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According to a recent survey, half of all Iranians say that they have left Islam as a religion, while two-thirds believe Islamic law should be excluded from their legal system. In the following essay, Ahmet T. Kuru explores the implications | Secularist regimes dominated the Muslim world in the 1970s. The Islamic Revolution of 1979 in Iran emerged as both the symptom and trigger of a new trend – legal Islamisation. Today, Muslim-majority countries find themselves at another critical juncture as a new secularist trend gathers momentum. And, once again, Iran is the symbol of change, as recent protests show. These protests have deep social roots. Iran’s semi-republican theocracy has produced the least religious society in the Muslim world.Nineteen seventies secularism failed to produce democracy in the Muslim world, and the current trend will be no different unless secularists change their authoritarian attitude. Whether they will truly embrace democratic pluralism remains uncertain. What is certain is that the promotion of Islamic law, or Sharia, as the state law has exacerbated the problem of authoritarianism in many countries.Of the 50 Muslim countries in existence today, three-fifths either have constitutions referring to Sharia as the sole legal source or mixed systems that combine both Sharia and secular laws. All of these countries are authoritarian. They follow the provisions of Islamic criminal law, such as those punishing apostasy and blasphemy, and Islamic family law, favouring men over women in marriage, divorce and inheritance.The remaining two-fifths of Muslim countries have constitutions that display varying degrees of secularism. They do not have apostasy/blasphemy laws and they are less discriminatory towards women. Nonetheless, only six of these secular states are electoral democracies. Hence, a secular constitution is necessary but insufficient for democratisation. From Iran to Turkey, Islamists rose to power by criticising secularist autocrats. Yet, their Islamic agendas now appear even more authoritarian, especially when they promote Sharia.Sharia: law of the ulemaThe tension between Sharia and democracy derives from the dominant method of Islamic law, which defines Islam as a set of legal rules guiding Muslims' lives entirely. Formulated by a ninth-century scholar, this method defines the sources of Islamic law as four: the Koran, hadiths (records of Prophet Muhammad’s words and actions), consensus (ijma) of the Islamic scholars, and analogical reasoning (qiyas). All Sunni schools of law embrace this method, and so do Shia Muslims, bar a few details.Hadiths play a vital role in the dominant Islamic legal method since they deal with a broad range of topics on which the Koran is silent. For most Sunnis, the two main hadith books, Buhari and Muslim, are canonical and their records are taken as words of the Prophet as if he is speaking today. Based on thousands of hadiths, the Islamic scholars – the ulema – have produced a large number of legal opinions (fatwas) that interfere with all spheres of life despite lacking sufficient expertise in fields such as politics, economy, science, and arts.Since the Koran and hadiths are open to interpretation, the crucial criterion of the dominant method of Islamic law is ulema consensus. Once the ulema reach a consensus on a particular legal rule, it becomes almost impossible to change it. So, Sharia implies the ulema’s – not God’s – law. The fourth criterion, analogical reasoning, restricts the role of reason to making analogies. Rationalism or empirical observation is not taken into consideration. These two criteria of consensus and analogical reasoning cause a hierarchical and literalist formation of Islamic law.The ulema’s alliance with the stateThe ulema’s hierarchical authority and literalism makes Sharia incompatible with democracy. In a democracy, laws are created as a result of popular participation, taking into account the changing needs of the people. According to the dominant Islamic legal method, however, the law is produced by a group of men – the ulema – based on their understanding of religious texts. There is no place for popular participation when shaping the Sharia.[embed:render:embedded:node:35285]Since the eleventh century, only one factor – the coercive power of the state – has been able to challenge the ulema’s claim to a law-making monopoly. This combination of the ulema’s religious authority and the sultan’s sword is what produced the duality of sharia and sultan’s law (kanun) from history to the present. This reciprocal relationship also created an alliance between the ulema and the state. As a result, the implementation of Sharia differs from country to country based on the specific characteristics of this alliance.In Saudi Arabia, Sharia is enforced by the alliance between the Wahhabi ulema and the Saudi dynasty, although Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman is currently trying to reconfigure the alliance to give more power to the state. Following its Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iran became the exception. There the ulema was given not only legislative and judicial, but executive power as well. It was based on Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s idea of the guardianship of the jurist (velayat-e faqih). Recently, the Taliban’s renewed takeover of Afghanistan has shown that such a system, where the ulema say “we are the state” is even possible in a Sunni-majority country.Is a new legal method possible?Bearing in mind the strong association between the dominant method of Sharia and authoritarianism, Muslim countries have two options for democratisation. One would be full legal secularisation, consigning Sharia to the history books, except for rules relating to worship (prayers, fasting, almsgiving and pilgrimage). The other option would be to produce new methods of Islamic law based on rationalism and empirical observation.There are two reasons to be optimistic about potential new methods. Firstly, diverse methods of Islamic law already existed between the eighth and eleven centuries, when Muslims produced a scientific and economic "golden era". The method of Abu Hanifa (d. 767), for example, encouraged legal judgements based on reason. After the eleventh century, however, the ulema-state alliance consistently favoured the method of Shafii (d. 820) with its emphasis on the Koran, hadiths, the ulema consensus and analogical reasoning. There is no reason early Islamic history could not inspire new methods today. Another reason to be optimistic is that there is nothing in the Koran or hadiths legitimising the ulema’s alliance with the state or favouring their consensus. Some ulema use a single phrase in the Koran (4:49) "uli’l-amr" ("those who have authority") to justify the ulema-state alliance, despite the fact that the verse refers neither to the ulema nor the rulers. They also use a hadith, "My community will never agree upon an error", to highlight the ulema’s consensus, yet the hadith refers to the Muslim community at large, not the ulema.In democracies, laws are made by popular participation and public discussion. New Islamic legal methods that embrace rationalism and empiricism can form part of democratic discussions. If Muslim societies fail to develop such new legal methods, democratisation will only be possible through complete legal secularisation – thereby consigning Sharia to the history books. It remains to be seen what path the Iranians and other Muslim societies decide to take.Ahmet T. Kuru© Qantara.de 2022Ahmet T. Kuru is professor of political science and director of The Center for Islamic and Arabic Studies at San Diego State University, and the author of Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment: A Global and Historical Comparison (Cambridge University Press

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Renowned scholar of Islamic Studies Gudrun Kramer has just published the first well-founded biography of Hasan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. Joseph Croitoru read the book | In the late nineteenth century, great swathes of the Islamic world were under Western colonial rule. This presence was particularly marked in Egypt. British rule in Egypt began in 1882 and lasted for several decades. France was involved in the Suez Canal Company and also had considerable cultural influence on the educated secular class in Egypt.

While the confrontation with European ideas and behaviours led to a hardening of conservative Islamic attitudes among the devout, reform-oriented groups were open to the momentum for modernisation and sought to re-evaluate their own traditions with a view to making Egyptian society "more Islamic".

Hasan al-Banna, who was born in 1906 in a small town called Mahmoudiyah not far from Alexandria, was filled with a similar sense of mission in his younger years. In 1928, he founded the Muslim Brotherhood in the city of Ismailia on the banks of the Suez Canal. In the two decades that followed, the brotherhood became an important player in Egyptian society. The organisation did not lose any of its significance, even when it was subjected to massive repression after the assassination of its founding father in 1949. This repression continues to this day in Egypt.

Resistance to colonialism

A lot has been written about the Muslim Brotherhood, which grew increasingly active both inside and outside Egypt after al-Banna's death – much of what has been written was partisan. Until now, however, there has not been a well-founded, comprehensive biography of the brotherhood's founder.

