Scholarly interest in Islam in general and political Islam in particular has grown substantially in recent years. This is a response, in part, to terrorist attacks associated with Al Qaeda and the Islamic State and also to the recent electoral successes of Islamist parties in a number of Arab countries. Terrorist actions have led some to ask whether violence and hatred of the West are inherent in Islam. Indeed, channeling Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations (1996), such allegations were prominent in Donald Trump’s campaign for the U.S. presidency.
These defamatory stereotypes have been largely debunked by serious scholars. An important new book by Garry Wills, for example, as described in a New York Times review, provides an antidote to the distorted version of Islamic doctrine “favored by Islamophobes and their partners in distortion, Muslim extremists” (see Lesley Hazelton, “Exploring the Holy Writ,” review of What the Quran Meant: And Why It Matters by Garry Wills,” New York Times, 16–17 December 2017). My own modest contribution includes a number of political attitude studies showing that attachment to Islam has little explanatory power when seeking to account for variance in attitudes toward terrorism, regional conflict, or democracy (see, for example, Mark Tessler and Michael Robbins, “What Leads Some Ordinary Men and Women in Arab Countries to Approve of Terrorist Acts against the West: Evidence from Survey Research in Algeria and Jordan,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 51(2), 2007).
The electoral successes of Islamist political parties and factions, especially in the aftermath of the Arab Spring uprisings, raise questions not about the actions that Islam does and does not encourage but about how Islamist parties operate in countries that permit political contestation—about what they advocate, how they attract adherents, why they are often successful at the ballot box, and what difference this makes. Countries that brought these questions to the fore in the immediate aftermath of the Arab Spring uprisings include Egypt, Tunisia, and Morocco, as well as, though in less straightforward ways, Palestine, Lebanon, and Kuwait. An example of research addressed to these questions is Tarek Masoud’s valuable study of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (Counting Islam: Religion, Class, and Elections in Egypt, 2014).
Against this background come two recent books that break new ground in political science scholarship on Islam and political Islam. Avi Max Spiegel’s 2015 Young Islam drills down and looks inward at the functioning and orientations of Islamist parties in Morocco. By contrast, Lawrence Rubin’s 2014 Islam in the Balance looks outward and examines the nature of a country’s threat perception and policy response when dealing with a state that has a strong Islamic identity and makes Islam an element of its foreign policy.
Spiegel’s book, based on deep fieldwork, begins with the important observation that Islamist parties and factions can take more than one form, that there is, in other words, Islamist pluralism. In Morocco, which is the focus of his investigation, there are two Islamist factions that Spiegel examines: the Freedom and Justice Party (PJD) and Al Adl wal Ihsan (Al Adl). The PJD, which was formed in the image of the Muslim Brotherhood, operates within the political system and not only participates in elections but has actually been successful, winning more seats than any other party in the parliamentary elections of 2011 and 2016. Al Adl, by contrast, remains outside the formal political system. Spiegel describes it as illegal but nonviolent and politically engaged. This pairing calls to mind Ellen Lust-Okar’s account of “structures of contestation” in Morocco (Structuring Conflict in the Arab World: Incumbents, Opponents and Institutions, 2005), whereby political life is shaped by the regime’s interaction with factions both within and outside of the formal institutions of government.
Spiegel calls his methodology “shuttle ethnography” (pp. 21–32). He spends a great deal of time observing and talking to leaders and activists of the two movements: He listens to them, he says, “making sense of the world around them” (p. 31). This method is one of anthropology as much as political science, and it calls to mind the impressive study of women’s participation in Islamic activities of the anthropologist Saba Mahmood (Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject, 2012). Labels aside, Spiegel’s ethnographic research is impressive and makes clear how much analytical insight can be gained through extended and in-depth fieldwork.
The author’s account describes the evolution of the PDJ and Al Adl, both separately and in relation to each other. He gives attention to the development of party structures and also, importantly, to ideas, showing how in both cases these were shaped by changes in the country’s competitive environment. This provides background and context for the many important questions that his research addresses. One of these is why young people join Islamist movements and, more particularly, why they join one movement rather than another. His answer defies easy summary, but is perhaps best referenced by the insight that activism “allows people to construct new identities, to build better versions of themselves—and it does so in multiple ways” (p. 93). The chapters also discuss the relationships of young Islamists with the Moroccan state and authorities within their own organization.
Particularly interesting in these sections of the book is the chapter entitled “Every Recruiter is a Reinterpreter.” This addresses the central question of “Who Speaks for Islam,” or, in the context of the book, “Who speaks for young Islamists on matters of faith? Who possesses the authority to interpret religious tenets and texts?” (p. 151). The answer, Spiegel reports, is not simple. There is no longer a monopoly on relevant information. Information today comes from multiple sources, and young people question official scholars and state-appointed imams.
In sum, Spiegel gives us a rare and rich look inside two Islamist movements, with a focus on young Islamists. We learn about the aspirations, beliefs, motivations, and behavior of these young men and women.
The book by Lawrence Rubin explores very different kinds of questions. Country, or perhaps, more specifically, a country’s governing regime, is the unit of analysis; its focus is on the role played by Islam in the way that the leaders of Muslim Arab countries perceive and interact with one another. Two of the four countries at the center of Rubin’s investigation are, in his analysis, “Islamic states.” These are Iran and Sudan, whose leaders make Islam an instrument of foreign policy. He calls this “ideational projection.”
The other two countries are Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and Rubin asks how and why each of them perceives and then responds to the ideational projections of Iran and Sudan. To what extent do Egyptian and Saudi leaders perceive an ideational threat, one by which the use of Islamic symbols and solidarities by another country strengthens or emboldens their domestic opponents. And if they do perceive an ideational threat, how do they respond, and does this response also involve Islam? Rubin calls a response involving Islam “ideational balancing.”
After introducing his argument that perceptions and manipulations relating to Islam need to be considered when explaining bilateral interstate relations, at least in the Middle East, Rubin discusses each of the four dyads: Egypt–Iran, Saudi Arabia–Iran, Egypt–Sudan, Saudi Arabia–Sudan. In each case, he offers a well-informed assessment of the ideational threat that is perceived by Egypt and Saudi Arabia and of each state’s response to the perceived threat, often involving, as noted, some form of ideational balancing.
To give just one example, Rubin characterizes as revolutionary and expansionary the political-religious ideology of Sheikh Hassan al-Turabi, the spiritual leader of Sudan, and then discusses, first, Cairo’s concern about Sudanese-supported Islamist groups in Egypt—the perceived ideational threat—and second, the mechanisms used by the Mubarak regime “to reduce Turabi’s influence and mitigate his ability to mobilize Egyptian domestic opposition using Islamic symbols” (p. 83). Using the Egyptian media to carry out a program of ideational balancing, Cairo sought to undermine the Sudanese leader’s credibility and appeal by portraying him as a fanatic and contesting his claim to be an authoritative interpreter of Islam.
Situated between realist and constructivist approaches, Rubin demonstrates that bringing Islam, and presumably other transnational ideologies, into the story can enrich explanations of foreign policy very significantly, in at least some cases. Accordingly, his insightful and original study will be of interest to students of interstate relations and foreign policy in general, as well as those interested in Middle East international relations.
The books by Spiegel and Rubin take Islam seriously. Like other recent works, they recognize that Islam can and frequently does influence the behavior of individuals and states and that, for this reason, its place in political affairs merits, indeed requires, scholarly inquiry. Both Young Islam and Islam in the Balance make very different kinds of scholarly contributions. Each in its own way, however, adds to our understanding of a key dimension of political behavior in the Arab world and beyond.
