Abu Aardvark

Cracks in the Foundation

I spent the day today at a fascinating day-long conference organized by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point about the various internal and external challenges to al-Qaeda within the Islamic world.  By Chatham House Rule I can't talk about the specifics of who was there or what was said, but I can say that it was one of the more interesting events of its kind I've been to lately.    Speakers looked in depth at the experience of radical Islamist movements in Yemen and Algeria, the internal arguments within jihadist circles (including some made famous recently by Larry Wright and Peter Bergen, but others as well), the various ramifications of al-Qaeda's relationship with various affiliate movements from Iraq to the Maghreb, the role of various trends in Saudi salafism, and more. Wish I could offer more detail but really can't. 

There's no rule against my describing my own talk, though.  I spoke about the relationship between al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood:  not about the arguments over whether and how to engage with the MB, and not about the deep history of the relationship (back to the splits in the Egyptian MB over Qutb) but specifically over how AQ and the MB view each other today.   While I'm not going to reproduce the whole talk here (I will be turning it into an article very soon if I can just find the time), and I'm not going to repeat familiar parts such as the core doctrinal differences between the two movements, the basic argument was that this long-simmering relationship turned "hot" in late 2005 - early 2006. It has increasingly emerged as a central ideological battlefield within Islamist politics, triggered by Zarqawi's bombing of the hotels in Amman (which made things very difficult for the Jordanian MB), the Hamas electoral victory in January 2006 (perhaps the single most divisive moment), the Hezbollah-Israel conflict (where much of the MB sided with Hezbollah but jihadist purists refused to accept the Shia party as legitimate), and - of course - Iraq.  Keeping in mind the importance of local variation (MB organizations really differ from country to country) and splits within individual MB organizations (the struggles between different trends within MB youth), it's difficult to miss the rising salience of the core doctrinal and organizational divides. 

It isn't always appreciated the extent to which Iraq proved a particular challenge to the MB.  Most MB members opposed the war, and supported the 'muqawima'.  But the rise of Zarqawi's methods and ideology repelled many of them, leading to sharp public controversies between Zarqawi and Yusuf al-Qaradawi (among others).   It is quite interesting that there has been virtually no evidence of any MB ‘foreign fighters’ in Iraq, while in one al-Ekhlaas posting in October 2007, Abdullah Mansour complained:  ‘why has the Ikhwan not issued one official statement calling its followers to jihad in Iraq?”  The decision of the MB's Islamic Party to contest elections in 2005 and join the government placed it at sharp odds with prevailing sentiment in most of the Islamic world, not just al-Qaeda, and disturbed many within the Muslim Brotherhood itself - tying Jordanian and Egyptian MB leaders who I've interviewed over the last couple of years into knots. It highlighted, according to the Palestinian-Jordanian journalist Yasir al-Za'atra, the absence of any real global MB organization able to control its national organizations. 

The split between the nationalist jihadist 'muqawima' factions and the Islamic State of Iraq (AQI) in April 2007 drove this to a fever pitch, with the jihadist forums (led by statements by Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Hamza al-Muhajir) coming to define nearly all of their Islamic rivals as "Ikhwani"... wiith this label extending even to salafi stalwarts such as Abdullah Janabi, the 'hero' of Falluja,  Hareth al-Dhari of the Assocation of Muslim Scholar of Iraq, the Islamic Army of Iraq, al-Jazeera (or, as they call it al-Khanzeera), and even at one point Hamed al-Ali.  Shamal al-Baghdadi summed this up a few months ago on an al-Ekhlaas posting, confessing that he didn't "know where to start with the conspiracies, treasons, hateful alliances", dubbing them the "ikhwan of apostasy, living under thumb of the tyrants and ruwafidh.. they are no better than Awakenings,  Abu Rishas by another name."   

