Political Islam at the Crossroads: Resilience and Adaptation in the Contemporary Middle East

A comparative analysis of Islamist groups’ ideological positioning toward nation-state, secularism, and democracy across different countries in the MENA region.

Authoritarian reassertion following the Arab uprisings in the Middle East has restrained Islamists’ political participation and challenged their survival as both opposition groups and rulers. In light of national sociopolitical variations across the region, this book explores Islamists’ means of adaptation and resilience in the face of this political exclusion, unpacking Islamists’ sociopolitical persistence and ideological sustainability.

In doing so this book sheds light on the following questions: How did Islamists adapt to contextual restrictions in terms of repression and stigmatization? How did the Arab uprisings impact their internal debates, ideological revisions, and reconsideration of tools of action? Individual chapters explore similarities and divergences among Islamist groups and parties in terms of ideological affiliations, means of survival and political participation strategies, drawing on comparative cases from across the MENA region. Examples include the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Al-Nahda in Tunisia, the AKP (Justice and Development Party) in Turkey, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, and the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. These studies engage critically with conceptual debates related to Islamism, post-Islamism, Jihadist Islam, and the Islamic nation/community (ummah) to determine the trajectory of political Islam in the MENA.

Ayfer Erdogan-Safak received her PhD in International Relations and Political Science from Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey. Her research interests include democratic transition, Third Wave of Democratization, Islam and democracy, and the Arab Spring. She is the author of Arab Spring-Arab Fall: Divergent Transitions in post-2011 Tunisia and Egypt.

Shaimaa Magued is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Economics and Political Science, Cairo University, Egypt. Her works focus on International Relations of the Middle East, Identity Politics, Foreign Policy Analysis, and Transnational Advocacy.