Political in the Age of Democratization Today Series editors: Mohammed Ayoob Fawaz A. Gerges University Distinguished Professor Professor and Chair of Middle Eastern of Politics and International Relations Michigan State University Director of the Middle East Centre London School of Economics

The Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the subsequent Gulf Wars, along with the overthrow of the Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, have dramatically altered the geopolitical landscape of the contemporary Middle East. This series puts forward a critical body of first-rate scholarship that reflects the current political and social realities of the region, focusing on original research about the Israeli–Palestine conflict; social movements, institutions, and the role played by nongovernmental organizations such as Hamas, Hezbollah, the Taliban, and the ; Iran and Turkey as emerging preeminent powers in the region—the former an Islamic republic and the latter a democracy currently governed by a party with Islamic roots; the oil-producing countries in the Persian Gulf and their petrol economies; potential problems of nuclear proliferation in the region; and the challenges confronting the United States, Europe, and the United Nations in the greater Middle East. The focus of the series is on general topics such as social turmoil, war and revolution, occupation, radicalism, democracy, and Islam as a political force in the context of modern Middle East history. Ali Shari’ati and the Shaping of Political Islam in Iran Kingshuk Chatterjee Religion and the State in Turkish Universities: The Headscarf Ban Fatma Nevra Seggie Turkish Foreign Policy: Islam, Nationalism, and Globalization Hasan Kösebalaban Nonviolent Resistance in the Second Intifada: Activism and Advocacy Edited by Maia Carter Hallward and Julie M. Norman The Constitutional System of Turkey: 1876 to the Present Ergun Özbudun Islam, the State, and Political Authority: Medieval Issues and Modern Concerns Edited by Asma Afsaruddin Bahrain from the Twentieth Century to the Miriam Joyce Palestinian Activism in Israel: A Bedouin Woman Leader in a Changing Middle East Henriette Dahan-Kalev and Emilie Le Febvre with Amal El’Sana-Alh’jooj Egypt Awakening in the Early Twentieth Century: Mayy Ziyadah’s Intellectual Circles Boutheina Khaldi The Social and Economic Origins of Monarchy in Jordan Tariq Moraiwed Tell Palestinians in the Israeli Labour Market: A Multi-disciplinary Approach Edited by Nabil Khattab and Sami Miaari State, Religion, and Revolution in Iran, 1796 to the Present Behrooz Moazami Political Islam in the Age of Democratization Kamran Bokhari and Farid Senzai Political Islam in the Age of Democratization

Kamran Bokhari and Farid Senzai POLITICAL ISLAM IN THE AGE OF DEMOCRATIZATION Copyright © Kamran Bokhari and Farid Senzai, 2013. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2013 978-1-137-00848-0 All rights reserved.

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10987654321 Dedicated to: Naheed and Chandni and our children Zakaria, Eesa and Enaya This page intentionally left blank Contents

List of Tables and Figure ix Acknowledgments xi Acronyms xiii Foreword xv Fawaz A. Gerges 1 Introduction: The Role of Religion in Politics 1 2 Understanding the Complexity of Political Islam 15 3 Theoretical Framework: Democratization and Islamism 31 4 Participatory Islamists: The Case of the Muslim Brotherhood 49 5 Conditionalist Islamists: The Case of the Salafis 81 6 Rejector Islamists: al-Qaeda and Transnational Jihadism 101 7 Rejector Islamists: Taliban and Nationalist Jihadism 119 8 Participatory Shia Islamism: The Islamic Republic of Iran 135 9 Arab Shia Islamism: Iraqi Shia Islamists and Hezbollah 153 10 Post-Islamism: The Case of Turkey’s AKP 173 11 Conclusion: Prospects for Muslim Democracies 185 Notes 197 Bibliography 227 Index 243 This page intentionally left blank List of Tables and Figure

