Dictators and Islamists - European Consortium for Political ......1 Dictators and Islamists A...
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Dictators and Islamists A Comparative Perspective on Egypt and Morocco
Paper prepared for presentation at the Joint Session of the European Consortium for Political
Research (ECPR), 14-19 March 2005
Workshop No. 11: “Post Cold War Democratization in the Muslim World: Domestic,
Regional and Global Trends” (Directors: Frederic Volpi; Francesco Cavatorta)
Holger Albrecht
University of Tübingen
Institute for Political Science, Department of Middle Eastern Affairs
Melanchthonstrasse 32
72074 Tübingen
Germany
ph.: ++49 7071 / 2975296
e.mail: [email protected]
Eva Wegner
European University Institute
Department of Political and Social Sciences
Via dei Roccettini, 9
50016 S. Dom. di Fiesole (FI)
Italy
e.mail: [email protected]
This paper is work in progress. Do not cite, quote, or distribute it without the authors’
permission.
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I. Introduction
When looking at post-September 11 discourses in the Western world, we may imagine
political Islamism as the major curse in world politics. However, the terrorist threat from the
al-Qa’eda network and other Islamist groups in Iraq and various countries worldwide divert
our views away from the fact that political Islamism plays an integral part of politics in the
Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Islamist groups have evolved into a powerful social
movement active in several Arab countries, i.e. in Algeria, Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco,
Lebanon and Yemen., those movements draw on strong popular support, mainly from the
poor and the lower middle classes in societies; they are, by and large, well-organized and
remain financially autonomous. In the absence of other major opposition forces the Islamist
movement represents the major political challenger for the regimes in the Arab world
particularly in times of economic and social crises when authoritarian incumbents face
problems to legitimize their hold on power. Therefore, it is an intriguing question how the
Middle Eastern states deal with this challenge.
Contrary to approaches that focus on the question whether Islamists would adopt democratic
principles or not, this paper addresses the question of how authoritarian elites successfully
manage to contain Islamist contenders in order to secure regime persistence. We assume that
the latter is the ultimate aim of authoritarian incumbents in the Middle East and that those
have abundant potential strategies and opportunities at their disposal to contain those
movements. Repression is by no means the main, let alone the sole strategy. True, pure
coercion remains the ultimate and last resort to overcome challenges to authoritarian
incumbents from any kind of opposition, but regimes may consider alternative opportunities
of containment such as formal inclusion into political institutions, informal toleration, and
‘soft’ repression.
This paper focuses on the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) in Egypt and the Movement of Unity and
Reform (MUR) in Morocco from a comparative perspective. In the wake of economic crisis
and subsequent threats to regime stability, the political elites of both countries’ regimes have
refrained from endorsing purely repressive strategies of containment. Rather, they have
yielded to the movements’ claims for inclusion into the political institutions. Comparing
Egypt and Morocco, however, illustrates that scope, timing, and outcomes of inclusivist
strategies of containment differ remarkably from one case to the other. Thus, the core of this
paper inquires into questions of when, under what circumstances, and why authoritarian
regimes use inclusivist strategies of opposition management or return to more suppressive
stances. In this context, we discuss the relevance of differing regime types, different
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mechanisms of inclusivist policies, the strength of movements, and the impact of the
authoritarian elites’ policies of containment on the Islamists.
Islamist Activism and Social Movement Theory
Islamist movements are the largest, most powerful, and best organized opposition movements
with the potential to challenge the political regimes in the contemporary Arab world. Their
intellectual origins date back to the late 19th century while they appeared as mass movements
in the second half of the 20th century. Since roughly twenty years do we witness a new
dynamics of politicization of those movements: the running of Islamist political parties and of
single Islamists as candidates without party affiliation in elections are the most recent
expressions of these movements’ aim at transforming the social and political life in the Arab
states. As Bennani-Chraïbi and Fillieule (2003, p. 35) argue, Islamism is best conceived of as
a historicized contemporary political ideology. The ‘other’ that Islamist ideology explicitly
confronts is not other religions, but rival ideologies of Western origin, i.e. Marxism,
Socialism, Fascism, Capitalism (Roy, 1992), and – most recently – economic liberalism. One
key element of the modern characteristic of Islamist movements is their aim to realize their
social ideas and programs through collective and organized action in the political field
(Eisenstadt, 2000, pp. 592-593, 601).1
Therefore, while scholars first held that Islamism would express a religious resurgence in
conflict with modernity, the focus on the ‘modern’ character of Islamist movements became
more and more prominent. In this context, Islamist movements have been understood as social
movements aiming at fundamental change of society (as opposed to single issue movements)
and analyzed from a social-movement-theory angle (cf. Bennani-Chraïbi & Fillieule, 2003;
Wickham, 2002; Clark, 2004; Hafez, 2003; Wiktorowicz, 2004; Munson, 2001). True,
concepts that have been established and used to understand social phenomena and their
historical trajectories in Western democracies do not always travel smoothly to the
authoritarian grounds in the Arab world, but the analytical tools of social movement research
do have decisive potential to contribute to a better understanding of Islamist movements.
Islamist movements match the consensual definition of social movements as “informal
1 There is a large literature about the elements that account for the emergence and success of Islamist movements. While the focus of these approaches differs remarkably, scholars mainly draw on two types of explanations, either implicitly or explicitly: Some approaches stress that the Islamists’ emergence and success should be viewed in the context of the socio-economic and political grievances deriving from the failure of many Arab States to provide for goods and services and to absorb the educated in the public sectors. Other works emphasize the relevance of cultural factors, the experiences of colonialism, or Western domination of the Arab states and societies. These explanations are not mutually exclusive but often combined.
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networks, based on shared beliefs and solidarity, which mobilize about conflictual issues,
through the frequent use of various forms of protest” (Della Porta & Diani, 1999, p. 16).
Second, social movement theory issues, such as ’political opportunity structures’, ‘resource
mobilization’ or ‘framing’, have been applied successfully to analyze Islamist activism and
the political framework in which they operate. Third, the application of social movement
theory approaches helps to trespass normative prejudices which have frequently biased
research on Islamist political action.
As a conceptual point of departure, we should note that social movements are to be
distinguished from singular groups or organizations.2 Thus, the contemporary Islamist
movement is composed of a broad range of organizations which differ remarkably within and
across countries according to their organizational forms, means of action, political strength,
popular support, and ideological orientations. The common denominator of these various
organizations is that they relate to the same ideological source in one way or another. Radical
groups, such as the Jama’a Islamiyya or the Islamic Jihad, co-exist with the well-established
moderate Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt or those organizations that limit their activities to the
educational and social domain. Other groups, such as the Palestinian Hamas or the Lebanese
Hizb’allah, comprise within one organization a political party, a militant branch, and some
kind of welfare NGOs providing all sorts of social services. Finally, we find well-established
political parties that emerged from the Islamist current as specific organizations for political
representation, for example in Jordan, Yemen, and Morocco.3
This paper deals particularly with the relationship between distinct social movement
organizations4 and political regimes and highlights the relevance of domestic opportunity
structures. This notion stresses the broader political system as the most important variable to
determine the constraints and opportunities that affect the extent and form of collective action.
Thus, political opportunity structures impact on the paths that social movements can go for
achieving their goals. More precisely, they comprehend the following four dimensions: the
relative openness or closure of the institutionalized political system, the stability or instability
of elite alignments, the presence or absence of elite allies, and the state’s capacity and
2 Kriesi (1996, pp. 152-154) distinguishes four different types of movement related organizations: ‘Service’, ‘self-help’, ‘political mobilization’, and ‘political representation organizations’. 3 On first sight, one could be tempted to question whether these organizations still represent the same movement. However, we shall bear in mind that one characteristic of social movements is that they may well include groups, organizations, and sub-movements which promote conflicting goals and compete with each other. For instance, the labor movement in Western societies also included various and conflicting sub-movements that we may label ‘Catholic’, ‘social-democratic’, ‘communist’, and ‘anarchic’ (Raschke, 1987, p. 82). 4 We will, in the following empirical sections, use the terms ‘organization’, ‘group’, and ‘movement’ synonymously to denote singular social movement organizations.
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propensity for repression (McAdam, 1996, p. 27).5 These dimensions strongly influence the
choices available for social movements and account for different forms and strategies of
similar groups in different countries.6
We focus on two specific social movement organizations from a comparative perspective: the
Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the Movement of Unity and Reform in Morocco. Both are
Islamist in that they champion the Islamicization of society and the application of the Shari’a
(Islamic law). Over the last decades, they managed to attract strong popular support from their
respective societies through social activities at the grass-root level; the groups possess well-
established organizational and financial capacities and resist so far the cooptation by state
elites – a common means of containing other, mostly secular opposition groups in the
countries concerned. On the other hand, both movements have been aiming over time at being
formally included into the respective political systems: They took up the initiatives to
establish political parties and to participate in elections. Other activities include their work as
members in professional syndicates.