Gudrun Kramer's portrait of this influential, active man is a worthwhile read. It is also pioneering in terms of what it has to say about al-Banna's background and career and the development of his organisation. Kramer also shines a light on the upheaval in Egypt in the first half of the twentieth century – a period marked by hefty political and economic turbulence. This turbulence was caused not only by the two world wars, but also by the growing religiously and nationalistically charged resistance to colonialism and its consequences.

As a member of a group of strictly religious young people, Hasan al-Banna sought to defend "Islamic morals" against corrupting influences such as Christian missionary work, the consumption of drugs and alcohol, gambling and prostitution in the town where he was born. Years later, his Muslim Brotherhood would campaign against these things too.

Even as a young man, al-Banna was shaped by burgeoning Egyptian anti-colonialism, which he later referred to as "jihad" in an even more pronounced manner than the Islamic reformers before him.

And although al-Banna, like the reforming figures he looked up to, considered an education based on the Islamic scriptures to be of vital importance to the propagated re-education of society, he quickly recognised that an in-depth study of these scriptures was the wrong way to get the Egyptian masses excited about Islam.

Roots in Sufism

This conviction also stemmed from al-Banna's roots in Sufism, to which the author devotes much attention. The Sufi preference for simplicity, spontaneity and prayer rituals accompanied by music and song meant that the Sufis were very close to the people.

It was exactly this kind of closeness to the people that al-Banna wanted when he set out in Ismailia in 1927 to share with people a simple, universally understandable version of Islam. At the time, he was working as a primary school teacher for Arabic – a job he held until 1947.

All of this was evident in his short sermons, which al-Banna regularly gave in the coffeehouses of Ismailia, which had been so strongly shaped by colonialism, and quickly made him known among the people on the street. This explains why the six co-founders of the Muslim Brotherhood were not intellectuals, but workers, employees and tradesmen, most of whom were employed by foreign companies. In 1931, they opened their own mosque, which was followed a short time later by a school for boys and a school for girls.

Despite the fact that iron discipline was the order of the day at these schools, the principles of modern European reformist education, which al-Banna considered compatible with the principles of Islamic education, were applied. Modelled on this, the Brotherhood's first branch offices in the eastern Nile Delta were opened. Where possible, these offices also ran textile- or carpet-weaving workshops.

Insignia "like in a judo club"

Thanks to al-Banna's extended missionary trips, which he generally undertook during the school holidays, the brotherhood continued to grow after its move to Cairo in 1932 and even set up its own magazine.

As a charitable organisation, the Muslim Brotherhood was banned from all political activity. The continual growth of the organisation was accompanied by the streamlining of its structures. As the "supreme leader" with comprehensive powers, al-Banna now watched over the brotherhood's members, who were divided into three categories and ten ranks, "each of which," writes Gudrun Kramer, "had its own obligations and insignia, which – almost like a judo club – made its members identifiable at a glance."

The association with sport is not just intended ironically, because as Kramer explains, the Muslim Brotherhood placed great emphasis on physical exercise. With the establishment of its own scouting organisation, the Muslim Brotherhood participated in the cult of masculinity influenced by the West, albeit making it Islamic at the same time: to al-Banna's mind, the Prophet Muhammad had been a kind of scout.

When Egypt came under the influence of fascism, and youth culture assumed paramilitary traits, the Muslim Brotherhood was also affected. Al-Banna, however, positioned himself squarely in opposition to fascist and racial biology-based ideologies: the Muslim Brotherhood did not support a feeling of togetherness that was built on race or skin colour, but called for fair fraternalism among people.

While this also included non-Muslims, following the pressure exerted by growing political tension in the country, where calls for national independence were just as loud as calls for Islamisation, the Muslim Brotherhood too soon identified Egyptian Jews as its enemies as part of its campaign against the "Zionist world conspiracy" in Palestine. This campaign, which was dealt with a little too briefly in the book, ultimately culminated in the dispatch of volunteer fighters to Palestine during the Arab-Israeli War in 1948.

Open rebellion against the "supreme leader"

Attempts by some of al-Banna's allies to stand for parliamentary election failed. Al-Banna himself even spoke about running for public office despite the fact that he called for the dissolution of all parties in the name of Islamic unity.

Although the Muslim Brotherhood grew rapidly during the Second World War thanks to the support of sympathetic politicians and is estimated to have had several hundred thousand members, it was around this time that the first cracks began to show. Kramer is convinced that the gradual loss of control by the "supreme leader", against whom some members openly rebelled, was down to his inconsistent policies. Al-Banna sometimes called for jihad and sometimes for prudence and calm. On the question of the enforcement of Islamic legislation, he also made contradictory statements: in 1936, he spoke in favour of corporal punishment (hudud) only to reject it again in 1948. His attitude to terrorism – to which he himself would ultimately fall victim – was also ambivalent.

Gudrun Kramer's study, which draws on a huge number of sources, provides a much more nuanced view of the often-demonised Muslim Brotherhood and its founder than has been written to date. It would have been good if the book had included information on the way the Muslim Brotherhood and associated Islamic movements are cultivating Hasan al-Banna's legacy today.

Joseph Croitoru

Translated from the German by Aingeal Flanagan

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In this essay, renowned Lebanese journalist and writer Hazem Saghieh asks whether the Arab Levant, which stretches from Iraq in the east to Egypt in the west, will remain an inhabitable region in the long term | This alarmist title is not intended to incite alarm. The goal, on the contrary, is to attempt to understand the dark, intractable times our region is going through. But we can't deny the fact that what we are undergoing should leave us feeling anxious in the existential sense of the word.

Today, at least nine factors, some of them are causes and the rest are symptoms, indicate that this is the case:

First, the dominance of sectarian and ethnic identities has reached absurd lengths. We are mere Sunnis and Shias, Arabs and Kurds, Muslims and Christians… We have almost no other titles to introduce ourselves with. These identities, which are opposed to other identities by their very nature, are rushing to embrace the most backward, regressive, and fundamentalist ideas. They go further in this direction on an almost daily basis.

Second, economic considerations and shared interests have demonstrated their failure to remedy the situation time after time. Iraq's oil wealth is a reason for a seasonal tug of war between the federal government in Baghdad and the Kurds in the North.

Even more scandalous is that Lebanon's oil wealth, which the Lebanese need with an urgency that is difficult to describe, could potentially become the reason for a new war with Israel.

Other nations' attempts to turn their wealth into a pillar of national unity, or maybe into a basis for a rapprochement between two sides in dispute, were not replicated in our part of the world. Here, extended kinship solidarities and their indoctrinations are chasing away economic interests and paving broad paths toward self-destruction.

The defeat of revolutions across the region

Third, all attempts at changing this dreadful situation in this region, indeed across the entirety of the Arab world, have failed.

All the revolutions were defeated (around ten of them broke out over the first and second waves). It is no longer convincing to hit back at proponents of the idea of "Arab exceptionalism" by calling them "racist" and continuing along our way. We now need, while continuing to oppose this concept, to think more and to come up with richer, less clichéd and repetitive ideas.

It is not only an issue of bloodthirsty regimes backed by the Iranians and Russians, like Bashar al-Assad's in Syria, that the region failed to change. The Lebanese failed to change their Central Bank Governor after he oversaw the biggest disaster in their country's history. Three former energy ministers, whose responsibility for the wretched state that the country's national electricity company is in is beyond doubt, were all successful in their electoral races. Two former ministers who have been summoned for questioning regarding the explosion of almost nuclear proportions at the Port of Beirut were also elected.

