Islamically-oriented parties and political movements are often the most credible opposition groups in semi-authoritarian countries of the Middle East and broader Muslim world. While their ability to mobilize grass-roots support has been widely documented, they have had decidedly mixed results in electoral competition in the last decade. This paper assesses the reasons for divergent electoral results of Islamist political parties, focusing specficially on the differing electoral trajectories of Islamist parties in Turkey and Indonesia. The paper addresses two inter-related questions. First, why has support for Islamically-oriented parties increased over time in Turkey but declined in Indonesia? Second, given that the majority of both Indonesian and Turkish voters prefer centrist parties, why has the AKP succeeded in moving toward the political center, whereas the PKS has shown inconsistency in its political direction? We argue that the variation in outcomes across these two cases is best explained by the variation in external (political system) and internal (party-movement) institutional constraints that shape the political incentives of these two Islamist parties. Specifically, the AKP in Turkey has evolved to capture the Turkish center as a result of institutional constraints inherent in the Turkish system, while internal constraints in the Indonesian PKS have prevented the party from making strategic choices to compete directly with mainstream Indonesian political parties.

There is change on the landscape of political Islam. What I term as 2G or second generation Islamist political parties has emerged, including Turkey's AKP, Malaysia's PKR, and Indonesia's PKS, which are Islamic in orientation and identity but base their political programs on principles of democracy, pluralism, and human rights, rather than crude appeals to implementing punitive aspects of shariah or creating an Islamic state. Also, unlike most of their first generation counterparts, 2G Islamist parties advocate positive relations with the West and do not overtly oppose key security and strategic interests of such Western nations as the United States. This paper draws on extensive in-depth interviews conducted with key representatives of the AKP, PKR, and PKS. It argues that political Islam has matured over time and that three key factors have been central to the emergence and development of 2G Islamist political parties. The first is internal socio-political factors, including growing support for Islam and demand for Islamic beliefs, values, and principles to play a role in the socio-political context; and the failure of first generation Islamist political parties to reach a sufficiently broad cross-section of the electorate and satisfy expectations, needs, and aspirations. The second is the external political context, including policies of Western governments, namely the United States, that are perceived to be hostile towards Islam and Muslims as well as the use of violence and terrorism by certain extremist Islamist groups. The former has facilitated the positioning of 2G Islamist parties towards the centre of the political spectrum in their respective counties leaving their more secular-liberal opposition to become more marginalised; while the latter has become increasingly unappealing for a growing majority of Muslims around the world, which has increased the appeal of the relatively moderate yet Islamic policies of the 2G Islamist parties. The election of Barak Obama as president of the United States and his policy of a new beginning with the Muslim world has given space and legitimacy to 2G Islamist political parties' policies of maintaining positive relations with the West, not only diplomatic and economic but also in the military context. The third factor is the growing acceptance of more contextual and higher objective or maqasid-oriented approaches to interpretation in Islam, which has given contemporary norms and principles concerning democracy, pluralism, and human rights an Islamically legitimate and authentic means of incorporation into Islamic thought and the policies of 2G Islamist parties.

A new development in the Muslim world is the formation of Islamic political parties (IPP) by reactionary Islamic movements in countries as geographically distant and historically disparate as Morocco, Yemen, and Indonesia. Transforming a movement into a party runs the risk of being repressed by an authoritarian regime, or alienating its supporters. The benefits of transforming a movement into a party, especially in an authoritarian context, remain unclear. Hence, the question I ask is: "Why have so many Islamic movements chosen to expend considerable resources to form political parties?" Questioning the motivations behind party formation sheds some light on the bigger debate in Islamic politics - whether IPPs are/can be democratic. Some argue that IPPs are "wolves in sheep clothes" trying to establish an Islamic state without a sincere commitment to democracy. Others see IPP formation as a democratic demand for greater religious liberty and representation under authoritarianism. The increased role of women through women branches in this transformation into an IPP is pointed by IPPs as a sign of their commitment to democracy. In consequence, grasping the incentives behind this movement-into-party transformation will contribute to understanding the bigger picture of democracy and Islam. In previous research, arguments have been made that IPP formation is the result of political liberalization or moderation. However, political liberalization or moderation does not lead every Islamic movement to form a party, nor Islamic endorsement explains this transformation. Hence, based on my secondary and field research, I argue that (1) under authoritarian but tolerant regimes, (2) a new "excluded" class in solidarity with Islamic networks emerges, (3) whose demands are taken over by pragmatic leaders who see more benefits in party formation and regard remaining as a movement as potentially risky. From a sample of Muslim majority countries with elections and moderate Islamic movements, I chose Turkey, Morocco and Jordan as my primary cases. My cases host both movements that turn to an IPP and those that reject such transformation. This not only allows me to look at a cross-country comparison but also at variation within a single case. This paper will discuss the Jordanian case of Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Action Front in comparative perspective to other cases by combining quantitative data from Polity IV Political Regime Characteristics: 1800-2008, ILO, UNDP, SESIC, and WB; theoretical framework from literatures on authoritarianism, hegemony, Islamic discourse, social movements, and political parties; and, qualitative data from my fieldwork.