How is the political environment shaped in which those movements operate? In other words:
What are the stable components of the opportunity structures for Islamist activism in the
respective political systems? Both countries, Egypt and Morocco, have authoritarian regimes
of distinctly patrimonial nature. Their political systems can best be described by the term
‘liberal authoritarianism’ (cf. Brumberg, 2002). Here authoritarian incumbents are eager to
use coercion and repression only when deemed absolutely necessary to preserve their power.
Additional means of power maintenance include the origination of political legitimacy by
creating a liberal picture of their rule through the toleration – however carefully controlled
and restricted – of some degree of political participation and civil freedoms.
The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt
The Muslim Brotherhood (al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin) was founded in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna,
and quickly emerged into a powerful social movement organization with strong popular
support. As the first organized form of Islamic political activism, most Islamist groups and
movements in other countries of the Muslim world draw their roots back – in one way or
another – to the Brotherhood. At that time, two ideological traits highlighted by the
5 His synthesis is based on Kriesi, 1995; Rucht, 1996; Brockett, 1991; and Tarrow, 1994. 6 Recent social movement research has stressed that this is a two way process. Not only are movements shaped by their political environment, but they also aim at reshaping this environment in order to increase their potential impact.
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Brotherhood happened to be particularly appealing to the populace in Egypt: the movement’s
call to apply Islamic principles to the transformation of society, culture, politics, and the
economy and, second, its struggle against the British occupation of the country.7 The
revolution in 1952 marked a first decisive turning point for the Brothers: They initially
welcomed the end of the British occupation, but quickly found themselves caught in a fierce
power struggle with the new regime of the Free Officers headed by Gamal Abdel Nasser (cf.
Aclimandos, 2002). Nasser won this fight by resorting to blunt repression and by
incarcerating thousands of Islamist activists and their leaders. This, in turn, led to the
radicalization of parts of the Islamist social movement in Egypt.8 The Muslim Brotherhood,
however, denounced violence as a means of political action in the early 1970s and entered the
political scene again when Nasser’s successor, Anwar as-Sadat, discretely encouraged the
Islamists in an attempt to counterbalance secular opposition from Nasserist, Marxist, and
Nationalist circles.9
With this political move Sadat laid down the origins for the demise of those latter opposition
forces and, at the same time, for the strengthening of political Islam in Egypt. As Carry
Wickham has shown in her seminal study on the ‘mobilization of Islam’ (2002), Islamist
outreach fell on fertile soil within Egyptian society at large. While diffuse support among the
rural and urban poor is still difficult to evaluate, the Brotherhood can certainly count on large
popular support particularly from the middle classes of society. In addition to the well-
developed organizational structure, two other intertwined dimensions determine the success of
the Muslim Brotherhood’s quest for popular support: the provision of ideational and material
incentives. Concerning the content of the Brotherhood’s ideology, it should be noted that its
political program remains rather vague. Using the Islamic concept of Da’wa (‘call’), the
Brotherhood fell short of offering a comprehensive political program, but called – in very
general terms – for the re-Islamicization of Egyptian society and the application of the Islamic
rule, Shari’a, to law and politics.10 This programmatic fuzziness, however, did not harm its
appeal towards the populace, mainly since rival ideologies of Western origin – such as
7 For the rise of the Brothers from the 1930s to the 1950s, see Munson, 2001. 8 Inspired by radical Islamist thinkers, the most famous of whom was Sayyid Qutb, Islamist radicalization triggered the emergence of militant groups and splinter factions of the Muslim Brotherhood. Such underground extremist movements included the Islamic Jihad, the Jama’a Islamiyya (Islamic Group), and the Takfir wa al-Hijra (’Repentance and Retreat’) which quickly drove away from the Brotherhood and resorted to a militant struggle to overthrow the Egyptian regime lasting from the late 1970s to 1997 (cf. Ansari, 1984; Gerges, 2000). 9 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. 10 Since roughly a decade, internal discussions on the relationship between Islam and democracy intensified, and so did the politicization of discourses among the Brothers.
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socialism, Marxism, capitalism, or nationalism – have been severely discredited by the 1980s
and gave way to an ideology based on ‘Arab-Islamic roots’. Islamic ideology was
accompanied by the Islamist movement’s provision of social security services which the
Egyptian regime had set up in its popular era under Nasser and during the early Sadat-years
but could not maintain any longer in times of economic crisis. Financed by a parallel Islamic
economic sector, the Muslim Brotherhood capitalized – as the major manifest political
organization – on the proliferation of services, jobs, and material benefits through private
mosques and Islamic voluntary associations.
Clearly, when Hosni Mubarak came to power in 1981, he did not face an easy task to handle
the Islamist movement awakened under his predecessor. His regime was confronted with the
challenge of both radical underground groups and a moderate Islamist mass movement which
was independent from government control and deeply rooted within society. To contain the
Islamist movement in Egypt, Mubarak’s regime employed a two-sided strategy. While the
radical Jihad and Jama’a Islamiyya were put under heavy-handed pressure from the security
and military apparatuses, the moderate Muslim Brotherhood was given some opportunity to
become a player in the formal political institutions: Political liberalization, which was
initiated by Sadat and resumed by Mubarak during the 1980s, led to the emergence of
political parties and elections, the creation of ‘civil society’ organizations, and the
politicization of professional syndicates. Thus, a playground emerged for those among the
Muslim Brotherhood who advocated activism in these political institutions. In the first decade
of his rule, Mubarak conceded to these demands to some degree. However, the Brothers’
activities have been closely overlooked and restricted from the very first minute. Most
importantly, the regime did not tolerate the creation of a political party. Rather, the Brothers
were allowed to participate in the elections of the parliament and professional syndicates as
independent candidates only.
In the 1984 and 1987 parliamentary elections, the Brotherhood made use of this opportunity
by forming alliances with other, secular opposition parties.11 Even more impact on the
Brothers’ new activism in the formal political institution had their activities in the
professional syndicates: Between 1987 and 1992, Islamists took over the majority in the
boards of the engineers, the doctors, and the lawyers syndicates respectively (cf. Wickham;
11 Cooperation among opposition groups in the 1984 and 1987 elections was bolstered through the need to cast at least 8 % of the votes to be represented in parliaments. In 1984, the Brotherhood formed an alliance with the Neo-Wafd Party as a junior partner; in 1987, members of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist associations joined with the (Socialist) Labor Party (Hizb al-Amal) and the Liberal Party (Hizb al-Ahrar) to form the ‘Islamic Alliance’. From 1984 to 1987, they increased their seats in parliament from – depending on the source – 8-12 seats to approximately 36 (cf. Abed-Kotob, 1995, p. 328; Ghadbian, 1997, p. 91; Guazzone, 1995).
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1997; Fahmy, 1997). The early 1990s parliamentary elections marked a decisive turning point
in the regime-Brotherhood relationship (Al-Awadi, 2005).12 Since then, the ‘political
honeymoon’ of the 1980s was over and the Muslim Brotherhood came under siege from
coercive, statist containment emanating in a policy towards the Muslim Brotherhood which
can be subsumed under the terms ‘minimal toleration and formal restriction’.
Both the organization and the Brotherhood’s mouthpiece al-Da’wa have not been legally
recognized by Mubarak’s regime. Coercive measures of the state included the arbitrary arrest
of the Brotherhood’s rank and file and also prominent activists particularly in the run-up to
the parliamentary elections in 1995 and 2000. Islamist candidates have been severely
hampered during election campaigns and, among those who succeeded to win a seat at the
Maglis ash-Shura, some Islamists have been removed when they have been perceived by the
regime as all too active and critical.13 Most importantly, the Muslim Brotherhood has been
excluded from the political dialogue with other opposition forces in the country (i.e. legalized
political parties and the human rights NGOs); communication between the regime and the
Brothers is exclusively maintained via security channels (Amn ad-Dawla)14. While the
Muslim Brotherhood formally remains an illegal organization and is subject to decidedly
higher degrees of coercion than the secular opposition, there are some signs that repression
has never been the regime’s sole answer towards the movement. On the toleration-side of the
game, it should be noted that the regime never made the attempt to destroy the organizational
capacities of the movement: The Brotherhood maintains offices on Roda-island of greater
Cairo and other cities in the country; the coordination of activities is openly organized in the
professional syndicates. Moreover, despite the said restrictions during elections, the Brothers
12 In the 1990 parliamentary elections, all opposition parties abstained from participating – with the Tagammu Party as a prominent exception. Thus, observers witnessed the starting point for a decade of political de-liberalization embracing higher degrees of repression not only towards the Islamist challenge but political opposition and society at large (Kienle, 1998; Brownlee, 2002). Concerning the Muslim Brotherhood’s success in Egypt’s political life, the regime’s fears were not to ignore any more at the Brothers’ sweeping victory in the board elections of the Bar Association in September 1992. This syndicate had always been a traditional stronghold for liberal forces (Fahmy, 1997; Wickham, 1997). 13 The most prominent example here is the case of Gamal Heshmat. An active member of the medical syndicate and Brotherhood bigwig in Alexandria, Heshmat was ousted from parliament in January 2003. Heshmat admitted that he was among the most active opposition figures in the 2000 parliament but emphasized that he had not deliberately crossed a ‘red line’ (author’s interview, 21. December 2004, Cairo). 14 There is no open political communication between the regime and the Brotherhood. Unofficial communication channels between Brotherhood members and single regime members are restricted to the corridors of parliament, some professional syndicates (particularly the press syndicate), and Universities (mainly Cairo University). (author’s interviews with several members of the Muslim Brotherhood, December 2004 and January 2005, Cairo). On the other hand, the regime does communicate with other opposition forces via political channels. One striking example is a meeting between Safwat Sherif and members of the Labor Party in November 2004 during which the re-legalization of the party was discussed (author’s interviews with Labor Party representatives, December 2004, Cairo). The Labor Party has an Islamist background too but is obviously not perceived as a dangerous contender like the MB and, thus, accepted as a participant in a political dialogue.