All of that was allowed to happen thanks to inflated sectarian and kinship loyalties. It seems that civil wars are the only potential change to the situation in our region.

Fourth, the Arab Levant has become the world's undisputed leading source of asylum seekers, displaced persons, and migrants. Ukraine, of course, is currently leading the pack because of its war, but this phenomenon began earlier here, and it is more robust and has gone on for longer, while those who leave are also less likely to return to their countries of origin.

There is no room for interpretation here: our region is uninhabitable. For a growing segment of the population, leaving the region is a requisite for survival, to say nothing about building a future. Skilled workers and the educated, as well as entrepreneurs who create job opportunities, are among those who have left and are continuing to leave.

Fifth, if Syria's death meant the death of the material link tying the ends of the Arab Levant together, Lebanon's death means the death of a model without the impact of which we would rot and find ourselves secluded from the world. Lebanon's death announces the death of a country with relatively robust freedoms by the Arab region's standards.

War zone between Iran and Israel

Sixth, we have become something of a war zone between Iran and Israel. Iran is expanding at the expense of the Arabs of the Levant and their countries, and Israel, in its fight against Iranian expansion, will not hesitate to turn our countries into scorched earth.

Seventh, in the new world inaugurated by the Russian war on Ukraine, human rights will continue to recede and atrophy further. That will exacerbate the rot that the Levant is in as it languishes under tyranny and sectarian disputes. The state of war and geopolitical and economic factors will, until further notice, continue to have the upper hand.

Eighth, there is nothing wrong with countries and homelands collapsing, provided that alternative countries and homelands are proposed and envisioned. This is out of the question in our parts, especially since foreign powers' lack of interest in our region reduces the likelihood of an emergency international conference being held to this end.

Piling on further misery is the fact that the political culture dominant in the Arab world still treats reexamining the national unity of crumbling national units like an exercise akin to treason.

Ninth, no country in the Levant is stronger than the other, nor is any faction more capable of providing assistance than the other.

A country like Iraq, strong and rich in principle, seems to be suffering from a total failure to take off politically. This ordeal is plaguing an entire region, a transnational ordeal likely to be trans-generational as well.

This is an assessment of the Arab Levant that had been the first in the Arab world to open up to modernity, building schools and universities, developing the arts, and forming elites…

All we can hope for is that we will not, once more, accuse modernity, schools, universities, and the arts for what has befallen us.

Hazem Saghieh

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According to Tunisia's electoral board, 94.6 percent of valid votes cast in Monday's constitutional referendum were in favour of President Kais Saied's constitution. Turnout was, however, low at only 30.5 per cent. What will the future hold for the North African nation where the Arab Spring began over a decade ago? | Tunisia, almost certain to introduce a new constitution following Monday's referendum, is now heading for "dictatorship light" in a decisive break with its troubled post-revolt democratic system, experts say.

The electoral board said on Tuesday evening that 94.6 percent of valid ballots had backed the new constitution with 30.5 percent turnout, citing preliminary results.

So what does the future hold in the birthplace of the 2011 Arab uprisings?

The draft constitution, the brainchild of President Kais Saied, hands almost unlimited powers to his office. It is set to go into effect as soon as final results are announced. Preliminary results were released late on Tuesday, although the electoral board controlled by Saied has until the end of August to announce a definitive outcome.

Little change in the short term

Tunisia expert Youssef Cherif said "little will change in the short term, because Saied is just making official a situation that's been in place for a year". On 25 July last year, Saied sacked the government and froze parliament, and later began ruling by decree, dissolved parliament and seized control of the judiciary. Elections to a largely neutered parliament are set for December.

Until then, "Kais Saied will have more powers than a pharaoh, a Middle Ages Caliph or the (Ottoman-era) Bey of Tunis," said political scientist Hamadi Redissi. Saied is determined to "press forward unilaterally, and very quickly" to leave "an exhausted opposition which will undoubtedly boycott the next election," he said.

Cherif agreed. Saied "is governing alone, the opposition is sidelined and the population isn't interested," he said. "Tunisia is moving towards a less parliamentary and more presidential system," Cherif said. "Examples from the region and from Tunisian history suggest that this will lead to a hardening of the regime and less democracy."

The pressure-cooker strategy

Redissi predicts a form of "dictatorship light" under what he terms "the pressure-cooker strategy". "This keeps some margin of freedom like in Putin's Russia ... but it is not a real democracy," he said.

Observers have noted that for now, there are few serious threats to freedom of speech in Tunisia – despite some prosecutions of prominent Saied critics. But Cherif said protesters would likely have fewer spaces to operate in during the coming weeks. "The security forces have been strengthened in recent months and their popularity as well as that of the army is still high," he said.

Observers say it is far from clear whether Tunisia's 24,000 civil society associations and political parties, products of the democratic space that opened up following the country's 2011 revolt, will resist Saied. "Until now, the resilience of political actors has been offset by the fragility of Tunisian democratic institutions," Redissi said.

Cherif noted that some opposition remains active, such as the powerful UGTT trade union federation and a multitude of political parties and NGOs that could become more vocal after the summer.

Need for reform could cause economic pain

Tackling the country's deep economic woes will be essential if Saied is to avoid unrest. The prospect of a bailout deal with the International Monetary Fund that could force sweeping reforms and more economic pain for Tunisians could have political implications. But "it will take time, maybe a year and a half, before frustration hits a peak," Redissi said.

Tunisia's opposition is divided, with many anti-Saied forces refusing to do business with the president's nemesis, the Islamist-inspired Ennahdha party, which has dominated politics for the past decade.

But joy among Saied's supporters "will be confronted with the economic realities" soon, giving his rivals a basis for their messaging, Cherif predicted. Redissi, however, pointed out that authorities are preparing a new law on NGOs, political parties and associations.

Saied told supporters in a speech on Monday night that he had no intention of dissolving political parties. But Redissi said: "the parties are already weak and in crisis. Saied will snuff them out with draconian rules on funding and organisation". (AFP)

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Tunisians are set to vote on a new constitution on 25 July. The prominent lawyer and women's rights activist Yosra Frawes fears the referendum could facilitate a return to dictatorship. This would also endanger progress on women's rights achieved since 2011. Interview by Claudia Mende for qantara.de | Ms Frawes, what's your assessment of the situation ahead of the 25 July referendum?

Yosra Frawes: The situation is very worrying for all Tunisians who hoped for political, economic and social change in their country and who have gradually realised that since 25 July 2021, politics has no longer been working towards the fulfilment of those expectations. The new constitution is dangerous because it presents the possibility of a return to dictatorship.

The 2014 constitution anchored a broad spectrum of liberal civil rights as well guarantees for their observance. Now that's all under threat because the new constitution was compiled unilaterally by the president. The process may have given the impression that a national dialogue was taking place, but that was misleading. Also, the changes he presented on 8 July were developed without consultation and do not address criticisms of his initial draft.

What is it that makes the new constitution dangerous, exactly?

Frawes: Of particular concern is, for example, a passage in Article 5, which says the state is required to "achieve the purposes of Islam" (Makassed). This could be interpreted as meaning that universal civil rights and liberties – including women's rights – have to be restricted.

