The failure of political Islam

The demonstration was almost perfect: in Egypt, after a year in power, the Islamists showed that they were incapable of running the state and had little idea how to islamicise a society that, in any case, had largely islamicised itself. The population has risen up against the Islamists, not to protest the introduction of Sharia law but rather the incompetence and nepotism of the Muslim Brotherhood. The crowds in Cairo were not only from the secular, liberal left. One saw among their number pious Muslims, Salafists and veterans of the Arab Spring.

The Brotherhood have lost the very thing that has lent them legitimacy in the past 60 years: the monopoly on the political expression of Islam. The Salafists, far from playing a supporting role, have turned themselves into a political party and, for the time being, have joined the ranks of the opposition to the Brotherhood. Religious institutions such as the Al-Azhar Islamic University have declared themselves autonomous with respect not only to the Brotherhood but also to the government. The Sufis are in the street once again, too.

It’s clear that the re-islamicisation of Egyptian society which has been going on for the past 30 years has not benefited the Brotherhood, with their authoritarian, patriarchal, centralised vision of religious authority. On the contrary, it has benefited new, highly individualised and diversified forms of religiosity. Paradoxically, the spread of Salafism expresses the emergence of a more individualistic, less ideological and politicised form of Islam. The religious sphere has been democratised, even if this hadn’t led to reform or secularisation. If the older generation in the Brotherhood, who thought they owned religious politics, didn’t understand what was going on, a large part of the electorate, sympathisers and younger cadres saw that it was time for the Islamist party to reform itself.

In short, this was the failure of political Islam. And one could have hoped that Egypt was about to escape from the paradigm that has held political life in Egypt and the Arab world in its grip for 35 years: self-declared secular dictatorships versus so-called revolutionary Islamism. And then the army fired into the crowds in Cairo.

Why? Perhaps it’s all they know. Or perhaps they wanted to foment chaos in order to assume leadership, either directly–but who can believe that the army would know how to run the country?–or indriectly, as has been the case in Pakistan, through the agency of a corrupt and manipulated political class.

The army has succeeded in restoring to the Muslim Brotherhood the status of martyrs and oppositionists, which, in the last analysis, is the only stance that really suits the Islamists. They have also discredited the opposition to the Brotherhood. How could self-proclaimed liberals countenance coming to power at the point of bloody bayonets? How could pious Salafists, having courageously thrown themselves into the political fray, stand by while their Muslim cousins were shot at? And how could the veterans of Tahrir Square celebrate a coup d’état?

Maybe one could expect a reaction from the opposition, for them to take their distance and to establish a space for political negotiation between all forces in Egypt? But in order to do that the demonstrators in Tahrir Square would have had to leave behind the protest culture of the street, in which the military is the sole arbiter. It is interesting to note, incidentally, that on both sides of the Mediterranean, the demand for democracy has been made by protest movements, like the Spanish “indignados”, who take to the streets each time they think their revolution is being betrayed, but who aren’t really seeking to construct a stable, institutionalised political space – which leaves the way clear for the old, established parties.

One would hope that the Muslim Brotherhood, having expressed their anger, won’t stint on the self-criticism and reform that is necessary if they are not to find themselves ghettoised once more. But in order to do that a new generation is required; a cumbersome, gerontocratic hierarchy is hardly to go to submit itself to such changes. The only source of legitimacy for the Brotherhood, as Morsi insisted in his last speech, was elections, not Islam. And that’s why there should be elections as soon as possible.

 

Olivier Roy is a professor at the European University Institute in Florence. He is the author of “Globalized Islam" (Chicago University Press) and “Holy Ignorance” (Hurst & Co).

 

Translated by Jonathan Derbyshire