An extensive literature documents and theorizes the “moderation” of Islamist parties (Schwedler 2011). The issue has gained importance now that elected Islamist parties are leading governments or governing coalitions in Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco, and may do so in other Arab countries undergoing democratic transitions. The literature falls short, however, with its simplistic unicausal explanations of the mechanisms and factors leading to change. In this paper, we thoroughly explore the factors that explain change in the positions, discourses and attitudes of the Tunisian al-Nahdha Party on social, economic and foreign policies. We argue based on field research in Tunisia that the factors leading to change vary across the developmental phases of the history of the party as well as policy issues, and are much more complex than the literature on “moderation” indicates. We identify the causal processes of change at each of the four distinctive phases of the Tunisian al-Nahdha’s history (formative period under the MTI designation, being prevented from participating in elections, outright persecution, and governing after the Jasmin Revolution) by testing existing hypotheses and several more we developed. To test hypotheses of change in the positions of the organization, we conducted twenty-five semi-structured interviews with party leaders, activists, allies and opponents; met with groups of activists; observed operations at the party’s headquarters for three days; and analyzed samples of the party’s archives, internal newsletters and electronic exchange boards. We find that al-Nahdha, and presumably other Islamist parties that value using ijtihad in their jurisprudence are considerably influenced by ideas from non-Muslim sources and by their ideological rivals, and that their positions are heavily path-dependent. We contextualize our findings based on additional field research in Cairo and Lebanon, as well as secondary sources.

This paper will examine the current discourse of the Muslim Brotherhood on the role of God (or perhaps, more correctly, the role of religion) in the Arab spring. It argues that the way the role of God was conceived of in relation to the momentous changes that occurred is complex and, as within Islamic jurisprudence, cannot be reduced to a binary between a secular approach that emphasizes the role of the autonomous individual in shaping history and a religious one that emphasizes God’s complete role at the expense of free will. In 1967, after the defeat by Israel, Muhammad al-Sha’rawi stated “God’s program has been victorious.” Similarly, after the revolution of 2011, the preacher Safwat Hegazy stated that “God brought about the revolution (sana'aha)” a phrase that appeared to be accepted by Islamist and secular groups alike. Popularly, the revolution, whereby Mubarak after 30 years in office was toppled in 18 days, was portrayed as a type of miracle for which God should be thanked. This paper analyzes the full implications of these responses, with a particular focus on how Muslim Brotherhood members, thinkers, and religious leaders, conceive of the role God had—and continues to have—in shaping Egyptian history. Initial research indicates that to acknowledge that God made the revolution is seen as a way of being thankful to God but does not detract from the belief that human beings are endowed with free will. At the same time, such individuals would not claim that the revolution happened because of their power. More recently, the Muslim Brotherhood claims that while God is helping president Mursi, the trials and tribulations that Egypt is currently going through are seen as a test from God and as something that could, in the end, be beneficial. The Qur’anic verses 2:216 (But it is possible that ye dislike a thing which is good for you, and that ye love a thing which is bad for you) and 94:5-6 (So, verily, with every difficulty, there is relief) forms a key part of their thinking. The paper will relate this thought to broader debates about the secular, in particular to the secularization of time (Taylor) and to the secular concept of the role of the autonomous individual in shaping history (Asad).

This paper stems from an inductive research problem: the support given to the military-deep state by the youth revolutionary movement in Egypt’s political upheavals of summer 2013. Why would the youth revolutionary movement choose to support the military-deep state’s political maneuverings, and what is the precise nature of this support? To answer these questions, this paper chooses to explore two different analytical frameworks that start with different base assumptions and end with quite different interpretations. The first framework is focused on the concept of strategic choice; here, the position of the youth revolutionary movement is understood as an active decision taken in order to further the achievement of the movement’s goals. The second framework emphasizes the concept of multisectorial mobilization; here, the position of the youth revolutionary movement is a product of political crisis and the fleeting unification of social space. Though both frameworks suffer from shortcomings, the inclination is to support the explanation of multisectorial mobilization. In this sense, the position of the youth revolutionary movement in the face of a military coup is less an active choice made to further movement goals than a result of the unpredictable dynamics and associated interpretations of the crisis itself.