This section of the constitution would make it possible to reappraise laws and rewrite them according to the new stipulations. In addition, the new constitution opens the door to a return to the situation pre-2011, to a presidential system. The institutions – first and foremost parliament and the judiciary – would be weakened and the president elevated to the status of a supreme national power who is no longer answerable to the electorate; he would be above any form of accountability. He would be solely responsible for appointments to the constitutional court, for example. Democratic institutions would be hollowed out from the inside. This new constitution would no longer comply with international standards concerning the rule of law.

The draft paves the way for an Islamisation of society and the Tunisian state; it would be a regressive step to a time before all the achievements made by the Tunisian people since independence. And it would also open the door to a new dictatorship.

Women especially hard-hit by the economic crisis

Tunisia is currently in a state of economic and social fragility – a situation exacerbated by rising food prices, high unemployment and the threat of national bankruptcy. What impact is this having on women?

Frawes: Women are more severely affected by the crisis than men; unemployment and illiteracy rates are higher among women; in some areas of Tunisia, up to 40 per cent of women can't read or write.

If women want to start their own business, it's harder for them to secure bank loans. Many women live in a highly precarious state. They don't have regular work contracts, their working conditions are dangerous – particularly in rural areas – and they have no social security whatsoever. They earn significantly less than their male counterparts, whether in public service, private business or the informal economy. A female farm worker earns 10 dinars a day (around 10 euros), while a man earns 15. That's blatant inequality.

Women also have much less access to land and property rights, in fact just 14 per cent of agricultural land is owned by women – which means it's still largely a male privilege and spells poverty for many women, in some cases extreme poverty. The poverty rate has risen further in the current crisis. Studies predict that around half of the Tunisian population will soon be living in poverty. And that poverty is primarily female.

Did the women's movement do too little for these socially disadvantaged women?

Frawes: To a certain extent yes, unfortunately. Women's movements in Tunisia and the Maghreb have focused on effecting changes to the judicial system. Urgent social questions, for example concerning the safety of female farm workers on their way to work in the fields, are easily overlooked. Too often, we limit ourselves to demanding laws, but then not checking how these laws are being applied in practice. Also, we've not managed to forge links between female activists and farm workers, for example, in a bid to achieve more together.

Ground-breaking statutory improvements within a short time

There have been some fundamental attainments for women since 2011, for example with the inclusion of the principle of gender equality in the constitution of 2014 or the right of a woman to pass her nationality on to her children since 2015 ...

Frawes: The statutory improvements achieved since 2011 can be compared with the ground-breaking legal reforms introduced after independence in 1956. Also of key importance were Law No. 58, which was passed in 2017, on the protection of women and girls against violence and the Law on gender-responsive budgeting. Within a very short space of time, many pro-female laws were passed in a process that would normally have taken 20 to 30 years. But it will take time for the new laws to be implemented in practice, to permeate societal value systems and also to be firmly anchored in government spending and political provisions. That being said, there haven't been any further laws passed to improve the lot of women since 2019, because the current president, Kaïs Saïed, is doing nothing for women and is instead thwarting our efforts.

How is the implementation of the laws looking on a practical level?

Frawes: It's still too early for a thorough appraisal. But we see that there is no political will to implement these laws. For example, the Law No. 58 on the protection of women against sexual, physical and psychological violence – which is ground-breaking for the Arab world – sets out clear rules for its implementation, such as state support for victims to enable them to bring the perpetrators to court.

To this end, the law stipulates the creation of an assistance fund. It does not, however, set out any concrete deadlines or sums. So at the moment, the success of this law depends more on a change in the societal mindset. The widely-held view that women themselves are to blame if they become victims of violence and the shame associated with that, is changing. It has become clear that it is the responsibility of the state and society as a whole to fight violence against women.

Together against authoritarian tendencies

What is your relationship like with the women of the Ennahda Party? After the toppling of Ben Ali, relations between secular women's organisations and activists from the Islamic spectrum were still charged with conflicts.

Frawes: At the start of the Revolution in 2011, the women of Ennahda were very critical of secular women's organisations because they said we didn't do enough for them when they were being tortured and detained under Ben Ali. But their criticism conceals an historic fact: we were all in the same boat; we were also persecuted and harassed, even if women from the spectrum of political Islam were harder hit than we were. But afterwards, we learned to talk to each other.

The fact that we organised a meeting for all candidates of the Constituent National Assembly in 2011 broke new ground. To get to know each other personally, to listen to each other – although we sometimes yelled at each other – was a first step on the road to saying that we women have something in common, we are all suffering under the patriarchy, in all parties.

How did things progress after that?

Frawes: After that, the Ennahda women were initially caught up in matters of party discipline. When it came to the 2014 constitution, Ennahda didn't want to enshrine gender equality, but the "complementarity" of man and woman, which is just a way of justifying discrimination. This, of course, led to further conflicts. Following a major mobilisation of progressive forces, the concept of gender equality was enshrined in the constitution. The situation eased again after that – also because political Islam had been weakened in the region as a whole.

Are there any issues on which both groups are fighting together?

Frawes: Once the 2014 constitution had been adopted, Ennahda underwent a reorganisation. We say the party "tunisified" itself and decided to stop calling women's rights into question. That meant we could work together again, first and foremost on Law 58 for the protection of women against violence. I recall conversations with Ennahda deputies in the relevant parliamentary commission, where they served as a bridge between the parties because they saw that we are all united by the battle against violence. It was, of course, also a way for them to prove that they are feminists.

Today, Ennahda women are also fighting against authoritarian tendencies under Kaïs Saïed. We in the progressive-democratic camp may be marching separately from them, but together we want the country to find its way back to democracy and the rule of law.

Interview conducted by Claudia Mende.

Lawyer and women's rights activist Yosra Frawes, born in 1979 in Jedeida near Tunis, played a key role in the implementation of pro-women laws such as gender equality in the Tunisian constitution of 2014 and the 2017 law to protect women against violence. From April 2018 to June 2021 she was President of the Association Tunisienne des Femmes Démocrates (ATFD). In 2022, she was awarded the Anne Klein Prize by the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Berlin in recognition of her work.

Translated from the German by Nina Coon

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In recent decades, Muslim piety has gone through a number of qualitative transformations, the most prominent of which is the emerging phenomenon of "Islamic influencers", which represents a new type of Islamic religiousness that combines globalisation and the values of Western modernity and is easy and effortless. By Ahmad Saif al-Nasr | The ongoing phenomenon of "Islamic influencers" varies, in many respects, from the model of "the Islamic common market" theorised by Patrick Heaney. An Islamic influencer does not attempt to compensate for political failure with economic success. Rather, he focuses primarily on introducing a new religiosity that is loaded with living conditions and can adapt to its changes.

For instance, it's okay for this influencer to call you to perform prayer, recite dhikr (Islamic oral prayer), do du'a (supplication), as well as listen to religious sermons, but at the same time he would be wearing a global brand (marketing), and he may even encourage you to buy it as well. This has motivated many to enter this field — not in order to provide Islamic content and promote a true Islamic message, but to gain fame and achieve worldly success, even at the expense of dumbing down the religion and presenting a reduced Islam.

With the emergence of Islamic influencers, Islam has been emptied of its substance and content, in the midst of attempts to cling to its lustre in order to adapt to the market and what the followers want, in addition to the fact that social media users and audiences are more inclined towards the type of religiosity that's inexpensive. They like those who offer them a religiousness that is easy, effortless, lenient, and subject to changes in mood.