The paper discusses the varieties of Islamic economic practice in the Middle East by discussing Egypt at length and secondarily comparing it to Turkey. It focuses on a specific topic (contrasting conceptions and practices of charity), but situates this within a broader comparison of multiple Islamic understandings of the economy. Islamic activists in Egypt and Turkey have different ways of thinking about poverty and organizing activities to deal with it. In Turkey, mainline Islamic charity aims to create entrepreneurs out of poor people; in Egypt it wants to maintain a just balance between well-to-do and poor people. These aims, in turn, depend on contrasting understandings of religious responsibility. In the Turkish case, religious responsibility is on the shoulders of all sectors, and responsibility is first and foremost defined with respect to productivity in the market. In Egypt, by contrast, activists of the leading Islamist organization (the Ikhwaan) emphasize the responsibility of the educated elite to create a socioeconomically balanced and ritual-focused society. These arguments are based on interviews with providers and recipients of charity in Egypt (as well as their political networks) and Islamist publications in Egypt (mainly Liwa al-Islam). I will secondarily bring in materials from my previous research projects in Turkey (based on participant observation, interviews, and archival research on Islamic activism). My interviews in Egypt suggest that there is a contrast between charity associations that emphasize ritual and politics and those that seek to instill a work ethic among the recipients. The former are in the majority and are connected to the most organized Islamist organization in Egypt (the Ikhwaan). The latter, though influential and internationally well-connected, are in the minority and are politically unaffiliated, in contrast to Turkey where work ethic-focused associations are more politicized and are in the majority. In both Egypt and Turkey, revolutionary understandings of Islamic economy and charity are not nonexistent, but are in the minority. These findings are significant for scholarly debates beyond Islamic activism and the Middle East, as they demonstrate that moral economies come in all shapes and vary significantly within countries and movements. They suggest that we need to think beyond a simple dichotomy between "the" moral economy and "the" market economy.

The Egyptian parliamentary elections, scheduled for November 2010, will mark the beginning of a new phase in the succession process, as they will shape the Parliament which will be ruling when the new president - the fifth of the Republic of Egypt - will be elected, a few months later, in September 2011. In order to deepen our understanding of the Egyptian current political scene and of the challenges it is facing, it is useful to look at the composition of the outgoing Parliament, focusing especially on the major oppositionnal bloc, i.e. the Muslim Brotherhood.Since 2005, when it won 88 seats, the movement has been confronting harsh repression and will probably not be allowed to achieve such a performance again. A comparative survey of MB members of parliament's profiles enables us to analyze the dynamics of political elites production in Egypt, as well as it provides relevant information about the Brotherhood itself. Are there some specificities of MB political elitese What are the patterns of their territorial and social implantationt What is the role played by civil society institutions such as professional syndicates, caritative associations, student or labor unionsu Can we observe recent re-compositionsi As a matter of fact, few is known about the so-called << social bases >> of this << 82 year old >> Islamist movement, which seems to have overcome the various repressive waves it had to face. We believe that its presence in the Egyptian People Assembly represents a great opportunity to learn more about its relationships to society: on a methodological level, instead of explaining MB's electoral success by its supposed << social strength >>, we suggest using the MB parliamentary bloc as a site of investigation on the nature of their social anchorage. I will not only compare the 2005 Muslim Brothers MPs' profiles to other MPs' ones, but I will also intend to do so between the 2005 MB bloc and previously elected Brothers, as far as available information allows me to do so. This analysis, involving statistical methods, will be drawn up on a database which I created from diverse biographical sources (mainly the MB's websites) and from existing studies about the 1984, 1987 and 2000 legislative elections.

The Six-Day War of June 1967 was a watershed event in the modern history of Egypt. In addition to shaking the foundations of the Nasserist state and diminishing the capacity of its charismatic leader to rule, the defeat signaled the return of two significant voices of opposition from within society: the student movement, with its legacy of popular activism, and the Islamic movement, thought to have been neutralized by Nasser's repression of the Muslim Brotherhood. These two forces combined in the form of Shabab al-Islam, an independent, religiously oriented student organization based at Cairo University. Through the use of memoirs, interviews, newsletters and other materials, this paper seeks to retrace the role of this little known organization in the so-called Islamic resurgence at a time when the Muslim Brotherhood had yet to re-emerge onto the scene. At its height, Shabab al-Islam claimed thousands of members from Egypt's student and young professional population, paved the way for the resumption of political activism within the university walls, and took the lead in the popular protests of 1972-1973. The organization was so effective that it drew the personal attention of Nasser and Sadat, both of whom sought to redress many of the rights denied to Egyptians over the previous decade and a half. Nonetheless, by 1974, Shabab al-Islam had become a defunct organization, penetrated by security agents and saboteurs. It was succeeded by al-Gama'ah al-Islamiyyah, a more traditionally organized Islamic group with close links to the recently reconstituted Muslim Brotherhood. In the areas in which Shabab al-Islam had failed, al-Gama'ah al-Islamiyyah was determined to succeed. The paper draws upon elements of Social Movement Theory (SMT), including a discussion of political opportunity structures, to analyze the reasons for Shabab al-Islam's failure to establish itself as a permanent fixture in Egypt's Islamic activist scene. Although it offered a fresh intellectual perspective that set the tone for the future of the Islamic movement, its organizational structure failed to keep up with the broad appeal of its ideas. As a result, the important legacy of Shabab al-Islam and its contribution to religious activism in Egypt has been lost in a contemporary narrative dominated by the forces that prevailed.