Radical Islamists, Civil Society, and Party System Transformation

• In Event: Islam and Party Politics

Abstract

From Turkey to Tunisia, the recent rise of Islamist parties in electoral politics has generated considerable academic interest about their possible effect on democracy and party systems. However, scant attention has been paid to the Islamist parties that have not yet been electorally successful and their influence on the ideological positioning of mainstream parties. This paper investigates the mechanism(s) through which extremist Islamist parties influence the political discourse and policy positions of mainstream parties when outside the institutional power structure. I argue that access to Islamist civil society organizations like mosques, madrasas, and charitable organizations enables the extremist parties to promote conservative societal norms. This, in turn, encourages public support for more conservative Islamist policies at the state level. If mainstream parties feel electorally threatened by the resultant changes in public opinion, they may choose to co-opt the latter’s extremist discourse and in doing so legitimize their policy positions. In this scenario, even if the extremist Islamists cannot ascend to formal state power, they can still pull the entire party system towards the far Islamist side of the Islamist-secularist spectrum.

This paper uses Bangladesh, the fourth largest Muslim country in the world and one of the most stable democracies in Asia, as a case study to explore the transformation of party systems when extremist Islamist parties participate in electoral politics. Through process tracing I show that, during the authoritarian era of 1975 to 1990, the military regime used political Islam as a legitimizing technique, and actively supported Islamist civil society organizations in Bangladesh. Unlike other well documented cases where Islamist repression resulted in radicalization and violence, it was the active state patronage that allowed extremist Islamist parties like Jamaat-e-Islami to gradually spread their ideology and influence in Bangladesh. Due to historic state support and access to civil society, Jamaat-e-Islami have indirectly shifted Bangladeshi politics towards the far Islamist end of the secularist-Islamist spectrum.

To measure the changes experienced by mainstream parties due to the civil society activities of the extremist Islamists, I perform content analysis of party manifestos and election platforms of the centrist- secular Bangladesh Awami League and centrist- Islamist Bangladesh Nationalist Party since the re-introduction of democracy in Bangladesh in 1991. I find a gradual Islamist shift in both the rhetoric and proposed policies of mainstream political parties in the country. I supplement these findings with content analysis of campaign speeches of major political leaders before the December 2018 Parliamentary elections. I also examine the laws and regulations passed in last twenty-seven years, under administrations from separate parties, regarding majority-minority relationships to measure the extent of change in the policy positions of mainstream parties. Laws and regulations regarding women’s rights, the rights of ethnic and religious minorities, and freedom of expression are examined as these tend to be the areas where the extremist Islamists advocate for the most severe changes. The findings show an alarming and paradoxical transformation of the party system, where even the ruling centrist-secular Bangladesh Awami League is coopting more conservative Islamist rhetoric and supporting policies that jeopardize women and minority rights.

This paper represents an original analysis of the party-civil society relationship in Bangladesh and is informative for understanding similar cases of emerging or new Muslim democracies because 1) it creates a new taxonomy of political parties in the Muslim countries, distinguishing between political parties with different levels of ideological intensity on both secular and Islamist sides of the ideological spectrum; 2) it explores the impact of authoritarian repression of the opposition forces during Cold War era over the mobilizational capacity and techniques of the extremist Islamist parties; 3) it explains the enabling role of civil society for extremist Islamists to transform the party system. The hypothesized mechanism of extremist influence via civil society and the novel taxonomy generated here are useful analytical tools for examining the interaction of civil society and extremist political movements on party systems beyond the Bangladeshi case. Highlighting an influential factor affecting the development of Muslim majority Democracies, this research contributes to our understanding of the processes that may result in societal and political radicalization.

Author

• Tahmina Rahman