Tables

2.1 Islamist views of state and society 27 3.1 Islamist attitudes toward democracy 44

Figure

2.1 The Islamist-secularist spectrum 29 This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments

Therearemanypeoplewhohavehelpedusinwritingthisbookandwhose contributions we wish to acknowledge. We have been fortunate to enjoy the kindness, insight and support of many scholars. In particular, we would like to thank Fawaz Gerges and Mohammad Ayoob for their initial suggestion that we write a book on this subject. Their thoughts and insights into this complex topic has always been a valuable resource for us to bounce ideas and shape the contours of our argument. We would like to especially thank our mentors and friends James Piscatori and Abdelwahab El-Affendi. We always appreciated the high standards they set and grateful for the numerous conversations, which helped shape our own understanding of the topic. Over the years we have also bene- fited greatly from comments by and discussions with numerous scholars on the topic of political Islam and democratization. We would like to especially thank Graham Fuller, Yahya Sadowski, John Esposito, Gilles Kepel, Olivier Roy, Peter Mandaville, Muqtedar Khan, Nader Hashemi, Moataz Fattah, Marina Ottaway, Amr Hamzawy, Nathan Brown, Emad El-Din Shahin, Asef Bayat, Carrie Wickham, Jillian Schwedler, Humeira Iqtidar, Larbi Sadiki, Alfred Stepan, Larry Diamond, and Laurence Whitehead. The arguments in the book are stronger due to their invaluable contributions on the subject. As is often the case in a project of this sort, some of the most helpful commentswehavereceivedhavecomefromnumerousconferences,presen- tations and private discussions in the United States, Canada, in Europe and throughout the Middle East and South Asia. While we cannot hope to thank everyone who has influenced our work, we are grateful to the many people that shaped our thinking through countless discussions. We would also like to express our gratitude to the many individuals, scholars, religious leaders and activists that provided personal thoughts, analyses, and access to valuable resources both here and abroad. These include Tony Sullivan, Charles Butterworth, Louay Safi, Jamal Barzinji, Hisham al-Talib, Ahmed Totonji, Omer Totonji, Fathi Malkawi, Radwan Masmoudi, Laith Kubba, Abdulwahab Alkebsi, Abdulaziz Sachedina, Asma Afsaruddin, Husain Haqqani, Hassan Abbas, Vali Nasr, Tariq Ramadan, Ibrahim Kalin, Saad Eddin Ibrahim, Ahmet Davutoglu, Anwar Ibrahim, Rachid al-Ghannouchi, Essam El-Erian, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Abul Ela al-Madi, Abdul Latif Arabiat, Ibrahim al-Houdaiby, Kemal Helbawy, Jamal Khashoggi, Ali al-Ahmed, Hisham Hellyer, Shadi Hamid, Omar Ashour, Khalil al-Anani, Yasir Kazi, Abdelrehman Ayyash, Ali Mohammad, Michael Georgy, Mehrdad Haghayeghi, Ahmed Ibrahim, Kamran Aghaie, Sulayman Nyang, Beth Baron, xii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Maria Holt, Roland Dannreuther, Daniel Greenwood, Dibyesh Anand, Simon Joss, Heba Raouf, Merve Kavakci, Shaheen Malik, Fahim Senzai, Tauqeer Ansari, Arshad Khawaja, Ali Swaby, Nasir Mahmood, Shafaqat Ali, Ayaz Parvez and Nisar Ahmed Mirza and many others who are too many to count. Their generosity, good-natured humor, and continued desire for positive change in their respective countries gives us hope for a brighter future in many Muslim societies. Writing a book is never an easy endeavor but there were many friends and colleagues that provided support throughout the process. We would especially thank several individuals that helped us with the editing of the final manuscript, including Hena Khan and Jay Willoughby, for reading every single chapter and providing their valuable editorial assistance. They both invested considerable time and energy to get the book done by the deadline including Hena’s feedback sent to us while on vacation in Spain. They provided immense help in bringing the project to fruition and in achieving greater consistency in the text. We also wanted to thank the superb editorial staff at Palgrave including Farideh Koohi-Kamali, Sara Doskow, Sara Nathan, Flora Kenson, Tara Knapp, and the rest of the production team. We also wanted to thank our research assistants Morgen Munoz, Danielle Giacchetti, Allie Barr, Brooke Latham, Ashley Loetscher and Samra Ahmed for their help at various stages of this project. We would like to especially thank our colleagues at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding including Iltefat Hamzavi, Shireen Zaman, Siwar Bizri, Farhan Latif, Hamada Hamid and Zareena Grewal. A special thanks is due to our colleagues at Stratfor, in particular George and Meredith Friedman, Rodger Baker, Fred Burton, Scott Stewart, Robert Kaplan, Nate Hughes, Reva Bhalla, Karen Hooper, Lauren Goodrich, Mark Schroeder, and David Judson; the numerous conversations with them and many others helped us. We also wish to thank our many colleagues at Santa Clara University includ- ing Janet Flammang, Terri Peretti, Jane Curry, Bill Stover, Dennis Gordon, Peter Minowitz, Elsa Chen, Greg Corning, Eric Hanson, Timothy Lukes, James Lai, Jim Cottrill, Kenneth Faulve-Montojo, Naomi Levy, Diana Morlang, Yahia Mahamdi, and Philip “Boo” Riley as well as the countless students at Santa Clara Univer- sity who continue to provide encouragement and an incentive to finish the book. In many ways it is for their continued curiosity and ongoing questions about the topic of political Islam and democratization that encouraged us to put our thoughts on paper and write this book. We are grateful to our parents Asghar and Salim Bokhari and Daud and Hamida Senzai for all they have done for us. Finally, we would like to thank Naheed and Chandni and our kids who watched us spend month after month working on the book. They patiently waited outside our office door countless times to ask if the book was done so that we could go outside and play. Without their support and sacrifice we are convinced that we would never have made it through. Now we can finally go outside and play. Acronyms