At any rate, my talk drew on both my ongoing research into the Muslim Brotherhood and on a rather vast quantity of postings on jihadist forums over the last five years to track the eruption of the "Ikhwan issue" in the jihadist consciousness and the MB response.   Among the many, many examples that I drew upon were the works of Akram Hijazi, a Jordanian who has emerged as one of key ideologues of the centrality of MB/AQ conflict (perhaps because he’s Jordanian, where salafi jihadists much stronger than in most of Arab world); a massive five part expose by Abd al-Majid Abd al-Karim Hazeen on al-Ekhlaas in August 2007 of “the conspiracies of the Ikhwan against Islam and its people"; a number of direct appeals to Brotherhood members to join the jihad; the surprisingly large amount of time Ayman al-Zawahiri devoted to the MB, Hamas and Qaradawi in his Q+A session;  and dozens of others.  As ‘abu qandahar’ wrote on the al-Ekhlaas forum in October 2007, the "Islamic world is divided between two projects, jihad and Ikhwan."   How and why that came to be so - and whether it's really even true - is a fascinating story... which will have to wait for that article!

GP: The MB in Saudi Arabia

Last week I wrote about an interesting piece by Mohanna Hubayl on the state of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Gulf.  I was curious about the accuracy of his descriptions, and asked some colleagues for their take.  I got some informal thoughts on the subject from Thomas Hegghammer, one of the best young(ish) scholars working on Saudi Islamism.  Recall that I summarized Hubayl's brief comments on Saudi Arabia like this:  "the MB peacefully and voluntarily liquidated itself, he claims. The main pillars of MB thought remain but many of its former members have moved to the conservative salafi trend. "

Hegghammer:  The MB in Saudi Arabia is a mysterious entity that is extremely difficult to pin down, because they do not have a formal organizational presence. Nevertheless, some people and communities are known to have more or less of a MB orientation. As such, the MB blends into the Sahwa and the two are often lumped together, especially by liberals (and by Prince Nayif). It is useful to think of the Sahwa as a spectrum with pure MB ideology on the one hand and pure wahhabism on the other. Muhammad Qutb would be far out on the left, Musa al-Qarni three-quarters to the left and Salman al-Awda somewhere in the middle. Two implications follow: first, it is extremely difficult to assess the state of the MB, and second, you never know what people mean when they speak of the MB in Saudi.

If by the MB al-Hubayl means the Sahwa, which I suspect, then I would agree with the assessment. The Sahwa, already out of steam in the late 1990s, has been further weakened by Hawali's hospitalisation and al-Awda's near-total cooptation. They still remain relatively popular and there is a new generation of Sahwists coming up, but their politics are not very contentious any more. I am not sure exactly who al-Hubayl has in mind when he says MB figures have moved to the salafi trend. I should say I don't follow the Sahwa very closely; I am sure Stephane has a lot more to say about this. [editorial note:  Stephane, consider this a call to action!   Please phone home.]

Me:  That sounds about right to me - what I can't figure out is what it means to have the MB without an organization?  Is it still the MB if it's just a bunch of like-minded individuals?

Hegghammer:  Your questions are spot on. Apart from ideological leanings, the most operational way to identify MB-oriented people would be to look at their international contact network. Some Saudis are more closely in touch with Muslim Brothers abroad than others. Hence the international Islamic organizations such as the Muslim World League are said to be bastions of Ikhwanism in the Kingdom. But I am not sure whether this means much for domestic politics.

Carry on.

UPDATE:  ask and ye shall receive:  Stephane Lacroix, elevated from comments (thanks!):

The MB has traditionally existed as an independent network within the Saudi Sahwa - and I have met several persons claiming to be affiliates of the Saudi MB while in the kingdom.

During the last few decades, however, many consider that the Saudi MB have lost their ideological specificity, and have drawn much closer to the mainstream salafi trend found in the Sahwa - to the extent that they have become pretty indistinguishable. This is, I suppose, what al-Hubayyil means when he writes that the "the MB peacefully and voluntarily liquidated itself".

The criticism formulated here by al-Hubayyil is quite common among the young generation of Saudi MB sympathizers, who consider the current context (post-9/11 widespread criticism of salafism/wahhabism, etc...) as favorable to the emergence of the MB as a religious alternative in Saudi Arabia. However, these calls for an "MB renewal" haven't yet led to any significant change in the Saudi political-religious sphere.   

Salafis Rising in Yemen and Beyond?

