The immediate wake of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution witnessed the precipitous rise to prominence of Islamist actors on Egypt’s political scene, culminating in the presidential election of Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Mohamed Morsi. Nevertheless, after only a year in power, popular discontent with Morsi led to his removal by the Egyptian military. Morsi’s overthrow was endorsed not only by his secularist and liberal opponents, but also by a number of prominent Egyptian religious thinkers and leaders, most notably former Grand Mufti Ali Jum‘a and the prominent Salafi scholar and activist Yasir Burhami. Given the recent character of these events, they have only just begun to attract scholarly attention. The proposed presentation will contribute to such efforts by examining the Islamic legal arguments used by Jum‘a and Burhami to justify the coup and to excuse the subsequent forceful dispersal of Islamist protesters. To do so, the presentation will analyze relevant fatwas, written statements, and televised interviews offered by both figures. Although the proposed presentation will explore the way in which Jum‘a’s and Burhami’s views are shaped by considerations of political expediency, it does not simply reduce them to such considerations. Rather the presentation will seek to demonstrate that if the legal arguments put forth by Jum‘a and Burhami have found acceptance among broad sectors of the Egyptian population, this is because their logic resonates with widely shared assumptions about political life inherited from the Mubarak era, and actively cultivated by proponents of the pre-revolutionary regime. Such assumptions include a tendency to frame political disagreements not as a natural feature of peaceful democratic political life, but rather as civil strife (or “fitna”) pitting the forces of stability (i.e., the military) against the forces of chaos and bloodshed (i.e., religious terrorists). The proposed presentation will show how the religious texts and fiqh maxims cited by Jum‘a and Burhami both reflect and re-entrench such a perspective on political life. By reproducing this zero-sum discourse, such figures use their authority to counter efforts by Morsi supporters (and some secular activists) to frame political dissent in terms other than violent civil discord. By examining the opinions of Jum‘a and Burhami, the presentation will not only provide insight into ongoing religious debates about political legitimacy in Egypt, but will also show how such debates relate to widely shared assumptions about political life that continue to exert great influence in the aftermath of the Arab Spring.

In the wake of the Arab Spring, the prospect of Islamist rule has worked to galvanize opposition from secular intellectuals and political activists. As a result, recent years have seen secularism assume an increasingly prominent place in public discourses on politics and social life. The ideas of the late Egyptian intellectual Abdelwahab Elmessiri (d.2008) have a central place in current Arab debates over secularism. Elmessiri articulates his views in the acclaimed 2002 work “Partial Secularism and Comprehensive Secularism” (Al-‘Almaniyya al-Juz’iyya wa-l-‘Almaniyya al-Shamila), which has already gone through at least four printed editions and is also widely circulated on the internet. Elmessiri’s text provides a critical conceptual and sociological analysis of secularism, particularly in relationship to the Arab Muslim world. Elmessiri’s views reflect an Islamist perspective, but one which is markedly liberal in character. Given its 800-page length and fairly recent publication, Elmessiri’s text has not yet received attention from Western scholars. The proposed presentation will address this gap by providing a general analysis of Elmessiri’s views and examining their place in current debates over secularism. In terms of methodology, analysis will draw on relevant textual sources, particularly Elmessiri’s “Partial Secularism and Comprehensive Secularism” and the published interviews with Elmessiri that have been collected in the 2009 work “Secularism, Modernity, and Globalization” (Al-‘Almaniyya wa-l-Hadatha wa-l-‘Awlama). Sources also include books and newspaper articles authored by figures who reference Elmessiri’s ideas. The proposed presentation will give special attention to the following key issues: (1) How do Elmessiri’s views differ from those found in the large number of Islamist tracts on secularism published over the past three decades? (2) What does Elmessiri mean by distinguishing between “partial” and “comprehensive” secularisms? What are the broader implications of such a distinction for Islamist politics? (3) How have Elmessiri’s ideas informed debates over secularism in the aftermath of the Arab Spring? I will show how Elmessiri’s arguments stress the need to differentiate between secularism as a limited political arrangement versus secularism as an all-encompassing mode of daily social existence. Elmessiri encourages openness to the former while denouncing the latter, thereby creating a position with some appeal both for left-learning intellectuals as well as religious conservatives. By laying out Elmessiri’s ideas and examining their increasing influence, the proposed presentation will provide insight into the future development of Islamist thought in the face of secularist challenges.

