Egypt Maintain Future Political Islam - Term Paper Example

Running Header: THE FUTURE OF POLITICAL ISLAM The Future of Political Islam: Egypt as a Case Study BY YOU YOUR SCHOOL INFO HERE HERE The Futureof Political Islam: Egypt as a Case Study Introduction Political Islam is an expression utilized as a means of describing political movements in which individuals in society believe strongly in Islam not only as a religion, but as a holistic political system that will dictate proper governance of a state using Islamic values and guidance. Political Islam attempts to build connections between the state and the social environment underpinned by the fundamental philosophies and dogma of the Islamic religion. Political Islam describes the belief that religion can serve as the central focus for guiding social and political connections. In the Middle East, there has been a recent push for the establishment of political Islam, known as the Islamic resurgence, has gained considerable popular appeal as followers of the Islamic religion see Westernization, capitalism and secularization as a significant threat to Muslim communities and the establishment of political Islam within a society serves to counter these perceived threats (Milton-Edwards and Hinchcliffe, 2001). As Fuller (2003) points out, Islam has prevailed much longer than any other religious institution in the world. Islamists see a need for re-interpretation of the Quran and successfully apply them to the modern world as it pertains to political state governance. Utvik (1993) reinforces that Islamists rebuff modernism due to its tendency toward secularism where there is powerful belief in reason and science with much less emphasis on serving the values of the divine. The ideological foundation for rejecting Westernism, materialism and capitalism can be witnessed with the inception of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, an Islamist organization that has gained popularity and support throughout the Middle East for blending political activism with Islamist-based generosity and philanthropy.  What underpins growth in political Islam throughout the world is a shared set of religious values in which the basic social sentiment is that Islam should be the guiding force for a society, governing social lifestyle. Islamists believe that the Quran’s guiding principles satisfy the divine, thus serving as the most relevant political model for a society in order to ensure that devoted precepts of the Quran are the fundamental goals of society. To not establish Islamist values in society and politics is considered unfavorable secularism, unfaithfulness to Islam which is incapable of solving problems or improving one’s ability to commune with the divine. Not achieving this communion is quite unfavorable for the devoted Islamist, hence adding to pressure to establish political Islam throughout the world.  This research proposal examines Egypt’s current political environment to assess whether political Islam maintains significant public and social support, taking into consideration political and social evolutions in Egypt. The research aims to answer the question as to whether political Islam maintains a future for political, social and economic state governance or whether it can be expected that this ideology of state governance will ultimately be phased out by political and social changes. Through an examination of the current state of the Egyptian government, the research can provide knowledge as to whether Islamic values and dogma will likely govern Egypt or whether the nation is moving toward a different political system of governance. A Review of the Literature Roy (2013) states that the ideology of Islam, in Egypt, maintains indistinct narratives that cannot, in the long-term, serve as a relevant blueprint for guiding the political environment in this country. This sentiment is based on the notion that Egyptian culture has changed to meet geopolitical changes steering global societies toward the Western model of political governance and Islamists are changing their values according to this contemporary landscape. It was predicted in the 1990s that strict Islamic norms and values would be recast in a transition toward Muslim democracy with society adopting a new set of cultural values in Egypt with less religious commitment and a burgeoning middle class transitioning toward a more capitalistic ideology (Schielke, 2015). The modern conception of political Islam is that it should be reflective of a democratic ideology, playing a central role in promoting human rights, freedom, cooperation and tolerance (Fuller, 2003). However, democracy and freedom are not necessarily the goals of oppressive regimes throughout the Middle East and these regimes tend to utilize Islam as a means of simply justifying their oppressive ruling tactics (Fuller, 2003). Hence, there appears to be evidence that modern conceptions of political Islam may not have an optimistic chance of guiding Middle Eastern political strategies. The sentiment by Schielke (2015) that Egypt is transitioning toward a market-based, capitalistic economy does not necessarily reflect fundamental Islamist values which underpin religiosity in the country. For instance, achieving a quality lifestyle means conforming to Western values of commerce and consumerism simply as a product of a capitalistic culture, a necessity based on the tangible realities of capitalism manifesting itself in Egyptian society. This does not necessarily reflect the devoted Islamist ideologies held by Egyptian society members which underpin religious commitment that might be manifest in lifestyle, outside of consumerism which drives the ability for Islamists to achieve wealth and quality of life. This study, through examination of other literature comparing capitalistic values, Egyptian culture and segregating Islamist values from capitalism could assist in closing a knowledge gap as to whether capitalism and consumerism transcends Islam or whether Islam remains the main priority of Egyptian Muslims. Ayoob (2005) asserts that there are inherent, built-in contradictions already embedded in Islam and, perhaps, there can be tolerance for capitalism and Islam with recognition that contradictions will never be fully rectified even through political Islam and establishment of an Islamic