The emotional pathways of recruitment to Islamist movements, and the role of affective ties in sustaining movement networks remain understudied relative to the service and preaching roles of these networks, and the material and spiritual benefits they offer individuals (Vannetzel 2016, Brooke 2019). Yet affective mobilization, as an outreach strategy, and as the basis of individual and community remaking, is an acknowledged part of Islamist mobilization from Pakistan to Egypt to Morocco, and socioemotional support is a key function of Islamist organizational work. This paper uses in-depth interviews with thirteen members of the Moroccan Adl wa Ihsan movement, and interviews and educational materials on recruitment from the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood to explore how they frame the affective experience of movement adherence and activism as a distinctive motivating factor and a strategy for achieving movement goals. I focus on how members frame the emotional benefits of the movement as key to their loyalty and belief in its mission, and as an alternative to uncaring mainstream society. I consider how members center positive interpersonal relationships as a religious duty, necessary for their own ethical cultivation, and affective bonds as key to building a better relationship with God and a just, Islamic society on a prophetic model. I also ask how movements see their role in offering sites in which to cultivate and model emotional and social solidarities that members can aim to replicate in wider social relations.
Rather than focus on moral shock and frustration as key mobilizing emotions, I emphasize how movements cultivate positive emotions in members to build their sense of agency and activist identities, drawing on a literature that emphasizes the role of emotions in framing and making sense of mobilization, without treating emotions as either passive resources or independently causal (Goodwin, Jasper and Polletta 2001; Bishara 2015; Blom and Jaoul 2008). Following Blom’s analysis of emotional mobilization among Pakistani Islamists (2017), I ask how members see their moral obligation toward others in their new emotional communities, and consider how these obligations shaped their understandings of citizenship. I conclude by analyzing how these cases help build theory on the emotional microfoundations of mobilization (cf. Pearlman 2013) and movement resilience, and expand our understanding of how Islamists understand their role in providing righteous alternatives to the failures of modern society.
Middle East/Near East Studies