Over the past few decades, a great deal has been written on secularism both by Islamist thinkers and by Western academics studying the Muslim world. Little attention, however, has been paid to the significant differences that exist between how these two groups conceptualize secularism. The proposed presentation will address this issue by comparing and contrasting these two sets of views, as well as the assumptions which underlie them. In doing so, the presentation will seek to nuance and challenge regnant understandings of “the secular” as a conceptual and analytical category. With respect to Islamist thought, the presentation will focus on the writings of the influential religious scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi. In recent years, al-Qaradawi has devoted great effort to both theorizing and critiquing secularism, setting forth his views in texts such as “Islam and Secularism” (al-Islam wa-l-‘Ilmaniyya) and “Secular Extremism Confronting Islam” (al-Tatarruf al-‘Ilmani fi Muwajahat al-Islam). With respect to Western academic perspectives on secularism, the presentation will focus on two influential recent works inspired by the ideas of Talal Asad. The first of these is anthropologist Hussein Ali Agrama’s Questioning Secularism (2012). The second is legal historian Wael Hallaq’s The Impossible State (2012). Each of these texts – indebted to the pioneering work of Asad but otherwise quite different in important ways – can both be read as associating secularism with the nature and functioning of the modern state and argue for its deep incompatibility with any historically recognizable form of the Islamic tradition. Such a perspective appears to diverge in important respects from that put forth by Islamist thinkers like al-Qaradawi. While al-Qaradawi holds that secularism is repugnant to Islamic principles, he does not associate secularism with the nature and functioning of the modern state as such. Consequently, for al-Qaradawi the notion of a modern state that is “Islamic” (rather than “secular”) is not seen as fundamentally problematic or a contradiction in terms. All of this reflects the fact that al-Qaradawi conceptualizes “secularism,” and its relationship to modern techniques of governance, in a manner potentially different from scholars like Agrama and Hallaq. The proposed presentation will critically analyze these differences, assessing their implications for the broader study of secularism and for the ultimate viability of Islamist aspirations to build a modern Islamic state. In doing so, the presentation will provide insight into the future of Middle Eastern political life in the aftermath of the Arab Spring.

In the two and a half years of Egypt’s brief revolutionary moment (2011-2013), the country’s oldest social movement organization experienced the most extreme swings in fortunes than at any other time in its 85-year history. From outlawed—but tolerated—opposition under the Mubarak regime, it quickly maneuvered in the emerging post-authoritarian political order to become the ruling party, winning a majority in parliament, electing its candidate as Egypt’s first democratically elected president, and seeing through the passage of a new constitution. By late summer 2013, however, not only had the Muslim Brotherhood lost all of its recent gains, but the organization was entering a period of unprecedented state repression that many have argued far exceeds that to which it was subjected during the Nasser era. With its leaders imprisoned, its members violently pursued and scattered, and its institutions all but destroyed, by 2014 the Muslim Brotherhood found itself at one of the lowest points in its history. This paper explores the possible avenues for the resumption of the organization’s mission within a unique and unprecedented social and political climate. Methodologically, I will contrast recent statements and official positions of the organization’s leadership with the group’s historical ideological development as represented by older movement literature. The ensuing analysis can more effectively address the intellectual and ideological challenges facing the Brotherhood’s contemporary leadership in rearticulating the group’s traditional activist mission even as it struggles for its very survival. The paper begins with an examination of the wider social context emerging out of the July 2013 coup and the military’s attempt to solidify a new political order. It then proceeds to examine how the Muslim Brotherhood’s historical experiences have impacted its intellectual development and its ability to maintain a significant presence within Egyptian society in the face of consistent efforts to constrain it. The paper concludes by examining the critical question: What possible paths might Muslim Brotherhood activists attempt to chart in their attempt to survive the latest round of repression? The path(s) chosen – ranging from the production of new modes of militant resistance akin to those of the 1970s to the development of a broad, all-inclusive mission that discards the Brotherhood’s traditional strict organizational structure in favor of a “cosmopolitan Islamism” – will directly impact whether the Muslim Brotherhood can forge new conceptual forms around which to rally its supporters and maintain its presence as a viable Islamic alternative in a new and uncertain era.

The events of the Arab Spring have spawned a vast amount of commentary and analysis by Muslim intellectuals. One of the most prominent contributors to these discussions is the distinguished Moroccan philosopher Taha ‘Abd al-Rahman, a figure renowned for his efforts to renovate classical Islamic mysticism in response to the challenges of modernity. ‘Abd al-Rahman sets forth his views in a 500-page work published in 2012 entitled “The Spirit of Religion: From the Narrowness of Secularism to the Spaciousness of Fidelity” (Ruh al-Din: Min Diq al-‘Almaniyya ila Sa’at al-I’timaniyya). Although ‘Abd al-Rahman has Islamist sympathies, his text offers a critique of conventional Islamist politics as well as secularist ideologies. This presentation will offer the first analysis of ‘Abd al-Rahman’s recent text, comparing and contrasting his views with that of other Islamist writings on politics, religion, and secularism. In analyzing ‘Abd al-Rahman’s text, special attention will be given to the manner in which he critiques the currents that presently dominate political life in the Arab World. ‘Abd al-Rahman criticizes secularists for attempting to separate politics and religion. At the same time he also criticizes conventional Islamist movements for confusing politics and the pursuit of power with religion. For ‘Abd al-Rahman, it is necessary to forge an alternative perspective that avoids both of these errors. In his view, a perspective of this kind will pave the way for transcending the secularist-Islamist deadlock that lies at the center of political struggles in the Arab World. ‘Abd al-Rahman’s text introduces such an alternative perspective, which he refers to as the “fidelity thesis”. The proposed presentation will explain what the fidelity thesis is and elucidate why ‘Abd al-Rahman believes it provides a way of transcending the errors characteristic of existing secularist and Islamist political movements. The presentation will also address how ‘Abd al-Rahman relates the fidelity thesis to the specific challenges associated with the Arab Spring. By providing a critical analysis of ‘Abd al-Rahman’s ideas, this presentation will provide insight into the ongoing evolution of Islamist thought in relationship to secular political ideologies in the contemporary Arab and Muslim worlds.