state. This study can seek to explore this disparity and the extent to which society in Egypt tolerates inconsistency. Heavy imposition of the Islamic religion on Egyptian communities has not, according to many in Egyptian society, made these communities an improved place to live (Schielke, 2015). In fact, quality of lifestyle is being measured by many Egyptians in terms of the quality of their housing and volume of material possessions they sustain. The younger generation expresses a feeling of frustration and monotony under political Islam (Schielke, 2015), and the bourgeoning middle class seeks identity through patronization of expensive cafes and restaurants rather than strict religious devotion. Islamic fundamentalism which underpins political Islam is now seen as fanatical, radical and not authorized by the Quran’s ideologies, hence society in Egypt is beginning to challenge its legitimacy and influence which is eroding political Islam’s popularity. Roy (2013) again asserts that Islamic political figures pay only lip service to the conceptions of democracy, in an environment where citizens are looking toward augmented liberties and increased political participation. Perhaps this notion of lip service is due to the fact that traditional Islam is highly puritanical and does not suggest appropriateness of liberalism (Hamayotsu, 2011). Pressure from Western economies underpin desire of political actors within the Middle East to establish democratic policies and systems and, to conform to these pressures, highly-conservative and puritanical concepts are not congruent with a consumerist, democratic ideology. Hence, this potential lip service, if a legitimate phenomenon, might well be founded on the tangible inability of political actors in Egypt to find harmony and reconciliation between democracy, liberalism and conservative Islam. This study will explore this distinction and the potential ability to reconcile liberalism with traditionalism using political Islam to determine whether resolution can be achieved to satisfy both ideologies without sacrificing traditional Islamic values. For instance, in Indonesia, the Justice Prosperous Party upholds conservative, puritanical Islamist values and seeks incorporation of these values in all political strategy. This party asserts that reconciling puritanical Islam with liberalism will hurt party authority and ultimately harm religious mobilization in the country (Hidayat, 2010). Furthermore, one of the fundamental doctrines of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is that Islam is the only relevant solution for governing a state and that jihad, a holy war, is their respected tactics (Wickham, 2013). Egyptians, today, are seeing violence as a barrier to earning a quality living and the basic social sentiment is that such jihadi actions, like September 11, 2001, were an aberration. This jihadi violence which underpins justification for spreading the Islamic doctrine seems to be turning Egypt into an enemy nation, creating less support for the Islamic awakening serving as a foundation for implementing political Islam to govern the Egyptian state. Egyptians, in recent years, have begun protesting in the streets demanding democratic reforms and see militant presence as a threat to incomes and business success. However, Bayat (2007) suggests that political Islam should be defined as post-Islamism, which underpins a basic interpretation of traditional Islam with compatibility to modernism. This ideology supports a deeply held religious conviction, but also takes into consideration the rights of a society’s citizens, a dutiful society that can operate within a democratic state. One of the radical turnabouts of the post-Islamist movement is that the rights of all citizens, including gender, can find social belonging (Bayat, 2007). In fact, many protestors which flooded the streets of Egypt in 2011 were very vocal that the introduction of Sharia law was irrelevant for securing the needs of Egyptian citizens and the main goal of government should be granting freedom of expression and the establishment of a democratic state (Bayat, 2007). Ideologically, then, post-Islamist values which are more democratic in nature might allow political Islam to be successfully implemented in the nation so long as citizens are granted liberties and are free of oppression and are free to interpret Islam in a capacity secure for the practicing Muslim. In Turkey, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) has managed to incorporate non-Islamist values with strong, conservative Islamic ideology to generate positive political change under political Islam. Conservativism blended with liberalism avoids creating political policy that is founded on extreme religious literalism (Yilmaz, 2009). This study can provide new knowledge by making comparisons between Egypt and other nations that have sought implementation of political Islam to determine whether reconciliation between liberalism and conservative Islam can actually be rectified as a viable political model for Egypt. Exploration of Egyptian cultural sentiment about Islam and liberalism, additionally, can assist in this analysis to make a rational conclusion as to whether both ideologies can successfully be combined in Egypt. In Egypt, additionally, political Islam has become corrupt. Policies have allowed for monopolization of economic resources and have granted tremendous allowances for autocratic ruling regimes which serves as a significant barrier to democratization of Egyptian society. The initial successes experienced by the Muslim Brotherhood were underpinned by public opposition for autocratic political regimes and encouragement of pluralism that supported a more democratic state. However, recurring failures of the Brotherhood in creating a more plural form of democracy and failing to recognize empowerment of women has created negative sentiment about the relevancy and viability of political Islam which has created an air of distrust and suspicion about whether political Islam can actually be free of corruption and compatible with democratic values. In Egypt, it is civil society that will likely determine whether political Islam is viable for Egypt’s future and this has been consistently illustrated by protests in recent years to depose government leadership