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managed to sustain the strongest opposition faction in parliament. At some very rare
instances, the regime even cooperated with the Muslim Brotherhood, for example when they
jointly organized a public rally against the US-led military campaign against Saddam
Hussain’s regime in Iraq on 27. and 28. March 2003.
The Movement of Unity and Reform in Morocco
Compared to the Egyptian case, the Moroccan Islamist movement is smaller and more
fragmented. The founding fathers of the Party for Justice and Development (PJD), on which
this paper focuses, emanated from one of the two major Islamist organizations in Morocco,
Harakat al-Tawhid wal-Islah (Movement of Unity and Reform, MUR).15 While the Moroccan
Islamist movement, like in Egypt, includes innumerable local educational, social and cultural
associations, independent preachers, and some small radical groups, the main other
organization of national outreach is al-‘Adl wal-Ihsan (‘Justice and Benevolence’) led by
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.16
The MUR and al-‘Adl wal-Ihsan have their roots in the 1970s when Moroccan Islamic
activism emerged essentially as a rather narrow student movement (Munson, 1986). However,
while members have sometimes switched from one organization to the other, their ideological
references and organizational structures are quite dissimilar. With respect to their political
strategies and preferences, the MUR has been labeled as ‘realist’ because it has, since the
mid-1980s, actively pursued its inclusion into the formal political process. The term ‘idealist’
is applied to al-‘Adl wal-Ihsan because – while also striving for legal recognition – it
nonetheless rejects so far the conditions of the electoral game in Morocco (cf. Rogler, 1997).17
The latter is politically organized in universities and its members are represented in unions
only. The following paragraphs thus concentrate on the Movement of Unity and Reform and
its institutional branch, the PJD.
The MUR came into being in 1996 as a merger of mainly two Islamist organizations: al-Islah
wal-Tajdid and Rabitat al-Mustaqbal al-Islamiyy. Both can be traced back to the Jami‘yyat
al-Shabiba al-Islamiyya (‘Islamic Youth Association’) which was founded in 1969 by Abdel
Karim Mouti‘, an inspector of the ministry of education, who had been influenced by the
15 As we will explain in more detail below, the MUR is in itself a merger of different Islamist organizations. In the following, if not hinting precisely at one of these predecessor organizations, we will employ the label MUR to refer to the entirety of all those groups that are now part of the MUR. 16 This is the organization’s popular name and motto; officially, it was founded in 1979 as al-Jamaa‘a and changed its name in 1983 into Jami‘yyat al-Jamaa‘a al-Khairiyya.
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ideas of Sayyid Qutb.18 Indeed, while the ‘realist’ label to indicate the MUR’s political
orientations and strategies seems appropriate for the later period, this does not hold for the
initial one. Here, the revolutionary option predominated until the early 1980s. Since then, a
reformist vision and a global approach to society emerged and solidified in the organizations
that were founded by former Islamic Youth members (cf. Tozy 1999a, pp. 228-235).19
Similar to Egypt and other Arab states, the Moroccan Islamist movement was initially
encouraged by the regime as a counterweight to the left on the university campuses. The
encouragement and legalization of the Islamic Youth in the early 1970s should be seen in the
light of a limited opening of the Moroccan political system. From 1965 to 1970, Hassan II’s
personal rule was based on military backing and a large clientelist network. In 1971 and 1972,
two attempts to overthrow the King were led by high military officers and illustrated the
necessity of broadening the power base for the King who, then, searched for a general
rapprochement with the opposition. A few years later, however, the success of the Green
march in 1975 through which Morocco appropriated the Western Sahara, provided
overwhelming popular support to the monarch and allowed him to co-opt the opposition from
the independence movement. The legal status of the Islamic Youth, then, was short-lived. In
1976, the King used the assassination of a leftist union leader to ban the organization and trial
its members. The followers subsequently split into three groups: Some joined Yassin’s
movement, others organized in local associations. The third and largest of these groups
founded a new organization in 1981, first called al-Jama’a al-Islamiyya, since 1992 al-Islah
wal-Tajdid. Members of this organization constitute today the major faction inside the
MUR.20 While initially loyal to Mouti’, this group started from the beginning of the 1980s an
appeasement strategy towards the regime21 culminating, in 1990, in a public commitment to
the ideological pillars of the Moroccan political regime: the monarchy, Islam, and territorial
17 In the early 1990s when the regime negotiated the conditions of the MUR’s entry into official politics, propositions where also made to Yassin who refused to make the required concessions (Burgat, 1995, p. 290). 18The Islamic Youth recruited its members primarily in universities and secondary schools. It advocated a strictly Islamic polity and engaged in violent clashes with leftist movements on the university campuses. Little information is available concerning its organizational structure; Tozy describes it as a paramilitary organization (1999a, p. 231). 19 Party leaders explain that the initial revolutionary orientation was based on a more radical ideology imported from Egypt embracing “all its antagonisms with the regime”. Their current perception is that the Moroccan Islamists in the 1970s had ignored some fundamental differences between the political regimes in Egypt and Morocco, whereas they now consider the monarchy as a “100%” Islamic institution (author’s interview with a party leader, 08. September 2003, Rabat). 20 The organization was founded by Mohamed Yatim, Abdallah Baha, and Abdelilah Benkirane, at present all MPs and members of the General Secretariat of the PJD. Neither al-Jama’a nor al-Islah have been legalized but the authorities tolerated their activities to some extent. The second big faction inside the MUR, Rabitat al-Mustaqbal al-Islamiyy, was founded by those that had turned to the local religious associations.
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integrity. It categorically condemned the use of violence in any form and started to comment
favorably and approve Hassan II’s political decisions in its journal. This has led Tozy (1999a,
pp. 240-249) to hint at this group’s ideological flexibility and its readiness to adapt their ideas
and strategies to changing constraints or opportunities.
According to the MUR’s charter, its goals and principles are typical of contemporary Islamist
organizations and include calls to renew the understanding of religion, to champion the
respect of individual rights and public freedoms, to advocate the implementation of the
Shari’a, to improve material and living conditions of Muslims, to perform charitable work, to
achieve a comprehensive cultural renaissance, to strive for the unity of Muslims, to confront
ideologies which are perceived as ‘subversive’ to Islam, and to raise the educational and
moral level of the Moroccan people (cf. Haraka al-Tawhid wal-Islah, 1999).
Rather uncommon for Islamist organizations, though, is the relatively non-hierarchical
internal structure of the MUR. The members of the two main decision making bodies, the
Executive Bureau and the Shura Council, as well as the president are elected. Compared to
political organizations of whatever ideological orientation in MENA states, the most
outstanding feature is probably the fact that the MUR's president can only serve a maximum
of two four-year terms.
The inclusion of the Islamists in the electoral process was enacted through the MUR’s
integration into one of the numerous dormant Moroccan parties. Having been denied the
legalization of an own political party22, they were authorized to integrate in the Mouvement
Populaire Constitutionel Démocratique (MPCD; change of name to PJD in 1998).23 From
1992 onwards, the Islamist leaders re-animated or founded local and provincial party bureaus;
in 1996, integration was made explicit in an extra-ordinary congress during which movement
leaders were appointed to the party’s General Secretariat. The most important MUR leaders
became party leaders while still holding their posts in the executive bureau of the MUR.
While there had long been internal debates about whether the MUR should merge its whole
organizational body with the party, its Shura Council eventually opted for a formal separation
21 In 1982, al-Jama’a published a statement denouncing the practices of Mouti‘ and announcing a total separation of the group from the ideas of the mother movement (Shahin, 1998, p. 189) 22 In 1989 and 1992, they asked for the legalization of an own party project, Hizb al-Tajdid al-Watani (‘Party of National Renewal’), which was designed to conform to the Moroccan law on political parties that explicitly prohibits religious parties. For instance, the statutes invoked that the party would be open to all Moroccans irrespective of their religious affiliation, and that it would participate in the political process according to following guiding rules: respect for democracy, the free choice of the people, accepting the concept of transfer of power, and respect for pluralism. Nonetheless, the authorities rejected its legalization arguing that the constitution prohibits the foundation of a party on religious basis.
