Abstract
Islamist movements today face perhaps their most difficult conditions in decades. After seizing political openings after the Arab uprisings, the Muslim Brotherhood and other Sunni political Islamist organizations have suffered from military coups, electoral defeats, social and political polarization, and extreme repression. This is not the first time they have faced such catastrophic conditions, however, and historically Islamist organizations have proven to be resilient and able to return to public life. This article examines the history of Islamist movements in the Middle East recovering from extreme setbacks in order to identify nine key mechanisms that facilitated those rebounds and then considers which of those factors might be operative today. It concludes that many of those factors are less available than in the past, but that the global turn toward populism, the persistent governance failures of Arab states, and the adaptability of Islamists create greater opportunities for recovery than might initially appear plausible.
Highlights
IntroductionFuture of Islamism through the Lens of the Past. Religions 13: 113
Islamism manifests in many forms, from Salafist movements focused on religious practice to violent Salafi-jihadist movements
This essay focuses on political Islam, the family of Sunni Islamists loosely associated with the Muslim Brotherhood tradition
Summary
Future of Islamism through the Lens of the Past. Religions 13: 113. Nasserist repression of the Brotherhood in the 1950s and 1960s had nearly destroyed the organization, while religious trends had been pushed to the margins of political and cultural life. The Gulf states that financed the resurgence of Islamism in the 1970s and 1980s through direct assistance and through large-scale labor remittances are deeply hostile to Islamism and likely determined to block such financial flows (Medani 2021) States such as Egypt are less willing to outsource social services or to allow Islamists to fill areas of limited state capacity where they might win over potential recruits. Global conditions are highly favorable to populism in its various manifestations, a trend from which Islamists have historically been able to profit While their unpopularity is very real and deep, political polarization makes it easier to rebuild in counter-publics and compartmentalized spaces where appealing to enemies is neither necessary nor encouraged. I consider whether and how the factors that allowed those earlier revivals are likely to be applicable in the coming decade
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