that continue to attempt imposition of political Islam ideologies and oppress the implementation of civil liberties. This study will explore the phenomenon of corruption and oppression in current Egyptian politics to determine whether a domineering government can successfully be unseated to implement a modern conception of political Islam with emphasis on liberalism and puritanical Islamist ideology. Furthermore, Roy (2003) suggests that Islamist movements in Europe are surrendering their international strategies in favor of a localized framework and ideology. Egyptian citizens, with the belief in globalization and internationalization as steps to economic growth and improved global identity for the nation, see this as undemocratic and illogical (Roy, 2003). Egyptians fear that political Islam will transform the country into one like Iran, which is highly isolated from the global community and experiences a vast array of global sanctions and where the nation is feared and global suspicions run rampant about its radical theocracy (Kassem, 2012). This contributes to the civil society-related lack of popularity for the Muslim Brotherhood as nationalism rather than the development of international agendas is seen as a barrier to legitimate pluralism and serves to repress effective economic, social and political growth for Egypt. Even extremists from within the Muslim Brotherhood are exiting the organization for recognizing only the will of God and not the legitimate needs and desires of the Egyptian people. Yet another problem of establishing legitimized political Islam is the disparity in Egypt in how the Quran is translated and how society members practice the religion. Radical and politically-organized groups that seek to completely remove secularism from the nation conflict the process of harmonizing democracy with Muslim values. Furthermore, even though many of the lower class members of society have a passionate devotion to the Islamic faith, they lack fundamental knowledge of Islamic faith. Common and popular rituals with this group include activities deemed unorthodox by Islamic traditionalists such as worship of saints, utilizing talismans and other ornaments and belief that evil spirits pervade society (Library of Congress, n.d.). Hence, creating a dichotomy of what specific Islamic values and traditions would be deemed relevant by civil society could be complicated. With such a disparity in how Islam is interpreted and practiced in Egypt, the ability of political actors and civil society to agree upon what legitimately constitutes acceptable religious practice and devotion continues to be a contemporary problem with the establishment of political Islam in this nation. Hence, policy development in political Islam could potentially conflict the process of establishing social equality achieving social agreement about what actually constitutes a legitimized Islamic state. Furthermore, the hegemonic United States continues to exert pressure on the Egyptian government to transition to a more democratic state congruent with Western ideals and political approaches. The United States provides economic support for Egypt and it might be argued that compliance to democratic-based pressures exerted by this nation would ensure that continued financial support be granted by a nation with considerable global dominance. This aid equates to $1.5 billion USD every year, with much of this aid to supply the government with military equipment, health services, education and development of democracy-based programs. Whilst the rationale or motive for this economic aid is not relevant, to establish political Islam without consideration of some dimension of democratic values could be detrimental, in terms of economic foreign aid, in sustaining military security and improvement of the educational sector in this country. Hence, motivation to create a constitution based on Islamic values and also democratic needs might be incentivized by continuing economic support from the United States (and other nations) which funds the majority of the government’s military arsenal. Simply for the sake of national security, therefore, it may be feasible to find a common ground between democracy, Westernization and Islamic tradition to identify a system that can properly govern this particular nation state. Study Methodology The literature on the contemporary and historical state of political Islam in Egypt illustrates some level of opportunities for its establishment, however conflict and disagreement seem to dominate the literature describing whether it will be viable and relevant in Egypt into the future. With the notion that social, cultural and attitudinal factors are complicating the implementation of political Islam in Egypt, this study takes a qualitative approach to research. Ramsden (1998) explicitly states that attitudes are unable to be measured using statistical instruments due to the reality that attitudes are abstract and multi-faceted. Hence, the researcher has selected content analysis as the most relevant qualitative approach to research. Content analysis involves the researcher seeking analysis of specific phrases or words in various written texts to examine how messages are framed. This approach is a common tool in social sciences that assists a researcher in recognizing specific tones and significances of communications, determining whether there is impartiality in discourse about political Islam or whether bias exists in terms of sociological understanding of the phenomenon. This study, in order to fully understand the potential future of political Islam in Egypt, must examine the social, cultural, and political influences that either build higher support for political Islam or rejection of it as a viable model for Egyptian governance. None of these factors can effectively be measured using the quantitative approach (i.e. surveys) since attitude and beliefs are complex aspects of human behavior that require a subjective evaluation of socio-political and socio-psychological aspects of Egyptian society that either embraces or refutes political Islam as a relevant governance system within this state. The researcher will procure a large volume of research journals, opinion reports, books and news articles about the current state of political Islam in Egypt in order to