Khalil el-Anani, an Egyptian scholar currently resident at Brookings, has just published an interesting analysis in al-Ahram Weekly, entitled "Salafis Ascendent in the Arab World":

Wherever you look in the Arab world, Islamist conservatism of the brand known as "Salafist" is gaining ground while moderates seem to be running out of steam. Even regional satellite television stations seem more interested in conservatives than in the mainstream or opposition moderates. Also, many social institutions have fallen into the hands of the Salafis.

Recently, the Salafist trend has widened its appeal to the Arab public. No longer confining themselves to their conventional preaching places, such as the mosque and home gatherings, conservatives are using hi-tech methods, including blogging and Facebook....

So why is the public lapping it all up? In my opinion, a major part of the blame rests with Arab regimes that have been clamping down on other relatively moderate political and Islamist options. The "scorched earth" policies of Arab regimes played a major part in the growth of the Salafi trend in the Arab world. Arab regimes have consistently repressed moderate Islamists, especially those affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, in countries such as Morocco, Algeria, Egypt and Jordan. For the past year or so, moderate Islamists have been relegated to a minor role in pubic life at best. The moderates are becoming marginalised, both intellectually and organisationally, and they seem to have lost all hope in ever becoming influential again.

The regimes tolerated Salafis, sometimes even encouraged them, at the expense of other politically active religious currents. This is true in Jordan, Egypt and Kuwait, among other places. Some regimes are actually fine with the rise of conservative Islam. For one thing, conservatives are not politically active, and therefore less of a threat to authorities. Also, ruling regimes hope to use conservatives to undermine moderate Islamists, especially the Muslim Brotherhood. The attitude of the Egyptian regime to the Muslim Brotherhood reminds me of the way president Anwar El-Sadat encouraged Islamists in order to undermine leftists, a course that turned out disastrous in hindsight.

I'm not sure why he includes the elevation of Himmam Said as guide of the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood as an example  - Said's a hawk, to be sure, but not exactly a salafi.  At any rate, very interesting and worth the read.   

I would pair Anani's article with a recent Islam Online article asking whether Yemeni Salafis would form a political party (written by a Yemeni author I don't know, Ahmed Mohammed al-Doghshi).     Most discussion that I've seen of the rising salafi trend in Yemen has focused on extremism.  This article describes a surging salafi trend fueled by the return of several old leaders and by changing internal dynamics, including some serious internal doctrinal and strategic debates.  As in Kuwait, the possible move by salafis into the field of electoral politics would be quite an interesting ideological and political development.  The article quotes several Yemeni salafist leaders who express deep skepticism about organized political work, in keeping with their usual norms, but also shows signs of rethinking on the part of others within the leadership.   

So is Yemen another case of an Arab country with a declining Muslim Brotherhood-style movement (the Islah party) and a rising salafi trend? How would this matter, if it were?  After all, Islah has long been a complex, internally divided movement which balanced a range of Islamist discourses - for instance, that of Abd al-Majid Zindani, who the US government thinks is an al-Qaeda supporter.   I would love to hear from the Yemen followers out there what they make of this article, and of its description of the relative balance between Islah and the salafis.   And everyone else feel free to weigh in on Khalil el-Anani's wider assessment. 

 

MB in the Gulf

A few weeks back I wrote about the shifting balance between the Muslim Brotherhood and the salafi trend in Kuwait, and tied it to a broader set of questions about how this might affect al-Qaeda and other forms of radicalization.  So I was very interested by an article last week (June 3) on Islam Online written by the Saudi Islamist Mohanna al-Hubayl about the state of the Ikhwan throughout the Gulf. 

Hubayl writes that the Kuwaiti election results should come as a major shock and wake up call to the MB, demonstrating that the general rise in Islamic sentiment in the Gulf will not necessarily translate into support for their organization.   The decline in the MB's popularity is not limited to Kuwait, he argues.  It extends across the entire Gulf, and is tied to the rise of the interlinked threats of America's military presence, the rise of Iranian power, and the ascension of competing salafi movements. 

He looks at each country in turn:

• Saudi Arabia:  the MB peacefully and voluntarily liquidated itself, he claims. The main pillars of MB thought remain but many of its former members have moved to the conservative salafi trend.  (Is that true?  I wish he had said more than that - he gives only a very perfunctory note on the Saudi case.)
  
