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Dictators and Islamists A Comparative Perspective on Egypt and Morocco

Paper prepared for presentation at the Joint Session of the European Consortium for Political

Research (ECPR), 14-19 March 2005

Workshop No. 11: “Post Cold War Democratization in the Muslim World: Domestic,

Regional and Global Trends” (Directors: Frederic Volpi; Francesco Cavatorta)

Holger Albrecht

University of Tübingen

Institute for Political Science, Department of Middle Eastern Affairs

Melanchthonstrasse 32

72074 Tübingen

Germany

ph.: ++49 7071 / 2975296

e.mail: holger-albrecht@gmx.de

Eva Wegner

European University Institute

Department of Political and Social Sciences

Via dei Roccettini, 9

50016 S. Dom. di Fiesole (FI)

Italy

e.mail: eva.wegner@iue.it

This paper is work in progress. Do not cite, quote, or distribute it without the authors’

permission.

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I. Introduction

When looking at post-September 11 discourses in the Western world, we may imagine

political Islamism as the major curse in world politics. However, the terrorist threat from the

al-Qa’eda network and other Islamist groups in Iraq and various countries worldwide divert

our views away from the fact that political Islamism plays an integral part of politics in the

Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Islamist groups have evolved into a powerful social

movement active in several Arab countries, i.e. in Algeria, Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco,

Lebanon and Yemen., those movements draw on strong popular support, mainly from the

poor and the lower middle classes in societies; they are, by and large, well-organized and

remain financially autonomous. In the absence of other major opposition forces the Islamist

movement represents the major political challenger for the regimes in the Arab world

particularly in times of economic and social crises when authoritarian incumbents face

problems to legitimize their hold on power. Therefore, it is an intriguing question how the

Middle Eastern states deal with this challenge.

Contrary to approaches that focus on the question whether Islamists would adopt democratic

principles or not, this paper addresses the question of how authoritarian elites successfully

manage to contain Islamist contenders in order to secure regime persistence. We assume that

the latter is the ultimate aim of authoritarian incumbents in the Middle East and that those

have abundant potential strategies and opportunities at their disposal to contain those

movements. Repression is by no means the main, let alone the sole strategy. True, pure

coercion remains the ultimate and last resort to overcome challenges to authoritarian

incumbents from any kind of opposition, but regimes may consider alternative opportunities

of containment such as formal inclusion into political institutions, informal toleration, and

‘soft’ repression.

This paper focuses on the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) in Egypt and the Movement of Unity and

Reform (MUR) in Morocco from a comparative perspective. In the wake of economic crisis

and subsequent threats to regime stability, the political elites of both countries’ regimes have

refrained from endorsing purely repressive strategies of containment. Rather, they have

yielded to the movements’ claims for inclusion into the political institutions. Comparing

Egypt and Morocco, however, illustrates that scope, timing, and outcomes of inclusivist

strategies of containment differ remarkably from one case to the other. Thus, the core of this

paper inquires into questions of when, under what circumstances, and why authoritarian

regimes use inclusivist strategies of opposition management or return to more suppressive

stances. In this context, we discuss the relevance of differing regime types, different

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mechanisms of inclusivist policies, the strength of movements, and the impact of the

authoritarian elites’ policies of containment on the Islamists.

Islamist Activism and Social Movement Theory

Islamist movements are the largest, most powerful, and best organized opposition movements

with the potential to challenge the political regimes in the contemporary Arab world. Their

intellectual origins date back to the late 19th century while they appeared as mass movements

in the second half of the 20th century. Since roughly twenty years do we witness a new

dynamics of politicization of those movements: the running of Islamist political parties and of

single Islamists as candidates without party affiliation in elections are the most recent

expressions of these movements’ aim at transforming the social and political life in the Arab

states. As Bennani-Chraïbi and Fillieule (2003, p. 35) argue, Islamism is best conceived of as

a historicized contemporary political ideology. The ‘other’ that Islamist ideology explicitly

confronts is not other religions, but rival ideologies of Western origin, i.e. Marxism,

Socialism, Fascism, Capitalism (Roy, 1992), and – most recently – economic liberalism. One

key element of the modern characteristic of Islamist movements is their aim to realize their

social ideas and programs through collective and organized action in the political field

(Eisenstadt, 2000, pp. 592-593, 601).1

Therefore, while scholars first held that Islamism would express a religious resurgence in

conflict with modernity, the focus on the ‘modern’ character of Islamist movements became

more and more prominent. In this context, Islamist movements have been understood as social

movements aiming at fundamental change of society (as opposed to single issue movements)

and analyzed from a social-movement-theory angle (cf. Bennani-Chraïbi & Fillieule, 2003;

Wickham, 2002; Clark, 2004; Hafez, 2003; Wiktorowicz, 2004; Munson, 2001). True,

concepts that have been established and used to understand social phenomena and their

historical trajectories in Western democracies do not always travel smoothly to the

authoritarian grounds in the Arab world, but the analytical tools of social movement research

do have decisive potential to contribute to a better understanding of Islamist movements.

Islamist movements match the consensual definition of social movements as “informal

1 There is a large literature about the elements that account for the emergence and success of Islamist movements. While the focus of these approaches differs remarkably, scholars mainly draw on two types of explanations, either implicitly or explicitly: Some approaches stress that the Islamists’ emergence and success should be viewed in the context of the socio-economic and political grievances deriving from the failure of many Arab States to provide for goods and services and to absorb the educated in the public sectors. Other works emphasize the relevance of cultural factors, the experiences of colonialism, or Western domination of the Arab states and societies. These explanations are not mutually exclusive but often combined.

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networks, based on shared beliefs and solidarity, which mobilize about conflictual issues,

through the frequent use of various forms of protest” (Della Porta & Diani, 1999, p. 16).

Second, social movement theory issues, such as ’political opportunity structures’, ‘resource

mobilization’ or ‘framing’, have been applied successfully to analyze Islamist activism and

the political framework in which they operate. Third, the application of social movement

theory approaches helps to trespass normative prejudices which have frequently biased

research on Islamist political action.

As a conceptual point of departure, we should note that social movements are to be

distinguished from singular groups or organizations.2 Thus, the contemporary Islamist

movement is composed of a broad range of organizations which differ remarkably within and

across countries according to their organizational forms, means of action, political strength,

popular support, and ideological orientations. The common denominator of these various

organizations is that they relate to the same ideological source in one way or another. Radical

groups, such as the Jama’a Islamiyya or the Islamic Jihad, co-exist with the well-established

moderate Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt or those organizations that limit their activities to the

educational and social domain. Other groups, such as the Palestinian Hamas or the Lebanese

Hizb’allah, comprise within one organization a political party, a militant branch, and some

kind of welfare NGOs providing all sorts of social services. Finally, we find well-established

political parties that emerged from the Islamist current as specific organizations for political

representation, for example in Jordan, Yemen, and Morocco.3

This paper deals particularly with the relationship between distinct social movement

organizations4 and political regimes and highlights the relevance of domestic opportunity

structures. This notion stresses the broader political system as the most important variable to

determine the constraints and opportunities that affect the extent and form of collective action.

Thus, political opportunity structures impact on the paths that social movements can go for

achieving their goals. More precisely, they comprehend the following four dimensions: the

relative openness or closure of the institutionalized political system, the stability or instability

of elite alignments, the presence or absence of elite allies, and the state’s capacity and

2 Kriesi (1996, pp. 152-154) distinguishes four different types of movement related organizations: ‘Service’, ‘self-help’, ‘political mobilization’, and ‘political representation organizations’. 3 On first sight, one could be tempted to question whether these organizations still represent the same movement. However, we shall bear in mind that one characteristic of social movements is that they may well include groups, organizations, and sub-movements which promote conflicting goals and compete with each other. For instance, the labor movement in Western societies also included various and conflicting sub-movements that we may label ‘Catholic’, ‘social-democratic’, ‘communist’, and ‘anarchic’ (Raschke, 1987, p. 82). 4 We will, in the following empirical sections, use the terms ‘organization’, ‘group’, and ‘movement’ synonymously to denote singular social movement organizations.

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propensity for repression (McAdam, 1996, p. 27).5 These dimensions strongly influence the

choices available for social movements and account for different forms and strategies of

similar groups in different countries.6

We focus on two specific social movement organizations from a comparative perspective: the

Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the Movement of Unity and Reform in Morocco. Both are

Islamist in that they champion the Islamicization of society and the application of the Shari’a

(Islamic law). Over the last decades, they managed to attract strong popular support from their

respective societies through social activities at the grass-root level; the groups possess well-

established organizational and financial capacities and resist so far the cooptation by state

elites – a common means of containing other, mostly secular opposition groups in the

countries concerned. On the other hand, both movements have been aiming over time at being

formally included into the respective political systems: They took up the initiatives to

establish political parties and to participate in elections. Other activities include their work as

members in professional syndicates.

How is the political environment shaped in which those movements operate? In other words:

What are the stable components of the opportunity structures for Islamist activism in the

respective political systems? Both countries, Egypt and Morocco, have authoritarian regimes

of distinctly patrimonial nature. Their political systems can best be described by the term

‘liberal authoritarianism’ (cf. Brumberg, 2002). Here authoritarian incumbents are eager to

use coercion and repression only when deemed absolutely necessary to preserve their power.

Additional means of power maintenance include the origination of political legitimacy by

creating a liberal picture of their rule through the toleration – however carefully controlled

and restricted – of some degree of political participation and civil freedoms.

The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt

The Muslim Brotherhood (al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin) was founded in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna,

and quickly emerged into a powerful social movement organization with strong popular

support. As the first organized form of Islamic political activism, most Islamist groups and

movements in other countries of the Muslim world draw their roots back – in one way or

another – to the Brotherhood. At that time, two ideological traits highlighted by the

5 His synthesis is based on Kriesi, 1995; Rucht, 1996; Brockett, 1991; and Tarrow, 1994. 6 Recent social movement research has stressed that this is a two way process. Not only are movements shaped by their political environment, but they also aim at reshaping this environment in order to increase their potential impact.

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Brotherhood happened to be particularly appealing to the populace in Egypt: the movement’s

call to apply Islamic principles to the transformation of society, culture, politics, and the

economy and, second, its struggle against the British occupation of the country.7 The

revolution in 1952 marked a first decisive turning point for the Brothers: They initially

welcomed the end of the British occupation, but quickly found themselves caught in a fierce

power struggle with the new regime of the Free Officers headed by Gamal Abdel Nasser (cf.

Aclimandos, 2002). Nasser won this fight by resorting to blunt repression and by

incarcerating thousands of Islamist activists and their leaders. This, in turn, led to the

radicalization of parts of the Islamist social movement in Egypt.8 The Muslim Brotherhood,

however, denounced violence as a means of political action in the early 1970s and entered the

political scene again when Nasser’s successor, Anwar as-Sadat, discretely encouraged the

Islamists in an attempt to counterbalance secular opposition from Nasserist, Marxist, and

Nationalist circles.9

With this political move Sadat laid down the origins for the demise of those latter opposition

forces and, at the same time, for the strengthening of political Islam in Egypt. As Carry

Wickham has shown in her seminal study on the ‘mobilization of Islam’ (2002), Islamist

outreach fell on fertile soil within Egyptian society at large. While diffuse support among the

rural and urban poor is still difficult to evaluate, the Brotherhood can certainly count on large

popular support particularly from the middle classes of society. In addition to the well-

developed organizational structure, two other intertwined dimensions determine the success of

the Muslim Brotherhood’s quest for popular support: the provision of ideational and material

incentives. Concerning the content of the Brotherhood’s ideology, it should be noted that its

political program remains rather vague. Using the Islamic concept of Da’wa (‘call’), the

Brotherhood fell short of offering a comprehensive political program, but called – in very

general terms – for the re-Islamicization of Egyptian society and the application of the Islamic

rule, Shari’a, to law and politics.10 This programmatic fuzziness, however, did not harm its

appeal towards the populace, mainly since rival ideologies of Western origin – such as

7 For the rise of the Brothers from the 1930s to the 1950s, see Munson, 2001. 8 Inspired by radical Islamist thinkers, the most famous of whom was Sayyid Qutb, Islamist radicalization triggered the emergence of militant groups and splinter factions of the Muslim Brotherhood. Such underground extremist movements included the Islamic Jihad, the Jama’a Islamiyya (Islamic Group), and the Takfir wa al-Hijra (’Repentance and Retreat’) which quickly drove away from the Brotherhood and resorted to a militant struggle to overthrow the Egyptian regime lasting from the late 1970s to 1997 (cf. Ansari, 1984; Gerges, 2000). 9 In an almost ironic twist, the Islamist resurgence encouraged by Sadat in the 1970s proved to become a ghost that escaped the bottle in 1981 when Sadat was assassinated by members of the Islamic Jihad. 10 Since roughly a decade, internal discussions on the relationship between Islam and democracy intensified, and so did the politicization of discourses among the Brothers.

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socialism, Marxism, capitalism, or nationalism – have been severely discredited by the 1980s

and gave way to an ideology based on ‘Arab-Islamic roots’. Islamic ideology was

accompanied by the Islamist movement’s provision of social security services which the

Egyptian regime had set up in its popular era under Nasser and during the early Sadat-years

but could not maintain any longer in times of economic crisis. Financed by a parallel Islamic

economic sector, the Muslim Brotherhood capitalized – as the major manifest political

organization – on the proliferation of services, jobs, and material benefits through private

mosques and Islamic voluntary associations.

Clearly, when Hosni Mubarak came to power in 1981, he did not face an easy task to handle

the Islamist movement awakened under his predecessor. His regime was confronted with the

challenge of both radical underground groups and a moderate Islamist mass movement which

was independent from government control and deeply rooted within society. To contain the

Islamist movement in Egypt, Mubarak’s regime employed a two-sided strategy. While the

radical Jihad and Jama’a Islamiyya were put under heavy-handed pressure from the security

and military apparatuses, the moderate Muslim Brotherhood was given some opportunity to

become a player in the formal political institutions: Political liberalization, which was

initiated by Sadat and resumed by Mubarak during the 1980s, led to the emergence of

political parties and elections, the creation of ‘civil society’ organizations, and the

politicization of professional syndicates. Thus, a playground emerged for those among the

Muslim Brotherhood who advocated activism in these political institutions. In the first decade

of his rule, Mubarak conceded to these demands to some degree. However, the Brothers’

activities have been closely overlooked and restricted from the very first minute. Most

importantly, the regime did not tolerate the creation of a political party. Rather, the Brothers

were allowed to participate in the elections of the parliament and professional syndicates as

independent candidates only.

In the 1984 and 1987 parliamentary elections, the Brotherhood made use of this opportunity

by forming alliances with other, secular opposition parties.11 Even more impact on the

Brothers’ new activism in the formal political institution had their activities in the

professional syndicates: Between 1987 and 1992, Islamists took over the majority in the

boards of the engineers, the doctors, and the lawyers syndicates respectively (cf. Wickham;

11 Cooperation among opposition groups in the 1984 and 1987 elections was bolstered through the need to cast at least 8 % of the votes to be represented in parliaments. In 1984, the Brotherhood formed an alliance with the Neo-Wafd Party as a junior partner; in 1987, members of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist associations joined with the (Socialist) Labor Party (Hizb al-Amal) and the Liberal Party (Hizb al-Ahrar) to form the ‘Islamic Alliance’. From 1984 to 1987, they increased their seats in parliament from – depending on the source – 8-12 seats to approximately 36 (cf. Abed-Kotob, 1995, p. 328; Ghadbian, 1997, p. 91; Guazzone, 1995).

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1997; Fahmy, 1997). The early 1990s parliamentary elections marked a decisive turning point

in the regime-Brotherhood relationship (Al-Awadi, 2005).12 Since then, the ‘political

honeymoon’ of the 1980s was over and the Muslim Brotherhood came under siege from

coercive, statist containment emanating in a policy towards the Muslim Brotherhood which

can be subsumed under the terms ‘minimal toleration and formal restriction’.

Both the organization and the Brotherhood’s mouthpiece al-Da’wa have not been legally

recognized by Mubarak’s regime. Coercive measures of the state included the arbitrary arrest

of the Brotherhood’s rank and file and also prominent activists particularly in the run-up to

the parliamentary elections in 1995 and 2000. Islamist candidates have been severely

hampered during election campaigns and, among those who succeeded to win a seat at the

Maglis ash-Shura, some Islamists have been removed when they have been perceived by the

regime as all too active and critical.13 Most importantly, the Muslim Brotherhood has been

excluded from the political dialogue with other opposition forces in the country (i.e. legalized

political parties and the human rights NGOs); communication between the regime and the

Brothers is exclusively maintained via security channels (Amn ad-Dawla)14. While the

Muslim Brotherhood formally remains an illegal organization and is subject to decidedly

higher degrees of coercion than the secular opposition, there are some signs that repression

has never been the regime’s sole answer towards the movement. On the toleration-side of the

game, it should be noted that the regime never made the attempt to destroy the organizational

capacities of the movement: The Brotherhood maintains offices on Roda-island of greater

Cairo and other cities in the country; the coordination of activities is openly organized in the

professional syndicates. Moreover, despite the said restrictions during elections, the Brothers

12 In the 1990 parliamentary elections, all opposition parties abstained from participating – with the Tagammu Party as a prominent exception. Thus, observers witnessed the starting point for a decade of political de-liberalization embracing higher degrees of repression not only towards the Islamist challenge but political opposition and society at large (Kienle, 1998; Brownlee, 2002). Concerning the Muslim Brotherhood’s success in Egypt’s political life, the regime’s fears were not to ignore any more at the Brothers’ sweeping victory in the board elections of the Bar Association in September 1992. This syndicate had always been a traditional stronghold for liberal forces (Fahmy, 1997; Wickham, 1997). 13 The most prominent example here is the case of Gamal Heshmat. An active member of the medical syndicate and Brotherhood bigwig in Alexandria, Heshmat was ousted from parliament in January 2003. Heshmat admitted that he was among the most active opposition figures in the 2000 parliament but emphasized that he had not deliberately crossed a ‘red line’ (author’s interview, 21. December 2004, Cairo). 14 There is no open political communication between the regime and the Brotherhood. Unofficial communication channels between Brotherhood members and single regime members are restricted to the corridors of parliament, some professional syndicates (particularly the press syndicate), and Universities (mainly Cairo University). (author’s interviews with several members of the Muslim Brotherhood, December 2004 and January 2005, Cairo). On the other hand, the regime does communicate with other opposition forces via political channels. One striking example is a meeting between Safwat Sherif and members of the Labor Party in November 2004 during which the re-legalization of the party was discussed (author’s interviews with Labor Party representatives, December 2004, Cairo). The Labor Party has an Islamist background too but is obviously not perceived as a dangerous contender like the MB and, thus, accepted as a participant in a political dialogue.

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managed to sustain the strongest opposition faction in parliament. At some very rare

instances, the regime even cooperated with the Muslim Brotherhood, for example when they

jointly organized a public rally against the US-led military campaign against Saddam

Hussain’s regime in Iraq on 27. and 28. March 2003.

The Movement of Unity and Reform in Morocco

Compared to the Egyptian case, the Moroccan Islamist movement is smaller and more

fragmented. The founding fathers of the Party for Justice and Development (PJD), on which

this paper focuses, emanated from one of the two major Islamist organizations in Morocco,

Harakat al-Tawhid wal-Islah (Movement of Unity and Reform, MUR).15 While the Moroccan

Islamist movement, like in Egypt, includes innumerable local educational, social and cultural

associations, independent preachers, and some small radical groups, the main other

organization of national outreach is al-‘Adl wal-Ihsan (‘Justice and Benevolence’) led by

Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.16

The MUR and al-‘Adl wal-Ihsan have their roots in the 1970s when Moroccan Islamic

activism emerged essentially as a rather narrow student movement (Munson, 1986). However,

while members have sometimes switched from one organization to the other, their ideological

references and organizational structures are quite dissimilar. With respect to their political

strategies and preferences, the MUR has been labeled as ‘realist’ because it has, since the

mid-1980s, actively pursued its inclusion into the formal political process. The term ‘idealist’

is applied to al-‘Adl wal-Ihsan because – while also striving for legal recognition – it

nonetheless rejects so far the conditions of the electoral game in Morocco (cf. Rogler, 1997).17

The latter is politically organized in universities and its members are represented in unions

only. The following paragraphs thus concentrate on the Movement of Unity and Reform and

its institutional branch, the PJD.

The MUR came into being in 1996 as a merger of mainly two Islamist organizations: al-Islah

wal-Tajdid and Rabitat al-Mustaqbal al-Islamiyy. Both can be traced back to the Jami‘yyat

al-Shabiba al-Islamiyya (‘Islamic Youth Association’) which was founded in 1969 by Abdel

Karim Mouti‘, an inspector of the ministry of education, who had been influenced by the

15 As we will explain in more detail below, the MUR is in itself a merger of different Islamist organizations. In the following, if not hinting precisely at one of these predecessor organizations, we will employ the label MUR to refer to the entirety of all those groups that are now part of the MUR. 16 This is the organization’s popular name and motto; officially, it was founded in 1979 as al-Jamaa‘a and changed its name in 1983 into Jami‘yyat al-Jamaa‘a al-Khairiyya.

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ideas of Sayyid Qutb.18 Indeed, while the ‘realist’ label to indicate the MUR’s political

orientations and strategies seems appropriate for the later period, this does not hold for the

initial one. Here, the revolutionary option predominated until the early 1980s. Since then, a

reformist vision and a global approach to society emerged and solidified in the organizations

that were founded by former Islamic Youth members (cf. Tozy 1999a, pp. 228-235).19

Similar to Egypt and other Arab states, the Moroccan Islamist movement was initially

encouraged by the regime as a counterweight to the left on the university campuses. The

encouragement and legalization of the Islamic Youth in the early 1970s should be seen in the

light of a limited opening of the Moroccan political system. From 1965 to 1970, Hassan II’s

personal rule was based on military backing and a large clientelist network. In 1971 and 1972,

two attempts to overthrow the King were led by high military officers and illustrated the

necessity of broadening the power base for the King who, then, searched for a general

rapprochement with the opposition. A few years later, however, the success of the Green

march in 1975 through which Morocco appropriated the Western Sahara, provided

overwhelming popular support to the monarch and allowed him to co-opt the opposition from

the independence movement. The legal status of the Islamic Youth, then, was short-lived. In

1976, the King used the assassination of a leftist union leader to ban the organization and trial

its members. The followers subsequently split into three groups: Some joined Yassin’s

movement, others organized in local associations. The third and largest of these groups

founded a new organization in 1981, first called al-Jama’a al-Islamiyya, since 1992 al-Islah

wal-Tajdid. Members of this organization constitute today the major faction inside the

MUR.20 While initially loyal to Mouti’, this group started from the beginning of the 1980s an

appeasement strategy towards the regime21 culminating, in 1990, in a public commitment to

the ideological pillars of the Moroccan political regime: the monarchy, Islam, and territorial

17 In the early 1990s when the regime negotiated the conditions of the MUR’s entry into official politics, propositions where also made to Yassin who refused to make the required concessions (Burgat, 1995, p. 290). 18The Islamic Youth recruited its members primarily in universities and secondary schools. It advocated a strictly Islamic polity and engaged in violent clashes with leftist movements on the university campuses. Little information is available concerning its organizational structure; Tozy describes it as a paramilitary organization (1999a, p. 231). 19 Party leaders explain that the initial revolutionary orientation was based on a more radical ideology imported from Egypt embracing “all its antagonisms with the regime”. Their current perception is that the Moroccan Islamists in the 1970s had ignored some fundamental differences between the political regimes in Egypt and Morocco, whereas they now consider the monarchy as a “100%” Islamic institution (author’s interview with a party leader, 08. September 2003, Rabat). 20 The organization was founded by Mohamed Yatim, Abdallah Baha, and Abdelilah Benkirane, at present all MPs and members of the General Secretariat of the PJD. Neither al-Jama’a nor al-Islah have been legalized but the authorities tolerated their activities to some extent. The second big faction inside the MUR, Rabitat al-Mustaqbal al-Islamiyy, was founded by those that had turned to the local religious associations.

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integrity. It categorically condemned the use of violence in any form and started to comment

favorably and approve Hassan II’s political decisions in its journal. This has led Tozy (1999a,

pp. 240-249) to hint at this group’s ideological flexibility and its readiness to adapt their ideas

and strategies to changing constraints or opportunities.

According to the MUR’s charter, its goals and principles are typical of contemporary Islamist

organizations and include calls to renew the understanding of religion, to champion the

respect of individual rights and public freedoms, to advocate the implementation of the

Shari’a, to improve material and living conditions of Muslims, to perform charitable work, to

achieve a comprehensive cultural renaissance, to strive for the unity of Muslims, to confront

ideologies which are perceived as ‘subversive’ to Islam, and to raise the educational and

moral level of the Moroccan people (cf. Haraka al-Tawhid wal-Islah, 1999).

Rather uncommon for Islamist organizations, though, is the relatively non-hierarchical

internal structure of the MUR. The members of the two main decision making bodies, the

Executive Bureau and the Shura Council, as well as the president are elected. Compared to

political organizations of whatever ideological orientation in MENA states, the most

outstanding feature is probably the fact that the MUR's president can only serve a maximum

of two four-year terms.

The inclusion of the Islamists in the electoral process was enacted through the MUR’s

integration into one of the numerous dormant Moroccan parties. Having been denied the

legalization of an own political party22, they were authorized to integrate in the Mouvement

Populaire Constitutionel Démocratique (MPCD; change of name to PJD in 1998).23 From

1992 onwards, the Islamist leaders re-animated or founded local and provincial party bureaus;

in 1996, integration was made explicit in an extra-ordinary congress during which movement

leaders were appointed to the party’s General Secretariat. The most important MUR leaders

became party leaders while still holding their posts in the executive bureau of the MUR.

While there had long been internal debates about whether the MUR should merge its whole

organizational body with the party, its Shura Council eventually opted for a formal separation

21 In 1982, al-Jama’a published a statement denouncing the practices of Mouti‘ and announcing a total separation of the group from the ideas of the mother movement (Shahin, 1998, p. 189) 22 In 1989 and 1992, they asked for the legalization of an own party project, Hizb al-Tajdid al-Watani (‘Party of National Renewal’), which was designed to conform to the Moroccan law on political parties that explicitly prohibits religious parties. For instance, the statutes invoked that the party would be open to all Moroccans irrespective of their religious affiliation, and that it would participate in the political process according to following guiding rules: respect for democracy, the free choice of the people, accepting the concept of transfer of power, and respect for pluralism. Nonetheless, the authorities rejected its legalization arguing that the constitution prohibits the foundation of a party on religious basis.

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of the two organizations. This rather ambiguous way of inclusion was acceptable to both the

regime and the Islamists. The regime was able to take one current of the Islamist movement

on board without creating a precedent through authorizing a political party based on

‘religion’. The Islamists, in turn, gained legality and were permitted political activity even

though they had to accommodate some of the old guard of the former MPCD.

The PJD ran in 1997 for the first time in national elections. National and international

commentators largely assessed these elections as a significant step in the Moroccan

‘democratization process’. Especially the King’s appointment of the leftist leader

Abderrahmane Youssoufi as Prime Minister and the formation of the Alternance Government

that included all former opposition parties were seen as symbols of the King’s commitment to

a political liberalization process he had set into motion at the beginning of the 1990s. The

necessity to liberalize resulted from a combination of a protracted economic and social crisis

and strong domestic and international criticism over the Moroccan human rights record.

Moreover, the mobilization capacities of the Islamist movement became apparent in the early

1990s in large demonstrations (Tozy, 1999b, p. 80). In addition to legitimacy crisis and street

politics, the problem of succession was already at the horizon; thus, King Hassan II aimed at

the inclusion of the opposition parties into the political process in order to stabilize the

system. This required two constitutional referenda (1992 – 1996) that channeled more power

to political parties and parliament and provided for the direct election of all MPs.24 Increasing

transparency of the electoral process was achieved through the creation of a National

Electoral Commission that comprises members of all relevant political parties.

The PJD supported the government for the first two years and then changed to the opposition

in 2000. Covering only half of the electoral constituencies, it increased its share of MPs from

14 to 42 (out of 325) in the 2002 parliamentary elections. It is now the third largest party in

parliament and the most active of the opposition parties. However, since the Islamists’ first

appearance in national elections in 1997, they did not openly confront the regime. Besides its

increasing success at the ballot boxes, the PJD has also considerably improved its

organizational size and capacities by attracting new members, by establishing more provincial

and local bureaus and by creating ancillary organizations for Youth, women and sympathizing

23 Founded in 1967 as a split-off faction from the Mouvement Populaire, the MPCD has never participated in elections. In 1992, the party’s organizational corpus was limited to the president’s villa. 24 Through the 1996 constitutional reform, however, a second chamber with large prerogatives was created in order to counter undesired effects of the increasing power of the first chamber. All the members of the second chamber are elected among the municipal councilors and the members of employer and labor unions.

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cadres. Besides this, it has aimed at the strengthening of the party organization by holding

party congresses and internal elections, and a constant revision of its formal procedures.

Strategies of Islamist Containment in Egypt and Morocco:

Formal Inclusion vs. Limited Toleration

As we have shown in the last empirical sections, the political regimes in Egypt and Morocco

display similarities as well as marked differences concerning their strategies to contain

powerful Islamist movements in the respective countries. The most important common feature

of Islamist containment in Egypt and Morocco is that both political regimes have preferred –

at least at one point in time – to permit some form of Islamist participation in the formal

political process over repressive means of containment. Thus, for both Islamist organizations,

we observe changes concerning their domestic opportunity structures that allowed for new

forms of collective action and participation in the political realm. However, the containment

strategies in Egypt and Morocco differ remarkably concerning the form as well as the

evolution of state policies over time.

First, with respect to the form chosen by the regimes, the participation of the Muslim

Brotherhood in Egyptian politics has been realized on an informal basis only. The Brothers

have never been authorized to enter the political scene through the establishment of a political

party. In Morocco, the MUR was allowed to take over a dormant political party; one can thus

speak of the formal inclusion in the political system. The second difference of our cases

concerns the evolution of statist policies towards Islamists over time. In Egypt, we witnessed

a change of strategies: While the Muslim Brotherhood benefited, during the 1980s, from the

informal inclusion in the political system, they experienced, since the early 1990s, a severe

repressive backlash; therefore, the status of the Muslim Brotherhood has changed from one of

‘informal inclusion’ to a mere limited toleration by the regime. Quite the contrary in

Morocco, where the formal inclusion of the MUR / PJD into the political institutions is a

continuous feature.

Three broad questions emerge from these observations: First, what accounts for the different

forms of inclusion? Second, what accounts for the different paths that the two regimes chose

to go? Third, how have the different strategies impacted on the respective movements?

Getting back to the crucial role assigned to opportunity structures, we assume that differences

in the institutional authoritarian settings in Morocco and Egypt determine to a large extent the

choice of the form of inclusion. Clearly speaking, there are differences in the authoritarian

14

regimes of the two countries. Recalling that initial inclusion occurred in both cases at the

moment of controlled political liberalization – i.e. of changing opportunities – we examine not

only differences in distinct institutional factors in Morocco and Egypt (such as regime

legitimacy) but also differences in the structure of political competition in order to account for

the regimes’ preferences. As a second determinant of this choice we compare the strength of

the two movements relative to other non-regime actors in these countries. As regards the

second question, we assume that the differences in the paths (change vs. continuity) must be

related to the question of how ‘successful’ the initial experiment has been from the

perspective of the regimes, that is whether inclusion is perceived to have confined the threat

the Islamist movement constitutes for regime persistence. In turn, the growth or decline of

perceived threats depends strongly on the Islamists’ behavior once included. In short, do they

play by the rules of the new political game or do they use their institutional representation to

effectively criticize and challenge the regime?

Proposition 1: The systemic importance of an institution determines its readiness to become

the target of the formal inclusion of Islamists.

When we look at the formal inclusion of Islamist organizations into the political realm, we

need to consider the strategic importance of the political institution where Islamists may be

included. In other words, we shall ask: What role and function is ascribed to parliaments or

other institutions with respect to the aim of authoritarian regime stabilization? And what does

it mean to the potential inclusion of Islamist movement organizations? Parliaments are

potential arenas of political competition in any polity, and thus in Egypt and Morocco too;

now the question is if, when, and why the respective authoritarian rulers tolerate such

competition in this arena or not. Following Daniel Brumberg, our assumption is that – in

principal, but below the level of rule-making – competition and political dissent is tolerated in

both political systems which facilitates a juggling act of interests between different societal

and elitist interests (cf. Brumberg, 2002; for the Egyptian case: Albrecht, 2005). One critical

difference, however, is that, in Morocco, the parliament constitutes the arena for such

competition, while, in Egypt, competition originates between distinct – in themselves rather

homogenous – pillars of the state, i.e. between the military, the religious world of al-Azhar,

‘civil society’, and the political realm of the authoritarian system, that is parliament and

government. Therefore, we assume that these differences in systemic political structures can

explain positive incentives for the formal inclusion of the MUR in the Moroccan parliament

as well as constraints for formal inclusion in Egypt. To explain differences in the systemic

15

functions and strategic importance of parliaments, we shall highlight another important

aspect: the kind and degree of political legitimacy at the disposal of the rulers in Egypt and

Morocco.

Different from the Arab republics, the ruling Moroccan Alaoui dynasty enjoys historical and

religious legitimacy. In post-independence Morocco, the King has build upon these sources of

legitimacy to appear superior and neutral over any group of society. The different segments of

society compete among each other for scarce resources to be distributed by the Makhzen. This

competition creates a permanent tension and conflict among these groups and allows the

supreme arbitrator to stay in control (Waterbury, 1970). In short, in contrast to Republican

presidents, kings “are […] above all factions and party to none” (Richards & Waterbury,

1998, p. 298). This superiority is reflected in Hassan II’s famous phrase “I will never be put

into equation” (quoted in Zartman, 1988: p. 64), which illustrates well the distance between

the monarchy as a ruling and governing institution and the rest of the Moroccan institutional

landscape. The monarchy as the ultimate Moroccan power center cannot be contested; but for

those actors that accept the king’s definition of the rules of the game, there is a sphere for

articulation and political contest, namely in parliament.

Contrary to the Moroccan king, the president of the Egyptian republic faces a tangible

legitimacy problem. He does not dispose of individual, inherent legitimacy emanating from

the hereditary transmission of the power to rule. As a consequence, he remains much more

subject to contestation, at least from within the ruling circles.25 Simply speaking, the

‘distance’ between the Egyptian president and the said pillars of the state is narrower than in

Morocco. Clearly, the Egyptian ruler needs the parliament in order to create a pseudo-

democratic legitimacy and as a pool to convene and keep in check the political elite.

However, from the logic described above follows that the toleration of dissent and contention

within parliament remains decidedly limited. This is certainly the reason behind the sorry

state of the Egyptian party system. Even though a multi-party system had been introduced by

Sadat already in the late 1970s, the so-called opposition parties have never been given the

opportunity to perform successfully in elections leaving Egypt de-facto with a one-party

system.26

25 This becomes obvious particularly in times of power changes: When Nasser, Sadat, and Mubarak came to power, they always had to overcome strong contenders for the regime’s leadership from their own ranks. 26 The legalized opposition parties, the most important of whom are the Wafd Party, the Tagammu, the Nasserist Party, the Labor Party, and the recently founded al-Ghad (‘Tomorrow’) Party, are very weak according to their popular support, electoral success, and their organizational and financial capacities.

16

Quite the contrary in Morocco: After the purely repressive period up to the early 1970s, the

function of parliament is precisely one of allowing competition and articulation of social

forces. Contributing to the stability of rule in a quite different way, it comes as a means for

integrating and co-opting political adversaries and for allowing a tamed style of protest

articulation. That the parliament can serve such purposes results from the fact that the King is

not directly affected by political competition. In theory, he is not associated with any of the

numerous pro-regime parties27; his rule is not based on support created through any

organizations. This is not to say that the king has not kept tight control over who would be

allowed to be represented in parliament. However, even though repression has always been an

important element of rule, the same holds true for the “manipulated” (Zartman, 1987, p. 64) or

“controlled” (Santucci, 2001) pluralism of organized political forces.

In Egypt, the ruler’s task to foreclose the rise of contention through elections and within

parliament becomes particularly critical when it comes to potential dissent from political

forces which are independent from direct state control. Here, we get back to the Muslim

Brotherhood: The formal inclusion of a strong opposition party controlled by the Brothers

would inevitably mean the weakening of the regime’s own party, the National Democratic

Party (NDP), which is in essence home to the bulk of the political elite of the country. This

cannot be in the interest of the Egyptian regime since it needs that political basis in the

absence of political legitimacy much more to control society than the Moroccan king.28 Thus,

we assume a prudential logic behind the seemingly half-hearted strategy to allow the Muslim

Brotherhood to perform in elections on an informal, individual basis but, at the same time,

foreclose the establishment of a political party: On the one hand, following the politics of

Sadat, political liberalization was expanded by Mubarak to include the moderate Islamist

current to some degree. On the other hand, the last step of the formal inclusion of the Muslim

Brotherhood into the political system was denied in order to impede the rise of an independent

political force in a highly sensitive political environment. This leads us to the conclusion that

the formal inclusion of an opposition actor is a two-sided sword in the hands of authoritarian

rulers who seem to bear in mind that it is harder to reverse than an informal toleration of

Islamists. By contrast, the Moroccan political system allows more smoothly for the

liberalization of a political sphere in which the ruler is not among the contestants. Compared

27 While being behind the creation of supportive ’royalist’ parties such as the Rassemblement National des Indépendants or the Union Constitutionnelle the King has never associated his faith with any of them, and has actively promoted conflicts and splits if any of his creations appeared to become too powerful or independent. 28 For the working mechanisms of the co-optation and control of society through elections and the government party, see May Kassem’s seminal work ‘In the Guise of Democracy’ (1999).

17

to Egypt, the formal inclusion of a strong new actor – the Islamists – in an institution where

the power to rule is not at stake bears relatively little costs or a potential threat for the

regime.29

Proposition 2: The stronger the Islamist movement, the less likely is its formal inclusion into

the political system.

It does not come as a surprise that the power of a social movement determines authoritarian

incumbents’ strategies on how to deal with them: The stronger an independent movement

granted access to the formal political realm, the more increases the risk of undesired

consequences for the authoritarian regime. We propose that the Egyptian Muslim

Brotherhood is stronger than the Moroccan Movement of Unity and Reform which would be a

second reason for the different regime reactions. True, in our cases, the strength and potential

of political outreach are quite difficult to measure since we do not possess any ‘hard’

categories for comparison30, for instance the two movements’ success at the ballot boxes:

While both can participate in elections, the Muslim Brotherhood’s rallies are far more

obstructed by the state than in Morocco whereas the PJD covers only a limited number of the

electoral constituencies.31

One good aspect to compare the Brothers with the MUR is the different organizational

capacities. The Muslim Brotherhood established from the very beginning a very capable

organizational structure.32 The movement is tightly organized along hierarchical arrangements

at the top of which stands the Supreme Guide (al-Murshid al-Amm) and his two deputies. As

29 The suggestion that different regimes have different fears regarding the participation of strong social groups in elections is mirrored by their preference for different electoral rules. Lust-Okar and Jamal have shown that single party regimes in the Middle East and North Africa opt for electoral rules that favor the dominant party, while monarchies aim at fragmenting the political landscape. As is shown, the problem for the single party regimes lies in the danger that the Islamist party turns out to be stronger than the ruling party. (Lust-Okar & Jamal, 1999, pp. 359-360). 30 The social movement literature distinguishes between three categories of support: Ideological support (goals), organizational support (group) and participation (action). It has been shown that the gap between active involvement and ideological support of social movements may reach about 70 % (Kriesi, 1992, p.26). In the case of social movements in authoritarian regimes, this gap should be even larger given the higher costs of active participation. If a social movement organization runs in elections, ideological support can be transformed with relatively little cost into votes. Thus, the best indicator for a movement’s threat potential would be ‘ideological support’. 31 While the Brotherhood still occupies the largest faction among all opposition groups in parliament, their share in votes would be reasonably higher with truly competitive elections. Observers estimate that the Brotherhood would be able to attract up to 30 % of the votes if elections were free. As regards the PJD, its true electoral scores are not only obscured by its limited coverage, but also by its acceptance to adopt a low profile. Rumors (and allusions of a party leader) say that it actually came out as the strongest party in the 2002 parliamentary elections but agreed to take the third rank (authors interview with a member of the party's General Secretariat, Khenitra, 9.November 2003).

18

an executive board functions the Guidance Bureau (Maktab al-Irshad) which is composed of

15 high-profile members of the older and middle generations among whom the organization’s

leadership is elected. At the lower organizational strata, the Muslim Brotherhood maintains

offices not only in every governorate of the country, but also in all bigger cities and even in

smaller villages and settlements. The organization’s working agenda is reflected in special

departments in which day-to-day work on specific issues is coordinated.33 Clearly, the

Brothers’ organizational structures and capacities stand out among political movements in

Egypt and impact positively on its role as a powerful social movement organization: First,

they guarantee high degrees of stability and homogeneity among its ranks.34 Second, outreach

towards the public is institutionally manifested through this organizational network that

literally reaches every corner in the country and facilitates the coordination of the Brothers’

work in the professional syndicates, schools, universities and student unions, clubs, and

charity organizations. As concerns active support, the Muslim Brotherhood – along with other

groups of Islamist nature – built up its basis during the 1970s in the universities in the

country. From the end of the 1980s, the Brothers controlled the student unions in all major

universities including those in Cairo, Alexandria, Mansura, and also al-Azhar university (Al-

Awadi, 2005, p. 64).

The whole Moroccan Islamist movement started mainly as a student movement in the early

1970s. Active involvement in the Moroccan Islamist movement has remained an urban

phenomenon. The MUR has a much more limited territorial penetration than the Egyptian

Muslim Brotherhood; it is mainly home to the big and medium sized cities. Correspondingly,

the Islamists electoral scores are highest in these areas. The decidedly urban character of the

movement can be – to some extent – explained by the fact that the initial activists were

32 The reader will find a very insightful empirical account on the Muslim Brotherhood’s organization and social outreach in Munson, 2001. 33 There is a ‘political section’ subdivided in the ‘political’, ‘economic’, and ‘information unit’. The ‘technical section’ supervises activities in the professional syndicates and comprises several subdivisions, like the ‘labor unit’, the ‘women section’, and the ‘social section’ (author’s interview with Abdel-Hamid al-Ghizali, University professor and Brotherhood member, 19. December 2004, Cairo). 34 This does not mean that the Muslim Brotherhood does not suffer from internal struggles between competing factions. Indeed, fissures within the organization came up along moderate and more radical proponents and, most notably, between different generations of activists: While the organization’s leadership is until today occupied by an ‘old guard’ of veterans who experienced harsh repression under Nasser, the ‘middle generation’ (Gil al-Wasat) comprises those activists who have been politicized in the 1970s. They occupy the majority of the seats in the Guidance Bureau and took the lead in the professional syndicates and in parliament. Competing perceptions between factions and proponents rose about important issues, such as the internal discourses on Islam vs. democracy and modernity, or the very nature of the organization which is either perceived as a social or a political movement. However, internal struggles and fissures never turned into open conflict among the Muslim Brothers’ ranks that have successfully drawn a disciplined and homogenous picture of their organization. Rather, open dissent emanated in the split of factions as the case of the Wasat party exemplifies (cf. Stacher, 2002; Wickham, 2004).

19

dominantly university students. Even if these were migrants from the countryside, given the

better employment prospects in the cities, they have largely stayed in place and concentrated

their activities there.35 Similar to Egypt, these activities include a broad range of charitable,

educational, and missionary (Da‘wa) activities. Before being permitted to contest elections,

the MUR members’ political activism focused strongly on the labor unions, especially the

Union Marocaine du Travail36, and the national student union Union Nationale des Etudiants

Marocains (UNEM).37

What is difficult to asses is the relative strength of the MUR with respect to other Islamist

organizations. Munson (1986, pp. 271-275) estimates that, in the early 1980s, less than 15 %

of the university students were actively engaged in some Islamist organization.38 Whereas the

number of university students had, by the early 1990s, almost tripled and a second generation

of Islamist activists had come to the fore, these are scattered among numerous movement

organizations. An assessment of the MUR’s strength is especially difficult compared to al-

‘Adl wal-Ihsan, often considered as the strongest organization of the Moroccan Islamist

movement.39 Moreover, as the only legal Islamist party, the PJD surely benefits from

ideological/electoral support created through al-‘Adl wal-Ihsan's activities. Compared to

Egypt, though, the sheer existence of another strong Islamist organization as well as the

relatively well-organized left that is represented in parliament and in the labor and student

unions, makes the challenge the MUR poses to the regime appear weaker. The Muslim

Brotherhood is the undeniably strongest actor in the social movement sector, while the MUR/

PJD is one among a range of well-organized social and political actors. As such, its formal

inclusion bears much less potential to shaken the balance of the Moroccan political landscape.

Proposition 3: Authoritarian rulers can learn and display tangible adaptive capacities

according to the outcome of inclusivist strategies and, in turn, the behavior of included

35 As Islamist movement activism is by and large a phenomenon of the educated, we suggest that an additional explanation lies in the high illiteracy rate in rural Morocco. 36 One of the most important and senior MUR leaders, Mohamed Yatim, is also member of the General Secretariat of the UMT. 37 According to a questionnaire distributed by one of the authors at the PJD’s last party congress, more than 70 % of those party members that were as well MUR members are affiliated to labor unions. 38 Munson notes as well that ideological support for the Islamist movement was much broader with over 30 % being favorable to “the re-establishment of Islamic law as the sole legal system” (Munson, 1986: p. 274). 39 While this is an often repeated claim, its empirical base is narrow. To our knowledge, no research has so far empirically investigated differences in membership or support of any of the two movement organizations. In fact, the two organizations often collaborate when organizing protest demonstrations such as against the war in Iraq, Israel, or the in the late 1990s against the reform of the personal status code. The only clear indicator is that, at the early 1990s, al-‘Adl wal-Ihsan seemed to dominate the national student union (Burgat, 1995, p. 289).

20

Islamists; while Islamist compliance with the rules of inclusion leads to protracted inclusion,

non-compliance leads to exclusion and repressive responses.

So far, we have accounted for the reasons behind the distinct strategies of authoritarian

incumbents to accommodate Islamist movement organizations. After initially opting for either

formal inclusion or informal toleration, both strategies can be subject to revision. Whether or

not and in what direction this occurs depends largely on the effects of inclusion on the

Islamists and, in turn, their behavior towards the respective regimes. Looking at the

development of regime-Islamist relationships from the early 1990s, we observe that the

situation once reached in Morocco was sustained, but not so in Egypt. What accounts for the

different paths of development? Two aspects are central to our discussion: First the reaction

of the two movements towards the different strategies of accommodation; and, second, the

perception of the two regimes concerning their inclusivist experiments. Obviously, the

Moroccan experience of inclusion has been viewed as a success story by the power center,

while the Egyptian regime felt seriously threatened by its Islamist movement and resorted to

more repressive means of containment.

The leadership of the Moroccan MUR / PJD has, from the very beginning of its formal

inclusion, aimed at reassuring the palace that it would play by its rules.40 Indeed, the party’s

acceptance to help legitimize the regime is remarkable. The Moroccan regime found an

elegant solution to the dilemma of how to limit the Islamists electoral score while, at the same

time, ensuring better scores for the freeness of elections. 41 It did not need to employ overt

harassment and electoral fraud as a means of limiting the Islamists electoral success. Instead,

the PJD was convinced to limit its coverage of the electoral constituencies.42 Progressive, or –

as PJD leaders like to put it – ‘qualitative’ instead of ‘quantitative’ participation in elections,

are part of the initial deal of inclusion and accepted by the party leadership to counter

domestic and external fears:43 “Le PJD doit se présenter sans qu’il aie atteinte à cet équilibre

qu’on doit respecter, qu’on comprend, parce que c’est dans l’intérêt de tous que la

participation du PJD vient progressive, et que les gens à l’intérieur et à l’extérieur voient que

40 For a more detailed discussion of the effects of inclusion on the Moroccan Islamists and its contribution to regime stability, see Wegner (2004). 41 From all Middle Eastern and North African countries, Morocco is among the few considered as ‘partly free’ (score 5.5) by Freedom House (http://www.freedomhouse.org/pdf_docs/research/freeworld/2004/map2004.pdf). 42 In the 1997 and 2002 parliamentary elections, it covered about half of the constituencies. In the 2003 communal elections, it decreased the coverage below 18 % and enacted a model of selective coverage assuring that it would not win the majority in any major city. 43 There are also other reasons behind this decision, most importantly the limits posed by the organizational capacities of the MUR / PJD which made it difficult to cover all the constituencies. However, given that the PJD has restricted its coverage well below its capacities, we must see the limited coverage as being clearly motivated by the desire to placate the regime.

21

le PJD est un parti comme tous les autres partis”44. To the same directions points the PJD’s

initial decision to support the 1998 government led by its long-time adversaries, the socialists:

At their entry into ‘official politics’ they saw the necessity of displaying their positive attitude

towards the Moroccan institutions and playing a constructive role in the consensual

alternance at which Hassan II aimed.45

In 2000, the PJD moved to the opposition benches. This shift occurred in a climate of

increasing liberalization.46 The abandoning of the PJD’s support to the government indicates

the increasing weight of a fraction more committed to constitutional reform that feared to

loose touch with its constituency and to appear co-opted.47 In practice, however, even in this

period, there were no activities or negotiations concretely pushing for the revision of the

constitution or other strong signs of confrontation with the regime. Most importantly, the

party has maintained the principle of limited coverage in the 2002 elections fielding

candidates in only about half of the constituencies. Moreover it praised these elections as an

important step in the Moroccan democratization process in the MUR’s newspaper at-Tajdid.48

In sum, the PJD has proven its willingness to appease the regime by limiting its outreach, by

hiding its own political strength, and accepting its limited role in parliament. Its acceptance of

the King’s political preferences has been extraordinarily high from the very beginning of its

formal inclusion and was maintained ever since. While this is not accepted by all factions in

the party, this conflict has been solved in the last party congress in 2004 to the advantage and

solidification of the compromising faction which now dominates the PJD’s General

Secretariat.49

We shall make it very clear that, like in Morocco, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood did not

actively challenge the Egyptian regime in the political field; rather, it is its remarkable

performance as a social movement organization that led to new forms of statist containment:

Since the early 1990s, the regime’s experiment of informal inclusion was displaced by a

44 Interview with a member of parliament, of the PJD’s General Secretariat, and the MUR’s Executive Bureau, 12. November 2003, Rabat. 45 Interview with a member of parliament and the PJD’s General Secretariat, 7. March 2003, Rabat. 46 King Hassan II died in 1999. At the beginning of his rein, his successor Mohammed VI. appeared to be committed to further liberalization. A very important symbol in that respect was the forced resignation of Driss Basri, the ministry of interior since 1976, long considered as the second most powerful man in Morocco, and responsible for electoral fraud and the deplorable human rights situation. 47 While the initial choice to support the government was taken by the party’s executive in the General Secretariat, the decision to change sides to the opposition was pushed for and eventually imposed in a very tight vote by the National Council (al-Majlis al-Watani), a body of 240 members, in which the weight of members of local and provincial bodies is particularly strong. 48 At-Tajdid, 30. September 2002, pp. 1 & 3: “Al-intichabat al-haliyya mahattat ijabiyya fi tatawwur al-musalsal al- dimukratiyya bi baladna”. 49 The more uncompromising fraction is, since the party congress in April 2004, only represented with two members in the General Secretariat.

22

strategy of limited toleration. What made the Muslim Brotherhood dangerous in the eyes of

the authoritarian incumbents? We can identify three variables that account for a change of

regime strategy towards increased coercion: diffuse fears of an ‘Islamist threat’ in general, the

extent and success of the Brotherhood’s societal outreach, and the politicization of their

activities.50

At the early 1990s, the Egyptian regime was alarmed by the Algerian experience where

formally included Islamists challenged the military-backed government in elections to an

unprecedented extent later triggering fierce state reactions and almost a decade of chaos and

civil war. Clearly, the strength of the Islamist movement in Egypt is comparable to that in

Algeria. Apart from the Muslim Brotherhood, radical groups, such as Jihad and Jama’a

Islamiyya, challenged the state violently since the early 1980s and were decidedly outspoken

in their demand to overthrow the Mubarak government (cf. Hafez & Wiktorowicz, 2004). The

Egyptian regime has always differentiated concerning its containment strategies between the

moderate Muslim Brotherhood and those radical groups. However, the Jama’a Islamiyya’s

and Jihad’s militant initiative during the 1990s has almost certainly impaired opportunities for

the Brothers since it has – in very general terms – increased diffuse fears from an ‘Islamist

revolution’. Quite to the contrary in Morocco: Here, radical Islamist groups never turned into

a serious political threat making life for the moderate side of Islamism easier. Here, even an

organization like al-‘Adl wal-Ihsan that denies the monarchy its religious legitimacy, has

never used violent means.

Besides fears of a general ‘Islamist threat’, the Egyptian regime had any reason to be worried

from the increasing success of the movement in its societal outreach which was, in turn, only

made possible by the regime’s toleration of informal activities. As Hisham al-Awadi (2005)

observed, the Brotherhood made use of its financial capacities and organizational network to

increase its popularity: Financed by a parallel Islamic economic sector51, the organization

provided jobs, education, and health care and helped out with hardship funds and other

charitable services. Thus, Islamists took over the task of providing social services which had

been largely abandoned by the state due to the ailing economy in the 1980s. The regime must

have been on high alert with the growth of this parallel Islamic sector since it lost credibility

and, as a consequence, political legitimacy to the Islamists. As the main transmission belt for

50 Hamed Quisay highlighted the idea that Mubarak had consolidated his own grip on power during the 1990s and felt confident enough to put up a more confrontational stance towards the Brothers (Quisay, 2001, p. 14). 51 The extent of financial flows through Islamic channels is unknown. However, we may reasonably speak of a ‘parallel economic sector’ as it is largely uncontrolled by the state. Sources to finance charitable services include Islamic banks and investment companies, donations from wealthy individuals in Egypt and particularly from

23

the provision of social services functioned the numerous private mosques and religious

endowments (Awqaf). Estimates want it that, in 1993, 170.000 mosques existed in Egypt of

whom only around 30.000 were sanctioned and controlled by the state; roughly half of all

private voluntary associations (some 15.000) are supposed to have religious foundations

(Wickham, 2002, pp. 98-99). While we cannot equate the entirety of the parallel Islamic

sector with the Muslim Brotherhood52, the latter is by far the largest and most important single

organization of Islamist social outreach bringing it to the centre of statist countermeasures.

