. For better and worse, that need has grown only more urgent. “Islamism,” “radical Islam,” Islam, and Muslims are all things that are under constant debate in Western capitals. The divisions over how to understand the role of Islam in politics have intensified. Islam— as a religion, as a political force, and as a perceived civilizational threat— will be at the center of an ongoing struggle of identity that draws in not just Muslim- majority countries, but also the United States and Europe. We hope that this book can serve as a starting point for constructive discussion, covering twelve countries and addressing the question of how the rise of the Islamic State and the demise of the Arab Spring have forced a “rethinking” of political Islam—or not. We also hope that this volume can be more than that, taking readers inside a world that can often seem quite foreign and remote. We looked at these twelve countries side- by- side, in an attempt to make sense of the bigger picture. We discussed and debated with the diverse group of authors who contributed to this ix x x Acknowledgments book, and we heard what Islamists themselves had to say about their own experiences. This project began in January 2015, and we were fortunate enough to have so many willing participants who believed in and contributed to it. We are grateful to Martin Indyk, Bruce Jones, and Tamara Wittes for nurturing such a supportive research environment and helping make the Brookings Institution a center of scholarship on Islamism and Islam’s role in politics more broadly. We also deeply appreciate the Henry Luce Foundation for their generous financial support of this project. This book simply wouldn’t exist without them. Finally, we want to thank our whip- smart contributors and the incredible Brookings team that provided research and logistical support over the course of the more than two years, including Anne Peckham, Elizabeth Pearce, Sumaya Almajdoub, Kristine Anderson, and Rashid Dar. We are indebted to our wonderful editor David McBride, who was incredibly patient and supportive every step of the way. Thanks are also due to Kathleen Weaver and the rest of the team at Oxford University Press for making the process as painless as possible. xi CONTRIBUTORSq OVAMIR ANJUM is the Imam Khattab Endowed Chair of Islamic Studies in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the University of Toledo. His work focuses on the nexus of theology, eth- ics, politics, and law in classical and medieval Islam. His interests are united by a common theoretical focus on epistemology or views of intellect and reason in various domains of Islamic thought, including politics (siyasa), law (fiqh), theology (kalam), Islamic philosophy (fal- safa), and spirituality (Sufism, mysticism, and asceticism). He brings his historical studies to bear on issues in contemporary Islamic thought and movements and is currently researching developments in Islamic political thought in the wake of the Arab uprisings of 2011. He obtained his PhD in Islamic Intellectual History in the Department of History, University of Wisconsin-Madison; his master’s in social sciences from the University of Chicago; and his master’s in computer science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of Politics, Law and Community in Islamic Thought: The Taymiyyan Moment (Cambridge University Press, 2012). OMAR ASHOUR is a senior lecturer in Security Studies and Middle East Politics in the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, at the University of Exeter. He is an associate fellow at Chatham House xi xii xii Contributors in London and the author of The De- Radicalization of Jihadists: Transforming Armed Islamist Movements, the first book on transi- tions from armed to unarmed activism by several Islamist organiza- tions in North Africa. Among his other publications is a Brookings study entitled “Collusion to Collision: Islamist-Military Relations in Egypt.” Dr. Ashour specializes in asymmetric armed conflict, Islamist movements, insurgency and counterinsurgency, terrorism studies, and democratization (with a main focus on civil-military relations and security sector reform). He previously served as a senior consult- ant for the United Nations on security sector reform, counter- terror- ism, and de- radicalization issues. STEVEN BROOKE is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Louisville and an associate fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Middle East Initiative. His research interests include Islamist movements, authoritarianism and democratization, and spatial and experimental research methods. He received his PhD from the University of Texas at Austin in 2015. AMR DARRAG served as Egypt’s Minister of Planning and International Cooperation during Mohamed Morsi’s presidency before the mili- tary coup in 2013. In 2014, he established and is currently Chairman of the Egyptian Institute for Political and Strategic Studies, a think tank based in Istanbul, Turkey. He was elected as Secretary General of the constituent assembly tasked with drafting the 2012 Egyptian Constitution. He is a founding member and was previously a mem- ber of the Executive Board of the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP). He served as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and chairman of the Development and Planning Committee of the FJP. Before that, he was elected Secretary General of the FJP in Giza Governorate, 2011. He was originally a professor of civil engineering at Cairo University and he received his PhD from Purdue University. He was elected as Vice- Chairman of Cairo University Staff Association, 1999–2008. He was also partner and top executive of several international and Egyptian engineering consultancy firms. AMMAR FAYED is a Muslim Brotherhood youth activist and Istanbul- based researcher, focusing on Islamist movements, sociology of religion, xiii Contributors xiii and Middle East affairs. He served as special secretary to President Mohamed Morsi. He contributed to the book The Salafi Phenomenon in the Arab World: Organizational Pluralism and Politics (Al Jazeera Center for Studies). Fayed is a MA candidate in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Istanbul Aydin University. COURTNEY FREER is a research officer at the LSE Kuwait Programme. She holds a PhD in politics from Oxford University, where her thesis focused on revising rentier state theory by exam- ining the sociopolitical role played by Muslim Brotherhood affiliates in Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. She received a BA from Princeton University in Near East Studies and an MA in Middle Eastern Studies from the George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs.