The Battle for the Arab Spring

by Lin Noueihed

  The main counterweights to Islamist influence in Morocco and Jordan will be the institutions of the monarchies. But, like Egypt's military, they will prefer to work with hierarchical mainstream political parties – even if they are Islamist – than the unpredictable youth who rejected constitutional reform measures in 2011 for not going far enough. Both monarchies may choose to promote and engage with more moderate Islamists in order to sideline extremist religious groups and the more determined secular liberals. Giving milder Islamist parties the freedom to operate and win elections – which in Jordan will require serious electoral reform – could go some way to sapping the appeal of violence as a means of achieving political change and encourage peaceful engagement.

  External, as well as local, influences may also push Islamist groups towards increasing pragmatism. Had the Arab Spring taken place just two decades ago, there would have been no stable democracy in a majority-Muslim country for Arab countries to look to. By 2011, Turkey and Indonesia both provided working – though flawed – examples demonstrating that majority-Muslim countries did not have to be monarchies, dictatorships or theocracies. Some Arab Islamist parties, such as Ennahda or Morocco's PJD, have said they look to Turkey's AKP in particular as an example of a moderate Islamist party which functions in a democratic framework and has overseen robust economic growth and eroded the power of the military. For others, Turkey is no model and its AK Party has made too many compromises to be counted as Islamist. This is certainly the view of the Muslim Brotherhood, which rejected Turkey's approach after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan toured North African countries in the wake of the Arab Spring.

  Turkey is far from perfect. The declining power of the army, especially in its role as guardian of the secular state, discomforts secular Turks. Some worry about what they see as Erdogan's increasingly authoritarian style, and point to rising numbers of arrested journalists and to constitutional amendments they say aim to keep power concentrated in his or his party's hands. But the point is that many mainstream Islamist parties – if not the more conservative Salafists – are leaning more towards a Turkish-style system than an Afghan one. A poll across five Arab countries in October 2011, including Egypt and Morocco, found that Turkey was overwhelmingly seen as having played the ‘most constructive’ role in the Arab Spring. When asked which world leader they admired most, respondents put Erdogan top.9

  In Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, the most immediate battleground between the different Islamist groups and their various counterweights will be the new constitutions that are being drafted in 2012. The extent to which those documents will be Islamized, or further Islamized, in the wake of the Arab Spring will differ from country to country.

  But few Arab states had fully secular constitutions before 2011. Unlike Turkey, whose constitution explicitly defines the country as a secular state – even though Islamists have reached government and the presidency – most Arab constitutions refer directly to religion. Even in Tunisia, the country held up as one of the most secular in the region, the constitution identifies Islam as the religion of state. In Syria, protests broke out in 1973 when a new Ba'athist constitution failed to name Islam as the religion of state. This clause was never inserted, though the Syrian constitution does say that the president must be a Muslim and that Islam is a source of jurisprudence. In Egypt, the constitution has since 1980 described sharia as ‘the principal source of legislation’.

  The main danger for democracy lies in how easily the new constitutions can be altered. Amendments are always necessary in any constitution, allowing them to evolve and initial mistakes to be corrected, but making it too easy to change key clauses could open the door for abuse. If a constitutional amendment required only majority parliamentary approval, for instance, popular parties or individual leaders might be tempted to change the rules to allow them to legally extend their terms, stay in power indefinitely, or circumvent elected bodies by going straight to a public referendum on key issues.

  What would happen, for instance, if an Islamist government in Egypt held a referendum proposing that all non-Muslim parties should be banned? Or, even if a constitutional amendment required a two-thirds majority in both houses, it would be theoretically possible for immensely popular Islamists to push through an amendment that suspends elections. Both scenarios appeared unlikely by early 2012, but given that Islamist parties took up to 90 per cent of the vote in some parts of Egypt in the first elections, it is hypothetically possible. A poor separation of powers could also allow new governments, whatever their level of religiosity, to influence decisions in parliament or remove judges who make inconvenient rulings, thus undermining the rule of law and ensuring that all decisions go the government's way.

  In Arab countries which have a recent history of non-religious rulers practising these types of abuses, there appears to be a genuine desire to create constitutions that provide checks and balances against the rise of new dictatorships. Nevertheless, some constitutions may function more as ‘showcase’ documents, setting out utopian ideals to which the country aspires, rather than hard principles which it can hope to enforce practically. In countries where the independence of the judiciary has been routinely compromised for decades, it could take many years of concerted effort to foster a culture of integrity among judges and to build up public trust in the system. But these are challenges that governments will face regardless of whether Islamist parties are voted into power, and they pose a bigger risk to the establishment of stable and functioning democracies than the religious leanings of those in cabinet or parliament.

