long beards vs short beards

I haven't had time to follow the Kuwaiti elections as closely as I would have liked, but the results are interesting.  Most of the English-language coverage has emphasized that Islamists did well, increasing their share of Parliament to 21 out of 50 seats, women again failed to win any seats, and liberals roughly held steady.  Shia, who make up about a third of the population, increased their share from 3 seats to 5 (10% is better than 6%, but still far from equitable);  all of their winning candidates were reportedly Islamists, including several who sparked sectarian anger over their praise for Hezbollah a while back, and some of the Saudi media in particular seem to eagerly anticipate increased Sunni-Shia tension. 

But as my colleague Nathan Brown, just back from observing the election, put it, the real story is  "long beards good, short beards bad." 

Salafi Khaled Sultan and friend work the phones:  "long beards", photo courtesy of al-Jazeera

Dr. Badr al-Nashi, Islamic Constitutional Movement ("short beards"), photo via Ikhwanweb

What does that mean?  The key change seems to be in intra-Islamist competition: the decline of the Islamic Constitutional Movement - the Muslim Brotherhood style party, i.e. "short beards" - and the rise of the salafi movement, i.e. the "long beards".   The ICM (which formally split with the MB back in 1991 over the organization's attitude to the Iraqi invasion, but which remains an MB-style party and is routinely identified as such) won only 3 seats, down from 6.  The Islamic Salafi Alliance - which reportedly is thinking about forming a political party, but hasn't yet done so, which would really blur one of the long-standing distinctions with the MB across the region - won 10 seats, with another 8 seats going to independent Islamists (many from tribal areas).

This might have less to do with changes in actual underlying preferences than with the effects of the new electoral law, as some reports suggest that the ICM simply bungled the tribal vote and lost several seats it should have won.   Islam Online quotes both salafi and Muslim Brotherhood figures arguing that the results had more to do with electoral politics than with any real change in support for either salafism or the Ikwhan - but also cites Hamed al-Ali, a former leader in the salafi movement and an influential frequent contributor to jihadist forums, claiming that the results demonstrated the widespread public acceptance of Islamist discourse among Kuwaitis.  I suspect this will be debated intensely in the coming months. 

In general, though, I'd suggest that a decline in the MB-style Islamic Constitutional Movement and a rise in the power of the salafis and independents is certainly relevant in the context of the questions I posed last week about the "Muslim Brotherhood firewall":  such salafis would have both a different ideological stance and less of an organizational component.  Local context matters, and I doubt that it is fair to just describe all of the salafis as "radical" as some of the news coverage has, but there are clear doctrinal and organizational and political differences between them and the ICM.   Look forward to hearing from Kuwait specialists on the topic - comments or emails!

UDPATE:  for more, see Nathan Brown's guest post "Do the salafis really want to party?"

Comments

[bb]

Realise as a woman my interests in the women of Kuwait might not rate much attention, but AA, have you any information as to whether there were more or LESS women candidates in this election compared to the last, and whether their share of the total vote improved or not or went backwards?

[Abdurrahman R. Squires]

I think your comments about beard length are, although seemingly somewhat tongue-in-cheek, rather interesting. The Salafis, as you probably know, are rather obsessed with the outward aspects of Islam, often at expense of the inward (which is why the "neo-Pharisee" label is sometimes applied to them). I generally don't count them amongst the sharpest tools in the shed, but they're no doubt crafty enough to realize that their more "Islamic" appearance often provides an air of Islamic authenticity in the minds of less religiously educated Muslims. It's a sad statement that playing the "Islamic appearance" card even counts for much, but it seemingly does.

I remember hearing an Islamic scholar say, when asked which scholar one should follow if faced with conflicting opinions (fatwas), in a clearly jesting tone, "Why the one with the longest beard, of course!" No doubt he was taking a swipe at an unfortunate mentality that does indeed exist. I think a lot of whatever grassroots support Osama bin Laden actually has in the Muslim world is due to some Muslims allowing themselves to be unduly influenced by his outward "religious" appearance.

You should know, however, that beard length in Kuwait, where I lived for four years, can be deceiving. Meaning, of course, not that the actual length is deceiving, but rather the religious affiliation that's normally associated with it. That's because a lot of the Ikhwanis in Kuwait have beards that are much longer than many Salafis tend to wear in other Muslim countries-which is not to dispute your point that in this election, the generally longer Salafis won out over the usually shorter Ikhwanis. However, in this tiny Gulf state, a person's tribal affiliation often has as much or more to do with their appearance, beard length included, than their religiousness or lack thereof.

Anyway, I hope this election isn't a sign that Kuwaiti society is moving more to the extremes in regard to their Islamic outlook, especially because the more Salafi one gets, the more anti-Shi'a one tends to become. I find it interesting that the Shi'a have not won more seats in the Majlis, since they do indeed make up about a third of the voting-eligible population. Why do you think that is? Are they voting along tribal, instead of religious, lines or are they divided amongst themselves?

[Brian Ulrich]

On the Shi'ites: Earlier I would have guessed they were too scattered, but the fact moving to five electoral districts didn't alter the landscape seems to belie that. My impression is that the "tribal vote" is mostly Sunni, but that could be wrong. In Iraq tribal religion tends to relate to proximity to the shrine cities, but Kuwait is close to al-Hasa.