About Book
The Middle East: They’ve Arrived
By Robin Wright
The Islamists are not only coming. In several countries, they’ve already arrived. Others are primed to take prominent roles down the road. Altogether, Islamist movements are today the most dynamic political force across the Arab world—and they may well be for the next decade or longer.
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Islam: The Democracy Dilemma
By Olivier Roy
The long-standing debate about Islam and democracy has reached a stunning turning point. Since the Arab uprisings began in late 2010, political Islam and democracy have become increasingly interdependent. The debate over whether they are compatible is now virtually obsolete. Neither can now survive without the other.
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Chapters
Egypt: The Founders
By Samer Shehata
The single most powerful and prolific Islamist movement was born in Egypt, the intellectual center of the Arab world. Formed in 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood was started as a social and religious club by a twenty-two-year-old schoolteacher, who recruited six members of the Suez Canal Company. It has since become the ideological grandfather of more than eighty-five other Islamist groups in dozens of countries well beyond the Arab world. Members or supporters of its many branches now number in the tens of millions.
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Egypt: The New Puritans
By Khalil al Anani
Salafism is a new force in Egyptian electoral politics. The rise of ultraconservative ideologues has been particularly striking because Salafis had previously renounced participating in politics altogether. In Egypt, the Salafis emerged from the political backwater to win the second largest vote in the 2011–12 elections for parliament. They are now poised to play a pivotal role during Egypt’s political transition.
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Tunisia: The Best Bet
By Christopher Alexander
Tunisia’s Islamist experience may hold the best prospects for a democratic transition in the Arab world. From its early roots in the ideas of the Muslim Brotherhood, Ennahda has evolved into an influential exemplar of a moderate, pragmatic Islamism that pledges to support human rights, pluralism, and democracy. It has developed ties to secular organizations that battled authoritarian rule. It is also attuned to the realities of Tunisian society and politics and, compared to movements elsewhere, is less wedded to a strict universal ideology.
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Libya: Rebuilding from Scratch
By Manal Omar
Libya’s Islamists quickly rose from the ashes after the 2011 uprising that ousted Colonel Moammar Qaddafi. They had been pushed into exile or the underground during his forty-two-year rule. Libyans, who are culturally conservative even if they do not actively practice the faith, esponded enthusiastically to Islamic political parties as they struggled to rebuild a new order.
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Algeria: Bloody Past and Fractious Factions
By David B. Ottaway
Riding the regional political wave, Algeria’s leading Islamic party proclaimed on New Year’s Day 2012 that it intended to become the primary political force in the Arab world’s second most populous country. But unlike in Egypt and Tunisia, the declaration in Algeria did not mark the first attempt by Islamist politicians to take power.
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Syria: Old-Timers and Newcomers
By Thomas Pierret
After years of repression, Islamist political groups reemerged in 2011 as Syria faced the most tumultuous political juncture since its independence from France in 1946. In 2011, Syria’s political landscape began to be redefined by both old-timers and newcomers.
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The Palestinians: Fighting and Governing
By Nathan J. Brown
In a landmark 2006 election, the Palestinians rejected the long-standing political status quo and turned over power to Islamists through the ballot box. It was a stunning upset. Hamas trumped Fatah, the party of Yasser Arafat, which had dominated Palestinian political life for almost a half-century. Even Hamas was surprised by the outcome. The victory of an Islamist party had a wide-ranging effect on both the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the greater Middle East.
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Morocco: The King’s Islamists
By Abdeslam Maghraoui
In a microcosm of the Arab world’s new political spectrum, Morocco now has two rival Islamist powers—one that dominates government and the other that is a banned but popular opposition group. The monarchy, however, still has ultimate control and effective veto power over the political realm. King Mohammed VI tolerated the rise of an Islamist party partly in response to the same kind of demands for reform that have swept North Africa. But Morocco’s experiment also has unique characteristics that are separate from the Arab Spring.
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Jordan: The Quiescent Opposition
By Jillian Schwedler
Since the late 1980s, the Islamic Action Front in Jordan has been the leading opposition movement, often boldly challenging the monarchy’s domestic and foreign policies. It boycotted the 2010 parliamentary elections and called for a constitutional monarchy led by an elected parliament. In 2011, the Front called for abrogation of the peace treaty signed with Israel in 1994 and the permanent closing of the Israeli embassy in Amman. The moves were particularly provocative in the context of Arab uprisings elsewhere.
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Lebanon: The Shiite Dimension
By Nicholas Blanford
Lebanon’s main Islamist party has undergone one of the most profound transformations across the Muslim world over the past three decades. Once associated with suicide bombings and hostage taking, the party has steadily evolved from an underground movement in 1982 to the leading influence inside the Lebanese government by 2012.
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Yemen: The Tribal Islamists
By Leslie Campbell
In Yemen, tribe is still the core around which political, economic, and social lives are organized. So Islamist politics in the Arab world’s poorest country has always blended with tribal influence. Indeed, tribal factors and figureheads often superseded Islam and its sheikhs in the Islah Party or, formally, the Yemeni Congregation for Reform.
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Turkey: The New Model?
By Ömar Taşpinar
In the twenty-first century, Turkey is arguably the most dynamic experiment with political Islam among the fifty-seven nations of the Muslim world. It also offers seminal lessons for the Arab world, despite the tense history (especially during the Ottoman Empire) and many differences.
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Islamist Groups: Parties and Factions in Turkey• Justice and Development Party Positions: Felicity Party |
Islamist Groups: Parties and Factions
By Annika Folkeson
Islamist groups in the Arab world are diverse in their political agendas, goals, and activities and thus defy simple categorization. But several trends and common denominators have emerged in the early twenty-first century.
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The Chronology of Political Change
By Cyana Chilton
The 22 nations of the Arab world—stretching from North Africa across the Levant into the Gulf—have witnessed unprecedented protests since December 2010. In the first 10 months, the four leaders of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen – who together had ruled for a total of 129 years – were overthrown by popular uprisings. But change continued to rumble across the region.
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