  Those most likely to suffer from the introduction or extension of sharia law are women and minorities. Most Muslim countries tend to prioritize the application of sharia in family law, which governs issues such as marriage, divorce, custody and inheritance, over its implementation in criminal law, which might see thieves have their hands amputated. Even if Islamist groups do not pass headline-grabbing measures such as enforcing the veil, women could come under more social pressure to conform in their dress and behaviour. While women have the theoretical right to divorce in Islam, in practice their rights can be severely restricted by the rulings of the male-dominated sharia courts. Women do not have equal rights of inheritance in Islam. Polygamy, too, clearly goes against the concept of gender equality by giving men rights in marriage that are not available to women. In sharia, Muslim men may marry Jewish or Christian women, but Muslim women may not marry any kind of non-Muslim.

  Mixing aspects of sharia with modern constitutions that declare all citizens equal before the law creates obvious contradictions. Which trumps the other – sharia or the equal rights enshrined in the constitution? Who decides? Is there a constitutional court that overrules the sharia court? In that case, would it be acceptable for a temporal court to overrule the law of God? Will regular courts face the difficult task of trying to apply both aspects of the law, or arbitrate between the two?

  Tunisians do not confront most of these issues, as Ennahda has accepted the Personal Status Code, but such issues are already raising questions in Libya, where the interim government has declared that polygamy would be legal while at the same time assuring women that they would have equal rights with men.

  In Egypt, the religious problem is more complex because the country is home to an ancient Christian minority that comprises some 10 per cent of the population. For some Islamists, it would be unacceptable for a Christian to be president. This is perhaps a moot point, since a Christian would stand almost no chance of winning in presidential elections in the current conservative climate prevailing in Egypt.

  Yet even the hypothetical discussion raises a whole host of dilemmas for some countries in the post-Arab Spring era as they try to simultaneously superimpose several overlapping identities and ideologies: a national identity that does not always match a religious identity, and a democracy that does not always include equal citizenship.

  Islam views the umma as the community of believers, which may include people of diffe
rent nationalities but excludes people of different religions. Like most major religions, Islam predates the relatively recent creation of the nation-state and for those who wish to create an idealized Islamic community, as some Islamists do, it is not always easy to relinquish aspects of their religious tradition for the sake of creating a coherent national identity.

  Consequently, the systems that have emerged from the Arab Spring in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya or Yemen are on their way to becoming democracies, but not the secular and liberal democracies that Westerners are accustomed to. Indeed, they may be illiberal or religious democracies in which the government is elected and there is a rotation of power but where, for instance, homosexuality remains banned and minorities and women lack the same rights as Muslim men.

  Problematic as this may be, it must again be considered in its context. Family law already tended to be governed by sharia in many Arab countries before 2011, and the degree to which women will suffer differs from country to country. In Tunisia, where women's rights groups are long-established, high-profile and active, and where there is a powerful secularist movement, women have a higher chance of retaining their rights despite the election of Islamists to government. In some countries, women will be just as badly off as they were before. In other cases, such as Egypt's, where a parliamentary quota reserving sixty-four seats for women was scrapped after the Arab Spring, they may be worse off, at least in the immediate term.

  While women often played an equal role with men in demonstrations from Cairo to Sana'a, an opportunity to improve their lot in the design of new constitutions and electoral rules may well be squandered by religious conservatives who did not play a major role in overturning the old system but have since won the battle for votes. Such a monumental opportunity to legislate more progressive rights for women, and to enshrine genuine equality among citizens after so many years in which all citizens had their rights curbed by authoritarian rulers, may not present itself again for a long time.

  Beyond the Backlash

  In a functioning liberal and secular democracy, the rise of overtly religious groups could be construed as a step away from equality. In Tunisia and Egypt, however, where no democracy existed before, the elections of 2011 were a first step towards establishing a system of rule that reflects the wishes of the majority of the people. It is tempting to hold up new democracies to the unrealistic standards which long-established Western democracies do not themselves meet, or have only met through centuries of gradual development. In the United States, the Christian right has a powerful impact on politics. Some areas are ‘dry counties’ where local residents, influenced by puritanical Christian teachings, have voted to ban alcohol. Abortion remains a divisive issue and a political hot potato, with the religious right broadly in the anti-abortion camp and the secular left broadly supporting the right to choice. The dollar bill still bears the words ‘In God we trust’ and when a president is voted into office, it is on the Bible that he swears his oath. Even in the United Kingdom, where the influence of religion on politics and day-to-day life is much diminished, twenty-six seats are reserved in the House of Lords for Anglican bishops. This may be symbolic, but it is a relic of the powerful role that religion once played in politics.

  It is unrealistic to expect Arab countries to establish in a single year the separation of politics and religion that took centuries in Europe. In France, women did not win the vote until 1945 and in Switzerland women were not allowed a federal vote until 1971. Up until the 1960s, there were US states where black Americans were not allowed to mix with white Americans. Democracy does not function in a void, divorced from the history of the country or the identity of its inhabitants. A new political system can be installed in a short time, but social customs and prejudices are often much slower to change.