• Oman:  the MB lives in an ongoing transitional period, ever since a confrontation with the Sultan over a visit by Shimon Peres.  After that, the MB faced a harsh security crackdown.  But in what he calls a historic decision, the MB refused to be dragged into a sectarian conflict with the Ibadis and Shia despite efforts to push them in that direction. 
• UAE:  despite some interesting developments among the cadres and youth of the MB, intense security obstacles prevented them from doing much by way of renewing their thought or engaging in popular actions. 
• Bahrain:  the salafi trend rose up and overwhelmed the MB - to the point of hegemony over the Sunni Islamist field. 
  
• Qatar:  despite being formally dissolved (cf Abdullah Nefissi) the Qatari MB retains a powerful presence intellectually and in the media.  But he sees the 'nahda' efforts of Dr Jassem Sultan as effective only beneath a clear ceiling, lacking a wider reform vision. 

He therefore sees the Kuwaiti Islamist movement as better positioned than its Gulf counterparts because of the democratic elections and political parties there, so uncommon throughout the Gulf region, which makes its evident decline all the more shocking.   He claims to see some encouraging signs of a critical spirit emerging among the MB youth in Kuwait (and to some extent further in the Gulf, though nowhere as developed as the reformist youth in Egypt, who clearly impress him).  But he fears they will be stifled by the organizations and by their lack of either a well-developed concept of internal reform or of a political strategy.

He notes that despiting playing no formal role in the Gulf organizations, the Egyptian (international) MB has nevertheless had a negative impact because of its controversial stances on Iraq (the Iraqi Islamic Party under Tareq al-Hashemi taking part in the political process but remained part of the MB, the performance of the MB-linked insurgency factions); Palestine (many in the Gulf saw the MB's efforts on behalf of Hamas and the blockade of Gaza as inadequate); and Hezbollah (its support for Hezbollah shocked a lot of people in the Gulf, who are less favorably inclined to Shia).    

He concludes that the MB in the Gulf lacks a strategic vision and is losing its ties to the people.  By imposing doctrinal and organizational conformity, and refusing alliances with other reformist trends, the Gulf MB was losing its appeal to the youth and failing to renew itself.   He therefore calls for internal reforms and a renewal of the movement's thought and political discourse - but doesn't seem particularly sure as to where such new energy might come from. 

In short, a pretty grim diagnosis of the state of the MB in the Gulf from this "friendly critic". It would be interesting if he performed the same exercise on the salafi competition and other political trends.  I would be very curious to hear from people studying the MB in any of these countries.  Does Hubayl get it right?  What does he miss?  And if he's right, what are the implications for Islamism more broadly in the Gulf?  Thomas H? Stephane L? Bernie H?  I'm looking at you!   (But not only at you... anyone out there, drop me a note.)

 

Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood in tough times

One of the main items on my agenda in Amman last week was to check in with the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood, which is actually more interesting right now than it has been in years. I guess trouble and turmoil builds character.   The JMB has been under great pressure for the last few years, with the tacit deals which used to govern relations with the Hashemite regime long since broken down.   The regime has been playing tough, with the November 2005 hotel bombings and the early 2006 Hamas electoral victory generally seen as the turning point.  The crackdown has been on all fronts - not just the blatant interventions in the municipal and Parliamentary elections, but also the government taking over the leadership of a key Islamic charity on thin allegations of corruption (no evidence of which I have yet seen produced) and interfering with MB social services and outreach efforts throughout the country.   

The JMB has seemed divided and uncertain about how to respond to these new conditions.  I have heard and read a lot of accounts now of deep conflicts between hawks and doves over the nature of political participation, Jordanian-Palestinian tensions, class issues, and the struggles of the organization to renew itself in the face of sustained regime pressure and challenges from the salafi flank.  After the electoral disaster in 2007, tensions inside the MB and IAF seemed to boil over, with the dismissal of the Shura Council and new leadership elections - resulting most recently in the elevation of the Palestinian-origin hawk Dr Himman Said to the position of general guide.   

During my week in Amman I talked to some of the best Jordanian analysts of the movement, as well as several MB/IAF leaders.  The general consensus seems to be that the sustained regime repression has taken a real toll on the movement, strengthening hawkish, more radical voices in the JMB and weakening the hand of the doves... a dynamic we see playing out again and again, most recently in this week's reports of the rising conservative (dawa) role in the Egyptian MB's shura council. But there is a lot of disagreement about whether this has had a serious effect on the movement's popularity and about the future of the movement.  And, of course, it's important to take into account the self-interest of Jordanian MB leaders in telling an American researcher that regime repression is weakening moderates...