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of the two organizations. This rather ambiguous way of inclusion was acceptable to both the
regime and the Islamists. The regime was able to take one current of the Islamist movement
on board without creating a precedent through authorizing a political party based on
‘religion’. The Islamists, in turn, gained legality and were permitted political activity even
though they had to accommodate some of the old guard of the former MPCD.
The PJD ran in 1997 for the first time in national elections. National and international
commentators largely assessed these elections as a significant step in the Moroccan
‘democratization process’. Especially the King’s appointment of the leftist leader
Abderrahmane Youssoufi as Prime Minister and the formation of the Alternance Government
that included all former opposition parties were seen as symbols of the King’s commitment to
a political liberalization process he had set into motion at the beginning of the 1990s. The
necessity to liberalize resulted from a combination of a protracted economic and social crisis
and strong domestic and international criticism over the Moroccan human rights record.
Moreover, the mobilization capacities of the Islamist movement became apparent in the early
1990s in large demonstrations (Tozy, 1999b, p. 80). In addition to legitimacy crisis and street
politics, the problem of succession was already at the horizon; thus, King Hassan II aimed at
the inclusion of the opposition parties into the political process in order to stabilize the
system. This required two constitutional referenda (1992 – 1996) that channeled more power
to political parties and parliament and provided for the direct election of all MPs.24 Increasing
transparency of the electoral process was achieved through the creation of a National
Electoral Commission that comprises members of all relevant political parties.
The PJD supported the government for the first two years and then changed to the opposition
in 2000. Covering only half of the electoral constituencies, it increased its share of MPs from
14 to 42 (out of 325) in the 2002 parliamentary elections. It is now the third largest party in
parliament and the most active of the opposition parties. However, since the Islamists’ first
appearance in national elections in 1997, they did not openly confront the regime. Besides its
increasing success at the ballot boxes, the PJD has also considerably improved its
organizational size and capacities by attracting new members, by establishing more provincial
and local bureaus and by creating ancillary organizations for Youth, women and sympathizing
23 Founded in 1967 as a split-off faction from the Mouvement Populaire, the MPCD has never participated in elections. In 1992, the party’s organizational corpus was limited to the president’s villa. 24 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 councilors and the members of employer and labor unions.
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cadres. Besides this, it has aimed at the strengthening of the party organization by holding
party congresses and internal elections, and a constant revision of its formal procedures.
Strategies of Islamist Containment in Egypt and Morocco:
Formal Inclusion vs. Limited Toleration
As we have shown in the last empirical sections, the political regimes in Egypt and Morocco
display similarities as well as marked differences concerning their strategies to contain
powerful Islamist movements in the respective countries. The most important common feature
of Islamist containment in Egypt and Morocco is that both political regimes have preferred –
at least at one point in time – to permit some form of Islamist participation in the formal
political process over repressive means of containment. Thus, for both Islamist organizations,
we observe changes concerning their domestic opportunity structures that allowed for new
forms of collective action and participation in the political realm. However, the containment
strategies in Egypt and Morocco differ remarkably concerning the form as well as the
evolution of state policies over time.
First, with respect to the form chosen by the regimes, the participation of the Muslim
Brotherhood in Egyptian politics has been realized on an informal basis only. The Brothers
have never been authorized to enter the political scene through the establishment of a political
party. In Morocco, the MUR was allowed to take over a dormant political party; one can thus
speak of the formal inclusion in the political system. The second difference of our cases
concerns the evolution of statist policies towards Islamists over time. In Egypt, we witnessed
a change of strategies: While the Muslim Brotherhood benefited, during the 1980s, from the
informal inclusion in the political system, they experienced, since the early 1990s, a severe
repressive backlash; therefore, the status of the Muslim Brotherhood has changed from one of
‘informal inclusion’ to a mere limited toleration by the regime. Quite the contrary in
Morocco, where the formal inclusion of the MUR / PJD into the political institutions is a
continuous feature.
Three broad questions emerge from these observations: First, what accounts for the different
forms of inclusion? Second, what accounts for the different paths that the two regimes chose
to go? Third, how have the different strategies impacted on the respective movements?
Getting back to the crucial role assigned to opportunity structures, we assume that differences
in the institutional authoritarian settings in Morocco and Egypt determine to a large extent the
choice of the form of inclusion. Clearly speaking, there are differences in the authoritarian
14
regimes of the two countries. Recalling that initial inclusion occurred in both cases at the
moment of controlled political liberalization – i.e. of changing opportunities – we examine not
only differences in distinct institutional factors in Morocco and Egypt (such as regime
legitimacy) but also differences in the structure of political competition in order to account for
the regimes’ preferences. As a second determinant of this choice we compare the strength of
the two movements relative to other non-regime actors in these countries. As regards the
second question, we assume that the differences in the paths (change vs. continuity) must be
related to the question of how ‘successful’ the initial experiment has been from the
perspective of the regimes, that is whether inclusion is perceived to have confined the threat
the Islamist movement constitutes for regime persistence. In turn, the growth or decline of
perceived threats depends strongly on the Islamists’ behavior once included. In short, do they
play by the rules of the new political game or do they use their institutional representation to
effectively criticize and challenge the regime?
Proposition 1: The systemic importance of an institution determines its readiness to become
the target of the formal inclusion of Islamists.
When we look at the formal inclusion of Islamist organizations into the political realm, we
need to consider the strategic importance of the political institution where Islamists may be
included. In other words, we shall ask: What role and function is ascribed to parliaments or
other institutions with respect to the aim of authoritarian regime stabilization? And what does
it mean to the potential inclusion of Islamist movement organizations? Parliaments are
potential arenas of political competition in any polity, and thus in Egypt and Morocco too;
now the question is if, when, and why the respective authoritarian rulers tolerate such
competition in this arena or not. Following Daniel Brumberg, our assumption is that – in
principal, but below the level of rule-making – competition and political dissent is tolerated in
both political systems which facilitates a juggling act of interests between different societal
and elitist interests (cf. Brumberg, 2002; for the Egyptian case: Albrecht, 2005). One critical
difference, however, is that, in Morocco, the parliament constitutes the arena for such
competition, while, in Egypt, competition originates between distinct – in themselves rather
homogenous – pillars of the state, i.e. between the military, the religious world of al-Azhar,
‘civil society’, and the political realm of the authoritarian system, that is parliament and
government. Therefore, we assume that these differences in systemic political structures can
explain positive incentives for the formal inclusion of the MUR in the Moroccan parliament
as well as constraints for formal inclusion in Egypt. To explain differences in the systemic
15
functions and strategic importance of parliaments, we shall highlight another important
aspect: the kind and degree of political legitimacy at the disposal of the rulers in Egypt and
Morocco.
Different from the Arab republics, the ruling Moroccan Alaoui dynasty enjoys historical and
religious legitimacy. In post-independence Morocco, the King has build upon these sources of
legitimacy to appear superior and neutral over any group of society. The different segments of
society compete among each other for scarce resources to be distributed by the Makhzen. This
competition creates a permanent tension and conflict among these groups and allows the
supreme arbitrator to stay in control (Waterbury, 1970). In short, in contrast to Republican
presidents, kings “are […] above all factions and party to none” (Richards & Waterbury,
1998, p. 298). This superiority is reflected in Hassan II’s famous phrase “I will never be put
into equation” (quoted in Zartman, 1988: p. 64), which illustrates well the distance between
the monarchy as a ruling and governing institution and the rest of the Moroccan institutional
landscape. The monarchy as the ultimate Moroccan power center cannot be contested; but for
those actors that accept the king’s definition of the rules of the game, there is a sphere for
articulation and political contest, namely in parliament.
Contrary to the Moroccan king, the president of the Egyptian republic faces a tangible
legitimacy problem. He does not dispose of individual, inherent legitimacy emanating from
the hereditary transmission of the power to rule. As a consequence, he remains much more
subject to contestation, at least from within the ruling circles.25 Simply speaking, the
‘distance’ between the Egyptian president and the said pillars of the state is narrower than in
Morocco. Clearly, the Egyptian ruler needs the parliament in order to create a pseudo-
democratic legitimacy and as a pool to convene and keep in check the political elite.