  Islamists are likely to continue to win the first elections held in countries where the Arab Spring has swept away old dictatorships. If King Abdullah of Jordan enacts meaningful electoral reform then the Muslim Brotherhood's party will be the main winner. If free and fair elections are ever held in Syria then Sunni Islamist parties, most observers feel, will be the single most popular political force. The major opposition parties in countries that have survived the first phase of the Arab Spring will continue to be Islamists. They are untried, the public wants to give them a chance, and they offer the solace of religion and identity to Arabs who feel rocked by globalization and by repeated Western political and military intervention in their lands.

  Not all Islamists are democrats, but keeping the Islamists underground has worked neither for the Islamists themselves, who never got a taste of government, nor for the secular rulers who repressed them, nor for Western countries that became the target of attacks by militant groups. It was inside one of Gamal Abdel Nasser's jails that Qutb wrote Maalim fi al-Tarik, or Milestones, which has inspired generations of violent Islamists, including Al-Qaeda.

  Not only have some Islamists been radicalized in prison, but their suppression has given an air of legitimacy to their claims that the Muslim world's problems could be solved with a return to strict religion. Al-Qaeda and its affiliates had a narrow and oppressive vision of the Islamic world which they wished to create, seeing violence as the only way to unseat corrupt rulers. The Arab Spring proved them wrong, and the subsequent elections boosted the credibility of Islamist groups with a more moderate approach.

  But to say that 2011 was a defeat for Al-Qaeda is to miss the point, and overstate its original appeal. Al-Qaeda's ideology had always thrived on the fringes of Arab society, and despite its headline-grabbing and deadly attacks, the network always relied on small bands of fanatics that could wreak havoc. It never presented a viable alternative for the vast majority of Arabs and Muslims.

  In the turbulence of the coming years, however, Al-Qaeda could flourish. In Yemen, its fighters could benefit from the disintegration of an already weak state. In Algeria, there has been a spike in the number of attacks by Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Security and military structures have been weakened in countries such as Libya, Egypt and Tunisia in the aftermath of uprisings. Weapons from Libya have flooded across lawless borders, uncontrolled by fragile states struggling with political transition and infighting. The dire economic situation will facilitate recruitment from the ranks of disgruntled young men. But they will appear increasingly detached not only from the moderate Islamist parties like Ennahda, but also from the much more conservative groups like the Salafists, who despite their outlook have nonetheless taken part in elections.

  Political Islam is in the midst of a dramatic resurgence after a long period of suppression, but its dominance will fade over time. In many ways, the groups that win the first elections after a revolution are sipping from a poisoned chalice. Expectations of what democracy and freedom can deliver are extremely high across the Arab region, and the challenges are many. Islamist parties are not known for their economic nous, and may face difficulties in formulating coherent policies that marry their tendency to support free trade and business with their focus on social justice and helping the impoverished. Opposition parties in parliament will have ample material to criticize and undermine new governments, whoever leads them.

  Long-established groups like Ennahda or the Muslim Brotherhood, which encompassed a spectrum of opinions, may see offshoots split away as they are forced to take concrete decisions that do not please everyone in their ranks. In Tunisia, Ennahda faces persistent protest both from secularists who accuse it of trying to Islamize the state and undermine women's rights, and from Salafists who accuse it of betraying Islam in the compromises it has made. Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood has already seen several members or factions branch off, unhappy with its cautious approach to street politics. They are keen to work with secular activists and take a more dynamic approach than the slow-moving and patient dinosaur that is the Muslim Brotherhood.

  Established secular parties will have time to regroup, while new secular parties will have time to build a support base and gain valua
ble political experience. If Islamists overreach with their religious policies, there may yet be a backlash against them. Once in power, tainted by the same failures and corruption scandals as other groups, they will lose support and become just another popular but compromised political group. More importantly, voters will begin to choose their parties not by their level of religious zeal but rather on the practical success of their policies, particularly in the economic sphere.

  Nor can they roll back the social changes and generational shifts that partly precipitated the Arab Spring. Women in Arab countries in 2010 gave birth to an average of less than three children each, down from an average of six a generation earlier. Female literacy rates are catching up with those of males, while the former practice of women being married off to their cousins is declining as women delay marriage and childbearing in favour of education and a career. An educated and employed mother is likely to ensure that her daughter also receives an education and enters the workplace.

  Though Arab countries remain patriarchal, some more than others, patriarchal authority is weakening, along with traditional attitudes that see women as mothers and homemakers. The norms that govern the relations between men and women in the family and in the public sphere, and the relationship between religion and the lifestyle choices individuals make, are shifting. That is the real revolution, and, unlike the political upheavals of 2011, this far more fundamental change cannot be achieved in a matter of weeks.

  In time, Islamist parties will also lose some of their current appeal as the most obvious way of rejecting old authoritarian leaders who had been supported by Western powers. Those leaders, in Tunisia and Egypt at least, are gone, and, as the following chapter outlines, the West's ability to gain sway over their successors is more limited than before.