How to Engage with Political Islam? Lessons from Europe

Abstract

Since the late 1980s, research on political Islam has been much in vogue in Europe and the US. This phenomenon is typically viewed as an expression of religion rather than of politics. Precisely because of the assumed “religious” underpinnings of political Islam, most Western attempts to engage with Islamists often remain trapped in an attempt to test their “democratic credentials”. By focussing on what Islamists think about democracy, many studies have ignored the political, social and economic contexts in which Islamists operate. Accounting for the political underpinning of Islamist movements can both help understand their political evolution and open up fruitful avenues for comparative analysis. For this reason, attention is turned to Europe to seek best practices of external engagement with domestic opposition movements in authoritarian contexts, such as Western engagement with opposition actors in Franco's Spain, Kuchma's Ukraine and Shevardnadze's Georgia.

Notes

¹Hurd, “Political Islam and Foreign Policy”, 345–67.

²Hamid, “Engaging Political Islam to Promote Democracy”.

³For interesting analyses using this approach, see Leiken and Brooke, “The Moderate Muslim Brotherhood”, 107–21; and Lynch, “The Brotherhood's Dilemma”.

⁴Berman, “Taming Extremist Parties: Lessons from Europe”, 5–18.

⁵For an interesting discussion of the fundamental difference between the two phenomena, see Guazzone, “Success of Islamist Parties Works Against Al-Qaida”, 95–100.

⁶Fuller, “A World Without Islam”, 53.

⁷Emerson and Youngs, Political Islam and European Foreign Policy.

⁸See for example the cautious interest expressed by the MB following Secretary of State Rice's speech at the American University of Cairo in June 2005. http://www.muslimbrotherhood.co.uk

⁹Pioppi, “Hezbollah in a state of uncertainty”.

¹⁰On Hamas’ shift away from radicalism in those years, see Hroub, “Hamas in and out of power”; and Tocci, “Has the EU Promoted Democracy in Palestine”, 8–9. http://www.fornet.info/documents/CFSP%20Forum%20vol%204%20no%202.pdf

¹¹This point is made in the vast majority of studies presented in Emerson and Youngs, Political Islam and European Foreign Policy.

¹²The Draft Party Platform stated that neither a woman nor a Christian could be accepted as the Egyptian head of state. It also advocated the establishment of a council of religious scholars to review the compliance of executive decisions with Islamic law, a concept reminiscent of Imam Khomeini's wilaya al-faqih (“ruling of the jurisprudent”).

¹³European Commission, Euromed report no. 78. See also El-Din Shahin, “Political Islam: Ready for Engagement”, 2.

¹⁴On this, see also Asseburg and Brumberg, Challenge of Islamists for EU and US Policies.

¹⁵For example, the electoral underperformance of the Moroccan PJD in the 2007 elections may also have been a product of its perceived closeness to the US, heavily engaged through the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute.

¹⁶On this, see for example, El-Din Shahin, “Political Islam: Ready for Engagement”; Hamzawy, “The Key to Arab Reform: Moderate Islamists”.

¹⁷Asseburg, Moderate Islamists as Reform Actors.

¹⁸Yacoubian, Engaging Islamists and Promoting Democracy.

¹⁹On the concept of spoilers in peace processes, see Newman and Richmond, Challenges to Peacebuilding: Managing Spoilers.

²⁰A. Crooke, “Bottom-up Peace-building in the Occupied Territories”, Conflicts Forum 2007. www.conflicts.forum.org

²¹For a preliminary assessment of Western engagement with Islamist actors, see Yacoubian, Engaging Islamists and Promoting Democracy.

²²Herd, Orange Revolution: Implications for Stability in CIS, 2.

²³Anaya Ortuno, European Socialists and Spain: Transition to Democracy, 9.

²⁴Pridham, “The politics of the European Community”, 239.

²⁵Pinto-Duschinsky, “Foreign political aid: German political foundations and US counterparts”, 35.

²⁶A potential peer group for Islamists in the West could be Muslim migrant communities and their own Islamist organisations. Yet this potential has yet to be realised and Muslim communities and their Islamist associations remain largely marginalised in Europe and the US and have yet to play an effective foreign policy role.

²⁷Whitehead, “Democracy by convergence and Southern Europe”, 56.

²⁸Anaya Ortuno, European Socialists and Spain: Transition to Democracy, 21.

²⁹ Ibid., 146.

³⁰Anable, “Role of Georgia's Media in the Rose Revolution”, 7.

³¹McFaul, “External Influences on the Orange Revolution”, 67–8.

³²Kaskiv, Chupryna, and Zolotariov, “It's Time! PORA and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine”, 139.

³³Wallander, “Ukraine's Election: Role of One International NGO”, 2–3.

³⁴ Ibid., 23.

³⁵Emerson and Youngs, Political Islam and European Foreign Policy.

³⁶Pridham, “The politics of the European Community”, 218.

³⁷Anaya Ortuno, European Socialists and Spain: Transition to Democracy, 69–70.

³⁸ Ibid., 85.

³⁹Fairbanks, “Georgia's Rose Revolution”, 115–6.

⁴⁰B. Grey and V. Volkov, “Georgia's ‘rose revolution’: a made-in-America coup”, World Socialist Web Site. Published by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), 5 December 2003. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/dec2003/geor-d05.shtml

⁴¹Wallander, “Ukraine's Election: Role of One International NGO”, 1.