examine whether general sentiment about the ideology’s future is perceived as bleak or viable. Comparative analysis method will also be utilized, comparing Egypt with other countries that have sought to implement or successfully implemented political Islam as a governing model for society. This method is inductive, approaching the phenomenon as various case studies to generate an appropriate theory based on data findings. Through the process of comparing incident to incident, this examination can provide knowledge as to whether other nations (other than Egypt) have found barriers or success in implementation of political Islam and how this was accomplished. Though an abstract process which requires significant inference, these findings can be supplemented by results of empirical studies that have utilized quantitative methods to determine social sentiment (in other Mid Eastern nations) as to whether efforts to implement political Islam are considered successful or a catastrophe.  The researcher does not maintain the adequate resources required to recruit a sample of real-world Egyptian civilians (under a random sampling methodology) to conduct in-depth interviews or distribute questionnaires, which conflicts the process of gleaning contemporary attitudes and beliefs about the relevancy and future of political Islam in Egypt. Whilst this would be highly valuable to the study, and serves as a moderate study limitation, genuine researcher constraints forbid the capability of conducting a primary study in this fashion. Such an approach would allow for analysis and identification of potential social, cultural or politically-motivated congruencies between participant responses which would solidify understanding what dominates attitudes in civil society about the relevancy and vitality of political Islam. Despite the aforementioned limitation, content analysis and the process of pouring over various, contemporary written texts is viable for understanding the multi-faceted aspects of what underpins acceptance or rejection of political Islam in Egypt. This approach will allow the researcher to identify common themes (and framing) of how the phenomenon is communicated in various media texts to make an educated conclusion as to whether political Islam can effectively be established or whether it should be predicted as a non-viable political ideology in the country. This method will be supplemented by second-hand interviews, examining existing publications in news media which spotlights other qualitative interviews with relevant Egyptian (or other Mid-Eastern nation) politicians or other relevant official opinion in various news media sources. Results of an existing survey study conducted by The Egyptian Center for Public Opinion Research will also be discussed and analyzed to indicate the level of sentiment that real-world Egyptian citizens maintain toward favorability of religion as an element of politics.  Research Outline for Final Project 1. Introduction – Outlines the concept of political Islam, the current social and economic variables in Egyptian culture and the aims and objectives of the research. 2. Literature review – Explores a vast array of literature on capitalism within the Egypt economy, consumer lifestyle, religious devotion and ideology of Islamist citizens in Egypt, potential ability of other nations to reconcile democracy with Islamist traditionalism, Egyptian socio-political identity within an international context, and oppressive versus liberal political ideology driving Egyptian politics today. 3. Methodology – Describes the instruments and methodological approaches to conducting research with emphasis on ethical considerations and study limitations. 4. Findings and Results – A discussion of all findings, both qualitative and quantitative, which underpin making a rational conclusion as to whether political Islam maintains a probable future as a guiding political force in Egypt; underpinned by all literature procured in the study’s review of literature. 5. Conclusion – Summarizes all findings and determines whether an established theory, founded on all research, is viable and generally proven through qualitative and quantitative analyses. Conclusion This study maintains the ability to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the potential or predictable future of political Islam in Egypt. The research, thus far, has uncovered a disparity of sentiment about the future of political Islam in this country stemming from political scientists, sociologists, and anthropologists, conflicting making a positive and realistic determination about whether traditional Islam or a more progressive interpretation of the religion will guide Egypt into tomorrow. Utilizing the qualitative content analysis as the relevant research design can determine whether socio-psychological influences underpin its probability for success or whether Egypt will, in the long-term, be unable to develop a constitution founded on Islamic values (either congruent with or against Western ideals of democracy) that will be accepted and deemed viable by civil culture in this state. Based on the research conducted thus far, it might well be competently concluded that Egypt will have substantial difficulties implementing political Islam as a guiding governance institution in this country. Based on pressures to establish a democratic state imposed by Western nations, a changing generation of Egyptian civilians that are valuing more secular lifestyle elements and capitalism, fear of being ostracized as a potential terrorist, enemy nation, and disparity of how Islam should be interpreted and practiced would seem to underlie substantial difficulties in utilizing political Islam as the prevailing future state of Egypt. It is the aim of this proposed research study to gain a more thorough understanding of the challenges and opportunities of political Islam in Egypt and make a sound and reasonable determination about its predictability for success as the relevant governance system in a country where attitudes about political Islam are highly disparate and seemingly incongruent. References Ayoob, M. (2005). The Future of Political Islam: The Importance of External Variables. International Affairs, 81(5), pp.951-961. Bayat, A. (2007). 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