In 2014, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), joined by Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, accused Qatar of endangering its security and withdrew its ambassador. At the heart of the crisis, which reerupted even more severely in 2017, was the Muslim Brotherhood. More specifically, while Qatar was quite friendly toward the movement, the UAE was quite hostile, to the extent that it outlawed and even declared the Brotherhood a terrorist organization. The whole episode clearly illustrated the continuing political significance of the Muslim Brotherhood movement in the Gulf. How did this religious movement that originated outside of the Gulf spread to and acquire such political significance in the region?
In Rentier Islamism, Courtney Freer addresses this question, tracing the origin of the Muslim Brotherhood and its rise to political prominence in three Gulf states: Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE. As described in Chapter 4, the Brotherhood expanded to these Gulf states as they began to build modern educational systems in the 1950s. Lacking locals to staff their new modern schools, Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE relied on expatriate teachers and imported them in numbers from other Arab states. Among those who came and settled in these countries were members of the Muslim Brotherhood. It was students of these teachers who founded the local organizations of the Brotherhood and became carriers of its ideology in Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE.
The Brotherhood’s most serious ideological rival, Pan-Arabism, which had its own adherents among teachers from other Arab states, began to wane in influence throughout the Middle East in the 1970s. As Freer shows in Chapter 5, this had an immediate impact on the fortunes of the Brotherhood in the Gulf as it did elsewhere in the region. The movement filled in the ensuing ideological vacuum and experienced a marked rise in influence in Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE. As the Brotherhood expanded its social base, however, it also became politically active, demanding a greater say in the political decision making in their countries.
Yet this political activism came at a price: The relations between the Muslim Brotherhood and three Gulf states began to change in the 1980s. As detailed in Chapters 6 and 7, the Brotherhood continued to be politically active in Kuwait, thanks to the more open political system in this country, and eventually anchored itself in the opposition. In Qatar, the movement dissolved its organization in the late 1990s, but kept its presence informally. More dramatically, in the UAE the movement became increasingly alienated by the regime and, with the eruption of the Arab Spring, became criminalized. Yet in all three cases, the movement has kept its political significance, through active political engagement and social activities in Kuwait, backstage campaigning for the implementation of conservative policies in Qatar, and, finally, ideological-religious opposition to widespread Westernization in the UAE.
Freer constructs her narrative by bringing together an impressive array of empirical material, hitherto buried in the memories of former and current members of the movement and through other primary sources. Given the extreme difficulty of getting access to these sources, the book is the fruit of Freer’s tirelessly conducted research. This in and of itself makes the book valuable.
In addition, Rentier Islamism makes two further contributions. First, it fills a serious gap in the scholarship on Islamism. Ever-growing since the 1970s, this literature has paid closer attention to major cases, such as Turkey, Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia and ignored minor cases, including such small Gulf states as Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE. I know of only one book and a few unpublished dissertations in English on Islamism in Kuwait, and no such lengthy studies in English on Islamism in Qatar and the UAE.
Second, on the more theoretical front, the book challenges the literature on rentier states, or states that derive substantial portions of their incomes from the sale of natural resources, particularly oil. Because rentier states do not rely on taxation, but can still provide generous welfare services to their citizens, the literature portrays their societies as extremely apolitical (due to the supposed rentier effect) and disorganized (due to the group formation effect). The literature further concludes that these societies can neither generate any sustained opposition nor have any meaningful impact on political decision making. Freer claims the contrary: The continuing political influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE proves that the literature’s portrayal of rentier societies is extremely simplistic.
The interesting question is, then, what keeps the Muslim Brotherhood vibrant in the Gulf. Freer’s answer is Islam. The author argues that while rentier states provide generous welfare services, they still need some sort of ideological legitimation. In the context of the Gulf, rentier states boost their legitimacy by investing in religion. This ideological ground, sustained by the state itself, in turn nurtures the Muslim Brotherhood in the Gulf. To put it in another way, the political influence of the Muslim Brotherhood really relies on the political influence of Islam.
This is where the book’s most valuable theoretical contribution could be, for the literature assumes that rentier states’ legitimacy and stability rely exclusively on their effective and fair distribution of state revenues. But it is unfortunate that Freer eschews any theoretical elaboration and keeps her discussion at the general level: If there is indeed any causality between state religious policies and the political influence of the Muslim Brotherhood, it awaits to be fully developed.
On a related note it is unclear how Freer assesses what constitutes political influence. As mentioned, her claim is that the Muslim Brotherhood is still politically influential in Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE. In the case of Kuwait, it is obvious, but not so in the cases of Qatar and the UAE. For Freer, the fact that the state in Qatar shows respect for some religious values and norms and adapts its policies accordingly is proof of the continuing political influence of the Muslim Brotherhood. Yet she cannot show that the said outcome is really the work of the Brotherhood. She avoids the burden of proof by claiming that the Brotherhood in Qatar exists informally only and that its influence cannot therefore be clearly shown. But some other factor could also have produced the same outcome. In fact, she herself admits that “while the above social policies suggest a leaning toward social conservatism favored by the Brotherhood, they could also reflect the desires of a conservative Wahhabi population” (p. 122). In the case of the UAE as well, Freer’s conclusion rests not on evidence but on conjecture. The simple fact that the UAE suppresses the movement is proof for Freer that the Brotherhood is politically influential. In her words, “[h]ad such groups [the Brotherhood organizations in the UAE] not been politically influential, the government would not have embarked on such a public and wide-ranging crackdown” (p. 139). It is obvious that this is not the kind of political influence that the Muslim Brotherhood has in Kuwait or is presumed to have in Qatar.
Freer could have asked a different question: Why do three Gulf states have different policies toward the Muslim Brotherhood, even though they are similar in many ways? Somewhat mysteriously, Freer refrains from asking this much more obvious question.
Notwithstanding these criticisms, Rentier Islamism is unquestionably a welcome addition to the field of Gulf studies, filling critical gaps in our knowledge of Islamism in the Gulf and inviting us to question some of our fundamental assumptions about rentier states. However, the book falls short of tracing out the full theoretical implications of the empirical material it contains.