A third aspect that raised concerns at the side of the Egyptian regime was the politicization of

the Muslim Brothers’ activities and – in this context – the Islamicization of existing political

institutions (Al-Awadi, 2005). Thus, Islamist outreach was a success story not only in

informal politics, but also in the formal political realm. A first sign of the Islamist take-over

of political institutions was the Islamicization of the opposition Labor Party. Originally

embracing a socialist ideology, the party took on an Islamist agenda since its cooperation with

the Muslim Brotherhood at the 1987 parliamentary elections. Another clear sign of the

Brothers’ dedication to ‘turn political’ was the attempt to create the Wasat as an own political

party in 1996.53 Most important in the context of the Islamicization of formal political

institutions was, however, the penetration of professional syndicates. In doing so, “Muslim

Brother activists gained an opportunity to hone their leadership skills, broaden their base of

support, and present an alternative model of political life” (Wickham, 1997, p. 131). To create

an ‘alternative model of political life’ was certainly not in the minds of Egypt’s rulers when

they tolerated the Muslim Brotherhood. Therefore, it is understandable that they shifted to an

alternative model of containment, that is essentially more repression.

Proposition 4: Both the formal inclusion and the repression or informal toleration of Islamist

movement organizations may lead to the moderation of the movement.

Egyptian residents in the Gulf countries, and the profit-making activities of Islamic associations (Wickham, 2002, p. 100). 52 Many organizations and associations are of an apolitical nature, and militant groups provided social services too as a case study in southern Egypt shows (Toth, 2003). 53 The Wasat was mainly an initiative of the Brotherhood’s middle generation of activists and initially included prominent members like Abdoul Moun’im Aboul Foutouh and Essam al-Irian. The importance of the project is emphasized by the fact that it was masterminded by the current Brotherhood leader, Muhammad Mahdi ‘Aqef. After an unsuccessful attempt to be legalized as a party, the idea was quickly dismissed by the Brotherhood’s leadership. However, some initiators decided to hold the Wasat alive and split with the mother organization. Today, it appears as an independent group headed by the prominent Islamist intellectual Abu Ela Maadi and remains an important platform for discourses on the modernization of Islamism. Even though the split between the Wasat and the Muslim Brotherhood seems to be very deep and conflictual, some informed observers assume that the Brothers could gain control again over the Wasat at any time (author’s interviews with Abu Ela Maadi, 25. January 2005, Cairo, and Muhammad Mahdi ‘Aqef, 18. January 2005, Cairo).

24

It is widely held in the theoretical literature that repressive statist policies would prompt the

radicalization of social movements, while more liberal treatments would encourage their

moderation (see Tarrow, 1998; Goldstein, 1983). A paradox of repressive strategies would be

that systematic repression “turns even moderate dissenters into opponents of the regime and

forces them to pose the problem of regime overthrow as the condition for reform” (Tarrow,

1998, p. 85). On the other side of the coin, it is held that more inclusivist regimes provide

incentives for moderation and co-operation (Goldstein, 1983, p. 341 et sqq.).

We would thus expect that the different strategies employed by the Moroccan and Egyptian

regimes should impact differently on the movements. Simply speaking, we should observe a

move towards protracted moderation in Morocco and towards radicalization in Egypt.54 The

trajectories of our cases, however, yield other results. We observe the Islamist movement’s

moderation not only in Morocco, but also in Egypt even though the regime switched to a

dominantly repressive strategy in the 1990s. When talking about ‘moderation’ and

‘radicalization’, we refer to the movement organizations’ means and strategies of political

action, and not so much to their discourses. Thus, speeches and appearances in the public may

well include ‘radical’ ideas. Moreover, we may often be tempted to distinguish between

‘radical’ and ‘moderate’ proponents of a movement. By moderation in our context, it is hold

that – today – both the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the Movement of Unity and Reform

in Morocco completely dismissed the use of violence, play by the rules of the political game,

do not challenge the regime, and – in this context – refrain from making use of the political

potential at their disposal.

It has already been shown that the PJD and the MUR have always displayed a very

compromising attitude towards the regime. By decreasing their coverage of the electoral

constituencies, they actively contributed to maintaining the balance in parliament. Besides

this, two controversial laws and a further decrease of the party’s coverage in the 2003

communal elections highlight the extent to which the Moroccan regime’s inclusivist approach

has provided incentives for the Islamists to opt in favor of moderate strategies. The PJD’s

parliamentary group’s eventual approval of two laws it had fiercely contested before showed

that it was ready to cross ideological boundaries and even to accept undesired law-making

over conflict with the regime: The reform of the Moroccan personal status code is an example

of the party’s readiness to step over ideological thresholds; the law against terrorism that

54 As studies of revolution and rebellion have shown, violent or revolutionary mobilizations were most likely when groups had initially made considerable gains in institutional power and were then suddenly excluded and repressed (Goldstone, 2003, p. 11). From that perspective, the period of greater institutional access in the 1980s should have even increased the likelihood of a more radical response by the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1990s.

25

reduces civil and political liberties is another indicator of the willingness to accept a

curtailment of political freedoms if the palace requires so.

The opposition against the modernization of the Moroccan personal status code as part of the

Youssoufi government’s Plan d’intégration de la femme au développement had been the key

event of Islamist mobilization in the first legislative period. The Islamists’ opposition centered

on elements they considered harmful to social morality.55 This protest was also conducted as a

general campaign against – what was called by the Islamists – the ‘conspiracy’ of the

francophone, secularist elites and international organizations against Islamic values.56 The

amendments of the personal status code that the King eventually proposed in October 2003

are very similar to the original reform project of the government. Both PJD and MUR

immediately issued favorable statements qualifying the reform as a pioneering project that

would serve the interests of families and women.

Less covered by the media but pointing to the same direction, is the case of the law against

terrorism. Only five days after the Casablanca attacks of 16. May 2003, the government

pushed for the adoption of a law that defined any ‘disturbance of the public order’ as a

terrorist act. The law contains provisions that allow the security forces to hold suspects for

twelve days without access to a lawyer and remarkably extends the range of crimes subject to

death sentences. When the government presented the draft bill in February 2003, the PJD had

strongly criticized it as a blow to human rights and democracy. After the Casablanca incident,

however, the law was declared an issue of national interest and the PJD – in need to send a

strong public message that it opposed all terrorist acts – voted in favor of most articles of the

bill and did not propose own amendments.

It has to be noted that the vote for these laws occurred after 16. May 2003. Since then, the

party was eager to demonstrate that it was first and foremost concerned with the Moroccan

national interest. After Casablanca, approximately 1.100 terrorism suspects were arrested and

the courts have sentenced more than 50 people to life in prison and 16 people to death. The

PJD was boycotted by the national TV stations and accused by the leftist parties of having

provided the climate for terrorism. Some demonstrations have been banned that the PJD

wanted to organize together with other Islamist organizations as an Islamist public statement

55 Especially raising the minimum age for marriages, the abolition of polygamy, and the women’s right to conclude marriages without a ‘marital tutor’. 56 The Plan d'intégration de la femme au développement that contained the reform never even became a law project. After being faced not only with extra-parliamentary mobilization but also with critiques inside his government, the Prime Minister conferred the issue to a royal commission. The commission that eventually dealt with the reform of the personal status code was composed of religious scholars and presided by the King.

26

against terrorism. The ministry of interior used the opportunity to intervene in the selection of

party office holders and to negotiate an even lower coverage in the September 2003 elections.

While the party’s behavior needs to be contextualized in this climate of more general anti-

Islamist public opinion, it has to be stressed that the regime did not at any point in time

threaten to reverse formal inclusion. The case of Mustafa Ramid illustrates that the regime

had not revised its integrative attitude per se: All too outspoken regarding the regime's

interventions in parliamentary politics and the violations of human rights he was forced to

resign as head of the PJD’s parliamentary group and became unacceptable as a future

Secretary General. However, he remained, throughout this period, a member of a royal

commission for human rights. As regards the party’s chosen strategy, PJD leaders like to

stress that it should be understood as a logical continuation of their moderate outlook. The

2003 coverage, for instance, is portrayed as a mere variation of the old principle of

‘qualitative’ participation: “Le principe était là, c’est l’amplitude du principe qui a du

changer”.57

In sum, the strategies the Moroccan Islamists adopted in the sensitive moments of 2003 show

as to what great extent the Islamists perceive the benefits deriving from being a legal political

actor. Very importantly, the necessity of a moderate and prudent approach is accepted by a

majority of the party members as is shown in the relatively low degree of intra-party protest58

and the recent overwhelming support for Saadeddine al-Othmani – the architect of the post-

may 16th strategy – in the elections for the party’s presidency. Thus, the Moroccan case

soundly demonstrates the interactions between formal inclusion and continuous moderation.

