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Abstract
This article examines how authoritarian elites manage the quest for political participation of moderate Islamist groups in view of securing regime persistence. Through a comparative analysis of the logics of two cases—the Moroccan Movement of Unity and Reform (MUR) and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood—it aims to understand the key factors accounting for differences in form and evolution of the respective containment strategies. The MUR was formally included into parliament and electoral processes. In contrast, the Muslim Brotherhood remains illegal, was tolerated on an informal basis only and subject to a repressive backlash in the 1990s. Therefore, whereas both regimes have yielded to the movements' demands for political participation, the mechanisms (formal vs. informal) and the developments (protracted vs. reversed) show marked differences. Starting from the assumption that the chosen mechanisms result from the rulers' risks perception, the comparison shows that the rulers' choices are predominantly shaped by the institutional setting of the respective authoritarian systems (monarchic vs. presidential) and influenced by the strength of an Islamist organisation relative to other opposition forces. As to the different developments, it is argued that continuity or the reversal of an inclusivist experiment is the result of the ruler's assessment of the success of the experiment. Inclusion is continued if it contributes to regime stability through the Islamists' compliance with the rules of the game or, at least, if it does not impact negatively on the latter. If, instead, the Islamist challenge increases over time, inclusion is abandoned and replaced by a largely repressive containment strategy.
Acknowledgements
The European University Institute, Florence, the German Academic Exchange Service, and the Hugo-Rupf Foundation provided funding for this research. A first version of the paper was presented at the 33rd Joint Session of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR), Granada, Spain, 14–19 April, 2005. For insightful comments and discussions, the authors would like to thank in particular Francesco Cavatorta, Katarina Dalacoura, Mirjam Künkler, Wolfgang Merkel, Mehdi Mozzafari, Ellen Lust-Okar, Peter Pawelka, Carola Richter, Thomas Richter, Frédéric Volpi, and Mohamed Zahid. As always, responsibility remains exclusively with the authors.
Notes
1. Michael Hudson Citation(1995) was among the first to raise this question from the Arab regimes' point of view. He distinguishes between five possible containment strategies: ‘forced exclusion’, ‘marginalization’, and ‘pre-emption’ can be subsumed under exclusionary strategies, while ‘limited accommodation’ and ‘full inclusion’ are inclusionary strategies. ‘Full inclusion’, however, remains more than ten years after the publication of Hudson's article, still a hypothetical category.
2. In an almost ironic twist, the Islamist resurgence encouraged by Sadat in the 1970s proved to become a ghost that escaped the bottle in 1981 when Sadat was assassinated by members of the Islamic Jihad.
3. In 1984, the Brotherhood formed an alliance with the Neo-Wafd Party; in 1987, members of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist associations joined the Labor Party (Hizb al-‘Amal) and the Liberal Party (Hizb al-Ahrar) to form the ‘Islamic Alliance’.
4. The term was coined by Hisham Al-Awadi Citation(2005); cf. also Auda (Citation1994, p. 385ff).
5. Most opposition parties boycotted the 1990 parliamentary elections. This was the starting point for a decade of political de-liberalisation embracing higher degrees of repression not only towards the Islamist challenge but society at large (Kienle, Citation1998).
6. The most prominent example here is the case of Gamal Heshmat, a Brotherhood bigwig from Alexandria who was ousted from parliament in January 2003 even though he had not deliberately crossed a common ‘red line’ (G. Heshmat, personal communication, 21 December, 2004, Cairo).
7. Until the time of writing, there was no open political communication between the regime and the Brotherhood. According to several Brotherhood members, unofficial communication channels have been restricted to the corridors of parliament, some professional syndicates, and Universities (personal communication, December 2004 and January 2005, Cairo). This communicative deadlock will almost certainly change in the aftermath of the parliamentary elections of 2005 because—with a 20 per cent stake of the Muslim Brotherhood in parliament—the regime will not be able to ignore the presence of the group as a political player any more.
8. The MUR is itself a merger of different Islamist organisations in 1996. In the following, if not hinting precisely at one of these predecessor organisations, we will employ the label MUR to refer to the entirety of all those groups that are now part of the MUR.
9. The largest of these groups founded a new organisation in 1981, first called al-Jama‘a al-Islamiyya, since 1992 al-Islah wa al-Tajdid. The organisation was founded by Mohamed Yatim, Abdallah Baha, and Abdelilah Benkirane, who are currently all MPs and members of the General Secretariat of the PJD. Neither al-Jama‘a nor al-Islah have been legalised but the authorities tolerated their activities to some extent. The second big faction inside the MUR, the Rally for an Islamic Future was founded by former members of the Islamic Youth who had initially turned to local religious associations.