Read more at Raseef22.net: The rise and rise of Muslim influencers

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Lebanon's elections on Sunday won't yield a seismic shift, say experts, despite widespread discontent with a corruption-tainted political class blamed for a painful economic crisis and a deadly disaster | Given Lebanon's sectarian-based politics, it will likely "reproduce the political class and give it internal and international legitimacy", said Rima Majed of the American University of Beirut.

"Maybe candidates from the opposition will clinch some seats, but I don't think that there will be a change in the political scene," said Majed, an expert in sectarianism and social movements.

Beirut voter Issam Ayyad, 70, put it more simply: "We will not be able to change."

The small country's political system has long distributed power among its religious communities, entrenching a ruling elite that has treated politics as a family business. By convention, the Lebanese president is a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim, and the speaker of parliament a Shia.

In the current parliament, the Shia Hezbollah party and its allies, including the Christian Free Patriotic Movement, command a majority.

The system has held back the emergence of non-sectarian political parties and civil society representatives.

The elections will be the first since a youth-led protest movement broke out in October 2019 against a political class seen as inept, corrupt and responsible for a litany of woes, from power blackouts to piles of uncollected garbage. The anger exploded into months of street rallies, but lost momentum as the COVID-19 pandemic hit, together with a financial crash that the World Bank has labelled one of the world's worst in modern times.

'Game of loyalty'

Popular fury flared again after a huge stockpile of ammonium nitrate that had languished in a Beirut port warehouse for years exploded in August 2020, killing more than 200 people and devastating entire neighbourhoods.

Successive governments have since failed to chart a path out of Lebanon's worst crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war that has sparked runaway inflation, deepened dire poverty and fuelled a mass exodus.

Where the Lebanese state has failed to provide basic services, traditional political leaders have tended to step in with their decades-old patronage networks – a trend more alive than ever during the current crisis.

"The elections are not meant to assess the performance of politicians," said Majed. "They are more a game of loyalty to whoever provides... the most basic services."

Public sector jobs have long been among the main handouts, but now fuel and cash assistance also feature high on the list, giving an advantage to established parties over new opposition groups that lack funds and foreign support. While bolstered by the 2019 protest movement, new independent candidates have also failed to build a coherent front that could energise a dispirited electorate, observers say.

Nearly 44 percent of eligible voters plan to abstain, according to a survey last month of more than 4,600 voters by British charity Oxfam.

Voter intimidation

Polling expert Kamal Feghali said many voters had hoped the newcomers would run "with a unified list and programme", but said that instead their competing electoral lists "will scatter the vote".

While independents will likely do slightly better than in 2018, when only one of them won a seat, said Feghali, the winner once more is likely to be Hezbollah, Lebanon's biggest political and military force, and its allies.

Iran-backed Hezbollah, first formed as a resistance force against neighbour Israel, is now often described as a state within a state that is all-powerful in regions under its control. Its pre-election intimidation tactics are "salient", said Oxfam, warning that such behaviour tells voters "that change might be denied, and in turn might lead to either a reduction in turnout or a distortion in voting behaviour".

In east Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, three Shia candidates were running on an anti-Hezbollah list, but withdrew last month, despite the expiry of a legal deadline to do so. The move stripped the anti-Hezbollah list of essential Shia representation and was widely seen by local media as a result of pressure by the powerful movement. (AFP)

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Indonesia has become a primary battleground between democratic and autocratic visions of Islam in the 21st century, with Nahdlatul Ulama pitted against Abdullah bin Bayyah, a Sunni high priest who provides UAE autocrats with religious legitimisation. Commentary by James M. Dorsey | Indonesian President Joko Widodo risks finding himself in the battle’s crossfire. Although closely associated with Nahdlatul Ulama, the world’s largest civil society movement with 90 million followers, Widodo has agreed to co-operate with the UAE on religious affairs in return for massive Emirati investment in the Southeast Asian archipelago nation.

After all, UAE Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed has pledged to lead a committee that will oversee the construction of a new US$32.5 billion capital city for Indonesia and invest $10 billion in the country’s sovereign wealth fund with a focus on infrastructure.

At the heart of the battle between rival theologically packaged visions of governance is the relationship between Islamic clerics and the state. Abdullah bin Bayyah favours a state-controlled clergy that stifles free-flowing debate, avoiding what the jurist terms the "chaos of the fatwa". The jurist heads the Emirates Fatwa Council, established in 2018 "to take the fatwa out of the hands of terrorists and extremists".

Hamdan Al Mazroui, head of the Emirati General Authority of Islamic Affairs and Endowments at the time, said the Fatwa Council had been created to "ensure alignment of fatwas in the country and ensure preaching of moderate Islam". Control of religious debate in the UAE mirrors the country's crackdown on freedom of expression in general. The Emirates Fatwa Council also counts among its members Professor Amany Burhanuddin, a prominent Islamic scholar, who heads Indonesia's Council of Scholars for Women and Youth.

Nahdlatul Ulama's very different agenda

In diametric contradiction to Bin Bayyah and the UAE, Nahdlatul Ulama, under the leadership of its newly elected chairman, Yahya Cholil Staquf, a proponent of humanitarian Islam that propagates democracy, respect for human rights and pluralism, has launched a frontal attack on Indonesia's once-powerful Ulema Council. Made up of representatives of all strands of Sunni Islam, the Ulema Council is a remnant of erstwhile state control that many view as the country’s top body of Islamic scholars.

The assault is designed to marginalise the council, which is seeking to retain that authority as a de facto independent group. By undermining the Ulema Council, Nahdlatul Ulama is encouraging the very "chaos of the fatwa” that Bin Bayyah and his UAE backers would prefer to repress.

Created in 1975 by then-President Suharto as a quasi-independent body, the Ulema Council has long projected itself as the authoritative voice of Islam. However, even if successive Nahdlatul Ulama supreme guides have since chaired it, control of the council has been up for grabs ever since Suharto was toppled in 1998 by popular revolt.

For years the council propagated discriminatory policies against Muslim sects accused of being heretical such as the Ahmadis and the Shias, as well as against gender minorities. It did so with the support of conservative Nahdlatul Ulama clerics, including Jokowi’s vice-president, Ma'ruf Amin. In 2017, Amin played a key role as chairman of the council in mass protests that brought down Jakarta governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, aka Ahok, an ethnic Chinese Christian, and led to his sentencing to two years in prison on charges of blasphemy against Islam.

The Nahdlatul Ulama assault began when the group’s supreme leader Miftachul Akhyar resigned his post as chairman of the Ulema Council in March. The resignation appears to have thrown the council into disarray. At the same time, the ministry of religious affairs has deprived the council of its monopoly on halal certification by opening the sector to competition.

Halal certificates are big business. The Halal Product Assistance Agency issues the certificates based on an Ulema Council fatwa addressed to companies in the food, fashion, education, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, tourism, media, travel, medical, health, art, culture, and finance sectors. By undermining the council, Nahdlatul Ulama is attempting to remove the last remnants of state influence over the issue of fatwas.

Unfettered debate versus uniform state-approved guidance

It no doubt opens the door to what Bin Bayyah fears most. Echoed in statements by top UAE officials, Bin Bayyah blames instability and volatility in the Middle East on a cacophony of fatwas that fuel unfettered debate rather than provide uniform state-approved guidance to the faithful.