My friend Mohammad Abu Rumman – whose monograph on the 2007 Parliamentary elections I highly recommend – has become a prominent advocate of the position that the MB has been badly weakened by the regime's efforts.  His accounts of the internal disarray in the JMB and Islamic Action Front have provoked some clear resentment within those organizations (dropping his name didn't have quite the effect I had anticipated!), but seem accurate and well-sourced to me.  But other equally well-placed analysts argue that Abu Rumman overstates the decline of the organization and misses its real, continuing, and even growing strength.  Certainly, all point out, no other opposition movement has emerged to compete with it - if anything, the JMB's struggles have left a political void which is hardly healthy.

One example of the controversy:  Abu Rumman argues that the MB has become primarily an organization of the Palestinian middle class, losing Jordanians and the lower classes either to salafi groups or to non-Islamist trends.  But Yasir Abu Hilala, the al-Jazeera correspondent and al-Ghad columnist, argues that the "Palestinianization" of the MB is actually a regime strategy - as in the co-opting of prominent Jordanian members with government portfolios and the equation of the JMB with Hamas -  which is doomed to fail.  Which is right?

So on my last day in Amman I had long conversations with two senior leaders from the IAF, Ali Abu Sukkar and Ruhayl al-Ghuraybeh, and chatted with the party director and half a dozen people hanging around the office (including Shaykh Hamza Mansour, who I’ve interviewed before).

They were all surprisingly frank about the internal debates within the movement.  Everyone I spoke with argued that the regime’s repression is hurting those voices favoring political participation.  Abu Sukkar argued that the repression had tipped the balance of opinion between those in favor of political opposition and those opposed.  Prior to the 2007 elections, opinion had been evenly split, but the regime’s interventions had weakened the voice of the moderates and strengthened that of the critics. If an internal vote were held today, he suggested, it would likely go against participation.  Hence the election as general guide of Hammam Said, who would likely produce sharper rhetoric and allow fewer consultations with the regime than in the past.   He hastened to add that the debate was not over violence – all the MB, by consensus, rejected the use of violence against Muslim governments while supporting it as resistance to foreign occupation – but over the narrower question of the value of political participation.

I asked them both blunt questions about Qutbism, violence, and trends within the movement. Their answers seemed fairly frank.  Both acknowledged multiple trends within the movement. Ghuraybah argued that in the 1990s, the youth were more liberal than their elders because their experience was of democracy and participation.  But now, the youth are more radical than their elders because their experience is of repression and regime manipulation.  Abu Sukkar talked about members of the MB leaving in frustration over the movement’s perceived failures, and moving on to more radical movements – a clear example of the crumbling firewall I've discussed before.  Again, they have a clear interest in making this argument.. but at the same time, that doesn't mean that it isn't right.

Both leaders talked at length about how the regime’s crackdown was interfering with their ability to be a force for moderation among the Islamic community.  The government ban on Muslim Brothers preaching in mosques had simply removed moderate voices and replaced them with – more often than not – uneducated salafis who preached a far more radical doctrine (or with dullards who the people did not respect).  The crackdown on charities meant that the MB was unable to provide the social services which the state neglected, intensifying the struggles at the popular level and again weakening voices for moderation and participation.  And the political repression discredited the voices of participation and moderation, tipping the balance towards the more radical voices.

I also talked to both of them about issues surrounding Iraq, but I'll save that for later.

The lines within the MB seem starker here than in Egypt, as does the directness of the salafi challenge (the Hamas issue and Iraq both weigh much more directly here, of course).  Just walking across the street from one MB-linked bookshop to another is revealing:  one featured a fair amount of jihadist-leaning literature, with a display of Sayid Qutb and some fairly rough Jerusalem pamphlets;  the other featured walls of carefully-groomed "Islam lite" media preachers, lots of dawa instructional pamphlets, a large display of Yusuf al-Qaradawi, and not a jihad text or Qutb book in sight.  Interestingly, Amr Khaled was the most prominent cross-store common feature, with large displays in both.