10. In 1989 and 1992, they asked for the legalisation of an own party project, the ‘Party of National Renewal’, which was designed to conform to the Moroccan law on political parties that—like in Egypt—explicitly prohibits religious parties. For instance, the statutes invoked that the party would be open to all Moroccans irrespective of their religious affiliation.
11. Two constitutional referenda (1992 and 1996) channelled more power to political parties and parliament and provided for the direct election of all MPs. Increasing transparency of the electoral process was achieved through the creation of a National Electoral Commission that comprises members of all relevant political parties. Through the 1996 constitutional reform, however, a second chamber with large prerogatives was created in order to counter undesired effects of the increasing power of the first chamber. All the members of the second chamber are elected among the municipal councillors and the members of the employer and labour unions. The predominance of municipal councillors (three out of five) in the second chamber guarantees its conservative bias.
12. The suggestion that different regimes have different fears regarding the participation of strong social groups in elections is mirrored by their preferences for different electoral rules. Lust-Okar & Jamal (Citation1999, p. 359ff) have shown that single-party regimes in the Middle East and North Africa opt for electoral rules that favour the dominant party while monarchies aim at fragmenting the political landscape. The problem for the single-party regimes lies in the danger that the Islamist party turns out to be stronger than the ruling party.
13. This is obvious particularly in times of power changes. When Nasser, Sadat, and Mubarak came to power, they always had to overcome strong contenders from their own ranks. Moreover, current events that saw the advent of lively street protests (Kifaya-movement), a revival of political parties, constitutional reforms, and general public discontent indicate that the Egyptian regime has increasingly come under pressure from society.
14. While being behind the creation of supportive ‘royalist’ parties such as the Rassemblement National des Indépendants or the Union Constitutionnelle, the king has never associated his faith with any of them and has actively promoted conflicts and splits if any of his creations appeared to become too powerful.
15. For the working mechanisms of the co-optation and control of society, see Kassem Citation(1999).
16. There is a ‘political section’ subdivided into the ‘political’, ‘economic’, and ‘information’ units. The ‘technical section’ supervises activities in the professional syndicates and comprises several subdivisions, like the ‘labour unit’, the ‘women section’, and the ‘social section’ (Abdel-Hamid al-Ghizali, University professor and Brotherhood member, personal communication, 19 December, 2004, Cairo); cf. also Munson Citation(2001).
17. Indeed, fissures within the organisation exist between moderate and more radical proponents and, most notably, between different generations of activists: while the organisation's leadership is still occupied by an ‘old guard’ of veterans, the ‘middle generation’ (Jil al-Wasat) comprises those activists who have been politicised in the 1970s. They occupy the majority of the seats in the Guidance Bureau and took the lead in the professional syndicates and in parliament. Competing perceptions rose about important issues, such as the internal discourses on Islam vs. democracy and modernity, or the very nature of the organisation. However, internal fissures never turned into open conflict among the Muslim Brothers' ranks that have successfully drawn a disciplined picture (El-Ghobashy, Citation2005, p. 391). Rather, open dissent led to the split of factions as the case of the Wasat party exemplifies (cf. Stacher, Citation2002; Wickham, Citation2004).
18. As Islamist movement activism is by and large a phenomenon of the educated, an additional explanation lies in the high illiteracy rate in rural Morocco.
19. Munson notes that ideological support for the Islamist movement was much broader with over 30 per cent favouring ‘the re-establishment of Islamic law as the sole legal system’ (Munson, Citation1986, p. 274).
20. The most important legalised opposition parties are the Wafd Party, the Tagammu, the Nasserist Party, the Labor Party, and the recently founded al-Ghad (‘Tomorrow’) Party (cf. Stacher, Citation2004).
21. The UNFC was formed in September 2005 under the leadership of former Prime Minister Aziz Sidqi with the idea to knit together opposition forces and thus challenge the regime more effectively. It comprises all major opposition parties, except for Ayman Nour's al-Ghad, along with other tolerated groups, such as the Karama (Dignity) movement, the frozen Labor Party, and several protest movements performing under the Kifaya (Enough!) banner. For a first account of the parliamentary elections, see El Amrani (2005).
22. For a more detailed discussion of the effects of inclusion on the Moroccan Islamists and its contribution to regime stability, see Wegner Citation(2004).
23. In the 1997 and 2002 parliamentary elections, it covered about half of the constituencies. In the 2003 communal elections, it decreased the coverage below 18 per cent and enacted a model of selective coverage assuring that it would not win the majority in any major city.
24. There are other reasons behind this decision, most importantly the limits posed by the organisational capacities of the MUR/PJD which made it difficult to cover all the constituencies in 1997. However, given that the PJD has restricted its coverage well below its capacities in 2002, we must see the limited coverage as being clearly motivated by the desire to placate the regime. Additionally, rumours (and allusions of a party leader) say that the PJD actually came out as the largest party in the 2002 elections but agreed to take the third rank (member of the party's General Secretariat, personal communication, 9 November, 2003).
