Representative, cross-national values surveys like the World Values Survey and Arab Barometer provide social scientists with the ability to test hypotheses related to values and opinions on a global scale. Unfortunately, while survey methodology has expanded the scope of scientific understanding of these phenomena, this has come at the expense of depth. In the context of the Arab world, for example, survey research shows that most Arabs express political orientations drawing on both democratic and Islamist ideologies, but very few studies have investigated the meanings of the survey items – including concepts like shari’a and democracy – to individual respondents. This project proposes to overcome this problem using cognitive interviewing, which involves asking respondents to answer a set of survey items along with open-ended follow-up questions about their answers. I use this technique to investigate the relationship between support for shari’a and support for democracy based on one-on-one interviews with fifty Tunisians performed between August 2013 and March 2014. Results indicate that relying on responses to survey questions as straightforward indicators of support for either shari’a or democracy is inappropriate. Responses to questions about implementing shari’a may have more to do with attitudes about literalist religious movements than attitudes about secular or religious governance, and responses to questions about democracy may have more to do with attitudes about the west than attitudes about democratic practices as such.

After the 2011-12 elections in Tunisia and Egypt which resulted in the victory of Islamic parties, many asked whether Islamic law could be applied by democratically-elected Muslim governments in such a way that would ensure fundamental rights and liberties such as gender equality and freedom of religion. In the Muslim world, there is only one country (with 5+ mi. pop.) which both qualifies as a “full” democracy (Freedom House) and officially applies shari‘a within its legal system, that is Indonesia. One country alone is not enough to accurately analyze the relationship between democracy and shari‘a. However, there are 4 non-Muslim majority nations (with 5+ mi. pop.) which both qualify as “full” democracies and formally apply shari‘a as part of their family law systems. These are Israel, India, Greece, and Ghana. In this respect, the proposed paper will discuss what challenges these 4 non-Muslim majority nations encountered while implementing shari‘a within a democratic framework, how they went about responding to these challenges and “democratizing” shari‘a, and, what lessons (if any) Muslim nations could learn from their experiences. I define “Democratization of Shari‘a” (DoS) as abolition of non-human rights-compliant customs and practices by legal decree. The existing literature offers 3 broad explanations for how and when DoS occurs. (H1) The more secular the state the higher the DoS. (H2) The more responsive the state to women’s rights, the higher the DoS. (H3) The more the state persecutes Muslims, the higher the DoS. In order to test these hypotheses the paper develops a Democratization of Shari‘a Index (DSI) that measures the degree of liberalization of Islamic law across 42 nations, and correlates generated DSI scores with standard indicators of secularism (RAS), minority rights (MAR), and women’s rights (CIRI). The study shows that none of these accounts really is able to accurately explain why DoS occurs. Instead, it offers 3 alternative explanations: 1) The way and extent to which shari‘a is integrated into national legal system directly affects the DoS. 2) DoS seems to have often occurred as a by-product of reforms passed for the benefits of majority community. 3) Institutional rules and practices established under the colonial rule informs the extent to which postcolonial regimes have democratized shari‘a. In concussion, the study identifies a number of lessons for democratizing Muslim nations, and counterintuitively suggests that for success of democratization in the Middle East, shari‘a should be fully integrated into national legal systems.

Building upon relevant literatures in democratization, political party and the Middle East, this study aims to uncover the popular base of the Islamist parties. In particular, we underline the importance of three factors on the party choice of Egyptian citizens: the importance of the emigrant families, support for democracy and secularism. We argue that the emigrant families, particularly the emigration to the Gulf countries, have boosted the Islamist opposition through ideological transmission and monetary assistance in many oil-poor Arab countries. We also examine the increasingly divisive secular-Islamist cleavage, support for democracy and electoral behavior in Egyptian politics. In order to test our arguments, we conducted a nationwide survey with around 1,100 individuals within two weeks just after the Egyptian parliamentary elections completed in January 11, 2012. In order to test our argument, we ask extensive questions regarding whether one has/had a family member as an emigrant worker; if so, which country and a battery of questions on secularism, democracy and other important factors such as assessment of household and national economy. The survey was completed between January 12- January 25, 2012. Even though it was invalidated by the Constitutional Court in June 2012, the Egyptian parliamentary election provided us a unique opportunity to unpuzzle the determinants of support for Islamist and non-Islamist parties as this election has been the first free and fair election in the country where people were able to disclose their true preferences for political parties. We find that the emigrant families; the families that sent off at least one family member to another country for work, voted heavily for the Islamist parties, particularly the MB and the Salafi al-Nour. However, further analysis shows that there is no statistical difference in voting for the MB between the emigrant and the nonemigrant families in voting for the MB, while al-Nour’s popularity among the emigrant voters is substantial and statistically significant. We also find that support for secularism and democracy among the electorates is an important division between the Islamist parties and the rest.