I came away with more questions than answers.  I'll need to look much more closely at all of this next time - and would love to hear from those working on Jordanian MB issues these days.   

shakeups in the Egyptian MB

Reports are swirling that the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood is about to announce a shakeup in its Shura Council, with five new members - all reportedly associated with the conservative "dawa" trend - replacing elderly, deceased, and imprisoned incumbents.  This seems to have strengthened the conservative trend at the expense of reformists, and has evidently infuriated many youth activists within the organization.  Some of them, including leading Brotherhood blogger Abd el-Monem Mahmoud, suggest that the conservatives are taking advantage of the regime's repression to consolidate their power within the organization and to prevent the emergence of a reformist leadership headed by the imprisoned Khairat al-Shater.  This seems to be rapidly developing into one of the sharpest public internal struggle within the MB in years. 

There is still a lot of uncertainty about what's actually going on.  For instance, there are sharp disagreements about whether elections were held or the new members simply appointed.  Some of the reformist critics complain about reformist candidates being passed over in favor of less popular conservatives, while some of their favorites deny being considered or interested.  The status of the imprisoned Deputy Supreme Guide Khairat al-Shater and Mohammed Bishr is also unclear -  some say they are being removed, others that they are simply being put on a kind of "injured reserve" while they are unable to fill their roles.   But whatever the case, as important a MB figure as Gamal Hishmet warned publicly that the lack of transparency in the organization threatens its internal stability. 

The most controversial part of the appointments is the alleged sidelining of the reformists and especially of those associated with Khairat al-Shater.  The imprisoned deputy guide is a wealthy businessman and charismatic reformist with wide support from activist youth, the champion of the reformist trend and widely tipped to be the next Supreme Guide. He was the force behind the English-language Ikhwan Web, and the patron of the MB Blogging movement I profiled last year.  I can personally attest to Shater's interest in opening up channels of communication with the West:  he wrote a moving response to my Foreign Policy article, delivered from prison via his daughter, which I did not publish at her request.   Shater's pragmatism and democratic leanings, argues Mahmoud, threatened the old leadership of the MB, which despite its talk of shura did not want to lose its dominant position.   

This appears to be the most open and intense internal divide in the Muslim Brotherhood in some time, and a sign that the regime's repression is pushing it into a more conservative and less reformist direction.  The Muslim Brotherhood youth bloggers, who had been mostly quiet since the organizational crackdown late last year, now appear to be lashing out in frustration, with Mahmoud openly complaining that the MB lacks the means for real internal dialogue and that its leadership lectures instead of discussing.  How the leadership will respond to the public airing of this internal dissent will be extremely interesting, as will the impact on the MB's approach to democratic participation.  This is definitely something to watch (keep on eye on Mahmoud's blog, which has been red hot for the last few days). 

Nathan Brown: do the salafis really want to party?

After I stole his best line this morning, my suitemate Nathan Brown volunteered this comment on the performance of the Salafi movement in the Kuwaiti elections, which he spent last week observing: 

Do the Salafis Really Want to Party?
Nathan Brown, GWU

As Marc noted today, one of the most interesting developments in last Saturday’s Kuwaiti elections was the success of the salafis and the decline (probably temporary but still striking) of the Islamic Constitutional Movement (known as Hadas the acronym for the movement in Arabic, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood).  I’ll be posting an analysis of what happened to Hadas on the Carnegie website next week.

Let me note for now what is so interesting about the Kuwaiti salafis. Not only do they participate in elections, unlike most of their counterparts in other Arab politics that disdain such political activity, but some of them are actually forming a political party.  Quintan Wiktorowicz’s book on salafis and the Ikhwan in Jordan shows how salafis there eschew formal and organized politics, and that’s the normal pattern elsewhere in the region.

The new Kuwaiti electoral law was supposed to favor parties and ideological movements, but for the most part it was sectarian and especially tribal identities that proved the real winners.  The exception was a salafi party that ran five candidates, four of whom won seats (some media reports gave the number of their deputies as ten, but that is based on counting their allies and like-minded independents).  They are far less of an impressive organization than Hadas in many ways. They have thought less about their agenda and they remain dominated by specific personalities (especially their leader, Khalid Sultan). 