However, from the logic described above follows that the toleration of dissent and contention
within parliament remains decidedly limited. This is certainly the reason behind the sorry
state of the Egyptian party system. Even though a multi-party system had been introduced by
Sadat already in the late 1970s, the so-called opposition parties have never been given the
opportunity to perform successfully in elections leaving Egypt de-facto with a one-party
system.26
25 This becomes obvious particularly in times of power changes: When Nasser, Sadat, and Mubarak came to power, they always had to overcome strong contenders for the regime’s leadership from their own ranks. 26 The legalized opposition parties, the most important of whom are the Wafd Party, the Tagammu, the Nasserist Party, the Labor Party, and the recently founded al-Ghad (‘Tomorrow’) Party, are very weak according to their popular support, electoral success, and their organizational and financial capacities.
16
Quite the contrary in Morocco: After the purely repressive period up to the early 1970s, the
function of parliament is precisely one of allowing competition and articulation of social
forces. Contributing to the stability of rule in a quite different way, it comes as a means for
integrating and co-opting political adversaries and for allowing a tamed style of protest
articulation. That the parliament can serve such purposes results from the fact that the King is
not directly affected by political competition. In theory, he is not associated with any of the
numerous pro-regime parties27; his rule is not based on support created through any
organizations. This is not to say that the king has not kept tight control over who would be
allowed to be represented in parliament. However, even though repression has always been an
important element of rule, the same holds true for the “manipulated” (Zartman, 1987, p. 64) or
“controlled” (Santucci, 2001) pluralism of organized political forces.
In Egypt, the ruler’s task to foreclose the rise of contention through elections and within
parliament becomes particularly critical when it comes to potential dissent from political
forces which are independent from direct state control. Here, we get back to the Muslim
Brotherhood: The formal inclusion of a strong opposition party controlled by the Brothers
would inevitably mean the weakening of the regime’s own party, the National Democratic
Party (NDP), which is in essence home to the bulk of the political elite of the country. This
cannot be in the interest of the Egyptian regime since it needs that political basis in the
absence of political legitimacy much more to control society than the Moroccan king.28 Thus,
we assume a prudential logic behind the seemingly half-hearted strategy to allow the Muslim
Brotherhood to perform in elections on an informal, individual basis but, at the same time,
foreclose the establishment of a political party: On the one hand, following the politics of
Sadat, political liberalization was expanded by Mubarak to include the moderate Islamist
current to some degree. On the other hand, the last step of the formal inclusion of the Muslim
Brotherhood into the political system was denied in order to impede the rise of an independent
political force in a highly sensitive political environment. This leads us to the conclusion that
the formal inclusion of an opposition actor is a two-sided sword in the hands of authoritarian
rulers who seem to bear in mind that it is harder to reverse than an informal toleration of
Islamists. By contrast, the Moroccan political system allows more smoothly for the
liberalization of a political sphere in which the ruler is not among the contestants. Compared
27 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 or independent. 28 For the working mechanisms of the co-optation and control of society through elections and the government party, see May Kassem’s seminal work ‘In the Guise of Democracy’ (1999).
17
to Egypt, the formal inclusion of a strong new actor – the Islamists – in an institution where
the power to rule is not at stake bears relatively little costs or a potential threat for the
regime.29
Proposition 2: The stronger the Islamist movement, the less likely is its formal inclusion into
the political system.
It does not come as a surprise that the power of a social movement determines authoritarian
incumbents’ strategies on how to deal with them: The stronger an independent movement
granted access to the formal political realm, the more increases the risk of undesired
consequences for the authoritarian regime. We propose that the Egyptian Muslim
Brotherhood is stronger than the Moroccan Movement of Unity and Reform which would be a
second reason for the different regime reactions. True, in our cases, the strength and potential
of political outreach are quite difficult to measure since we do not possess any ‘hard’
categories for comparison30, for instance the two movements’ success at the ballot boxes:
While both can participate in elections, the Muslim Brotherhood’s rallies are far more
obstructed by the state than in Morocco whereas the PJD covers only a limited number of the
electoral constituencies.31
One good aspect to compare the Brothers with the MUR is the different organizational
capacities. The Muslim Brotherhood established from the very beginning a very capable
organizational structure.32 The movement is tightly organized along hierarchical arrangements
at the top of which stands the Supreme Guide (al-Murshid al-Amm) and his two deputies. As
29 The suggestion that different regimes have different fears regarding the participation of strong social groups in elections is mirrored by their preference for different electoral rules. Lust-Okar and Jamal have shown that single party regimes in the Middle East and North Africa opt for electoral rules that favor the dominant party, while monarchies aim at fragmenting the political landscape. As is shown, the problem for the single party regimes lies in the danger that the Islamist party turns out to be stronger than the ruling party. (Lust-Okar & Jamal, 1999, pp. 359-360). 30 The social movement literature distinguishes between three categories of support: Ideological support (goals), organizational support (group) and participation (action). It has been shown that the gap between active involvement and ideological support of social movements may reach about 70 % (Kriesi, 1992, p.26). In the case of social movements in authoritarian regimes, this gap should be even larger given the higher costs of active participation. If a social movement organization runs in elections, ideological support can be transformed with relatively little cost into votes. Thus, the best indicator for a movement’s threat potential would be ‘ideological support’. 31 While the Brotherhood still occupies the largest faction among all opposition groups in parliament, their share in votes would be reasonably higher with truly competitive elections. Observers estimate that the Brotherhood would be able to attract up to 30 % of the votes if elections were free. As regards the PJD, its true electoral scores are not only obscured by its limited coverage, but also by its acceptance to adopt a low profile. Rumors (and allusions of a party leader) say that it actually came out as the strongest party in the 2002 parliamentary elections but agreed to take the third rank (authors interview with a member of the party's General Secretariat, Khenitra, 9.November 2003).
18
an executive board functions the Guidance Bureau (Maktab al-Irshad) which is composed of
15 high-profile members of the older and middle generations among whom the organization’s
leadership is elected. At the lower organizational strata, the Muslim Brotherhood maintains
offices not only in every governorate of the country, but also in all bigger cities and even in
smaller villages and settlements. The organization’s working agenda is reflected in special
departments in which day-to-day work on specific issues is coordinated.33 Clearly, the
Brothers’ organizational structures and capacities stand out among political movements in
Egypt and impact positively on its role as a powerful social movement organization: First,
they guarantee high degrees of stability and homogeneity among its ranks.34 Second, outreach
towards the public is institutionally manifested through this organizational network that
literally reaches every corner in the country and facilitates the coordination of the Brothers’
work in the professional syndicates, schools, universities and student unions, clubs, and
charity organizations. As concerns active support, the Muslim Brotherhood – along with other
groups of Islamist nature – built up its basis during the 1970s in the universities in the
country. From the end of the 1980s, the Brothers controlled the student unions in all major
universities including those in Cairo, Alexandria, Mansura, and also al-Azhar university (Al-
Awadi, 2005, p. 64).
The whole Moroccan Islamist movement started mainly as a student movement in the early
1970s. Active involvement in the Moroccan Islamist movement has remained an urban
phenomenon. The MUR has a much more limited territorial penetration than the Egyptian
Muslim Brotherhood; it is mainly home to the big and medium sized cities. Correspondingly,
the Islamists electoral scores are highest in these areas. The decidedly urban character of the
movement can be – to some extent – explained by the fact that the initial activists were
32 The reader will find a very insightful empirical account on the Muslim Brotherhood’s organization and social outreach in Munson, 2001. 33 There is a ‘political section’ subdivided in the ‘political’, ‘economic’, and ‘information unit’. The ‘technical section’ supervises activities in the professional syndicates and comprises several subdivisions, like the ‘labor unit’, the ‘women section’, and the ‘social section’ (author’s interview with Abdel-Hamid al-Ghizali, University professor and Brotherhood member, 19. December 2004, Cairo). 34 This does not mean that the Muslim Brotherhood does not suffer from internal struggles between competing factions. Indeed, fissures within the organization came up along moderate and more radical proponents and, most notably, between different generations of activists: While the organization’s leadership is until today occupied by an ‘old guard’ of veterans who experienced harsh repression under Nasser, the ‘middle generation’ (Gil al-Wasat) comprises those activists who have been politicized 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 between factions and proponents rose about important issues, such as the internal discourses on Islam vs. democracy and modernity, or the very nature of the organization which is either perceived as a social or a political movement. However, internal struggles and fissures never turned into open conflict among the Muslim Brothers’ ranks that have successfully drawn a disciplined and homogenous picture of their organization. Rather, open dissent emanated in the split of factions as the case of the Wasat party exemplifies (cf. Stacher, 2002; Wickham, 2004).