AKP Justice and Development Party FIS Front Islamique de Salut FJP Freedom and Justice Party FLN Front de Libération Nationale GAI Gamaah al-Islamiyah HAMAS Harakat al-Muqawamah al-Islamiyah HT Hizb al-Tahrir ISA Islamic Salafi Alliance ISCI Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq JI Jamaat-e-Islami MB Muslim Brotherhood MMA Mutahiddah Majlis-i-Amal in NDP National Democratic Party NGO Nongovernmental Organizations PIJ Palestinian Islamic Jihad PLO Palestinian Liberation Organization PMB Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood JMB Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood TAJ Tandheem al-Jihad MENA Middle East & North Africa IDF Israeli Defense Forces STL Special Tribunal for PSP Progressive Socialist Party ICG Iraqi Governing Council CPA Coalition Provisional Authority UIA United Iraqi Alliance IIP Iraqi Islamic Party SCIRI Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq UNSC United Nations Security Council CHP Republican People’s Party NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization IRGC Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps IRGC-QF Islamic revolutionary Guards Corps – Qods Force INA Iraq National Alliance NA National Alliance SoL State of Law xiv ACRONYMS

TSK Turkish Armed Forces EU European Union NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization IMF International Monetary Fund GCC Gulf Cooperation Council FPM Free Patriotic Movement (Lebanon) TTP Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan PJD Justice & Development Party (Morocco) NSF National Salvation Front CA Constituent Assembly SCC Supreme Constitutional Court SCAF Supreme Council of the Armed Forces IAF Islamic Action Front PNA Palestinian National Authority RCD Constitutional Democratic Rally PDPA People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan Foreword