But salafi movements have generally regarded the Ikhwan as more of a political than a religious organization, and the Kuwaiti salafis are no different. There remain strong ideological and personal differences between Hadas and the salafis—deep enough to have prevented the two from going into an electoral alliance despite long and tortured negotiations.  But the Kuwaiti salafis, as much as they look down upon Hadas as dedicated to what they might term “Islamism light,” now seem to be taking a page out of their book.  Those interested in the party can view its website at http://www.al-islami.org/  

The salafi party will now have to wrestle with the same issues that Hadas has since it was formed in 1991: how and when to cooperate with liberals and Shi‘a, whether to accept ministerial portfolios (if offered), when to make compromises, and how to prioritize among various elements of its program.  I met on Monday with Salim Al-Nashi, their media spokesperson (and the older brother of Hadas secretary-general Badr Al-Nashi) and pressed him on these issues. He insisted that unlike the Brotherhood, the salafis remain concerned with far more than politics and that they would not compromise but only pursue the Islamic way.  But since the Islamic shari‘a gives little guidance on parliamentary maneuvering, we’ll have to see what happens to them in practice.

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?"

Assessing the MB "firewall"

So that I don't feel like such a bad blogger, here's a lightly edited version of my presentation notes for the public session of yesterday's Institute for Middle East Studies workshop on political Islamist movements.  This was very much a workshop, not a place to present finished work, and I'm still digesting a lot of the critiques and suggestions.  Here it is in rough form nonetheless - and sorry, I really don't have time to go through and add the links that are so richly deserved.   Welcome to the virtual workshop!

Assessing the Muslim Brotherhood "Firewall"

In a number of recent articles I have argued that the Muslim Brotherhood can serve as an important "firewall" against al-Qaeda style radicalization in Arab countries (while simultaneously taking seriously the concerns that it might act as a "transmission belt" towards radicalization under certain conditions).   While this makes intuitive sense, and seems to be empirically plausible in some key cases, much needs to be done to flesh out the contention into a more rigorous causal argument which specifies mechanisms and can be made subject to empirical analysis.  In today's presentation, I don't yet presume to go that far. But I do want to put forward three key areas for research. 

Before getting to that, a word on the rising centrality of the MB-AQ divide across a wide range of issues in the world of Islamist politics.  This is a key theme of influential analysts such as the Jordanian journalist Mohammed Abu Roman and Akram Hijazi (whose writings are widely circulated in a range of jihadist internet forums).   It can certainly be seen in the many recent statements by Ayman al-Zawahiri, whose obsession with the Muslim Brotherhood is well documented;  in his recent "Q+A" session he devoted a remarkable amount of space to the MB-friendly Yusuf al-Qaradawi and to a detailed critique of the Brotherhood's party platform.  He has also made a determined effort over the last few years to claim the mantle of reform (islah) from the Brotherhood, dismissing their attempts to work within the system and trying to redefine reform within a salafi-jihadist framework.  Zawahiri has sharply criticized the Egyptian MB and the Palestinian Hamas for their participation in elections (both groups responded with sharp, scornful dismissals).   

The main driver, though, is probably Iraq, where the conflict which erupted between the Islamic State of Iraq and the various 'nationalist-jihadist' factions has been framed as "salafi-jihadist vs ikhwani" even though few of those groups other than perhaps Hamas Iraq really merit the label.  This often seems to be reduced to a catch-all for "groups which claim to be Islamist but aren't because they are willing to work within existing political institutions, prioritize the national rather than the universal jihad, and put pragmatism ahead of principle".  The irony is that while the Muslim Brotherhood party (Tareq al-Hashemi's Islamic Party) does enjoy political power due to its decision to contest elections, Iraq has not had a serious MB presence for a long time because of Saddam's refusal to tolerate competing movements or power centers - indeed, I remember back in 2002-03 that at least a few influential MB-affiliated writers argued against siding with Iraq against the US because of Saddam's treatment of the movement over the years.

At any rate, today's presentation focuses on a set of claims about how the MB might act as firewall against AQ-style radicalism. This begins with a simple observation:  where the MB is strong (Egypt, Jordan, and Palestine for example), AQ has had a hard time finding a point of entry despite serious efforts to do so, while where the MB is weak (Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Lebanon) it has had more success.   This begs the question of how to define where the MB is strong and weak and along what indicators - certainly something for further research. 