19
dominantly university students. Even if these were migrants from the countryside, given the
better employment prospects in the cities, they have largely stayed in place and concentrated
their activities there.35 Similar to Egypt, these activities include a broad range of charitable,
educational, and missionary (Da‘wa) activities. Before being permitted to contest elections,
the MUR members’ political activism focused strongly on the labor unions, especially the
Union Marocaine du Travail36, and the national student union Union Nationale des Etudiants
Marocains (UNEM).37
What is difficult to asses is the relative strength of the MUR with respect to other Islamist
organizations. Munson (1986, pp. 271-275) estimates that, in the early 1980s, less than 15 %
of the university students were actively engaged in some Islamist organization.38 Whereas the
number of university students had, by the early 1990s, almost tripled and a second generation
of Islamist activists had come to the fore, these are scattered among numerous movement
organizations. An assessment of the MUR’s strength is especially difficult compared to al-
‘Adl wal-Ihsan, often considered as the strongest organization of the Moroccan Islamist
movement.39 Moreover, as the only legal Islamist party, the PJD surely benefits from
ideological/electoral support created through al-‘Adl wal-Ihsan's activities. Compared to
Egypt, though, the sheer existence of another strong Islamist organization as well as the
relatively well-organized left that is represented in parliament and in the labor and student
unions, makes the challenge the MUR poses to the regime appear weaker. The Muslim
Brotherhood is the undeniably strongest actor in the social movement sector, while the MUR/
PJD is one among a range of well-organized social and political actors. As such, its formal
inclusion bears much less potential to shaken the balance of the Moroccan political landscape.
Proposition 3: Authoritarian rulers can learn and display tangible adaptive capacities
according to the outcome of inclusivist strategies and, in turn, the behavior of included
35 As Islamist movement activism is by and large a phenomenon of the educated, we suggest that an additional explanation lies in the high illiteracy rate in rural Morocco. 36 One of the most important and senior MUR leaders, Mohamed Yatim, is also member of the General Secretariat of the UMT. 37 According to a questionnaire distributed by one of the authors at the PJD’s last party congress, more than 70 % of those party members that were as well MUR members are affiliated to labor unions. 38 Munson notes as well that ideological support for the Islamist movement was much broader with over 30 % being favorable to “the re-establishment of Islamic law as the sole legal system” (Munson, 1986: p. 274). 39 While this is an often repeated claim, its empirical base is narrow. To our knowledge, no research has so far empirically investigated differences in membership or support of any of the two movement organizations. In fact, the two organizations often collaborate when organizing protest demonstrations such as against the war in Iraq, Israel, or the in the late 1990s against the reform of the personal status code. The only clear indicator is that, at the early 1990s, al-‘Adl wal-Ihsan seemed to dominate the national student union (Burgat, 1995, p. 289).
20
Islamists; while Islamist compliance with the rules of inclusion leads to protracted inclusion,
non-compliance leads to exclusion and repressive responses.
So far, we have accounted for the reasons behind the distinct strategies of authoritarian
incumbents to accommodate Islamist movement organizations. After initially opting for either
formal inclusion or informal toleration, both strategies can be subject to revision. Whether or
not and in what direction this occurs depends largely on the effects of inclusion on the
Islamists and, in turn, their behavior towards the respective regimes. Looking at the
development of regime-Islamist relationships from the early 1990s, we observe that the
situation once reached in Morocco was sustained, but not so in Egypt. What accounts for the
different paths of development? Two aspects are central to our discussion: First the reaction
of the two movements towards the different strategies of accommodation; and, second, the
perception of the two regimes concerning their inclusivist experiments. Obviously, the
Moroccan experience of inclusion has been viewed as a success story by the power center,
while the Egyptian regime felt seriously threatened by its Islamist movement and resorted to
more repressive means of containment.
The leadership of the Moroccan MUR / PJD has, from the very beginning of its formal
inclusion, aimed at reassuring the palace that it would play by its rules.40 Indeed, the party’s
acceptance to help legitimize the regime is remarkable. The Moroccan regime found an
elegant solution to the dilemma of how to limit the Islamists electoral score while, at the same
time, ensuring better scores for the freeness of elections. 41 It did not need to employ overt
harassment and electoral fraud as a means of limiting the Islamists electoral success. Instead,
the PJD was convinced to limit its coverage of the electoral constituencies.42 Progressive, or –
as PJD leaders like to put it – ‘qualitative’ instead of ‘quantitative’ participation in elections,
are part of the initial deal of inclusion and accepted by the party leadership to counter
domestic and external fears:43 “Le PJD doit se présenter sans qu’il aie atteinte à cet équilibre
qu’on doit respecter, qu’on comprend, parce que c’est dans l’intérêt de tous que la
participation du PJD vient progressive, et que les gens à l’intérieur et à l’extérieur voient que
40 For a more detailed discussion of the effects of inclusion on the Moroccan Islamists and its contribution to regime stability, see Wegner (2004). 41 From all Middle Eastern and North African countries, Morocco is among the few considered as ‘partly free’ (score 5.5) by Freedom House (http://www.freedomhouse.org/pdf_docs/research/freeworld/2004/map2004.pdf). 42 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 % and enacted a model of selective coverage assuring that it would not win the majority in any major city. 43 There are also other reasons behind this decision, most importantly the limits posed by the organizational capacities of the MUR / PJD which made it difficult to cover all the constituencies. However, given that the PJD has restricted its coverage well below its capacities, we must see the limited coverage as being clearly motivated by the desire to placate the regime.
21
le PJD est un parti comme tous les autres partis”44. To the same directions points the PJD’s
initial decision to support the 1998 government led by its long-time adversaries, the socialists:
At their entry into ‘official politics’ they saw the necessity of displaying their positive attitude
towards the Moroccan institutions and playing a constructive role in the consensual
alternance at which Hassan II aimed.45
In 2000, the PJD moved to the opposition benches. This shift occurred in a climate of
increasing liberalization.46 The abandoning of the PJD’s support to the government indicates
the increasing weight of a fraction more committed to constitutional reform that feared to
loose touch with its constituency and to appear co-opted.47 In practice, however, even in this
period, there were no activities or negotiations concretely pushing for the revision of the
constitution or other strong signs of confrontation with the regime. Most importantly, the
party has maintained the principle of limited coverage in the 2002 elections fielding
candidates in only about half of the constituencies. Moreover it praised these elections as an
important step in the Moroccan democratization process in the MUR’s newspaper at-Tajdid.48
In sum, the PJD has proven its willingness to appease the regime by limiting its outreach, by
hiding its own political strength, and accepting its limited role in parliament. Its acceptance of
the King’s political preferences has been extraordinarily high from the very beginning of its
formal inclusion and was maintained ever since. While this is not accepted by all factions in
the party, this conflict has been solved in the last party congress in 2004 to the advantage and
solidification of the compromising faction which now dominates the PJD’s General
Secretariat.49
We shall make it very clear that, like in Morocco, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood did not
actively challenge the Egyptian regime in the political field; rather, it is its remarkable
performance as a social movement organization that led to new forms of statist containment:
Since the early 1990s, the regime’s experiment of informal inclusion was displaced by a
44 Interview with a member of parliament, of the PJD’s General Secretariat, and the MUR’s Executive Bureau, 12. November 2003, Rabat. 45 Interview with a member of parliament and the PJD’s General Secretariat, 7. March 2003, Rabat. 46 King Hassan II died in 1999. At the beginning of his rein, his successor Mohammed VI. appeared to be committed to further liberalization. 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. 47 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. 48 At-Tajdid, 30. September 2002, pp. 1 & 3: “Al-intichabat al-haliyya mahattat ijabiyya fi tatawwur al-musalsal al- dimukratiyya bi baladna”. 49 The more uncompromising fraction is, since the party congress in April 2004, only represented with two members in the General Secretariat.
22
strategy of limited toleration. What made the Muslim Brotherhood dangerous in the eyes of
the authoritarian incumbents? We can identify three variables that account for a change of
regime strategy towards increased coercion: diffuse fears of an ‘Islamist threat’ in general, the
extent and success of the Brotherhood’s societal outreach, and the politicization of their
activities.50
At the early 1990s, the Egyptian regime was alarmed by the Algerian experience where
formally included Islamists challenged the military-backed government in elections to an
unprecedented extent later triggering fierce state reactions and almost a decade of chaos and
civil war. Clearly, the strength of the Islamist movement in Egypt is comparable to that in
Algeria. Apart from the Muslim Brotherhood, radical groups, such as Jihad and Jama’a
Islamiyya, challenged the state violently since the early 1980s and were decidedly outspoken
in their demand to overthrow the Mubarak government (cf. Hafez & Wiktorowicz, 2004). The
Egyptian regime has always differentiated concerning its containment strategies between the
moderate Muslim Brotherhood and those radical groups. However, the Jama’a Islamiyya’s
and Jihad’s militant initiative during the 1990s has almost certainly impaired opportunities for
the Brothers since it has – in very general terms – increased diffuse fears from an ‘Islamist
revolution’. Quite to the contrary in Morocco: Here, radical Islamist groups never turned into
a serious political threat making life for the moderate side of Islamism easier. Here, even an
organization like al-‘Adl wal-Ihsan that denies the monarchy its religious legitimacy, has
never used violent means.