To Bin Bayyah's mind, autocracy – uninhibited by religious jurists who do not know their proper place – is best positioned to ensure societal peace. Bin Bayyah remained silent when his Emirati paymasters rendered his theory obsolete with military interventions in Libya and Yemen. Their interventions fuelled civil wars, while political and financial support for anti-government protests in Egypt that overthrew the country’s first and only democratically elected president in 2013 produced a brutal dictatorship.

More than 800 protesters against the coup were killed in its immediate aftermath. The UAE's intervention in Yemen in co-operation with Saudi Arabia sparked one of the world's worst humanitarian crises, while UAE support for Libyan rebel leader Khalifa Haftar in contravention of a United Nations arms embargo helped push the North African nation into protracted violent conflict.

Bin Bayyah's silence on chaos fomented by Emirati autocrats suggests that he "is not opposed to 'chaos' unconditionally, but rather he only refers to as 'chaos' efforts to oppose autocracy on the part of democratically-oriented forces in the region," says Usaama al-Azami, a British Middle East scholar of South Asian descent who also trained as a classical Islamic scholar.

Bin Bayyah's silence is grounded in his belief that jurists should not impinge on the decisions of a ruler because they do "not know the facts of the matter or the consequences of particular courses of actions". Moreover, Bin Bayyah argues that Islamic scholars may not be aware of a country's "internal tensions or external concerns that may lead to civil war which need to be taken into account in matters of state". By contrast, "the ruler understands the underlying reasons for his decisions and delays with situations that are hard for others to understand," Bin Bayyah has said.

Rather than subjugating Islamic scholars to state control, Staquf, the newly elected Nahdlatul Ulama chairman, has pledged to take the group out of politics. The assault on the Indonesian Ulema Council may be the first step in that direction. Still, the litmus test will be the future of the numerous Nahdlatul Ulama activists that serve in Widodo's cabinet and as ambassadors and board members of state-owned enterprises.

"While the new chairman has publicly pledged to return NU to being a politically neutral organisation, signs suggest it may well retain its close ties with the Jokowi regime, working with the government to promote the brand of 'moderate Islam' Jokowi endorses at home and abroad," said Indonesia scholar Alexander R. Arifianto.

Nahdlatul Ulama may well conclude that preventing Jokowi, tempted by UAE financial largesse, from buying into the Gulf state’s autocratic notion of 'moderate Islam' is reason enough to maintain the group’s close ties to the president.

James M. Dorsey

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Taha Hussein (1889-1973) is considered one of Egypt's most influential intellectuals and cultural politicians. With his biography "The Last Nahdawi", historian Hussam Ahmed provides a profound insight into the contradictions in the life of the great pioneer of Egyptian modernity. By Shady Lewis Botros | Taha Hussein's autobiography, Al-Ayyam ('The Days'), is one of the most famous autobiographies in Arabic. So why bother with a new biography about the man? Maybe the question should rather be: how can one write a biography at all that does justice to its protagonist and his time? In the introduction to his book The Last Nahdawi (2021), Hussam Ahmed, assistant professor of history at Maynooth University in Ireland, acknowledges the apologetic tone in which historians typically present their autobiographical works, as if biography were a particular kind of history, of lesser significance.

After all, biographies are governed by dates of birth and death, and this prohibits authors from analysing the wider history. By focusing on the personal, biographies often either neglect the context or fall into the trap of misrepresentation, as if the subject of a biography is representative of an era, an institution, or an entire generation. This book overcomes these shortcomings by presenting a socio-political narrative; it focuses on the inter-relationship between the personal and the historical; it subsumes the institutional and the structural, without making the mistake of spending too long on the wider context at the expense of the individual.

In addition to the general lack of Arab biographies, The Last Nahdawi puts forward a number of reasons which justify revision of Taha Hussein's story. Put simply, the writer informs us, in the opening pages, that the man we think we know so well, we maybe don’t know at all. Taha Hussein's story has always fallen between sharply dichotomous poles. Either he is the cultural giant carrying the torch of enlightenment, or he is a writer of "pre-Islamic poetry" and a traitor to his faith and his society.

Contradictions abound in Hussein's writings

The book introduces us to this so-called "thread of criticism". It began with a generation of young left-wing writers who saw Hussein as a bourgeois, liberal intellectual (in the negative sense of the word), and it continues through to more recent post-colonial analyses, the authors of which blame Taha Hussein for giving in too easily to Western allure.

This is fair criticism; after all, contradictions abound in Hussein’s writings. There is also a vast gap between his ideas about culture and his cultural practices.

The Last Nahdawi does not present a history of ideas, like most works dealing with Arabic cultural history, but rather a history of the cultural practices advanced by Taha Hussein, statesman, bureaucrat and politician, member of the Academy of the Arabic Language, pioneer of free education, dean of Alexandria University, founder of academic and cultural institutions and of a number of higher councils.

In its chronicling of events, therefore, the book relies on the minutes of administrative sessions, cabinet meetings, official and university meetings, payrolls and budgets in dozens of government agencies and departments, in addition to Hussein's personal papers.

Taha Hussein was of the view that "politics is the only way to build institutions for the production of culture and knowledge, to achieve the project of national independence."

The irony, we learn, is that Taha Hussein, who persisted in defending a complete separation between politics and culture, with a romantic belief that culture is purer and more durable, was, in practice, a believer in the state as the most important force for modernisation. He believed that politics is the only way to build institutions to produce culture and knowledge, in order to bring about national independence and to put Egypt on a par with Europe.

Cultural emancipation to redress the balance of power

His pragmatic awareness of the enormous difference in power between the colonisers and the colonised prompted Hussein, as one of the last figures of the Egyptian Renaissance, to rely, almost to a utopian degree, on culture in order to redress the balance of power with the West. In 1950, when Taha Hussein was Minister of Education, he presided over the historic move to provide free secondary education.

He believed that the struggle for education and the struggle for democracy were one and the same. This revolution in education, which took place in stages in the parliamentary period between 1922-1952, has not been adequately studied, as this book argues. Indeed, the entire phase was derided as a total failure because, as Hussam Ahmed points out, the chroniclers of this period were, at the same time, its adversaries.

Another paradox with which the biography deals relates to the clash between Hussein and France. For the man whose opponents always accused him of Westernisation and surrender to French culture in particular, his political biography reveals a completely different narrative. Rather, “The Last Nahdawi" goes further, pointing out that the cultural policies of the Nasser era, which were concerned with expanding Egyptian influence internationally in support of an anti-colonialist agenda, were merely a continuation of policies which the Egyptian government pursued in the 1930s and 1940s, and in which Taha Hussein played a leading role.

In 1950, Taha Hussein inaugurated the Institute of Islamic Studies in Madrid. Alongside this, he provided government support for the establishment of the “Muhammad Ali” chair in Arabic language and literature at the University of Nice in France, as well as a chair at the University of Athens. He also sought to establish an institute for Arabic studies in Istanbul, and he sent university lecturers to the University of Ez-Zitouna in Tunis.

On a collision course with France

In the same year, Hussein presented his ambitious project to expand the boundaries of Egyptian cultural influence to encompass the Maghreb, instead of keeping to the traditional confines of the Mashriq (the Middle East). Over the course of two years, Hussein took steps to establish Egyptian cultural and educational institutes in Tangiers, Rabat, Algiers and Tunis.

The project came across as a threat of “Arabisation” directed at the colonial administration in North Africa, however, and it was met by the French with suspicion and procrastination. By the end of 1951, the clash between the two had reached a point where Hussein pushed the Egyptian government to suspend the permits of French archaeological teams in Egypt, to expel their directors from their places of residence and to refuse entry permits for cultural and educational purposes to most French nationals. He even threatened to close all French schools in the country.