Fawaz A. Gerges

By the end of 2012, Islamist-led governments of varying colors and shades were ruling more than half of the population of the Middle East, including Egypt, Tunisia, and Morocco, and playing an important governmental role in Lebanon, Palestine, and Yemen. Iran is also a crucial case, and Islamist groups in the Gulf play an influential political role, although they have yet to gain access to the exec- utive offices. After the large-scale Arab popular uprisings of 2011, the Middle East is witnessing a watershed in its modern history, one that may not have reached its peak yet. For scholars interested in social movements, particularly religious-based ones, these ongoing events are historic—an “Islamist moment” par excellence. Islamism is not only a social movement, but also a powerful political force that is now in power in several countries. This unforeseen scenario has injected a great deal of uncertainty into the region and into the foreign ministries of key great powers. The implications of the Islamists’ rise to power directly affect the daily life and future of the region’s peoples and will have serious implications for global politics. After decades of persecution, what is unfolding today clearly shows the rele- vance of the Islamists, most of whom are centrist and modernist and accept the rules and procedures of the democratic game in shaping their societies’ future political trajectories. In contrast, the majority of Salafis and ultraconservatives in general, who believe that Islam controls all social spheres and regulate the whole of human life, are in the minority.1 Over the last four decades, centrist and reformist Islamists skillfully positioned themselves as a credible alternative to the failed secular authoritarian order, an order that unwittingly facilitated the Islamist movements’ rise and expansion. They invested considerable resources in building national and local social net- works, including nongovernment professional civil society associations, welfare organizations, and family ties. In contrast to their secular-minded opponents, Islamists mastered the art of local politics and built a formidable political machine that delivered the vote. Their recent parliamentary victories were not surprising, because they had paid their dues and earned popular credibility and the voters’ trust. Now they are cashing in on their longstanding social investments. Although the Islamists did not trigger the large-scale popular uprisings, their decades-long resistance to autocratic rulers had turned them into shadow xvi FOREWORD governments in peoples’ eyes. A vote for them implied a clean break with the failed past and a belief (still to be tested) that they can deliver the goods—jobs, economic stability, and transparency. Thus their political fortunes will ultimately depend upon whether they live up to their promises and meet the rising expectations of the Arab publics. Scholars have examined the many manifestations of political Islam and utilized various theories (e.g., social movement, constructivism and communitarianism, parliamentarization, and historical sociology) to make sense of the Islamists’ conduct. Political Islam in the Age of Democratization makes an important con- tribution to the growing critical literature on Islamists by using democratization as a conceptual framework to assess their record in this arena, as well as apply- ing it to seven distinct case studies. Kamran Bokhari and Farid Senzai’s analysis of Islamism over the last three decades offers a systematic way of making sense of the existing discourse while connecting it with the broader scholarship. One of their major findings is that the vast majority of Islamists are “participatory” actors as opposed to hardcore ideologues. Not only have the Islamists shaped the political landscape, but they have also been shaped by it. For the last four decades, religious-based activists have struggled to participate in their societies’ political space and, on the whole, have accepted the rules of pol- itics. Despite the alarming statements made by some Islamists, particularly the Muslim Brothers, on balance, ideology now takes a back seat to the movements’ interests and political wellbeing. More than ever, their message targets specific constituencies and interest groups—a sign of an ideological shift and socializa- tion. Islamists are travelling a similar path as did the Christian Democrats and Euro-communists of Western Europe who, in the twentieth century, subordinated ideology to economic interests and political constituencies. Stathis Kalyvas, who analyzed the Christian Democratic parties’ evolution, reminds readers that these parties emerged from the illiberal and often intoler- ant Catholic movement, a counter-revolutionary reaction against liberalism. The Catholic movement was built on an ideology of opposition to the liberal state, a project that was “fundamentalist” and “openly theocratic.”2 Today, however, these parties retain no traces of illiberalism, intolerance, or subservience to the Church; rather, they have become anchored in democratic political discourse and prac- tice. According to Kalyvas, this transformation occurred because voters became the “paramount source of support and legitimacy,” and not necessarily because of secularization, integration, or acceptance of democracy: it was the result of “the choices made by the new parties in response to endogenous constraints that were built in the process of their formation.”3 Like these religious- and ideological- oriented parties, their Islamist counterparts will likely be transformed by means of political engagement and governance. Their members’ desire for reelection will exercise a moderating influence upon the parties as a whole, regardless of where they are located within the region.4 This gradual transformation is consistent with what scholars have been saying about the more gradual, inexorable, and perhaps structural trends that come with “parliamentarization.” According to the “moderation thesis” discussed by Jillian FOREWORD xvii

Schwedler in her book on Jordan and Yemen, as well as the longer theoretical lin- eage of argument covered previously by Kalyvas and others, history shows that the shift from movement activism to parliamentary seat-holding leads to compro- mise, moderation, and corruption. Schwedler’s moderation thesis contrasts the evolution of Yemen’s Islah Party with Jordan’s Islamic Action Front (IAF). She shows that the former’s fragmented and hierarchical structure left it somewhat paralyzed and therefore unable to cooperate and engage with Leftist and liberal groups, whereas the latter’s unified and democratic internal structure allowed it to engage in “sustained cooperative bodies with Leftists and liberals.” Her arguments suggest that those Islamist parties that were able to engage openly with other social groups dramatically changed and moved away from their formerly “closed” and “rigid” worldviews and toward a more “moderate” discourse and practice.5 For too long, democratization theorists have insisted that democracy can take root only if religion is extracted from the political arena. Bokhari and Senzai challenge this premise by proposing that democratic theory needs to be revisited and expanded in order to take religion into consideration. Building on the theo- retical and empirical research of scholars like Alfred Stepan and Nader Hashemi, they argue that contrary to conventional wisdom, religion can play a role in shap- ing democratic politics. What makes Bokhari and Senzai’s examination critical, however, is their use of democratization as a theoretical framework to assess the behavior of Islamist groups and their insistence that religion will, to varying degrees, play a role in public affairs as democratization moves forward in Muslim nation-states. Political Islam in the Age of Democratization raises pertinent ques- tions about the place and role of religion in the political arena and expands the debate on a highly important topic facing those Arab societies in transition: Does religion impede or facilitate the transition from authoritarianism to democracy? Going to great lengths to maintain their objectivity on a contentious and oft-politicized topic, Bokhari and Senzai do not subjectively project what ought to happen to the various Islamist actors; rather, they focus on what is likely to hap- pen. Whether readers agree or disagree with their conclusions, this book could not have been written at a more important moment for the region in particular, and a global audience at large.

Fawaz A. Gerges Director of the Middle East Centre and a professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Author of The New Middle East: Social Protest and Revolution in the Arab World (Cambridge University Press).