Besides fears of a general ‘Islamist threat’, the Egyptian regime had any reason to be worried
from the increasing success of the movement in its societal outreach which was, in turn, only
made possible by the regime’s toleration of informal activities. As Hisham al-Awadi (2005)
observed, the Brotherhood made use of its financial capacities and organizational network to
increase its popularity: Financed by a parallel Islamic economic sector51, the organization
provided jobs, education, and health care and helped out with hardship funds and other
charitable services. Thus, Islamists took over the task of providing social services which had
been largely abandoned by the state due to the ailing economy in the 1980s. The regime must
have been on high alert with the growth of this parallel Islamic sector since it lost credibility
and, as a consequence, political legitimacy to the Islamists. As the main transmission belt for
50 Hamed Quisay highlighted the idea that Mubarak had consolidated his own grip on power during the 1990s and felt confident enough to put up a more confrontational stance towards the Brothers (Quisay, 2001, p. 14). 51 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
23
the provision of social services functioned the numerous private mosques and religious
endowments (Awqaf). Estimates want it that, in 1993, 170.000 mosques existed in Egypt of
whom only around 30.000 were sanctioned and controlled by the state; roughly half of all
private voluntary associations (some 15.000) are supposed to have religious foundations
(Wickham, 2002, pp. 98-99). While we cannot equate the entirety of the parallel Islamic
sector with the Muslim Brotherhood52, the latter is by far the largest and most important single
organization of Islamist social outreach bringing it to the centre of statist countermeasures.
A third aspect that raised concerns at the side of the Egyptian regime was the politicization of
the Muslim Brothers’ activities and – in this context – the Islamicization of existing political
institutions (Al-Awadi, 2005). Thus, Islamist outreach was a success story not only in
informal politics, but also in the formal political realm. A first sign of the Islamist take-over
of political institutions was the Islamicization of the opposition Labor Party. Originally
embracing a socialist ideology, the party took on an Islamist agenda since its cooperation with
the Muslim Brotherhood at the 1987 parliamentary elections. Another clear sign of the
Brothers’ dedication to ‘turn political’ was the attempt to create the Wasat as an own political
party in 1996.53 Most important in the context of the Islamicization of formal political
institutions was, however, the penetration of professional syndicates. In doing so, “Muslim
Brother activists gained an opportunity to hone their leadership skills, broaden their base of
support, and present an alternative model of political life” (Wickham, 1997, p. 131). To create
an ‘alternative model of political life’ was certainly not in the minds of Egypt’s rulers when
they tolerated the Muslim Brotherhood. Therefore, it is understandable that they shifted to an
alternative model of containment, that is essentially more repression.
Proposition 4: Both the formal inclusion and the repression or informal toleration of Islamist
movement organizations may lead to the moderation of the movement.
Egyptian residents in the Gulf countries, and the profit-making activities of Islamic associations (Wickham, 2002, p. 100). 52 Many organizations and associations are of an apolitical nature, and militant groups provided social services too as a case study in southern Egypt shows (Toth, 2003). 53 The Wasat was mainly an initiative of the Brotherhood’s middle generation of activists and initially included prominent members like Abdoul Moun’im Aboul Foutouh and Essam al-Irian. The importance of the project is emphasized by the fact that it was masterminded by the current Brotherhood leader, Muhammad Mahdi ‘Aqef. After an unsuccessful attempt to be legalized 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 organization. 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 modernization 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 (author’s interviews with Abu Ela Maadi, 25. January 2005, Cairo, and Muhammad Mahdi ‘Aqef, 18. January 2005, Cairo).
24
It is widely held in the theoretical literature that repressive statist policies would prompt the
radicalization of social movements, while more liberal treatments would encourage their
moderation (see Tarrow, 1998; Goldstein, 1983). A paradox of repressive strategies would be
that systematic repression “turns even moderate dissenters into opponents of the regime and
forces them to pose the problem of regime overthrow as the condition for reform” (Tarrow,
1998, p. 85). On the other side of the coin, it is held that more inclusivist regimes provide
incentives for moderation and co-operation (Goldstein, 1983, p. 341 et sqq.).
We would thus expect that the different strategies employed by the Moroccan and Egyptian
regimes should impact differently on the movements. Simply speaking, we should observe a
move towards protracted moderation in Morocco and towards radicalization in Egypt.54 The
trajectories of our cases, however, yield other results. We observe the Islamist movement’s
moderation not only in Morocco, but also in Egypt even though the regime switched to a
dominantly repressive strategy in the 1990s. When talking about ‘moderation’ and
‘radicalization’, we refer to the movement organizations’ means and strategies of political
action, and not so much to their discourses. Thus, speeches and appearances in the public may
well include ‘radical’ ideas. Moreover, we may often be tempted to distinguish between
‘radical’ and ‘moderate’ proponents of a movement. By moderation in our context, it is hold
that – today – both the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the Movement of Unity and Reform
in Morocco completely dismissed the use of violence, play by the rules of the political game,
do not challenge the regime, and – in this context – refrain from making use of the political
potential at their disposal.
It has already been shown that the PJD and the MUR have always displayed a very
compromising attitude towards the regime. By decreasing their coverage of the electoral
constituencies, they actively contributed to maintaining the balance in parliament. Besides
this, two controversial laws and a further decrease of the party’s coverage in the 2003
communal elections highlight the extent to which the Moroccan regime’s inclusivist approach
has provided incentives for the Islamists to opt in favor of moderate strategies. The PJD’s
parliamentary group’s eventual approval of two laws it had fiercely contested before showed
that it was ready to cross ideological boundaries and even to accept undesired law-making
over conflict with the regime: The reform of the Moroccan personal status code is an example
of the party’s readiness to step over ideological thresholds; the law against terrorism that
54 As studies of revolution and rebellion have shown, violent or revolutionary mobilizations were most likely when groups had initially made considerable gains in institutional power and were then suddenly excluded and repressed (Goldstone, 2003, p. 11). From that perspective, the period of greater institutional access in the 1980s should have even increased the likelihood of a more radical response by the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1990s.
25
reduces civil and political liberties is another indicator of the willingness to accept a
curtailment of political freedoms if the palace requires so.
The opposition against the modernization of the Moroccan personal status code as part of the
Youssoufi government’s Plan d’intégration de la femme au développement had been the key
event of Islamist mobilization in the first legislative period. The Islamists’ opposition centered
on elements they considered harmful to social morality.55 This protest was also conducted as a
general campaign against – what was called by the Islamists – the ‘conspiracy’ of the
francophone, secularist elites and international organizations against Islamic values.56 The
amendments of the personal status code that the King eventually proposed in October 2003
are very similar to the original reform project of the government. Both PJD and MUR
immediately issued favorable statements qualifying the reform as a pioneering project that
would serve the interests of families and women.
Less covered by the media but pointing to the same direction, is the case of the law against
terrorism. Only five days after the Casablanca attacks of 16. May 2003, the government
pushed for the adoption of a law that defined any ‘disturbance of the public order’ as a
terrorist act. The law contains provisions that allow the security forces to hold suspects for
twelve days without access to a lawyer and remarkably extends the range of crimes subject to
death sentences. When the government presented the draft bill in February 2003, the PJD had
strongly criticized it as a blow to human rights and democracy. After the Casablanca incident,
however, the law was declared an issue of national interest and the PJD – in need to send a
strong public message that it opposed all terrorist acts – voted in favor of most articles of the
bill and did not propose own amendments.
It has to be noted that the vote for these laws occurred after 16. May 2003. Since then, the
party was eager to demonstrate that it was first and foremost concerned with the Moroccan
national interest. 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. Some demonstrations have been banned that the PJD
wanted to organize together with other Islamist organizations as an Islamist public statement
55 Especially raising the minimum age for marriages, the abolition of polygamy, and the women’s right to conclude marriages without a ‘marital tutor’. 56 The Plan d'intégration de la femme au développement that contained the reform never even became a law project. After being faced not only with extra-parliamentary mobilization but also with critiques inside his government, the Prime Minister conferred the issue to a royal commission. The commission that eventually dealt with the reform of the personal status code was composed of religious scholars and presided by the King.
26
against terrorism. 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.
While the party’s behavior needs to be contextualized in this climate of more general anti-
Islamist public opinion, it has to be stressed that the regime did not at any point in time
threaten to reverse formal inclusion. The case of Mustafa Ramid illustrates that the regime
had not revised its integrative attitude per se: All too outspoken regarding the regime's
interventions in parliamentary politics and the violations of human rights he was forced to
resign as head of the PJD’s parliamentary group and became unacceptable as a future
Secretary General. However, he remained, throughout this period, a member of a royal
commission for human rights. As regards the party’s chosen strategy, PJD leaders like to
stress that it should be understood as a logical continuation of their moderate outlook. The
2003 coverage, for instance, is portrayed as a mere variation of the old principle of
‘qualitative’ participation: “Le principe était là, c’est l’amplitude du principe qui a du
changer”.57
In sum, the strategies the Moroccan Islamists adopted in the sensitive moments of 2003 show
as to what great extent the Islamists perceive the benefits deriving from being a legal political
actor. Very importantly, the necessity of a moderate and prudent approach is accepted by a
majority of the party members as is shown in the relatively low degree of intra-party protest58
and the recent overwhelming support for Saadeddine al-Othmani – the architect of the post-
may 16th strategy – in the elections for the party’s presidency. Thus, the Moroccan case
soundly demonstrates the interactions between formal inclusion and continuous moderation.