This confrontation ended with the Cairo Fire in 1952. In July, the Free Officers led by Gamal Abdel Nasser and General Mohammed Naguib overthrew King Farouq I and his government, in which Husain held a ministerial post. In its final chapter, the book covers the period that followed, focusing on Hussein's troubled relationship with the Free Officers regime.

The Last Nahdawi does indeed fulfil its promise. It is not just a biography of Taha Hussein, the statesman; it presents, through him, an account of the history of the parliamentary era and the development of its institutions. Moreover, it also vividly depicts the origins of Nasser's political agenda, from state-guaranteed free education to anti-colonial cultural diplomacy.

Shady Lewis Botros

Translated from the German by Chris Somes-Charlton

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In Albania, where most Muslims live a pretty secular life, it would seem that praying and drinking go hand-in-hand. Nevertheless, over a hundred Albanians still went to fight for Islamic State. By Karin A. Wenger with photos by Philipp Breu | The huge painting is hard to miss; thickly framed, it shows the Prophet Muhammad, his daughter Fatima and her husband, the Caliph Ali. For the guardians of the faith in Mecca and Tehran, this would be blasphemy, but Edmond Brahimaj thinks little of the ban on images in Islam. The spiritual leader of the Bektashi Muslims, whom everyone calls Baba Mondi, sits under the painting at the headquarters of the Sufi order in Tirana and says: "These are my parents; isn't it perfectly normal to hang up pictures of your own family?"

Tolerance is one of the guiding principles of the Shia Bektashi. Bektashi women do not wear headscarves and the congregation – men and women – prays together in the tekke, the house of worship.

Baba Mondi has important things to do on this evening in August: the five-day feast of pilgrimage is just kicking off.

Thousands of Albanians from all over the country are chugging up a bumpy, dusty track in their SUVs and old Mercedes, up Mount Tomorr in southern Albania. At the summit, the noise of engines mixes with loud music, while families picnic on the meadows and in front of tents where they will spend the night. The atmosphere is a mixture of local fete and open-air festival.

At the market stalls on the mountain, the sacred and the profane compete for attention: one table away from souvenirs – icons of Imam Hussein and the like – traders sell cans of beer and raki, a highly alcoholic drink.

Alcohol is sanctioned from the very top among the Shia Bektashi – in the reception hall at Baba Mondi in Tirana, two hip flasks belonging to former dervishes are displayed in a glass case.

Several dervishes are buried on Mount Tomorr. At their shrines, men in short trousers and women in even shorter trousers place photos of relatives, hopeful of a blessing. Later, each family chooses a sheep, the throat of which is then cut on the festival's own 'butchers row'.

The pilgrims dab a dot of the fresh blood on their foreheads for good luck; it has always been done that way, they say. The pilgrimage would seem to be based more on custom than deep religiosity.

"Allah or Jesus, it's all the same"

While a bloody fingerprint is also visible on Festim Shametaj's forehead, a distinctive gold cross hangs round his neck, a gift from his Christian sister-in-law. "Allah or Jesus, it's all the same," he says.

The heterodox Bektashi minority, similar to the Alevites in Turkey, suits Albania: they co-exist peacefully together with the Sunni majority, the Catholics and the Orthodox Christians.

Shared festivals and mixed marriages are widespread. In Albania, likely to become the first Muslim country within the EU, people who describe themselves as half-Muslim, half-Christian are common. In 2014, Pope Francis said the religious tolerance of the Balkan nation was an example to the world. The tolerant country is also the most secular: according to a Gallup poll, Albania has more people who describe religion as irrelevant to their everyday lives than any other Muslim-majority state.

This religious pragmatism was already evident in the later Middle Ages when Albania was a contested territory between West and East. If the West was victorious, the feudal lords adopted Catholicism; if the Byzantine Empire prevailed, they supported the Orthodox Church. In the 16th century, large parts of the population under Ottoman rule converted to Islam, some out of conviction, others under duress, or due to economic incentives.

The Bektashi played an important role in Islamisation: they were the spiritual companions of the janissaries, the elite troops of the Ottomans. How many people still call themselves Bektashi today is disputed. Baba Mondi claims the allegiance of half of Albania's nearly three million population. According to a recent census, the figure is more like 60,000. That said, one-fifth of respondents did not reveal their religious affiliation.

Religious repression under the Communists

In recent history, it was above all the communist dictator Enver Hoxha who shaped the country. In 1967, he declared Albania the world's first "atheist state" and had practicing believers arrested or executed.

Churches, mosques and the tekken of the Bektashi were expropriated or destroyed. Hoxha's anti-religious zeal was so great that even Stalin told him not to hurt the religious feelings of the people.

Fear of Hoxha's repression was part of the childhood of Ylli Gurra, Mufti of Tirana, who was born into a religious family in 1973. He remembers how the "sigurimi", the secret police, roamed around at night during Ramadan, checking on Muslims.

Once, when Gurra was still a schoolchild, they stormed into the house and arrested his grandfather. After three days of torture, they let him go. The shared experience of being oppressed brought the religions together, Gurra says.

After the collapse of the regime in 1990, the remaining believers tried to revive their communities. The Gulf states quickly brought money into the country, creating two to three hundred unofficial backyard mosques where imams with foreign training spread their ideologies. A struggle developed between them and the long-established over the interpretation of the religion.

The influence of Islamism was underestimated for a long time; many were surprised when, after the Arab Spring, over 140 Albanians went off to fight for Islamic State in Iraq or Syria. "We made mistakes," Ylli Gurra openly admits. The established religious communities had failed to supervise the unofficial mosques. In recent years, they have now regained control together with the state, he says. The mosques have either been registered or closed down and the imams officially hired.

"We have learnt our lesson," Gurra says, "we have to constantly work to uphold religious tolerance, it cannot be taken for granted."

In this he can count on the support of Baba Mondi and the Bektashi.

Karin A. Wenger and Philipp Breu (photos)

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With no end to Lebanon's crisis of statehood in sight, Qantara.de met up with leading Lebanese thinker and theologian Martin Accad to discuss the country's current difficulties and explore ongoing efforts to find a way out of the morass. Interview by Erik Siegl | The immediate causes of Lebanon's currently dire situation are corruption and a state "living beyond its means". Yet both these factors are found in many other countries. Why, then, has Lebanon fallen so far?

Martin Accad: Corruption and living "above beyond one's means" are aspects that are closely linked to our political system. Lebanon's tragedy – and the source of all its problems – is political sectarianism. "Objective sectarianism", on the other hand, with Lebanon boasting 18 sectarian groups in total, is something quite different. Such identities may hinder the emergence of a common national identity, but they are not themselves the cause of our current crisis.

"Political sectarianism" stems from the political system established after the end of the Lebanese civil war in 1990, with corruption, fraud and embezzlement justified by or cloaked in collective interest. This corruption derives its existence and structures from the country's many religious divisions and sects.

Another root cause of the current crisis is that we as a nation have failed to address our past. Following 15 years of civil war, the leaders of sectarian militias who fought against each other were transformed into Lebanon's new political leadership. In 1991 the warlords came together and agreed to a general amnesty, forgiving each other their war crimes with the expressed intention of becoming untouchable.

As a result, we slipped into 30 years of national amnesia, which manifests in an overriding culture of impunity. The country's bureaucracy, firmly in the hands of former militia members, each serving his own sectarian ends, has created a situation that is systemic.

