In response to: Do the
electoral results in Egypt and Tunisia post-2011 support a claim that people
are particularly religious in the MENA region? Has Edward Said, who once said
he felt the “predominant mood of the Arab world is very secular,” been proven
wrong?
Immediately after the Arab Spring,
Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood was elected to the presidency in
Egypt, and the Islamic democrat party Ennahda was elected to govern Tunisia. However,
although the Arab populations of Egypt and Tunisia are predominantly Muslim,
the political climate tends to be secular.
The trend in the Middle East, including
Egypt and Tunisia, seems to be that Arabs will elect more Islamic governments
in times of crisis. Wickham and Dajani both note that the Muslim Brotherhood
and Hamas were well liked because they provided a measure of stability and
“support, food, [and] medical care” in the community (Dajani 57). This might be
because the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas both make an active effort to be
present in their communities, more so than other government parties.
In a region often plagued by
instability, these rigid governments offer some sort of security. Especially
considering the upheaval surrounding the Arab Spring, consistency would have
been attractive to voters. In addition, one of the driving forces of the Arab
Spring was the lack of employment for young, often well educated, Arabs. In
Tunisia, now that the crisis has passed, the population has chosen to move back
to a secular government. Egypt’s choice to get rid of Morsi was also rooted in
economic circumstances, but for different reasons. The situation for Egyptian
youth has remained fairly stagnant, with many in the population still unable to
find work or feed their families.
In the end, I would say that although the MENA region is
very religious, the populations’ choices concerning their governments is very
rooted in the economic and political circumstances at the time of elections,
rather than their religious convictions.
Susan, I completely agree with you in the majority of your analysis. As we've discussed quite a few times, many Islamist movements have a strong presence in the community due to the support they offer, like the food and medical care that you mention. However, I wonder how truly religious the population is and how much of it is just due to the popularity of these Islamist movements and the spillover they cause in perceived religiousness.
ReplyDeleteI think that in evaluating the first question it's important to consider the longevity of the regimes that came before the 2011 elections in Arab Spring countries. Corruption and unemployment were very much associated with these regimes and I wonder if another failure by a secular regime will result in a more consistent role for religion in government without the existence of a crisis, e.g. Iran post-1979 until today.
ReplyDeleteElizabeth, I think your comment about "perceived religiousness" is really interesting. Perhaps populations are focused on the service the Islamist groups are providing their communities, rather than the religious platforms the groups are using.
ReplyDeleteI also wonder if it's similar to the Western tendency to claim a religion as a merely a label rather than actual practice (for example, when someone says, "my family's Catholic"). I haven't studied that aspect of Middle Eastern culture, and I always think of Muslims as devout practitioners of Islam, but I'm curious what percentage of people claim the title but don't participate and how that ties in to the election of Islamist parties.
There is all this interesting discussion going on in this blog and while I get email notifications of all your posts, to my frustration I haven't had a chance to participate properly! The issue of secularism and faith is a very interesting one. As I have mentioned elsewhere, I don't think Edward Said was wrong when he said what he said in the late 1990s, but I suspect the polarizing climate we have seen in the last decade in a half have given some Islamist groups the opportunity to employ a narrative on 'secularism' as being equal to 'atheism.' This is by no means true of all Islamist movements, but it certainly is a movement frame that has gained traction in latter years, not only in MENA, but in South Asia as well. Not that long ago, there was no conflict between being a person of faith and being a secularist. Sadat was mentioned in another post as an example of someone who claimed to be a person of faith but simultaneously a staunch secularist, and this wasn't a contradiction at all in the past. Now, however, secularism is often equated with atheism, which is in turn equated with 'anti-Islamism.' This obviously creates a problem for someone who has faith, but thinks politics and religion should be kept separate. The point is, people may have been just as religious when Said made his comments, but they may not have seen a contradiction between a secular form of government and having faith, while this distinction is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain (possibly due to the effectiveness of Islamist movement frames in conflating secularism and atheism).This may help explain the aforementioned Pew polls, but I do think, as Susan points out, that the success of Islamist parties at the ballot box is more due to their presence in local communities and their ability to claim authenticity in the face of failed secular regimes.
ReplyDeleteProfessor Hardig, since I don't get notifications on my blog posts, I'm only just now seeing your comment! It's really interesting to come back to this post/topic in light of your comments on secularism being viewed as atheism. I think that because we often see the Middle East so tied to Islam/rooted in Islamic tradition, it is easier to equate secularism with atheism than it is in other global regions. However, as you point out, it is important to remember that secular, here, often means a separation between politics and religion rather than a lack of religion altogether.
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