In Egypt, there are some very clear signs that the regime’s repressive treatment of the Muslim
Brotherhood had moderating effects too. Contrary to the 1980s, when the Brothers fletched
their muscles against the regime, the organization’s prime aim to date seems to be not to anger
or even challenge the regime. Most importantly, the Brotherhood does not draw on its
massive public support to carry politics to the street. This would be a reaction quite
understandable when we bear in mind that the organization’s participation in formal politics is
tightly restricted. The Brotherhood undoubtedly has the potential to organize large public
rallies which is proven by the massive appearances of supporters mourning the death of their
leaders in recent years. Only at one instance, however, did a public demonstration imply a
57 Author’s interview with a member of the PJD’s General Secretariat and coordinator of the 2003 electoral campaign, 04. September 2003. 58 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.
27
political message: at the anti-Iraq-war demonstrations at 27. and 28. March 2003. These
demonstrations have been tacitly approved by the regime and even jointly organized by its
security forces (Schemm, 2003). By contrast, oppositional street politics in Egypt takes place
without the Muslim Brotherhood. At the time of writing, a new movement was shaking
politics in that they turn to the streets to express their ultimate slogan, ‘Kifaya!’ (‘Enough!’),
calling for an end of the Mubarakist rule in Egypt.59 The ‘Kifaya’-movement seems to be
rather heterogeneous and complies independent socialist, liberal, Nasserist, and also Islamist
forces. However, Brotherhood leaders emphasize that they are out of that game since they fear
massive state repression towards the organization.60
In the formal political arena, the Muslim Brotherhood retains a decidedly low profile too.
With some few exceptions, the organization’s parliamentarians are not very active. In the last
15 years, even the controlled and co-opted opposition in the political parties and most human
rights organizations have been more critical and have launched attacks on some state policies,
such as the protracted application of the emergency law, human rights violations, and rigged
elections to the parliament and professional syndicates (cf. Kienle, 2001). While Brotherhood
voices remain largely unheard in these political discourses, it is striking that they are not even
at the forefront of Islamist campaigns: During the 1990s, Islamist attacks on liberal
intellectuals have been launched by established political parties (al-Wafd, Labor Party) or
even by pillars of the state (al-Azhar, some within the NDP), but not by the Muslim
Brotherhood (cf. Lübben & Fawzy, 2000).
To many observers in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood appears today as a toothless tiger. This
is all the more striking in times when political opposition seems to be more active and vivid
than ever before. Since the second half of 2004, the Egyptian regime came under pressure
from Kifaya, the established opposition parties that strive for a better political representation,
and a small group of individuals around Saad Eddin Ibrahim, Nawal Saadawi, and
Muhammad Faried Hassanein, who launched a personal drive against Mubarak. With rising
US pressure and presidential and parliamentary elections at the horizon in autumn 2005, the
Mubarak regime may face a crucial test all the more so since the question of political
succession remains an unresolved puzzle for the stability of the political regime. It seems,
however, that the incumbents will not face any trouble from the Muslim Brotherhood – still
by far the strongest opposition force in Egypt. As concerns this election year, Brotherhood
59 At the time of writing, Kifaya had organized three public demonstrations between December 2004 and February 2005. While the number of usually around 200 participants are not extraordinarily impressive, the mere fact that president Mubarak stands in the focus of public oppositional attacks is intriguing in itself and may well bear witness for a crumbling red line.
28
representatives made it very clear that the organization will not take on any role in the
presidential elections which is a clear sign that it has no interest in questioning the power
center of the country. The Brotherhood prepares to participate in the parliamentary elections
but remains open to follow the rules that the state sets.61
Concluding Remarks
Our inquiry shows that Islamist movements and organizations can persist over a long period
of time in authoritarian settings. This is, at first sight, a rather intriguing fact. One would
indeed assume that authoritarian incumbents should prevent the rise of such strong non-state
actors in order to secure regime stability. As is shown, however, Islamist movement
organizations do not necessarily challenge authoritarian regimes even though they do have the
potential to do so. Therefore, their existence does not automatically lead to either systemic
regime change (i.e. democratization, ‘Islamic’ revolutions) or the elimination of the
movements by their authoritarian counterparts. From a state-versus-society perspective, we
can thus denote a protracted and stable coexistence of strong authoritarian states and strong
Islamist movements.
In this context, our analysis concentrated on the questions of why Islamist movement
organizations yield to statist rules, and how authoritarian incumbents contain strong
movements. For the latter issue, one may ask why the two regimes did not, after all, attempt to
calm down troubling waters simply by eliminating Islamist movements by force. Both Egypt
and Morocco would have the necessary coercive means at their disposal. The answer is
simple: While coercion does remain the ultimate means of power maintenance, the necessity
to create some sort of ‘liberal’ legitimacy prohibits the unrestricted and massive use of state
repression which would certainly be necessary to eliminate the Islamist movements
altogether. Thus, in order to create a picture of a relatively liberal form of autocracy, the
authoritarian incumbents in Egypt and Morocco found it more apt to introduce a flexible
containment regime: ‘Soft repression’, co-optation, or even the formal inclusion of Islamists
are strategies of containment which often replace the use of blunt repression. The persistence
of Islamist movements does even imply some advantages for the two regimes: In both
countries, Islamists are an important player in a juggling act, by which opposition forces are
pit against each other. Thus, in Egypt as well as in Morocco, struggles and contention occur
60 Author’s interviews with Brotherhood representatives, December 2004 and January 2005, Cairo. 61 Muhammad Habib, member of the Maktab al-Irshad and Deputy to the Murshid al-‘Amm, made it clear that the Brotherhood will not provoke the government and thus confine its participation to a small number of constituencies (author’s interview, 20. December 2004, Cairo).
29
between leftist and Islamist groups probably even more often than between regime and
opposition. Why play the Islamists by these rules? For them, the states’ treatments come as
carrots and sticks. Clearly, they are subject to repression at a much greater degree than other
opposition forces. On the other hand, hopes have been manifest among the Islamists that they
would gain recognition as an accepted player in politics since more than two decades.
So far the similarities between Egypt and Morocco, but where are the differences? It is
obvious that, for an Islamist, life is much easier in Morocco than in Egypt. ‘Legality’ is the
key to understanding the different roles the two Islamist movement organizations take on. In
Morocco, the formal inclusion of the MUR has served the regime in several ways: It has
bolstered the regime’s ‘democratic’ image and, at the same time, involved the containment of
leftist opposition parties. On the other hand, the participation in elections has enabled the
Moroccan movement to increase its organizational capacities, to broaden its support
remarkably, and to impact directly on the agenda setting of existing political organizations.
For instance, 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. In Egypt, this development could already be
witnessed since the 1980s. This was certainly the prime reason for the Egyptian regime’s
more careful stance towards the inclusion of the Muslim Brotherhood. Here, an inherent lack
of legitimacy caused a more pronounced threat perception on the side of the regime, and, as a
consequence, a repressive backlash during the last 15 years. However, as in Morocco, the
Muslim Brotherhood survived as a powerful, moderate, and homogenous social movement
organization whose political impact, though, remains rather limited and does not reflect the
relevance and potential of the movement.
When we turn our eyes towards questions of democracy and democratization processes, our
cases imply only limited findings primarily since we do not witness anything close to
democracy or even democratization in Egypt and Morocco. However, strong Islamist
movement organizations are interesting cases to look at concerning their potential to trigger
democratization processes because they are the most powerful non-state actors in the two
countries. When we ask – in this context – about the preconditions for the take-off of
democratization processes and the role of such movements therein, we shall ask: Do they
emerge as a serious challenger and contender of the state? Do they have any allies both within
the state or society? As we have shown here, the answer to this two questions can only be
‘no’. Still, this is not a ‘no’ based on the perception that Islamist movements would be
incompatible with democracy due to their ideological foundations. While this remains a rather
30
hypothetical question to date, our presumption would be that our two movements would well
play by democratic rules. They have shown in their recent history that they are quite adaptable
and flexible particularly as concerns ideological traits, and when they have relevant
incentives. Thus, Islamist movements are not on another planet simply because they are
‘Islamist’. Rather, we should perceive them as rational actors in politics that make their
choices according to opportunities or disincentives. On the other hand, the potential to induce
democratization processes (or the lack of it) should not be looked for in the Islamists but in
the ability of the authoritarian regimes to keep their hold on power alive and, thus, foreclose
anything which could end up as a democratization process.
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