25. Member of Parliament, of the PJD's General Secretariat, and the MUR's Executive Bureau, personal communication, 12 November, 2003, Rabat.
26. Personal communication with a member of the PJD's General Secretariat, 7 March, 2003, Rabat.
27. King Hassan II passed away in 1999. At the beginning of his rein, his successor Mohammed VI appeared to be committed to further liberalisation. A very important symbol in that respect was the forced resignation of Driss Basri, the ministry of interior since 1976, long considered as the second most powerful man in Morocco, and responsible for electoral fraud and the deplorable human rights situation.
28. While the initial choice to support the government was taken by the party's executive in the General Secretariat, the decision to change sides to the opposition was pushed for and eventually imposed in a very tight vote by the National Council (al-Majlis al-Watani), a body of 240 members, in which the weight of members of local and provincial bodies is particularly strong.
29. Cf. al-Tajdid, 30 September, 2002, pp. 1, 3.
30. On 16 May, five simultaneous suicide bombings in Casablanca left 45 dead and nearly 100 injured. After Casablanca, approximately 1,100 terrorism suspects were arrested and the courts have sentenced more than 50 people to life in prison and 16 people to death. The PJD was boycotted by the national TV stations and accused by the leftist parties of having provided the climate for terrorism. While the regime did not threaten to ban the party, the ministry of interior used the opportunity to intervene in the selection of party office holders and to negotiate an even lower coverage in the September 2003 elections.
31. Especially raising the minimum age for marriages, the abolition of polygamy, and the women's right to conclude marriages without a ‘marital tutor’.
32. In only two cities, Tangier and Agadir, local party leaders rebelled against the strategy in the communal elections. In Tangier, they refused to run in only three out of five constituencies, and in Agadir, they refused to run on a joint list with another party. In other cities, there were some discontent militants but the General Secretariat's decisions were eventually accepted.
33. For instance, the Brotherhood has—only until recently—never capitalised on its popular support to take politics to the street and organise public demonstrations in order to challenge the state. In early 2005, however, the organisation joined in the new dynamics of opposition politics and organised mass rallies in Cairo and other cities in which they championed domestic political reforms. Obviously, this move was triggered by the appearance of another protest movement, Kifaya, that crossed formerly established thresholds by demanding the end of Mubarak's hold on power. While the Brotherhood tried hard to placate the regime—e.g. by the announcement to support Mubarak's bid to serve another presidential term—this did not prove successful. Instead, the Brotherhood rallies have been accompanied by a massive security presence and triggered the arrest of up to 1,000 sympathisers and even prominent members, such as Essam al-Iryan and the organisation's Secretary-General, Mahmoud Ezzat.
34. The extent of financial flows through Islamic channels is unknown. However, we may reasonably speak of a ‘parallel economic sector’ as it is largely uncontrolled by the state. Sources to finance charitable services include Islamic banks and investment companies, donations from wealthy individuals in Egypt and particularly from Egyptian residents in the Gulf countries, and the profit-making activities of Islamic associations (Wickham, Citation2002, p. 100).
35. Many organisations and associations are of an apolitical nature, and militant groups provided social services too as a case study in southern Egypt shows (cf. Toth, Citation2003).
36. The Wasat was mainly an initiative of the Brotherhood's middle generation of activists and initially included prominent members like Abdoul Mouneim Aboul Foutouh and Essam al-Irian. The importance of the project is emphasised by the fact that it was masterminded by the current Brotherhood leader, Muhammad Mahdi Akef. After an unsuccessful attempt to be legalised as a party, the idea was quickly dismissed by the Brotherhood's leadership. However, some initiators decided to hold the Wasat alive and split with the mother organisation. Today, it appears as an independent group headed by the prominent Islamist intellectual Abu Ela Maadi and remains an important platform for discourses on the modernisation of Islamism. Even though the split between the Wasat and the Muslim Brotherhood seems to be very deep and conflictual, some informed observers assume that the Brothers could gain control again over the Wasat at any time (Abu Ela Maadi, personal communication, 25 January, 2005, Cairo; Muhammad Mahdi Akef, personal communication, 18 January, 2005, Cairo).
37. According to Roussillon (Citation2001, p. 101), the Egyptian ambassador in Algeria claimed that his main task was to convince the Algerian regime not to legalise the FIS.
38. Quite to the contrary in Morocco where radical Islamist groups never turned into a serious political threat making life for the moderate side of Islamism easier.
39. One important effect of the inclusion of the Islamists in the political realm is that other political parties are increasingly adjusting to the new tones in politics and started to adopt some traits of ‘Islamic’ discourses.