In Egypt, there are some very clear signs that the regime’s repressive treatment of the Muslim

Brotherhood had moderating effects too. Contrary to the 1980s, when the Brothers fletched

their muscles against the regime, the organization’s prime aim to date seems to be not to anger

or even challenge the regime. Most importantly, the Brotherhood does not draw on its

massive public support to carry politics to the street. This would be a reaction quite

understandable when we bear in mind that the organization’s participation in formal politics is

tightly restricted. The Brotherhood undoubtedly has the potential to organize large public

rallies which is proven by the massive appearances of supporters mourning the death of their

leaders in recent years. Only at one instance, however, did a public demonstration imply a

57 Author’s interview with a member of the PJD’s General Secretariat and coordinator of the 2003 electoral campaign, 04. September 2003. 58 In only two cities, Tangier and Agadir, local party leaders rebelled against the strategy in the communal elections. In Tangier, they refused to run in only three out of five constituencies, and in Agadir, they refused to run on a joint list with another party. In other cities, there were some discontent militants but the General Secretariat’s decisions were eventually accepted.

27

political message: at the anti-Iraq-war demonstrations at 27. and 28. March 2003. These

demonstrations have been tacitly approved by the regime and even jointly organized by its

security forces (Schemm, 2003). By contrast, oppositional street politics in Egypt takes place

without the Muslim Brotherhood. At the time of writing, a new movement was shaking

politics in that they turn to the streets to express their ultimate slogan, ‘Kifaya!’ (‘Enough!’),

calling for an end of the Mubarakist rule in Egypt.59 The ‘Kifaya’-movement seems to be

rather heterogeneous and complies independent socialist, liberal, Nasserist, and also Islamist

forces. However, Brotherhood leaders emphasize that they are out of that game since they fear

massive state repression towards the organization.60

In the formal political arena, the Muslim Brotherhood retains a decidedly low profile too.

With some few exceptions, the organization’s parliamentarians are not very active. In the last

15 years, even the controlled and co-opted opposition in the political parties and most human

rights organizations have been more critical and have launched attacks on some state policies,

such as the protracted application of the emergency law, human rights violations, and rigged

elections to the parliament and professional syndicates (cf. Kienle, 2001). While Brotherhood

voices remain largely unheard in these political discourses, it is striking that they are not even

at the forefront of Islamist campaigns: During the 1990s, Islamist attacks on liberal

intellectuals have been launched by established political parties (al-Wafd, Labor Party) or

even by pillars of the state (al-Azhar, some within the NDP), but not by the Muslim

Brotherhood (cf. Lübben & Fawzy, 2000).

To many observers in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood appears today as a toothless tiger. This

is all the more striking in times when political opposition seems to be more active and vivid

than ever before. Since the second half of 2004, the Egyptian regime came under pressure

from Kifaya, the established opposition parties that strive for a better political representation,

and a small group of individuals around Saad Eddin Ibrahim, Nawal Saadawi, and

Muhammad Faried Hassanein, who launched a personal drive against Mubarak. With rising

US pressure and presidential and parliamentary elections at the horizon in autumn 2005, the

Mubarak regime may face a crucial test all the more so since the question of political

succession remains an unresolved puzzle for the stability of the political regime. It seems,

however, that the incumbents will not face any trouble from the Muslim Brotherhood – still

by far the strongest opposition force in Egypt. As concerns this election year, Brotherhood

59 At the time of writing, Kifaya had organized three public demonstrations between December 2004 and February 2005. While the number of usually around 200 participants are not extraordinarily impressive, the mere fact that president Mubarak stands in the focus of public oppositional attacks is intriguing in itself and may well bear witness for a crumbling red line.

28

representatives made it very clear that the organization will not take on any role in the

presidential elections which is a clear sign that it has no interest in questioning the power

center of the country. The Brotherhood prepares to participate in the parliamentary elections

but remains open to follow the rules that the state sets.61

Concluding Remarks

Our inquiry shows that Islamist movements and organizations can persist over a long period

of time in authoritarian settings. This is, at first sight, a rather intriguing fact. One would

indeed assume that authoritarian incumbents should prevent the rise of such strong non-state

actors in order to secure regime stability. As is shown, however, Islamist movement

organizations do not necessarily challenge authoritarian regimes even though they do have the

potential to do so. Therefore, their existence does not automatically lead to either systemic

regime change (i.e. democratization, ‘Islamic’ revolutions) or the elimination of the

movements by their authoritarian counterparts. From a state-versus-society perspective, we

can thus denote a protracted and stable coexistence of strong authoritarian states and strong

Islamist movements.

In this context, our analysis concentrated on the questions of why Islamist movement

organizations yield to statist rules, and how authoritarian incumbents contain strong

movements. For the latter issue, one may ask why the two regimes did not, after all, attempt to

calm down troubling waters simply by eliminating Islamist movements by force. Both Egypt

and Morocco would have the necessary coercive means at their disposal. The answer is

simple: While coercion does remain the ultimate means of power maintenance, the necessity

to create some sort of ‘liberal’ legitimacy prohibits the unrestricted and massive use of state

repression which would certainly be necessary to eliminate the Islamist movements

altogether. Thus, in order to create a picture of a relatively liberal form of autocracy, the

authoritarian incumbents in Egypt and Morocco found it more apt to introduce a flexible

containment regime: ‘Soft repression’, co-optation, or even the formal inclusion of Islamists

are strategies of containment which often replace the use of blunt repression. The persistence

of Islamist movements does even imply some advantages for the two regimes: In both

countries, Islamists are an important player in a juggling act, by which opposition forces are

pit against each other. Thus, in Egypt as well as in Morocco, struggles and contention occur

60 Author’s interviews with Brotherhood representatives, December 2004 and January 2005, Cairo. 61 Muhammad Habib, member of the Maktab al-Irshad and Deputy to the Murshid al-‘Amm, made it clear that the Brotherhood will not provoke the government and thus confine its participation to a small number of constituencies (author’s interview, 20. December 2004, Cairo).

29

between leftist and Islamist groups probably even more often than between regime and

opposition. Why play the Islamists by these rules? For them, the states’ treatments come as

carrots and sticks. Clearly, they are subject to repression at a much greater degree than other

opposition forces. On the other hand, hopes have been manifest among the Islamists that they

would gain recognition as an accepted player in politics since more than two decades.

So far the similarities between Egypt and Morocco, but where are the differences? It is

obvious that, for an Islamist, life is much easier in Morocco than in Egypt. ‘Legality’ is the

key to understanding the different roles the two Islamist movement organizations take on. In

Morocco, the formal inclusion of the MUR has served the regime in several ways: It has

bolstered the regime’s ‘democratic’ image and, at the same time, involved the containment of

leftist opposition parties. On the other hand, the participation in elections has enabled the

Moroccan movement to increase its organizational capacities, to broaden its support

remarkably, and to impact directly on the agenda setting of existing political organizations.

For instance, one important effect of the inclusion of the Islamists in the political realm is that

other political parties are increasingly adjusting to the new tones in politics and started to

adopt some traits of ‘Islamic’ discourses. In Egypt, this development could already be

witnessed since the 1980s. This was certainly the prime reason for the Egyptian regime’s

more careful stance towards the inclusion of the Muslim Brotherhood. Here, an inherent lack

of legitimacy caused a more pronounced threat perception on the side of the regime, and, as a

consequence, a repressive backlash during the last 15 years. However, as in Morocco, the

Muslim Brotherhood survived as a powerful, moderate, and homogenous social movement

organization whose political impact, though, remains rather limited and does not reflect the

relevance and potential of the movement.

When we turn our eyes towards questions of democracy and democratization processes, our

cases imply only limited findings primarily since we do not witness anything close to

democracy or even democratization in Egypt and Morocco. However, strong Islamist

movement organizations are interesting cases to look at concerning their potential to trigger

democratization processes because they are the most powerful non-state actors in the two

countries. When we ask – in this context – about the preconditions for the take-off of

democratization processes and the role of such movements therein, we shall ask: Do they

emerge as a serious challenger and contender of the state? Do they have any allies both within

the state or society? As we have shown here, the answer to this two questions can only be

‘no’. Still, this is not a ‘no’ based on the perception that Islamist movements would be

incompatible with democracy due to their ideological foundations. While this remains a rather

30

hypothetical question to date, our presumption would be that our two movements would well

play by democratic rules. They have shown in their recent history that they are quite adaptable

and flexible particularly as concerns ideological traits, and when they have relevant

incentives. Thus, Islamist movements are not on another planet simply because they are

‘Islamist’. Rather, we should perceive them as rational actors in politics that make their

choices according to opportunities or disincentives. On the other hand, the potential to induce

democratization processes (or the lack of it) should not be looked for in the Islamists but in

the ability of the authoritarian regimes to keep their hold on power alive and, thus, foreclose

anything which could end up as a democratization process.

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