Correlation, of course, is not causation.   How, exactly, does a strong MB interfere with al-Qaeda style movements?  Simplifying a bit, I could see arguments which stress either ideology or organization.  The ideology argument would focus on the MB's avowed 'wasatiya' (centrism) and denunciation of Qutbist notions of jahiliya and takfir.  It's clear (to me anyway) that the leadership of the MB is firmly opposed to al-Qaeda and its ideology, and have made this extremely clear in both rhetoric and practice over the last five years.  MB leaders themselves seem to prefer this explanation, as do many of the MB members I've spoken with about this.  But ideology alone does not seem to be enough – ideas tend to be somewhat elastic, adapting to circumstance, and there are lots of different Islamist ideas out there besides those of the Brotherhood.  Ideas, as they say, do not float freely. 

The second argument would therefore stress the MB's distinctive organization which allows it to effectively monitor and control social space – through mosques, charities, organizational networks, and widespread networks.  Put simply, by this argument the MB is aware when radicals move in to social sectors full of Islamically-oriented and politically active people, and are in a position to lock out their challengers. (Think here of Fearon and Laitin's arguments about in-group policing, for instance.)  Of course, the MB isn't the only kind of organization that can do this - an efficient mukhabarat, tribes or clans, established neighborhoods, gangs, and so forth might all do similar functions.  But I do suspect that MB structures have a distinctive advantage with regard to specifically Islamist challengers.  That's where ideology does matter:  the MB is present in the religious, pious spaces where AQ might get foothold in way that unions or secular orgs are not.  [I'd like to work in something here about Abdullah al-Nefisi's argument for dissolving the MB based on Qatar's experience, but haven't yet.]

So far, so good.  But even if the firewall argument has been true in the past, can the firewall hold when it's being actively degraded?   The current wave of official crackdowns on the MB in places like Jordan and Egypt might similarly hinder their capability (if not willingness) to act as a firewall.   Repression after choosing political participation discredits the pragmatists within the organization, and it's possible to imagine politicized youth growing frustrated at feckless leadership or to see the MB struggle to hold on to some of its constituencies (what Amr Hamzawy terms the ‘facebookiyin’, angry and impoverished workers, pious salafis, marginal urban areas). What's more, the repressive efforts increasingly target precisely the charities (Jor) and financial underpinings (Eg) which make the organization so formidable.  There's precedent for such degraded capacity:  during the Egyptian insurgency of 1992-97, for instance, the MB found itself caught up indiscriminately by the regime's repressive response despite its efforts to differentiate itself from the Gamaa and Islamic Jihad and was thus perhaps less able to contain radical challengers. 

There are obviously a lot of other variables to consider here, and a lot of cases beyond the paradigmatic ones which would change the picture.   The focus on the organization rather than the ideology would arguably make the global MB less relevant of a "firewall" than specific national MB organizations. It would also raise cautionary concerns about the likely impact of the repressive measures currently being taken by Arab regimes - by weakening the MB organizationally, they could be opening up those spaces for more radical competitors.  Jordan seems to be a particularly relevant test case here, with the MB and IAF discredited after the response by some of its members to Zarqawi, highly publicized internal splits,  the fallout of Hamas over the last few years, its poor electoral performance, and in general the breakdown of the long-standing accord between the regime and the MB.   Syria might also emerge as a national arena upon which to focus, just as Lebanon has to such widespread alarm over the last year.   

All worth looking into...

Monday: IMES Conference on Islamist Movements

For those in the area and interested, just a quick note that I will be appearing on an Institute for Middle East Studies panel discussion Monday afternoon entitled "What have we learned about Islamist political movements?"  It is the public portion of a day-long academic workshop featuring a number of leading political scientists whose work focuses on various dimensions of Islamist activism.  The public event will feature Amr Hamzawy (Carnegie), Janine Clark (University of Guelph), Joshua Stacher (Syracuse), Nathan Brown and me.  It's at the Elliott School, Room 602, from 3:30 to 5:00 on Monday, May 12.  Hope to see you there!