Islamist Groups and the Struggle for Legitimacy during Periods of Transition

• In Event: Islam and Politics

Abstract

Political transitions are periods of heightened uncertainty, during which legitimacy is continuously contested and negotiated. What explains the divergent abilities of Islamist groups to weather these contestations over legitimacy? The events in the Middle East since the 2011 protests show that the fate of Islamist groups is not uniform if there is an opening in the political system. While all Islamists groups initially benefited from enormous electoral successes in the countries that experienced a regime change, the tides turned as political transitions degenerated into conflict in Libya, or authoritarian reversal in Egypt. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood is a stark example of an Islamist group that quickly came to dominate political life, but subsequently was just as quickly expelled from politics and labeled a terrorist organization. Tunisia remains as the only example of a relatively successful democratic transition, but the Islamist Ennahda party had to learn to compromise and relinquish political control.
Much of the literature on the Arab Spring explains the differences between the fate of the Tunisian Ennahda party and of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood by focusing either on the divergent structural constraints of the two groups, their agency (and in particular their willingness to compromise) during the tumultuous transition period, or the presence or absence of a “twin toleration” between Islamists and the state. This paper argues that structure and agency cannot be easily disentangled, and that the very identities of social actors during political transitions are deeply impacted by historical legacies and authoritarian structures. Using historical analysis and relying on a variety of primary and secondary sources, including interviews conducted by the author, the paper examines the different dynamics of political Islam during the transition in Egypt and Tunisia, and compares them to the political transition in Indonesia. The analysis reveals how authoritarian legacies impact the social cohesion of civil society during times of transition, the diversity of religious actors, the organizational identity of Islamist groups, and the perceived legitimacy of the main political actors. It is through this lens that we can gain a more nuanced understanding of why Tunisia and Indonesia might have a “twin toleration” between Islamists and the state, and why Islamists in Egypt were unable to overcome their crisis of legitimacy.

Author

• Ioana Emy Matesan, Wesleyan University