Any analysis of the rise and prospects of Islamist movements is hampered by the inability to let go of pervasive myths, writes Khalil El-Anani The "Arab Spring" has failed to change the way we look at and think about ourselves, our societies and our socio-political conditions. Many Arab political commentators and intellectuals remain captive to explanatory models that arose during the authoritarian period and that one hoped might fall with the repressive dictatorships. But these models seem to have acquired the nature of absolute and indisputable truths. They have become myths that inhibit any rational discussion or critique of their basic presumptions. But once stripped of their various ideological and, sometimes, personal elements, we find they lose any cogency. This applies, most recently, to commentaries on Al-Nahda Party's success in the Tunisian elections. Commentators were divided into those that expressed glee, rejoicing in this "second rise of Islamists" -- the first being the so-called "Islamic awakening" of the late 1970s and early 1980s -- and others who could react with nothing but dismay. While the subject of this article extends beyond events in Tunisia to an examination of how Arab political and intellectual elites view Islamists in general, it is nevertheless important to underscore two points regarding the Tunisian case. First, by any objective measure, Al-Nahda victory is far from extraordinary. It was considerably less than had been anticipated in the course of the huge pre-election media build-up. Al-Nahda emerged from the polls with 40 per cent of seats in the constitutional assembly, hardly giving it a free hand to draw up Tunisia's new constitution or form a government independently. Sixty per cent of the Tunisian electorate, ie the majority, did not vote for Al-Nahda. To reduce the recent elections in Tunisia to the convenient sound-bite of "Al-Nahda victory", excluding other important facets of the poll, from the huge turnout and the integrity of the electoral process to the peaceful and civilised competition between diverse political forces, does a grave injustice to Tunisia's nascent democratic experience. It overlooks many encouraging aspects when it comes to establishing solid democracies in the Arab region. The Tunisian experience was not just a preliminary test of the ability of the Tunisian people to build a democratic state, it was also an important test of the perceptions and presumptions of the Arab intelligentsia towards the Islamist question. Ultimately, it cast into relief a number of prevalent myths that prevent us from dealing objectively with this complex phenomenon and that are more than mere ideological instruments for expressing our differences with it. The first myth has to do with the concepts on which we build our perceptions and modes of awareness, beginning with the concept of "Islamist". Before the Arab Spring, we customarily placed in this category anyone who espoused an ideological political project based on perceptions of Islam. Whether consciously or not, we all used the term sweepingly, ignoring differences between the groups that fall under this label, some so essential they reach the point of ideological - even theological - antithesis, as is the case between the jihadists and the Muslim Brothers, the Salafis and Sufis, and the Shia and the Salafis. To make matters worse, the function of the term and its consequent implications shifted it from the analytical to the ideological realm, generating a chronic conflict between the referents of the term and its affiliation to other political and ideological trends. Such over generalisation is no longer tenable in this time of Arab revolutions, neither from an analytical nor moral standpoint. The political and ideological rhetoric of Al-Nahda Party, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Moroccan Justice and Development Party cannot be squeezed into the same taxonomic box as the Salafist, Sufi or Shia parties. However much they stem from the same religious frame of reference there is an enormous gulf between them in terms of the exegetical instruments and visions that bring to bear in developing their understanding of this frame-of-reference. It would be morally wrong to chalk these fundamental differences down to "tactics" or transient positions veiling political opportunism. Not only does this reflect the tendency to automatically imply double standards, it does an injustice to that portion of the Arab polity that is putting effort into understanding the nature of the considerable - and sometimes unimaginable -- differences between its components. The second myth is that the Islamists now dominate the public sphere. This is an ideological myth par excellence, the reflection of a conflict that is more socio-political than religious. The public space created by the now deposed regimes in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya was originally secularist. It began to be occupied by an Islamist tide only when the regimes themselves began to play religious one-upmanship, against the Islamists in order to establish their own "Islamic" credentials and strengthen their legitimacy, and in an attempt to pit one set of Islamists against another, as the Mubarak regime did with the Salafis and Muslim Brothers. Of course, neither the regime nor the Islamists would use religion so flagrantly in the public space had they not been convinced the public would accept it, a fact that begs the ultimately ontological question: Why is religion so important to the average Arab citizen? Even to sketch an answer would exceed the space available here. The crucial point in this context, in any case, and the one that puts paid to the second myth, is that the public sphere that created the Arab revolution was not by any stretch of the imagination Islamist. It was a liberal, civil sphere, free from the burden of ideological frames-of- reference, religious or otherwise. This, in turn, means that the opportunity to sustain a liberal, civil public sphere still exists, although it is contingent upon the determination of its affiliates not to surrender to their Islamist rivals. The third myth has to do with the relationship between the West and the Islamists. The fact that the substance of this myth has shifted from one antithesis to another is singular proof of its absurdity. At one time Arab intellectuals could not imagine the Islamists and the West finding any common ground. Since the Arab Spring they have not only begun to speak of dialogue between the two sides but have raised the spectre of a Western-Islamist "pact", all in the absence of any documented evidence. The tendency not to see Islamist groups as social movements that affect and are affected by political forces and by the wider society leads to a fourth myth, which is that Islamists are religiously and ideologically static. The danger of this myth is not only that it inhibits an objective and realistic analysis of these movements but also hampers any perception of their constant transformations, inhibiting the possibility of any accurate prognosis on the future of the Islamist phenomenon as a whole. Did anyone imagine before the revolution that Egyptian Salafis would throw themselves into the political fray after having not only refrained from political involvement but denouncing it as heretical? Who would have thought that the Jihadists would form political parties and engage in the pubic sphere so openly? Did anyone anticipate that the Muslim Brotherhood, with its reputation of hierarchical rigidity and internal cohesion, would spawn four political parties in less than six months? The fifth myth concerns the "historical imperative" of an Islamist hegemony, as well as its obverse. Those who espouse the former base their views not so much on the Islamists' determination and zealotry but on the more concrete observation that they are more tightly regimented and have broader grassroots organisations than their weak and fragmented opponents. Those who would argue for the flipside, that the Islamists are ultimately doomed to fail even if they do mange to win an election here or there, cite the experiences of Iran, Sudan, Afghanistan and Hamas. The critical flaw of the myth of historical inevitability, regardless of on which side its proponents fall, resides in the fact that it deals with the public as a uniform and naïve lump lacking any critical powers. What they forget is that this lump succeeded in overthrowing long-established and powerful authoritarian regimes. Perhaps the saddest part of the mindset of Arab intelligentsia is that while they remain prisoners of the foregoing myths, many scholars in the West have begun to shed such illusions, freeing them to develop a more realistic reading of the Islamist phenomenon. * The writer is a researcher at School of Government and International affairs, Durham university.