In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in the politics of religious freedom in non-Western societies, particularly in Muslim-majority countries. Many of these countries such as Indonesia and Egypt have established religious freedom clauses in their constitutions that protects the rights of religious minorities to establish places of worship and practice their religion without any interference from both the state and from other religious groups. However, despite these constitutional guarantees, there has been a rise of incidents of inter-religious conflicts in the two countries within the past decade, affecting Christians and members of the Ahmadiyah minority sects in Indonesia and the Coptic Christian community in Egypt. These incidents have often been attributed to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and revivalist Islamic social movements in the political realm of these countries. This paper argues that Islamic fundamentalism is not sufficient in explaining the rise of inter-religious conflict in Indonesia and Egypt. Instead, they occurred due to the coalitional pacts and alliances between Christian minorities to support authoritarian rulers (Indonesia’s Suharto and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak) that suppressed Muslim political activists in both countries. The tacit supports of Christian political and economic elites in both societies, whom backed the oppressive ruling regimes in their respective societies, along with the lack of support they have given to Islamic pro-democracy activists, have caused alienation between Muslims and Christians in both societies. These helped to fuel the call from revivalist Muslims to curb the religious privileges of Christians in both Indonesia and Egypt, and in-turn increased the incidents of conflicts and violence between the two religious groups. This study uses comparative historical methodology to find the empirical data to support its theoretical arguments. First, it outlines the history of the establishments of Indonesian and Egypt constitutions and how both Muslims and Christians agreed to the religious freedom clauses in the constitutions of these societies. Second, it explores why Christians decided to form an alliance with the authoritarian regimes in both societies in order to retain their political and economic privileges, while alienating the Muslim-majority groups in the process. Third, it shows how these alliances helped to contribute to the inter-religious conflicts between the two religious groups that increased during the transition process that ended the Suharto and Mubarak regimes and continued to worsen afterwards.

The Coptic political activism of post-January 25th, 2011 has yet to be fully discussed outside of the “minority question” or this national unity paradigm. Thus, questions arise—how are Coptic political groups in the continuing revolutionary moment challenging the victimhood narrative or the national unity paradigm? Why are these groups making visible their claims through the framework of citizenship rights? What is left invisible? This paper will focus on how the present Coptic political groups, particularly the Maspero Youth Union (MYU), or Shabab Maspero, connects a call for equal rights before the law, renewed visions of citizenship and a secular, civil state within a (re)imagining and (re)connection of Copts to Egyptian nationalism. The all-encompassing and moral (re)configuration of human rights discourse has become integral to the discourse on equality and citizenship within Coptic communities and among political actors, such as the Maspero Youth Union. Thus, the Maspero Youth Union’s promotion of human rights discourse and secularism as a means to overcome sectarianism and “enlighten” Egyptian society requires reframing and must be contextualized in order to deconstruct the emerging political possibilities of reworking a particular grammar associated with the “Copt” and in envisioning how “citizenship,” in and of itself, does not provide the proper grammar for the desires of the current Coptic political groups and Coptic communities more broadly. This paper will present a history of the Maspero Youth Union as a means to (re)position the movement in a “national” political context that performs unity, but maintains difference. Second, this paper will seek to show how the Maspero Youth Union is a site of contestation in the “meaning” attributed to a “Coptic community.” Finally, this paper will focus on how the present Coptic political groups are opening up spaces for rethinking “citizenship” as a means to achieve “equality.” Importantly, this paper aims to discuss Coptic political groups outside of recent scholarship on a “Coptic civil society” that champions and re-enforces the referential connections of a “Coptic community” to the Coptic Orthodox Church or other Christian institutional denominations. In positioning Coptic political groups like the Maspero Youth Union outside of relations to the Church as institution and representative of the “Coptic community,” this paper seeks to (re)position the “Copt” into the Egyptian national imaginary looking through the lens of the continuing revolutionary moment.