One year and a half ago, more than 200 people were killed, and 6.500 others injured, in the #BeirutExplosion that took place here in the port. Meanwhile, political leaders continue to obstruct the probe. #Lebanon pic.twitter.com/rfiDGrsJxa — Matthieu Karam (@MatthieuKaram) February 4, 2022

Is it fair to say that sectarianism has been historically present in Lebanese politics from the outset – that it is inherent to the country's political reality?

Accad: Insofar as the notion of nations in this part of world is not older than a hundred years and is thus fairly new, I agree. The proto-state of Lebanon was established after the First World War under the French protectorate. We can also argue that the underlying cause of the Lebanese civil war was related to finding the right formula for these diverse communities to be able to live together and be equally represented. No properly functioning model had achieved this previously. The Maronite Christians dominated Lebanon from 1943 until the onset of civil war, which was a vicious expression of the dissatisfaction of others with their domination.

The 1989 Taif Agreement that ended the civil war redistributed power, with Sunni representation taking the lead in the person of prime minister Rafik Hariri. His era is synonymous with the controversial post-war reconstruction of downtown Beirut and a popular culture of entertainment and affluence. This remained consistently at odds, however, with the "culture of resistance" fostered by Hezbollah – fighting the Israeli occupation, the U.S. and Western dominance. These two cultures have continued to co-exist in constant tension with each other. Arguably, the assassination of prime minister Hariri in 2005 tipped the balance in favour of Hezbollah.

What about the mass protests against the ruling classes that began in October 2019: were they another milestone?

Accad: The October 17 uprising marked the dawn of a new era. It calls itself "revolution" and "movement of change" (thawrat). Its main tenet is the anti-sectarian desire for a civil state that ensures equal opportunities for everybody. Unfortunately, the current crisis is making it difficult for the protesters to drive their message home. Meanwhile, Lebanon's kleptocratic elite is fearful that a new unpredictable element will enter the political arena and disrupt its wheeling and dealing.

France, EU, the United States and by extension, the International Monetary Fund, have all actively engaged with Lebanon in an attempt to find a way out of the crisis. Why do you think these initiatives have so far failed?

Accad: Let's assume France and the U.S. are really trying to find a solution to the Lebanese crisis. If so, it is possible that President Macron and other stakeholders have simply concluded the "movement of change" is not a viable partner. They may regard it as too divided or too decentralised – and thus unable to lead the country as a real alternative to the existing or "old" political parties. As a result, the West continues to strike deals in a spirit of pragmatism with the existing elites, despite its low opinion of them.

The more cynical observer would likely argue that rescuing Lebanon from the current crisis or its interests long-term are not a top priority for either France or the United States. The West favours other geopolitical goals, such as securing the offshore drilling concessions for oil and gas. After all, it has done little to help combat the political corruption in Lebanon that has become so endemic in recent decades. How did the state obtain so many loans and grants from international partners with the minimum of oversight and accountability? How come funds were either spent ineffectively or remain untraceable? Is the West not complicit?

Could the upcoming elections prove an opportunity for change? If not, why not?

Accad: Despite regular elections, Lebanon is not a democracy. The state is a kleptocracy, ruled by a handful of crooks, an extension of the civil war era. Six or seven main political leaders and their parties emerged from the Lebanese civil war as power-brokers. As a society, we closed our eyes to the status quo and accepted the general amnesty for crimes past, without learning any lessons from them. The Syrian occupation during those years also presented an added burden, which continues today.

Your project – "Leaders of change" – brings leading figures of the protest movement and civil society stakeholders together. What do you aim to achieve?

Accad: Our research company Action Research Associates was set up with two primary objectives. Firstly, to understand the nature of the October 17 movement and to establish what its motivations, objectives and solutions are. This is key, since there has been much fragmentation within its ranks, with some members refusing representation and the need for structuring.

Following interviews with October 17 activists and independent political actors not directly linked to the current regime, we formed thematic focus groups with our interviewees to assess the data collected together. Five consensual recommendations emerged that will likely play a major role in framing and directing thought when planning how to effect the desired political change. These were laid out in an initial report, which can be read here in English.

Working groups made up of activists and independent political actors have continued to discuss each of the five recommendations, elaborating on them in more practical terms. This has produced a set of talking points and several practical initiatives aimed at stimulating public discourse and spreading the "movement of change" message.

As organisers, we harbour no political ambitions. Part of our success is being able to win the trust of those participating, precisely because we are neutral and have no hidden agenda. We aim to be the glue that holds this multi-faceted movement together.

Since, as you say, many of Lebanon's current problems stem from a reluctance to address the past, the second declared objective of your initiative is to help the Lebanese people process their history. How do you go about that?

Accad: Our aim long-term is to approach Lebanese history from a multi-narrative perspective. What the 1989 Taif peace agreement stipulated was that we as society needed to agree on a unified history book. Since then, there have been many failed attempts: our children still stop studying Lebanese history at 1943, because we simply cannot agree on one common interpretation of past events. We believe the unified history approach is wrong. History should be studied for sake of developing civic values such as empathy, active listening and the ability to accept different perspectives and realities. I would like to see Lebanese children study history as an end in itself, i.e. as a means to develop these skills. We would then be able to accept that our history is one of multiple narratives. This would also help address the root of Lebanon's current problems.

Despite having more or less dropped out of the news, the war in Syria remains unresolved. Refugee returns are very low despite the crisis in Lebanon. Why is that?

Accad: For years now, Syria has been a playground for regional power politics and enmities. Lebanon is sandwiched between Israel, the Palestinian territories and Syria and has been deeply involved in the war, especially through Hezbollah. Closely allied to Iran and the Syrian regime, this Shia militia has extended and even changed the course of the conflict. Despite the current situation in Lebanon, Syrian refugees feel safer staying put than returning to their home country.

The economies of both states are also closely intertwined. As long as the price of fuel was subsidised in Lebanon, trafficking to Syria was encouraged, despite the damage this inflicted on the Lebanese economy. The banking crisis in Lebanon also froze the accounts of many Syrians.

We can of course re-visit history: Syria has never recognised the legitimacy of an independent Lebanon or its borders. During the civil war (1975-1990), Syria actively propped up different warring parties under its tutelage. The current system of corruption was established and mentored during this Syrian dominance and partial occupation. Unfortunately Lebanon failed to liberate itself effectively following Syria's withdrawal in 2005 and things got even worse.

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At the same time, I am against a view that would ascribe too much responsibility for Lebanon's current ills to the Syrian war or even assign guilt to Syrian refugees. Even before 2011, we did not have electricity 24/7, solid infrastructure, a viable economy, or true democracy. The Syrian war may have played a minor role in exacerbating our crisis, but it was an accident waiting to happen long before the unrest broke out in Syria.

Is there anything you would like to add so readers around the world can better understand the current crisis?

Accad: Do not make the mistake of thinking that our upcoming elections are the magic solution. The "movement of change" rejects the use of violence to achieve its agenda. What we are hoping for is gradual infiltration of the "cartel system". We need more transparency, accountability and an independent judiciary. This is what our friends in Europe and the rest of the world should be pushing for.

Interview conducted by Erik Siegl

Martin Accad holds a DPhil from the University of Oxford, UK. He is chief academic officer at the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary in Mansourieh, Lebanon and founding director of its Institute of Middle East Studies. He is also associate professor of Islamic Studies at ABTS and affiliate associate professor at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California, USA.

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