The modern history of the Arab nation is characterized by the role of media and journalism in a) shaping how people feel about where they belong and who they are, particularly after World War I, b) the shaping of a standard Arabic common to all Arabic speakers, and facilitated by the spread of the media and the increased access to education. Three strands of modern identity which are linked to the place of the Arabic language and what mode of Arabic (dialect or standard), are identified: an Islamic vision of a state, an Arab-nationalist, and a local nationalist. Each of these ideas is still negotiating its space in society. Lastly, much research on the modern identity of the Arab world does not seem to pay enough attention to the role of language. This paper is a preliminary exploration of ideas of citizenship and the place of the Arabic language in it, in Egypt. It is based on ethnographic work conducted in Alexandria in May 2013, formal and informal interviews with journalists, students at the University of Alexandria, and the writing of two of Egypt’s most acclaimed authors. In interviewing the director of the journalism department at the library of Alexandria who is also an editor of a local newspaper, I ask the following questions: can we discuss an Arab identity common to all citizens of Arab states (from an Egyptian point of view)? If so, what does it revolve around? Where is the place of Arabic versus English in this identity? Where is the standard ‘fusḥa’ versus the Egyptian dialects ‘‘aamiyyah’ also in the construction of this identity? This interview is compared to the positions of two prominent Egyptian novelists, columnists and public figures: ‘alaa Al-Aswany and Yosef Zaidan. I chose these columnists in order to provide a perspective of ‘shapers’ of ‘public language standards’. Conclusions about Egyptian nationalism and the place of Arabic will be drawn, hopefully with some insights into some of the dynamics behind the Post-Arab Spring events in Egypt. The paper finds that in contrast to Western discourses of ‘ethnic hybridity’, the participants in this research were engaged in discourses of conflicting primordial identities, similarly, to discourses much earlier in the twentieth century in Egypt and the Arab World.

IDENTITY CRISIS? POLITICAL OPPOSITION AND IDENTITY POLITICS IN JORDAN At least in relative terms, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan has appeared to be placid and stable amidst the revolutions, coups, and civil wars of the regional ‘Arab Spring.’ But while Jordan has, so far, avoided the more violent politics that have engulfed so many countries in the region, politics within the kingdom is by no means placid. Most alarmingly for the regime, Tribal East Jordanian youth are among the most politically restive and angry forces within Jordanian politics. Other more traditional forms of opposition – including leftist parties and the kingdom’s large Islamist movement (ranging from the Muslim Brotherhood to a revitalized Salafi movement) – have also taken to the streets to oppose the regime. This suggests the potential for a broad-ranging opposition coalition. Yet divisions continue to hamper collective action, preventing a truly united opposition front. This paper examines identity politics as the key wedge dividing Jordanian political opposition and at times Jordanian society more broadly. Jordanian politics seems to continually return to debates over “who is really Jordanian?” This concern has been continually refueled by matters as diverse as the Syrian civil war, the rise and fall of the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and even local legislation regarding children’s rights. Today in Jordanian politics, seemingly every debate and crisis leads back to identity politics. Methods: This paper draws the author's own extensive field research in Jordan (most recently in 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014) to investigate Jordan's continual identity crisis. My field research includes interviews ranging from opposition activists to government officials and even King Abdullah II himself. Conclusions: This paper argues that identity politics remains a trump card within Jordanian politics that still manages to divide even the largest and broadest possible opposition coalitions. For the opposition to be effective, it needs to take the initiative itself to address a more pluralistic and inclusive vision of Jordanian identity. If it fails to do so, it will forever remain susceptible to divide and rule tactics as well as its own internally-generated divisions, rendering all its other efforts at mobilization futile. Panels? If accepted, this paper could fit with a diverse range of panels, including identity politics, democracy, reform, government and opposition, or papers on the 'Arab Spring' in general.